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5yuubs | why have salaries not increased on par with the cost of living. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yuubs/eli5_why_have_salaries_not_increased_on_par_with/ | {
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"Our economy is based on an everlasting perpetual growth. In other words if company i.e. Walmart doesn't post profit increase in their year over year sales report it is considered unsuccessful or not profitable and investors start pulling away. One of the easiest ways to do that is to keep your payroll as low as possible. Now multiply that by 100s of powerful companies who are very powerful and and have significant representation and influence in our government and there is your answer. This is as simple way as I can put it without writing an essay."
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3svhtz | why aren't siblings born with the same dna? | Statistically speaking, non-twin siblings from the same parents could have the same DNA, right? Why doesn't this happen? What are the statistical odds that it could? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3svhtz/eli5_why_arent_siblings_born_with_the_same_dna/ | {
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"You have 23 pairs of DNA in your body. One of each pair from your mom, another from your dad. This means you have about 0.5^23 chance of having the same DNA as a sibling, and that's not even factoring in recombination (bits of DNA switching around).",
"Not all of it. A child only contains half the DNA each parent has, with two parents combining to make a complete set. The best way to describe this is in terms of meiosis, the production of gametes (sex cells) in which the chromosome number (I am assuming you know basic Biology, if not ask questions) halves.\n\nSo, most humans have 46 chromosomes. These chromosomes are in pairs, with 23 pairs, each pair containing one from the mother and another from the father. Each chromosome in these pairs controls the same traits.\n\nSo, during meiosis, the chromosome pairs split apart into different cells to form sex cells. However the nature of this splitting is random, chromosome pair one could have the mother's chromosome go to one side, while chromosome pair two could have either the mother's or the father's chromosome to go to that side. This is called independent assortment, since all the chromosomes arrange themselves independently of other chromosomes (except the pair) This splitting is random, and generates 2^23 types of combinations for a single gamete to be produced, which is about 8 million. For the production of the two cells needed to make up a child, it is 8 million squared, or over 10 billion. Ten billion different combinations, and that is ignoring the other DNA randomization processes. Factor in the others, you get numbers in the trillions and quadrillions of combinations, and even though some are more likely to occur than others, the chance is still tiny that two siblings will be produced to be exactly the same in DNA."
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d326cy | how do computers transmit and translate video and pictures? does each picture get boiled down to a pixel level with a binary code for each pixel? what about video? it blows my mind that computers can do this. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d326cy/eli5_how_do_computers_transmit_and_translate/ | {
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"Every pixel has a colour represented by a binary code. Commonly a byte (8 bits) is used for each of the three primary colours of red, green, and blue, so you need three bytes (24-bits) per pixel. That gives 16 million possible different colours.\n\nPictures are then compressed which allows a big reduction in the number of bytes required. Pixels tend to be the same colour as adjoining pixels and encoding that in an image file allows it to be much smaller than if you described every pixel separately. Usually \"lossy\" compression is used which can allow the file to be much smaller, at the cost of not looking exactly the same as the original. There's a trade-off between file size and quality.\n\nVideo is just a sequence of pictures called frames. It can be compressed more because most frames are almost exactly the same as the previous frames. The compressor might only send one self-contained frame every second and the other frames are described based on how they're different from preceding and/or following frames. If one part of the frame is moving in front of the rest, the compressor can describe which parts of the frame have moved and how far, instead of having to resend the pixels.",
"Yes, in theory the computer takes each pixel gives it a number to describe its color and then goes on to the next, os that if you have a picture a hundred pixel by hundred pixel, you would transmit 10,000 numbers with a color for each pixel. The computer breaks up the color numbers into bytes for this. If you have only two colors like black and white you can fit 8 of those numbers into each byte, if you want 24-bit \"true color\" you end up needing 3 bytes for each pixel.\n\nThis is what happens with Bitmaps at least and some relatively rare forms of video.\n\nIn practice, pictures and videos like this can get really really big, so you use compression. This means that you don't transmit each single pixel, but use some math to describe where and when what color pixels are in a way that avoids unnecessary repetition. to shorten things a bit. The exact nature of the compression can differ from format to format.\n\nHowever it all boils down to the idea of giving each pixel a number that represents its color and transmitting a string of numbers that allows the computer to display pixels in the same (or at least a similar) way.\n\nThere are some exceptions however: vector graphics. These are not so much instructions to tell the computer what color each pixel looks like, but more instructions on how to draw the picture. It may contain an instruction like \"make a thin diagonal black line from the upper left corner to lower right corner of the picture\" and the computer has to figure out which pixels it has to make black itself."
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3ras3t | why does taking (something) to the negative power give us 1/(something)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ras3t/eli5_why_does_taking_something_to_the_negative/ | {
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"If you can realise that multiplication is the inverse of division, then it is pretty easy.\n\nFor positive powers:\n\n2^1 =1x2=2\n\n2^2 =1x2x2=4\n\n2^3 =1x2x2x2=8\n\nand so on. For a positive power, you multiply the number.\n\nA negative power has the same pattern, except with division, so:\n\n2^-1 =1/2\n\n2^-2 =1/2/2=1/4\n\n2^-3 =1/2/2/2=1/8\n\nand so on.",
"The fact that *a*^(-*n*) = 1/(*a*^(*n*)) is actually a matter of definition. However, any other definition would make little sense, and here's why:\n\nIf *a* is some number, the notation *a*^(2) is just a convenient way of writing *a*·*a*. In general, you have \n*a*^(2) = *a*·*a* \n*a*^(3) = *a*·*a*·*a* \n*a*^(4) = *a*·*a*·*a*·*a* \nand so on.\nThis is a definition we make: We define *a*^(*n*), where *n* is a positive whole number, to be *a*^(*n*) = *a*·*a*·*a*···*a*, where *a* occurs a total of *n* times in the product. (*a* can be any number, it doesn't have to be an integer.) In particular, this must mean that \n*a*^(1) = *a*.\nNow, consider something like *a*^(3)·*a*^(5). We know that *a*^(3) = *a*·*a*·*a* and *a*^(5) = *a*·*a*·*a*·*a*·*a*, so \n*a*^(3)·*a*^(5) = *a*·*a*·*a* · *a*·*a*·*a*·*a*·*a* = *a*^(8) (=*a*^(3+5)). \nSimilarly, \n*a*^(7)·*a*^(2) = *a*·*a*·*a*·*a*·*a*·*a*·*a* · *a*·*a* = *a*^(9) (=*a*^(7+2)). \nAs you can hopefully see, if *n* and *m* are positive whole numbers and you multiply *a*^(*n*) by *a*^(*m*), you'll end up with *n*+*m* factors *a* and so the result is *a*^(*n*+*m*). This is a rule we've thus proven (kind of proven anyway) for positive whole numbers: \n**RULE**: *a*^(*n*)·*a*^(*m*) = *a*^(*n*+*m*)\n\nNow, what should *a*^(0) be? We *could* define it to be whatever we feel like, but it's best to try to make the definition as convenient as possible, so why not try to define it to follow our rule *a*^(*n*)·*a*^(*m*) = *a*^(*n*+*m*)? Well if it is to abide by the rule, we need to have \n*a*^(*n*)·*a*^(0) = *a*^(*n*+0) = *a*^(*n*). \nThis actually means that we must have \n*a*^(0)=1 \nfor our rule to keep holding if *n* or *m* is zero. (Since *a*^(*n*)·*a*^(0) = *a*^(*n*) can only be true if *a*^(0)=1.)\n\nFinally, let's move on to negative whole numbers. Again, we *could* define things in a lot of ways, but again, we insist that our rule for exponents should remain valid for negative integers too. This means that we must have \n*a*^(*n*)·*a*^(-*n*) = *a*^*n*+(-*n*) = *a*^(0) = 1. \nAt this point you can divide through by *a*^(*n*) on both sides and you end up with \n*a*^(-*n*) = 1/(*a*^(*n*)). \n\nSo in other words: If you want the rule *a*^(*n*)·*a*^(*m*) = *a*^(*n*+*m*) to be true for all whole numbers (and not just the positive ones) you must have *a*(0) = 1 and *a*^(-*n*) = 1/(*a*^(*n*)).\n\nA couple of remarks: \n*0*^(-*n*) is not defined (unless *n* itself is negative). This is because the equation *a*^(*n*)·*a*^(-*n*) = 1 becomes 0^(*n*)·0^(-*n*) = 0·0^(-*n*) = 1 if *a*=0, and that's absurd. There's just nothing you can multiply by zero to get one. Sure, we could define 0^(-*n*) to be something else, but doing so would then break the rule we've tried to adapt to. \nI've only discussed whole numbers. If you want to consider rational numbers (fractions of whole numbers) or real numbers (any number that can be represented with decimals) as powers, the same argument still applies; it's just a little harder to define *a*^(*x*) when *x* is no longer an integer. (For instance, what would *a*^(√2) or *a*^(π) mean?) However, as soon as you do define *a*^(*x*), you still want it to fit the rule we established and so the same argument will lead to *a*^(-*x*) = 1/(*a*^(*x*)).\n\n**Summary:** For positive whole numbers *n* and *m* it's true that *a*^(*n*)·*a*^(*m*) = *a*^(*n*+*m*). If you want that to remain true for all whole numbers it needs to be true that *a*^(*n*)·*a*^(-*n*) = *a*^(*n*-*n*)=*a*^(0)=1, so *a*^(-*n*) = 1/(*a*^(*n*)). Just defining what *a*^(*x*) means for rational or real numbers *x* in general is pretty cumbersome, but the same argument goes through as soon as you do."
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qyolp | the annoying sound in my ears when i get out of the shower. | Not just the feeling of water in your ears (which goes away hitting your head with your hand on the area over your ear leaned to the side) but, you know, that sound. It's like there was a little, tiny flag in your ear which would wave very strongly with every move you make with your head.
And optional: How to get rid of it?
This time it's really extreme and it won't go away. It will drive me CRAZY! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qyolp/eli5_the_annoying_sound_in_my_ears_when_i_get_out/ | {
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" > It's like there was a little, tiny flag in your ear which would wave very strongly with every move you make with your head.\n\nIf it's a clicking sound and seems related to swallowing, yawning, or breathing, you may want to ask a doctor about possible [Eustachian tube](_URL_1_) problems. That's a little tube inside your head that helps you \"pop\" your ears and equalize pressure.\n\nIf you mean some sort of ringing sound, then I'd suggest you look at [ELI5 : Tinnitus](_URL_0_)."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustachian_tube"
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3kh1hm | the difference between deductive and abductive reasoning. | _URL_0_
I was watching an episode of QI and they mentioned that Sherlock Holmes did not use deductive reasoning. He used abductive reasoning. I tried to learn the difference, but I go crosseyed every time I read the above article. To quote Richard B. Riddick: "Maybe you should pretend like you're talkin' to someone educated in the penal system. In fact, don't pretend." | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kh1hm/eli5_the_difference_between_deductive_and/ | {
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"It simply means coming up with ideas to explain things we see. Those ideas then are put to the test and discarded or validated.\n\n- Deduction: Winter is cold. Winter starts next month. So it will be cold next month. \n- Induction: Last winter was cold, the one before was cold, and so on. So next winter is probably going to be cold. \n- Abduction: Why is it so cold? Well, if it were winter, then of course it would be cold. So it's probably winter.",
"Deductive reasoning is deducing or \"arriving at\" a conclusion based on a clear observation that can be connected and make logical sense. (More so evidence based)\n\n(Ex: If its raining outside and I don't bring an umbrella, then I will get wet)\n\nAbductive reasoning bases a conclusion off a set of incomplete observations. The conclusion is reached when a decision is made on the data that you currently have. (More so judgement based)\n\n(Ex: I may or may not be raining..I'm not sure. So I will take my umbrella. If it is then raining I will not get wet)",
"* Deductive reasoning is all about if A is true, then B must be true. It is often less useful in the real world, as things are seldom that certain.\n* Inductive reasons is the voice of experience...yesterday it was cloudy, then it rain...today is cloudy, so it will likely rain again. Induction is more about probability than certainty.\n* Abduction is about observing anomalies, and finding a common explanation for those anomalies. That is what Holmes is doing when he determines the killer is a left handed smoker who spend time in the tropics. He is picking out details and finding the simplest explanation that ties them together."
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bwwd2v | what are apertures, f-stops, how does depth of field work, and how does lens measurement factor into the equation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bwwd2v/eli5_what_are_apertures_fstops_how_does_depth_of/ | {
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"An ideal lens focuses light from a single plane (called the focal plane) onto its sensor. However, that's not super useful, as we often want to take pictures of things that are thick. As it turns out, there is a region around the focal plane where the image is still well focused. This is called the \"field\" of the photo, and the \"depth of field\" (DOF) measures the thickness of this region from the point nearest the camera that is well focused to the farthest point that is well focused.\n\nAs it turns out, actual lenses are not ideal lenses. This matters when it comes to DOF. At small apertures, much less light enters the lens, and it all enters through the middle part of the lens. The result is a larger DOF. In fact, you can make pictures with no lens at all using a pinhole camera. The aperture is so small that the DOF is essentially infinite. Since the amount of light that comes through is similarly small, you need a very bright scene.\n\nSince aperture effects both amount of light and DOF, it's not exactly a DOF control. As less light comes through, more integration time (or exposure time if you're still thinking of a film camera) is required to get an image.\n\nf-number (or f-stop) is a ratio of aperture to focal length. This is a camera-specific idea, but the exposure time for similar f-stops is similar. This was a more interesting parameter when light meters were separate from cameras. Almost all modern cameras use through-the-lens metering and automatic (or at least semi-automatic programs) to select appropriate f-stops and exposure times."
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34oh2g | why do i have to wait 30 seconds after i unplug my modem to plug it back in? once it's off, isn't it just...off? | When resetting a modem, why does the 30 second time limit matter? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34oh2g/eli5_why_do_i_have_to_wait_30_seconds_after_i/ | {
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"there are various components that still hold a slight electric charge for a few seconds after you disconnect the power cord. leaving it unplugged for 30 seconds or so allows these components to completely drain making the power cycle completely effective. ",
"Electronics contain capacitors and will maintain a capacitive charge for some length of time. The 30 second window is intended to be enough to let that capacitive charge drain. Not starting discharged can lead to some sequencing problems as the modem powers back up. In a perfect world they'd be designed such that it wouldn't matter, and it usually probably really doesn't.\n\nYou can see it one some electronics when you unplug them and the LED slowly fades out rather than going blank entirely.",
"It has to do with provisioning at the ISP side. Generally they ask for power off for a few minutes, this causes their equipment to \"release\" your modem's information, so when you turn it back on, it acquires new information, be it IP address, updated firmware, whatever.\n\nIf they do tell you \"30 seconds\" - it's either their equipment can be told to manually drop the stored information, or, they want to be SURE you actually powered it off, and will ask you \"what lights are blinking?\" - this proves you didn't just blow the tech off and not power cycle it. ",
"I work for an ISP. We tell you 30 seconds, because it is long enough to make sure that everything fully powers off. if you pull the plug and put it back, sometimes it won't reset.\n\nAs for the reset button, if you don't hold that down for 30 seconds it won't actually wipe the config file on our modems.",
"Most of these answers are right to some extent but aren't explaining the whole / true reasoning.\n\nYour modem automatically sends information to your ISP (pings) ever so frequently in order to let them know that your modem is still online. These pings contain your modem's MAC address which is a unique serial to your modem. When you unplug your modem and instantly plug it back in, the pings resume without a large delta (time gap from the last ping). Once a ping hasn't been received after a certain amount of time (between 5 - 15 seconds) the ISP's devices can determine that your modem is offline and then do things like releasing your stored MAC address to IP allocation. By waiting a full 30 seconds, both you and the ISP support technician can ensure that the ISP's devices recognize that your modem is offline / has restarted.\n\nSrc: Network Engineer / Computer Scientist"
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6pkxoc | why do brass instruments only emit a sound when pursing your lips? why can't you just blow into them and make sound? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6pkxoc/eli5_why_do_brass_instruments_only_emit_a_sound/ | {
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"There needs to be some kind of vibration. Your lips vibrate in the mouthpeice and the instrument basically amplifies that vibration. If you just blow all you do is move air though a bunch of tubes. A saxaphone is brass but is considered a woodwind instrument because they have a wooden reed that emits the vibration.",
"Sound is really just the air vibrating. In order for anything to make sound, it must make the air vibrate. A piano makes sound because a hammer hits a string, and the string vibrates, and then that causes the air to vibrate too. This basically the way all 'string' instruments (like the guitar, violin or cello) work.\n\nThe other large class of musical instruments are the wind instruments. Some of these wind instruments work when you just blow into them (like a recorder), and some don't, but all of them must make vibrations. The instruments that work when you just blow into them work in two steps: first your breath passes though some device so that is makes a \"whushing\" sound. This sound contains a very large range of musical notes, all sitting on top of each other. Then this \"whushing\" sound enters a tube. The tube will only allow a particular musical note to come out: the longer the tube, the lower the note. Here, the air inside the tube is like the string in string instruments, it vibrates at a particular frequency, and this is the sound you hear.\n\nLots of instruments that you blow into, however, do not work this way. Many of them require you to make a particular note first, like a clarinet or a trumpet. Here, you make a note with your lips (or with the reed in a clarinet) and then this note moves into the tubes of the instrument, which again, will only vibrate at a given note, depending on the length of the pipe.\n\nSo why can't you make a \"whushing\" noise, and have a trumpet or clarinet work? You probably could, (especially in a clarinet) it just wouldn't be very loud. Because of the different materials/construction different wind instruments are better at filtering out all the unwanted notes in the \"whushing\" noise, and leaving and making louder, the note you want.\n\nThis all comes down to an idea in physics called resonance, that you should probably look up!"
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5fut2f | how does my printer know how much ink is in the cartridge? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fut2f/eli5how_does_my_printer_know_how_much_ink_is_in/ | {
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"the inkjet cartridge has a electronic chip inside that counts how many times its asked to jet ink of each color. reach the upper end of that count and you have a good idea when it's going to run out. \n\n"
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1q2vdg | how much money (usd) would need to be "destroyed" in order to see a significant rise in the value of the dollar? | If the value of money goes down as more money is put in circulation, taking some out would make the value go up, right? So how much cash would need to be burned to actually see a real change in the power of the U.S. dollar? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q2vdg/eli5how_much_money_usd_would_need_to_be_destroyed/ | {
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"_URL_0_\n\nThe monetary base went from ~800 billion USD in 2008 to 3.6 trillion 2013 and you had ~10% cumulative inflation over 5 years.\n\nSo if you want to roll back that inflation you'd need to eliminate at least 80% of the monetary base (note that much of the monetary base is electronic), and that might get you back to where the US dollar was in 2008.\n\nIt's a non trivial question honestly, causing deflation - even a trivial amount would cause huge damage to the US economy, which would have effects of the US dollar. "
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bgn603 | what is the purpose of that transparent blue strip on the top of the windshield glass of almost every car? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgn603/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_that_transparent_blue/ | {
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"As the sun starts to set it can be shining directly into the drivers eyes. The shade strip lets you block some of that without having to tint the whole window which would make it harder to see out at night."
]
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5uldrh | why primary education is disproportionately a female institution? | Surely both male and female children need equality in their role models? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5uldrh/eli5_why_primary_education_is_disproportionately/ | {
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"That's a pretty tough question to answer, and I think it also depends on the country you live in. \n\nA lot of people think that the reason there are a majority of female teachers is because society puts pressure on girls to go into fields that have a more nurturing nature like teaching, child care, and nursing/medical fields. \n\nOr it could be that, in general, women are more likely to go into fields like that because of their biology, as women are more genetically programmed for these types of things. Or maybe they just enjoy it more. \n\nIt's really more of an open-ended discussion than a cut-and-dry answer. ",
"It's work that the average woman would find more suitable as there is less physical labor and more interpersonal skill necessary. Plus women are generally seen as being more trustworthy to be around kids, especially with all the pedophile hysteria in recent years.",
"This might be somewhat off topic but I work somewhat with nurses by delivering them their patient's medication. It is surprising how many men are nurses. "
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28fqva | in philosophy, what are epistemology and metaphysics? | I hear these terms thrown around often when reading about philosophy, but I've never been able to find a sensible answer to what they actually are. Can someone help me out?
Edit: Thanks, guys! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28fqva/eli5_in_philosophy_what_are_epistemology_and/ | {
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"True ELI5: \n\nEpistemology = \"How do I know shit? What does it mean to know shit?\"\n\nMetaphysics = \"What is this shit? What is shit? What is?\""
]
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2zhbk5 | how can we smell spring? | You can just feel it in the air... I am pretty sure it is something to do with pollen... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zhbk5/eli5_how_can_we_smell_spring/ | {
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"text": [
"I'd like to think it's more a mass thawing of hundreds of petrified dog turds.",
"Pollen is just plant spunk. Walking outside in spring is like walking into a huge tree orgy. There really is something in the air, and on the ground, and covering your car (if you park under a tree)."
]
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6ek466 | what's happening inside of a plasma ball? | I was have one and was wondering what the plasma and light was and why it's attracted to objects outside of the glass. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ek466/eli5_whats_happening_inside_of_a_plasma_ball/ | {
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"Inside a plasma ball high voltage is used to strip electrons away from atoms of a noble gas (usually neon or argon). Plasma is a state of matter comprising these free electrons. Light (release of photons) happens whenever electrons change orbitals.\n\nThe stream of electrons are negatively charged and looking for a place to \"go\". Your body is a conductor so when you touch the globe you are presenting a path for these free electrons to go to."
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28zam8 | how could pixar produce toy story back in 1995? | Since it was rendered by computer, did they have a team of 500 PC's or something like that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28zam8/eli5how_could_pixar_produce_toy_story_back_in_1995/ | {
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"They had 117 computers running 24 hours a day, which could produce three minutes of the movie a week. It was slow.",
"Rendering 3d video is done through \"render farms\", which are essentially a bunch of computers in a warehouse turning the 3d models created by the artists into fully textured, high resolution video with lighting and particle effects - basically it turns it into a movie. Pixar has a 13500 square foot render farm which houses 3000 AMD processors, with the ability to add workstations to the farm pool after hours, increasing to 5000 processors. \n\nI don't know what their farm stats were in 1995, but they did it the same way. Create the model via wire frames and vertices, assign textures and lighting and effects, send it to the farm to be rendered into a final product. \n\nEdit: these numbers are out of date, from 2010. Apparently they had 12500 cores for Cars 2.",
"Look at Toy Story compared to the sequels though, they're a lot more primitive (still an amazing technical achievement and a great movie)\n\nAs processing power has increased, the depth and definition of Pixar's work has increased massively.",
"The whole reason for the concept of Toy Story is because of the limitations of the technology at the time.\n\nSomewhere in Pixar there was a conversation like \"Damn, our animation methods struggle to capture the complexity of human movement realistically, and when we render our characters they look like they're made of plastic. They look like toys.\" \"Fuck it, let's just have the characters be toys. Keep the humans off-screen whenever we can.\"\n\nLater, as the tech got better they could do insects for A Bug's Life, which move complexly but don't have skin and hair. Then they figured out hair/fur for Monsters Inc, then water for Finding Nemo. Notice how even in those films, adult humans are pretty much never seen. Then they could do people, but in a very cartoony way for the Incredibles, and then finally the more realistic human characters in Ratatouille and Up.\n\nBut toys are by far the easiest thing to animate and render, so they did that first.",
"If you can find it, checkout *[The Pixar Story](_URL_0_)* it is unfortunately not on Netflix anymore, but it is very interesting and explains to a certain degree what you are asking."
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5yvh3n | how do download and upload speeds actually work,(i.e how do they limit the speed of download through your cables) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yvh3n/eli5_how_do_download_and_upload_speeds_actually/ | {
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"They limit the speed of the download by limiting how many bits per second are allowed to transfer through the wire to you. Someone, somewhere tracks all the bits that go into your house, and counts those bits. Every second, that count \"refreshes,\" but if that count reaches the max rate, they stop sending traffic through until the next second.\n\nBasically, if your cable supports 10MBPS, they don't limit it by somehow making your cable support 5MBPS, they just transmit 5MB in half a second, then transmit 0MB for the next half a second.",
"I always assumed it had more to do with the physical meaning of \"bandwidth\" rather than the way we measure it in the computer world (digital transfer rate - i.e. Bits per second). I could be terribly wrong, so input is welcome. I'm also no pro, so I may jack up terminology.\n\n\"Bandwidth\" refers to a range of frequencies. Data (signals) is transferred over a cable using a certain frequency. Think of a dump truck. You fill it up with dirt and drive it across town but your max speed is limited by the street's speed limit. If you need to quickly move 5 loads of dirt, the people on both ends have to wait on you while you drive back and forth. That's not very fast. The solution? Fill up 5 trucks *at the same time* and drive them *at the same time* and you move 5 loads in the same time you could have moved one. It's similar with sending signals - you can only send the signals so fast, and then you have to wait before you send more. Solution? Connect 5 wires and send data over them all at the same time. Luckily, instead of adding more wires, you can use the same wire as long as you can use more than one frequency. If you can use 5 frequencies then you can send 5 different signals, each with their own frequency, *at the same time.* We can mostly thank Jospeh Fourier for this.\n\nAlmost 200 years ago some guy named Joseph Fourier realized that you can take multiple frequencies, mash them together to make one signal, then take them back apart, and end up with the exact same original frequencies. So now we can take 5 frequencies, upload/send data over each one, mash them together, shoot them through an Ethernet cable, and have a device on the other end that pulls them apart and receives the exact data you sent on each one. Alternatively, your computer can download/listen for the signal, split it apart into each frequency, and get that info from each frequency. (I think this is how cable worked - the cable company sends you all the channels down one wire, and when you turn the channel your TV just filters out the other frequencies and displays the one you wanted. Surely there's more to it, but I think that's the basics of cable tv, and explains why your neighbor could steal your cable!)\n\n**Wrapping up** (I promise)\n\nYour router/modem takes signals from all the computers connected to it, works that Fourier magic on those signals, and shoots the combined/composite signal to a magical cable in your wall that connects your house to the internet. That cable that brings internet to your house is connected (in my case anyway) to a big green box up the street. All of your neighbors' magic internet cables are also tied in there. I imagine that box kind of like a huge router (just like the one in your house). That big box takes signals from you and your neighbors, works it's Fourier magic on those signals, and sends it up the next wire. A group of those boxes all plug into an even bigger one, and so on until it connects back to the ISP. \n\nGo back to the dump truck example. If the dirt is the data, and each truck is another frequency, then the road is the wire. Even if you buy a million trucks, the road can only fit so many. Again, easy solution - upgrade the road by making it bigger. But that costs money! Instead, just make certain customers pay more money if they want their dirt faster. If you have 4 customers and one pays for quicker dirt delivery speed, then you can send 2 trucks together for his delivery and the other customers each get one truck for their delivery. \n\nApply that analogy:\n\nEach cable can only carry a certain range of frequencies (something in physics explains this), so those boxes do eventually max out data transfer. This can be fixed by using bigger, better boxes and cables all the way to the ISP, but it gets way too expensive. The solution?? --- > make a customer pay more money in order to have more frequencies available to them. So now you give the ISP more money, and they push a button that tells the box up the street to allow you to use a bigger *range of frequencies,* which we now know that a certain range of frequencies is also referred to as a *bandwidth.* Since downloading is the majority of internet traffic, they assign you many more frequencies for download than they do for upload. Once you run out of frequencies to use, you spend time waiting on your computer to finish using the current ones so that you can use them for something else.\n\nBoom. Done.\n\nI'm fairly positive that this is how it works, but it could all be monitored and regulated. Heck if I actually know haha"
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1djsdv | how come the zimbabwe dollar inflated so fast? how do people survive in a country with such hyperinflation? | Basically those two questions. I'd also like to know what's going on there right now - if your 100 trillion dollars is only worth 10 trillion tomorrow (lol) how can people even work and expect to survive?
