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13facs | how do google's driverless cars work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13facs/eli5_how_do_googles_driverless_cars_work/ | {
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"A system including cameras, GPS, proximity sensors all work together to drive the car. Pretty much every road in north america is mapped on GPS. The GPS gives the rough information on the route the car should take and what to expect in terms of directions. That information is few to the computer on board that tracks the cars position. The cameras and proximity sensors work to control the more important functions. The cameras are used to pick up markers on the road, like lines, helping position the car in the lane. The cameras are also helpful for detecting things like stop lights and signs, using an advance for of recognition software. Proximity sensors work to track the position of the surrounding cars, they track the speed and distance of the other vehicles, helping the car avoid accidents.\n\nAll the information is processed by a computer onboard and using pre-written algorithms, the computer drives itself. "
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4yjn38 | how does up voting photos in reddit effect their visibility in google searches? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yjn38/eli5_how_does_up_voting_photos_in_reddit_effect/ | {
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"I believe that every time you upvote an image a link to it is created in your users folder. For example you can see all of my upvotes here:\n_URL_0_\n\nEach upvote generates a new link. When a lot of users upvote an image it creates a lot of backlinks.\n\nGoogle uses the amount of backlinks as one of the determining factors for what is the most \"relevant\" item. It also uses the anchor text (link text) to determine which keywords it will appear for. Thus you will usually see the keyword in the title.\n\nThe real algorithm that google uses is far more complicated then that. But people have figured out that by upvoting you can create enough value to push an image to the front page. "
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1qitg6 | the religion of jehova's witness | I'm surprised this isn't on here already. I would love to know all the basic fundamental beliefs or just what they would tell me if they came to my door. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qitg6/eli5_the_religion_of_jehovas_witness/ | {
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"Using reddit search I found:\n\nELI5: Jehovah's Witnesses\n\n_URL_0_"
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lee73/eli5_jehovahs_witnesses/"
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6298az | why aren't people in congress who took money from people not forced to abstain from a vote? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6298az/eli5_why_arent_people_in_congress_who_took_money/ | {
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"Because then all I'd have to do to stop something from passing is donate small amounts of money to some people who supported a bill. ",
"It is because the purpose of the legislature is to influenced by people.\n\nYour representatives are supposed to represent you. The best way to insure they do just that is to help elect the one that wants what you want. So you donate money to that person to help them get elected and to help them get re-elected. In turn they vote how you want them to. To know how you want them to vote you call them, send them mail, or have a meeting with them.\n\nTo be clear it is illegal for Congress or Senate members to receive money or gifts in exchange for voting a certain way. And that is not is what is meant when news or media say \"congress took money\". What that means is that those members have received campaign donations from someone."
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155l3i | when you flip your rear-view mirror down in the night time, why do the headlights behind you seem less bright? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/155l3i/eli5_when_you_flip_your_rearview_mirror_down_in/ | {
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"It's a second mirror that has a less reflective surface. If you take a flashlight to the mirrors at night, you can see where they each reflect to.",
"The mirror isn't flat; the glass is thicker at the top forming a wedge shape. The back of the glass is silvered to make it very reflective. When you tilt the mirror tab, the silvered portion points away from you, so you don't get a great reflection. The dim reflection you end up seeing is a reflection off the glass itself, similar to the reflection you'd see when looking out of a window at night.\n\nNewer or more high-end cars use a different method of dimming. There are sensors which determine if the level of light is too much. This then sends a signal to the glass itself to alter is light transmitting properties. This is a property known as electrochromism. "
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sx5r4 | compression of video, photo and audio. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/sx5r4/eli5_compression_of_video_photo_and_audio/ | {
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"Photo: Instead of recording the exact color of every pixel, either reduce the number of colors used (gif), or make a note that the next however number of pixels are the same color, followed by a bunch of pixels that are a different color, and so on.\n\nAudio: instead of recording every single tone of a song, only keep the loudest parts. Maybe the singer is singing while there is a loud cymbal crash. You can't really hear the singer, so cut that part out and leave the loud cymbal. If you don't know the song well, you won't usually be able to tell, unless the compression is really high.\n\nVideo: instead of keeping all of the info of every image in the video, analyze the pictures and record only how the images change from frame to frame. The background doesn't change much? Then only change the parts of the picture where someone is moving! You can see the edges of the moving stuff in badly or highly compressed movies."
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9ptw3s | what does falconry actually involve? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ptw3s/eli5_what_does_falconry_actually_involve/ | {
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"Im a falconer. There's kind of a difference between how we take the sport on and how they do it in the arab world. In north america we use trained raptors to hunt \"fur or feather\" meaning either small furry animals or gamebirds and water fowl. Our method is almost just like regular hunting but with birds of prey instead of firearms. In the middle east the sport is more like a fox hunt that uses high octane gyr falcons or gyr hybrids and a bustard called the houbara.\n\nIn either case the bird is conditioned using some degree of weight management and various different training methods. It involves finding a weight at which a bird is both responsive and healthy then maintaining it by weighing them and their food on a daily basis. "
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5cctg1 | what has changed culturally/politically that people believed it when they were warned about the hole in the ozone, but not about climate change now? | I am too young to have really understood the turn around with the ozone, but it seems like it would be as abstract to the layman as climate science is now. But yet, the whole world seems to have gotten on board with getting rid of CFCs and reversing the trend. Why is this not happening with climate change awareness? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cctg1/eli5_what_has_changed_culturallypolitically_that/ | {
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"There's a belief that the Earth can balance itself to sustain environment. I've heard it hundreds of times, this idea is popular between climate change deniers and religious people. But it has nothing to do with reality. If you want to know if it's possible for planet to became inhospitable, take a look on the Venus.",
"The CFC lobby was not nearly as powerful as the CO2-releasing lobby and was unable to produce enough anti-science propaganda.",
"The ozone layer was a fairly visible problem (look at this giant hole that wasn't there) with short term scary consequences (skin cancer for everyone!) which required very little personal or public financial sacrifice to fix (oh... we switch hair sprays.... that's not so bad). Amd since most of that could be fixed with relatively cheap legislation, you really didn't even need to mos people to buy in to fix the problem.\n\nCompare that to climate change which has long term consequences broad consequences diffused away from most key countries (displacenent of populations, issues in 50-100 years, etc) stemming from seemingly minor, nonthreatening visuals (would 1 or 2 degrees be that bad) and which addressing means fundamental changes in just about all aspects of our day to day life and commercial system.\n\nClinate change is therefore easier to scoff at and people/countries have far greater motivation to do it it.",
"It wasn't long ago that generally people (especially common folks) looked up to science. When scientists agreed on something, people deferred to that.\n\nThen came the evangelical movement with its literal interpretation of the Bible. If the earth is only 6000 years old (about the age you get to if you count the generations Genesis), then evolution over millions of years couldn't have happened. So scientists must be against God, and what they say must rejected.\n\nCombine that with a campaign by the big industrials whose profits were threatened by climate change talks, and you have the bulk of your answer.\n\nEdit: typo",
"I flew with the Naval Research Lab over Antarctica in the mid eighties. We carried scientist studying the ozone hole. It was easily observable and quantified in real time unlike global warning that requires some speculation about the environment in the past. By the way, two of the scientist told me the ozone hole was mainly caused by an active volcano on the continent. ",
"In the United States, about half the population denies global warming is real. For virtually everyone in America, directly or indirectly benefits from the activities that contribute to global warming. So virtually everyone is faced with two -- as Al Gore would put it -- inconvenient truths. \n\n1) Fossil fuels, non-sustainable farming, and other greenhouse-gas-emitting activities benefit you immensely.\n2) Fossil fuels are destroying the planet we all live on. \n\nThese two truths are hard to reconcile, so some people reconcile them by denying that they are both true. It's actually a relatively normal psychological defense mechanism that a lot of people use, though not always on this scale. \n\nWith the ozone hole, that's got a much smaller cause. It's CFCs, or freon. Ban CFCs and get the coolant in your AC and fridge replaced and problem solved. You don't depend as heavily on the use of freon for your livelihood, so you don't need to resort to denying the existence of the ozone hole to avoid hard truths. ",
"I could be horribly wrong about this but I want to chime in to get some further insight, but I was told that the climate is cyclical and that if you look back through almanacs and other published information regarding temperature and climate, the climate we have now, could've also been the same hundreds of years ago as far as people saying \"global warming is making each summer hotter and hotter\" but you can look back and see summers that were very similar in average temperature or even hotter. "
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emils6 | why do phone cameras seem more zoomed out than eyes when looking at the same thing | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/emils6/eli5_why_do_phone_cameras_seem_more_zoomed_out/ | {
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"Because they are taking the whole scene and representing it on a small screen. Then you look at the screen and it looks like a small duplication of the scene. Most camera lenses also capture a smaller field of view than your eyes do as well.",
"Your eye has a lens inside them to focus the light reflected off objects onto the retina of your eye (the image). The focal length of that lens, along with the distances involved give you a viewing angle. \n\nIf you have an SLR camera, it might have a fixed focal length or a zoom (variable focal length) lens. A camera lens of about 55mm has a similar viewing angle as our two eyes combined have. Any larger focal length would be classified as a telephoto lens and makes objects appear closer (zoomed in). Smaller focal lengths are classified as wide angle and make objects appear further away (zoomed out). \n\nBecause it would be cost prohibitive to have variable focal length optics in our phones, the smart decision was to utilize wide angle lenses. The camera resolutions are high enough to allow zooming in electronically instead of optically with an acceptable level of image degradation."
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12veh7 | why do international sporting organizations have french names? | I have always wondered why the international sporting organizations for soccer (FIFA), basketball (FIBA) and the Olympics have french names or use French predominately within their respective organizations. Any thoughts? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12veh7/eli5_why_do_international_sporting_organizations/ | {
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"Historical reasons. The modern Olympics began in the late 1800's, and FIFA was founded in 1904. While England and Germany were major players at the time, France had been a dominant cultural and military force in Europe for the previous few centuries, and was the default accepted language for international culture and diplomacy, similar to how English today is the international language of business and engineering. Even in English we call the position of having an internationally common language a \"lingua franca\" which is ~~French~~ Italian for \"~~French~~ Frankish Language\" reflecting just how dominant a force French was at the time.\n\nSince international sporting leagues were created to be, well, international, everyone assumed that everyone else would be able to speak French and set up the organizations with that in mind. Of course, it didn't hurt that France was a major initial backer for a number of these projects.\n\n(Edit) Romance languages all sound the same"
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2gcsty | when people gain weight rapidly, do they grow new hairs to cover all the skin, or do they have the same amount of hairs spaced farther apart? | For example on legs and arms... and then if the person lost the weight, would they be harrier afterwards because they still had all of the new hairs? If your body can grow new hairs because you gained weight, why can't it grow new hairs when you bald? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gcsty/eli5_when_people_gain_weight_rapidly_do_they_grow/ | {
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"No, they get stretch marks bro. Hair follicles just spread out and you don't grow new ones.",
"Is this why really fat guys often have patchy beards?",
"I lost about 90 pounds in the last year (about 185 now).\n\nI was hairy before, but you couldn't really tell on my arms for example because the hairs were actually spread out quite a bit. Now it's a lot more noticeable since the hair is denser (as in closer together) and appears darker than before. Same goes for face, legs etc.",
"I'm sure you have the same amount of hair. \n\nSource:My overweight Black Lab and her baldish spots on her fat rolls. ",
"I like to think it works like how space expands. Like how the stars just get infinitely farther apart because the space between them is growing. \n\nSource: I watch cosmos sometimes",
"As someone that lost weight rapidly, I can verify that I didn't lose hair I had when I was fat. It's denser now, because I'm smaller, but it really seems to be the same amount covering the same areas.\n\nI'd wager gaining weight is the same in reverse, excluding long term adaptation to normalize.",
"Just wondering where stretch marks come into play on this topic. I know women can gain weight rapidly during pregnancy which results in stretch marks but I've also seen them on people who are overweight. Do some people just get them and some don't?",
"I went undiagnosed for a while with hypothyroid and got heavy. The hair remains the same, it just spreads out.",
"You do not grow new hair follicles, they just spread out. It doesn't matter how quickly you gain weight. ",
"This question would make a good metaphor for the expanding universe.",
"I've always wondered about this as it relates to Bruce Banner turning into the Hulk.",
"Lost 60lbs (240 - > 180), noticeably hairier.",
"Sad that I know this: same number of follicles, further apart.",
"Same amount of hairs. Also losing weight causes hair loss, but it grows back.",
":S Some of the bears(men) I hang out with are super hairy. The image of them losing weight and becoming hairier has actually made me discover my limit of \"too hairy\".",
"Somewhat related side note: \n\nOne effect of malnutrition (esp. in anorexic patients) is lanugo, which is the growth of excess body hair (particularly very fine, \"peach fuzz\"-type hair on the face and neck). That happens when people reach dangerously low weights as a sort of failsafe for keeping them warm, because they don't have enough body fat to do so on its own. \n\nI think that the primary purpose of body hair is to provide warmth, and since gaining weight shouldn't have a negative effect on the body's ability to keep warm, I don't think there would be any benefit to growing new body hair. I'm no expert, though."
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5toebp | the economics of the cost of private education. | How can a school survive when it charges $50k tuition but says the "real price" to educate a student is ~$90k? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5toebp/eli5_the_economics_of_the_cost_of_private/ | {
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"What school is claiming that? For $90k you could get every student their own private teacher, a computer, and all the supplies they need and still probably have $10k left over. "
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apjzep | how come noise cancelling headphones don't increase hearing loss when there is actually more sound being produced around your ears? | I understand that passive noise cancelling headphones are good for your ears because they have and insulant that keeps some of the sound from outside sources from reaching your ear.
What I don't understand is the active noise cancelling technology that records the audio on the outside of the headphones and produces sound waves of the opposite amplitude on the inside.
Wouldn't these extra sound waves exhaust your ears and potentially damage your hearing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/apjzep/eli5_how_come_noise_cancelling_headphones_dont/ | {
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"That's the whole point of the opposite amplitude, the two waves cancel each other out and the eardrum doesn't move at all as a result. So the additional sounds actually result in less movement of the eardrums, and thus are easier on your ears. People who work in noisy environments (like a data center), even if the volume isn't enough to be classed as dangerous, often eventually lose their hearing in the band of frequencies the sound was in. That's due to the cilia in the inner ear in that zone being worn away."
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5knfro | are more celebrities dying this year than average? or is it just observe bias or something? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5knfro/eli5_are_more_celebrities_dying_this_year_than/ | {
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"Statistically more celebrities are probably not dying more than in previous years, but there may be a connection based in how popular / unique these celebrities were."
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jiklb | where do/did words come from? | Having just eaten breakfast, my 5 y/o niece is wondering who the heck came up with the word "banana," how it happened, how the rest of the world found out about the word, and this is how it works for all words.
Then she repeated the word "banana" until the word lost all meaning.
Thanks reddit! haha :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jiklb/eli5_where_dodid_words_come_from/ | {
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"There are a *lot* of answers to that. Here are some:\n\n* Some people believe the first words were caveman grunts or warning calls. It's easy to see how \"gaaah!\" for \"there's a tiger coming, let's run!\" could become a word *meaning* 'tiger' or 'run'.\n* It's not interesting, but the main way a language gets words is taking them from other languages. Usually they get pronounced differently and might change so much down the years that they might not look like the original word anymore ('naranja' to 'orange', for example).\n* Words can change meaning over time. The word 'deer' once meant 'animal', but with time came to mean only one *kind* of animal. And the word 'hound' once meant 'dog' but now means only one *kind* of dog. A more current example is 'LOL', which once meant 'laughing out loud' but in just a few years has lost so much of that meaning that if you want to tell someone their comment made you laugh out loud, you won't type 'LOL', because it doesn't mean that anymore.\n* We'll make compound words - sticking two words together. Like 'blackbird', which doesn't meant any old bird that happens to be black in colour but a particular *kind* of bird.\n* We also have a lot of prefixes and suffixes, which are little bits you put at the beginning and end of words to change their meaning. So you have 'locate', but then you have 'relocate' and 'relocation' as well.\n* In English one thing we do a lot it take verbs and make them nouns or take nouns and make them adjectives, etc. You can 'chair' a meeting for example.\n* There are also words like 'radar', which is the first letter of five different words (an acronym) and words like 'brunch', where the head of one word is stuck onto the body of another (portmanteau words). But it's really, really rare for someone to just 'make up' a word and have it stick. ",
"There are a *lot* of answers to that. Here are some:\n\n* Some people believe the first words were caveman grunts or warning calls. It's easy to see how \"gaaah!\" for \"there's a tiger coming, let's run!\" could become a word *meaning* 'tiger' or 'run'.\n* It's not interesting, but the main way a language gets words is taking them from other languages. Usually they get pronounced differently and might change so much down the years that they might not look like the original word anymore ('naranja' to 'orange', for example).\n* Words can change meaning over time. The word 'deer' once meant 'animal', but with time came to mean only one *kind* of animal. And the word 'hound' once meant 'dog' but now means only one *kind* of dog. A more current example is 'LOL', which once meant 'laughing out loud' but in just a few years has lost so much of that meaning that if you want to tell someone their comment made you laugh out loud, you won't type 'LOL', because it doesn't mean that anymore.\n* We'll make compound words - sticking two words together. Like 'blackbird', which doesn't meant any old bird that happens to be black in colour but a particular *kind* of bird.\n* We also have a lot of prefixes and suffixes, which are little bits you put at the beginning and end of words to change their meaning. So you have 'locate', but then you have 'relocate' and 'relocation' as well.\n* In English one thing we do a lot it take verbs and make them nouns or take nouns and make them adjectives, etc. You can 'chair' a meeting for example.\n* There are also words like 'radar', which is the first letter of five different words (an acronym) and words like 'brunch', where the head of one word is stuck onto the body of another (portmanteau words). But it's really, really rare for someone to just 'make up' a word and have it stick. "
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b6cadm | the difference between the degrees and the warm/cold settings on a split system air-conditioner. | Long time lurker, first time poster to ELI5. Apologies if I haven't titled this correctly.
& #x200B;
I am working in a small office today and we have set the air-conditioner to warm and 22C. But my co-worker and I questioned what is the difference between 22C warm and 22C cold. We just thought 22C is just 22C. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6cadm/eli5_the_difference_between_the_degrees_and_the/ | {
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"Warm=keeping room temp above set temp\n\nCool=keeping room temp below set temp\n\nThe temp you set the thermostat to isn't necessarily going to be the room temp, it's just the temp that activates the system. ",
"22C cool tells the system that when the air temp goes above 22 the cooling system turns on to cool the air to 22C. \n \n22C warm is the reverse - it controls the heating system. \n \nSo if the system is set to 22C cool and the temp is **below** 22C, the heating system won't engage, **no matter how cold** the air gets."
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861cqc | why do pigments look like another colour when they’re a powder? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/861cqc/eli5_why_do_pigments_look_like_another_colour/ | {
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"Well, I can't say I've noticed what you describe, but the explanation would be the following:\n\nLet's start with electromagnetic radiation: Electromagnetic radiation consists of electromagnetic waves, which are synchronized oscillations of electric and magnetic fields. It has a property called wavelength — the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.\n\nLight is actually a spectrum of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (as are radio waves, microwaves, x-rays and so on.. the difference between all of them is wavelength).\n\nWe can perceive a small part of that spectrum with our eyes - That part is what we consider visible light (some animals can perceive parts of that spectrum that we cannot, such as ultra-violet or infra-red). We can further break down that visible spectrum into individual colors - Each color is actually a slight variation of wavelength with red roughly at one end of our visible spectrum and violet at the other, going through every possible color in between. \n\nHere's a little graphic to better explain _URL_0_ \n\nNow the reason we actually see objects at all is because they mess with with the flow of these electromagnetic waves. The images we see are the waves bouncing off objects - partially off transparent objects and fully off opaque objects. \n\nThe reason we think objects have color is because the surface of the object can bounce the different wavelengths of visible light in slightly different ways - a particular surface might reflect a lot of the red spectrum of light, but little of the blue spectrum. Thus, that object appears to us as red because that's the part of visible light that gets to our eyes from that object. \n\nSo color is entirely determined by how a surface reflects electromagnetic radiation. It isn't red, it just reflects red light better than other kinds of light.\n\nThe explanation to your question, then, would be that those reflective properties are slightly altered when the powder is mixed with a liquid, resulting in a slightly different spectrum to be reflected back to our eyes.\n\n "
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2xovey | when the supreme court rules on gay marriage, what will happen to the lower court rulings, and the states, if the supreme court decides that states can constitutionally ban gay marriages? | I'm curious at what could happen if SCOTUS in June by some surprising 5-4 vote up hold bans on gay marriage. Would this effectively reinstate bans in every state where District and Circuit judges have ruled in favor of gay marriage? And if so, will marriages that have taken place in those jurisdictions still count? And what kind of administrative nightmare will this cause?
Edit: Title Gore! By "And the states", I mean there are states like Iowa where state courts have overturned bans on gay marriage. What would happen in those cases? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xovey/eli5when_the_supreme_court_rules_on_gay_marriage/ | {
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"In the past when a gay marriage ban has been lifted then applied again those who legally married still were married. It's possible this would happen nationally if the SCOTUS ruled that way. But further marriages would still be illegal where the state bans being considered had made them illegal.\n\nExactly how much of a hassle depends, but since in most of these places not having gay marraige was the norm forever, going back to that norm should be straightforward enough.\n\nThis wouldn't make gay marriage illegal in the states which haven't banned it though.",
"Let's assume that they say states have the right, then each state would get to decide to keep it or not. The states that have gay marriage would have to pass a law to stop it. The states without it already wouldn't really be affected unless they wanted gay marriage. \n\n"
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49c375 | why is mp3's still ripped in 128kbp/s and not simply in either 320kbp/s or straight flac? | I have never understood this. Maybe it doesn't matter if you listen on some shit speakers like beats by dr dre or such but theres really no excuse anymore. Theres so much hd space available for cheap that the filesize really can't be an excuse anymore either. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49c375/eli5_why_is_mp3s_still_ripped_in_128kbps_and_not/ | {
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"Most people aren't audiophile nerds and 128kb/s is perfectly fine for listening with the cheap earbuds that 99% of the population uses. ",
"While hard drive space is irrelevant for desktops and laptops, it is still an issue for smaller devices like smartphones. The quality of MP3s is what people are used to, so it is still advantagous to stick to it.",
"I am not an audio expert, but where are you seeing 128kbps MP3s? Pretty much all of the digital music I've seen for purchase recently has been at least 256kbps.\n\nWhy 256kbps and not 320kpbs? Many feel that the difference between 256kbps and 320kbps cannot be distinguished by the human ear even under the best circumstances, let alone by typical listeners in typical situations.\n\nWhy not FLAC? Firstly, the reason above: the vast majority of people feel that there isn't a perceptible difference. Whether you feel the limit of what is detectable is 192 or 256 or 320, there is definitely a limit in the benefits of additional bitrate. If a FLAC file takes three times the space and no one can tell the difference in a blind test it's hard to justify the using that extra space. That said, if you feel that you can tell the difference, or just want the most \"pure\" version of the recording, there are services that will sell you a FLAC version.\n\nAnd the additional space does have some costs, even if they aren't as big of a deal as they used to be:\n\n* A lot of music is streamed: and while you may have a lot of space on your hard drive, a lot of people have much more limited bandwidth caps. Even over land lines many people still pay by the GB.\n\n* Some devices still have very limited space. The Apple Watch only has 2GB for music, and many people still run out of space on their phones, especially older ones.\n\n* There are additional encoding and storage costs for the music services as well, and when you are dealing with millions and millions of tracks the costs do add up. Perhaps not that significantly, but when you consider that 320kbps or FLAC is most likely an additional encoding, and not a replacement, it's just added expense for them.\n",
"Ripping from YouTube? Every time I tested I ended up with a 128kbps file",
"All of you are ignoring the fact that MP3 encoders have improved greatly over the years. A modern 128kbps track probably sounds just as good as a 256kbps or more track from the early 2000's. ",
"It's important to note that the sound quality difference between a lossless audio file and a 128Kb/s is so minute that less than 1% of people can really tell. To prove my point, take [this test](_URL_0_)\n\nFLAC is also not a well supported format (for instance, Windows Media Player won't add FLAC to the library without a plugin). It's also a very hyped format that people seem to think improves the quality (even when converting old MP3 files, which, obviously, it doesn't)\n\nThirdly, most MP3 files are at least 256kbps, a fair amount being 320. It's a well established format that perfectly balances quality and size. \n\nFinally, lossless formats are designed to be reprocessed, not used as the main format for storing files (plus streaming/playback will eat bandwidth and RAM), such as being remixed, remastered, enhanced, etc. Lossless formats are often saved many times during the production process which would eventually cause Quality loss in an mp3, but having the final product as an mp3 won't lose any real audio quality. Basically FLAC is a fad "
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6lajev | how does facebook (and other social media sites) compile a creepily accurate suggested friends list even when you are a new user and have given the site minimal personal information? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lajev/eli5_how_does_facebook_and_other_social_media/ | {
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"Using a mixture of IP addresses and cookies for identification purposes, throughout various websites and ads they keep track of and build a profile on you.",
"Phone contacts.\n\nOnce, i added to my phone a guy from other city (he was on vacation) and we didn't have friends in common.\n\nNext day, he appears on facebook as a friend suggestion.",
"Did you give them your phone number? Even if it isn't public, if some idiot installs the facebook app on their phone and has it in their contacts, facebook will link you. Same for email address - if someone has that in their phone's contacts or gave facebook access to their emails (e.g. has both the gmail and facebook apps installed).\n\nI recently saw someone from way far away with 0 friends in common who I have emailed a few times for something very specific and business-related as a suggested friend.\n\nFacebook actually [builds profiles on non-members based on members' data](_URL_0_) and then links the two if that person ever does join facebook.",
"A lot of ways. If you have the account signed in on your phone, it can read your contacts and find their Facebook accounts.\n\nAn obvious way: it looks at mutual friends.\n\nIf you use apps via Facebook, it could look at other people using those apps, people you've used it with and people nearby who've used it.\n\nIt could and probably does track the location of users (via IP addresses and GPS) and - if it finds you spend a lot of time with particular accounts - might consider that you were friends.\n\nIt might also buy data from Google, Yahoo or Hotmail about the people certain people email, and find accounts registered to your frequently contacted email addresses.\n\nFinally, it's unlikely but possible that if you create multiple accounts from the same computer, it will automatically associate them with each other.",
"One of the higher ups with the company I work for is always showing up in my suggested friends. He's not in my contact list at all. No phone number. No email. Nothing. We have no mutual friends. I don't have anything linked to my workplace on my profile at all. We don't even work out of the same building or the same city for that matter. I would really love to know how that works."
