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3mq1rp | if there were bacteria on mars, why wouldn't it be everywhere like on earth? | Bacteria covers every surface on earth. If there were any bacteria on Mars, why wouldn't it reproduce until it also covered every surface?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mq1rp/eli5_if_there_were_bacteria_on_mars_why_wouldnt/ | {
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"Mars lacks a functional magnetosphere to protect the planet's surface from the Sun's radiation, and the atmosphere is incredibly thin and diminishing more every day. As a result there are very few locations on Mars where bacterial life could live for a prolonged period of time.\n\nTo put this in perspective, even after a full-scale nuclear war or the worst-case scenario of climate change, Earth would still be preferable to Mars for most forms of life. Mars is an incredibly hostile environment."
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6yw2dr | if a child loses a limb, and it's successfully reattached, can the limb still grow? | I'm talking about something small, like a finger (but more than just the tip of the finger).
For example, if a child loses a whole finger in an accident, but then the finger is reattached, will the finger always remain the same size and appear deformed? Or is there any chance that it could grow as normal *after* being reattached?
I thought I could easily google this, but I'm not finding what I'm looking for.
(In case anyone's wondering, what made me curious is a documentary I watched about people who lost limbs during shark attacks; none of the victims were kids though). | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6yw2dr/eli5_if_a_child_loses_a_limb_and_its_successfully/ | {
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"It depends on how clean the separation is, how the limb was preserved (cooled) and how skilled the surgeon is. It will never stop growing. If it is attached successfully and is still alive then it will continue to heal and grow as usual. And it does not matter if it is kids or adults. Sharks do tend to tear the limb off instead of a clean cut and they tend to go for larger limbs and even swallows pieces of it. So it is very rare to get a good enough limb to reattach after a shark attack.",
"Assuming that it is successfully reattached such that blood can flow through the limb (vessels reattached) and the child can use the muscles in the limb (nerves reattached), the only issue that may occur is if the injury affects the growth plate area of the bone. The growth plate is the region on a bone that lengthens as the limb grows. Depending on the severity of injuries on the growth plate, it can lead to arrested growth in that limb. \n\nGrowth (at least during puberty) depends in hormones transferred through the blood that signal regions to grow. If the blood flow is restored to the limb, it can receive those signals and nutrients to grow.\n\nThe muscles attached to your bones also matter. Children with spinal cord injuries as a child tend to develop scoliosis going through puberty since the muscles cannot support the growing spine, causing it to grow curved. Thus, the nerve connections to the reattached limb are important so that there are proper stresses on the bone while it is growing.\n\n",
"I wonder how likely it is that the growth will be normally symmetrical. I broke my leg when I was 1, and my legs are different lengths. The difference is little enough that most my friends never notice, but physical therapists recognize it by a faint hitch in my stride). I assume a break is usually less traumatic than a full loss and reattachment. ",
"Had my finger cut off as a kid and reattached. The nail looks off, but it's an adult finger now with no issues",
"I have pretty much a 5 year-old's understanding of this, so you're in luck: \n\nLimb comes off: This piece of body loses its blood supply containing energy sources (like oxygen and calories) and its building blocks (like amino acids, minerals, water, and stem cells), and therefore loses its ability for cell repair. \n\nLimb goes back on, it regains access to all those resources. So assuming the vascular tissue connectivity is repaired to some extent (not just skin, joint, bone, muscle, and nervous tissue), then the resource delivery system to the body part is restored, and that limb is going to be able to turnover cells at the appropriate rate to live, remain healthy, and yes continue to grow. \n\nThere will be better answers in here, but I thought I'd \"try my hand\" at this topic so to speak."
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67klvz | why are some businesses classified as "non-profit," but are clearly wildly profitable based on their executive's salaries? | A good example would be organ and tissue recovery facilities around the U.S. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67klvz/eli5_why_are_some_businesses_classified_as/ | {
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"Executive salaries are a cost of business, not a profit. If you want good executives you need to pay for them.",
"To be a nonprofit, you spend what you bring in, meaning there are no retained earnings. You could most certainly give all your revenues to your employees and still be a non profit.\n\nBut what about super high exec salaries? Well... The argument is that not everone can do the job. Maybe it does take a million a year to pay a super-star CEO to run the non-profit. If the salary isn't competative, maybe they go elsewhere and then the non-profit falters and everyone loses their job.\n\nBut the argument I like best is the one where you jump into the middle of a real situation...\n\nYou got this non-profit company bringing in 1 billion in donations and revenue. You employ 2,300 people, run 60 retail locations in 8 countries and use the revenues in part to help thousands of needy people. Now your CEO quits and works for a big bank and triples his or her salary. \n\nWho do you hire to replace someone like that? Who can do the job? Maybe the woman at XY company whose already making 1.2 mil? How do you get her to accept the job for less money? Do you hire someone without experience and risk destroying the company? Maybe you promote within and give the job to the executive manager? But he is already making 650k and expects a raise now that he's taken on the added risk and responsibility of being the CEO. It's a tricky situation.",
"A business has ownership, whether it be a sole proprietor, dual proprietors, private shareholders. or public shareholders, someone is there to collect the profit as the owner of the company. Non profit organizations don't have someone to collect profits, instead the profits are invested back into the company. They do have a Board of Directors that might make decisions for the organization, but they can't take the profit home with them."
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dnx06p | how does the internet exist? no i'm not talking about us using it but more so, what's actually causing it to run and who's in charge, who could possibly end it? | Edit * WOW 700 VIEWS, THANKS SO MUCH.. PS. I didn't know I could write in this box! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dnx06p/eli5_how_does_the_internet_exist_no_im_not/ | {
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"The internet isn't one thing that someone could just shut down or with someone in charge off. It's a network so basically it's just computers connected with each other. Some of those computer are just laptop or destop they are for user like any normal computer you ever used, while other computer are use as servers they are specialized to just have a bunch of website page on them with a directory to make it easier to find those webpages. So when you type an address that the addresse of the page on a servers, your computer send a signal through the network to that server to send you the webpage.\n\nNobody is in charge, there is several communication companies that own cables through the world, some go underwater to connect different continents. So for example Google own 63 thousands miles of submarine cables which is 8.5% of the world total, so if Google wanted to shutdown their stuff it would take time to remove to disconnect all of their cables, and maybe some region would end up with bad connection, because now the information need to pass through longer or older cable, some region wouldn't have any internet anymore, think small Island with only a couple of cable to connect them, but most people wouldn't see any differences depending where you live. You would have to cut most of the cables submarine or onland to disconnect everboby from the internet.",
"Imagine if there were only three computers in the US, located in San Francisco, Kansas City, and New York City. The SF computer is connected by cable to KC, and KC is connected by cable to NYC. So far, that means SF and NYC can talk to KC.\n\nWhat makes these computers special is that they advertise that they are willing to help you talk to other computers. Specifically, the KC computer knows it's connected to SF and NYC, and says that it's willing to ferry messages on their behalf. This means that SF can now talk to NYC, so any computer in this network can talk to any other one.\n\nHere's where it gets interesting. If Los Angeles buys a computer and wants to get on to the network, all it has to do is connect to SF, which is the nearest one. Because the SF computer (just like the KC computer previously) knows how to route messages for other computers, it means that the LA computer can talk to KC and NYC as well.\n\nNow, let's say Austin wants to join in the fun, and connects to KC. But now the LA-Austin connection has to go through SF and KC, which is slower than we'd like. At great expense, we can directly connect LA to Austin by cable for better performance. This is really cool, because any LA-KC traffic can now either go through SF or Austin, *depending on which one is faster*. In fact, SF can break down entirely, and the rest of the network can still route around the failure.\n\n(On the flip side, a country like China that wants to control information would do the opposite, by deliberately funneling all traffic through a specific set of computers that it controls, so that it can selectively censor certain messages by simply not ferrying them across.)\n\nSo as you can see, there's nobody specifically in charge of the Internet. There are standards committees that decide how these computers can talk to each other, but as long as you connect to somebody who is already on the Internet, you're also on the Internet. You connect to an ISP, who in turn connects you to the rest of the Internet. Reddit also does the same on its end. Then numerous computers (now specialized computers called \"routers\" that do nothing but ferry messages for a fee) in between gets your request to Reddit and brings back a web page for your computer to draw.",
"The internet exists in it's current form as a series of servers where information such as websites exist. It's actually pretty similar to the postal service in that sense. The information is the mail, and the internet is the postal service. Service providers are like the postal workers and your mailbox is the modem. The government is relatively in charge, in the sense they can regulate what is allowed and what isn't. In some places they regulate it pretty hard, like China. I don't really think there's a way to \"end\" it per say since it's not centralized. But suppose destroying the infrastructure that allow you to access it would effectively disable it.",
"next question: how can i be an internet provider? i mean, i don't want to rent other company internet, i want to \"create\" my own internet (that is connected with the normal one)",
"The internet started as a military program called Arpanet. Many different companies have worked on standards like IEEE or infrastructure like your ISP. There is no one off switch, the most relatable comparison would be the highway and road system. \n\nYour network / town can be disconnected from the rest of the internet / highway but it would take massive efforts to destroy it entirely. Like wise you can think of your personal computer as your house that you lock with your creditials and companies / agencies restrict almost all access to the general internet.",
"The Internet is what we call a global data network consisting of many sub networks belonging to various companies and governments.\n\nIt's kind of like asking who owns the road? What road? The world is connected with roads, some going from one country to another, and in many cases many countries. They connect places and people, and allow us to visit businesses and others. The way you know where to go is by looking up the address of a location (DNS, see \\[1\\]) and then checking a map to know how you get there (routing tables, see \\[2\\]).\n\nAddresses are also governed by an entity which hands them out, and once they've been handed out, have an easier time being subdivided to other companies and institutions, or even individuals.\n\nThe important part left is then who creates the map (see \\[3\\]) because this changes constantly and determines the path we take to reach our destination.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n\\[1\\] For example when you type in an address in your browser, your computer sends a DNS request to the DNS server that it has stored in its settings, which responds to your computer with an IP address, and your computer then can send data directly to that IP address. The DNS network however does have some governance in the sense that there are root servers at the very top level, but there is no requirement for the requests to reach them as they can be manipulated by a DNS server at any point in the chain, although in most public cases isn't needed or done.\n\n\\[2\\] Mostly in this case we talk about globally routed addresses. For example, your computer needs to really only know where to, within its own network, send data if it's outside its own network, it doesn't need to know anything more than that. This local destination is called your gateway and in most residential setups is handled by your router. So your computer wants to reach an address on the Internet using a domain (something dot something), gets an IP from the DNS server, sees that the IP (say 216.58.211.142) is not within your own network (say 192.168.0.0/24) so it sends the data to its gateway (say 192.168.0.1, which in this example is your router). Your gateway has a routing table just like that (\"This is my local network, anything outside of it, send here \\[another IP address\\]\", called a default route). As you go higher up the chain from your home, into your ISPs network, and then beyond, the routing table will increase until we find a routing table that describes where we can find the location of the IP address you are looking for, and then start to decrease as the packets hit those routers since we are getting closer to the target the devices hit need to know fewer and fewer routes.\n\n\\[3\\] Throughout the Internet are the above mentioned routers. They belong to companies, institutions, governments, and some individuals. The point is, these routers communicate with each other. They most often on the Internet use a protocol called BGP. In this protocol we determine with whom we'd like to talk, and what we'd like to say. The things the routers exchange during these talks between themselves are routes, so that each router knows what the router it is connected to is itself connected to. This is why the higher up we get, the routing table grows, so that we at the highest point know where to send data no matter what the address is (I am router A, and I want to send data to IP X, looking at my routing table the router that knows where that address is goes via router B, so I'll send my data there and then it is router B's problem).\n\n & #x200B;\n\nPut very simply and omitting quite a bit, this collection of roads, addresses, and maps is what we call the Internet. There isn't a single point one can attack bring it all down, and there isn't one entity controlling everything, but if someone was dedicated and had the resources, they could disrupt parts of the Internet for a finite time.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI apologise if parts of the above seemed rushed, I'm finishing this with 2% battery left. I'll check comments later if I've left anything unclear.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEdit: I tried to simplify the basic idea, but for the folks wondering what 5 year old would understand this, ELI5 isn't for actual 5-year-olds (rule #4).",
"You can effectively end it by cutting off access to third party DNS servers and blocking ports. If you were a dictator and wanted to shut down the internet except for companies that pay a bribe, disabling all IPs as a destination except the ones you want would basically do this.\n\nThis assumes you are the only ISP or all the ISPs must go through you.",
"Summary\n\nThanks for all the explanations\n\nFrom what I gathered, it forms part of the road, map and diagram analogy... \n~the internet was create by a couple of computers trying to communicate with each other... \n~in order to do this physical connections had to be established between the two... \n~this therefor created somewhat of a hub as it stored pages and 'websites' that may be of use to the other computer ....and other people... \n~this means that other computers would want to connect to these initial servers in order to obtain information... \n~but there is no central point for this information as the server is not specifically the computer... The computer is just the tool used to access parts of the 'server',where information is stored... \n~\nThat means other computers that want to access this information is dependent on location and which of the other computers are closest or fastest to travel to them... \n~thus no need for centralisation as any amount of computers can communicate via the internet without a hub computer\n\nFINAL THOUGHTS \n\n~so how the internet provider is the key player and just like China IP filters their access, can't that be happening to us 😱 how do we know it's not happening to us! \n....~\n~if it's all connected physicallywhich I had no clue about, as it's man made I thought communication were happening via telephone poles lol. \nDoesn't that mean it can be physically destroyed \n\n~....Does that not mean information can be destroyed?",
"The internet is a network of networks connecting many computers together. Physically, it's a bunch of fiber optic cables running over most of the planet, including under the oceans, to connect the different continents. \n\nThe company that owns the cable also owns the hardware on either end of the cable. That company lets other companies connect to their cable for a fee.\n\nThe cables that run under the ocean, and across vast distances on land are called \"backbone\" cables, as they function sort of like your spine. It's a big bundle of cable that branches off in many places to connect remote locations to a central network.\n\nThe backbone cables are owned by companies, and those companies allow other companies to connect. Some companies own a different section of backbone, and some are small internet service providers who act as an intermediary between you the consumer, and the company who owns the nearest backbone segment.\n\nAll these different segments of the network are owned by different companies, but through mutual agreement they're all interconnected, which is what allows the internet to exist as it does.\n\nOn a logical level, the internet is just your computer talking to another computer, or a series of them. When you navigate to _URL_0_, your computer asks a domain name server for Google's address. Then your computer connects to that address, and downloads whatever data the server wants to send you.\n\nPhysically, your connection is routed through many switches and miles of cable, but the core point is that it's simply a direct connection between your computer and the server. And that's how the internet works.\n\nNo one person is in charge, and that's a good thing. If one or two companies shut down their backbone service, we'd see large slowdowns, and some outages, but for the most part the internet would continue to exist. It's a very robust system, full of redundancies.",
"All the signals are protocols as in HTTP or HTTPS or FTP or SMTP and a bunch more. The protocols are for different technologies and different methods of moving data around the internet. Web address and URL's work due to DNS and routers. There have been arguments about who should run and manage the DNS records and host the servers. Some countries wish they could solely manage the DNS zones and records and this would be a horrible nightmare if one single country had control.",
"Another way of understanding it is that it's a collection of communication protocols which are mutually agreed upon, sort of like a language. There's HTTP for web pages, SMTP for email, FTP for file transfer, and a bunch of other aspects like handshaking for identification and encryption for secure transmissions. The idea was conceived by Sir Tim Berners Lee in UK, and first implemented by DARPA, a part of the US military, as a way to create a counter network that had no single point of failure, but instead could have limitless nodes added or removed, like a chaotic mesh system. \n\nWhat's really happening is that the computers talk to each other, via servers that are owned by individuals, organisations, universities, governments, countries and tech giants like Google, via WiFi, ethernet cables, copper cables, fibre optic cables, and huge undersea or underground trunk lines, using this language. \n\nNo single entity is in charge, but industry groups like IETF agree internet standards across the industry, and a lot of the hardware like towers and cables is owned by ISPs like the Verizon/Comcast of each country. Web servers are often hosted on computers in data centers of companies like Amazon (AWS) or Microsoft (Azure).\n\nWhat could possibly end it? Not much could kill it completely, but there was a recent incident when Russia \"switched off\" the internet for the whole of Ukraine or something, since it turned out that the whole country was reliant on a trunk that went via Russia. In theory a huge solar flare from the sun could behave like a giant EMP attack and leave all electronics unusable, but it's never happened in the history of modern electronics.",
"It's a bunch of cables connecting a bunch of PCs.\n\nSome of these PC's are Servers. Most of the PC's are used for playing games and watching porn. A bunch of other PC's host the games and the porn.\n\nSome of the cables run across the sea. Some from your house to a node where a bunch of smaller cables then run into the Sea as a giantcable.\n\nAlso some of the computers use WiFi.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIt's a spider web but in 3D. Breaking one link wont break the entire web, and new links are popping up every minute.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe Sun could probably end it.",
"Everything that is on the internet, devices, your phone, your computers, networks, connections, servers, etc IS the internet.\n\n\nThere's no core, no central servers, and no main connections that dictate \"internet\" versus other similar structures.\n\n\nIt started looking ago with military and then university organizations linking their own individual networks together, so that you could get access to one network from another without having to be on that first network locally. It grew, more and more networks connected, and many new protocols were invented and adopted by people to use the connections for new types of services (www, for example, is just one thing used, email is another, and so on).\n\n\nThere's some central protocols in the original design and management of the public IPs given out, but that's a deeper look. \n\n\nWho is in charge and who could end it? Its SUPPOSED to be no one and no one. However, it's clear that governments could easily do whatever they want to control and end it, especially with everyone clamoring for government regulation today, and quite likely end it or make it so difficult or unsable that it effectively ends it.",
"The internet is like passing notes in your class at school.\n\nYou want to get a note to kid B? You gotta pass it to kid C first, who then passes it to kid D and finally to B. How do you all know where to pass the notes to? Well, you all know where everyone sits in class because of your teacher's seating arrangement (DNS). You are each a sort of network router, passing notes along with each address to the recipient. Your classroom is its own contained network (sorta like a particular country's networks smaller).\n\nThat's pretty easy.\n\nWhat if you want to get a note to a different classroom (a different network or country)? Well, you all know the one kid who can pass notes to that classroom, so you send your note to him who then gets it to the other classroom. At that point, a similar thing happens. Those kids know where each other sits so you don't have to know when you write the original note.\n\nAs for who can stop it, the teacher is in charge of the seating arrangements, they could change where each student sits (it'd be like changing the IP address of a website or domain), and they can control who comes in the classroom. This means, like China, they could prevent certain students from entering the classroom or intercept a note before it gets where you want it to go.\n\nDon't know if this helps or not, but it's helped me trying to explain it just now.",
"Computer Scientist here! My favorite topic so I'll try not to rant too much.First the Internet's grandfather... Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANet) was established to let universities 1) To collaborate on computer projects without having the physically transport their work slowly. 2) To share their expensive resources so that everybody can save costs. In order to do this the few universities connected their computers directly via wire. **There was only a few around so for the most part there was a cable running directly from university to university without much overhead.**\n\n**Eventually more computers were added, and eventually too many were added**. Some overhead was devised to better organize the computers. **Computers were dedicated exclusively for routing traffic.**\n\n**Today, your computer sends a message to your internet service provider,** if you're service provide owns a routing computer then it checks its database. **If the address is unknown you're request gets raised to a higher more complete list. Each time your request is raised more and more computers hear about the request.** Other internet service providers, government computers, businesses, and more all checking to see if they know (or are themselves) the computer you've addressed your request to. Either somebody has heard about your request, or the distance your packet is willing to go is exceeded. **Either somebody gives your message to the intended person (and you also learn the route to take next time), or the farthest person tells you that your packet doesn't want to go farther.**\n\n**What's running it? The fact that the computers agree to talk to each other.**\n\n**Who's in charge? This is up for debate, the FCC sets the rules at the moment (as far as I've heard), but the FBI,NSA,FCC (and maybe others because they're capable) search packets and accept reports from various sources to enforce the laws. They send letters to your home and if you continue to break the law they'll send people.**\n\n**What would shut it down? Nothing can shut it down, because it could be reset by any capable computer scientists willing to tie their computers together. As far as the internet that most people know about it can be turned off by the government.**",
"Everything on the internet is basically on a type of computer somewhere. Those computers are all connected by wiring under the ground (or at the bottom of the ocean) that connect to various meeting points and those are connected to other points. Things you do online travel through those lines, connect up to other points where those lines meet, and eventually make their way to the computers hosting the information (or the same in reverse. Think a big spider web that goes around the world. \n\nThose meetup points for wiring are owned by local ISPs (internet service providers) and it's in their best interest to keep them up and running well (if they aren't working properly, people are going to cancel their internet services and go with someone else). If they do go down, though, stuff can just go around them (take a other route).\n\nThe computers hosting the information (like this reddit post) are owned by regular people in their home, companies called web hosting companies (think Go Daddy, for example), private companies, or branches of government. Laws about what you can have on the internet are determined by the country the computer hosting it is in. So, if I lived in Canada and wanted to have a website selling maple syrup and it was illegal to sell maple syrup in the US (it's not), I probably couldn't host the website with Go Daddy and would go with a Canadian company like My Hosting instead or I would host it from my home if my computer and internet speed was good enough to do it.\n\nThe reason we're able to see stuff from other countries or post stuff like comments on reddit from all over the world is because different countries work cooperatively together to make sure those connections are there. A country can decide that they don't want to be connected to the rest of the world, and cut those cords, or block certain stuff at those connection points.",
"The internet is just a bunch of computers networked together using a mix of really cool tech.\n\nThe ELI5 (maybe ELI12) version would go something like this:\n\n1. You got a friend who wants to have a LAN party so you can play fortnite without some pro in Russia or China sniping you from 700m away - so he comes to your house with his pc and you guys connect both your pcs via an ethernet cable and boom! You got a network!\n2. You go back to school and tell your other friends about it and soon, 5 of them want to come over and play, too - so you buy a switch and connect all 5 of your pcs together and laugh at stupid russians and chinese pros.\n3. Your parents get mad because a bunch of 15 year olds are messing up their house and jacking up the electicity bill, so they kick you out - what do you do?\n4. One of you find out about this wonderful device called a modem where you can dial each other pcs remotely and get connected to each other that way! Cool! Game on! Continue laughing at russians and chinese.\n5. All your parents get mad, cos now, you're hogging the phone line at home and they are partially deaf because they were trying to speak to the \"machine\" which kept pinging back.....meeeeee meeeeee eeeeee eeeee pong ping pong eeeeeeee.....\n6. Well, fuck, what do you do now? Then one of your friends realises it's 2019 and there are greedy companies called ISPs which really provide an essential service where instead of dialing each other, you can just dial the ISP and they handle all the connectivity issues and you dial em up and tell them you want your own private network and just wanna play fortnite with your mates without stupid russians and chinese kids ruining your fun.\n7. The ISP then tells you that they charge thousands of dollars for a static IP address and why would a stupid 15 year old want to do that just to play fortnite?\n8. So you just grin stupidly and give up on the idea on playing fortnite without russian and chinese kids t-bagging your sorry excuse for a player and realise that the internet is just a bunch of computers connected together like when you first asked your mate at school to come over and connect your two pcs.\n\nDoes that help?",
"Wasn’t there a thing where a handful of people had access to “reset” the internet. Like a master safety switch. This was probably 10-15 years ago that I read that.",
"I am. At least, I am one of many people that help it remain working and could cause a major disruption. The internet is a joint effort. Your ISP is connected to other ISPs that connect to servers that you talk to. The \"map\" of the internet is stored by all the ISPs. When a new path is made, there are protocols for updating everyone (BGP if you wanna look it up).\n\nWhat you are probably looking for is authority. There are a lot of organizations and everyone goes by what they say so everything is standardized. ICANN is a big one, since they oversee who gets what domain and IP.\n\nDoes every country have to play along? No, in fact look at China, they have a huge content filter that blocks out a lot, and they have their own sites that mirror google, amazon, etc as a result. Also, even something standardized like IP allocations, nothing is stopping you from broadcasting someone else's IP, although if you do it intentionally you will get cut off from everyone else. You also have local laws (looking at you EU) that make their own policies and the options for other countries is comply or get blocked.",
"For the internet to work you need 3 things:\n\n1. Computers connected together by cable or radio waves\n2. Agreed formats/standards/protocols for these computers to talk\n3. 'Directories' of how the computers are connected so that they know where to send things\n\nFor the internet to be 'ended' or for other bad things to happen you need to attack one of those things.\n\nIn 2008 Pakistan disrupted the 'directories' by accident. If you think of the directory as your phone contacts list, it's kinda like your friend saying \"Hey bud did you know Stacy changed her number to 555-1234, you should update her contact on your phone\" and you can decide to either believe your friend or ignore it. Pakistan did this to YouTube's address and everyone believed Pakistan, people will be more careful in the future.\n\nRussia is working on disrupting its own connections in the event of an 'emergency'. Russia will disconnect all connections between Russia and the rest of the world. However, anyone in Russia could theoretically hook up a satellite modem and they could even allow anyone else in Russia to use it, but it will be far slower and more expensive.\n\nProtocols are the most interesting threat, because every computer on the internet uses the same standard to communicate (like, that's the point of a standard) it means everyone is vulnerable if there's a security flaw in that standard. Luckily pretty much every tech company on earth is aligned on preventing that because they don't want the internet to break. However, net neutrality (or rather, lack of it) is a way that tech companies could make the internet essentially useless, if it makes them more money."