Is the situation resolved? If so, how? If not, why not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1djsdv/eli5_how_come_the_zimbabwe_dollar_inflated_so/ | {
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"People stop using the currency and move to a barter system (or different currency). That is the resolution as well.",
"The president Mugabe is an EVIL dictator (arguably the worst on the planet) and he's printing money like crazy to fund corrupt politics in Zimbabwe.\n\nIt's not like people are having an easy time. Many are moving out of the country and but it's becoming more and more difficult as they become more poor. ",
"Economic growth can come from 2 areas, supply side or demand side. Supply side growth is long term, sustainable, and deflationary; it involves pushing out the maximum you can produce, by investing and improving infrastructure. Demand side means making people spend more, and a recession is caused by a lack of demand side growth. However, demand side growth is unsustainable. It leads to inflation.\n\n Demand side growth is short term, and can be easy, but it can only move so far. You can't buy more stuff then you have. One way of increasing demand side growth is called quantitive easing (it's sounds complicated, it's literally just printing money) and the Zimbabwe Govt did this loads; causing hyperinflation that crippled their economy. \n \nTL;DR Essentially is was a government looking for quick growth, without wanting to invest, so they printed money until everyone had so much it was meaningless - hence inflation.",
"Hyperinflation is typically caused when a nation goes through a major crisis (war, political turmoil, etc) and has a simultaneous need to spend large amounts of money. The tax base has collapsed and the uncertain economy makes international borrowing unavailable, so the government starts to print money. \n\nThe sudden, huge increase in the amount of money in circulation makes the currency less valuable. With the value of money shrinking, the government has to print ever more of it to meet its commitments. Very rapidly this turns into a spiral of hyperinflation. \n\nIn the case of Zimbabwe specifically, the country entered into a plan of forced land redistribution. At least initially, the idea was to confiscate farms from the descendants of former European colonials and give the land to the poorest indigenous people. There were many problems with this plan. Chief among them, the recipients of the land knew very little about farming so productivity collapsed. Foreign investors saw property being confiscated and left the market. To make matters worse, the land grants were frequently awarded to cronies of the Mugabe regime. The government printed huge volumes of money to try to make up for the lost tax base and foreign investment. \n\nHow do people survive? Well, you may have heard of other cases of hyperinflation from history where people try to adapt. In the southern US after the Civil War and in Weimar Germany after World War I, there were stories of people bringing cash to the markets in wheelbarrows to try to buy food. In some families, there are stories of people burning bundles of cash for heat in the winter because it was cheaper than buying fuel. \n\nIn Brazil there was a saying that you should always take a bus instead of a cab because on a bus you pay when you get on; in a taxi, you pay when you get out and there is no telling how much the currency may have devalued during the ride. \n\nAs others have said, many people turn to barter or other types of trade that are not dependent on currency. Sadly, in most affected countries, this also means a large increase in crime. \n\nThe interesting thing is that barter holds the key to how Brazil finally managed to beat decades of hyperinflation. Economists noticed that people bartering would settle on fairly standard relative values of goods: just as an example, imagine two potatoes for one tomato. These same ratios held for the prices in the markets. If a potato was $50, a tomato was $100. When potatoes hit $50,000 tomatoes were $100,000. \n\nThe economists called this \"real value\" and started referring to prices in units of real value. Storekeepers started putting units of real value in ads and on shelves and just posted an exchange rate between the currency and the real value (this was also much easier than re-pricing everything in the store every day). \n\nEventually, after a few years of this, the country just switched to a new currency. Each unit of the new currency was equal to one unit of real value. The currency was even called the *real* (in Portuguese, the plural is *reais*). The switch was remarkably smooth, since everyone was already thinking in units of real value. \n\nIt's kind of fascinating from a psychological standpoint as much as an economic one. You wouldn't expect that you could simply swap out a failed currency for a stable one, but in this case (with the right preparation) it actually worked. ",
"My aunt and uncle live in Zimbabwe (with my cousin before he was shot). We visited them in 2004. They are white, and they own a business, so they were lucky enough to have had money before the hyperinflation started. \n\nThey got around it by using foreign currency. Basically, South African Rand and American Dollars were used in place of Zimbabwean currency by most people. The tricky part is getting hold of Rand or US Dollars when nobody will trade them for your worthless Zimbabwean paper. There are several ways to do this. \n\nOne, used by my aunt and uncle, is to store any cash you have in foreign banks. They had bank accounts in South Africa and the UK. This works pretty well, but is not an option for most people in Zimbabwe since they haven't got enough money in the first place for a foreign bank account.\n\nThe more common method is for somebody in your family to leave the country and find work elsewhere, and then send their wages back to Zimbabwe in hard currency. Millions of Zimbabweans did this, amounting to about one out of every five or six citizens. Most went to South Africa, where living in a slum and working for less than what the locals will accept in wages (which is a pittance) is still seen as a more hopeful option than living in Zimbabwe. I think that these remittances supported most people in Zimbabwe for the last decade or so. \n\nThis phenomenon also achieves part of the governments political goals: there are two large tribes in Zimbabwe, and Mugabe is from the northern one. He indirectly oppresses the southern tribe by reserving government jobs for members of his own tribe, by directing foreign aid exclusively to his own people, and by generally disenfranchising the southerners. When millions of those people left the country to find work, he is happy to see his political enemies become somebody else's problem.\n\nFinally, people learn to be savvy and get their hands on usable currency whenever the opportunity arises. When we visited, we traded US $600 to my aunt and uncle in exchange for a suitcase full of ZIM $20,000 notes, which we used while we were in the country. Every market trader we traded with was willing to accept any foreign currency from a country without hyperinflation, in one case we paid with a mix of low-denomination (ones, fives, tens) Australian, British, American, and South African currency. This was preferred by the traders to the Zimbabwean currency, presumably since it could be used as a store of value.\n\nAs far as I know, Zimbabwe is no longer experiencing hyperinflation, thanks to the policies implemented by Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC, the opposition party who are now in coalition with Mugabes ZPF in government (the MDC actually won the election, even in the face of massive fraud, but Mugabe would not step down so this was their best option).",
"I lived in Zimbabwe for a time. They use the US Dollar now, but back then we would spend our money as soon as we got it. You couldn't save it because it would be worth less the next day. As soon as you got paid, you bought all your groceries immediately. Most people survived by growing a lot of their own food. Nearly everyone has a garden.\n\nThe massive deflation on a 5 year old level: No one thought that Zimbabwe money was worth anything because the country's government was bad. As things got worse, people put even less value on the currency. ",
"I was in Zim a few years back and talked to a lot of people about what they went through. Normal people didn't have much savings anyway, they lived paycheck to paycheck. So when the shit started they would get paid everyday and buy groceries every day. You couldn't hold onto anything. One guy described it as feeling like falling off a cliff all the time. He actually worked in a Bank and did during the crisis.\n\nThe richer and upper middle classes already used foreign banks and currencies. I met one guy who was studying finance, but he was in Malaysia in school when it happened.\n\nI stayed with guys in Mbare which is the poor part of Harare. They also didn't really have anything to lose. They still have suitcases of trillion dollar bills.\n\nBut the biggest problem was that there wasn't anything to buy, because things couldn't be imported and the farmers collapsed, and they couldn't market crops correctly. Then the massive brain drain happened when 30% of the population left. Its still a big issue, most of the best most educated people simply left and can't come back. Many are in South Africa working and they send money home. \n\nZim has a better education system, they speak better English then the South Africans do, and to be frank they are more honest and better employees. So the South Africans hate them, rob them and even kill them.\n\nThe root cause of the inflation was that Mugabe had a lot of debt and decided to fuck the IMF by inflating his currency to pay off the debt. His economists were idiots.\n\nLastly - Zimbabwe is a great country with really friendly people. I met rastas and computer programmers, painters, school teachers, welders, sculptors and musicians. I definitely recommend visiting. they use USD and SA Rand for the coins."
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5llgje | in ww2 movies and rl videos some soldiers salute and some use nazi salute. why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5llgje/eli5_in_ww2_movies_and_rl_videos_some_soldiers/ | {
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"Nazi salute (with straight right hand) was mandatory for civilians but optional for military. Soldiers mostly used traditional salute. "
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5or7wg | why do competitions require you to answer a ridiculous question when you enter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5or7wg/eli5_why_do_competitions_require_you_to_answer_a/ | {
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"Well, in the UK a competition with a question is regarded legally as a game of skill, even if the question is stupidly simple. Without a question it would be regarded as a lottery, which has very much tougher rules and regulations.",
"Well, without any indication of what you consider a \"ridiculous question\" it's going to be hard to know what the best answer is. \n \nThat said: Contests have to take care to not be treated as illegal lotteries. There are two ways to do this: \n1) Make the contest free for anyone to enter (e.g. \"no purchase necessary\"). \n2) Make the contest include a 'skill' component. Asking a question meets this standards. "
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9mzp5a | what is treasury yields and why does it cause the market to slide? | What does it mean when the news reports that US Treasury yields?
What's the Treasury's relationship with the market that causes it to slide over the week?
I've tried to read up about it, but it just gets more confusing. I was surprise to find that there are 3-month US treasury, 1-year US treasury, 2-year treasury, and so on. What are they?
The one that has gone up recently is the 10-year treasury. Why that 10-year treasury but not other intervals of treasuries? And why does that 10-year treasury have such impact to the market?
So there so many questions running in my mind. It will be great if someone can explain this to me. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9mzp5a/eli5_what_is_treasury_yields_and_why_does_it/ | {
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"First all the quick answers:\n\nTreasuries are US government debt. Yields are how much interest the US government will pay lenders to loan money to them for a certain period of time. 10-year treasuries are the long term benchmark rate, they're the bench mark because they're a very liquid market. All the other rates are just different terms (pretty similar to a 3-year, 5-year, or 7-year car loan) the government can get more money for less interest by offering a variety of terms. \n\nNow the why:\n\nTreasuries are like the basic unit of investing. The US government has a very good reputation with investors, so treasuries are the safest return one can get over a period of time. \n\nThat means that when treasury rates rise, all other investments need to adjust (because if riskier investments don't provide at least that much return, investors are better off selling the other investment and buying the treasury). Sort of like an employer known to hire essentially everyone paying more than other more selective employers, the selective employer is going to have to keep their wages higher than the employer who hires anyone if they want to keep getting employees. \n\nSo when treasury yields rise, all other investment income rates also have to rise, and that means most investment prices fall. ",
"The National debt that you often hear about? That is the result of the government selling bonds to investors. The government collects money now, and agrees to pay it back down the road with interest.\n\nThese bonds are called Treasury Bills, or T-bills. The yield is the % of interest they pay out to buyers. The time frame is how long the money is loaned for, ie. a 10 year treasury gets paid back after 10 years. The longer the timeline, the higher the risk that things like inflation will counteract the interest gains, so longer term bonds pay a higher interest rate then shorter ones, where the external risks are better known. An increase in yield means that an investor get more money for the same (super low) risk investment.\n\nIf, as an investor I have the choice of low risk 2% return or higher risk 5% return, I may be more likely to take the higher risk. If the low risk option pays 4% vs. high risk 5%, I am a lot more likely to choose the safe option. So I might sell high risk stock and buy low risk T-bills instead. Less demand for stocks (more sellers than buyers) causes their price to fall.",
"Some of the other comments have glossed over what yield actually is, and why it rises/falls.\n\nA bond is a special kind of fixed interest loan where you borrow some money, pay interest only for a number of years, then pay back the full amount of the loan in one single final payment. For example, the US treasury takes out a loan for $1000 over 10 years at 1%pa interest. They pay back $10 (interest) each year, then after 10 years, they pay back the full $1000.\n\nWhat if you lend the treasury $1000 for 10 years, then 2 years later you need that $1000 back? Treasury won't give it back early, but you can sell the loan to somebody else. You might find someone willing to pay you back the full $1000. That person will then get the remaining $10 yearly payments and the final $1000 payment. From this person's point of view, they have lent the treasury $1000 for 8 years at 1% interest. \n\nHowever, maybe you can't find anyone willing to pay back the full $1000. So, desperate for money you agree to sell the loan to someone who will only pay you $900. However as the new owner of the loan, they are still entitled to the full $10 annual payments and the full $1000 final payment. This is basically the same thing as earning a higher rate of interest. In fact, from this person's point of view, they have lent treasury $900 for 8 years at something closer to 2.5% interest.\n\nThis effective interest rate is called the yield. It matters because anyone wanting to sell an 8 year treasury bond at the same time as you are trying to offload your one must offer an effective interest rate equal to 2.5% to compete with you. Especially, even the US treasury won't be able to sell new bonds for 8 years unless they offer an interest rate of 2.5%.\n\nThe yield is a reflection of how willing people are to buy \"second hand\" loans at any particular time. \n\n"
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48e5e1 | why does urinating feel different when you are sick? | Can tell I'm a sleep out from a full blown flu and possibly. Today had some minor symptoms such as stuffy nose and sore throat with the general body ache that comes with a flu
When urinating it feels almost more sensitive/different, don't really know how to describe | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48e5e1/eli5why_does_urinating_feel_different_when_you/ | {
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"For a multitude of reasons, among them:\n\n+ When sick your system is generating different chemicals from the immunologic system fight, which generate different contents, pH and even smell for your pee, the different contents and pH can irritate the urethra and be painful\n+ Your sensibility usually is higher due to the disease, so you can not only feel more intensively the urine pass, but also the above mentioned irritation\n+ Your urination frequency messes up due to the sickness and you end up going to the bathroom at unusual (for your normal daily routine) times, which can also feel different"
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3wuokw | why did sega drop out of the video game console business? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wuokw/eli5_why_did_sega_drop_out_of_the_video_game/ | {
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"Because people stopped buying them.\n\nThere is an apocryphal story that Sony released a *Final Fantasy* game the day of the Saturn's release, in a move to deliberately cripple sales of the new system.",
"The fact of the matter is, they lost.\n\nThe Nintendo sold in much higher numbers than the SEGA master system then the Super Nintendo outsold the Genesis. Now, someone has to be number 2, so SEGA was OK. Then came the next generation and the entrance of Sony. The orginal PlayStation did better than SEGA's Saturn and then the following generation the Dreamcast was simply slaughtered by the PS2, despite having a 1 year head start. And that was the end of SEGA making consoles. \n\nAt first Nintendo and SEGA were fighting for position, and SEGA lost. Next thing you know they lose again, then the real fight is between Nintendo and Sony and SEGA is simply left on the sidelines. There's really only enough console market for 2 players in the hardcore gamer space. Nintendo and SEGA, Nintendo and Sony, Microsoft and Sony. The only reason Nintendo still survives is that they stayed with the younger gamer target market when Sony and MS moved to older rated games.\n\nEven today Nintendo struggles to be a third console maker and that's only because the system is radically different than the top 2.\n\nThe second thing to understand is that home consoles were always a secondary revenue stream for SEGA. They started as an arcade company and that division was still profitable while the dreamcast was burning money like mad.\n\nThey made an businesses decision to remove themselves from that market. The same thing Nintendo could easily decide to do today, shift all it's attention to the handheld market and just walk away from home consoles. \n\nSega left the market because they lost. They could of kept throwing money at the pwo ",
"Sega spent a lot of money making the dreamcast. They didn't get enough money in return. They decided they can make more money with software alone. Big reason being, the market is too saturated with giants with a lot more financial backing then sega will ever have. That said - Dreamcast is still my favorite and I can't wait to play Shenmue 3... finally... ",
"SEGA made some pretty dumb decisions back then. The company created two \"add-ons\" to the Genesis: SEGA CD and the 32X, which didn't sell very well. Besides, the next console they made was the SEGA Saturn, which also didn't have very good sales, in fact, they were horrible. \n\nAnd the final nail in the coffin was the Dreamcast. It had potential, *BUT*, due to the small library of games, not many people bought it. Because of all of these failures in the console market, SEGA became a Third Party Company.",
"They were in rocky waters and the dreamcast was their last shot. The lack of killer apps( there were great games just not great selling games) + the ps2 dropping was the nail in the coffin for Sega as a console maker. They spent a lot of money on that venture and lost big time.",
"I happened to work for a competitor to Sega during that time. Sony changed the game when the Playstation came out. Then Microsoft followed with the Xbox. BOTH Sega and Nintendo were unable to compete with both Sony's and Microsoft's ability to sell at steep losses for extended periods. They simply didn't have the cash reserves to do this.\n\nSega simply bowed out. They said \"no thanks\" to selling hardware at such steep losses. Nintendo interestingly did not - it was actually expected that they would. Nintendo came back with a very innovative approach. They let Sony and Microsoft duke it out for the gamers' first hardware choice - they made sure they would be the second. So gamers tend to have a Sony OR Microsoft console and a Nintendo console. They succeeded surprisingly well here. It is not the type of move Sega could have made. Sega always competed with high end hardware. They were very successful here with Genesis. \n\nNow.. there are plenty of things Sega lost/failed at as others have mentioned. They did actually learn from their mistakes - the Dreamcast was a fantastic machine. The Dreamcast (and Sega) just never stood a chance of competing against Sony and MS. Sega did the right thing in bowing out BEFORE failing. It is actually one of their few good decisions and the reason why they still make games. Some are even pretty good.\n\nEDIT: I say that with the Dreamcast being my favorite system of all time and with its cancellation being rather heartbreaking. Yet.. it was the right decision.",
"I lived through it, the SNES versions of the same games cost less and had more levels than the same games on Genesis. Sunset Riders was my favorite game on Genesis and when I played it on my friend's SNES, it has about twice the content and I found out it was $10 less at the same store I got the Genesis version. Our wealthy friend had a Neo Geo that was fucking mind blowing, but it cost way too much for a game system that could only play games (there was no media center or DVD playback back then). Neo Geo lost early on volume. Sega got a reputation as being not as good as SNES. \n\nThat's when Sega started doing that bullshit X32 and whatnot add-on death spiral. Now your parents could buy you a game for the Genesis and find out it doesn't work because they didn't get this crazy add-on and they would tell their friends not to get their kids a Sega thingy. Sega never learned and would keep doing this shit like grown people were playing their consoles back then. It would be a cash cow now, like physical DLC, but not back then. Their add-on crap wasn't doing the trick, so they upped the anti.\n\nThe Saturn blew the SNES out of the water and supported 16 players at a time when the average TV was below 20\" and in standard definition. If you find an old Saturn with the splitters, controllers and bomber man, you can have a great time on a new big screen. My wealthy friend had a Saturn and we did bomber man at a party with 16 player and it was awesome (so awesome that at one point in college I purchased a Saturn, 16 controllers, the splitters and Bomber man and ran a tournament with cash prizes). The problem with Saturn is it only had a few really good games and not much when it released (the flagship game, Nights into Dreams, was lame). PlayStation came out the same year as the Saturn and had better game offering that weren't centered around 16 people squinting at a 2 inch square section of a TV to be cool. Neither was so much better than the SNES that Nintendo was threatened. Sega was second fiddle again, this time to a nobody in the form of Sony.\n\nN64 was revolutionary and came out a few years after PlayStation. PlayStation had already made a name for itself in an unbelievable way (more than half the market by then) and Nintendo had to step it up to compete. Sega and PlayStation were too close to their last releases to respond and Nintendo cleaned up for a while. PlayStation responded with new games for it's market dominating platform, Sega Saturn had flopped, so it had no response but to double down on the next release.\n\nDreamcast was nuts and came out a few years after N64; it sold like hot cakes for a few months on hype that it was a PlayStation killer. It had some good games, but not enough and PlayStation fired back with PS2 and host of amazing games and DVD playback. That was it. Everyone that bought a Dreamcast wished they had bought a PS2 and no one bought any Dreamcast games. Sega lost their ass because they had loss lead the console, but made tons of money on games for other platforms and they gave up on the console business.",
"I read about Sega and Nintendo in the book [The Console Wars](_URL_0_). The book does a good job of telling how Sega of America (SoA) did the impossible job of taking the console fight to Nintendo, and through some genius marketing was able to take majority market share with the Genesis. However, according to the book, the Genesis never really took off in Japan like it did in the US because the Japanese executives did not want to follow SoA's sales strategies. The book really makes it seem like Sega of Japan (SoJ) really held a grudge against the American office and started to actively fight against their ideas. IMO, the biggest mistake Sega made was when the SoA President found a company making an incredible next gen processor that he wanted to use in the Saturn. For petty reasons, SoJ didn't want to use it. Feeling guilty for getting the processor company's hopes up, the SoA President had them call up a friend of his at Nintendo. That processor became the technology in the Nintendo 64. Had that processor actually been used in the Saturn, I bet Sega would still be around. \n\nThe horrible launch of the Saturn was just one of many missteps caused by the friction between SoA and SoJ. It seems to me that the inability for the two offices to work together was the real reason Sega failed at the console market.\n\nTL:DR: IMO, Sega failed at consoles because Sega of Japan office didn't want to listen to any advice or work together with Sega of America.",
"OOH! I got this one!\n\nFirst, it is important to know that in the beginning, Sega was primarily a arcade developer. \n\nAs they made games and hardware, they made a home console, with strong 1st party support. The Genesis blew the NES, and \"Brought the arcade home\". It was super popular for a time. \n\nThen the Super Nintendo came out, and we had the first big Console War, (the likes of we wouldn't see again until the PS3/360 era.)\n\nIn the end, Sega took a mild loss. The 32 Bit era was about to start, so Sega, unsure what to do, gave Sega of Japan and Sega of America a project to make a 32 bit system. SoJ made the Saturn, SoA made the 32X. The 32X was a 32-Bit add-on for the Genesis, that could do some nice things, but nothing near the Saturn. Still, it robbed Saturn of sales, and was a terrible failure. This lowered confidence in Sega.\n\nWhile this was going on, Nintendo had really strict censorship rules, and Sega's laxness made it the \"edgier\" of the two. \n\n32-bit era begins, this time with a new challenger, Sony PlayStation. Sony doesn't have Nintendo's censorship, and the PlayStation is much easier to program for than the Saturn. \n\nThe issues with the 32X, and lackluster starting library hurt Saturn in the beginning, and Playstation kept the hurt going. \n\nSega got the bright idea to launch a next-next gen system (Dreamcast), before the public/industry was ready to upgrade, and was full of features like Online Play, that didn't have the necessary tech to pull off well. \n\nOnce the PS2 and the Xbox came around, the Dreamcast went from looking cutting edge, to looking like the Wii. \n\nThe fact it could play burned games out of the box didn't help revenue either. \n\nAfter having 2~3 systems in a row die hard, Sega went back to doing what they did best, make games. \n\nAs an aside, the slow death of Arcades contributed to the slow death of Sega, as their IP's were less and less in the public's eye. ",
"Because their last two consoles flopped, at least, in the US market.\n\nSaturn was doing well in Japan, but the US division made a really, really stupid move by suddenly releasing the Saturn early without telling anyone. This pissed off retailers who weren't ready to sell it yet, some even going so far as throwing out all their Sega merch and replacing it with Nintendo/Sony stuff. It also pissed off developers who didn't have their games ready yet, because they were not told about the sudden early release. The Saturn flopped really, really hard in the US.\n\nDreamcast did okay in the US, but was just horribly overshadowed by the PS2. With PS2 and now Xbox entering the market, Sega focused on just making games for the Dreamcast to try and ride out their remaining time before the PS2 released. After PS2 and Xbox released, they just rode out the rest of Dreamcast's life and decided against making any future consoles.\n\nI suppose you could say it started as early as the Genesis addons, which both failed pretty hard as well. The CD sold *okay*, but the 32x just sold horribly.",
"This might be a bit more lengthy but I do think G4's Icons documentary on the Dreamcast gives a pretty good explanation of how Sega left the console game if you want to know more.\n\n_URL_0_ ",
"Sega had difficulty selling their later consoles. People stopped buying them, so companies didn't want to make games for them. It reached a point where it didn't make sense anymore to make consoles. But people still loved games Sega made, so instead of selling a limited number of great games to a small number of console owners, they decided to make games for wider audiences on other companies consoles. ",
"As usual. The top comment is wrong. Oh well... There was a lack of unity between different parts of Sega. Sega of Japan had a different vision than Sega of America. (there are more divisions of Sega than just those two) There are a few books that talk about this and there are many sources on the internet that will tell you. But yes the top comment is completely wrong.... But essentially the big problem is that with no unity. Pieces of Sega were all doing their own thing. This is why Sega CD came out followed quickly by 32x. And then there was the Sega Neptune that never saw light of day. And finally the Saturn which was a technological mess because it was hard to develop games for 2 cpus and it was also incredibly expensive. (Saturn was like $400 console which is like an a $644.20 console today) 4 pieces of hardware being developed in rapid succession... The Dreamcast was a step in the right direction, however the company burned far too many bridges with a failed Sega CD, 32x, and Saturn. All of this information you can verify by searching the internet and/or going to the public library. I really wish people would stop up voting non-sense. Argumentum ad populum... This question doesn't even need to be asked. It's easy to look this information up yourself.",
"Because Sega had released the Dreamcast and in doing so created the perfect video game system. Sega would never surpass what they did and knew they should leave the console business while they were on top.",
"A lot of people aren't explaining WHY the Sega consoles sold poorly compared to their competitors.\n\nThe answer is that almost every Sega console had a slew of underutilized functions. For example, the Sega Genesis had online multiplayer capabilities built into the hardware, but none of the games released in the United States had online multiplayer MODES. It was expensive to test, and very few people had internet at the time, most of the games for the Genesis were developed to be ported to multiple consoles, and it didn't increase the sale value of the cartridge, so most developers didn't bother.\n\nSo customers had to pay more for a Sega console because it had a bunch of functions... that they couldn't use. Nintendo consoles cost a lot less, and had roughly the same quality of experience.\n\nThe cost-to-functionality ratio is the same reason the Xbox broke into the market.",
"A lot of people are only viewing this from the Western market perspective. Sega's hardware is very much alive, at least in Japan. If you walk into a game center (the arcades), the majority of the arcade machines are made by Sega, as well as the pseudo-gambling machines. I never go to a pachinko parlor but I wouldn't be surprised if a decent chunk or more of them are made by Sega. They also have UFO catcher machines (claw machines) and other entertainment devices.\n\nAlso the Dreamcast that many people are citing as a the reason for their failure had a larger library and better reception in Japan. To me, it just seems like Sega decided to stay domestic while Nintendo and Sony aggressively fought for the international market. I'm sure Sega makes a pretty enough penny with essentially every aspect EXCEPT for home consoles, that they don't really need to care about it to make coin.",
"But also aside from the dream cast sega fucked up on the 32x, sega CD, game gear and the saturn didnt win either. They made mistake after mistake",
"Because they were bad at console business. Let me explain. \n\nSega had a horrible reputation of not supporting their consoles. They would build something and then ignore it. They would move onto the next project while developers scrambled to get content out for the system. So while developers were pushing content for Genesis, Sega was releasing Sega CD. Sega CD was out for 3 years before being discontinued. In those 3 years, Sega developed and released the 32X. \n\nThis addon required developers to switch gears and develop for it instead of the Genesis or the Sega cd. Even though these were addon accessories, they still pulled development away from the original system. The 32X came out shortly after the Sega CD and was out for 2 years before being discontinued. \n\nThe reason they were discontinued was the release of the Sega Saturn. This required developers to quickly switch to the new console and essentially wasted tons of development time to the previous addons that could have been used to develop for the Saturn. \n\nThe Saturn was released in 1995 and discontinued in 1998 the same year as release of the Dreamcast. \n\nThese years are all NA, below is JP. I bring this up because the 32X and Saturn debacle is really the answer you seek. The 32X was under promised and ended up being much better than they anticipated. It was announced around the same time the street date for the Saturn was announced. This caused marketing problems and they ended up marketing the 32x as a transitional product aimed at people who couldn't afford the twice as expensive Saturn. This caused the 32x to sell out. In fact, more people wanted the 32x than the Saturn so eventually Sega discontinued it to focus on the Saturn. Doing this left developers out in the cold. 32x and Saturn games were not compatible. The quick release of the Dreamcast gave developers pause. They just went through all of this and most were not eager to relive the experience. Thus the developers did not follow Sega to the Dreamcast. This combined with the Sony Onslaught is why they stopped making consoles. \n\nA quick timeline. \n\n- SG-1000 1983. \n- MasterSystem 1985. \n- Genesis 1988. \n- Sega CD 1991. \n- 32X 1994. \n- Saturn 1994. \n- Dreamcast 1998. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"Sega challenged Nintendo at the height of its power, directly and very aggressively. The Genesis/Mega Drive made the videogame market truly competitive for the first time in years. The NES was clearly inferior and Sega had about 2 or 3 years to enjoy being the cutting edge (unless you count the NeoGeo and I don't). \n\nThen, along comes the SNES and the era of the Radical Mascot games, which Sega basically started with Sonic the Hedgehog. This helped Sega compete, but now the shoe was on the other foot: The Super NES had better graphics, much better sound and a lot of amazing games. Sega's head start was becoming a liability by 93 or so. Fighting games, primitive 3D and FPS, and even JRPG games were exploding in popularity and the SNES was the console better suited for them, for a variety of reasons.\n\nSega comes to believe that the key to regaining the initiative is to regain the technological advantage. First, there was the Sega CD. whereas Nintendo and their loyal devs were more or less defining the near-term future of video gaming, Sega, like many others at the time, bought into the idea that barely-interactive movie/games were going to overwhelm everyone with visuals that the SNES couldn't match.\n\nThat being an expensive failure, the next step was 32 bits. It's twice as many! Unfortunately, the first attempt at that was the 32X, another expensive Genesis add-on. It had few games and fewer good ones. And then, just one year later, Sega was asking people to lay out 400 more $mackeroos for ANOTHER 32 bit machine. You can imagine how that must have felt to 32X owners. Sega actually intended, from the start, to market the 32X as a 32 bit bargain model and the Saturn as the flagship console.\n\nNever one to say no to a terrible idea, Sega released the Saturn with no warning, literally. Tom Kalinske of Sega of America was expected to show the console at E3 1995. Instead, he announced that it was already for sale,in limited quantities, at select retailers, for $399. This was done at the behest of Sega of Japan, to give the Saturn a head start (of four months). All this accomplished was surprising gamers, infuriating all the retailers (big ones like WalMart) who were not informed by Sega or included in the early distribution and, in some cases, retaliated by refusing to stock Saturns and games. Sony immediately follows that announcement with one of their own, about the Playstation: \"$299\". Saturn was dead by 1998.\n\nSo, after some big shakeups at the company, the Dreamcast comes out at the very end of the decade, and Sega seems to have finally gotten their shit straight. It's cheap, the games look amazing, there are a lot of good and unique titles very quickly, and it largely delivered on its promise to be the first console to emphasize online gaming. And it had the terrible luck to debut just ahead of what would go on to be the most popular console ever.\n\ntl;dr: Sega went full retard and snapped out of it too late to save itself.",
"It's really too bad, for a number of reasons, but primarily because House of Pain really went to bat for them. \n \nAlso, Sega had the best commercials.",
"The simplest explanation is that Sony took Sega's market in the console wars. Sega was always a bit more rebellious than Nintendo when it came to mature audience games. When Sony came along it took that market.",
"They made too many consoles in short spans of time that failed. Consumers lost trust in them. In a short period of time, they launched the Sega CD, 32x, then surprise launch of the saturn that retailers werent even ready for. 3rd party developers didnt even have games or dev kits for the thing. They jumped ship much like they did with the wii u. The saturn was underpowered when it came to 3D and that was where gaming was headed with the arrival of the playstation. Dreamcast was their attempt to make things right with consumers and 3rd party developers. It almost worked, but ps2 came and was more powerful and had the sony name behind it at that point. Even though the ps2 launched horribly it still killed the dreamcast. Sega bowed out and went software only. Long story short, sega killed themselves by flooding the market with too many systems that were weaker and more expensive than the competition and pissing off their fans and developers.",