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khqen | why we use rms to express ac voltages | I understand DC voltages pretty easily. AFAIK "120v AC" means that circuit pushes out 120 volts just like 12v DC pushes 12 volts. But where and how does RMS factor into all of this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/khqen/eli5_why_we_use_rms_to_express_ac_voltages/ | {
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"I started to type up a complicated response to this, but then I realized this was ELI5. If you want the full answer Like You Are An Electrical Engineering Student I can actually explain the math behind it.\n\nBasically, an AC voltage is almost always less than its peak value. Think of a wave in the ocean, the peak value is like the top of the wave. A DC voltage of the same \"level\" would be flat and at the same height as the top of the AC \"wave\".\n\nIt turns out that an AC voltage with a *peak* the same as a DC one doesn't supply as much power, since the AC voltage is only at its peak. But, an AC voltage with an RMS voltage that equals a DC voltage will supply the same amount of power. So, the RMS value is kind of like a fancy average, that lets you think about AC power in a similar way to DC.",
"RMS = sqroot ( mean_value ^2 ) which is a useful average of a repeating signal.\n\nSo for AC voltages, since it is sinusoidal, the RMS = peak_voltage / sqroot(2). The reason to use RMS is because when dealing with AC stuff, usually people care about power, and average power follows the normal equations people are used to if you use RMS voltages and currents.\n\nP_instanteous(t) is still V(t) * I(t) but this depends on the phase difference, which depends on the complex load, and varies with time.\n\nP_avg = V_rms * I_rms which is easy to calculate and deal with.\n\nOne problem with AC is that because it alternates, if you look at one cycle of voltage, the average is zero. And in many ways the current is flowing out and then flowing back in, and also appears to be a net of zero, so how do you describe the real power being done (heat, light, work). \n\n115V (and/or 120V) is the rms value of the AC voltage. So if you have a 100 ohm resistor plugged into your wall, you can calculate the wattage (if you use average power and rms voltages), just like they were DC equations. ",
"AC voltage is expressible as a [sine wave](_URL_0_). The top part is positive, the bottom part is negative. If you add all the parts together over one entire period (two periods are shown in the picture) they add to zero. But we know from experience that AC can be used to do work, just like DC. \n\n[RMS](_URL_1_) gives the average over time, so this is what's used for calculations in electrical work.",
" > AFAIK \"120v AC\" means that circuit pushes out 120 volts just like 12v DC pushes 12 volts.\n\n120V RMS means that the constantly changing AC voltage ends up causing the same amount of heating to the wire (or, speaking in electrical engineering terms, \"carries the same amount of watts worth of power\") as a 120V DC signal would. But the actual DC peak of an RMS AC signal is actually 1.414 (sqrt(2)) times higher than the nominal RMS value. In the case of 120 RMS, 120 * 1.414 = 169. So if you use a DC multimeter and measure the light socket in your house, you'll see the DC voltage peaks up 170 volts( and down to -170 volts) for a tiny fraction of a second each time through the AC cycle.\n\nBTW, *don't* measure the light socket in your house with a meter, unless the meter is rated for 200V or more. Stick your el-cheapo 20V meter in there, and it'll blow up and put your eye out, or catch fire, or maybe just burn up its guts and die with a horrible nasty burned plastic smell. Don't say I didn't warn you.",
"I started to type up a complicated response to this, but then I realized this was ELI5. If you want the full answer Like You Are An Electrical Engineering Student I can actually explain the math behind it.\n\nBasically, an AC voltage is almost always less than its peak value. Think of a wave in the ocean, the peak value is like the top of the wave. A DC voltage of the same \"level\" would be flat and at the same height as the top of the AC \"wave\".\n\nIt turns out that an AC voltage with a *peak* the same as a DC one doesn't supply as much power, since the AC voltage is only at its peak. But, an AC voltage with an RMS voltage that equals a DC voltage will supply the same amount of power. So, the RMS value is kind of like a fancy average, that lets you think about AC power in a similar way to DC.",
"RMS = sqroot ( mean_value ^2 ) which is a useful average of a repeating signal.\n\nSo for AC voltages, since it is sinusoidal, the RMS = peak_voltage / sqroot(2). The reason to use RMS is because when dealing with AC stuff, usually people care about power, and average power follows the normal equations people are used to if you use RMS voltages and currents.\n\nP_instanteous(t) is still V(t) * I(t) but this depends on the phase difference, which depends on the complex load, and varies with time.\n\nP_avg = V_rms * I_rms which is easy to calculate and deal with.\n\nOne problem with AC is that because it alternates, if you look at one cycle of voltage, the average is zero. And in many ways the current is flowing out and then flowing back in, and also appears to be a net of zero, so how do you describe the real power being done (heat, light, work). \n\n115V (and/or 120V) is the rms value of the AC voltage. So if you have a 100 ohm resistor plugged into your wall, you can calculate the wattage (if you use average power and rms voltages), just like they were DC equations. ",
"AC voltage is expressible as a [sine wave](_URL_0_). The top part is positive, the bottom part is negative. If you add all the parts together over one entire period (two periods are shown in the picture) they add to zero. But we know from experience that AC can be used to do work, just like DC. \n\n[RMS](_URL_1_) gives the average over time, so this is what's used for calculations in electrical work.",
" > AFAIK \"120v AC\" means that circuit pushes out 120 volts just like 12v DC pushes 12 volts.\n\n120V RMS means that the constantly changing AC voltage ends up causing the same amount of heating to the wire (or, speaking in electrical engineering terms, \"carries the same amount of watts worth of power\") as a 120V DC signal would. But the actual DC peak of an RMS AC signal is actually 1.414 (sqrt(2)) times higher than the nominal RMS value. In the case of 120 RMS, 120 * 1.414 = 169. So if you use a DC multimeter and measure the light socket in your house, you'll see the DC voltage peaks up 170 volts( and down to -170 volts) for a tiny fraction of a second each time through the AC cycle.\n\nBTW, *don't* measure the light socket in your house with a meter, unless the meter is rated for 200V or more. Stick your el-cheapo 20V meter in there, and it'll blow up and put your eye out, or catch fire, or maybe just burn up its guts and die with a horrible nasty burned plastic smell. Don't say I didn't warn you."
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7fjm2c | why does the us federal reserve want to raise intrest rates if unemployment falls below 4%? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fjm2c/eli5_why_does_the_us_federal_reserve_want_to/ | {
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"The Fed has a dual-mandate: keep unemployment low and keep inflation low. Generally economists think that the US is at full employment if the unemployment rate is around 4%. This is because you figure that at any point in time you have about that many people \"frictionally\" unemployed. Meaning they are moving from one part of the country to another, want to change careers, just caught a bad break, etc. They are no unemployed because of it being systematically hard to find a job.\n\nOnce the economy hits full-employment, the Fed gets very worried about inflation taking hold in wages. If the economy continues to grow, employers will start bidding up wages even though there are no more people to hire. In essence, wages would increase without an increase in productivity, and thus inflation would be transmitted through out the rest of the economy. (This is essentially what happened in the 1970's and was a huge problem.) So they start raising rates to slow growth and prevent wage inflation. ",
"Moderate inflation is good for the economy as it results in more money to employees = > increased consumer spending = > increased production = > increase in GDP."
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5f6xej | how are not-for-profits/nonprofits allowed to pay their workers? isn't salary profit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5f6xej/eli5_how_are_notforprofitsnonprofits_allowed_to/ | {
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"Profit is made after all of your overheads and expenses have been paid, so wages/bills/insurance etc have to be taken cared for first. Anything else that is left is profit :)",
"No, profit is everything after expenses that normally goes into the pockets of the people who own the corporation and makes them wealthier. Non-profits are allowed to turn a profit, but they have to take that profit and re-invest it into the corporation to further its goals instead of handing that money out to the shareholders. ",
"Well, no, from an organization's perspective, salaries are an expense.\n\nBut the real reason it's not like that is that not-for-profit has a more specific meaning than you're thinking. The details aren't really ELI5 stuff (and besides, vary from country to country), but the basic idea is that a non-profit has a mission other than making money, and, if it does end up with more money than it started with, it doesn't distribute the gain back out to its owners.",
"Non-profit means that what's left at the end of the year (subtracting expenses from revenue) isn't given to owners as profits. Revenues are not profits, nor are donations in the case of a non-profit. And salaries are an expense for an organization, not a profit.\n\nTo illustrate, you have a business that makes $1 million revenue, and you have a non-profit that takes in $1 million in donations. Both spent $500k on salaries, rent, marketing, etc. At the end of the year, the business owner would pocket the remaining $500k as profit. The charity would use that $500k remaining to fund cancer research, or buy food for the poor."
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2kcts8 | why do american's take halloween and costumes so serious? why is it such an important event in the year? | UK here. Can someone explain why Halloween holds such significance with Americans? Why they try so hard with costumes?
I fully understand why you would dress up in cool costumes as a kid trick or treating, but even adults go to great lengths to have the best costume at (for a non-American) a completely forgettable date on the calendar.
Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kcts8/eli5_why_do_americans_take_halloween_and_costumes/ | {
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"The simple answer is that it's fun. A lot of people like to get artistic with their costumes and have fun dressing up with family and friends.",
"It is not exactly important. It is a fun holiday where children get to dress up and go get candy and adults get to dress up and go to parties. A major part of dressing up is to have high quality costumes that you put effort into. It makes it more fun, particularly if you are crafting your own costume. ",
"Costume parties are lots of fun. It's pretty much a day where everyone is throwing a giant costume party. Im surprised it hasn't caught on in more places.",
"It isn't that serious. Most stores/banks/etc. are still open on Halloween. Really it is just a great time with the kids and has become tied to growing up in the US.",
"American here. I have no frickin' idea and it frankly skeeves me out. I am the Grinch of Halloween.\n\nTrick-or-treating -- OK, harmless fun, I get that, I did that. A costume party -- that certainly can be fun. But for me it crosses over into *no fun at all* when your bank teller becomes a witch and the kid bagging your groceries is Frankenstein, or when six houses on your block have mock cemeteries on the front lawn or corpses impaled on the fence.",
"It's a time that you are supposed to party, and enjoy life through the motions of death. it's acceptable to get drunk, have fun, and look as crazy as you want. There aren't very many rules, and anything that would be \"strange\" to wear into society is perfectly acceptable.\n\nSource: mid-twenties american male.\n\nEdit: you could say that I'm ignoring the more traditional roles, but i'm explaining it the way that most everybody that I know sees the holiday.",
"It's not important, it's FUN. \n\nWhy do people complain about fun thing in the world? \"But WHY are there trampolines?\"",
"The answer with a lot of these questions relating to American culture is usually = does it make some people a lot of money? If so, that's why.",
"Englishman here and I feel the pain. In many ways it'd be cool to have the same halloween culture over here but it never takes off other than for kids' parties and trick or treating.\n\nWhat I genuinely find annoying is how batshit mental Reddit goes for it, every other post is about a costume AND THEY'RE NOT EVEN SCARY. Not a single white sheet ghost or anything.",
"We don't have an entire house of our Congress dedicated to silly dress, so we have to take a more egalitarian and hands-on method to scratching that itch.\n\nThat said, there are many approaches to Halloween in the US. The people who consider it the high point of their year are rare, but they make for good TV and post to reddit a lot.",
"marketing. the underlying principle of everything American. ",
"Part of it has to do with shifting cultural norms in US society. As distinctly religious holidays like Christmas and Easter receive less attention due to a less homogeneous religious culture, the secular holiday (secular in how it's observed, not its roots) gets more attention because everyone can join in without feeling like an outsider.\n\nThis effect is amplified by both the mainstream media (which avoids the\"controversy\" of religious holidays like the plague) and sites like Reddit (where there's a strong and vocal atheist/non-religious segment) and the secular Halloween gets talked about far more than things like Christmas (or Hanukkah or Yom Kippur).\n\nPlus, other holidays don't have cool costumes you can show off."
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1uata8 | what is happening when i can tell someone is looking at me from across a busy room? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uata8/eli5_what_is_happening_when_i_can_tell_someone_is/ | {
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"was just speaking to a friend about this, also how is it that the reaction to this causes my eyes know how and where to look precisely into the other persons eyes once you know there looking at you in a reflex type manner.",
"Well, I'm certainly no expert on psychology, but what's probably happening has been around a lot longer than you or I, even our great great grandparents. Back when we were still primates living out in the plains, we would have to keep our senses tightened up and ready to go, because almost every situation was a life or death situation. That's why when something bad happens, people tend to overreact because we're switching back to our primal instincts. \n\nNow, imagine you're an early homo sapien, wandering around the plains, when all of a sudden you feel a fierce gaze burning into your senses. Without looking, you know you've made a mistake and wandered into another animal's territory. You make a mad dash into the trees and escape before you can get caught. That early sense of danger potentially saved your life. Now, imagine you didn't notice anything and continued to wander around, right into the angry animal. Now you're dead meat.\n\nOf course, nowadays we humans don't have to worry about lions pouncing out of the brush and eating us, but our brains are still hardwired to subliminally sense people's gazes without us even realizing we're doing so. Our brains simply aren't used to the fact we're not in immediate danger, and so it's always alerting us when we're perceived to be in danger.",
"You have this feeling, of not knowing what is behind you, many times. Most of the time, you take a quick glance, see nothing, forget all about it, and go on. Sometimes you see something, like someone looking at you, and you remember. As all you remember is the few times you glanced and saw something, then you think that you 'know when someone is looking at you'.\n\nThere is another thing that is going on - and it is related to the 'stopped clock illusion'. You can't see anything when your eyes are moving from one place to another, so your brain replaces that with what it sees when your eyes stop moving. So you look around, your brain drops the useless, motion blurred imagery, and you see what was there when your eyes stop moving. Someone else sees you turning around or looking up, and looks at you. Bingo - you see someone who appears to have been 'looking at you' - but in fact, was only reacting to what you just did."
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446mww | why do gas stoves start at the highest heat setting instead of the lowest? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/446mww/eli5_why_do_gas_stoves_start_at_the_highest_heat/ | {
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"For lighting. The gas comes out at maximum so it will reach the pilot flame and ignite right away.\n\n"
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1ojad6 | how does land/property pass from public too private ownership? | I'm curious about how land originally passes from being owned by the state too being owned by individuals, In what circumstances is it allowed? Does it cost as much as buying from the market? Why doesn't the government sell more/people buy more? How are settlements formed when no-one private entity owns the land? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ojad6/eli5how_does_landproperty_pass_from_public_too/ | {
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"Unless the public body is prohibited from selling its land, it can sell it whenever it wants to. Generally governments try to stick to the market rate, unless there's an ulterior motive (like land redistribution in Africa, in which case it might be sold below market value). Government doesn't sell more because it generally tries not to hold too much excess land, because it generates costs without income or usage.\n\nWhen no-one owns the land, usage is possession, at least in 18th and 19th century political philosophy. In almost every modern state however, 100% of land is owned, and anything that is registered to a private entity is automatically the government's."
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2req40 | if we can do our own taxes online, why can't we register a new car, transfer a tag to a new vehicle online? or any other dmv task for that matter?? (besides issuing licenses...) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2req40/eli5_if_we_can_do_our_own_taxes_online_why_cant/ | {
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"Because the DMV didn't build a web portal and the IRS did. If you want to know WHY the DMV didn't build one....well that's a different question altogether.",
"In some states you can do many things online. It's up to your state's secretary of state to establish the procedures and set up a website that can do those things. This whole internet thing is still pretty new in terms of changing the way the government does things.",
"In Virginia I know you can do a few things online, I can update my registration and they'll mail me new stickers"
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21xuwd | why it's legal for fox news to make stuff up and sell it as news? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21xuwd/eli5_why_its_legal_for_fox_news_to_make_stuff_up/ | {
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"The step after regulating \"integrity\" is regulating free speech -- so it's a slippery slope.\n\nAnd in a sense, there is regulation. Rather was canned for what he did and the damage it caused to his company. If people decide they want the same out of Fox, they'll vote with their wallets.\n\nAlso, your question is entirely speculative, and based on the idea that you (or someone somewhere in charge) have more ability to determine truth over someone else. Also a slippery slope.",
"CBS took action against Dan Rather, not the government (now, George Bush could have taken action against CBS as a citizen for slander, but that's different from how I'm understanding your context of 'legality'). Fox News can call itself news and say what it wants as long as it's not infringing on others' rights or endangering the public safety.\n\nWhat I think you're talking about is intellectual honesty. CBS sided on the side of intellectual honesty (but firing Dan was more of a PR move).",
"The same reason CNN MSNBC and ABC news can make stuff up",
"Also, to differentiate the examples, there's usually a harsher line drawn for lying about facts than for manipulating facts. When you manipulate facts, like, say, making a [misleading chart](_URL_0_) or reporting your own talking points as \"news,\" that can certainly cause issues. But we usually think of the best way to handle those issues as more speech, not more court action. This is in part to avoid slippery slopes, and in part because it can be hard to tell the difference between \"manipulation\" and effective argument before the idea gets out into the wild. \n\nBy contrast, straight up lying about facts, like Rather did, is easy to identify as wrong before the fact, and really is best dealt with by just stopping the speech before it happens. It's still very dangerous to let government decide what can or can't go forward, but it makes sense for there to be a harsh response. "
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c4ihfp | what is the sun's spectrum and how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c4ihfp/eli5_what_is_the_suns_spectrum_and_how_does_it/ | {
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"Heated matter emits radiation. Most commonly as infrared radiation which we can't see but can feel on our skin. When the heat exceeds a certain value, it starts glowing red. Keep heating up and it becomes yellow, then white, which means that all visible wavelengths are emitted - like a very hot piece of iron. Knowing this, we can attribute the heat to the colour of the light: 5500 degrees Kelvin is daylight \"colored\" (this light colour temperature is printed on light bulb boxes). \n\nA perfectly black body would emit all wavelengths that come from this temperature. But atoms and molecules absorb very specific wavelengths. So while we know that a star of a certain temperature would emit a certain spectrum of so called blackbody radiation (which wouldn't absorb any specific wavelength), we can observe that certain wavelengths are missing from the expected spectrum.\n\nFrom the missing lines in the observed spectrum, we can deduce the presence of certain elements in a stars surface, which tells us a lot about that star."
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2ch2f8 | why is katsaridaphobia (fear of cockroaches) so common? | First of all-yes, I did a search and the [last post](_URL_0_) was not helpful.
I understand the common fear of snakes, spiders, tigers-all are dangerous and it's instinct to fear them. I also understand that there are really uncommon fears like rabbits or birds that don't need an explanation, those people are the exception to the rule.
However, *many* people fear the damn roach-myself included. I don't mind other bugs-just the roach! I know others who feel the same as me.
Why do we fear these harmless, stupid bugs?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ch2f8/eli5_why_is_katsaridaphobia_fear_of_cockroaches/ | {
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"Cockroaches are generally considered a sign of uncleanliness, even squalor. That's not strictly true, but it's a connotation that has remained. They also carry diseases. Many things like this aren't even an instinctual fear. Babies reach for hot stoves. We *learn* over time that cockroaches are indicative of a poor situation. They're also really hard to kill, and nobody likes that. Darn things would survive a nuclear apocalypse. That's freaky.",
"Because they are miniature lovecraftian hellbeasts! I almost broke my ankle \"teleporting\" over the couch to get away from a palmetto bug (cockroaches bigger, uglier, even harder to kill cousin in the south) once. They are made of malice and hatred of people and will fly in your face for no damn reason. I tried to kill one once, \"kill it with Raid\" my husband said, \"It will die instantly\" he said reassuringly (from a safe distance over the phone)...it flew into my EYE covered in raid and then escaped. I was blind for like and hour and it got away scott free. Why are we afraid of roaches...because they are scary and have evil murderous hearts that won't quit beating until they have filled you with the maximum amount of rage-panic!! Ok, rant over.",
"If you've ever had to deal with roaches (and almost anyone who loves in a hot/humid place long enough has had to deal with them at least once in their life time) you know that they are built to be a nuisance to anything they cross paths with. And thats their only job, to be a nuisance. \n\nThey are fast, they are resistant to almost anything (I've seen man survive taking a boot to the head), they like to hide it the most annoying places, and they like to come out in the dark. Its not uncommon for a person to be uneasy in the dark because of the things they might be able to see but you know thats when roaches like to some out. So now you have to think about this things crawling all over the place in the dark. Turning the lights on isn't too much better because then you get to see them all scatter and how close they were to you, this understandable freaks a lot of people out. You might feel something brush across your leg and you don't know if its just your imagine or a roach, probably a roach."
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9e5ybd | what's preventing me from randomly guessing someone else's software product key, especially for physical copies of stuff? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9e5ybd/eli5_whats_preventing_me_from_randomly_guessing/ | {
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"You seem to understand the concept of brute force. I think the reason it's not more common is just the amount of work that entails for relatively little gain. It would be more lucrative to use that program and computational power to guess windows keys or something more valuable than the new CoD DLC or whatever. But it does happen there are a number of \"cracked\" games where you use a keygen program as part of the install process. ",
"Actually, the numberspace is significantly smaller because with a 15 char key, the 15th is usually a check digit. So you just need to generate the 14 char combos and ensure you calculate the correct check digit for the last one.\n\nOther than that, it’s all up to the large numberspace to prevent collisions (just like with hashes).",
" > but first of all I could bring that number down by avoiding using obvious or simple compinations (e.g. QWERTY)\n\nLet us assume there is some sort of filter on the keys to prevent curse words from showing up. Or maybe any word at all, in any language which uses those characters. A couple million combinations ruled out then.\n\nHow many combinations can you get for a 15 character key that allows letters and numbers which are case-sensitive? That means each character can be one of 62 different possibilities and you are choosing 15 of them in a specific order.\n\nThe result is that there are about 7.689 times 10 to the 26th power different options. That is 768900000000000000000000000 different options. Your couple million filter doesn't make it much easier. Let us assume you make a copy of the game for every living person on Earth? Still absurdly tiny in comparison to the different possible options.",
"TL;DR: Nothing really, because the chances of you guetting a valid key is slimmer than winning the lottery. The number of invalid keys simply make any potential guess worthless, even in great numbers. It's the same with passwords. \n\nFor one the validation server might notice you trying thousands upon thousands of keys and deny you access, so that's one possibility. \n\nHowever, I don't think you actually understand how monumentally huge the number 35^15 is. It's a number that has 24 digits (not to mention most keycodes use both upper and lowercase, so it's more likely to be 62^15 or whatnot).\n\nLet me put it this way: let's assume that you have a computer that can make 100 million guesses every second. It will take that computer roughly 45 million years to manage to guess every single key. If we assume that there are a billion (10^9) different valid keys then your chances of guessing a valid key is for all practical purposes 0. \n\nIf you take 100 thousand guesses the odd of you getting NO valid keys, out of a billion, are 99.9999999%, essentially guaranteed failiure. \n\n\nIn order to get a 50% chance of finding ONE of the billion keys floating around you'd have to print 10^14 different codes. ten thousand billion guesses to have a 50% chance. \n\n\nIt's simply not practical in any sense of the word, even if there are more valid keys. This is also the philosophy behind \"your website password must be X characters long\". after a certain point, assuming you don't use an obvious password, it simply isn't practical with all the computing power in the world to randomly guess the correct answer. \n\n\n",
"You're grossly underestimating the difficulty of guessing a key. Let's go with your 37^15 probably, since that's a fair approximation. Now let's assume that we can knock out all the \"most common\" keys that are \"too easy\". That gets rid of 10,000 or so possibilities. Yay. But that still leaves HUNDREDS of TRILLIONS of possible keys. Assuming you can make 10,000 guesses per SECOND, on average it will take you approximately 10,000 YEARS to get a single hit. \n \nThat's what keeps you from randomly guessing a key, it's why Bitcoin wallets (and other forms of encryption for that matter) are so secure, etc. Statistically you have a significantly larger chance of guessing every number in the Powerball drawing ONE time over the course of your ENTIRE LIFE than you do of randomly guessing one out of 100,000 15-digit product keys.",
"Since its ELI5, there is nothing but raw chance that makes it so you can't do it.\n\nMore advanced:\nsay a computer takes 3 seconds to attempt a passcode, relay the information to the company, and get either a pass or fail response back:\n\nThe chances of you getting it correct are 1 in 3.3344626795e+23, or for simplicity sake, 330000000000000000000000 with a 15 character. Each time you do it AND FAIL, you don't say \"Now I have 2 out of x chances\" instead you have just the same amount of chance of getting it right. The law of large numbers says as we do more trials, the number of successes / number of attempts will slowly reach what is the true chance.\n\nEven assuming that somehow, we're guaranteed to get a hit at least be the bigNumber'th time, that's still on average bigNumber * 3 seconds.\n\nLets see how long one person takes to do it:\n330000000000000000000000 * 3 / 60 / 60 / 24 / 365 = 3.1392694e+16\nor 31,000,000,000,000,000 years (again, this is assuming we have the power to get average odds on demand)\n\nYou bring up that a single game has 100,000 copies sent out, so now we have many more times the chance to hit! \n\nNow we're down to 31,000,000,000 years of churning. \nThere are 15,624 games on steam (as of 2017, so data is a little old) and lets make it an even 15000 (some games are free!) \n31,000,000,000 / 15000 = 2,066,666 years of churning (assuming we just want one license)\n\nYou can have more computers working, so say we have 500 computers going all at the same time (avg cost of a computer is $700 so thats $350000) \n\n2,066,666 / 500 = 4133 years of constant work to get one game.\n\nAt that rate, its cheaper to buy a game."