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2k09hr | why is it that every time i am in a customer phone support menu that asks for my (acct., citation,order, etc.) # the first thing i have to do when the rep comes online is give them that exact same info. why ask for it if it doesn't show up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k09hr/eli5why_is_it_that_every_time_i_am_in_a_customer/ | {
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"Sometimes it's as dumb as you suggest, but most of the time it's a form of two-factor authentication. The system asks for your account number, and then the rep on the other hand has that account open. Then the rep will ask for the account number again, to make sure they're looking at the right account, as well as asking your order number, last four, DOB, etc to authenticate that you're really the account holder."
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1nh6d0 | why is my facial hair darker than my head hair? | I have had people ask if I colored my hair because my beard is darker than sin, but my head hair is noticeable lighter.
Beard=black as a coal mine.
Head=medium brown | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nh6d0/eli5_why_is_my_facial_hair_darker_than_my_head/ | {
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"Im a blonde and my beard grows in a nice deep red..just genetics",
"Mine is dark brown on top of my head, nearly white eyebrows, carrot top red goatee/beard, and blonde body hair. I just assume my mom slept with a calico cat. "
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eje68p | this is a delicate subject so i’ll start with this is not intended to hurt feelings or be disrespectful. why if you say something against a person solely based on ethnicity is it called racism, unless that person is jewish, what exactly does anti-semitic mean? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/eje68p/eli5_this_is_a_delicate_subject_so_ill_start_with/ | {
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"The TL:DR is that Judaism has roots in a religious movement, as opposed to a purely race concept so it’s a clearer label to make everyone aware of exactly who you’re trying to insult.\n\nThat’s a very short wrap up, but make no mistake. Being anti Semitic, is racist. It’s just that a white man doesn’t automatically belong to any preconceived group, so this is merely a subsection of racism, to create further subdivision among people. \n\nAnti semitism is the discrimination of Jews for their heritage, but it is also racist. If you were to be anti Semitic, someone would not be wrong for calling you a racist."
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6w0vey | why can foods be too salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and spicy, but not too savory? | I'm sure everyone's experienced foods that have been too salty or too sweet or too sour or too bitter, but I've never eaten a food and thought that it was "too savory/umami". Why is that the case? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6w0vey/eli5_why_can_foods_be_too_salty_sweet_sour_bitter/ | {
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"Go get a big ol' chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Not crappy pre-grated 70% cellulose parmesan, the real stuff. \n\nNow grate a cup or two of that. \n\nNow eat it all at once. Just shove as much of it in your mouth at once as you can and chew on it. \n\nThen tell me if you still think things can't be \"too umami\". ",
"Render a cup of pig fat from bacon. Strain it and let it cool to room temperature. \n\nEat it like ice cream and let us know if you've had enough savory.",
"People are giving you some ideas, but if you want pure unadulterated umami, try a very, very small spoon of straight [MSG](_URL_0_). You absolutely can use too much of this - the result is difficult to describe but it tastes really bad."
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wht4b | why are maps that way round? | Why is north at the top, east and west to the side? If we lived in a differently arranged planet, might things be different? Have there been other cultures (Australians aside) who viewed maps differently? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wht4b/eli5_why_are_maps_that_way_round/ | {
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"Because the original explorers were Western Europeans, and we've just used modified revisions of their maps since everyone has been used to them. Defining North as the \"top\" of anything is a human attribution, and we could easily make the South the \"top\" of the world.\n\n[Here](_URL_1_) is a video from the tv show The West Wing on the subject (it's short, but interesting).\n\nAnd [here](_URL_0_) is a wiki article on reversed maps.",
"All the maps are the one way around because having it standard makes everything easier. It took a long time for everyone to start doing that. Everyone used to do their maps differently until eventually we all saw each others maps and realised it would be easiest if we all did them the same way around so we wouldn't be confused.\n\nAn example of how maps used to be different is that it used to be common for any map of the coast to have the coatline on top and the sea on the bottom, regardless of which way was north.",
"The reason is: because that's how Ptolemy did it.\n\nClaudius Ptolemy was a very smart man who lived nearly 1900 years ago. He's most famous for books about astronomy, but he also wrote a very important book about map-making, which also contained an atlas of the world as it was known to his people, the ancient Greeks. This book is called the *Geographia*.\n\nThe actual maps that went along with the *Geographia* haven't survived, but that doesn't matter because the book lists the coordinates for every place he mentions. Anyway, Ptolemy spends book 1 of the *Geographia* talking about earlier map-makers, and about the mathematical problems that come up when you try to draw the curved surface of the earth on a flat piece of paper. Eventually, at the start of book 2, he actually starts with the maps. He begins by deciding how he's going to arrange the map.\n\nNow,\n\n1. his people had more information about the area around the Mediterranean Sea than about the rest of the world,\n2. the Mediterranean is in the north-west of the Eurasian-African landmass, and \n3. in ancient Greek you write from left to right and top to bottom of the page.\n\nFor these reasons, he decided to put the north-west at the top left. Here's what he writes:\n\n > We propose an arrangement with consideration for what will generally be useful for a drawn map: and that is the system whereby we make movements from left to right, starting from things set down and moving to those not yet taken in hand. This may be done if things to the north are written before those in the south, and things in the west before those in the east; that is, to the sight of those writing or viewing, north lies up, and the east of the known world lies to the right, both on the globe and on a map.\n\nAfter Ptolemy, western Europeans didn't make decent maps for a long time. But when they got really interested in maps again in the ~~15th~~ 14th century, they used Ptolemy's *Geographia* as a starting point because it was *that damn good*. So almost all of them followed his practice of putting north-west at the top left. Pretty quickly this became the standard way to do it, and the rest of the world has adopted the same system."
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cm9i3a | why is alcohol so detrimental to fat loss/muscle gaining goals? what’s the biological mechanisms happening? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cm9i3a/eli5_why_is_alcohol_so_detrimental_to_fat/ | {
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"As far as I am aware (I'm not an expert so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) alcohol changes the way your body burns fat. Excessive intake means that your body is focusing more on burning off the alcohol rather than fat.\n\nIt's a myth that alcohol contains a lot of sugar, however, we generally mix alcohol with high sugar liquids (like coke.) Wine and beers also contain carbohydrates so this would also be detrimental to weight loss/gain goals.",
"As well as the calories contained in alcohol, drinking presses a pause button on your metabolism, switching to burning off the alcohol energy and not burning off any of the food calorie energy.",
"The other answers are semi-right but also semi-wrong.\n\nYour body does burn the alcohol off first, BUT, this is not the problem.\n\nIf you have a 300 calorie drink vs 300 calorie snack you’re going to gain the same amount of weight. It doesn’t matter what order the calories get burned up. \n\nThe real problem is this: you don’t have one drink, you have 5 drinks and if each drink is 300 calories then you’ve just had 1500 calories (75% of the average diet) PLUS and food or snacks you’ve eaten with it.\n\nEdit: removed ‘easier source of energy’",
"Alcohol is a term we use for drinks containing ethanol. It's kind of a square and rectangle thing, alcohols are a type of chemical compound that includes ethanol, which gets us drunk. Methanol is another alcohol but turns us blind instead.\n\nEthanol is calorically dense. There's a good amount of replies here about your body burning the alcohol first but that's missing the picture. When you drink something your consuming calories. Those calories need to get burnt off before your body goes to fat stores. It doesn't really matter if it's in the form of alcohol, sugar, or carbs. You've consumed calories, they need to get burnt off before you lose weight.\n\nUnless it's a mixed drink or has non fermentable sugar added (see milk stouts) your drink won't contain as much sugar as you think. The fermentation process uses yeast to convert sugar to alcohol. There's a ton of chemistry and biology in play here, but you can kind of think of alcohol as sugar in a different form.\n\nThen there's the affects of being drunk. You'll probably not have just one drink, and those drinks can be calorically dense. There's a good chance you'll get the \"drunkchies\" and eat something fatty or carb heavy, as alcohol makes you those things. This greatly increases the amount of calories you've consumed.\n\nWeight loss is 99% making sure you burn more calories than you consume. That's it. I've never heard of someone who hasn't managed to lose weight that's truly tracked their food intake and exercise. Everytime someone has tried to claim that it's found out that they weren't tracking some kind of snacking or were tracking something incorrectly.\n\nLastly your body gets stressed after drinking. Alcohol will disrupt your sleep and sleep is vital for weight loss and mass building. It'll disrupt your electrolyte balance making you feel lazy and lethargic on top of being tired from lack of quality sleep. The alcohol will disrupt your digestive track causing you to have digestive issues. You'll also be dehydrated from the affects of the booze. All this combined makes the exercise needed to build mass extremely difficult. The amount of calories you consume while drinking makes it really hard to lose weight.\n\nI did some digging on if alcohol is a carb or not. I always thought it was but it looks like it's technically not. Still I believe alcohol is metabolized into sugar which is then used as fuel, so even if not a carb when you consume it it ends up as a carb when you digest it.",
"Calories.\n\nBeer is liquid bread. There are a ton of calories there. An average pint of beer runs in the neighborhood of 200 calories. \n\nBooze isn't any better. A single shot (1.5 oz) of whisky, vodka, rum, or tequila each have around 100 calories. Plus a mixer, if you're into that, is often soda, which is also loaded with calories.\n\nAnd none of it provides any actual nutrition, just pure calories, so you'll still need to eat actual food for even more calories."
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3feu62 | why is shampoo usually translucent but conditioner opaque? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3feu62/eli5_why_is_shampoo_usually_translucent_but/ | {
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"Because conditioner is marketed as a \"cream\". (In fact it's sometimes the case and used to be the case back in the day that people would call conditioner \"cream rinse\".) \n\nWe associate opacity with creaminess and moisturizing properties, while we associate clarity with cleaning properties. \n\nKind of like why Crystal Pepsi didn't do well as a product, and why the SNL spoof commercial for \"Crystal Gravy\" was so hilarious.\n\nTL;DR It's all marketing/what we expect the product to look like.",
"Broadly for the same reason that orange squash is transparent and milk is opaque.\n\nIn your shampoo everything is dissolved. It's more likely than not coloured, but if it wasn't it'd be colourless and transparent. So, light passes more or less straight through it and you can see through it.\n\nYour conditioner has oils in it to soften and smooth out and detangle your hair. This doesn't dissolve, but it forms a more or less stable emulsion. Milk is an emulsion of fat and water. The fat is suspended in the water in sufficiently tiny droplets that it doesn't split apart. A consequence of this is that light bounces off it, rather than passing through it, so it's opaque.",
"Seriously though the refractive index of all the surfactants isn't equal and they are more like an emulsion rather than a solution. ",
"Maybe it's because I am not from the USA but rarely have I seen shampoo that is transparent, the ones I've used have been even more opaque than my conditioner.. ",
"well....this isnt the case in ALL shampoos. Mostly...Clarifying shampoos are clear, but moisturizing, frizz taming, and color protecting shampoos are opaque. \n\nMost women who dye and heat style their hair...stay away from clear/clarifying shampoos because it can strip the hair of its natural oils as well as damage any color processes. ",
"Haven't seen the SNL skit but yea I see what you mean because clear gravy even if it tasted the same, sounds disgusting.",
"The chemicals used in shampoo to clean hair strip some of the natural oils off of the strands of hair, so conditioner is used to replace the oils and keep hair from getting frizzy by giving it weight and neutralizing the electrical charge (like how static electricity can make your hair stand up). The ingredients in conditioner that do that job are made up of fats, which are usually opaque.",
"Used to work for a big fast moving consumer goods company on one of the biggest hair care brands. This may be incorrect, but what gives the conditioner the opacity is in the ingredients - specifically silicone. You'll actually realise many shampoos aren't clear either, for the same reason, as nowadays people expect a level of 'conditioning' in their shampoos. ",
"This post makes me wonder about the efficacy of 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner. Does anyone actually find that it works?",
"What i would like to know is who came up with the name sham poo\ni mean wtf i am not a native english speaker but isnt the word sham basicly same as scam and poo well poop?",
"Unlike shampoo, conditioner contains a small amount of oil to smooth out the hair. This comes in the form of tiny droplets named micelles. They are surrounded by the water molecules in the mixture, which creates a kind of opaque emulsion.\n\nA similar comparison would be to milk or cream - the fat molecules make it opaque.\n",
"Short answer is that shampoo contains stronger surfactants (soap) to wash your hair. Specifically wash out oil. Conditioner contains these oils and there is an emulsifier in the conditioner so all of the ingredients (including the oils) don't separate, so what you get is a mix. ",
"Shampoo is clear because it's basically soapy water. Conditioner is opaque because it's basically mayonnaise.",
"The appearance of shampoo and conditioner is engineered to appeal to customers. Shampoo is for cleaning and so a clear substance looks more clean. Conditioner is for moisturizing and making your hair soft, so they make it look like moisturizer.",
"Shampoo is water-based. Conditioner is oil-based. I used to be a PLC programmer at a Unilever plant. ",
"What I want to know is why they write \"Shampoo\" or \"conditioner\" so small on the bottles, knowing that we don't have glasses in the shower.",
"One is an emulsion with oils which is your conditioner. The other is a shampoo with a bunch of surfactants which are water soluble hence clear. You can make clear systems using microemulsions- which is solublizing the oil into the water.",
"ELI5: Shampoo is a soap. Conditioner is an oil based lubricant. Oil's are opaque because fat is opaque.",
"Shampoos are usually translucent?",
"As someone who is blind as a bat without my glasses or contacts, I'm happy that the two are different. Especially when I'm in friends showers and forgot to differentiate between the two before getting in the shower. ",
"All of the best science so far has proven that A) shampoo is better.\nAnd also,\nB) Shampoo goes on first and caleens dah hayah.",
"Mainly because they are two completely separate things. They aren't at all the same. Conditioner typically has things that rejuvenate your scalp, so it's a lot like lotion, and liquid soap has various oils that have been brewed with lye (or a by-product of lye) in order to make, essentially, a type of salt in liquid form. Or at least, this is why natural versions of liquid soap and conditioner are translucent and opaque. Source: Work for a soap company."
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3a4yk5 | will we run faster if we use 4 legs instead of 2 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a4yk5/eli5_will_we_run_faster_if_we_use_4_legs_instead/ | {
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"It entirely depends on the configuration of our body after the results of the change. \n\nIf basically unchanged in form, the answer's a clear no. You can prove this by trying to do a crawling run on your arms and legs now, effectively treating your hands as your front feet. You can move along fairly well, but your pace will suck compared to an upright sprint, and it'll hurt like hell in very short order.\n\nNow if you re-engineer your body instead so that your front arms are transformed to legs that are designed for speed and loadbearing instead of carrying and handling, and your rear legs are designed to move most rapidly while pointing ahead of your torso as opposed to directly down from it, at some point you may reach a changed form where you can keep up or exceed that upright running pace. \n\nBut you would look remarkably different as a result. "
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6p5iag | how did early humans, or those part of small tribes and villages, survive genetic disorders of inbreeding and did not become extinct? | During some preliminary research, it is shown that inbreeding has "increased levels of mortality and morbidity due to a variety of genetic defects". ^[1]
Now, with that statement, how did early generations of humans when we weren't as diverse nor had big populations survive without the terrible genetics disorders inbreeding causes? This questions could also be valid for remote and small villages and tribes.
