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41v1vu | if we were to go extinct today, would earth be able to erase any evidence of us completely? | I don't just mean fossils and stuff but all these constructions, bridges, heavy steel stuff etc. Would they be identifiable in a million years? Or a billion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41v1vu/eli5_if_we_were_to_go_extinct_today_would_earth/ | {
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"From the surface, yes. All traces of us will either erode away or be buried. However, we have fossils of single celled organisms that are [3.5 billion years old](_URL_0_). That's a significant fraction of the age of the earth itself. It's at least plausible that we would leave fossils that would last that long, if not until the sun becomes a red giant and erases pretty much all evidence altogether, which wouldn't necessarily be that much longer after that. As far as structures, I think it is plausible some of our materials will persist a good long time, depending on the circumstances of their burial.\n\nTLDR: It seems at least reasonably plausible that there will be evidence of humans as long as the Earth exists.",
"There was a show called Life After People. It showed what the earth would look like if people just disappeared. Each episode went a little farther back in time. Eventually all traces would be gone.\n\nKeep in mind this show started with the premise that we just disappeared. No natural disaster, no war or anything that \"killed\" us. Just \"poof\" we're gone. So no fossilized human remains.",
"Yes and no. The things you mention, such as buildings and bridges, would pretty much fade to oblivion. Foundations would probably remain for some things but for the most part, we would simply fade away. However, many of our more forward thinking projects, such as seed banks, would be around for millennia. When we decide that we want something to last, we can do a pretty good job of it. Furthermore, our effects on the planet will live on for the rest of the Earth's lifespan. Trapped in the geology of our planet will be records of our lives here today. Changes in carbon and methane levels, along with traces of elements and isotopes which simply do not exist naturally, will be infused into the planet for all time. To a future civilization, it would be as clear as the words you are reading right now.",
"Naturally occurring uranium is about 99% ^(238)U and 1% ^(235)U. It is enriched to 3-4% ^(235)U content for nuclear reactors, and 90+% for weapons. There is no known means for uranium to be significantly enriched naturally.\n\nTheses uranium isotopes have half lives measuring in the hundreds of millions of years. Even if nothing else man made remained, it would be apparent to any future alien archaeologist coming across enriched uranium that is was not natural.\n\n",
"Interestingly the last thing that will probably remain of humanity are the things we left on the moon. Almost no weathering would occur and very little chemistry.",
"Ceramics lasts a long long time. In a million years, when all of the steel and concrete is gone, the surface will be littered with urinals, crappers, and old tubs. ",
"All of our space junk isn't going anywhere. Assuming whoever comes after us looks at the stars in the sky at night they will be able to see satellites and our stuff for quite some time (def not in the billions of years tho)",
"There was a tv series on the History channel a few years back called \"Life After People\". It goes into detail about how long it would take for certain structures to collapse, grass and trees to grow through streets and things like that. \n\n",
"Given a billion or two years however wouldn't all that stuff all that evidence get subdicted through tectonics and melt back into mantle?",
"It is currently up for review whether we should consider the Earth to be in a new epoch. The proposed name is the Anthropocene Epoch (epoch of the humans).\n\nThere is considerable evidence that suggests the Earth has been changed in permanent ways. At least from a geological perspective.\n\nCement and plastics will stay around for a long long time.\n\nHumans have made many pure elements that just don't exist naturally, such as elemental aluminum. \n\nThe amount of nuclear detonations that have occurred have left of dusting of heavy element isotopes across the globe.\n\nSupposedly, we have physically altered 50% of our available landmass.\n\nAlong with some other examples.\n\nHowever pertaining to your question, in a million years there *might* be some very heavy duty structures that might be somewhere. In a billion years? More than likely not. ",
"Check out the 'Life After People' series, it goes in to a lot of detail as to how long various things we've made will last.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nPretty much only the stuff we've carved out of rock outside of earthquake free zones can be considered permanent.",
"Some solid Bronze statues might last until the sun expands in 5 Billion years and melts the Earth. Here's a possible scenario: Let's say the human race dies out but our cities aren't destroyed. All over the US there are hundreds of bronze statues in public parks. The statues would sit outside in the sun and the rain for thousands of years and they would be ok. (although acidic bird poop might ruin a lot of them) Most of those statues will be standing on stone bases. Water will get into cracks in the stone and freeze and the cracks would expand. Eventually the bases would crack apart and the statue would fall over. Time would pass and after 100 years the statue might be 100% covered by dirt. Once the statue is underground it could survive indefinitely. Icebergs might grind away a lot of the statues but statues near the equator might be spared. After a few million years, the surviving statues would be encased in layers of protective sediment.\n"
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1mdbyj | why do humans feel shame? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mdbyj/eli5_why_do_humans_feel_shame/ | {
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"It's a social emotion similar to embarrassment. When you feel shame, it's usually from doing something not socially accepted and whatnot, so you feel a bad emotion to be discouraged from doing it again, as humans are social creatures, and we generally prefer to be accepted by our communities. ",
"Interesting question, I do not know but I'll try to guess. \n\nLike most words for emotions there would seem to be more than one meaning to the word, which do not describe the same phenomena. \n\nPerhaps the most common meaning of shame is the feeling of discomfort and lowered self esteem connected with the perceived loss of social status due to a action even event. \n\nHedging that purpose in the context of evolutionary traits can only ever refer to a mechanism which makes the positive impact on trait survival plausible. Id say that the purpose of shame is likely two fold. \n\nShame causes a set of immediately recognizable behaviors, first showing people that you are ashamed(red face, hesitation) then later reducing the attention paid to you(subdued behavior) in your social group for a while. Basically a non verbal my bad followed by a please look over there instead. As such it would seem to serve the purpose of reducing the loss of social status(apology ) despite the inevitable mistakes you will make and events beyond your control and reduce conflicts during your move downwards in the social hierarchy should this be required by the group. As you perceive the group having normalized its interactions with you the shame subsides, until the event is brought to focus by some external event. If this is the case then accepting the shame and bearing the behaviours it causes while remaining in contact with the social group is critical to allow the shame to subside. Hiding away entirely will not let this happen while at the same time ensure that your group relations do not normalize. \n\nSecond shame likely plays a significant part in the feedback mechanism with regards to learning both direct and long term. As a feeling to which we are averse it will negatively affect the probability that we take actions which we find similar to the actions which caused the memory too which the shame is connected.\n\nLearning mechanisms are not perfect and when shame becomes associated with behaviors which would reduce the shame felt it can be come paralyzing since any attempt to learn the behavior which would reduce the shame would be negatively impacted by the shame itself. \n\nTL;DR; \nShame facilitates group cohesion and is part of the way you learn not to do things due to their social impact. \n"
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3t9nev | why its carl's jr. on the western half of the u.s and hardee's on the midwestern/some eastern | I know they essentially serve the same things, but why two different names. Also, are there any other companies that do this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3t9nev/eli5_why_its_carls_jr_on_the_western_half_of_the/ | {
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"I know that burger king in Australia is called hungry jacks! This is due to naming rights for burger king in Australia. it could be something similar to this",
"Carl's and Hardees were originally different restaurant chains. Back in 1997, the parent company of Carl's Jr. bought Hardees and is slowly combining the two restaurants. I expect they will keep the names separate indefinitely, as there's no reason to throw away name recognition."
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6l8v3i | how does lying to yourself work? | How do people actually believe the lies they tell themselves to be true, even though they "know" it's not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6l8v3i/eli5_how_does_lying_to_yourself_work/ | {
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"I feel like this is a psychology question, and I am in no way an expert, but maybe this helps:\n\nYour every actions come from your brain, and every decision you make is made after considering your options.\n\nAs you get older and make a lot of similar decisions you get in a habit of reacting the same way to the same actions. There are paths in your brain you \"like\" to take, because you are so well used to them.\n\nIf you treat depression you teach the patients how to get out of their every-day thoughts and finding a different approach to your thoughts and react differently.\n\nIf you tell a lie often enough your brain makes a \"path\" for the lie and all the actions that come from it. They know this isn't the right path, but it is the easiest one to take because it is often used.\nGetting out of that habbit is a lot of work and is in no way easy once the path is big enough",
"You don't actually \"lie\" to yourself. You don't say something factually wrong like \"I'm not fat\" and suddenly believe you are not overweight.\n\nWhat you do is delude yourself about things that are less factually certain. You say things like \"I might be overweight, but I am still pretty healthy\". You focus on the evidence for being healthy, like being able to go on long bike rides, and pay less attention to the evidence against, like your high blood pressure. Next time you have to decide between a double cheeseburger and a salad, you comfort yourself with how healthy you are, and get some fries with that."
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3zyrz0 | what exactly is a bruised bone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3zyrz0/eli5_what_exactly_is_a_bruised_bone/ | {
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"A bone bruise, or a bone contusion, is an injury to bone typically caused by trauma that results in [microscopic fractures and the build-up of blood and fluid in the surrounding tissue and bone](_URL_0_). Bone bruises can be very painful but are much less severe than a fracture. While fractures can be seen on x-rays, a bone bruise can only be seen on MRIs."
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2drx86 | why do people have pairs of chromosomes? what does that do? | Ok, so people have 23 pairs of chromosomes, for a total of 46. What's the difference between the two chromosomes in a pair? Why are there two, what makes them a pair, what purpose does it serve?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2drx86/eli5_why_do_people_have_pairs_of_chromosomes_what/ | {
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"You get one chromosome from each parent. It increases genetic diversity by giving you one from each parent, rather than just one chromosome from one parent."
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1unpen | how do i perceive myself as a single entity, when i'm actually composed of a group of cells that are each self replicating blocks of life? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1unpen/eli5_how_do_i_perceive_myself_as_a_single_entity/ | {
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"Saving this, hoping for some kind of super deep answers...",
"Although you are the composition of many \"moving parts\" so to speak the control center is your brain. This means all these parts report back to your brain and your brain acts as the representative of your body and your \"conscious\" is in your brain. The reason why you perceive yourself as one entity is because, although you are made up of many cells and receive many signals from your body, your brain compiles these and forces you perceive them as a whole, thus creating the illusion that your are one entity.\n\nTL;DR your brain is the control center of your body which controls everything. Therefore you only exist in your brain, and perceive yourself as one. \"You\" are just a brain controlling meat, muscle, and other tissue.\n\nAnalogy: if you are in a car do you see yourself as part of the car? No, just one thing controlling car. The rest of your body is the car and your brain is you in that analogy.",
"This is such [/r/showerthoughts](_URL_0_) material. Love it.",
"imagine if a five year old actually asked you this though ahahaha",
"The same way countries see themselves as single entities...",
"There is no such thing as your \"self.\" You believe some \"self\" entity exists because your experience of reality seems to be continuous. So you say, surely there must be some \"thing\" that is continually experiencing reality. \n\nIn fact, each moment you experience reality is discrete, quantum, separate, autonomous, whatever-word-you-wanna-use. This \"thing\" that experiences reality is born, acts, and dies in each of these moments. There is no continuous self that proceeds from one moment to the next. Your self, mind, ego, whatever-word-you-wanna-use is an illusion.",
"You just asked \"what is the nature of consciousness?\" People have been debating and researching that for millenia.",
"I think it's funny that people here think they can answer this question in a way that a: everyone can understand and find useful and b: sounds like it's just common knowledge and the questioner is the last person to figure it out. Or maybe he is....",
"You seem to be asking about consciousness. That's your real question; What is consciousness? How am 'I' conscious when I'm just made up of unconscious cells? \n\nDan Dennett does a great job in this video: _URL_0_ and I also recall a longer hour long one I liked better but can't find at the moment. My takeaway from this is that consciousness is an emergent illusion. Illusion, to me, doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that it doesn't exist how we think it does, i.e. that it isn't dualism. From Wikipedia: \"Dualism is the position that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical, or that the mind and body are not identical.\" Which to be pretentious, sounds like a pretty stupid idea in the first place. Maybe consciousness is imbued through fairies, or aliens, or little people inside our heads, or god, or something else equally ridiculous. But physics and reality seem more likely.",
"All of these answers completely miss the point of your question. What you're asking is called The Hard Problem of Consciousness and no one on earth has even the slightest clue as to an answer. \n\nSomehow singular consciousness is an emergent property of modular non conscious units. No one knows how though. ",
"I think none of the answers here will satisfy your question, I know that because I have the same question and so do a lot of people. This is famously know as the \"hard problem of consciousness\" and no one really has an answer for it.\n\nIt is easy to say that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain but in my opinion that is just a lazy answer trying to avoid the question by saying it just pops up at some point due to sheer complexity. It's a poor explanation if nothing else. \n\nIf everything in the universe is made of stuff then surely there would be the stuff of thought which is inside our head, but many respected scientist argue this point and say that the universe is made of two different kinds of stuff, the material and the mental. This is kind of an old school view but it has never been proved to be wrong. Personally I don't agree with the latter, but there you go. \n\nIn conclusion, there is no answer to your question as of yet, only speculation. Speculation is good tho and asking questions is the most important thing that will bring us to the answer. \n\nIf you want to learn more, I would suggest reading into philosophy of mind, you will find there many different theories and you may choose the one that sounds best to you since none has been proved or disproved yet. If you're feeling adventurous for a controversial theory, look up Roger Penrose's theory which is called Orchestrated Objective Reductionism or \"Orch OR\" for shorts. It is based on quantum mechanics and a bit of a trip but very interesting and plausible. \n\nI am sorry if this is not so much explain like I'm five but I thought I should post it either way. Cheers. \n\n",
"**You are the nexus through which all information you consciously perceive passes.**\n\nWhere this point is, in your body, is hard to say. It's not in any of your organs other than your brain. It's not in parts of your brain you can live without. It might not even be a fixed point; it might not even be a local point, but rather a collection of points, networked such that they all believe they share the same name, when they exist in different locations, like the blockchain in a cryptocurrency.\n\n",
"To play devil's advocate...\nWhat if your multitudinous cells and their conglomerate you call a person were producing not just one single mind, but a multitude of minds. You would still be able to ask your original question, no? You would just simply be aware of your one, single mind, and not the others. Then the question would be something like \"Why am I only aware of one mind and not many\"?\nAnd if you were aware of the many minds, would you recognize that fact? Or would you still feel like you were perceiving one single mind? And if so, would that lead you to ask your original question all over again?\n",
"Go watch on netflix.. Stephen Hawking's Grand Design: The Meaning of life. \n\nTo think that there are more receptors in our brain than there are known stars in our galaxy = Woooow....",
"Your perception of yourself as a single entity is a flawed perception. This perception began when you incorrectly made a distinction between self and other. There is no self as you have discovered -as your body is composed of other cells and your mind is composed of many different processes and thoughts. Buddhism addresses this confusion and when you understand it you are enlightened. Please read the Diamond and the Surangama sutra to learn more.",
"Ants are the closest answer. A single ant is powerful, but nothing compared to a legion of ants. Once several ants are together, they form a group mind, similar, if not exactly like, the cells of our body.\n\nWho's to say we experience ourselves as single, individual entities? It could be our cells working together to form ideas with the help of electrical currents.\n\nHave you ever shared a special connection with someone? It can be otherwordly. Since we're all made of the same substances, this makes it more so.\n\nEventually, these self replicating blocks of life end their replication and we die.\n\nTruth being, I don't know.\n\nGreat question and philosophical debate.",
"Interestingly one of the main aims of Buddhism is to free yourself from this notion, to realize it is merely an illusion. What you view as \"yourself\" is an illusion, the whole universe is one. You're nothing and at the same time you're an undefinable small part of everything. Everything in the universe, including you, is in a constant flux. The cells and particles that make up you are not the same from one instance to the next.\n\nA bit of further reading for anyone who's interested: [The Buddhist Concept of Impermanence](_URL_0_).",
"My bio teacher explained something similar. I'm cells you have a nucleus and organelles. The nucleus is the \"brain\" of the cell, it tells what all the parts of the cell to do. But the nucleus tells the cell how to do basic functions, it doesn't have feelings and can't really control itself, once all your cells are together you use your brain to control your body, I guess because the cells cannot think for themselves and decide what to do, your cells aren't thought of as an individual being. Once all these cells are brought together to form you, you control movement, and you can choose to do things and make choices. So you are one being.\n\nSorry if it's confusing, it's 2 am here and I can't sleep, I'm also on my phone! ",
"In short, it's because some sets of matter are disorganized and some sets of matter are what we'd call \"integrated systems\" or to use an esoteric term, \"holons.\" \n\nA \"holon\" is something that is both a whole and a part of another whole. You are a holon, as you are a whole person, yet a part of your culture. Your cells are holons because they are whole cells, yet also a part of you. Your arm is not a \"holon\" because it is not a whole thing nor a single part of you. It is many parts, and by itself is not a whole organism.\n\nIt has been suggested that all holons have consciousness because of the nature of their integration as holistic systems. most people think of this as pure bullshit -- an atom can't be conscious, a cell can't be conscious -- but to me, I can't perceive of any other place consciousness could come from other than being made of its parts. the fabric of empty space becomes holon-particles which then become holon-atoms which become holon-cells which evolve into many-celled life which has consciousness.\n\nThis would mean that consciousness is actually not located in your individual self, but in the fabric of the universe, and that it merely takes a shape and form as yourself through integration of parts.",
"OP can you share some of whatever you're taking?",
"I've always thought of myself as a byproduct of layered control structures.",
"I think it's based on the emergent behaviour of a complex system. Each cell does it's own thing, but everything is tweaked by evolution so that the resulting system is very functional. In other words, your behaviour defines your sense of self-identity, not the other way around. ",
"And then, how do you perceive yourself as a single entity when there is no self and reality is an illusion?",
"There's an amazing book on exactly this subject, Thomas Metzinger's The Ego Tunnel. 1-2 Philosophy-Science combo punch exploring both logical reasoning and experiential phenomena (like lucid dreaming/out-of-body experiences) to explain why we experience life as just one \"I\".\n\nAdvance warning - concludes that there is no such thing as a self. Prepare for long, dark nights."
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2a7kf3 | how do seasons work around the world? is it summer everywhere, or is it just summer on a part of the world? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a7kf3/how_do_seasons_work_around_the_world_is_it_summer/ | {
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"When it is summer in the northern hemisphere, it is winter in the southern hemisphere. When it is hot in the US, it is cold in Australia. When the days are long in the US, they are short in Australia. This is due to the tilted axis of the earth, resulting in the different hemispheres getting different amounts of sunlight as we travel around the sun."
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e7wad4 | how can we recall memories and imagine scenarios and see them visually, while also seeing and observing the current environment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e7wad4/eli5_how_can_we_recall_memories_and_imagine/ | {
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"Your brain does lots of things simultaneously, if it didn't your heart would stop when you needed to take a breath, or when you thought about a math problem. \n\nNeedless to say, the thing you're seeing in actuality is based on stimulus coming from your optic nerve. That path only takes inputs from your eye (normally) whereas the input from your imagined scenarios is coming from elsewhere in the brain. They may have some overlap in terms of where they are processed in the brain (giving you the sense you are \"seeing\" a memory), but that portion of the brain is pretty good at doing things simultaneously.",
"because while the sensations might *feel* similar, both being visual, your imagination and your eyesight are not directly connected. Your brain doesn't have to stop processing what you're seeing in order to visualize something, and what you're visualizing doesn't make you start hallucinating.\n\nIn a similar sense how your inner monoloug doesn't prevent you speaking, imagining sounds doesn't make it harder to hear the outside world, and imagining what something disgusting smells like doesn't make you vomit. \n\nWhile the functions are similar, your imagination and your sensory inputs are processed differently in your brain, even if there is some overlap in where they get processed at different stages.",
"I've always been able to render things over my current environmental input. It's not real, I know it's not real, but I can place a virtual thing anywhere I want. I write software and I do the same thing with my software before I write it. Helps a lot with designing things before you write them. Takes a lot of energy though. \n\nThose organically rendered VR objects are recalled from the part of our brain that reconstructs objects based on visual input. Your brain is like a giant AVR machine. Amazing! The objects you perceive as they are perceived by you are rendered or constructed by your brain in real time!"
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17v8kv | putin's government in russia and the quality of democracy that exists there. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17v8kv/eli5_putins_government_in_russia_and_the_quality/ | {
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"Since you haven't gotten a bite, try posting in /r/askpolitics\n\nYou'll prob get a great answer.",
"Well, I lived in Russia during Putin's primetime. And in all honesty, 10 years ago he was the best thing that happened in Russia. He made the country great, became a very popular, most people loved him. Then when reaching his maximum term, he declined to rewrite a law (that would let him stick around longer consecutively) and all the country praised it as an honorable act. Then Medvedev took over, and the people seemed to take a liking to him as well...eventually, which seemed to upset Putin. Putin got jealous, over reacted, and made sure he won the next election... and now he's setting dumb policies in place. \n\nSo how is life there now?\nWell, the media always has to be careful of criticizing the govt., the people still get beat up for having even peaceful protests, and there is still a ton of corruption (which will take decades to go away). The mindset of Russian people is what makes the difference. I personally believe it's great that every person in the US has the ability to buy a weapon, but I feel the opposite about the same issue in Russia... God forbid that Russians get access to guns (technically it's fire-powder ban, I believe). Russia is nowhere near developed enough to trust it's people to that extent. The current anti-democracy measure are a bit much, but I think there needs to be a balance between govt control and peoples freedom in the Russian Federation. "
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69oj81 | what keeps a bowling lane from getting warped from thrown balls? | You always see those bowling ball videos of people punching through the ceiling and it coming back down, and you can hear it occasionally in public lanes where the release isn't really on point, so what keeps the wooden lane from getting warped, dinged, or dented? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69oj81/eli5_what_keeps_a_bowling_lane_from_getting/ | {
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" Wood lanes are shaved down usually every 2 years. Also the lanes are not 1 continuous piece of wood. There are sections. The front part of the lane (where balls land) are made of a harder wood.\n\n Most lanes today are made of a synthetic material. Also in sections that can be replaced.",
"Also, there are many dents in most lanes from people throwing the ball. They are just hard to see depending on the light. They are minimized by the harder wood at the front, completely sanding the lanes every few years, and putting down a new finish (at my old bowling alley we did this every year). Most league houses don't use real wood anymore, which I understand is easier to repair. "
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adhakp | is there a reason why all or most ip addresses begin with 192.168..? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/adhakp/eli5_is_there_a_reason_why_all_or_most_ip/ | {
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"These are internal IP addresses. If you are on a home network, you will have this IP address. Even if you have one computer on a wireless router connected to a modem, you are on a home network.",
"192.168.x.x is reserved for [private networks](_URL_0_), i.e. your local network (for your home, office etc.)\n\nIn some places, each device could also be assigned a public IP address (for accessing the internet), or all the devices in the network could share the same public IP address using [NAT](_URL_1_).",
"192.168.x.x is part of the 'private' range of addresses set aside by the Internet masters (APNIC). Whilst these are valid addresses, they are specificically designed not to be transmitted across the wider Internet. There are actually 3 such sets, (Class A, B and C).\nThese are: \n\nA: 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255.\n\nB: 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255.\n\nC: 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255.\n\nThe Technical term is '[Non Routeable IP addresses](_URL_0_)'\n",
"First you need to understand the difference between public and private IP addresses as well as the term routable. \n\nPrivate IP addresses are used internal to your network and public IPs are used external also known as routable. You may have 50/100/1000s of devices inside of your network they can all share one public IP address via Network Address Translation and the use of port numbers. \n\nIf you google “what is my IP” you’ll see a much different ip address. That is your public IP and it’s how you talk to the world. This is dynamically assigned via your ISP. \n\nThe best way to put it is this, your house has a unique address: 123 Main Street, city State zip code. No where else in the world does that address exist and it’s how UPS knows to find you. Now inside of your house you probably have tons of things that everyone else has. UPS doesn’t need to know where your fridge is to deliver you packages for the fridge just how to get to your house. \n\nThis all exists because there is a limited number of IPv4 address so every routable IP can have thousands of Private IPs behind it. \n\nThere are three private spaces:\n\n10.0.0.0/8\n172.16.0.0/12\n192.168.0.0/16\n\nI’m not 100% sure why most retail devices went with 192 as the IP range. Technically they could have used any of them. In my house I use several different subnets with the use of Vlans.\n\n192.168.98.0/24 vlan 998 management\n192.168.99.0/24 vlan 999 Lab\n192.168.100.0/24 vlan 1000 Home Network\n192.168.101.0/24 vlan 1001 IOT\n192.168.102.0/24 vlan 1002 Media\n192.168.103.0/24 vlan 1003 Cameras\nVlan 1004 retired\n192.168.105.0/24 vlan 1005 Servers\n192.168.106.0/24 vlan 1006 NAS \n\n\nThat’s about the basics of a network. I’ve been a network security engineer for about 10 years.. it’s a really amazing career with lots of jobs and the entry is minimal. Hope that helped. \n\nEdit: also understand most things in Network were developed 20-30 years ago when not many home users had internet. That is why 127.0.0.0 range is reserved.. the thought was we would never run out of IP address.. and it’s why IPv6 is becoming the new standard. ",
"You have a limited view of the IPv4 address space. This is most likely due to the use of the 192.168.0.0/16 address space by consumer routers. \n\nThe entire IPv4 address space is heavily utilized except the highest numbered addresses."