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f6m1yo | how did someone as insane as nero become emperor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f6m1yo/eli5_how_did_someone_as_insane_as_nero_become/ | {
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"Nero was raised in a Roman imperial governance tutoring system after being adopted by Claudius. \n\nKeep in mind that when looking at the historic past, behaviour considered loathsome now was more common place then. Additionally, the tenets of human emancipation weren’t yet a thing so life was cheap and crimes were rarely held to account."
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2xngf6 | if scientists can tell that their best atomic clock loses 1s every 16 million year, why not use what ever they're using to measure the clock's accuracy as a clock itself? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xngf6/eli5_if_scientists_can_tell_that_their_best/ | {
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"They're not measuring the atomic clock, they're using the science behind it to judge it's statistical likelihood of accuracy. They're measuring it's \"margin or error.\"",
"Also what can happen is that they actually make several clocks working by the same principle and see how much their time diverges. The idea is to correct for random inaccuracies, so one clock will go a bit faster while the other is a bit slower. If you compare the deviation you can measure the inaccuracy of the clock. \n\nExample: Take a few old spring-based clocks they will diverge a couple of minutes over a few days. If you take quartz-based clocks they might bring that down to seconds or less over a few days and if you take atomic clocks it will be very much less still... virtually nothing over a day but you can then extrapolate to a divergence of 1 sec in X years.",
"Apparently this needs to be a FAQ. [How did people know which clocks were the most accurate?](_URL_0_)\n\nTo re-explain, you don't need a Platonic True Clock to measure accuracy, because what accuracy means for timepieces is stability and consistency.\n\nIf you take 10 wristwatches, synchronize them, let them run for about a year, and synchronously stop them, they won't even agree on how many seconds have elapsed. If you take 10 atomic clocks, synchronize them, let them run for about a year, and synchronously stop them, they will agree on how many nanoseconds have elapsed, and their sub-nanosecond differences will be consistent with \"loses 1s every 16 million years\" (or whatever).\n\nIf you're initially developing atomic clocks, and they agree that precisely, but all 10 clocks say that the year is 5 seconds too long (exageration), that just means you need to recalibrate the atomic clocks (change how many oscillations counts as one second) based on your best existing non-atomic time sources. But now the calibration is long-since done and the second is defined in terms of a certain type of atomic clock."
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jrap5 | why food cools off faster in my 98.6 degree mouth than at room temperature. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jrap5/eli5_why_food_cools_off_faster_in_my_986_degree/ | {
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"because air does not conduct heat as fast as water (or your saliva) does. ",
"Both the air and your saliva are made of tiny parts called molecules. Heat is actually the back-and-forth motion of those little parts. The molecules that make up your saliva are closer together than the ones in air, so a lot more of them touch the molecules in the food when it's in your mouth instead of surrounded by air. The food molecules cool faster then because they have more molecules to bump into to slow them down.",
"because air does not conduct heat as fast as water (or your saliva) does. ",
"Both the air and your saliva are made of tiny parts called molecules. Heat is actually the back-and-forth motion of those little parts. The molecules that make up your saliva are closer together than the ones in air, so a lot more of them touch the molecules in the food when it's in your mouth instead of surrounded by air. The food molecules cool faster then because they have more molecules to bump into to slow them down."
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lxik2 | what digital technology is and how it differs from whatever we used (analog?) before it | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lxik2/eli5_what_digital_technology_is_and_how_it/ | {
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"Both technologies use electronic circuits, but digital ones have 'digital' data running through it. \n\nA signal running through a wire can be high or low. When it's high, we say that it represents the number 1 and when it is low we say that it represents the number 0. This is digital (digit-al) data since a combination of these values can represent whatever we want, eg time, symbols, letters. Say for example, we decide that 3 high signals represent the letter 'A', or when all signals are low then it represents midnight.\n\nWe then use these little components called Transistors. These are good at manipulating digital signals. Using these, we could make a component that takes incoming signals and adds them together to make a simple calculator. And then by making more elaborate components and circuits, we develop computers which can manipulate digital signals in all sorts of ways like calculate the motion of a bullet in a video game.\n\nPrior to this, electronic technology had no real concept of digital data. You would have electrical signals running through them, but they would function on the basis of more rudimentary processes.\n",
"Source: College Digital Systems Design Course\n\nWhat is digital?\n\n* A mode of transferring data by electrical voltage by the use of two states (0 and 1)\n\nWhat is analog?\n\n* A mode of transferring data by electrical voltage with a continuous signal\n\nWhy use analog?\n\n* You can model complex functions with few transistors\n\n* Low power consumption\n\nWhy not use analog?\n\n* Circuit complexity is limited by noise\n\n* Analog designs require more skilled designers\n\n* Limited amount of reuse or design automation\n\n* Does not scale down well (to nanometer size, for example)\n\n* Hard to test\n\nWhy not use digital?\n\n* Requires thousands of transistors to do simple functions\n\n* Requires more power\n\nWhy use digital?\n\n* Highly immune to noise and component variation\n\n* Same result every time\n\n* Reliable circuits with millions of transistors\n\n* Reusable designs\n\n* Designers require less knowledge\n\n* Scales down to nanometer size\n\n* Easy to test\n\nIf you'd like me to elaborate on any of these points, feel free to ask.\n\nFor example, I mentioned noise in analog and digital circuits. If there is any interest, I'll go into more detail on why this is a big deal.",
"Both technologies use electronic circuits, but digital ones have 'digital' data running through it. \n\nA signal running through a wire can be high or low. When it's high, we say that it represents the number 1 and when it is low we say that it represents the number 0. This is digital (digit-al) data since a combination of these values can represent whatever we want, eg time, symbols, letters. Say for example, we decide that 3 high signals represent the letter 'A', or when all signals are low then it represents midnight.\n\nWe then use these little components called Transistors. These are good at manipulating digital signals. Using these, we could make a component that takes incoming signals and adds them together to make a simple calculator. And then by making more elaborate components and circuits, we develop computers which can manipulate digital signals in all sorts of ways like calculate the motion of a bullet in a video game.\n\nPrior to this, electronic technology had no real concept of digital data. You would have electrical signals running through them, but they would function on the basis of more rudimentary processes.\n",
"Source: College Digital Systems Design Course\n\nWhat is digital?\n\n* A mode of transferring data by electrical voltage by the use of two states (0 and 1)\n\nWhat is analog?\n\n* A mode of transferring data by electrical voltage with a continuous signal\n\nWhy use analog?\n\n* You can model complex functions with few transistors\n\n* Low power consumption\n\nWhy not use analog?\n\n* Circuit complexity is limited by noise\n\n* Analog designs require more skilled designers\n\n* Limited amount of reuse or design automation\n\n* Does not scale down well (to nanometer size, for example)\n\n* Hard to test\n\nWhy not use digital?\n\n* Requires thousands of transistors to do simple functions\n\n* Requires more power\n\nWhy use digital?\n\n* Highly immune to noise and component variation\n\n* Same result every time\n\n* Reliable circuits with millions of transistors\n\n* Reusable designs\n\n* Designers require less knowledge\n\n* Scales down to nanometer size\n\n* Easy to test\n\nIf you'd like me to elaborate on any of these points, feel free to ask.\n\nFor example, I mentioned noise in analog and digital circuits. If there is any interest, I'll go into more detail on why this is a big deal."
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26ohjm | why doesn't society like loners? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26ohjm/eli5_why_doesnt_society_like_loners/ | {
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"This is because the people that talk in public are extroverts. An introvert isn't as likely to take a public stance on any of this, so we have less of a defense.",
"I'd say it has to do with the fact that humans are pack animals, we live in flocks and are sociable creatures. Those who don't fit into that structure of being a part of the flock are left out.",
"Why don't loners like society?",
"This has been deleted because it is asking for opinions, it is not a subject that can be objectively simplified into layman's terms. Because of this, it belongs in /r/askreddit rather than here. Thanks."
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9zgs5e | why can’t people sue internet and financial companies for data breaches and why aren’t people behind bars? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9zgs5e/eli5_why_cant_people_sue_internet_and_financial/ | {
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"Your premise is false. People can, and do, sue companies for data breaches. In fact many companies buy special insurance just for this issue."
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2a0sl5 | why is calling obama a socialist considered an insult? what's so wrong about that type of government anyways? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a0sl5/eli5_why_is_calling_obama_a_socialist_considered/ | {
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"Because \"socialist\" is a loaded term in American politics, as illustrated by /u/quasiplumber 's response. It inevitably leads to a false equivalence between \"socialist\" policies like progressive tax rates, social spending, and government assistance and \"socialism/communism,\" absence of private property, no free market, government controlled everything, IE Soviet Russia and Communist China.",
"During the Cold War, the \"enemy\" of the United States (as well as most of the wealthy world) were all self-proclaimed socialist nations (The USSR and China being the largest). The word \"socialism\" has come to represent all the things US Americans prefer about their way of life to that of those countries: freedom, democracy and capitalism. So to call someone a socialist is often to associate them with the brutish Communist societies of the Cold War.\n\nObjectively, Obama is not a socialist. Socialism is any social system where the means of production (ie, all the things presently owned by employers like machines and tools as well as land) are \"socially\" rather than privately owned and controlled. Obama is more accurately described as a Social Democrat, someone whose ideal society is quite capitalist but with a government who often intervenes to improve efficiency and fairness.",
"It's only an insult to certain people who think being a socialist is a bad thing. Also, it's just simply not true. Obama is a moderate centrist, and fifty years ago he would have been considered more conservative than Eisenhower.",
"In my experience socialism/communism is kind of mushed into one 'ol put of 'thats bad' by some people in the states. ",
"Obama is not a socialist, so that is a lie. When you tell a lie about someone in order to make them look bad, that is an insult.\n\nThere isn't really anything inherently wrong with socialism, but the USA spent a very long time living in fear of socialist countries during the Cold War, and so many older Americans hear \"socialist\" and think back to the days of seeing \"Russian bread lines\" and \"Joe McCarthy\" and \"the commies are going to nuke us\".\n\nIt scares people and paints him as an Other to be distrusted and feared.",
"Obama in Britain would be right of the centre",
"The election was a bit of a facepalm for actual Socialists because Obama shared virtually nothing ideologically with them. It was basically a purely emotive statement to make and the only real \"proof\" that was ever brought to bear was some half-articulated argument about him engaging in class warfare (with no actual idea what that term meant) and believing in wealth redistribution (spoiler: they believe in it too!) so that automatically means Socialist. \n\nThe equation basically went:\n\nMalformed idea of class war + vague and mis-stated ideas about wealth redistribution + we don't want him to win = Socialist.",
"For some 150 years, there has been an ongoing smear campaign in America against socialism, and now many Americans just automatically associate it it with evil.\n\nBack in the 19th century, socialism became quite popular among people fighting for social justice and decent working conditions and pay. Socialism *almost* caught on as a major political force, there were several socialist political candidates that did well.\n\nBut the robber barons of the time mounted an enormous smear campaign against it, equating it with anarchy, bomb-throwing lunatics, etc.\n\nWhen Stalin shot whoever was standing in front of him and seized control of Russia, that made things a whole lot easier for the smear campaign, because now it was easy to confuse people by conflating Stalinism with socialism (made easier by Russia loudly proclaiming it was socialist. It really wasn't *very* socialist).\n\nAlso in the early 20th century, the government finally got off its ass and started passing health and safety laws, and unions gained significant power in dealing with workplace atrocities, so socialism began to fall out of favor among the general public.\n\nBy the time of the Cold War, the decades of propaganda finally paid off, and socialism acquired the permanent taint of dictatorship and evil some still associate with it today. Indeed, the conservatives managed to shoot down the nascent universal healthcare movement by branding it as \"socialized medicine.\" A B-movie actor named Ronald Reagan even recorded a speech detailing the HORRORS of socialized medicine, and it was released on a record album that got played at a lot of country club luncheons. Decades later, long after the collapse of the Soviet system, when the ACA was being debated, conservatives even trotted out the old term like it was some dusty, moldy, old cardboard Frankenstein statue at a carny funhouse. And people *still* swallowed it.\n\n",
"As to \"what's wrong with Socialism?\"\n\nConsider the following question:\n\nDo individuals serve society or does society serve individuals?\n\nThe United States is built upon the idea that society serves individuals. We believe that life works best when the individuals focus on improving their lives and that society improves as a byproduct. We have relatively low taxes on the rich because we believe the rich will do better things with that money than society (or the government) will. \n\nSocialist countries are built upon the idea that individuals serve society. They (and, in the extreme, Communist countries) believe that life works best when individuals subordinate their needs to the needs of society as a whole. For example, socialist countries have relatively high taxes on the rich because they believe that society (or the government) will do better things with that money than the rich people will.\n\nTo answer your question as to \"what's wrong with Socialism?\" many Americans feel that it answers the above question the wrong way when it says that \"individuals serve society.\""
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1xj0z1 | what is the onion magazine? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xj0z1/eli5_what_is_the_onion_magazine/ | {
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"The Onion is a humor and parody newspaper that makes fun of political, social and economic events in the world through parody and exaggeration. "
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6jc1qa | so i bought 'new' listerine with no alcohol. what's left in it that kills germs? do i need the alcohol? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jc1qa/eli5_so_i_bought_new_listerine_with_no_alcohol/ | {
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"Alcohol isn't actually the ingredient used to kill mouth germs, its primary purpose is to keep the actual active ingredients in solution. Alcohol free Listerine, according to their site, uses essential oils with antibacterial and anti-fungal properties. I'm unsure what ingredient in the Zero Alcohol formula keeps the oils in solution"
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13qo6b | grover norquist is just some guy. why do politicians behave as if a pledge to him is sacred? | One would think that their allegiance would be to their country, not some random guy. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13qo6b/grover_norquist_is_just_some_guy_why_do/ | {
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"Norquist is an incredibly influential \"just some guy,\" and his tax pledge is technically a pledge to the *voters* not to raise total taxes, not to Grover."
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6xgixf | why was cavalry so effective against infantry without spears? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xgixf/eli5_why_was_cavalry_so_effective_against/ | {
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"I think this is pretty self a explanatory, but I'll do my best. As far as I know, earlier armies were focused around phalanxes or turtle formations, think Greeks or romans, pretty much meaning they'd make walls out of living bodies and see which side broke first. Early cavalry was more mobile, but didn't have stirrups, which didn't allow them the advantages of heavy cavalry in the middle ages. Now imagine mobility with a more powerful punch. Your army can out-maneuver your enemy, and when you meet on the field of battle, you have more control of location, which is a serious tactical advantage. I'm sure seeing a herd of horses with bad guys on top of them charging down at you didn't help with morale, either.",
"Well first of all, the depiction of cavalry charge in movie is usually incorrect. Most of the way they show it in movie wouldn't work. An infantry man have the advantage over a cavalry man in a static fight.\n\nCavalry was pretty much never the main part of an army. It usually was just a small portion of it, in a specialised role.\n\nI'll simplify it a lot, but you get mainly two type of cavalry with different role and capability. Light cavalry is the oldest. It wasn't that powerful, but was really good at several things. The main advantage was their speed. So they used that to focus manpower in weak point, reach enemy archers, flank the infantry and root the fleeing enemy. They also serve as scout. They were rarely used as battle cavalry and when they did it was usually as harassing force, like launching javelin or using spear as they pass the flank of the enemy. \n\nHeavy Cavalry war not really around until later in history. Cataphract was an early version of Heavy Cavalry and like you can see, they are more armoured than the charging calvalry we usually see in movie. The name Cataphract mean completely enclosed.\n_URL_0_\n\nTheir strong horse, made heavy cavalry able to have more armour, which protect them very well against attack from infantry and the weight of all that make them are to drop drag out of their horse. That said, they are still vulnerable against infantry in a static combat. That's why in a cavalry charge, they usually focus on the side of an enemy formation so that they can continue the charge away from the enemy and not end up in the middle of infantry man in a static fight.\n\nThe advantage is the shock of a charge. With the weight of the horse and the armour, a Heavy cavalry man hitting an infantryman, even if they don't cut or impale them, will most likely kill or severely injury them. This also cause chaos in the enemy formation, while make them vulnerable to other type of attack. For example, the Persian used horse archer against the Roman infantry to force them into a tortoise formation. But that formation is vulnerable to an heavy cavalry charge because they don't move. A charge will break the formation, leaving them vulnerable to an infantry or archer attack, while the cavalry get out of the way and prepare for another charge."
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6f3wvd | what does it mean for an actor to be executive producer on a tv show? | What kind of direction do they give? How does this affect the production? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6f3wvd/eli5_what_does_it_mean_for_an_actor_to_be/ | {
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"I work in the film industry and am an 'executive producer' on smaller productions. Simply that means I work with the client stakeholder to hire any and all staff (either directly or indirectly) for a production. I also handle budgeting and empower a director to execute the project vision, etc.\n\nIn professional productions, there is a consistent standard which you can read about here. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nWhen things are altered beyond this 'standard set of roles' someone can handle multiple roles such as acting and putting forth the financials to make the production and may gain multiple credits in IMDB or as the credits role... \n\nSummary: there are many ways to skin a cat ;)",
"Sometimes nothing. For a popular show, when the lead actor(s) renegotiate their contracts, they may ask for an Executive Producer credit as a sign of their status, or because it gives them a small portion of the profits. \n\nSometimes they may actually have a larger role in determining the direction of the show and the writing, or may even choose to direct an episode - see Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad.\n\nSometimes they may have lent their name and status to helping a show get made, but have little to do with it afterwards. See Martin Scorsese and Boardwalk Empire - he directed the pilot and was involved in developing the show, but didn't have much of a hands on role after that.",
"Executive producers make much more money on the back end. For a TV show, giving an actor an exec producer credit boosts their earnings considerably—especially in the residuals. In Seinfeld, for example, Jason Alexander admitted that the reason he didn't continue with the series is because there was no upside for him. Whereas, as an Executive Producer, Jerry Seinfeld stood to make billions in syndication.\n\nBryan Cranston's Executive Producer credit in Breaking Bad probably increases his earnings in syndication by a factor of 10 (if not 100)."