Source: ^[1]: _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6p5iag/eli5_how_did_early_humans_or_those_part_of_small/ | {
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"They raided other groups of people near by. Killed the men, took the women as wives, 2nd wives, or maids/servants. Or joined groups and cheated or swapped partners. In some species the women/female would go away seeking a male/mate to only mate with and then go back to their own group. Same with single males. They would break off from a pack find a woman and have his way and leave. ",
"Humans have been apex predators for most of their history. There was never a time when the population of homo-whatevers was so low that mating became a genetic challenge. \n\nBy the time societies formed, there were more than enough humans to breed with. It doesn't take that large a population to guarantee genetic variation in a few generations. \n\nSome research has been done to this effect for the purposes of planning future space colonization. One article I read suggests a population as small as 160 people would be sufficient:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThere was never a time in our history where inbreeding was strictly necessary for survival of the species. ",
"One method that dealt with this is familial locality based on sex. In a patrilocal society, the men of the tribe remain and marry women outside of their tribe who then live with the man's family, while the women are sent to neighboring tribes and stay those men's families. In a matrilocal society it's reversed. Women stay with their families and the men leave the tribe and live with the neighboring tribe's women ",
"Exogamy - basically, taking mates from (or joining) other nearby bands of humans, as well as marrying more distantly related people within their own groups.\n\nIt should also be noted that many groups may have practiced inbreeding and despite the negative effects didn't die out simply because humans are on the top of the pecking order, at least until other groups came along and took over.\n\nRemember, you don't have to beat the best people in the world, just survive your local environment.",
"I studied anthropology in college. Most early hunter gatherers lived in small groups of 4 to 5 families. Every few years they would meet up in larger gatherings presumed to be some hundreds of people. At this point most would pick partners that were of age and go on with them and their families. Also, hunter gatherers were nomadic, they would run across other groups randomly. So the answer is they would meet others for reproduction purposes.",
"Severe inbreeding doesn't cause death. Just a higher chance that one bacteria or virus could kill off more in the group because of similar genetics. \n\nMost of the cheetahs in the wild now are almost all genetically identical to one another. They're still alive and breeding - just at a very high risk of disease. What kills one could kill them all. ",
"For most of humanity inbreeding was the norm. It was the case with [early humans](_URL_0_) and also [in civilized times](_URL_1_). Before motor vehicles there was only a small radius in which a man could find a bride so inbreeding was the norm. Most people didn't marry strangers. They married cousins.\n\nIn breeding only becomes a problem if the founders of such large clans have the wrong genetic mutations. If they don't then it's fine.\n",
"Lots of reasons listed in the comments. I didn't see anyone mention the fact that homo-sapiens also interbred with other hominids such as the Homo-neanderthalensis (as evidenced in dna sequencing) so that spruced up our gene pool considerably as well on top of all our other advantages.",
"Increased levels of mortality and morbidity means going from 1% chance of risk to 1.6% chance of risk (depending on the risk). So yes, worse in the aggregate, but not a death warrant. \n\nNo doubt there were a few very small groups that were isolated, became too inbred to have surviving children, and died off. But that would be at the level of two families or so over quite a few generations. \n\nTypically, the small tribes would be ok because there would be enough of them (20 families, not 2) and there would still be mixing from the outside from time to time, from wars, trade, and travel. "
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"http://www.as.wvu.edu/~kgarbutt/QuantGen/Gen535_2_2004/Inbreeding_Humans.htm"
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e6vzby | do things suspended in a magnetic field affect the weight of whatever the magnets are on? if i had a backpack that could do that an out something that was 5kg in it would i feel that much heavier? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e6vzby/eli5_do_things_suspended_in_a_magnetic_field/ | {
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"The overall weight of the magnets + backpack would be the same. If you were attempting to reduce the weight of a backpack due to levitation by magnets it's unfortunately not possible. The magnets produce an upward force which counteracts the force of gravity due to the backpack, elevating the backpack. However since there is an upward force from the magnets, there is an equal and opposite downward force added to the weight of the magnets. This new downward force is equivalent to the upward force required to levitate the backpack. Add everything up and you see that the mass remains the same and you cannot just get rid of the weight of the mass.",
"Yes, when magnet A pushes on magnet B, magnet B also pushes on magnet A by the same amount. All field forces - gravity, electric, magnetic - work the same way."
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6lxtu2 | how does the mlb regulate the dimension of a park when its being built? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6lxtu2/eli5_how_does_the_mlb_regulate_the_dimension_of_a/ | {
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"The rules\n\n\"Any Playing Field constructed by a professional club after June 1, 1958, shall provide a minimum distance of 325 feet from home base to the nearest fence, stand or other obstruction on the right and left field foul lines, and a minimum distance of 400 feet to the center field fence.\" (Rule 2.01)\n\nTeams can request a waiver. If they are really short MLB might ask that the wall is taller. Minute Maid park is 315 feet in left field, but its 19 feet tall. They requested a waiver from MLB and were approved. "
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6y0cqe | why do we feel cold when we have tummyaches? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6y0cqe/eli5_why_do_we_feel_cold_when_we_have_tummyaches/ | {
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"One of the cranial nerves, those connected directly to the brain rather than the spinal column, runs through the abdominal cavity is called the [Vagus nerve.](_URL_0_) the Latin name means \"wanderer\" and indeed it does it is connected to and exerts a strong influence in many parts of the body.\n\nAbdominal pain can stimulate the Vagus in a way that causes it to slow the heart rate, lower the blood pressure, and result in \"breaking a cold sweat.\""
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3ndvmy | how exactly does a 1080p screen display a 720p video, or any other resolutions without an even scale? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ndvmy/eli5_how_exactly_does_a_1080p_screen_display_a/ | {
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"It just scales the video as closely as possible. It will warp the image slightly, stretching it out to fit the display. Luckily, 1080p and 720p share the same aspect ratio (16:9), so the image doesn't have to be warped. You device just scales up each pixel to 150%, and you've gone from 720p to 1080p."
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2fzbqx | how would the internet sustain itself if everyone used adblock? are there any other options for income than ads or a fee? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fzbqx/eli5_how_would_the_internet_sustain_itself_if/ | {
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"I don't use AdBlock to block *all* ads, just ads designed to be annoying -- ads that move, flash, wave at me, holler at me, or stand in the way of the article I'm trying to read. So ads that are polite are still there on my screen, and I still click and respond if they're offering something that intrigues me.\n\nAdvertising isn't the problem. Fricking *rude* advertising is the problem, and the reason I send AdBlock $50 every year.",
"Plenty of websites make money without intrusive ads. _URL_1_ has been ad free since the beginning, and covers the costs of operations by referrals to websites that have merch for bands. _URL_0_, while using ads, make more money from their YouTube channel and merchandise than from their ads.\n\nIMHO, pop ups and intrusive ads are on the way out. Google AdSense is here to stay, and websites are getting wise to other forms of income.",
"Sure, as an example let's look at Vlogbrothers Industries. Besides what they do that can be adblocked they have:\n\nMerch revenue from DFTBA records at _URL_1_\n\nDistribution revenue from other IP owners on _URL_1_\n\nOptional direct subscriptions on _URL_0_ (way more profitable than ads, Hank Green has offered absolution for anybody that donates via subbable for using adblock)\n\nSales, promotions etc from Vidcon Inc\nStakes in Pemberly Digital whom create more content, now partnering with other companies to produce content for other channels\n\n\nAs well, there are other things they have refused for various reasons that other creators do, but are unaffected by adblock:\n\nIn-content ads\n\nProduct endorsements\n\nDirect donation campaigns (for themselves, not directed to content)\n\n\nThere's a lot on the table for any online creator to do, but you need an engaged audience to so most of it. Buzzfeed sucks at it because who cares about Buzzfeed?",
"If the internet was ad free, income would come from people donating, or paying for it's content, so small sites probably wouldn't be able to make a profit, and larger sites would probably be expensive.",
"Premium subscriptions ('freemium') is another common way to make money. Another way is non-intrusive text ads or referrals (e.g. link to book on Amazon and get a % if someone buys it via your site).",
"There is a lot more advertising going on around you than you realize. \n\nI would point you to BuzzFeed for your answer. Something like 50% of their \"articles\" are some form of hidden, or blatant advertising. \n\nWatch this whimsicle cat video - _URL_0_ \n\nProduced by BuzzFeed, it is cute, funny, amusing...and they are trying to sell you cat food. But who cares that it is a commercial right? You enjoyed it!\n\nPaid placement advertising is alive and well. There are also many, many articles on MSM that are nothing more than free advertising for a business. \n\nI hope this answers your question. "
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t759v | the recreational drug hierarchy. which drugs are worse for your body short-term, long-term, etc? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/t759v/eli5_the_recreational_drug_hierarchy_which_drugs/ | {
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"I wouldn't look at it as a heirarchy. Drugs all have different effects given they are used a certain way. Granted the long term use of drugs lead to different outcomes. You cannot objectively say some are worse than others when their effects are so different but still very severe.\n\nI would rank it as this from best to worst from your body when used in the amount they are regularly used.recreational.\nMarijuana \nPsychedelics\nDxm\nEcstasy (mdma, x, whatever.)\nCocaine \nPrescription painkillers\nCrack cocaine\nHeroin \nCrystal Meth \n\nThis takes in a number of factors including cleanliness addictiveness and overall harm to your body. Surprisingly doing most drugs occasionally (once every three months) won't hurt you in any significant way as long as the product (and needle if required).are clean. It's just the addiction factor that makes the substances so volatile. \n\nPosted from phone forgive any spelling or formatting errors.\n\n"
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4xeq9u | how does the cell tower know what phone to send a call/text message to? how secure is this system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xeq9u/eli5how_does_the_cell_tower_know_what_phone_to/ | {
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"Each phone has a unique ID, and it registers that ID with the tower as it connects. The tower isn't *physically* able to target one phone: it broadcasts the data tagged with the target phone ID, and all devices except that phone will normally ignore it. The data itself is normally encrypted.\n\nHowever, we know that cellphone IDs can be \"spoofed\" and the call decrypted, thanks to news reports about the StingRay device such as [this] (_URL_0_). That doesn't mean that all calls are automatically insecure, but if authorities *really* want to listen to your calls, they have the capability. ",
"For GSM networks (AT & T and T-Mobil), the data is encrypted using a pre-shared key system. SIM cards are pre-loaded with an IMSI number used to identify the person using the phone, which allows the cell network to only broadcast from one tower to a phone, rather than sending all data to every cell tower. The cards also have a 128-bit key used to both encrypt and decrypt data over the cell network. Using this system, it would take a maximum of 1.44 billion years to crack the key (however, the longer that a computer program is attempting to crack the key, the more likely it is to succeed, culminating at a 100% chance a little over 1.44 billion years from the time it started).\n\nI'm not confident in my knowledge of CDMA networks, so I'll let someone else explain how they work."
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ad5vqp | what do musicians hear through the headphones when "acoustic" with a band? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ad5vqp/eli5_what_do_musicians_hear_through_the/ | {
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"Musicians performing live generally find some sort of monitor useful. It can be either a speaker pointed back at the band or an earpiece or headphone. \n\nWithout a monitor, the sound system is mostly pointed out towards the audience and it is difficult to hear your own instrument or those of others. Singing is also difficult when you can't hear your own voice over the din. \n\nOr sometimes you want a different mix of sound than what the audience is hearing. More or less of your own voice or a particular instrument. The sound person can mix the monitor sound separately from the house PA.\n\nNot sure what they're hearing in your example. Another possibility is a click track playing through the headphones, to keep time.",
"This is called a \"monitor mix\" and it can be whatever the performer wants. If they are singing it will almost always include their own vocals. If they are playing an instrument it will almost always include that instrument. Many performers will want to hear some of all the other instruments. When there is a drummer they will likely want some of the kick drum and the snare drum and maybe some hi-hat but usually not much else. \n\n\nAgain this is 100% up to the wishes of the performer. Sometimes there will be a click track to help keep them in sync with any pre-recorded playback. Sometimes there will be verbal instructions telling them which song is about to be played back or reminding them of solos or bridges coming up in the song.",
"There are two ‘mixes’ going on for concerts, front of house (what the audience hears) and monitor (what artist hears) (this is a bit oversimplified, bc there can be multiple monitor mixes, but it’s easier to explain with just one).\n\nThe artist may like or need a different balance than the main mix. In this case, they would need the instruments (vocal + keyboard) as well as click/track if they’re using tracks and perhaps certain effects that aren’t there acoustically such as reverbs and echoes/delay\n\nIn the case of multiple members of the same band, each probably wants vastly different things in their ears — I work with a corporate/wedding band, and we can have up to 12 different monitor mixes. Each musician tends to like to have a lot of themselves in order to monitor themselves and stay on time/pitch, and then maybe the bassist wants more kick than everyone else t really lock in on the groove, or the drummer just needs a lot of click and track and doesn’t really need to hear the acoustic guitar and keys - the mixes fully depend on the musician in question.",
"Thanks all, makes sense and appreciate the comments.",
"For rythm sections, it may be a metronome (a clicky thingy that ticks in an exact rythm, with a special click to emphasize the first note of a section).\n\nThis helps them stay in check through the noise of a possible crowd, other instruments, or slip ups.\n\nI attended a non-acoustic band once, and noticed the drummer had some slip ups, nad I noticed he had these little plugs he was wearing. Afterwards a band member explained that there were problems with the metronome, which caused him to fall out of it for a few beats, before picking it back up.",
"Sound guy here, acoustic is more or less a style. That being one of very little processing (ie no distortion on guitar) in this case they are still using some vocal effects but nothing heavy, and no synthetic sounds like keyboards.\n\nThe way the music is actually played and produced is largely the same. So they are still using microphones to get sound from each instrument and it's still being mixed by an engineer with a bit of processing here and there. I bring this up because monitors (the headphones) are a standard part of music making. They allow the sound engineer to send back signal in real time to the musicians so they can \"monitor\" their style and sound.\n\nFrequently they will also have a click track to keep time and a talk back from the producers and the other musicians so they can communicate easier.\n\nI'm on a roll sooooo......\n\nThis is done through headphones (or in-ears) for two reasons, one is that it won't pollute the audio coming from the instruments (kinda like feedback). The second is that they can personalize each mix for every musician, for example a bass guitar will only really need a kick drum and the click to keep time but the vocals will usually focus more on the piano to help keep pitch.",
"Finally a 'claim to lame'. I recorded that vocalist once in the studio I work for! Great vocalist.\n\nAnyway, it could be anything. The most basic is what you see, the piano, and the two vocals. Each vocalist may possibly have their own vocal a little louder.\n\nAs performances get bigger and more involved, there can also be click tracks to keep performers in time, and cue tracks to give performers instructions that the crowd can't hear. They can also be used to give vocalists a starting note for tracks that start right on a vocal. Usually these are a side effect of playing to a sequenced backing track or lighting systems. For an example of that, check out this IEM feed of Muse playing live:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nand here's another with the vocal cue:\n_URL_0_\n\nNotable things that people might not pick up on. In the second example, that piano sound is in matt's ear only. Also the bass player sings bvox in the second half and he has decided to have them removed from his ears entirely.",
"As a drummer it depends on the band I am playing with. I generally have the bass player turned up, while maybe vocals turned down. This is because a good vocalists follows the band. For jazz and latin I need more of the malody but still a lot of bass. This is used to solve a lot of phasing issues when there is a lot of eleftronics involved. Feel free to ask me questions I deal with this a lot. ",
"As a metal singer in a small band, I was honestly astonished about how important monitors are when I first played a concert. You have to realize that what your audience hears is NOT what you hear yourself on stage. all the speakers are usually directed at the audience, if you're standing behind them, you're lost. for me personally, the sound guy is usually one of the most important persons at any given concert, cause he is the one that can fuck up the whole concert if he's shit. You can have the best band of the world, if the sound guy's shit, the sound will be shit. If the band members can't hear themselves, they'll play shit. \n\nIf you sing surrounded by your band, and your own voice is not amplified and given back to you, you have no clue what you're singing, cause you simply cannot hear yourself singing. You absolutely need to hear your own voice, or you're just lost. You have no Idea whether you are in tune or not. \n\nI sometimes realize these issues also when attending a concert. I recently was at a concert that had a shitty mix to the audience, you couldn't hear what the singer was singing. NOt a word. It sounded awful. I realized that the singer himself probably had no clue about this, as he probably had his own mix and could hear himself pretty good. \n\nAs for your specific question: Probably just some kind of mix. Himself, the band, whatever he wants and needs. It doesn't need to be done via an ear piece, it can also be done via speakers directed at the singer / band member, called a \"Monitor\". \n\nI personally usually have just kind of everything on my monitor, so I can hear what everyone is playing. ",
"As a guitar playing MD, I want plenty of my own guitar in my monitor, and then a fairly even mix of the rest, so I can hear everything and give cues if needed.\n\nI once astounded an engineer by asking for more guitar in my monitor rather than turning up my amp. As that is what most guitar players would do!",
"What a lot of people don't realize is that the monitor sound often sounds not at all like the mix the audience is supposed to hear. When I was playing bass guitar in a band I mainly had myself and the drums on the mix but almost no lead guitar, a little vocals and rhythm guitar for orientation. That's some of the reason why the sound can be fairly bad close to the stage, because the stage sound can mix with the actual live sound (especially when the band does not use in ear monitoring and picks up the amps on stage). The sound is usually best where the mixer is located because that's the place he does corrections to the sound from.",
"Themselves and the instruments. The speakers are pointing into the crowd (yes, acoustic shows have speakers) and you usually won't be able to hear even your own instrument very well without headphones. ",
"I have thought about getting IEMs. I sing with a local big band style group and those horns are loud. I’ve got a monitor that we set up on a stand so that it isn’t a large one at my feet. We have limited stage space where we perform and have to shove 20 people plus instruments and stands so not a lot of room. \n\nIf our sound guy doesn’t get the monitor up loud enough, it’s very easy to get lost. Horns and drums behind me just drown out my voice. We only have a few instruments that go through the mixer (piano, voice, upright bass, guitar). We all have monitors to hear ourselves. The horns and drums carry over everything which made me think an IEM blocking some of it out would be useful, but I would only use one. I need to be able to hear the saxophones who wouldn’t be fed through the monitors. \n\nWe aren’t a professional group. We get paid but all funds we take in go toward music scholarships for students in our district. We send several kids to band camp every year. An IEM might be overkill. It might save my hearing though. ",
"\"Acoustic\" only means the instruments are acoustic, it doesn't mean they're not amplified with microphones and speakers. Otherwise an acoustic album, or \"unplugged\" as it's usually called in this context, would not sound that much. This is just a little side-note to the monitor-explanation that others have given. ",
"This is partially what I do for a living lol. There's separate mixes of all the inputs that go back to each musician in a wedge (the speakers on stage that point back at the musicians, you'll see rock guitarists putting their foot up on them to play a solo), or in ear systems like headphones or earbuds. If the artist is large enough to afford it, there's usually two separate audio people, one for front of house (mixing the PA, what the audience hears) and another on monitors who just makes mixes for the band to hear. Each musician can ask for the specific balance of instruments they need to be able to play well. The singer will ask for a ton of vocals and main accompanying instruments like guitar or piano, maybe a little of everything else whereas a bass player will want mainly drums and percussion as well as himself and doesn't care so much about the vocals. It depends on the person really. ",
"Many good reasons to use the \"monitor\" headphones instead of stage speakers:\n\n- The performer can get a **custom mix** for their needs (usually making their own voice/instrument louder than the rest of the band).\n- The sound in those headphones is **much clearer** because it keeps out all the unnecessary noise.\n- It **protects hearing** because the stage can sometimes get really loud (mostly applicable to rock bands).\n- It helps avoid loud screeching sounds known as [audio feedback](_URL_0_) (by removing the need for speakers pointed towards the musician).\n- The performer can hear things that the audience doesn't need to such as a **click track** (to keep the tempo) or sound engineer's commands.",
"You'd be surprised at what you *can't* hear while performing on stage. In-ears allow you to hear whatever you want. ",
"Another interesting thing about headphones and performances. When you see a DJ wearing headphones it isn’t just for show! They are usually listening to songs you can’t hear and making it so that the transitions fit well, BPM mapping, etc. all really interesting stuff! That is, if the DJ knows what they’re doing. "
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ckoa0v | how does a hot and deserty country like egypt have such a high humidity? | I'm in Cairo right now and I noticed the humidity is incredibly high. In fact, I took a water bottle from the refrigerator out and it was soaking wet in a matter of minutes. For a place in the largest desert in the world and being so incredibly hot this time of year (just short of 40°C) it's quite strange. You'd think such high humidity would contribute to better vegetation also, but nope. How is it so humid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ckoa0v/eli5_how_does_a_hot_and_deserty_country_like/ | {
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"Are you sure the humidity is that high or are you just use to a very low humidity? A quick google says the humidity there is only 33%, which is quite low when many places are at 80%+ right now. \n\nThat said, it does border nothing but water on roughly half the country, so that is a pretty big factor to humidity. Look at other countries surrounded by water and you'll notice much higher humidity than Egypt typically has (only up to about 60% from what I could find).",
"Many desert areas are humid, especially if there is a warm water ocean or sea nearby , the warm ocean would be the provider of the humidity into the air"
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4njsxw | how do actors improvise lines in movies? | Like that post on the front page about Bill Murray improvising most of his lines. How do the other actors even know what to respond with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4njsxw/eli5_how_do_actors_improvise_lines_in_movies/ | {
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"They do it on the fly. It's called improv (improvisational comedy) One well known example of this is the television show Who's Line Is It Anyways? Plus, movies are often shot with multiple takes, so the director can pick and choose which scenes he likes best.",
"Scenes aren't just shot in one take and then printed. To shoot a single scene, you do many takes -- one from a wide angle, one from medium, one focused on actor A, one focused on actor B, etc. Then an editor produces a final cut by mixing and cutting between a dozen takes, choosing the best angles and best times to switch, the best deliveries, and so on. And even before shooting starts, there's rehearsal. Actors will perform the scene with each other plenty of times before actually shooting. \n\nSo the footage you actually see in the final cut might be the 10th, 30th, 50th time they've done the scene, and the footage of the delivery and the response are usually separate takes. When you hear that an actor improvised something, it can mean improvised at any point during that process, not necessarily during takes used during the final cut. Improvisation *usually* happens in rehearsal, when there's less pressure, and joking around, messing with dialogue, and throwing the other actors off doesn't mean entire crews are resetting and wasting time. \n\nWhen that happens, the other actors can try to improvise their best response on the fly, or they can break character and lose the scene, and then everyone restarts (not necessarily from the very beginning, usually just from a few lines before). If people liked the improv, the director can give his thumbs-up and say \"Yeah, we'll put that in\", brainstorm good responses or encourage the other actors to improv in turn. Or the director can give his thumbs-down and say \"Shut the hell up and stick to the script.\"\n\nThe kind of improv most people imagine, where an actor just does something with no warning and full footage of the delivery and the response make the final cut, is usually only seen in multicam sitcoms like Seinfeld (the actors' stunned/amused reactions to Kramer's wild mannerisms and nonsense are often real).\n"
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yt3b5 | why is b. obama always referred to as black? is mulatto an offensive term? why is a half-black person 'black' by default? | It just sits weird with me. That a half-black person is 'black' by default. Like blackness of one parent is more dominant than the whiteness or anything else really of the other because it's more visible in a half-b offspring. Tiger Woods, Bob Marley...
