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4jsnte | why is a root canal preferable over say an extraction/implant? | [This video](_URL_0_) shows the root canal procedure and it seems like at most 50% of the actual tooth remains after drilling the internal tooth/roots and making room for the crown. Why is this preferable over just extracting the tooth and replacing it with an implant? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jsnte/eli5_why_is_a_root_canal_preferable_over_say_an/ | {
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"Root canal or implants are not the only options. There's also the \"old way\", extraction and a dental appliance (dentures). The emphasis on keeping all your teeth is relatively new - in past times, dentists had no compunction about yanking problem teeth. Not all countries place such an emphasis on cosmetically-perfect teeth as the USA. \n\nDentures are much cheaper, but there's a problem: bone loss around the socket of the extracted tooth. Root canals and implants prevent this. However the costs involved in either procedure make it impractical for most average working people. ",
"A root canal will remove the soft pulp and nerves from the inside of the tooth. It leaves in place the roots of the tooth, which usually have an effective connection into the upper or lower jaw. Filling in the void and crowning it is less invasive. An implant involves pulling the tooth. Then you have to deal with the void left by the missing tooth. Either you wait a few weeks for some bone to grow back into the void, or you wait several months if you need a bone transplant. A bone transplant involves usually cadaver bone material to provide the structure for your own bone to grow around. The cadaver bone has the remnants of foreign tissue excised, so the chance of rejection is minimal. After that, the titanium implant is inserted (a screw that is hollow inside to accept the post that the crown fits over) and the bone must be allowed to grow and incorporate into the titanium. Titanium is the best metal for bone to grow around and attach to. One the screw implant is secured and fused with the bone, the post is placed and the dentist takes impressions for the crown, which then gets made and placed over the post. Implants cost a lot more because of this. It is not really advisable to try and do the implant and crown in a very short time frame, otherwise one risks damaging the weakened bone around the tooth socket. "
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eznb9x | how do insurance companies like geico, progressive, etc. have so much money to spend on ads? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eznb9x/eli5_how_do_insurance_companies_like_geico/ | {
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"There are roughly 265 million vehicles on the road in the US. Roughly 87% of those vehicles are insured. That leaves you with about 230 million vehicles insured in the US. \n\nThere are approximately 6 million car wrecks a year in the US. I'm assuming some of those vehicles didn't even need to have insurance claims done. That leaves you about 225 million insured vehicles without a claim for a wreck. Factor in theft, weather damage, and shit like that, and I'll be generous saying another 50 million claims.\n\nThat's still 175 million vehicles on the road having insurance premiums paid every month for no fucking reason.\n\nWe havent even begun to discuss motorcycles, boats, RVs, houses, and all the other insurable shit that is out there that I would assume have roughly the same numbers.\n\nIf my math is correct, insurance companies have a metric fuck ton of money because all of us send them a few hundred bucks every month, and they give us exactly jack shit in return for months and months until the off chance we need 500 dollars to replace a fucking hubcap."
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axi301 | why are sit-ups harder to do with your hands behind your head, rather then free? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/axi301/eli5_why_are_situps_harder_to_do_with_your_hands/ | {
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"Have you ever looked at a teeter-totter before? If one person on the teeter-totter is sitting at the very end and person on other side is sitting closer to the middle, then there's an imbalance and that imbalance spreads outward from the middle, which is called the fulcrum. Even though the two people may weigh the same amount, it's almost as if the person that's further away from the middle is heavier. When doing a sit-up, the middle of your body (your hips, waist, and butt) would be like a fulcrum. By placing your hands behind your head, you're putting more weight at the very end and that impacts the amount of effort you have to expend when you do your sit-up. This is caused by gravity. The further out on the end the weight is located, the more it has to fight against gravity and rise above the ground."
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fslx3t | why is quarantining for a few weeks so effective? wouldn't it just start spreading just as bad as soon as the quarantine ends? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fslx3t/eli5_why_is_quarantining_for_a_few_weeks_so/ | {
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"That's why quarantine may not only be a few weeks. It's hard for people to gage how long it will take for this to pass because what started as a few weeks could turn into months if people keep going out and spreading this virus.",
"Viruses, like all living things, need to reproduce to survive. They do so by infecting an animal (or sometimes even a bacteria) and taking over its cells to replicate. By people who have the virus quarantining for an extended period of time, the hope is that they recover and develop the antibodies to fight off the virus. This kills the remaining virus in their bodies, and eventually any remnants of the virus they’ve spread to their surroundings will die since they haven’t found a new, vulnerable animal to help them reproduce.",
"If you have the virus and don't realize it, you could infect a lot of people, and each of them could infect a lot of others and the virus spreads exponentially.\n\nIf you might have been exposed and then stay isolated for two weeks: if you get sick during that time, you can obtain treatment while minimizing the number of people exposed. If you have no symptoms after the end of the two weeks, you probably don't have the virus or (if you had a mild case) are not contagious anymore.\n\nSo if someone is at risk, either due to travel or close contact with an infected persion, isolation can drastically reduce the number of people who get exposed.\n\nIn the end the virus is still likely to spread \"exponentially\" but the daily percentage growth rate would be much smaller -- thus flattening the curve.",
"The point of quarantine isn't to stop the virus dead. The point of quarantine is to slow down the demand for doctors, hospitals and the accompanying supplies necessary to treat serious and deadly cases until such time as resources and facilities are online to manage the full blown outbreak.\n\nWith this virus, treatment has a massive impact on mortality for serious cases so if we reach a point where there are no facilities to treat the seriously I'll they will die, and further those who have other conditions who need treatment may also go without. Accidents and other emergencies may go untreated and cause even more deaths that may never get associated to this virus.",
"Lots of the rhetoric around social distancing refers to \"flattening the curve\". Importantly, this might not involve reducing the number of people who are ultimately infected. It's very possible that the virus has spread so extensively in some places that most people will be infected eventually. \n\nInstead, what's helpful about \"flattening the curve\" is that it reduces the strain on medical resources. Instead of having all of the serious cases arrive at the hospital in the space of a few weeks, they're spread out. This reduces the chances that someone is unable to get care that could have saved their life. \n\nEarly simulations of this epidemic presented a choice between very aggressive quarantine and \"mitigation\". The first would have worked kind of how you're imagining things. Everyone stays locked in their house, and the virus can't spread. The upside is that the fewest number of people die. The downside is that you have to maintain it until there's a vaccine. The second is more like the \"flattening the curve\" scenario above. Weeks later, it looks like the virus is more infectious (but also less lethal) than we initially thought, and that may have made our choice for us."
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650x5b | why does it feel like there's less viruses on the internet nowadays? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/650x5b/eli5_why_does_it_feel_like_theres_less_viruses_on/ | {
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"Anti-malware is better than it's ever been, and malware is better at hiding than it's ever been.",
"*Fewer\n\nAnd the purpose of viruses has shifted from being some piece of code that just fucks your system up, to being motivated by money. Modern malware is mostly targeted at businesses, websites, banks, etc. The home user isn't really a lucrative target. There are still viruses out there, but most end user AV software is good enough now to keep most of it from ever affecting you. The major hackers want to exploit databases to steal information from a business to ransom it or sell it, steal millions of credit card numbers at once, or other attacks that can make them a lot of money. There isn't much money to be made in having your individual home PC break. There are still viruses out there, and they can affect your computer, but you AV will *probably* detect it, along with safer browsing habits. "
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22vqst | why do boxers get paid so much? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22vqst/eli5_why_do_boxers_get_paid_so_much/ | {
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"If anything, why do athletes get paid so much? "
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2l6o1g | why do musicians (famous and average) choose to publish music through record label companies, as opposed to going to pandora/spotify/itunes radio/all the others directly? | Also, what do music record labels do that require so much of the profit?
I understand why relatively un-famous musicians need help with marketing/distribution of their music, but for famous people, they already have a huge fan base to get the word out.
It seems like streaming service companies are whining because it costs so much to stream music, and on the other end the musicians are struggling with small returns. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l6o1g/eli5_why_do_musicians_famous_and_average_choose/ | {
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"For a lot of musicians, it's still easier to let someone else handle all of the details of dealing with distribution, marketing, and production. And since record labels have been doing this for a long time, they tend to have the resources to handle all of that pretty efficiently.\n\nRecord labels probably take more than most bands would like, and are stingier about licensing and pricing that most music providers and end users would like, but that's true of most middle-man style businesses (like book publishers)\n\nThere are plenty of bands who do try to skip the middle man, but it's a lot of work for bands that are not well known. Already successful bands can afford to just let record labels deal with it.\n\nThere are examples of bands that buck the trend. Nine Inch Nails has famously (infamously?) split from its record label and does most of its own distribution etc."
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3ig8cs | is there a way commercial banks are creating their own money (digital or paper) without anyone knowing? | edit: what i mean is, with the advent of digital banking. can the bank create an account that belongs to no one, say some sum of money was deposited, lend that money that only exists digitally out and then collect it as money from a real person | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ig8cs/eli5_is_there_a_way_commercial_banks_are_creating/ | {
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"Okay, this is going to be complicated, but bear with me. \n\nEconomists have names for different types of money. M0 is the sum of all the dollars bills and coins printed by the treasury. Banks do not increase the M0 supply. \n\nBut there are several other types of money that economists count - traveller's checks, demand notes, saving accounts, money market accounts, etc. Depending on what types of things are included, [these are known as M1, M2, and M3](_URL_1_). It turns out that banks can increase the M1, M2, and M3 money supplies. \n\nThe most important way they do this is to give out loans. Let's say I take a dollar and put it into a bank. By law, they have to put a certain percent of that in the vault. Let's say, for the purpose of this example, it's 10%. (In reality, I think [it's either 10% or 3% depending on the size of the bank](_URL_2_)\\). The bank takes the other 90 cents of my dollar, and lends it out, and it gets spent. Then someone else deposits it. The bank takes the 90 cents, puts 10% away, and loans out the other 81 cents. It gets spent, redeposited, and another 72 cents gets lent out. Wash, rinse, and repeat. Eventually, that one dollar becomes ten dollars. That's the main method for how banks create money. \nMore details: _URL_0_"
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking#Example_of_deposit_multiplication",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#Empirical_measures_in_the_United_States_Federal_Reserve_System",
"http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm"
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f0xcdo | what causes eyes to get fatigued from reading for too long? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f0xcdo/eli5_what_causes_eyes_to_get_fatigued_from/ | {
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"We actually have muscles in our eyes. These muscles constrict and relax to change the shape of the lens, which is how our eyes focus. Reading or looking at a screen for long periods of time requires these muscles to hold themselves in specific position in order to focus on what we're looking at. We also have muscles that control our eye movements, and they have to work to keep our eyes pointed in the right direction and moving at the right pace to read. Like any muscles that's overworked, they get tired. That's why it's recommended that people who spend a lot of time reading or working with screens take breaks at least every 30 minutes and look at something further away for a bit. This gives these muscles a chance to relax."
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7itd15 | what does it mean to have something notarized? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7itd15/eli5_what_does_it_mean_to_have_something_notarized/ | {
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"A document that's been notarized has been approved by an a neutral and trusted public official called a notary public. Basically it means the notary witnesses and confirms the identity of the person or persons signing the document and that they understand what the document does so there's no question later as to its validity. This is usually required for documents that you really don't want questioned, like property deeds, wills, and powers of attorney.",
"Contrary to popular belief, a signature isn't a magic thing that makes a contract binding. A contract is established simply by agreement, and a signature is evidence that agreement has been made. A claim that isn't your signature or that you were tricked or coerced into signing can invalidate the contract. Similarly, a contract can also be considered binding without a signature if there is other evidence it was agreed to.\n\nA notary is a neutral third party, registered with the government, who verifies your identity, logs when and what kind of document you are signing, and witnesses you actually signing it. Note this is still just evidence you have entered into an agreement, but it is much stronger evidence.",
"A Notary is an officially neutral, registered government official that verifies the identities of those involved in signing the document, the basics of what the document covers, and sees that so far as they can tell no one is signing in duress. It is an extra level of security for all involved to help keep them from being cheated by someone trying to back out of a contract. "
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4s3an9 | if we created a magnet that was say 1 inch in diameter and was a kilometer long, is it possible we can create monopoles on each end (north side doesnt connect to south side) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4s3an9/eli5_if_we_created_a_magnet_that_was_say_1_inch/ | {
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"by definition, no.\n\nevery north and south side of the magnet will connect. If the magnet is 1 long magnet of uniform orientation, than thats what it will be.\n\nIf you force opposite poles together, or separate magnets with a non magnet filler, then your just moving the goal posts, but each magnetic segment will pair north to south, with interference's from the other segments."
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8bi2av | how can the bootes void, or the great void as it is sometimes called, be filled with stars and galaxies and still be called a void? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8bi2av/eli5_how_can_the_bootes_void_or_the_great_void_as/ | {
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"Because our definition of \"void\" (in regards to space) is not just _URL_0_ just means less than average density of matter compared to the rest of the observable universe."
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3xarf8 | why don't more companies collaborate on everything? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xarf8/eli5_why_dont_more_companies_collaborate_on/ | {
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"Because if there is no competition, your company doesn't have the chance to win more money than the rest. It's like the prisoner's dilemma:\n\n _URL_0_",
"A company is a group of *people*, and each *person* is competing with every other person to sell us what we all want. (We can try being nice to each other in the hope that they'll be nice back, but naturally there's nothing forcing everyone to cooperate. The fact is, we are each other's competition.)\n\nBy default, there is a lot of competition because there are a lot of people.\n\nThe only reason there are *any* companies at all, is because some people have ideas for producing and selling stuff, that can be done much better if they team up with a lot of people.\n\nWhat they do, then, is make a set of agreements between all the people in a team, that those people *won't* compete with each other on the individual level.\n\n*I will try to help my team mates make money for the whole team, rather than try only to make as much money as possible for myself*.\n\nThe more people you have in your team, the more things your team can possibly do. But, the harder it is to make sure every single person on the team sticks to the agreement.\n\nThere is more than one team doing each good idea, because there is more than one team *by default*, and it takes *serious work* to reduce the number of teams."
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l9hhd | - could someone explain to me the ethical theories of plato, aristotle, kant and mill by giving examples? | For example how would they respond to this moral dilemma: Should Batman kill the Joker? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/l9hhd/eli5_could_someone_explain_to_me_the_ethical/ | {
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"Plato: The well-being of the soul *(\"eudaimon\")* is the highest goal of thought and action. This is achieved when each member of society commits to his *ergon*, his natural duty. Batman's natural duty is to protect the common good. Thus Batman's obligation to himself leads to an obligation to his *ergon*, which compels him to kill the Joker.\n\nAristotle: *Eudaimonia* arises from virtuous action. Virtuous action is action which arises from *enkrateia* (mastery of the self) rather than *akrasia* (lack of self-mastery). *Akrasia* arises from *pathos*, or emotion, while *enkrateia* arises from rationality and self-discipline. Therefore Batman's obligation to his *enkrateia* compels him *not* to kill the Joker.\n\nKant: Ethical action is that which arises not just from reason alone, but from duty. We have duties to the civil law, to the moral law, to the hypothetical imperative and to the categorical imperative. Both civil and moral law instantiate the hypothetical imperative that one should not kill a person when other options remain available. Therefore Batman's duty to the civil and moral law compels him *not* to kill the Joker.\n\nMill: Actions are right in proportion to their tendency to promote happiness; therefore, actions must be prejudged by their anticipated consequences. The consequence of killing the Joker would be the absolute prevention of the Joker's causing unhappiness in the future, balanced against the possibility of creating a vacuum into which another figure would rise to create greater unhappiness, balanced against the deterrent effect of the Joker's killing. Therefore, Batman should torture the Joker to death slowly on live television, stopping periodically to turn to the camera and growl \"This is what will happen to you if you step out of line.\"",
"I worry that ELI5 is quickly turning into \"write my _____ paper for me\".",
"Plato: The well-being of the soul *(\"eudaimon\")* is the highest goal of thought and action. This is achieved when each member of society commits to his *ergon*, his natural duty. Batman's natural duty is to protect the common good. Thus Batman's obligation to himself leads to an obligation to his *ergon*, which compels him to kill the Joker.\n\nAristotle: *Eudaimonia* arises from virtuous action. Virtuous action is action which arises from *enkrateia* (mastery of the self) rather than *akrasia* (lack of self-mastery). *Akrasia* arises from *pathos*, or emotion, while *enkrateia* arises from rationality and self-discipline. Therefore Batman's obligation to his *enkrateia* compels him *not* to kill the Joker.\n\nKant: Ethical action is that which arises not just from reason alone, but from duty. We have duties to the civil law, to the moral law, to the hypothetical imperative and to the categorical imperative. Both civil and moral law instantiate the hypothetical imperative that one should not kill a person when other options remain available. Therefore Batman's duty to the civil and moral law compels him *not* to kill the Joker.\n\nMill: Actions are right in proportion to their tendency to promote happiness; therefore, actions must be prejudged by their anticipated consequences. The consequence of killing the Joker would be the absolute prevention of the Joker's causing unhappiness in the future, balanced against the possibility of creating a vacuum into which another figure would rise to create greater unhappiness, balanced against the deterrent effect of the Joker's killing. Therefore, Batman should torture the Joker to death slowly on live television, stopping periodically to turn to the camera and growl \"This is what will happen to you if you step out of line.\"",
"I worry that ELI5 is quickly turning into \"write my _____ paper for me\"."
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bcvnd2 | how do rocks (track ballast) able to support a train? | Wouldn't these large size gravel shift when load is on top? How do, essentially, rocks support a train on its rails & sleepers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bcvnd2/eli5_how_do_rocks_track_ballast_able_to_support_a/ | {
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"1) I assume the gravel is compressed when it is installed, e.g. with a heavy roller and/or a vibrating plate, so that if it's going to move down and fill a hole then it does that while it's being installed, not when a train is on it.\n\n2) The rails and sleepers do a good job of spreading out the load. While a car only touches the ground in 4 small spots at the base of each tyre, with a train the load from the wheels is spread out first along the tracks by the rails, then across the tracks by the sleepers.\n\n3) The rails and sleepers aren't moving. Driving cars along a gravel track will tend to dig out gravel from under the wheels as the wheels slip and push gravel out backwards; that doesn't happen with a railway track because the train wheels only touch the rail not the gravel.\n\n4) The railway line does get maintenance occasionally; this will presumably include filling in any low spots in the ballast. There are special trains they run along the tracks to look for places where the rail has moved, so they can schedule maintenance.",
"They do shift, but only a small amount over a considerable amount of time. That's why every so often they have to do maintenance on the track. \nIf you look at a typical shunting yard where the trains move slowly, you can see the bends in the rails. This isn't a problem at low speeds, so they let it be. On high speed tracks it is a problem, and that's why high speed tracks need more maintenance.",
"The ballast isn’t smooth, and they have considerably large surface area. The individual pieces of stone lock together and support the weight through the stone, projecting downward through the many intersecting layers of the ballast.\n\nLots of friction locks everything together...."
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ed1ymk | why are most houses that were made recently so ugly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ed1ymk/eli5_why_are_most_houses_that_were_made_recently/ | {
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"The first reason is survivorship bias. There were tons of ugly buildings in the 50s. For example [Nissen huts](_URL_0_) were a cheep and fast way to build and ugly ass garage or barn and were very popular until the 60-70's. You don't see many today because people tore them down whenever they got the chance and replaced them with something less ugly. \n\nThe second thing is that mcmansion style houses are often built on the cheep to give off the illusion of having much more wealth than one actually has. They're made of the worst materials as fast as possible and with as little aesthetic input as possible. Its all about how quickly and how large it can be made and not much else. Many beautiful homes are still being made today but by the very nature of what a mcmansion is (cheep and fast to construct) you're always going to see more of them. \n\nThe third thing is that 90% of everything is crap especially when its new. Those houses from the 50s have had a lot of time to come into themselves and remove flavor of the month items. You're seeing them after decades of development and refinement when for all we know when it was first constructed it could have had a bright pink enamel everything kitchen and green felt over every concert outdoor surface as was the style of the time."
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2ntw4c | what would happen if an illegal immigrant claimed that she had always lived in that country and had simply lost her id? even if they didn't believe her, what country would they deport her to if they didn't know? and if she had no money, would they just keep her locked up forever? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ntw4c/eli5_what_would_happen_if_an_illegal_immigrant/ | {
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"If she has an id she is in a computer somewhere. They would look it up ,then they would ask questions, then serve warrants.she'd spend time in jail or an immigration center till we decided what to do with her. Unless you're implicated in something more serious i consider illegal immigration up there with parking tickets and jaywalking.",
"I think this is what you're looking for:\n\n_URL_0_\n",
"I don't understand why people are failing to understand Stallone2's question. I think it's essentially:\n\nIf the authorities think a person is an illegal immigrant they usually deport them to their country of origin.\n\nIf no country of origin can be established, what happens?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjaman_Kyle"
],
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||
2107o5 | why do i have an explosive bowel movement very shortly after eating indian food? it can't be getting through the gi tract that fast, right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2107o5/eli5_why_do_i_have_an_explosive_bowel_movement/ | {
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"text": [
"Many GI reactions are due to something simply being in the tract. When you eat some exotic food, your body may react to the unusual foods and spices regardless of where the food is in the digestive process.",
"It is because you failed to offer a gift to Kali before eating.\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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||
21i1qi | motherboard types | What is the difference between the following motherboards?
AMD AM3/AM3+
AMD FM2/FM2+
and the Intel series of Sockets? These are Socket 1150, 1155 and 2011
Why do brands like ASUS and Gigabyte sell Intel and AMD Motherboards? I don't understand this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21i1qi/eli5_motherboard_types/ | {
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"text": [
"It's basically just that each type of CPU needs a different motherboard, hence all the different kinds. Some boards also have different features, such as integrated graphics.",
"[Maybe this should help..](_URL_0_)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/cpu-socket-types-explained-from-socket-5-to-bga-makeuseof-explains/"
]
] |
|
8azn1x | does epidural anaesthetic during childbirth inhibit uterine contractions | Epidural anaesthetic is just local anaesthetic in the epidural space right? But when the dentist gives you local you lose motor control of your lip as well? Does this happen with epidurals too?
If so how do they stimulate contractions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8azn1x/eli5_does_epidural_anaesthetic_during_childbirth/ | {
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"text": [
"Epidurals for child birth generally are analgesic, not anesthetic. \nAn analgesic is something that blocks pain (at the doses typically used for labor it isn't always 100% effective at that, but it definitely knocks it WAY down in terms of severity). It still allows you to feel pressure (to know when to push) and allows you to have some level of muscle control. Anesthetics stop everything. \nThe common use of \"Epidural anesthetic\" is for a C-section. If a woman already has an epidural, but has to go in for surgery, then the anesthetist will use the epidural catheter to completely anesthetize the women from the mid-body down. "
]
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[]
] |
|
a017i3 | why do shoes/tires have better grip with less surface area touching the ground? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a017i3/eli5_why_do_shoestires_have_better_grip_with_less/ | {
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"Since you (or your car) have a constant weight, smaller area means more force per unit area. Uniform large surfaces don't give water, snow, whatever, an easy path to escape from under you, which can also cause slipperiness.",
"They don't. The greater the surface area in contact, the greater the friction (grip). Race cars have wide slick tires, rock climbing shoes have smooth soles. The problem is if it is wet then you get a layer of water between road and rubber so no contact and no grip.",
"On a smooth, hard surface, flat things have better grip. This is why race cars have very little, if any, tread. Treads in tires and shoes allow them to dig into water, snow, dirt, and other soft materials, which helps them grip into the material and push through it like a waterwheel. Road car tires and your shoes have a few grooves to help them contact pavement through small amounts of rainwater or dirt. Old tires perform badly in the rain because the treads are too short to reach the ground through the water and instead skim across the water (hydroplane).\n\nI think shoes also have grooves in them to make the soles more flexible while remaining sturdy."