"Anyone else play the heck out of Phantasy Star Online? I had a close knit group of friends in middle school who played this game with me until there wasn't much more to accomplish... probably the most fun out of any mmo I've played.",
"Because thats what you do when you make the greatest platform of all time. You retire a champion ",
"To get to the other side?",
"Basically the failure of the Dreamcast. I highly recommend [The GamingHistorian's video on the Dreamcast](_URL_0_), if you're interested, but to summarize, there are at least three main reasons for the Dreamcast's failure (summarizing GamingHistorian): \n\n1) the PS2. It was a much more powerful console---period. Also, it had a DVD drive while the Dreamcast still used CDs. The XBOX and Gamecube didn't help either. Sega just came late to the nextgen party with an all-around weak system (although it did have some revolutionary technology, like the memory card screen and online play)\n\n2) Lack of third party support for games. This was due to the failure of the Sega Saturn, which had a similar \"too late to the party\" story, so third party developers---especially big ones like EA---weren't too keen on developing games for the Dreamcast. \n\n3) Game piracy. When the Dreamcast came out, CD burners were getting quite popular too, and so people figured out how to rip games and turn them into images that could be read by the dreamcast. \n\nAgain, the video in the link above is highly recommended. ",
"Anyone remember how easy it was too play copied games on the dreamcast? None of the pain of physically modding the system. Just a boot disk then bam! Crazy taxi",
"I'm a guy who never got into video games, but I can't see the name Sega without hearing it as \"SEGA!\".\n\nWhy is that?",
"Love how all the top answers fail to mention buyers pirated the shit out of Dreamcast games.",
"It was meant to be. Sega was on the path out of the console business from early on.\n\nTheir first console, the Master System, had several incremental \"upgrades\" and I believe on the third try it finally found some success at competing with the NES. However, before there was even really a firm idea of \"console generations\", they released the totally different Genesis / Megadrive, thinking that more accurate arcade-to-home games would give them to ability to beat the NES. \n\nThat turned out to be their fatal error - the Genesis came out 2 years before the SNES, and Nintendo made their console significantly more powerful. Sega's system had enough traction by the SNES' release (with the help of Sonic, smart advertising, and continuing domination of then-thriving arcades) that it was almost an even battle. Yet, Sega had an inferiority complex and wouldn't rest with weaker hardware. \n\nCartridge-based games sometimes had extra chips in them to supplement the hardware's graphics and sound processing. But they added to the cost of each game, and it was redundant to sell the same extra hardware that could only be used with each game cartridge. So Sega basically thought they'd save the customers money in the long run by creating a peripheral 'supplemental console', the 32X, which would turn the Genesis into a more advanced machine than the SNES. Now, even in 1994 when it was released, there was still no firm concept of a 5-7 year console generation - consoles were being released every year, and even consumers didn't know how long a console \"should\" last for. That said, even Sega knew by the time the 32X was released that it was DOA. The 'Ultra 64' was on the horizon, which brought with it gamers' expectations of powerful 3D gaming at home. People who bought it felt duped, and everyone else was made more wary of Sega's offerings. (Others have simply mentioned the Sega CD and 32X in the same breath, but they were very different - the Sega CD actually lived for 4 years or so and did what it was advertised to do. It had nowhere near the negative impact the 32X had.)\n\nThe Saturn was successful in Japan, but a flop elsewhere, mostly due to Sega ignoring consumers' attitudes towards them post-32X. They made no effort to win back disappointed buyers, and without the enthusiasm of a core fanbase, they had a real uphill struggle. Add to that, they were selling the Saturn at a price point which was not competitive at all, and didn't even have a 3D Sonic game, which is what casual fans had been expecting to see.\n\nWith the Dreamcast, they released what the Saturn should have been, but faced a new set of challenges they were unprepared for. Sony drove up consumer expectations of what the next generation would look like, to the point where people thought the graphics would look like the CGI cutscenes in FF7, but in real-time (to be fair, very late PS2 games did have extremely impressive graphics). Dreamcast's graphics were clean, sharp (480p, a resolution that is *still* in use on the few Wii releases trickling out), and on par with even the most advanced arcade games of the time. Yet, gamers wanted more. Sonic still looked like a game, not CGI. Dreamcast was selling better than the Saturn, but not well enough. With MS' announced entry into the console wars, they knew they had no more tricks up their sleeve. The trajectory they had been on since the Megadrive had played out, and they landed back at being a games company.",
"Actually the reason was all the good game developers were jumping ship to go to the upcoming Xbox as well as the PS2, so they decided to scrap the hardware division and stay with game development.",
"What?!!! OMG, when did this happen?!",
"There are two main reasons. One, there was a clash of cultures between America and Japan. Japan would develop the games, and America would market them. Japan became offended when its American counterpart suggested what games needed to be developed. Japan developed its own games, which were quirky, and difficult to market to American audiences. It wasn't so bad during the Genesis era because there were so many games, but the clash just got worse and worse during the Saturn era. By the time of the Dreamcast, it didn't matter that SEGA had reinvented itself and had the superior machine on the market.\n\nThe second reason was market oversaturation. With the Genesis and Game Gear, SEGA had enough of a market share to chip away at Nintendo's monopoly, and developers were grateful for the benefits of the free market. But then SEGA alienated its base with too much hardware. The SEGA CD and 32X weren't next generation, but they weren't first gen either. They were placeholders? While SEGA was between systems, promising that it would support the SEGA CD and 32X, the Saturn dropped. And it dropped in such a way as to not only alienate consumers, but also retailers--only certain retailers were authorized to sell the Saturn. So if you bought a 32X for Christmas, it was dead by March. Japan fired its American CEO and marketing team to ensure that SEGA's machine would never find an audience.\n\nThen, of course, the PSX drops, and Saturn never catches it. Those who are saying that it was the Dreamcast are wrong; SEGA died well before that, during the Saturn years.",
"1. The Sega Genesis had too many add ons that weren't all that great. (Sega 32X and Sega CD)\n\n2. The Sega Saturn was released early causing backlash from retailers and some even refusing to carry it. It was difficult to program for. It also did not have a native Sonic title.\n\n3. The Sega Dreamcast did not have a DVD player. At the time Playstation 2 was actually one of the cheapest DVD players on the market. (This is one reason I could possibly see Nintendo dropping out at some point. It's 2015 and we cant watch DVDs or Blurays on the Wii or Wii U)",
"Real reason. Sony and Microsoft are both multi-billion dollar corporations. Their consoles don't need to make money for the company to remain profitable, because they make money in so many other ways. Sony can finance the Play Station through their film or television divisions, or vice versa. Microsoft can finance through anything. Sega doesn't have that luxury, and the profit to risk involved in consoles was too high. Nintendo on the other hand has found a niche with \"interactive\" games, and they have a great list of proprietary games and characters, allowing them to remain profitable, albeit not as profitable as Sony or Microsoft. ",
"Sega's management was pretty screwed up throughout the '90s. While Nintendo was focusing on continuing to make great games for the SNES (supporting the console well into the decade with hits like Super Metroid and Donkey Kong Country), Sega was churning out hardware without real purpose.\n\nFirst the 32x and the Sega CD, with both technologies being \"the next big thing\" in gaming but neither with the library to back it up. Then the Game Gear with its \"console-like graphics\", monstrous size and ridiculous battery autonomy. The Saturn was released ahead of schedule so it could beat the PlayStation to market, surrounded with poor communication with the audience and even the game developers. Finally, the DreamCast, the one hardware since the Genesis that showed real promise, landed with a thud amidst the popularity of the PlayStation (and the N64) and hype for the PlayStation 2.",
"Sega had a few flops in a row.\n\nThey tried to push additional life out of the Sega Genesis just before the Saturn released with the 32x. The 32x was way cheaper than any of the independent consoles, but it wasn't really that much of a leap. They launched this just before the Sega Saturn as well, which wound up hurting the Saturn's sales.\n\nThe Saturn itself was technically the most powerful console of that generation, but it was so damn convoluted to write games for that most developers never took full advantage of it. Meanwhile, Sony's Playstation was more or less the same hardware as Namco's System 11 arcade cabinets, so more developers were familiar with it from the get-go.\n\nThe Saturn pretty much flopped, and for Sega to have remained in the console business after those flops the Dreamcast had to be wildly successful. Unfortunately, it simply didn't measure up enough to keep them in the game.",
"After their highly successful 16bit console, the Genesis / Megadrive, Sega decided to make a 32bit console next, called the Saturn. The Sega Saturn released in September 1995. \n\nSony had just entered the games console industry with their 64bit PlayStation the same year. Because of this, Sega's main competitors at the time, Nintendo, decided that they would skip the 32bit generation and instead focus development on their own 64bit console, which we came to know as the N64. It released in June 1996, less than a year after the Saturn, and an entire generation ahead in terms of tech (at least that's what consumers thought anyway, 64 > 32). \n\nSeeing that they were being left behind, Sega had to quickly focus their efforts on producing their own 64bit console, which would come to be known as the Dreamcast. This resulted in them abandoning the Saturn early, which subsequently had a very short lifespan of under 3 years, as games ceased to be produced for the Saturn in 1998. The console was considered a disappointment by consumers.\n\nUnfortunately, Sega was not able to finally ship their 64bit Dreamcast until late November 1998. 3 years after the Playstation entered the market, and over 2 years since the N64. By this time, both Sega's competitors had estabished games libraries and fan-bases, and Sega found themselves unable to compete. \n\nThat, coupled with the fact that the Dreamcast suffered from rampant piracy, led to Sega withdrawing from the games console industry, after two successive systems being considered large failures. \n\nEDIT: Dreamcast was in fact 128bit, looks like Sega tried to put themselves a set ahead of the competition, but unfortunately it was too little, too late. Consumers did not trust in Sega's claims to have superior hardware after the slew of low-quality hardware failures (Sega CD and 32X expansions for the Genesis, the Saturn, and the canceled Neptune) in the preceding years.\n\nThat's a breif breakdown of events, anyway. Not that anyone will see this comment since it will be drowned below 1000 others.",
"Because staying in the console industry simply wasn't profitable enough, the genesis was huge nothing after was even close, to the point of mostly being \"failures\" from a profit perspective.\n\nThe CD did okay (approx. 2.25 million units.)\n\nThe 32x did less okay ( > 1 Million units.)\n\nBut those were just add ons so sega tried a new console \n\nThe saturn did poorly (approx. 17 million units.)\n\nThe dreamcast did even worse (approx. 9 million units.)\n\nUltimately they just couldn't beat their competitors, namely the ps1 selling 102 million units by the end of its run, and then just a year after the dreamcast's release the ps2 came out selling 155 million by the ens of its run. \n\nSega could have made another console but it just wouldn't make sense profits wise.",
"Remember when biggie smalls was bragging in his songs about owning a Super Nintendo AND a sega genesis? Pepperidge farm remembers.",
"A combination of factors really.\n\nBefore the Dreamcast Sega was supporting, in different regions, the Sega Saturn, The 32x, The Genesis/Megadrive, The SegaCD, the Master System, and the Game Gear.\n\nBy support I don't nessicarily mean games so much as technical and customer support. Also while the Megadrive did INSANELY well in Brazil (to the point it's still being made,) and in Japan the Saturn was hot (we did'nt get a lot of the quirky import titles, but on the other hand Japan had never really let the arcade die, so 2d was still a thing where here stateside we were '3d or GTFO.')\n\nAs you can understand this costs a *LOT* of money to keep going.\n\nAdditionally Sega had alienated both retailers and customers with how they mishandled the 32x and the saturn. The SegaCD everyone can forgive, quirky interesting thing that was always advertised as 'just an addon.' The 32x was at first advertised as Sega's next gen, up to and including shells (with or without hardware I don't know but only ones I've seen are empty shells) for a 'Neptune' console which would have been a combination 32x/Genesis all in one.\n\nThe problem is when the 32x was released the Saturn was already out in Japan, and was slated for release for the Christmas shopping rush of 1995. This gave developers and retailers time to gear up and get a solid release date.... except Sega announced during a conference in May where they demo'd the Sega Saturn 'Oh yea, you can buy one RIGHT NOW.' This left the Saturn with a piss poor launch lineup, retailers with their confidence shaken in Sega to the point KB Toys refused to stock their hardware, and on top of all that the Saturn was stupidly difficult to program for because they went and slapped a co-processor in at the last minute.\n\nBy the way the 'extra' time was because Sony was set to release the Playstation roughly around then and the board thought 'well hey let's just go with getting more units in people's hands huh?\n\nThen in 1998 Bernie Stoler, head of Sega of America basically said in an interview 'The Saturn is not our Future.' Granted the Dreamcast was in development but this was a public interview. Consumers and Retailers not to mention Developers saw '*oh shit Sega's jumping platforms again.*'\n\nSega did learn from the Dreamcast's poor Japanese launch and spent most of 1999 hyping the hell out of it. Just hyping and showing demos and gearing up and they came in with all guns blazing. The problem wasn't the dreamcast itself, or even Sony even though several of the PS2 demos were rendered rather than real time. Sega's problem is that they didn't have the money to keep going nor the faith from third party developers to keep mindshare in the face of the playstation 2's launch.\n\nThere were attempts by sega to get Microsoft, who had partnered with them for the dreamcast, to try making the xbox able to play dreamcast games so their customers would have a migration path. While that didn't happen this explains Jet Set Radio Future, Shinmu, and other games getting ports or sequels on the original xbox.",
"Imagine if Sega did succeed with the DC, where would be now? Do you think they would have gone to making just games still, or would we have some awesome Sega console today?",
"There's a lot of misunderstanding that the Dreamcast was the reason for Sega pulling out of the console market, but it was actually selling okay when it was cancelled. Not great, but it was on track to outsell the Gamecube over it's lifetime. The real issue was the loss of consumer trust after the Sega CD and 32x. These were expansions for the Sega Genesis which were unsupported due to low sales and released back to back. This was then followed by the Sega Saturn. That is 3 hardware pieces released in a few years, back to back. People were wary of Sega because it seemed to just drop support at the first sign of trouble. So no one in the largest market for Sega (North America) wanted to risk buying the Saturn because they were worried that the company would do the same thing to the Saturn as they did to the last two hardware pieces. This was on top of the fact that the Saturn had very few games, no killer app, and a lot of the bigger games for the Saturn only came out in Japan.\n\nBy the time the Dreamcast came out, Sega was already financially crippled by the last 3 hardware pieces. New management took over Sega part way through the strategy of the Dreamcast and that new Management decided the console market was too volatile and canned support about two and a half years into the system. This new management also did things like cancelling sequels to well known Sega franchises, such as a 3D Streets of Rage 4 that was in development based on it's genre alone without knowing the popularity of Streets of Rage. So what it really came down to was not the Dreamcast, but everything between the Sega Genesis and it's eventual release. Had Sega not released the 32x or Sega CD, it's possible they could have kept consumer trust when moving on to the Saturn and Dreamcast. On another short note, this is why Nintendo decided to stick with the Wii U as long as it has despite the sales it currently has. They wanted to avoid Sega-ing themselves out of the console market.",
"After the dreamcast Sega decided it would make more money and do better if it was a software developer only. Basically did it because their really wanst any room for them in the market anymore. That being said Id love for them to team up with old time rival Nintendo to make a kick ass console. "
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2q3hq2 | why should someone never refreeze something that has been unfrozen ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2q3hq2/eli5_why_should_someone_never_refreeze_something/ | {
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"Generally when frozen foods are frozen for sale/storage they are done so in a way that prevents large ice crystals from forming and damaging the food. You can't easily do this at home.\n\nThis was the big advantage that Birds Eye had when it first started - its founder, Clarence Birdseye, realized that fish frozen by the Inuit in Newfoundland was much better than fish frozen in New York and he reasoned that the difference was the speed at which they were frozen. Turns out, if you freeze something faster the ice crystals don't get as big and mess with the food as much.\n\nWhen you unfreeze and re-freeze something you freeze it slowly since you probably don't have an industrial freezing machine and that causes larger ice crystals to form in the food, which makes it taste worse. The rule isn't really \"don't unfreeze and refreeze,\" but rather \"don't freeze for preservation without the proper machinery/techniques.\"",
"When you freeze things, all the water in it crystallizes. Those crystals can rupture cell walls, destroying the texture of the food.\n\nIn commercial environments, they use blast freezers to chill the food really fast, giving you very tiny crystals. Tiny crystals are less likely to damage your food. Home freezers are much warmer & result in much larger crystals which are likely to puncture cell walls, leaving you with nasty, limp broccoli.\n\n"
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2k9icr | the ending of the sopranos | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k9icr/eli5_the_ending_of_the_sopranos/ | {
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"Here's a very detailed analysis:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI personally think you have to pick one of two narratives:\n\n1. Tony was killed by the man in the members only jacket, with the ending tied to prior episodes where the characters discuss the fact that you you never see death coming. The fade to black is Tony's point of view as he dies.\n\nor\n\n2. Tony lives, and the audience is just on edge experiencing what it will be like for Tony for the rest of his life -- always worrying about death and his assassination from an unnoticed attacker.\n"
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3fpcdl | why do some sites not allow you to have special characters in your password? wouldn't it be better to always have as secure a password as possible? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3fpcdl/eli5_why_do_some_sites_not_allow_you_to_have/ | {
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"There have been news stories about websites getting hacked, and the hackers making off with lots of customer/employee/third-party information. How do hackers normally do this?\n\nIn the younger days of the internet, most sites were vulnerable to an exploit called SQL injection. SQL is a programming language associated with a type of database. A database is what actually stores information that website visitors put into the website so they can use the site how they want. Most sites these days have a database they rely on to control--among other things--how users can access the site's services. Other sites use flat files or databases stored in flat files, such as those created and managed by Microsoft Access, which come with their own problems, but we'll stick with actual databases here. \n\nFor example, whenever you sign up to use the services of a website, the information you put into the account setup page is then stored in a database. You are actually telling the web application what information to put into the database by inputting values into the page's input fields, then clicking the \"Submit\" button. The page will ask you for things such as a username and password, maybe your name and birthdate, and whatever else the web site needs to build a profile of you. Depending on the site, it may even ask a user for their credit card details and other financial information. The web application updates the database by using an application account to log into the database, then either inserting new information into the database, or updating the information already in the database so it can be used later. When you then log into the website later, you input your username and password you set up when you created your account, and the application attempts to retrieve the information from the database, checking to see if what you put in is the same as what is in the database, then it gives you access to the services available to your account.\n\nWhere it will sometimes go wrong is when the web application is told to get data from the database that the application is not supposed to return to a normal user. This is accomplished by knowing what the application expects the user to put into a certain input field, knowing how the application's queries to the database are written, and knowing that either the application administrator or the database administrator did not limit the web application's access to the database--giving the application access to everything in the database, instead of limiting the application for just the tables and permissions it needs.\n\nHere is a simplistic example. A user wants to log into a web site. The user puts in the username and password for his or her account. The web application usually then logs into the database and performs a query--SELECT \\* FROM users where username=user1 and password=password2. If a valid row is returned, the user gets logged into the site, is given the permissions the account is set up with, and continues the session. If no data is returned, the user is deposited on the \"Wrong password\" page. Seems logical, right?\n\nNow, say a hacker logs into the same website, but he or she does not put in a valid username--the hacker simply puts in an asterisk in the username and password fields. Depending on how the application is written, it may log into the database and perform this query instead--SELECT \\* FROM users where username=\\* and password=\\* (reddit may have a formatting problem with that). Depending on how the application and database are set up, the hacker may get a database error, he or she may get logged into the first account set up in the web site (which often is the admin account), or the application may return a list of user accounts, complete with usernames and passwords (and maybe credit card numbers, expiration dates, etc). You can see how this may be a problem. There are other methods of tricking the application into giving up data, using a similar method of SQL injection, but the result is often the same--either someone has acquired more information than they need, or someone is just given the keys to the kingdom.\n\nTo combat this problem, some websites have written the database queries their applications use to get data from the database so that queries do not return so much data, which in some cases results in a tiny performance boost. For example, a SELECT userid FROM users where username=\\* and password=* may simply return a list of userids instead of the entire users table--but some applications will allow the hacker to be logged into the first account in the database--the admin account, usually. Also, most sites do not save account passwords to their databases in readable form--they run the passwords through an encryption algorithm before saving them as hashes in the database--instead of \"password2\", there may be a long string of random characters and numbers in its place. So, a user logs into the database with \"password2\", the application immediately puts the user's input through the encryption, and if it matches the resulting hash in the database, the user is allowed access to the account. However, in poorly-written applications, this still results in an unauthorized user logged into someone else's account. In an effort to stop this, most sites today use code which scrubs most special characters out of input fields to guard against sql injection. So, when a hacker goes to put asterisks in an input field, the hacker presses Submit, the application immediately scrubs the asterisks out, and the hacker is left with either a database error, or--on well-written applications--deposited on a Wrong Password page. This is normally called \"sanitizing\" the input. Most of the sites you will browse have this feature in the application, but some sites will not. Best to not try and find out.\n\nSo, basically, you're not allowed to have special characters in the password field on some sites because the website owners don't want other people getting access to your information, so they run most of their inputs through a scrubber that stops what used to be a very prolific exploit.",
"Lazyness. Sanitizing inputs takes time, effort and knowledge. So some developers take the easy (and less secure) way out."
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3jhveu | stock dividends | Title | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jhveu/eli5_stock_dividends/ | {
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"If a corporation makes a profit, it may decide that it wants to share some of the corporation's profits with its owners (known as shareholders). The profit that is paid by a corporation to its shareholders is called the dividend. The dividend is issued \"per share\", which means that the corporation might pay $1 per share. In that situation, someone who owns 10 shares of the corporation's stock would receive $10 and someone else who owns 25 shares would get $25. The corporation is free to decide the amount it pays per share.",
"Ok, so to understand dividends, you have to understand the point of a company issuing stock.\n\nA company issues stock in order to exchange shares of ownership of the company for capital they can use to expand. The owners of a private company will issue stock, and sell it to the public in what is called an initial public offering (IPO).\n\nUsually, the IPO is the main time that a company can actually turn shares of ownership into cash money. Most companies and the original owners of the private company will retain at least some shares for themselves that they have the option to sell later, but they usually don't sell since this is also equivalent to giving up some control of the company.\n\nThis is because owning a share of stock also gives you some rights in regards to the company. For one, the company's financial reports are required to be made available to share holders.\n\nAlso, important decisions about the company can sometimes be left to a vote among share holders. For example, the membership of the board of directors is usually nominally controlled by a vote, and if enough share holders are upset with a given board member, they can kick them out.\n\nThat's a long explanation to make the point that owning a share of stock makes you a partial owner of the company. As a part owner, you are entitled to some of the proceeds of the company, should there be any. This is the important bit that explains dividends.\n\nUsually, a company doesn't make any money while it still has room to expand. Every bit of money that comes in and isn't earmarked for something else, gets rolled back into hiring new people, buying new equipment, and producing more of whatever the company does.\n\nBut, the theoretical expectation is that once a company gets big enough, it will run out of ways to productively expand, and more or less stop growing. When a company reaches maturity like this, it will start issuing dividends out of its cash reserves. These are the disbursements of the money that share holders have purchased the rights to.\n\nNow, normally, many companies aren't anywhere near that level of maturity. But in theory the possibility that any given company will eventually start paying dividends is what drives the stock price on the open market. If a company is doing well, it's more likely to eventually issue dividends, and the price per share should go up. If it's doing poorly, then it may fail before it starts paying dividends and the price should go down.\n\nWe tend to lose sight of this, since most people make money from the stock market by buying stock low, and selling high, without ever receiving dividends at all, but the whole system makes a lot more sense when you realize that stock value is driven by potential future dividends and not some sort of inexplicable self sustaining cycle."
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d4oqx2 | what determines whether a pro sports team is named after a city (dallas cowboys), or after a state (minnesota vikings)? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d4oqx2/eli5_what_determines_whether_a_pro_sports_team_is/ | {
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"It is down to the owner plus any special tax break the local community has given them which may also involve promoting the city or state. In addition existing teams in the state may restrict the naming process.",
"That’s completely up to the team owner(s), they can name it whatever they like. \n\nLook at the Angels in baseball, for example. Over they years, they’ve been the California Angels, Anaheim Angels, Los Angeles Angels, and now the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim."
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1q7zq8 | why do wombat's poop cubes? | Title says it all, I just can't wrap my head around the fact that they poop little dice shaped turds. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q7zq8/eli5_why_do_wombats_poop_cubes/ | {
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"Wombats poop on top of rocks and logs near their burrows. The reason for this is not to keep intruders away, but to use as an indicator to know where their home is. Wombats have terrible eyesight however they have an extraordinary sense of smell. The reason for these rubiks poop is because if the Wombat's are to effectively effectively smell their way home, their turds must remain where they dropped it, hence the fact that their excretion is cube, not circular. Who want's their shit rolling away?"
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2zq7a7 | how does the army/military wash clothes while deployed? | How does the army/military wash clothes and laundry while deployed? I'm assuming they just hand wash everything? Wouldn't everyone smell like ass? Hoping someone could chime in. Just a random thought that I couldn't find anything on google. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zq7a7/eli5_how_does_the_armymilitary_wash_clothes_while/ | {
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"Modern armies generally deploy with enough support machinery to wash clothing, and hand washing is quite effective.\n\nHowever everyone smells like ass anyway. Welcome to the Army.",
"At the laundry. Deployed at base you still sleep in a bed/cot. Deployed in the field, you don't wash",
"Depends. If they are at let's say camp leather neck they just drop it of and pick it up the next day. When I was deployed I was at a fob without running water so we used 5 gallon buckets and scrub brushes. and hung them out to dry. Which was the worst since sandstorms would come out of nowhere and make your wet clothes muddy",
"They do have laundry areas, with machines and detergent and everything.\n\nIf you have a base with 1500 people working 12+ hours a day on it, there are some \"creature comforts\" that are going to be there. They are going to have laundry machines, they are going to have kitchens, they are going to have a recreational area, they are going to have electricity and relatively running water and some buildings with fans/air conditioning.\n\nIf you have a bunch of trained people used to first world amenities, then stick them in a place without them, the best way to get them to work efficiently and not gripe is to give them a few comforts from home.",
"You turn them into 3rd party nationals and pick them up 3 days later, folded and clean. It's actually the best part of being deployed.",
"Shower first with your clothes on, wash everything as you would normally shower with clothes off. Then take the fatigues off and wash again. Not ideal, but it worked. This was Royal Army BTW.",
"5 gallon bucket when you're at a FOB without running water.",
"Ex-US Army here. Typically we dropped them off at the \"Cleaners\". The clothes come back smelling like nothing at all, folded, and wrapped in plastic. This took anywhere from 24-72 hours depending on where we were.\n\nIf I wanted something immediately I just took a box of tide to the sink and hand washed it. Never had to go outside of any sort of base but I had a friend that did. He got dysentery his first day out and ended up shitting on himself. He had to wear that for 3 days until they came back. ",
"On the sub we had 2 washers and dryers. For 150 people. Some people don't wash their clothes, but you were given a schedule to do it once a week. ",
"From my experience, there are three situations.\n\n1. You wash it yourself. Depending where you get stationed it, a pretty cherry camp will have a laundry room provided either by the Army, MRW, or locals.\n\n2. Speaking of locals, sometimes there will be a laundry run by the hadjis. Toss a third of your clothes in a bag. Don't put too much, you have to be careful of delays or any other reason you don't get your laundry back and you don't want the same thing for a week or two straight. Even recycling dirty clothes is better than seeing salt stains on your uniforms. Drop the bag off and pick it up a few days later.\n\n3. Army has these... well shit, I don't know what they're called. Part of a quartermaster unit, they drag around water bags and set up showers and laundry services. Just like the hadjis, except not as reliable as far as losing your shit goes (sorry, I had to).\n\n4. And then the warning from method 2: sometimes you just don't. You're at a shitty FOB, you're on a shitty convoy, or god's in a shitty mood. You just recycle dirty clothes and worry you're creating a new bacteria that's going to destroy mankind from the bottom of your laundry bag by hanging it on the laundry outside of your tent.",
"No one has mentioned the Navy. Ships have laundry rooms. Size depends on size of ship and size of crew. I was on a amphibious ship, LSD type. Crew was ~350. IIRC we had 5 washers and 5 dryers. There wasn't a rotation, meaning if it was open you could use it. That's all if you wanted to do your own laundry. There is a ships laundry that the crew isn't allowed to walk into themselves and use. Crew members work down there and do laundry all day. Someone is assigned to clean berthing and take all laundry down and pick it up and bring it back on a regular basis. If you wanted to send your uniform in that laundry, go ahead. But it wasn't recommended on my ship. That laundry was usually used for linen.",
"I got out of the Infantry in 82, reckon things have changed a lot, back then when you were in the field you got nasty and kept getting nastier till you got home. Didn't matter to us, you go full nose blind after awhile. Used to seriously gag out our old ladies when we got back though, you could always tell, you see a couple going down the road with the windows down and the temps 5 below 0, you know she's about to hurl just tryin to get his nasty ass back to the house!",
"Just for the record for he first six months I was in Iraq in 2003 we washed out clothes ourselves. We had one of those old fashioned wash boards and a bucket and hung our shit up to dry on clothes lines made out of 550 cord. Absolute worst part of the deployment for me (except getting shot at... Maybe). "
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7m2k57 | in movie scenes depicting large crowds or groups, do the extras usually have scripted dialogue or do they ad-lib? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7m2k57/eli5_in_movie_scenes_depicting_large_crowds_or/ | {
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"They aren't talking at all. They are just pretending to talk. The sound is added in later. If they really talked it would interfere with the main actors dialogue recording. Sometimes directors will give them some motivation (like ask one couple in the background to pretend to argue or something). Even if they are working or doing something they are asked to do it completely silently. \n\nSource: I work in the film industry. "
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382www | why has the euro held its value for so many years, then all of the sudden dropped to almost the same value as the usd? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/382www/eli5_why_has_the_euro_held_its_value_for_so_many/ | {
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"US Fed has slowed down how much money they are putting into circulation (went interest rates are slowly going up.)\n\nGreece and partially Spain have forced the EU to begin their own QE",
"I don't care how anyone ELI5 this question but please do it using an analogy with candy or something. ",
"The comments about Quantitative Easing (QE) are somewhat correct. The central bank of Europe is a authority that regulates the Euro, while the U.S has the Fed to regulate the dollar. One key difference with the Euro however is that countries in Europe are just that; still separate countries. This means that their economic policy needs are varied. Greece could use a massive devaluation in the Euro, while Germany is doing just fine where it is. Trying to operate under a common currency takes all control away from the central banks of these countries, and they must accept what the European Central Bank does. So Greece would like to see the Euro drop (their goods become cheaper to the rest of the world, comparing relative exchange rates.) This increases tourism, exports, etc. The result is a boost in Greece's economy that they need. Therefore the ECB saw it necessary to provide this relief to the countries struggling in the EU, meanwhile the U.S has started to raise interest rates."