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dcea88 | why are americans so obsessed with halloween? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dcea88/eli5_why_are_americans_so_obsessed_with_halloween/ | {
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"Why not, enjoy the holiday?",
"Because Halloween is fun. The little kiddies dressed up in their costumes out getting candy. The harmless pranks people can play on others. Great movies on T.V. Everything about Halloween is just fun.",
"Americans Excited about Holiday that Glorifies Eating Candy and Dressing Slutty.\n\n\"Shocking!\", says nobody.",
"Halloween has become a bit of it's own counterculture in a way. As the Christmas holiday has continued to bloat and start earlier and earlier each year, people respond by opposing it in various ways. Thanks to internet and meme culture being what it is, Halloween itself has started to become overly bloated itself. You'll find that most people who rave about halloween online dont actually do much to celebrate it.",
"Canadian here, we also adore Halloween. It’s fun. It’s a bit of a free pass to show your excited/eager/more youthful exuberance for something as an adult. You get to buy miniature versions of your favourite candies, and rewatch your favourite Halloween movies while keeping an eye for new ones. You get to see kids grinning from ear to ear as they go door to door chanting “trick or treat!” And swoon at the toddlers “twik-o-tweeting” \n\nThere are few tricks nowadays, so it’s actually one of the more wholesome holidays. If you’re an adult there is alcohol costume parties - it’s like returning to childhood + alcohol. If you have kids there are family pumpkin patches (some on wineries, with charcuterie, wine by the glass or bottle) and loads of usually free outdoor kids activities. Ditto with corn mazes on some of the pumpkin patches. Family Halloween parties with old school games like bobbing for apples etc. \n\nAnd candy. Loads of candy, chips, chocolate and cheap toys. It’s just fun.",
"I’ve grown to hate Christmas because family systems are so broken that sharing kids with all these different sets of parents and grandparents is just a huge burden. Halloween is all mine. Not complicated at all.",
"Why do you ask this question like it's a bad thing? It's a friggin holiday for fun...",
"America is pretty into all it's major holidays (there aren't that many) Halloween is just one of the more social-network friendly ones since there's a large degree of personal flair and diversity in decorating as well as dressing up so it's a high visibility holiday.",
"We like to party. Add some costumes and candy, hell yeah. I personally love fall , so i stay pumped about the seasons changing.",
"Halloween is a fun holiday, just like so many others, but it gets hyped due to marketing. Just look at all the retailers that can make money selling candy and costumes and decorations and all the massive piles of useless, expensive, shoddy shit. What you're experiencing is the effects of marketing hype. It's like Christmas. Do people enjoy it? Sure. Are people so fucking nuts about it that they demand Christmas shit on the shelves in October? That's a thing, but it's just the retailers trying to capitalize on the market, it's not in response to demand.",
"It's a truly simple festivity that is non-religious, non-political, and non-historical. Therefore, the common person can enjoy it without feeling they have to please a particular demographic's beliefs."
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5fjq51 | why are some people great at abstract thinking but terrible at algebra which involves it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fjq51/eli5_why_are_some_people_great_at_abstract/ | {
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"Math requires abstract thinking to understand why you're supposed to do certain things, but not to literally do them. You need abstract thinking to understand why you can divide two from both sides of 2x=4, but not to do it.\n\nThe people that are good at math before calculus are people that can do well in a system that requires logical and step by step thinking. It isn't really until calc and beyond that you need to understand why you can/cannot do certain things. "
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3w3q7w | the yahoo-alibaba spin-off | I read the articles but because of the terminology i didn't quite understand how that affects the company, the products and the board. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w3q7w/eli5_the_yahooalibaba_spinoff/ | {
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"Yahoo is doing terribly and its' core business is pretty much worthless. However, Yahoo owns a lot of shares in a company called Alibaba, which is actually very profitable. So they want to get rid of their actual business and make money on the shares instead.",
"So yahoo way back when,bought into alibaba.\n\nNow yahoo is basically worthless compared to alibaba.people want them to split because if they want alibaba shares,they don't want to also have to pay for the (relatively crappy) yahoo stuff on top of it\n\nYahoo stock=bad\nAlibaba=good\n\nYahoo+alibaba= ? Weird mix\n\nSo people really want those alibaba shares,and the way to split them off is to make a new company. But in order to sell them,yahoo has to do some weird stuff to avoid taxes.alibaba is literally worth enough that those taxes are massive (more than yahoo entirely),so it's worth dodging them\n\nHowever,the IRS came out and said \"hey don't sell off your alibaba shares or well sue you for not paying taxes on it\" (not that directly,but that's basically what they said). No one is sure whether they would win or lose in court.\n\nSo now,instead yahoo is basically splitting itself off to get around it.\n\nI shortcutted a lot in that explanation,but if you're looking for more, Matt Levine on bloomberg has a bunch of articles that I thought were easy to follow\n\nEdit: in case it wasn't clear,it shouldn't really affect the company/board/products right now (although if it comes to it,those shares are worth more-they could literally get rid of all of yahoo and still profit)"
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37gbr2 | the bill of rights | Each of the amendments. I'm trying to understand it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37gbr2/eli5_the_bill_of_rights/ | {
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"**First Amendment**\n\n*Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.*\n\nThe government cannot criminalize or arrest you for speaking your mind, exercising your religion, associating with people, protesting the government, or publishing news.\n\n**Second Amendment**\n\n*A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.*\n\nThe government cannot criminalize or prevent you from having weapons or forming militias.\n\n**Third Amendment**\n\n*No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law*\n\nThe government can't force you to house members of the military.\n\n**Fourth Amendment**\n\n*The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized*\n\nThe government cannot search or seize you or your possessions without a warrant or probable cause.\n\n**Fifth Amendment**\n\n*No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.*\n\nThis one's a doozy, basically it establishes the requirement of a Grand Jury to indict people for major crimes, protects people from being tried for the same crime twice, protects you from self-incrimination, and prevents the government from arresting and incarcerating you without following \"due process.\" Also says the government can't take your stuff without due process and just compensation.\n\n**Sixth Amendment**\n\n*In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.*\n\nYou have a right to a fast and public trial, a partial jury of your peers, be told of the charges against you, be able to question witnesses against you and provide witnesses in your defense, and you have a right to a lawyer.\n\n**Seventh Amendment**\n\n*In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.*\n\nGrants you a right to a jury trial for civil cases exceeding $20 and protects the results of those cases from being overruled by a judge.\n\n**Eighth Amendment**\n\n*Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.*\n\nThe government cannot issue excessive bail or sentence people to cruel and unusual punishments.\n\n**Ninth Amendment**\n\n*The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.*\n\nBasically, just because the Constitution mentions certain rights by name (such as freedom of speech) this doesn't mean people don't have other rights *not* mentioned in the Constitution.\n\n**Tenth Amendment**\n\n*The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.*\n\nAny power not explicitly granted to the Federal Government by the Constitution is instead reserved to the States or the people.\n\nNote: This is a simplification. Centuries of application have created various case laws which flavor and limit these amendments to some degree or another.",
"Most of them are pretty self-explanatory.\n\n1. There can be no laws against what you say, or what religion you follow, or who you associate with.\n\n2. We need a military force, so you're allowed to own guns.\n\n3. You cannot be forced to house troops.\n\n4. Your home can't be searched without an OK from a judge.\n\n5. You can't be tried twice for the same offense. You can't be forced to testify against yourself.\n\n6. You have to have a fair public trial with witnesses you can cross-examine.\n\n7. If you want a jury trial, you are entitled to have it.\n\n8. The punishment must fit the crime.\n\n9. This is not an all-encompassing list. You may have other rights too.\n\n10. If it's not specifically a federal issue, then it's automatically a state issue. [There's more, but I can't really describe it LY5.]",
"The bill of rights enumerates some of our most important fundamental [natural rights](_URL_0_). It doesn't *grant* any rights. It enumerates them and explicitly forbids the government from infringing on them. This is an important distinction that is clearly expressed with the ninth amendment.\n\nThe constitution doesn't grant you the right to free speech or to bear arms. You already had it.\n\nIt's also interesting to note that the term \"natural\" is used and not \"God given\" like we hear so often today. The founding fathers were surprisingly irreligious considering the limited scientific knowledge of the day.\n\n\n",
"The REALLY important thing to understand about the Bill of Rights--which, alas, neither much of the public or the government seems to grasp--is that it was NOT written as a memo from the government to the people saying, \"look at all these sweet-ass perks we're letting you have because we're nice guys.\"\n\nIt was actually intended as a memo from the people to the government saying \"U can't touch this.\" Rights are not revokable, they don't apply to JUST people we like, they are simply not subject to any legislation less than another Constitutional amendment.\n\nYeah, it frequently doesn't work out that way in real life, and people are partly to blame when the government abridges their rights, for not screaming bloody murder and running the scoundrels out of office on a rail.\n\nAnd THAT, Timmy, is why the President of the US today has the authority to order the summary murder of a US citizen on *suspicion* of being an enemy of the state.\n"
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zfmxv | the philosophical concept of epiphenomenal qualia and jackson's "mary" thought experiment. | I have to write an essay on this and I just don't know how to write anything of substance. I don't understand why it's not an open and shut 'Yes, she does learn something new; what it is to actually experience the colour red' case. I was comparing it to something like -knowing everything there is to know about the theory of swimming won't mean you can jump into a body of water and swim (theoretical knowledge vs functional or applied knowledge). But then I read a statement from Jackson himself that said this was not what he is getting at, so I think I've missed the point.
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zfmxv/eli5_the_philosophical_concept_of_epiphenomenal/ | {
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"It's not open and shut because it's not demonstrable that Mary *has* learned anything new. [Mary's room](_URL_1_) has been argued by greater (or at least more singularly focused) minds than either of ours, and yet they still disagree.\n\nThis is how I see it: Suppose Mary *and Martha* work together in the black & white room, studying color vision. After a thoroughly complete study, and a development in both researchers of a complete-as-possible understanding of the phenomenon, Mary leaves the room and experiences color vision for the first time. When she returns, Martha asks her what she has learned. Can Mary tell Martha anything that will expand Martha's understanding of color vision? I think it is obvious that she cannot, so Mary really hasn't gained any new *knowledge*, even though she may perceive that she has.\n\nSimilarly, a person using \"magic mushrooms\" or LSD may perceive subjectively that they have expanded their consciousness and gained knowledge far beyond what their tiny minds could have held before. This is subjective, however; the knowledge is \"useful\" only within the tripper's own psyche.\n\nLastly, take a look at the problem from another angle used in the study of artificial intelligence. It is obvious that while in the black & white room, Mary does not experience color vision. However, the *system* which is composed of Mary, the room, the monitor, and all connected cameras and sensing equipment, *does* experience color vision. That *system* can differentiate a red apple from a green one just as readily as any person who can perceive color naturally. That person, after all, is a system of optics, sensory apparatus and neural tissue that can perceive color, even though the actual sensors (the [cone cells](_URL_2_) of the [retina](_URL_0_)) only register relative light intensity."
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2nozip | the lake effect, as in what happened in buffalo. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nozip/eli5_the_lake_effect_as_in_what_happened_in/ | {
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"Basically, the Lake Effect is what happens when cold air moves over warmer water, picking up water vapor which freezes in the air, and then comes down as snow when the air moves downwind to land. Since Buffalo is right next to Lake Erie and Ontario, there is plenty of water for the cold air to move along. Additionally, since Buffalo has a higher elevation than the lakes, then the air moves up when it deposits snow, causing very intense snowstorms. ",
"The Great Lake are big and warm compared to the air. This encourages moisture to be taken up by the air passing over. The air is usually traveling west to east in that area. Once that air goes back over land it cools again and can't hold as much moisture. It falls as snow not very far away. It means that Buffalo, New York, can get five feet of snow while Syracuse gets nothing."
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yxdnd | what are the blue and orange/yellow lines that i see on the edges of everything when i have my glasses on? | Whenever I use my glasses (not contacts), I will see on the side of every vertical edge, a side with a blue glow, and a side with an orange/yellow glow. I don't see the glow without my glasses of course. But, what is it? And what causes it? Can anything be done to glasses to prevent it from happening? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yxdnd/eli5_what_are_the_blue_and_orangeyellow_lines/ | {
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"You are nearsighted, your eyeglass lenses are concave, and the outer edges act like prisms that split up light into its component colors. A white object, seen through the edge of your lenses, will appear to have a reddish halo that oozes out towards the outer edge of your lens, with a corresponding bluish halo that oozes in towards the center of your lens - and this happens no matter if you are looking through the left, right, top, or bottom edges.\n\nAt night, you can enjoy superhuman vision skills. Go outside and glance at a distant street light through the outer edge of one of your lenses. You will see a truncated rainbow - just three or four colors instead of a full wash - and you will be able to tell whether the streetlight is a sodium-vapor lamp (a heavy orange halo) or mercury-vapor lamp (a blue halo plus a green halo) just from the spectrum that only you are able to see because of the lenses that give you mutant powers."
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5hhhd7 | does having a "will to live" help you overcome a severe illness or injury, and if so, how? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hhhd7/eli5does_having_a_will_to_live_help_you_overcome/ | {
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"Definetly. Someone who has given up on everything is less likely to think about his/hers well being. As someone who has a will to live will check up symptoms, have less anxiety. Some cures in life are really the pure basics like sleeping and eating well. ",
"Research has shown Single old people with dogs live longer given the same other circumstances. \nThey have something to live for. ",
"I used to work for a company that made shades for hospitals and offices, and one of the benefits for hospitals patients was the ability to see outdoors through the loosely woven shade when it was down and the bedside remote control to raise and lower the shade. The remote gave the long-term bedridden patient the ability to have some control over their lives when so much of their illness was out of their control. The scene through the shade helped to keep them connected with the activities of the outside world and with nature. Thus the psychological disposition of the patient was affected by the shade and greatly helped their ability to recover sooner. The faster you can feel normal again, the faster you can recover. So logically, having the \"will to live\" will at the very least make you better able to deal with a terminal disease.\n\nOn the other hand my mother died because she lost the will to live because she no longer functioned normally due to life long case of diphtheria and was bedridden for a long time."
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69eom4 | when nuclear weapons were added to the us arsenal, why was the ability to launch them given to the president of the united states and not congress? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69eom4/eli5when_nuclear_weapons_were_added_to_the_us/ | {
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"Because the main purpose of a nuclear weapon is to retaliate if someone attack you. It serve as a deterrent, if you attack us, you will be destroyed.\n\nIf you need the approval of the congress, which could takes days at best, it would make the deterrent value of nuclear weapons useless. Someone could destroy the US with nukes before congress can approve a retaliation.",
"The President is the Commander in Chief. He has control over all the armed force's weapons. While he is required to get Congress approval for certain actions, if he gives an order the military will follow it.\n\nIt is not the job of Congress to give orders to the military or any other armed force in America.",
"Imagine if we got attacked with our current congress. First, they'd have to meet up to approve anything which is a problem if Congress is in recess or it's 3 in the morning when nukes hit, then they will argue over party lines for a few days about whether the nuclear attack really happened and if the country that did it is really not a friend. \n\nJoking aside: Even in a one party congress where everyone agrees it'd take too long to organize and vote on that so it was given to the only single person who's supposed to be knowledgeable and trusted enough to make that decision",
"Constitutionally, (although not really in practice any more), Congress is the sole authority on declarations of war or authorizations of the use of military force, but the President is the commander in chief of the armed forces. Congress can't tell generals what to do and it can't give or veto military orders. A nuclear attack is a military order and as such only the President has the authority to initiate it.\n\nOn a more practical note, if nuclear missiles have already be launched at the US, there would be only a few minutes to authorize a retaliatory strike, and even a functional congress is not capable of acting that quickly. No country in the world with nuclear weapons has that authority given to their legislatures. In every case it's the head of government or the head of state.",
"The need to use nuclear weapons -- particularly in response to a nuclear attack -- requires a very quick response. Congress, under the best of circumstances, can make a decision in a few days.\n\nIn the nuclear age, a decision may have to be made in a matter of minutes. The law authorizing the President, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Defense, to use nuclear weapons reflects this reality.",
"here is everything you ever wanted to know about the history of the president and the bomb...great read\n\n_URL_0_",
"Check out the podcast Radiolab. In a recent episode called \"Nukes\" they talk about the issues at play having one person with the keys and if there are better ways. ",
"Congress has never in the 228 years of their existence had the authority to issue orders to the military(fire that cannon, move those troops 500 yards forward etc). That power belongs to the President as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. A nuclear strike is an order from the civilian Government to the military, making it the power of the President and not Congress.",
"Originally they were just another weapon, and controlled by the military like any other weapon. You don't consult the government before shooting at the enemy in an already declared war. Truman could probably have stopped the two bombs from being dropped on Japan if he had really tried, but he was mostly outside of the loop, it was a decision made by generals, not the president. \n\nTruman didn't really understand the consequences until they had already been dropped. He then sat at the middle of a political firestorm of protesters asking just what using these horrific weapons really accomplished. He decided if he was going to get the blame for their use he damn well was going to have control of when they were used, and took steps to set up the current system where nukes are only used by presidential order.",
"People who appeal to the Constitution are using a post facto rationale to what was already in place. (The War Power is actually pretty complicated Constitutionally, esp. if you try to use the Constitution to make sense of a post-18th century world, where wars can happen sort of instantly and do not require conscripting of new troops, etc.)\n\nThe short answer is, because the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 made it that way, and Congress passed it. Congress gave that right to the Executive. They did not see it, at the time, as a giving of the right away from Congress — they saw it as enshrining the idea of civilian control of nuclear weapons, as opposed to giving the military control over them (as would be most weapons). \n\nAs for why they did that: you have to get into the history of the Atomic Energy Act, which went through two major revisions. The first (the May-Johnson Act) basically gave the military a relatively stronger role. The second (the McMahon Act) stripped that entirely away, and vested the power in the Executive. To my knowledge Congress never even considered giving themselves that kind of role — it just wasn't on the table. They did not outline anything like a chain of command. (Johnson himself emphasized the need for greater Congressional control over atomic energy matters — he was ridiculed by McMahon as implying that he wanted them to lead armies into battle.) \n\nIt didn't specify chain of command, but it made clear that the civilian Atomic Energy Commission (an executive agency) was in physical control of the weapons unless so delegated by the Presidency. This became enshrined over the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy administrations as Presidential control. Again, in resistance to the idea of military control, a very different question than President vs. Congress. \n\nBy the time of Johnston it was basically taken for granted that Presidents had unilateral authority on this point. The requirements for rapid response in the Cold War (by the 1960s, the Soviets could nuke the USA within 20 minutes or so) also dictated a very streamlined chain of command. \n\nIn the 1970s and 1980s there were some proposals to add Congress into the chain of command, at least for first strike uses (e.g., not for \"instant retaliation\" purposes), but they didn't go anywhere. There is currently a bill in Congress (the Lieu-Markey bill) which tries to do something very similar. The context post-Nixon has changed very dramatically — it has ceased to be civilian vs. military, and more a question of \"should this be in the hands of one human being?\" \n\nCongress has never tried to seriously assert power in this area. They could presumably do it, under the same justification of the War Powers Act (which passed under Presidential veto). The Constitutional questions are seriously involved."
]
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||
1osowz | why are the baby boomers considered the worst generation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1osowz/eli5_why_are_the_baby_boomers_considered_the/ | {
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"Obviously this is subjective, but there's a very strong case to be made that baby boomers are the most selfish generation. See [this](_URL_1_) and [this](_URL_0_) and [this](_URL_2_), for example. \n\nLong story short - unlike previous generations of Americans, the baby boomers inherited a very prosperous country and made a number of extremely short-sighted decisions that benefited them but screwed over their children, particularly in the areas of fiscal solvency (read: entitlements), education, and infrastructure. ",
"Generally because they inherited a hard-won and prosperous welfare state but then proceeded to dismantle it in the name of short-term profit at the expense of their children. This current generation are the first who, on average, are going to be worse off than their parents, and the policies of deregulation and privatisation pursued in the 1980s are directly responsible for that.",
"TIL; Apparently, the greatest generation were also the worst parents ever?",
"The general (anti-boomer) narrative can be quickly reduced to this: Boomers benefited from a substantial government investment in human capital and then grew up generally less willing than their parents to accept high tax rates.\n\nWhen Boomers were young, government built interstate highways, made education affordable (and for many who fought in the military, essentially free), expanded social safety nets (classic entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid), and spent 32 cents of every federal dollar on long-term investments (compared to 16 cents on the dollar now). It's undeniable that Boomers benefited substantially from these investments. \n\nNow, Boomers tend to be conservative ([source](_URL_1_)). Specifically, they tend to be skeptical of government spending/taxation and strongly in support of entitlement spending ([source](_URL_1_)) which will drive long term debt when Boomers retire. \n\nInitially, this seems hypocritical. The generation that benefited the most from government seems defensive of their safety nets and yet unwilling to use government as a tool to fix broken education systems, crumbling infrastructure, etc. The rule of the last few Presidents seems to embody this - they have spent their children's money (debt) to finance huge entitlements and tax cuts rather than massive infrastructure investments and serious investments in education. (see the piece - it's long - that started it all, by calling the Boomers the \"[Worst Generation](_URL_0_)\")\n\nThat is the common narrative. As with any generalization about millions of people, you should take it with a grain of salt (and weigh it against the fact that at least some Boomers fought the Vietnam War without a choice and helped dismantle the racist/sexist institutions maintained by their parents). \n"
]
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"http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/keller-the-entitled-generation.html?_r=0",
"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2055497/JEREMY-PAXMAN-Baby-Boomers-selfish-generation-history.html",
"http://www.esquire.com/features/worst-generation-0400"
],
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[],
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"http://www.esquire.com/features/worst-generation-0400",
"http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/03/the-generation-gap-and-the-2012-election-3/"
]
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||
21m6wj | why my car windows do this and how i can prevent it? mostly happens in rain. | _URL_0_ It's dangerous and I'm not sure how to deal with it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21m6wj/eli5_why_my_car_windows_do_this_and_how_i_can/ | {
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"It's condensation because of the temperature/humidity difference between the cabin of your vehicle and outside.\n\nThey make antifogging coatings that you can use (rainx makes one, for instance) but for immediate relief, use the defrosting setting on your air conditioner.",
"Turn on your vents, put your temp gauge warmer. If you find its happening more often, you need to clean your air filter.",
"If the car is equipped with air conditioning, turn it on, set the vents to defrost, and set the temperature to a warm setting. \n\nIn most cars, this will set the air from recirculate to outside air. The AC will remove moisture from the air and you will still get warm air.\n\nThe condensation will stop."
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55sjzk | do those pedestrian button things at traffic lights actually do anything? how do they work? | Or is it like elevator door close buttons and office thermostats, where it's only there to make people think they have control?
If they actually do anything, how do they work? They don't seem to be wired to anything, if anything they seem bolted on and it's as if they're usually connected to nothing at all. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55sjzk/eli5_do_those_pedestrian_button_things_at_traffic/ | {
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"They simply activate the walk and don't walk lights.\n\nSome activate lights in high traffic areas. For instance, on a main road there might be a factory that employs a large amount of people. Parking is on the other side of the multi lane road. Lights may be put up, but they are only ever activated when someone presses the button. This allows the employees to cross the street safely.",
"It will depend on where you are (including which country you're in) and even what time of day it is. It may be that some of those buttons are just there to make people feel they have some sort of control, but many of them -- I can attest from personal experience -- really do work.\n\nI have encountered pedestrian crossings, for example, where you have to push the button or the lights really won't change. This is always true when it is just a light-controlled pedestrian crossing and not also an intersection. And I have encountered pedestrian crossings at intersections, where at busy times the lights change whether or not you push the button, while at less busy times they only change if you do push the button.\n\nAs for how they work, they send a signal to the software controlling the lights. On simple pedestrian crossings they change the traffic lights to red and then, after a short pause, the crossing lights to green; if the lights have recently been operated in this way, the software waits before changing the lights, so ensure that cars aren't backed up forever as pedestrian after pedestrian pushes the button.\n\nAt an intersection, the software waits for the traffic lights, as they go through their normal sequence, are switched so that the pedestrians can cross, and then change the crossing lights to green.\n\nThe box with the button may seem to be simply bolted on, but where that box contacts the post it's bolted to, there will be a hole.",
"In the UK we have 'Pelican Crossings' which are all pedestrian operated, if the button isn't pressed the lights won't change at all as they have no bearing on other lanes of traffic ",
"I remember vaguely from my traffic engineering class 10 years ago that those buttons do work, but not as most people think. The buttons actually control the amount of time the light will stay on for people to walk. The more people who press it, the longer it stays \"Walk\".\n\nBut this is all from memory a long time ago, and I was most likely daydreaming about the hot girl in class during that time."
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2y2k5z | how does the common signature hold so much power confirming identity? anyone could copy it and there are much better tools available. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y2k5z/eli5_how_does_the_common_signature_hold_so_much/ | {
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"Signatures don't confirm identity, they affirm it. When you sign something, you're making a promise that you're the person named in the document.",
"It doesn't prove identity, it proves intent. Notarizations are used to prove identity - a notary reviews a person's identification (for example, a driver's license), watches the person sign the document, and affixes an official stamp or seal."