]
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[],
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||
8pzvgm | why do wood pigeons hoot in the same melodic pattern? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8pzvgm/eli5_why_do_wood_pigeons_hoot_in_the_same_melodic/ | {
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"text": [
"Many bird species have a very specific call that they all do. This is how they recognize fellow members of the same species at a distance"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
dqxxd5 | what is the process of a catholic confession, from walking through the church doors, to walking out afterwards? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dqxxd5/eli5_what_is_the_process_of_a_catholic_confession/ | {
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"when I was younger the confessionals were located in the back of my church. There was certain times that the priest held confession. The confessional was a booth separated by a screen you could do it anonymously or looking at the priest. I don't remember if he said my child. \n\nSo you go in and start the confession with bless me father for I have sinned, these are my sins. You list your sins and the priest will counsel you or say this is your penance ie say 10 hail Mary's etc. Also the priest is bound by an oath not to discuss your confession with anyone and he cannot be forced to tell anyone what you confessed not even by court order.\n\nhope that helps"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
20ltvh | - how does someone get into whiskey/bourbons and able to pick up tastes? | Been a beer connoisseur for a while and have trained my palette to pick up many minute flavors. I really like anything aged in bourbon barrels but just can't get into picking up those flavors in the bourbon straight. All I get is heat when I sip. How can I get into bourbon and broaden my horizons. Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20ltvh/eli5_how_does_someone_get_into_whiskeybourbons/ | {
"a_id": [
"cg4icsm"
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"text": [
"Just like in beer, it takes training. You have to try a lot of different types and compare notes.\n\nIt helps to find one or two you really like, drink them a bit to become very familiar with them, then compare others to your \"base\"."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
9gdjw2 | why was half life 2 considered such a milestone in gaming? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9gdjw2/eli5_why_was_half_life_2_considered_such_a/ | {
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"At the time it was the pinnacle of a game engine, also had a interesting story and great voice acting. ",
"It had amazing graphics and physics at the time, just compare [it's character animations](_URL_2_) with a similar game at the time like [Far Cry](_URL_0_) and you can see it still holds up, and is even better than some [current games](_URL_1_). \n\nNot to mention it's just a really good game to boot.",
"Half Life 1 was fantastic, and the story and gameplay in the 2nd completely lived up to expectations and hopes. Also, the physics engine was incredible at the time. I remember a friend literally called me over to his room to show me that he had figured out you could pin dead bodies to the wall with crossbow bolts, or that ammunition would go through open windows on vehicles, proving they were actually rendered \"realistically\" rather than just as one solid block like they had been before. It was a big amazing step forward in pretty much every aspect. Physics, graphics, storytelling and complexity, voice acting, franchise advancement, etc.",
"This guy has a good few videos on some of the reasons why, might be worth checking out. _URL_0_",
"Real time physics on machines that were Pentium 4 single core CPUs. Integrated graphics even.",
"The game engine was developed over 9 years, compared to 3 for the Unreal engine. This contributed to its advanced nature. ",
"The main reasons have been already mentioned however, HF2 is a better single player game than 99.99% of recent games. It was made to tell an interesting story in interesting locations that actually needed some basic problem solving skills (quite rare these days).\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTo me it's like asking why Game of Thrones is considered one of the best TV shows of all time. It does all the things it wanted to do well and is still much better than current day's competition. And it does it without hand holding the player and innovating greatly with the engine. Few games (if any) match HF2's physics and believable gameplay. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAny player can see that Valve made it because they wanted to make a great game first and make money second.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"[This short retro doc](_URL_0_) gives perspective on the entire series if you watch all of it. I linked to where it starts talking about HL2 and its contribution to the series and gaming as a whole.",
"I've waited years for it. It's still one of best games ever.\n\nAtmosphere, physics, smart design and great e3 tech demo",
"It had an engine that could assign properties to materials. You could tell the engine something was 'wood' or 'metal' or 'glass' it wasn't just textures and surfaces, it was actual interactions between materials and lighting. \n\nAnd it was the first well known instance of an actual physics engine- I remember seeing the first time a mattress was lifted up and it flopped around - how barrels would roll on surfaces. \n\nlight shined through red glass would shine out red, and look distorted .\n\nAnd it was the first time living models talked with moving lips and eyes rather than just nutcracker mouths and 'talking in italian gestures'\n\nAnd it gave us G-Mod. ",
"Half life 2 was pretty much my first real pc game and I got to play it with everything on high settings and it’s the most memorable game for me to this date. The physics and just the graphics alone were amazing. Then put in how there was really no cut scenes everything happened right there and then when someone was talking on a tv they were really in a place in the game talking to a camera. Then theres the good acting and story. Not to mention some good physics puzzles and memorable moments like the jet ski. But you had to play this game right when it came to pc in order to respect it because by the time you played it on console all that was lost because everyone already done it to their games. ",
"I have heard the game described as \"The thinking man's shooter\" and I think this is a lot of the reason why it is still considered amoungst the best games.\nA lot of shooters were/are seen as quite lowbrow, half life and half life 2 were much less focused on the action, allowing a lot of puzzle solving and being rewarded fir thinking outside the box. Take Ravenholm, you could get through the whole section only firing one bullet. \nThe story and setting were also quite new at the time, that era was heavily focused on world war 2 and not a lot of shooters tried to tell a story like that.",
"I remember that it had exceptionally good graphics and physics for that era but also managed to run well on low spec devices even back then. Pretty much every other game from the same era had high system requirements but mediocre graphics and physics compared to hl2.",
"I don't think any game has been as good of an FPS experience since.\n\nThe maps and the enemies, how you progress, how you learn the game and get more powerful weapons, how you learn to use them better and how the difficulty of the enemies scale up in such a natural way just felt, natural and the flow of the game is amazing.\n\nThe game mixes it up so much with swarms of enemies, big tough enemies, sneaky scary enemies. Different parts of the game feel different, fighting against zombie monsters when it is dark as hell is a very different feeling compared to fighting against soldiers or big airships etc.\n\nWhen you are hiding from heavy gun fire and hear the bullets hitting the thin sheet of metal you are hiding behind you don't feel safe, you feel the bullets swishing past you and how they might penetrate the cover at anytime. You feel stressed and scared.\n\nThere are a lot of little FPS puzzles that makes the game more than just a shooter.\n\nEngaging characters and story.\n\nIt is just a fantastic game imo and the storytelling and world building is great for a FPS game which is a format that doesn't lend itself well to that.\n\nAs many others say, the game engine being so great was also a factor but the thing that made Half-Life 2 such a milestone in gaming is because it is a great game in so many ways.",
"It was one of the first games to make the physics engine an integral part of the experience. We take ragdoll physics and the ability to pick stuff up and throw them around for granted today but when it came out that was huge and became something of an industry standard. ",
"During the period, Half Life and Half Life 2 were considered trend-setters because nobody had really done what they did before. First-person shooters in the 90s and early 2000s usually followed the same structure when it came to telling stories: you play a bit of shooty stuff, then you get a cutscene with some story, then you shoot more things, repeat until game done. Half Life bucked that trend by having everything take place 100% within the player's control. You never get control of your character taken away from you for a cutscene, you can always move or at least look around where you want. This seems like the standard for games these days, but back then that was something different.\n\nHalf Life 2 built on this by being the first 3D first-person shooting game to have a real physics engine which could contribute to gameplay. Games before that would just have pre-rendered backgrounds and change sprites for things when you interacted with them (like when you open a door or shoot through a wall or something). In Half Life 2 you could pick up a lot of the 3D objects around you and have them interact with the rest of the 3D environment according to what you did with them. Being able to pick up a barrel and throw it at your enemies was a big revolutionary thing back then, not so much because it was a new idea but because this was the first time it had been technically implemented and been woven into the fabric of the game.\n\nNone of this seems like groundbreaking stuff these days because it's all so fundamental to most of our videogames 15 years later, but Half Life 2 did it first. A lot of the games we have today were shaped by what Half Life 2 achieved."
]
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"https://youtu.be/9j8jb21bo_k?list=PLpmG2JGHItwmcpN8nID6mtbCJGIac6lqt&t=379",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Kxy0Rd9EIA",
"https://youtu.be/CMoB6Xg7XsE?t=11"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjDY3m1SMpw"
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4ks3fx | can hard liquors ever go bad? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ks3fx/eli5_can_hard_liquors_ever_go_bad/ | {
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"Hard liquor such as vodka have near limitless shelf lives when unopened, however, once the seal is broken and the liquor has been exposed to the air it will only last around 6-8 months",
"Whisky is matured in wooden casks for up to 50 years and it doesn't go bad. A wood cask is far more porous than a glass bottle, even opened (as long as the stopper is in). ",
"I've heard my father tell a story about being at a friend's ranch and finding an old bottle of vodka in the shed left untouched for ten plus years. It was cold when they found it and to hear him tell it, it was just as good as brand new."
]
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||
cwyuam | what is piezo-electricity and what are its uses ?? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cwyuam/eli5_what_is_piezoelectricity_and_what_are_its/ | {
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"text": [
"Piezoelectricity is an effect found in some solid materials that causes a charge to build up when it's under stress (an applied force). This relationship makes possible to use electricity to cause deformation of the material, known as the *converse piezoelectric effect*. This basically means you can create movement just by applying an electric field, which is very useful in the manufacturing industry.\n\nOn of the key uses is in 3D printing, specially the drop-on-demand binder and material jetting processes. These work by selectively forcing small droplets of material in place and moving over the surface. Using a piezoelectric actuator means that an electric current can be used to accurately and rapidly deposit these droplets. It also means that a thermal actuator doesn't need to be used, avoid problems with thermal cycling and burning of the material.",
"Piezoelectricity is basically when electricity and materials bending go together. Either bending the material produces electricity, or applying electricity to the material causes it to bend. I'm using \"bending\" in the loosest sense possible here — anything that applies that sort of force on the material, even if it doesn't visibly (or permanently) bend. /u/Penguin__Farts did a good job of covering some uses for the electricity - > bending case, so I'll cover the bending - > electricity case instead.\n\nOne use for this is lighters in gas stoves — pushing the button forces a hammer to strike a piezoelectric hammer, and that produces enough electricity to generate the spark that lights the gas.\n\nIt's also useful for building sensors. For example, piezo pickups are used for classical (Spanish) guitars, which use nylon strings so the magnet-based pickups found in electric guitars wouldn't work. Also, at least some digital drums use piezo-based systems to sense striking the drums.\n\nAlso — I don't fully understand this one, but apparently quartz clocks use *both* directions at once to produce the steady timing necessary for a clock.",
"[See the gif.](_URL_2_)\n\nIt's a way of converting physical movement to electrical energy, or vice versa.\n\nA piezoelectric \"[Crystal Oscillator](_URL_1_)\" made from a quartz crystal, vibrates (moves) at a known frequency. \n\nA quartz watch counts the vibrations and divides by [32768](_URL_0_), then moves one second. \n\nMost underwater microphones ([hydrophones](_URL_3_)) use piezoelectric ceramic to convert sound (movement) to signal (electric). They are used in Sonar."
]
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[],
[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oscillator",
"https://gfycat.com/alienatedremarkablebluefintuna",
"https://dosits.org/galleries/technology-gallery/basic-technology/hydrophonereceiver/"
]
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||
4h6e25 | what is a css subreddit? | And what exactly is its purpose? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h6e25/eli5_what_is_a_css_subreddit/ | {
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"text": [
"CSS is cascading style sheets. Basically it enables admins of specific subreddits to create a look and potentially change some functionality (like removing downvote buttons) to help enforce the feel of the sub.",
"\"CSS subreddits\" as a specific phrase sometimes refers to private subreddits that individuals or mod teams set up to test and tweak CSS formats before implementing it in the larger public subreddit."
]
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|
1xy5hf | in what way is the unionization of european states similar than or different from the unionization of early states and territories of the us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xy5hf/eli5_in_what_way_is_the_unionization_of_european/ | {
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"text": [
"Different. They're not forming a federal government with explicit foreign affairs and military \"supremacy\" over the individual states. That is, local militaries are not being disbanded, and individual nations within the EU can maintain varying degrees of foreign relations with external countries, independent of the EU's \"stance.\"",
"It is kind of like what happened after the Articles of confederation. Not exactly, but the European states and those pre-constitution American states still had plenty of independence. In both cases they could set foreign policy independently."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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] |
||
af7t5c | why are salty and fatty foods the tastiest things to eat when your drunk. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/af7t5c/eli5_why_are_salty_and_fatty_foods_the_tastiest/ | {
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"text": [
"They're always the tastiest, but when you're drunk the voice in your head that would usually say \"no that's bad for you\" just says HUNGRY",
"You crave salty things because the alcohol is causing you to dehydrate. The craving is your body’s way of trying to get you to drink water by creating a thirst. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
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||
3h4kl7 | why are some words considered more offensive/rude than others, despite meaning a very similar or even the exact same thing? i'm referring to swear words mainly. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h4kl7/eli5_why_are_some_words_considered_more/ | {
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"Similar question has been asked more than once today. It's weird.\n\nAll languages have curse or swear words; words used to describe acts, ideas, or concepts that are considered taboo by the culture that uses said language. These can vary widely from culture to culture, of course, but the common taboos in western civilization are (as I'm sure you're aware) sex-related.\n\nIn English, at least, the idea of \"poor\" or \"bad\" language also comes in part from how the language as we know it today developed during the middle ages. In the simplest terms, the common people spoke a different dialect than the Norman French nobility, and the so-called \"vulgar\" (literally \"common\" in Latin) vernacular was seen as dirty, impure, and distasteful to the prim and proper Norman overlords."
]
} | [] | [] | [
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||
28zou3 | why is it that i wake up right before the good parts | When ever I have an amazing dream, and I am either about to have sex, or jump off a plane, I always wake up right as I am about to do it. I don't just wake up normal and tired, I wake up just as if I'm a actually going to do that action, whether it with a boner or with my heart pumping as i get ready to skydive. What causes my brain to "cock block" me from having a fully fleshed out dream.
Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28zou3/eli5_why_is_it_that_i_wake_up_right_before_the/ | {
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"text": [
"I remember reading that the \"good\" part gets you excited and that excitement is what may contribute to you waking up.",
"I believe it has something to do with your brain not being able to create something it has never experienced. If you do research on dreams, you learn that we really don't know a lot about why dreams exist or what kind of benefit they really provide to humans if any at all. \n\nBut for example, generally it is said that your brain cannot create a person. In other words, any person you encounter in your dream is a person you encounter in real life. Even if someone in a dream is not someone you immediately recognize, it could literally be someone you passed in a grocery store once 7 years ago. Whether you remember it or not, the image of that person is stored somewhere in your brain. And sometimes they reappear in dreams. \n\nSo just like your brain cannot create a person, your brain cannot create an experience that you never had. If you have never gone skydiving, it is hard for your brain to simulate that experience. \n\nThis is all just an assumption based on bits and pieces of things I have read in the past. I do not actually know the answer to this question for sure. "
]
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[],
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2sinku | why do patents expire? | I know it's probably a stupid question, but I'm wondering. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sinku/eli5_why_do_patents_expire/ | {
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"So that a patented device or technique or medicine cannot remain proprietary forever. This is important because it would then allow for people to later build upon whatever was previously patented to continue advancement in creative, industrial and scientific endeavors.\n\nThe idea of patents (and copyrights, even though those are different) are to allow a creator or inventor to make a profit on their work by being the only one who has rights to it for a period of time. However, in order for things to move forward, eventually such exclusivity must expire.\n\nIt's also a reason why certain companies do not patent their creations, and instead opt to keep them as trade secrets. Which never expire, but do not carry all of the same legal protections.",
"If patents never expired it would be possible to build unlimited monopolies - a handful of companies could continue leveraging their patents to stifle competition and innovation (which happens even with today's long patent lives, and business/software patents). Imagine if the patent for a telephone had been extended indefinitely, and was broadly applied to any and all two-way communication devices as more \"improvement\" patents continued to be built on top of it, only licensable by one sole company.",
"Patents are a balance between encouraging innovation, and efficient economic development. \n\nToo short, and people won't have an incentive to invent new things. Too long, and the economy spends more on royalties than it does on making things.",
"Patents were originally devised to encourage innovation. People and companies are more willing to put the time, effort and money into creating or improving if they know that they will get rewarded for it. Patents ensure that no one can swoop in and steal an idea and all of the resulting profits.\n\nThat being said, you run into a similar problem if patents were endless - people would stop innovating because the item they are trying to innovate is still owned in exclusivity by someone else. Moreso, there is little incentive for an existing patent holder to improve on a product because they know that no one will be able to create something similar enough to compete."
]
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3d3wjf | how did internet explorer and chrome end up so different? | I'm not an IT person, but I find IE awkward, while Chrome is smooth and more user-friendly. And there is a general loathing towards IE, from what I've seen.
Presumably though, both groups tried to make them the best offering possible.
How did they end up being so different? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d3wjf/eli5_how_did_internet_explorer_and_chrome_end_up/ | {
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"Internet Explorer has a lot more history than Chrome has.\n\nIn the mid-late 90's, Microsoft had managed to tie in business deals with a lot of PC manufacturers, governments, schools, and so on to make Windows the default operating system on something like 95% of the personal computers in the world. Internet Explorer came bundled with Windows, so it was the default browser for 95% of people. What happens when you control that much of the market is you basically control what standards are set.\n\nSo for a while Internet Explorer was the best browser around, because it supported the standard best. In fact, it pretty much *was* the standard.\n\nThen the world moved on. Microsoft, being the absolutely massive corporation that it is, has some inertia. It took them a while to notice that other browsers (most notably Mozilla, later known as Firefox) were helping the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium, the guys who actually decide how the web should work) to move the web in a new direction, implementing better standards and more sane defaults.\n\nBefore Microsoft could react, IE was way behind in terms of features (due in part to them continuing to set their own standards as if the other browsers didn't exist for a few years).\n\nSince about 2002, IE has been playing catch-up with other browsers. Now Google enters the market.\n\nArmed with the knowledge of what went wrong for Microsoft, they decided (at first) against building their own browser engine, instead opting to modify the KDE project's Webkit engine (the one that powers Safari). The reason for this is that Webkit is open-source and therefore can be worked on by a lot of people from different backgrounds at the same time, which prevents stagnation. Since Apple had jumped on it for Safari, it also meant that it already had the support of a large company.\n\nThat's basically it, if you leave out the technical details (like Chrome being built to be multicore from the ground up while some of the codebase in IE was over a decade old at some points).\n\nHowever, you feeling that IE is awkward right now is probably just a social thing. IE has a *really* bad rap for all the things it did wrong in the mid-00's, but the latest incarnation of the browser (version 11) is a very snappy little thing that uses barely any memory and has argually the best touch-screen support out of any browser in the market.\n\n**Edit:** \nAlso, the IE team are still cool guys that send cakes to the other browser devs when they hit a major release. \nOr, well, they used to. Since Mozilla started with their 6-month release schedule for Firefox, they only get muffins. Serves them right for trying to cheat the system :P"
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mzhdg | why do you need to apply pressure to bullet wounds? | Doctors say it. People in movies say it. Why is it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mzhdg/eli5_why_do_you_need_to_apply_pressure_to_bullet/ | {
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"pressure slows the bleeding and helps promote clotting. \n\nEither that or they are afraid the bullet will shoot back out of the wound and kill someone else.",
"pressure slows the bleeding and helps promote clotting. \n\nEither that or they are afraid the bullet will shoot back out of the wound and kill someone else."
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2hxmcd | how were large purchases made in gold coins during the middle ages? i.e. 2 million gold pieces? | Seems like a lot of weight in metal to be hauling around. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hxmcd/eli5_how_were_large_purchases_made_in_gold_coins/ | {
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"It wasn't. A couple chest of gold could buy whole states",
"For large purchases you'd have gold in a bank, you'd then get a bank note (precursor to modern money) for the amount in question, you'd give the person the bank note and if they went to the bank with it they'd be given the gold.",
"People didn't really buy anything worth that much.\n\nConsidering how much gold has historically been worth, a couple of coins could buy most commodities, and even a good-sized castle (if you could even buy a used castle) wouldn't be worth more than a few dozen large chests of gold."
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11w8h4 | what exactly happens when you see a beam of light? | Sorry if you guys think this is a dumb question, but I'm really curious. Isn't light supposed to travel straight? Isn't light supposed to reach your eyes for you to see something? How is light supposed to reach your eyes if it travels straight in a direction away from you? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11w8h4/what_exactly_happens_when_you_see_a_beam_of_light/ | {
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"The space between the light source, and whatever it is being shone upon is not empty. In fact, it's got lots and lots of stuff bouncing around in it. Light is hitting those things and bouncing off them in not-quite-random directions. Dust motes, smoke, water vapor, etc. Your eyes are picking up photons pinged off a microscopic flake of cotton from someone's t-shirt who walked by a month ago."
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4a9nzr | why isn't the board game go as popular or mainstream around the world as.chess? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a9nzr/eli5_why_isnt_the_board_game_go_as_popular_or/ | {
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"Partly the game isn't popular because not enough people play it. Without opponents, you don't practice. Without practice, you don't get better. And if you suck, the game is no fun. \n\nI own a board, and have taught a few friends the rules. But despite being so simple, the strategies are deep and complex. I'm terrible, so I'm either going easy against someone I've just taught to play, or I'm getting demolished by someone online. It's tough convincing others that it's worth the effort. ",
"There are many cultural factors at play here. The places where Go is popular (China, Korea, & Japan) had a lot of cultural exchange over the last millennium. The places where chess is popular (Europe, US, Arabia) also had a lot of cultural exchange over the last millennium. \n\nI have heard that Go is representative of eastern thinking. It favors a subtle, amorphous, indirect approach. All the pieces are equal, and any piece can be placed anywhere on the board at any time. You can't 'see' the opponents 'army' until they use them. In chess, the armies march directly at each other, every piece is visible on the board from the beginning, and some pieces are definitely more important than others."
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2zyp6i | when muslims want sharia, what does that mean? does it mean that everyone, even non muslims should abide by those rules as well? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zyp6i/eli5_when_muslims_want_sharia_what_does_that_mean/ | {
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"Yes, that's what it means.\n\nChristians and Jews are specifically given the right to pay a tax, so long as they demonstrate that they are subservient to Islamic authorities, and are exempt from some of the prohibitions imposed on Muslims, but those exemptions are mostly religious proscriptions. The Christians and Jews paying the tax would still be required to follow the civil and criminal code (so for example, Christian or Jewish law would apply to matters of dealing with the estate of a dead person or determining who could marry whom, but Christian and Jewish women would still have to conform to the required 'modesty' regulations for dress.)\n\nNon-muslim people who are neither Christian nor Jewish or who don't pay the tax are outside the limits on the law and the Muslims can pretty much do anything they wish, including enslaving them.",
"It depends.\n\nSharia is a system of laws Muslims are expected to follow. They're both moral and religious laws. Sort of like the Ten Commandments, to give a Christian analogy, but a bit more in depth, and with a bit more to say about punishments for those who break them.\n\nDepending on the denomination, politics, or personal opinion of any given Muslim, they may hold Sharia law to be higher than the law of the land, (ie: they believe Sharia law is more important than laws against murder, so they believe a crime should be punishable by death even in countries without the death penalty) and they may believe that Sharia law should be applied to non-Muslims as well. Generally the types who believe in both of the latter and attempt to enforce it are the ones you hear about on the news a lot.\n\nPractically all Muslims believe in Sharia law to some degree, though they can certainly disagree with its interpretation for better or for worse. Same as with Christians. Thou shalt not kill? Plenty of Christian soldiers rationalise it as being acceptable if it's done in self-defence or in defence of the innocent. People gonna people, man."
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18s9ft | why doesn't earth spiral closer and closer to the sun due to the sun's gravity? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18s9ft/why_doesnt_earth_spiral_closer_and_closer_to_the/ | {
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"Because the Earth has enough velocity (that is, kinetic energy) to keep from falling into the sun. \n\n**WARNING: BUCKET ON A STRING ANALOGY APPROACHETH**\n\nSo you've got your bucket on a string, swinging around you. Gravity wants to pull it towards the Earth, but it's literally standing straight out from you, perpendicular to where it should be. That's because the rotational energy of the bucket is such that it counteracts the attraction of the Earth, in fact it completely cancels it. \n\nThe 'energy' of the Earth's orbit is the same concept - the Earth has enough kinetic energy that it doesn't fall (that's the energy of our orbit around the sun, the 'speed' that makes the year 365 days long). If we were to suddenly stop, we would 'sink like a stone' plunging straight toward the center of the Earth-sun system. ",
"It's not enough to make a difference, or even to measure, but due to gravitational radiation, the earth is constantly losing an extremely small amount of energy, and its orbit is every so slightly decaying. The sun will die long before the orbit decays enough to make any difference though.\n\n*If we use the previous values for the Sun and the Earth, we find that the Earth's orbit shrinks by 1.1×10−20 meter per second. This is 3.5×10−13 m per year which is about 1/300 the diameter of a hydrogen atom. The effect of gravitational radiation on the size of the Earth's orbit is negligible over the age of the universe. This is not true for closer orbits.* -[quoted from wikipedia](_URL_0_)\n\nDoesn't really answer your question, but it is an interesting piece of trivia.",
"Here's a good explanation that I can't take credit for. Let's explain the example of a baseball orbiting the earth, which is exactly the same principle as the earth orbiting the sun.\n\nSuppose you are standing at the top of a very tall tower, and you throw a baseball in a straight line in front of you (that's to say, parallel to the earth's surface, like you would if you were pitching it to a batter). The gravitational pull of the earth curves its trajectory further and further downward until it eventually hits the ground.\n\nNow, suppose you throw it again, but harder. The earth's gravitation will again pull it downward until it hits the ground, but it will have travelled farther along the earth's surface before it hit, because you threw it faster.\n\nNow, here's the trick. Since the earth is not flat, but is actually curved, if you throw the baseball *really* hard, the earth's gravitation won't have time to pull it down to the surface before the baseball has travelled so far that the earth's surface has already begun to curve away beneath it. If you throw it at just the right speed, it will never hit the earth, because it is being pulled toward the earth by gravity at just the same rate that the earth's curvature bends away beneath it. [Here's an illustration I found](_URL_1_).\n\nThat's what we call a stable orbit. You've thrown the baseball at just the correct *orbital velocity* of the height of the tower you're standing on. It will continue to fly around the earth forever (theoretically), continuously pulled towards it by gravity, but continuously missing the ground, which is always curving away from it.\n\nThe higher the tower, the slower you have to throw the baseball to get it into orbit. That's because the higher you are, the farther away from the earth you are, and the weaker its gravitational pull is. So at a larger distance, you don't have to go as fast to compensate for it. And of course, if you throw it faster than the orbital velocity for that height above the earth, it will neither fall to the earth nor stay in a stable orbit, but will escape the earth's gravitational pull altogether and fly off into space.\n\nIn fact, if your tower is high enough, you don't have to throw the baseball at all. You can just let it go and it won't fall. That's because at that precise height, the speed of the rotation of the earth (one revolution every 24 hours, which gives us day and night), exactly equals the orbital velocity at that distance from the earth. That's called *geostationary* orbit. And we actually have satellites in geostationary orbit in cases where it's useful to have a satellite that is always positioned over a specific point on the surface of the earth. There's a very cool theoretical possibility involving geostationary orbit called a [space elevator](_URL_0_), which you should definitely read about if you've never heard of it. It's *awesome*.\n\nNow that you know about geostationary orbits, take the moon, for example, just for fun. The moon orbits the earth about once a month, though that's a crude approximation. That's why there is a full moon about once a month, because that's when the moon is on the opposite side of the earth from the sun (so that the entire side of the moon that faces us is illuminated by the sun). You ought to be able to guess, then, that the moon is much farther away from the earth than our geostationary satellites. Why? because its orbital velocity is much slower than geostationary orbit, which is by definition once per day. Remember that the farther away from the earth you are, the slower your orbital velocity is; the slower you need to go to be in a stable orbit. In the case of the moon, it's even slower than the rotation of the earth."
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6r5m3g | why are humans not tired anymore shortly after contact with water on their bodies, for example in the shower after waking up in the morning or splashing water in their faces? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6r5m3g/eli5_why_are_humans_not_tired_anymore_shortly/ | {
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"It's an instinct thing. Our body's associate water on our face with one of two immediate hazards. One rain and foul weather. And two being in a large body of water and being at risk of drowning. Our body places priority on not dying and thus we are kept alert"
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30xc0l | if i play sports that are challenging for my joints, will they get stronger from the work out, or will they get bad (especially if pain shows up when i get older)? | Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30xc0l/eli5_if_i_play_sports_that_are_challenging_for_my/ | {
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"I don't know of an overall answer, or if it's different for different sports, but my wife rowed crew in college, and the first day the coach told everyone, \"This sport is going to ruin your knees.\"",
"Permanent damage is permanent. \n\nOn the other hand bone growth depends on the stress put upon it. Bone deposition occurs during youth. Young women can develop strong bones by exercise. Bone loss occurs later. Eventually bone loss is severe enough for an old woman to break a hip, then fall.",
"Muscles (including the ones that support ligaments, and therefore our joints) can get stronger. Joints and the soft tissue that surround them cannot. If you play a sport, or engage in an activity that puts consistent loads or includes twisting and turning on your joints, you run the risk of injury. You can mitigate that risk by ensuring proper form, training smart, working on both strength and flexibility, etc... but the risk is never zero. \n\nAs a personal anecdote, I started cross country in high school, and continued to run longer and longer distances until my mid-30's. I suffered dozens of ankle sprains during that time and as a result, am no longer able to run. The ligaments that support my ankles are \"floppy\". The main driver of these injuries was a lack of flexibility, primarily in my hips and hamstrings. I'm continuing to try and lengthen those muscles and strengthen them slowly in the hopes I can continue to run someday, but those chances are slim. If I had to do over again, I would have researched WHY I was continuing to injure myself and fixed it far sooner... I didn't understand the damage I was doing was permanent. "
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5t276f | how do the autonomous regions of spain work in relation to the national government? | I am specifically interested in the Basque region. I know that they have their own parliament and even their own police force, but I am having trouble grasping how this works in relation to Spain's monarchy. Is it like the states and the federal government? Are there national laws and then regional laws or do regions determine their own without consideration of the monarchy? I am just confused how the relationship works. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5t276f/eli5_how_do_the_autonomous_regions_of_spain_work/ | {
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"It is similar to states, in that autonomous regions can enact their own laws if those laws mesh with national laws.\n\nSpain's monarchy doesnt matter much, as it is primarily lead by a Prime Minister (not the King).\n\nAll autonomous communities have a parliament (Legislative Assembly, Council of Gov't and High Court of Justice)\n\nSince certain autonomous regions share languages/beliefs, many of them will share regimes amongst eachother.",
"After Spanish transition to democracy both Catalonia and the Basque Country had proved a strong will for acknowledgement of a separate identity and status and had met the requirements(culture, different language, etc.. ) to accede to a provisional regime of autonomy that would allow it to elaborate a draft Statute. The Statute to name a few examples, allows the formation of it's own police force and slightly enhances the power of self-government. Each autonomous region has its own parliament, government and a high court of justice. Laws that interact with national ones must be compatible (e.g The Basque Parliament can not legalize weed if there is a nationwide law forbidding its sale) but there have been cases where regional governments have decided not to follow the law. For example, when Catalonia's government made a kinda-referendum for independence (since the constitution does not let a territory separate from Spain), or where almost every region denied to carry out a huge educational retrogressive bill. "
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dc78n7 | "eli5" how is the flame shaped behind a rocket. | how is it that when the flaming gas comes out of the exhaust, narrows down in the beginning and then after a bit it becomes wider and the goes back down to be narrow again?