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9gwxcj | why are we certain there wasn't a technological civilization before humans here on earth? | It took only some 10000 years from being cavemen to going to space. It is a tiny interval in evоlutiоnal and geological scale. How can we be certain that say 30000 or 50000 years ago there wasn't another technological civilization here on earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9gwxcj/eli5_why_are_we_certain_there_wasnt_a/ | {
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"We can't. Just like we can't be certain the universe wasn't created by an invisible purple teapot orbiting Jupiter. \n\nWe *can* be certain they didn't use large amounts of plastics, as those show up clearly in fossil records. They also didn't use any carbon or soot producing technology on an industrial scale, didn't launch any geostationary satellites, leaded gasoline, rare earth metals, gold, lithium, or any of the elements we use for advanced technology. \n\nAt that point, the question is how you define technological civilizations. Personally I tend to think *widespread technology* is a requirement and we know no one had that before us. ",
"It's not that scientists are not certain about this.\n\nIt's just that there is no known existing data or phenomena that point to this being likely, and there is no evidence pointing, with any certainty, that there was such a civilization.\n\nAs to your point about cavemen to space, Moore's law is an interesting read on this, but basically, science builds upon science. 10,000 years ago, short life spans, struggle just to eat and not get killed.\n\nThings that multiply the ability to develop science gradually entered in, such as increasing global travel, ideas being recorded and taught to others, more and more leisure and longer lives resulting in more and more ability to pursue advances.\n\nStarting in the 90's, we got the internet, enabling us to share data, instantly, world-wide. \"Google it\" is now a verb phrase we wouldn't have dreamed of in 1975. Or I should say, thank goodness for the few brilliant people who probably DID dream of it then.\n\nSo the more technology we have \"in the bank\", the more we can use it to build upon and advance farther and farther.\n\nWhat will the world be like in 100 years?\n\nBut what we don't know if what it looked like 30,000 to 50,000 years ago, in terms of any civilization. Just no evidence for it.",
"On the scale of *thousands* of years you'd have vast archeological/radiological/ice core/atmospheric evidence, of which there is none.\n\nWe can't truly be certain for vast timescales of hundreds of millions of years since that fossil record is so sparse, but the complete absence of any evidence makes it highly unlikely. For a species to so thoroughly dominate the planet like we have and then vanish without leaving a single fossilized car tire or bottlecap is a real long shot.",
"We aren't certain. However, consider the massive global changes humans have made in those '10,000 years.' We have significantly altered the atmosphere, the crust. We have erased major mineral deposits and created new entirely unnatural deposits, signs of both of which will persist for millions, if not billions, of years. \n\nIt is quite possible that if we went extinct tomorrow, we'd be detectable for the entire foreseeable future of the Earth in *some* form, and not necessarily subtly either. \n\nThere's no strong reason to believe an equally capable species in the past would not likewise be so observable. "
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5b289m | gradient descent algorithm | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5b289m/eli5_gradient_descent_algorithm/ | {
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"Imagine you're stranded in a mountainous area, and you're blindfolded. \nYou'll be rescued if you reach the lowest point in a valley. \nYour only knowledge of your immediate surroundings comes from placing your foot one step away from yourself, and estimating which direction takes you the furthest downward. \nThat's it basically, and it's quite accurate for a simple GD problem in 3 dimensions. It can be further complicated if there are multiple valleys, and real problems will usually have more dimensions (so just replace \"checking the direction that goes downward the most\" with \"taking a derivative and choosing the direction that minimizes it\". \nI'm a bit rusty on this topic but I think that's accurate enough to get the idea. ",
"start at point a calculate the gradient of your function del F(a) , calculate point b by: \n \nb=a - y del F(a) \n \nwhere y is a small increment \n \niterate and track the value of the function F until you reach a mimimum"
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2h87ob | why did the us government have no trouble prosecuting microsoft under antitrust law but doesn't consider the comcast/twc merger to be a similar antitrust violation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h87ob/eli5_why_did_the_us_government_have_no_trouble/ | {
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"The DOJ has not yet ruled on whether or not the merger will be a violation of antitrust rules.\n\nNow, once they have, and if they say it isn't, then you have a really good question. But at this point, it's premature.",
"Comcast and Time Warner don't compete with each other in many ways, their cable systems are all franchised, so each is its own little monopoly. With a few exceptions, it's not illegal to get bigger (even when that means adding more local monopolies to a group of other local monopolies). \n\nMicrosoft was prosecuted for trying to use its ownership of Windows to make it impossible for Netscape to become the dominant browser. That's against the law. ",
"The US Government *did* have trouble prosecuting Microsoft. They investigated repeatedly throughout the 90's, but they only got a slap on the wrist by the European Union and nothing more than a finger waving by the US DoJ... if anti-trust laws still had any teeth they would have been split into a couple companies (OS, Office, etc).\n\nThe issue with Comcast/TWC is that they're effectively operating as a cartel (by not competing with each other now), and it's a discussion about how much future competition the merger actually prevents.\n\nWe should be discussing nationalizing broadband infrastructure, but I digress.",
"People seem to think antitrust means anti-monopoly. It doesn't.\n\nIt means that a business (or group of businesses) can't 'conspire' to make an unfair market for the consumers.\n\nComcast isn't actively conspiring with anyone (business wise). They have fallen into a position of having a natural monopoly. No other competitors. (This is more the government's fault than other telecoms) You can't hold a company at fault if they don't have any competitors in the areas they are active. The same with TWC.\n\nBut let's use the old Ma Bell example. Ma Bell set it up to where no one else could compete in the market (not allowed) as compared to no one else chose to compete in the market (didn't want to). That's why the government stepped and broke them up.\n\nBut let's shift gears a little. Take Coke & Pepsi. If a couple executives from each company got together and decided that a 12oz can needed to cost $2.00. That's a conspiracy to create an unfair market. That's what anti-trust is about. But they don't do that, they let the market determine how much a can costs. Sure they set MSRP, and they have the same MSRP, but they do it independently.\n\nThe same goes with these cable companies. \n\nNow when it comes to mergers. The SEC does review these big organizations and look for conflicts of interest. They try to head these things off at the pass. But when it really boils down to it, you have to prove the company is working outside normal market forces (there is an actual violation).",
"Microsoft didn't give as much money to politicians as Comcast did.",
"You could ask why they haven't broken up AT & T into baby bells again. The truth is that Corporations keep lobbying the definition of a Monopoly. They increase market share by corrupting our politicians and laws. They will keep going until 99% isn't considered a Monopoly.",
"Because the US Government anti-trust law isn't about fair competition. It's about getting companies with a lot of money and influence to play ball with what ever government policy is and not to go against the government. \n\n_URL_0_",
"Antitrust lawyer here.\n\nFor one, we're talking about different antitrust issues. Broadly speaking, the antitrust laws prohibit (1) concerted action that harms competition, like price fixing cartels; (2) unilateral action by a monopolist that harms competition; and (3) mergers and acquisitions that significantly diminish competition.\n\nMicrosoft was alleged to have used its position as a monopolist to undermine competition. That's (2) above. Typically, monopolization entails an element of foulplay. Achieving or maintaining a monopoly through normal, reasonable business practices is not illegal.\n\nComcast and TWC are proposing to merge. That's (3) above. When evaluating a merger, the DOJ looks at whether the companies directly compete in any markets, and whether the merger is likely to reduce competition in those markets.\n\nComcast and TWC claim that they do not directly compete. That's true, but there's more to the story. Comcast and TWC will point out that cable systems are \"natural monopolies\" -- it costs a lot to lay cable, and where one company has already laid cable in a given area, it enjoys a huge cost advantage over other would-be competitors, who would have to lay their own cable to compete.\n\nBut on the other hand, Comcast and its rivals have also done some dubious stuff in the past that has led to the current competitive landscape. For example, Comcast, TWC, and others have engaged in a number of anticompetitive deals, such as geographic market allocation and customer swapping, to create large regional monopolies. These deals themselves arguably violate the antitrust laws -- see (1) above -- and indeed are the subject of ongoing litigation. But unfortunately, the DOJ most likely would not take this background into account when evaluating the likely effect of the merger on competition.\n\nSo when Comcast and TWC say that the merger will not reduce competition because they do not currently compete, that is in part due to the fact that they have already *agreed not to compete*. It's like two members of a price fixing cartel saying that merging would not reduce competition because, hey, they aren't competing anyway.\n\nWe don't know yet whether the DOJ will challenge the merger. The Obama DOJ has been decent in this area; they challenged the AT & T/T-Mobile merger and US Air/American Airlines merger. But neither of those cases played out -- the FCC killed AT & T/T-Mobile, and the DOJ caved once politicians began pressuring the agency to let US Air/American Airlines go through.\n\nGiven that Comcast is so well connected in Washington, and in light of the potential difficulties in establishing that the merger will actually reduce competition, I expect that the DOJ will approve the Comcast/TWC merger, subject to certain concessions.\n\nPolitics is a core issue when it comes to antitrust enforcement. In fact, I don't think the Obama DOJ would sue Microsoft today. Clinton's DOJ was a bit more aggressive in this area.\n\nHope this helps.",
"Two reasons: tech companies didn't bother much with lobbyists until recently and thus lacked political influence, and also the fact that regulatory agencies are hopelessly corrupt tools of partisan politics. \n\ntl;dr: follow the money. ",
"Because $$$, that's why. \n\nDon't bite the hand that feeds your fat corrupt pockets.",
"Because Comcast knows how to spend money in Washington, while Microsoft thought they could be the new king on the hill without playing ball. ",
"I'd also like to know why Microsoft got into loads of trouble for bundling IE with Windows, eventually (at least in the EU) being forced to present you with a choice of browser to download on a new install of Windows but Apple are allowed to bundle Safari with OSX without even a slap on the wrist.",
"My dad was one of the anti-trust attorneys who represented the government in the Microsoft case, and is now representing the US government in the Comcast/TWC merger so I have some intimate knowledge of both cases. In the case of Time Warner/TWC, they can argue that since they don't compete with each other in a lot of markets, they aren't consolidating their market shares. It's a flimsy argument, but they have near-infinite legal resources and the government doesn't, so the reality is, if the government tries to stop the merger from happening, they will fail. Same as Microsoft, the outcome was very favorable for Microsoft because they had the DoJ enormously out-lawyered. What they're trying to do instead, is negotiate terms of the merger that will be most favorable to the consumer. It's exactly the same thing as the American Airlines/US Airways merger. They will have to agree to not raise their prices more than X% per year for Y years in markets where they would effectively have a monopoly, and other consumer-friendly regulations. ",
"Personally having worked in both industries, it has more to do with political winds and people in the Government picking winners and losers than the facts.",
"To prosecute under antitrust, there needs to be evidence of abuse (let's say inflated pricing or inferior product offering based on the power the entity has in a market or region). Since twc or comcast tend to deliver 'about' the same products and pricing as most other service providers in other areas, there is no easily provable abuse going on. \n\nBad customer support isn't really abuse, though it can open them up to civil lawsuits. ",
"Comcast spends a fortune on lobbying. Microsoft didn't. (They spend a lot more now. They learned.)",
"For many years MSFT never spread the wealth with campaign donations like good corporate citizens should:\n\nIn 1991-1992, $61K was given.\nIn 2011-2012, $2.3M was given.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)",
"microsoft bribed the wrong people/bribed in insufficient amounts",
"The antitrust suit was mostly about Microsoft giving a free copy of a web browser with the OS - after the antitrust suit Microsoft still gave a free copy of the web browser with the OS. The only major change for Microsoft was their participation in political spending. Once they started showering politicians and their favored charities with money the feds backed off.\n\nComcast has always showered the political class with money which is why the feds mostly leave them alone.",
"While /u/Ah_Q's answer is very good, the bottom line is this: corruption.\n\nThe spirit of antitrust law is to protect consumer choice, and improve consumer quality of life through that choice (quality of life meaning better goods & services at lower prices - really, what the foundation of capitalism and our entire economic paradigm is built on).\n\nA merger between Comcast/TWC does not benefit consumers, at all. There is no case to be made that it does, because it doesn't. Thus there is only one way in which the merger will be approved, and that's through corrupted political channels*, including outright bribery as defined by the average, every day normal people that our government is supposed to serve.\n\nLawyers and politicians can fuzz the language and legal technicality all they want, but the end result is the same: citizens get fucked.\n\n*Or perhaps our government is beyond corruption at this stage. Corruption implies a government body favoring special interests in exchange for favors. But perhaps our government is favoring special interests, period. No favors involved, they simply don't even care about their purpose as lawmakers anymore. They aren't standing on \"our\" side of the fence and taking bribes through the links, they are standing squarely on the other side of the fence now with their backs turned to us...\n\nBribing a congressman now is more akin to just preaching to the choir, making water wet, or attempting to kill that which has no life...",
"For perspective on the Comcast/Time Warner merger, the FTC opposed the merger of Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats on anti-competitive grounds, because, ya know, you can't buy groceries anywhere but Whole Foods or something.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nSo, it will be interesting to see if the same agency that thinks Whole Foods owns a food monopoly, doesn't see any issues with this merger.",
"I read the Microsoft plea deal - It said in essence: \"We admit no wrongdoing, and anyway, we promise we'll ever do it again.\"\n\n",
"Because Microsoft wasn't spending millions on lobbying. Now they are. Tech companies got the message. Butter the bread or get fucked. ",
"Because Microsoft didn't OWN the board at FCC. Prior to working at the FCC, Wheeler worked as a venture capitalist and lobbyist for the cable and wireless industry. Another one of them is a former Verizon lawyer. ",
"Here is the real skinny-\n\nComcast owns NBC-Universal which owns MSNBC and has a ton of lobbyist working on their behalf. MSNBC has been totting the administrations water for a long time. This gives Comcast tremendous leverage. Though everyone with half a brain knows that this is a bad deal for the consumer and will lessen competition, it is proceeding because Comcast has paid off the administration with it support and MSNBC's bias coverage.\n\nAs for them dividing up the country geographically that is illegal (collusion) in itself. This deal will make any law suits concerning that that go away and head off any future law suits.\n\nAs for Microsoft, Bill Gates was minding his own business with zero lobbyist and not really interested in politics. Bill Clinton brought the action antitrust to wake Gates up and get some of that dotcom bubble money in the Democratic coffers. Gates hired the necessary Democrat flacks for lobbyist and gave a big donation to the DNC and the whole thing went away.\n\nI believe Gates did limit competition and should have been broken up. The operating system and the application system should have been made into two different companies. There were a bunch of great companies. Lotus and WordPerfect were far better than the MS products (Word is still the WP from hell). When MS and intel moved to 32 bits, Word and Excel immediately had 32 bit software. Lotus and WordPefect were frozen out for nine months or a year. Microsoft leveraged Windows95 into making their software the office standard. MS office is around $600. Word Perfect Office is $69.00.",
"Cable company's buying each other out is not going to affect competition because most cities have only one cable company anyway. Time Warner and Comcast use the same software platform so people really will not see a difference. Both have shitty call centers though but that's with any large corporation.",
"\"Antitrust law\" isn't just a penalty/prevention against companies that are too big. Being too big of a company isn't a crime.\n\nMicrosoft got in trouble for using their dominance in one area (operating system) to give themselves an unfair advantage in another area (web browser). It was anticompetitive; other companies couldn't possibly do well even if they were the best choice.",
"Lobbying. Its important to remember that although America claims to be democratic and capitalist, its Congress is for sale, and the Government provides socialist like services to the super rich billionaire class. I say services as they through lobbyists pay congresspeople to act on their behalf in that manner. Democracy has become a punishment.",
"The Comcast/TWC monopoly costs consumers money. The Microsoft monopoly was costing enterprises money. It's that simple. If Level 3 and Cogent were proposing a merger, the government would be singing a different tune.",
"The US Government did have trouble prosecuting Microsoft under antitrust law\n\nlol, that case is literally the WORST poster child for antitrust provisions.\n\ntl;dr nothing happened, after it stopped being popular in the media Microsoft and the US Government did nothing. 6 years later Microsoft and the industry were simply using different OSs and Internet Explorer remains a problem to this day",
"At the time, Microsoft simply did not lobby Washington. NBC-Comcast and TWC, on the other hand, has funneled oodles and oodles of money towards Obama's election and reelection (through PAC'S). Now the result of that is an FCC Chairman that is a former telecom industry lobbyist - Tom Wheeler. That is how things work (and have worked for decades and decades) in Washington DC. ",
"They had a lot of trouble prosecuting Microsoft. From what I recall, according to the letter and spirit of the law, Microsoft should have been broken up into one or two companies (Windows=MS1, Office=MS2 was mooted). That ended up not happening. Why exactly I don't know. The last time a real major breakup happened? AFAIK that was in the telco industry, when they broke up [Ma Bell](_URL_0_). Possibly the relevant US authorities have since become toothless and spineless.",
"Top comment says is best. \nTechnically, Microsoft was a monopoly in the field of computing, although I understood it to be that they simply had a much better product and had a right to market their own product how they wished.\nAs for Comcast/TWC, they are taking non-competing lines (like two different branches from the same tree) and labeling them as one of the same company. In this sense, however, they would have a greater majority of branches (lines) of the tree (internet). We suppose they are going to undermine competition much the same as Microsoft EXCEPT I think this has GREATER harm.\nFor homeowners, needing a computer in the '90s was a luxury. It really wasn't needed unless you had a very good job....in which case you could easily afford any such products. In today's modern society, it is essential to have internet if you are not a senior citizen/not retired. In fact, it is being debated as being treated like a utility. For this reason, we are much more weary to monopolization. I do question then why some of my other utilities are essentially monopolized (electric!). In my area at least, there are a 2-3 cable providers whereas I am only familiar with DTE for electrical. \n\nIn summary, it is more of a concern of Comcast growing their customer base and dominance over the cable industry. This doesn't change the fact that they already have monopoly over what seems like most of the country. The pie is just getting a little bit bigger. ",
"Most of the explanations on this post target actual 5 year olds. Only 5 year old kids would believe this is not about the amount of money Microsoft used to spend lobbying before the lawsuit (about $0) and after (tens of millions). The judge on the Microsoft case could not be more convinced of Microsoft's guilt, and outside of Judge Judy I have not a judge that upset since. The man was fuming, the decision was replaced by the consent decree, and Microsoft was not broken up.\n\nTWC already spends tens of millions already, and that is the part they have to declare. The whole argument that this does not reduce competition is a gigantic piece of bullshit when you think that Bell did not compete with anyone when it was broken up. It was just too big, period.",
"Now that's an expert response. You know the reason most people are against that merger is because Comcast is one of the worst companies in America apparently. I've never heard anyone complain about one company more. So obviously, they don't want to see a company like that get any bigger. My advice to all those Comcast customers. Disconnect it.\n\nYou will be surprised how easy it is to live without cable. When it hit $40 a month in Oklahoma, about 10 yrs ago, I said to hell with that. I'm not paying $40 a mth to watch tv.",
"There is a logical fallacy in your question. The merger is proposed but has not happened yet. The government (FCC) may not approve it for exactly that reason: That it is anti-competative. \n\nMicrosoft was sued because they grew (mostly organically) to dominate both the PC operating system market and the browser market. They were requiring PC manufacturers to preinstall their browser and not any of their competitors. Very different scenario from Comcast who is trying to buy a competitor.",
"The US Government doesn't care to actually govern us anymore and they all just use their positions as \"leaders\" of this country to double and triple their millions by taking bribes (lobbying) and using their insider knowledge gained by various committees that they are on to unethically sell information that would have an average citizen locked up for insider trading. Our celebrity elite government is above the law and the epitome of the class problem in this country. Both parties are equally guilty of this.",
"We like to tell ourselves that people who say the government is corrupt are exaggerating or \"conspiracy theorists,\" but the honest truth today is that the current FCC Chairman was placed there by Comcast as their personal puppet via millions in illegal bribes, but nobody wants to prosecute the matter, as there are too many guilty parties, and rubbing the wrong person the wrong way will get your fired.",
"There are some major differences. Microsoft's antitrust case was designed to set an example while the internet was still new. Microsoft had competitors that could lobby against it. It was a more flexible time.\n\nFast forward to today. Comcast and TWC have enough clout with government officials that any potential threat to their monopoly is easily dispatched. Telecom is an infrastructure based service, which gives Comcast and TWC a huge amount of leverage with any government agency or official.\n\nNobody in the government or big telecom gives a fuck about the internet as long as they can go home, watch buffering BSG reruns, and jack off to 480p porn. I pity the souls who cannot dream of playing Counter-Strike at 256 tick with no ping. The same creatures who cannot fathom the vast implications of the Oculus Rift.",
"In the end Mircosoft used its position in the market to prevent other companies from either entering the market or making money in the market. Specifically they shipped IE for free with every copy of windows esentially blocking customers from Netscape (which at the time was not free). Comcast has not used it's power to prevent anyone from entering the market or to block their business (see Google Fiber). I'm No fan of Comcast, and this deal should be examined closely for what it will do to the market, but it's not based on abuse of monopoly power. The other wrinkle is that we basically give this companies a monopoly over sets of territory in exchange for fronting the money to build the infrastructure.",
"because you shits arent burning the white house yet :s\n"
]
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[],
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"http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Google-conservatives-donating-GOP/2014/01/23/id/548771/"
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"http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/03/06/us-wholefoods-ftc-idUSTRE5253AL20090306"
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||
66kr94 | - recently scientists observed negative mass. what is the significance of this? is this anti-matter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66kr94/eli5_recently_scientists_observed_negative_mass/ | {
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"No, it's regular old matter, with regular old positive mass. What they did, was through difficult techniques, induce the bulk of the material to behave *as though it has* negative mass. It does not, however. Additionally, anti-matter has positive mass. ",
"The mass isn't negative, the inertial mass is. If you put it on a scale or something you'd still get a normal reading. However, if you gave it a push, it'd move in the opposite direction instead.\n\nThis is why scientific journalism sucks."
]
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[],
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||
5zgszh | after a snow storm, why does the sky emanate a pink/gray hue throughout the entire night? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5zgszh/eli5_after_a_snow_storm_why_does_the_sky_emanate/ | {
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"In dry conditions, the light from sodium vapor street lamps is mostly absorbed by the dark pavement or soil/grass.\n\nWhen the ground is snow-covered, much of that light is reflected upward, where it illuminates the cloud cover or even the water vapor in the atmosphere.\n\nEdit: Made longer to satisfy the auto-moderator."
]
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[]
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||
87ixvq | what's happening when my back "pops" and is it bad? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87ixvq/eli5_whats_happening_when_my_back_pops_and_is_it/ | {
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"Usually, when bones 'pop', you're basically popping very small air bubbles between your bones (or at least that's the best theory we've come up with). Your back popping is not a big deal if it happens rarely, but if it happens regularly it could be a sign of back problems, especially if it hurts.\n\nDon't be scared about this though (ik how scary looking up health conditions on the internet can be), but if it's just the popping, it's usually nothing too bad. It's probably just a sign of straining your back a lot of maybe unhealthy sitting or sleeping positions. Try to fix these things and the popping should decrease.",
"Directly, it's not 'bad'. As above, it's just air bubbles in joints. Completely normal. However, when you 'pop' your own back - which is essentially known as a 'manipulation' - you are often only manipulating the vertebral joints that have the greatest range of movement by comparison to the other ones in your spine. This means the joints that have a more restricted range of movement are not being manipulated, as you essentially 'miss' them. So over time you end up with some joints that are hypermobile by comparison to the ones that you missed. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but as a result, the muscles of your back often have tighter, more restricted resting and active states (because your body naturally makes compensations for imbalances or restrictions in movement to help it work as effectively as possible). \n\nTherefore: you are more likely to suffer from postural or mobility issues later down the line - not because cracking your joints has lead to arthritis or other degenerative musculoskeletal disorders (you've probably been told you'll get arthritis by popping joints, which is mostly false), but because your body is suffering from muscular imbalances and overcompensations as a result of some joints that haven't been popped being very very restricted.\n"
]
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bvig0h | why can my laptop pick up my wifi very well, but my phone, on the same desk, hardly connect at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bvig0h/eli5_why_can_my_laptop_pick_up_my_wifi_very_well/ | {
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"I would only assume better hardware in the laptop given its increased form factor.\n\nSame reason you won't get a core i9 and 32gb ram in a smartphone.\n\nEdit - forgot to add phones are more power conscious so reduce performance of areas to prolong life.",
"Laptops are larger so they can fit a bigger and better wifi antenna, usually the wifi antenna is built into the edge of the laptop's monitor."
]
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[],
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||
3tb3yr | what policies and systems are (or aren't) in place to help veterans? who is responsible for the aid and implementation? why do so many vets seem to end up homeless or worse? how can people help them? | This is regarding US vets. Sorry rest of the world. Though feel free to add what systems are in place in your country as well. I was just wondering because so many people are bitching about why we should help veterans before refugees and it had me wondering about these questions and how I can help. As that little girl says, "Why not both?" I'd like to help both refugees and veterans. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tb3yr/eli5_what_policies_and_systems_are_or_arent_in/ | {
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"We have programs and tools in place to help veterans. The GI Bill pays for school, there are housing vouchers, and many companies are actively seeking to hire veterans. Reducing veteran homelessness and unemployment is something that requires a little (not even much) effort on the part of the veteran.\n\nSource: I'm a veteran and currently using my GI Bill."
]
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|
zzwin | - how does my body know how to do things that i can't control? | How does my heart know how to beat, my blood knows to respond to a wound. Is it possible to take control of these things? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zzwin/eli5_how_does_my_body_know_how_to_do_things_that/ | {
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"There is a part of the brain dedicated to \"automated\" functions of your body. Like a separate computer processor, it keeps track of things like the heart beating, intestines constricting to digest and move food, etc. Some things you can control to a certain extent; controlling your breathing can raise/lower your heart rate, for example.\n\nOther things you cannot control, like your blood reacting to a wound. Such actions are chemical. When you get cut or injured, the barrier that keeps your blood in place is removed. The blood \"spills\" into the open areas and reacts based on what are called \"intrinsic factors\" or the \"intrinsic pathway\". \n\nWhen blood touches air, the factors are set off in a chain of sequence that allows your blood to clot and start the healing process. Sometimes, a person is missing an intrinsic factor, and the chain is broken causing problems such as Hemophilia or Von Willebrand disease."
]
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|
35uoc5 | in what order should you brush, floss and mouth wash? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35uoc5/eli5in_what_order_should_you_brush_floss_and/ | {
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"Just doing them in any order is better than not at all, but according to my dentist:\n\nFloss\n\nBrush (spit, don't rinse)\n\nSkip mouthwash, especially if it has alcohol. Use it in the middle of the day to \"freshen up\" in need be.",
"[According to the ADA:](_URL_0_)\n\n > Should I brush or floss first?\n > \n > Either way is acceptable as long as you do a thorough job. Some people brush their teeth and unfortunately skip flossing because they think their mouth feels clean or they may be short on time or tired and flossing is postponed. That’s not a good idea.",
"Flossing is the key. Before or after brushing, just do it!\n\nI prefer to do it before to get any chunks out. Doing it after makes sense because it should get more of the remaining toothpaste between your teeth. However the sodium whatever the fuck can irritate your gums if left on.\n\n",
"The order you listed in your title, personally; brush to remove most of the plaque and food, floss to get the rest, and mouthwash to disinfect any small cuts or irritated spots from the flossing.",
"All of you guys are missing one thing.\nThe order goes, \nFloss, Brush front and back of teeth, brush tongue, mouthwash",
"I brush, then floss (with the toothpaste still in my mouth). I have (and have always had) sensitive teeth, so I use a desensitizing toothpaste. Flossing with said toothpaste still in the mouth pushes the chemicals from the toothpaste well between my teeth (which, incidentally are extremely tight, making flossing quite difficult). Followed by a fluoride alcohol free mouthwash.",
"I was looking into alcohol-free mouthwash and I found out that [one of the main antiseptics can become deactivated by common toothpaste additives](_URL_0_), so if you're using one of those it's recommended that you put 30 minutes between brushing and rinsing regardless of the order."
]
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorhexidine"
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30x7s0 | is it possible to amputate your own leg/arm and use that as food? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30x7s0/eli5_is_it_possible_to_amputate_your_own_legarm/ | {
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"Vsauce explained this quite well in one of his videos, I'm on mobile so sorry for no source. But basically you shouldn't eat yourself.\n\nEdit: link: _URL_0_",
"There is at least one good written story about this. Also the movie about the self amputation of the arm for mobility. \n\nBut I assure you that your body will effectively cannibalize itself internally to keep you alive if you are starving. That is why it is not a good idea to try to lose weight by fasting. ",
"The vsauce video basically says that it takes more energy to consume and digest your own limbs than it gives you in. ",
"For the most part there is a 10:1 ratio of weight of prey consumed to predator flesh produced. A predator, that relies on prey not only for the building blocks of its flesh but for the energy to do the building, has consumed ten times its weight in prey to achieve any particular size.\n\nOf course you could eat your own arm, but it would amount to a net caloric loss under the best of conditions. If you add in the nutritional burden of healing it only gets worse.\n\nThis is why the Charlton Heston movie, Soylent Green is based on an impossible premise. No population of humans can sustain itself eating humans. "
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"https://youtu.be/kdrTQlClb08"
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||
5yr3pb | ! how can a country go bankrupt.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yr3pb/eli5_how_can_a_country_go_bankrupt/ | {
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"In most cases, it *can't* in quite the same way that a person or corporation does. A person can be made bankrupt and then whatever they own is taken and sold off to pay off the debts, and this is enforced by the country they live in. But there's no power to force a country itself into bankruptcy. Rather, a country can simply refuse to pay back its debts, which is known as 'default', and there's no solid way to stop them. Although a country that didn't pay back its debts will have a hard time borrowing again and that damages the economy.\n\nTrying to pay off the debts by printing more money doesn't work, because it just causes inflation - the money becomes worth less. Quite often the debts are owed in a different currency, for example Argentina might owe debt to a French pension company in US dollars, which means printing more Argentine pesos can't even pay off the debt directly. In extreme cases the result is hyper-inflation where the value of money just plummets as the government foolishly continues printing more and more bigger and bigger banknotes."