]
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[],
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k43hb | copyright / trademarks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k43hb/eli5_copyright_trademarks/ | {
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"**Copyright:** You wrote something, and nobody else gets to make copies unless you say they can. Also they don't get to make a movie of your book, or a performance of your play, unless you say they can. There are some exceptions for people who are talking about your work, teaching, writing reviews (\"fair use\"). For music, you can't stop people from singing or playing the tune you wrote, but they have to pay you (\"compulsory licensing\").\n\n**Trademark:** You made up a name for something you're selling. You use that name on your product and your ads, so that people can recognize it. Competitors aren't allowed to call their products by the same name or one that's confusingly similar, because that would trick the customer. But you don't get to stop people from using the name of your product when they write reviews or articles about your product. And if you *let* your competitors call their products by the same name, or customers just decide that your product's name is the name of the whole general concept (like \"xeroxing\" or \"kleenexes\"), then you can't go after them any more.",
"**Copyright:** You wrote something, and nobody else gets to make copies unless you say they can. Also they don't get to make a movie of your book, or a performance of your play, unless you say they can. There are some exceptions for people who are talking about your work, teaching, writing reviews (\"fair use\"). For music, you can't stop people from singing or playing the tune you wrote, but they have to pay you (\"compulsory licensing\").\n\n**Trademark:** You made up a name for something you're selling. You use that name on your product and your ads, so that people can recognize it. Competitors aren't allowed to call their products by the same name or one that's confusingly similar, because that would trick the customer. But you don't get to stop people from using the name of your product when they write reviews or articles about your product. And if you *let* your competitors call their products by the same name, or customers just decide that your product's name is the name of the whole general concept (like \"xeroxing\" or \"kleenexes\"), then you can't go after them any more."
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3eoobm | why don't big companies get hitmen to off people who successfully sue them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eoobm/eli5_why_dont_big_companies_get_hitmen_to_off/ | {
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"It's not particularly easy to commit murder without leaving a trail to follow. It's too much of a risk for the company. "
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||
1s8ffp | the void | I have no idea how this works.
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s8ffp/eli5_the_void/ | {
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"text": [
"Instructions were not clear. I hurt my back trying to shake my 27 inch CRT monitor.",
"Had no effect on me\rConclusion: I'm batman "
]
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"http://i.imgur.com/WvdmV7S.png"
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8sb8mq | why does symmetry make people look more attractive? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8sb8mq/eli5_why_does_symmetry_make_people_look_more/ | {
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"Not 100% sure about this but I think that it is in our genes. \n\nSymmetry is associated with healthiness. Back then when it was \"only the strongest survive\" symmetry was (and is) a sign of a healthy individual with good genes.\n\nIf you have a healthy partner, you and that person are more likely to create a strong and a healthy descendant that will survive till he/she is able to pass your genes to the next generation."
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||
38apug | what exactly happened in the olympic boycotts in 1980/84? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38apug/eli5_what_exactly_happened_in_the_olympic/ | {
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"That was the one Russia hosted right? Basically no one went there to spend money in Russia while they spent money to host it and sped up their financial collapse of the soviet union.",
"There were 4 significant Olympic boycotts, two in 1976 and one each in 1980/84. I mention the 1976 boycotts because they inform the subsequent ones:\n\n**Chinese-led boycott**: Taiwan (officially the Republic of China) and China (officially the People's Republic of China) both boycotted over the recognition of the other, each insisting it was the sole government for all of China.\n\n**Congolese-led boycott**: In July 1976 the New Zealand Men's Rugby Team participated in a tour of South Africa, playing against all-white teams. In response to this \"approval\" of apartheid 26 African and Middle-eastern nations boycotted the Olympic Games that started that month. Most athletes were already in Montreal when they learned of the boycott and had to return home without competing.\n\nThus, in this climate the Soviet Union was set to host its Olympics in 1980.\n\n**US-led boycott**: President Jimmy Carter announced that the US would not participate in the 1980 Moscow Olympics in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It was clear to the western world that the Soviets were making an effort to extend its oil resources at the expense of the Afghani people. 65 countries joined the United States in boycotting the games, and several others did ceremonial boycotts of the opening ceremonies or releasing their athletes to compete under the Olympic Flag.\n\n**Soviet-led boycott**: The Soviet Union and 14 other countries did not participate in 1984 games in protest of \"chauvinistic and anti-Soviet\" attitudes. It is widely understood that this boycott was retaliatory for the 1980 boycott.",
"Flashback to the late 70's. Your country is either Communist (Soviet Union/Russia, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba) or it isn't (Western Europe, US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia). Most of the world is planted in one of these two camps. The intensity of these international relationship is high - a politician's sneeze could set off thorough nuclear war. 3rd graders were taught to duck under their desks in case of nuclear war. No kidding. It was wild.\n\nThe 1980 Olympics was hosted in Moscow. The Soviet Union (USSR) invaded Afghanistan in late-1979, and the ensuing world controversy resulted in a boycott of the Olympics from most of the non-communist world (which really didn't like the Soviet Union, and their influence over other nations). \n\nThe 1980 Olympics were held (in Lake Placid, NY) as normal, and were dominated by Russia and East Germany, save for the USA's hockey victory over the USSR, which was largely passed over in the Soviet Union. I doubt that the huge upset had anything to do with the boycott, though it's popularity shows the heated rivalry between US and USSR.\n\nSo by summer 1980, the invasion had been in the press for a few months, and the boycotts began after the Winter Games that year. In total, 65 nations (including nations who won about 70% of the medals from the previous 1976 Montreal Games) boycotted. The Olympics probably lost a ton of money, as NBC canceled coverage in the United States. \n\nWith the USA and Western Europe, it was no surprise to see the 1980 games dominated by the home-field Soviet Union team, and East Germany (who was, politically, the Soviet's bitch anyways). \n\nIn 1984, there was some payback to the West, as the games were long since scheduled to take place in beautiful Los Angeles, California. Disclaimer: I am a lifetime LA area resident, I was there. 16 nations, mostly the Soviet Union's posse from Eastern Europe, boycotted. Also, Iran and Libya boycotted, I recall because of our alliance with Israel. Iran especially has a history with Israel, and will sometimes refuse to compete. Iran boycotted *both* Olympics, because, well, crazy government.\n\nNotably, Romania, Yugoslavia, and China, all Communist/Socialist nations, did *not* join the Soviet-led boycott. \n\nWithout the USSR and East Germany, the United States dominated the Olympics, along with West Germany. Romania had a good showing, especially in Gymnastics and Weightlifting.\n\nSince the '84 Olympics had US broadcasting money, as well as a crapload of corporate sponsorship, they made some money, and Peter Uberroth (who was the director of the LA games) was a potential candidate for president. \n\nCompared to the 1980 boycott, which darn near killed the games, the '84 boycott was harsh, but not as nearly as bad.\n\nA forgotten winner from the boycotts was Ted Turner, who organized the \"Goodwill Games\" in Moscow (1986) and in Seattle (1990). These two events helped cement Turner as a major media guy when CNN (the first 24-hr news station) and TBS (the first 'national' TV station) were still new. The events, showcasing the US vs. USSR meeting in 'alternative Olympics' was a TBS exclusive, quite a win when cable TV wasn't nearly as common as it is now."
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3qb4er | the who announcement regarding processed meats. | What defines "processed"? Is this only about red meat and not say, Turkey/Chicken? What is the science behind this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qb4er/eli5_the_who_announcement_regarding_processed/ | {
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"So first off you really need to understand what the numbers look like here. We're talking about maybe 34,000 cases worldwide. Almost 13 million cases of cancer are diagnosed every year. So even if we take this announcement at face value, you're looking at about .002% of all cancer. Over the course of your life you have about a 40% chance of getting some kind of cancer (much more likely very late in life) so if you live to be around 80 you're looking at about a .001% chance that you'll get any sort of cancer from your bacon intake assuming this is correct. \n\nHere's the thing: almost any sort of cooking that alters the food a lot might be carcinogenic. A good char on your steak? Probably a little bit carcinogenic. The same applies to that char of your tofu, too. This sort of modified chance is less about meat (and the processing of it) as much as it is about the methods used to make things. \n\nAlso, you need to be aware that when they did this study they basically used the crappiest bacon you can find. A crap bacon made of a miserable pig full of nitrates and nitrites really is not the same thing as a traditionally smoked and cured slice of bacon from a healthy and properly raised pig. When we're talking about odds this small, those things matter a lot. \n\nBut basically this is because these things have nitrates in them. It's not news or new. Nitrites degrade into nitrosamines in high acid or high heat environments. Nitrosamines are carcinogenic. Even \"uncured\" meats have nitrites in them, as they are cured with celery juice which contain high amounts of natural nitrates instead of chemical curing agent. \n\nPeople seem to have it in their heads that the idea of living is to never die, but it's not. You evolved to make other humans by the time you hit middle age. After that, there's no promises. Something will kill you. If it's not the 0.002% chance it's bacon, then there's the much larger chance that it's liver failure from alcohol consumption or heart disease or the massive environmental stress put on a body by a lifetime of not enough sleep, too much work, and weird exposure to electronics 24/7. All of it's got a chance of being the thing that does you in, but only one of them gets to win and ultimately one of them will. That's what this means. \"of the people that have cancer, a really small number of them had it triggered by the carcinogens that came from nitrates in processed meats as opposed to the carcinogens that came from just about every other aspect of their life or from the free radicals that they generated themselves.\" \n\nEDIT: TL:DR: life is a cost benefit analysis in action. Everything you do might have a negative consequence somewhere. Some things have a better change of hurting you than others. Eating bacon is absurdly safe compared to most everything else you do. "
]
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393amq | when i eat apples my face sweats, why reddit | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/393amq/eli5when_i_eat_apples_my_face_sweats_why_reddit/ | {
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"Are you allergic to apples? I never had this happen or heard of it happening to anyone. Bot pls don't kill me :( Friend bot?",
"Sounds to me like an alergic reaction.\n\nDoes it happen with apple juice?\n\nstop eating apples. You risk tightening your esophagus if you really are allergic."
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5wi89i | what happens to water when it goes stale? | What happens to the water to give it that tangy, metal-like taste? Is it something to do with the plastic bottles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wi89i/eli5_what_happens_to_water_when_it_goes_stale/ | {
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"Part of it has to do with some of the gasses inside the water evaporating out, like how when you leave water out for a while it starts developing little bubbles along the walls of the glass.\n\nThe rest, as you mentioned, is from the container itself reacting with the water and the minerals inside it. ",
"After about 12 hours tap water starts to go flat as carbon dioxide in the air starts to mix with the water in the glass, lowering its pH and giving it an off taste"
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3b2oc4 | why hasn't a car company come up with a new better performing, more efficient air cooled engine? | It seems like you get more space, save weight, and reduce complexity with an air cooled engine. Why hasn't a manufacturer put R & D into making a modern version for today's compact cars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b2oc4/eli5_why_hasnt_a_car_company_come_up_with_a_new/ | {
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"Ironic username is ironic. \n\nI think engineers like water cooling because it helps solve a number of problems. It quiets the engine, provides a reliable source of heat for the HVAC systems and allows the temperature of the engine to be contained to a narrower range, allowing it to run more efficiently. \n\nThat said, I long ago promised myself that my next car will have an air-cooled boxer six in the rear. Still waiting, however. ",
"Because you're dealing with a fuck-tonne of heat in the car engine. The reason water is used is because it takes a huge amount of energy to change its temperature, whereas air only needs a little bit of energy for its temperature to change. \n\nOn top of that, water boils at a temperature lower than the melting point of the engine parts. This happens to be a good thing because when something is boiling, its temperature stays constant. This allows you to plan for your parts to expand and run at a certain temperature range if you use water as your coolant. Air, on the other hand, lacks this benefit because it wouldn't be changing state in the environments that people typically use their cars in. \n\nI'm pretty sure that smaller combustion engines such as the ones on lawn equipment are air cooled, but those have less rigorous tolerances, and don't put off nearly as much heat as a car engine.",
"A common misconception about Porsche's (your username) is that they were only air cooled. The engines in fact were oil-cooled. They had a tremendous oil capacity and cooling system for it. Cooling with air is very difficult because it is an insulator and an engine has a lot of volume without enough surface area (opposite of a radiator) to dissipate heat. A typical cooling system on an engine is not as complicated as you seem to imply and it is very effective. "
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lj043 | time signatures | Like I'm 5, please. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lj043/eli5_time_signatures/ | {
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"Simply, a time signature is the number of beats in a measure.\n\nListen to a piece of popular modern music, and count the beats. You'll most likely notice that it goes BOOM dot dot dot BOOM dot dot dot or some variant on that. The most significant beat happens every fourth beat.\n\nIn music, these four beats define a measure, which is an organizational unit. The time signature tells you how many beats there are in a measure. A time signature of 4/4 means there are 4 beats (top 4), and each is a quarter note (which is the bottom 4). The quarter note part is only important for reading the music, as it identifies which note is the beat.\n\nNow listen to a waltz. You'll notice that the main beat (aka the downbeat) comes every three beats: oom-pah pah, oom-pah pah, and so on. (Note: fast waltzes tend to sound like there's only one beat, but they are subdivided into three.) This is a time signature of 3/4: 3 beats, and the quarter note is the beat. Some waltzes are written in 3/8, which means the eighth note has the beat. This sounds identical, but the music is written differently (usually, this is done to make it easier to read).\n\nSome pieces are in two. These often include marches (which are otherwise in 4) and polkas. Think of the oom-pah, oom-pah tuba beat that underlines a stereotypical march. This is written as 2/4 and sometimes 2/2 (which means the half note has the beat; this looks like a 4/4 measure but has 2 beats. This is done for clarity reasons too).\n\nThe next most common signature is 6/8. This means there are 6 notes to a beat, but it can also be subdivided into 2 groups of 3 notes or 3 groups of 2 notes. This signature is used for some marches and dances (for example, a march where three notes can happen per beat instead of two). [Example](_URL_5_)\n\nThese are the most common time signatures: others exist, but aren't used as frequently. \n\nSome music is in 5, which means there are 5 beats to a measure. This can be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; or it can be subdivided into 1-2-3, 1-2 or 1-2, 1-2-3. [This piece](_URL_6_), which is in 5/8, mostly alternates between the latter two. [This one](_URL_2_) is in 5/4, and goes 1-2-3,1-2. This is more common for dances; a march isn't fun if you have to take an odd number of steps.\n\nSome pieces are in 7/4 or 7/8, which can be subdivided in several ways ([here's](_URL_3_) an example). Time signatures like 9/8 and 12/8 can be used to divide a 3/4 or 4/4 measure into threes.\n\nThere are also pieces which switch time signature, which makes things even more fun. This can be done for a variety of reasons: the music switches from a march to a dance, for example, but sometimes, the melody doesn't really fit into a time signature, so assigning it one that isn't awkward creates some odd signatures. [This](_URL_4_) piece alternates between 5/4 and 6/4, because the melody is free-flowing and assigning any one signature would have interfered with the structure. Composers can use changes for notational reasons: [this](_URL_0_) section of this piece is in 7, but the composer wrote it in measures of 2/2, 2/2, and 3/2 alternating so it is easier to read. (If you listen further into this piece, you'll see the time signature change because the nature of the piece changes.)\n\nThese changes can get strange; [this piece](_URL_1_) starts out in \"free time,\" where the conductor marks each chord, and then moves between 1/8, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 3/8, 4/8, 5/8, 1.54, and 2.5/4. (Basically, this is because the composer, Grainger, was really weird.)\n\nThe odd and obscure time signatures are just that; you won't see them often, and the first few are the ones worth knowing.",
"Count from one to three, and then keep repeating it (1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3....)\n\nNow count from one to four in the same way (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4...)\n\nDid you FEEL the difference in the rhythm? That's what a time signature tells you. \n\nHint: the top number in a time signature is the only important one. It tells you what number to count to.",
"Simply, a time signature is the number of beats in a measure.\n\nListen to a piece of popular modern music, and count the beats. You'll most likely notice that it goes BOOM dot dot dot BOOM dot dot dot or some variant on that. The most significant beat happens every fourth beat.\n\nIn music, these four beats define a measure, which is an organizational unit. The time signature tells you how many beats there are in a measure. A time signature of 4/4 means there are 4 beats (top 4), and each is a quarter note (which is the bottom 4). The quarter note part is only important for reading the music, as it identifies which note is the beat.\n\nNow listen to a waltz. You'll notice that the main beat (aka the downbeat) comes every three beats: oom-pah pah, oom-pah pah, and so on. (Note: fast waltzes tend to sound like there's only one beat, but they are subdivided into three.) This is a time signature of 3/4: 3 beats, and the quarter note is the beat. Some waltzes are written in 3/8, which means the eighth note has the beat. This sounds identical, but the music is written differently (usually, this is done to make it easier to read).\n\nSome pieces are in two. These often include marches (which are otherwise in 4) and polkas. Think of the oom-pah, oom-pah tuba beat that underlines a stereotypical march. This is written as 2/4 and sometimes 2/2 (which means the half note has the beat; this looks like a 4/4 measure but has 2 beats. This is done for clarity reasons too).\n\nThe next most common signature is 6/8. This means there are 6 notes to a beat, but it can also be subdivided into 2 groups of 3 notes or 3 groups of 2 notes. This signature is used for some marches and dances (for example, a march where three notes can happen per beat instead of two). [Example](_URL_5_)\n\nThese are the most common time signatures: others exist, but aren't used as frequently. \n\nSome music is in 5, which means there are 5 beats to a measure. This can be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; or it can be subdivided into 1-2-3, 1-2 or 1-2, 1-2-3. [This piece](_URL_6_), which is in 5/8, mostly alternates between the latter two. [This one](_URL_2_) is in 5/4, and goes 1-2-3,1-2. This is more common for dances; a march isn't fun if you have to take an odd number of steps.\n\nSome pieces are in 7/4 or 7/8, which can be subdivided in several ways ([here's](_URL_3_) an example). Time signatures like 9/8 and 12/8 can be used to divide a 3/4 or 4/4 measure into threes.\n\nThere are also pieces which switch time signature, which makes things even more fun. This can be done for a variety of reasons: the music switches from a march to a dance, for example, but sometimes, the melody doesn't really fit into a time signature, so assigning it one that isn't awkward creates some odd signatures. [This](_URL_4_) piece alternates between 5/4 and 6/4, because the melody is free-flowing and assigning any one signature would have interfered with the structure. Composers can use changes for notational reasons: [this](_URL_0_) section of this piece is in 7, but the composer wrote it in measures of 2/2, 2/2, and 3/2 alternating so it is easier to read. (If you listen further into this piece, you'll see the time signature change because the nature of the piece changes.)\n\nThese changes can get strange; [this piece](_URL_1_) starts out in \"free time,\" where the conductor marks each chord, and then moves between 1/8, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4, 3/8, 4/8, 5/8, 1.54, and 2.5/4. (Basically, this is because the composer, Grainger, was really weird.)\n\nThe odd and obscure time signatures are just that; you won't see them often, and the first few are the ones worth knowing.",
"Count from one to three, and then keep repeating it (1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3....)\n\nNow count from one to four in the same way (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4...)\n\nDid you FEEL the difference in the rhythm? That's what a time signature tells you. \n\nHint: the top number in a time signature is the only important one. It tells you what number to count to."
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5r8sa863Ts",
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2z7gxr | how come i wake up a minute or two before my bus stop more or less like clockwork when i fall asleep on the bus? | I've been commuting for 6 years and I've been taking the same bus line for those years and almost every time I take it in the afternoon I fall asleep and wakeup in just in time to press stop and get off.
I've been thinking about it and I can think of any que that really indicates that it's the right stop unless I'm unconsciously counting the amount of stops it makes but that isn't foolproof either since it doesn't necessarily stop at every stop everyday. The time it takes also varies depending on whether it stops at a bus stop to pick people up or not and how many which could delay my arrival by ~5 minutes.
But the puzzling part about it is that I haven't missed my stop when I've been sleeping on the bus quite frequently for 6 years. Only happened a few times when I first started commuting. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2z7gxr/eli5_how_come_i_wake_up_a_minute_or_two_before_my/ | {
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"Same here. I've always thought that it's about habit - even when you aren't fully conscious, so long as it's not a truly deep sleep, a body probably has to stay aware of its surroundings (in case of danger?), and therefore, through habit, the body knows when to wake you up, but I have no scientific reason for thinking this, haha.",
"It's probably a combination of a bunch of subtle clues that you subconsciously pick up on. It could be a pattern in the stops right before yours, subtle changes in the scent of the air near your stop, specific sounds that you only hear near your stop, the absence of the voice of a person who gets off right before your stop, or a combination of any or all of these and more. There are literally millions of variables that your brain can subconsciously pick up on, and wake you up at the perfect time to get off the bus. Having ridden the same route for 6 years, your brain will be excellent at picking up on subconscious clues that you may not even be able to notice consciously."
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cwr3gu | why is brown rice so much dryer than white rice? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cwr3gu/eli5_why_is_brown_rice_so_much_dryer_than_white/ | {
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"Brown rice is just white rice that hasn't been processed so it still has a thing called a bran layer. \n\nThe bran layer is a tough fiberous coating. It isn't very absorbent and it surrounds the outside of the rice grain, so when you feel it in your mouth, it feels drier and more coarse than regular rice which has that tough paprt removed so only the inner more absorbant and soft middle is there."
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a9v9s3 | how do glow sticks light up when broken | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9v9s3/eli5_how_do_glow_sticks_light_up_when_broken/ | {
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"They contain two chemicals that, when mixed, produce light. One of these chemicals is stored in a thin glass vial. When you crack the stick, the chemicals start mixing & the reaction can take place.",
"There is an inner glass tube that when broken allows 2 chemicals to mix. The reaction causes them to glow with different chemicals making different colors.",
"The outside tube is made of flexible plastic and contains a solution of phenyl oxalate and fluorescent dye. Inside that is a glass tube containing hydrogen peroxide. When you bend the stick far enough, the glass tube breaks and the two chemical solutions can mix. The reaction between phenyl oxalate and hydrogen peroxide produces energy, which goes into the fluorescent dye. The dye then emits that energy as light."
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1nh9sq | how they change wedding rings size without cutting? | How jewelry shops changes wedding rings size without cutting?
I saw this machine, but i dont know how it works. How can you change the size and keep the same size (yo dawg)?
Does it make the ring thinner?
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nh9sq/eli5_how_they_change_wedding_rings_size_without/ | {
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"The machine linked in the OP stretches the ring to make it larger, or compresses it in one of those dies around the base to make it smaller. Gold is pretty malleable, so it's not terribly hard to change its size this way. Yes, of course it will affect the overall thickness of the band. if you stretch it, the band will get thinner, for example.",
"Hey, goldsmith here. The picture you linked is, like another user said, a device we call a \"ring stretcher\". There are various forms of it and it usually includes a compressor as already mentioned. This works only for rings of one color, and that are the same all the way around the band. Jewelers will not use this for a ring that has any stones in it, or rings that are two-toned, or that have areas that are thinner than others, because it causes \"unexpected and/or undesired results\".... As you have already guessed, the rings when compressed and stretched maintain their original weight, it is all the same material, but you are either stretching it out thinner to cover more area, or compressing it to cover smaller area. If you compress a ring a single ring size, it will not suddenly gain a whole millimeter's worth of thickness; it's much smaller and not very noticeable. You would need to stretch or compress a ring about 5 sizes or so to see a noticeable change in the ring. Usually in rings that are going down in many sizes that are not very thick you will see a concave depression happen on the inside of the band. If you stretch a ring that is two-toned, or white gold and yellow gold, you may cause the rings to separate, because the alloys to make karat yellow gold and karat white gold are different and stretch and compress differently; if you stretch a ring with stones set in it the areas removed to accommodate the stones will stretch faster and cause the settings to become weak and the metal to stretch irregularly, same with rings that have thin and thick design areas. Additionally, rings that have plain bottom shanks and elaborate crown and shoulder areas can also sometimes be stretched, but usually at the cost of the thickness of the shank- this can be done by placing the ring on a steel ring mandrel and \"tapping\" on the shank gently with a brass or steel hammer. There are many limitations to this but it can generally safely be done to a ring that has never been cut-sized and has been properly annealed 1/2 to 3/4 of a single size up."
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fvpv99 | why do modern phones lack the soap opera effect of modern tvs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fvpv99/eli5_why_do_modern_phones_lack_the_soap_opera/ | {
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"I think they r referring to that hyper realistic quality in the picture.. i dont like it..it does remind me of a soap opera..I thought i was high the first time i saw it on someones tv..",
"The effect you’re talking about is the motion blending that takes what is normally 30fps or 24fps material and turning into into 120fps, which makes everything look like shit and if you have it turned on you’re a horrible person. \n\nI don’t know for sure why it’s not on phones, other than maybe no one fucking wants this garbage feature. And also it would absolutely wreck your battery like this wrecks whatever it is you’re trying to watch.",
"Newer TV's use display panels with much higher refresh rates than the programs they are showing. That means the program is made at 24 or 30 frames per second but the panel itself is refreshing up to e.g 200 times per second.\n\nIn order for the motion to be smooth and without jitters and judders the TV has to interpolate the other 170-ish frames every second. It does that using an algorithm running on a processor. And algorithms like that can't account for every eventuality. So they get it wrong sometimes and the motion looks weird.\n\nThere should be an option to disable the interpolation. Samsung calls it Auto Motion Plus, LG calls it TruMotion, Sony calls it MotionFlow, and so on.\n\nEdit : Sorry that didn't actually answer your question. I would guess phones don't do the same because of the cost of integrating or developing their own interpolation system. I think the decoding of most video formats is already done in integrated third party hardware (GPU chips) and tacking another stage onto that wouldn't be easy or cheap. And of course the reduction in battery life isn't something their sales literature could easily spin as a worthwhile tradeoff."