Either move past race or be precise about it? Why not? Why am I wrong? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yt3b5/why_is_b_obama_always_referred_to_as_black_is/ | {
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"What's the right word then? You freaked when I said quadroon. ",
"Because race is a socially-determined category in the US. The names used have less to do with hue than history. If you have any African heritage at all, in this country you're Black. \n\n\"Mulatto\" is offensive because it's an artifact of an even more racist era.\n\nEDIT (an hour after original post): Just for balance, [here](_URL_0_) is an interesting essay written in 1997 by a Radcliffe grad who chose to call herself mulatto. I wonder if the intervening 15 years have changed her mind?",
"I'm black and I've never really understood why it's always the dominate race in mixed people. ",
"I would think its how you present yourself. I am curious though of how he defines himself on forms and such.\n\n",
"Tiger Woods describes himself as multi-racial, if I remember correctly. It's society that calls him black. \nI just think it's all about what's the easiest way to describe a person. If a half-black person looks more black, and I were looking for him, I'd ask people if they saw a black guy. If he looks white, I'd say white, however.",
"He's black because in the 1940s he would not have been served at a whites only lunch counter.",
"White Americans used to own African slaves.\n\nThis is a bad thing to do. But when people do things they know are bad, they don't stop doing them--instead, they find justifications for them.\n\nThe first justification was that these Africans weren't Christians, and that whites were doing them so much good by teaching them Christianity (saving their immortal souls) that kidnapping and enslaving them didn't even weigh in the balance.\n\nBut slaveowners owned their slaves' children as well; they didn't release their slaves even after they'd been Christians for several generations. So they needed a new justification. This was the idea that Africans, *simply by being African,* were somehow inferior and doomed to slavery.\n\nNow: One of the big attractions to owning slaves was the ability to legally rape them. One slave, \"Box\" Brown, thought that it was THE big reason whites couldn't imagine giving up their slaves. This meant that more and more slaves were actually mixed race. \n\nThat gave slaveowners--the ones who thought about the moral issues involved, which was by no means all of them--a problem: Was a half-black person still inferior enough to enslave? One who was three-quarters white? Fifteen sixteenths?\n\nIf the answer was \"yes,\" then slaveowners could happily keep their slaves with their consciences intact. So of course, the answer was \"yes.\" Eventually, the idea became that \"one drop of [African] blood\" was enough to make you enslaveable.\n\n(As an aside, note that slaveowners enslaved *their own children.* Nice institution, slavery.)\n\nToday Africans are not legally enslaved, but the \"one drop of blood\" idea is still part of our culture. So we generally consider anyone with *any* discernable African heritage is to be black, even if we don't know why.",
"Mulatto is offensive in part because it's etymology ties it to the Spanish (and ultimately the Latin) word for a mule, which is offspring of a horse and a donkey (a generally infertile hybrid commonly considered inferior to the breeds of both parents.)",
"Because he is. The guy can grow an afro if he wants. ",
"People may take this offensive, but I'm assuring that never was my reason for bringing it up.\n\nWith that in mind, just wanted to give a brief explanation of how the Swedish equivalent (mulatt) of the word mulatto sometimes may be a very offensive term. E.g. described (in a Swedish encyclopedia from about 1920s, 1930s sometime) as a person born from a human being and a negro. \n\nAs young teenagers reading this in that ancient encyclopedia we found in one of our classrooms, we could never understand how someone could be described in those particular word in an official way like that. \"A very bad joke?\" was what we were wondering. But then again, Europe may not be the best place to expect nice treatment of other \"races\" from those decades.\n\nSo in a historical point of view, that particular word has been associated of being very, very offensive. But that may perhaps only apply to Sweden?",
"Its the idea that in the south a long time ago, you were fucking black if you had ONE drop of black blood. They would lynch you enslave you whatever. So as a black man, this offends me slightly when people say hes not even black because whats happening is racists keep the negatives about it by saying a black man isnt good with finances but when people say they are glad that same man can be president its \"hes only half black!\"\n\nSo its just how society sees blacks. Its not about actually ethnic background as much as the color of his skin. which is black, and if it comes with the negatives (it does, see DWB) we should also be able to say hes black when its good for us.\n\nDoes any of that make sense? lol\n",
"Mulatto is an offensive term mainly because of its etymology, which means where the word came from and how we began using it in our language. You see, the English word \"mulatto\" is based on an older word from Spanish and Portuguese - \"mulato\" which is their word for \"mule\" (and \"mulato\" is based on even older words, either from Latin or Arabic, there is debate). A mule is half horse and half donkey, and I don't think anyone would appreciate that comparison. \n\nI found out the hard way that this is an offensive term, because I used it. I, like you, thought it was simply a more accurate word for someone who is half-black. When a half-black (or half-white if you like) classmate explained what the word actually signifies it made a ton of sense to me.\n\nWikipedia: _URL_0_\n\nWhy is a person \"black\" by default? It's a hold-over of (what I would like to think is) old school racism. In WWII Germany you could be as Aryan looking as the day is long, but Nazis categorized you as Jewish if you had only one Jewish grandparent. Same in the US in the 19th and 20th Century. Certain people of mixed race could \"pass for white,\" but having one drop of African blood, according to some people, made you black (see: _URL_1_)\n\nEdit to eliminate a rogue apostrophe.",
"If he is currently known as the first black president. And someone...\"blacker\",for lack of a better term, comes along and is president. Will everyone just be like oh well this guy is the first REAL black president? Will they switch Obama to a white president?",
"No, because he looks black. If he looked white, he would be called white except among his friends if he requested.",
"\"Well, you freaked out when I said 'quadroon!'\"",
"I'm half black, and since I have pale skin and look white, I'm referenced to as white. Vice-versa with obama.",
"He was pitched to us as \"the nation's first black president\" and it just stuck.",
"I have nothing to add, but this goes for half-asian people as well.",
"This seems more of a /r/foodforthought post",
"It's because of a term called \"hypodescent,\" which has been in effect in the US since its colonization of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASPs. Hypodescent is used to determine race, and it automatically gives people of mixed descent the race of their minority background. This is a strategy which is used to deny people rights that WASPs enjoy. The more divided the minorities are, the harder it is for them to amass power.",
"Others have covered the \"one-drop rule\" and social pressures fairly well, so let me address the word \"mulatto.\"\n\nIf you don't consider yourself a racist and would prefer to not be accused of being a racist, then drop the word from your vocabulary. \"Mulatto\" is Spanish slang meaning \"little mule.\" Spanish colonials believed highly in racial taxonomy and hierarchy - in fact, many Spaniards still do, and are unapologetic about it. They believed the gap between Spaniards and Africans to be as far apart as horses (tall, elegant creatures with high aesthetic, social, and military value) and donkeys (Squat, stupid, stubborn creatures bred for work and little else).\n\nIpso facto, the product of Spanish-African cross-breeding is a little mule.\n\nIt's not a nice word.",
"The litmus test for determining ones race is as follows:\n\nPrior to announcing that he was running for President of the United States of America if Mr. Obama were pulled over after midnight in Detroit what color would the cops say his skin was?",
"Not white? Must be black.",
"Like you're five? \n\nBecause he looks black.",
"As a biracial man, I've never once been mistaken for a \"white guy\". if the kkk came running through my town they wouldn't consider me \"white\". I've been called a nigger, and I've had a girl not date me because her \"dad wouldn't want her dating a black guy\"\n\nthis is the world we live in\n\nperception is reality\n\n**update for clarity:** to be clear I consider myself biracial because that's what I am, *I* don't define my ethnic identity, my ethnic background does. I don't feel the need to associate with \"a side\" because that's the kind of racist bullshit i've had to deal with my whole life, which is why this entire conversation about \"what\" Barack Obama \"is\" infuriates me to no end.",
"As a half black guy, I feel the same way.\n\n\nBut you know what? When I refer to myself as half-white, or mixed, white people say \"No, you're black!\" Most people just don't get it. The concept of being-mixed race is too much of a foreign concept for uniracial people to understand. ",
"I guess the short answer is \"because they're not white\"",
"Almost all US blacks are mixed-race, regardless of the appearance of their parents.\n\nRace is about how you are perceived by society and how you view yourself. \n\nI appear black. My husband appears white. One of my children appears mixed-race, meaning with dark skin but \"white\" features. The other appears white. We live in a white neighborhood and our friends mostly white and Asian.\n\nWhen the kids are older, I'd expect they'll self-identify as white, because that's how they'll be perceived by people who don't know me. That would be a counter-example to your \"one-drop\" rule.\n\nHowever, I'd also expect that each of them will at some point encounter a relationship with someone who will be squicked out by the fact that their mom is black and will dump them because she doesn't want to risk having black babies.",
"He identified himself as black on the last census. Him considering himself black is enough for me to do the same.",
"To quote comedian W. Kamau Bell, \"Barack Obama is only the first black president because we're all racist. His dad is from Africa - where the real black people come from - and his mom is from Kansas - where the real white people come from. You could claim him as your own. 'Another white president! The streak remains unbroken!'\" ",
"No one is explaining this like i'm five.\n\nSeriously people, give me an elementary school answer please!",
"Why not Whack?",
"Obama identifies as black himself, rather than biracial or multiracial (more politically correct terms than mulatto). Race is socially and individually defined so he has the right to choose between the two terms. Some would say that decision is also politically motivated.",
"Is mulatto an offensive term? Yes. \n\nIt was used to describe mixed white / black people who were desired for working inside someone's house.",
"Because that's what he calls himself.",
"It means mule , do you need it spelled out why that is offensive?",
"Boys and girls are created from a mix of their mummy's and their daddy's looks, and this results in a \\everyone looking a little different. Not only their parents features by themselves, but really a mix of the looks of *their* mum and dads, and *their* mums and dads, all the way back into the first few mums and dads that ever lived. Really, everyone on Earth are all related, like your cousins. (Even the other animals if you go back far enough!) The only way you can tell us all apart is by looking at us, because there are all the little differences that come from our mum's mum's mum and our dad's dad's dad, big and small all add up.\n\nBack long ago, before even your grandaddy's grandad's grandad was born our one big family split up to find their own little places to live, and over a long, long time, when mums and dads got together, the families started to look a lot different from the other families who lived a long way away. Some of those family's skins got whiter (or darker; some people disagree over this, even though it's kinda obvious when you listen to really educated big people)\n\nOver time, those families forgot they were kinda like cousins. they protected their own families exclusively and tried to do the best for them for them against other families. They started to fight amongst themselves for food, space, technology and all those things big people call \"power\". Every child was taught to fear and fight anything they couldn't be really sure was their own family. The easiest and simplest way to tell was by skin colour. (There were other ways, but none as easy to tell within a second!)\n\nOver a long enough time a few big families that had white skin bumped into some other big families that had black skin. At that time and place, those with paler skin had more power than the ones with darker. The pale-skinned people bullied the darker ones very very badly for for a really, really long time. A lot of dark skinned people were made very very sad.\n\nLater, at a time when more and more dark and white skinned families had met in other places on Earth, and people were speaking to one another more and more by telephones, it was obvious that bullying people who were different was wrong because really they were related. \n\nBut it took a long time for EVERYONE to realise this. For an even longer time it was still considered naughty for darker people to play with or fall in love with pale people. Those bullied dark people remembered what it was like to be bullied so badly, and combined with how other dark skinned people were (and still are) treated by, and compared to, their pale-skinned cousins. It led to stories being told to their children and their children's children, saying they rightly they deserved to be treated equal. Some thought they deserved even more speciality because they haven't been equal for such a long time and they were made very sad. The history was never truly forgotten for them.\n\nBut some pale-skinned people were no less helpful. Those who remembered how inferior they thought the darker-skinned people were told their children to think the same, for the very same reasons they were taught: fear and hate those who aren't your own; they are lesser than us and you should treat them as such. There were even those raised in environments who hadn't been told, that they didn't even realise that opinions had changed. So the hate and the division persisted for a very long time. \n\nThere are so many of our one, big family now meeting each other, and so many televisions and telephones and friends and relatives who look a little different, it makes us all slowly realise we are all one big same family still. The people who still think otherwise are getting fewer. But there are a smaller few with lots of power who try and use the time-tested and long-successful method of using the colour of someone's skin to divide the family into smaller groups of enemies. \n\nIn America, the arguments and the bullying in the past were so strong that it's still used by people trying to divide the big family for their own interests. The division has been there so strongly, the pale and dark cultures so different, the memory of the past so strong, that some pale people still consider anything but the palest of the pale to be the \"same\" family anymore. They are not ashamed of proclaiming the difference at any moment in time. Pale skin has become the default colour, anything else deserves a special word for it.\n\nMore and more Big People are learning it though. I don't believe you can blame those that don't for what they have been taught to believe, and time itself has led us all closer to believing we are all the same family again. One of the reasons we haven't caught on quicker is because of language use like this. You would think that becoming more 'correct' about how we use our language would help quicken this lesson, but current experience shows that going too far in the other direction also makes it even slower.\n\nThis shows you that even big people can be really, really, silly ALL the time. When you grow up, it's important for you to remember people should to be nice to one another. Treat them like you want to be treated, whether they look, sound or think a little bit different to you. Everything works much better that way.\n\n\n\n\n\n",
"I thought Woods and Marley were full black ...\n\nFuck.",
"mullatto is an offensive term it comes from the would mule. mullatto started from spanish comparing mixed race people to mules, it implies that black people are dirty stupid donkeys compared to the pretty and valuable horses that are white people.\n\nthis is why this words not used anymore. \n\nand president obama is black because of he appears more black than white. and since was treated as such through out his life. you were treated as what you look like. people will look his skin and his name and not care at all that his mother is white he looks black and has an african name.",
"I don't get this. I mean he looks black? His skin colour is what I would call 'black'. Sure it's not as dark as black skin can go, but I still call both a Scot and a Frenchman 'white' (assuming they're not another skin colour, obviously), despite the frenchman being tanned (closer to Mediterranean), and the scot being a translucent off-blue. \n\nMaybe I just don't get the social background, not being from the US, but if you asked me 'what colour is Barrack Obama's skin?' I would answer 'black'. \n\nHis parents don't come into it. If a white couple had a black child (it's possible), then the child is still black. ",
"Cause when you add chocolate to milk its brown.",
"What about halfrican- american, is that offensive?",
"It's not just blacks. Pretty much anyone that is crossed with caucasian is reffered to as their non-caucasian half. I would assume it is because the other half often has more dominant features due to generations of intraracial breeding (Mexican, African, various Asians, Arab, etc.). Caucasians have more mixtures of unique features that are not as dominant as non-caucasian features and can easily be lost through interracial breeding. when these caucasian features are lost, they are replaced with the more dominant features from the non-caucasian parent.\n\nMain point: Obama is referred to as black because his black features are more dominant and therefore more noticable than his non-black features.",
"There's really good points being raised about the cultural contexts and historical perspectives concerning skin tone. What I would point out to the the OP, is that it's simply a matter of sensitivity. Why be more precise about it? How does it bother you if biracial people choose to identify as black? The reasons may be long and complex and contradictory but do they even matter? ",
"Because he looks black. It's quite simple. If you were 25% Japanese and 75% Italian but you looked 100% Japanese, what do you think people would call you?",
"I'd also like to add that the term \"mulatto\" is suspected to have been derived from the Latin MULA, which meant mule (part horse, part donkey). If more people knew that, I don't think mulatto would be the popular term it is to this day. ",
"Oh god people, this is not a racism issue. The simple fact is this: he's refered to as black, because the majority of people (yes, even Americans) probably aren't even fully informed on him being half-white, but guess what, he looks black, so he's called black, jeez.\n\nOh, and, the majority of your explanations are incomprehensible for a five year old.",
"I am black and I always tell other black people that Obama isn't true black or true white. He's mixed so neither race can really say. People are ignorant. ",
"Mulatto is offensive. Mixed is not. Are you that stupid?",
"Honestly, it's not that deep. It's all based off of appearances. The first thing you see are the discerning characteristics of each race. And generally, if a person has dark skin and has no features that point to anything otherwise, they are considered black.",
"Black is a term that describes how you look. Mulatto is a term that describes your heritage. Mariah Carey is also mulatto, but the fact that she doesn't look ''black'' is a factor in a country that was built in systemic racism. Barack's election was not groundbreaking because he had African heritage [as we all do], it was because he looks like a Black person.",
"I just call him The Half-Blood Prince.",
"Shit half the US is calling him a n*gger. Black is fine",
"Mulatto sounds like something you order at starbucks.",
"I grew up w/ the \"One Drop Rule\", or at least, that's how we referred to it. Back in the slavery days, this rule was implemented to distinguish White people from the so called mixed races. If you take a bucket of white paint and put one drop of black paint in it, it's no longer white and is considered black. Therefore, anyone w/ Black genes were Black. I don't know when the \"mixed race\" or \"biracial\" terms became popular, I still go by the same rule regardless... and I'm Black! So, Obama's Black, Mariah's Black, and Tiger is too to me, whether they associate themselves or not.",
"Simple: he identifies as black. Race and ethnicity are two different things.",
"Because people are judged by how they look. For example, my sister and I are both half mexican/half white. She has fair skin, I'm dark. Everyone assumes shes all-white, and that I'm all south of the border. Not true, but first impressions can be superficial. So it has been since forever.",
"Its racist, but easy to understand: Half a nigger is still a nigger. Its derived from an old stupid racist way to categorise people.",
"I highly recommend reading Dreams from my Father. Obama discusses coming to terms with his racial identity in the United States eloquently and thoughtfully. What's most remarkable is that it is so clearly written by someone who's not considering a presidential campaign and has an extra dose of honesty to it for that reason. Part of my takeaway from that book is that Obama chooses to identify as black, because he found culture, warmth, and acceptance in black communities. There's not exactly a mixed-race community or culture in the same way. ",
"Because he identifies as black.",
"Funny cultural difference: in Brazil race is bout skin tone, not parentage, probably because the population is very mixed. This causes some funny differences:\n\n* Most people don't really consider hake berry or Obama black. He's a light mulato.\n\n* For a few years census data on skin color wasnt multiple options, but you just choose one. This resulted in a census result with over than 100 shades of skin colors: from greenish white to light Moreno to dark mulatto to bluefish black.\n\n* Affimative actions are based on self reported colors: there has been a case where two brothers got in the same university: one got in the black quota and the other in the white quota. They're both two shades of morenos.\n\n* Skin color is changeable, and people will treat you accordingly. If you spend your summer tanning instead of studying, there's a good chance you'll be eligible for the affirmative actions quotas in public universities.\n\n* this doesn't make people less racist. Ive known people who didn't like black people who also didn't like tanned people for the same reasons.\n"
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1hnmgd | why do wild bulls gore everything in sight at a rodeo? | The people in the rodeo aren't a threat to the bull, and the bulls aren't attacking people for food, are they?