]
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||
f4nj7y | what is the difference between a "good" and a "bad" bottle of wine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f4nj7y/eli5what_is_the_difference_between_a_good_and_a/ | {
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"Honestly, whether or not you like it. There are a lot of complex factors that can go into it, like specific techniques for making the wine, other ingredients, what kind of grapes were used, where the grapes are from, etc. while all of that does have an impact on the taste of the wine, what makes any bottle “good” or “bad” is completely subjective and up to your own personal tastes. Adam Ruins Everything did a really great [segment](_URL_0_) that breaks it down better than I can.",
"Well even a good bottle can be bad - it’s called corked. That’s when the cork fucks up and basically shits into the wine making it all corky.",
"It's no different than a relationship. Who you find attractive isn't who the next guy finds attractive. Don't fret over the bougie wine snobs out there. Figure out what styles you like, and you'd be shocked at how many amazing wines are out there for $20-$30 a bottle."
]
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"https://www.trutv.com/shows/adam-ruins-everything/videos/why-wine-snobs-are-faking-it.html"
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||
2wrygw | why do companies such as nintendo region lock certain products? what exactly is region locking? | I read the Wikipedia page for it but am still having trouble understanding the reason. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wrygw/eli5_why_do_companies_such_as_nintendo_region/ | {
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"Based on the Wikipedia article, it seems that region locking is when you make a product that's only usable using products available in a certain part of the world. For video games, this would mean that a game is only playable if the console (Wii, XBox, Playstation, etc.) is from the same region. \n\nNintendo has said that it has used region locking for reasons including making sure the games were localized (adjusted for the region where the games are played) and to deal with licensing issues (copyright rules that vary by country). ",
"Nintendo region locks their consoles for a few reasons. One is cultural differences; for example in Bravely Default the Japanese versions' costumes are much skimpier and the characters are younger whereas when it was localised for the West they were aged up and were given more 'modest' clothing. Nintendo also doesn't bother localising every single Japanese game for the West because the game or franchise might be:\n\n* unpopular or not very well-known\n* confusing to Western audiences\n* considered 'inaproppriate' for the West or impossible to localise in a way that would make sense to non-Japanese audiences\n\nThus they are region locked so there is no confusion; these games aren't translated into English anyways so unless you are a fluent Japanese speaker and reader living in the US there would be no reason for you to really want to play these games.\n\nThere are also economic reasons; in places like Australia even popular games are pretty expensive and if there were no region locking there would be no reason for them not to import US games for cheaper than it would be to buy Australian games.\n\nLicensing and copyright issues are also an issue that region locking deals with.\n\nI don't think Nintendo plans to remove region locking any time soon, but I believe some popular 3DS hacker (I dunno the correct terminology so I'm definitely not trying to be disparaging here) has devised a way to bypass region locking on the 3DS."
]
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3h657q | how my cpap senses my breathing in and out. | I have a Phillips cpap and it has an SD card that collects data on its useage. Is it literally sensing my breaths in and out? Is some circuit being broken or created by the air pressure? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h657q/eli5_how_my_cpap_senses_my_breathing_in_and_out/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"A diaphragm (fabric that is suspended along an opening or a valve) will either be pushed or pulled based on the air flowing through it due to negative pressure. These diaphragms can be wired along a calibrated sensor that measures your breath. A reference voltage is applied along the circuit, and as the diaphragm changes shape the resistance increases and decreases, changing the output voltage to the sensor which will interpret as your breathing.\n\nAircraft pitot static systems work in the same way, which is the only reason I know (im a mechanic not a doctor lel)\n"
]
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] |
|
6kzbe1 | can you guys help me understand this paragraph | This is one of the questions from south korean SAT equivalent test prep book (English reading section) and I've been struggling with this for 2hours lol I don't know if I'm too stupid to understand this paragraph , I need help.
Here it is :
The tourism sector's reaction to climate change has involved two different but related responses : mitigation and adaptation strategies. Mitigation refers to attempts to reduce the impact of tourism on climate change, while adaptation refers to attempts to adapt tourism to climate changes and minimize climate change risks. The tourism sector will also need to make adaptations in response to national mitigation strategies related to greenhouse gas emissions, hence the concepts are related. For instance, as a sector totally reliant on transport, national and international mitigation polic related to greenhouse gas emissions are likely to increase costs of transport and impact tourism mobility. There are implications for slow travel which emphasizes traveling to destinations more slowly and staying longer in one place rather than cramming in as many places as possible in a short space of time. For example, it could be argued that slow travel should become a major mitigation response, as part of a cultural change, associated with [ blank ]
1. Travel and trip distance reduction
2. Removal of unnecessary regulations
3. Provision of fast and safe transport
4. Diverse tourism products to choose from
5. Reducing conflicts between locals and tourists
This answer is 1 btw :-)
But it's not the answer that really matters, I have NO idea what that paragraph is all about. If you had no problem getting this question right, I dare you to try these questions. Smh korean tests
_URL_0_
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6kzbe1/eli5_can_you_guys_help_me_understand_this/ | {
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"It's saying that the tourism sector is responding to climate change by trying to reduce their impact on the climate, and by trying to adapt to a changing climate. One way to reduce the impact is to promote more slow travelling, which is staying in one place for a while and enjoying it rather than travelling to a whole bunch of places in quick succession. Slow travel is associated with travel and trip distance reduction - therefore less carbon emissions.",
"It's basically giving you a background on what the tourism sector has done to reduce emissions, and then asking you what the \"best\" option is to reduce emissions, based on what they've just told you about the sector.\n\nSo:\n\nMitigation: Attempts to reduce the impact of tourism on the environment (specifically emissions from transportation)\n\nAdaptation: Adapting tourism to climate change that already exists\n\nThe question states that \"cramming in as many places as possible in a short time\" is a bad thing. So the correct answer is (1), because reducing the amount of travel and trip distances directly results in a reduction in overall emissions.\n\n(2) is not correct because it is not associated with the information in the question;\n\n(3) is not correct because the question states that slow transportation is \"good\" for reducing emissions;\n\n(4) is not correct because diverse tourism products do not affect trip distances or frequency of travel (or may adversely affect them);\n\n(5) is not correct because it has no bearing on emissions.",
" > The tourism sector's reaction to climate change has involved two different but related responses : mitigation and adaptation strategies. Mitigation refers to attempts to reduce the impact of tourism on climate change, while adaptation refers to attempts to adapt tourism to climate changes and minimize climate change risks.\n\nStarts off with the difference between the mitigation and adaptation strategies. Climate change is impacting tourism adversely, and there are two ways to go about handling this: one is to reduce the negative impact itself (in other words, mitigating it) and the other is to adapt the tourism sector itself (adapting strategy.)\n\n > The tourism sector will also need to make adaptations in response to national mitigation strategies related to greenhouse gas emissions, hence the concepts are related.\n\nThe two strategies mentioned earlier are interrelated because mitigation involves GHG reductions, and GHG reductions require a change in approaches, which is simply adaptation.\n\n > For instance, as a sector totally reliant on transport, national and international mitigation policy related to greenhouse gas emissions are likely to increase costs of transport and impact tourism mobility. \n\nTourism is meaningless without having tourists moving around. Tourists moving around = fuel consumption = GHG emission. If fuel standards are to be improved to reduce GHG emission, costs will go up and reduce mobility for tourists.\n\n > There are implications for slow travel which emphasizes traveling to destinations more slowly and staying longer in one place rather than cramming in as many places as possible in a short space of time.\n\nBasically, instead of trying to have breakfast in NYC, lunch in Panama and dinner at LA, spend more time in a single place and take in all the sights rather than rushing through everything as fast as possible.\n\n > For example, it could be argued that slow travel should become a major mitigation response, as part of a cultural change, associated with _____\n\nSince the last point focuses on slowing down travel, the next sentence is unlikely to change topic abruptly. That rules out options 2, 4 and 5. Option 3 is contradicting the previous point, which pretty much favours slowing down and smelling the roses. Hence we can rule it out too, and the right option is bound to be option 1.",
"Travel and tourism is bad because it causes greenhouse gases which are super duper bad because of we're all going to die climate change. So everyone should travel less to keep the earth from dying. You don't want to kill the earth do you?\n\nSee it's all about the subtext that we're all going to die if we don't immediately change how we live. Be a good world citizen, stay home and produce. Not reproduce because the world is over populated and that also causes climate change. \n\nIf you're taking this as a Korean learning English the best thing to do would be to watch more American news to see what you should be afraid of then choose the answer that would best remedy the situation. Extra credit: Google \"problem, reaction, solution\".",
"If u break it down each sentences it would be much simpler and it will still lead you to the answer of 1.\n\nFirst sentence simply refers to the 2 different responses to climate change. Simple enough.\n\nSecond sentence is just definition of each response.\n\nThird and fourth sentence is just emphasis on the situation.\n\nFifth and last sentence is the clue to the answer. Since it is talking about the travelling between destinations, the answer would be no.1 or no.3. \n\nBut using no.3 as an answer would mean \"cramming in as many places as possible in a short space of time\" thus by elimination the answer is no.1. \n\nCorrect me if my logic is wrong. cheers"
]
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"https://youtu.be/pNTwRSKVJLc"
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36v1sl | if my pc freezes why are my sound keeps playing? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36v1sl/eli5_if_my_pc_freezes_why_are_my_sound_keeps/ | {
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"text": [
"because sound data is still stored in the sound card buffer. The sound card runs seperately from the CPU so it will keep going over the same data over and over and over since it is not being updated by the CPU."
]
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[]
] |
||
b6tot2 | why are humans so drawn to the water? (srivers, seas, ocean,...) | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6tot2/eli5_why_are_humans_so_drawn_to_the_water_srivers/ | {
"a_id": [
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"I don't think its so much the view that attracts people as it is the activities available there. Fishing, boating, jet skiing, sunbathing, parasailing, seafood, swimming, the wildlife, the list goes on and on. \n\nThe change of scenery is nice every once in a while. If you live in a big city with the constant traffic, noise, hustle and bustle, the allure of seeing something calming and different is something we all experience at some times.",
"I think its also not just a flat reflective surface as much as music is mere vibrations in the air. I think its oversimplifying it when thought of from that perspective. In the modern sense, I think its an escape from the busy modern life."
]
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[],
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|
3sdh8e | how hard is it to survive on minimum wage? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sdh8e/eli5_how_hard_is_it_to_survive_on_minimum_wage/ | {
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"Depending on where you are, it can be practically impossible. \n\nI'm in WI, where the minimum wage was set in 2009 at $7.25 an hour and hasn't changed since.\n\nAssuming you worked a 40 hour week, this would net you about $1000 a month after taxes.\n\nFor comparison as to what that will get you here in WI, my previous dwelling was a crappy apartment in a fairly rough neighborhood on the outskirts of Milwaukee. It cost me $900 a month in rent.\n\nSo if I'd been on minimum wage, I would have had about $100 left per month to pay for food, transportation, clothing, medical expenses, insurances, gas, electric, water etc. In other words I'd have been in the red ALL the time, gradually getting further and further into debt until there was no way out.\n\nIn certain places, minimum wage is a nothing more than a joke. ",
"It... depends? It would not probably be a problem for me, but I'm extremely frugal. It could be a problem for me. There would not be much of any money left over, so if I got seriously sick or something, game over. There would be no savings there. Any one major bill would destroy me.",
"You can survive on it, but it's no walk in the park. You won't be renting a nice apartment. Maybe just a room with a shared kitchen and bathroom. No vacations, or fun money. It's just rent/food/utilities/transportation. And all of those keep going up, outpacing the income so you keep getting poorer.",
"I live in Ontario. Min wage is $11/hour.\n\nThat's $1760 before taxes and other deductibles. Let's say $1500 after taxes and deductibles.\n\nYou can rent a room in a house for about $500 in my area that provides power, water and internet.\n\nAnother $50/week for groceries means we are at about $700/month.\n\nMy insurance is $250, my gas is about $200/month just going to and from work and minor errands. And I keep $100 each month to put towards maintenance.\n\nWe are now at about $1250. Leaving about $250 a month for stuff like a phone ($30-$100/month), savings, insurance, etc.\n\nThis is assuming you have a fulltime job and already own a car. If you don't then you have to lease or else take out a loan to get a car."
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235e4w | what defines a song's genre? | Is there a technical defenition for each genre or is it just whatever genre the artist says it is? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/235e4w/eli5_what_defines_a_songs_genre/ | {
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"text": [
"Instrumentation used, beats per minute, type of singing, key,...",
"Genres are a way to categorize music based on similar traits and attributes. Their definitions are defined by musicians, consumers, critics, and scholars as a whole. There is no objective body which defines the genres and sub-genres, which means that there is a level of subjectivity to classification, though this only becomes more of the case as you get closer to the borders between genres and sub-genres. For instance, a Metallica song is clearly different from a Wagnerian opera, which itself is very different from a rap by Tupac. \n\n"
]
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[],
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4kjd0x | what causes your vision to become gradually worse? are video games and/or continual staring at phones a factor in today's society? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kjd0x/eli5_what_causes_your_vision_to_become_gradually/ | {
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"I read somewhere that there was a study done in Japan that the more time school children spend away from sunlight the worse their vision is. I have had terrible eyes since I was a child, it started about the time that I started reading books a lot and staying inside. Since I heard of that study I have been more cognisant of times I go out in the sun and look at stuff, while on a walk etc. It does seem to improve my vision for a while. \n\n Not a biologist, just an armchair scientist with bad eyes. ",
"ELI5: Changes to your eyes shape, coloration (cloudiness), the lens may begin to deteriorate, skeletal changes might cause your orbital bones to move and shift/squeeze the eye socket, changing the focus distance. You can also damage the retina with too much extreme bright light or staring at bright lights for too long. Also, if you jam a white-hot needle into your eye, that has an effect, too. Basically, anything that can affect the shape, clarity, and effectiveness of the eye can and most likely will change your eyesight, and rarely for the better.\n\nStaring at video games and phones will only make things worse if you do so when you need glasses to see closer things better. If you continue to try to view close things when you need corrective lenses, it will gradually make things worse.\n\nHope this helps! Peace!"
]
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[],
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1lgr3j | how can photon travel at light speed with so less/negligible energy. | Living organisms (humans/animals) have huge amount of energy as compared to photon. I know that our mass is also significantly higher.
But a photon can travel at light speed with so less energy! And other living things are barely moving on Earth as compared to photon.
I understand that gravity has a lot of impact on our movements. Does that mean we will be able to travel a lot faster in vacuum/space without much effort? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lgr3j/eli5how_can_photon_travel_at_light_speed_with_so/ | {
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"Photons have literally 0 mass, as all massless particles they travel at light speed. No particle with mass can travel at light speed, no particle without mass can travel at any speed but light speed. The energy of a photon is irrelevant to it's speed, there is no mass to be moved.",
"You just barely missed the key point when you said \"I know that our mass is also significantly higher.\"\n\nOur mass is not only significantly higher, it's *infinitely* higher. A photon has no mass whatsoever, none at all. Things without mass can *only* travel at the speed of light, for the most part (it gets complicated and murky but that's not important here). Conversely, things with mass can never reach the speed of light.\n\nThere are lots of good explanations for why photons travel at the speed of light and why things without mass can't travel at the speed of light, so if you want to know more about why that is, just search \"speed of light\" on ELI5, you'll get lots of results.\n\nFor a reasonable qualitative (not completely precise) explanation of why we can have so much more energy than a photon but move so much slower, think of E = mc^(2), which I'm sure you've seen before. What it's essentially saying is that energy (E) gets tied up in mass (m).\n\nIn addition, the mass is multiplied by the speed of light twice (don't worry about why), so a lot of mass means a fuck-clobberingly huge amount of energy. The average person has as much energy \"tied up\" in their mass as a million atomic bombs.\n\nThe problem, of course, is that we can't really *use* that energy for anything, it's just stuck in the form of mass. A photon doesn't have that problem, though; it has no mass, so it can (and actually must) zip around at the speed of light with only a tiny amount of energy, because none of its energy is \"wasted\" in the form of mass.\n\nAgain, this is not a totally precise explanation of what's going on (I'm cutting a *lot* of corners), but I think it's reasonable enough as a starting point of sorts.\n\nBringing gravity into things doesn't really change much in this case, to be honest. It is certainly easier to fly around in a rocket when you're farther from the Earth or Sun or whatever, but it's not really part of the explanation of why we can't travel even remotely close to the speed of light. "
]
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acxzk2 | why is john lennon's death generally referred to as an "assassination" and not just a murder? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/acxzk2/eli5_why_is_john_lennons_death_generally_referred/ | {
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"Assassination is the killing of a prominent person, either for political or religious reasons or for payment.",
"I think it has to do with the nature of the killing.\n\nLennon was murdered, and so was JFK, and so was Trotsky...but so were thousands of people.\n\nIf the murder is motivated by politics, or of an important figure, and is done for motivations other than personal greed, generally it is considered an assassination.\n\nLennon's death might be stretching this a bit, though.",
"Assassination generally refers to someone famous/culturally or politically influential, while murder is the blanket term. Legally, it's all \"homicide,\" however.",
"An assassination is the killing of a prominent person. He was a very prominent pop culture figure. \n\nThe rest of us normal people only get to be murdered. "
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29ln3y | how do texting apps generate a phone number that hasn't already been claimed? | Is this a legal method? To not be paying service to a phone company, but to have a phone number linked to an APP on your tablet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29ln3y/eli5how_do_texting_apps_generate_a_phone_number/ | {
"a_id": [
"cim4v44"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"It doesn't exactly work like, phone companies arn't the only ones who can control phone numbers. Apps can use online services such as [Twilio](_URL_0_) that allow their systems to get phone assign phone numbers and access SMS. By chain the company who makes the SMS app is paying a service like Twilio for SMS.\n\nninjaedit: didn't link right"
]
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3cajlp | why does drinking water on an empty stomach hurt? | Sometimes when I'm hungry, I'll drink some water and it kills. It feels like someone is wrenching my stomach. The pain is fairly debilitating, so I want to know what's happening? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cajlp/eli5_why_does_drinking_water_on_an_empty_stomach/ | {
"a_id": [
"cstpuvl"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"I drink warm water do you drink it cold? I won't pretend I know what I'm talking about but my mentor told me it's easier on your stomach to drink room temp."
]
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[]
] |
|
27cgp8 | meta: why does it seem like the same questions get asked every hour? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27cgp8/eli5_meta_why_does_it_seem_like_the_same/ | {
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"text": [
"Because people don't follow the rules and don't search.",
"It's a combination of two things: not searching and there's probably an article in the news or on a popular website that brings up the question.\n\nMultiple people see the same thing that inspires the same question.\n\nThey then either ignore or don't notice the instruction to search, or presume that their question is unique or that the rule doesn't matter.",
"If you see a bunch of similar questions over the span of a couple of days, a newsworthy event or highly upvoted post (such as in /r/todayilearned or something) could have made a lot of people wonder the same thing. ",
"This is a default sub. Defaults attract the masses, and the masses tend to be rather impulsive and daft. If there's a Bitcoin story on the front page, expect half a dozen questions about Bitcoin because\n\n- user sees Front, sees story about it\n\n- user comes here to see if there's an explanation\n\n- no thread, user assumes it's because no one has asked the question yet\n\n- user doesn't realize mods are deleting the topics off /new because they are so overdone\n\nBTW OP, this topic itself is a very frequent submission. I think there have been 2 other submissions like this just today. Ironic."
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1daray | why and how laundry detergents are used in the drug community. | [This thread](_URL_0_) popped up on /r/wtf and from what everyone is saying, detergent is used in the drug community.
I get it's used for trading and stuff like that, but I don't understand why, or exactly how everything works the way it is said to.
Can somebody explain this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1daray/eli5why_and_how_laundry_detergents_are_used_in/ | {
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"Some small non-chain stores will buy it from you at a fraction of retail price so they can resell it. They're also easier to steal than booze or other items that are more closely watched. If you were to steal 10 of them, and sell them at 1/4 price you could use that money to purchase drugs. Similarly, some drug dealers will accept it as a means of currency. For example. If X drug costs $10, then they will accept $20 worth of laundry detergent instead of actual money (the extra $10 for the inconvenience of being paid in laundry detergent)."
]
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"http://http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1da91f/you_know_you_live_in_the_ghetto_when/"
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[]
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a58adl | how did scientists identify humanity's common ancestor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a58adl/eli5_how_did_scientists_identify_humanitys_common/ | {
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"Imagine evolution to be like a book, something written long before the invention of printing. Like the bible. So it was copied over and over by monks, who even though they worked very thoroughly, occasionally made a mistake. Since there are so many more words than mistakes, the chance that two monks do the same mistake twice are incredibly low. But the monks who use that particular book to make their own copies will copy over the mistakes in it.\n\nSo now you've got 1000 copies of the book, and want to find the one that's closest to the original. What do you do? You assume that a book can only have a particular mistake if it's the one where a monk first made the mistake, or it was copied from that book, or it was copied from a book that was copied from it, and so on and so forth. So they all must have a common ancestor.\n\nBy sorting all the books by their mistakes, you can trace exactly which book was copied from which other book. And ultimately, that will lead you to the oldest common ancestor - or at least tell you which ones are the oldest.\n\nGenetics are similar. Mutations rarely occur twice in the same way, and it's basically impossible that multiple mutations occur at the same time in a species independently from one another. So if you have two different human fossils where, say, the hip bone looks oddly similar, it might be pure chance. But if in addition to that they have a similar skull, it's safe to assume that they do have a common ancestor. So if you have a whole bunch of different fossils, you can group them by these similarities, and reconstruct which ones are the ancestors of different fossils. Ultimately, that will lead you to the oldest of the bunch.",
"Scientifically, there is no such thing as a 'common ancestor' in the sense that 'every human alive is descended from one single person'. The closest we can get is the 'Most Recent Common Matrilineal Ancestor' (MRCMA), or the putative 'Mitochondrial Eve' (a term which many scientists dislike), which you can read about [here](_URL_0_) .\n\nMitochondria are genetic 'energy factories' inside our cell-structure, and they're only ever transmitted through the female line of descent. It's possible to trace mitochondrial DNA back over the millennia until the lines of descent converge on one woman.\n\nIt's important to note, though, that 'one woman' does not mean that it's one *specific* woman, or that she was the 'only' woman alive; by definition, Mitochondrial Eve had at least two daughters who both have unbroken female lineages that have survived to the present day. Thus, mt-Eve is effectively a 'title', passed down mother-to-daughter, that denotes the *most recent* female that qualifies as 'Mitochondrial Eve'."
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25hbwl | are there any laws against independent space travel without government consent? | If Red Bull wanted to try and send a man to the moon and wanted to privately fund it, could they attempt to actually do their own moon landing? I bring this up because it blows my mind that we haven't been back to the moon. Supposedly the tech in our iPhones is equal to or better than the computers and hardware in the Apollo (Could be total bullshit but that's what we have all heard), so we should be able to go back with ease now right? Imagine a moon landing in HD! The advertising and ratings on something like that alone would be bananas! Even with upstarts like Virgin Galactic don't really seem to be able to do much other than fly out of our atmosphere. The space shuttle program seems to have taken back a step, we go visit another planet (The Moon) and then instead of trying to build a space station on the moon, we just orbit around our earth and get the same view. Now while I am not necessarily implying we haven't been to the moon, I do find it puzzling that we have not attempted to explore that planet more
TL;DR If Red Bull wanted to fund a moon landing would they be allowed to? If not why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25hbwl/eli5_are_there_any_laws_against_independent_space/ | {
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"Sorry I don't know the answer to your question but please stop calling the moon a planet. Its not a planet its a planetary satellite. Planets are things that revolve around the sun, moons are things that revolve around planets.",
"Lawyer here! The answer to your core question is \"generally, no.\" Most spacefaring nations require compliance with statutes/regulations before they'll permit a private entity from launching.\n\nIn the U.S., for example, private launches are controlled by the [Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984](_URL_1_). This requires a substantial amount of regulatory compliance. For example, the company has to submit an environmental impact report to the EPA, and has to obtain quite a bit of liability insurance (among other things) before they can launch.\n\nMost countries have something similar. The [UN Outer Space Treaty](_URL_0_) (a real thing) seems to contemplate (without explicitly requiring) that we're only going to have state-sanctioned spaceflight. Specifically, it assigns liability for any losses in space to the nation that authorized the launch of the craft responsible.\n\nEdit: Now with links!"
]
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38bzih | do websites make absolutely no money off ad block users? | like not even a cent? or do they make some but not as much as a non adblock user? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38bzih/eli5do_websites_make_absolutely_no_money_off_ad/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Free websites that rely on ads make no money off any users, whether or not they use ad block. Instead they make users off businesses who buy their ad spaces. These business make extra money by attracting new users/customers to their paid services/products.\n\nPeople who use ad blocks are not exposed to these ads, so if a website has a quarter of its users on ad blocks, their ad spaces would be exposed to a quarter less than what it otherwise would, and those business would see a less increase on buyers of their services/products, which means the ads are now less valuable.\n\nThis is how free websites suffer from ad blocks."