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1wn5br | how do companies like primerica make you money? | I want to save for retirement but I don't understand how IRAs make you money or how dependable a company like Primerica is. I don't know how stock generates money. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wn5br/eli5_how_do_companies_like_primerica_make_you/ | {
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"These companies are known as \"Multi-Level Marketing\" and have a structure *very* similar to that of a pyramid scheme (though legally, because they have a product they aren't classed as pyramid schemes).\n\nThe way it works is that someone recruits you to sell a product (in this case it's insurance). You have to pay your recruiter to be able to sell the product, and he/she gets a cut of any sales (and whoever recruited them gets a cut of whatever they make, and so on). The company encourages you not to focus on selling insurance, but instead on recruiting other people to work under you. The vast majority of people walk out of these schemes having lost large amounts of money.",
"Don't use Primerica. It's a scam, or at least as close you can legally be to a scam. Their fees are insanely high, and their products are way too expensive.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_9_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_8_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_7_\n\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_6_\n\n_URL_4_\n\nIf you really want advice on things like retirement saving, IRAs etc. come ask at /r/personalfinance. They have had quite a large number of detailed discussions on these things if you search back, and the community is generally willing to help everyone out.",
"How about using Kramerica instead? \n\n\".... if you would have told me twenty-five years ago that some day I’d be standing here about to solve the worlds energy problems, I would’ve said you’re crazy… Now let’s push this giant ball of oil out the window.\""
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"https://www.consumeraffairs.com/employment/primerica.html",
"http://www.ripoffreport.com/r/Primerica-Ripoff-Report-Verified-Safe/Edmonton-Alberta/REVIEW-Primerica-offers-excellent-business-opportunities-stands-behind-its-products-s-23615",
"https://web.archive.org/web/20070208210054/http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff127284.htm",
"https://web.archive.org/web/20070210200729/http://www.ehmac.ca/showthread.php?t=25840",
"http://www.sequenceinc.com/fraudfiles/2013/05/primerica-financial-services-the-fake-job-interview/",
"http://www.sequenceinc.com/fraudfiles/2013/09/losing-money-in-herbalife/",
"http://www.sequenceinc.com/fraudfiles/2013/10/article-on-nuskin-fraud-in-china/",
"https://web.archive.org/web/20070202130254/http://www.armydiller.com/financial-scam/",
"https://web.archive.org/web/20070520032731/http://sastools.com/b2/post/79393875",
"https://web.archive.org/web/20070206092441/http://www.revolution242.com/blog/2005/05/primerica-scam.html"
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4tlpo9 | why are fiber-optic connections faster? don't electrical signals move at the speed of light anyway, or close to it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tlpo9/eli5_why_are_fiberoptic_connections_faster_dont/ | {
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"It's not directly faster but indirectly it can be much faster than copper depending on what needs to be done. Fiber has the advantage of not having to deal with any kind of electro-magnetic interference along the wire, no matter how long it is or how many wires are bundled together. So you can get much more bandwidth out of the same diameter cable than you would with copper. It's also harder to splice into to eavesdrop on the traffic so security conscious engineers prefer it over copper. ",
"The \"speed\" of your connection is not determined by the speed in which the messenger particles travel. But rather the speed in which they can convey information.\n\nIn this case the issue here is not raw speed of photons vs. electrons, but the bandwidth if information they can carry. Photons can operate at higher frequencies and therefore carry more information per photon. Electrons cannot operate well at those higher frequencies so are limited in the amount if information they can carry.",
"Light in optic fibre is actually pretty slow, about two-thirds the speed of light. Electricity through copper carries data much closer to the speed of light, so that isn't the answer to your question.\n\n\nThe reason fibre is faster for home broadband, which is probably what you're actually wondering, is because of the technologies used. \n\n\nDSL makes use of the copper phone cables to your house, but it's fighting a battle against a noisy phone line to do so. More noise (interference) on the line reduces the amount of data that can be sent, akin to shouting at a friend over the noise of a roaring highway.\n\nCable is faster, and that's because it uses a higher-quality connection to you in the form of coaxial cable. This adds shielding to the electrical signal, reducing the noise that interferes with the signal. However, your cable is shared with many other properties, so you'll be fighting for your share of that data with your neighbours.\n\n\nA fibre connection runs through glass that is quite impervious to outside noise. Electricity from outside doesn't affect it like it can with copper, and it isn't affected by light from outside the glass, either. This means that the signal is not fighting as much noise, and you can push more data over the fibre than you could over copper.\n\n\nI haven't mentioned latency, but most questions about speed are usually referring to bandwidth, not latency.",
"Individual signals inside both fiber and electrical cables do travel at similar speeds.\n\nBut you can send way more signals down a fiber cable at the same time as you can an electrical cable.\n\n\nThink of each cable as a multi-lane road. Electrical cable is like a 5-lane highway. \n\nFiber cable is like a 200 lane highway. \n\nSo cars on both highway travel at 65 mph, but on the fiber highway you can send way more cars. \n\nIf you're trying to send a bunch of people from A to B, each car load of people will get there at the same speed, but you'll get everyone from A to B in less overall time on the fiber highway than you will on the electrical highway because you can send way more carloads at the same time. \n\n\n**Bonus Info** This is the actual meaning of the term *bandwidth*. It's commonly used to describe the speed of an internet connection but it actually refers to the number of frequencies being used for a communications channel. A group of sequential frequencies is called a *band*. One way to describe a communications channel is to talk about how wide the band of frequencies is, otherwise called *bandwidth*. The wider your band is, the more data you can send at the same time and so the faster your *overall* transfer speed is. \n\n**EDIT**\n**COMMENTS** Many other contributors have pointed out that there is a lot more complexity just below the surface of my ELI5 explanation. The reason *why* fiber can have more lanes than electrical cables is an interesting albeit challenging topic and I encourage all of you to dig into the replies and other comments for a deeper understanding of this subject. ",
"Electrons move close to light speed, but the signal carried by them in a cable moves much slower, depending on the cable. The electrons don't actually move very far, they just bump into each other, like a sound wave. That wave can be as slow as 60%ish of light speed. \n\nFor what it's worth, the light in fiber optic cable also isn't going light speed, ironically enough. Light moves slower in a medium than in a vacuum, and the light is not taking a straight path, but bouncing around. Still, it's much faster than coaxial cable, at least.\n\nFor most applications, you're not going to notice the difference. The cable in your neighborhood is going to stay copper. But the nodes going out of neighborhoods, that handle all the incoming traffic there, and which have to communicate with the ISP directly, would greatly benefit from fiber optic cable. The distances are long enough, and the bandwidth high enough that fiber optic will make a huge difference.",
"It's not sending you information *faster* but rather its sending you *more information* at a time, which means more total data transmitted over a given period of time, and that's typically what we refer to as \"faster\" \n\n\nThe reason it sends you more information at a time is, as others have described, it is very insulated against noise and other external factors. \n\n**I like bad analogies so here you go**\n\nImagine if I have 50 eggs and my goal is to take them 100 yards as fast as I can, and the goal is to get them there without breaking them.\n\nFirst time I try I am given nothing. I use my shirt as a \"pouch\" and fill it up with the eggs and then run. A lot of the eggs bounce/fall out as I'm running and half of them are broken or missing when I get there. \n\n\nSecond time I try I am given metal box to put them in. While running the eggs bounce around inside the box and about 1/3 of them break. \n\n\nThird try I am given a thick plastic bag. I fill it up with the eggs and only 4-5 of them fall out the top on my way there. Nearly all the eggs made it safely.\n\n\n-I can run near the speed of light. \n\n-I am your ISP\n\n-Eggs are data\n\n-My shirt is DSL\n\n-Metal box is coax\n\n-Plastic bag is fiber",
"\"Latency\" = the time that it takes a signal to go from sender to receiver. If you're talking, it's affected by the speed of sound. If it's radio, it's the speed of light. Wire and fiber optic are both close enough to the speed of light.\n\n\"Throughput\" = the amount of data that you can transmit or receive in any given unit of time.\n\nSo, for example, if you want to send a bunch of data from New York to Washington DC, you might have two choices:\n (a) send it over the internet\n (b) put it all on hard drives, load those hard drives into a minivan, and drive them\n\nIf you choose option (a), Washington will start receiving the data long before it would if you chose option (b). But, if you're sending enough data, Washington may finish receiving the data sooner if you choose option (b).\n\nSimilarly, if you want to move a pile of gravel from one place to another, 10 yards away, you might have two options:\n\n (a) pick up individual pieces and throw them over\n (b) load up the gravel into a wheelbarrow and cart it over\n\nYou'll get some of the gravel there faster with choice (a), but you'll be done sooner with choice (b).\n\n\nSo, when you hear people talk about \"speed,\" they don't mean \"how long does it take to get the first little bit\" (that would be latency, which is affected more by the speed of light). They mean \"how long does it take this to finish?\" and that's affect mostly by throughput.",
"You’re confusing two concepts.“Speed” as in how long it it takes to download a big file, and “speed” as in the time it takes for communication to be exchanged. They’re not necessarily related.\n\nLet’s say you need to move some toys. You could hire a truck or you could hire a train. Trucks and trains can make the journey in approximately the same span of time, but trains carry a lot more while doing it.\n\nFibre optics are like the train in this analogy. Each individual unit of information doesn’t get to the destination any faster, but you can send a whole lot more of them per second.",
"Lot of \"meh\" answers... The answer is closer to the fact that you can switch optics much faster (THz range) compared to low GHz range for wires. Yes, you can also use multiple wavelengths but individual signals can carry more bits per seconds than a copper connection.",
"So I see the answers here about the speed of electrons:\n\nYou can outrun electrons in a wire.\n\nI know this isn't ELI5 below but\n\nA major thing to remember is that they do not move in a straight line. They're always bumping into one another and it's more of a collective \"drift speed.\" let's take a wire with a 0.001mm radius with a current of 1 amp.\n\n________I_______ \n Q * e * R^2 * p\n\nThe electrons are traveling at .00025 m/s.\n\nSo the reason the activity is instant when using electronics is that it's similar to filling a tube with tennis balls. Put one more tennis ball in one end, and it forces one out the other end.\n\n",
"To transfer a lot of information, you don't just need to transfer a signal, you need that signal to *change quickly*, the more quickly the better.\n\nAnd electric signals that change quickly are really hard to transmit over long lines: they create magnetic fields and radio waves, through which they lose energy until you can't measure them anymore, or they are simply dampened by capacitive resistance.\n\nLight, on the other hand, is transmitted the same, no matter how quickly its intensity changes; it's limited purely by the electrooptical elements that create and receive the signal. ",
"It depends what you mean by \"faster\". There are two possible measures - how long it takes to transfer a certain amount of data (bandwidth) and the delay before your data arrives at the other end (latency)\n\nIf latency is critical, and you are communicating over a long distance, then fiber may not be the best option. In a fiber cable, the signal travels at about 0.6x the speed of light (the light travels more slowly through the glass fiber than air).\n\nHowever, in a radio network (or a professional microwave beam system), the signal travels at the speed of light.\n\nIf you need to link computers a long distance apart (several hundred miles or more), and you need low delay (latency), it is better to do it with wireless links. This is particularly important for financial work, where deals are done in order they are received, and to get the best deal, you need to be first in line. If a company is doing this type of work, then they usually prefer a wireless link between private wireless towers than a fiber link.\n",
"People often get confused between bandwidth and latency. Imagine a funnel used to pass water; size of the funnel is the bandwidth and the rate at which water passes is the latency. Now if the water itself is being passed slowly, increasing the size of the funnel will not help.\nMany times you complain to the ISP of bad network performance and almost all times they suggest to increase your bandwidth; but if the packets themselves are traversing at a slow rate, increasing the bandwidth will not help.",
"They're not necessarily faster. They just have less loss. Think of Fiber like a perfectly paved road and copper as a paved road that turns into a dirt road, then a trail, and then hits a brick wall.",
"There is quite a bit of misinformation here, so I will try and ELI5 for you.\n\nFirst - what is bandwidth? Bandwidth refers to the number of electrical pulses transmitted over a link within a second. Each pulse carries individual bits of information. Bandwidth is the data transfer capability of a connection and is commonly associated with the amount of available frequencies and speed of a link. \n\nData Throughput - is the actual amount of data that can be carried over this connection. When people discuss upload/download speeds they are actually discussing data throughput.\n\nNow onto the question at hand - why are fiber-optic connections faster? There are many reasons, but here is a quick breakdown for you. \n\n1. Cable lengths, resistance and attenuation. Glass has much less resistance to light than copper does to electrical signals. This allows the light to travel faster and further. For copper wires, more repeaters are required to ensure signal strength is not lost. Every time a signal hits a repeater the transmission is delayed. \n\n2. Noise. Copper wires also are at a higher risk of EMI radiation. This radiation can disrupt your signal and cause the systems to have to resend the frames (bits of information). Cross talk is also a type of noise (when a signal jumps from one wire to another) and can also cause signal loss. \n\n3. Cable size. In Canada/USA, the typical Copper connection (Coaxial) which is used for most home installations is a 10Base2, ThinNet cable. This allows for about 10Mbps for Ethernet. Think of this as the size of the pipe itself. Fiber uses larger pipes1000Base-x which allows for speeds of 1000 Mbps.\n\n4. Cable Sharing. Coaxial is also the tunnel used to bring your tv services to your home. This sharing of the line is called broadband. Different frequenciess spectrums are used for different purposes. If you have fiber installed, it is typically dedicated for your internet services. Coaxial is also shared amongst other customers in your region and thus reduces your available data throughput further.\n\nI think this about sums it up, but it has been a while since I studied this.",
"In a bunch of the replies, there are great answers and analogies. However, none of them mention modulation. \n\nCable modems, dsl modems. Modem stands for modulator/demodulator. The point of the modem is change the electrical signal from digital to analog for transmission and from analog to digital for receiving. It's difficult for an analog signal to represent 1s and 0s so it does this by using a sine wave. It uses the process called phase shift keying in which it represents the individual 1s and 0s as a shift in phase on the sine wave. To get more bandwidth, you add more possible shifts in the sine wave to represent more bits at a time. This is where the term noise comes into play. The more noise, the harder it is for your modem to recognize the phase shift. Each phase shift is a Hertz, cycles per second. It is the same concept as 4g, lte, 3g, 2g in your phone. 2g uses less types of phases compared to 3g. \n\nFiber is different. Fiber doesn't need to convert data to analog before sending it down the line. It can transmit data faster by adjusting the intensity of the light. \n\nI apologize for the lack of ELI5.. -ness but it is really hard to put this into simpler terms. I'll edit it when I'm not mobile. \n\nEdit: for correctness. I forgot fiber doesn't need to convert to an analog signal before transmitting and receiving.",
"I'm sure the answer is already here, but it's not so much speed as it is bandwidth. \n\nBut to answer the actual question, the speed of light in a standard fibre optic cable is 0.69c and the speed of electricity through copper depends on a few things... Signal frequency, current, conductor size, insulator. For all intensive purposes, the speed of the signal propagation is extremely close to a fibre cable. Like 0.64c-0.72c\n\nWhere fibre has the advantage is bandwidth. A similarly sized fibre cable can carry a much wider bandwidth of signal, allowing for speeds upwards of 100gbe, where I think the max you'll get over your cat5/6 is around 1gbe. But the word \"speed\" in the context of Internet bandwidth is a little bit misleading. If you were to compare it to copper pipes transporting water to your house, an Ethernet cable is like a 1/2\" copper pipe, while a fibre optic cable is like a 5\" pipe. The water flows at the same speed, but you can get way more water from your 5\" pipe.",
"Here is an actual ELI **5** for you.\n\nConstant stream is no information, because how would you know where the information starts and where it stops ?\n\nYou send information by starting and stopping the stream of electricity or the light or whatever.\n\nElectricity is lazy, it starts and stops slowly.\n\nLight is not as lazy as electricity, you can start and stop it much faster.\n\nTherefore sending information by light is faster.",
"Much of the confusion stem from the word faster or speed. Some people equate volume to speed. 500mbps is fast! Well, a 500mbps connection over satellite will be over 1000ms because the data has to travel to space and back. Conversely, a 56kbps connection to an adjacent server could be 1ms. So was is fast?\n\nFor most people (1gbps users,) fiber and copper connection operate the same. In fact, the difference between copper and fiber are almost nothing. Last month, a coax carrier had the highest average bitrate for netflix. This month they are 10kbps slower than the current #1. There are many fiber carriers that have lower average bitrates than coax counterparts.\n\nIn most applications, copper and fiber send the same volume of data. There are even 10gbps specifications for copper. One bonus you do get is wavelength-division multiplexing. You can send different colors of light over the same piece of glass and they do not interfere with each other. Most people do not deal in C/DWDM.",
"Copper lines also degrade signals over distance. That's why when you used to call long distance from NY to CA, it would cost a fortune. Phone companies had to amplify that signal every time it degraded to a point. Not an issue with fiber.",
"As a communications technician who went to tech school and has worked in data centers for Microsoft, facebook, and wells fargo installing and maintaining thsee sorts of connections...\n\n1. Copper cabling is electrical in nature. Because of this, you can only send so much through the cable before you start to reach a physical limitation of the electrical signal interfering with itself via EMI (Electromagnetic interference)\n\n2. Fiber does, in general tend to move faster. The speed of light is only constant in a vaccum. Fiber is just light impulses being sent throught glass. Copper is actually electrons running through a conductor, and there is a lot of drag.\n\n3. Fiber can have multiple signals overlaping eachother in orders of hundreds of signals per strand. Part of the job the boxes at either end is to put the signal back together. Copper can do this but at less then 0.1% the magnitude. Rule of thumb. One fiber connection can handle the load of 1000 copper lines.\n\n4. The way my tech school instructor explained it to me in layman's terms was: Imagine you're standing in walmart. Your thumb nail is copper. The rest of Walmart is fiber.\n\nIn short, the main reason we don't have more fiber is actuallt because of a lack of skilled labor that know's what the fuck they're doing. If you like money, it's a good field. Tedious but I'm making 24/hour and I'm only 25.\n\nEdit: formating",
"I'll explain it like you're five.\n\nElectrons in a wire move really fast, but photons in a vacuum move faster.",
"IAA[G]NE (I am a [Google] Network Engineer) so I think I'm fairly qualified to chime in here to clear things up and dispel some inaccuracies in other comments. Not completely ELI5 but more ELI15.\n\nIt's got nothing to do with the speed of light. Sure there are differences, but that only affects latency a little, not really speed (see other comments here for more on that). It's more to do with how fast you can turn the signal on and off.\n\nAbout claims of fibre carrying more channels/signals:\n\nSo fibre can carry hundreds of signals / streams at once. More signals = more throughput. But so can electrical - just look at your cable tv connection - 200+ channels, and all sent over the one wire. It's the same principle - different frequencies on the radio dial. Fibre uses the same principle, and can carry 100+ channels, but the frequencies are represented by different colours, split and combined using a prism - though you cant see these colours as they're deep into the infra-red (like how you cant see the light from your TV IR remote).\nThe main difference is that electrical has a limit to how much total combined speed it can carry...\n\nLet's look more at the differences between electrical and fibre signals.\n\nElectric cables are susceptible to noise - think about if your mobile phone is near a speaker and you get the buzzing. Lots of things aside from your phone can give out this interference - power lines, other cables in the same duct, TV/Radio stations, even radio hiss from space! Now imagine that over a looong cable between two cities and you're talking about a lot of noise on the signal (like radio static on a weak station). Even shielding them only reduces the noise to a certain extent.\nAs well as receiving noise, electrical cables radiate signals - they are like a long antenna, some of the signal gets radiated and lost this way so it gets weaker.\n\nFibre signals aren't susceptible to noise - a solid black tube can't pass any light at all, so the fibres within the cladding are completely blacked out from external light. (Note there can be reeealy tiny amounts of noise from quantum effects and the electronics at each end, but its minuscule compared to electrical.)\nThe light within the also doesnt leak out. Refraction is like a near-perfect mirror, keeping the signal bouncing inside the fibre for a very long distance.\n\nSo we've established that electrical signals get noisy, and fibre optics don't pick up interference.\n\nNext, we have signal degradation.\n\nElectricity has \"inductance\" - this manifests itself very similarly to physical inertia, which means it resists being changed. Heavier objects are harder to move and stop than lighter ones. So electricity has the same thing, it takes time to change the signal - which is what happens when the zero and one bits are transmitted. The longer the cable, the more the inductance (i.e \"inertia\"), so the longer it takes to change that zero to a one. Therefore you have to send signals at a slower rate to allow the electrons to keep up with the changes. There is a similar related effect called capacitance which also slows down the maximum rate of change.\n\nLight has no inductance, (so there is effectively no \"inertia\") - therefore changing it from zero to one is pretty much instant. That means you can change it much faster - more \"bits per second\" - regardless of distance.\n\n(note it's not really \"inertia\", the above is mostly an analogy, but it behaves like it)\n\nNext is resistance. Electrons are large (compared to photons), so they interact with the copper atoms as they travel through the wire. This interaction is analogous to friction. Friction creates heat, which is where the energy goes. In a wire, some electrons lose energy in the same way as heat (which is why power cables can get hot when carrying a lot of current). So over a long distance, much of the signal diminishes due to resistance. For high speed signals (1-10Gbps), this typically happens within a few hundred metres. Not very useful when you need to get cat videos between cities!\n\nLight interacts much less with fibre optics - the photons are tiny and much less likely to interact with the glass - especially as it's super clear specially made glass. The signal can travel up to 100km before it gets too weak for the other end to \"see\".\n\nSo we have problems of \"interference\" and \"signal degradation\". Electrical gets both problems, fibre only degradation, and much less so.\n\nEventually the signal degrades to such a weak one. For electrical signals, the noise from interference drowns out the original signal and you can no longer detect it. For the speeds that matter (1Gbps to 10Gbps) electrical signals are drowned out after just a couple of hundred metres.\nWith fibre, the degradation happens after around 100km (depending on the power of the lasers at each end). There are other interesting effects with fibre (e.g dispersion), but they are more advanced topics.\n\nWhen the signal starts to get weak, but before it's too weak to extract, you install an amplifier to boost the signal. It's much more feasible and economical to install fibre amplifiers/repeaters every 100km that it is every few hundred metres for electrical. And that's why fibre is used for anything except short network connections (usually only inside buildings).\n\nTL;DR: High speed electrical signals can only travel ~100m before they get too weak and drowned out with noise. Fibre optics don't pick up noise and the signal can travel 100km before you need to amplify it.\n\n\n[edit: better wording]\n\n[edit 2: I know people are nit-picking. This is meant to be a simple(r) explanation using terms/analogies that avoid some of the deep detail].\n\n[edit3: more clarification - and Gold, thank you!]\n\n[edit 4: clarified a bit especially on inductance and the inertia analogy]",
"Multiplexing lets a single wire carry more than 1 conversation. When you multiplex though, you have use a carrier frequency that is several magnitudes greater than the frequency of whatever you're transmitting (human voice for example).\n\nAs the number of conversations you're multiplexing goes up, the carrier frequency must also go up. It gets to a point when the frequency is so high that the signal no longer stays on the wire. It gets radiated out and never returns; the wire basically becomes an antenna.\n\nThis is the bandwidth of the wire. The \"width\" of the band of signals that can travel on the wire is fixed by the properties of the conductor and the electromagnetic spectrum - radio waves.\n\nFiber does not have this limitation. The signal will never radiate from the wire. Consequently, you can raise the carrier frequency really high and cram *even more* conversations onto a single wire... er fiber. This gives fiber a larger bandwidth of possible frequencies it can carry.",
"Yes they both move at near light speed. Difference is frequency. Bandwidth has nothing much to do with it. Reason fiber is better is that there is no interference in the frequency's. For both cable type's they must follow a frequency plan. With copper cable the issue is harmonics. Harmonics will cause interference between signals causing them to be distorted so in the end you will lose data.\n\n Since they are following a set frequency plan that does not allow 1 signal to interfere with another this limits the number of signals on a line. Fiber frequency's are different since it is in area of visible light spectrum. They can tune a line to hold several signals allowing you to have more data without loss. So really its not that fiber is faster, Fiber allow you to have more signals running without interference caused by harmonics. Easier way to think of it there are 2 10 lane highways. 1 is a normal 10 lane people moving in and out. Other is a smart lane controlled by computer where everyone moves at a set speed and distance. On one side people will interfere with others the more people on the highway the more interference. On the computer controlled side it knows when they need to get off and when to allow people to move around to keep the speed constant. They both can get you from A to B but on one side you have interference the more people. Other side the amount of people do not cause interference. Yes there is a cap to how many people are on the highway. ",
"Is this /r/shittyaskscience ?\n\nTo OP: One pound of sugar and one pound of cotton weigh the same.\n10Mbps on copper is the same as 10Mbps on fiber. Which speed tier you have with your ISP is the only thing that matters.",
"Imagine a stretch of road, for sake of argument it is 1km long, the road represents our fibre or copper link. People travelling along the road are the bits of data. Lets say there are 1000 people we want to get from one end to the other. The problem is the road has only a single lane and each person must go in a separate car and each car must be 100m apart. Cars must travel at the imposed speed, 10m/s, analogous to the speed of light.\n\nIt takes the first car 100 seconds to reach the end of the road however the last car is still stuck at the start because only 10 cars can be on the road at a time. Each car starts every 10 seconds Thus it takes 10000 seconds for the last car to get under way. The latency of the link (100 seconds) is far smaller than the time it takes to transfer all the data (10100 seconds). \n\nTo speed up the transfer time, make the connection faster, we need more cars travelling at the same time. We can do this in 3 ways, add more lanes (multiple carriers), make the cars closer together (higher frequency) and thirdly put more people in each car (use advanced modulation schemes).\n\nIt turns out that these 3 things are easier to do with light and fibre cables than electrons in copper cables. Copper cables are like a bumpy road, put the cars too close together and they easily crash, fibre optics allows the cars to pack very close together without crashes. This also means we can't pack as many lanes into the road either because the cars need a wider lane.\n\nIt also turns out that copper cables are like a road with a steep gradient, the cars eventually slow down and need a push to get running again. This further means that we can't pack the cars as close together. \n\nIn practise the cars on our copper road have to be about 1000 times further apart than on a fibre optic road. This results in data transfer speeds which are 1000 times faster with fibre!",