& #x200B;
I draw a few lines, in the screenshot, I got to show what I mean.
& #x200B;
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dc78n7/eli5_eli5_how_is_the_flame_shaped_behind_a_rocket/ | {
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"These cones are commonly called shock diamonds and is present in all jet engines not only rocket engines. A jet engines nozzle is designed to output an exhaust at a specific velocity and pressure. Ideally the pressure would be the same as ambient pressure. However, especially for rocket engines that is designed to operate in a wide range of altitudes, the nozzle usually outputs gas with too high or low pressure. So at the edge of the nozzle you have two areas of gas at different pressures meeting. That creates a shockwave through the gasses as the pressure tries to equalize. And because the exhaust gas is moving faster then the speed of sound the shockwave will move backwards in the exast gas forming a cone. As the shockwave from all around the edge of the exhaust meet in the middle there is momentum of the gas which means it creates an overpressure area in the middle of the exhaust gas. This is usually visible as a bright spot in the exhaust. The overpressure again creates a new shockwave now moving outwards. As this shockwave hits the edge of the exhaust it gets reflected back again. And ever time it moves between the edge and center it gets blown further and further back creating repeating shock diamonds.",
"I believe it has to do with the fact that the exhaust (flame) is at a lower pressure than the atmosphere when it exists the nozzle. The higher pressure of the atmosphere compresses the exhaust flow. Shock waves form as the flow is compressed. Eventually the pressure of the exhaust lowers enough for the atmosphere to compress it again. This cycle repeats until the flow dissipates enough to prevent the shock waves from forming as necessary. \n\nIt's a fairly complex process though, and I'm no expert in this. You can probably find some good resources if you look up the design/shape of rocket engine nozzles."
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bbkmkh | why would a beverage have both sucrose and sucralose in it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bbkmkh/eli5why_would_a_beverage_have_both_sucrose_and/ | {
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"It's likely related to the well-known \"sugar tax\" being levied by various governments, US included. Drinks with sugar levels above a certain limit are subject to additional taxation.\n\nRemoval of X% sugar, and replacement with sucralose, will take it below that level."
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281qxt | does marijuana have side-effects/withdrawal symptoms like controlled-substance medications such as xanax? if not, why is the latter available legally in every state (with prescription)? | I'm not an expert, but it seems like Xanax and marijuana both have the same effect for the user-- to slow down depression/anxiety and make a person feel better, to put it simply.
However, most, if not all physicians won't allow a patient to take Xanax indefinitely, because of inevitable dependency issues. Does marijuana have that same potential of dependency? If it doesn't, why isn't it legal everywhere for medical purposes? Or why doesn't the field of pharmacology look into what the difference is between the two and figure out if (what would essentially be) non-addictive Xanax is possible?
Note: I'm assuming marijuana actually has legitimate anti-depressive qualities. If not, then could someone explain how it works? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/281qxt/eli5_does_marijuana_have_sideeffectswithdrawal/ | {
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" > Yes, marijuana has side-effects and withdrawal symptoms.\n\n---\n\n > Additionally, weed has no addictive properties or withdrawal affects.\n\n:-/",
"I anticipate anyone who points out negative things about weed will be heavily down voted.",
"I've smoked weed pretty much everyday for the last 15 years and every now and again I won't smoke any all day with no negative side effects. The closest thing I could describe as a side effect is a slight increase in irritability but absolutely nothing physical. Still eat, sleep, work etc.",
"Okay, for one marijuana is not a particularly good treatment for anxiety. Marijuana can cause attacks of paranoia that exasperates anxiety symptoms. \n\nHowever, marijuana's addictive potential is low. It's similar to a strong caffeine habit. When you quit a daily pot habit you will probably feel edgy and constipated and have some insomnia. It lasts about a week before you get back to normal.\n\nAll in all, I don't think that marijuana is terribly effective at treating depression and anxiety. On the other hand, it doesn't really hurt much either.",
"As someone already pointed out, xanax and weed have very different effects. Xanax is a central nervous system depressant where weed actually increases activity in your central nervous system. Yes, weed can have anti anxiety effects but depending on the strain can increase anxiety. Even the strains that are the best at reducing anxiety can have a paranoia effect as everyone reacts differently. Xanax, on the other hand, reduces anxiety in almost everyone. They are *very* different drugs. \nEdit: added a word",
"Just to address the withdrawal of marijuanna\n\nWithdrawal symptoms are typically due to a rapid decline in drug concentration in the body. So drugs that have a rapid decline will typically have a more severe withdrawal symptoms. However, marijuana is removed from the body extremely slowly, such that you don't really experience any side effects. \n\nMarijuana can have side effects if you give a drug that abruptly stops the action of marijuanna, but because it is normally slowly removed, you do not get side effects",
"Quitting cannabis cause withdrawal symptoms, but they are mild and short-lived.",
"Wow, some really awful replies in this thread, I'll try to get a clearer picture.\n\nIt's very important to recognize that cannabis is not a single chemical like Xanax. The plant can include any of some 60 psychoactive chemicals, all with their own effects. In addition, the exact percentage of those chemicals which are biologically available varies depending on method of ingestion, temperature, how the plant was cured/stored/exposed to light, etc. So when you ask about the effects, keep in mind that you will receive a wide variety of perspectives and experiences.\n\nEven the question of whether or not cannabis reduces anxiety and depression depends on the relative ratios of psychoactives in any particular strain. Some strains have been bred to include more anxiolytic chemicals, some have been bred to include more stimulating chemicals. Really each strain has its own character and can affect the user differently. This is why most dispensaries offer a wide variety of strains.\n\nAs for dependence and withdrawal, they are far far less than with benzodiazepines. There are many people who use cannabis every day for most of their lives and remain pretty much fine. Additionally, most people can choose to stop using it if they really want to, or go for days/weeks without like if they're on vacation or something. That being said, it is not entirely without effects, like other people have mentioned. Ceasing use can cause irritability or just feeling sort of unbalanced for a few days to a few weeks, disruption to sleep cycles, etc. These are nowhere near the physical dependence issues like with Xanax, which produces much more extreme and dangerous withdrawal effects. The drugs really are entirely different, although they may have some minor similarities.\n\nAs for why cannabis is illegal, that's a complicated historical question that I would encourage you to research on your own. Primarily it is due to the use of the plant by minorities and the counterculture in the 30's through 60's. Any evidence-based examination of the effects and dangers of the plant indicates that it is clearly less dangerous, and shows less potential for abuse than more common legal pharmaceuticals.",
" > If it doesn't, why isn't it legal everywhere for medical purposes?\n\nLies and racism.\n\nIn the early 1930's, a moral panic started around marijuana. Criminalizing things was popular back then (alcohol, cocaine and heroin were all legal in 1915, not in 1945). Marijuana was primarily smoked by the black and Hispanic communities, especially by jazz musicians. Some groups began circulating pamphlets suggesting that black men were using marijuana to corrupt white women, lure them into their \"jazz clubs\" and impregnate them. Marijuana use was blamed on a number of crimes, \"moral indecency\" among them. A bill was introduced to Congress banning the drug. During committee hearings, the chairman asked \"What is the opinion of the American Medical Association on this bill?\" Someone in the audience stood up and said that the AMA fully supported the bill; this was a lie, the AMA had no opinion. The bill passed easily.\n\nXanax on the other hand, is a synthetic drug. It was researched and released to the public during the 1970's and 1980's, at the height of the War on Drugs. It was never the subject of a moral panic because it was never widely available without a prescription, and as a result, never made it to Schedule 1. Schedule 1 is the most illegal of drugs, drugs that \"have no acknowledged medical use\" and therefore can't be prescribed by doctors. Marijuana is Schedule 1 because it was the victim of said moral panic, and most doctors couldn't prescribe it if they wanted to.\n\nFinally, your question isn't quite correct. An increasing number of American states do allow marijuana to be prescribed for medical uses, and I believe that treatment for anxiety is the primary reason it's prescribed in California today.",
"I used to smoke a lot of weed/oil/hash, when I quit the only withdrawal symptoms I had were a bit of boredom, and difficulty staying asleep due to the dreams.\n\nWell, I wouldn't really say it was hard to sleep, it was just that the dreams you get coming off thc are so fucking intense and realistic that you wake up every sleep cycle. So about every 60-90 minutes I would wake up, be like \"holy fuck that was insane\" and then immediately go back to sleep. If however you normally have a hard time falling sleep, I could see it really sucking.\n\nThe dreams were crazy though, so hyper realistic that they could almost be hard to tell the difference between dream and reality. I would almost consider starting to smoke a shitload again just so I could have those intense dreams again.\n\nEDIT: BTW, when I say hyper realistic, I don't mean realistic as in normal realistic things happen in the dream, because they can be some of the most surreal dreams I've ever had. I mean it more like... I don't know... Sometimes normal dreams are kind of weird and hazy and when you wake up it is immediately obvious it was a dream. Weed \"withdrawal\" dreams on the other hand look, feel, smell, sound, and taste just like reality to the point where you may actually remember something that happened in your dream as something that happened in real life.",
"Eat a fuckin snickers every day and you'll have a withdrawal.\n\n\n"
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5clnxo | why are pesticides meant to kill insects and rodents also poisonous to humans? | Humans, rodents, and (especially) insects have very different physiology, so why is it so hard to find a poison that only kills pests, but doesn't affect humans? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5clnxo/eli5_why_are_pesticides_meant_to_kill_insects_and/ | {
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"Because we are very close relatively speaking in terms of evolution. We are, in a broad sense, not \"very\" different to each other. That's why it's hard. For example, Nicotine (and caffeine) were created by plants to attack insect \"brains\" and those molecules also bind to humans brains. But it can be done!, one example are chitin disrupters: we have cheratin (mammals) instead of chitin (insects) to make hard things in our body (hair, skin, nails) so any compound that targets chitin (chitin formation for example) affects only insects, and we've used that to kill them (Novaluron is an example).",
"Because there is no way to make a poison specific to a species. Poison will kill any life if in a high enough dose unless they are immune to that poison. Human are resistant or immune to many, such as Caffeine. ",
"All animals are very similar at the molecular level. The differences in physiology are made by different arrangements of these fundamental building blocks. Poisons and toxins target these building blocks, so it can be very difficult to find poisons that affect one organism and not humans. This is why it is also difficult to discover new antibiotics. Bacteria and humans are very similar at the molecular level and the trick is to identify compounds that kill the bacteria without killing our own cells."
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4nvli6 | why is the 5-pointed star so prevalant on flags & in militaries | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nvli6/eli5_why_is_the_5pointed_star_so_prevalant_on/ | {
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"The pentagram has been a popular symbol since ancient times. There are a few theories about why this might have happened:\n\n* It is possible to draw a pentagram in one go. It might have been a symbol of continuity or endlessness, much like a circle, just more fancy looking. This might also explain while the pentagram has often been encircled.\n\n* Golden Ratio. The lines intersect each other in a way that one outer part of a line compared to the remainder of the line is in the golden ratio as is each outer part to just the middle part. This probably leads to the pentagram to be aesthetically pleasing.\n\n* Easy to draw. Stars with three, four or seven points are much harder to draw than those with five and six.\n\nThe followers of Pythagoras used the pentagram as a symbol of identification, furthering its association with wisdom and mysticism in the following ages.\n\nWhen it came to designing flags, the five-point star was already a strong, ancient and well-known symbol with many different meanings. Also, when you want a star in your logo or whatever, which star are you going to use otherwise? Three-point does hardly look like a star at all, four-point is strongly associated with the rose of a compass, six-point with Judaism and seven-point begins to scale badly (looks more and more like a spiky wheel when styled small) although some flags like New-Zealand and Australia have seven-point stars."
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3yd784 | trading 'futures' in the stock market | Recently read an article where two people in the 50's cornered 98% of the onion market by trading futures. What does this mean and how would this affect the price of onions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3yd784/eli5_trading_futures_in_the_stock_market/ | {
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"\"Futures\" are contracts for the future delivery of an item. Instead of buying a farmer's onions that he just harvested, I invest in the onions that he has yet to grow. The farmer can use the investment on his farm right away, which might help the harvest, and it tends to stabilize the price.",
"A 'future' is a contract to purchase future production at a set price. Farmers can contract to sell their future crop. Actually anyone can contract to sell things in the future at a set price.\n\nOften only a small amount of money is needed now for a future contract. So it is possible to have tremendous leverage. \n\nThey may have purchased all onion contracts available bu not all the crop is offered as a future contract basis."
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92t2ld | will my teeth move after braces are removed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/92t2ld/eli5_will_my_teeth_move_after_braces_are_removed/ | {
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"Nah, at least not significantly in 10 days. Putting the retainer on the first time might be uncomfortable because of the minute movement, but if you wear it properly afterwards it will keep it in place.\n\nIt is important you're not lazy with your retainer though. Many people have to get braces for a second time because they didn't wear their retainer enough.",
"just a bit, but nothing dramatic. itd prob take a good 3-4 weeks before any slightly considerable movement, but 10 days is nothing to worry about. retainers will definitely hurt for the first couple of days js",
"No your teeth will not start moving that quickly BUT if you do not wear your retainer/ivisaline as advised your teeth will shift. They wont go back to the way they were not even close but they will shift. My front teeth overlap slightly because i didnt follow thru with my retainer. ",
"Agreeing with the other comments here that your teeth won't move in those 10 days, but also want to add that it's totally common and nbd that your teeth will eventually shift a little even after the 2 year retainer period, even if you wear the retainer religiously. They won't move *very* much and they won't go back to how they were before braces, but it's just normal that clenching or grinding or chewing might eventually shift your teeth very slightly in the future. It's nothing to worry about though."
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5l3unr | how do they determine what age group of kids is safe for a specific toy? does the administration just say what they think is right or is there actually a scientific way to determine this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5l3unr/eli5_how_do_they_determine_what_age_group_of_kids/ | {
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"In the United States there are regulations that spell out how toys for children need to be tested and how the safe age range should be determined. Most toy manufacturers have to submit toys for third party testing and then certify the results in a Children's Product Certificate. The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission oversees all of this. You can see more details and specific regulations [here](_URL_0_).",
"A lot of toys with removable parts (or easily removable by a toddler's force) are marked as \"3 years or older\" because that is the age it's generally assumed that kids will stop putting things in their mouth. So you can ask the question: are the ingredients that make up this product safe for consumption? (example: home-made playdough with \"natural ingredients\" versus the storebought kind) Is there a choking hazard? \n\nYour mileage per kid may vary, of course. "
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48g7tw | why do humans find it necessary to try and control how others live their lives even when it doesn't affect them personally? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48g7tw/eli5_why_do_humans_find_it_necessary_to_try_and/ | {
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"We are a social species that evolved to live in villages of under 300 people. So we have evolved instincts designed to ensure our place in the hierarchy, and to regulate and stabilize the group. When you live in a small village, *everyone's* behavior affects you personally.\n",
"There are several different models for explaining human social interaction behaviour. Most of them seem to agree that people have preferences for how they do lots of things, but that we're usually pretty good at adapting when circumstances require it.\n\nThe model I got taught was one that classed people as being naturally drawn to one of three styles - leadership, logical thinker, or friend/helper. Leaders usually have to fight for their position, but the rewards can be enticing; but the penalties for failure can be harsh, so it's not a role everyone wants. Thinkers tend to have either a position of influence, or one of isolation, so have to work hard at calculating which of their ideas are likely to be adopted and which will get trashed. Friends are generally able to get along with everyone else, and don't normally create ripples unless something major rattles them.\n\nSo this model supports the idea that there are two types of leader - those who have always sought control because it is what they know and how they feel most comfortable, and those who came up through the ranks and progressed to leadership through graft and expertise.\n\nMany of us have at one time or another felt unhappy under poor leadership, which can act as a spur toward wanting to influence future outcomes. There's an old adage which goes something like: *there's a time for talking and there's a time for doing.*"
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3eq9zm | why when you look sideways at a moniter it looks like a picture negative? | Does it happen on anything other than lcd monitors? Why does it only happen to certain colors? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eq9zm/eli5_why_when_you_look_sideways_at_a_moniter_it/ | {
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"Nope, it's just LCD monitors. LCD stands for \"liquid crystal display\", because there is a layer of an electrically reactive liquid, enclosed in tiny little cells, over the top of the screen. When the liquid is activated, it turns dark, blocking out a pixel of color. As you move to the side, instead of looking straight through the cells, you're looking at them from an angle. As you move further to the side, you start looking through the barrier between the cells as well. When light from the screen hits those walls, it *refracts* - it gets bent at an angle, and the colors no longer line up exactly. The further you go to the side, the more this diffracts the colors away from your eyes, so you don't see them.\n\nLCD manufacturers have worked very hard to fix this issue, and it's hardly noticeable on modern LCDs unless you get way off to the side."
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5onwec | why won't companies like valve make games such as half life 3 which would pretty much guarantee them unimaginable profits? is there another reason for not doing it apart from the risk of it not being that good? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5onwec/eli5_why_wont_companies_like_valve_make_games/ | {
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"Valve is making money hand over fist with Steam. Half Life 3 has impossible expectations to live up to so I'm sure they'll wait until the risk doesn't outweigh the reward. Why risk messing things up right now when they're doing really well?\n\nSquare long ago said they would never remake FF7. They're now remaking FF7 because something about their situation changed and they think it's good for business. That might happen in the future to Valve but there is really no way to tell without waiting for it to happen."
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626noz | why do you always need a resistance in front of a led even if the voltage is lower than the max the led can handle? | Essentially the title.
(Newbie here, sorry for any errors) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/626noz/eli5_why_do_you_always_need_a_resistance_in_front/ | {
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"The issue is that for an LED a small change in voltage can mean a very large change in current. For the resistor a change in voltage produces an equivalent change in current, different from an LED. You can't really know how much current is going through an LED at a given voltage except by testing, so you really need to consider feeding a specific current to the LED rather than a voltage. That is what the resistor does in feeding a specific current to your LED."
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39li8r | why doesn't gravity have an opposite, like the other fundamental forces? | Electromagnetism has positive and negative charges. Strong and Weak nuclear forces seem to come in pairs, as well.
It seems strange to me that gravity works only one direction (pulling objects together). Why doesn't anti-gravity exist?
[Obligatory XKCD link]( _URL_0_)
(Sorry if that title winds up in r/titlegore; I wasn't quite sure how to express what I meant.) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39li8r/eli5_why_doesnt_gravity_have_an_opposite_like_the/ | {
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"Because we have never found a particle with a negative gravitational mass.\n\nCould there be an entire galaxy of negatively charged gravitationally charged particles that repel our matter. Conceivably, but there are a few things that would make this different.\n\nIn E & M like repels like. With gravity we would be requiring that like attract like. That is a little unusual (granted that gravity already does this, but its also not a charge so...).\n\nAdditionally the fact that gravitational mass and inertial mass are the same is currently unexplained. No particles have been found that have an inertial mass that differs from their gravitational mass. Negative gravitational mass particles would throw a wrench in that. Presumably they wouldn't have negative inertial mass... and so now inertial mass=abs(gravitational mass) which raises concerns? Why can't we have inertial mass=1/2 gravitational mass or the like?\n\nThen there are all sorts of difficulties relating to wormholes and time travel and perpetual motion machines and the like:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Gravity is just the manifestation of the curvature of space. Gravitons (particles that convey gravity) might exist, but we haven't found them yet, and assuming they do doesn't help this explanation.\n\nIt's not possible for a human only exposed to a 3D universe to fully grasp higher dimensional curving of space (we can calculate and find what it's like, but we can't visualise it) so I'll go with the standard 2D explanation.\n\nSay you have a flat elastic sheet with ping pong balls on it (assume they're massless). The balls don't move. This is what space would be like if it were flat. Replace the balls with bowling balls. Now they can bend space, and they clump up. This seems like using gravity to explain gravity, but you must remember our gravity is the curving of space. It corresponds to the bending of the sheet. In the model, our real life gravity just allows the set up to work. A bend in space causes clumping. It's just what it does. It's not because of some extradimensional gravity-thing.\n\nTheoretically, you could push up on the sheet and make a mound where objects repel. But that would require an object other than balls. Our universe does not, to our knowledge, contain such objects. Those would be extending poles which could represent antimatter.\n\nIt's worth noting that gravity affects the fabric of space itself. It's causing the universe to slow its expansion. There's also a force (not really a force, but kind of) called dark energy, which causes the continued expansion of the universe. That could be your opposite to gravity. In the same way that gravity causes clumping, dark energy will eventually rip things apart at the subatomic level. But that's only when universal expansion enlarges the distance inside atoms too much. Just like how things get crushed really small when they're close to a strong source of gravity like a neutron star.",
"Gravity is proportional to a thing's energy and the way we've defined energy is that it's not possible to be negative. The gist is that the more energy, the less space there is around the object so it seems like objects get pulled closer.\n\nOther answers tackle the nitty gritty of why it's going on pretty well. But the reason there's no antigravity, at least according to general relativity, is because the definition says so and we've no cases otherwise.\n\nAnd that XKCD is mostly about how we don't have a good quantum model for gravity, which makes it hard to play nice with the rest of standard model physics. It does seem to work differently from the other fundamental interactions, in that it doesn't really have nice, clean quantum bookkeeping to thank. Energy is a relatively complicated thing that arises from a bunch of sources, all of which gravity cares about. Meanwhile the other interactions have a small collection of quantum numbers to describe what's going on and for the most part don't care about one another."
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2p1s7v | why do videos playback/appear smoother on my phone when the brightness is all the way down and the lights are off? | For example. I'll watch a video with lights on, normal brightness. Video appears normally. I watch a video in the dark with normal brightness. Plays normally. Low brightness and lights off, it appears very smooth. Is it something to do with my phone, because my last phone did this as well. Curious, that's all | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p1s7v/eli5_why_do_videos_playbackappear_smoother_on_my/ | {
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"It has more to do with how your brain interprets visual data. The low brightness makes it harder to notice small little hiccups in playback, so you have an easier time perceiving it as smooth motion."
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3o9ic3 | what's wrong with developing downtowns? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o9ic3/eli5whats_wrong_with_developing_downtowns/ | {
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"You'll have to give more details.\n\nWho is saying there is a problem developing downtowns? What are their arguments?\n\nMost people involved in urban design and development would argue that developing downtowns is the best thing that a city or region can do to improve its finances, reduce car congestion, and increase quality of life for residents."
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1q636n | why military forces use standard-capacity magazines for their rifles if there are magazines with much higher capacity? | For example, why military forces use a 30-round STANAG magazine if there's a BETA C-Mag 100-round magazine?
Not only limited to rifles, can also be pistols, machine pistols/submachine guns or basically any magazine-fed military-issue firearms. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q636n/eli5_why_military_forces_use_standardcapacity/ | {
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"Simplicity, low cost and, often overlooked, the means to carry, exchange and manage magazines in the heat of battle would be my guesses. \nVery large capacity mags tend to be bulky and heavy.",
"Standard operating procedure isn't to go full auto on everything - indeed unless you're a machine gunner most militaries would rather you keep to semi-auto and only take shots you actually think will hit.\n\nAlso militaries would generally go with what has even a little bit of an advantage in terms of durability. In WWII German soldiers were often told to only load their rifles with 8 rounds despite it being capable of holding 10. The spring would last longer. Reloading when you know you're running out of shots regularly is a much, much better situation than finding out your gun needs some maintenance with no warning.",
"Large magazines would also potentially unbalance the weapon, are more likely to get in the way, get caught on things, and require greater dexterity when changing whilst under pressure, and--Note that I'm completely guessing here--due to the difference in spring tension between a full magazine and a near empty magazine, potential problems with the bullet feed.",
"It had a lot to do with reliability. There are larger magazines out there, but they can lead to jams. As technology improves they expand the capacity. During Vietnam soldiers carried 20-round magazines. \nThere is also the logistics of fielding higher capacity magazines. You can't just consider the magazines, but also the load carrying equipment, how they fit on a kit, and how they may stick out while on a vest. ",
"There are several reasons.\n\n1-the higher capacity magazines are less reliable and will double feed more often.\n\n\n2-you want to know how many rounds you have left, it's easier to remember within 30 than 100.\n\nWhen I was doing my national service I could reload a magazine in 4.6 seconds. I don't know anyone who needed more than 6. switching mags is easy. you have enough to worry about without trying to remember if you have 42 or 36 rounds left.\n\n\n3-simpler to carry. it's far easier to carry 10 30-round mags than 3 100-round mags.\nThe flat shape means you can have them on your chest/stomach withouth being an annoyance when you're crawling around.\n\n\n4- you have more ammuntion in your backpack, some pockets, etc.\n\n45 seconds is the maximum amount of time you need to refill a 30-round mag by hand, with no quickload systems. I don't mean that as in \"you should be able to do it in 45\", I mean that's the absolute maximum before you no longer qualify for service. (atleast that's the rule in my country)\n\n\n5- most modern military uses rifles with automatic fire, this is never used. Standard use is semi-automatic fire, if you're sure of your shot you shot twice quickly, almost never more than that.\n\nEven machine gun operators only shoot in 4-6 round bursts. spray 'n pray looks cool in movies, in reality it means you just lost a few hundred rounds of ammo.",
"A standard capacity magazine for an AR15 (M16) weighs approximately 2.5 lbs (1kg+). We carry 6-7 in a combat load. That's a lot of weight. Additionally our LBV (Load bearing vest) and magazine pouches are designed to hold standard mags. \n\nAdditionally, we buy them a million at a time."