]
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8jmlln | is the air around me packed full of atoms, like peas in a can, or is there space between? how can i see through it? are atoms transparent? | I know that an atom is mostly empty space, but every atom has a "solid" particle at the center, doesn't it? There must be gazillions of those things all around me. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8jmlln/eli5_is_the_air_around_me_packed_full_of_atoms/ | {
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"text": [
"It's like looking through a screen door, but much, much farther apart. They aren't transparent, but when spread out, you have no issue seeing through it.",
"When we say mostly empty space we mean that dense center is a baseball sitting in the center of a football field. Its a lot of empty space.\n\nBut yes many atoms let visible light through, they absorb/reflect in different ranges depending on their electrons (thats how colors work).\n\nThey are mostly pretty packed with 6.02*10^23 atoms per 22.4 liters.",
"You can only see through it for short distances. Look at something further away and you'll notice a blue/grey haze. That's air.",
"[Solids](_URL_1_) are packed like peas in a can.\n\nLiquids are actually loose enough that they move more like cars on a highway (at rush hour).\n\nAnd gases (like air) are more like [people on a sidewalk](_URL_0_).\n\nHowever, transparency is not quite related to \"relative size\" or photons being \"blocked\" by a wall of atoms. Because we clearly can have transparent solids, as well as various gases that don't let light through.\n\nAt the \"elementary particle\" scale, things tend to vibrate a lot, and also have not very precise locations. And the wavelength of photons can be bigger than the size of the atoms that make up the material. So absorption or reflection of light depends on whether the atoms in the material can absorb the energy of the photons, or not."
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4nthjg | why does weather move from west to east, but wind can be blowing from any direction? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nthjg/eli5_why_does_weather_move_from_west_to_east_but/ | {
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"Winds also flow differently between pressure systems. \n\nLow pressure system, wind tends to flow counter-clockwise\n\nHigh pressure system, wind tends to flow clockwise",
"Weather doesn't have to move west to east. Look at the Hurricanes! They move southeast to northwest on the east cost of North America. ",
"The wind that you feel is created because of a difference in temperatures, resulting in a difference in pressures. As an example: all day, the land and sea are warmed up a bit by the sun. As the sun sets, the sea cools faster than the land. Cold air sinks, and hot air rises. So the hotter air over the land rises, creating a lower pressure area. The cooler, low air from the sea (which also happens to be higher pressure), rushes into the area with lower pressure, causing wind. And the hot air that was above the land moves back over the ocean, cools, and the cycle repeats. Remember, this is happening on a massive scale. Also remember that this is only one common example. There are many other reasons for wind generation. ",
"The wind that you feel is created because of a difference in temperatures, resulting in a difference in pressures. As an example: all day, the land and sea are warmed up a bit by the sun. As the sun sets, the sea cools faster than the land. Cold air sinks, and hot air rises. So the hotter air over the land rises, creating a lower pressure area. The cooler, low air from the sea (which also happens to be higher pressure), rushes into the area with lower pressure, causing wind. And the hot air that was above the land moves back over the ocean, cools, and the cycle repeats. Remember, this is happening on a massive scale. Also remember that this is only one common example. There are many other reasons for wind generation. "
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d53zhy | how does the electric company categorize my usage? | I have service with Duke / Progress energy. Every month I receive a breakdown of what categories I’ve spent my electricity on - lighting, cooking, cooling, etc - how can they know this information? Is it based on usage cycles, or some kind of per-breaker tracking? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d53zhy/eli5_how_does_the_electric_company_categorize_my/ | {
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"They use something called Power Signature Analysis. Basically, you have to imagine your homes power usage as a graph. When you turn something on, there will be a small increase in the graph, and decrease when it's turned off. Certain devices create patterns in usage. This data includes both voltage and amperage. Smart Meters transmit this data to the power company and they use special software to analyze the data.\n\nDevices that use large motors often times create huge spikes in amp draw, which also causes a drop in voltage. Devices such as air conditioners and refrigerators use large motors. Light bulbs will create very small loads with no initial spike. Devices such as space heaters, toaster ovens and electric ranges, that use electricity to create heat, also do not create large spikes, but will create a very high and steady draw of amps. Washing machines will often times create erratic loads, as they are constantly turning their motors on and off, and running them at different speeds.\n\nSmart Meters are also capable of measuring power factor, so they may also take that number into account. Most people are not billed for power factor, but it can give hints as to what type of devices are running inside the home."
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1h0xnk | how can you measure the speed of light if nothing goes faster than its speed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1h0xnk/how_can_you_measure_the_speed_of_light_if_nothing/ | {
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"Speed = Distance / Time\n\nYou don't need a on object with a similar or greater velocity to compare it to. \n\nNow here's a fun way you can confirm it at home:\n\nRemove the rotating plate from your microwave, and place an upturned plate over the rotor in the middle. Butter about 4 slices of bread with an even covering right to the edges, and lay out flat in the microwave.\n\nTurn on the microwave, and watch carefully: you should see the butter bubble up in spots on the bread.\n\nStop the microwave, and measure the distance between two of these splotches. \n\nThen flip the microwave around and look for an information sticker. It should have the frequency listed (either in MHz or GHz).\n\nThen, multiply the wavelength (distance you measured between splotches) by the frequency (number you read on the back of the microwave oven), and you get the speed of light. ",
"Light still takes time to travel. So you can work out the speed of light by having a light source, a light detector, a clock and a mirror.\n\nPlace the detector next to the light source, and the mirror a certain distance away. Rig the clock to turn on when the light starts and to stop when the detector sense the light from the reflection in the mirror. You can then work out the time the light took to travel between the source the mirror and back to the detector, hence the speed.\n\nOther methods have existed too using astrological information. There's a summary [here](_URL_0_) "
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1lchfc | what determines if you are burning fat, muscles or calories? | Does it depend on your hart rate or what you had to eat before or after working out? Does the type of workout matter?
Edit: Thanks everybody, a lot of useful anwers in here! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lchfc/eli5_what_determines_if_you_are_burning_fat/ | {
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"a calorie is a measure of energy. the food you eat provides a certain amount of energy, measured in calories. your body uses a certain amount of energy (calories) every day just to support regular functions. at the end of the day, any unused energy gets stored in your body as fat. when you work out, your body needs energy, so it starts to \"burn\" fat so it releases its energy. why arent fat people bursting with energy? well, fat doesnt do anything, muscles do. fat stored as fat is just dead weight and makes it that much harder for your muscles to do their job. you need to get active and have your body use that energy stored in the fat. the energy released from fat is measurable in calories, so thats why when you work out you can gauge how many calories you have burned. only in cases of extreme starvation will your body start to burn muscle, after it has gone through all of your fat",
"I assume you meant \n\n > What determines if you are burning fat, protein, or carbohydrates?\n\nIt is dependent on a number of factors, the type of exertion does not matter. Running or weight lifting alone do not determine which energy source your body uses. As I think you meant to say, there are three energy reservoirs our body can use: fat, protein and carbohydrates. Generally speaking you have three states, resting, moderate and heavy. Resting is sitting on the couch or sleeping. Moderate is walking up the stairs, hiking, lifting weights. Heavy is sprinting, marathon running and such. For a average person, your body burns carbohydrates the vast majority of the time, and almost never protein, regardless of your activity level. There is always some small level of fat being burned as well. At a moderate level, you burn a higher percentage of fat than at rest or at a high activity level, but because you burn more calories overall at a high activity level, you don't burn more fat at a moderate level. This is why those fat burning zones are actually BS. An average person will burn through their carbohydrate sources fairly quickly, so the body will switch over to fat burning. Fat has a higher energy density than carbohydrates, that's why we store a lot of fat and very little sugar. Athletes have been shown to almost instantly switch to fat burning during activity. Your body will burn protein only if you are starving.\n\nTL/DR; Your activity level and duration determine what your body is using for energy ",
"The body will burn through carbs (in the form of glycogen) first, then once the glycogen stores are depleted, it will switch to burning through fat. Once all the fat and glycogen are gone (as mentioned in another response - if you're starving), the body will start to burn protein for energy.\n\nAfter reading some of the responses here, I think it should be noted that while it is *possible* for the body to convert carbs into fat (Lipogenesis), it rarely or never happens in our bodies. We get fat from eating carbs because our body burns carbs first. If your body always has enough carbs (glycogen) to burn for energy, it never get around to burning fat for energy, so all the fat you eat gets stored.\n\nBasically, our body - like everything in nature - takes the path of least resistance. Carbs are the easiest to use for energy, then fat, then protein.",
"_URL_0_\n\nYou're welcome",
"Calories are measurement of energy - everything you eat has a calorie count.\n\nIn general the following conversions exist:\n\n* 1g Protein = 4 cal\n* 1g Carbs = 4 cal\n* 1g Fat = 9 cal\n\nWhat you eat, in what ratios, combined with when you eat and work out are all very important factors in what your body does with the food. The problem is, every single person is different, so there is no magic formula of what to eat.\n\nFirst let's talk about how each type of food is used by the body:\n\n* Protein is used primarily for muscle repair and growth. Additionally, what I haven't seen anyone comment on here, is that it can also be broken down and slowly converted to glycogen to be used as slow burn energy source.\n* Carbs are used primarily for energy. Depending on what the carb is determines how fast it is absorbed in your body.\n* Fat (you eat) can also be used as an energy source, but is mostly broken down to provide your body with nutrients used in natural body function. You also get most of the fatty acids your brain needs to function from fat sources.\n\nOk, now that we know what these things do in food - how do they affect your body.\n\nWhen you eat food, starting in the mouth it goes through the digestion process. Different parts begin to break down at different speeds - simple carbs (sugar) get broken down fast, complex carbs and proteins take much longer. Think of this like throwing wood on a fire. Twigs burn up right away, logs burn low and slow. The digestion process breaks down the sugars and converts them into glycogen to be stored for later use - note: food is not burned directly, first it's converted, then stored, then the stores are burned as a fuel source.\n\nWhen you eat, anything, your blood sugar will rise as your body starts processing the sugars in the food. This causes a release of insulin to regulate your blood sugar. Insulin is a double edged sword though. It lowers your blood sugar by forcing the sugar in to your glycogen stores (muscle fuel tanks) BUT insulin is unaware of how much sugar it's going up against, so generally too much insulin is released and all of that sugar is forced somewhere - when the muscles and liver are full, that somewhere is in to fat cells.\n\nThere's also a nasty byproduct of insulin - the double edged sword - you can't burn fat when your body is pumped up with insulin, as it it's in the process of storing fuel. You can't be starving and full at the same time.\n\nSo that covers the eating portion. Now for the burning.\n\nAs someone else said - there are 3 states of burn: resting, aerobic (enough oxygen), anaerobic (not enough oxygen). In all 3 cases your body is burning the stored fuel in your system, just in different ways.\n\nWhen you're resting, your body can generally burn through the glycogen in your muscles slow enough that your slow burn digestion (complex carbs and protein) refills the stores at the same rate so you don't notice a lack of energy or fatigue when sitting around.\n\nWhen you do low intensity exercise, 60-70% your max heart rate, where you can still breath properly, you burn more energy obviously then when sitting around. This is when those glycogen stores really get tapped - first the liver is emptied, then the muscles.\n\nIf you do high intensity exercise, 70%+ your max heart rate, where you run out of breath your body needs quick energy because it can't go through the normal process due to the lack of oxygen - so usually the muscles are tapped directly. Because muscles, per muscle, store a lot less glycogen this process can only be sustained short term. There's reasons you can't sprint for more than a few minutes.\n\nIn all 3 cases, fat is also being burned along side your glycogen stores - remember (above) how fat has way more calories then protein and cabs, well that makes it a good energy source. As you deplete the glycogen in your muscles, by moving your muscles, they need to get refilled - well that's where the fat burning comes in. Your body is going to look for sources of energy and it's going to take both from the fat stores (back up fuel) and the stuff you're still digesting.\n\nProtein, in the form of your muscles, is never really burned unless your body literally has nothing left to consume for energy - for men this happens below 4% body fat, for woman around 12%. You might have some small muscle loss from muscle decay, if your muscles are bigger than your body needs them to be it will break them down - muscles take a lot of fuel to support.\n\nAnd this is when you realize it's not a linear process (food goes in energy comes out), but a cyclical (energy is stored, energy is released).\n\nso that covers the burning portion. Now for the exercise and timing.\n\nGenerally you want to avoid eating high amounts of carbs, especially simple ones. Because as we saw, it turns off the fat burn and turns on the fat storage. But there is one exception - work out time. It is ok to eat carbs, especially simple ones, right before/during/after a work out. You're probably wondering why now.\n\nBecause, it generally takes about 30 mins for the insulin response to sugar to kick in. If you eat cabs before a work out, but before the insulin kicks in, you can rapidly deplete your glycogen stores (working out) and give that sugar a place to go, just to be used again during the work out. Similarly, after a work out your fuel tanks are empty, so those carbs go right to the glycogen stores. It doesn't matter that excess will go fat tissues, because there shouldn't be excess - your body has about 450g of glycogen stores between the muscles and liver. You would have to eat ALOT of sugar to over flow that.\n\nFor the rest of the day you want to eat complex carbs, healthy (**un**saturated) fats, and quality proteins to keep your body fueled with slow burn foods - which will keep your blood sugar consistent throughout the day. This avoids the spikes that cause fat storage.\n\nLastly - when insulin is done with it's job, it's usually so effective that your blood sugar is lower than before you ate. Making you hungry again. Every wonder why quick candy snacks leave you hungry an hour later, that's why.\n\nOnce you've gotten your head wrapped around the basics of how the body uses food, then you can get in to the details of what you should be eating for daily % of p/c/f. Personally I eat 25/20/55 following the Paleo guidelines, with 1hr of exercise 5 times a week, and I can eat all day and still lose weight because the carbs aren't being stored.\n\nHope that helps.\n\n**TL;DR Learn how insulin works, it's the key to understanding what you should eat and when**\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_3_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: Feel free to ask follow ups and I'll do my best to clarify. Tried to keep it 'five year old' in detail, but unfortunately nutritional science is very complex\n\n\n\n"
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2vhig6 | what is a computer script? | Are there different types of scripts, and if so what are the best uses for each type?
How does one go about learning to write scripts?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vhig6/eli5_what_is_a_computer_script/ | {
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"One way of categorizing programming languages is according to whether they are interpreted or compiled. In an interpreted language, a program is simply a plain-text file containing the commands that you want to run. This file is called a *script*. You feed this file to a program called an *interpreter* which then executes each command in the order they're written (like an actor reading a script).\n\nIn compiled languages, the plain-text file that contains the commands for the program is called a *source file*. This source is fed to a *compiler*. Instead of executing the commands in the source immediately (as the interpreter does), the compiler translates the program into a binary file called the *executable* (actually, it's a bit more complicated than this, but we're going for simplicity here). The executable is the actual program that you run on your computer.\n\nEach method has its pros and cons, and choosing between them depends on the program being made. Some compiled programs will even incorporate an interpreter to handle aspects that are better accomplished by scripting.",
"Scripts are small programs generally written in a \"high level\" languages (languages where much of the computer's underlying workings are abstracted from the user). Scripts are also often associated with the automation of small repetitive tasks and interpretive run-time environments (special computer code that interpolates the script as it executes). \n\n The delineation between calling something a program vs script is very unclear, but usually a script would be denoted by brevity and lack of complexity. That said, there isn't a hard and fast rule, as evidenced by the lengthy write up on wikipedia: _URL_0_\n"
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flhogm | how do 'dry' wines taste dry when they're a liquid? | I never knew what people meant when they said dry wines until I drank one recently and it definitely tastes dry. It's a liquid though and I'm curious how this works. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/flhogm/eli5_how_do_dry_wines_taste_dry_when_theyre_a/ | {
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"Dry is simply the opposite of sweet. Dry wine means it has a low sugar content. They tend to be quite sharp, the same way lemon juice is, and I suppose that could taste \"dry\".",
"\"Dry\" is just the wine lingo word for \"not sweet.\" Sugar tends to make us salivate a little bit, which might explain why \"dry\" is used to mean a wine with little sugar - because the sour, bitter, and tannic flavors in wine can make the mouth feel drier without much sugar to compensate.\n\nHowever, it is mainly the tannins in wine that cause that puckery, drying out feeling on the tongue. The same compounds in a strong cup of tea. But we describe wines with a high amount of those tannins as \"tannic,\" rather than dry. Confusingly, a wine can have plenty of sweetness and high tannins, meaning that your mouth might have that dry feeling, but the wine shouldn't be considered \"dry.\" It's just a term that's been used historically for drinks without much sugar content."
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1huxi9 | why singapore is doing better (economically) than its neighboring countries | Singapore's at the top: _URL_0_
I get that Singapore's smaller, but what else? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1huxi9/eli5_why_singapore_is_doing_better_economically/ | {
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"It is a former British trading port which achieved independence but retained its importance as a trading hub.",
"Initially, right after independence, the geographical location of Singapore as a free port was the main thing that boosted its economy. As the country got richer, more investments could be made in R & D, resulting in technological advancements which would further boost economic growth. It's a cycle, and since then the country has thrived on international trade, quality of human capital (which is also ranked one of the top few in the world, if I'm not wrong), and technology. Hope this has helped!",
"The link you give is \"urbanization.\" That's how much of the country is city. In the case of Singapore, 100% of the country is a city. That's because the country is the *size* of a city.",
"Not sure why this hasn't been brought up yet... plain and simple, Singapore has one the freest economies in the world.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere are lots of former British colonial ports and lots of small trade dependent nations in the world, but Singapore's economy excels for the same reason Hong Kong's does; a very deregulated market-based economy that attracts investment and business ventures. \n\nThe country has problems (low birthrate, some draconian laws imposed on its citizens) but it's economy is not one of them. "
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1pt6qp | how are weather percentages determined? | Yesterday had been marked as 100% chance of precipitation all day for the last week, and then we received a little rain at night, otherwise a pretty dry day. How are these percentages determined? They are something that has always confused me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pt6qp/eli5_how_are_weather_percentages_determined/ | {
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"Its a combination of likelihood and area of prediction (and they use things like Hygrometers to measure Humidity).\n\nIf they predict 60% chance of rain, but over 100% of the area they show, then it is a 60% chance. Conversely, if they predict 100% chance of rain, but in scattered showers over only 60% of the same area, then it is still 60% chance of rain (since 40% of the area wont receive rain). ",
"In order to forecast the weather, a lot of model simulations are run. This is called an ensemble, and each ensemble member has a slightly different set of initial conditions (to account for uncertainty in measurements). \n\nPercentages are calculated based on the results of the ensemble. For example, if it rained in a particular area in 20% of their simulations, they would say there is a 20% chance of precipitation."
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24glzo | what are "zoning laws" and "neighbourhood commities". they're either a tiny thing or not a thing at all in the uk | It seems crazy? That some people can come a long and just say what you can and can't do. Is there a way out of it or do you somewhat agree to follow the rules when you move there or something? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24glzo/eli5_what_are_zoning_laws_and_neighbourhood/ | {
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"Zoning laws designate what type of structure and/or business can be located in a certain area. For instance, a city may not want a car repair shop plopped right down in the middle of a neighborhood.\n\nIf by *neighborhood communities* you mean Home Owner Associations, these are collective organizations in which homeowners pay into the association and, in return, the association pays for common area maintenance and improvements, such as a pool and recreation area and common area landscaping and lighting. \n\nAssociations are becoming prevalent in certain areas in the US because cities tend to be lax about making repairs or keeping up city-owned land, and homeowners like to feel they have some control over the area in which they live.\n\nCities love homeowner association because they can completely wash their hands of any maintenance to the areas, even including the streets.\n\nThe downside, as you may have guessed, it that these associations are made up of people who often have a strict agenda of controlling everybody else in the association, and the contracts that homeowners have to sign when entering these communities tend to be strict and unforgiving.",
"A Neighbourhood committee, or Home Owner's Association is essentially a group of people that run the neighbourhood's appearance. They schedule any block parties, stuff like that. But they also dictate certain things about the outward appearance of the house, they have a list of approved colours, you can't have a window AC unit in the front of the house, all the mailboxes have to look like this. And yes they do have some authority, but they do have a purpose, neighbourhoods do look nice when all the houses have a bit of uniformity and such.\n\nAs for zoning laws, I'm sure they are there in the UK, you just don't hear about them. Essentially, when land gets divided up and the city is given authority over it, they have to classify what it is. Whether it be residential (people live there) or commercial (people work there) or industrial (factories, shipping yards, warehouses, etc) obviously there are people who work from home, and people who live in hotels, but you get the idea. You can't buy a store in a city and then try and make it into a house, just like you can't buy a warehouse and make it into a house. There are certain restrictions, and if you want to do so, you have to go to the city and get it changed.",
"Zoning laws are laws that determine what a particular area of land could be used for. For example, a particular lot may be designated as residential and you'd be able to build a house there but not a convenience store (unless you get the city to rezone it.) \n\nBy \"neighborhood committees\" I'm guessing you mean something like homeowner's associations. Those are voluntary groups formed to ensure that the appearance and activities don't negatively affect the value of neighboring homes. If you never agree to join they don't affect you (although some owners and brokers won't sell to you unless you agree to join). There have been some small communities that have been able to incorporate as a legal neighborhood and try and pass ordinances to force people to join but they haven't really stood up well in court.",
"Zoning laws are the cities way of controlling development in the city. Ensuring that you have enough space for housing (both high and low density), Commercial, Light and heavy industrial. In some cities by zoning for low density residential you ensure that only larger upscale houses can be built and therefore prevent low income apartment building from going up.\n\nNeighborhood Communities or HOA's are a list of rules that you must abide by in order to live in the community. It is there to protect property values and to keep the area looking nice. They are put in place by the developer and usually ran by a private management company. While it may be a bit of a pain getting a warning for leaving your trash can out for two days...it does prevent my neighbor from allowing all his plants to die in his front yard, park his car on his lawn and paint his house purple.\n\nIf you have a problem with zoning then you talk to the town council. If you have a problem with the HOA then join the board and help take control.",
"You can't just build where you want in the UK either. You have to apply to the council for planning permission."
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1jorh5 | lbw in cricket | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jorh5/eli5_lbw_in_cricket/ | {
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"Leg Before Wicket: it's the simplest way for a batter to get put out in cricket. If he stands in front of the wicket and gets hit by a pitched ball that would have hit the wicket but for his body block, he's out. If you know baseball, it's like leaning into the strike zone. In baseball, such a pitch would just be ruled a strike, but in cricket it's an out -- because if the wicket does get hit, it's one strike and you're out."
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5352eo | how can idle clicker games that offer little to no gameplay become popular? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5352eo/eli5_how_can_idle_clicker_games_that_offer_little/ | {
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"People like to micromanage and people like easy on-the-go games to play while they're taking breaks at work or are on the shitter."
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1pnc0d | the reddit policy against self promotion | So I run a YouTube channel. Recently I created a video that received a very positive response. Realizing that I had found a new market for my videos I began working on new content. Not spamming mind you, I made sure to allow a gap of at least 3-4 days between videos or posts.
However, I am now running up against the "self promotion" clause. I read the information I could find but don't feel like I have a good understanding of what I did wrong. I'm frustrated because I'm getting great responses from my content but I can't share it.
Thank you for your help! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pnc0d/eli5_the_reddit_policy_against_self_promotion/ | {
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"Reddit has very few hard rules (i.e. rules which may cause your account to be shadow-banned if broken), however there are a number of soft rules (primarily outlined on the [reddiquette](_URL_0_) page) that guide 'proper' behavior on the site.\n\nIn terms of hard rules, the only one which is relevant to your situation is the \"Don't Spam\" rule which basically only applies if the only content you post on reddit is from your own website/blog. In other words, this rule generally does not apply to people who actively engage in the reddit community and participate in discussions (e.g. by making relevant and thoughtful comments in other user's threads and by posting a variety of content/links from various different sources, not just your own websites).\n\nIn terms of proper etiquette... if you do plug your own site, you should generally disclose this information up front (such as by posting a comment in the thread that makes it clear that you are the creator of the video/content and perhaps explains why the content is relevant or why you thought the reddit community would enjoy it).\n\nPlease note that reddit is comprised of many (almost endless) different subreddits. Each subreddit has its own moderators which enforce their own rules. So just because you may have received warning from one particular moderator of one subreddit about self-promotion, does not necessarily mean what you did was against reddit's site-wide rules or that it was against the rules of other subreddits.\n\n"
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28yjek | can blind people even understand the concept of color? | I've always been curious (in the case of people who have been blind their whole lives and never enjoyed a single second of sight) as to whether or not they can grasp or understand explanations about visually derived phenomena like color, visually descriptive terms like gloomy, brilliant, etc?
There are so many things I wonder about their ability to comprehend (given their handicap), as well as what they undoubtedly understand in greater detail or in ways that I could never understand (by having other heightened senses).
I wish I could speak to a blind person about this but would love to learn from others who might know the answer to this free-flowing, endless sorry excuse of a question :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28yjek/eli5can_blind_people_even_understand_the_concept/ | {
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"Check out Tommy Edison on youtube. He's a blind comedian, and he's got a whole series of videos on being blind...and he's hilarious. One specifically where he's trying to guess the color of a Magic Marker by smelling them..."