"A somewhat simplified explanation: To send a train of digital pulses down a cable as quickly as possible, the pulses need to be as short and as closely spaced as possible. The shorter the pulses, the higher the frequency components required to create them. (This is called the uncertainty principle of Fourier analysis.) Fiber optics cables can carry visible frequencies, 10^15 hertz, whereas coax cable cannot, they operate at lower (microwave or below) frequencies, so digital pulses can't be as short or closely-spaced in coax as in optical fibre. ",
"Fiber are not faster, but being an optical medium it allow the signal to be transfered at much lesser loss and interference. And by having higher quality signal, it is also easier to develop protocols and tech to squeeze in as much as possible.\n\nFor example a Long Wave fiber with the right 10G trancievers can transfer up to 10 over miles while a copper 10G tech can only goes up to at most 30 feet.\n\nFor cases like home fiber, it is much more cost efficient to push passive optical network over long distances than using copper as we don't need a couple of middleman equipment along the way.",
" > Why are fiber-optic connections faster?\n\nIt doesn't. Not always at least.\n\nBack in the old days, if you want to have 100Mbps connection to your ISP, a dedicated Ethernet cable connecting your home and your ISP is required because that's the max speed of Ethernet cable (let's assume better cable was never invented, anyway). It's expensive, so we normally don't have that. And now there's optic-fiber. An optic-fiber is able to transfer multiple 100Mbps sessions. Cost down, and that's why we can all afford to 100Mbps Internet connections today. This may lead to the stereotype that fiber is faster.\n\n > Don't electrical signals move at the speed of light anyway, or close to it?\n\nThe speed of the movement of the signal is not what we know about the speed of Internet connection. When an ISP advertises 100Mbps, it's the amount of data transfered over a specific time. 100 million bits per second, for example. It really doesn't matter if the signal, optic or electric, travels at the speed of light. As long as this parcel of 100 million bits data delivers from the ISP to my home within one second, it's 100Mbps.\n\nDisclaimer: This answer contains biased, comprehensive or inaccurate information. Please always refer to a reliable source for more detailed technical information.",
"You get the same ping, but better speeds, with fiber.\n\nThat's like getting your water from a small pipe vs a large pipe: a specific drop of water (i.e. a bit, aka a 0 or a 1) might not come out of it any faster, but you'll get much more water every second from the larger pipe (bits per second).",
"The number of wrong answers on this thread is truly epic.\n\nHere is a really simple ELI5 answer:\n\nA fiber optic line can transmit much more information per second than a typical copper line, whether twisted pair or coaxial.\n\nOn a twisted pair or coaxial cable, the signal is sent as a radio frequency signal, and the maximum frequency such a cable can transmit is measured in gigahertz, or billions of cycles per second.\n\nLight is also a radio frequency signal, but it is at a much higher frequency, measured in terahertz, or trillions of cycles per second.\nBecause fiber optic lines transmit light, which is at a much higher frequency, it allows for transmitting a larger signal. The size of a signal is measured in bandwidth, and the bandwidth of a fiber optic signal can be many orders of magnitude larger than a signal can be on an twisted pair or coaxial cable.\n\nEach bit of data is not sent faster one way versus the other, but by sending more of them simultaneously, the fiber optic signal transmits much more data in the same amount of time.",
"No. Electricity in general does NOT operate at the speed of light. Electron currents do not flow at that speed through conductors.\n\nThe thing most people don't realize is electrons move through metals and semiconductors much as [an ink drop moves through water by diffusion](_URL_0_). \n\nThe electrons move a short distance, hit an atom, and then careen away in a different direction until they hit another atom. This is how diffusion works as well. The typically path length before a collision is typically in silicon is about 1 nanometer or 1 billionth of a meter. Metals like copper are a bit longer at 50-100 nm.\n\nSo it's pretty slow in terms of forward progress down a wire. Far slower than the speed of light. But faster than most things you experience daily. This speed is captured by a parameter called \"carrier mobility\" and \"drift velocity\". For silicon maximum \"saturation\" velocity is ~0.03% of c. For metals it's a bit higher but less then 1% of c.\n\nThis fairly low speed is also related to why magnetic fields generated by electrical currents are relatively weak: the magnetic field is a relativistic correction to electrostatics but the electron velocity in metals is just barely relativistic so the effects are weak so magnetic fields require a lot of current.\n\nThere's also another way that energy gets transmitted electrically : not by electron movement but by electromagnetic radiation fields propagating along the wires. \n\nThese operate faster then the diffusion processes of electron movement but typically still at a fraction of the speed of light. These are sort of like having a radio signal propagating along the surface of the metal. The interaction with the metal slows it down but it's faster than the electron velocities.\n\nThere's a specification typically associate with electronic cables called the \"velocity factor\" that captures this numerically. A common value is 70% (of the speed of light). But this is only for high speed AC signals.\n\nSo compare this to fiber optic cables. The speed of light in a fiber is defined by the index of refraction, N, of the cable material. However it's possible to tune this value to increase the speed (N=1 is the speed of light, 1/N is the speed in the material).\n\nLab versions of fiber materials have managed [99.7% of the speed of light](_URL_1_).",
"There are a lot of good answers here clarifying that optics' real advantage is interference, power, signal integrity, etc all leading to higher throughput.\n\nI would just add one fun fact that a lot of folks are glossing over. Contrary to your post, a signal can actually propagate FASTER over copper than over most fiber optics. This is because the speed of electricity through copper is on the order of 0.75c, while the speed of light through a normal backbone optical cable is around 0.5-0.66c.\n\nSo if your goal was to send data with the absolute least latency-- and you had a dedicated connection, such that bandwidth / interference were not issues-- copper would actually be a significantly better choice.",
"Technically the speed of light is different depending on the medium it is passing through. The well known speed of light that everyone refers to is the speed of light through a vacuum. A quick Google search indicates that scientists have gotten light to move as slowly as 17 meters per second through some special semi conductor. As for the differences in data transmission speed in wire and optical fiber, that's already been pretty well addressed. But a short answer involves the term multiplexing. The way prisms can separate a beam of light into many different colors means that you can actually merge multiple light signals into one and then separate it again at its destination. Another huge benefit with optical fiber is that it preserves the signal. Electromagnetic interference has no effect on it.",
"This thread is too far gone and no one will read this, but in short, fiber is not inherently faster than copper. There are many ways to cram *more* data down a fiber, but an IP packet moving over a fiber will move at the same speed it does over copper. As to the more part, there are things like Dense Wave Division Multiplexing (DWDM) that let you put 40 or 80 signals down a single fiber in a way you can never do on copper. There are also things like Quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), which is how your cable modem works in part, that function over copper and fiber. Source: I do this for a living.",
"As a side note. As far as internet speeds fiber being better this is because the fibers can be made very very thin, orders of magnitude compared to copper. The actual conductor being thinner allows more signal per area. \n\nSent from mobile. ",
"It's not about the speed at which the data moves, it's about the bandwidth. You can send signals at higher bandwidths through a fiber rather then through copper wires. Higher bandwidths means there's the possibility of sending higher bitrates which finally allows you to receive more information per second.",
"to put it in extremely layman term, lets rule out all the interference in this case. electrical signal can move up to 99% of what light speed does exception that the medium it is using is generally copper.\n\nthere are so much blocking for the electrons to move across, heat is a issue on physical medium which changes everytime, hence the throughput will never be 99%, more of like 50% or even lesser then lightspeed.\n\nwhere else for fibre, it really depends on it's medium! lousy plastic mimicking a good fibre glass may give somewhere 70% of the light speed quality. a good one without much diffraction will result a close 99%. \n\nfibre use reflection for it's bound. this is taught in basic engineering.\n\nme too, network engineer from Singapore telecom and communication is my forte since 18 year old.",
"It's not about speed of travel, it's about speed of modulation. We can modulate light waves (THz) much faster than we can modulate electric circuits (GHz). The faster you can modulate, the richer the signal you can encode into a signal of a given duration. This translates into downloading faster, as you are able to receive more information in a finite span of time.",
"There are different kinds of speed. The speed of light effects latency, that is how long it takes to send a message and start to get a response. But what fiber optic cables are better at is throughput. This can be viewed as how wide the cable is. More information can fit in the fiber optic at the same time. So the result is that your web page will start loading just as fast with both, but it will finish loading faster with fiber optic cable. ",
"I am a cable dawg, I do install these.\nFiber is literal light. No interference. \nCopper is not and has interference. \nFiber is muy Bueno ."
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60cvp0 | why do so many superhero origin stories involve parents dying? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60cvp0/eli5_why_do_so_many_superhero_origin_stories/ | {
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"Parents are only there to cause angst for the hero. If they're loving and supportive they must die. If they're not then they're mean and abusive so the hero must run away bemoaning his fate.",
"Because so many superhero writers are unimaginative hacks. It's easier to fall back on a trope like that than it is to write an interesting and unique origin story.",
"It is a very common trope in fiction. It is frequently used because it can accomplish several things\n\n- give the protagonist a motive. Why are they a superhero / chasing this villain / in this job. Easy answer: their parents died.\n\n- if the crime was committed by the main antagonist, it's an easy way to establish that they are bad business. They are obviously evil cause they will just kill a kid's parents (or even try to kill them). It can also serve to show how incompetent law agencies / other people are in the story if this villain won't be caught for the crime until our hero gets involved.\n\n- it clears the way for the protagonist engaging in things parents would normally stop you from. \n\n- it gives the protagonist a source of angst (which, to be honest, some writers mistake as a fully-functioning personality) / helps create a dark and edge tone to the work."
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236qf1 | what's the difference between cables that send power and cables that send data? how come phone cables can do both? | How come the cables that come from a computer's power supply send JUST power and what is difference between those cables and the SATA cables that send data. Following that, why can the iPhone and Android cables send power and transfer data - is it due to it being USB?
Thanks, just a niggling query that I've never had explained to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/236qf1/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_cables_that/ | {
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"At each end of every cable is a connector. Typically cables have a male connector that plugs into the female connector on a device. On every connector there are multiple \"pins\" or connection points. You solder a wire to each pin, and encase it into one cable. \n\nFor example, on an instrument/old telephone connector there are 2 pins, labeled signal and ground. Inside the cable are two wires of different colors, one soldered to signal and the other soldered to ground. \n\nNow a USB connector has 4 pins. Vcc (+5V supply), D- (Data -), D+ (Data +) and Ground. There is also a more or less standard for color coding the wires inside the cable, where Vcc is red and Ground is black, D- is white and D+ is green. If you cut open an iPod charging cable you can see those four individual wires. \n\nIn some applications you have to have multiple pins on a connector for supplying power and signal, or multiple signals. In other applications you can send power and the signal on the same line (like telephones), or multiple signals together using a technique called multiplexing (which is how TV cables work). You generally need a different connector and cable for different applications because of the difference in power requirements, number of signals, size of the device, etc. \n\nHope this helps! ",
"ELI5: Technically there is none, it depends on the hardware sending the power and receiving the power. Both transmit electricity, but if the hardware is made to do so it can transmit a pattern in the electricity that hardware on the other end can understand. Having them separate has to do with cost, efficiency, flexibility, and complexity of the hardware.\n\nUSB is actually a bundle of cables, 4 to be exact, you can see it on the pins. The outer 2 are for transmitting power. The inner 2 are data. Once again this is likely done to allow more flexibility. For example, some external hdd units have a usb cable with 2 plugs. 1 is for data, the other power. This is because in some situations the power supplied by 1 usb plug is not sufficient to power the hdd.\n\nMore detail (And a bit of a rant):\nThere are various engineering reasons why there are dedicated cables. The SATA one is likely related to efficiency and modularity. Passing power through the motherboard is not as efficient as grabbing it from the power supply directly.\n\nThis is also why it's utterly silly when iPhones have a proprietary plug with 30 some odd pins. You need at most 3 related to power (+/- and ground) and 2 for data since all communication with your computer is done via usb anyway. Sure you can dedicate pins for certain tasks but the fact that Android phones can do the same bloody thing with 4 pins (they use a std usb plug by design) means that this is primarily motivated by business reasons rather than engineering reasons.\n\nAlso, the cables themselves play a relatively minor role as can be seen with USB 1, 2, and 3. All of them use the same plugs with the same 4 wires in the cable. Yet the data transfer speeds are vastly different. This is because each of those iterations improved the hardware sending/receiving the signals making them more efficient and able to cram more data into the cable. As a note wire quality does play a role in it as a bad wire can severely impede the speeds. But don't buy into the Monster cable sales pitch, most of the time it doesn't matter all that much unless you got a really bad cable."
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9rmy0m | how do public policy think-tanks work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9rmy0m/eli5_how_do_public_policy_thinktanks_work/ | {
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"They get paid to think about problems and write reports of their conclusions. The analysts that work in these places combine expertise in the subject matter (economics, foreign policy, ...) with critical thinking and analysis skills to explore the problem, the solution space, and possible courses of action."
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4v3phu | why do you need to pay to get a divorce and pay to get married? | Update: Thank you guys for educating me! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v3phu/eli5_why_do_you_need_to_pay_to_get_a_divorce_and/ | {
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"Because it requires paperwork which your government has decided it will charge a fee to process.\n\nGenerally it is a nominal fee. Is ~$10 really stopping anyone from getting hitched?",
"Previous answers are correct.\n\nGovernments have to decide, for each service they offer, whether to charge a fee or to use tax money -- either way the staff need to be paid.\n\nUsually if the service benefits very large numbers of people, or if it's for poor people, they use tax money. But if it's for just one person or family at a time, and it's not specially focused on the poor, it seems fairer that the person benefiting from the service would pay for it.",
"Why does it cost money to get divorced?\n\nBecause it's worth it!"
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9i5n8z | how can we drive for minutes, maybe even hours, without really paying attention to the road? i have daydreamed and come back and not known what has happened the past 15 minutes. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9i5n8z/eli5_how_can_we_drive_for_minutes_maybe_even/ | {
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"Seriously, I kind of shutter every time it happens",
"Driving involves a lot of habits and muscle memory. You do it so much your body just learns how to do it on it's own. Basically your subconcious kinda takes over the driving thing leaving you free to daydream. This is fine if you were on a open road with no traffic or hazards but in the real world the environment is always changing which makes that kind of driving dangerous. Your subconcious is great at the basic repetitive task of keeping the vehicle at speed and between the lines but it has no clue how to deal with other stuff like traffic or pedestrians, so it just doesn't. If you don't snap out of it in time you'll just run into someone/thing. ",
"Ever done a mundane task at work and don’t really have to think about it? Same process. Your body just goes into autopilot",
"Not remembering what happened for the last 15 minutes doesn't mean you weren't reasonably alert during that period, it just means that you weren't forming long term memories of what happened. It is possible for that part of your brain to take a break because whatever is happening is so irrelevant that there is no need to store it beyond the short term. The result is you have no memory of that period but if something unexpected happened you would still be able to react to it.",
"It's called [Highway Hypnosis](_URL_1_) which is a form of [Automaticity](_URL_0_).\n\nThe short version is that for tasks like driving, the thing you're doing is relatively simple. Stay in the lines, go about this fast, stay a certain distance from other cars, etc. As such once you have a certain amount of practice at doing it you don't really need to think about it as long as nothing unusual happens.",
"To put it simply, your brain filters out useless or redundant information, such as memories of extremely repetitive or monotonous tasks. \nIf you’ve ever been doing a job and zoned out for hours without realizing it, it’s effectively the same thing. \nThere’s no reason for your brain to store your memories of that time, so it doesn’t.",
"I get scared witless when I realize I’ve been driving on autopilot. It’s truly scary stuff. "
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23u67r | why is it impossible to stop thinking? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23u67r/eli5_why_is_it_impossible_to_stop_thinking/ | {
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"Some kinds of meditation are the attempt to silence your thoughts. Through willpower and training you can silence the internal monologue of your thoughts. Of course your brain is still functioning and processing information, it does that even when you're asleep.",
"it isn't, it took me some self control but i can stop my verbal thought at will for however long i will.",
"Since I don't feel anybody here has adequately answered the question directly, I will take it upon myself.\n\nThe reason WHY it is impossible (or near impossible)?\n\nEvolutionarily, thinking means you're doing something, usually productive. Be it food, comfort, sex, success, understanding, your thinking is always trying to help you in a potential scenario. Those who didn't think as often ended up not being able to account for many outcomes, and died/failed to reproduce because of surprises they didn't account for.\n\nIn addition, constantly thinking keeps you alert and aware of your surroundings. It's like trying to run a program on a computer. Would you rather run it on the computer that's already on and warmed up, or the one that's off and needs to be booted up? It's not much of a difference for a mind, but biologically, split-seconds save lives and pass genes.\n\n**TL;DR: You're always thinking because it helps you react to possible and unexpected situations**",
"Hard* not impossible.",
"It isn't. The only problem is, you cant catch yourself not thinking.",
"It's not impossible, it requires a lot of practice. Here is how we start learning to silence what we call the \"monkey brain\" in zen:\n\nSit in a quiet room and close your eyes. We are going to only focus on breathing. Breathe in to an eight count. Count the numbers in your head. I know that this is thinking, but it's just how we start. Hold the breath for an eight count, release on an eight count, and hold your exhale for an eight count.\n\nOther thoughts and pictures will enter your mind as you do this. Every time this happens, say to yourself \"thinking,\" push it aside having noted it as such, and resume your counting.\n\nStart off only doing this for five or so minutes at a time, slowly building up to twenty minutes or so. After a time (you won't realize when), you'll become comfortable doing this without counting your breathing and will have achieved being able \"not to think.\" You should be able to clear your mind at will at this point and have completed the first step of learning to meditate.",
"Would you even know if you stopped thinking?"
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385405 | caitlyn jenner in vanity fair and the big deal of it? | I dont follow these sorts of things but it has popped up in my FB feed and people are praising her for being a strong women and all that.
What is the significance of this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/385405/eli5caitlyn_jenner_in_vanity_fair_and_the_big/ | {
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"Caitlyn Jenner was formerly Bruce Jenner, an internationally renowned Olympic athlete who was the face of masculinity and athleticism in the 1970s. She recently came out as transgender. She is very likely the biggest celebrity in history to come out as trans.",
"She is transgender, and this is her first public appearance as a woman. She was a big Olympic hero back in the day and become famous again more recently in reality tv. She was formerly Bruce Jenner. ",
"A famous Olympic athlete named Bruce Jenner (who's been in the news a lot in recent years as he was married to the Kardashian family's mom), came out as transgender a little while back. Since Bruce was a huge star and pretty much the national standard for masculinity back when he was competing, this was pretty big news, and raised a lot of people's awareness of transgendered people.\n\nSo Vanity Fair has now given Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner a with no other headlines obscuring the picture - pretty much unheard of for a magazine like this. Since she's one of the most famous transgendered people ever to come out and is being interviewed in a very popular mainstream magazine, it's a pretty big deal for LGBT awareness.",
"Caitlyn is the new name of Bruce Jenner, who recently came out publically as a male-to-female transgender. She is known as one of the world's most celebrated Olympic athletes and a symbol of American triumph in the Cold War, having beaten the returning Russian champion of the Decathlon and setting a new world record.\n\nShe was the picture of peak masculinity, and for her to self-identify as a woman - in a time when transgender people are facing a lot of distrust, hatred and even violence - is seen as opening doors for acceptance of the LGBT community. "
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2r6wzq | why is the credit card considered so secure if all the information required to make a purchase is on the card? | There isn't any memorisation (such as PINs) aspect to the credit card. To make a purchase from one, you just need the physical (or a photo of the) card. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2r6wzq/eli5_why_is_the_credit_card_considered_so_secure/ | {
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"Though chip/PIN aspect protects the cardholder and merchant from one type of fraud, the security procedures and insurance of the entire industry protects both from the other type of fraud.\n\nLet's say I have your credit card information. I can make a purchase online, but I generally need an address to ship it to, or I need to be somewhere to cash in (e.g. plane tickets). I get caught both ways.\n\nLet's say I am able to get a store to ring in a purchase from just the plastic card (no chip/swipe) or just from the numbers. Even if I get away with that, chances are that there will be a report soon enough (either from the cardholder, or the bank's security people) that the card or card information was suspected as stolen.\n\nIn most cases, the cardholder is protected (insurance). The merchant could also be protected, depending on whether or not the employee ringing in the purchase checked ID, signature, or phoned the bank to make sure the purchase was okay.\n\nEdit -fdjklas;",
"I work at Saks and we see significant credit card fraud at our store. For this reason we don't have a customer swipe or pin pad, you have to hand your card to the cashier, we frequently ask for ID as well. Banks and CC companies are getting more vigilant as well, we frequently have cards declined because people are traveling and our store is located in a high end outlet mall. So the bank will see charges from the Gucci outlet, the Armani store and Burberry and freeze the card because it's outside your normal spending habits. Even so, we lose money to fraud, although I don't know exactly how much."
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1vw2s5 | why are most corporations considered evil? | I have never fully researched or looked into the world of corporations and all the things they do (or don't do) most of what I do know is based on peers or people around me talking about it. For example? Company's like EA or Bayer (knowingly giving medication that could give HIV). I have recently decided to expand my knowledge on this particular topic so I can be well informed and have my own opinion on it as well as information to back my opinion up. It's embarrassing to admit how uninformed I am. I sometimes wonder if I am avoiding it because i know it can be a hard pill to swallow. Any input will be appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vw2s5/why_are_most_corporations_considered_evil/ | {
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"Most corporations aren't evil and just do useful things like make your bread for your breakfast toast or make wires for your house.\n\nOf those that are evil often their evilness can be often put down to either to outright corruption in management ranks, which is just the human condition.\n\nAnd secondarily companies often do evil things because traditionally directors (CEOs etc) can be sued personally by the shareholders of that company if they don't act in such a way to make the most possible money. This leads them to make unethical decisions just to make larger profit. Because if they don't. They could potentially be sued by the shareholders for running the business improperly.\n\nSome countries (recently the UK) have passed laws to try and allow the directors more leeway in how they run the company.\n\nI believe in the UK directors of companies are now protected from shareholders sueing the director if the director acted in a fashion that was intended to benefit society or the environment.\n\nA lot of other countries are passing similar laws\n\n",
"No matter how altruistic a company may seem, it's ultimate purpose is survival. \n\nAs a company grows in size and takes on more responsibilities, the situation worsens as the company is faced with more and more difficult decisions. Customer satisfaction becomes increasingly at odds with maintaining profit margin, competition with others, and employee benefits. \n\nOnce the company grows further and takes on large loans and investors from varied groups, it's purpose slowly shifts from survival to dominance, and will ultimately stop at nothing to achieve this.\n\nMy .02$\n\n\"All corporations are foreign.\" - [Immortal Technique](_URL_0_)\n\n",
"A company's reason for existing is to make money for the owner(s) and shareholders. They have no social responsibility except to obey applicable laws.\n\nSome of the things some of them do to make money may be considered questionable or even evil. Take for example Myriad Genetics which owned a patent on methods of testing for genes associated with breast cancer. They could prevent anybody from performing those tests without paying them, despite that those tests were likely to save lives. It also made it difficult to get second opinions from other labs not licensing their technology. It did, however, make them a lot of money, and was perfectly legal until a court case decided otherwise.\n\nEdit: the court case was decided against them because the genes were naturally occurring and their tests were not novel except as they applied to the naturally-occurring genes. The court held that naturally-occurring genes could not be patented.",
"A business main's goal is to make profit. \n\nMost things today now runs like a business. This can include charity, government, and events. The core of it all is that it can only run and survive on one particular resource: Money.\n\nThe more money, the more things they can do like investing, innovating, and spending back into the economy.\n\nCompanies as you have described are portrayed to focus only on the money and not the customer.\n\nWhen a corporation goes public, they sell their stocks to shareholders. The stocks give the shareholder some controls of the company in exchange for their financial investment to the corporation. Now you got shareholders pressuring you to keep making money and you now have a lot less control of your company. You have to balance between running the company and keeping your investors happy. These shareholders will only join in if they find your corporation profitable.\n\nTo me, evil is subjective.\nDo you trust a business that hides their real intentions and claiming to be a \"good company\"?\nOr do you trust a business that is honest with the fact that their goal is focused on the money?\n\nEdit: Added more info on Publicly traded companies.\n",
"If someone wants to take your children's toys, you would react. Corporations start when someone has new ideas, or is lucky, and take a slice of the market share and keep growing, until other corporations or newcomers try to take their share of the market. They then consolidate and adapt the culture of the business, moving jobs to where it is cheaper and less regulated, lobbying politicians, and even financial and other shenanigans.\n\nAre they evil? No, but what they often do is.",
"Many good answers in this thread, but I think the simplest one is this:\n\n\n*Short Term Profit is a temptation that most corporations can't resist.*\n\n\nThe issue is that to pursue the lifeblood of a corporation (money) thousands of decisions must be made. The decisions that lead to money savings and money generation are the ones that are typically going to be chosen. Intended and unintended negative consequences are rarely weighed by those making the decisions, as the corporation's responsibilities are spread out over many groups and individuals.\n\n\nThis is contrasted with a small business that has the decisions and responsibility centralized in the owner's hands, along with the larger scale impact reduced."