Also, how do they keep the bulls so docile before they're released? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hnmgd/eli5_why_do_wild_bulls_gore_everything_in_sight/ | {
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"Bulls are extremely aggressive and territorial. Prior to being released they are not docile, just stuck in a small space unable to move much. ",
"also note that during a rodeo, the matador are putting spikes into the bulls back, in an attempt to kill it through slow blood loss.\n\nthat kind of torture would be maddening for most creatures.",
"I know you got your answer but they also us a flank strap which is a leather or nylon strap, or soft rope, which is wrapped around the flanks of a bull, to irritate him to encourage bucking. They use to strap it near or on the bulls balls but now they tighten it around the bulls abdomen.(they're not soppose to tighten it on or around the balls/penis but smaller unsanctioned rodeos still do). . .See pics\n_URL_0_"
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3hrkc3 | why stagnant water makes humans sick and can potentially kill them but animals and bugs have no problems with it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hrkc3/eli5_why_stagnant_water_makes_humans_sick_and_can/ | {
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"I'm pretty sure animals can get sick from stagnant water as well. My dog has to get a [leptospirosis](_URL_0_) shot specifically for this.",
"It all depends what the organism is equipped to deal with. \n\nOne kind of example of this is when a person from the U.S. goes to a place like India. An Indian has been drinking Indian tap water for their whole lives and is used to the bacteria, etc. that may be in it which is why they don't get sick. But for the American, since get have not developed immunity, they will get sick from the water. \n\nThe animals that can drink the stagnant water and stay healthy have adapted to be be able to do so, while we have not developed such adaptations. "
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crwogq | what causes autism in the brain what are neurological differences in the brain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/crwogq/eli5_what_causes_autism_in_the_brain_what_are/ | {
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"Autism is not a 'disease' that comes from some kind of brain abnormality (pathology). It's a part of how any 'normal' human brain functions. It's the part of you that can focus on a task or sensation or idea so intently that you lose track of the outside world. \n\nAlmost anyone can experience this, because everyone is *somewhere* on a spectrum that starts at \"totally unable to concentrate on anything\" (which is itself an issue) and then goes through \"can concentrate when required\" (which most people consider 'normal') and ends up at \"complete focus on an internal state\" (which characterizes profound, non-communicative autism).\n\nLike any analog spectrum (colors of light, for example) there is no 'natural dividing line' between 'normal' and 'autistic' but just as yellow is clearly distinct from green despite a perfect blend between the two, the diagnosis can be clearly made once an individual is far enough down the line. Asperger's disease, for example, is not a separate disease of its own (as it was thought to be when 'discovered') but is best thought of as the 'color' between 'normal' and 'autistic'. \n\n*Everyone* is *somewhere* on the Autistic Spectrum, you just don't notice it until they start acting differently enough to stand out from the crowd. It's a normal part of human cognition taken to an extreme and as such doesn't require any pathology, although there are some types of brain abnormality that do have some symptoms similar to autism. I simply don't have a list of those conditions on hand at the moment, sorry."
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2u9dn1 | is breaking the seal a thing? ... if so, why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u9dn1/eli5_is_breaking_the_seal_a_thing_if_so_why/ | {
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"nope. it ain't a thing. alcohol makes you pee. ",
"Not really. \n\nYou can wait as long as you want to go to the bathroom for the first time, it won't change anything. You will still need to go frequently. \n\nThink of a water filter jug. You know those things that you pour water in the top then it filters it and fills up the bottom? \n\nNow imagine you put water in to one of these where the filter was totally dry. It would take a bit of time for the water in the top to saturate the filter. Once the filter was saturated, it would start filling the bottom up. So you'd have a bit of delay, but the saturation of the filter would stay the same so once the water starts moving it will keep moving.\n\nNow imagine you pour a cup of this water before the top has filtered all the way out. Doesn't matter when you pour the cup, the rest of the water in the top is going to filter out to the bottom at the same rate. \n\nNow imagine that you keep putting water in the top as it filters out to the bottom. Now, after that initial delay, you have a never ending constant stream of water coming in to the bottom, no matter how many times you dump out the bottom.\n\nSame thing with your bladder. You reached saturation point, essentially. It's just gonna keep coming until all that liquid you consumed is processed and shed. \n\nExpelling this fluid won't change anything, start anything or end anything, your bladder is just going to keep filling up. ",
"Of course it is, never take medicine or eat from jars of food if the seal is broken. \n\nIt might end up being nothing, but what if someone tampered with it. "
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b6dlrf | why does putting tape on windows help during a tornado? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/b6dlrf/eli5_why_does_putting_tape_on_windows_help_during/ | {
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"Just in case your windows break, the tape will prevent it from shattering and all the little glass pieces flying everywhere. Easier to clean up and more safe",
"With tornados, you have a few minutes of warning at most - you're running into a basement, shelter, or interior room, not taping your windows. \n\nWhen a hurricane makes landfall, people have at least 24-48 hours warning. They tape windows to prevent a broken window from shattering into a zillion little pieces of shrapnel and try to keep any broken windows from flying around. ",
"It doesn’t provide any protection for the windows, but does let you know where they are, and if they’re broken. It can prevent injury after the storm passes by helping people know it’s a window and not a hole.\n\nIn some cases, it may help hold together cracked panes, but won’t prevent shattering.",
"One theory is that it helps keep the window intact by preventing too much warping and bending. Another theory is that if the window breaks, you are less likely to have airborne shards flying around. And some people do it just because they heard that is what you are supposed to do."
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2fvhix | how do glasses help a kid's eyes develop? | So last time I went to my ophthalmologist he said my eyes were basically finished developing. I was wondering how wearing glasses helps kids' eyesight develop better? Hoping for a biological answer so I can understand how much I can regret never wearing my glasses as a kid. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fvhix/eli5_how_do_glasses_help_a_kids_eyes_develop/ | {
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"They do nothing to help a kids eyes develop. They correct vision problems helping them be able to see properly which helps motor development, and intellectual development. "
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vyo6o | self posts/non-karma on self posts | Please explain
1. What is a self post?
2. What subreddits would one find a lot of self post
3. How do you distiguish a self post from a regular post?
4. Why do you receive no karma from a self post
Thanks in advanced! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vyo6o/eli5_self_postsnonkarma_on_self_posts/ | {
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"A self post is what you just did, a text based post with no image or link.\n\nYou accumulate 2 kinds of karma on Reddit, Link karma and comment karma. A self post does not have a link and it is not a comment, so no karma for it. This can allow things like moderator posts or other important messages to be upvoted heavily without the people worrying that the person is just karma whoring. "
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3ahzgo | why didn't coffee evolve the same way as tea, with everyone using little one-use bags of grinds just like tea? | Is it a taste issue? Genuinely curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ahzgo/eli5_why_didnt_coffee_evolve_the_same_way_as_tea/ | {
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"Yes, it is a taste issue, but coffee bags do exist. They're just not as good as other methods of coffee making, although they are better than instant.",
"Coffee requires hotter water to brew properly in a reasonable amount of time. Water poured into a cup with a bag will quickly cool well below that temperature.\n\nTea brews decently (though not ideally) at a more moderate temperature."
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1jf1u2 | how capacitors work | I have a pretty good understanding of DC power, this just always confused me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jf1u2/eli5_how_capacitors_work/ | {
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"Imagine two plates of copper separated by an insulator. If you put voltage through the conducting material (in this case copper), you're basically making the positive charge to accumulate on one plate and the negative on the other. Between them, you create electrostatic field, in which energy is stored. \nSource: [wiki](_URL_0_)",
"First you have to think about the fact that \"current\" basically means that negative charges are moving one way through a wire, and positive charges are moving the other way. A capacitor is basically two conducting plates with an \"insulator\" between them called a dielectric. The reason it is called a dielectric and not just a insulator is because it has special electromagnetic properties where it blocks the flow of current, but it allows an electrics field to pass through it. So what happens is, the dielectric material will block the charges from passing through it. This is sort of like a traffic jam, and negative charges will all start building up on one plate, and all the positive charges that are moving the other way will start building up on the other. There will be no current passing through the dielectric, but because there is a large difference in the charge of the plates (one is largely positive and the other is largely negative) there will be an electric field in the dielectric (which means there will be a voltage across it).",
"'Like charges repel' is a basic rule of electrostatics, and it is how capacitors work. When you push charge into one side of a capacitor, it forces charge to exit the other side. This builds up a voltage difference in between the plates, which resists the flow of charge. \n\nTo make a larger capacitor, increase the area of the plates, or decrease the distance between them. An electrolytic capacitor uses a roll of very fine aluminium foil as the plates, so the area is huge in a small package, and a very thin layer of aluminium oxide as the insulator. (the other 'plate' is the conductive liquid electrolyte)",
"Capacitors are a sort of elastic barrier along a conductor. In the water pipe analogy, they would be like an elastic sheet that has been trapped between two pipe fittings... it stops water from flowing, but with enough pressure you can stretch the elastic and get a little bit of movement - as soon as you relieve the pressure, the water flows backward until the elastic returns to neutral.\n\nThey work just like an insulator, except instead of stopping flow completely, they impede flow by building voltage.\n\nLarge capacitors work like batteries - you can \"pressurize\" electrons into them, and purposefully relieve that pressure (voltage) when it is needed.\n\nSmaller capacitors are useful components in oscillators, isolation circuits and noise filters.\n\n- You can get the elastic effect to oscillate by applying an AC current.\n- You can communicate pulses across the barrier, *moving* electrons, even though no electrons cross it.\n- You can absorb electrical noise, as the capacitor will absorb increases in outside voltage, and provide return voltage when the outside voltage drops.\n\nThe capacitor effect works simply because as electrons build up on one side of the capacitor, they repel nearby electrons on the other side of the capacitor.",
"'Getting Started in Electronics' by Forest Mims III. ",
"Look at it like a barrel with a sheet in the middle. It fills and unfills from both sides at the same time. It tries to keep its fill level equal to the voltage across it. In short, it's always lagging behind what happens around it. How much it lags behind is how big the barrel is (how much capacitance).\n\nA big capacitor in your startup circuit will at first eat up all current that goes there (as it's empty and there's a current rushing past it trying to up the voltage). As it fills up the current going to the capacitor's filling reduces and the voltage rises higher, causing the capacitor to fill even further. After some time the capacitor barely takes any voltage from the line making the line \"stable\" as it is at the same voltage level as the line.\n\nNow, when something happens with the voltage on the line - either somebody starts pulling more current all of a sudden (causing the voltage to dip) or somebody stops pulling current (causing the voltage to spike), or the input stops providing current (causing the voltage to dip, again) the capacitor does what it can to prevent this from happening. It drags the dips up and the spikes down as much as it can, until it is at the same level as the dip or spike, or until the level has gone back to normal. This causes it to stabilize the output voltage for a given input.\n\nIf you took a smaller capacitor in the same setup and put an AC current on it, it would try to keep adjusting to the current new level. The net result would be that it (for a fast oscillating current) effectively takes the full brunt of loading/unloading the AC current and leaves nothing for the system behind it. This effectively filters out high frequencies as it eats them in charging / discharging.\n\nPut a slower frequency on it and it cannot keep up; it's empty before the AC goes back up. In this case it'll just lower the peaks a bit and use up a bit of the power (effectively in heating).\n\nNow, take the capacitor out and put it in the first line. This is a different set up - it now takes from the input on the left and on the right there's a separate line. What this does is, when the input goes up, it will release electrons left and take them from the right, effectively inverting the signal. The line on the right is \"floating\" so it's a bit hard to know what comes out.\n\nSo, what you do is that you tie the right hand side to some known value - say, ground - through a resistor. If you put a DC input on it it will give a single spike on the output (as it's charging, but then no change is being applied on the right hand side and it just charges to ground through the resistor) effectively isolating the circuit. For slower ACs this works the same - you get no output.\n\nIf you put fast AC on it though, the left-and-right charge and left-and-right drain of the capacitor starts to become important enough, more so than the resistor's effect in dragging it back to ground. This causes *high* frequencies to pass through and low ones to be filtered out. \n\nThe last two together allow you to make a bandpass filter. You can also use the capacitor-in-line method to put a given AC signal (say, communications) onto a DC input (say, a power line). This is the basics of power line communications.",
"I liked [/u/Crepe_Cod's answer](_URL_0_), but I'm also an Electrical Engineer, and feel it could be a little over everyone's heads (no offense, good sir). \nA capacitor is like a very simple battery. The main difference being that a battery is designed to discharge it's energy over a long period of time, whereas capacitors are designed to discharge their energy very, very quickly. This is due to a very low internal resistance. \nInside a capacitor, the terminals are connected by two metal plates that are separated by a non-conducting surface (an insulator, or dielectric in the electrical world). Because of this design, it is very easy to charge up a capacitor to an arbitrary voltage - however, the charge itself is only momentary. They are very beneficial for stabilizing unstable power inputs because of this. \nNot the best explanation I know, it's hard to explain something like a capacitor as simple. "
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3crb0f | why do some internet services make it impossible to actually delete an account? what do they gain by holding on to an empty profile? | I just checked out that site "_URL_1_" that was posted in that thread about good websites today, and saw that some places like _URL_2_ and _URL_0_ don't let you fully delete your profile. What good is it to them to say you can't? Also, why is it legal?
Edit: Thanks for all the responses! I guess I never really thought of it in a business sense that having a userbase of xx,xxx would look good, despite how active the accounts are. I also underestimated the sensitivity of the tech behind huge databases. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3crb0f/eli5_why_do_some_internet_services_make_it/ | {
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"Shareholders, advertising money, and all that comes with it.\n\nIf a website can say \"look at our userbase! It's huge!\" even if it's a lot of unused/dead accounts, it looks better to potential investors and advertisers than actually allowing the number to dwindle.\n\nAs for legality, no idea. It's not false advertising per se to say an unused account is part of the user base, but it is dishonest.",
"Self-promotion. If you have a board that has been online for 20 years, maybe you do really have 400,000 accounts registered. But that also includes accounts that were spammers, or that registered in 1998 and haven't been back since. \n",
"You are worth money. Your information is worth money, your spending habits, when you are online, what you look at, what you ignore, what games you play, ect ect ect.\n\nThe company who is collecting all this information on you doesn't want to give it up.",
"Just piggybacking on /u/ameoba 's answer, deletion is what's called an 'expensive' database action, especially depending on your underlying database software. Think of what has to happen to delete an account. \n\nFirstly, remember that especially with user accounts, you almost always want the data to be clustered. That means if you query the database for account 1000 to 2000, you generally expect them to have all been created in the order they appear - account 1005 isn't created after account 1892. \n\nAnd you also don't want any gaps. You don't want to have the software handle \"oops, no account found\". And you don't want to look at your database and go \"Huh, why is account 1774 totally empty/blank/nonexistent?\" \n\nSo if you want to actually 'delete' the item, you could actually remove it from the database, the entire record. \nThat could mean moving *every single account* that comes after it sequentially up in the database. That's huge. That carries a lot of risk. What happens if there's a power outage when that happens? What happens if something goes wrong? \n\nSo instead they just offer account deactivation. You deactivate the account. You can't log into it any more to do stuff. If you want, you can ask for it to be reactivated - that means they can cover their ass in case you delete it by accident. Now they don't have to do all kinds of crazy database things - it's just flagged as a deactivated account. "
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a55fbb | why is the windshield on my car more frosty than everything else in the morning? | Even other objects made with glass don't seem to frost as much as the windshield. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a55fbb/eli5_why_is_the_windshield_on_my_car_more_frosty/ | {
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"It's at a shallower angle than the other glass, meaning a greater horizontal area for moisture to settle on, and less tendency for it to run off durle to gravity. More water = more ice.\nIt may also be facing away from buildings etc. that are sources of heat. ",
"There are lots of things which determine how frosty the windows get. For example if you park with one side of the car towards a wall and the other side is towards an open area then there will be some small amount of infrared light bouncing between the wall and car causing that side to be slightly warmer then the side that is towards the open area and it will therefore frost up much slower. Similarly your windshield is often angled towards the open sky or towards a cold roof. This may cause it to frost up much faster then the other windows. The best way to prevent frosty windows is to get a cheap blanket to cover the windshield and mirrors. It will make sure your windscreen keep just a tiny bit warmer then the ambient temperature which makes the moisture settle on the colder surfaces instead.",
"The night sky is very cold (you can feel this by looking up at the sky and then holding something like a piece of paper between you and the night sky). Your car's windshield is at an angle, so it gets more exposure to the night sky's cold. \n\nThat heat loss is between your window and the sky can be enough to cause water to condense from the air and freeze on a night where the temperature is just above freezing (or cause extra frost when the temperature is lower). \n\nBefore refrigeration, the coldness of the night sky was used to make small amounts of ice in places where the [temperature remained above freezing throughout the year](_URL_0_). \n\n"
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89i2og | exactly how is smoking weed different from eating edibles. not in your mind but chemically. | I don’t know the science behind it but I can tell the difference in the effects. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/89i2og/eli5_exactly_how_is_smoking_weed_different_from/ | {
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"When you eat it it gets processed by your liver into 11-hydroxy-THC. Which is said to be 5 times more psychoactive than when you smoke or vaporize cannabis.",
"The active ingredients in smoke get absorbed directly into your bloodstream inside your lungs. The active ingredients in edibles have to be digested before they can have an effect. Not everything digests at the same speed or as efficiently, but what you breathe is all absorbed at the same time. \n\nSo the effect of smoke is faster and you get all the different compounds at once, whereas with edibles it's slower and different psychoactive compounds hit your brain at different times. "
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9os7rq | how would universal healthcare in the us effect the economy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9os7rq/eli5_how_would_universal_healthcare_in_the_us/ | {
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"If my basic internet sleuthing is correct: all the Republicans would move to Canada rather than pay for somebody else’s problems. This would drain the tax base and cause the system to collapse. Apparently it’s the worst thing we could ever do to the country. How dare you even suggest the idea of such a thing. ",
"ELI5 is not for hypotheticals. Questions like this are better in r/askanamerican.",
"In order to avoid inflaming either side of the healthcare debate, the only safe answer is, it would change some things dramatically, and some things not so much. Some things will be unaffected, some things will be altered forever. ",
" \n\nIt will remove a big burden on the middle and lower classes and would make USA a better commonwealth. Any commonwealth item increases the wellbeing of citizens at zero cost if funded by fiscal deficits = created money. Why people do not understand this is beyond me.\n\nFiscal deficits can fund govt paid medicare for all, SS for all with zero FICA, free College for all, with small stipends, minimum income for all, free roads and infrastructure for all and so on with not a dime in taxes or insurance. Anyway federal taxes do not fund anything. They are simply noted for records and trashed.\n\nGDP is proportional to fiscal deficit. Free govt funded medicare will make people healthier and happier and also increase employment of doctors and nurses and medical personnel.\n\nGovt debt is the biggest fiction there is! And the stupid debt clock which is nothing but the wealth clock."
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57ciy2 | how does glass become sea-glass? | Once glass has been in the ocean for awhile, it becomes smooth. Why is this possible?