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5nbd6g | why is taking an aspirin before the surgery harmful? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nbd6g/eli5why_is_taking_an_aspirin_before_the_surgery/ | {
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"It prevents your blood from clotting properly! Hence, if you want to walk out of the surgery without blood gushing from your wounds you shouldn't take an aspirin right before it :)\n\nEDIT: words",
"Because aspirin is the only NSAID with blood thinning properties: that's why it's used in prevention of CV events at low dosage ( < 100mg). ",
"They also usually don't want you to take ibuprofen (Motrin/Advil) before surgery, either. And make sure of the number of days before surgery that you can't take them."
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58j9ts | what exactly makes ramen noodles so unhealthy, and if you eat ramen often, will you have a shorter life expectancy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58j9ts/eli5_what_exactly_makes_ramen_noodles_so/ | {
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"Ramen in and of itself is just noodles in soup. But instant Ramen, the kind you buy in a store, has a lot of salt. Too much salt is bad for you.",
"It's not that it's bad for you, it's that it's not \"good enough for you to live on\". Noodles are to starch what soda-pop is to sugar. A sneaky and tasty way to overindulge in an empty indulgence.\n\nSo ramen makes you \"feel like you ate\" (slaking your hunger) but it didn't give you any really essential nutrients. It doesn't even have enough _fat_ to keep you healthy, let alone the vitamins and minerals you need to keep all your systems functioning.\n\nThe problem isn't that eating ramen is poisoning you, it's that it's being treated like a staple.\n\nNow go look at that packaging on your instant ramen. Notice how they have a picture of the noodles with like vegetables and meat or eggs floating in the broth. ... If you do that. If you make it part of a balanced meal then it's fine.\n\nBut just like Captain Crunch is never encountered in the wild as \"part of this balanced breakfast\" the average people in the world you know eat the noodles in the salty broth and are secretly starving to death even as they get fat.",
"I am going to ASSUME you are talking about instant Ramen noodles. The typical quick cooking noodles in a cup or in a block.\n\nYou might ask consider how do they pre-cook the noodle, yet still put it dry into a package? The noodles are first deep fried in oil, then dried.\n\nSo first they are deep fried in oil, then you put them in a high sodium broth. Citation: _URL_0_\n\nReal, fresh Ramen is another thing.",
"One serving of instant ramen noodles will typically have close to 100% DV worth of sodium and I dunno bout you but I'd regularly have 2 packs at once when I was broke, so that's more sodium than you should have ALL DAY in one meal.\nThey also contain very little vitamins/minerals that a balanced diet needs, I find that all instant meals share this in some way, and in this case you're basically just getting salty carbs. \nSome would argue that if you eat any one particular dish that you'd become unhealthy, so don't think this is just the instant noodles we're warning you off of but actually lack of a proper diet in general."
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3uphh2 | why is the media so selective about the things they report? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uphh2/eli5why_is_the_media_so_selective_about_the/ | {
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"They have to be.\n\nThey only have so many reporters, so many photographers, so many pages or minutes of airtime... They can't report on everything.\n\nAs a result, they must pick & choose.",
"1. Firstly most news sources' main source of revenue is from people buying their product (newspapers, watching adverts on tv etc.), so they need views or clicks to do this, generally more people care about gossip relating to celebrities than a constant stream of \"all these people died and you should feel terrible about it\". So media outlets choose to publish things that get a lot of buyers as opposed to real news stories, this is called sensationalism or churnalism. \n\n2. Most media outlets are run by private individuals with a strict agenda, examples include Rupert Murdoch who owns everything from Fox News to The Sun in England, the Murdoch family is very wealthy and obviously doesn't like to pay tax that goes to social welfare programs because they don't need it, so these outlets only show how evil left wing/liberalism is and how great conservatism is, that's why Fox news is so biased. There are also left wing media outlets that do the same, it's all about propaganda, you're reading someone else's agenda because even though they should be, most journalists aren't neutral.\n\n3. The media has to be careful what they publish as it may effect world events. As many redditors have now begun to understand, whenever a mass shooting happens there will always be many copycats that follow if the media reports on these stories because people realise that they can gain national attention even if it is from doing something deplorable. \n\n4. There is also governmental censorship of certain things and government's will work with newspapers that share their agenda about a topic, examples include the Margaret Thatcher government of the UK in the 80s, Margaret Thatcher covered up the police's part in a disaster that took place in a football stadium in Hillsborough in 1989, she worked with newspapers to convince people it was the fans that caused to disaster and not the police who let overcrowding of the stadium take place.\n\n"
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5057wz | why is ac better than dc ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5057wz/eli5_why_is_ac_better_than_dc/ | {
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"Well, it depends on the application. For some things AC is better, for some DC is better.\n\nThe main advantage of AC is the ability to move it over large distances, which means you don't have to live within a mile of a power plant to have electricity in your house.",
"It's not really, with practically everything, DC is a better choice (lower losses, higher transmission efficiency, and easier to interface with modern systems). There are two main exceptions, with AC a transformer can be used to change the voltage (DC requires a relativity complex circuit) and with AC a generator and motor do not require a ~~commentator~~ commutator or any circuit other than three windings. This is not true for DC.\n\nThe major downside of DC is that the electronics to change the voltage (required to long distance transmission) have only existed at a commercially acceptable price for maybe 10 years. When they built the grids they were simply not an option (doing it with DC back then would require a motor-generator set at every house, which are expensive and fail often).",
"it's much easier to transform to a different voltage, which in turn simplifies transportation a lot.\n\nby transforming AC to a higher voltage, the same amount of power can be transported over much thinner wires. the only drawback of high voltage is that you need a good insulator between the wires and that high voltage switches are very expensive. but air is a very good insulator and you actually don't need that many switches for overhead powerlines.\n\non the other hand, quite a lot household electronics work actually at a much lower voltage than 110/230 V. these things usually have a small transformator built in their power supply unit, for example in most laptops that's the black box in the middle of the power cord.",
"The main benefit is that you can easily change voltages/amps with AC using a transformer.\n\nVoltage and Current have inverse relationship, but power used/lost depends mostly on current, so being able to transport it as a very high voltage, and very low current means you can use much smaller wires, which cost a LOT less when your talking about miles and miles. Then substations you transform it to medium voltage, then low voltage at all your houses, and businesses etc. \n\nWith DC switching between voltages takes much more complex equipment thats more likely to fail, AC only takes some wires rapped around a bar of iron, so its relatively cheap, and unlikely to fail.\n\n\nSource EE working in power distribution.",
"The biggest reason AC is better is constant power output/input. When you run a DC motor you get surges when the coils are in different positions. With 3 phase AC power output/input is constant at every step, so when on phase goes up/down the others compensate. The transformer thing is also a plus. \n\nTl:Dr Sine waves are nice. \n\nSource: I am an electrical engineer in power generation and transmission. ",
"It's not, they're different and used for different things, but both are extremely useful. It's kind of like saying \"Which is better, hands or feet?\" ",
"I wouldn't say ac is better than dc. It's just cheaper and easier to transport ac long distances. In addition to what others have said, DC current have historically had less efficiency with transporting, but we've gotten a little better at that. It should be heavily noted that we use both ac and DC current.",
"AC\n\n- Power grid easier to make. \n\n- Easier to transform to a different Voltage.\n\n- It's safer: You can stil let go of a power line when you touch it. \n\n- Easier to control the voltage under variable load.\n\n\nDC:\n\n- Difficult power grid.\n\n- Hard to transform to a different voltage.\n\n- More dangerous. If you grab a power line your muscles contract and you can't let go.\n\n- Its hard to maintain DC under a variable load.",
"AC is better for long distance energy transmission - like from the power plant to your home. Covering the same distances using DC would require full blown power stations every other mile. AC can be transmitted long distances using relatively small transformers and magnetic induction to transfer power.\n\nDC is better for short distance transmission, like from your wall to your device/appliance.\n",
"Ac current is easier to transmit over long distances.\n\nThere are certain applications one excels at more than the other... (ac is better in motors, DC is better in electronics) but for the most part transmission is the number one concern.\n\nAt the local level ac current can be stepped down or rectified as needed;each individual device has its own way of doing that.",
"I had an electrical question on an exam once. \nWhich is safer... AC or DC?\n\nThe answer:\nAC, because AC oscillates the direction of the current back and forth, thus if you were to touch an AC coupled wire, your muscles would contract and release rapidly giving you the ability to jerk your arm away. Whereas DC is a continuous current (on an oscilloscope, DC is a straight line) thus your muscles would contract and you would not be able to let go. Of course in practice, both would fry you given enough amps.\n\nDC power grids are now very efficient and soon we will not need AC grids at all. However, since the infrastructure is there and most power stations use turbines which produce oscillating AC current it's going to be around for a very long time. There is talk of DC power grids supplying renewable power (e.g. solar) to parts of Europe from the Sahara .. i'd love to see this come to life.",
"If the real question is why do we use AC, the answer is transformers. It's relatively easy for the power company to send power at tens of thousands of volts over high power lines to travel far distances with little loss, then have it go through a transformer to drop it to step it down to a more useful voltage (that won't blow up every device in your house or cause it to jump through the walls and kill you, but has the downside of not traveling as efficiently) closer to your house. You can transform DC voltages but the circuitry is more complex and difficult to do with very large amounts of power like the electric company delivers to all the houses in a city.",
"We can look at it a bit from how power distribution works.\n\nWhen we transfer electricity from a producer to a consumer, we usually transfer it a very long distance. No-one wants to live next door to a nuclear power plant and the waterfalls that are easily used for hydropower tend to be a inland somewhere a long distance from cities that are historically founded near an ocean. (generalizing things here a bit.)\n\nElectricity s easy to transfer, because all you have to do is attach a wire to a porcelain insulator that sits on top of a pole, and run the electricity through it. The wire will, however, inevitably consume part of the energy that goes into the wire and become something we call transmission loss. Transmission loss can be lowered to levels where it proves cost-efficient if you raise the voltage some 1000 times at the production site and then lower it again near the consumer in a transformer substation. The loss of the transformers are somewhere around 5% or so depending on size and cost, and some two or three different voltage levels along the way gives that you still have not even near half the loss you would have with a DC powered grid running the same distance with the same voltage. DC voltage can't be as easily altered in a cost-efficient manner, so you are stuck with what you have and that would inevitably give you costly losses.\n\nAnother thing that speaks for AC is that it's cheap to construct motors that are AC powered. It's so cheap that it's what made the first electrified industries finally putting the foot down and have their wishes heard. Lights bulbs and all that are really fancy, but them power grids were originally built to provide power to one industry that required some sort of motion, and the selling point had to be that the new fancy electricity everyone was talking about had to be cost-efficient compared to steam- and waterwheel-powered machines. Cheap motors was how it all got interesting. Without them industries, no-one would have coughed up the funds to build any long-distance wires.\n\nThe thing about AC though is that it is fantastic when you use it on wires mounted on poles, like power grids have historically always been built, but once you want it in a cable instead some really scary things happen that need to be taken into account. The three phases affect each other. because each of them create a magnetic field. Those fields can be seen as TV interference and there is some debating going around about if they cause cancer (which, if I recall correctly has not been proven nor dismissed yet, but it's a scary thought that I completely understand why people wonder about) or not, but from the power grids point of view the magnetic field needs to be handled because it creates transmission loss. If you look at a very high voltage line (say, from 100kV and up) you will notice that every kilometer or so the phases shift position on the pole. That's a transmission loss prevention measure that alters the magnetic field.\n\nNow, imagine that you want to have that very same transmission capability in a cable instead. You are basically taking those phases that don't go very well together even when they hang on a pole some ten-fifteen meters apart, and try to entwine them into a cable. This is somewhat of a pandoras box for power cables at the moment. There is no good way to do this when you reach a certain voltage. In fact, when you dig down a power cable intended to transfer anything beyond 100kV you are in fact digging down at the very least three separate cables that have to be placed five-ten meters apart - which basically makes it impossible to do that in a normal suburban road - and the cables are so bloody dangerous that the power company can't get away with just borrowing the land from the land owner, they will have to become the land owner themselves for mile after mile of roads they have no wish whatsoever to own nor maintain.\n\nThe magnetic field can also affect the cable terminations - it goes without saying that there has to be a conductive element in it, and those are also affected by magnetic fields - and those are harder to do properly if you have higher voltage, because the tolerances are lower.\n\nAC was the obvious choice when power grid started to pop up in the world, but cables where not a thing until half a decade later when cable manufacturing started to produce (somewhat) reliable grid equipment that you could actually dig down. By then AC was well stuck in the industry and chanting something that everyone has agreed on already is very hard. Especially when the needy customers dislike the higher costs of the alternative.\n\nA DC cable is a sensible alternative, because it will not create the same type of magnetic field, and in theory you only need one or two wires that won't affect each other. Still dangerous as fuck, but not affecting each other and not self damaging in the same way as a AC cable. Very high voltage that needs to run through urban areas in cable are for that reason subject to AC/DC-conversion in substations with very expensive (and power consuming, which is another aspect of expensive) equipment.\n\nSame goes for subsea transmission. If you can't use a pole and wires, you will have to go DC.\n\nSo, basically, DC would have been the sensible alternative for power distribution, but for historical reasons it's AC and will remain so.",
"*Edit* - This was supposed to be a supplemental post to others, not make it as a high top-level comment. So here's an ELI5 explanation people would expect from it. More mathematical explanation has been pushed below that.\n\n\nWhen you want to transfer electrical power, you have to push electricity through a wire to reach its destination. As electricity flows through a wire, it heats it up slightly. This is how a light bulb works - electricity flowing through a very thin wire heats up the wire until it glows.\n\nWe're going to think about it like water. If we want to transfer energy with water, we need to put it under pressure (blowing through a straw) and we need to move it through a pipe. The more water we move under a given pressure, the more energy we'll transfer.\n\nWater flows through pipes. Bigger pipes let water flow easier. The reason is that water rubs up against the sides and friction causes it to slow down. Larger pipes have a lot more area that isn't rubbing up against the sides. Think a soda straw versus a coffee straw - a coffee straw is a lot harder to drink with, or to blow air through.\n\nBut the friction between the water and the side of the pipe also depends on how *fast* the water is going. If the water is moving slowly, not much heat is generated. As the water moves faster, a lot more heat is generated and energy is wasted.\n\nSo ideally we'd like to transfer our water slowly through large pipes to deliver it over long distances. But since it's a long distance, we can't afford to make the pipe that large. So the pipe has to be fairly small and thus we need to make sure the water moves *very* slowly.\n\nGoing back to electricity, water pressure is like Voltage, and the speed of the water is like Current. Current times voltage equals how much power we're transferring. So if we increase the pressure by a factor of 10 - increase the voltage, we can drop the speed of the water - the current by a factor of 10. If we multiply the voltage by *one million* we can drop the current to *one millionth* of the original speed and still transfer the same energy. At those super-slow speeds, the water rubbing against the pipe isn't going to waste any energy at all.\n\nAC power lets us use a cool device called a transformer that lets us take in voltage and current on one line, and output a different voltage and current with the same total power on another line. We can't do this efficiently with DC power. So we use AC power because we can step up the voltage to super-high levels, and drop the current to a trickle.\n\n \n\n\n---------------------\n\nLarge number of correct answers - but none are describing the mathematics of why, so I thought I'd add it. The Short version is that resistive loss of power transmission is a function of resistance in the wire, multiplied by the square of the current. So high current leads to *very* high resistive losses heating up the power line and wasting energy. Some examples:\n\nPower (energy in a set amount of time) is a function of the voltage on the power line multiplied by the current. So if I wanted to run a winch that lifted up a 1kg weight at 1 meter per second, I'd need a motor than ran on 10 volts of DC power with a current of 1 amp.\n\n > Electric Power Draw: \n > 10Volt x 1Ampere = 10 Watts = 10 joules/second. \n\n > Potential Energy of Weight: \n > 1m/s x 1kg x ~10m/s^2 = 10 Nm/s = 10 joules/second\n\nSo they're balanced. However, if I had a motor than ran off of a 20 Volt power, it would need only draw 0.5 Ampere. At 100 Volts, it'd need draw only 0.1 Ampere.\n\nThen the question goes to power distribution. Why is there a limit to how far we can deliver electricity from a power plant? We have to run electricity through wires. And when we run electricity through a wire, it heats up slightly and loses some energy.\n\nThat power is equal to the resistance in the wire multiplied by the *square* of the current. RI^2 = resistive loss.\n\nSo lets change our example above a little bit. Now we're lifting huge wrecking ball that weighs 10,000kg.\n\nTo lift it at 1meter/sec would require 100,000 joules/sec or 100Kilowatts. Using our 10 Volt motor, we would need to draw 10,000 Amps.\n\nNow lets say that the we have a very thick wire that is 10 meters long, and has 0.0001 Ohms of resistance per meter. So almost no resistance. \n\n > Overall resistance R = 10m x 0.0001Ohm/m = .001Ohms \n > Overall Current = 10000 Amps \n > Resistive Power Loss = 0.001O x 10000A x 10000A = 10^5 W or *100 Kilowatts of power as waste energy!*\n\nWe're burning as much energy just *transferring* the power to the motor as we're actually using for the motor.\n\nSo lets switch our 10 Volt motor out for a 100 Volt Motor. The power demand remains at 100 Kilowatts. \n > 100,000KW = 100Volts x ?Ampere \n > current I = 1000Amps\n\n > Resistive Heat Loss = 0.001 Ohms x 1000Amps x 1000Amps = 1000 Watts = 1 Kilowatt of waste heat.\n\nStill a lot of waste, but it's actually manageable now. we're only spending 1% of our power draw heating up the wire during transmission.\n\nIf we used a 1000 Volt motor, we'd only pull 100 Amps and our restive heat loss would be 10 Watts across the whole thing. A tenth of the energy spent on an incandescent bulb, spread over 10 meters. The wire wouldn't even be warm in your hand.\n\n\nSo clearly, when transferring power with electricity, we need to keep the current as low as possible because the energy lost is a function of current-squared. We also can't make the resistance too low because thick wire becomes prohibitively expensive over millions upon millions of meters of power lines.\n\nSo if we want to transmit, say, 1 Gigawatt 10 kilometers from a power plant to a city, with 6 gauge wire (1 Ohm per kilometer), we need to figure out how bad that will be.\n\n > P = 1 Billion Watts \n > R = 10 Ohms\n\nIf we step the voltage up to 1 Million Volts, we'd still have 1000 Amps of current, and would lose 100 Megawatts of power - 10% to heating up the power line.\n\nIf we get up to 10 Million Volts, we'd need 100 Amperes, and now our losses are 10 x 100 x 100 = 100 Kilowatts of loss. Which is still a ton of energy, but its spread out over 10 kilometers and represents only one ten-thousandth of the energy transferred as a loss. \n\nAs others have repeatedly said, AC power lets us use transformers, which very easily and efficiently let us maintain the *power* of electricity flowing, but trade voltage for current. So I can transfer the energy of a circuit running at 10 volts with 100 amps into a circuit running with 1000Volts at 1 Amp. Or 1 Million Volts at 1 miliAmp.\n\nSo for power distribution in our country, we generate power at a station, we step it up to hundreds of thousands of volts and transfer it across the country on those *massive* high-voltage power lines. Those lines go to a few dozen sub-stations located around your town, that step the voltage down to ~10,000Volts. That energy is carried along power lines to neighborhoods, where every 1 to 5 houses share a small green box somewhere that transforms the voltage down to 120 Volts, which is then delivered to your wall outlet.\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"It's not but it is easier to transport over long distances. Basically it has to do with the fact that when you transfer voltage it has to be high because the higher the voltage the lower the resistance. Now this can be done with AC or DC, but the advantage of AC is that in order to use in homes you have to transform it into a low voltage once it gets there, and AC is just easier and cheaper to transform. ",
"AC is just different. Both have pros and cons and should be used where it makes sense.\n\nIt's like using single mode vs. multi mode fiber or PVC vs. lead vs. copper vs. whatever else pipes.\n\n",
"As someone who lives in New Jersey that recently visited Washington, DC this was very confusing.",
"It's not. They are different for different purposes.\n\nYou might as well as, what is better odd numbers or even numbers?\n\nBetter for what?\n",
"There is an implication in asking \"Why is AC better than DC\" and that is \"for commercial power production and transmission to consumers and businesses\" because you would otherwise have to define what 'better' means. It is akin to asking why is hot better than cold. \n\n\nThe short version is that to get power from a far off generator, into your cable modem at home is best accomplished with a minimum loss of power, and with the greatest efficiency and safety using alternating current for power transmission. \n\nThink about a circuit. You form a circuit and electrons flow in one direction from one side of the circuit to the other. If this circuit is 100 miles each direction, that is an awfully long way for an electron to travel and this creates a lot of heat and loss of power along the way. After all it's not the distance the electron travels that lets it do work, but merely it's movement. It does just as much work going back and forth as it does moving only forward, but since the direction changes 60 times a second, it never travels very far. So alternating current is great for transmitting power at long distances without needing prohibitively thick cabling. \n\nAs an added bonus, most heavy machinery used in factories runs on alternating current directly without needing any complex circuits. This was likely the reason that AC won out over DC back in the early days. It could deliver lots of power, a long distance, and be more easily turned into mechanical work for factories. \n\nDC at the time needed much thicker cables, and it still could not be sent over more than a few miles at a time so instead of one big station sending power to a region, it needed hundreds of smaller neighborhood power stations sending power close by. And when that power arrived at a factory it had to be converted into alternating current to run the big motors that drove the factory which caused a loss of power and a lot of heat. \n\n\nSo to summarize\n\nAC: \n\nBenefits: long transmission distances with minimal loss of power. \nCan easily be stepped up and down with transformers to raise or lower voltage without complicated electronics or loss of power. \nThinner wires. \n\nCan run industrial motors directly. \n\nProblems: \nMany electronics run on DC so we need bridge rectifiers and mosfet switching power supplies to provide stable power for electronics. This wastes a little energy as heat and adds to the cost of consumer goods. \n\n\n\nDC: \n\nBenefit: Can directly power your clock radio\n\nProblems: Size of cables. Distance of travel. Can't drive industrial motors directly without expensive stepping controls and complex control circuitry which limits the size and power of the motors. Lots of energy loss as heat. No easy way to change voltage without lots of electronic circuitry which are not as robust as the simple transformers used in AC. \n\n",
"Imagine you have a pulley system in front of you, with one pulley on each end, and a rope looped around both. You're standing near one pulley, with a wooden stick pressed against the rope near the other pulley. Your goal is to try to start a fire by rubbing the rope as fast as you can against the stick that's on the other end.\n\n**DC** means you could only pull the rope in one direction, so you have to pull it as fast as you can in order to start a fire.\n\n**AC** means you can grab a hold of the rope, and tug it back and forth in short jerks.\n\nIn this example, it's easy to see how AC would beat DC in terms of transmitting your energy from your arm, to the stick that is far away from you. This is one of the advantages of Alternating Current. The electricity flows both ways, enabling the energy to perform work to be transmitted a longer distance more efficiently.",
"AC isn't \"better\" than DC. In fact most modern electronics use DC for good reason! So why do our homes have AC not DC going to them? Because it's easier to transport than DC power!\n\nThe reason it's easier to transport is due to two components of electricity called voltage and amperage. Voltage is like the potential energy of electricity, and amperage is the current or ability to do work. The total amount of power in a wire is a product of voltage and amperage. However, only amperage determines the thickness of the wire used to transfer electricity.\n\nSome people use a water-pipe analogy to explain electricity, but instead, I want you to think about raised aqueducts like what you might find in ancient Rome. Voltage would be how high the aqueducts are from the ground, and amps are like the speed the water flowing through it.\n\nThe benefit to AC is that it's easy to step up and step down the voltage. So it's like raising or lowering the aqueducts. When we lower an aqueduct, the water flows downhill and speeds up. In other words, stepping down AC voltage increases its current or amperage!\n\nA city is a big place, and it requires a lot of power! Power can be thought of as a product of amps and voltage. However, the more amps you send through a wire, the bigger wire you need to handle all that current. A city's worth of amperage over a 120 volt line would require cables thicker than cars!!! Going back to the aqueduct example, the more water that flows through an aqueduct, the bigger you have to make it.\n\nLuckily, an inventor named Tesla had an idea! Why not send electricity at a really high voltage and relatively low amperage, then use transformers to step down the voltage and raise the amperage at the destination?! That way, a big power plant can send power to an entire city using relatively thin wires. \n\nSince AC is easier to step up and step down the voltage compared to DC, all our homes receive AC power. If we used DC power instead, we would have needed power plants on every block. \n\nIf you pay attention to your surroundings, I'm sure you'll find lots of transformer boxes around your town converting higher voltages to lower voltages so each home can get the power it needs. These transformer boxes are easiest to work with AC power, and thus, all our homes run on AC. :)",
"All those posting that DC can't be transmitted long distances might be interested to know that most of the power for Los Angeles arrives via high voltage DC transmission lines. 3.1 gigawatts via the Pacific DC intertie (Path 65), 850 mi long, starting from the Oregon Washington border, and 2.4 gigawatts via Path 27, 500 mi long, starting in central Utah",
"It is probably better to say that they are better for different purposes than to say that one is better than the other. ",
"It is not \"better\". In fact we use DC in most things rather than AC. But right now it is impractical to transmit DC over long distances so we use AC for getting from point A to point B then then transform to DC because that is what the devices need internally.",
"I am not going cover much but I would just like to correct a misconception in many of these replies. High voltage DC power actually transmits along long range power lines more efficiently than AC especially in underwater cables. But transformers for stepping down the voltages for home use have historically been much cheaper, more reliable, long lasting and efficient when designed for AC current, historically the only way to transform DC current would be a motor and generator with different windings on the same rotor. DC electric motors and generators also require brush contacts on the motor which can wear out or create inefficiencies. As the AC DC converters have gotten better [HVDC powerlines](_URL_0_) have become a more effiecient option for long range and underwater power transmission.",