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34h6t0 | - if hiv can take up to 6 months to show up on a blood test, how do they know donated blood is safe? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34h6t0/eli5_if_hiv_can_take_up_to_6_months_to_show_up_on/ | {
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"They generally eliminate high risk classes from donating blood. There are a lot of reports that confirm that HIV transmits faster from certain ways over others. They make sure to ask people questions about their lifestyle to figure out whether they represent one of those high risk classes.\n\nFor example my wife is a veterinarian and over half of her class is unable to donate blood because they handled monkeys.\n\n[In the 80s around 2,000 Canadians were infected from tainted blood when HIV was first becoming a thing](_URL_0_). Today all of the mechanisms that are in place are based on old failed policies."
]
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||
5igz5z | how'd the yahoo "hacking" happen? | Mainly just the title, shellshocking? What's that? And I saw on a couple of sites that only some details of accounts had been revealed, name and date of birth, but it says that "the internal servers were compromised" am I just reading dodgy sources? why wouldn't they take stuff like credit card details? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5igz5z/eli5_howd_the_yahoo_hacking_happen/ | {
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"According to [the post from Yahoo](_URL_0_) \n > For potentially affected accounts, the stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system the company believes was affected.\n\nUnfortunately the post does not make it clear if the hashed passwords were salted. If they were not salted it would be very easy for an attacker to find many users that had used common passwords, especially with around a billion to work with. Thankfully there was no credit card information stolen, but with all of the information that was stolen put together and the the likelihood that people will reuse passwords and usernames across multiple sites it could be very dangerous.\n\nAlso, [Shellshock](_URL_1_), a security issue with Bash, the command language default on Unix operating systems. Essentially it allowed an unprivileged user to gain privileged access to a system, essentially allowing them to do whatever they wanted."
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] |
|
3bih4k | why do we find the natural human odor to be so offensive? are there other animals who are put off by the smell of their own species? | It's summer. I can't be in the same room with people who don't shower every day and use deodorant. Why do people in their natural state smell so bad? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bih4k/eli5_why_do_we_find_the_natural_human_odor_to_be/ | {
"a_id": [
"csme7fs"
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"text": [
"Well, that's not \"natural human odor\" you're smelling. What you're smelling are actually mostly the chemical byproducts of bacteria eating all the oils and things in your sweat.\n\nThese bacterial byproducts are actually some of the same chemicals that make some cheese smelly and even some of the same ones that make rotting flesh smell the way it does."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5jw3g3 | security codes on credit cards | Was it useful at some point? Because it seems that the contemporary method of keylogging to get credit card information a 3 digit code would be just as vulnerable as the 16 digit ID preceding it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jw3g3/eli5_security_codes_on_credit_cards/ | {
"a_id": [
"dbjgops"
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"text": [
"It makes it harder to use stolen credit card data for online purchases without the physical card. The 3 digit code is not stored on the cards magnetic strip, it's only printed on the card itself, so if the card's data is surreptitiously stolen using a card skimmer, they don't get the code, and theoretically it should be impossible to use the card for online purchases (assuming the online store in question requires the code)."
]
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|
61a8pg | how can a baseball player throw 95 mph baseball when a boxer's top punching speed is around 25 mph? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61a8pg/eli5_how_can_a_baseball_player_throw_95_mph/ | {
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"text": [
"Because the speed of a pitch comes from the whip of the arm accelerating the ball. The punch is just arm movement. The two are not connected when it comes to speed. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
38qqgi | when and why will the current tech boom end? what are the implications for the overall economy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38qqgi/eli5when_and_why_will_the_current_tech_boom_end/ | {
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"crx3ngw",
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"\"Tech\" is a very big field with many sub genres if you like. The 70-90s boom was the personal computer, 00s-10s was the the internet era and to a certain extent it's still going. The next few years will see lots of wearables, IoT and all things 3D printing related. We expect to see interesting developments and changes in how computing as a whole is done.\nIt's also important to realise that tech is in everything and spills out to almost every other field from medicine to aviation.\nI don't see the popularity of tech going down anytime soon as it has become a fundamental tool for facilitating almost everything in modern society",
"Technology is always changing and evolving. It will always be changing and evolving. The tech boom will never end, just adapt to suit the user needs"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
37xrsi | why do games nowadays get sold at normal price unfinished? is it just for money, or is the gaming industry creating such massive games they can't release all the content at once? | I saw this post about how when you bought a game, it was like buying a whole meal. Nowadays, it seems like you pay for each ingredient separately for an entire game.
Link to what Im talking about: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37xrsi/eli5_why_do_games_nowadays_get_sold_at_normal/ | {
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"I'm 33 years old and was heavily involved in gaming when I was a teenager. I'm not the most OG guy around, but I remember a \"back in the day\" story or two.\n\nYou are remembering with rose colored glasses what \"then\" was like. Back then games were routinely released with game killing bugs. While we did not see the DLC for content that should of been there by default, we saw a lot more of the \"this game cannot currently be played, wait for the 2.0 patch\". \n\nIn addition, expansions were often after thought content. So you'd pay nearly full price for 2 new weapons (and one of them uses the model of an old weapon) and a handful of new levels. $40 please.",
"For years, costs have been going up. It already costs over 50 million USD to make a typical AAA game, and some experts are expecting that number to pass 100 million in the next few years. Customers expect better and better fidelity every year, and that means developers are struggling to hire even more of the best artists, programmers, designers, and so on.\n\nFor years, profit margins have been getting smaller, or even disappearing. People complain that games used to cost only $50, compared to maybe $60 today. Problem is, that hasn't kept up with inflation -- if it had, that same game would cost more than $90, today. The market price for a big title has actually gone down over the years, all while development and marketing costs have skyrocketed.\n\nMeanwhile, in mobile markets and some online games, players are balking at spending even $1 to buy a game. Developers and publishers are expected to give away their work for free, on the off chance that someone *might* spend some money on it down the road. Some businesses have done very well at that, but many more haven't.\n\nRetailers and publishers are really pushing pre-orders, which leads to a lot of those special deals you're seeing. It's bad enough that some games are judged commercially *solely* by the number of pre-orders they get.\n\nI'm not exactly happy with the current state of the industry, but the market forces driving those decisions are hard to ignore."
]
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"http://imgur.com/o5ojiDy"
] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
1q7l87 | need some physics help to explain why or how this works? (xpost from r/lifehacks) | Hello ELI5, need some help getting some science stuff down. This was a recent life hacks post, started a small controversy about why/why not it works (see comments). I'm not interested in if its a good hack or not, but mainly just the idea as to whether the flower pots actually do help generate more heat and faster. Thanks!
[original vid](_URL_1_)
[/r/lifehacks post](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q7l87/eli5need_some_physics_help_to_explain_why_or_how/ | {
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"cda1e3k"
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"text": [
" > ...mainly just the idea as to whether the flower pots actually do help generate more heat and faster.\n\nDefinitely not. The flower pots are only insulating the heat given off by the candles, so it won't dissipate as fast (the same way a thermos works, essentially). Since the room is so small, and his desk is right next to the \"heater\", it could make a difference."
]
} | [] | [
"http://ww.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/1q4v6k/heat_a_room_for_pennies_a_day/",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brHqBcZqNzE"
] | [
[]
] |
|
1woj0j | why is it that when you quit smoking you get sick and cough so much. | It happened to me when i quit smoking and I heard from some of my ex smoking friends. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1woj0j/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_you_quit_smoking_you_get/ | {
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"text": [
"Nicotine is a physically addictive drug meaning that your body developed a physical dependence on the drug being in your system.\n\nWithout the nicotine your body starts to go through withdrawal symptoms until your nicotine dependence is gone.",
"Basically... it's your body's withdrawal symptom reacting to it's extreme addiction to nicotine after not receiving what it thinks it needs. Which is why it's hard for so many people to go cold turkey and need to be weaned off using patches or gum, making your body \"need\" a little less each day. Going cold turkey with smoking is no different than any hardcore drug that your body is addicted to and has an adverse reaction when it's deprived of said addiction. \n\nWhy I'll never understand smoking above anything else. ",
"Your respiratory system is lined with small hairs called cilia. These hairs have the job of moving particulates up you lung so you can get rid of them. Tobacco smoke acts kind of like an anesthetic to these cilia. Once the effects of the tobacco wear off the cilia kick back in and voile coughing spell."
]
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[],
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|
6njlvs | how is the price of a book determined? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6njlvs/eli5_how_is_the_price_of_a_book_determined/ | {
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"dk9y34x"
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"Supply and demand. Books with small publishers and high demand are expensive. Famous authors are expensive. Books that are considered up-and-coming stars are given better jackets and priced higher than new books that the publisher has deemed serviceable but not amazing. However, new books cost more than old books because there is more demand for them. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2bdgtw | what are the major differences between aerobic and anaerobic exercise? | What are the benefits of each? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bdgtw/eli5_what_are_the_major_differences_between/ | {
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"Aerobic exercises are often classified as cardio and endurance work outs. They focus on doing light exercises for long periods of time to help the blood flow and help muscle groups learn to work for extended periods of time. This is what's most often recommended for people who are working out just to lose weight, because it consumes lots of calories. Aerobic exercises literally mean \"pertaining to the freedom of oxygen\" meaning that you are getting enough oxygen through your system to keep going for long periods of time.\n\nThe most simple aerobic exercise is jogging/running, not sprinting, not dashes, but taking the dog for a walk or going for a jog around the block. Other ones include steppers, light swimming and cycling. These are designed to get your heart racing, and leave you breathing heavy, but not cause you to pant, heave or feel dizzy.\n\nAnaerobic exercise means \"pertaining to the lack of oxygen\" these are shorter, more intense work outs designed to build muscle, speed and strength. The lack of oxygen to your body causes lactic acid build up, which is what causes \"the burn\". If you are trying to do a power workout and don't feel it, you may need to step it up, but in contrast, if you are running and feel it, take a breather.\n\nSome widely done anaerobic workouts are push-ups, sprints, bench press, etc. Which are done in sets which are subdivided into reps. Sets should not exceed a minute or two, with a break in between.\n\n\nIn all, it depends on what you want to do. If you just want to trim some fat, throw on the running shoes and start running, but if you want to build muscle you grab some weights and start pumping."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
k9zbq | please explain me why some people believe the world trade center catastrophy was a conspiracy act | **EDIT:** Thank you very much for the answers! I'm going to read them all after I get home from university.
Again, thanks everyone for explaining | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k9zbq/please_explain_me_why_some_people_believe_the/ | {
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"There are conspiracy theories on every subject imaginable (the most ridiculous within the past 30 days would probably be [this](_URL_1_) ), so it shouldn't be particularly surprising that there are conspiracy theories about 9/11. My experience arguing with \"truthers\" is that they generally don't understand the physics of what happened that day.\n\nFor instance, a common argument tends to be that the fires within the towers could not have been hot enough to melt steel; however, you don't need to completely melt a chunk of metal in order to compromise its strength. Another argument is that traces of thermite were found in the rubble of the towers; however, thermite isn't a particularly exotic material, since it is composed of aluminum powder and rust.\n\nIf I had more time, I'd go into a lot more detail, but the [Loose Change Viewer Guide](_URL_0_) debunks much of Loose Change, which is the bible of conspiracies for a lot of truthers.\n\n",
"I don't want to get into a huge flame war, so I'm not going to try and explain myself. I'll instead leave you [this link](_URL_0_).",
"Because people in the US (including myself) aren't used to seeing buildings turned into piles of debris. That *shouldn't* happen.\n",
"The human mind is very good at finding patterns. It was necessary for survival, being able to pick out someone in a dense forest or hear someone sneaking up on you over background noise.\n\nBut sometimes it works too well, and people see patterns that aren't really there, like when you see a ducky and a bunny rabbit in the clouds.\n\nSome people refuse to believe the patterns they see aren't real. They pick out the 2 or 3 facts that support their view, and ignore the 100 that don't. The fall in love with their idea, and refuse to let it go, and when challenged, it becomes less about the truth and more about being right. And the more they fight, the harder it is to admit they are wrong, so they just keep on fighting, no matter what.\n\nThis is why people believe things that are not true.",
"Because if 9/11 was not committed by our Govt. It would be one of the first times our country did not attack us to get us involved with a conflict we have no reasoning to get involved with. Is the Gulf of Tonkin incident a conspiracy theory to you? Or was FDR ignoring the reports of an oncoming fleet of Japanese war planes heading for the U.S. that would get us involved in WWII a conspiracy to you? What about our actions in Panama? All of these were sited as \"Conspiracy\" when they were mentioned in the times they took place. Now we know the truth. The fact that there are so many questionable events on that day causes overally rational people to question things. Jesus building 7 is enough to make you wonder. Some people don't believe everything their Govt. tells them. Time will tell. ",
"LIHOP theory - our government Let It Happen On Purpose",
"No one here actually explained anything about why people believe its a conspiracy act. I, myself, **do not** believe any of this, but this is what is said. Whether any of it is true, I do not know.\n\n1. There have been only 6 times in history that a steel building has fallen due to fires. 4 of them happened the WTC buildings. 2 were poorly constructed buildings.\n2. Building 7 was located across the street from the twin towers, and also fell due to controllable fires apparently. It was hit with debris from the towers collapsing. Going back to #1 this is hard to believe given that no plane hit this building. Would a fire get spread when a building falls and rubble hits another building? WTC 7 is also said to have been the control center where all the planning was done and was taken down to destroy the evidence. Some of the floors were government controlled.\n3. If you watch the videos, you can see people standing in the holes left by the plane. If people were there, the fire must not have been that strong. Combine that with #1 and #2.\n4. The designer of the towers said specifically that both buildings were designed to withstand 2 planes hitting them.\n5. The head of security at the WTC buildings was the younger brother of George W. Bush, whose 2 year contract ended on the day of the attacks. Also someone claimed a multimillion dollar insurance policy afterwards.\n6. Some people looked at the moment the buildings were collapsing and noticed small explosions that looked like controlled demolition .\n7. The Pentagon was said to have been hit by the same type of plane, a 767, yet there is no lawn damage in front of the building at all. Also some windows right next to the damaged portion of the building are in tact. Also the hole in the pentagon is smaller the width of the wings of a 767.\n8. A passport was found for Mohammed Atta, one of the attackers outside the rubble of the collapsed towers. A paper passport from inside the plane, that exploded with enough fire and heat to bring down a building survived after the towers collapsed.\n9. The steel after the towers collapsed was quickly destroyed. People would have liked it to have been saved so it could have been studied to find the cause of the collapse.\n\nI'm sure there are more, but thats is all I can remember off the top of my head.\n\n",
"There is nothing really special about 9/11 with regard to conspiracy theories.\n\nConspiracy theories exploit a general weakness in the human mind for seeking patterns and explanations for things in excess of a corresponding regard for the validity of such explanations. This is especially true of events that have had a large emotional impact on people, such as the various events of 9/11/01.\n\nAs people start to question the theory, people who feel the need to perpetuate it, start devising elaborate explanations for all the missing pieces and holes in the theory. A lot of energy and effort can go into this. Very often these explanations will be shown to be false, but rather than resetting their bearings and rethinking their original theory some of the conspiracy theorists will typically double down, by simply discarding any explanation that was unconvincing and replacing them with different explanations. They keep iterating this process doing it over and over again until they get theories that are not easily or obviously rejected/debunked on first examination.\n\nConspiracy theorists hold their theory constant, and just keep varying the explanations to find the one most convincing and most consistent with their theory. The key problem with this is that they don't proceed from an objective intent to test their theory -- anything which contradicts their theory is discarded, it is not taken as evidence against their theory.\n\nFor people who don't normally buy into conspiracy theories or dismiss the early versions of them, they are usually not as motivated to continue to test the conspiracy theory and so don't build up counter claims or critical tests to debunk them -- after all, they were never convinced by them in the first place. So over time this imbalance of effort creates an *artificial appearance* of robust support for the conspiracy theory while counter-claims don't seem as credible. This leads to the theory becoming very attractive to people who don't realize this is happening.\n\nThe key fallacy that most conspiracy theories embrace is a failure to fairly consider alternative explanations for their observations. So for example, one of the key claims of the 9/11 \"truthers\" is that the towers collapsed in a way that is \"consistent with a controlled demolition\". They literally ignore and are hoping their audience also ignores the fact that the \"official story\" (i.e.: burning + melting + pancake collapse theory) might also happen to appear consistent with a controlled demolition (as might *any* critical structural building collapse). This very simple possibility is never addressed by \"truthers\". By ignoring this, they are hoping their audience ignores it and therefore makes their own argument look much stronger than it is.\n\nYou have to have a somewhat logical mind, or be familiar with core scientific principles in order to catch problems with conspiracy theories that are constructed this way. And you have to put an effort into following the threads in the first place. Failing that, popular conspiracy theories (including crop circles, JFK assassination, Saddam's so called WMDs, the idea that the scientific community censor creationist papers and are fooling people with \"evolution\" etc) grow a life of their own with adherents that accumulate because they don't know better, or have an emotional investment in the theory.",
"I'm surprised no one has brought up [operation northwoods]( _URL_0_). A proposed series of false flag terrorist attacks on the U.S. in the mid 1960's that would be blamed on Cuba giving the government an excuse to invade Cuba. \n\nI'm still on the fence when it comes to my opinion on whether or not 9/11 was an inside job. But the evidence is pretty compelling. ",
"Even the official explanation is a story of conspiracy.\n\nNo one disputes that the attacks of sept. 11th were the result of a conspiracy.\n\nA better request would be, \"Please explain to me why the sept. 11th attacks could only have happened with the cooperation of the US Government\"",
"There are conspiracy theories on every subject imaginable (the most ridiculous within the past 30 days would probably be [this](_URL_1_) ), so it shouldn't be particularly surprising that there are conspiracy theories about 9/11. My experience arguing with \"truthers\" is that they generally don't understand the physics of what happened that day.\n\nFor instance, a common argument tends to be that the fires within the towers could not have been hot enough to melt steel; however, you don't need to completely melt a chunk of metal in order to compromise its strength. Another argument is that traces of thermite were found in the rubble of the towers; however, thermite isn't a particularly exotic material, since it is composed of aluminum powder and rust.\n\nIf I had more time, I'd go into a lot more detail, but the [Loose Change Viewer Guide](_URL_0_) debunks much of Loose Change, which is the bible of conspiracies for a lot of truthers.\n\n",
"I don't want to get into a huge flame war, so I'm not going to try and explain myself. I'll instead leave you [this link](_URL_0_).",
"Because people in the US (including myself) aren't used to seeing buildings turned into piles of debris. That *shouldn't* happen.\n",
"The human mind is very good at finding patterns. It was necessary for survival, being able to pick out someone in a dense forest or hear someone sneaking up on you over background noise.\n\nBut sometimes it works too well, and people see patterns that aren't really there, like when you see a ducky and a bunny rabbit in the clouds.\n\nSome people refuse to believe the patterns they see aren't real. They pick out the 2 or 3 facts that support their view, and ignore the 100 that don't. The fall in love with their idea, and refuse to let it go, and when challenged, it becomes less about the truth and more about being right. And the more they fight, the harder it is to admit they are wrong, so they just keep on fighting, no matter what.\n\nThis is why people believe things that are not true.",
"Because if 9/11 was not committed by our Govt. It would be one of the first times our country did not attack us to get us involved with a conflict we have no reasoning to get involved with. Is the Gulf of Tonkin incident a conspiracy theory to you? Or was FDR ignoring the reports of an oncoming fleet of Japanese war planes heading for the U.S. that would get us involved in WWII a conspiracy to you? What about our actions in Panama? All of these were sited as \"Conspiracy\" when they were mentioned in the times they took place. Now we know the truth. The fact that there are so many questionable events on that day causes overally rational people to question things. Jesus building 7 is enough to make you wonder. Some people don't believe everything their Govt. tells them. Time will tell. ",
"LIHOP theory - our government Let It Happen On Purpose",
"No one here actually explained anything about why people believe its a conspiracy act. I, myself, **do not** believe any of this, but this is what is said. Whether any of it is true, I do not know.\n\n1. There have been only 6 times in history that a steel building has fallen due to fires. 4 of them happened the WTC buildings. 2 were poorly constructed buildings.\n2. Building 7 was located across the street from the twin towers, and also fell due to controllable fires apparently. It was hit with debris from the towers collapsing. Going back to #1 this is hard to believe given that no plane hit this building. Would a fire get spread when a building falls and rubble hits another building? WTC 7 is also said to have been the control center where all the planning was done and was taken down to destroy the evidence. Some of the floors were government controlled.\n3. If you watch the videos, you can see people standing in the holes left by the plane. If people were there, the fire must not have been that strong. Combine that with #1 and #2.\n4. The designer of the towers said specifically that both buildings were designed to withstand 2 planes hitting them.\n5. The head of security at the WTC buildings was the younger brother of George W. Bush, whose 2 year contract ended on the day of the attacks. Also someone claimed a multimillion dollar insurance policy afterwards.\n6. Some people looked at the moment the buildings were collapsing and noticed small explosions that looked like controlled demolition .\n7. The Pentagon was said to have been hit by the same type of plane, a 767, yet there is no lawn damage in front of the building at all. Also some windows right next to the damaged portion of the building are in tact. Also the hole in the pentagon is smaller the width of the wings of a 767.\n8. A passport was found for Mohammed Atta, one of the attackers outside the rubble of the collapsed towers. A paper passport from inside the plane, that exploded with enough fire and heat to bring down a building survived after the towers collapsed.\n9. The steel after the towers collapsed was quickly destroyed. People would have liked it to have been saved so it could have been studied to find the cause of the collapse.\n\nI'm sure there are more, but thats is all I can remember off the top of my head.\n\n",
"There is nothing really special about 9/11 with regard to conspiracy theories.\n\nConspiracy theories exploit a general weakness in the human mind for seeking patterns and explanations for things in excess of a corresponding regard for the validity of such explanations. This is especially true of events that have had a large emotional impact on people, such as the various events of 9/11/01.\n\nAs people start to question the theory, people who feel the need to perpetuate it, start devising elaborate explanations for all the missing pieces and holes in the theory. A lot of energy and effort can go into this. Very often these explanations will be shown to be false, but rather than resetting their bearings and rethinking their original theory some of the conspiracy theorists will typically double down, by simply discarding any explanation that was unconvincing and replacing them with different explanations. They keep iterating this process doing it over and over again until they get theories that are not easily or obviously rejected/debunked on first examination.\n\nConspiracy theorists hold their theory constant, and just keep varying the explanations to find the one most convincing and most consistent with their theory. The key problem with this is that they don't proceed from an objective intent to test their theory -- anything which contradicts their theory is discarded, it is not taken as evidence against their theory.\n\nFor people who don't normally buy into conspiracy theories or dismiss the early versions of them, they are usually not as motivated to continue to test the conspiracy theory and so don't build up counter claims or critical tests to debunk them -- after all, they were never convinced by them in the first place. So over time this imbalance of effort creates an *artificial appearance* of robust support for the conspiracy theory while counter-claims don't seem as credible. This leads to the theory becoming very attractive to people who don't realize this is happening.\n\nThe key fallacy that most conspiracy theories embrace is a failure to fairly consider alternative explanations for their observations. So for example, one of the key claims of the 9/11 \"truthers\" is that the towers collapsed in a way that is \"consistent with a controlled demolition\". They literally ignore and are hoping their audience also ignores the fact that the \"official story\" (i.e.: burning + melting + pancake collapse theory) might also happen to appear consistent with a controlled demolition (as might *any* critical structural building collapse). This very simple possibility is never addressed by \"truthers\". By ignoring this, they are hoping their audience ignores it and therefore makes their own argument look much stronger than it is.\n\nYou have to have a somewhat logical mind, or be familiar with core scientific principles in order to catch problems with conspiracy theories that are constructed this way. And you have to put an effort into following the threads in the first place. Failing that, popular conspiracy theories (including crop circles, JFK assassination, Saddam's so called WMDs, the idea that the scientific community censor creationist papers and are fooling people with \"evolution\" etc) grow a life of their own with adherents that accumulate because they don't know better, or have an emotional investment in the theory.",
"I'm surprised no one has brought up [operation northwoods]( _URL_0_). A proposed series of false flag terrorist attacks on the U.S. in the mid 1960's that would be blamed on Cuba giving the government an excuse to invade Cuba. \n\nI'm still on the fence when it comes to my opinion on whether or not 9/11 was an inside job. But the evidence is pretty compelling. ",
"Even the official explanation is a story of conspiracy.\n\nNo one disputes that the attacks of sept. 11th were the result of a conspiracy.\n\nA better request would be, \"Please explain to me why the sept. 11th attacks could only have happened with the cooperation of the US Government\""
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5hwxb1 | if older cartoons and animated movies were drawn by hand, how did they get the coloring so even and clean, unlike paintings for example? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hwxb1/eli5_if_older_cartoons_and_animated_movies_were/ | {
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"It all depends on the medium used. For example, paintings often use canvas (usually with a rough surface for better paint adherence) and acrylic or oils, which tends to be thick and don't evenly mix throughout all the layers an artist applies.\n\nFor early animators, however, the medium used in earlier animations was often black and colored ink or watercolor, which tends to blend much more evenly, and are able to be applied more evenly across the layers the animators apply. The surface was usually paper or transparent slides in order to create multiple layers, a method that Disney introduced for the first time ever in Snow White",
"You mean how they stay perfectly inside the lines? It's because the sheets the animation is drawn on are transparent. They draw the lines on one side, then paint on the backside, so even if they're off slightly, filmed from the front, the color is perfectly inside the lines.\n\nIf you mean how uniform the colors are... You can make paintings like that too if you want, but painters often go for more nuance, shading, gradients, textures, etc. So they don't paint it as flat, uniform spans of color.",
"To add to what everyone else has listed here as far as frames go they painted far less background frames and body frames. You've noticed the background loop I'm sure. You'll also see that most cartoon characters have some form of break at their neck, sometimes its a tie, or a collar or something along those lines. That allowed to them to use the same body frames but just paint new head frames ."