Also, is it possible to create it on your own terms? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57ciy2/eli5_how_does_glass_become_seaglass/ | {
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"It becomes smooth after 20-50 years of being tumbled by waves and tides, in contact with abrasive saltwater and rough sand. It's possible because sand is of similar hardness to glass (being made from similar materials), the sand is able to wear away the glass. \n\n\"Fake\" sea glass is fairly easy to make in much less time. Usually glass is placed in a rock tumbler or treated with acid to produce the smooth edges and frosted appearance. \n"
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6uutud | how do humans "learn to like" things? shouldn't we have the same response every time? | A good example of this would be music. You hear a song and originally you hate it, but you hear it enough times and start to like it. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6uutud/eli5_how_do_humans_learn_to_like_things_shouldnt/ | {
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"Not the same response every time, because learning takes place! When you were small, money had no value to you-- it was not conditioned as a reinforcer. Your caregivers gave you food, a place to sleep, etc. As you grew up, you started to learn that money was a method of accessing all of these great things, so money became valuable to you. As an adult, very few people would work if not provided a paycheck on an extremely consistent basis. Over time and repeated trials, money became a generalized conditioned reinforcer.\n\nIn the music example, there may have been pairing going on-- was the song played during other enjoyable activities? Enough occurrences of something you don't care for much paired with something you already like can make the thing you don't care for become more reinforcing eventually. You may want to check into operant conditioning and B.F. Skinner. :)"
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1moar0 | why aren't things that are inherently good for us addicting? while things that are naturally bad for us are? | Example: Nicotine and sugar = addicting, where as Apples are not.
I don't know anyone addicted to apples... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1moar0/eli5_why_arent_things_that_are_inherently_good/ | {
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"There are two types of addictions, psychological and Physical. Physical addictions are often but not always bad for us because they cause long lasting changes to our body and create incredibly powerful physical urges. Nicotine or Alcohol cause physical addiction which is obviously bad, but the soy bean edamame also causes a physical addiction which is obviously not that bad for you. (its freaking soy!)\n\nOn the other-side, anything, and I mean anything, can create a psychological addictions, even apples. These addictions can be bad, some even as bad as physical addictions and I know people who had withdrawal effects from additions to certain habits that rivaled nicotine withdrawal. The mind can do terrible things to you even if your addiction is just apples.\n\nEDIT: Psychology friend told me its called physical addiction and not chemical.",
"The premise of your question is fundamentally flawed. The real question shouldn't be \"why are bad things addicting\", but rather \"why can we even get addicted to something that isn't food or sex in the first place\". Because the chemical pathways that addicting substances hijack are the same ones your body uses to signal that drives you to eat food and to reproduce.\n\nLimiting your question to only physical addiction, I will try to explain. \n\nYour body has a complex internal chemical signaling system consisting of thousands of different molecules. These molecules bind to receptors on the surface of cells and cause a change in that cell, like stimulating the production of another chemical inside the cell. Many addictive substances, like nicotine, are structurally similar to a naturally occuring signaling chemical in your body, and can bind to those receptors and stimulate a response in the cell.\n\nMany of these signaling \"pathways\" are self regulating using a variety of different mechanisms, for instance a chemical signal that stimulates the blood vessels to constrict may also cause those cell to start releasing a different chemical that would stimulate other cells to produce less of the original chemical, thus lowering the concentration of the first signal chemical creating a feedback loop.\n\nWhen you ingest/inject/inhale an addictive substance, like nicotine, you are completely bypassing the internal feedback loop that regulates that chemical signal. Your body does its best to cope with the excess signaling chemical, for instance, by reducing the amount of receptors that the substance can bind to (thus producing tolerance, a phenomenon anyone who has regularly drank coffee has experienced). If you continue taking the substance, your body can get to the point where it the natural levels of that chemical signal in your body is not sufficient to sustain normal function, if you quit cold turkey, the chemical concentration crashes very quickly and you experience withdrawal.\n\n\nThere are many substances that people take that can cause the effect described above that aren't usually \nconsidered physically addicting. Testosterone (Steroids) is one example. Body builders bypass their internal hormone regulation system by injecting testosterone into their blood stream, after a short time (a few weeks) your body stops producing its own testosterone completely because it is getting more than it needs from the injections. When a body builder stops taking steroids their hormone levels crash and it can take several months for the natural production of testosterone to return to normal, causing severe symptoms akin to a menopausal woman. Caffeine intake also does something very similar (caffeine withdrawal is almost as severe as nicotine withdrawal), but is not considered physically addicting. \n\nNow here comes the addiction part. If the chemical interacts directly with a very low level system, like the one responsible for pleasure or another important system (nicotine, for instance, stimulates acetocholine receptors, an ubiquitous neurotransmitter that is literally involved in almost all brain functions) , then the physical change in the cells can be disastrous to normal functioning. If you don't continue to take the substance regularly the chemical levels begin to decrease and can cause severe depression, anxiety, even physical pain. Your body cannot function normally without them. Quiting cold turkey can be physically impossible because the pathways involved touch on very strong, very low level urges, like the drive to find food, or have sex. These chemicals \"hijack\" very primal drives that our body relies upon to survive and as a result makes it so we have to rely on those chemicals to survive. \n\nWhy are most addicting things bad then? A substance that can so fundamentally affect your internal body chemistry and functioning is like a hammer over the head. The body is a finely tuned chemical system, there are hundreds of very intricately balanced systems that regulate your internal functioning, by bypassing it you bypass millions of years of evolutionary fine tuning that found the perfect balance to keep your body functioning. Its like going up to a complex machine and fiddling with all the dials, it probably isn't going to end well. However, that isn't to say that all addicting substances are inherently bad for you if used with a little more finese than a needle to a main vein. Nicotine is very addicting, but it causes very little negative side effects on its own (besides a mild stimulant effect that can stress your cardiovascular system), the smoke in cigarettes is carcinogenic, and being the most common way of taking nicotine it means you are taking in a bunch more stuff that is terrible for you. Amphetamines are addicting, they mess with dopamine (another neurotransmitter) receptors in very complex ways, however used in a controlled setting it can cause drastic improvements in performance and concentration (hence adderall), as well as a very strong stimulant effect, controlled consumption can be therapeutic to some, but the rapid tollerance that you develop for amphetamines means you need to take more and more just to feel normal and all the positive effects go out the window if you abuse it. Eventually, the amount that you need to satisfy that primal craving (the addiction pathway) is enough to make you catatonic and non-functioning (the other mental systems it affects), and you are now a methhead. "
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232w1e | why is it sometimes so satisfying to press buttons and flip switches? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/232w1e/eli5_why_is_it_sometimes_so_satisfying_to_press/ | {
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"problem solving (which these actions mimic in a simple form) is a catalyst of evolution",
"The ability to affect and see changes happen physically.\n\nTouchscreens are ruining this.",
"This is from memory so some of the details may be a little off: There was a study done to see what sort of enjoyment people got out of menial tasks, and whether money actually makes them happier. They had people do the most boring task they could devise: putting wooden pegs in holes, then taking them out again, then putting it back in. \n\nSome people were paid, some people were paid a bit more, some weren't paid at all. It was expected that people who were paid more would be happier to do the task, since it equates to more money. They found it was the opposite. When your job is largely about the money, you find yourself more easily dissatisfied with the duties you have to do, and these testers reported it was the dullest job they'd ever done, and warned the people in the lines following them not to go through with it, it wasn't worth it. Conversely, the people who weren't decently compensated or compensated at all, were rather all right with the experience and came out going \"yeah, it was okay, you're going to be fine.\"\n\nFrom it people gathered that if you take away any kind of monetary drive to do something, you are left trying to find a reason why you're doing what you're doing, and most people fill it with the rationalization that you're doing it because you like doing it, and you're having a grand old time.\n\nIt doesn't quite answer your question, but it might be one of the contributing factors as to why it comes as great satisfaction to you, since it's your own choice to do so. Others include \"oh look, I have visually and physically changed something in my domain, I am in control of my space and it feels good. Look, I can even change it back! I am a god!\"\n\nSo on, so forth.",
"Tactile sensations like pressing buttons and flipping switches have been linked through years of conditioning to action/reward sequences. Or something like that. I don't actually know what I'm talking about, I just like pressing the keys on my keyboard. Clicky click clack. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. ",
"Next to the other reasons given here, I'd like to point out that some people are working very hard to create buttons and switches with satisfactory clicking sounds and tactile experiences."
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9txd7b | what are some of the causes of the huge variability in average salary (finance vs nursing for example) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9txd7b/eli5_what_are_some_of_the_causes_of_the_huge/ | {
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"Supply and demand, both for the field and people working in it. It’s good to have more skilled doctors, lots of people need doctors, but it’s hard to become a doctor. You need years of training and practice. So people are willing to pay more for a doctor. \n\nFinances, while still important, don’t have the same kind of barrier for entry. It’s easier to get into finances, so there tends to be more people there, and so people don’t need to pay as much to find someone in finances. ",
"There is not a huge variability in the average salary. The average salary of someone with a [finance degree](_URL_2_) is slightly less than the average salary of [a registered nurse](_URL_0_).\n\nIf you look at variability **within** the professions, finance is much more variable because it is much more competitive. If you and the guy in the next skyscraper both write excellent proposals for taking _URL_1_ to an IPO (or back private again, or maybe both!), one of you will get it and the other, well, I guess your proposal just wasn't excellent enough. Which means it was crap.\n\nIf one nurse takes an average of 1.1 sticks to start an IV and one the next town over takes 1.2 sticks to start an IV, both average patients still have an IV started and both nurses still have a job."
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"https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/registered-nurse/salary",
"MagicUnicorn.com",
"https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120214/whats-average-salary-someone-finance-major.asp"
]
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1q31im | what would happen if all the cockroaches in the world disappeared? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q31im/eli5what_would_happen_if_all_the_cockroaches_in/ | {
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"I could go visit Florida ",
"We'd be left with only crickets and spiders to complain about.",
"My dog would be bored tonight."
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5fmfrz | why have processor speeds been stuck at 2-4 ghz for a long time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5fmfrz/eli5_why_have_processor_speeds_been_stuck_at_24/ | {
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"Intel was famous for trying to push clock speeds to the maximum in the early/mid 2000s with their Pentium 4 lineup. However, they found that increasing clock speeds, and consequently a need for higher core voltages, DRAMATICALLY increased power draw. Increased power draw means a lot more heat that has to be disposed of, and that presents it's own issues.\n\nInstead, other approaches to getting faster processors included designing cores capable of more instructions per clock, and processors with multiple cores. "
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17xv1z | why do so many parking lots, particularly in "shopping centers," seem so poorly designed? | I know that there are professionals who do this, and I'm not trying to call them out or anything. What makes it difficult to design a parking lot that feels easily navigable? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17xv1z/eli5_why_do_so_many_parking_lots_particularly_in/ | {
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"What is difficult about navigating 10 rows of 2by100 car spots?\n\n^Standard parking lots are just rectangles filled with 2-by-n spots",
"I don't think it is terribly \"difficult\". It simply isn't the #1 priority. \n \nWhen designing a parking lot for a shopping center, one of the highest priorities is simply density. They don't want a scenario where potential customers leave because they can't find a space, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to have the maximum number of spaces. \n \nSo you can end up with some odd intersections and non-optimal traffic flow patterns to squeeze in more parking spaces. \n \nYes, you risk having customers get annoyed and leave if the lot is too annoying (or risky) to navigate. But that is less likely than having them leave if they can't actually find a place to park. ",
"I assume you're talking about the use of shrubbery and plants and such. Put simply, the engineer would just pave and stripe a big square and there's your lot. The problem comes when a) your area isn't square and b) you let \"designers\" and \"architects\" in on the game. \n\nIn case of A, (your picture) you have to make these wierd looking end spots to show that the road runs at an angle to the parking spots. Frequently these are just striped in spots. \n\nIn your picture, B also took an interest and someone approved planting trees and things that look pretty. We now need curbs to contain mulch and prevent people from running over trees. \n\nThat's really all that there is to the lot pictured. The only other option might have been to do angled parking but that would have screwed things up at the bottom of the picture where the road runs straight across. The layout pictured also allows more premium spots because I assume the bottom of the picture is where the people want to go once they park their cars. "
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6b47co | how does slamming particles into each other in the lhc help us to make new discoveries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6b47co/eli5_how_does_slamming_particles_into_each_other/ | {
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"Some of the most fundamental particles that make up atoms are really difficult to isolate and study. One of the ways scientists have been able to see them is to accelerate particles to extreme speeds then collide them with each other, seeing what comes out. This is what the LHC is designed to do."
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almszq | how do voice assistants like siri or google assistant say so many things? | I have a non-English name, and it still got it spot on. Almost always say things properly, or at least how I imagine I'd say a word if I hadn't heard it before. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/almszq/eli5_how_do_voice_assistants_like_siri_or_google/ | {
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"I *think* it has a bank of \"noises\" or syllables so all of the noises are put together when talking, so your name will be made from those noises, like it is with most other names"
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1900hx | how do printers work so fast and efficiently? how does the ink not smudge all over the page? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1900hx/how_do_printers_work_so_fast_and_efficiently_how/ | {
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"....Is it magic?",
"Please point me to this magical printer you have that prints fast and \"efficiently\" all the time. ",
"There are two important types of printers, I'll try to explain both of them:\n\n**ink jet printers**: They are those which use actual fluid ink. The print head moves over the paper, and a row of small nozzles sprays tiny droplets of ink onto the paper. The ink dries really fast.\n\nManufacturers spend a lot of time and effort to make the drops of ink smaller and smaller, because smaller drops means clearer images and more detail. It also allows for better mixing of colors, e.g. yellow with just a hint of red in it (in fact really small red drops sprinkled in between a lot of yellow drops).\n\nThe ink nozzles work in different ways, maybe I will go into more detail in a second post if you like.\n\n**laser printers**: they don't use ink, but instead a *very* fine black powder called *toner*. The printer then charges a drum electrically on the surface. A movable laser then \"paints\" the writing or image onto the drum, which then loses its charge where the laser beam hits. This means that the fine toner powder now sticks to only this uncharged parts of the drum.\n\nThe now partially drum rolls the toner powder onto a sheet of paper while a second drum applies heat, this \"bakes\" the powder on the paper. This is also the reason why a fresh laser print feels warm.\n\nLaser printers can create quite fine and sharp print, since a laser is very good at painting tiny structures on the drum."
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387wmp | why do the nsa and fbi actually need to gather our data? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/387wmp/eli5_why_do_the_nsa_and_fbi_actually_need_to/ | {
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"They claim that if they can gather and analyze mountains of data they'll be able to find connections and networks terrorists use to kill Americans. ",
"Theoretically, the more information they have, the harder it is to secretly plot to do bad things. Of course, this assumes they have the ability to process the information, and ignores the balancing act with the right to privacy. ",
"They need to be able to have a file on everybody containing all of their transgressions (legal or otherwise). This way when they want to get rid of someone they can just pull up the file and have them arrested/blackmailed for whatever is in there.\n\nThis is the only thing that really makes sense. By their own admission, they gather much too much data to actively monitor and correlate. So they don't monitor it, they store it, and they only pull it up when they already have their target in mind. ",
"To make their jobs easier.\n\nIf a crime is committed, being able to access the bank account and cell phone record of everyone who might be involved makes it easier to solve the crime. Have to deal with pesky court orders slows things down and makes it harder to catch the bad guys.\n\nThe question is, how to balance the social good of catching criminals with the social good of have strong civil rights and the social good of guarding against state abuses.",
"As I understand it, NSA had this rationale for collecting info on EVERYONE:\n\nSuppose govt gets a tip that person X is planning an attack. They want to trace all of his phone calls and emails and tweets etc. So they'd have to give warrants to N different phone and internet companies, wait for results to come back. Then the data would show person X has been communicating with persons Y and Z. So more warrants to all those companies, wait for results to come back. Repeat with more persons of interest.\n\nIf, instead, NSA already had all of the data for EVERYONE, just hasn't looked at it yet, the whole process would go FAR faster. Get a FISA warrant for person X and anyone he's communicated with, and dive into the database.\n\nI'm not defending this, just giving what I understand to be the govt rationale."
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e874j9 | why does faster flow in a hose cause more pressure, given bernoulli's principle? | Bernoulli's Principle seems to say that increased flow velocity causes less pressure. This does make sense, since pressure takes energy and so does motion, so with a fixed amount of energy of course there's a tradeoff. But in every example I can think of, the opposite seems to be true. If you put your thumb over a hose nozzle, the water goes faster and there's also increased pressure on your thumb. The higher you turn the water flow, the faster the water flows and the stiffer the hose becomes. What am I missing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e874j9/eli5_why_does_faster_flow_in_a_hose_cause_more/ | {
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"Conservation of energy is the key principle. \nIf one variable is changed, the other elements must change to compensate. In our case, speed has increased so pressure must drop to keep the energy budget consistent. \n\nIt’s mind bending, and whilst I accept this as fact, I don’t intrinsically “get it” either.",
"The pressure increases downstream of your thumb, and the velocity decreases. Less water flows out of the hose.\n\nBut as the water passes the restriction, your thumb, the pressure drops and the velocity increases.\n\nYou can only feel the pressure increase, because you don't feel the water after it leaves.",
"Bernoullis Principal is basically conservation of mechanical energy for fluids. It should not be applied in a situation where the fluid is flowing through a long, narrow pipe, since viscosity (analogous to friction) is a dominating factor. It doesn't help that, when learning about Bernoullis principal, fluid flowing through pipes is the go to example.\n\nWhen fluid flows through a pipe, it experiences \"head loss\", which is a decrease in the mechanical energy due to the viscosity/friction between the fluid and the walls of the pipe. All else being equal, the faster the fluid flows, the more head is lost. By putting your thumb over the end of the hose, you are forcing the fluid in the hose to flow slower overall, meaning it has more head when it reaches you, and thus greater pressure where you thumb is, and greater velocity where your thumb isn't."
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45sw56 | does bank account with all money which my country hold exist ? | Where is this all money which my country has from taxes ? Is somewhere a real account ? Does somebody has a real password to this account ? How this all looks like ?
Sorry for English, not native. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45sw56/eli5_does_bank_account_with_all_money_which_my/ | {
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"I once heard a guy on the radio who told that he performed transactions on the Dutch government national bank account, account number \"1\" at The Netherlands Bank. For instance, when the Netherlands needs to pay fees to the European Union, it is done from this bank account. I'm not sure if this account \"holds all the country's money\", but these kind of national bank accounts exist."
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cuhorm | how does the science behind the inheritance of skin colour work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cuhorm/eli5_how_does_the_science_behind_the_inheritance/ | {
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"Skin color is controlled in significant part by genetics, which you inherit from your parents. However, there's a number of these genes, not simply (for instance) a white gene or a black gene. These genes can vary in dominance, with some favoring darker skin, lighter skin, or not heavily favoring either. \n\nWhen parents have a kid, they get some grouping of these genes from either parent, and the result determines their skin color, without necessarily matching the skin color expressed in either parent, since they aren't guaranteed to have the same grouping."
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4hy30r | why do human beings, as a species, get such enjoyment from picking on each other and hurting each others' feelings, even among supposed friends? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hy30r/eli5_why_do_human_beings_as_a_species_get_such/ | {
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"Humans are a social species, and we highly value (and fight for) our rank within our peer group. Showing your peers that you are tougher than them, and deserve a higher position than them, is part of how you gain rank and thus better access to resources, mates, and decision-making power.",
"Many people are insecure about themselves. Others have been damaged through abuse and neglect. Pair those traits with ignorance, selfishness, and a lack of empathy and youre halfway to your answer. People try to make themselves feel better and raise their own esteem by pointing out the weaknesses and failures in others. As social creatures we also tend to talk about each others behaviours. Sometimes this can result in hurt feelings even when cruelty isnt intended.",
"Fighting, whether physical or verbal, is an important skill to learn.\n\nPlay fighting...even if it is sometimes less than play...among friends who don't wish to harm you, is an effective way to develop these skills.",
"Well really some people don't care about other people because they literally cant feel guilt or empathy. Some do it so they don't get picked on themselves. Some don't know that they are taking things to far. Mostly it is just like with other social animals they have the instinct to establish a pecking order.",
"We don't all get such enjoyment from it, if everyone got enjoyment from it you'd see it all over the place, most places you go, but most people do have a sensitivity and respect for others. Most people actually get the opposite effect and feel bad when they put others down, everyone has a conscience.\n\n I think it comes down to personality, some people disregard their own feelings, or may have a propensity for excitement or thrill - even if it's through provoking others - whereas other people may be more feeling-dominant, and more reserved.\n\nIt'd come down to many factors, maybe some kid saw his parents fighting at night and he decides to mimic that behavior the next day at school. It could be someones hate/fear of another person just manifesting itself. I disagree with the idea that it's all to gain social hierarchy, some of the most successful people wouldn't have gotten that way by putting others down, cooperating seems more important to survival than antagonism to others"
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1rzfts | what happens to the water elevation of a lake when a drop of water falls in? | Is it equally distributed throughout the lake or are the elevations different in different areas? Also, how much of a difference would the drip make in elevation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rzfts/eli5what_happens_to_the_water_elevation_of_a_lake/ | {
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"it evenly distributes. Any time you have a raised area in the water it will \"spill\" over since there is nothing holding it back. It will continue to \"spill\" until it is even with everything else."