"AC is like a rolling wheel of electricity while DC is like a sled that slides along. The wheel is easier to push faster for longer distances than the sled on any surface. The AC's \"rolling\" means that it propagates longer over wire and is more convenient to generate: since we can easily make a power source that turns (like a water wheel, wind mill, horse pulling a cart, or gas turbine engine) we can very efficiently turn a spinning shaft into \"rolling\" electricity that will be consistently proportional to the input speed. Similarly it's very easy to control, split, and transform \"rolling\" electricity to multiple lower speed wheel outputs, and also very easy to convert it back into a high power spinning motion like in a kitchen blender.",
"This is a particularly hard one. I wouldn't necessarily say that AC is better than DC. They seem to work best hand-in-hand. While I quite enjoy a cold room, I also do love my batman comics. Best scenario, batman comics in a cold room. ",
"\"One of the reasons that AC might be considered more dangerous is that it arguably has more ways of getting into your body. Since the voltage alternates, it can cause current to enter and exit your body even without a closed loop, since your body (and what ground it's attached to) has capacitance. DC cannot do that\" ~ [Source](_URL_0_)",
"AC(armor class) more commonly at low levels and against martial enemies comes into play than saving throw DC (difficulty class). Additionally, there are 6 ability scores with separate saving throws. It is much easier to optimize AC to mitigate damage than all six abilities when you cannot max them all. \n\nI had to go to the comments to realize this was not one of my d & d subs. ",
"Maybe you meant to ask *when* is AC better than DC?",
"AC is not better than DC or wise-versa. They both have their magnificent applications. AC is better for power transmission while DC is better for powering circuits, and then the circuit will convert it into a mixture of AC and DC at a grand spectrum from 0 to giga Hertz of frequency! It is an unimaginable world of beautiful and yet killer power! I almost like to break into a song!",
"Both do certain things well. AC has better transmission efficiency. Edison was pushing hard for DC but having a grid based off of DC would have required massive cables and power plants every few blocks. DC is really easy to build circuits around. AC is also very easy to turn into DC. On macro scales AC wins because of the efficiency and ability to centralize production. On small scales DC is dominant because its easy to use.",
"It has a lot to do with motors:\n\n**AC's advantages**\n\n* Cheaply generated by the AC alternator motors at the hydropower dam, wind turbine, coal and nuclear power plant. DC dynamos (alternative to AC alternator) are inefficient and require expensive maintenance more often. \n* Cheaply transportable through the wires by means of voltage conversion via transformers.\n* Voltage conversion through cheap basic transformers and still achieve the same high-quality, low-loss sine wave. Efficient DC voltage conversion is expensive with all the MOSFET transistors and big capacitors needed, and it always generates high-frequency electrical noises.\n* Appliances (aircon, fan, washing machine, etc) can use cheap AC motors to run off AC power. \n* Cheaper to convert AC to DC using a single rectifier, than DC to AC using multiple power transistors.\n\n**DC's advantages**\n\n* Modern electronics always run on DC power due to the fact that CMOS chips do DC digital operations, as DC offers stability and predictability to the chips.\n* These CMOS chips are not just CPU. They are everything from RAM, flash memory, to LED emitter, OLED display, camera sensor, CPU, GPU, transistors, microprocessors and more.\n* DC is easy to deal with. Much simpler formulas. Easier to electronically control the voltage and current at low power.\n* DC is generally safe to human touch at 48V or less (although higher DC voltage is actually more dangerous than AC). AC can interfere with the electrical signal that our heart, brain and muscles use; it can confuse our heart and make it stop. \n\n\nYou can see that both AC and DC have their own unique uses that the other can't replace. It's the two sides of one coin.",
"EE here. I would say that AC used to be better, as everyone says, because you can step it up and down with a simple transformer. However, these days, DC can also be stepped up and down using a DC-to-DC converter, and these have become very good and cheap. They basically consist of a DC-to-AC converter, a transformer and an AC-to-DC converter. There are important advantages to this which more than compensate for the extra complexity. For one thing, the size of the transformer depends on the AC frequency. Higher frequency = smaller transformer at the same power rating. Using a DC-to-DC converter, you can choose the frequency, and the most economical choice is usually WAY higher than 50-60 Hz. Every computer power supply sold today actually does this, and operate at frequencies between 40 kHz and 2 MHz. Otherwise, they'd be big, bulky and expensive. Similar savings could be made in power distribution transformers if we used DC for transmission and only used AC right around each transformer. Also, DC has less power loss in HV transmission lines than AC. In fact, some of the very beefiest power transmission systems in the world use DC despite the extra complication involved in converting to and from 50/60 Hz on either end (see [HVDC](_URL_0_)) So I would say we are stuck with AC as a legacy standard because it used to be better, not because it is.",
"Several reasons:\n\n* More efficient to transport long distances.\n\n* More suited for elecrical motors (remember, in the beginning, electricity was mainly for motors, lamps (which don't care about AC or DC) and heating (which also don't care)).\n\n* Transformers need AC to work, so to transform between different voltages, it's much easier.\n\n* It's easy to go from AC to DC, and harder to go from DC to AC.\n\n* Polarity is not an issue, so outlets does not have to have a fixed polarity.",
"Okay, so imagine you've got a bunch of metal balls in a long pipe about the same diameter of the balls. Pretend you're feeding some more balls into one end so some come out the other end. You'll intuitively notice that it takes a bit of effort to push all the balls at once as there's friction between the balls and the pipe. This is DC.\n\nNow imagine a [Newton's cradle](_URL_0_). With a Newton's cradle you can slap one ball into the others and watch the ball at the other end swing out. The balls in the middle hardly move at all, but the energy still goes through. So now imagine you can slap the first ball again and again at a steady rate - the ball at the other end will swing out at the same rate. Given a way to capture the energy of the final ball, we've created a way to transport kinetic energy without transporting the balls across the whole distance - they just move back and forth a tiny distance. This is AC.\n\n____\n\n*However*, things like computer electronics and stuff can't use AC because they need to manipulate the individual balls and trap them in transistors and stuff. So we need to use DC for them. AC is great over long distances though.",
"DC isn't better than AC. Simply put, AC is better suited to travel long distance, like from the place it's generated, to your house. ",
"None of each is \"better\".\nThere are applications where DC is better and there are applications where AC is better. But it would be more than wrong to say this or that is better. Source; electrical engineer "
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3sssxi | how come light doesn't go through objects like walls of their atoms are made of mostly empty space as proved by the gold foil experiment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sssxi/eli5_how_come_light_doesnt_go_through_objects/ | {
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"I would think it has to do with the photons being blocked by the cloud of electrons surrounding the atom, so even though by volume it is mostly space, it's more like an opaque hollow sphere. ",
"The difference is that the gold foil experiment fired *alpha particles* (which are Helium atoms but without electrons) at high velocities at the gold foil, not *light*. The two interact completely differently with atoms.\n\nYour question is kind of like asking \"How come cannonballs can go through walls while light can't?\"\n\nWhile the alpha particles can (largely) ignore the electron 'shell' about an atom, light interacts heavily with this layer.",
"The wavelength of visible light is much bigger than the size of atoms. Visible light doesn't really interact with individual atoms (unless it's absorbed, but that's based on frequency, not size).",
"A forest is mostly empty space too, but if you run a car into one at 100 miles and hour you're likely going to have a tough time making it very far.\n\n",
"easy answer...the gold foil experiment only had a \"single\" layer of atoms (in reality, it was more than that, but not much) and that like shooting a pea through a goal posts but when you get more layers, it is like playing Plinko and the distance between pegs gets SO SMALL that light cant make it all the way through (usually it gets stopped and bounces off the first row) ",
"Very thin (nanometer sized) gold sheets actually are transparent. Also blue, interestingly enough.",
"For the wavelengths of interest for visible light (~300-700nm), the primary interactions of photons with atoms are the photoelectric effect and Compton scattering. Both of these interactions are with the atomic electrons due to the wavelength of the light being on the order of the DeBroglie wavelength of the electron. For higher energy photons, there are photonuclear reactions where the photon interacts with the nucleons in the atomic nucleus.\n\nThe issue with comparing this to the gold foil experiment is that the gold foil was irradiate with alpha particles which have an electric charge and interact directly with the coulomb field of the atom. Alpha particles are electrically charged and tend to have a much higher energy than visible light photons. This being said, they are deflected by the electric field surrounding the atom but can also scatter of the nucleus because their large momentum can strip atomic electrons from their orbitals and allow the alpha particles to get closer to the nucleus. It's really two different sets of interactions for photons and alpha particles so you can't directly compare the two."
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50hzlv | what is data mining? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/50hzlv/eli5_what_is_data_mining/ | {
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"Gold mining is digging though rock and dirt looking for clumps of gold that is worth anything. Data mining is digging though tons of random looking data looking for the pieces of information that is worth anything.",
"Suppose that every school day your teacher writes down in a notebook what color the playdough each student plays with and she does it for years. \n\nWhen you data mine you look through that entire notebook and try to find patterns. \n\nYou might, for example, count the number the of students using Blue on a given day (Statistics) or ask your friend \"da computer genie\" for help (Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning) etc You use various techniques in order to find certain obscure patterns in data . In this case you might find out that all boys named Jessie like to play with Green playdough. ",
"Looking for patterns in large amounts of data.\n\nA well known case from a while back was this: retailers have a huge database of what customers bought. An analyst had this idea: You can tell when a woman has just had a baby because for instance she has started buying diapers. But is there anything in a woman's buying patterns that changes before she gives birth? Then you could for instance send her ads or free samples, and make her more likely to use your product.\n\nTurns out that yes, you can do that. Look at the women you know that just gave birth, then check if the history of their past 9 months has anything that distinguishes them from the average woman. And you will find things like a pattern of stopping to buy alcohol, buying vitamins, etc. With enough data you can fine tune this by a lot, to the point of figuring out pregnant women before they even told anybody yet.\n\n[It was in the news](_URL_0_)",
"Essentially, going through raw data and finding trends within. \n\nI took an intro class to data mining in college, and for our main project we were given a set of raw data concerning computer programs in the 1980s. Using a tool called [Weka](_URL_0_), we could focus on one dependent variable (number of bugs, in this case) and several dependent variables (length of the code, number of comments, action statements, etc), creating either linear regression equations or decision trees, either of which could be used to predict future cases.",
"Aww yiss something I can explain!\n\n**Data** is just bits and pieces of numbers and text. For example results of a running competition at a local school. It is composed of observations and variables. Let's say we have runners Mike, Jane, Thomas and Hannah and they start doing laps. When Mike completes a lap, we have a new piece of data called an **observation** which is set of individual data pieces called **variables**! And then Jane, and then Thomas and Mike again and so on until we have a **data set**. We write down the name of the runner, the result, the age, weather and date and time of the run. These are our variables!\n\n| name | result | age | weather | datetime |\n|---|---|---|---|---|\n| Jane | 16 | 13 | dry | 2010-09-12 11:00 |\n| Mike | 55 | 13 | ice | 2010-01-12 11:00 |\n| Hannah | 36 | 17 | snow | 2010-02-12 11:00 |\n| Thomas | 6 | 17 | dry | 2010-06-12 11:00 |\n| Mike | 11 | 13 | rain | 2010-06-12 11:00 |\n| Jane | 15 | 13 | rain | 2010-10-12 11:00 |\n| Jane | 306 | 13 | dry | 2010-03-12 11:00 |\n\n\nWe have multiple variables for each observation. Using data mining algorithms the software can determine rules that during the summer it can be rainy or dry, during the winter it can snowy or icy, autumn or spring rainy or dry. It can also make a rule that older runners are faster, while bad conditions (ice,snow) make worse results than during better (dry,rainy) conditions and so on. This is how advertising products to you works in online stores. A large data set of what people bought, and the software determines that people that bought iPhones also bought an iPhone case of some kind and perhaps a screen protector. (Some software is smarter, some is dumber).\n\nNotice that one result is different? It is called an **outlier** or an **anomaly**. Perhaps Jane tripped or did cartwheels all the way. Software can detect those too! Perhaps your credit card information was stolen, and the bank is able to determine that buying stuff at a strip joint for 1000 dollars at a Tuesday night is an anomaly, because you normally don't go spending 1000$ at a strip joint on Tuesdays even though you sometimes go to a strip joint, sometimes spend money on Tuesdays and sometimes spend 1000$ but the combination of these is abnormal.\n\nThe process of extracting **information** and **knowledge** from data is what data mining is.\n\nRelated keywords are machine learning, anomaly detection, data science, data analysis, business analytics, prediction, statistics"
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2v904m | why can't spacex let the used rockets land in the ocean, then retrieve them rather than trying to land on a barge? | Seems like there should be a cheaper, more cost effective alternative, but I'm sure someone can explain. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2v904m/eli5_why_cant_spacex_let_the_used_rockets_land_in/ | {
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"Cleaning the salt and other ocean contaminants off of the rockets is expensive.\n\nWhat you propose is what the [Space Shuttle rockets did](_URL_0_). While a reliable system at the time, the same benefits could be achieved for less cost by landing the rockets on a barge or other area such that the refurbishing costs are significantly reduced.",
"They want to land them safely and reliably on land, eventually. Saltwater exposure makes reusing their rockets more problematic and more expensive. So, once they get through the costs of developing a reliable on-land recovery, the rest -- *as they say* -- is gravy."
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zw8mj | why can places like newegg ship ups for free when it costs regular people so much money? | I bought a Storm Trooper computer case a while back, and for those who don't know, this is a huge 45-pound steel case. Newegg offered free 3-day shipping via UPS. Now I'm trying to sell it, and UPS wants a minimum of like $50 to ship it. Are they just losing money on places like Newegg or am I getting ripped off? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zw8mj/eli5_why_can_places_like_newegg_ship_ups_for_free/ | {
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"Volume.\n\nCarriers like UPS commonly offer discounted rates to companies that do a lot of business with them. It's not hard to see why; a company that does a *lot* of shipping can choose among several worldwide shipping companies, and not getting that business means losing a lot of revenue. So carries are highly incentivized to compete on price.\n\nOnce the price gets low enough, the company doing the shipping can absorb the marginal cost — say, eating $3 on a $100 purchase. This reduces their profit margins, but if it wins them enough extra business from their competitors, they end up with the better end of the deal."
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84n0oz | what would be the environmental issues with sinking large quantities of trash into the mariana trench? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/84n0oz/eli5_what_would_be_the_environmental_issues_with/ | {
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"You didn’t deal with the problem you just dumped it out of sight. It’s like sweeping dirt under the rug. Eventually you’re going to have to pull up the rug and clean that up too. So you just delayed the problem and potentially made it worse from pollutants leaking out of the garbage. "
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3o261t | if drunk people are unable to consent, what happens when both parties are equally drunk and have sex? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o261t/eli5if_drunk_people_are_unable_to_consent_what/ | {
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"Usually yes. However, it is possible for people to give consent beforehand. For instance, an established couple might consume drugs and then have sex while under the effects. Because they have an established relationship, and previously consented, I think it would avoid the definition of rape.",
"It depends on the law in your area. Historically, rape was often defined as a forced action taken by a man against a women; it was legally impossible for a man to be raped. In modern law, rape is often defined by penetration; so it would depend on the acts involved. Even if you are 'blackout drunk', legally speaking you can still commit rape (in the same way that drunk driving doesn't absolve you from guilt of manslaughter); even rape each other, and both could go to jail for it.",
"Please note, not a laywer:\n\nDrunk people are capable of consenting. You can be sufficiently drunk that you're incapable of course (At the extreme end someone barely conscious is not able to consent for obvious reasons). Exactly how this breaks down will depend on jurisdiction and other \ncircumstance. The age difference of both parties, are both of them of legal age to be drinking, weather anyone of pressured into drinking or otherwise manipulated into getting drunker than intended (If you keep refilling someone's glass before it's emptied it can be easy for them to lose track of how much), whether at any point one of the parties objected to sex and so on will all be taken into account. \n\nAbsent any of those or other relevant details, then the likely opinion of the courts is that no crime occurred at all. Neither party carried any malicious intent. \n\nThat said if someone ends up in that situation, they should still get themselves a good defense attorney. Also while that might be the opinion the courts are likely to take, private disciplinary bodies may have different guidelines: Universities, workplaces, etc. \n\nETA: also some places (again universities etc) use incapacitation as their test which is often defined as: “an inability to make a rational, reasonable judgment or appreciate the consequences of your decisions”. In that situation the other person could be stark naked begging for sex, but it would still be considered rape if their status was known or knowable by the other person. Unfortunately most of these regulations are quite new and are very much works in progress and may have all sorts of potential for bad decisions when it comes to enforcement. \n\nETA2: Also true cases of mutual incapacitation are hilariously rare. They're basically unicorns. ",
"Are there any cases of this actually happening or is it just a hypothetical?",
"In the US Army, both parties get Article 15s (get in legal trouble). \n\nLegally speaking (most logically), by law, even two drunk people having sex consentually would mean that they raped eachother, and are both rapists."
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32wxcx | why were people like the nazi ss able to such horrible things without remorse? | I've been looking at the various massacres committed by the SS during WWII, and I really can't wrap my head around the idea of a group of people committing mass murder. In one of the massacres, they ate lunch outside the burning church with hundreds of bodies inside. (Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre)
I just don't understand how a group of people could collectively agree with doing such a thing.
If I have any misconceptions about anything please let me know, I'm 17 and I plan on studying history in college. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32wxcx/eli5_why_were_people_like_the_nazi_ss_able_to/ | {
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"1. Some people are really fucked up\n2. They were following orders and only did it out of fear for their own lives ",
"Desperation leading to ingrained de-humanization of their enemies.\n\nPeople have, for the entirety of humanity, done things similar to what the SS had done. There have been massacres and slaughter and war since the dawn of man.",
"You have to understand a few things in the context of History. Even in the late 1930s most of Europe was still trying to recover from WWI which devastated millions of people and human life was not perceived as an especially precious commodity. In fact, casual murder runs all throughout human history, even in America (the 1800s was ripe with it).\n\nSo once human life is sufficiently devalued and you mix in a healthy dose of nationalistic and racist ideology, it was quite easy for German soldiers to dehumanize Jews, Gypsies, the elderly, children, homosexuals, the handicapped, etc.\n\nThere were certainly good Germans who found what they were doing repellent, but what was their option? Disobeying orders would lead them to the same trenches. What would *you* do?\n\nBTW - Don't let anyone crap on you for studying History. I feel it's the most valuable degree possible for understanding exactly how the world works and how everything happens in cycles. A proper understanding of History helps you put the present into its proper historical context.",
"They believed they were doing good. The Nazi propaganda depicted the Jews as evil and threat to society.",
"Through out history people have dehumanised their enemies. One of the best examples is the [Hartlepool Monkey] (_URL_0_). If people can be manipulated enough they will do almost anything. \nIn the example you cite there is also the macho factor. Remember most of the SS grew up in the Hitler Youth which ridiculed any sign of weakness. It's true there were many good Germans but by the time they realised what was happening, it was too dangerous to speak out.",
"If you plan to study history prepare to be horrified.\n\nThat stuff that the Nazis did was not really an exception but pretty much the rule for most of human history. What makes it stand out is that it happened on the end of a paradigm shift in human ethics that said such things were no longer okay and that it happened at a point where technology was advanced enough to allow people to commit atrocities on an industrial scale.\n\nYou will find similar and even worse stuff throughout human history. It may feel comforting telling oneself that it is not normal but mostly it was the sort of thing people did all the time and by pretending that it was more exceptional than it was you are setting yourself up to the danger of it being repeated.\n\nAfter WWII [Stanley Milgram](_URL_0_) did an experiment to figure out how people could have been brought to this and if there was something special about Germans. Like a good scientist he started out by doing the experiment first in the US so he would have a control with 'normal' people.\n\nHe then very quickly stopped because the results, as obvious as they are in hindsight were quite horrific for anyone who had previously believed that average normal humans did not just go and start torturing other people with little to no provocation.\n\nIt turns out humans are bastards and all that is keeping most of the people around you and most likely yourself from being like the people who ate lunch next to a burning church is a certain set of circumstances.\n\nOur only hope of preventing something like this from ever happening again is to always question ourselves and our motives and never fall into the trap of blindly believing that we are in the right.\n\nThere are many ways that one can end up in a situation that on would normally consider to be completely wrong. Most of the people who committed those massacres did not start out as psychopaths and sadistic serial killers (though there were some) most of them were normal people like you and me.\n\nOne important part of it was obedience to authority and peer pressure. It is easy to get caught up in those kind of things especially since they offer a convenient mechanism to let go of your own responsibility.\n\nYou just follow orders and don't question authority very much and do as everyone else around you does. the trick here is to start with something small and work yourself up. If you give people and order and they follow it once you have greater chance of being obeyed again. If they do a slightly sketchy thing just because they were told to, they will have a harder time saying no to the next order because saying no once would be admitting that they should have said no earlier. Once you killed a person because you were told to you either buy into the whole ideology fully or you have to admit to yourself that you were a murder. If it is gradual enough it is almost impossible to escape without some tremendous amount of self reflection, that few people are capable of.\n\nAnother aspect is the whole dehumanization of the victims thing, you deny them that they are human beings like yourself and it becomes much easier to justify to yourself what needs to be done.\n\nThe nazis started out by going after people that the vast majority of the population could agree had it coming and than gradually moved things up. Again admitting to yourself that things had gone to far would have meant admitting to yourself that you should have stood up for the first people they had come for and which you had despised.\n\nThe SS-comandos were the extreme and point to this development, they were so involved with death and murder and atrocities that in the end they could do things that even normal nazis who carried their own share of guilt would have reacted with horror to.\n\nIt is easy to put these people down as monsters and not really human, but that is about the worst thing you could do for two reasons.\n\n1. Dehumanizing people is the thing that got us into that sort of trouble in the first place.\n2. Many of them started out as not-monsters, but as mostly normal people. If you don't admit to yourself that they are human like yourself you have far less chances of avoiding the traps they fell into when they might ever come for yourself.\n\nIt is easy to divide the world in good and evil and tell yourself that they are obviously evil and you are obviously good, but it helps to keep in mind that they probably thought similarly of themselves too.\n\nIt is hard to wrap you head around it but humans have a great capacity for 'evil' and by the time it becomes as obvious as your example it is usually to late to stop. You have to constantly check yourself to avoid becoming like them. \n",
"A lot of people are trying to say \"They had no choice\". That's not entirely true. Well it might be for some people... with Nazis it's kind of like the empty rifle in the firing squad, an easy out, but it's not the whole story.\n\nWatch the movie *Compliance*. When you're done look up the case it's based on. Look up the Stanford prison experiment. Look up the Milford experiments.\n\nYou don't have to be desperate to be horrible to another human being. You just have to be told by someone, in a position of authority, that you have to do it.",
" > group of people committing mass murder. In one of the massacres, they ate lunch outside the burning church with hundreds of bodies inside.\n\nYeah you get that from every army, including the good ol' USA. \n\nEnd of the day is if you don't see your victims as being humans, then it's easy to kill them off like cattle. ",
"There is a recent book titled Ostland by David Thomas that you might like to read. It's a fictional novel, but based on actual events, about a respected German police detective who later took part in horrific war crimes on the Russian front. It does a pretty interesting job of following his thought process as he sinks deeper into the quagmire. He knew what he was doing was terrible, but also knew that disobeying would get him killed or sent to the front, where he would die. "
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment"
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5ij57u | if the energy is consumed at the time it is produced how come there is always electricity at the electrical outlets ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ij57u/eli5if_the_energy_is_consumed_at_the_time_it_is/ | {
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"Because it is produced in anticipation of you using it. And with a million people using it at the same time, you turning on your blender is balanced out by someone else turning off their blow dryer.\n\nAlso, there is enough \"slack\" in the system that what one or two households so isn't going change how much total power needed to be used.",
"The outlet is not using power until something is plugged in. When you plug something in, it does actually pull the voltage of the entire grid down. It's just that most consumer products are such a minor quantity of power that the change is pretty unnoticeable to the grid. You will see this though with a large air compressor (the lights in your house will dim). \n\nEventually it will propogate all the way through the grid to the turbine generating the power. Since the turbine is simply converting mechanical energy to electrical energy, the grid will take more mechanical energy from the turbine. This is a fancy way of saying it slows the turbine down. Those managing the power grid can assure proper power generation by maintaining the proper speed on those turbines. ",
"Think of electricity like water flowing through pipes. Everything you plug in is like a drain valve. Open a valve (turn something on) and that allows water to flow, close a valve (shut it off) and the flow stops.\n\n\n\nPower plants are like pumps, they never stop and when water isn't flowing they just sit there churning. No water is pushed into the pipes until you open a drain valve."
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