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3godyn | why is artificial light used to grow plants on iss instead of the sun? | Many of you may have watched a video today of astronauts eating lettuce that they had grown on the International Space Station. Why is it that these plants were grown under artificial LED lights rather than using sunlight? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3godyn/eli5why_is_artificial_light_used_to_grow_plants/ | {
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"If you leave the window shades up all the time, you will heat the inside of the ship up a lot. Additionally, you'd only get light on the plants half the time since you're going around the earth every 90 minutes. Finally, with LEDs you can control the wavelength and intensity of light to optimize growth conditions."
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bz4jtf | how do movies go from the raw footage (film or digital) to 4k? | I’m mostly curious about the process of converting it from its raw form into ultra high quality, especially if the movie is older. But the question also probably applies to DVD and Blu-ray as well. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bz4jtf/eli5_how_do_movies_go_from_the_raw_footage_film/ | {
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"With digital recordings, the raw footage is usually higher quality than 4K (IIRC, 8K is fairly common). For final release, you just render the video in the release quality and write it to the DVD or blu-ray (or digital download/streaming service).\n\nWith film, we're lucky because film is actually very high quality. People tend to think film has low quality because back in film days, the film *duplication and distribution* technologies were not-so-great, making the version in theaters of lower quality. To go from a film recording to a 4K digital video, you essentially put each frame of the film into a digital scanner (like the one in a multifunction printer) and make sure they line up with software. You can optionally use software to remove defects in the film from the digital file. You then send the scanned images off to be written to the DVD, bluray, etc.",
"While it's correct that 4K video is often shot in higher resolution and converted for the final product I think your confusion may come from what makes a RAW image RAW. \n\nRAW means that the image has not yet been processed into a compressed file yet. Essentially the RAW image is all of the data captured by the sensor, and hasn't thrown some out in creating a JPEG. This is why RAW is really only useful for professional or enthusiast use. There is maximum color and light information that can be tweaked. It's not great for your phone or low end digital camera as in those uses having an easily shareable format and less memory use is more advantageous."
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58txje | if fish are cold blooded, how do some species function at depths of over 900 meters where the temperatures are 0-3 degrees celsius? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/58txje/eli5_if_fish_are_cold_blooded_how_do_some_species/ | {
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"Fish have a unique chemistry. It has been determined that often their blood is similar to antifreeze. This makes them able to function at colder temperatures than a lake trout or some similar surface water species.",
"_URL_0_\n\nThis does a pretty good job explaining it. Basically, you will find more unsaturated fats within the cell membrane and proteins/enzymes which function better at lower temperatures. regardless of the temperature, radiation, ph level, ect, as long as specific chemical reactions can take place, they'll be fine ",
"In warm-blooded animals, certain chemical reactions that are part of the metabolism can only occur in a narrow temperature band. In order to keep these reactions working, they have developed a system to keep the body in that temperature range.\n\nFish are cold-blooded, but, more specifically, poikilotherms. This means that they have redundant chemical reactions that are able occur at different temperatures, which means that they can survive in a larger range of temperatures.\n\nThere is another notable type of cold-bloodedness called ectothermia, where the chemical processes only occur in a small temperature range, as with warm-blooded creatures, but the animal relies on external heat sources to maintain that temperature, such as when lizards lie in the sun.\n\nSee the [Wikipedia article on thermoregulation](_URL_0_) for a starting place for more info.",
"Some fish ARE warm blooded. I believe the opah, or moonfish, was the first recognized species."
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21thry | how did the pdf format become so popular? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21thry/eli5how_did_the_pdf_format_become_so_popular/ | {
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"First, there was a need for a way to represent paper online. A PDF is a decent approximation of a paper document as it will print to actual paper without any issues. The PDF is an early example of \"What You See Is What You Get\", or WYSIWYG. This became handy when people would need to send print documents over electronically, as it could be reasonably assumed that the receiver could print it if they could open it.\n\nSecond, Adobe made its reader free. This meant that anyone could read a PDF across different operating systems. So, if you had to create an electronic document that was to be printed, you could safely assume that people would be able to open it via PDF.",
"The acrobat format was developped to be an editable portable format, meaning it could be moved from any PC to any other PC and look the same no matter what operating system, fonts or printers were installed on the system. \n\nBecause it's an editable file and not a fixed picture, it became popular because the files were smaller than jpegs, could be altered, and could be read on just about anything.\n\nPortability is not to be confused with WYSIWYG which had existed for many years prior to PDF popularization. PDF became popular at a time when there were multiple printing formats, word processors, and fonts being passed around, so PDF files fixed these issues and allowed people to send relatively small files to each other when broadband was just starting out but still know that the files would look the same on the destination computer as they did when they were created. So more like what I see is what you see (WISIWYS?). \n\nTo do this, PDF format allows font embedding, image embedding, absolute formatting characters, document level embedded page and document formatting information, and so on.\n\nThen, adobe started distributing a free application which allowed showing and printing PDF files, which further helped make PDF the de facto portable file format. "
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rvebu | explain to me how stocks work, what makes the price go up/down? | I know this question has likely been asked before, but I'm curious: What determines a stocks price, and how does it rise/fall? I want to start investing in some low-cost stocks to get a feel for it, but I'm curious what actually impacts the change, and rise/fall of the price.
thank you in advance! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/rvebu/eli5_explain_to_me_how_stocks_work_what_makes_the/ | {
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"Also, you can think about companies like cows, and buying stock like buying part of a cow (and buying part not in the sense of the tail of the hooves, but owning a certain portion of the money the cow generates). The cow can make you money in two ways:\n\n1) Whenever the cow is milked the owners of the cow can give you some of the money they get by selling the milk (this money is called dividends). alternatively, the rancher can choose to use some, or even all, of that money to improve the value of the cow, maybe by feeding the cow better food or having a veterinarian give it a check up (retained earnings). You may be okay with not getting even of the milk money if you trust the rancher to use that money wisely to increase the value of the cow (Apple's cow is worth a TON of money despite the fact that, until recently, they never paid out any of their milk money to investors).\n\n2) At some point the cow can be sold (the company can be bought out) and you will be payed based on what percentage of the cow you own. Even if the whole cow is not sold, you can sell your portion of the cow to someone else if you want. \n\nThe value of the cow, and therefore your portion of the cow is decided by a couple things. First, the basic attributes of the cow are important. Is it a healthy cow? Does it produce a lot of milk? Does it produce good milk that people like to drink? Is it likely to grow in the future? How does it compare to other cows that are similar to it? These kind of things are the cow's (or company's) fundamentals.\nIn a perfect world, the price of the cow would perfectly reflect everything that you, or anyone else knows about the cow.\n\nSecond, what people think about your cow, and cows in general affects the price of the cow. Is there a mad cow scare brewing? Is veganism in fashion? Or on the positive end maybe you're expecting a hot summer where a lot more people than usual will want to barbeque hamburgers, or maybe you know of a new beef-based diet that you think will become all the rage and expect the value of your cow to increase. These kinds of things are the \"behavioral\" aspects of the price of your cow (or stock) and are important too, but much harder to see or measure.\n\n",
"A share of stock is the right to receive a portion of the profits of a corporation, registered in the company's official list of stockholders. A corporation is a special type of business structure recognized by the law. When a corporation is started, a number of people (or other corporations) provide the money that's used to start the company. Those people are given stock shares in exchange for their money; those who put up more money get more shares than those who put less.\n\nGiving those initial investors shares of stock in exchange for the money is really just a formal way of recording the fact that since these guys are the ones who put up the money to start the business, they are the ones who should be paid if the company profits.\n\nThere are two ways a stockholder can get paid by the corporation:\n\n* The corporation makes a cash payment to each of its stockholders. This payment is called a dividend, and the amount is a fixed number per share, so people who own more shares get a bigger payment.\n* The corporation is liquidated; it goes out of business, everything that the corporation owns is sold off, all of the corporations debts are paid off, and the remaining money is split among the stockholders, each getting an amount proportional to the number of shares they own.\n\nIn either case, when the coroporation must pay out money, it uses the official list of shareholders and how much they own to figure out who to pay and how much to pay each of them.\n\nThose are the most basic facts about stocks. The buying and selling is a bit more complex than this, but not that much. The first thing to say about that is that the corporation's shareholders are not obligated to remain shareholders forever. They can, if they wish, sell any amount of the stock that they have to anybody else, at whatever price the seller and the buyer agree on. When the sale happens, the corporation is notified of it, and it changes its records to reflect that the seller sold that number of shares to the buyer; that way the corporation knows, in case of a dividend or liquidation, to pay the new guy instead of the original guy.\n\nStock selling and buying exists because society wants to make it easy for people to provide the money to start corporations: if giving some of my money to start a corporation meant that I had no way of getting any of my money back in 10 years, I would be much less willing to do so, because I may have an emergency that requires me to spend that money before then. If I can sell my stock at any time, then the risk is not as large.\n\nBut the fact that I can sell my stock to somebody else doesn't mean that they will pay me exactly the same amount as I paid for it originally. The amount that the buyer should pay, if they are rational, is based on these things:\n\n1. The value of all of the stuff the corporation owns, minus the all the money the corporation owes. This is called the \"book value.\"\n2. Their guess at how much profit the corporation is going to make in the future.\n\nIf the company has made profits since you bought the stock (making the book price go up) and the buyer is confident that the future profits will be good, they will likely be willing to pay more for the stock than what you paid for it. In that case, you sell at a profit. If the company has been losing money, or the buyer thinks that the future profits don't look very good, then they won't be willing to pay as much, and you may only be able to sell for less than you first paid.\n\nWe're almost done. The next thing to add is that our society, since it wants to make it easy for people to start corporations, has created institutions dedicated to making it possible to buy and sell stocks quickly and easily. These are the public stock exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the NASDAQ. These exchanges, put simply, are just places where people who want to sell or buy stocks can go meet each other and agree on the price. Except that you don't actually have to go there and meet anybody: you just tell a stock broker that you want to buy (or sell) the amount you want of the stock you want at the price you want, and they use the stock exchange to find another person who wants to sell that amount of the same stock at a compatible price. As sales happen throughout the day, they publish the price that each stock most recently sold for. You can look up these prices online.\n\nThe last thing: society isn't as smart and rational as the above makes it sound. The stock market is full of people making mistakes of all kinds. People often overestimate or underestimate how much profit a company will make in the future, and then either pay too much to buy its stock, or sell it for too low of a price when they should have kept it. Or even worse: once in a while, the management of a corporation will lie about its profits, people who believe the lies will pay too much for the stock, and they will lose money. So over short periods of time, whether a stock is going up or down doesn't really mean a lot; a company that's not going to do that well may see its price go up a lot because a lot of people think it will do super-well, or the opposite.\n\nBut 10 to 20 years from now, it will be pretty obvious which of today's companies did well and which did badly; the stock prices of the good companies will have gone up to reflect that, and the bad ones will go down. So over the long term, stock prices go up or down because the company did well or badly. In the short term, it's a random mix of people's often misguided opinions.",
"read as socks. was dissapoint.",
"Since this is ELI5, let's do it playground style. If this seems patronizing, then you probably aren't really five. :-)\n\nImagine Susie opens a lemonade stand. She sets it up like this: In order to buy the lemons, and the sugar, and the magic marker to make her sign, she offers all the kids a chance to share in owning her stand. Anyone can buy 1/20th of it a buck. She is going to sell 10 shares, each worth a tenth of her whole business, for a dollar apiece. She will then keep the other ten shares.\n\nSusie gets out her notebook and writes 20 \"ownership\" certificates and signs each one. she keeps half of them for herself, then sells the rest to kids for a dollar apiece.\n\n(Please be aware that each share of the lemonade stand is *indivisible* - it's 1/20th of everything all at once; not, say, three lemons and the stirring spoon. )\n\nA few days later and Susie's stand is doing great. But now Jimmy wants to go buy some Nerds and he needs his dollar back. He offers to sell his share back to Susie. She declines the offer. Jenny says she will buy it for a dollar, though - she wouldn't mind owning two shares instead of one, and has a dollar in her pocket.\n\nHowever, Rudy overhears. He likes how Susie makes her lemonade and was absent the day she sold the shares. He wants in on the business. So he offers Jimmy $2 for his certificate. Jenny counters with $2.50; Rudy ups his offer to $3, and buys Jimmy's share.\n\nOver the two weeks, Susie's lemonade stand does very well. Everybody wants to own a piece of the business. Shares are hard to come by, as nobody seems to want to sell. But if a buyer offers enough, even a reluctant seller will be found. Jordan buys a share from Jenny (who now owns three) for $6.\n\nThen people begin to notice that Susie's sales are slipping. It's getting colder. Fall is coming. Nobody wants lemonade. People start to think that maybe the lemonade train has passed. When Timmy wants to sell a share he bought for $4 the best he can get for it is $2. A week later, Bobbi can't find a buyer for her share for even a dollar. And Jordan, unhappy child, sells her share for 50 cents, a loss of $5.50.\n\nThis little illustration didn't touch on stock splits or dividends, but I think it covers the basic reason prices go up or down. But keep in mind, the real stock market is not a perfect playground. Stocks may move for irrational reasons - deceit and fraud, rumors and manic speculation among them. Good stocks will decline in a falling market, and bad stocks will rise during a bubble.\n\n\n"
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3w8nq0 | why do all big music artist's youtube channel's names end with vevo? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3w8nq0/eli5_why_do_all_big_music_artists_youtube/ | {
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"\"Youtube/Google was in danger of being sued by Sony Music/UMG music. To prevent a potentially devastating lawsuit, Google's CEO (at the time) Eric Schmidt made a deal with Doug Morris, CEO of Sony Music, to build a parallel video platform based on YouTube tech where Sony could control the monetization settings and sell their own ads. Vevo V1 was basically a shell website that hosted an embedded YouTube player which in turn loaded Vevo's own ad module at runtime. This allowed YouTube to keep the music video content, provided a link was present to the 'official' Vevo page (effectively, a rebranded YouTube page.) The videos were still hosted on YouTube.\n\nSource: I was a YouTube software engineer who worked on the Vevo launch.\n\nEdit: Wow, this thread really blew up! I'm a bit amazed at the sheer amount of nastiness lobbed at my inbox, but I guess that's par for the course on the internet. As far as my opinions on YouTube's changes since I left: they're completely inconsequential. YouTube costs a ridiculous amount to run and provides a pretty amazing platform for free video hosting. It's a rare day I don't search YouTube myself or get directed to a YouTube link by a friend or colleague. Whatever your beef with it, I can assure you that if that beef were strong enough to force a decline in viewership Google would be making changes tout de suite. I'm afraid I can't help all that have asked how to increase their channel's visibility, make more revenue, get Sergey Brin's phone number, etc.\n\nAs far as working at Google/doing an AMA: I think that subject has been covered pretty extensively and I'm not sure I have much to add to that conversation. My path to becoming a software engineer was pretty atypical, so I'm afraid I don't have much career advice to offer either. I suppose if you want to follow my lead: spend a good long while in art school, play in a lot of bands, and read everything you can get your hands on dealing with software development.\n\nSilicon Valley loves a disruptor. If you really think YouTube has lost the plot, and that your UI/video player ideas are superior, start working on your website! The worst that could happen is that you learn a ton about web/software development and perhaps get a better understanding of what makes hosting/serving video at Google scale such a challenge. The best that could happen? Ask Steve Chen and Chad Hurley.\n\nEdit again: Reddit gold! I feel as though I have now truly arrived. Thank you kindly jlota. I honestly had no idea Vevo was this contentious of a subject, but I'm glad I could answer a few questions.\"\n\nCredit: extuber\n"
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tnju9 | ] what is the volcker rule, and how does it operate? | I understand its made to make speculative banking harder to do, and separate the "consumer" and "investment" banking.
But.. how, and what exactly does this rule do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/tnju9/elif_what_is_the_volcker_rule_and_how_does_it/ | {
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"So, it's actually really simple but the formal legislation is so complicated because of politicians.\n\nIt means that banks that take deposits (Like JPMorganChase) cant participate in proprietary trading. What is prop trading? It's basically trades that are purely for JPMorgans books/profits (basically, what a hedge fund does). Banks like JPMorgan should be making money from client trades and things like that, not taking on risk for their own accounts."
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3dscsf | do planets get smaller with time? | Does it get smaller with time with some kind of erosion and so it's fated to become dust at some point?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dscsf/eli5do_planets_get_smaller_with_time/ | {
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"Just the opposite, actually. Continuous meteor impacts make planets gain mass over time. Eventually though all suns explode, and the planets around them scatter to dust."
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2y8a7r | why are spell checkers still not aware of grammatical issues? | It seems that we now have very good AI in many language-related domains (e.g. translation). Why isn't there more grammar-aware spell checkers and even style enhancers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y8a7r/eli5why_are_spell_checkers_still_not_aware_of/ | {
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"Complexity.\n\nHere's a computer's spell checking algorithm.\n\n For each word in document\n If word does not appear in dictionary\n highlight it\n compare closest word matches based on percentage and position of letters\n include mouseover window or other view to show and allow selection of alternate suggestions\n end if\n next word\n\nI'm not going to do grammar's equivalent because it's way too long, but\n\n* you have to look at sentences now, including punctuation, capitalization, and phrasing;\n\n* words now have to be examined in relationship to each other, not one at a time;\n\n* you now have to worry about consistency, such as if this list is separated by \";\", or \".\", or nothing at all; \n\n* grammar rules can be very complex, particularly in longer sentences, and false positives or missed negatives are very easy; and\n\n* even a decently phrased sentence with good grammar doesn't necessarily convey its intended point clearly, but people might expect a grammar engine to deal with that. \n\n**TL;DR: Spellchecking is simple, grammar-checking is very hard.**"
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3jvf5d | why is addition so much easier to do than subtraction in your head? | Maybe it's just me and the select group of people I've spoken with, but everyone seems to agree that addition is so much easier to do in your head than subtraction. Is there a reason for this?
When I do have to do subtraction, I usually end up just switching the numbers and making it an addition problem. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jvf5d/eli5_why_is_addition_so_much_easier_to_do_than/ | {
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"Practice. I noticed this when I was a kid, too. And noticed teachers always gave more add/multiply homework than subtract/divide, which seemed (still does) backwards to me."
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23ujqx | as a british person who has never used or had dealings with comcast, what is so bad about them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23ujqx/eli5_as_a_british_person_who_has_never_used_or/ | {
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"text": [
"poor customer service, along with abysmal Internet performance during peak hours. and now you can't choose anything else because Comcast is exclusive to your area. I'm sure other people will have more elaborate stories, however I'm fresh out currently ",
"Some background for the US. The UK used to have a state telecoms supplier, British Telecom(BT). Being state run it was very inefficient, they used to run ads telling people not to make too many phone calls, there were waiting lists for phone lines and you were only allowed one type of telephone.\n\nIn the 80s BT was privatised and became a PLC - however they still had a monopoly. When the first ISP's started up you still needed a BT phone line to dial up and when ADSL was introduced you were still connecting to BT equipment and networks before eventually connecting to the ISPs network.\n\nThe government sought to end this monopoly by introducing Local Loop Unbundling(LLU) This forced BT to allow other operators to install thier own cabling and equipment in the exchanges. As a result of this competition the UK has faster and cheaper broadband than the United States.\n\nFrom what I understand, in a lot of states private companies still have a monopoly like BT did in the 80s, therefore there is no pressure to increase speeds or lower prices",
"They increase their prices several times a year with no warning and provide no additional benefit for the ever increasing price.",
"[This minute and a half long silly YouTube video is actually a really great explanation of the Cable Industry here in the US](_URL_0_)",
"Comcast is shitty because they can simply get away with it due regional monopolies. These monopolies exist for a few reasons:\n1. Comcast does not have to lease their lines if they don't want to. This means that if a new provider wants to start up in the area, they have to spend a ton of money building out all new infrastructure. As you can imagine, this costs a lot.\n2. When a new provider wants to build out in an area (at least this is how it is in PA), they have to get township approval for each township they want to build in. This may not sound too bad, but Comcast has some sort of agreement with some townships where they won't give approval for competitors to build out in an area or attach huge costs to the build out.\n3. Comcast also has an agreement with some apartment complexes where they are the only cable provider allowed in the complex. This means that even if a provider like FiOS is avaialble next door, you won't be able to get it as your complex won't allow it. Some of these complexes even ban satellite dishes! (mainly due to aesthetics)\nIn areas where Comcast does have competition, they are a bit better, but not by much.\n\nComcast's techs are also poorly trained for the most part. I have a TiVo and have yet to have a pleasant experience trying to get a cablecard activated through them (even when using the cablecard hotline!). The techs that come to install the service are also very rude and do not clean up after themselves. The last time I had a tech out to install in an old apartment, he left cable clippings all over the floor. My dog then proceeded to try to eat them. I have vowed to never let a tech in my house again, this was 3 years ago. Comcast also insists on sending a tech out to your building for very minor issues (including simply installing a cablebox) and then charging you upwards of $65 for the visit.\n\nAs another person mentioned, their price hikes are a huge pain. I signed up for a $50 a month plan that is basically only internet an 10 TV channels (the cheapest plan you can sign up for basically). I knew after 6 months, it would go up to $65 a month. However, hidden in the fine print, there was another price increase to $85 a month! This is for basic 25/5mbit service and only 10 HD TV channels (basically broadcast TV). I had to cancel my service and sign up in my girlfriends name in order to get to a more reasonable price of $70 for the same internet and 45 HD channels with HBO. This also forced another call to the cablecard activation line, which took me a full week to get activated...\n\nI think that is enough for now, I am getting kind of pissed off just thinking about all the troubles I've had with them.",
"They're essentially an overly expensive, occasionally frustrating nuisance. I have basic cable (no movie channels or what they consider \"upper level\" channels, i.e., I get Discovery/Travel but not Nat Geo) and I rent a modem from them for internet. I pay something like $140 a month the last time I checked. That's for one cable box, it'd be more if I had two. The internet fee is something like $50 of that amount. Also, for me this price does NOT include phone service, as I have no land line phone in my place. So $200 a month for people is probably fairly normal for basic services.\n\nTV acting wonky? Getting someone on the phone is a trick in itself, as the automated system can be brutal. You're going to wait on the phone for half an hour at least, and they 100% of the time are going to tell you to unplug it and plug it back in. 100% of the time. Or, they will send a re-set signal to the box which occasionally works. \n\nNot resolved? They'll send a guy out to service your equipment. Someday. They will tell you the guy will be there between 2-5pm, or something. He'll be there at 6. But you'll leave your job at noon just in case he's there. But your internet doesn't work, which is why the guy is coming out, so you sit there annoyed and bored. They will assess the situation and then likely say they need to come back with a new modem or box or whatever. Oh, it's not in the truck. Why? No idea. Too easy?\n\nAside from that they're usually either the biggest more reliable network in some areas, or the only one. So you're stuck with them. Prices can be unpredictable. Ultimately I suspect if it wasn't so pricey people might not expect as much, or be so annoyed with shoddy customer service.",
"Comcast has in iron grip on politics in the US, which is my primary problem with them. They spend billions on lobbyists and buying out government officials. They have way too much power as a company, which is terrible because they dont care about the average consumer whatsoever.\n\nThey lie about their service a lot, and I notice my service getting throttled *constantly.* I'm talking on the daily. I haven't gotten the service that I've paid for (which I'm over-paying for on top of that) since day one. I'm supposed to be getting 25Mbps, and even when there is only one device connected to the internet, I'm lucky to get 15, its typically only 10 though. I've called them several times, and every time I do, they run me through this same routine of resetting my router, (which they provided us with, promising that the router can handle the bandwidth) changing my wi-fi password, and a few other debugging processes, and I may get 25 Mbps for a few hours, but then they start throttling my services again.\n\nBeyond that, there is simply no competition with Comcast in my area, so i really don't have a choice but to let Comcast fuck me.\n\n",
"Former comcast user here. Comcast is expensive for the speeds you want. As a new user, you will normally get 6 months to 12 months at a discounted rate which makes just internet service almost palatable. \n\nHowever, after that period, rates go up. They also force you to have a set-top in your house for cable, even if it's just the local channels. If you choose NOT to have this, you must pay an additional $10 a month. There are taxes and fees for this too.\n\nTheir uptime is bad. At my last apartment, I had to power cycle the damned router every few days. Maybe this sounds like an OK annoyance, but I assure you when you work all day and just want to spend an hour or two gaming, watching netflix, etc - it's a major annoyance. \n\nTheir speeds just aren't that great. If you pay for high end speeds over 50Mbps, you're probably paying out the nose for it. My bill after taxes etc was normally 70+ a month for 35Mbps. Not so hot.\n\nNow I have FioS at my latest residence, and while the uptime has been much better, and the speed-bill ratio more fair, they censor and degrade content/connections as they try to extort more money from content providers such a Netflix and Youtube.\n\nIt's amazing how I cannot watch any youtube videos on a 75Mbps connection. They just stutter, lag, try to reload, oops - another ad! - and shit themselves. All this for a 5 minute clip. _URL_0_ too. Netflix used to load faster than the progress meter would show. Now I watch each percentage tick by.\n\nFunny - if I use a VPN, things just magically start working again! But it's definitely my computer, my router choice, etc when I call to waste my time with Verizon. I ditched their cell service and couldn't be happier. If I could find an alternative to their internet I would. The fact is my work depends on the uptime and speed and there are no alternatives. \n\nWe're in dire need of immediate competition in the broadband market but there are no major players who can deliver quick enough due to infrastructure costs. If someone made a start-up in my neighborhood I would gladly consider them in a heartbeat.",
"I'm on sky in the UK, I'm on 12mb broadband for £2 per month as a customer loyalty discount. I pay another £35 a month for line rental and 200+ channels of TV, free WiFi access in public as well. Now I know 10mb isn't the fastest in the world but its reliable (not had to reset my router in over a year or had an outage) and I can still download a 1gb movie in less than an hour. I always thought from watching TV back in the day that the USA was the place to be for home entertainment. I guess not.",
"Let me explain it with one simple statistic. On average a Comcast customer will call into their support center once a month. Now imagine you and the millions of customers they have having to spend an hour a month on the phone to get their internet service fixed. Add onto that price gouging, local monopolization, and the bribing of government officials and you see why they're hated.",