]
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[],
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||
b67wqp | why does tea taste sweeter after it cools down? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b67wqp/eli5_why_does_tea_taste_sweeter_after_it_cools/ | {
"a_id": [
"ejj3thb"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"You generally tastes less when drinking really hot things or really cold things, partially due to how fast you tend to move it to parts of your mouth that are less sensitive, and others are signals being mixed with how hot/cold/pain you are feeling."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
3p28b7 | canadian's election are really close. can you explain what we should know? (young guy that knows nothing and want to make the best decision) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3p28b7/eli5_canadians_election_are_really_close_can_you/ | {
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"As a fellow first Time voter, I have the dilemma of listening to the politicians speak agreeing with somethings they say, then they say something else and I think \"and YOU want to lead this country\". I am told to vote for the person I cringe the least at. Like the good ole saying \"politicians are like diapers, full of shit and should be changed regularly\". ",
"Read through the party platforms and websites to see which party you most agree with. \nPersonally I won't vote conservative, because they have blocked research scientist from speaking about publicly funded research results without political approval. \nThey also closed many research libraries, getting rid of decades wortn of research data, including climate data, and made stats-can useless for econimic planning. (Can you tell I don't like them?)\n\n",
"Please don't ask Redditors for help on this one. Go to [Vote Compass](_URL_0_) and answer the questions honestly. It will help show you the party(ies) which best represent your political beliefs."
]
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[],
[],
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"http://www.votecompass.com/"
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||
8rbt5l | why can't we build a car that generates its power from the wheels turn like a windmill | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8rbt5l/eli5_why_cant_we_build_a_car_that_generates_its/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Because energy transfer isn't perfect, and the energy you'd expend getting the wheels to turn is WAYYY more than the energy you'd get back trying to use the spinning wheels to turn a generator. \n\n"
]
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[]
] |
||
b8dxyd | why are illicit drugs cut with dangerous chemicals? | I often see articles on drugs being cut with dangerous chemicals. Like mdma tablets containing paint thinner.
Why is this the case? Why not just use something like flour if you are trying to save money on production | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b8dxyd/eli5_why_are_illicit_drugs_cut_with_dangerous/ | {
"a_id": [
"ejxxh6t"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"When you're making drugs \"at home' (ie - not a professional lab), you tend to cut corners and not buy everything from the most reputable chemical suppliers. Maybe you need a strong acid, why not grab battery acid or concrete cleaner? A strong base means you use lye-based drain cleaner. A solvent has you use gasoline.\n\nSince there's no real standards or testing, these things get left in there. You then have anti-drug propaganda giving it the scariest possible description when they say what it is."
]
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[]
] |
|
1xl4ih | what happens to fines paid to government? | For example:
I was reading about the [Libor Scandal](_URL_0_) and it said...
"On 19 December 2012, UBS agreed to pay regulators $1.5 billion ($1.2 billion to the US Department of Justice --- ) for its role in the scandal."
...
Who gets the money in these cases? Does it just fund future investigations? Does this money go to a general fund used in discretionary spending? Is the answer the same for Local/State/National levels? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xl4ih/eli5what_happens_to_fines_paid_to_government/ | {
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"I'm sure there are a million and two different stories if you followed any of the money, but generally speaking it counts as revenue for that level of government. Like taxes and bond sales and then it gets allocated in some budget limited only by the administration's imagination and spent/wasted/buried in the backyard. Any court-appointed settlement could also come with its own strings attached, like \"this money can only be spent on a national hairstyle museum.\"",
"Broadly speaking, it's treated as income. In that respect, you can think of it like cutting Uncle Sam a check; it's no different than paying taxes.\n\nIt might help to think of the government^1 as a big corporation: there's a highly visible point person, a 538-person board of directors, and a whole bunch of subsidiary corporations. They're all owned by the same company, they all answer to the same CEO, but they all do different things and keep track of their own business — including what they make and what they spend.\n\nEach individual government agency has its own budget; each agency is responsible for keeping tabs on how much money comes in and how much comes out. Fines are generally paid to their relevant agencies — the DOJ would impose criminal and civil penalties, while regulatory agencies like the SEC might also impose their own fines.^2 Those incomes are accounted for in each agency's budget as a separate line item.^3 As for what the agency does with it then? Well, it's kind of up to them; after all, they're the ones who \"made\" the money. Usually, though, the money will stay within the agency in order to fund its operations.^4\n\nSome specific fines are earmarked for special purposes: criminal fines and penalties are earmarked to go towards the [Crime Victims Fund](_URL_1_), a rather large^5 fund used to compensate victims of crimes.^6 The decision of what to do with the money is really on an agency level, but usually it will go to agency operations.^8\n\nLastly, it's worth noting that all of these supplemental sources of income are just that: supplemental. Taxes, in their various forms, make up about 91% of all federal revenue, with the bulk of that coming from income and payroll taxes. ([Here](_URL_4_) are some pretty graphs for that!)\n******\n^1 This is all for federal information. I presume state-level budget management is much the same. State agencies rarely levy massive fines like the DOJ does, but of course state budgets are proportionally smaller.\n\n^2 Many agencies have the power to assess fines for violations of their rules, and I would speculate that most rule violators would rather pay a fine than take it to court and *then* pay a fine. DOJ and SEC are just the poster children for throwing down billion-dollar bills.\n\n^3 Literally! You know how much the government loves paperwork, so you can bet your tax return it's all out there... somewhere. They key is finding it. [Here](_URL_3_) is a set of high-level budget spreadsheets which contain some examples of literal line items for different incomes.\n\nIf you take a look at the [Receipts](_URL_0_) document, you can see how the various agencies track their money. In that document, you can see that rows 149–46 represent receipts for the DOJ — and since the DOJ doesn't tax people, all of their money comes from fines and fees. 140 and 143–46 represent fee income, while 139 and 141–42 represent fines. \nVarious other agencies also have more interesting fees. Line 187 represents assets the Treasury seized from Iraqis — and you'll note that, farther over to the right, that only happened in FY 2003 and 2004. Big settlements might have their own line items; line 195 is the EPA's income from the Exxon Valdez settlement fund.\n\n^4 The exception, of course, being the IRS. They're in the business of making money for everyone else to spend it.\n\n^5 In the [above-linked spreadsheet](_URL_0_), you can see this line item on 142. According to [Wikipedia](_URL_1_), the CVF is currently sitting on about $4B.\n\n^6 More information about the CVF, including their specific financial breakdown, is available [online](_URL_2_). I should note here that, as a general rule, victims of crime can also usually file a civil lawsuit for compensation; the CVF is designed as a gap-filler to provide compensation when the criminal^7 cannot.\n\n^7 Well. Since the civil burden of proof is preponderance, but the criminal standard is of course beyond a reasonable doubt, you can win a civil lawsuit even if a person was not convicted of the crime... but that's a bit beyond the scope of this explanation.\n\n^8 Agencies can't rely on fines for any significant part of their operating budget, of course; they're irregular incomes. Nevertheless, it's reasonable for an agency to expect a range of income based on those fines and to budget around that. Billion-dollar windfalls are just that: windfalls."
]
} | [] | [
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal"
] | [
[],
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"http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2014/assets/receipts.xls",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_Victims_Fund",
"http://ojp.gov/ovc/pubs/crimevictimsfundfs/intro.html",
"http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Supplemental",
"http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm"
]
] |
|
15wcnt | how do the rsa securids work? | I saw [this post](_URL_0_) and decided to read up on what these devices do. Apprently, I'm having comprehension problems today because the Wikipedia page went right over my head. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/15wcnt/how_do_the_rsa_securids_work/ | {
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"Normally, when you log into a server your user credentials are stored in some kind of database. This may be a *nix based system, or in Windows this will typically be Active Directory (AD).\n\nTo overly simplify things, the database would just have a list of username:password, you enter your username and the correct password for that username - voila! You get in!\n\nThe RSA SecurIDs add a 2nd level of protection, otherwise known as 2-phase authentication. There is additional software installed on the authentication server (i.e.: the server where that username:password database is stored) which adds a 3rd item you have to enter in order to get logged in successfully.\n\nEach keyfob (the grey keychain thing shown in that post) has a unique serial number written on the back. If you'll notice one of the top comments said \"DO NOT POST THE BACK OF IT!!\"\n\nThat unique serial number is stored on the authentication server, and matched against your username. There is an algorithm used to generate a code on the keyfob, which is the same one used inside the server side software. With the same algorithm on each side, the authentication software knows what code should be displayed on your keyfob at any given time.\n\nTo add **another** layer of security, you typically have to provide a personal pin on TOP of what's displayed on the keyfob. This is typically a 4-6 digit number that you choose yourself. So now your pin is something like 1234 + whatever is on the keyfob\n\nSo... when you go to log in you can only get in with YOUR pin, with what is listed on YOUR keyfob, with YOUR username, and YOUR password.",
"Let's say that I own a house. I'm going to go on vacation and I trust you to come into my home and take care of my cats. Now I could just give you a key to my home and then we wouldn't have to worry about much else.\n\nBut If you accidentally lose the key, and someone apprehends it, they have access to my house! AND MY CATS D:\n\nSo I decided to up my security at home. A simple explanation would be that I installed a deadbolt and gave you a second special key. Let's look at a little bit more accurate description.\n\nI have my normal door key and also a pin pad. You can enter my house if you have the key, as well as the secret code on the pinpad.\n\nHere's where the fun starts.\n\nIf i just told you \"the pin is 12345\" (that's the combination to my luggage!) then anyone could just extract that information from your head (a la inception style) and would have the same problem as me giving you the key.\n\nSo I give you a mathematical equation. I tell you that y = x^2 + 2x + 3 (irreverent equation, just to get a point across) where x is the current date and time (ex: 1/3/2013 10:45 would be formatted like 1320131045) and we'd plug that into the equation we agreed on. The value I get at the end would be the number that you put into the pinpad.\n\nThe great thing is that the key is never set on one value, the pin changes every minute. \n\nThe RSA SecurID works in the same way by being connected to a server and agreeing upon an equation and several other things. It uses AES-128 to generate the key (iirc) so it's secure. Every minute (or whatever interval is set) it generates a new value, and at the same time, so does the server. Because they're following the same guidelines, the values will be the same on both ends.\n\nIt's a two-factor authentication method so if anyone gets your password, they would still need that unique securID",
"Imagine you had two matched devices that generated a series of numbers, 1 every minute, based on a secret formula. You give me one, and keep one for yourself. Later on, I text you, but you aren't sure that it is me, so you ask for the number on my device. If it matches yours, you can be pretty sure it is really me.\n\nThat's basically what is going on. The secret formula is designed so that every device can have its once unique version, and that is it is very, very hard to figure out the formula from just the numbers. One device is your key fob, and the other is a program running on the computer you are trying to connect to. This way, even if someone gets your password, they still need the device to log in."
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/15w688/my_securid_code_was_all_zeros/"
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[],
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b3zf68 | why are the french riots with the yellow vest protestors not being reported at all in u.s. media? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b3zf68/eli5_why_are_the_french_riots_with_the_yellow/ | {
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"A combination of the fact that many people in the US don't care about foreign affairs to begin with and don't understand the reason for the Yellow Vest protests / riots and are therefore not interested, and that even if people did understand what the protests were about, they've been going on for so long that the media would have a hard time marketing it as clickable material.\n\nThe conspiracy part of me thinks it's because France is a NATO ally and revered democratic nation and the media doesn't want to glorify mass protests against a publicly elected government. ",
"They were when they started.\n\nNow it's old news, and not terribly interesting to anyone in the US. "
]
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[],
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||
765op1 | during the war of the currents, tesla and edison battled over superiority between alternating current (ac) and direct current (dc). why is alternating current regarded as more superior than direct current? | I know that the main difference between alternating current and direct current is that direct current flows from one direction while alternating current goes back and forth in the same circuit.
But what difference does it make? Why does this make alternating current superior than direct current? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/765op1/eli5_during_the_war_of_the_currents_tesla_and/ | {
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"It is not really superior. Automobiles use direct current.\n\nThe one really important difference up to now is that transformers can be used to step up and down the voltage with alternating current.\n\nAt the power plant the voltage is stepped up tremendously to be carried on high overhead wires. High voltage means low current. Low current means more power transmitted over same size wires with less loss due to resistance.\n\nThe voltage is stepped down before use in residential and most commercial buildings. Only alternating current can do this using transformers. \n\nThere may also be advantages in industry where triple phase alternating current can be made available.\n\nDirect current is actually less dangerous if people connect across the voltage.",
"Power needs to be transmitted at high voltages to minimize losses in the system. You don't use high voltage so it needs to be \"stepped down.\" AC can be stepped down easily and efficiently with a transformer circuit. Before semiconductors, there was no efficient way to step down DC. Or at least nowhere near as efficient as a transformer with AC. \n\nBecause AC has fewer losses when it was stepped down, it was cheaper for power companies to adopt AC generators and transmit that instead of DC. \n\nThere were additional problems, for example it was easier to convert AC to DC for applications than convert DC to AC reliably. \n\nSo that's why we use AC in our power grids. \n\nThat said, things aren't the same today as they were a century ago. High voltage DC has fewer losses in the wire than AC, and modern electronics has made efficient DC/DC and DC/AC conversion possible. Over new and long distance transmission, DC is used today instead of AC. ",
"The reason is because of long transmission lines. The transmission lines themselves also have resistance, i.e. some of the power that is being sent through them is lost to resistance.\n\nHowever, the higher the voltage is you send through, the less power you lose this way. BUT very high voltage is dangerous and you want much lower voltages to actually use the electricity.\n\nWith AC it's rather easy to change the voltage through a transformer.\n\nWith DC it's not so easy to adapt the voltage.\n\nAnd that is why the electricity grid is AC.",
"Misnomer there - War of the Currents was Edison and **Westinghouse**, not Tesla and Edison. Tesla did not get into the AC biz until after the \"War' was already on and his poly-phase motor did not hit the market until after \"War\" was over. He had no roll in the War of the Currents. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs other have said, AC's main advantage was it could be converted to a higher voltage using a transformer to allow it to be transmitted much longer distances in the same diameter wire. The cost of wire (copper) was everything back then so if you did not have to buy big thick conductors you could undercut the other guy (Edison) who did. \n"
]
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2y5804 | a breakdown of the marvel universe leading up to avengers: age of ultron. | Comic geek friends of mine are very excited about the upcoming new movie. I have a basic knowledge of each character and their personal world, but I never read the comics and am ignorant to how they are connected and the roles they play. Can anyone give me a cliff notes version? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y5804/eli5_a_breakdown_of_the_marvel_universe_leading/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"They were once all separate heroes but they were eventually all recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D., a US government agency dedicated to detecting and neutralizing threats, both on earth and elsewhere.\n\nIt is a lot to go into so I agree with homeboi in saying check out /r/marvel or /r/marvelstudios "
]
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[]
] |
|
78zg82 | what is this warm feeling that starts from the top of my face and goes down towards my body. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/78zg82/eli5_what_is_this_warm_feeling_that_starts_from/ | {
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"doxw593"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Are you an alcoholic by any chance?"
]
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||
as2lsq | how is it possible that the world collective debt is bigger than world collective wealth? can't we just annul all of the debt that shouldn't be there and go on? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/as2lsq/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_the_world_collective/ | {
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"I think that debt IS wealth. If you got rid of the debt, it would remove all the wealth, because the wealth is made up of receivables. That’s one reason why you wouldn’t get a lot of support for this idea from the wealthy. ",
"Theoretically that would be great. \n\nBut doing that would reset the entire foundation of economics and we'd have to rebuild our entire infrastructure. ",
"Who doesn’t get paid? Because that’s the question. "
]
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||
5ghll7 | how does an old hospital get sanitized before being turned into another kind of institution? | What equipment is used? How does the cleaning process look like?
I recently ate lunch at an institution that aims to help improve peoples' fitness. The building once served as a place for tuberculosis treatment. It has not been renovated heavily - most rooms, walls, etc. is the same - so how did they sanitize that place before re-opening it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ghll7/eli5_how_does_an_old_hospital_get_sanitized/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Would I be correct in understanding that you feel hospitals are DIRTIER than restaurants?\n\nThis seems to be a pretty strange thought, could you explain why you believe there needs to be extra steps taken other than the cleaning they do anyway?",
"It's not. It's just a building. It's not like there are germs all over the surfaces and biological waste in every corner. If anything, hospitals are already cleaner than most buildings. Plus no germs would survive more than a couple of days anyways. "
]
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[],
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|
1vjxmo | why can't spinal discs be "re-hydrated" later in life? | I recently suffered a debilitating injury to my back where multiple discs were herniated and/or bulging. My lower discs in particular we affected. The specialist went on to tell me about how my upper spine had healthy, white "hydrated" discs while my lower spine had discs that were beginning to grey due to "old age" and overuse. When I asked him if there was any way to rehabilitate, re-hydrate or rejuvenate the discs in question he gave me a pretty flat no and moved on. So ELI5, why can't these discs ever be repaired/re-hydrated? Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vjxmo/eli5_why_cant_spinal_discs_be_rehydrated_later_in/ | {
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"text": [
"If your doctor didn't explain why, get a new one. He/she obviously doesn't care",
"Yeah sure you'd have to expect an explanation for treatment. Sadly I csn offer no bearing of expertise on such a matter but it came across in your question that your doctor disregarded your query about why it can't be done. For anybody unaware if why disks can't be rehydrated (most people I imagine) then it's important for their doctor to inform them of why certain treatments aren't possible so as to rule out possible false hope. However, more importantly, I hope somebody can answer your question and that your spine heals in good time."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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|
2euv49 | how does this .jpg file move like a .gif but when downloaded shows up as a .jpeg | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2euv49/eli5_how_does_this_jpg_file_move_like_a_gif_but/ | {
"a_id": [
"ck35cja"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"It's lies.\n\nThe filetype isn't determined by the extension - not in this context anyway - it's determined by metadata in the file that says it's a gif.\n\nMy image reader on the desktop chokes trying to read it because it naively trusts file extensions, but the file utility shows clearly it's marked as a GIF in the metadata."
]
} | [] | [
"http://i.imgur.com/M95MCVT.jpg"
] | [
[]
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|
381u8z | difference between nightmares and night terrors | Has something to do with REM sleep? I just can't understand that Wiki article. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/381u8z/eli5_difference_between_nightmares_and_night/ | {
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"crrnrp9",
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"text": [
"The basics are that nightmares you wake up from and remember.\n\nNight Terrors you don't wake up, can call out / yell in your sleep, yet you won't remember that particular dream ( although you can remember the feeling the dream gave you )\n\nSource: Have had both Nightmares and Night Terrors consistently for years. I was explained this concept this simply the first time I asked.",
"A nightmare is a dream with scary elements, whereas in a night terror there is no dream component. Only a fear reaction. It's a weird state of consciousness that one cannot usually be woken up from. Parents are advised to simply wait them out, since trying to console a kid experiencing a night terror usually only makes it worse. They don't recognize you as mom/dad in that situation."
]
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[],
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|
4mv8ek | how do we know that gravity curves spacetime and is not a force? | As I understand it, electromagnetism is a force but gravity changes the shape of spacetime. How do physicists understand this difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4mv8ek/eli5how_do_we_know_that_gravity_curves_spacetime/ | {
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"text": [
"The theory which describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime (Einstein's general theory of relativity) makes a lot of predictions. And many of those predictions [have been verified](_URL_0_), which lends support to the theory.",
"U/robusetceleritus covered it pretty well in the link. The way I've always explained it is as follows:\n\nGravity is classically seen as a force of attracting masses. That means, Gravity operates on massive objects.\n\nWe have also noted that light bends around supermassive objects. Light has no mass; it can't mass. So the big question is, how does light curve due to the force of gravity?\n\nThe answer; it doesn't. Light travels on a geodesic, or the straightest path it possibly can travel on. GR theorizes that the very presence of mass distorts spacetime itself, curving spacetime. This way, a supermassive object will literally bend spacetime until a 'straight line' appears as a 'curved line' from far enough away. Gravity isn't actually causing mass to interact with light, but rather causing mass to interact with *space*, which then 'interacts' with light",
"The difference between gravity and EM is the the force is proportional to the mass rather than the charge. The fact that it is linear is a huge tell tale sign to its nature because the acceleration due to gravity is, therefore, independent of the mass.\n\nThis leads to the equivalence principle: if you were in a system falling under a uniform gravitational field, there would be no *local* experiment that you could do to prove that you were accelerating because everything would be accelerating at exactly the same rate. This is unique to the gravitational force. It is this principle that leads to the idea that the cause of the acceleration is a property of space itself. \n\nOf course, there's a bit more to it but that's the first thing you learn about when you're starting on general relativity."
]
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|
6eizt0 | what do doctors do with the empty space after a half brain removing surgery | I can't spell the actual name of the surgery (hispherectomy?) but it's that surgery they give to epileptics where they cut out half your brain. What do they do with all that empty space in your head? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6eizt0/eli5_what_do_doctors_do_with_the_empty_space/ | {
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"The procedure is called a hemispherectomy (hemi = half, sphere, ectomy = removal) and they don't do anything with the empty space. It ends up filling up with cerebrospinal fluid. It's not like they are going to put a prosthetic brain in there for cosmetic purposes, haha."
]
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|
19wlxx | the different types of pencils 2b,b,whatever else there is | Follow up question-why in American movies(not from America) do in tests teachers tell you to get a specific pencil out | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19wlxx/eli5_the_different_types_of_pencils_2bbwhatever/ | {
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"Pencil leads come in a variety of hardnesses, obtained by altering the ratio of clay to graphite in the pencil. More clay makes the lead harder, but also means it makes a lighter mark. They are often used for engineering drawings because they produce a sharp, clean line without much variation in the darkness of the line.\n\nPencils with less clay are darker (blacker) & softer. They smudge easier, & can produce a range of darkness. They're often popular with artists because they can produce a variety of marks.\n\nPencils are often graded using the HB system in much of the world. B stands for Black, & H stands for Hard. The higher H numbers have more clay, & are lighter & harder, & the higher B numbers have less clay & are darker & softer. HB is a balance between the two. Sometimes you see F too, which is between HB & H, & is used for fine details in drawings. [Here's a diagram of the various shades.](_URL_0_)\n\nAmerican pencils use a number system, with #1 equal to B, #2 equal to HB, #3 equal to H, & #4 equal to 2H. The tests you hear about are filled out by colouring in bubbles corresponding to answers, & are marked by computers. The pencil used needs to be dark enough for the computer to be able to recognise which bubble was filled out, yet hard enough not to smudge outside the bubble & confuse the computer, so they use a pencil in the middle of the range."
]
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8dc2tx | given the fragmented instant messaging market and the failure to create a standard protocol, why aren't there email clients that make using email more like instant messaging? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8dc2tx/eli5given_the_fragmented_instant_messaging_market/ | {
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"Huh? \n\nEmail essentially already is instant messaging, if the user utilizes it in that way. You can get notifications that pop up on your computer that tell you that you just got an email, and it's essentially instance. Your phone can tell you that you just got an email, and it's essentially instant.\n\nI sometimes use email like that with my less Tech Savvy family members. I will have a 10 or 20 email long chain in only a few minutes, because we are just emailing back one or two sentences to each other.\n\nToday, I don't think there is an issue with email clients or technology. It's simply how the users utilize it.\n\nAlso, instant messaging it's probably not as popular as it once was, since the Advent and popularity of phones and texting has taken over from that."