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spssr | the modern "war on women" | I really have this HUGE premonition that this whole thing is a bunch of crap, but I'd like to know more. What makes people think this is actually going on? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/spssr/eli5_the_modern_war_on_women/ | {
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"Don't have time to respond fully right now, spend 7 minutes watching the video at the bottom. \n\n_URL_0_",
"There are a variety of issues that have come up that seem to relegate women to second class citizens, two of the biggest being birth control and abortion.\n\nThe fact that viagra is covered by insurance, but some are fighting to keep birth control uncovered. Many in the media hinted that women who needed birth control were sluts. \n\nThe bill that would require women to undergo an invasive vaginal ultrasound (which many likened to being raped) before an abortion. The idea being that they would change their mind after seeing their unborn baby.\n\nIn addition, tax breaks for women who stay home and have children lead to an environment where women are encouraged to give up careers for children and their husbands. \n\nThere is nothing wrong with women or men staying home or being chaste, but when the government is supporting this, it creates an oppressive environment.\n",
"A couple of recent developments lead women to say this:\n\n* All across the nation Planned Parenthood has been labeled as abortion factories and pure evil by republicans. Efforts are underway to defund them. Supporters on the other hand say that abortions are just a very small (and not publicly funded) part of what PP does (best cancer screenings, pep smears, birth control...)\n\n* The GOP is opposed to extending the Violence Against Women Act which makes it easier for women to get help in domestic violence situations.\n\n* They are against abortions even if the mother's health is in danger. Or if she was raped.\n\n* GOP controlled states want to pass/already passed laws that force women who want to abort to look at the unborn child/see videos of other abortions/watch educational videos.\n\n* Some republicans want to end/or did end equal-pay-laws (which makes it easier for woman to sure if they are being discriminated against). \n\n* House republicans wanted to pass a measure that would only cover abortions if a rape was \"forcible\". Hence precluding for example statuary rape.\n\nThoee are just a couple of points. There are many more. \n\nBut if those things constitute a \"war on women\" surely is a very subjective matter.",
"In this election year, many conservatives, particularly Rick Santorum, have gone the \"tradition values\" route, which include a number of issues that primarily affect women:\n\n* abortion - there have been many pro-life candidates, but Santorum takes it a step further, wanted to ban abortion in the case of rape\n* ultrasound guilt trips - requiring the patient to view an ultrasound, in some cases a penetrative vaginal ultrasound, before getting an abortion\n* birth control - Santorum opposes all forms of birth control, and supports a state's right to restrict or even ban birth control for adult women\n* state at home moms - Ann Romney has been touting her choice to be a stay at home mom, when in fact her wealth make her more of a stay at home nanny-cook-housekeeper supervisor."
]
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[
"http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rachel-maddow-calls-on-gop-to-appoint-sen-murkowski-war-on-women-spokesperson/"
],
[],
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[]
] |
|
3r0dsl | if one had an electric motor on a car that turned one wheel and three generators on the other three wheels, with two battery banks (one charging and one being used) could i run this car forever? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r0dsl/eli5_if_one_had_an_electric_motor_on_a_car_that/ | {
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"Nope! Any question that asks \"could I run such-and-such system forever?\" violates the first and second laws of thermodynamics.\n\nMore specifically, you would not be able to recover electricity at a fast enough rate with the three generators to refill the battery powering the motor on the first wheel. Eventually, it will lose power altogether depending on how efficient your generators and motor are.",
"No.\n\nYou're using energy to pull the car *and* using energy to turn the generating wheels to store again as energy. So that, alone, means your plan can't work. Let's say the car takes 50 watts to move, and each generator wheel needs, oh, 10 watts of power to turn and generate power. That means your motor wheel (*in an ideal universe without thermodynamics...we'll get to that later*) would need to put out 30 watts of power *just to turn the other wheels*. But it also has to drag the car, so the total the motor wheel has to use is 80 watts, but you're just getting 30, so no matter what you have a net loss of 50. Even if the car only took a fraction of a watt to move, it would still be a net loss of power.\n\nBut way more importantly, thermodynamics is a thing. Energy is *never* transferred without loss. The wires don't transfer the electricity from the batteries perfectly, so you lose a little. The motor wheel loses energy to friction against the road. The generator wheels also lose friction to the road. The wires lose energy to the batteries, etc.\n\nIf you just had a motor directly turning a generator, you would *still* lose energy. That's like asking if a crank can turn itself...\n\n*Those numbers are just made up off the top of my head and wildly inaccurate.",
"Nope, because the system is not perfectly efficient. There are losses due to heat, (caused by friction of mechanical parts, and electrical losses in the wiring), noise etc, so that the amount of power generated would always be less than the amount needed to move the car.\n\nWhat you are proposing is perpetual motion and by all known laws of the universe, is impossible. Google **Entropy**--the most powerful thing in the universe."
]
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[],
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1cyoq4 | why does money exist? | I've been thinking about it, and most problems begin with money. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1cyoq4/eli5_why_does_money_exist/ | {
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"Because it's inconvenient to have to trade water buffalo for skittles.\n",
"Less flippantly, it exists because resources are scarce. Money helps us decide how to allocate scarce resources.\n\nFor example: there is a limited amount of beautiful, beachfront property on earth. How do we decide who should get to use that property? Money provides us the answer - whoever is willing to pay the most for use of the property, gets to use it.\n\nIt is important to note that money is just *one possible* system for allocating scarce resources. Money has some advantages, which I will get into. But there are other possibilities. For example, you could allocate scarce resources by decree, with a committee deciding who gets the beachfront property. Or, you could allocate scarce resources by whoever gets it first. Whoever first builds a house on the property gets it. \n\nThe advantage to using money to allocate scarce resources is that money can generally only be made by being a productive member of society. And that means making life better for people, because if you didn't, they wouldn't give you their money! That's the theory, anyway, and plenty of people would disagree with it, but the fact is that it's worked damn well for Western civilization so far, problems and all. Are there *better* ways to allocate resources than money? Maybe! Who knows! Money is certainly very well tested.\n\nSo if you want to do away with money, then you have to come up with an alternate system of allocating scarce resources. Because resources will *always* be scarce. Even if everyone on earth had all the food they wanted, and we somehow managed to make everyone an Xbox 360 and a nice car, beachfront property would still be in limited supply. As would Ferraris and 20 carat emeralds. All of these need to be allocated somehow. How do you propose to do that?",
"The problems you think start with money, actually start with human vices.\n\nThe capitalist - market system would actually work flawlessly, if not for human greed, carelessness, irrationality, gluttony,irresponsibility, lack of respect and care for their fellow humans, inability to think long term, be emphatic and support equality.\n\nWell educated, egalitarian, enlightened and empathic cultures are significantly less prone to have economic problems, and even when they do, the negative impact on human lives is lessened, and spread equally, without significantly harming anyone."
]
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24chw0 | how do intangible currencies like bitcoin and dogecoin have value? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24chw0/eli5_how_do_intangible_currencies_like_bitcoin/ | {
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"text": [
"People will accept it for goods and services. Therefore it has value."
]
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[]
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||
1mi7am | in u.s., "math". in u.k., "maths". why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1mi7am/eli5_in_us_math_in_uk_maths_why/ | {
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"They're both shortened forms of the word \"mathematics\". Americans just shorten the whole word indiscriminately, while the rest of the world keeps the plural *s* and shortens the root of the word. ",
"Linguists discuss the math vs. maths wording: _URL_0_"
]
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbZCECvoaTA"
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||
229yxj | if number of offspring in mammals roughly correlates with mammary glands, why are twins not the predominant birth in humans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/229yxj/eli5_if_number_of_offspring_in_mammals_roughly/ | {
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"text": [
"Due to bilateral symmetry (animals being roughly symmetrical down the middle) all mammals, as far as I know, have an even number of nipples, even ones where only one offspring at a time is the norm."
]
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[]
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||
5a8de6 | why is a fan higher pitched when on higher speeds? | I'm curious why a fan sounds like it's higher pitched on higher speeds. Does this effect apply to other things? And is the sound we hear air particles moving more quickly? (Not 100% sure if this is a physics question but that seems right...). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5a8de6/eli5_why_is_a_fan_higher_pitched_when_on_higher/ | {
"a_id": [
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Sounds are based on frequency. The greater the frequency, the higher the pitch of the sound. As the fan is spinning faster, its frequency is greater and therefore the sound is higher."
]
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8s7i6p | why during medical trials both control and subject group are told they are receiving experimental drug instead both being told they receive placebo? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8s7i6p/eli5_why_during_medical_trials_both_control_and/ | {
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"Telling people you're feeding them sugar pills when in fact they're taking an experimental drug with possibly disastrous side effects is considered unethical, as it will make them more likely to shrug off bleeding from their ears and eyes as \"probably just allergies or something.\" \n\nTelling people you're feeding them an experimental drug when in fact you're just giving them sugar pills is less likely to do any harm. ",
"Adding to the other comment, when it eventually goes public, the people will be told they are receiving the actual drug and not just a placebo. It helps both groups stay in the correct state of mind",
"AFAIK during clinical trials participants are not told anything about which of the two they're getting. As far as they know, they could either be getting the real drug or the placebo, and they won't be told which it is/was until after the trial is completed. Telling people they're getting the real drug when they're not (which would be true for the control group) would be very unethical. Did you hear/read somewhere that this was how it worked? ",
"I’ve never heard of a study where the subjects are told they definitively are going to get one or the other, and possibly take the other. This would be considered unethical. An ethical study is one where the subjects are told they *may* get the placebo or drug beforehand. Thereon the best kind of subject is where both the subjects and researchers don’t know who got what until the end. Now having said all that I can answer the question. The power of suggestion is quite strong and the psychosomatic effects (mind effecting the body) of either a placebo or nocebo (opposite of placebo - where you perceive a negative effect from something which shouldn’t normally), can really make or break a study. In that sense it wouldn’t be a good control if you said everyone was told it was the drug or not. Because you couldn’t tell that it actually was the drug or not, or a placebo or nocebo. Again, this is why the best studies are when subjects and researchers only know who was given what until after the study. In that sense you will only be looking at raw data in all possible circumstances. What your looking at then, is a subject who only reports what they feel/effects, completely unknown. Sure there will be people who make up there own minds, but because it’s not already based on a prejudiced expectation of what they ‘believe’ the pill to be, the data is much more valuable. "
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2bhon2 | - why do most honour killings involve murdering the victim? why not kill the rapist instead? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bhon2/eli5_why_do_most_honour_killings_involve/ | {
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"In such cultures women are viewed as property, to be bought, sold, or traded. The honor killing is in retribution for the perceived dishonor of allowing themselves to be raped, as it damages or destroys their value to their male owner.\n\nIt is fucked up.",
"If someone smashes the windows in your car, take a shit in it, slashes the tires you would get a new car, it was just property damage. Maybe youll find the dude who did this but either way that car is useless. \n\nMost of these cultures view women as property so not only should it be replaced but its broken goods, so broken you have to set the car on fire so your neighbors dont give you shit for having a smashed up wreck in your driveway. ",
"Because it's not about the act, or the property being damaged, or the people involved. \n\nIts about maintaining family honour, and removing the mark against the family. The girl doesn't factor into it at all, because she was supposed to protect herself, and the family was supposed to help her do that. They failed, and so it has brought shame ~~too~~ to the family. To rectify, they destroy the evidence of shame to remove the mark on the family. \n\nMost Muslims do not believe in honour killings, by the way, nor do any sects therein publicly accept them as part of their faith.",
"Because even if you are the victim and you got raped, you still had sex outside of (or before) your marriage, which means you dishonored your family. This dishonor sticks to the family, and you, for the rest of your lifetime. Thus they significantly shorter your lifetime.\n\nAlso because the people that thought up these religious rules were like superhigh on acid.",
"The real issues here are the twin concepts of dishonor and atonement. \n\nWhat is dishonor? Dishonor is a state of extremely depreciated social value within your community. Each society treats their 'dishonored' differently. Some societies have legal and social rules to protect their dishonored from too much abuse, while other societies essentially revoke their rights and encourage everyone to treat them as an open target. \n\nWho determines what is dishonorable in a society? Well, every member of a society who expresses their opinions on dishonor 'votes' for what their society defines as dishonorable. When enough of a society are in agreement, their beliefs gain momentum and trample any competing beliefs to establish a cultural norm that is difficult to change. Different societies come up with widely different beliefs about dishonor.\n\nAtonement is an act that that a society has collectively agreed will alleviate or remove someone's status of dishonor. Societies with especially draconian beliefs about dishonor often develop strong concepts of atonement. Different societies come up with widely different beliefs about atonement.\n\nCultures with honor killings tend to have a couple things in common:\n* they collectively treat their dishonored very very poorly\n* dishonor is transmissible through association. A dishonored person automatically passes their dishonor onto their family.\n* women are poorly protected in both legal rules and social rules.\n\nAs for the ELI5, why do most honor killings involve murdering the victim? Why not kill the rapist instead?\n\nThe areas where honor killings developed have well established legal rules and social rules that make it very hard for women to pursue justice against male perpetrators. These societies have long-held and sacred beliefs that men are inherently honorable and women aren't, and they have written their laws as if it were a fact that women were inherently untrustworthy. Because men are deemed to be more honorable then women, any evidence they produce in court will be weighted as more significant. The evidence demanded from women is overwhelming and often impossible to supply. This makes it almost impossible for women to get justice against men in the courts. On top of that, because society views women as being innately less honorable then men, the general population is quick to condemn any woman who visably seeks justice in the courts. They are almost automatically assumed to be a liar who is seeking to ruin the reputation of an innocent man, and they will be treated as such. This makes it painful for women to even pursue the justice that they probably won't get.\n\nOn top of all this, women in these societies aren't really considered free people, they are considered property of men and are owned by either a father or a husband. Rape, for all intents and purposes, is treated as a property crime in these cultures. The victim of rape isn't the woman, it is the man who owns her. A sexually impure woman is considered dishonored in these cultures, which ultimately means she has lost her trade value and will be treated worse by society. And if that weren't enough injustice, these cultures also believe that her dishonor is transmitted directly into her family. Her father suffers from her dishonor, her husband, her children.\n\nKnowing all this, imagine your daughter has been raped. You know that you can't get justice in the courts, and that if the word gets out both here and yourself will be dishonored. The obvious decision is to hush it all up, but it is too late, you daughter already confided in her friends and now the word is out on the street. People are starting to talk about your liar daughter, calling her a whore and saying that probably tempted that nice boy to destroy his life. The word gets out further and you now in the discussion as the disgraced father of a lying whore. Suddenly no one seems to be buying anything from your shop and none of your friends are calling to invite you out to dinner. You can't go after the man, he is utterly protected by the law, besides all of this is probably because of her flirtations. How do you even know she was even raped? She could have made it all up. For all you know she might be a lying whore who would destroy your life for a fast fuck, then come to you afterwards with a fake story and crocodile tears in her eyes. Everyone knows that women can't be trusted, hell the whole of society is grounded on the knowledge that you can't trust women. This wretched whore has made a mockery of your trust and humiliated you in front of the whole town. This dishonor is all her fault, but only you have the power to atone for it. Your society has collectively agreed that you can atone for this dishonor by showing the strength and courage to destroy the thing that ultimately dishonored you; your daughter. \n\ntl;dr Daughters are replaceable in exactly the way that honor isn't."
]
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||
10g9uf | how does a random function work? | If a random function is made up of a certain algorithm, you'd surely be able to somehow calculate it, wouldn't you?
Also, wouldn't it simply repeat itself after a while? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10g9uf/eli5_how_does_a_random_function_work/ | {
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"Before a matematician/IT guys confirms it, I can say that it takes a really difficult to foresee value (ex. the actual date, up to the hundredth of second) and feed its to a very complex function whose output is even harder to foresee, and has an uniform distribution in a given interval.\n\nEx. get date, divide for hundreth of second, square root the value, take the 62th and 103th digit after the dot and multiply, blah blah blah..\n\n",
"A random number generator like the one typically used by a computer to generate random numbers isn't actually random. It is what is known as a *pseudo-random number generator*. It generates numbers according to a certain algorithm that first is initialized with a value called *seed*. For different seed values, different pseudo-random sequences would be produced. Your computer will usually use something like the current time as seed to initialize the pseudo-random number generator. And then you get these pseudo-random numbers that seem to be random, even if they aren't. For most purposes, this is good enough.\n\nA certain category of pseudo-random number generators are known as *cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generators*. These are algorithms that conform to certain requirements that are hard to ELI5, but the basic and most important idea is that one can't predict what the next number would be even if you know the entire sequence up until now.\n\nFor certain applications where truly random numbers are needed, special hardware devices are used that can generate random numbers by using physical processes that are unpredictable (random) by the laws of physics."
]
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cj0otb | why can some brands completely rip off other brands designs on certain products? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cj0otb/eli5_why_can_some_brands_completely_rip_off_other/ | {
"a_id": [
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"Per a quick google search, they are often lawsuits for this. However, I’d hazard a guess that court costs and lawyer fees are factored in before moving forward. Generic copy at Walmart maybe only profits 40k$, but the lawsuit would cost 200k for both sides. It’s now a loss to sue and not worth moving forward. Adidas sued Walmart for infringing on their 3 stripe design a while back and won. Those shoes now have 4 stripes.\n\nEdit:changed a letter"
]
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[]
] |
|
dkh7xr | does convolution of signals have an intuitive explanation like the water-flow example for voltage and current? | I understand convolution from an equation point of view but is there some way to visualize it easily? something similar to the water flow in a pipe example for current through a wire. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dkh7xr/eli5_does_convolution_of_signals_have_an/ | {
"a_id": [
"f4f0ure"
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"text": [
"Have you heard of convolution reverb?\n\nBasically, you take an impulse response from, say, a cathedral, and then you can convolve it with any sound signal to make it sound as if it were in the cathedral.\n\nSo i guess a convolution is kind of like an echo. A bit like sonar - when there is something x-metres away, you'll get a corresponding spike on the impulse-response when the echo comes back."
]
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|
89pr9h | the definition of “literary theory” | The definition is kind of confusing for me to understand so I was wondering if you lot could explain it to me differently? Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89pr9h/eli5_the_definition_of_literary_theory/ | {
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"dwskrfl"
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"I suppose there isnt one definition but a literary theory woukd be a way in which yoi can understand/interpret literature. \nFor example you could read a text in a feminist or post colonial way and theyre both literary theories. \nOr you could theorise on what literature itself is, for example literary theorist Roland Barthes discusses the role of the author in literature."
]
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|
ar49ob | how do we know what prehistoric life was like? | Watching through the Walking with Monsters: Life Before the Dinosaurs series... where do our theories of what life was like for those species come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ar49ob/eli5_how_do_we_know_what_prehistoric_life_was_like/ | {
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"We have a good understanding of biomechanics, how the shape of bones, their growth and wear patterns, how ligaments were attached, and a lot of the details that tell us how the moved, how they ate and hunted. Teeth can tell you a lot about what sort of food an animal ate. The design of the head tells you how big their eyes, noses, and mouths were. Some bones have teeth marks, indicating that they were bitten by other dinosaurs. \n\nHere's a review article [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) on Dinosaur Biomechanics\n\n & #x200B;"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1634776/"
]
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|
cxhe0k | what's a good source of hydration during a hurricane if water supply in stores is sold out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cxhe0k/eli5_whats_a_good_source_of_hydration_during_a/ | {
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"text": [
"The point is to stock up beforehand. Water comes out of your faucet for hundreds of times cheaper than in the store.",
"Top part of the toilet. Seems gross but it’s actually clean except for a few airborne poo particles that sneak under the lid. No more than you breathe in all day anyway.",
"This is better in r/answers."
]
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||
1lvtc4 | why does canceling a credit card with a zero balance hurt my credit score | I got an amazon card because it was supposed to allow me to buy a product on credit and avoid interest charges if I paid in full with in 6 months (20% APR thereafter!). They set my limit at $500 and I found something I wanted that costed about $600. My plan was to buy it and pay off $400 immediately and then $200 over the next 2 months. They denied my request to raise my limit, so I canceled the card (with out ever using it). My credit score dropped to below where it was before I got the card when I canceled it.
For the record, Amazon is not the only company that offers these kind of credit lines.
TL:DR - Why would canceling a new credit card with a zero balance hurt your overall credit score? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lvtc4/eli5_why_does_canceling_a_credit_card_with_a_zero/ | {
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"Assuming you have other credit and you have outstanding balances. Canceling increases your credit utilization %..\n\nLets say you have two cards and one has a balance\nA:$50/$100\nB: $0/$100\nYou are using 25% of your available credit.\n\nYou cancel card B\n\nYour are now using 50% of your available credit.\n\nCredit scores are a bit of a scam, they measure more your ability to keep paying than anything else... in fact most companies would prefer you keep paying your minimum and send them money for ever.\n\nThis is why the following can also hurt your score:\n- Having TOO Much available credit, IE you have lots of cards with $0 on them but the total credit has become a risk in-case you snap and max them all at once.\n- You have no credit cards, and have always payed for everything.. Even if you have good income, this can be a problem if they haven't been able to build a history of your reliability to pay.\n\nIf you have Netflix check if the movie [Maxed Out](_URL_0_) is still on their... it explains consumer debt fairly well.",
"Credit ratings are for the benefit of credit card companies, not for you. They want customers who can pay off their balance, but not so fast they don't earn interest off of it first.\n\nSome savvy customers try to get better rates by signing up for introductory rates cards, then cancelling them when the rate goes up. Credit card companies don't make money of these people, so credit ratings penalize this behavior."
]
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[
"http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0762117/"
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22tnmq | why do indian reservations have such high unemployment? | So the common perception of modern Indian Reservations is low income, high unemployment, high crime rates, low standard of living, except in the case of casinos. I guess the first question is, is this actually true, and if so why?
I understand there are probably complex ideas here, but there are probably some simple underlying factors. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22tnmq/eli5why_do_indian_reservations_have_such_high/ | {
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"text": [
"Very true and in case you have forgotten, the reservations were the tracts of mostly worthless land nobody wanted, far from civilisation. That should explain the dismal prospects ofvthe denizens.",
"First Reason: No jobs... \nSecond Reason: Remote... \nThird Reason: Culture Shock...\n\nSimplest terms these three in combination with each other is why... Every other problem stems from these...",
"Yes. They're in bad locations in the middle of nowhere. What sort of jobs would be found there? They're usually too poor to leave, and if they do, they generally won't be supported by the other members for betraying their culture. And if they leave, they really will eventually lose it. I guess this sort of things applies to poor inner city youth too, or most groups in poverty who band together."
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asxdxy | how do motor boat engines not get water logged? | Any time that there's moving parts, especially in a circular motion, wouldn't the water find a way in? Or are the moving parts so disconnected from the engine that it just doesn't reach it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/asxdxy/eli5_how_do_motor_boat_engines_not_get_water/ | {
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"Same reason your car motor doesn't get water logged when you drive in rain or puddles.\n\nThe motor is not in the water. It's spins a shaft which is also attached to a propeller, that goes into the water. ",
"The actual motor is well above the waterline, usually at least 1-2 feet. Like on this outboard boat for example \n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe actual motor part is in that black plastic housing, there's possibly a gear box and shaft that goes down to the actual propeller. In theory water could get into the housing for the shaft, proper maintenance of the shaft seals, and a lot of marine rated grease will protect them from water damage. The grease lubricates any moving parts, but also fills any gaps with grease where water could enter. ",
"On large sailboats with internal motors there is a thing called a stuffing box. Between the water and the engine is a box like compartment that contains a grease infused material that keeps water out yet is slippery enough to allow the shaft to spin. The compartment on my boat is six or eight inches deep, and it is stuffed tightly so there is basically no room for water to enter. One interesting aspect of this is that if there isn't a tiny bit of water coming through, like a drip a minute, the grease can dry out. So the box is made so it can be tightened or loosened. Eventually you run out of room to tighten and you have to pull the boat out of the water and replace the material. "
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4gq882 | reverse entropy | Could it ever be possible? Why or why not? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gq882/elif_reverse_entropy/ | {
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"imagine you have a jar of marbles that you tip over. The marbles all go out in different directions, ricochet off of eachother, and settle. Now, you must put them back how they were before. How? That's impossible, that's so much data to somehow learn, which way each marble went and what it hit and how at what angle and so on to reach it's final resting spot.\n\nimagine if you could look through time, though. You'd see the path that every single marble took and the way they scattered would look very apparent to you, like a tree with branches. You could easily tell how they got there and how to reverse it. \n\nReverse entropy is only possible by timetravel, but we cannot do that. As time advances, the past is braided, so to speak, into one singular universe, the universe we at this very moment are at the head of. In the future there's infinite possibilities but as we travel through the fourth dimension, we collapse/destroy all those universes into the one we right now are witnessing. The past is beyond our reach, and the future doesn't exist yet, or rather it exists in every infinite way. So we're kinda stuck in the present, just like how a 3D apple passing through a 2D world would only exist to the 2D world as that slice of 2D it is at that current time, we're that apple, and time is what we're passing through, and we can only experience the world as it is at this very moment we are advancing through it. And as such, it's not possible for us to go back and look how the marbles fell and scattered... But the secret to reversing entropy might hold the way to look back in time, and vice versa. Just like in that 2D world they have no concept of ALL of the apple in one physical 3D existence, only slices of it. They might have the cognition to imagine a 3D apple, just like how we humans have memory and forethought of the past and future, but it's really just a makeshift bandaid solution. \n\nIt's all very theoretical stuff."
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6zgvsl | how do companies like walmart profit from selling gift cards to other services when a gift card costs the amount of credit it's worth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zgvsl/eli5_how_do_companies_like_walmart_profit_from/ | {
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"it is a strategy used to get people in the door, much like a sale, it is ok to not make as much money on one or two items because usually when people come in they buy more than they were intending to in the first place, it happens. so to get people in the door it is actually more profitable to sell some things at a reduced price or even at a loss if it means you are making more profit on other goods and or services",
"Interesting. I always just assumed that they worked out a deal with those companies. Say Starbucks will sell Walmart a $25 card at the cost of $20. Now Walmart is +$5 and Starbucks is still getting at least most of their profit margin. ",
"Lost and not redeemed cards ale happen a lot. A radio ad runs in my area that offers to mKE gift cards for businesses and they talk about only 85% or something get redeemed",
"Walmart buys the cards for less than their face value. They make money on the difference. \n\nThe exception is Visa/MC gift cards, which are actually sold at a premium (spend $35 for a $25 MC gift card, for example.) In that case Walmart gets part of the premium.",
"Generally speaking, the merchant selling the gift card gets a small commission on the sale.\n\nExample: Target sells a $100 Red Lobster gift card. Target activates the card and collects a $5 commission, the other $95 goes to Red Lobster. The customer goes out to eat, gets the check for $100 and pays using the gift card.\n\nIn reality it's a bit more complicated.",
"I always assumed that they made a lot of money from lost gift cards and when there was such a minuscule amount left on one that it just gets thrown away.",
"They dont make or lose anything from gift cards other then labor cost to put them on shelves..Its to generated foot traffic. If you come in to buy it some times while you wait in line you will buy say a drink or a candy bar and thats profit. Also not everyone uses all the money on a gift card. \n\n For example you might get a $25 gift card and you spend $24 of it. Now you have $1 left and there is nothing that is worth $1. So now you have to decide either A. throw away the gift card and lose out on $1 meaning the company gains a $1 profit or B. You spend say $5 and to use that $1 and end up spending $4 out of pocket meaning the company profits from you spending more money beyond the gift card",
"Retail stores *really* like when customer have their gift cards. When someone buys a target gift card, it's basically* guaranteed sales for them. By selling gift cards in other stores, they extend their reach, and make sales to customers who might not have otherwise stepped foot or thought about target in the first place.\n\nIn return for this extra sales opportunity, they're willing to share back a little bit of that sale to whatever company is selling the card for them. Really popular gift cards like Apple will pay out 1% of the card value. Less popular cards like regional restaurant will pay out a higher amount, usually up to 5%, to entire other businesses into carrying their cards. Since most stores make much more then 5% on each sale, it's worth it to them to give a \"cut\" to some other store to sell their gift card - they'll still make a profit when the card is redeemed.\n\nBut even this amount would usually not be enough to get a store to sell your product. A regular grocery store will make between 15% and 30% on every item they sell, so a 5% gift card is not very profitable. To offset this, gift card malls (the industry term for selling other store gift cards in your store) have a few other advantages.\n\n1. They're low risk. The merchant doesn't have to buy the cards - they're given to them for free. The cards don't have any value until activated, so theft is not a problem for the store selling them. Compare that to regular products, which they have to pay for up front, and if they're stolen the store is out the cost of the item. Gift cards also don't affect their on hand inventory value, which means they don't drive up insurance costs.\n\n2. They don't take up shelf space. Shelf space in a store is a valuable commodity - most products need to be on a shelf, and the more space you have, the more stuff you can sell. Compare a small independent convenience store to a Walmart - the reason the convenience store is crammed full of stuff is because they are trying to maximize the limited space they have. Gift card malls can be hung on a wall, put on a spinner and shoved in a corner, or left in front of a register. Most stores can find a space where the cards are essentially taking up 0 space that could have been filled with more profitable products. \n\n3. They draw in more customers. Even if 90% of the shoppers who buy a gift card don't buy anything else, the 10% who realize they need milk and grab a gallon from the back are \"free\" extra sales the store might not have gotten anyway. \n\n**Source** - I used to work for a company that pushed gift card malls as a value added option with our POS platform, to independent grocery stores.\n\n\\* Some people are saying stores love them because they keep the money from un-redeemed gift cards. This isn't quite accurate. In the US, gift cards cant expire for at least five years. Some states don't let them [expire ever](_URL_0_). Businesses are required to hold the money they get from selling the gift cards in a separate holding account while waiting for the cards to be redeemed, at which point they can pull the cash into their usual revenue. The exception is when a business shuts down, then they can take any outstanding gift card balances as cash. Most companies would rather have the gift card redeemed quick so they can realize the revenue now, rather then wait five years, even if the payoff could be bigger. Revenue means growth, cash sitting in an account they can't access means accounting costs. (Edited for accuracy)",
"The gift card companies pay a commission to the stockist. They can afford to do this as something like 30% of all gift cards are not redeemed within their validity period. And the provider of the card (iTunes, whatever), has a profit margin on their goods. $50 of music downloads doesn't cost $50 to Apple. So the combination of unredeemed value and margin for profit more than covers the commission the retailer receives.",
"Because the face value of the gift card is only the consumer cost not the actually profit margin of the item. Along the supply chain of an item are multiple profit margins ",
"They get a cut obviously. Most of those gift card racks are from one vendor who's the middleman. They literally buy that space in the store. Maybe it's a percentage of sales but likely it's a fixed price. X vendor pays Y retailer a set price to have 2 kiosks in every location for a year. The vendor come regularly and fills the racks and makes sure nothing is spoiling the sight lines etc that they pay for. Coke pays for shelf space in a grocery store and so does Pepsi, Tide, etc. ",
"You likely won't use the whole amount. If you have a 50 dollar card maybe you spend 46 and forget to use the rest. Assume most people do it they get pure profit. Some people just never use them or lose it. That's cash to the company bottom line",
"In addition to what other folks are saying about guaranteed sales (i.e. you have a gift card to Le Shoppe Manifique, you're going to use it there), there's also the significant portion of them that\n#never gets used\n\nIf 5% of them never get used, then you, as Le Shoppe Manifique's owner, just realized a 5% price increase on everything sold via gift cards. Free money!"