"As a fellow Brit, imagine if the whole country could only get it's phone and internet through Virgin Media cables. Nobody else was allowed to supply it. You'd just have to put up with crappy service, because without competition they have no reason to improve. That's the basic situation in some parts of the US.",
"If you find the episode of south park where they make fun of Comcast, that sums it up nicely.",
"A sub-ELI5 on this topic, why does the United States pride itself on capitalism, but let companies like Comcast exist?",
"Comcast is like a big ramming machine and the only thing its good at ramming is your anus. ",
"Can't speak for everyone else but: \n\nI had comcast and I quit their service and turned in their equipment. A few months later, I get a bill for the equipment, plus the back pay for the service they were providing since (apparently, if you don't turn in the equipment, the service (and payments) continue). I called them and explained that I turned it in, and they assured me that they would resolve it. \nIt's been a year now, and probably a dozen phone calls. I have a ding on my credit for over a thousand dollars as they refuse to believe that I turned in the equipment and I refuse to pay them for something I don't have. ",
"South Park season 17 episode 2 \"Informative Murder Porn\" does a great job of satirizing cable companies. ",
"They aren't all that bad, but it WIDELY varies by area. Their support is universally hated though. \n \nSome Tips: \nDownload the app \"Fast Customer\" from the app store. No more navigating phone menu's. No more waiting on hold for hundreds of companies.\n \nIf you have any technical savvy, head over to DSL Reports and make an account. They have an official Comcast support forum with pretty good response times, Post before you go to work, and have a viable answer by the time you get home.\n \nPlay the billing game. I have not paid over $55 a month for 50down 10up internet EVER. Call up, go right to cancellations (same goes when you have an unresolvable issue with your service. You state you are going to cancel because such and such isn't fixed and you are sick of it, they can get a lot more done for you than the support rep. BTW there is never a wait and it's always an American). \n \n\"How can I help you today\" \nI'd like to cancel my service. \n\"Sorry to hear that sir, may I ask why\" \nI am having Uverse installed on Friday (I don't even have uverse available in my area) \nThey argue why their service is better and you say you are just looking at price vs performance. \n\"Oh, well I can give you your current service for $39.95 for 12 months\" \nSounds good, thanks. \n \nBuy your own modem, an idiot could set it up and they are usually better models than Comcast installs. I have a Zoom 5341j, $66 on Amazon right now to avoid a $7 a month fee. \n \nGood Luck! I have had resounding success for nearly a decade.",
"they turned me into a newt",
"I can give an example. First you need to understand that in each area there usually only is one cable company, you basically get that company for cable or you don't get cable (there are satellite options but many towns and apartment buildings have restrictions on satellite dishes) and for internet cable is usually the fastest option so usually you just take the cable.\n\nMy brother was in the state of New Jersey and he notice his cable bill went up (again). Since it had just gone up a couple months before, he looked into it and he saw a new fee (which comcast words so that at first glance you might think it's a tax... they do this a lot \"government regulatory fee\" and things like that). At the time he was in journalism school so he decided to call them up and ask what the deal was. They informed them that the state had recently started imposing a fine on the company in areas where there was no competition (DSL, etc.) and that's why their's a fee. His response...\n\n\"So let me get this straight. You're a monopoly, I don't have any other choice as to who to get cable/internet from in my area. Correct?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And you make a lot of money because of that and the state has decided to fine you for that?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And so you're passing that fine on to me?\"\n\n\"Yes. Have a nice day.\"",
"Absolutely terrrrrible customer service, BUT they do make up for it occasionally. I've had Comcast for years because unfortunately it is the fastest I can get. We recently switched from having just the internet to having both internet and phone. Later, we realized the price was much higher than it should be. We called, and they fixed the bill. Great, good job Comcast! Few days later I notice my internet is slow as shit. I call, guy tells me it's an outdated modem. Doesn't make sense. I repeatedly ask. He INSISTS that it just went obsolete and it needs to be changed. It's midday Saturday so I'd have to wait until Monday to get a new Modem from them. I go buy one. Doesn't work. Call, next lady tells me the first guy was full of shit and they actually downgraded my plan from 30mbps to one of their lowest at like, 3 when they lowered my bill the first time. I bitch, they give me 2 years of their Blast 50mbps internet for the price of the lowest plan. Took 4 more calls and more confusion because the lady who told me that didn't actually change it to 50, but I finally got it. I still fucking despise Comcast, but they hooked me up this time.\n\ntl;dr: Comcast fucked me over a couple times. Fixed it by giving me their fastest internet for 2 years for the price of their slowest. Still hate the fuckers.",
"Run a home-based business and have Comcast. Apparently a squirrel had chewed through our wires last month. Took Comcast 3 weeks to come out. Their customer service system is complete SHIT. Their dumbass protocol for technicians to call before they knock on your door is fucking stupid. Apparently, they kept getting the wrong number. We would call and tell them the right number, they would say they changed it. Once we got extremely pissed off and said we're going to switch ISPs. AT & T was the other choice... slower internet for more money, are you kidding me? Before the time that the techies would come out, I would call the automated systems to confirm.\n\nEventually I logged into my account and noticed a wrong contact number (Although both our phone numbers are on the same account). After all that bullshit of them changing the fucking numbers, I decided to change it on the website. They called, they came out. We had to go to McDonalds to conduct business, and all they wanted to compensate for lost of time was six fucking dollars. \n\nI was ready to get $6 dollars from my wallet, attach it to a brick and head down to the Comcast HQ in my area, and throw that shit through their window. They want to cost us our time and our money than I'll cost them theirs! Fucking pieces of shit. FUCK COMCAST FUCK YOU PIECES OF SHIT. I HOPE YOUR CABLES RUST IN HELL.",
"Where to start. Okay, here goes:\n\n1) they are a near-monopoly. While this in and of itself is bad, it goes further than that. Comcast's near-monopoly (which will become a true monopoly after the Time Warner Cable merger) means it does not a) feel compelled to offer competitive prices and b) does not feel compelled to improve its service. Which brings me to #2:\n\n2) Worst customer service experience ever. And I am not the only one to say so; Comcast is ranked *lowest* in customer satisfaction across the US. For several years running. They hike bills and blame it on 'infrastructure upgrades' but really drag their feet on fiber optics and other **real** improvements. The fact is that Comcast (and its evil twin; if Comcast is the Gatekeeper then TWC is the Keymaster and getting those two kids together would be an incredibly bad idea.) hold a complete monopoly over the lines, pipes, and other infrastructure in the towns in which they operate because they make shady deals - or sometimes just financially blackmail - local municipalities into agreeing to hand these parts of the city over. Which leads me to #3\n\n3) They kill competition. Smaller start-up companies which theoretically *should* exist in a \"Capitalist\" economy are either bought out, forced out, or priced out by Comcast & TWC. The only exception is Google Fiber which has the money (thanks to Google's other businesses) to lay its own infrastructure (thus bypassing #2 above) **and** offer really, really good speeds at really, really low prices (see #1 above). But, Google Fiber is only offered in a literal handful of places - less than 2% of the market thus far - and so it is a distant, poor competitor. Comcast and TWC are afraid, however, of Google or municipalities taking control over information flow and have taken moves to true to quash competition **before** it gets off the ground.\n\nSee:\nCustomer Satisfaction: _URL_0_\n\nTWC v. Google in Austin, TX: _URL_2_\n\nSmall Kansas Town v. Cable Companies' lobbyists: _URL_1_",
"Its mostly how they work. Service price fluctuates like the ocean, customer service is pretty much \"Oh you already bought our services? Ok fuck you, we have your cash\". The boxes break down and lose signal CONSTANTLY. Which results in a 2 hour conversation with customer service that ultimately results in them disconnecting you 3 consecutive times. \n\nThen when they do come to fix it, they never replace the box as they should, just fix it long enough for the maintenance guy to leave the how and drive away before your box shorts out again. Internet sucks, and is expensive. Channels are limited more and more by the day.\n\nEvery aspect of the company is pretty much shit.",
"I've been living in Boston the last year and was really happy with Verizon. Customer service was great, speeds pretty close to advertised and never had one outage in service. I am moving back to Philadelphia and my location doesn't have Fios. I am dreading having to deal with Comcast's poor service, and constant outages again. ",
"Here's a fun example.\n\nA few months ago, Comcast shut off my service. The first thing I did was check my latest bill. It wasn't due for another week.\n\n When I called to ask why I was cut off, all of their billing numbers redirected me to an automated system. This system said that that I was delinquent on my payment, and that I had to pay it immediately before I could speak to an account representative to ask what the fee was for.\n\nAfter a while, I decided to ask a friend of mine for help. He suggested that I call and pretend to be a new customer and ask to be transferred to the billing department. Luckily, that worked, and I finally got a hold of the billing department. The billing rep I spoke to refused to look at my account and kept suggesting payment options (as I'm sure she was trained to do). After about 10 minutes of this, she finally gave in, looked at my account and just said, \"Oh, it looks like your payment isn't late after all. I'll turn your services back on.\"\nSo after nearly 3 hours of frustration, I finally had my internet service back. \n\nAbout 2 weeks later I got another bill from Comcast, and it had about $25 worth of late payment fees and reactivation fees.\n\nTL;DR : Comcast shut off my service for no reason. I had to lie to sneak my way into billing to get it back. They charged me $25 for their mistake.",
"Long-time Comcast customer here. Let me just tell you a few of my stories. I feel like every Comcast customer has some of these.\n\n- When I first got hooked up, they didn't shut off the TV from the previous resident. I paid the internet price until I called one day about being double-billed (oh yeah, they double bill you sometimes) and they said \"hey you have TV\" and informed me that I now owed them for 4 months of TV service that I wasn't aware existed.\n\n- They garbled my name on my account, *badly*. Like if my name was Smith they would have written Sithmrgh. This used to cause my credit card payments to fail. They could not change the account name, according to them.\n\n- The \"new customer\" pricing is the only reasonable price, and you should effectively never pay the \"normal\" rate that kicks in after 6-12 months... But you have to call and sit on hold for about an hour every time your bill changes in order to keep getting a decent price. I've had to do this a total of 6 or 7 times now. It never gets better.\n\n- I pay for a speed tier called \"Blast\", and mostly get it. Every time I call for any reason, they tell me I'm not on the right plan and try to put me on a more expensive one. I have to threaten to cancel to prevent this. Every. Time.\n\n- They regularly send me letters, *addressed to my name*, telling me about this amazing offer they want to extend *to me personally*. When I call, that offer isn't available for me, but wouldn't it be great to add TV services for only $10* more per month?!? *Introductory rate, rises to $49.99/mo after 6 mos.\n\n- I had outages constantly for months after I moved. They sent out technicians who were totally clueless and arrived whenever they damn well pleased, several times. The issue was finally resolved by reading other customer complaints online and realizing my modem was trash.\n\n- So I bought a new modem and took the old one back to their facility. The lady at the desk informed me that I didn't have a modem rental on my account (which was odd, since I was being billed for one.) She took the modem anyway. I demanded a receipt, which she grudgingly gave me. I was still being billed for modem rental on my next bill. I called to complain, and they informed me that I had never returned my modem. I explained that I had and gave them the transaction ID from my receipt. They had no record of it. I spent the next 90 minutes escalating to useless person after useless person until I finally found someone who just said \"fuck it\" and took the modem off my account.\n\nIt goes on, and on, and on like this. If I could switch, I would do so instantly, but they're a local monopoly.",
"i pay 25€ for a service similar to tivo i think, plus unlimited phone calls (land line) and 100mbps internet. sup",
"unpopularopinionpuffin.jpeg \n\nAfter a handful of years with Comcast internet service at work and at home, in 3 different major metropolitan cities, Ive never had a single problem or complaint with Comcast.\n\nNot even one. \n\n(Not to mention I signed up during a promotion and got that price-locked going on 4-5? years now)",
"Oh your poor inbox...",
"The price advertised will be about 1/3 higher on the bill because of hidden fees like a modem rental. Have your own modem? Ok, you'll get charged an additional fee for not using their modem. The prices WILL raise frequently and with no warning. Notice it after the bill is send and want to cancel? Too bad, you owe for this month. Pay for super fast internet? You won't get it. You'll call and complain and they'll say \"That is your *peak* speed, not constant.\" Oh and the modem we provide can't handle that speed of Internet. You'll have to upgrade. For a fee. Get fed up and decide you don't want it anymore? There is no other option. ",
"You might not have had contact with Comcast but if you have had contact with genital herpes then you will definitely understand.",
"Some years ago the FCC decided against regulating the cable companies in the same manner as phone services. That means they aren't compelled to rent the physical infrastructure - the \"last mile\" of cable to their competitors. Unlike the UK and much of Europe. So there's a very high barrier of entry to other isps. They have to lay their own infrastructure (e.g. Google Fiber). So instead of having half a dozen or more isps to pick from, there's usually only one or two services available. This lack of competition means Americans typically have poor service.",
"Comcast is just one of many strings of shitty companies in the US who charge outrageous amounts of money for subpar services that they don't care about supporting or improving.\n\nCompared to the rest of the world, these companies are raking in profits hand over fist, yet we're nowhere near having the fastest speeds that we should.\n\nThey're always ranked worst in customer service since their tech support rarely knows anything behind resetting your modem, and if that doesn't work, scheduling someone to come out 3 days later. There's no, \"You're having an issue? Let's figure it out and fix it now\" sense about them at all.\n\nBut all other ISPs are like this, so it's not just Comcast. Comcast just keeps getting bigger and fails to provide customers with what they deserve.\n\nImagine every source of food was a McDonald's clone. And you were forced to pick between shit and shittier. That's what our ISPs are like (and mobile carriers)",
"bottom line is they lie to you. You don't get the internet access that you pay for. \nOh, and then there are all the bullshit fees. \n\nOh, and then there is all the anti-trust laws they are violating.\n\nOh, and then there is the disgusting lobbying power.",
"Comcast is to cable TV as The Sun is to journalism, except, you have no choice but to not read anything at all unless you read The Sun.\n\nNow imagine there are only 2 newspapers available, The Sun and The Daily Mail, and they plan to merge, that's the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger.",
"Quite honestly, I have Comcast, and their service is absolutely great. Everything is nice and reliable. The only thing that is bad about them is their merging with Time Warner Cable that will create a monopoly with their prices, making everyone pissed off except for the executives in the black suits.",
"I'm on TWC, not Comcast, but i could show you a video of what loading a YouTube video is like here. Or i could show you a jpg of a YouTube video player with the little spinning circle icon and tell you to stare at it for ten minutes because that would be the same thing.\n\nBut hey, if i go to _URL_0_ i test at 30mbps download so i've got that going for me, which is nice.",
"Imagine BT didn't have Virgin to compete with them.",
"This will probably get buried but I'll chime in with my Comcast story. I was moving three weeks ago and called Comcast a week ahead of time to transfer my service because we need internet at home for work and couldn't have a gap in service. The guy on the phone told me it would be a $50 fee for bad credit, plus a $66.95 installation fee. I said I would just set up my modem and router myself because I couldn't afford that, and he proceeded to argue with me and tell me it would never work and that I would have to have a Comcast guy come out to set it up.\n\nI assured him I knew how to set it up and he was really rude to me. He then tried to get me to get cable (I don't have a TV, and told him this..he kept going) and a landline. I told him no thank you about the landline and he went off, berating me with questions for what I would do if there was an emergency and cell towers went down.\n\nI was on the phone with him for over an hour and he wouldn't stop telling me that I was wrong and wouldn't have internet so I finally hung up. I moved, set up my router, called again, and asked them to flip the switch. It worked. Internet with no ridiculous fee.\n\nBasically they try to squeeze money out of you wherever they can for absolutely no reason.",
"[South Park also has a good take on it.](_URL_0_)\n",
"They are literally 9/11 times Hitler.\n\nEvery cable company is the same though. They have a service that people need, and want at a fixed price for an unlimited amount. So there's a conflict. So OK, we can't have that... we have to at some level pay by use, we get that.\n\nThe real kick in the nuts is that the way they break out their services is always designed to fuck you, and then fuck you again. And they treat you like you're a cunt, get them on the phone takes hours and when you finally talk to someone they try to be about as helpful as a rape victim would be to his rapist.\n\nIf they ever fuck up or if your service ever goes out, they just treat you like you're some sort of sub-human gutter-trash who deserves to die painfully. \"Oh, your internet is out? Well... we can maybe do something about that in a month.\"\n\n_URL_0_",
"Comcast is a local monopoly like every cable company with no incentive to actually compete for its customers. As one random example of how shitty they are, my parents have HBO but cannot access HBO Go streaming on their Samsung TV or Blu-Ray player because Comcast is retarded. Comcast has to manually approve the HBO Go app on any player that supports it and simply hasn't approved it on Samsung equipment for no particular reason.",
"Anecdote pile on time!\n\nComcast expected me to pay $50 to have a technician come out and service my cable connection because the signal levels on the wire had changed elsewhere in their network.\n\nI pay them nearly $80/month for service, shouldn't that cover fixing it when they make topology changes?",
"I hope this doesn't get buried because it's an explain action of how terrible their customer service is...\nI was the third person in my area to get high speed internet from comcast waaaaaaay back somewhere close to 20 years ago. At that time hotmail, gmail, etc wasn't that popular or available. At that time you used your ISP email address... So last year I moved across the country and while I don't understand from a monopoly standpoint how this is possible there are two cable companies Comcast and Cox Communications. If you live in a Cox area you can not get comcast and visa versa.\n\nWhen I first moved we were in a rental and it happened to be in a cox area. We were buying a house in the near future and I have had the same email address for almost 20 years... And I use it. I figured I would continue paying my high speed internet bill at the old house and it wouldn't be a problem. My email continued to work and when I got a new account with comcast I would transfer service to the new house and everyone is happy!\n\nI paid my bill for about 6 months and then suddenly my email stopped working.. The people that bought the old house set up cable service and it cut off my comcast. I started doing research on how to fix it and found the answer was very simple all along. With comcast you can have 5 email addresses on an account and I could simply transfer mine to someone else's account that had room and since 90% of America doesn't use their ISP address who would care.\n\nI called a friend back in Chicago and told her what was going on and she had zero problems with it... And so the nightmare begins. I get all of her info and call comcast... Hey I want to move my email address so I can keep it, explain the whole long winded story about almost 20 years same email address, I'm a very loyal customer and I want to keep my address until I buy my house in a comcast area etc. I give my account info and hers and then he said he needs to talk to her instead.. Yea that makes sense.. I'll 3-way call her in and well get it handled.\n\nShe gets on the phone releases the security question info and everyone is happy. The CSR says hey it's gonna take 48 hours an they will need to call you to make sure both parties agree to this expect a call.\n\nTwo days later I got a 6am call that left no voicemail... I slept through the call as it was 6AM!! But it was 8am in Chicago so I guess I understand. He made a note in the system to call me at 11am Chicago time 9am local and asked her to get ahold of me to expect the call... I sat by my phone from 830am my time until 1130 am my time just in case they forgot the time zones when they said 1130. I couldn't wait anymore.\n\nLong story short that was the only call I ever got from them in a reasonable amount of time and I went back an forth explainin the situation for 60-90 minute calls at a time TWICE A WEEK for 2 and a half months. I called every Monday and Thursday for 10 weeks!!! I spent somewhere between 20-30 hours getting resolution on this and it was COMPLETELY INSANE.\n\nTurns out the guy / department that was supposed to handle the transfer used the fact that they couldn't get ahold of me the first time at 6am to their advantage and every time they were supposed to make the call to get my consent they put in the notes. \"Called, no answer. Unable to complete. Case closed\" ..... Assholes\n\nTL;DR used same email for almost 20 years. Took over 20 calls and 30 hours to get to keep it because the comcast customer service is god awful. Their service is great tho...",
"paying $60/month for 'high speed' 50mbps+ internet and only getting, on average, 36mbps....wired =\\",
"King George III, but in company form.",
"Comcast gave me a window of time to be home for the installation. Guy shows up near the very tail end of that period. Part of my deal is that I get cable in four rooms of our house, but he's so far behind that he says he only has time to do one room, then he has to go - but that he'd come back later to finish up.\n\nI call Comcast the next day, and they tell me that they'll have to charge me extra to finish the free installation, because it costs them money to send their guy out there. They aren't willing to budge, claiming its my fault for not forcing him to do work he wasn't willing to do. \n\nA few months later, I've cancelled Comcast and use Clear for my internet, and no TV service. Much cheaper, I get more speed than I pay for (not less), no lies, and my modem/router is one unit that can travel with me around the country. Doesn't work so great during storms though.",
"imagine buying an ice cream from the ice cream man for $50, and then you notice that he forgot to take the price tag off from when he initially bought it before he sold it to you. The tag reads 10 cents. ",
"I have been going round and round with Comcast for a couple of weeks trying to get an install in a beach house 90 miles from here. I won't bore you with the details of this running joke other than the \"problem resolution\" team is apparently in India and does not know what the date is in the US. But here's what I have decided: Comcast as a corporation has done a cost/benefit analysis on providing customer service and has decided that as a municipal monopoly in most places they can keep their customer service costs at a minimum, knowingly bad, possibly knowingly obstructive and maximize their profits. I think they make more money by refusing to deal with issues knowing the customer has little choice but to capitulate to whatever they offer at whatever costs because they have bought off (politically) any alternatives.\n",
"They wanted to charge us to swap out a box that was dead on arrival.\n\n\nThey wanted to charge us to fix our inside line because of speed being low despite me telling them I had the modem plugged directly into their outside feed.\n\n\nThey are supposed to come fix the outside line that at the very least needs to be compressed because the moron who did it the first time forgot his tool. This was a month ago still no word..\n\n\nThey charged us for hbo that we didn't get for a month due to their screw(sent wrong box refused to send correct one for 3 weeks... Correct box was dead on arrival ) then only gave us half off hbo for that month.\n\nStill charging for 50 mb internet despite getting under 20mb. \n\n\nCalling them is a joke they hang up on you all the time and no one knows anythings.\n\n\n\nTheir bills used to be single line like \"Internet 65\"\nWith no breakdown until a few years ago..\n\nI looked and saw that for 7 years I was paying a modem rental fee despite me owning the modem... They have us 6months credit and told me if I didn like it to call the fcc\n\n\nSo this is why we hate comcrap..\n\nAlso the Obama administration is so far in bed with them it's only getting worse fast",
"Basically you only have two choices, both are super expensive, and shit speed. You can call and complain, but then you'd waste like 3 hours of your time. \n\nOn the bright side, I get Google Fiber next week. Smd Time Warner. ",
"I just spent ten minutes navigating their site, and then ended up having to online chat with an analyst, just to find out my current level of internet speed. In itself that's not a major issue, but it's a symptom of their entire structure. Everything is needlessly difficult, and they do not give a shit to improve it.",
"A few years back I lived at an apartment complex where the only options for internet were Comcast cable or AT & T 1.5 mbit DSL. I chose Comcast. Instead of running the cable to my unit flush against the wall, they ran it over the top of some shrubs. Every time the groundskeepers trimmed the shrubs, they cut the cable. I would call Comcast and report it. Unfortunately they told me they would not classify it as an outage and send someone out to fix it unless multiple people reported it. So, I had to go to each of my neighbors and get them to call Comcast. Even then it took weeks for Comcast to send someone out and re-run the cable.\n\nThis continued happening until my lease was up and I could move out.",
"I don't really believe in hating on stuff. I believe that instead of wasting my time complaining about things, I just avoid them if I can. Instead of complaining about bad music, I don't listen to it. Instead of complaining about bad friends, I stop hanging out with them. Instead of complaining about bad companies, I use a competitor...\n\nOh yeah, I can't. That's why I HATE Comcast.",
"Because they are, practically, the only choice consumers have, they don't care about the customer experience. If a customer is not satisfied, VERY often (and this is the case with me) their choice is: Comcast, or no internet. Because of this, they can make your internet as slow as they want, and can wait as long as they like to upgrade your speed after you buy a new plan.\n\nTl;DR: They almost have a monopoly in the US, so if you aren't happy with their service your only other option is to have no internet.",
"Imagine being gang raped in a prison shower and someone comes and hands you a bill for 150 euros.",
"When you ask for one channel ONE FUCKING CHANNEL for 10+ years. And receiving 1000 channels except the one you specifically asked for. My childhood consists of hearing my dad screaming into the phone at comcast as they tried to sell us all this bullshit we had no care for saying we would receive the channel if we did. Even our neighbors had this channel. But us, nope. Going on 11 years now and finally dropping them. I hate comcast with a burning passion.",
"Where's that South Park episode where they deal with the cable company. The accuracy in it hurts",
"my internet literally dropped when I was trying to open this fucking page about comcast...",