]
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||
5wt455 | why are saltwater aquariums so hard to maintain, but the fish can live in the ocean with a lot more variables? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wt455/eli5_why_are_saltwater_aquariums_so_hard_to/ | {
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"The oceans are very large. The food or waste from a fish is a super tiny fraction. In only 100 gallons of water, it can build up and cause problems.",
"Because fish have evolved to live in the conditions of the ocean, and these conditions hardly fluctuate. Consider the amount of water and ions used by a single fish. Now consider this amount to the size of the ocean. Even though the ocean has more than one fish (duh) most fish don't change their environmental conditions enough to displace the effect of how big the ocean is and so their local environment keeps very similar conditions all year.\n\nTL;DR: the conditions in the ocean don't change very much but aquarium conditions do, due to the size difference",
"It's largely *because* there are so many variables that are typically present in the ocean, but not in an aquarium. There are a million different chemicals that are present in the ocean in specific concentrations that won't be present in the aquarium, often because we don't know which of them is important or not. Even when they're not directly related to fish health, simply *changing* that environment is stressful. Reefs, mostly, don't change. They haven't changed significantly in tens of thousands of years\\*. Because of that, marine life isn't accustomed to dealing with changes.\n\nThey're also part of hugely complex web of resources - every fish on the reef has a specialized diet. You can replicate that diet, but only to a degree. For instance, most marine angels eat corals, which is undesirable in an aquarium because corals are *expensive*. On the reef, the angel could graze from place to place, eating a few polyps on a colony of thousands and move onto another colony while the first recovers - in an aquarium, there's only so many corals to munch on so they're all going to get munched on all the time. Ok, so don't keep angels with corals. Except that some angels are obligate corallivores - their diet *must* include coral. Tangs, like [blue regal tangs](_URL_1_), eat algae, specifically macroalgae (seaweed), which means you *have* to include seaweed in their diet. Except your angels, even if they don't need coral, still want meaty foods. So you have to feed two different things. Puffer fish have a fused tooth like a beak, which they use to scrape meat out of shells - they eat clams and snails. If their diet does not include clams and snails, their beak doesn't get worn down and, just like a rabbit, it will continue to grow until it hurts them. Every single fish in your aquarium will have a specialized diet, and often we don't know what all is in that diet. Not to mention the rest of the food web, from phytoplankton, zooplankton, diatoms, copepods, amphipods... Some foods may not be available in your tank without feeding *those*, and so on.\n\nAll of that assumes your fish will eat prepared foods *at all*. Except for *basically* most clownfish, seahorses, and a very, *very* small group of other fish, literally every other saltwater fish you see in an aquarium was wild caught. All of them. You may be offering them a high quality food pellet with every nutrient they need to survive, but they may never recognize that as food. It doesn't *look* like food to them, because even if it's made of shrimp and seaweed, it doesn't look like shrimp and seaweed. Some saltwater fish are very picky eaters and will never take to prepared foods, like [seahorses](_URL_0_) (that's my tank!). They will *only* eat live food, or frozen food like thawed mysis shrimp, even if they're captive bred!\n\nThe ocean is also big enough to absorb problems. Consider the [nitrogen cycle](_URL_3_): fish produce ammonia during their metabolic processes, which is broken down by bacteria, then broken down again until it becomes nitrate. In nature, that nitrate is absorbed by plants for the nitrogren, converted back, eat by the fish, converted into ammonia...etc. In your aquarium, you are always adding nitrogen via the food, but it's not *going* anywhere. Once it enters your tank, it stays there until you remove it. In the ocean, that's millions of gallons of water to absorb and spread out the nitrate while the plants absorb it, plus there's tons of plankton also absorbing it, *plus* there's tons of surface area for the nitrogen to evaporate into the air. None of that exists for your aquarium, so nitrate can build up very quickly. The same applies to things that mess with your pH (which has to be very consistent at 8.3 to 8.4) - the pH of the ocean doesn't change\\*, it's too big, but your teeny tiny tank may see pretty big swings in pH, or salinity, or temperature, which the fish are not equipped to deal with. There are so many factors to keep track of in your aquarium and not a whole lot of time to do it before it's changed enough to be stressful for the fish.\n\nThere's also the problem of space: even small reef fish that pick one hole and live there, or one small territory are used to a *lot* of space around them. Nomadic fish like tangs are used to having huge amounts of room to swim through. Being stuck in a small tank can be very stressful, especially if you make the mistake of overcrowding your tank or not having an appropriately sized tank (adult tangs need tanks in the hundreds of gallons to feel comfortable). Along with space, they're used to having features to hide in or hide around, and having big open spaces with no rocks or corals can make them feel unsafe. *They* don't know there aren't any sharks around, so they're looking for a place to hide, just in case, and there aren't any. Which often leaves you with a catch 22: less rock so your fish have more room to swim, but no place to hide, or places to hide but no room to swim. Finding that balance can be difficult.\n\nThere's more I could go into, like compatibility (which fish will eat each other or fight each other), how stressful transportation is, some of the questionable methods used to catch aquarium fish (like using cyanide - yes it's exactly as dangerous as it sounds, for both the fish and the diver), the deplorable conditions some of them are kept in before they make it to your tank...some of the absolutely, hideously deplorable conditions people try to keep them in at home...believe it or not, even saltwater fish are hardier than people give them credit for, you just would not believe how many people do it *wrong*, and how pants-on-head stupidly wrong they do it (\"I just set my 10g up yesterday, the ammonia is reading at 4ppm, the pH is at 7.2, and the salinity is at 1.030...can I get three blue tangs, four clownfish, two angelfish, eight damsels, an eel, and a puffer? Thanks...\"). (Seriously, if you want to set up an aquarium, fresh or salt, awesome! Go to /r/Aquariums and ask questions, or just PM me, aquariums are literally my job; I'm more than happy to help! Do your research, do it right, be patient, and take care of the animals you're bringing into your home.)\n\n*Global climate change is having an effect: see [ocean acidification](_URL_4_). Along with rising temperatures and changes to salinity, the effects are [not good](_URL_2_). Marine life is having a really tough time dealing with the changes going on in their environments for many of the same reasons they have trouble dealing with aquariums. Their ecosystems have evolved a very delicate balance, and they all fit very carefully inside that balance, so when one thing gets out of whack the whole reef suffers."
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"http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-38127320",
"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Nitrogen_Cycle.jpg",
"https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F"
]
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||
873t09 | what is an elementary function? | What makes a function an elementary function, and what are the names of functions that aren't elementary? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/873t09/eli5_what_is_an_elementary_function/ | {
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"The elementary functions are a set of well known functions such as powers of x, roots of x, exponentials, trigonometric functions and their inverses, and most importantly any combinations of them, for example e^sinx + x^(2).\n\nNon elementary functions are those that can't be written like that. For example if I define the function:\n\nf(x) = 1 if x is rational and f(x) = 0 otherwise\n\nThen f is a non elementary function. This function has a specific name - Dirichlet function - but most non elementary functions don't have a name or an easy way to describe them. ",
"An elementary function is a function which you can write using a finite number of mathematical operations, which include any combination of the arithmetic operations (+,-,*,/), exponentials, logarithms, constant numbers, roots (and nth roots), trig, inverse trig and hyperbolic trig functions.\n\nBasically, if you write an equation/function just using those things mentioned, it's an elementary function. It's important to note infinite sums, limits and integral don't count.\n\nA non-elementary function is a function that cannot be written that way. An example of this is the integral of e^(-x^2). This function is called the error function. No matter what you do, there is no way you can write its anti derivative using a finite number of the aforementioned operations. A few other integrals also turn out the same way (such as the integral of e^(e^x) )"
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5jvdb4 | if temperature affects air pressure, would the temperature on a planet with a thinner atmosphere feel different than the same temperature on a planet with a thicker atmosphere? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5jvdb4/eli5if_temperature_affects_air_pressure_would_the/ | {
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"text": [
"How temperature feels is subjective because it is a feeling. Factors such as humidity may impact how temperature feels but humidity is related to much more than how thick the atmosphere is and its quite localized. "
]
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[]
] |
||
5twwla | where does water pressure come from? | In municipal water supply, such as my faucets at my home, where does the water pressure originate. Or, what creates the pressure to allow it to flow to our homes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5twwla/eli5_where_does_water_pressure_come_from/ | {
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"In short, pumping stations and water towers.\n\nWater is pumped from it's source, which could be a well, river, lake, etc. It's usually then treated/cleaned, then pumped up to a water tower. Gravity takes it from there.",
"Pressure is created by throttling volume. Pressure and volume have an inverse relationship, meaning as one increases the other decreases. Imagine you taking a garden hose and putting your thumb over the end. You are restricting the volume and in turn increasing the pressure. Same goes for air. ",
"I'll just try to elaborate a bit. There are only 2 common ways to increase the pressure of any fluid (including water). Pressure is equal to the density of the liquid times the height, it doesn't matter how wide or deep the pipe is, the water pressure at the bottom of a 2 inch diameter tube that's 100 feet tall will be the same as a 2000 inch diameter tube that is 100 feet tall. So water is either collected at high elevation (rain collecting) or pumped to a higher elevation (tank at the top of a tower). Pumping is the second method to increase pressure, which is pretty obvious, using electrical power, to turn mechanical parts that apply force to the fluid to increase pressure."
]
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6ovlzj | why does an emergency door have a grill / bars inside its window? | I'm almost certain that every emergency door have a window and a grill in it. Why does it have those? It doesn't mean like the grill will make the door stronger, right?
Pictures: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ovlzj/eli5_why_does_an_emergency_door_have_a_grill_bars/ | {
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" > I'm almost certain that every emergency door have a window and a grill in it.\n\nMany do not, but it is a common feature in such doors to allow some vision of what is past them. You can avoid walking into a fire or smoke hazard with such a feature.\n\n > Why does it have those? It doesn't mean like the grill will make the door stronger, right?\n\nThe grid of wire does not make the door stronger. It does however make the *window* stronger. Wire mesh can keep even shattered glass mostly in place, and keep both debris and intruders from passing through.",
"It is to prevent burglars from smashing the glass, reaching through, and opening the door. This is valuable since these doors are often in obscure locations that would be pretty good for burglary.",
"Wired glass is not stronger. The inclusions in the glass from the wire significantly weaken it.\n\nWhat wired glass does is stay in the frame even if a fire causes huge pressure differences, and it can also withstand being blasted by a fire hose. \n\n"
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xbu86 | - the recent hate on nbc | I understand that NBC is hosting the olympics, and I've been watching it pretty regularly but haven't noticed anything god awful. Why is everyone so mad at them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xbu86/eli5_the_recent_hate_on_nbc/ | {
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"Only speaking from personal experience, but I'm not happy with the lack of online viewing available. \n\nI get my tv through an antenna, and nbc doesn't broadcast in my area. So I am out of luck, and have no (legal) way of watching the games. ",
"From the sounds of it, their coverage has been somewhat uneven, between cuts, camerawork and adverts. \n\nHowever it seems the most notable culmination that has got people riled is the replacement a tribute to victims of a terrorist incident in the UK on the 7th of July in 2005 that took place during the opening ceremony. As the replacement was seen as somewhat trivial in comparison (an interview with Michael Phelps by Ryan Seacrest, if what I'm hearing is correct?), some people are disappointed and offended at NBC's broadcast choices.\n\nFor a contextual comparison, some choose to parallel it with the outcry that might follow a national broadcaster sidelining a 9/11 tribute to cover something trivial instead.",
"The Olympics represent a spirit of inclusiveness, community, and support for ones nation. NBC, which owns the broadcasting rights to the 2012 Olympics within the US, has made a decision to monetize their holdings, or to use their rights for profit. In many countries, the companies that own the broadcasting rights have decided to make viewing as easy as possible for as many people as possible, embracing the qualities that the International Olympic Committee stands for. By requiring that viewers have cable/satellite subscriptions for online viewing, NBC has chosen to leave those of us who don't pay for these services to find other ways to watch.",
"Imagine if, say, during the coverage of 2002 Winter Olympics, the BBC had chosen to cut away from a 9/11 memorial tribute to showcase Ant and Dec interviewing a British athlete.\n\nAlso, Community.",
"Another thing that I hate about NBC's coverage is the media monopoly of universal. After merging with comcast, people with dishes or other cable carriers are SOL for coverage. My mom and I pay about the same amount of money for cable a month. I have comcast, she has dish. The only Olympic channels she can watch are NBC and CNBC. I have almost every channel. ",
"One of the biggest issues is the refusal to show many of the most hyped events live, because they want to save them for US primetime.\n\nFor instance, the Michael Phelps/Ryan Lochte 400 IM, which NBC had hyped mercilessly, was not shown live on tv in the us, and viewers had to watch it on tape delay. In the era of twitter/online news/etc, a large number of people found out the results of the event before they could even watch it on TV.\n\nIn fact, if you did nothing but watch NBC all day, NBC nightly news with Brian Williams, which aired before the olympics coverage reported the event results...",
"With all this said, is there a way to watch the olympics online/without NBC bias? (I don't have any cable but I am moving in 2 days and my new apt will have it)",
"The commentators don't know when to shut the fuck up"
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2l7t57 | what happens to the human body when it experiences spontaneous decompression? does it just pop? | What exactly happens to the human body when it experiences spontaneous decompression?
Like in movies or sci-fi shows, a door leading into he vacuum of space is breached and everyone and everything in the room will get sucked out, except for the hero who grabs on to something for the ride and somehow holds their breath and makes it?!
It's hard to believe if you were violently sucked into space there wouldn't be some very violent physical side effects | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l7t57/eli5_what_happens_to_the_human_body_when_it/ | {
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"\"Coward, Lucas and Bergersen were exposed to the effects of explosive decompression and died in the positions indicated by the diagram. Subsequent investigation by forensic pathologists determined Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient, violently exploded due to the rapid and massive expansion of internal gases. **All of his thoracic and abdominal organs, and even his thoracic spine, were ejected, as were all of his limbs.** Simultaneously, his remains were expelled through the narrow trunk opening left by the jammed chamber door, less than 60 centimetres (24 in) in diameter. Fragments of his body were found scattered about the rig. One part was even found lying on the rig's derrick, 10 metres (30 ft) directly above the chambers. The deaths of all four divers were most likely instantaneous.\"\n\n[Byford Dolphin Accident](_URL_0_) \n\nThere is a picture of what was left of one of the divers, but I couldn't find it. Essentially, if you read the above, what was left on the stretcher didn't amount to much, \n\n\nEdit: This was an extreme situation obviously. "
]
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[
"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin"
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|
uih0q | why fat forms where it does | I've always wondered what it is about the body that dictates where a person's fat will form. You know how you can have two people who are slightly overweight, and with one person their face doesn't have a whole lot of fat on it, but with another their face does have fat on it?
Or how with some people all their fat goes to their stomach/chest area whereas other people's fat goes to their butt and thighs. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uih0q/eli5_why_fat_forms_where_it_does/ | {
"a_id": [
"c4vom2v"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"I'm sorry if the answer is incorrect but my lecturer told me that it has to do with gender. \n\nMale: The stomach.\n\nFemale: Buttocks."
]
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|
7pvdew | how does a build up of lactic acid in an athlete's muscles cause them to sometimes thow up | I'm an athlete and I train for the 400m. During the 400m you get an insane amount of lactic acid in your muscles and sometimes this can cause you to throw up. Why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pvdew/eli5_how_does_a_build_up_of_lactic_acid_in_an/ | {
"a_id": [
"dskcgue"
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"text": [
"Throwing up is one of a few things the body just defaults to when it senses something is geberally wrong. Better safe than sorry, maybe it's something you ate, let's throw up just to be sure. Makes sense from an evolutionary stand point.\n\nAlso, when so much lactic acid is built up, it'll sometimes end up in your actual stomach. This will irritate the stomach and throwing up gets rid of it."
]
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[]
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|
9rroux | is paying off a mortgage like paying rent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9rroux/eli5_is_paying_off_a_mortgage_like_paying_rent/ | {
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"...Sort of? It is a regular bill which needs to be paid so it seems similar. However a major difference is that the money paid into the mortgage isn't really gone in the same way as rent. You are gaining equity or ownership of the property so when it is sold you get that money back. You can even sell before the mortgage is done and pocket the difference between the mortgage and sale price.",
"It is like rent in that it's a monthly payment for housing, but you also pay toward owning the house outright, and have rights to all gains in home value.\n\nYour monthly mortgage payment includes principal (reduces loan, increases ownership), interest, and escrow funds (setting aside money monthly for annual property tax payments and home owners insurance). \n\nEventually, if you keep paying for 15-30 years, you'll pay off the mortgage entirely and own 100% of the house. You'd then just have to pay the taxes and insurance directly, but no mortgage."
]
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||
3bwkhy | why are veterans held in such high regard in america and why do some veterans walk around in uniform when not on duty? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bwkhy/eli5_why_are_veterans_held_in_such_high_regard_in/ | {
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"text": [
"Because they fought for our country. They risked their lives for us. I think they deserve a little damn respect."
]
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||
g3vpg8 | why does our teeth not erode away when we are brushing our teeth (and using them in other ways) every single day? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g3vpg8/eli5_why_does_our_teeth_not_erode_away_when_we/ | {
"a_id": [
"fntukca"
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"text": [
"If the tooth enamel is only gently weakened it can regenerate. Toothpaste is specifically made to help your teeth do this regeneration. If you significantly damage your tooth enamel it is gone forever and your tooth underneath will likely begin to rot."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
amhg3w | what's the significance of the queen's guard's hats? bonus explanation: what purpose do they serve in a modern attack with glowing uniforms and massive heads? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/amhg3w/eli5_whats_the_significance_of_the_queens_guards/ | {
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"text": [
"The queen's guard aren't commandos that get sent on covert Missions.\n\nThey're meant to stand out, and be a very visible show. They aren't just ceremonial, though. They're full trained soldiers in their own right on full guard duty.\n\nBut to do their job there is no need to hide or blend in. They want to be a very visible deterrent. ",
"If i recall some info I learned correctly the style was adopted from napoleans soldiers to appear bigger and more intimidating as well. I'd assume that's what youd want from a royalty gaurd."
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4lqv2o | how do snakes grow? | This is a stupid question but since snakes have all those ribs and can get the size of a leviathan, depending on the species. How do they grow? Do their ribs get bigger and stronger per their size, so does the spacing increase? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lqv2o/eli5how_do_snakes_grow/ | {
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"The same way other animals do?\n\nDo you think you were born with a full-sized adult ribcage?",
"The number of vertebrae is genetically determined, as with us, and does not increase during the snake's lifetime. Their bones grow, just as with ours, and judging from the skeleton on-hand at work, although the relative space seems to remain more or less constant, indeed, in absolute terms the spacing increases."
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8a0mqz | how do tv game shows tax people who get cash on the spot? | I see game shows like How too make a deal give away cash on the spot. Are these people taxed? I know if you win showcases etc taxes are collected on items, but what about cash handed on the spot? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8a0mqz/eli5_how_do_tv_game_shows_tax_people_who_get_cash/ | {
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"Any cash prize (including lotteries) is generally considered income in the eyes of the IRS (or similar entity for other countries). \n\nThe person/entity giving the money will report the transfer of money to the IRS (and in some cases, offer to withhold the expected taxes) , and it becomes the responsibility of the recipient to submit a payment of the expected owed taxes in a timely manner and to report the earnings when the time comes to file taxes for the year.",
"Often they don't actually give money away on the spot, that is just for the cameras. At the very least, the show has to gather sufficient information to report the award to the IRS.\n\nI was reading something about *Cash Cab*, about how it was one of the realest shows on The Discovery Channel, the only thing fake about it was handing out cash. There is paperwork off camera and the winners wind up with checks.\n",
"There have been documentaries on this, specifically related to the Price is Right.\n\nSurprisingly the fact that you have to pay taxes on lottery winnings and tv show prizes isn't as common knowledge as you'd think. If you win you have to fill in paper work and deal with the original vendor that donated the prize. Contestants are told about this after the show is over and quite often will abandon the prizes (cars, trips etc) because they can't fork over the cash for the taxes needed to pay for them.\n\nPrice is Right is apparently a stickler for not allowing you to take cash value for your prize. As a result the Price is Right supposedly has a depot that stores cars, and all manner of prizes that have appeared on the show but were unclaimed. The show is required to hold onto them for X period and then afterwards dispose (auction? re-use?) them.\n\nThat's one of the reasons that show like Jeopardy, Who wants to be a Millionaire, Family Feud, etc give out cash prizes. It's just easier to manage.\n\nInterestingly though Canada has no such law, and Canadians can claim lottery and prize winnings tax-free. If a Canadian wins on a show like Price is Right we have to pay the taxes upfront and then have to go through a laborious process to get the taxes back from the IRS because they can't tax us for that.",
"Surely depends how much money. If it's under 10 grand I'm quite sure it works exactly how they do bingo parlors.\n\nWhen you win anything over $1199, they rig it so you win multiple 1199's so it's not one lump taxable sum.",
"So you're telling me prize money is not tax-free in the US like it is e.g. in Germany? o.O",
"Canada does not tax windfall gains, so lottery/casino/game show winnings are pocketed in the amount shown. This is also why Canadians play American big-prize lotteries, as it is possible to keep much more of the winnings than American citizens do."
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4sg7vd | why did civil war soldiers not use revolvers exclusively? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sg7vd/eli5_why_did_civil_war_soldiers_not_use_revolvers/ | {
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"Range, revolvers have a very limited range. If you exclusively rely on revolvers the enemy will sit out of range and pick you to pieces. In addition the reloading speed of revolvers is slow compared to that of the rifles and carbines of the period so the number of shots per minute were relatively few. Pistols were only really useful for cavalry who could use a small weapon on horseback fire a rapid number of shots and then charge home or get rapidly out of range.",
"Revolver rifles, or repeating rifles of that ERA were somewhat unreliable. They could discharge all of the six ammo at once and after 6 shots they were pretty slow to reload. Ammo was harder to make on field and most of the militants were without a proper training for using those guns. Also the ammo was way more expensive.\n\nAlso having six shots would give wrong idea to the soldiers. Using a gun with one shot would make them aim, while having six they could just shoot them down the range. Ammo were scarce so they didn't want to waste it. \n\nAnd last but not least, they were seen as wasted resources. \n\nEDIT: And the accuracy was really a thing and mattered. Remember that they had very limited ammo, and they melted their own personal posessions to make ammo.",
"The revolver design was used in rifles at that time. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere seems to have been reliability issues with the possibility of chain fire, where all one shot ignited all the chambers and could be potentially quite destructive. Chainfire was a problem with a handgun revolver too, but less risky to the user because handguns didn't need to be fired with one hand in front of the chambers. \n\nBut they were used in some quantity, along with a great many other weapons. ",
"First of all, I'm not sure why you think accuracy doesn't matter. Direct, close range, charges were not common and when they did occur the two lines would be separated by hundreds of yards to start. The Napoleonic line tactics fell out of favor pretty early in the war and the small unit tactics that developed were not that different from modern warfare (in fact, the number of shots per causality was much lower than it is now). Late in the war, many battles turned into long sieges in which snipers accounted for a large percentage of the casualties. \n\nSecondly, a revolver is a relatively low power weapon. A revolver fires a small ball with about 250 ft-lbs of energy. By comparison a rifle firing a minie ball might have over 1000 ft-lbs of energy and offer superior ballistics (so it kept it's energy for a longer distance). Beyond 50 yards a revolver was fairly ineffective. \n\nLastly, they developed much better solutions than percussion cap revolvers in either handgun or rifle form. Most notably the Spencer rifle and similar lever actions guns were developed which were cartridge fed and so much faster to reload than a cap and ball revolver. These might have completely replaced the muzzle loading rifle in the North if not for limited manufacturing capacity. \n\n\n\n\n\n"
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1jqfv8 | how is it that i'm left handed but do some activities like a right handed person would? | Like the title says, i'm left handed. I seem to do small-movement type things (write, brush my teeth, pour coffee, hold a fork, hold the TV remote) with my left hand, but at the same time; use my right hand to throw a football, I shoot right in hockey/golf etc.
Is that common? I only know a handful of lefties and they don't do anything like a right-handed person would.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jqfv8/eli5_how_is_it_that_im_left_handed_but_do_some/ | {
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"As I understand it, left/right-handedness isn't a 100% binary thing. You can be left-handed for *most* activities, but still be right-handed on a few/some others depending on how you were taught, how you grew up, etc.",
"I'm a leftie too, but I use cutlery, knit, play guitar etc \"right handed\". Just the way I was brought up I guess!",
"I am right handed. I only use my left hand for one thing. That is because I use my right hand to control the mouse. So maybe some of it is training. So much training. ",
"I'm a lefty from a family of all right-handed people. I favor my left hand in most things (writing, throwing, batting, kicking,) but do some things right-handed (guitars, drums, mouse, fork & knife, scissors.) I think this is mostly due to the set-ups and equipment available (typically favoring right-handedness) when I was learning.\n\nIt's ultimately led to a higher level of ambidexterity."
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Subsets and Splits