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42j6i5 | sound effects | How do people get the sound effects that can be used in music or movies? Like for an AK47 shootinh do they actually get a mic and just record it, it's hard for me to see them doing that for things like tires screeching or a punch. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42j6i5/eli5_sound_effects/ | {
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"Yes, sometimes they just go out to a shooting range or go out driving with a bunch of sound equipment.\n\nUsually for movies they just buy the sound effects from someone who already did that and is selling all the sound effects.\n\nEither way, studios end up with libraries of sound effects they use.",
"Depending on the budget of the movie (nowadays, it has to be a pretty high budget -- think Transformers, etc), they can record sound effects special for the actual film. This is done during the post production process and overseen usually by an experienced sound supervisor. \n\nHere's an excerpt from Academy Award winning sound designer Dane Davis as he was describing recording sounds for the chase scene in the second Matrix movie: \n\n > \"We had to drop the cars right in the middle of the microphone array, and then keep them from rolling over the mics or over all of us. We also had a couple of wrecking balls — including one that weighed 3,500 pounds — that we dropped through the cars. At one point, one of the balls went all the way through the cars, through the concrete under them, into the dirt and back up through the car, then rolled over a bunch of mic cables and came to rest on a PZM mic, completely crushing it. We got some really great sounds out of that.” [link](_URL_0_)\n\nThese big-production sound effects are often mixed with \"Foley\" recorded in a studio, things like the sound of punching has been made with smashing celery, etc. \n\nFor lower budget films and TV, they will often use small amount of foley recorded in studio if it's a very unique scene or sound. \n\nThere's often \"sound design\" aspects to creating the entire collection of sounds for a film, such as recording something in the wild and then processing it afterwards using digital or analog effects to create the sound needed. I read somewhere that one of the sound designers on the original Star Wars created the lightsaber effect by hitting a wrench against one of those thick guylines that secure a powerline pole (couldn't find a reference for this, I'm sure someone will clarify if I'm wrong). \n\nSound designers and supervisors will have hard drives full of hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of these sounds that they carry around with them, and they will often share them with their peers. Probably the majority of sound effects these days that you will hear, if it's the occasional gunshot or punch or car crash, have been used at least dozens of times before and may have been recorded 10-20 years ago and reused endlessly. \n\n*TL;DR* Yes, they record sound FX by actually recording real guns, cars, etc, but depending on budget they may reuse sounds they already have. "
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1wpgez | is it true that if you eat human flesh your body will uncontrollably shake? if so, why? | Curious. Just finished the Book of Eli. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wpgez/eli5_is_it_true_that_if_you_eat_human_flesh_your/ | {
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"It could happen, yes. It's due to a prion disease called Kuru: _URL_0_",
"Not quite.\n\nTremors from cannabalism is a result of 'Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy', and it results from eating brain tissue that contain certain prions (a kind of defective protein that can act like an infectious agent). Its akin to Mad Cow Disease, which is caused by cows eating infected brain tissue from sheep remains that had been added to the cow feed for added protein."
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3rk4cs | how is the sugar coating on sour candy so much different than table sugar? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rk4cs/eli5_how_is_the_sugar_coating_on_sour_candy_so/ | {
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"From Wikipedia: *Sour sanding, or sour sugar, is a food ingredient that is used to impart a sour flavor, made from citric or tartaric acid and sugar. It is used to coat sour candies like Sour Patch Kids or to make hard candies tart, such as acid drops or SweeTarts.* It's not quite the same thing. "
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1ivxvy | how are airplanes able to travel through the air despite being heavier than air? also, what exactly is jet propulsion? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ivxvy/eli5_how_are_airplanes_able_to_travel_through_the/ | {
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"Airplanes fly by generating lift. Their wings are shaped in such a way that when they are moving through the air, the air passing over the top of the wing is moving faster than the air moving under the wing. The faster that air moves, the lower pressure it has. Since the faster moving air on top of the wing has less pressure than the slower moving air on the bottom of the wing it generates lift and causes the plane to rise. \n\nJet engines work by taking in a large amount of air and compressing it into a small space. Fuel is then added to the compressed air and it is ignited, or basically blown up. The more air that can be pushed in and the more it can be compressed, the more powerful the explosion will be. The force of the explosion pushes out of the back of the jet engine causing forward thrust. In reality it creates more pressure pushing forward on the jet engine than at the rear of the jet engine, the thrust isn't actually pushing off of anything behind it. That's why boosters still work in space where there is no air."
]
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||
483ggs | when you forget something, why does retracing your steps often make you remember? (such as going back to a webpage you closed or redoing the activity you were doing) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/483ggs/eli5_when_you_forget_something_why_does_retracing/ | {
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"For me, it tends to be that something in what I was doing was the impetus for the thought to begin with. When that stimulus occurs again, the thought happens again in the same way it did initially."
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||
2kortk | why was microsoft criticised for bundling a browser and media player with their os, but is apple allowed to bundle a computer with their os? | I know the examples are a bit different, but in the end it does constitute product tying, right?
Please, no flaming or brand wars. I'm just curious what the difference is. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kortk/eli5_why_was_microsoft_criticised_for_bundling_a/ | {
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"Microsoft was leveraging its monopoly to put a much smaller rival out of business.",
"The difference is that Windows is very widely used for more than normal computing, servers and other uses are common. Not to mention that you can install windows on basically anything where as OSX can only be installed on MACs (easily) \n\nPeople aren't as upset when a mac comes with extra software like that since thats what they bought it for but many pc users bought windows to use as a barebones OS instead of a \"normal\" computer. ",
"Honestly, it is because lawyers and judges are idiots.\n\nWhen the the browser bundling issue came up in the Microsoft anti-trust case in 2001, the legal system was clueless when it came to technology. From a technical perspective, the charges against Microsoft were nonsensical, and Microsoft's defense was equally incoherent.\n\nThere were no good guys or bad guys here, just a bunch of idiots, and no valid conclusions can be drawn from that case.\n\n ",
"You've gotten a few answers but I don't think they tell the whole story.\n\nYou have to remember this was a while ago now and the market was a bit different. There was a time when people paid money for web browsers. You literally went to a physical store and bought Netscape Navigator. So Netscape was charging for its browser and the MS, who dominated the computer market, started offering Internet Explorer for free.\n\nMS was leveraging their monopoly on the PC to but IE in front of everyone's face, so why would anyone pay for Netscape? Even after Netscape moved to a free model IE was the default browser on the default operating system and if you were not tech savvy you probably didn't even know Netscape existed.\n\nApple is not in a dominate market position therefore they cannot abuse a monopoly situation.",
"Nobody cares about \"anti-competitive\" practices by a small player. There has never been much of a risk of Apple becomming a monopoly the way there was with MSFT. It's all about market share. Everyone is going to go after the one on top.",
"Legally, tying arrangements are only a problem if they involve tying a product that dominates its market to another product that doesn't in an effort to stifle competition in the market for the second product. Apple does not dominate either computer or OS market, so tying one to the other isn't legally a problem. In the Microsoft cases, Microsoft dominated the operating system market and by tying its browser to its operating system it was (theoretically) extending that dominance into the market for browsers."
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20aw9h | why do some nutrition labels read "total carbohydrates 30g" but sugars will say "sugars 22g"? | without any mention of fiber? what/where is the unaccounted 8g of carbs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20aw9h/eli5_why_do_some_nutrition_labels_read_total/ | {
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"Sugars are a simple type of carbohydrate. \n\nFibre (cellulose) is technically a carbohydrate, but it is not digestible and has no direct nutritional value. It is therefore not included in the total carbohydrates of food."
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fuevro | what do the schrödinger and dirac equations describe and what's the difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fuevro/eli5_what_do_the_schrödinger_and_dirac_equations/ | {
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"The Schrödinger equation (ih d/dt psi = H psi) is a very general statement about quantum mechanics: the phase of a state changes (it ”turns”, in a way) proportional to its energy. It can describe many different things as long as you use the correct H. Note that I’m NOT talking about the common formulation ih d/dt psi = -h^2 / 2m psi + V psi, which is the specific case for a singe nonrelativistic (slow) particle. The Dirac equation is another specific instance of it, describing relativistic (very fast) spin-1/2 particles (like electrons) and has spin and antiparticles built into it."
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kaocu | obama's new jobs bill. | With a very conservative family I know I'm going to hear nothing but complaining about it in the coming weeks regardless of whether it's good or bad, I'd like to know the real truth. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kaocu/eli5_obamas_new_jobs_bill/ | {
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"text": [
"good one! I can't wait for an answer.",
"You can read about it [Right Here](_URL_0_) from a previous ELI5. Cheers.",
"good one! I can't wait for an answer.",
"You can read about it [Right Here](_URL_0_) from a previous ELI5. Cheers."
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356fh1 | what makes the noise in an engine? | Vroom vroom 🚘🚘 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/356fh1/eli5_what_makes_the_noise_in_an_engine/ | {
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"Its either the engine lifter's noise, valve noise, the combustion, bearing noise, or the exhaust of the car itself you're talking about at the moment.\n\n\nVroom vroom.",
"A short answer: the explosions cause by the sparks within the pistons (or cylinders) cause the sound. Vroom Vroom, if you will."
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26z988 | what is al qaeda fighting for? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26z988/eli5_what_is_al_qaeda_fighting_for/ | {
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"Islamic caliphate - A worldwide dominance of Islam and governance according to sharia.",
"[Here is a letter from Osama Bin Laden to America](_URL_0_) The basis of this is that we are supporting acts of aggression against Muslims via Israel, occupying their Holy Land, and we are not Muslims.",
"Its not a simple answer because Al Qaeda is NOT a simple terrorist group.\n\nThe point of Al Qaeda, as laid out by Bin Laden, is not a single group with a single goal, but as the Arabic translation plainly tell us, to be \"the base\" for multiple related but not 100% similar groups, causes, and goals. \n\nThis is NO single thing Al Qaeda wants because the is NO single Al Qaeda. There's Al Qaeda in Iraq (now fracturing into AQI and ISIS), there's Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQM), Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, also Al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa. The original Afghanistan franchise is also still present with the remnants of the Taliban in the Pakistan Tribal areas. Plus these franchises, literally they are franchises, they use the Al Qaeda name and sometimes share finances/fighters but they have semi-independent leadership and act towards separate goals. \n\nBin Laden states goals where many, but the usual demands in his fatwa videos included: Removal of US soldiers and sailors from Saudi Arabia, end of US support of Israel, the overthrow of several western friendly Middle East governments, and the replacement of them with a unified Islamic Caliphate or one super Arab-Muslim state in the gulf. \n\nOthers linked to Al Qaeda have also demanded the forced conversion of all non-Muslims, the replacement of civil law with Sharia religious law, the complete destruction of Israel, or for an Islamic Caliphate to extend beyond the middle east and conquer the world. \n\nTo accomplish these, Al Qaeda was supposed to be a linked network of terrorism support groups. The training camps in pre 9/11 Afghanistan hosted terrorists from all over the world. Al Qaeda would link financier X with group Y to move money. They would provide their franchise groups with better planning of attacks and strategy. You could share bomb makers. One guy learns an IED to defeat armored Humvees, Al Qaeda would hook up other groups with him. It was envisioned as a one stop terrorist super store/support line. \n\nEach individual group had its own motivations, usually less about Islam and infidels, and more about seizing regional power and taking political control. Al Qaeda in Iraq talks a good game about hating Jews and Americans, but really they just bomb and kill other Iraqi Muslims so that AQI can get more political control over the west of Iraq. They couldn't care less about Al Qaeda in the Maghreb fighting in Libya or Algeria or the Taliban's fight in Afghanistan. Bin Laden simply built them a common support network for training, money, and strategy; but not a governing body where they vote on the general platforms of terrorism. \n\nThis split has only gotten bigger since most of the senior leadership have been killed or captured since 9/11. Al Qaeda is less about the spectacular overseas attacks (9/11, London bombings, Madrid train attacks) of which OBL and KSM were proponents and more about these regional franchises attacking regionally for regional gain. \n \n**TL:DR** What exactly Al Qaeda wants depends on which Al Qaeda you are talking about. ",
"\"Radical jihad has not been global for long. Even the \"Afghan Arabs\" who fought the Soviets in the 1980s generally saw themselves as training to confront enemy regimes back home. It was not until the mid-1990s that Osama bin Laden launched the globalist strategy of giving priority to attacking the \"far enemy\" in the West. Later still, Ayman al-Zawahiri reversed his long-standing concentration on the \"near enemy\" (the Egyptian regime), joined forces with bin Laden, and became number two in the al Qaeda hierarchy. \"\n\nAfter Reagan pulled out of Lebanon in the wake of one suicide bombing and Clinton left Somalia, Bin Laden saw the USA as a paper tiger; whereas the domestic regimes were seen as only being able to crush the rise of Islamist governments because they were supported by the USA. The logic was (up until 9/11): scare the far enemy into pulling support for the near enemy with attacks and the illegitimate regimes will collapse. This strategy seems misguided and a miscalculation, setting aside the obvious ethical problems.\n_URL_0_",
"As I understand it (I'm far from an expert), Al Qaeda is one of the more recent strains of a pan-islamist reactionary movement aimed at ending the state of de facto subjugation of the Arab world by western powers and extirpating their influence in the heartlands of Dar al-Islam. Remember that the islamic world stood as one more or less unified domain for the better part of 1,500 years, and for a great part of that time their empires were more advanced than the west. It's only been one century since the Ottoman empire was dismantled, after all.",
"A common mistaken assumption is that all of these militant groups we find in the Third World are fighting for some well-thought out political agenda. In reality, many of them are glorified bandits, their leaders fighting for a much more shallow business interest (ie control of diamonds or coltan), and their ranks populated by easily misguided young men without many more productive opportunities in life. For that last reason alone, it could be hard to disarm them (ie put down their guns, so they could do what, dig dirt instead? In 100F+ heat, shitty pay?)",
"TIL nobody knows who the Al Qauda are, nor who they're fighting for",
"Why don't you ask mr. Bin Laden himself\n_URL_1_\nTL:DR \nIsrael\nhere is some guy explaining it really nice ex CIA\n_URL_0_\nnoone is going to blow himself up because girls go to school ",
"So that they can be in charge and be as corrupt as those who are already in charge. Simple they want power and will do anything to get it.",
"Watch the BBC documentary called \"the power of nightmares\"",
"They want everyone to be muslim and date goats.",
"It's important to point out, as well, that the type of Islam that Al Qaeda wants is a variant called Wahabism. Wahabism is, more or less, a strict and by most views corrupted vision of Islam. It is against anything western, as well as entertainment, education (unless it is Wahabi teachings), increased female roles in society. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Mos Def asked a similar question to Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie on Real Time with Bill Maher. [Watch](_URL_0_) their reply.",
"They fight for the legitimacy of the American military industrial complex, and it's right to exist.\n\nOh - you wanted a serious answer: They hate us for your freedoms.\n\n/s\n\nOn a really serious note, everything you've been told about the \"War on Terror\" and 'al qaeda' is a lie. Made up. Why do you think everything that happens in the terror world somehow goes full circle in supporting US interests? ",
"Read up on [Sayyid Qutb](_URL_1_) and [Ayman al-Zawahiri](_URL_0_). Qutb is the idealogical father of al-Queda, and Zawahiri was his best student and has been leader of al-Queda since 1998. bin Laden was just the money man and propaganda tool. The goal was to establish a world-wide caliphate under their interpretation of Sharia law. This was established 25 years before al-Queda was formed in 1988.",
"What was the Spanish inquisition for? (you don't follow my religion to the letter so now you must DIE!)\n\nYes, the US, went to their aid to help to defend against Russia, but to insinuate they're mercs hired by the CIA.. is just plain stupid. \n\nIt was simply a case of the old enemy of my enemy thing. \n\nHopefully, some day, we can just agree to disagree and be satisfied with some people believing A. some B, and some C.. personally, I'm a strong believer in Z!\n\nCan't we all just get along?",
"Wow. The comments here are mostly really wrong and ignorant.\n\nHere is what they want:\n\n1. US troops out of Saudi Arabia because it's a Holy place for Islam.\n\n2. An end to US support of Israel in the form of military aid and vetoes of UN resolutions against Israel. The US is one of the five veto powers in the UN and regularly vetoes general assembly resolutions against Israel. \n\n\nThey want other things too, but that is what they want specifically from the United States. ",
"Something I've always wondered. Being a Canadian and someone who pays little attention to the news here nor there. \n\nDoes the average member of Al Queda want me dead? Do the organizations?",
"The various terrorists will often create long and sometimes silly lists if demands, but it all basically boils down to one thing: the spread of western culture. The western culture bug has bitten countries all over the world, and it's reaching the middle east, much to their dismay. Ideas like women's rights (or allowing them to show their faces at all), free markets, individual liberties, consumerism, religious freedom, gay rights, the whole enchilada. It very much bothers them to see their youth thinking and acting in ways that aren't in line with their culture, and they point the finger of blame at America, who is sort of the poster child for western culture. \n\nThe sad thing is that before 9/11, it was a very, very small group of people who 1) hated western culture that much 2) blamed its spread on America, and 3) were willing to resort to terrorism to fix it. But after 9/11 and our massive invasions every which way in the middle east, Al Qaeda suddenly had a perfect recruitment tool, saying \"Look at what America is doing to your cities and governments! They must be stopped at all costs!\" Because this makes a much more compelling argument that \"our kids are copying American TV so let's blow shit up\", their numbers multiplied in the years following. \n\nTl;dr: It started as an intimidated hatred of American culture, but turned into a hatred of America's actions in the middle east. ",
"There was a redditor who wrote an interesting book that helps to explain Al Qaeda. It's called Tremble the Devil:\n\n_URL_0_",
"The bigger al qaeda is an invention by the US white house kept alive by the state department and it's accepted by various group in the middle east because it sounds kick-ass. It's just a general term for islamic militants.\n\nThere is actually a 'real' al queda now though, as in an organized cooperating grouping, but for some reason media are told to play that down and ignore it. it's ISIL, you can see their recognizable flag everywhere from the fighters in syria to the videos from boko haram and libya and mali.\n\nAnd now it's best for everybody including me you downvote me into oblivion. Thank you.\n",
"easy answer: US foreign policy",
"Al Qaeda is a jewish creation so we can fight wars for Israel. Here are some Jewish folk pretending to be American Al Qaeda. \n\n_URL_0_",
"To replace everyone's religion with their own by force. And kill people who dont agree with them.",
"Controlled and funded by the CIA through Saudi Arabia, acts as a platform for western involvement in the east. First it was the communists, now its the Muslims. ",
"Whatever the CIA tells them they are fighting for I'd imagine.",
"Back pay from the CIA. They are particularly upset with Orrin Hatch.",
"If the intention of the question is to understand what motivates fundamentalist groups like Al Qaeda then a better question would be 'What is Al Qaeda fighting *against*?' and the answer is not, as has so often been simply portrayed, 'our freedom'. I'm not setting out to apologise for these groups or demonise the West but it is naive to think they appeared out of nowhere, hellbent on world domination, as others in this thread have suggested. \n\nThese groups are a violent reaction to Western secular modernisation and globalisation in the language and conceptual framework of Islam. Their emergence can also not be separated from the geo-political meddling of Western States in the region and the legacies of European colonialism.\n\nA simple illustration of this point is the fact that the Nigerian Al Qaeda affiliate is called 'Boko Haram' meaning 'reject western teachings'. They are not called 'build Muslim empire'. \n\nSome context because we can't know nutin' without some context -\n\nThe Muslim world was at times through history more advanced than the West, it was a proud civilisation then was colonised by the more advanced European societies which was has left a major scar in the collective Muslim/Arabic consciousness. Imagine being told that your ways of life, your practices, your knowledge systems were backward and 'exotic'. \n\nFastfwd to 20th century - decolonisation and the rise of Arab Nationalist dictatorships. \n\nFundamentalist 'political Islam' is a modern phenomenon that has emerged in opposition to Arab Nationalism. The roots of Al Qaeda can be traced to the 20th century political Islam movements like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which formed in the 1920s as an alternative model and opposition to the ruthless Arab Nationalist governments that took over after the European empires collapsed. These Arab Nationalist governments (think Assads Syria, Mubaraks Egypt or Saddam Husseins Egypt) were secular one party states and while they were ruthless to their opposition they help to understand why 20th century Arab world wasn't torn apart by war. \n\nThese secular regimes were supported throughout the 20th century by the West and set about modernizing their respective countries and in large part did so. For much of the 20th Century countries like Syria and Iraq were in many ways egalitarian, modern nations with high literacy rates and good healthcare etc. \n\nBut they did not take kindly to opposition and despite being secular religion remained central to the way of life of many of the people in the region and became the language and framework through which opposition became organised and articulated. A rallying point to combat injustice for the disenfranchised. As groups like the Muslim Brotherhood became persecuted, they were radicalised and for that reason it is said that religious fundamentalism was born in the dungeons and torture chambers of the likes of Nasser's Egypt.\n\nFastfwd to the 80s and 90s and the west is propping up all sorts of dictatorships in the region, there is the situation in Palestine and so on. The Russians are at war with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, the latest of thousands of years of wars with foreign invaders etc. More than anything at this time the Islmaic thinking and indigenous practices were under threat as the 'McDonaldisation' of the world was well underway. \n\nEnough to really grind your gears - look at peaceful Muslim countries like Indonesia (the worlds biggest Muslim country) there isn't fundamentalism there. It is the product of war, foreign domination etc. \n\n\n\n",
"The American military industrial industry.",
"The fourteenth century. ",
"Nobody ever explains much in ELI5 like ELI5 should be.\n\nSo for argument's sake, I'm going to explain it like your five.\n\nal Qaeda is a Muslim religion group composed mostly of male believers. They believe in using all manner of extreme violence to get their message across.\n\nThey hate Western Culture. They hate the United States and they hate, more than the United States, Israel. Jews to al Qaeda are the worst and since the USA supports Jews, they hate the USA. They also hate the USA for being in the Persian Gulf.\n\nSo al Qaeda nas vowed to bring American soldiers to the Middle East to fight them in any way they can, which includes blowing up children so they can blow up soldiers.\n\nTheir leaders are cowards and instead of coming out in the open, they recruit many illiterate, poor people to commit the acts they want, such as suicide bombers. They then promise them if they do what they need, they'll help their families, which is a lie.\n\nAnd to any potential al Qaeda member reading this. Just remember that 'Great Satan' who you hate so much, you're using his Internet, his Reddit, his E-mail systems and his computer codes to communicate. \n\n",
"Al Qaeda - literally 'the base' - a reference to the CIA covert offensive operation against the USSR in Afghanistan in the 70's/80's and specifically the US training facility set up there at the time. I know what you're asking but literally and factually speaking Al Qaeda is the proxy militia of the CIA. Always have been. From Afghanistan to Bosnia to Saudi Arabia (9-11 operatives were nearly all from there remember, not Afghanistan) and now Syria and Lybia - they will be around as long black ops are in the budget and drugs are illegal.",
"Al-Qaeda was created by the CIA through Victor Brzezinski in 1979 in order to fight the Soviets. \n\nSince then the power elites in the West and the USA particularly have been using Al-Qaeda(which as former British foreign minister Robin Cook said is nothing more than a database of known mujaheddin and arms smugglers that were created by the CIA in the first place) to overthrow foreign governments and use that as an excuse to take away rights and freedoms at home all in the name of security. \n\nThe terrorist threat is mostly fake, and what little real threat there is is insignificant as you have 5x times more chance to get hit by lightning than die in a terrorist attack. \n\nMost terror attacks are staged and/or provocateured. To know more research **FALSE FLAG OPERATIONS** and do some research into operation Gladio, Northwoods and Gulf of Tonkin.",
"Al-Qaeda is now not just the group that bin-Laden created and led in the 90's and early 2000's. It can now be very crudely divided into the few remaining core members left and then its franchises. I will focus mostly on the former because the later have mostly local grievences.\n\nAl-Qaeda proper, the group founded and lead by bin-Laden and later his successor, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, gave many a rambling sermon regarding his grievances but the most important of them were political in nature. \n\nHe viewed many of the regimes in the Middle East as particularly beholden to Western interests or even puppets of them because of the oil they possess.\n\nFor instance, the US used to base a number of troops in Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda demanded that the US leave the peninsula, the land of the two holy places and surely not ground where troops of a secular, capitalist, power should be housed.\n\nAl-Qaeda and similar groups, it should be noted, view the corrupt regimes of the Middle East as just as bad if not worse than the US and Western Europe. But they also proffer that the US and Western Europe does much to keep those corrupt regimes in power, not a ridiculous claim.\n\nAl-Qaeda also, at least nominally, fights for justice in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'm unsure what their exact demands in this regard, but its safe to say they take issue with how Israel has conducted itself since its inception. \n\nVery simply, Al-Qaeda proper fights for the liberation of Muslims from the corrupt, US-backed regimes of the Middle East and the conclusion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which would be extremely favorable to the Palestinian people.\n\nIn a way what they demand is not so crazy. In fact many of the regimes in the Middle East ARE at least partially reliant on US assistance (military, not economic if we're talking about the Gulf) and are extremely repressive and corrupt. Additionally, any fair observer would say that the Palestinians have been pretty screwed over by Israel. \nOf course, what they want to replace the regimes with (a probably very repressive theocracy) would probably be no better, if not far worse, than the regimes already in place. Additionally (obviously), the tactics they employ are despicable. \n ",
"The foundations of al-qaeda were laid back when russia invaded afganistan - which was run by a group of people called the taliban. \n\nthe usa wanted to help the taliban defeat the communist russians - so they asked pakistan to act as a go-between and supply weapons and training to the taliban to help stop the march of the red russian army. it worked!\n\nthen iraq invaded kuwait. thinking they would also try to invade saudi the americans sent armies to saudi to help stop saddam and liberate kuwait. thus by gaining alot of powerful oil owning friends.\n\nosama argued that americans should not be allowed to defend saudi and instead take his taliban and do it. he was eventually assured that once saddam was stopped the americans would leave. \n\nsaddam and osama had very different thoughts on how islam should be. needless to say they didnt see eye to eye. \n\nso end of the war osama said the americans should go back now. the americans refused saying it was in the interests of the region for them to maintain a presence. the saudi govt also said this going back on the assurances they gave to osama. \n\nthe heirarchy was already set of al-qaeda in the form of osama and the taliban. he'd already proved himself as a very able general of a rag tag army and as such changed the objectives to troubling the americans to leave the saudi.\n\na fair few rich saudi's agreed with him and bank rolled the process. some saying that this money was also being given to him by none other than the saudi govt. \n\nthe al qaeda of today is now fighting to \"protect\" islam but only the islam that matches their school of thought. the top tiers of power have long been removed and now its a free for all al-qaeda with many factions that rarely talk to each other as one but still go under the same umbrella and some are put there by the media",
"DURKA JUERKA MUHHAMED JIHAD ALLAH FUK AMERIKA ",
"They're devout Muslims. Islamic theology commands that Muslims are supposed to fight the infidels until Allah's religion reigns supreme over the entire world. They want to overthrow governments that they view to be un-Islamic so that Islamic theocracies based on Islamic Sharia law can be erected in their place. They then want to unite these Islamic states under a Sunni Islamic empire called a Caliphate. Then they want to invade the rest of the world through imperialist jihads and force every single man, woman and child on this planet to live under Islamic Sharia law. \n\nThey also support mass Muslim immigration to infidel countries for the purpose of [subverting](_URL_4_) them from within and growing 5th column Islamic enclaves. \n\nThey believe that this ultimate global victory for Islam will bring on the end of days where the prophets of Islam like Jesus (they believe that Jesus and Old Testament prophets were actually Muslims whose teachings have been twisted by Jews and Christians) will come back to the Earth, destroy all of the Christian crosses, slaughter all of the Jews and send the disbelievers to hell and the good Muslims to heaven. \n\nThis isn't just al Qaeda ideology. This is orthodox Islamic theology. Which is why Islamic terrorism is so [common and widespread](_URL_3_) throughout the entire world. Muslims are just currently too weak to wage conventional imperialist jihads like they did in the past (the Caliphate was also abolished after WWI). That's why they've resorted to terrorism, insurgencies, unconventional warfare and various sorts of dawah (spreading the faith through aggressive and sophisticated proselytization) and taqiyya (lying to infidels when in a position of weakness for the purpose of cloaking their true intentions and protecting the cause). \n\nWatch some [lectures](_URL_1_) or read some of the [books](_URL_0_) by the much-maligned Robert Spencer of [Jihad Watch](_URL_2_). He's a courageous beacon of light on this issue. He's one of the few Islam experts with the courage to expose Islamic theology for how depraved it really is. He also exposes how the subversive Western Left [are in bed](_URL_5_) with Muslims. ",
"they're not. they're just an excuse for america to inflict imperialism on and rob countries of their resources worldwide, while trying to scare the shit out of americans into rationalizing said robbery. Also, we're backing al-qaeda in syria. It wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of the dudes attacking places and claiming it was al-qaeda are CIA spooks.",
"If you rearrange the letters in Al Qaeda, it actually spells out 'excuse we made up to perpetrate and prosper off of the military industrial complex on a global scale while keeping it ambiguous enough for the general complacent public to not question' -- somehow seems like extra letters got in that word jumble somehow, but you get what im sayin... ",
"Their right to party. Obvious.",
"I'm just wondering why they thought it would be a good idea for Al-Qaeda to attack via 9/11 if they wanted the U.S. out of their country. Did they not expect the U.S. to wage war?",
"The overarching goal of Islam is to Islamify the world. Their adherents follow the word of a 1400 year old delusional war monger. Please spare me your absolving of Islam by pointing out the deficiencies with Christianity or other religions. All religion is insane but Islam has a special place for itself on crazy bus.\n\nSource: I'm of Turk descent. Turkey is the most moderate, liberal an sensible muslim nation and among the younger generations Islam plays a minimal role in our lives but even we still have our islamist lunatics.",
"Nothing. There is no such thing as an Al Qaeda. Now, step away from the window. And go back to sleep. ",
"It used to be the expulsion of all non-Muslims from Arabia. Now, everyone who wants some publicity link themselves to the group and thus the goals are no longer set.\n\nEveryone has their own goal.",
"cia...that was pretty simple..",
"There is no Al Qaeda. There are of course militant groups that use that name. Our military industrial complex doesn't use that name in serious discussions. Of course the media uses that name. Politicians do.",
"First and foremost, they want US troops out of the Arabian Peninsula (specially Saudi Arabia/Qatar/Bahrain/Jordan and so on) \nSecond they want to remove the current Saudi kingship and replace it with more austere and hard-line form of fundamental Islamic rule (Salafi ideology).",
"Seriously? No one?\n\nEnemy of my enemy....\n\nAl Qaeda was original funded by the US government to fight our enemy (Russia) without directly intervening during the Afghan soviet War. We gave them weapons and money. That's how they went from small time \"community watch\" organization to multinational super cell.\n\n\n\nthis was our original intention, obviously. \n\n\nJust google it or watch Charlie Wilson's war if you find it hard to believe.\n\n",
"In addition to the commentary here, also consider anything by Michael Scheuer on the subject.\n\nI also highly recommend Faisal Devji's \"Terrorist in Search of Humanity\".",
"I don't think they know, now that [Iris is dead](_URL_0_).",
"the right to party!",
"Their goal is to rid the Islamic State of western influences. Therefore they must destroy the \"infidels\" (Western People/Culture) that is present in their native land, to re establish a true Islamic State where man made laws are replaced by religious and traditional secular laws aka Sharia Law. ",
"A [serious] tag would be nice. \"The right to party\" being every other comment is pretty fucking stupid.",
"Mustard. They love mustard. ",
"I don't think terrorists really fight \"for\" something, they rather fight against something.\n\nWhat counts with terrorism is the means not the ends. Al qaeda is big so they can shape their ends in whatever form they want to reach their goals and especially recruit people.\n\nI think overall Al qaeda is against american imperialism in general and how influential, powerful, christian nations tend to cause trouble to smaller poorer countries, which is an easy, simple, short, efficient opinion to get around with in the recent years, especially with situations like Israel, the 1991 Iraq wars, Iran plots, and how the US in general replaced some small governments.\n\nUnfortunately, some politicals beliefs of al qaeda can be matched with anti-imperial, anti-american sentiments throughout the world. Only of course, al qaeda uses money and violence to reach those goals.\n\nYou could say they fight \"for\" a muslim world, but I think they use extreme religious groups as a mean to recruit and indoctrinate people (extremism works pretty well on people with a lack of proper education), pretty much like the same political tactic any revolutionary like Fidel Castro used to get in power.",
"To put it really, really simply - they want to convert anyone who will listen to their absolute, stone age, literal interpretation of Islam, kill anyone who doesn't and their punishment for ignoring them is death.",
"For the C.I.A.",
"Shifty humans doing shifty human things because other shifty humans want to force their shifty human things on them and don't want to have the first group of shifty humans to force their shifty human things on them.\n\nDamn auto correct shifty=shitty",
"Whatever CIA tells them to",
"Also.. It is my understanding that one of the pillars of islam is preservation of the faith. Western influence is seen as a corrupting factor so radicalized faith groups (ala al qaeda) use particular tactics in an attempt to fight back (ala terrorism).",
"Imagine what you would do if there were numerous bombings in the US and your family was blown to pieces for nothing other than the invading force wanting to show they have the power to do so and to possibly target someone who you barely knew that had contact with someone who had contact with someone who they did not like.\n\nI am sure that most Americans would come out fighting and use guerrilla tactics to seek revenge against the enemy.\n\nAnyone can become a terrorist , at the moment a terrorist is described as anyone who either fights against insurgent american or allied forces or plans attacks in retaliation for their family being bombed into tiny pieces, how would you feel if Russia had the power to do what America is doing now in the middle east on American soil , having bombing runs on LA and San Fransisco and targeting schools and residential areas, how would your mind be twisted if walking home you saw babies bodies in pieces next to other children and woman's body parts and you recognized some body parts as those that belonged to your baby and wife and pre teen children. You would lose it and do anything to retaliate. Now imagine that this happened to you and those around you on a daily or weekly basis with no way to retaliate.\n\nThis I believe is one reason for terrorists, but then again many are funded by Saudi Arabia and Iran just to mess with US forces.",
"Al Qaeda is a group of particularly powerful people, who have a distorted interpretation of the Qu'ran. Their belief is that Allah is the only true god, (a reasonable belief, lots of christians and other religious people have similar beliefs) but they also believe that everyone should be Muslim, and they preach a global Jihad. Jihad can be interpreted in a number of ways, and most sensible muslims believe it to be a inner spiritual struggle. However, islamic extremists quote it as a \"holy war\" against \"the enemies of islam\".\n\nHowever, a lot of the people who fight for Al Qaeda do not have such archaic interpretations; they become members of the movement as it is one of the only ways to fight back against western powers who have been having their way with the middle east for years. Al Qaeda uses these people, preaching extremism to them, some of which is not even loosely based on the Qu'ran, manipulating them into terrorism and genocide.\n\nThe sad thing is, a lot of the people who turn to extremism are perfectly justified in their misery and desperation. It is up to the western countries (not just the US, but especially the US) to stop committing atrocities in the middle east, as all they are doing is fueling more hatred in the people who live there; who are in danger of turning to extremism as a potential solution.\n\nBasically, what Al Qaeda want is everyone to think the same way as them. By no means, should my opinion or your opinion of Islam be tainted by those who misuse it to manipulate people.",
"still doesn't matter, they are all anti-Merica faggots\n\n\n'Merica",
"A terrorist born Al Qaeda is not real. It is our creation in order to have an enemy to fight just as the Red Scare was not real. Business of war is the most profitable business and there are those that have become very rich off the blood of those that have died on both sides of this business model \"conflict\".",
"Al Qaeda is fighting for he CIA",
"There is no ELI5 for this sort of question, but I can try. \n\nAl Qaeda, specifically the more current active cells, have become more of an idea than an organization. This idea is more 'apparent' in one of their newer names \"Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant\". These organizations will traditionally have a extremist and political front (ie, the Nusrah Front in Syria and ISIL). It's also important to remember that AQ is Sunni Islam who are in a continuous battle against Shia Islam and western influence. Think of it like Republicans VS Democrats in the united states, there is a history of not getting along, but they both dislike Communism. So while they both fight each other, they are also against the spread of communism. Extremist Muslims will look for anything that might be seen as an act against their people. (ie, replacing a powerful position with a Shia when it was a Sunni leader previously)\n\nIn addition to these conflicts of interest, you also have major government support from different countries because it secures your borders and/or spreads your ideology. Iran who likes the idea of Shia Islam and Saudi Arabia who likes the idea of Sunni Islam. \n\nSo you could say that Al Qaeda is a way of life that Extremist Sunni's are willing to fight for. They use media to their advantage to show how oppressed they are and bait law enforcement into killing them so they can continue to recruit based off of this idea. As mentioned many times in this thread they desire a Caliphate, but it's an impossible destination because there are too many different ideas on how it would function and thus violence is the answer, because democracy doesn't change your religion and beliefs. ",
"Please do not downvote me until you have read the research and formed an opinion yourself:\n\n_URL_4_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_7_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_5_\n\n_URL_8_\n\n_URL_6_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR\n\nAl-Qaeda is fighting for whatever the CIA and the intelligence agencies want them to fight for, there is a lot of controversy over the actual legitimacy of the group as a whole. For no one has ever truly seen Al-Qaeda outside of what the Military Industrial complex corporately funded media machines tell them is Al-Qaeda, even though it very well may not be that group. It's a walking contradictory logical fallacy; and yet people swear up and down that they are the biggest threat to something because that's what the TV told them. I was tricked too!\n\nAll in all Al-Qaeda is simply a media and intelligence community creation used to steer public opinion for the War on (of) Terror.",
"The truth is being downvoted. They are created by the intelligence community as a cog in the machine. They are smoke and mirrors. \"\n\nAnybody saying otherwise has bought into the agenda and are compromised. ",
"_URL_0_\n\nWatch it.\n\n_URL_1_\n\nWatch that too.",
"For the right..... TO PAAAAAARTY! ",
"\"The United States of Fear\" is an excellent read on this issue. Highly recommended! ",
"Firstly, Al-Qaeda was made up by the American neo-cons post 9/11 to create an umbrella term for the \"terrorist network\" - Binladen never actually used the word Al-Qaeda.\n\nSecondly, Al-Qaeda is basically fighting for Islamic fundamentalism. They detest the western standard of living and seek to uphold the Quran as the political/social/economic standards by which we should live.\n\nI've just written a 3000 word essay on Islamic fundamentalism, if you need any further information I'll be more than happy to send you my bibliography.",
"The same thing the United states fights for, control. Since you know._URL_0_",
"This was a great question. I now understand a lot more about what's going on in the middle east. Thank you, bunnyhopskotch and thisisntnamman.",
"There are two types of organizations in this world (I'm generalizing because it's not really so black and white) -- those who want to see everyone get along with each other and grow as a species, and those who want to have control and power.\n\nHaving control and power in a small group or leader is starting to slowly become a little bit antiquated. Think back to the time of kings and queens and dictators. They want to rule their kingdom the way *they* want.\n\nNowadays, we have to learn to work together to take care of our planet. There's a physicist called Michio Kaku who talks about different types of civilizations. A type 0 civilization is one that still has civil wars, famine, uses fossil fuels and other planetary resources. A type 1 civilization is one that is peaceful, harnesses the power of the sun, controls the weather, etc.\n\nWe're on the verge of either becoming a type 1 civilization, but there are still lots of people who want to be dictators and rule people. These types of people are terrorists. Very simply put, Al Queda is a group that wants to control people instead of see everyone get along peacefully."