"I moved into a house and had two options for internet: cable or satellite. Since I operate an internet company and frequently work out of the house, I needed a fast and stable internet connection so satellite wasn't an option and my only cable option was Comcast. I like watching tv, mainly sports, so I got their \"bundle\" for the two. In order to get the service connected, I had to basically take a week off work to sit at the house and wait for a technician to show up. They scheduled the service for a Tuesday, but nobody showed up. I called and they said, \"Our technician was busy servicing somebody else and couldn't make it to your place. They'll be there in the morning.\" I didn't get a notice, or a call saying they'd be late let alone not show up. The next day, I get a call from the technician saying I'm their second stop for the day; they show up at 6pm. Their \"service\" was to walk in and look for the nearest coaxial outlet a meter or two from the door and hook up a splitter to a cable box and modem and leave. I was told I wasn't allowed to move the units from that outlet or I'd be charged an additional service fee for them to come out again. It wouldn't have been a problem, but there wasn't anything near the outlet and it was all in a walkway. I moved the equipment anyway and reconnected everything and found out the cable box was standard definition and I ordered HD service. I called and they wanted me to jump through all sorts of hoops before they'd entertain the idea that I had the wrong equipment.\n\n\"Please connect the HDMI cable to the tv\" \"There isn't an HDMI port\" \"Well, you need a tv that supports HD in order to watch HD channels sir\" \"I know, I have an HD tv and that's what I'm trying to hook it up to\" \"Then go ahead and connect the HDMI cable\" \"This is a standard box, I can't connect an HDMI cable to it\" \"Sir, please don't get hostile. I'm just asking you to connect the HDMI cable to the box\" \"I'm trying to tell you that I can't connect an HDMI cable to the box because the box doesn't have an HDMI port because it's not an HD box\" \"Ok, so the HDMI port doesn't work. Let's try connecting the component cables. Take the cable with the red, blue, and green plugs and connect them to the video out of the box.\" \"I can't do that either, there's no component output to plug a cable into because it's not an HD box\" \"I see, I'm sorry that you're colorblind sir, please take a look closely at the cables for a small 'Y', 'Pb', and 'Pr' and plug them into their corresponding ports.\" \"I'm not colorblind. Can I just tell you the model of the cable box I received?\" \"Certainly sir\" \"Scientific Atlantic xxxxxx\" \"It appears that you were given a standard definition box. There's no way to view HD content with that equipment. Would you like to upgrade your service to include HD?\" \"I ordered HD\" \"Yes, I see that you ordered HD service in our records, but you need to upgrade to HD service to view HD content. Would you like to upgrade?\" \"I already did\" \"Ok sir, we'll schedule your upgrade for tomorrow and a service technician will be there to connect your equipment for you. Is there anything else I can help you with?\" \"Yeah, why is my internet connection so slow? I'm only getting 3Mbps when you advertised 10Mbps\" \"The service you ordered is 10Mbps, it's part of our Blast! technology. It allows you to blast up to 10Mbps for a few seconds at a time to help you download websites faster.\" \"I have to use this connection for work, is there anything faster?\" \"We do have our fastest Blast! Plus+ service that increases the burst rate to 15Mbps\" \"What's the stable connection speed?\" \"5Mbps sir\" \"Ok, give me that\" \"Right away. Just to confirm, I'm signing you up for our bundle for Blast! Plus+ internet service with 15Mbps speed (nice choice I must say sir), HD television with a complimentary 3 month HBO subscription, and digital phone service. Is there anything else I can help you with today?\" \"Wait, phone? I don't want phone service\" \"I don't understand sir. If you get our 3-service bundle, it's only $3 more, it's like getting a phone line for free\" \"I don't want phone service\" \"Of course, we have our 2-service bundle for $285 per month and our technician will be there tomorrow to install everything for you. Is there anything else I may help you with today?\" \"No\" \"Thank you sir, please hold on the line to complete our phone survey\" ... I hang up.\n\nThe technician did show up the next day, but argued and yelled at me that I didn't have a computer to \"install to the modem\" or something. They wanted a windows or mac computer to install software on, but all I had were linux machines. I was told, and I'm not joking with this, \"your computers aren't compatible with the internet\". I told them to not worry and I was hooking up a router anyway. \"You can't just connect your own router, it's incompatible with the internet. You need to rent a router from us and have a technician install it for you.\" I ignored the technician and had them connect the new box. The previous technician forgot to give me digital converters for other tvs so this technician had them. These converters you have to rent as well and Comcast made them a requirement a few years back in my area. Before, when you just wanted standard definition you got your service and plugged the tv into the outlet. Now, you need additional hardware to rent for every tv because they're encrypting all signals sent. When I asked about this later on the phone, their explanation was that they had to deal with competition from Netflix and Hulu; my guess is it's just an additional revenue stream. When the technician was leaving, I tried to hand them the previous standard definition box and they refused. \"We can't collect hardware, you have to drop that off at a service center.\" So the next day I drive an hour to the nearest service center to drop off the equipment. There's a line of 50 people out the door and 6 teller positions at the desk, 3 occupied, and only 1 helping people. The other two just sat there doing nothing the entire time and were annoyed that people were bugging them. If I didn't wait in line to drop the equipment off, I'd have been charged rental fees for it, so I waited nearly all day to turn it in.\n\nAfter about a month, my first bill arrives and it's for more than $600. I'm livid and go through every item. I was charged for HD television and my desired internet tier service, but also for installation costs, all of the movie channels, technician charges for installing 2 additional outlets, and rental fees for the returned hardware. I called to complain and was brushed off. I called a few more times and got nowhere. I finally called yelling to be elevated and I was elevated. I told this new person the items on my bill and went through line by line to get things corrected. Then I reached the outlets part. Each additional outlet was for around $100, so I asked. \"What's the item for installed outlets mean?\" \"That's for the technician installing outlets in your home\" \"I was just handed the digital converters, is this a connection fee for those because I was told they'd be free?\" \"No, this is for the technician actually installing a new outlet in your home to connect those to. They're the connections in the wall that they ran the cables to\" \"They didn't install outlets. Outlets were already here. They just handed me the converters. Is there a way to get that removed or a way for me to formally contest that?\" \"Oh, I see that previous accounts at your address had service with us before so you obviously had outlets already. I'll go ahead and remove them for you. This is interesting though, it could very well be a way for technicians to pad their wallets since these items are directly paid to them.\"\n\nSo after all that pain, I currently have horrible connections for Netflix, gaming, and video services like Youtube, EPSN3, and network apps for watching reruns of shows on stations for ABC, Fox, etc. I have absolutely no problems with the NBC apps streaming or any ad network videos. To top it off, since I work from there regularly, I have to move around some pretty big files from time to time and when I do, the speeds drop incredibly after a minute or two uploading or downloading. All public speed tests are faked with wide open connections to every station. Those tests show between 30 and 100Mbps, but my own tests show I average about 2.5-3Mbps and it fluctuates wildly as they throttle my bandwidth. Additionally annoying is their \"6 strike\" policy. I've been given a couple strikes for using torrents to download linux distributions.\n\nIt's now been a few years, and my bill is hovering around $315 per month for poor 5-10Mbps internet and television that's basically junk now and without any subscription channels. I only physically watch the television for sports which I can't get live anywhere else; the HOA doesn't allow dishes so I can't even consider a satellite service for the sporting channels. Rates for everything continue to rise, and they even added an additional fee for the \"privilege\" of receiving broadcast television through the cable service. That means that stations that would be free if I were allowed to stick rabbit ears on the roof are now a premium service.",
"The entire cable industry is the problem. Comcast is just the most prominent face of it.\n\nOverall I've been happy with my AT & T Uverse service but like Comcast, they're still hellishly deceptive. \"TV just $19 extra/month!\" means \"We'll give you like ten channels and charge you a hidden $200 for installation and the new modem.\"\n\n\"You buy the modem instead of renting!\" means \"You have to pay $100 for our piece of shit and get to buy your own router if you want wifi more than 10cm away from the modem.\" Oh and if you add TV then you have to ship the original shitty modem back to them on their dime.\n\nBoth Comcast and AT & T (the only two services available in my area) use automated customer support systems that are great if you just want to pay a bill, and shitty if you want to do anything more complex like, say, contest some inexplicable charges. All the providers list their download speeds in \"Mbps,\" a term that's deliberately irrelevant and confusing to the non-tech-savvy. Speeds are listed as \"*up to* x Mbps\" which basically gives them wiggle room if the speed's only half that number. Prices/tiers are basically the same from all providers because they know their \"competition\" won't undercut them; they don't want to get into the kind of price war that would benefit consumers.\n\nEssentially the cable industry in the US hasn't undergone the same kind of revolution experienced by mobile phone service providers because of the infrastructure issue. Pay-as-you-go mobile services can piggyback on, say, Sprint towers and stay competitive that way; Comcast (and AT & T, and Time Warner, and...) won't let anyone else use their infrastructure so every new provider has to start from the ground up.\n\nI keep AT & T because the service has never failed on me once and it's close to the 25Mbps I'm paying for, plus they haven't implemented any data caps (threatened, but not implemented). They're not great though. No cable company here is.",
"I'm jealous of your naivety.",
"[There's also this.](_URL_0_)",
"If you like guns and explosions, FPSrussia's channel is pretty good, though I'm pretty sure it's pretty popular.",
"Look at the thread on the reddit frontpage right below yours. Their attempts to merge with Time Warner, and their lobbying against net neutrality are just the latest reasons to hate them. \n\n",
"/u/IT_Chef posted pretty much the perfect example already in that video, but if you'd like a more graphic description of why cable companies suck, check out [this little gem from South Park.](_URL_0_)",
"I get 160mb for $49 a month. Don't know how I did it in Indianapolis but I did.",
"There was something similar in France: there were 3 Telecom networks, who agreed on the price. There was no competition, but (almost) everyone still believed there were some kind of choice. That was until another telecom firm came into the market, and introduced a very competitive cost. To illustrate, the name of this telecom firm is \"Free\", and they offered 20€ per month for unlimited calls/data, and 3 Go of 3G Data plan, while the equivalent was worth about 60€ per month. Unfortunately, their network was too young to support the million users who subscribed within a month, and a lot of issues appeared. Eventually, the 3 other \"bad\" ancient networks tried to benefit from these issue in their ads, but it didn't work well, and they lowered their price as well. Now, something similar is happening with 4G, as those same 3 networks were ready for it before the newer one, so they made everyone pay a lot, again. End of the story: Free gives 20 Go of 4G data plan for the same 20€ price tag, while the equivalent was non existent among the rivals, with the closest offer being 16 Go of 4G at 80€ per month. \n\nTL;DR: one firm saved French people from fake competition",
"Last time I called customer support, the guy on the other line asked me for my subscriber ID. When I told him I don't have it on me at the moment, he cursed me out and hung up on me. I experienced such terrible customer service only with Comcast.",
"Ok... lets see Comcast...\n\nELI5: \n\nIts like when you go to Disneyland, and you pay a bunch of money to get in, expecting to have fun browse the place: but once you get in the gate imagine if they picked you up, walked out back outside the gate, and you had to enter again, over and over again, to the point where you can only see it, and its right there, but you can't play and can't have fun - your just sitting in the line again. \n\nNow your getting upset arn't you? ... So you try to call someone, and they keep you on hold for what seems like ever, then once they do pick up they say 'disneyland is open and running, it must be a problem with your shoes, and because your not using their shoes they can't examine the problem any further'.. ... so you then agree to buy their shoes, then they say its your socks,... ok so you buy their socks... then they say we can send a tech out to you and make sure you have a valid ticket... days later they come out to you and you show them your ticket, your socks, your shoes, and they say 'yeah everything should be working right, - you should call the 1800 number and see if they can help you.' and the tech leaves... \n\nYou then call the 1800 number as the tech is leaving, and the guy on the 1800 number says they can see a problem and will have to send a tech out to fix it... so a tech comes back out, tells you to call the 1800 number and then leaves, then you call and they send a tech out again...\n\nall in all, and after all the frustration you give up on going to Disneyland and switch to Knotts Berry Farm, where everything is a little bit slower but it all works. \n\nTrue story:\n\nI WFH for 2 days a week, I had comcast... the connection kept dropping - and i kept dropping from conference calls with the CFO and COO .... while im only a mesley helpdesk tech, i called in and told them the error message on my modem says that a node may be going out, they said it was my modem - ok so i went from using my $200 modem to renting their POS box for $10 a month, then they tell me its router, and again i go from my $160 dlink to renting this POS for $6 a month. \n\nAfter i am using their equipment they say that its my lines from the box to the house, so they come out and run new lines, then they say 'they can see the problem and will send a tech out' the tech says 'i don't see a problem - you should call the 1800 number' and the 1800 number says 'they can see a problem and will send a tech out' - did this about 5 rounds of back and forth.\n\nI end up switching to centurylink ADSL for a little slower speeds (40/10) for cheaper a month, but have never been dropped from a conference call since. Ohh and I come to find out a year later that it was a node that was going out, and the only other comcast subscriber that noticed it was a hospital that was down the block from me. \n\nsrsly. ",
"All cable/internet companies are the same in the U.S (with possible exception of google for the time being): They provide substandard connection speeds, high prices, and as a point of business, scam you up front with exhorbitant fees and subscriptions. The worst of all, when you call them to complain about bad connections they charge you more just for visiting you and charge additionally if they can't find anything wrong with your equipment.",
"Edit... sry for calling the cakes/biscuits cookies....\n\nEdit2 again.... You know what that just goes to show how frustrating comcast/american cable companies are.... They would call them cookies just to piss you brits off....\n\nEdit 3... I lived in england for 2 weeks when I was 17. I never had the opportunity to enjoy your jaffa cake/cookie.... All I know about them is what I have learned from the yogscast on youtube.... What I would give for a jaffa cake.\n\nImagine it this way.... Comcast in the UK is a jaffa cakes* provider.\nThey promise to provide you with unlimited jaffa cakes*24/7 at a rate of 10 cakes* per hour.\n\n So you say wow this sounds amazing for 20 pound a month. So you sign up for 6 months or a year\n\nThe first day you sign up you ask for 10 jaffas when u get off work. You press your magic jaffa button and only 7 biscuits* pop out. This is still pretty cool, but you call Comcast Cakes* for an explanation. They say while we do our best to serve you we only guarantee 70% service. \n\nThis boggles your mind, but you think hey it can't always be 70%, surely they must have 10 cakes* available sometime or else they wouldn't have given me the sales pitch. Weeks go by, then months then years and you never receive 10 cakes*. Most days you press your magic button and no cakes come out at all.\n\nyou repeatedly call comcast cakes* to figure out why. They schedule multiple appointments for a technician to repair your cake* button, sometimes they show up sometimes they don't and you have to wait all day from 8-6 for them to show up, knock once and immediately start walking away. If you aren't standing at the door for them to knock they will leave. I'm convinced half the time they dont even bother stopping by, and report no one was home, and eat all your jaffa cakes themselves.\n\nThen your contract expires and they raise the price of your shitty cake* service. You tell them you are tired of their horrible customer service and are going to find another cake* provider. They offer you a 2 pound/month discount and you stay with them while you look for a new provider. \n\nYou find 2-3 alternatives if you are lucky. Dish Satelite Cake* provider that sends your cakes* to outer space and back before providing you with a wopping 1 biscuit* per hour. Or you can go with ATT/TWC depending on who bought the rights to where you live. These guys can offer you 3 cakes per hour for the price you paid for 10(7) cakes* per hour with comcast. Or you can pay double for a solid 5 bisquits* per hour.\n\nMind you about 70% of Americans have no option in the matter. Many people have 1 cable service provider in their area, and comcast is just taking the blame in this example. My least favorite is Cox cable.... They are a bunch of COCKS! They go a step further and jizz all over your precious jaffa cakes, call it icing, and charge you a premium!\n\nSo you come crawling back to comcast and they know they have you by the balls. They jack up your rates every 6 months and provide with 5-6 cakes per hour until you complain and spend a whole day waiting for a technician to come fix your cake problems for an additional bisquit* each hour. Why spend all this time and frustration for an extra bisqui*t an hour? Because The cable company fucks with your mind where you feel it is the principle of the matter. That you will do whatever it takes to get the service you pay for, when in reality you could walk a block anywhere in the US to a starbucks or mcdonalds for free jaffa cakes (wifi), or steal your cakes from your bloody neighbor's unlocked kitchen.\n\n\n\n",
"The main problem with Comcast is that their shit never works, and they seriously don't care. It's almost like they are glad it doesn't work. Now that they have bought Time Warner, it could be argued that they have a monopoly in many markets. There are no other options in many places for high speed internet, which should not be allowed.\n\nIt can be very expensive, or reasonably priced if you are willing to complain over a period of months to the right departments (loyalty). Sometimes you get locked into absurdly expensive contracts. Some regions have \"data caps\" which only allow users to download X gigabytes per month. I don't have one, but if I did I would be over 100GB on a monthly basis as I don't use their broken cable TV and opt to use Netflix/Hulu instead.\n\nMy Comcast woes are that my Cable TV inexplicably doesn't work with around 40 channels (including HBO). I pay for 50 down/10 up internet, and usually get around 55/1 during peak hours. Sometimes the upload bumps up to 10 and I'm a happy camper, but no amount of tech visits will fix it. They usually try to charge me money when they send a tech out, even though it's their idea to send one and it's an issue on their end.\n\nHowever, I do actually get a reasonable rate. I dropped Cable TV because it doesn't work, and considering all of my issues I have worked my monthly rates down lower compared to where it started. When I was getting this internet and cable TV it was $130. When I dropped TV it was $80. When I bought my own modem it was $72 ($8 rental fee). When I complained for months it went down to $55, then later $45.\n\nAll things considered, I am paying $45/month for inconsistent internet with abysmal customer service. I HATE contacting them, and my girlfriend does not want to be around me the entire day if she knows I have to deal with Comcast. They are that bad to communicate with it and they just revel in it.",
"They're a bit like BT before privatization, in that in most every place they provide service they are a complete monopoly, except unlike a government-run utility, you don't get any say at all how much they charge, and their service is shit, and there's fuck all you can do about it. That, and they've started buying up television channels and getting their tentacles in all sorts of things, and now with the planned merger with their largest competitor (in the sense that the other company also serves a lot of areas in much the same monopolistic way), they basically want to take over both creation and delivery of television. Without a shred of general public or government oversight.",
"So there's also a new issue that will likely become somewhat problematic in the near future--Net Neutrality. The FCC just announced that cable/internet providers, like Comcast, are able to charge different content providers different amounts for access to faster and more reliable internet speeds. For example, lets say BravoTV wanted to pay Comcast so that middle aged women could more easily watch the Real Housewives at high 1080p quality. BravoTV would pay Comcast a little bit extra so that their video speeds are faster and more reliable than others. Only problem is that Comcast happens to be in both the internet AND content businesses. They own NBC Universal who owns Bravo, i.e. they wouldn't have to pay or would be paying themselves. \n\nTL;DR Comcast sucks",
"Comcast is very expensive and is crazy rich and powerful, but for some reason still feel the need to consistently raise prices. ",
"Monopoly. Reduces incentive to provide efficient service at reasonable prices. They suck. I love TV but I canceled my service a few months ago because it was astronomically expensive and the quality was shitty. Much happier paying $8 a month for Netflix, $8 a month for Hulu, and $100 a year for Amazon Prime.\n\nThey also have assloads of lobbying power on the hill, which is not good for the net neutrality debate. They're now throttling bandwidth for services like Netflix, having forced Netflix to pay them a premium to allow users to stream content at the highest data rates.\n\nI can't believe I'm going to say this, but I believe broadband internet access should be treated a public utility. The government sucks at virtually everything, but it's unlikely that it would suck as badly as Comcast, and would have the added benefit of existing for the public good. Leaving it private prevents many people in rural communities from competing effectively in a free market, where a government-run service would absorb some of the financial burden of expanding service to communities that don't have it.\n\nAll that said, I really hope a free-market solution presents itself. Google Fiber is promising, but there are a number of economic challenges for Google to overcome before they're an effective alternative.",
"They give 0 fucks about customers. If I wanna talk to someone I talk to someone in India. They can't even relate to me as they likely don't have cable. They advertise 30 mbps I get half of one mbps. Fuck them and their monopoly. ",
"First lets go the cable bill.\nService Fee,Equipment fee,Having to pay for a package with channels you don't want,having them come to the house to fix cable...add a fee.If your late by even a day....add a fee.Calling customer service is like pulling teeth or calling an advertising line.They try to upsell on a new cable package you every 30 freaking seconds.When you do finally get through the upselling.Then unless it is something simple like a reset button needs pushing,it can take almost a week to get them to come out to fix the issue,and guess what.....yup you guessed it...the repair tech tries to upsell you.I have never seen a greedier company in my life",
"This past Saturday was pretty windy where I live and the wind managed to blow over a giant tree in my neighbor's yard. This took out the powerline and the comcast cable line going into my neighbor's house. They have called and been told three times that a comcast service tech would be sent out the following day to restore service. AT & T is over at their house now, installing U-Verse. ",
"Their price is okay but customerservice blows. I am supposed to go 50mbps but I get 28 when plugged into modem and 3-20 through Wi-Fi usually about 3mbps. Which is rediculous they told me someone is hogging the ports and there's nothing they can or will do about it. At night time no hulu or Netflix works.. the list goes on ",
"They erroneously charge me $1.99 because I have extra equipment. Then when I call out the error the take three weeks to investigate the error to find that they made a mistake. Then the refund $0.85 pro rated for the unused portion of the equipment that I never had in my home. This happens every three months. ",
"If Comcast were a person, I would punch him in the face. FUCK Comcast! ",
"Don't care if this gets buried.\n\nMy family and I used to live in a trailer park, and we paid lot rent, and it was pretty a pretty chill place that actually waited to go to Hell until we moved out.\n\nAnyway, for a long time we had dial up and satellite TV. Eventually we decided to upgrade to cable so everyone could use the net in the house as we planned to do a small network.\n\nwell, we started to shop around a bit, and eventually we got Comcast. Techs came out pretty quickly, we got our boxes put in, stuff started up, it was pretty good.\n\nThen the prices went up, and up, and up, and I said something about trying another provider, then we learned that Comcast had a deal with the park management to be the only provider for the entire park. The tenants, who pay the fucking bills, had zero say in it.\n\nThat was only one facet of it, the increasing rent making house payments cheaper, our trailer falling apart, suddenly getting billed for water because the lines were too old to get hooked up to city water... The list of reasons we finally noped out is quite long.",
"Weird, I just got off the phone with their customer service. I was canceling my service because I'm about done with my semester and I will be moving home soon. The entire time the representative was trying to sell me more service and told me to consider getting extra things on my package when I move. My mom already has comcast, but she insisted on informing me of all their bull shit benefits. At one point she called me ma'am, which was kind of funny. She placed me on hold randomly for about 5 minutes and then told me she was having technical issues. Every time she asked for my address or phone number I had to repeat it multiple times and say it very slowly. When I finally got it scheduled for my service to be cancelled she told me once again about all the services that they offer for when I move back out on my own.\n\nTL;DR Trying to cancel the service is their time to try and sell you every service that they offer.",
"If you check here Monday between noon and four I might have an answer for you.",
"Two things in particular among the god awful customer service that I've experienced:\n\nA few years ago I had to wait five months to receive $150 that they owed me. They charged me for not returning the cable box and modem from an old apt, but I had the receipt they gave me for returning it. So for the entirety of the five months, comcast workers and supervisors ensured me that the check had gone out and it would be at my house within the week. Literally took FIVE MONTHS. \nThe other happened most recently. I lived in an apartment for 5 years. After about 3.5 years comcast sent us a new modem, but the letter never said anything about having to return the old one. I held onto it, just because I'm lazy and didn't bother throwing it out. I moved last November and returned the new modem in person. No one at the counter told me I still had equipment I needed to return for that houses' account or that I had a balance on it (they charge you for the modem until you return it.) A month or so later I get a phone call from them saying they're gonna have debt collectors come after me for the old modem. What a scam.... Send people a new modem that they didn't ask for, then charge them if they don't bring the junk old one back. (Luckily I did still have the old one and took the time to go all the way back to that fucking awful customer service line and stand there for 20 minutes.)",
"I had a Comcast guy in my apartment for three hours trying to hook up my internet. He even called another guy over to help and they couldn't figure out the problem. Finally, my boyfriend asked if he could look at it. He turned the switch on and it worked...",
"[So sleepy](_URL_0_) thinking about all of this Comcast stuff.",
"Soooo glad I don't live in 'Murica.. I'd die without my high speed super cheap Internets. £45 a month plus line rental and I get 100mb download, free TiVo, free modem/router (aka a super hub) and free calls to anywhere on the weekend. ",
"You just shut up. You are just a customer. Slow,bad or no connection? It's your fault. It just cannot be ours.\n\nYou are not worthy anyway.\n\nOnly the stockholders, well, the major ones that is, are what matters.\n\nSo, we will provide the crappiest service possible, at the highest price possible.\n\nHave a nice day. ",
"The service they offer is **garbage**. Our connection speed varies from around 10 megs/second (which I believe is what we're paying for) to **less than one**. So hey, we're playing World of Warcraft with eight to twelve friends, and suddenly we've got latency over a half-second, making it impossible to properly respond to what's going on - meaning we fuck it up for all the rest of those people. Hooray! \n\nSeriously, it's not uncommon these days for static images from imgur to load for us at **dial-up** speeds - to the point where it slowly loads more and more of the picture, from the top to the bottom, over the course of say twenty seconds? \n\nThis shit is *unacceptable*, but it's not like we have a hell of a lot of choice. And now Comcast is trying to merge with *the other* big cable company, resulting in a situation even closer to an actual monopoly. \n\nTeddy Roosevelt would be so fucking pissed. ",
"Along with everyone else's complaints, they're incompetent.\n\nI called Comcast to get service put in at my home. They assured me that there is no such address. I pointed out that I'd lived there for several years and was quite sure of my address, and they simply told me that I am wrong and don't know what I was talking about and tried to convince me that I actually lived at a different address, next door. I told them bluntly that that's not acceptable customer service and that I was quite certain of my address. They said \"hold on\" and transferred me to someone else. Lather, rinse, repeat. \n\nAfter I went through about 5 people trying to convince me I don't know where I live, I finally got someone who stopped to listen to me. With her help, we figured out that their database had separate fields in the address for street name and house number... my house number was formatted like 123-A, but their database had the house number as an integer. Thus, every other house in my town couldn't be put in their database, as every other address in my town is a -A. She got a manager to get on the phone with me to discuss... he said he would get it fixed and call me back about getting service put in. I told him he had a week. They never called back, so I called their competitor (*my* town has competition for cable) and had service put in promptly and efficiently.",
"well this really took off :-) Thank you all. Makes sense now.",
"Basically, Comcast has lobbied the fuck state and federal governments, and has essentially a monopoly on Internet and cable services in the country. As a they can set their prices however they see fit. Their monopoly also gives them the ability to provide shitty customer service, and no one can do a thing about it. \n\nExample: I order a internet/cable bundle. They will tell me their technician will come by between 8am and 5 pm on a certain day. That means I have to literally have someone door watch my property all fucking day, all so a tech can set things up, all of which takes 10-20 minutes usually.\n\nThey also offer no real flexibility when it comes to cable channels, if you only want a few channels, tough break, you have to pay for an additional 30-50 channels no one is going to watch.\n\nThey even lobbied to block Google fiber from expanding in Kansas city IIRC, thankfully, it failed.\n\nThe USA was one of the forefront nations on development of high speed internet early on, yet we have one of the most mediocre and overpriced offerings compared to the rest of the developed world these days, and a severe lack of competition. They also have bandwidth caps set in place at 250GB, which in an era where HD media is everywhere, doesn't last very long.\n\nThey argue in their defense that do have competition in the form of LTE hotspots from ATT/Verizon, but this is grasping straws as those LTE hotspots data packages are supremely expensive.\n\nFinally, the worst of it all is when the public tries to setup their own infrastructure for internet via tax money, comcast cries foul and stifles any efforts to make it happen.\n\nFeel free to correct me, though I believe I am 99% correct on what I have stated.",
"Signed up for Comcast and they spelled my first name incorrectly (Nitch instead of\nMitch) A few months go buy and I'm fully able to pay my bill so I figure why bother calling and changing it because I know till fuck something up. But after those few months I started getting lots of junk mail. Guess who the junk mail was made out to? Nitch. Assholes sold my information. I even get 'competitors' junk mail. ",
"One time they charged me for a DVR box they installed in my house even though I never requested DVR. I had no idea the cable box i had was dvr. After arguing on the phone they sent me a new cable box with no DVR to replace it, telling me to send the much bigger DVR cable box in the same box the other device came it. It didn't fit.\nCalled them up, argued again, sent a new empty box for the DVR box, again didn't fit. \nCalled them up again, argued for over two hours before I had to drive an hour away to give the box to their distribution center in bum fuck. \nI Managed to get three months free HBO and I am planning to cancel my service immediately when it runs out. ",
"Well as someone who actually works for Comcast I will give you my take. Every decision they make is about maximizing their profits, sometimes the decision benefits the customer, mostly though it does not. For example, they just doubled the speed of their blast tier internet without increasing its price (the price actually increased by about $10/month a while back without a speed increase) but this was done so they could market their packages of equal costs to Verizon's but with faster internet. So that actually benefit the customer, but was done to retain and gain customers. \nThe biggest complaint aside from price is definitely customer service though, which will either suck or be awesome and here is why. Comcast has in house reps and \"business partners\" in the field and in the call centers. The business reps are not trained by Comcast, they have to be trained by their respective company. There is very little accountability for them, and get paid by call for the phone reps and by the job for field techs, as where in house is paid hourly rates, so the business partner reps only really want to get done with you and onto the next person. This means they will lie, whether it be about a hit taking a half hour to get to a box, that they made you an appointment, that they will come back later to finish the job, etc. Also if a contractor, or field tech not employed directly through Comcast, gets fired because Comcast told his company he can't run on Comcast jobs anymore, he will just apply for another contractor that does with for Comcast.\nIn house employees are generally very demoralized and become apathetic due to fixing the issues, and having customers take it their frustrations on them, caused by the business partners. As well as all the b.s. politics inside the company, not to mention the fact that there is no real interactions between departments. For example, if your tech is late and you call in, that call goes to tech support who had no way to contact the tech to find out his eta, nor can they contact dispatch directly. Tech sort has to put in a ticket that goes to dispatch for them to contact the tech, dispatch is then supposed to call the customer with the info. Too many steps for a small piece of info...",
"Funny you ask, I just looked in my mail box to find an envelope from Comcast. I canceled them in February. They're still charging me. ",
"All these stories fucking suck. I'm on virgin media and my internet is amazing. 150mb fibre optic. Love it",