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j43mk | explanation the human immune system, li5. | Please describe how the human immune system works, specifically referencing the major organs and structure involved, and major cell types that comprise this system, including [natural killer cells, as seen in this neat video.
](_URL_0_)
Maybe a quick brush up of Biology 101 is in order first to meet the guidelines of LI5? Quick rundown of Cell Theory? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j43mk/explanation_the_human_immune_system_li5/ | {
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"[](/awyeah \"I'm a medical student\")\n\nThe immune system is comprised of two parts: the innate and the adaptive system. The innate attacks anything they feel as dangerous, whereas the adaptive will counter specific antigens. It's the difference between shutting the door of the city hall, and installing a system that keeps felons out.\n\nThe innate immune system is comprised of several parts: firstly you skin, and the inner lining of your mouth, gut etc. Cells (e.g. bacteria) will have to get through this layer to enter your body and infect you. Just like they need to get through the walls/doors of the town hall. \n\nSecondly, you have macrophages and so called Dendritic cells that will 'eat' anything they do not recognize as being part of your body. This is comparable to the security allowing only people through with a key-card and kicking everybody else out. They will then present a part of that foreign (that's the term....) cell to other cells: the lymphocytes. (B & T) This is the security guard taking your picture and uploading it to the database, so everybody else will know what to look out for.\n\nThe lymphocytes are subdivided in 2 main categories, which are both subdivided even further:\n\n* B lymphocytes, consisting of\n * Plasma cells\n * Memory cells\n* T lymphocytes, consisting of\n * T- helper cells (subdivided, but this is omitted to keep it within limits)\n * Cytotoxic T cells\n\nB-cells are formed in the bonemarrow, T-cells in the thymus. Both circulate the blood and lymphatic system, which is where they are activated.\n\nEach lymphocyte has a specific receptor, that can only notice one kind of antigen (facial recognition software in the mugshot database). \n\nWhen a T-cell encounter its antigen, the response depends on which type of cell it was that encountered the antigen.\n\n* Th cells will activate other cells: the macrophages, B-cells and cytotoxic T-cells. They encounter antigen that is presented to them by macrophages and other cells. This is you alerting one security guard, who then alerts the rest.\n* Cytotoxic T-cells recognize antigens presented to them by normal cells, like your live cells. They get the signal that the cell is infected and kill the cell to prevent further spread. This is useful against viruses. This is a suicide- one hostage says that there are ten terrorists with him in the room, so they should just blow it up.\n\nWhen B-cells encounter its antigen, often presented by a T-helper cell, they will begin producing antibodies, that cling to the target cell (that produces the antigen) and make it easier for it to be eaten by macrophages. This is hiding a transmitter in the felons clothing, so that he can be tracked and weeded out easily. This is the task of Plasma cells. Memory cells will remember the specific antigen, and when they encounter it again they will be activated quicker than the first time around. In other words, he remembers the face and can print out the pictures more quickly.\n\nBecause you asked specifically about NK cells: NK cells are like cytotoxic T cells, with one big difference: Tc cells have to be activated to kill a cell, whereas the NK are always active- they have to be stopped by the cell itself, otherwise they kill it. This is a back-up mechanism. Normally a cell, once infected, will tell the Tc cells that he's infected so they can kill them. This is not good for the pathogen inside. So some pathogens (like the herpes virus) will prevent that from happening. But when they do this, they change the outside look of the cell. This is recognized by the NK cell, who then kills the cell anyway. This is like a room in a building with terrorists no longer answering the phone- they're not answering, so the terrorists must be there.\n\n###This omits the principle of MHC molecules, among other things. If you want more detailed info, please go to r/askscience, because then we're entering university level material.",
"Do you have a handle on what cells are, and how blood works? If not, lemme know and I'll explain in a reply.\n\n---------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nYour first line of defence against the World is your skin. Your skin keeps all your cells in, and keeps everything else out. Your nose hairs and mucous in your throat trap dust when you breathe, and that helps keep intruders out too. When we're talking about the immune system, \"intruders\" are called 'pathogens' (pathogen is Greek for 'to make feel bad'). If pathogens manage to make it past your skin; if you get them in your eyes, or if you scrape your knee, for example, then your body has to have a second way of defending itself.\n\nSo:\n\nSay you closed your eyes and tried to figure out what was around you. You would have to feel your way around. Since you're at your computer, you would have a keyboard, a mouse, a screen, that sort of thing. \n\nYou would be able to tell which of those is the keyboard, because it would have a whole bunch of bumps on the top. The screen would have four corners and one really flat side. You could say which is your mouse because it has two buttons and a wire coming out one end and it fits nicely in your hand.\n\nThat's how cells see. They feel stuff that's around them. Some of your cells float around in your blood and feel around to make sure that there are no pathogens. These cells are called 'leukocytes', or 'white blood cells' (leuco is Greek for 'white').\n\nWhite blood cells (WBC's) pay attention to what things in your body feel like. There are special shapes that your body uses as a password, and your cells are covered in these shapes. They are special to you -- like a fingerprint. They let the WBC's know if it's feeling one of your own cells, so they get left alone. Pathogens won't have these special shapes on them. They'll be covered in other, weird shapes.\n\nThe WBC's can feel that the pathogens are weird, and will try to get rid of them. There are a few kinds of white blood cells for doing that. One is called a \"helper T-cell\". It doesn't attack pathogens directly. The helper T-cell will recognise that the pathogens don't have the right shapes, and send out signals for other WBC's to come help.\n\nOne of these is the 'killer T-cell'. When it finds a pathogen, it shoots poison at it, which breaks it apart.\n\nSome WBC's are called 'macrophages' (macrophage is Greek for 'big eater'). Macrophages will eat pathogens, and then break them up into little pieces.\n\nA third kind of WBC is called a 'B-cell'. B-cells scoop up these bits left over from the killer T-cells and the macrophages, and make signs for them that say \"kill this!\". These signs are called 'antibodies'. They stick to anything with the same shape as the little pieces it found earlier. So if the same pathogen gets into your body again, these signs will stick to it, and your body will react quicker the second time.\n\nTo recap:\nYour skin is your first line of defence against intruders, which are called pathogens.\nOnce pathogens get in your body, your white blood cells try to destroy them.\nFirst, helper T-cells notice the pathogen, and alert your other WBC's.\nKiller T-cells break apart the pathogen with poison.\nMacrophages eat and break apart the pathogen.\nB-cells take the pieces left over and create an early-warning system for the next time.\n\nAnd those are the basics! (gosh, I left out a lot, now that I'm thinking about it. My highschool prof was awesome.) Now that you've got some background information, I'll answer a few common questions that you might have been wondering about.\n\n**What are blood types, and why can we only get certain blood transfusions?**\nThe basic blood types are: A, B, AB, and O. These letters tell you which shapes are on your red blood cells. Type-A blood has A's all over. Type-B blood has B's all over. Type-AB has A's and B's all over. Type-O is smooth. It doesn't have anything on it.\n\nWhat type of blood you have determines what type of blood your body will think is weird. If you have type-AB, then if you get AB blood from someone else, it will seem normal to your body. If you get A blood from someone else, that will also seem normal. Your body doesn't notice that it's missing B's. Similarly, you can use type-O blood, since the surface is smooth. Your body won't notice them, so they won't attack them.\n\nIf your blood is type-O, then you can only get type-O blood from other people. Your body isn't used to seeing A's OR B's.\n\n**Why is HIV so hard to cure?**\nThere are three main reasons for this. First, HIV attacks your WBC's. It kills off your defences, and makes it hard for doctors to help your body help cure itself. Second, it hides inside your own cells. Your body can only see what it touches, and it can only touch the outside of cells. If HIV is hiding in one of your cells, it's invisible until it starts to change the cell. Third, HIV bumbles around inside a bubble. The bubble doesn't really matter; it's what's inside that's dangerous. Unfortunately, HIV changes the shapes on the bubble very often. So once your body figures out what shapes are on HIV's bubbles, it changes them and you have to start all over.\n\n**What are vaccines? How do they work?**\nVaccines have mostly two things in them. They have some antibodies for the pathogen you're trying to protect against. They also have little bits of the pathogen that are all broken up and dead, like you would get from a macrophage. Your B-cells scoop those bits up and use them to create more antibodies the same as they would normally.\n\n---------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nLemme know how readable or informative that was for you. Lemme know which parts didn't make sense, or you had to read over a couple times to understand. I've been trying to learn how to explain well since primary school, so feedback is really helpful for that.\n\nCheers!\n\nps. The immune system is ridiculously complicated. It does weird things, too, like mix your DNA with the DNA of bacteria and viruses and things that you run into over the course of your life. Cool stuff.\n",
"Imagine that your body is just like the regular world and bad people commit crimes all the time. Police are needed to for two purposes, **catch the criminals** after they commit crimes and **stop other crimes** before they get too out of control. The police who catch criminals are the Innate immune system police (IIS from here on out) and the police who stop criminals before they get out of control are the Adaptive immune system police (AIS). The criminals are viruses and bacteria that make us sick. \n\nIIS are basically the police that you see out on the streets everyday. They are constantly patrolling the streets (bloodstream) looking for bad guys. All the IIS policemen get trained at the Bone Marrow Academy (BMA) where they get handed a book that says exactly what a bad guy will look like, but the pictures are very limited. For example, the book might say all bad guys have green wavy hair. So IIS police will kill anything that has green wavy hair, even if they are not really bad. **The thing to remember about IIS is that they are very fast to kill bad guys and only have a limited picture of the bad guy meaning they can make mistakes. Also IIS police do not remember bad guys they killed before so they will repeat those mistakes.** Let's go through all the IIS police and their weapons: \n\n* Macrophages - these are the smartest policemen in the IIS because they stay on the force for a long time compared to other IIS police. They kill bad guys by eating them (phagocytosis) and as soon as they eat a bad guy, they send signals (cytokines) for more cops to show up and release toxic gas (Nitrogen and Oxygen radicals) to kill other bad guys they couldn't eat. They also can bring evidence to the local police station and show them to AIS policemen they caught so they know what to look for.\n\n* Neutrophils - these are the not so smart policemen of the IIS. They only live for one day so they really only focus on killing one type of bad guy (bacteria). They eat bad guys to but they cannot call more police or show the AIS what bad guy they caught. They can release toxic gas too to kill bad guys that are close by.\n\n* Natural Killer - These police are hunting for only one type of bad guy. They want to find a robber who is still inside a person's house or car stealing stuff. This is really hard because the house or car looks pretty normal on the outside, except for a broken window or a security alarm going off. NK police go around looking for broken windows when they find one, release a bag full of poison nearby which disintegrates the whole house or car along with the bad guy.\n\nNow for the AIS which are the police who are trying to stop criminals before they commit crimes. The AIS is like the CIA or the FBI. They have pictures and information about tons of different types of bad guys and they can remember all the bad guys they have killed before. The AIS relies on pictures they take of bad guys (antibodies). When an AIS policemen see a bad guy, they take a picture of his face, hands and feet (variable regions of an antibody). Their training has many parts but basically, they take pictures of all the hands, feet and faces of bad guys and mix them all up to make pictures of possible bad guys. Like if I have pics of the feet, hands and face of Bad guy A and Bad guy B, a possible new Bad guy C might have the feet of Bad guy A and face and hands of Bad guy B, right? **Catching bad guys takes AIS a long time since they are very concerned with making sure they recognize the differences between bad guys and good guys. Therefore, they tend to make less mistakes than the IIS police.** When the AIS police recognize a bad guy, they call on IIS police to do some of the actual killing. \n\n* B Police Training - B police get two stages of training. First, in the BMA they are shown pictures of good guys so they know who not to pay attention to (positive selection). If an B policeman pays too much attention to a good guy, they must kill themselves (apoptosis). After they know what a good guy looks like, make some possible bad guy pics and are sent out on patrol.\n\n* T police - They start in the BMA but don't stay for very long because they have their own special Thymus Academy (TA) for training. First part of TA training is that each policeman gets a tattoo of a bad guy's picture on their arm (T Cell Receptor). All T police get a different tattoo pic just for them. Then all T policemen get either super senses of touch (CD4) and hearing (CD8). So now all T police have a tattoo, super touch and hearing. Then they must go through testing to make sure their super senses do not turn on for good guys, only bad guys (positive and negative selection). Most T police have one sense that is better than the other. The testing figures out which sense is better and tells the T police to always use their better sense to find bad guys and just quit using the weak one. This testing is done by making sure they can either touch an object and tell if it came from a bad guy (see MHC Class II) or if they can hear a sound and it came from a bad guy (see MHC Class I). And their tattoo must not look too much like a good guy. If a T policeman cannot tell a good guy from a bad guy, they must kill themselves. There is also testing to make sure no T police overreact to a bad guy just in case the bad guy is not actually bad (since we are just going off looks here). Now they are sent out to patrol with either super touch (CD4) OR super hearing (CD8) along with a bad guy tattoo.\n\n* Dendritic investigator (DI) - These are not police officers, they are private investigators who go around picking up information about people (mainly bad guys). They take pictures, record video and pick up stuff they found. They have the same book that the IIS police get from the BMA so they toss they things they are pretty certain are not from Bad guys. They also take crappy pictures sometimes and shaky video but as soon as they get some good stuff they run over to the local police station (lymph node or spleen). \n\nLocal police station (LPS)\nB police and Helper T police hang out in the LPS must enter the LPS. All the B police stay on one side of the LPS and all Helper T police stay in another part of the LPS. When DI's enter with evidence they show any physical evidence to T police since they have super touch. IIS Macrophages are at the LPS too with evidence from bad guys they caught. They show pictures to T police and B police to see if anything matches up. \n\n*If the B police find a match to their pics, they will start multiplying themselves and make more pics of the bad guy.These police then all enhance the picture of the new bad guy to make it even better. Then some of these B police can either become Plasma B police or Memory B police. Plasma B police reproduce pictures of the bad guy and send them out all over the body so that all police (even the IIS) will know who the bad guys are. Memory B police file all the pictures so they can be kept for future use. \n\n*If the T police find a match they will begin Helping duties. Helper T police can only use their super touch senses to find criminals. But remember, the bad guy has to match their tattoo as well or they cannot really be sure they are a bad guy. Helper T people send out signals to Killer T and IIS police to come kill the bad guy. Some Helper T police will leave the LPS with the bad guy info and just keep it in a file within themselves. These are Memory T police. \n\n*Killer T police do not hang out at the LPS. They go on patrol and talk to different people. A Killer T police cannot directly kill a bad guy, he can only kill a bad guy who he hears committing a crime AND who matches his bad guy tattoo picture. He can also kill a bad guy who is robbing a home or car as long as he can hear the robber and see his face. If it's for sure a bad guy, the Killer T police can release special weapons that poke holes in the home or car to kill the bad guy. They also have weapons that can make the home or car self destruct to kill the bad guy. The process of this sends out a bunch of signals to IIS police to come to the crime scene and help out.\n\nThe IIS and the AIS work together to make sure you are safe. They protect and serve to keep you from getting majorly sick. There are bad guys that try to make you sick all the time but your immune system keeps you from even knowing about. Truly amazing, yet truly complicated.\n\nQuestions?\n\n"
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7yz2b5 | what do the people in the bobsleds do when going down the track? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7yz2b5/eli5_what_do_the_people_in_the_bobsleds_do_when/ | {
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"The push at the beginning is extremely important, and being able to sprint very fast while pushing a machine that weighs a few hundred pounds takes some muscle and athleticism. I'm not saying it's the hardest thing in the world, and I’m not saying that these positions are as competitive as some of the bigger sports, but these guys are definitely picked for strength and speed.\n\nI've been told as well that the team can shift their weight on turns and stuff, but I've also heard that they mostly keep their head down and stay still to reduce drag, so there may be other components to being a good bobsledder as well. But these men and women would be mostly there for their explosive power at the start."
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t5v25 | why is classical music titled by a musical note? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/t5v25/eli5_why_is_classical_music_titled_by_a_musical/ | {
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"It's simply a way to differentiate a given piece without going through the individual catalog numbers. It tells you what key the piece is in. \n\nIt should also be said that not all classical music is differentiated that way."
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aieq9f | what actually causes chromosomes to cross over in meiosis? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aieq9f/eli5_what_actually_causes_chromosomes_to_cross/ | {
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"It's a very complex process, but the ELI5 version: special molecules attach to the chromosomes and break them apart, and the individual pieces of the two chromosomes are close enough together that they can stick to eachother instead of re-sticking to themselves.\n\nHere's a little animation with clay (!) showing what it looks like. _URL_1_ \n\n\nAs for *why* the enzymes stick to the DNA and the DNA sticks to eachother, it's all physics at that point. The different atoms in the DNA and enzyme molecules all exert attractive and repulsive forces on eachother based on positive/negative charges, and these favor the formation of certain structures over others. This level of analysis is wayyy over my head, but here's a paper if you're curious:\n_URL_0_"
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af6emp | when a flashlight is about to die, it becomes very dim. why don’t phones do that same thing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/af6emp/eli5_when_a_flashlight_is_about_to_die_it_becomes/ | {
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"My dearest five year old,\n\nGreat observation! That dimming is a voltage drop. And, as it turns out, yes the batteries in phones (and laptops) do have a similar voltage drop. Now, those batteries are usually more advanced than a headlamp's. But what really does the trick is the power supply! Internal mechanisms make the voltage constant for sensitive equipment. That dimming of the light, for a computer could be a real bad thing. So, the manufacturers do some clever things to make the voltage smooth.",
"When a battery is fully charged it starts at a certain voltage. That voltage gets lower the more of the stored power you use. But it stays reasonably high and only drops significantly when the battery is almost empty.\n\nNow theres a difference how lightbulbs, LED and mobilephones work. If you increase voltage on a lightbulb it shines brighter, lower it and it dims. That explains why it gets dim when the battery is about to die, because the voltage drops.\n\nNow why dont phones work the same way. Phones work with electronic logic circuits which require a constant voltage to work properly. So what you do is, you take a battery that provides more voltage then you actually need. Then you use a little chip which lets only that amout of voltage through that you want.\n\nSo the voltage in your phone is constant all the time up until the point where the voltage in the battery is less then the voltage your little chip is trying to make. At that point it just stops working at once.\n\nEdit: This is only a rough explanation in reality theres more to it. That little chip that provides your constant voltage could even increase the voltage to the level your phone requires. But you dont to that because your phone uses LIPO-Batteries that get damaged once its internal voltage gets to low. So you actually have a little chip that watches the voltage level of your battery and turns your phone of if it gets too low, even thought you would have still some power left. It does that so the battery is not damaged."