]
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[],
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"http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver"
],
[],
[
"http://m.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61144/l-carl-brown/the-far-enemy-why-jihad-went-global"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ncn5Q16N4",
"http://youtu.be/UXOslH6aM1E?t=48s"
],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahabi"
],
[
"http://youtu.be/fkmQpqCMyHc?t=42s"
],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayman_Zawahiri",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/Tremble-Devil-Anonymous-Author-ebook/dp/B004R1QBN8"
],
[],
[],
[
"http://youtu.be/GsUtvOW6SR0"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.amazon.com/The-Truth-About-Muhammad-Intolerant/dp/1596985283",
"http://www.c-span.org/video/?199391-4/book-discussion-politically-incorrect-guide-islam-crusades",
"http://www.jihadwatch.org/",
"http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/",
"http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1235",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu4UAG3XHIE"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OVv-J-LXQU&feature=kp"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/10/ghost_wars_how_reagan_armed_the",
"http://newsone.com/1205745/cia-osama-bin-laden-al-qaeda/",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8mvjLgt7Hg",
"http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0228",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA%E2%80%93al-Qaeda_controversy",
"http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/09/sleeping-with-the-devil-how-u-s-and-saudi-backing-of-al-qaeda-led-to-911.html",
"http://www.whale.to/b/alqaeda.html",
"http://www.globalresearch.ca/al-qaeda-and-the-war-on-terrorism/7718",
"http://www.rense.com/general73/cia.htm"
],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Lam9V_9tE",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjtb22sxSuc"
],
[],
[],
[],
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"https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=nkCLU66hEoGP8gGzj4B4&url=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DDqn0bm4E9yw&cd=1&ved=0CCkQtwIwAA&usg=AFQjCNH1LjzZPH-QeV53F9g_IWt4y7o6IQ"
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4gzeho | why does styrofoam melt when it comes into contact with superglue/adhesives? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gzeho/eli5why_does_styrofoam_melt_when_it_comes_into/ | {
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"Super glue and other adhesives contain some organic solvents (e.g. acetone, ethyl acetate). Styrofoam is made from thousands of styrene molecules linked together. Styrene by itself really wants to dissolve in these organic solvents, but since so many of them are linked together it can't because it's simply too big. So instead of dissolving, you get melting effect."
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||
1y9sro | how do services like pandora and spotify work | I was wondering how a service like Pandora makes money if they have to buy the rights to all of the music that they have. When as far as I know not many people purchase the paid version. Same thing applies to Spotify. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y9sro/eli5_how_do_services_like_pandora_and_spotify_work/ | {
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"same way any business operates. sell it for more than you buy it.\n\nif it costs $10,000 for Pandora to buy the rights for a song, and they play it on 1million users and get advertising $0.01 per play, then that's profit."
]
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21c9ta | putting down animals in zoo | why do Zoo put down healthy animals? for example in Denmark recently they put down healthy giraffe and 4 lions
thank you for answer | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21c9ta/eli5putting_down_animals_in_zoo/ | {
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"Did you read the rest of the article? They explained exactly why they did it.\n\nThey didn't have the money to relocate the animals, and the new animals they were getting would have killed the old animals -- euthanasia makes a little more sense than a zoo snuff show.\n\nIt's more important to look at the population of the species as a whole than any one individual animal -- with regards to the species as a whole, the zoo was doing exactly what it should."
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a2ai3x | why is it easier to fall asleep to background noise (radio, tv etc.) than just the plain dark? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a2ai3x/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_fall_asleep_to/ | {
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"In my experience, a little background noise (white noise) helps cut out any outside noise that might wake you up ",
"This happens because when there's noise around us we feel that someone is near us.\nThus we feel safe and can let go of the tension and fall asleep.\nThis is an evolutionary thing and has been embedded in our DNA. Humans are primarily social animals and keep each other safe.",
"If everything is silent, you are able to hear every noise - the person walking past outside, a family member moving about and other fairly normal noises become prominent and obvious, so you hear them and have to decode them to figure out of they are dangerous - you are deciding whether you need to kick in your 'fight or flight' response and act, or whether the sound is normal and not a worry - for example whether the sound of someone walking past is your neighbor coming home from a bar late at night, or someone nefarious lurking outside your house. Is that humming noise the natural sound of the fridge, or is it something that has been left on accidentally?\n\nWhite noise (or other familiar sound) covers all of this up and let's you relax - if you cannot hear the sound of someone walking past outside over the natural sound in your home then you won't have to go through the evaluation process to determine if it is a danger or not.",
"Another reason is because of hearing damage. If you have tinnitus you might hear a constant sounds that aren’t there; often a high pitched ringing or whine. Background noise can cover this perceived sound and be more comfortable for sleeping. ",
"All of the other comments are totally accurate, but I'm surprised no one's said this: When it's completely silent, many people's brains make an attempt to fill the void with thoughts. So, instead of sleeping, you're now having an existential crisis, or wondering what would've happened if you asked that one girl out, in 3rd grade."
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c1abiu | how are amputees able to control the fingers in their bionic arm ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c1abiu/eli5_how_are_amputees_able_to_control_the_fingers/ | {
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"Conventional myoelectric prostheses, what 99% of the bionic hands on the market use, are controlled by two inputs. Two sensors on the forearm (in the case of a below elbow amputee) pick up muscle signals. The amputee can either open or close the hand. Programming in the hand and using a variety of combinations of input codes can trigger different grips. For example, triggering open and close at the same time can engage one grip. Holding an open signal for a fixed time can trigger another grip. Sending a very fast/strong open signal can teigger a third grip. Same with a close impluse. \n\nWith practice, it can become somewhat natural. \n\n\nPattern recognition uses many more electrode sensors to pickup more fine movements that can directly pickup more detailed inputs from the remaining muscles, but it still is not at the individual finger control level yet. \n\nTo control 5 individual fingers of flexing and extending. You need 10 different inputs. This level of detail is only possible with inplanted electrodes. To control every joint of each finger like you can with your natural hand, you will need about 35 different inputs.",
"The company I work at actually exclusively works on this!\n\n/u/WashingtonFierce post is incorrect, we do not yet have commercial technology designed specifically to physically interact with the brain and detect limb movement. The amount of time, money, and risk is prohibitively monumental. Imagine being an ethics review board member having to review an experiment about splitting a subject's head open to insert a sensor that you may or may not know will work effectively and reliably unless you try.\n\n/u/TheLazyD0G has more or less explained it correctly, and I can add some additional info.\n\n* Your brain sends signals to nerves in the arm, and the nerves are connected to the arm muscles. What actually happens when your arm muscle contracts is a bunch of sodium and Potassium ions moving about the cell walls of your muscles. Since these ions have positive charges to them, their movement generates a very very tiny voltage. The two sensors that sit in the prosthetic socket and touch the forearm are sensitive enough to pick up this change in voltage. This concept is called [EMG](_URL_1_).\n\n* [So depending on the voltage change, the sensors can detect how hard you're flexing, or even at all.](_URL_2_)\n\n* [The way the hands are programmed are in that they cycle through different pre-set grip modes, and the patient can only open and close them in the different modes.](_URL_0_) The bebionic3, for example, you start out in Tripod grip (so you only close index, middle, and thumb) and can only close and open in that formation. You have to press the button on the back to change to Power grasp, and then you can only open and close them in a fist. You then have to press the button, AGAIN, to go into another grip, say Precision grasp, and then you can only open and close the thumb and index finger together. In a sense, they're just hand-shaped swiss army knives.\n\n\n\n* The patient opens and closes them by flexing their limb in one direction or another. Imagine flexing your wrist towards your chest. That's close. Now flex your wrist away from you. That's open.\n\n* This can get tedious (how many times did I have to press the button?) and can get frustrating if you make a mistake in a high-pressure situation (e.g. getting change into your wallet after the cashier hands it to you)\n\n* The pattern recognition that /u/TheLazyD0G mentions attempts to use multiple (3+) sensors and machine learning to have the arm change the grip based on which hand gesture you trained it to do earlier. However, this concept is still bogged down by the hand's programming of only changing between different pre-set gestures.\n\n* We have not yet achieved the level of fineness in detecting individual finger movements, largely to the concept of \"Crosstalk\". With the current size of these skin sensors, the region of muscle they observe can't distinguish whether a movement was for one finger versus another. Implantable sensors can theoretically solve this issue, but research into them so far have been very preliminary.\n\nLet me know if you have other questions!",
"Depends on the exact type of bionic arm; but in general, the bionic limbs got sensors somewhere in the body (sometimes at the stump itself, sometimes elsewhere in the body) that measures either muscle contraction or nerve/neuron activity directly and interprets the different signals into limb position or movement velocity. Some variations are more intuitive to control than others, but in general over time the person learns how to control it with a bit more dexterity.",
"None of y’all ELI5. Either that or your 5 year olds are are intellectual prodigy.\n\nAhem...\n\nNERVES AND WIRES.\n\nWe control our fingers with NERVES like we control most things in our body.\n\nNerves are like wires that go down our arms from our brain to our fingers in a bundle.\n\nIf we loose an arm by accident, the wires are still in our arm bit we still have, they just don’t go to any fingers anymore. The best doctors find the out these finger control wires... nerves... and make them go to the arm muscles on the arm bit that we still have instead.\n\nNow when we think of moving our fingers, our arm skin moves instead, just a little bit.\n\nThey make the robot arm scan the real arm where the wires have been put by the doctor to move the skin! The cup bit where it attaches has the sensors.\n\nWhen the robot arm senses the arm skin make a move, it moves the robot fingers instead!\n\nThey swap the lost human wires in the arm with robot WIRES!\n\nEDIT: Thx for the gold stranger! First one! I need to find the ELI5 for what it means now..."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromyography",
"https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Igor_Stirn/publication/254229319/figure/fig3/AS:393234309238792@1470765773723/Energy-envelope-of-the-rectified-EMG-signal-of-LD1-of-three-consecutive-muscle.png"
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3srgnb | why haven't we seen the us (and its partners in the fight against isis) engage in a siege of raqqah, the "de facto capital of isis"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3srgnb/eli5_why_havent_we_seen_the_us_and_its_partners/ | {
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"Isis doesn't wear uniforms, man. They blend in with civilians, that is their defence tactic. Raqqah has a population of like 300k, how many more innocents need to die ?",
"1. Raqqa is surrounded by other territories controlled by Islamic State, so to surround it you need to fight IS on at least two fronts (both sides of the Euphrates).\n\n2. Any effective form of siege could have to involve cutting off food, water, or electricity, which would result in massive civilian casualties and would be a PR disaster. Remember, IS is already surrounded by countries that are hostile to it, the softest of which is Turkey which still tries to prevent them from using the border. They manage to get weapons and soldiers despite this.\n\n3. No one wants another war. America is tired from Iraq and Afghanistan, and Russia still has bad memories from Afghanistan and Chechnya.\n\n4. Surrounding Raqqa would involve putting American troops in Syrian soil. America does occasional special forces raids into Syria (two that I can think of off the top of my head), but long-term troop deployments is something else entirely. It would be a diplomatic nightmare.\n\n5. Raqqa is arguably not the most important city in the Islamic State. Their military equipment is spread everywhere, and the city of Mosul is larger and more important. Raqqa is only the capital because it is the first big city they captured. \n\n6. There are already powerful groups fighting ISIS, including but not limited to: Jaysh al-Islam, the Army of Conquest coalition, Iraqi government, Syrian government, the SDF and New Syrian Army, Iraqi Kurdistan, YPG, PKK, FSA, and Hezbollah. For foreign governments, it is easier to simply support one of these groups with weapons or airstrikes. "
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7m4e2p | when did the storefront name of "arcade" go from being a kids' video-game hangout, to being an 18+ slot machine parlour? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7m4e2p/eli5_when_did_the_storefront_name_of_arcade_go/ | {
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"It happened due to home gaming consoles.\n\nOlder redditor here. I used to play the quarter-munchers back in the days before everyone with teens or kids had at least a couple game consoles... and the earlier generations were really shitty. So you'd go to the \"pinball arcade\" to play games with much better features like actual voices, graphics that didn't look like potato-splats, and... pinball.\n\nFast forward to when the average 15 year old that finds they have an interest in electronic games has their own Steam account or PS4 or XBOne, and the biggest source of quarter-by-quarter funding for \"arcades\" dried up. So, with the exception of a few that feed our senses of nostalgia, they largely went out of business.\n\nSo the word \"arcade\" was ripe for repurposing... and they did that by assigning it to legal-gambling slot machines instead because a lot of gambling addicts and participants drop WAY more money into those machines so it's a viable business mode.\n\nBut why \"arcade\"? Before it was \"video arcade\" it meant \"penny arcade\", which meant coin-operated devices. With the exception that they now use bills or tokens instead, it's still currency-operated... and so the term still very much applies."
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308jls | what is the difference between readings books (any kind) and reading various reddit articles/threads? | Assuming you don't look at any advice animals or funny pics, etc. and it's all reading, what's going on in your head between the two?
Also, besides looking at a screen (blue light) and a physical book. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/308jls/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_readings/ | {
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"Reddit posts & articles are usually fairly short. There's not a lot of depth or nuance going on - especially the front page, which is full of image, memes and other such easily digestible things (not to mention all the articles that get commented on by people who never read the link).\n\nA book, or long-form article requires more commitment & attention paid to it. It's able to express more complex ideas, commit more time to them & explore themes in more depth.\n\nHaving reddit as your primary reading source is like eating candy & stacks instead of eating a full meal."
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b5s4wd | why can paying off your student loans hurt your credit score? it seems like it would be a good thing. | Any information that would help explain credit scores would be very much appreciated. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b5s4wd/eli5_why_can_paying_off_your_student_loans_hurt/ | {
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"Part of a credit score is being able to prove you can pay off debt, which requires having debt to begin with. That’s why people who have never had a credit card or loan generally don’t have good credit. Without any debt, you can’t prove you have the ability to pay it off, hence the lower score.\n\nTo summarize, lots of debt = bad / no debt = bad / some debt = good",
"Making payments on time on your student loans is good. Everything in your credit report ages out over time. The day you make your last payment is the local maximum for your credit score, if you don't have any other transactions. Years later, your score will be lower, because your last good report will be older.\n\nSo, if you run off to be homeless in the forest and live your life with cash, you don't have a very good credit score. This sorta makes sense, you might be an anti-social nutcase that wouldn't pay back the money if someone loaned it to you. It's not proof you are, but it's uncertainty that you might.\n\nSo, you need to make sure that there are good reports every month. And you need to relationship between the credit limit and the actual payments is favorable. There are many, many weights used in the calculation, all of which are proprietary to keep people from gaming the system.",
"A credit score is an indicator of how good a customer you would be to creditors. Part of that is proving that you can pay your bills on time, which is why missed payments or having too much debt can cause damage to a credit score. But another part of it is showing that you're actually willing to take on debt in the first place, and proving that you can manage it and pay it. So if you're ever in a position where you have no debt whatsoever, it can adversely affect your score as well. After all, creditors want to know that you'll actually be a customer - someone who never takes anything on credit is someone they'll never earn money from.\n\nThis means that there's a weird limbo where having too much debt is bad and having too little debt is also bad. If you're hoping to improve your credit score, having some debt - like a car loan or modest credit card usage - is important, because it helps establish you as a customer that people should want to lend to.",
"A [search](_URL_0_). Near but not identical threads.",
"Paying off student loans early doesn't \"hurt\" your credit score, but it does have an opportunity cost where your credit score could have been higher if you would have paid them over time. \n\nSomeone that has made consistent and regular payments for 10+ years is more valuable than someone that zeroed their loans 5 years ago and hasn't had to keep steady payments since. \n\nThe bank KNOWS the 10+ year guy can handle regular payments and has a proven track record of making sure there's always enough in the checking account to make his payments, even if they're unemployed. \n\nThe 5 year guy is probably good too, but the bank doesn't KNOW if he can keep his payments regular. For all they know he's a chronic gambler that got lucky 5 years ago and paid off his debts. If they give him a loan today he could go lose it all on black at the casino and miss payments. \n\nWith all that said, pay off your loans in order of highest interest. If you're under 30 everything you buy is going to be debt financed anyway, so you're going to be building a history no matter what. Just be smart and zero the 20% credit card before zeroing your 3% student loans. ",
"The most important thing to know here is that there's a common misconception of what a credit score actually means. \n\nMany people think it's a number that says if you repay your debts. And while that's true it's not the only reason the score exists.\n\nThe score is actually a store representing how likely the lender is to make money from you. A big part of that is the likelihood that you will default (therefore the bank loses the money they lent you). But also if you repay loans before significant interest is paid, the bank doesn't make any money off the transaction. \n\nThis is the key. Pay off your loans early and the bank won't make any money off you. That makes you a bad customer because they are not likely to make much profit. Loans always have costs, there's an innate risk but also the money they spend to evaluate the transaction and determine if they want to lend you money. If you constantly repay loans before the banks can recoup those costs, you actually become someone they don't want to lend money too!\n\nSo the credit score is a score the bank can look at and ask themselves \"if we loan this guy money, will we make a profit in the deal?\". The truth is that the actual score is far too little information for most banks and most take the actual underlying data on your credit report and use it to generate their own internal score for you as a client. But the ultimate indicator is not exclusively the risk of default, it's the potential for profit. Defult is just one element of profit potential.",
"Paying off your student loans won't hurt your credit very much, and its not something you should worry about.\n\nif you are making a payment on time every month, that shows you are reliable. Once the loan is repaid, you are no longer making a monthly payment. You might have become unreliable. Maybe you lost your job. Its hard for the bank to know. Unknown = risk. Risk = lower credit score.\n\nI don't think you'll see this affect if you have other bills and pay those bills on time.\n\n"
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2ppwgh | when i'm tired, every now and then i will go through bouts of extreme drowsiness where i can't even keep my head up and eyes open, but after about 5-10 minutes i am awake again and completely fine. what are these cycles and how do they work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ppwgh/eli5when_im_tired_every_now_and_then_i_will_go/ | {
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"Could be a bunch of things, but generally that's not normal. Could be blood sugar or blood pressure drops, narcolepsy, etc... Should see a doctor.\n\nIn my case, this would go on for an hour or two every couple days. I had a 3x2 inch tumor (what they call a \"schwannoma\", noncancerous) in my neck that was butted against my spine, putting a ton of pressure on surrounding nerves, and causing fatigue. Since I had it removed last month I no longer have these issues.",
"This can't be as abnormal as other posters are making it out to be. I experience the same problem sometimes if I did not get much rest the night before and I am doing something uninteresting. I try to think about how important it is that I stay awake in a meeting with my boss, for example, but sometimes I find it legitimately impossible to keep my eyes open, so I pinch myself ceaselessly until I wake up...",
"wait, this isn't normal? This happens on a regular basis to me, especially if I'm driving. I just get really, REALLY sleepy. If someone then starts talking to me, the drowsiness dissappears completely, almost right away. Shots of adrenaline, like from my tires hitting the rumble strips only jerks me up for about 30sec, then it's like it never happened (ie. back to feeling sleepy). I'd love an answer to why this happens, and if it's not actually a normal thing...",
"I know this feeling. You just battle it out, and then if you managed to stay awake, you're back to normal. \n\nI think its a mix of boredom, heat and exhaustion. If you're driving, sing along to your favorite songs, roll windows down or pull over and nap.",
"Like others have said, it could be a lot of things. I imagine a lot of people's fatigue is diet based. Usually after a meal there's a spike in blood sugar, depending on the meal and the composition of the meal. Meals high in sugar will jack up the blood sugar. You will be pretty energetic. The body will overcompensate and release a ton of insulin, plummeting the blood sugar. This will make you woozy and what not. The body will then try and correct the aggressive over correction, releasing glucagon, bringing the blood sugar back up to normal levels. ",
"It could be one of two things I'd say.\n\n1) Basic Rest and Activity Cycles.\n\nIn humans, the BRAC cycle seems to last 90-120 minutes. The first 75-100 minutes are a period of alertness and activity, with the last 15-20 minutes of the cycle being a period of marked somnolence, a dreamy (day-dreamy), drowsy state of consciousness. It is thought to be the inverse of the sleep cycles, where SWS and REM occur in similar 90 minute intervals.\n\nThe purpose of the BRAC cycle may have to do with brain electrolyte restoration. The rhythm has been found on EEG readings of the brain. It is also present in other animals. My personal experience suggests that these rhythms are very suggestible, sometimes unnoticeable if not absent at times. At other times, they can be like clockwork. It depends on what you're doing at the time, and your general state of health I'm sure.\n\n2) Microsleeps.\n\nIn states of marked sleep deprivation, humans can enter states of microsleep. These are very short episodes of sleep, lasting seconds on occasion. Whether or not they are beneficial or just side effects of sleep deprivation is unknown.\n\n",
"Jeez, people trying to spout claims of cancer and trying to prescribe drugs for this completely normal occurrence. This is normal, OP. Many people do not let themselves get tired enough to experience this, but those that have gone long stretches without sleep and had a period of minimal activity/movement/thought will know exactly what you're talking about.\n\nI don't have the correct terms off the top of my head, but I can assure you that there is nothing unusual about this.\n\nPart of you is trying to enter sleep, but you consciously decline the aggressive offer.",
"I have suffered something similar for as long as I can remember now. I could fall asleep in a cold hall curled up in a doorway in under 5 mins. I sleep for 10hrs without difficulty, love my bed and feel as though I could sleep for a 100 years. I constantly feel like im dragging my body around behind me. There are only two times in my life when i have felt 'full of beans' and full of energy. I regularly have to pull over for a sleep and this excessive tiredness makes me short tempered, miserable and has been a constant pain my entire life. Fucking sucks.",
"_URL_0_ \n \n\nIts called a micronap or microsleeping and it means that you're internally exhausted but you keep telling your brain to stay awake. So, during boring or times where your brain doesn't have to \"work hard\" or focus, it nods off for brief moments of time. (Because its tired and wants to sleep.) This is prone to happening while we are doing activities that we are very comfortable with and don't require a lot of movement. (Driving, Watching T.V., Games, etc. ) If this is happening to you, you need to caatch up on some back sleep. If not, you're gonna go into sleep debt. \n \n_URL_1_",
"Same thing happens to me but I also have narcolepsy",
"I used to have these symptoms. Turns out that I have sleep apnea. If you snore when sleeping you may have sleep apnea as well. After getting treatment for it, I no longer get bouts of drowsiness. You might get yourself checked out.",
"I'm sure it's correlated to brain wave activity. Think of a car's engine. You press on the accelerator, and when you reach a certain speed, you lower the pressure on the pedal. After a bit, especially in older engines, you'll lose speed and have to press the accelerator again. If you're not paying attention, you might accidentally go from 60mph down to 45 and not even notice. Your brain goes through the same struggle. A tired brain is analogous to an old engine. Like you, it tries to maintain the 60mph (beta frequency / alert work). If your brain is too tired to keep up, it slows down to 50 mph (alpha / calm, steady work and thought). If you stay in that relaxed state, you'll eventually hit 40mph (theta state /drowsiness and heavy-headedness), and from there go down to 15mph (delta waves / deep sleep). \nYour brain can't maintain 60mph beta alertness for too long either since it burns alot of gas (calories), but it's much less efficient if it didn't get the proper maintenance (sleep).",
"Are you overweight? I had similar symptoms - falling asleep at my desk, in meetings, etc. - and was diagnosed with Sleep Apnoea. That's fairly serious. I've since lost about 70 pounds and I sleep like a baby. I feel great every day now. You should probably talk to your doctor about this, rather than reddit.",
"Man, a lot of people are really eager to diagnose sleep disorders. \n\nFor the record, I don't think you are describing narcolepsy, sleep apnea, or anything like that. It sounds more like you are talking about a [liminal state](_URL_0_).\n\nMost of the time someone uses that term they are talking about life changing events or religious experiences. But it just means \"threshold\" and you sometimes hear it used to refer to the state between waking and sleeping.\n\nWhen we think of sleeping we tend to think of it as a very smooth process where our conscious minds just switch off. It doesn't quite work that way. It's more of a fuzzy cycling process between awake and asleep. For the first few minutes of sleep you bounce in and out of wakefulness. This happens every time. You just don't remember it. Why?\n\nEr, well, because it takes right around 30 minutes before short term memories can be converted into long term memories. If this process is disrupted, say by going to sleep, you just lose the memories. So that last memory you have before going to sleep was not the last moment you were conscious. That could have taken place up to half an hour after that point.\n\nBut, as I was saying, your brain and your body start settling into a more relaxed state. As this happens and you drift in and out of sleep, the periods of waking get shorter and shorter and the periods of sleeping get longer and longer.\n\nIt doesn't just end there, either. During the entire night you'll repeat this process over and over again. Around every 90 minutes or so in fact. You drift down into sleep from waking, bouncing in and out, and gradually settle into a deeper sleep. Then you start waking back up. You may actually even wake up briefly but, again, if it is less than 30 minutes you'll forget it. Back down you go. \n\nSo, back to your original question, what you are probably experiencing is that moment where your body is drifting to sleep. You may even have been asleep for a moment (someone else mentioned microsleeps and that's sort of right but most of the time someone talks about microsleep they are actually referring to when chronically exhausted people may fall asleep for a few seconds to a few minutes and wake up during a normal waking period). You were doing something that caused your brain to relax and you started the process of going to sleep. However, when you drifted back out you interrupted that cycle and forced your brain and body into a higher activity level. Since you are forcing yourself to be awake for long enough for the memories to transfer to long term memory, this time you recall your dozing off state. \n",
"Perhaps your body is saying you need sleep so it starts release melatonin, which makes you sleepy. When it realizes you are not going to be sleeping it stops releasing melatonin and you become less drowsy. Probably similar to how you are still sleepy when you first wake up. "
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2olx19 | suitjacket, sportcoat, and blazer? which situation calls for which jacket? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2olx19/eli5_suitjacket_sportcoat_and_blazer_which/ | {
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"Sport coats have patterns, unlike blazers, which are solid and have contrasting buttons. Suit jackets are smooth, have tonal buttons, and should never be worn with anything other than matching suit trousers.\n\n",
"Generally, suit for formal occasions, sport coat in winter and blazer with light slacks in spring or all year if you're a frat boy. ",
"suit jacket - this one will have matching pants so its best for business \nsportcoats - this one is also good for business, especially young prof. who want more bang for their buck (you can mix up the pants to create more looks). \nblazer - these tend to be just like sportcoats - but are navy in most cases. Also can be dressed up or down. \n\nTL;DR - sportcoat/blazer casual, and suit jacket less casual (tho not formal) ",
"Have you tried this question on the folks over at /r/malefashionadvice?",
"I was taught a little differently growing up about suits, sport coats, and blazers. \n\nAgreed with previous posters: suit coats should only be worn with matching suit pants. Generally worn with a collared button down shirt like an Oxford. Many variations of ties (long, bow, bolo) or no tie/ascot acceptable. Generally darker cool colors, greys, and blacks. \n\nSport coats are generally a different color than the slacks and are often worn for morning events or sporting events. It is acceptable to wear suit pants with a sport coat, but generally lighter color slacks are worn with sport coats. Never black. \n\nBlazers are often solid or a heavier weave pinstripe and are most commonly paired with more casual bottoms such as chinos, khakis or jeans. Blazers may have elbow patches and lapels of a different pattern/fabric. Blazers can be worn any time. \n\nFor true formal occasions, none of these are appropriate menswear: tuxedo only. \n\nThis info is probably no longer in style or correct and was handed down from my grandfather and great uncle when I was young. "
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3yvmjh | why are so many large companies headquartered in minneapolis? | A handful of people have asked before about Silicon Valley, or NYC... Those places make sense, because of the reputation and availability to network. But nobody (at least, nobody I've asked about this) think "Oh, best place for corporate headquarters? Obviously Minnesota."