"An hour ago, I just witnessed the Comcast guy sneak up to my neighbor's door and leave a note saying \"Sorry, we stopped by for your appointment but you weren't home!\" and try to sneak away.\n\nShe had taken the morning off to wait for the Comcast service call. I yelled for her to come to the door and we caught him running back to his truck. He didn't look very happy with me, the asshole.",
"The short of it:\n\n* Their service is ridiculously overpriced for what they advertise.\n\n* They don't deliver the service they advertise.\n\n* They increase prices frequently.\n\n* They NEVER increase service quality.\n\n* They will always nickle-and-dime you for additional services and equipment, in some cases even fabricating charges.\n\n* If you ever try to contact them to improve any of this or resolve any problem, they give you the run-around.\n\nSo basically the same as every other cable oligopoly with no competition.",
"Firstly, when I used Comcast, they would sign me up for all sorts of services that I didn't want. I wanted basic internet. Just internet. Nothing else. I didn't own a TV or a Landline phone, so I had no interest in those services. But I was having to call once every 2-3 months to get those charges removed. \nSecondly their customer service is terrible. They would always tell me that someone else in the house must have signed us up for it, or it's a special promotion and if I cancel the TV it will actually cost me more. It was always some excuse or blaming the customer, rather than a \"Ok, we'll help you get the services you want.\" They used to leave me on hold for 20-40 minutes at a time and then just hang up too. \n\nBasically Comcast has a monoply and they know it. So there are no consequences for their terrible business practices. Consumers have very few other options for cable, internet and phone service so we tend to just bitch about it while we try to deal with it. ",
"Reading all this makes me glad I don't live in America :)",
"I dont have a problem with comcast- Their shit works- I like shit that works.",
"I've been a customer for about 5 years, and I personally can't complain about their service. Their prices are average, service is OK when I need it, and the speeds are reasonable.\n\nThe problem is that they have no incentive to give me better than average prices, excellent service and super fast speeds. It's just a balancing act. \"Everything is great right now\", but when you fall off the wire, you're screwed.",
"Imagine if Ryanair ran a cable company. ",
"Here is another kick in the teeth for any Americans out there. I moved into a new apartment last August and my favourite provider in the UK (Virgin) unfortunately don't supply their services in this area. I can get 76mbps speeds through BT but their customer service is awful and I decided around 8 years ago I would never give them my custom again. As an avid gamer I wanted / needed fast stable speeds. My only option was BT but I couldn't bring myself to give them my custom. So I began tethering on my phone under the impression it would just be to check emails and a little internet surfing. I was completely blown away that I was getting between 40-48mbps download and 4-5mbps upload speeds. So I decided to try out some games and see if it was any good. Roll on 8 months later I have been using my phone as my internet provider and have had 0 issues. It's costing me £33 a month with a Samsung Galaxy S4. My package has more minutes I could ever use and unlimited texts. As well as the hugely important unlimited internet. Which is actually 1000gb limit. The provider im with (Three) say that if you were to use the internet at its max speed 24/7 for a whole month you would only use around 980gb of data. I have been using around 300gb of data a month on average using nothing but my phone. I have received no extra charges and have never paid more than the stated £33. It's so good that all my family who were with BT paying the same amount for shitty DSL speeds of around 2-3mbps download have switched to using a phone as well.\n\nMy parents live in a very remote area of Scotland at the moment and they were paying around £40 a month for 1.7mbps download speeds plus a basic TV package. That also doesn't include the £15 a month line rental. When I went up there for Christmas I was getting 28mbps download speeds on my phone so my Dad instantly cancelled BTs service and went with Three just like myself.\n\nIt would appear that in the UK we can literally get better speeds and better prices even from our mobile phone providers than you can in the US.\n\nI would like to point out though that Three have changed their stance on the unlimited tethering policy around May I believe. So if you're interested in doing the same as myself make sure you do your research. Last I heard they were capping the Tethering limit for new customers but old customers wouldn't be affected. You can still get unlimited Tethering as a new customer but it's only on one certain package. The one plan. But I dont think it applies to sim only. You have to take out \"The one plan\" contract with a new phone and I think you still get unlimited. All my family just bought Sim only contracts at £15 a month.\n\nTLDR - For £15 a month with no line rental fees you can get just under 50mbps download and 4 mbps upload speeds from Mobile providers in the UK.",
"I pay 70$ a month for 1mbps, though it's usually around .6\nRural Canada sucks.",
"As a Canadian, I laugh when Americans complain about the price of just about anything.",
"Absolutely nothing, comcast has been nothing but good to me. ",
"As an Australian i feel sorry for Americans with these problems. In Australian if your service provider (i.g. Telstra, Optus) start fucking with you like I'm hearing Comcast has done to their customers all we have to do is mention things like FairTrading and Consumer Protection laws and they do everything but kiss your feet.",
"1. In many locations, there is literally NO other choice for internet OR TV.\n\n2. They \"bundle\" their services, and then overcharge for single services. i.e. \"20mbps internet + Basic Cable\" $59.99/mo, while just \"20mbps internet\" would be $69.99/mo, essentially forcing you to buy Cable whether or not you want it. \n\n3. All of their prices are \"introductory\" and after a few months, the price skyrockets usually without your knowledge (it's in the fine print). \n\n4. They have absolutely awful customer service, and require you to call their awful customer service, wait for 30+ minutes on hold, and then usually it doesn't get done and you have to call again the next day after getting transferred around for an hour. They make you do this for downgrading a service, asking about your bill, cancelling service, etc. Of course, if you're ADDING a service of opening an account, it takes 2 seconds online with the click of a mouse.\n\n5. The speed you actually receive is often much lower than the speed advertised. Again, fine print says something like \"20mbps under ideal conditions\". Basically, they tested the 20mbps when no one else was using the internet in the area. But cable internet slows down when there is high use so you NEVER get 20mbps, usually more like 12, sometimes 3-5. \n\n6. And I haven't had this issue with them since I moved into the city but at my parents suburban home, Comcast had outages on a weekly basis. Some would last for hours. Occasionally for days. Of course, they offer no refund.",
"heh, sorta different but I live in a small town in Oregon, we have Charter Cable for TV and Internet. We are plastered with commercials about how the internet speed we get is 60mbphs those commercials act like its the best thing ever ever and we as consumers should be gracious.......I test my internet speed on _URL_0_ which is often sponsored by Charter communications, my internet speed never tops 40mbphs and is most of the time around 28mbphs and stuck at 5upload averages 3.5 - 3.98upload.\n\nthat's the start of hatred for Charter communications.",
"I use Comcast for internet (no tv) and have never had a problem.",
"People: give us better internet plz\n\nGovernment: here's money to give them better internet\n\nComcast: okay, no problem \n(Comcast slowly puts bills in pocket)\n\nPeople: we still don't have internet\n\nGovernment: Comcast, the fuck bro?\n\nComcast: I'll do it eventually, but I wanted time warner and you gave me all this money soooo",
"he created the city in the sky, locked his daughter up, and tried to kill his younger self. ",
"I was having problems with bad internet speeds. I pay for 50mbps, I was getting 5-12mbps. After no less than *three* missed appointments (for which I had to take off work to accommodate *Comcast's* busy schedule) a human sloth* appeared at my door to replace my cable modem, and I ended up spending $200 out of pocket to fix the problem. \n\n*I shit you not, he was a sloth. Long arms and legs, so relaxed he was a liquid. He moved in slow motion. If that dude had been any more chill he'd be lacking a pulse.",
"Personal anecdote: Had an improper installation of X1. Tech came out diagnosed problem and fixed. He said it would be free. I see a 120$ charge on my bill. I call to complain, they say they will \"appeal the charge\" and I have to check back in 3 days for a decision. Turns out the appeal was denied, I owe 120$. I'm still fighting to get it refunded.",
"yet one more reason that the US is like a 3rd world country with running water (most of the US has running water that will not catch fire)\n\nWe are all looking at the US healthcare system in awe already and now this!\n",
"My only issue with comcast is if you do need a tech to come out, it takes a while. Other than that I've been very happy with their service.",
"I work for comcast . How they treat their customers is nothing compared to how they treat their employes",
"I would still trade this bullshit att service for them ig I could.....I fucking hate att with a passion. ",
"I guess my experience must not be all that normal, but I've been a Comcast customer for over a decade and feel like they've done a pretty great job for me, all things considered.\n\nThat said, more competition can only be good, and they really have a lock on things right now in my area.",
"It really depends on the area people live in. I have had no problems whatsoever with Comcast (Customer for over 5 years) and i pay $60 for 50 download/10 upload speed. I play online games, stream a lot over apple tv and torrent \"things\".",
"Imagine going to a store for a sandwich. It takes over an hour just to get to the front of the line. Next, you want to order, so you need to talk to five different people. You order your sandwich, and wait another hour for it. When you get it, it's rotten, smells and tastes horrible and is overall the worst sandwich you've ever had. It's also smaller than you were told. When you complain, they don't really care. So you say you're never going there again.\n\nUnfortunately, every restaurant in the area is the same place, with the same results. So you're basically stuck eating a rotten, soggy, small sandwich until another restaurant manages to start up.\n\nBUT WAIT! It's EXTREMELY hard for another restaurant to start up, and even if they manage to, eventually they're bought out by Shitty Sandwich Company.\n\nTL;DR: You're stuck eating disgusting sandwiches for the rest of your life.",
"Internet goes out, they send someone out (who doesn't even work for comcast) still has shitty service. Cable and internet bill is close to 200 a month. On demand goes out. Try to drop off your equipment and it takes at least a hour because there is 60 other pissed off people in the store waiting to cancel also ",
"Over priced. Slow service. Customer service is a joke. They WILL get your bill wrong and you will have to call several times to fix it, slow internet speeds, random charges show up and a lot. If you can, go with any other internet company",
"I've actually had a good experience with Comcast. I have a good connection, and signed up using a promotion to get a low price for one year. Haven't had any service interruptions, price raises or anything. Perhaps I'm just lucky.",
"I had Comcast for my business and was paying $125 a month for 16MB internet and a phone line which I was under contract to keep.\n\nI closed my business and transferred the service to my home to not have to pay a huge termination fee.\n\nWhen my contract finally expired I switched to residential service and now I have 50MB at 39.99 a month for the first year. i bought my own modem so no rental fees. no contract either.\n\nWhen I run speed tests I routinely hit about 60MB consistently.\n\nWhen my promo package expires, I will call and make them keep the price or I will cancel service and put it in my dogs name.",
"as a British person that has had dealings with them, they are crap the service is incredibly patchy and we loose connections regularly etc etc as everyone else says.... you get the idea....\n\n\nWe here have no choice who our ISP is, so there is no drive to improve. It's not like home we have multiple providers in every city",
"Here's my current Comcast situation: every day my cable service and internet stop working, right around two. This has been happening for about two weeks. I called the first week about a dozen times. Apparently Comcast is having some automated phone system issues and every time I called I was hung up on. I was promised by several reps that I would be getting a call back to set up a technician appointment. No one has ever called me back.\n A friend works for Comcast and gave me a card for guaranteed customer service. Guess what? They hung up on me too and haven't called me back. Fuck you Comcast\n",
"Ive had three different providers and Comcast is by far my favorite! They had amazing speeds and rarely had any problems. When they jacked the prices up, just called in and complained and they'd give me a month or two at discounted price of my original orice",
"If you need tech support, you have to navigate a long menu to get to a human being. The human takes your complaint and has a select number of fixes he is allowed to make, because he is the first tier of tech support. When that fix doesn't solve your problem, he may 1) forward you to a tier 2 person and then you get cut off or get a voicemail box, 2) tell you someone will call back and they never do, 3) make an appointment for a guy to come to your house to look at the problem, and if it turns out to be a problem with wiring outside your house he will fix it free, but if there is a problem inside your house with wiring or your cable modem, you must pay for that. \n\nYou receive no advance warning if your neighborhood will be cut off for a period of time while doing upgrades. The first thing you hear when calling for service in an internet problem is an advertisement a full minute long about an upcoming cable tv event, followed by a patronizing automated message informing you that you could have used your phone to see online if there is an outage without phoning them, finally followed by information if there is a neighborhood wide outage. You are just supposed to hang up and wait for the outage to be over without ever getting to talk to a human.\n\nComcast initially charged a reasonable fee for 200 channels years ago then over time moved all the Spanish speaking channels next to each other so those could be bundled together and offered at a lower cost to traditionally poorer Hispanic communities. The rest of the channels were segregated into tiers that had higher costs, usually with just one or two highly desirable channels in the tier that you are interested in. Sports of course is in the highest tier.\n\nFor example, unless you paid for the highest priced cable tv tier you were not permitted to view live Olympics events over the internet, even though this violates rule 42 of the IOC requirements for broadcasters. Without cable, all you got to see were replays of only a handful of the events. \n\nCertain sports games and live events like the Oscars ceremony are sequestered behind the cable tv paywall and it is not even broadcast over the airwaves. Comcast can get away with this because it owns NBC. This is frustrating to people who live in rural areas where there is no cable connection or who cannot afford to pay the $100 a month price for the highest cable tier required to watch that content.\n\nIf comcast strove to get a cable connection to every business and home in its service area, people might not be so upset, but comcast refuses to run the cabling in many rural areas, citing excessive cost, despite having acquired exclusive rights to be the only cable provider in the area to ensure their ROI (for running this nonexistent cable) is repaid to investors. Because of these exclusivity deals, the only competition in your city, if you are lucky, is a 1.5 Mbps DSL connection or satellite connection. Some parts of the city have faster DSL but as soon as you get beyond the outskirts of town, 1.5 Mbps is best you can get besides comcast 25 Mbps. \n\nWhat's more, comcast is steering internet television so that the only way to view shows online is to have a cable subscription (which is impossible for people who can't afford cable due to having lost jobs in the bad economy). The very people who need most to view tv online for free and have low internet costs are deprived of doing so.\n\nIf you try to lower your comcast costs you are told that your internet price will go up about 30% if you drop cable tv from your package. They charge you an extra $5 a month for your cable modem rental, plus there are another $5 or so in hidden fees nobody has any idea why we are charged for.\n\nComcast set up their own streaming tv service that can only be viewed if you have a cable subscription ( modulo a handful if offerings available to internet only customers). This is intended to compete with Netflix, so they can claim that carrying the more popular Netflix traffic burdens their servers and competes unfairly with their own offering, a ploy intended to give the appearance of being the underdog publicly , but the real purpose is to strong arm Netflix and other streaming providers to pay more. Before Netflix agreed to pay more, it's traffic to comcast customers was significantly degraded, then suddenly all was well as soon as the bribe was paid. They first refuse to upgrade a high traffic server then demand the web sites generating the high traffic pay for the upgrades. All while charging $60 a month for internet service that costs $5 a month to deliver to its millions of customers. \n\nIn the end, tv content providers must pay the ISP side of comcast more, which will force the content services to raise prices they charge customers, which in comcast's mind will make comcast's high prices look not so bad and keep their business model going. But this ploy just takes more money out already cash strapped middle class wallets.\n\nCustomers want ad-based tv over the top (over the internet) without a cable login, like the major networks are doing with a few of their tv series now, like what you can get with an antenna. But the networks and cable providers can't agree on even how to do that. Some networks wait a week after airing before putting episodes online. Others do it after one day. Yet others are big assholes and refuse to put content online at all unless you rent it from Amazon or iTunes, and hold back the most desirable content like Game of Thrones as exclusive to cable tv only, putting it behind the cable tv paywall so you can't view as on demand it without a cable tv subscription. All that to try to force people into believing they have no choice but buy a cable tv package.\n\nBut cord cutters are so angry with the idea that charging some websites for adequate bandwidth that they ought to already get by virtue of their monthly payments for service, along with the high profits comcast is making and refusing to spend on expanding into rural areas or upgrading high traffic servers, along with the chilling effect killing net neutrality has on innovation from new tech startups that drives the economy, along with the FCC being run by comcast lobbyists who get high paying jobs at at comcast after working at the FC c to get perks comcast wants....all these things have made comcast the most despised company in America.\n\n",
"I'll translate this for our British friends: They're cunts. ",
"I Never post but will add to the long endless scroll of stories that no one will ever read because its probably going to get buried under other terrible stories. \n\n\nGet Comcast internet moving in. Goes out after a month. Talk to 4 different people who can't pull up my account. It is not in their system (what?)...Okay, last guy i talk to says he'll just great a new account. I say okay. I just want my introductory offer and just internet. \"No problem. Done.\".\n\nGet billed twice the rate. I call them up. Rep says I have internet and cable. Also modem rental.. I used my own modem. I even had to give my own modem MAC ID to the rep who set it up the socond time. They can't change my plan. I tell them I never agreed to this. I agreed to the rate which was confirmed by the rep who set up my account and told him explicitly I just wanted internet. After being transfered again, the new rep says okay. Now you just have to return the modem and cable box which I never received.... 1 week later. I check account and my billing is still messed up...oh and cherry on top, local Comcast rep for my apt building never returns my call after I asked her to fix the issue... Its gotten to the point where they've literally designed a system to make the customer running in a circle and expect him to give up and bite the bullet...I'm considered caving in and paying the $50 is charge errors. But after reading all this, fuck them. I'm fighting this on principle.\n\n\nTo be painfully pragmatic, nothing will be done about this terrible service because there is no incentive for Comcast to fix it. Market competition is non existent. Why would you want to decrease earnings by increasing customer satisfaction when you are the only supplier of a service every person will purchase. \n\nFrom the most basic economic model, you can understand the situation perfectly. Demand is so inelastic that the one supplier has free reign to charge what ever the fuck he wants. In a more intermediate concept elaboration, they literally have the ability to move consumer surplus to producer surplus. Comcast can stomach the bad customer service and cheap tactics of prying more money out of its customers because, at the end of the day: 1. They have no competition..no substitute product in almost every market region. So there's no gain in value to make customers happy. 2. They control a service/good that has basically achieved the status of a consumer staple. 3.These tactics of adding more charges are effective in utilizing their market superiority without clearly exhibiting their market monopoly. \n\nIf you were the only person who produced a product that is like no other... that is basically a consumer staple and your only goal was to make as much money as possible. Would you think itd be necessary to care about service or quality? You're going to get the money with or without great service or quality. Without great service and quality is money not spent and more money in your pocket. That's basically the position Comcast is in. They have no reason to give a fuck about you because there is no consequence. The cable/internet market is fully controlled by the supplier. We consumers/demand side have absolutely no power\n\n",
"Time warner is the worst because of their deceptive practices. My deal was $99/month for internet and basic cable. 3 months later my bill was $144. We cancelled the service and they kept charging for 3 months after the equipment was returned. The service was out 3-4 times a month and I could never hook up more than 2 devices to the WiFi because their router was CRAP."
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"http://www.pcworld.com/article/2099908/aha-time-warner-cable-ups-austin-broadband-speeds-as-google-fiber-looms.html"
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5ptdmg | what is the purpose of the turnable dial around the face of a watch? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ptdmg/eli5_what_is_the_purpose_of_the_turnable_dial/ | {
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"text": [
"The ring as we know it today on some watches, also called rotating bezel, actually dates to the first diving watches of the 1950's. At the time, using a stopwatch was impossible, because every additional pusher could further compromise water-resistance, so instead they relied upon the bezel as a basic timing apparatus.\n\nRight before a dive, the wearer aligns the zero mark on the minutes hand. The bezel then indicates the minutes passed since entering water. To add security, the bezel can only be turned counter clockwise, meaning that if it were accidentally rotated, the immersion time would appear longer and the diver would be compelled to return to the surface earlier.\n\nDuring the 1960's and 1970's, the US and British Ministries of Defence also incorporated the bezel into military standard, either to display dive time or hours.",
"It can be used as a lapse timer or a reminder for a specific time. \n\nTurn the point on the rotating bezel to the current minute then at some future time you can see calculate how much time has passed without having to keep up with what time you started. \n\nTurn the point on the bezel to a specific time in the future as a reminder of some event at that time. \n",
"it's a timing feature. you turn the dial so the minute hand is currently on the number of minutes you want to count down, and you know it's been the correct amount of minutes when the minute hand reaches zero. it's originally for diving before digital watches. an alarm doesn't make sense under water and the old school watches didn't have stuff like flashing alarms or digital timers. it's mostly a traditional thing today, but i still use it from time to time, and sometimes when you're diving you may not want your watch to start blinking. ",
"On pilot's chronograph watches, the bezel is used as part of a slide rule, used for calculations. Aviators used to rely on these to handle range and other navigational computations."
]
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||
34gdlx | why can't software companies make an update/download/install status bar that moves evenly and accurately reflects the percentage of the task that is actually complete? | You know, instead of the ones they have now that move to around 3/4 of the way in a couple seconds and then spend about half an hour on the last quarter. Or even worse, the ones that get to the end and then just start the bar over. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34gdlx/eli5_why_cant_software_companies_make_an/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqul7uy",
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"text": [
"Let's forget about the computers for a moment.\n\nYou're driving down an unfamiliar road with nothing but a map and a bunch of boxes you need to deliver to various houses. How do you estimate how long this will take you?\n\nThe short answer is that you can't definitively say how long it will take, because you don't know enough about the roads or the state of traffic. You could be going along fine, estimating you'll be done in the next 30 minutes, and then turn down a street that's backed-up with traffic for the next mile and realize that it's actually going to take you 2 hours.\n\nInstalling/Downloading/etc is all the same way. It's performing the same steps it always does, but it's doing it in unfamiliar territory (Your computer). To compound the problem, every program running on your computer is sharing the same computer, and thus all of them are trying to use the hard-drive at the same time, the Internet at the same time, etc. The result is that (like traffic being backed-up), things can be going really well and we're estimating it's going to only take another 30 seconds, and then your download speed drops from 500 kb/s to 5 kb/s because your brother decided right now is a great time to start downloading a new movie and slows your network down, making your 30 second estimate turns into a 50 minute estimate.",
"As a programmer, it's difficult to know how long each process may take in a multi-step process. And processes may take different amounts of time on different machines. So generally, the idea is to just keep the bar moving to let the user know stuff is still happening. Perhaps if there is time and funding, the developers can recalibrate the progress bars to be a little more even, but it still may differ across machines."
]
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[],
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6n8ezt | why is a photocopying machine so huge compared to a normal colour printer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6n8ezt/eli5why_is_a_photocopying_machine_so_huge/ | {
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"There are very small photocopiers too.\n\nOn the large ones, most of the extra size is for complex paper handling: several large supplies of different sizes of paper; a collator that can make 10-20 separate copies of a whole document; sometimes an auto-stapler; a high-speed jam-resistant paper feeding and duplexing mechanism.",
"Normally they are not it's the paper trays and feeds under that make it look bigger than it actually is. But for example in the office I'm in the copier is bigger as it, a Xerox workcentre 7428, is designed to print a lot of pages quickly. But even then most of it is taken up with the large laser toner cartridges ",
"It is not necessarily bigger. You can get photocopier that fits in your bag and you can get printers that take up the room. But even the big photocopier have a modest sized printer and a modest sized scanner. Most of the space is taken up by rollers and shelves for moving and manipulating the paper. And this part is optional. But there is a tendency that on smaller printers you omit the scanner part to make it more compact but for bigger printers you have the scanner module as it does not matter that much and is quite useful. So it is not so much that photocopiers tend to be bigger then printers but more the fact that big printers tend to be photocopiers.",
"8 1/2x5 paper limits how much smaller you can make them without paper storage capacity being unacceptably small. ",
"Besides the extra paper trays and paper handling mechanism, there is also the design constraint of wanting a unit the can be put on the floor, but is tall enough to be used by a standing person. ",
"Photocopiers are not necessarily bigger than printers. What determines the size of a printer will be mostly the speed at which it prints, whether it prints single or double sided (and whether it pulls the page back in to do so), the print quality, the sizes of paper it can print, and, if applicable, the quality and size at which it can scan to copy. Age is also a factor, but comparing my 2 year old HP printer/copier (roughly the size and shape of a PC tower turned on its side) to a commercial copier of the same age, the primary difference will be print speed and quality, and the size of paper which it can print. Less often, you may also see options like a printer that staples stacks of paper for you, which will increase the size as well.",
"You see photocopiers in office environments. They are required to handle a larger load of workflow so require more storage, and other functionalities like scanning.\n\nYour average home printer is small because it needs to take up less room to fit in your computer room at home and it doesn't get used for 10 hours every day. "
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27tq62 | where do our sweat glands pull water from when we sweat? | Is there a "reservoir"? Does our body diffuse it from our blood? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27tq62/eli5_where_do_our_sweat_glands_pull_water_from/ | {
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"text": [
"Yes, it mostly comes from blood (and tissue fluid, which is blood without the cells that takes nutrients all the way to your cells). The sweat glands actively pump out salts into your pore and water follows by osmosis. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
5c23b9 | does frequency of life change during refraction? | A prism can split light into the entire spectrum of colours. So how can the frequency of the light beam change to different frequencies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5c23b9/eli5_does_frequency_of_life_change_during/ | {
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" > So how can the frequency of the light beam change to different frequencies?\n\nIt doesn't. The \"white\" light beam was actually made up of many different frequencies all going along together. A prism is dividing up already separate things like you would sort a bag of M & Ms, not splitting something which was a cohesive whole like cutting up a banana.",
"When you see \"White\" you're actually seeing *all* the colours in the visible spectrum (or, at least close enough).\n\nWhen that \"white light\" hits a prism, each of those wavelengths takes a different angle, so the red goes one way and the blue goes another.\n\nWhen they split like this, you can see them individually. If you were to put a lens on the other side to converge all these colours again, you'd get white again.\n\n[Relevant xkcd.](_URL_0_)\n\nSo it's not changing. It's just not all mixed together anymore."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://xkcd.com/964/"
]
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|
efl83o | why is it when you’re sick and can’t keep water down that something like sprite or ginger ale will stay down? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/efl83o/eli5_why_is_it_when_youre_sick_and_cant_keep/ | {
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"text": [
"Answer: ginger has some medicinal properties that help deal with nausea or indigestion. Pop drinks also have a lot of sugar in them, which is a quick source of energy when you're sick and unable to keep food down. So a flat ginger ale gives you the benefit of soothing your stomach a bit and giving you some energy to keep fighting the sickness.",
"Ginger ale is supposed to work because ginger is used to calm one's stomach. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nI've always had the best luck with gatorade or pedialyte. When you're that sick, you need the electrolytes. Just sip it very slowly, tiny little sips at a time."