Even southern regional staples like Dairy Queen and Whataburger have headquarters there, and the latter even moved FROM Texas, where they were originally... Why would such southern companies choose to have headquarters in a region they dont even do business in? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yvmjh/eli5_why_are_so_many_large_companies/ | {
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"Minneapolis has a well educated population, the standard amenities of a major city, is a hub for a major airlines, has a high livability index, and still maintains a relatively low cost of living compared to other major cities."
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a88scv | why are b.c. (before christ) and a.c. (after christ) the reference points we have chosen to use for historical measure, as opposed to any other major historical event? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a88scv/eli5_why_are_bc_before_christ_and_ac_after_christ/ | {
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"Nowadays you often see “BCE” which stands for “Before the Common Era.” “BC/AC” was just a handy reference since many Western historians were/ are Christian. ",
"In the rest of the non-Christian world other systems are used. In fact entirely different calendars are used.\nHowever due to the outsized influence of Christian based European countries, much of the world also uses the European based calandar for commerce. ",
"Because Christians in Europe were the one who brought that system to much of the rest of the world when they explored and colonized and plundered it. Other local systems kept being used but the benefits of a more or less unified calendar that worked well and was sued by everyone else won out in the end.\n\nCurrent alternatives that are still used include the Hebrew calendar and the Islamic calendar which count from the beginning of the world (not really) and the birth of the prophet Mohamed respectively. They are not as appealing to wider use because the Hebrew calendar sort of has no fixed length and the Islamic calendar is lunar based which does not really work as well in latitudes were season are an important thing.\n\nSome places like North Korea have taken the Gregorian calendar (because it works) slapped traditional local names on the months and set the Year one to be based on the birth Kim Il-sung.\n\nMany places have a traditional calendar that only gets used for festivals and religious rites and use the normal Gregorian calendar for everything else."
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7h4fr1 | if most psychopaths become psychopathic due to their childhood or a birth defect, why are most psychopaths male? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7h4fr1/eli5_if_most_psychopaths_become_psychopathic_due/ | {
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"Because contrary to what you might have been told, gender is not actually a social construct. Our brains are wired differently, and when they malfunction, they malfunction in different ways. Just like women are much more likely to suffer from unipolar depression, men are more likely to become psychopaths.",
"The debate about whether psychopaths are the result of nature vs nurture is still very much ongoing.\n\nIf and to the extent it is due to nature then the sex difference in psychopathy is likely to be due to the sexual dimorphism in the brain. Both women's and men's brains are mainly formed by estrogen, but the male estrogen is slightly different than the female estrogen because the estrogen in men is due to conversion of testosterone.\n\nIf and to the extent it is due to nurture then it is likely to be due to differences in how we raise boys vs girls. For example the amygdala - the center for emotions - is about 18% smaller for psychopaths. But newer research shows that the brain structure itself is due to the how we use the brain, especially in the formative years. The neural pathways we use as kids are the neural pathways that will dominate our brains as adults. Research shows that a young child dressed up as a boy receives less affection than a child dressed as a girl, and this will affect both personality development and brain structure.",
"1. first of all psychopathy isnt a term used in psychology anymore.\n2. What you may be referring to is anti social disorders\n3. I personally think its a nature thing\n4. Sexism affects men, believe it or not\n5. The role of a \"man\" in our society might be more financially lucrative, but there are many downsides\n6. Men and boys are expected to be emotionless. People tell 4 year old boys to stop crying and act like \"men\" that might mess a kid up in the future if it happens frequently\n7. This directly relates to the idea of \"an emotionless killer\" women are allowed to have emotions in our society, men are not\n8. This explains why most serial killers are men\n9. Fun fact, if a person is raised without social contact in their formative years, they cannot function properly later on and it cannot be fixed and many end up in homes for the mentally ill. This really shows how much environmental factors have an impact on young people, how suppressing boys emotions might have a large impact in their future selves",
"I don’t think most psychopaths are male, I think most psychopaths *we hear about* are male. Basically society encourages men to be violent. When you hear about psychopaths on the news it’s because they have done something horrible like murder, and since men are more prone to violence the psychopath in question will most likely be male. I’m sure the psychopathic women are out there— just not committing any terrible newsworthy crimes."
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a9k4bp | what makes our ears ‘clog’ in high altitudes and what makes them pop by yawning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a9k4bp/eli5_what_makes_our_ears_clog_in_high_altitudes/ | {
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"Im pretty sure when there’s low air pressure it messes around with how your inner ear functions and yawning sorta stretches it making it “pop”.",
"Air in your middle ear is at a higher pressure than the surrounding air; popping is allowing that air to equilibrate with surrounding air (via a connection to the throat).",
"When you go from a lower altitude to a higher altitude, the ambient air pressure decreases. Because the air inside of your eardrum is semi-trapped (you can clear them) it expands as you go higher and puts pressure on the eardrum. When you yawn/chew/etc it helps open up the eustachian tubes that go from the backside of your eardrum to your throat and equalize the pressure.\n\nSource: I have 2200+ skydives and had to clear my ears a lot. "
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8y3rcf | why are surgical gowns, masks, and gloves green or blue? | Wouldn't white be a better color since doctors usually wear a white coat and white provides better contrast with red color of blood. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8y3rcf/eli5_why_are_surgical_gowns_masks_and_gloves/ | {
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"They used to be white. There's a sort of 'surgeon legend' about the green being used because it was easier to see in a surgical field (brightly lit + whites = too bright). But then also that green/blue is actually opposite red and makes it easier to see blood. But I think it's kind of one of those \"was written down somewhere once\" and became cannon type of things. Whether it's true or not. ",
"I was always told it was so you wouldn't notice the reverse color image that's been burned into your retinas after staring at a brightly lit, blood red surgical field for hours when you glance away from the field. "
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6qrwya | why does it seem easier to get stuck in a comfort zone as an adult? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qrwya/eli5_why_does_it_seem_easier_to_get_stuck_in_a/ | {
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"In the old days, life changed very slowly. The way the world worked when you were 5 years old was the same when you were 75 years old. So by the time you had reached adulthood you pretty much had figured out what there was to figure out."
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nvxvz | conservation of mass says matter can't be created nor destroyed. do we have any theory of how this fundamental law was originally ignored to create the big bang? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nvxvz/eli5_conservation_of_mass_says_matter_cant_be/ | {
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"The original question not entirely accurate. Mass/energy (they are the same thing) cannot be created or destroyed, but mass *can* be turned into energy, and vice versa. \n\nNuclear reactions attain their vast energy outputs by converting a small (but non-trivial) amount of mass into energy. Even chemical reactions are theorized to do the same, but obviously a far smaller amount. In both cases, the total mass/energy remains the same before and after the reaction occurs.",
"The original question not entirely accurate. Mass/energy (they are the same thing) cannot be created or destroyed, but mass *can* be turned into energy, and vice versa. \n\nNuclear reactions attain their vast energy outputs by converting a small (but non-trivial) amount of mass into energy. Even chemical reactions are theorized to do the same, but obviously a far smaller amount. In both cases, the total mass/energy remains the same before and after the reaction occurs."
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5m4mzf | how does an led change colors? | Is there any mechanical or physical change? Are there multiple different colored LEDs in each "bulb" that are illuminated in various configurations to produce each color (similar to an RGB display)? Or can one unit actually produce light of variable wavelengths? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m4mzf/eli5_how_does_an_led_change_colors/ | {
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"A color changing LED isn't one LED in a package but three LEDs along with a small computer to drive them. The LED is made up of red, green and blue LEDs each of which can be controlled by a microcontroller. Since the two legs on the LED that supply the power are connected to the microcontroller and not the LED elements a current limit resistor is not required.\n\nThe microcontroller is able to turn each of the colors on or off, so if the red LED is turned on then the output from the color changing LED is red. When the blue LED is turned on it is blue, if both the blue and red LEDs are turned on then the color changing LED is a shade of purple (called magenta). Similarly combining red with green gives yellow and blue & green gives cyan.\n\nAlthough the color changing LED uses the six colors mentioned above, it slowly changes from one to another. This is still done using the three basic red, green & blue elements. If the red LED is combined with the blue LED, but the blue LED is only driven at 50% of its normal brightness then a color half way between red and magenta is generated.\n\nWhilst the red LED is left turned on, if the blue LED is slowly taken from 0% brightness to 100% brightness then the color will gradually change from red to magenta.\n\nIf a standard LED is turned on and off very quickly, say 100 times every second then as far as the human eye is concerned it looks like it is constantly on. If the amount of time the LED is on for is the same as the time it is off for then it will be on for 50% of the time and 50% of its full brightness.\n\nThis same method can be done with the three LED elements inside the color changing LED. This means it is possible to combine any amount of the red, green and blue to give the desired color. Looking once again at the change from red to magenta, if the blue LED starts mainly turned off, goes to being on and off in even amounts and then to mainly being on then the the color will change as required.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)",
"Multicolor LEDs generally have an element for each color. There are RGB LEDs as well. Color can also be slightly adjusted by changing the operating voltage. \n\nEdit. Each element color, they can then be turned on in combinations to make other colors. ",
"Masters Electrical Engineering. Most RGB LED have all three colors in them. You then light a specific one my applying power to the color you want. If you look at large LEDs that can do RGB, they have 4 prongs coming off. You then power the prong you want an bam! Color. One for ground, and then each color gets a prong. If you make a super small RGB LED and then combine a bunch into a massive array, you get a tv.\n\nYou can do it with a single light source, then apply a polarizing filter. The filter is controlled by a small current. This can produce colors as well and is the idea behind LCD displays.",
"An older style of multi-colour LED is the type that have a red and a green LED in the one package. They usually have three legs. \n\nDespite having a red and green LED, they can actually display a third colour. Light them both and you get yellow, because red and green light combined give you yellow light. ",
"As most have said, they typically contain a red, green, and blue LED in one package. \n\nJust wanted to point out: this is also how a TV or computer monitor works. There is a red, green, and blue pixel in a pattern over and over.\n\nBy controlling each color, you can basically make any color.",
"Here's a [close-up of a surface mount RGB LED](_URL_0_) that shows you what's going on inside.\n\nYou get different colors by combining the red, green and blue in student quantities. To dim one of the colors, you switch it on and off very quickly. The higher the ratio of on time to off time, the brighter it is.\n\nThey'll often have a diffusing cover to blend the colors together.",
"Wow thanks everyone! That would have taken me hours of googling and synthesizing information from multiple sources. This is more than I wanted which is even better. "
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3impk0 | cannabis strains classification. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3impk0/eli5_cannabis_strains_classification/ | {
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"It's both. There's a classification system to differentiate between plants, and from the same family of plants.\nAnd with cannabis, naming the strains means that you can get the same product again without confusion; but you can name any strain the name you want. There's no science behind that.",
"That Wired article misses one major problem with the black market - there's no way to tell by looking at it if your \"blueberry kush\" is really a \"blueberry kush\". You don't have paperwork tracing it back to a reputable breeder/grower, you just have to rely on the last guy in the chain being honest (or un-stoned enough to remember).\n\nThere's nothing stopping somebody from deciding to label their boring mid-grade weed (or even some unrelated high-grade) as \"blueberry kush\" because they know that's what everyone's looking for this month.\n\nWhen you have legal marijuana sold in dispensaries, you start seeing them analyze each batch in a lab & give you actual ratings on how much of each of the different chemicals are present in the plant. You're also buying from suppliers that can generally be trusted to *not* mislabel their shit.",
"Imagine a line with Sativa on one end, Indica on the other end, and Hybrids in the middle. Sativa has more THC, while Indica has more CBD. Hybrids are a mix, for example, 60/40 THC/CBD. THC is more of a \"head high\". CBD is more of a \"body high\". So, cannabis is exquisitely customizable. For instance, if you just want something to make you sleepy, and pain free, go with a heavy Indica strain. If you want something to make you get \"high\" and experience a mind altering experience, go with a pure Sativa. Or if you want a blend, Clear Head, Numb Body, go with a Hybrid. I'm from Colorado. If you walk into any weed shop they are very knowledgeable and will ask you specific questions about what you are seeking and customize a solution for you on the spot. The \"names\" are meaningless. What you want to ask is the blend of Indica and Sativa (CBD/THC) that you are getting. The names are just names. What you want to do is be very specific with your bud tender and tell them exactly what you want to get out of it. Do you want to watch movies and giggle, or do you want to melt into the couch and zone out? Are you looking to get rid of pain or just go \"on a trip\"? Be specific and they will know exactly which strain to recommend. ",
"Just ask your customer what their favorite strain is. Then in two weeks, call whatever weed you have to sell that strain. It's worked for more for well over 10 years without a single complaint."
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4uxjwq | why airlines don't sell empty seats on flights at cheap rates | I was at the airport recently waiting for my flight, and looked up prices for last minute tickets as it was relatively empty - they were all over $500. So it got me thinking, why would an airline rather not fill the seats, than to sell them at deeply discounted rates? Is the actual cost of transporting a person on a plane so high, that it wouldn't be worth it for them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uxjwq/eli5_why_airlines_dont_sell_empty_seats_on/ | {
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"Because people who purchase tickets last minute usually *have* to travel and will pay the full price.\n\nIt's rare that a plane will be relatively empty. When that happens, it's probably just a fluke. If a route regularly has a lot of empty seats, they airlines will drop one of the flights and put it on a more profitable route.",
"If airlines offered last minute cheap seats, no one would book too far in advance. \n\nBecause last minute flights are expensive, people book early to save some money, and if their plans cancel, they lose out on the cost of the flight. \n\n",
"Airline companies have a goal of maximizing profits. They do part of this by charging different prices for tickets on the same flight. Their goal is get as much money as possible per flight. They prefer to know how full a flight is going to be earlier, so they can adjust their price accordingly. A flight that is mostly full two months before it takes off will see a large increase in price. Airlines know that the majority of people who buy tickets closer to the departure date need to go and will pay a higher price to do so. If the day before, they dropped prices until every seat was filled, many people (i.e., the ones who let the airline know a couple months in advance how full an airplane will be) would in turn wait until that predictable event to buy the cheap tickets. Airlines would thus lose money because they could not determine the demand for the flight beforehand, and would essentially be filling most of their airplanes at the last minute. ",
"They do. It's called flying \"standby\". Generally you can only do this if you have a flight later that day and want to switch to an earlier one or if you are an airline employee or have a 'buddy pass' from an airline employee. You have to arrive at the airport early and are not guaranteed the flight. You can't book it in advance.",
"Actually, many airlines did this in the early days of the Internet. I was a member of Northwest CyberSavers (edit: in the mid-late 90s) - each wednesday they would publish select supercheap fares good for that weekend.\n\nSince the programs universally no longer exist, I must conclude they were overwhelmingly not profitable, or not profitable enough. "
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ekuabf | why can't we use the ocean to dump onto fires? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ekuabf/eli5_why_cant_we_use_the_ocean_to_dump_onto_fires/ | {
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"So... What about an intercontinental seawater highway? Or a water version of the electric grid? Could we, over time, create a set of pipes (an interconnected series of tubes perhaps? ;-) ), that carry sea water across the nation? Desalinization is still a problem, but it sounds like transporting the water is another problem that could be solved. If we had a water grid, desalinization facilities could be feeders off this grid.",
"In the recent California wild fires I saw planes and helicopters picking up water from the ocean to fight fires. They treat it to be a reddish color with a fire retardant then drop it from the buckets or fuselage.",
"Would it take too long to desalinate the water before dumping it on the fire?",
"In some cases we do. My city has powerful backup pumps that can draw directly from the bay in an emergency. The fireboats also pump saltwater directly. I believe the water bombers will use salt water if it is what is closest but it is rarely so.\n \nThen there's the matter of pressure. A million gallons of water does no good if you have no way to get it onto the fire. The civil water system is typically gravity fed which provides extremely reliable and consistent pressure. For the amount of water usually needed to fight fires, it is much easier to just tap off the municipal system than to built an entire parallel network of standpipes.",
"This problem is recurring right? after the fire everything grows back. Use salt water to impede the rapid re growth. Don't use it on pastures of course. \n Here's a thought they use dynamite or some type of explosive to extinguish oil well fire's right (by creating a vacuum) . How about using a daisy cutter/other ordinaance or two to create the same effect",
"Saltwater changes the pH of soil and can really hinder the regrowth of plant communities. \n\nIf you consider an area that seldom receives rain then you have a very long time before enough freshwater (rain) has fallen to restore soil chemistry.",
"Sometimes you can. There are planes like the CL-415 (scooper) that can skim along the surface and pick up water. \n\nRough conditions (windy, large waves) will not allow the planes to do this. \n\nThe salt in the water can eat away at metal, so the equipment would need to be clean thoroughly after. \n\nThe planes only pick up 2000 or so gallons at a time, so unless the fire was right near the coast, and the ocean the only water source, it would not be a good choice for a water source.",
"We can and we do. A lot of harbors have firefighting boats that pump seawater on fires. That has limited reach.\n\nThe farther you get from the coast, the more complex the logistics get. Do you pick up the water and dump on the fire? There are planes that do that, but the loads are very limited. Do you pump the seawater to where the fires are? Very slow to deploy this type of system.\n\nThe reality is that if the fires are not very close to the coast, it is very complicated to put them out with seawater.\n\nForest fires are contained by cutting clear around the burning area to stop the fire from expanding.",
" > Why can't we use the ocean to dump onto fires?\n\nWe can, and do. However, most fires do not happen near oceans, so it's not a practical technique most of the time.",
"You absolutely can, but it's largely governed by proximity of water sources to the fire. We will take water from the best nearby source. If that's the ocean or a saltwater body of water, so be it. Source: firefighter and operator with NSW aviation command."
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2yesv7 | does piracy actually hurt the profit of corporations? | I'm going to assume you all the know the normal arguments from both sides. But is there any hard data on this subject? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yesv7/eli5does_piracy_actually_hurt_the_profit_of/ | {
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"If any brainy person with data can answer this well, I hope they also take into consideration the affect of franchise knock-on, which is often not discussed. And arguably makes up a larger long term profit and vertical integration, or market synergy and all that.\n\n\n\n\nFor example people who may pirate a show still love the show and thus buy shirts and toys and the Happy Meal. So missing out on 3 dollars for ad views is nothing compared to the $300 collected from the new Fan."
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7pxblx | how did some neighborhoods in america came to be known as 'black neighborhoods'? is it mainly because of segregation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pxblx/eli5_how_did_some_neighborhoods_in_america_came/ | {
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"Housing segregation enforced by redlining and blockbusting and white flight. \n\nSo, you take a neighborhood, and you line it. Red lines are where black people are able to live. Banks would (and still do) deny black people loans to live outside of the red lines, and designate the loans inside of the red lines high risk. Certain towns would also have housing contracts that said that black people weren't able to live there and that no one would sell their houses to a black family. At the same time, one white family moves out of a white neighborhood, and the house is sold to a black family. The other families then leave because black people bring down property values, thus making that neighborhood a red lined one. \n\n\nThere's a good article about Chicago here:\n _URL_0_",
"Both official and unofficial segregation, yes, and some of it still ongoing.\n\nTravel in, say, Texas. You'll see lots of little towns that are directly adjacent to or even entirely surrounded by bigger towns and don't seem to have much reason to exist as separate entities. They were often created to either be white- or black-only (usually white-only). This was enforced by things like deed restrictions (you agree not to sell your property to a non-white family), and unofficially by threats of violence or what-have-you.\n\nRead deed restrictions or HOA documents from the 40's and 50's. They often have explicit restrictions on the race of the property owner.\n\nAlabama went all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to re-draw city boundaries so that in a given city there were mostly white people or whatever, and the way Alabama's government works, city boundaries can be redrawn from the state government almost arbitrarily and cities are very limited in what laws they can pass themselves. This centralization of power in the state government was done immediately after the Civil War for the explicit purpose of making sure the state could divide itself into white and black cities and then deny black cities the power to pass their own laws.\n\nBefore various pieces of legislation (the Civil Rights Acts, the Fair Housing Act, and so on), it was more-or-less legal for banks to deny mortgages to black families who wanted to buy houses in white neighborhoods -- and banks would do so to keep their white customers happy. Even after it was made illegal, Realtors would intentionally not show houses in white neighborhoods to black families, and discourage white families from buying in black neighborhoods.\n\nWhen that was made illegal, Realtors would make sure to include photos of the family or photos of family photos, when photographing the house for sale, to be sure people knew that they were looking at houses in black neighborhoods.\n\nNow that sort of thing is illegal too, and it is getting better, but there's an immense amount of inertia in things like that. Houses aren't movable, and because of their inherent value tend to stay in families for more than one generation more so than other kinds of property. Because the older generation lives where they do and children often want to live near their families when they buy a house, the network effect acts as pressure to keep neighborhood demographics more stable than they might otherwise be.\n\n(Of course that doesn't mean that they *always* stay that way, just that they're slower to change than the demographics of other things like, say, Universities or apartment complexes, which are more flexible.)\n\nBecause of the relative demographic stability of neighborhoods, they're often a pathway to other unofficial racism. School district lines are drawn such that schools are tilted more heavily towards one ethnicity or another, and schools in black neighborhoods are often underfunded. Other city services are often neglected, and so on.\n\n(In 2018 there are still hundreds of court-mandated desegregation orders for school districts, some renewed as recently as 2017, because of cities and school districts maintaining de facto segregation by drawing boundary lines in certain ways. I remember growing up in small-town Texas. We had two high schools for a town of only 12,000 people. Even though the city was 40% black, one high school was 99% white, less than a mile away from the other. I graduated in 1998.)\n\n(Speaking from personal experience, there was a neighborhood here in Austin, in the middle of town, that was still on septic systems. The demographics were mostly black and Hispanic. The city promised to get sewer service to them by 2009. It took until 2016. They promised sidewalks back in 2008...still very few sidewalks. This was all explained as \"not enough money in the budget\" -- but whiter parts of town got new bicycle paths, city-owned bicycle repair stations, covered bus stops, etc, etc, during the same time period when people in this neighborhood were getting their homes condemned because their septic systems were failing and they didn't want to spend $20,000 to fix it just to have to pay more to hook up to the sewer when it finally came in.)",
"Covenants were a biggy. There'd be covenants on houses saying you can't sell the house to a non-white person. Those were made illegal (or invalidated) but if you look at some older homes the covenant is still there, it just can't be enforced.\n\nSo black people and other minorities (California is one of the most segregated states if you count in Hispanic, just black and white and NY is the most segregated. The south was actually forced to integrate while the north just got to be racist) couldn't buy homes in certain neighborhoods leading them to find homes where they could buy. Overtime it becomes cultural and people like to stay close to home.",
"Part segregation, part economic, part social.\n\nIn housing, segregation was very real, but usually could not be enforced by laws. Instead, banks and realtors would strongly discourage black families from moving into the \"wrong\" neighborhood, and white neighbors would be less than welcoming. Even if you weren't a racist, the fact other racists wouldn't want to live in a mixed neighborhood meant your property values went down, so you might not be thrilled at the prospect either. \n\nAt the same time, working and middle-class blacks were often able to build decent communities in the neighborhoods that already were mixed. A new black family might not be terribly interested in the hassle around living in a white neighborhood, especially if it were more expensive. You also have cultural affinities. Even if segregation was not present, you would expect certain neighborhoods to develop cultural trappings, like food and music, that made it more desirable to people of that culture.\n\n"
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xji30 | why were african, australian and native american civilisations so technologically inferior compared to european and east asian civilisations? | Thanks for the answers Reddit, most of them tell me to read "Guns, Germs and Steel" which I'll definitely buy once my exams are over.
So to summarise:
* Similar climate encouraged trade of farming techs/animals etc.