]
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[],
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||
39c6ew | why do military ship names begin with uss, hms, etc.? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39c6ew/eli5_why_do_military_ship_names_begin_with_uss/ | {
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"text": [
"USS = United States Ship\n\nHMS = Her Majesty's Ship\n\nThese prefixes are part of naval tradition and vary from navy to navy. ",
"They signify what country's military they represent. \n\nUSS = United States Ship\n\nHMS = Her/His Magesty's Ship, meaning UK.\n\nHMCS = Her Majesty's Canadian Ship \n"
]
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[],
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||
1zo1cp | why do networks like abc,nbc,etc "partner" with comcast or other providers to view shows online. | Is there any benefit to ABC or any other network in require users be a customer of a certain provider in order to view some shows online.
What benefit is it to them (the TV networks/content providers), to deal with a third party to deliver their content, on their website?
I am a technical guy, I work in computer networking so you can get technical. Does Comcast provide CDN type hosting on their servers so its more efficient to deliver it to Comcast customers?
Obviously for NBC (which is owned by Comcast) it makes sense. By why for others?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zo1cp/eli5_why_do_networks_like_abcnbcetc_partner_with/ | {
"a_id": [
"cfvevh6"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Broadcast networks make lots of money selling carriage licenses to cable companies which allow those companies to include the channels in their lineups.\n\nBy limiting the audience of free in-season streaming video, broadcast networks are keeping their partners happy. When video is completely freely available, there's less reason for people to continue getting cable TV service."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
43ea5e | why do high scoring posts (top all time) get archived so you can't vote on them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/43ea5e/eli5_why_do_high_scoring_posts_top_all_time_get/ | {
"a_id": [
"czhl5jq"
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"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"all reddit posts are archived after 6 months\n\ntheres not difference between a high scoring post and a low scoring one"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
1vdai6 | is there a specific reason clocks go clockwise? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vdai6/eli5_is_there_a_specific_reason_clocks_go/ | {
"a_id": [
"cer34a2"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Probably because they were modeled after sundials."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
1lzdy7 | saturn's 'storm' | How does a gas giant such as Saturn have a such a well-defined and sudden storm? How does this one compare to that of a traditional storm on Earth?
Edit: [Here](_URL_0_/comments/1lz1pq/the_huge_storm_churning_through_the_atmosphere_in/) is the link to the recent [r/spaceporn](_URL_0_) post, which has a great picture taken by Cassini showing the storm. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lzdy7/eli5_saturns_storm/ | {
"a_id": [
"cc49t80"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
" > Monster storms rip across the northern hemisphere of Saturn once every 30 years or so, or roughly once per Saturn year.\n\n > \"We think this huge thunderstorm is driving these cloud particles upward, sort of like a volcano bringing up material from the depths and making it visible from outside the atmosphere,\"\n\n_URL_0_\n\n > In fluid dynamics, a **Kármán vortex street** (or a von Kármán vortex sheet) is a repeating pattern of swirling vortices caused by the unsteady separation of flow of a fluid around blunt bodies.\n\n_URL_1_"
]
} | [] | [
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/1lz1pq/the_huge_storm_churning_through_the_atmosphere_in/"
] | [
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"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-268",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_vortex_street"
]
] |
|
2zn0d3 | why don't musicians and performers yawn or hiccup on stage ever? | Kind of a dumb question, but I've never heard a performer cough during a song, hiccup or have the urge to yawn. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zn0d3/eli5_why_dont_musicians_and_performers_yawn_or/ | {
"a_id": [
"cpkf4da"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"Classical music performer for 8 years here:\n\nIt happens more than you think. I've seen people take small naps on stage, vomit, pass out, etc. The reason it doesn't happen more though is probably because when performers are on stage, their brain focuses on the performance itself and anything else gets put aside."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
ccd5ow | what function do insects like ticks serve in nature? | Just read a disturbing article on [_URL_0_](https://_URL_0_) about savage tick clone armies that are sucking cows to death. I have to wonder what function do insects like ticks serve in nature when it seems all they do is destroy and/or sicken people.
Link to article:
[https://_URL_0_/science/2019/07/savage-tick-clone-armies-are-sucking-cows-to-death-experts-fear-for-humans/](https://_URL_0_/science/2019/07/savage-tick-clone-armies-are-sucking-cows-to-death-experts-fear-for-humans/) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ccd5ow/eli5_what_function_do_insects_like_ticks_serve_in/ | {
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"text": [
"Evolution does not require a \"function\" in order to justify an animal existing in a niche, it's not all part of some unseen designer's \"plan\".\n\nTicks have a niche because there are things for them to eat. Perhaps one could argue that this keeps \"something worse\" from filling the niche, but that's just humans seeking a pattern where none is required.",
"Why do you assume everything in nature has a 'purpose to serve'?\n\nWhat purpose do *you* serve in nature?",
"They serve no function, they just exist. Or at least, they can help regulate their hosts' population, maybe",
"They serve the purpose of making your day just that much worse. But in seriousness like other's said, all that is needed to justify their existence is the ability to eat and survive. Other things also eat them, so there is that addition to the foodchain.",
"All animals serve at least 2 functions:\n\n1. They eat something.\n2. They are eaten by something.\n\nNo matter how a creature evolves, these two things will always be true. If they don't eat, then they die out. If they aren't eaten by something, then they multiply too quickly, exhaust their food supply, and then die.\n\nTicks, specifically, perform these functions very well.\n\n1. They eat blood, thus spreading disease, and killing just about anything.\n2. They are eaten by birds, insects, and possums.\n\nThat means that ticks are useful for controlling the population of most animals. Because of the diseases they carry, you can think of them like a predator, except that they take a long time to kill a creature, and then the creature is consumed by scavengers and insects. Really, a tick is one of the few things that can take down an apex predator.\n\nIt also means that eradicating ticks from an area creates a hole in the food chain, affecting those animals that eat ticks, and also the animals that eat the animals that eat ticks, etc.\n\n=======\n\nConcerning your article, it looks like it is about an invasive species of tick (Chinese tick found in the US). That means those ticks are in an area where there is not an animal that eats them, and their numbers are growing too fast, and they are in the process of exhausting their food supply."
]
} | [] | [
"arstechnica.com",
"https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/07/savage-tick-clone-armies-are-sucking-cows-to-death-experts-fear-for-humans/",
"https://arstechnica.com"
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c6c914 | why do you have to refrigerate eggs from the grocery store but you don't have to if you get them fresh from a farm? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c6c914/eli5_why_do_you_have_to_refrigerate_eggs_from_the/ | {
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"text": [
"There is a membrane that comes out of the chickens that cover the egg. In the US, its standard to have the manufacture plant wash and sanitize them, but in places like the UK, they don’t so they can leave their eggs on the counter or shelf for a while.",
"In North America, eggs are washed before shipping to the grocery store. This removes the protective layer, and requires refrigeration to keep them fresh. Farm fresh eggs still have that layer intact, so they don't have to be refrigerated. Apparently, we North Americans are too delicate for anything but perfectly clean eggshells.",
"Washing eggs removes a protective layer that can keep out bacteria etc, this causes them to go bad sooner. Eggs purchased from a farm are often unwashed keeping this protective layer intact. I only wash eggs from my birds right before use or if they are really dirty."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
539cgu | why coffee is not considered as a drug even though it's one of the ten most addictive substances in the world? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/539cgu/eli5_why_coffee_is_not_considered_as_a_drug_even/ | {
"a_id": [
"d7r0y4s",
"d7r0z3j"
],
"score": [
9,
5
],
"text": [
"Caffeine is a drug.\n\nThese are the first lines of its wikipedia page:\n\n > Caffeine is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant of the methylxanthine class. It is the world's most widely consumed psychoactive drug. Unlike many other psychoactive substances, it is legal and unregulated in nearly all parts of the world. ",
"Caffeine is considered a drug—not that that says much, drug is a very broad term.\n\nNow, as to why it's not considered a *dangerous* drug, for one consumption of caffeine doesn't have the same level of negative affects that consumption of, say, cocaine does. Additionally, pathological addiction (i.e an actual physical need) has apparently never been documented with caffeine*. You can be psychologically addicted to anything—video games, drinking water, reading books, studying, banging your head against wall, etc. Pathological addictions are much more dangerous.\n\n\\* Source: _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_dependence"
]
] |
||
2n2unr | why should we care about the depreciation of a new car? | Isn't a car a utility and not an investment? I do not expect to make money like I do in my 401K or other investments. So why do so many people belittle the decision to buy new instead of used? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n2unr/eli5_why_should_we_care_about_the_depreciation_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"cm9t7dm",
"cm9u5q8",
"cm9ug20",
"cm9wepq"
],
"score": [
6,
3,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"A car is not an investment. You are always going to lose money on it. But you may chose to lose more or less money.",
"It only matters if you're going to sell the car. If you're me, buy new, enjoy the warranty service, and keep the car 12-15 years, depreciation really doesn't factor in. Now could I have saved a bit by buying used upfront also (aside from depreciation)? Of course. But the peace of mind is worth it to me. ",
"A car *is* an investment, just a very poorly performing one. For most people a car is a significant purchase, so the future value of that is worth considering. The concept is probably easiest to understand with luxury cars just because the numbers are bigger, but it applies all the time. If you were looking at buying a Mercedes S-Class and keeping it for 5 years, you could expect to spend say, $95,000 on a 2015 model. After 5 years you could reasonably expect it to be worth about what a 2010 model is worth now, which is about $35,000. That's a $60,000 drop in five years! Now, maybe you make enough money that $12,000 a year is an acceptable expense in order to have that nice new mercedes, or maybe you look at that and decide to find something that will hold its value a little better, but either way, it's important information to have.",
"If you look at the total cost of ownership of a car, the biggest single expense is the depreciation.\n\nHe's _URL_1_ breakdown:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe cost of owning a Versa in the first year is almost $10,000. The cost in the 4th year is $5100. You can skip the most expensive years by buying used.\n\nIf you never sell the car, the math works out a little differently, but the vast majority of people plan on selling their car at some point."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://www.cars.com/nissan/versa-note/2014/costofownership",
"cars.com"
]
] |
|
3nkcgq | why is apple flavoured candy always green when red apples are far more prevalent? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3nkcgq/eli5_why_is_apple_flavoured_candy_always_green/ | {
"a_id": [
"cvotah2",
"cvotkrd"
],
"score": [
5,
2
],
"text": [
"Firstly, depends on where you live, red maybe more prevalent to you. Red is used for strawberry and cherry as they don't have alternates, leaving green as a good option for apples.\n",
"Green apples (called \"Granny Smith's\") are pretty common throughout southern Ontario and, I imagine, the New England area of the US. And because red generally ends up being cherry, strawberry, raspberry, or watermelon it doesn't make much sense to throw yet another red flavour on the pile. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
4yi8bl | why do some online stores have different regions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4yi8bl/eli5why_do_some_online_stores_have_different/ | {
"a_id": [
"d6nxp21"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"It's due to copyright related issues, one different companies can hold the rights to the same book in different regions, for example that upcoming Star Trek series was licensed to Netflix in every other country than the United States.\n\nSometimes it is also due to legal issues, e.g. games with Nazi symbols may not be sold in Germany or only in a German version with altered symbols.\n\nA third reason is the distribution strategy, Pokemon Go is a good example. Nintendo launched the game in a few selected countries first to see how successful the game might be before distributing it in other countries."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
44h0la | why does it take amazon several days to "prepare" items for shipment? | Aren't they in a warehouse somewhere ready to go? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44h0la/eli5_why_does_it_take_amazon_several_days_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"czq3zco",
"czq40er",
"czq47cd"
],
"score": [
4,
5,
5
],
"text": [
"It doesn't take days for Prime members, or people who pay for faster shipping.\n\nIf you take the cheap/free shipping, you're standing in line behind all the people who paid to get it quicker.",
"Okay, you know how a mailman comes to your house every day, it's kinda like that for amazon, except instead of your house, it is a warehouse with thousands and thousands of items shipped every day. \n\nIf you order it later in the day, you've likely missed the delivery company's pickup, so you have to wait till the next one.\n\nAnother thing that might be a cause for amazon taking more than one day is that they can only physically ship or set up postage for so many items per day, so if there are lots of people ordering one day, it may take another day or two to process the shipments.",
"In some cases you may just be in a low priority. In others, they may be moving it from one warehouse to another closer to you so that they don't have to pay for UPS to ship it across the country. It's cheaper to package a whole bunch of things together and ship it as freight than to ship a bunch of individual boxes. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
12t935 | why do i hear no music when i push an earbud deeper into my ear? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12t935/eli5_why_do_i_hear_no_music_when_i_push_an_earbud/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6y67r2"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"Earbuds make sound by making waves in the air between the speaker and your eardrum. \n\nIf you seal the ear canal tight and compress the air even tighter, the speaker needs to work harder to make waves. Cheap earbuds under low voltage can't move the air."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
felech | why do you have to dunk what you're frying first in flour then egg then bread crumbs and sometimes back to egg and a second round of bread crumbs? | I don't understand this process whatever is being fried unless it's bread itself for stuff like donuts and dough balls. Or anything that is coated with bread of any kind. I see this often on recipe videos and i dont get it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/felech/eli5_why_do_you_have_to_dunk_what_youre_frying/ | {
"a_id": [
"fjoryta",
"fjow5r9",
"fjoxlrp"
],
"score": [
6,
7,
5
],
"text": [
"The flour and egg make things like breadcrumbs stick to whatever you’re frying. A second round of that process will double up on the breading/crunchiness of it.",
"“Dry sticks to wet” is as simple as I can explain it.\n\nFlour sticks to wet surface of, say, chicken\n\nEgg is used to make the surface wet again and also helps to adhere the bread crumbs. It’s like a glue. If you just dunked the chicken directly in the bread crumbs alone, they wouldn’t stick.\n\nSecond round is for extra crispy skin that everyone loves!",
"Breadcrumbs don't like to stick to the thing you're frying, they need something stickier than your average piece of meat or veggie to adhere to, otherwise they'll just slip off into your oil. Beaten egg is ideal because it's cheap and neutral but adds a little richness to whatever you're making, and it's sticky enough to hold onto the breadcrumbs.\n\nNow the issue with egg is that it's wet, and wet doesn't usually stick to wet. Wet sticks to dry. So the egg might hold the breadcrumbs, but it won't stick easily to the surface of the food, which is likely a little damp. So we need something else that's dry that will stick to the meat/fish/whatever you're frying. Flour is, again, cheap and neutral, and serves nicely to protect the food it coats from being burned or dried out too quickly. \n\nSo the dry flour sticks to the wet food, the wet egg sticks to the dry flour, and then the dry breadcrumbs stick to the wet egg. Everything's nice and tasty. And if you want your food extra crispy, you can add a second layer of egg wash and breadcrumbs, for a second layer of crunchy goodness."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
34uegc | why are there so many immigrants coming across the mediterranean sea? | Specifically... the ones who have suffered such a morbid fate from Libya. What's going on? When/how was this arrangement made? Or was it? Any insight would be appreciated, however not if you are a wingnut who will spout murderous nonsense. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34uegc/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_immigrants_coming/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqy5ws4"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because their cost/benefit calculation (likely based on incomplete information) tells them it's a good option. Lots of parts of the middle east are very unstable, and offer poor economies and life chances. Lots of parts of Africa have few jobs, and lots of young people. They know that if they stay put, their likely lot in life will be poverty or death. They think that if they get to Europe, they have a better chance of living, a better chance of finding work, a chance to send money home & to provide for themselves & their loved ones.\n\nThat establishes the demand. As for getting them across, they have a few viable routes: stowing away on aircraft (very likely to lead to death), overland route through Turkey & Greece (long, difficult, likely to get stopped by officials or killed by others en route), or across the sea.\n\nPeople smugglers then provide barely seaworthy boats, charge several times more people than can fit into them extortionate amounts to get over, and head the boat towards the southern coast. If they're lucky, a European naval patrol finds them before they sink.\n\nSo long as Europe is much richer than countries relatively nearby, this will continue to be, for some, an appealing option. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
95d81p | how does discord make money if they have no advertisements? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95d81p/eli5_how_does_discord_make_money_if_they_have_no/ | {
"a_id": [
"e3rrmot",
"e3rro3h",
"e3rrz1o"
],
"score": [
2,
11,
10
],
"text": [
"\"If you aren't the consumer, you're the product.\"\n\nWith a lot of new tech companies, market share is more important to investors than income. Snapchat is burning money but the stock is valued so highly because it's the head honcho as far as the \"temporary picture message\" platforms go. The idea is that once the company has virtually monopolized their niche, you can start making tweaks to the business model in order to be profitable (e.g: Selling user info to advertisers, advertisements in-app, a paid \"premium\" account with more features, etc.)",
"They currently do not make money. They are planning to implement some premium or paid features in the future but as of now this really isn’t happening and they are just trying to spend money to grow their platform. \n\nThis is fairly common business practice in the software/tech world. ",
"A brief effort led me to Discord's homepage, which says this:\n\"Wondering how we’ll make money? In the future there will be optional cosmetics like themes, sticker packs, and sound packs available for purchase. We’ll never charge for Discord’s core functionality.\""
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
25xo1b | - what are vpns and what kind of magic makes them unblock restricted websites and stuff? | A classmate of mine uses a VPN to access blocked sites at my college sometimes but am wondering how exactly this works. Can anyone explain how it does that and how I can use one? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25xo1b/eli5_what_are_vpns_and_what_kind_of_magic_makes/ | {
"a_id": [
"chlp43z",
"chlpnpf",
"chlppze"
],
"score": [
3,
73,
3
],
"text": [
"A VPN or Virtual Private Network is a network connection that enables you to create a secure connection over Internet. With a VPN, all network traffic (data, voice, and video) goes through a secure virtual tunnel between the host device (client) and the VPN provider’s servers, and is encrypted. [Diagram](_URL_0_)\n\nTl;dr. VPN hides all your activity so that you can't be tracked.\n\nHere is a another link where you can setup a VPN on Android hope it helps.\n\n_URL_1_",
"At the point where your college network connects to the public Internet, there is a device that inspects the traffic in and out looking for \"forbidden\" sites. \n\nIf you pretend that your traffic to the Internet is being written on paper, it acts like a guard that reads all of the papers going in and out, and throws away any papers that it doesn't like. Unencrypted traffic (http) is like writing the stuff on paper and handing it to the guard. He can read everything on the page and decide if he likes it or not. Encrypted traffic (https) is like putting the paper inside of an envelope and putting only the address of where you want to go on the outside. The guard cannot see what is *inside* of the envelope, but he can see who you are sending it to and can decide of he wants to send it there or not. \n\nWith me so far?\n\nNow, imagine that you had a friend on the outside who you could mail the papers to (inside of an envelope), and he will then mail them on to where you want them to go, and then mail you back the answers. The guard can see only that you are sending an envelope to your friend, and will let them through *even though your friend will be forwarding them to \"forbidden\" places.*\n\nThe VPN is an encrypted tunnel that acts like the envelope between you and your friend. The traffic destined for the \"forbidden\" sites is hidden inside of a tunnel to the VPN endpoint, and not to the eventual destination.",
"Imagine you're browsing internet on a distant computer (often in a foreign country), this computer make the requests to the web sites (youtube, please show me that video), then he transfer all the data to your computer. BUT it's encrypted so your internet provider only see a connection between two computers but can't have an idea what's the data about.\n\nSorry if bad english, french guy here (don't hit me please)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://imgur.com/zfS9uPE",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCS6ATvKVF0"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
ant93h | how do rocket engines not crush themselves under their own thrust? | Rocket engines look relatively delicate, and seem like they are mostly thin metal and empty space to allow room for combustion and fuel/oxidizer flow, yet they put out thrust in the 100s of tons, how do they not crush themselves under their own trust? Are they actually more robust than they look, or are there other hidden physics at work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ant93h/eli5_how_do_rocket_engines_not_crush_themselves/ | {
"a_id": [
"efvt560",
"efvtbq3",
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],
"score": [
5,
18,
3
],
"text": [
"They are often times made out of extremely strong and robust exotic metals like titanium alloys or [Inconel.](_URL_0_)\n\nIn short, super duper strong and well engineered.",
"They are actually just more robust than they look. Careful engineering and design went into making them be able to withstand the forces they generate, a complex and technically difficult process called \"rocket science\".",
"On top of the other mentions of strength of alloys, they’re also designed to alleviate pressure. Materials break not so much due to the force, but the force per area. That’s why a sword will pierce, but a broom handle wouldn’t, given the same amount of force"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconel"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
5gcfci | why do galaxies form in clusters rather than spread out from one another? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gcfci/eli5_why_do_galaxies_form_in_clusters_rather_than/ | {
"a_id": [
"dar4j9k"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because after the Big Bang matter clumped in certain areas of higher density due to gravity. These clumps would become Galaxy Clusters. They in turn would clump up even more and the resulting smaller clumps would become galaxies. Note that Galaxy Clusters are actually themselves parts of bigger structures called Superclusters which follow the same principle."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
916o9z | how is it possible to see a star that might’ve exploded thousands of years ago? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/916o9z/eli5_how_is_it_possible_to_see_a_star_that/ | {
"a_id": [
"e2vqtbi",
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"e2vqyfa",
"e2xwxev"
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"score": [
28,
3,
7,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"Light takes time to reach us. \n\nA star that is a million light years away may have exploded a thousand years ago, but the light carrying that information hasn't reached us yet.",
"Because it is so far away the light is just now reaching us. If a star is 250000 light years away from Earth, that means it takes two hundred fifty thousand years for the light from that star to reach Earth due to Its distance from Earth. In reality, the light takes longer to reach us than you would expect if you simply went by the distance from Earth at the time it was admitted due to the expansion of the universe, which means that the distance between Earth and any other given point is constantly expanding. Every time you look up into the night sky, you are looking back in time",
"Okay, so you know how it takes time to move your body across the room? Well light takes time too, just significantly less. When a star is producing light, we can see it however many lightyears after the point in time that that bit of light was produced. Our sun for example is 8 minutes away, so at 0 minutes when light is being produced we will see that same bit of light 8 minutes later. Well if the sun decided to explode today for no reason, we wouldn't know for 8 more minutes , because it takes time for that light to travel to us.",
"Light travels very fast, but other stars are very far away. Light from a far away star thus travels thousands or millions of years to reach Earth. This basically means we see light that is thousands of years old, thus we see the past. There might be new stars we can't see yet since the light is still on it's way, and we might see stars that have exploded thousands of years ago, but we still see the light they emitted long before that happened. ",
"Yes it is possible we are seeing stars that have already exploded. \nImagine you lived in say San Francisco in 1845 and your grandmother lived in London. \n\nEach day your grandmother mailed you a letter. \nOne day your grandmother dies but for weeks maybe months following her death letters she wrote keep arriving. You don’t know she is dead when you receive them. \n\nThe light from distant stars is like those letters. It is in transit to you even though no more are being sent so you keep receiving them for some time after. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
490j50 | how does the military determine when someone gets deployed overseas? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/490j50/eli5_how_does_the_military_determine_when_someone/ | {
"a_id": [
"d0o71wj",
"d0o9bj3"
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"score": [
2,
4
],
"text": [
"In the Navy you get stationed on a ship. Ships go through alternating cycles of maintenance, training and then deployment. If you're stationed on the ship and it deploys you go with it. Small ships deploy for six months every 18 months, larger ships like aircraft carriers deploy every two years. Obviously certain situations can speed up or extend these deployments. \n\nNaval aviation is similar. You're attached to a squadron which will be attached to a ship or ship squadron and you will deploy when the ships deploy.",
"Individual soldiers aren't deployed. Units are deployed.\n\nWhen you're in the military you work and train on a particular base and in a particular unit.\n\nHigher-ups determine what units will deploy based on a number of factors.\n\n*Usually* a brigade will deploy. This is several thousand people, broken down into multiple battalions, which are broken down into companies.\n\nThat brigade will then spend several months getting ready to deploy, and will relive a currenly-deployed battalion, taking over thier area of operations.\n\nThis is a *very* basic, barebones example.\n\n(Source- Veteran, former Army infantry)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
8zcgtp | why does it seem that people with mental disabilities are happier than those who don't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8zcgtp/eli5_why_does_it_seem_that_people_with_mental/ | {
"a_id": [
"e2hn22p",
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"score": [
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7,
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],
"text": [
"It some instances, maybe they're not and simply cannot communicate. But for the rest, probably because they will never have the same worries and responsibilities. Many will be cared for their whole lives. Perhaps they dont have the capacity for that level of worry/anxiety.",
"I work at a speech therapy clinic and we see a lot of children/teens with mental disabilities (mostly Autism). I’d say it’s about a 50/50 split of ‘happy’ vs ‘tormented’ dispositions. The happy children seem to be in an “ignorance is bliss” state, like the previous poster mentioned - they don’t have the capacity to worry and be anxious and stressed. The tormented children seem “trapped” in their body and in a world that doesn’t fit them. ",
"I'm assuming you're taking the stereotypical view of mental disabilities whereby people are ignorant and therefore blissful. There are many other layers to mental disabilities, but I will purposefully ignore them to answer your specific question.\n\nImagine being drunk all the time. Because of your being drunk (disabled) you do not have the physical brain power necessary to do certain things (walk a straight line, tell that girl at the bar she's cute, etc.). Some of those things also include thinking properly. When you're drunk you're not going to have an existential crisis about your bills or your debt or your car that needs repair, you're just drunk and having fun in the moment.\n\nThis is synonymous to certain mental disabilities where the brain power is just lacking and therefore incapable of knowing what to be sad about in the right way. Expressing emotions costs brain resources do to their high level of social function so some disabled brains just don't have that.",
"I have read from a couple of people with relatives who have mental disabilities and are Not. Happy. At. All.\n\nUnfortunately, the mentally handicapped person had no way to deal with this other than acting out, which included hurting other people. In both cases, these folks were in \"homes\" because they weren't really safe to be around. (Imagine a really angry toddler having a temper tantrum. Now imagine they weigh 150 pounds.)\n\nSo it seems that there is a tendency to only see the ones who are relatively happy. because those are the only ones we're able to interact with safely. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
76kn6r | can people have smaller than average organs and what does it mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76kn6r/eli5_can_people_have_smaller_than_average_organs/ | {
"a_id": [
"doer7dg"
],
"score": [
8
],
"text": [
"If you made it this long with little to no problems, I wouldn't worry about it.\n\nBest thing to do is talk to your doctor about it. She would probably feel bad if she knew what she said made you uncomfortable and she didn't know/therefore couldn't explain things for you so you could feel better.\n\n\nI'm almost 36 and was 7 weeks early at 4lb 5oz. I have a medically documented legit thick skull. Lol. A host of other problems too, but family genetics are to blame. \n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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