* Domesticated animals
* Close proximity of groups of people encouraged competition and a military tech arms race
* Longer life spans due to colder climate/less mosquitoes (makes sense, malaria is thought to be the number one killer in history when it comes to diseases)
* Less disease allowed large groups of people to live together, allow specialisation in particular jobs
As mentioned by hippiechan some civilizations (yes I spelt it wrong twice in the title :(, also brackets and smileys don't work _URL_0_) in the Americas (Aztecs, Mayans, Incas etc.) and Africa were technologically advanced (thought not to the same level of weaponry) its just that they were wiped out fairly quickly during European expansion by guns and disease.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xji30/why_were_african_australian_and_native_american/ | {
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"There are two main explanations. The first is that these places were much more isolated. Traders didn't come over as often (or ever), and so any technological advancements didn't get shared like they did in Europe. So they had to invent everything themselves, while Europeans could steal liberally from the people they traded with.\n\nThe second is a bit trickier. It's the navigable-rivers-through-arable-land theory. Navigable rivers can ship lots of goods cheaply, and arable land means that it's cheap to run cities on these rivers. Europe has a lot of arable land with very good coverage with navigable river, so it's a lot easier to make manufacturing wealth there.",
"For one thing, it's cold enough in East Asia and Europe (note they're at similar latitudes) for germs to die every winter, so people live longer and technology can advance accordingly. In the case of Australia, humans inhabited the continent and killed off all the big game before they domesticated anything, so they didn't have the advantage of cows and horses. In Africa, in order to avoid diseases carried by mosquitoes, people traditionally lived in small communities far from water sources, meaning they have to put in a lot of effort to carting water. This means that they lacked the benefits of a city like job specializations, etc. \n\n[\"Guns, Germs and Steel\"](_URL_1_) is a really interesting read to answer this question more fully.\n\n[There was a Cracked article](_URL_0_) that made me think we don't get the whole story about Native Americans. Supposedly they were very advanced, but a plague wiped them out and allowed Europeans to conquer them.",
"There's a great book that covers this exact topic, the propagation of civilizations and technology in general, but it talks about why parts of africa, australia, and the america's lagged behind europe and asia. It's called [Guns, Germs, and Steel](_URL_0_). \n",
"I answered this in my explanation of why Africa is so fucked up currently, let me repost it for you:\n\nIn Europe, the English, French, Germans, etc... all were in close proximity of one another and had to compete for resources. That's why the military of Europe evolved so fast. They had to be the best of the best to win resources, while Africa is so spacious and devoid of the same resources, especially in the center where its all desert.\nWhen you look at resources available to the Africans versus say, the Europeans or Chinese its easiest to see how successful a society has been based upon their access to key domesticated plants and animals. Almost all of Europe and most of China is suitable for raising animals like pigs, chickens, cows, horses, sheep and other traditional farm animals as well as edible plants like wheat, beans, and apples. These animals and plants are key parts of diets to make sure people get enough essential vitamins and minerals, as well as being staples of the military for hundreds of years. In Africa, the climate is not so suitable for raising the animals that Europe and China had access to, as well as having an abundance of animals that aren't able to be domesticated or take far too long to be useful like lions, elephants, or the African buffalo.\nAdditionally, it has been noted that technology and domesticated animals are easily transferable along the same longitude as all areas along this will have nearly the same climate. Plants and animals that are successful in say, Germany, will most likely be successful in France, Russia, or the United States since they are pretty close to the same longitude. Many of these staple animals from Europe had been brought to Africa when they had been colonized prior to the Berlin Conference, and most were not successful. Animals, plants, and even people died fairly quickly to coming to Africa.",
"Africa had a lot of advanced civilisations in the past, the Egyptians for a fucking start. So did South Asia. The Native American empire was also quite strong and actually defeated the Vikings in their attempts to settle America, they got wiped out by disease. Read up on history a little, jesus.\n\nThe world did not begin only like 200 years ago you know....",
"Several reasons. Mainly:\n\n* Africa and the Americas are longer north-south, while Eurasia stretches east-west. This makes it easier for cultural innovation to spread in Eurasia, because climate differences are less drastic. Agricultural techniques that work in Canada aren't likely to work in Mexico, but techniques that work in East Asia can work in Europe. Plus it's just easier to travel when climate differences along your route aren't so drastic, and easier travel means more trade and more exchange of ideas. Easier spread of new ideas means civilization advances faster.\n\n* Africa is home to a particularly harsh climate if you're from the northern hemisphere, as well as lots of tropical diseases, which makes it unwelcoming for traders from Eurasia, or sometimes even from other parts of Africa. Again, this cuts down on the spread of new ideas.\n\n* Domesticable plants and animals. Not all plants and animals are equally easy to domesticate; for instance, there's a reason we have domestic sheep and not domestic deer - sheep instinctively bunch together when startled, making them easy to herd, while deer scatter. Similarly, all serious attempts to tame zebras have failed. As it happens, Eurasia has lots of useful crops and animals that are relatively easy to domesticate. The Americas and Africa and Australia, not so much. (The absence of the horse from the Americas and Australia, in particular, is a serious disadvantage.)\n\n* Don't forget that humans didn't arrive and settle down in the Americas ~~and Australia~~ until much later than pretty much anywhere else, so sedentary civilizations in the rest of the world had had a lot more time to develop.\n\nIt's also worth realizing that mainstream education as a general rule tends to downplay the achievements of American, Australian and African civilizations, as they weren't seen as really worth studying by Western scholars until quite recently. This does *not* mean they weren't technologically inferior at the point of contact, but they were a bit more technologically advanced than people generally tend to assume.",
"I believe its because of the balance of power in Europe, they had lots of kingdoms in a small area, each one powerful enough to defend itself but not able to overpower the others.\n\nthat means every kingdom would be constantly looking for ways to get ahead of the neighbors, by developing trade and finance, techology, funding expeditions for resources, etc.",
"*Guns, Germs, and Steel*. Not exactly 5 year old reading material, but it will answer any and all questions on the matter.",
"Randomness, luck. There are a billion reasons that cause technology to advance and a billion reasons that cause it not to. It's just that when you draw the line and add all of them up, some place happens to come up ahead of the other. ",
"They weren't.\n\nWe view European and East Asian civilizations as being 'more advanced' because of our views of advancement, which typically revolve around art, science, written literature, human rights, etc. As such, we view the Roman Empire as being very advanced for it's time because it was large, organized around a well-defined political system, and had widespread influence over arts and culture. We consider the Tang Dynasty to be among the greatest of Chinese dynasties because of the art, culture, and religion that came out of it.\n\nThen there are the so-called \"technologically inferior\" societies, such as those in the Americas, Australia, and Africa. In Africa, Egyptian civilization was creating great leaps in science, art, and mathematics before the Classical Era in Greece, and the Mali empire in the 13th century was home to Timbuktu, an educational center for the medieval world. Australia, admittedly, didn't have much in terms of great civilizations, but New Zealand and the pacific had the Maori and many Polynesian groups, which combined made great marvels of architecture, art, and seafaring.\n\nIn North America, the civilizations were on par with Europe at least by the 12th century. The Maya civilization in Central America had advanced understandings of astronomy and space, and were able to accurately predict solar eclipses using mathematics. The Inca civilization of South America are known for their greatest marvel, Machu Picchu, to this very day, which is an architectural and mathematical masterpiece. In North America, the Iroquois people of what is now New York/Ontario had an advanced governmental system, and their culture was actually more liberal towards women upon their first contact with Europeans.\n\nThe notion that these civilizations were 'less technologically advanced' only comes from the idea of technological advancement, which at the time of many of their discoveries, meant military capability. Civilizations in the America's struggled to fight off the influx of Europeans because they had more advanced weaponry (and the fever which wiped out 90% of the indigenous population). African civilizations are seen as less advanced because the people themselves were kidnapped and used as slaves for hundreds of years, and how advanced can a civilization be when it's made up of potential new property?",
"High technology isn't developed in isolation. You just don't develop develop it out of the blue.\n\nA lot of our mathematical foundation came from the Arabs and Turks, which came from the Greeks and Indians and Persians, which came from their respective proto-civilizations, etc. \n",
"We invented glass! Allowed optics for study via microscopes, battle advancements via telescopes, botany using greenhouses etc. It really did allow us to excell!",
"They weren't. Check out the book \"[1491\"](_URL_0_). It does a good job discussing it all. I believe the Mayans or someone around there even invented the concept of zero prior to the mid east. \n\nEdit: Tomorrow evening (PST) I will be glad to post some quotes of my favorite parts.",
"I think the most important factor here was the incredible amount of coastline, meaning lots of resources and trade, coupled with a relatively mild climate. Some evidence has also been found that becoming tolerant to lactose greatly increased the nutritional availability for early Europeans.",
"From what I recall from \"Guns, Germs and Steel\".\n\nIt has to do with the variety of plants/animals you have that can be domesticated, which started farming. The beginnings of domesticated plant and animals leads to high density populations capable of producing 'specialists' like priests (that justify war) and politicians (that wage war). \n\nIt also depends on WHEN you start domesticating plants and animals, because diseases and technologies take time to evolve (which help conquer others).\n\nAlso, Eurasia is mainly east-west (long) where as North America and Africa are more north-south (tall). This has huge effects on technology transfer as domesticated plants and animals have trouble travelling north-south far distances due to differences in climate. So a plant that works well in one place would die in another place if it travelled too far along the north-south axis because it would be a completely different climate (like past the African dessert). \n\nEurasia, on the other hand, the east-west axis allows technology, people, and plants/animals to be exchanged frequently (wheat could be grown in Germany, Mesopotamia, and also China), thus compounding innovation and growth of societies. \n\nI am sure there were other factors that I am missing out and it would be great if someone could fill me in.\n\n\n\n",
"Depends on definition of technology. The Americas featured by far the greatest plant breeders in the world, some very interesting medicine, decorative metallurgy and weaving and at several points cities with arguably the largest populations.",
"If you have Netflix you can stream the Guns, Germs, and Steel 3-part TV series.",
"In Charles Mann's books 1491, he makes some excellent arguments as to why the Native American cultures were technologically superior in many ways to Europe in spite of being isolated from the rest of the world. His arguments are based on two basic premises: \n\n1) That when the earliest European explorers came to the Americas they brought small pox which wiped out perhaps as much as 90% of the indigenous populations over the next century, so what we think of as the Native Americans are really the devastated remains of a culture, almost a kind of post-apocalypse. \n\n2) Many of the Native American contributions to technology aren't really recognized as such by the wider world. Basically this argument is that the Native Americans made HUGE advances in agriculture/nutrition in particular, as well as in the medicinal (brain surgery), hygiene, textile (they had a Kevlar type armor based on densely layered fabrics) and fine metallurgy technologies. Ironically their cleanliness and good health made them more susceptible to European diseases as Europeans had been living in the SAME rooms as their livestock and had been malnourished for centuries, making their diseases vibrant and abundant. Their agricultural advances don't necessarily represent technologies used today or those developed in any other parts of the world and so they get downplayed and written off. I don't recall all of them but here are some highlights I remember.\n\n-By some estimates 3/5ths off all food eaten today were developed by Native Americans such as corn, tomatoes, potatoes, avocados, squash, peanuts, chocolate and pineapples. \n\n-Corn was essentially a weed in the wild. They somehow genetically engineered/breed it into a diverse food source with over 500 variants. We only use a few of them today but they had corn species for a vast variety of purposes. \n\n-They developed a method of growing corn, squash and beans together in an extreme efficient way where each crop supplemented the other allowing for greater nutrition and field yield. I think this reduced \"rest\" time for fields somehow as well. \n\nHope that helps!",
"I will avoid the geography topic, since it seems like that has been covered, but will look at it from historical and political reasons for why they might be perceived as technologically inferior by focusing closely on the Americas.\n\n\nIn terms of the Americas, the overriding contribution for why civilizations such as the Aztec and Inca were overtaken has largely to do with politics and disease. \n\nIn terms of technology, the type of warfare conducted in Meso-America, which was a ritualized warfare with small amounts of casualties and many sacrificial prisoners. Weapons were designed not to inflict death so much as to inflict injury so that warriors could be captured (it was considered more prestigious to capture prisoners). There is also the fact that most weapons were made with stone and wood and were less deadly than many European counterparts. These facts helped contribute to European take-over but hardly explain why it was successful.\n\nDue to the political tensions between the Aztec/Mexica and the city-states they controlled and the general view that they were despotic brutes, Cortez and his men to build favorable alliances and recruit huge mercenary armies to take over Tenochtitlan. Cortez’ small army was really no match for Moctezuma’s vast imperial army without the help of other Meso-American allies. Therefore Cortez’ army of Tlaxcalan and other mercenaries aided his siege of Tenochtitlan. There were many revolts, but since the Spanish were then at the top of the political structure, they were able to command more effectively to put down any insurrections. On top of this was the fact that disease swept through populations in the Americas leaving them weakened and less able to resist foreign rule.\n\nWith the Inca, it was very similar. Political infighting between rival brothers for the throne of the Incan Empire, along with a widespread outbreak of smallpox that decimated the population of the Incas left them vulnerable to European incursion. Pizarro’s ability to sweep into that turmoil and unseat Atahualpa with 150 men, as Cortez had done to Moctezuma, and simply take over the power structures is one of the defining reasons why Spain was able to set itself up so quickly in the New World. There are several instances in which both Pizarro and Cortez could have been squashed like bugs by either emperor, but weren’t for a variety of reasons, and due to the luck and cunning political exploitations of both commanders they were able to brutally fortify their positions as leaders of both empires.\n\nIn terms of Africa, the situation was a bit different, but not completely so. Many African civilizations were quite advanced in the 15th Century, but political upheaval between rival empires and city-states with the introduction the slave trade drove many to war to claim a monopoly as suppliers of slaves. In return for exporting slaves, African states became increasingly reliant on European firearms to subdue their African rivals (a similar thing happened in China and the United States). This led to a dependency that only increased African states’ weakness in light of European advancement. \n\nIn terms of Australia, I am not very qualified to speak on that subject, but I assume it reflects more of US/British intrusion into the west of North America than the previous examples. \n",
"I think it's interesting that disease was, by far, the biggest contribution to the European victory in the Americas\n\n_URL_0_\n\nAccording to that, smallpox wiped out 95% (!!!) of the American population after Columbus landed. A fully populated America would have been so much more difficult to conquer that history would have turned out so much different. The weapon difference was significant, but was it significant enough by itself?\n\nFor some interesting alternative history, read the book Pastwatch. A bit preachy, but a cool time travel story about Columbus and the Americas.\n\nAnyway I think your question is better phrased \"why do I mostly only learn about European and Eastern-Asian achievements in school?\" ",
"A couple comments on you summary:\n\n > Domesticated animals,\n\n > Close proximity of groups of people encouraged competition and a military tech arms race\n\nDomesticated animals allow more people per square mile, which enabled said competition\n\n > Less disease allowed large groups of people to live together, allow specialisation in particular jobs\n\nLiving at higher densities and in extremely close proximity to domesticated animals actually caused a much higher disease rate (poor sanitation/drinking tainted water/crossover diseases with animals). This made Europeans immune to and carriers of diseases that wiped out large portions of aboriginal populations. \n\n\n"
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"http://www.cracked.com/article_19864_6-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-founding-america.html",
"http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393061310/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343875102&sr=8-1&keywords=guns+germs+and+steel"
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1x9p9x | what exactly does this mean (pic in post)? | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x9p9x/eli5_what_exactly_does_this_mean_pic_in_post/ | {
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"In some locations, failing to upkeep a property means it can be forfeited to a new owner who does want to care for the property. The sign was posted by essentially squatters who want to prove no one cares for the property. \n\nIts called adverse posession. "
]
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"http://i.imgur.com/1ZirFkV.jpg"
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2d8v8u | why does my cat insist on having me constantly feed him, even though he still has food in the bowl? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d8v8u/eli5_why_does_my_cat_insist_on_having_me/ | {
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"Cats are assholes?",
"My cat literally meows for me to watch him eat. I'll be in my room and will hear him meowing from downstairs so I'll go down thinking he wants me to let him outside. When I get downstairs he leads me to his food bowl and just eats in front of me. \n\nHe's a dick.",
"My cat does this. My mom, who runs her own pet care taking business (not that it makes her an expert, but she knows a hell of a lot more than me about pets), says that he most likely wants **fresh** food in his bowl, because the old food has lost some of its scent/appeal. This is of course for dry/kibble food - you give my cat (and in my own experience, any cat really) canned food or meat, and he will NOT let that go to waste.",
"It's a combination of things. There's the term \"creature of habit\". Your cat has a habit of eating while you are there. When you are not there, Something Is Wrong. Cats can also be particular about the dish, the floor covering, foot traffic in the room, and so on. Also, you and the cat have a learned behavior. You have learned to hang out with the cat when he eats and the cat has learned to eat when you are in the room."
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3c3uk0 | swingset physics | ... and then maybe like I'm 40 afterwards :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3c3uk0/eli5_swingset_physics/ | {
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"In the absence of friction (or other energy sinks), a swingset, or indeed any simple pendulum, would simply continue to oscillate indefinitely between the two high points. At one extreme, when the pendulum is highest and its speed zero, the system has maximum gravitational potential energy, and zero kinetic energy. At the bottom / middle of the swing, the system has minimum gravitational potential energy and maximum kinetic energy - essentially trading height for velocity, and then it converts back as you come to rest at the other extreme. A swingset, of course, is not a frictionless simple pendulum in a vacuum. Energy is lost to mechanical friction, drag / friction with the surrounding air, and so forth, so to keep the swing swinging, the occupant must input energy into the system. This is done by moving the legs, which moves your centre of mass, increasing the available gravitational potential energy. On the back swing, you curl your legs behind you to raise the centre of mass, and on the front swing you extend them above you. At the bottom of the swing, you ideally want the centre of mass as low as possible to obtain the greatest difference between high and low, and hence greatest kinetic energy (velocity) at the bottom of the swing.\n"
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2h4ar2 | how do we know that we 'mixed' with other human species? | I was reading about it on [this Wiki page](_URL_0_) but I have difficulties understanding.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h4ar2/eli5_how_do_we_know_that_we_mixed_with_other/ | {
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"Scientists are able to analyze DNA and determine your ancestors. Certain areas/species have specific genes, and we have recently discovered Ozzy Osborn has traces of Neanderthal heritage: _URL_0_\n\nThat's how we \"know\". But evolution occurs at such a slow rate, so it's not like two subspecies of humans birthed the modern man. As evolution shows, species change over large periods of time. Millions of years."
]
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"http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ozzy-osbourne-genome/"
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48vw38 | why flight attendants close the windows during the night? | I've been to a lot of flights and this happens all the time. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48vw38/eli5_why_flight_attendants_close_the_windows/ | {
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"So people can sleep. Night destination-time may not correspond to night at the longitude the plane is currently over. For example, you may be arriving in Europe early in the morning, but flying partially during daytime.",
"When the sun comes up it glares like lasers through the window, waking all the passengers. That means the plane is full of wakeful, jet lagged, grumpy passengers, many of whom will insist on waking the stews from their well earned naps to make coffee."
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4iat99 | why do most power plants convert heat into electricity by heating water into steam and then using it to spin a turbine? is there not a more efficient way to do it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iat99/eli5_why_do_most_power_plants_convert_heat_into/ | {
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"None that we've found. There are ways to make the process more efficient, but nothing can reliably keep the turbines spinning at maximum capacity (their most efficient state) as consistently as steam.\n\nThough things like solar power may eventually overtake them.",
"Steam turbines are actually quite efficient and they have the advantage in that the steam can be condensed back into water at the end of the process and reused. ",
"As it turns out, a large portion of our energy production portfolio is based off of burning things. We burn coal, lignite, and natural gas to make heat. Nuclear power plants don't \"burn\" in the traditional sense, but the nuclear fuel does produce (a lot of) heat when it fissions.\n\nSo how do we convert this heat energy into electricity? Turns out the steam cycle is the most cost-effective way to do so.",
"It is possible to produce electricity using heat directly, but the technology is very inefficient. The only realy advantage this has right now is that it works with low temperatures and doesn't require any moving parts, and they are currently mostly used for nuclear batteries powering spacecraft. \n\nHeat engines using hot gas (e.g. gas engines, stirling engines) could be more efficient than steam turbines, if they were made from a material which can survive extremely high pressure and heat, since both imcrease the amount of energy you can get from heat. Unfortunately, most materials which are good enough in both regards are very expensive and/or difficult to work with.\n\nSteam turbines are currently more efficient because you can operate them at a fairly low temperature, which lets you reach very high pressure using conventional materials, and makes it possible to run them without cooling the turbines.\n",
"[This page](_URL_0_) contains an excellent summary of the efficiency levels of different power plant types. A modern coal+steam plant turns 38% to 42% of the coal's heat energy into electricity. This is considered quite efficient, and better designs have not been created that work at large scale. (Coal never *intended* to be electricity, so it's actually quite an accomplishment.)\n\nYou'll notice on the same page that hydro is way more efficient.",
" > Is there not a more efficient way to do it?\n\nNot really. \n\nWe have centuries of experience engineering steam turbines and are really, really good at it. And water is cheap and plentiful.\n\nIn terms of the pure physics of it, there is theoretical room for improvement. A typical steam turbine is about 33% efficient, where the theoretical (Carnot) limit is in the 60 percent range. However, taking advantage of this would require new engineering techniques and exotic materials that would be unlikely to make it worthwhile.\n\n"
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5xfnjw | what is the significance of having headphones in the correct ears when listening to music? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xfnjw/eli5_what_is_the_significance_of_having/ | {
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"There isn't one from a music perspective, (some songs have differences in the left-right channel, but it doesn't really matter if it is reversed). The problem is with the shape of the headphones themselves. The right headphone is shaped for the right ear, so if you put it in the left ear then it will be backwards and won't be as good of a shape."
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7rvcpq | choice theory | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7rvcpq/eli5_choice_theory/ | {
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"Hi, which choice theory are you referring to? There's a few out there.\n\nPersonally I study criminology, meaning the Rational Choice Theory is by far the most well known, so I'll explain that one:\n\nThe rational choice theory explains us how people choose to do things or take actions that might go against the social norm. It's based on the fact that we are all individuals making our own choices in life. The RCT states that we make these decisions based on our own idea about the problem, looking at the pay-off and the possible consquences.\n\nExample: You are in a store and you see a chocolate bar, but you don't have money to pay for it. The RTC states that you will, by yourself, decide if it is worth it to steal the chocolate bar or not, based on the pay off (being able to eat a chocolate bar) and the possible consequence (being caught and possibly paying a fine or spending a day in jail). So in your head you'll make a cost-benefit scheme, and then decide to either take the risk or not."
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zekmx | why hasn't there been prosecution for the corruption on wall street? | The only article I can find about bankers being convicted was from last week: _URL_0_
Will anyone be held accountable for the trillions of dollars the US government has shoveled into Wall Street in the past decade? Is there any end in sight to Wall Street receiving bailout money when bubbles burst? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zekmx/eli5_why_hasnt_there_been_prosecution_for_the/ | {
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"First, because Wall Street has a shitload of money, which buys them political clout.\n\nSecond, because taxpayers got nearly all of the bailout money back.",
"Because the laws they can use against them are very vague, and the evidence against them is very small, hard to pin on a single person. ",
" > Will anyone be held accountable for the ~~trillions~~ *billions* of dollars the US government has ~~shoveled into~~ *lent at above market interest rates (which has since been paid back) to* Wall Street in the past ~~decade~~ *four and a half years*?\n\nFTFY\n\nThe simple answer is that, for the most part, nobody broke the law.\n\n[As I’ve posted before]( _URL_0_):\n\nFor the most part, it wasn’t corruption but herd mentality, blinders to being in a bubble and an underestimation of risk. \n\nIt wasn't just Wall Street but the entire system. (In the interest of full disclosure, I’m an AVP at one of the TARP “To Big to Fail” banks) With the real estate bubble, a lot of wealth was overstated – in other words, if your house’s true value is X but is valued by the market as X+Y (where Y is the overvaluation due to the bubble) then your assets are overstated by Y. You have less real wealth than you think you have.\n\nOn top of this people had easier access to credit because of loan securitization. This is where loans (mortgages mostly) are bundled together and sold on the stock market as tradable securities. In the past, banks wouldn’t lend to people who were credit risks because they didn’t want to lose their investment (traditional banking has a very low margin – Bank holds your money for interest and lends it for a slightly higher amount. All operating expenses and everything come out of the differences. Loan defaults are a real issue in this model – remember the old joke that banks would only lend money to people who didn’t need it?) But with securitization there’s less risk to the bank (or so they thought) as the bank is selling the loan off to the market. So these Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) were bundles of mortgages, most of which were low risk but with some risky ones peppered throughout. The ratings agencies gave them all high ratings even though there was a little bit of risk. Like a food inspector allowing only a few rat hairs in the sausage. Everybody thought that they were eating rat-hair-free sausage.\n\nOn top of this came Credit Default Swaps (CDS), which are Over The Counter (OTC) Derivatives that, for the sake of simplicity, are essentially insurance on loans. Look at it this way: Person A lends money to Person B at 5% interest. Person C comes along and sells a CDS to A at 1% offering to pay off the loan if B defaults. A is happy because he gets the loan at 4% risk free. C is happy because he gets 1% without having to pony up the cash to B. And B gets his loan. So then…\n\nHere’s where it gets messy. So now C can sell his CDS on the market (and bundle them up as CDO’s but that may be too advanced for a five year old) to Person D. And D can sell it to E and so on. Now, did you catch where I called them “Over the counter”? What this means is that they’re not traded on an exchange – they’re basically back of the envelope deals. And there was no agreement as to how to account for them on General Ledgers or how to price them. So you end up with a Lehman or AIG that is trading in many multiples of these and, well…\n\nBubble bursts. A lot of Person B’s start defaulting on their loans. All the C’s and D’s and E’s have to start ponying up the cash… Which leads to selling assets… Which leads to stock price drops… Which leads to lay off’s and more defaults and more CDS’s getting called and, well, you get the idea.\n\n",
"Wall Street bankers donate many millions of dollars to both parties, and Wall Street banks and their law firms often offer seven-figure jobs to retiring politicians, so very few politicians want to risk alienating donors and potential post-politics employers by cracking down on Wall Street.\n\nThe DOJ, SEC, and other government agencies responsible for policing Wall Street have trouble bringing criminal cases against Wall Street. Except in the most clear-cut cases (Madoff, Enron, etc.), criminal cases against Wall Street banks and bankers are very complicated, and difficult to explain to a jury. It is easy for a good defense lawyer to muddy the waters enough to avoid a guilty verdict.",
"The fundamental problem with Wall Street is not that they break the laws, it's that they make sure that the laws are so soft that they don't *need* to break them to rip people off. See also: [regulatory capture](_URL_0_)."
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5khr81 | if for all of pre-human history and most of human history we were scavengers that relied on fruits and nuts, how are there so many humans today that have nut allergies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5khr81/eli5_if_for_all_of_prehuman_history_and_most_of/ | {
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"Back in the day, they would have died off, leaving people without allergies to continue on.\n\nNow, we save those people's lives. Also, we probably know more about allergies and how to deal with them.",
"This is a pretty interesting concept! Hunters/gatherers had to subside off of the land and with what they had. As of such, individuals with potentially fatal reactions to things like nuts seemingly would have been weeded out of the gene pool.\n\nOne of the main theories behind the concept as to why there are so many people with nut allergies pertains to the idea of hygiene. In ancient times, people were constantly exposed to all sorts of microbes and pathogens and as of such, built up immunity to them. Nowadays, kids are way less dirty and sick than they used to be. While this generally seen as a good thing, it means that our bodies don't have to work as hard to protect us and are subsequently weaker defenders against future problems and are more likely to make mistakes with inflammatory responses. In recent studies, mothers that passed on good microbes (through breast feeding) had children that were less likely to have severe allergies than children who were raised exclusively on formula.\n\nSomething else to keep in mind is that cultures plays a big role in this as well. Cultures like those found in East Asia have more occurrences in milk allergies (and lactose intolerance) than the rest of the world and they don't really consume milk. Naturally, since milk was never a large part of their culture, they never really started drinking it like people in Europe did. So, the fact that they consume it was less noticeable and those individuals survived to pass on their genes.",
"Part of the probelm, with peanuts and tree nuts, comes from 2000 when women were advised to avoid peanuts and tree nuts while pregnant and nursing and to avoid feeding nuts and peanuts to children under the age of 3. In 2008, the recommendation was reversed. There is some indication that avoiding peanuts and tree nuts may have increased allergies to these foods. "
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7zmgqa | what is an apr? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7zmgqa/eli5_what_is_an_apr/ | {
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"It's the price of money. If you want 100 dollars, I'll give it to you for 120$ a year from now. That's a 20% APR, give some not ELI5 assumptions,imo. ",
"APR is annual percentage rate, or otherwise, simple interest. For example, if you have a $10 loan for the year with 50% APR, that is 50% of $10 = $5. So you owe both the principal amount ($10) plus interest ($5) = $15. \n",
"Its a specific way of calculating interest to permit fair comparisons. It's often mandated by governments that is should be quoted alongside any other interest statement as otherwise a loan can be made to look a better deal than it actually is. It usually also has to incorporate any fees charged.\n\nTake /u/squadm-nkey's example but you had to pay back the $120 in 12 monthly payments of $10. That might be advertised as 20% interest. However you only had the first $10 for 1 month, the second for 2 and so on. Averaging it out You borrowed $100 for only 6 months. So its closer to 40% (41.3) when calculated as the APR.\n ",
"You've got the complete answer already, but split up over multiple posts so I'll just collate things into one coherent story.\n\nAPR stands for annual percentage rate, and its purpose is to provide a standardized way of comparing compound interest rates with different periods. \n\nThe way compound interest works is that you start with an initial amount, an annual interest rate is specified (a percentage), an a compounding rate is specified (a length of time called a period), and then once per period, the initial amount is increased by the annual rate divided by the compounding rate. Importantly, the higher the compounding rate is, the faster interest with a given rate accrues.\n\nFor example, if you start with $100 and get 30% interest compounded monthly, each month you get 30/12=2.5% interest, so at the end of a year you'll have $100 increased by 2.5% twelve times, or a total of $134.49.\n\nIf I asked if whether you'd rather get 30% interest compounded monthly or 30.5% interest compounded monthly, obviously you'd take the 30.5%. But what if the alternative wasn't 30.5% compounded monthly but 30.5% compounded *quarterly*? Is that still better?\n\nIf you punch in the numbers from the example above, that would be $100 increased by 30.5/4=7.625% four times, which is only $134.17 -- a higher interest rate, but the lower compounding rate makes it pay out less in the long run.\n\nOkay, what about 29.5% compounded weekly, or daily, or any number of tiny tweaks to both the interest rate and the compounding rate? How can people possibly expect you to do this kind of calculation every time just to figure out when one interest rate/schedule is better than another?\n\nThey don't -- you just look at the total percentage each one would return over the course of a year, which is exactly what APR measures. For example, the APR of the two examples given above are approximately 34.49% and 34.17%, so obviously the first one is better. ",
"Mortgage Banking Professional here. Lots of misinformation about this floating around. It is not the rate your interest compounds. It is the total cost of a loan including any fees incurred. This is why you are generally given an interest rate and an APR. If a loan or credit card has no fees attached the APR and rate would be the same. \n\nIt is very important to know what both numbers are. One of the most underhanded tactics I see in my industry is giving a great low rate, and attaching a ton of fees. So typically you would see a Rate of 4% and an APR of 4.457% or something like that. You could compare that to a Rate of 4.375 and an APR of 4.505. Logic would say the lower APR is a better loan right? Not really. What you should be analyzing is the difference between the rate and the APR. That difference is the cost in up front fees and it gets added to your loan amount, which means you start out with a higher loan balance and thus end up paying interest on those fees. \n\nIdeally you want the APR and the interest rate to be as close as possible. This would indicate you aren't getting a huge upfront charge to borrow the money.\n\ntl:dr APR is a calculation of all fees *and* interest expressed as a rate percentile\n\n"
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