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31p35y | other than efficiency, what does pumping premium gas instead of regular do? | I started pumping premium about a week ago and so far noticed better gas mileage and the response time almost feels better but I know absolutely nothing about gas and its effects. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/31p35y/eli5_other_than_efficiency_what_does_pumping/ | {
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"Does your car say to put premium? It should say on the inside of your gas cap. If it says to use 85 or 87, premium shouldn't add any benefit. My car requires premium, so that's what I put. \n \nThe difference in the gases is how easily they combust. A premium engine needs the gas to combust at a different rate than the engine that's made for regular gas.",
"You should've noticed that there are numbers on each, probably 87 and 89. This is the octane rating of the fuel mixture. The higher the number, the more compression the fuel can withstand before it ignites. The higher your engine's compression ratio, the higher octane fuel is needed. Check your owner's manual and see what rating the manufacturer says to use and use that one. They've tested it and determined what's best for your engine.",
"It doesn't improve any of that. You are probably imagining it. \n\n\nBasically, it's possible to do more aggressive engine design if you only use premium. If your car doesn't say it uses premium (usually sports cars) there is no benefit. ",
"Turbocharged engines often require premium to reduce engine knock. I don't know what that is I just buy the expensive stuff cause that's what I've read and I have a turbo engine.",
"Depends on a few things, if you have a very high end engine, its made to run higher octane fuel. If you have an older car, (early 00's or older) and the premium gasoline is ethanol free, that could explain it. For smaller engines (ATV, lawn mower, etc) and car engines not designed for it ethanol runs poorly compared to gasoline. Whether your premium has any ethanol, and how much is in regular depends mostly on region. ",
"Engines work by squeezing fuel vapor and air inside a cylinder, then igniting it with a spark and using that explosion to push on a piston to generate power. If you squeeze that fuel mixture hard enough, it can ignite on it's own. This is how diesel engines work, they don't use sparks at all. The octane rating of a fuel is a measure of how hard you have to squeeze it to get it to ignite on its own; premium gas is harder to auto-ignite than regular.\n\nHigh performance engines are designed to squeeze their fuel more than other engines because this allows them to be more powerful. If regular gas is used in an engine designed for premium, the fuel can ignite too soon and try to push the piston down when it's still moving up to compress that fuel further. This is very bad for an engine and can ruin it if not taken care of in time. Lower-end engines don't compress their fuel as much so they don't have this problem, and the spark will ignite either type of gas just as well.\n\ntl;dr: Engines that can run on regular receive *zero* benefits from premium gas. Engines designed for premium can be damaged by regular gas. Read your manual and use the lowest octane rating you can get away with, or you're just throwing money away.",
"Using a higher octane fuel than what your owner's manual asks for (such as premium over regular) is just a waste of money. There is no performance or efficiency benefit to be gained from it. \n\nBasically premium gas can withstand more heat before igniting than regular gas. A car engine compresses a fuel and air mixture prier to igniting it as a part of the combustion cycle. When that compression happens, the air and fuel mixture heats up thanks to physics. In performance cars that have more powerful engines, with more powerful compression, you need a higher octane fuel to prevent the mixture from prematurely igniting. If you try to use low octane fuel, it will ignite prematurely from the compression of the fuel, rather than from the spark plugs, which is just plain inefficient because you are not getting the most out of your combustion cycle, and it is debated that using regular when your car needs premium will damage the engine (the debate is that new modern day car engines can withstand the premature combustion, when older engines definitely could not)\n\nBy using premium gas in a car that requires regular, you are paying for a higher heat tolerance that simply isn't needed. Premium gas does not contain more energy than regular gas, it just withstands more heat. You will not gain extra horsepower or fuel economy from it. \n\nIn fact, you will see more of a variation between brands of fuel than between one brand's regular vs premium. One brand's fuel may have more energy than another brand, or have more engine detergents, but a comparison of a single brand's regular and premium will yield nothing different aside from the heat tolerance (although the additives to make regular into premium may have some slight benefit, but it would be unnoticed by the average consumer) "
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a8sxrd | why do microscopic images of things seem to have no texture? they look like crappy, grey animations. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a8sxrd/eli5_why_do_microscopic_images_of_things_seem_to/ | {
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"There are two major forms of microscopes light microscopes and electron microscopes.\n\nLight microscopes generally have to slice things thinly enough to shine a light through the object in order to make out what it is made of and may be stained different colours for contrast. - _URL_0_\n\nScanning electron microscopes use a beam of electrons to bounce of the surface of the object however since they are not using light all they are three dimensional shapes in black and white but they are extremely magnified - _URL_1_",
"If you're talking about images like this: _URL_1_ , they're taken with a scanning tunnelling microscope. Basically, they take an incredibly sharp needle and get it really close to the atoms they want to take an image of. When they get close enough, some electrons are able to quantum tunnel between the needle and the target, inducing a current which they can measure. Then you sweep the needle over the sample, producing an image. This isn't much like photography at all, though - it's more like mapping out the pipes in your house by running back and forth with a metal detector.\n\nIf you're talking about images like this: _URL_0_ , that was taken with an electron microscope. The reason they would appear poorly animated is they're not moving at all; you have to plate things in metal before you look at it with an electron microscope. So they're dead."
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3kynl1 | do i have to charge my new phone battery to 100%? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kynl1/eli5do_i_have_to_charge_my_new_phone_battery_to/ | {
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"short answer: no, you don't have to charge a new phone battery to 100% before use. that's a guideline meant for nickel-based batteries, which do need a full charge before use. the lithium batteries used in today's phones don't need to be fully charged, and in fact, a partial charge is preferable."
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9mf628 | with gravity being tied to mass, if you were in the exact center of an earth sized object in a protected sphere, would you be weightless or experience intense pressure? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9mf628/eli5_with_gravity_being_tied_to_mass_if_you_were/ | {
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"Both.\n\nIf you're in the center of a uniform hollow shell - which ultimately this is, although the walls of it are very thick, you will be weightless, because the gravity in any given direction will be cancelled out by all the other directions.\n\nHowever, the weight of the rest of the planet is still bearing down on your protected sphere, so, um, check for cracks.",
"I don't accept the \"or\" in your sentence. You would be:\n\n* Weightless, because the mass is uniformly distributed in all directions.\n\n* Under intense pressure, because the mass all around you attracts each other. Given that the innermost core of the Earth might be solid, you'd need your \"protected sphere\" to be able to support a huge amount of pressure."
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u6dle | how do rivers flow continuously? | I understand the water cycle in that water is evaporated, condenses, and precipitates which puts water back into the ecosystem, but how does a river continuously flow millions of gallons of water when it eventually empties into an ocean? Where does all the water come from to keep it going nonstop? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/u6dle/eli5_how_do_rivers_flow_continuously/ | {
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"The water in a river comes from many different sources. Let's try to think of a few. There are springs, where the water bubbles out of the ground. There is rain, where the water precipitates, or falls from the sky. There is the melting of glaciers or snow cover. The water also seeps out of wet ground, and the water we pump out of the ground for use in our homes and businesses probably gets treated and then put back into the ecosystem, where it flows into rivers. \n\nThe watershed, or area in which the water will flow to a particular body of water, is quite large for most rivers. All of these sources combine over that large area, to form the river. Rivers naturally rise and fall over time, as the amount of water flowing in changes with seasons and weather.",
"Well, your question has a very subtle bias built into it. The real answer is that if rivers didn't flow continuously, we wouldn't call them \"rivers,\" we would call them something else. There are lots and lots of small streams or creeks that dry up in dry seasons. These are, basically, very small rivers that don't run continuously. \n\nSo, in any case, all the water precipitates has to fall somewhere, and then after it falls it has to flow somewhere. The geographic makeup of the planet makes it so that smaller streams tend to flow into larger ones, then those will feed into even larger ones, and so on. Then the very largest ones, the ones that we call \"rivers\", basically are the place where the water from thousands of smaller streams must end up, because of the shape of the land.",
"Basically, rainfall is what keeps the rivers, springs and fountains flowing.\n\nThe sun evaporates vast amounts of water from the oceans and lakes into the atmosphere. This rains back, and whatever lands on continents, seeps through the ground and combines from tiny dampness into ever larger flows. Where rainfall is regular, a river or a flow will eventually form.\n\nThe annual rainfall volume is sufficient to keep the rivers flowing continuously. The river flow represents the collected rainfall from across a very wide area of land around it."
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bzpycb | could we build nuclear power plants underground? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bzpycb/eli5_could_we_build_nuclear_power_plants/ | {
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"Must look at the tectonics of the potential site. Unstable tectonics could lead to a disaster",
"Yes, look up the LFTR, or liquid fluoride thorium reactor. We built one at ORNL and operated it underground for about 5 years. There is a freeze plug that stays frozen unless there is a power loss to the controlling mechanism, so if it begins to melt down the freeze plug melts and the liquid reaction drains into the drain pan in the ground. Its a great design if you ask me.\n\nThis technology produces virtually zero waste when compared to today's fast breeder reactors and light water reactors. Also thorium is super cheap whereas today's enriched uranium is super expensive.",
"Yes, it's possible. In fact, there have been many experimental reactors built underground. The problem is cost of maintenance and building the thing in the first place. Nuclear power plants are already incredibly expensive above ground, building it underground would dramatically increase the costs. These plants undergo frequent maintenance that requires easy access to many parts of the building. Having it underground would make this increasingly difficult. Adding on to the plant would also be difficult, as new underground portions would have to be carefully dug out and built around the active power plant with little open space.\n\nThere's also the fact that meltdowns at nuclear power plants are extremely rare with modern reactors. The only one that has occurred since Chernobyl (1986) was the Fukushima Daiichi plant (2011), and that is an older plant that was built in the 60's. The only reason the reactors had a melt down was that the emergency power generators failed when they were flooded due to the tsunami. Had the generators not failed, the reactor would've safely cooled down after the emergency shutdown triggered by the prior earthquake. A simple problem to fix, keep the emergency power generators out of harms way, or keep multiple backup generators at different parts of the plant.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIf MSR's (Molten Salt Reactors) can be perfected to the point of commercial viability, then the threat of potential meltdowns would be zero."
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3bg6q8 | the role of queen's guard | What exactly do they do? Are they just for tourists or do they have a real role in the UK. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3bg6q8/eli5_the_role_of_queens_guard/ | {
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"It's right there in the name. They are active soldiers who have a duty to guard the royal residences in the UK. They are not for tourists, although a very big tourist attraction, they a trained soldiers who have the authority to kill if needed. Plenty of YouTube videos of them shouting at tourists.",
"They're normal soldiers who have normal military duties when not guarding the palaces. The guard is mostly ceremonial, though they have real guns and bayonets and would act if a threat required it. There's a section of the Metropolitan police which is primarily responsible for royal protection, similar to the Secret Service in the US.",
"They continue to practice traditional methods for cultural and ceremonial reasons, which no doubt appeals to tourists, but they are actual soldiers who are actually guarding the royal family's residences.\n\nYou can find similar practices in other areas. In the United States, there are military guards patrolling the [Tomb of the Unknowns](_URL_0_) in a very ceremonial fashion, but those guards are armed and will confront trespassers.",
"The Queen's Guard duty rotates through various units in the British Army (usually Guards units IIRC, but I know of one rotation where it fell to the Paratroopers. They hated it). All of them are trained infantrymen and most have seen active deployment. Some will have come right home from Afghanistan, gone through decompression, and been assigned to the Palace. Imagine their joy when faced with a bunch of giggling tourists trying to get them to react. ",
"They, like most nations, the military plays a ceremonial and formal role in protecting their leaders. Their formal uniform and marching style is part of the royal decoration. Their weapons and bayonets are real, and if necessary, they can use them to protect the grounds, or the royal family. \n\nIt's no different from the US Marine sentries who guard the white house. Someone who climbs the fence would most likely be shot or arrested by traditional uniformed law enforcement. (Metropolitan police or Secret Service) \n\nIt's generally an honor to be an official guard, not any regular soldier can be one. ",
"They protect the queen, royal family and buildings owned by the crown. Whilst they may attract tourists, they are NOT tourist attractions. They are fully-trained soldiers, as in the same who fight in Afghanistan, who march with live, fully-loaded weapons and won't hesitate to use them come push to shove. It's perfectly legal for them to shoot someone if they feel they're a direct threat to what they're protecting. "
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2qdms3 | why are the borders of car windshields dotted? | The black border around a car windshield, it always fades away into dots. Why? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qdms3/eli5_why_are_the_borders_of_car_windshields_dotted/ | {
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"The idea is to have a gradual fade in shading sunlight, but the varying size dots can achieve that without the trouble of tinting the glass. Making completely opaque dots is much easier.",
"The Dots give a \"Cleaner Visual Look\" to the car from the outside, And hides the glue used to hold windows on.\n\nSome times they are Round and some times are Hexagons.",
"The main reason is that it is difficult to install a windshield and dash that line up perfectly, and a straight edge makes that difference more obvious (my dad's truck has a straight edge, no dots). With the frits, it gives a rough surface which makes minor issues with the window alignment tougher to distinguish and less noticeable. Overall they are an entirely aesthetic feature, and don't offer any real advantages over looks.",
"_URL_0_\n\n > It is called \"frit\"\n > \n > From an \"auto glass specialist\": \n > Seeing dots on windshields\n > \n > > Q: Several years ago, black dots started appearing on new vehicle windshields. The dots are usually only around the periphery of the windshield. What purpose do these dots serve? --Brad, Midland, Texas\n > > \n > > [Steve Coyle, Auto Glass Specialists] The black dots blend the border into the glassA: Windshield glass contains a black enamel band (called the frit) around the periphery that is baked into the glass. This black band includes a border of dots. See figure. The band has an etched surface to enable adhesive to bond to the glass, says a sales manager at Able Auto Glass. When car manufacturers install the windshield, they bond the windshield to the vehicle with adhesive placed on the etched part of the black enamel glass area (inside surface). The outside of the enamel band shades the adhesive from the Sun and protects it from ultraviolet radiation. The band also serves a cosmetic purpose by covering up the adhesive and gives the windshield edge \"a more finished look.\"\n > > \n > > [Steve Coyle, Auto Glass Specialists] The black dots blend the border into the glass\n > > \n > > Rather than a straight black edge, the dot border blends the solid band into the clear glass, says Steve Coyle at Auto Glass Specialists. Some windshields also use the dots as a third sun visor to block the Sun behind the rearview mirror where most visors don't reach.\n\n",
"The real reason it fades into dots is because you could not see out the window if it was all black."
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1ybo9j | how is it possible that our entire universe exists in a black hole in another universe? | I understand the concept of a singularity, but I don't understand how our entire universe could exist in the singularity of a black hole. I am reading the latest National Geographic issue and I can't seem to make sense of some of it. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ybo9j/eli5_how_is_it_possible_that_our_entire_universe/ | {
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"We don't know. It's a musing by a few scientists. ",
"Most scientists think the answer is no. This is because physical laws in our universe operate very differently on different scales. The forces that hold an atom together are very different than those that keep our galaxy together. This leads to some interesting consequences that lead many to believe that our universe is not \"inside\" another one.\n\nThere are quite a few theories about multiverses and how the laws may be different in a theoretical 'parent universe' but it's just not common theory. No one has proved it false yet though, so... you might be correct."
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1gf4lg | how do autistic people see the world? | I've always wondered. how do the autistic physically and literally view things? I've known people who are autistic, in fact I grew up next door to two autistic children one of which was born a year before I was so we played together how children play, etc. His sister who also was born autistic was worse off than he was, she would randomly do things, talk to herself and what have you. And what I wanted to know was are they actually seeing the world differently. Does their imagination trump their intelligence? Do they hallucinate things that aren't actually there? Just some stuff I've been wondering for a while now. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gf4lg/eli5_how_do_autistic_people_see_the_world/ | {
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"with thier eyes",
"They're not schizophrenic, which seems to be what you're describing. They only see the world differently in a metaphorical sense. In other words, they may perceive different solutions to problems than you normally would. A lot of them do have active imaginations, but they can tell what's real and what's not. The reason your friend's sister talked to herself was because she was probably thinking about something and didn't really care if people heard her internal thought process. It has nothing to do with seeing or hearing things that aren't there.",
"I've heard that [this Calvin and Hobbes comic] (_URL_0_) somewhat describes what it's like.",
"Let's let Arthur and friends help:\n_URL_0_"
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2eeiqq | why don't psychologists and psychiatrists work in tandem? | If psychologists made the diagnosis and psychiatrists reviewed it, the entire process would be more comprehensive. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eeiqq/eli5_why_dont_psychologists_and_psychiatrists/ | {
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"Psychologists and psychiatrists normally work together, more or less. A counseling psychologist will refer a patient to a psychiatrist if they feel the patient needs help beyond what the counselor can provide. For instance, if a psychologist has a patient that's schizophrenic they would refer them to a psychiatrist after the initial diagnosis. If a patient has depression issues the likely course would be therapy with the counseling psychologist and medication and occasional checkups with the psychiatrist to see how the meds are working. If the patient needed behavioral therapy then a psychiatrist most likely wouldn't be needed. ",
"I am a LPC (Licensed Professional Counselor) - What this means is I have a bachelors degree in Psychology and a Masters in Counseling as well as over 3500+ hours of clinical work...and I passed a state issued test which gave me a license to practice counseling in my state and recieve reimbursments from 3rd party (insurance companies) payees. I am ALSO working on my PhD in Developmental Psychology. Despite all of this I am NOT a \"psychologist\" and have no desire to take my licensing test to be a psychologist. A \"psychologist\" is someone who specializes very much in the science of mental health. By science I mean testing/measuring and creating literature pertinent to a diagnosis. This MORE often then not translates into Iq tests for schools, psychologicals, MMPI's or other personality tests for private firms/military or police...ect. \n\nSo Long answer - they do communicate...just not face to face very much. Usually as one health professional to another would do...they share records (contingent upon appropriate releases.) If it is pertinent for a patient who comes for an evaluation to explore med management a psychologist will refer this individual to a psychiatrist (who is a Medical Doctor) - the psychiatrist will look at the patients chart and make a decision from there. \n\nIf you have any other questions feel free to ask.",
"They do in many cases and lots of places.",
"Many times they do (or, at least, a psychiatrist and a counselor).\n\nBut I would like to add that (in the US) insurance doesn't always like to pay for \"comprehensive,\" especially with mental health. They want fast/easy/cheap."
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1satve | how come a hot tub still puts off steam in the winter, even when it isn't hot enough out to evaporate the water? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1satve/eli5_how_come_a_hot_tub_still_puts_off_steam_in/ | {
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"Believe it or not, it's because it's not hot out that you can see so much steam. The physics behind this phenomenon is identical to cloud formation, where hot, moist air meets cold, dry air. The steam you see is actually water coming out of evaporation (condensing) as it meets the cold air above the hot tub."
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4iw0me | why do movie theaters charge seperate fares for different age groups? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iw0me/eli5_why_do_movie_theaters_charge_seperate_fares/ | {
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"To encourage (or discourage!) those groups.\n\nKids are cheaper because if you get a kid to come you're also getting their parents. It's a 2 for 1 deal as far as the theater is concerned. Families also buy more concessions, which is where most theaters make their real money so encouraging them to come in the door is a big deal. ",
"Students and pensions get discounts because they tend to have less money. They might decide not to go at the full price, but are willing to go at a reduced rate. And the cinema would rather sell a reduced priced ticket than none. \n\nAlso, if kids, go, then so do their parents up to a certain point, especially if it's a 12A and they're younger kids."
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63hil7 | how do companies like trivago and webjet actually make money? | If they get discounted prices and just skim off the top of that, what incentive do airlines and hotels have to provide them with those prices. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63hil7/eli5_how_do_companies_like_trivago_and_webjet/ | {
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"In reality, these places aren't getting any real special rates... they're typically getting the same discount off \"rack rate\" all travel sites, and even the hotel websites show. These websites act as online travel agencies -- they are referred to as OTA's in the industry. Just as in the past, airlines or hotels would pay a commission to travel agents for booking their customers on their particular flight or hotel, they today pay OTA's a commission for each booking. Just a different sales channel than if the hotel's call center took a call and paid a commission to the rep or a traditional travel agent booked a ticket for a customer. Now the commissions have gotten much smaller than they were and are now typically fixed instead of a percentage... but for a website booking millions of flights, rooms, cars, etc. per year it adds up. So they may get $20 for every hotel room night booked from Hyatt brands, and 15% of room rates at Hilton, etc. Airlines are tiny commissions, like $5 a flight segment... but hotels pay 10-25% typically."
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55lq4h | penis envy | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55lq4h/eli5penis_envy/ | {
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"Basically it was Sigmund Freud's theory that women secretly wish to be men.\n\nAlong with a lot of Freud's other theories on child sexual development, its been largely discredited.",
"The idea is a part of Freudian psychology. Basically when children start to become aware of what their genitals look like, as compared to the other sex, we're talking like three years old. Kids are potty trained and out of diapers, its the phallic stage of development as Freud called it. The idea is that girl child sees that boys have something she lacks. By comparison the boy child sees that girls don't have something he has and has castration anxiety for fear of losing it. \n\nIts all part of his schema for childhood development. Progressing from the oral stage, to the anal stage, to the phallic stage. Terms like oral fixation, and anal retentive come from this idea. And the phallic state penis envy and castration anxiety fit in with concepts of the oedipal and electra complexes. But there's not really evidence for this idea, or modern credibility. Its more that Freud's contribution was to start the conversation, allow people to talk about these sorts of things that weren't really something for polite company. To question how childhood development influences a person. There's not really much ground to support the idea of penis envy as a universal part of a girl's growing up. ",
"This was a theory by Sigmund Freud, that, like most of Freudian psychology, has basically become a punchline in modern times.\n\nIt was the idea that when very young girls began to notice that male and female genitals were different, they were envious of the extra piece of equipment the boys had. And that influenced them growing up. No one takes it very seriously any more."
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9ag26l | why does ground coffee not coagulate like other powders? | I'm not sure whether to flair as chemistry or physics. Other fine powders like hot cocoa mix will clump together, but even fine ground espresso does not. What causes some powders to coagulate and others not to, and why?
Edit: to be clear, I'm talking about coagulation, i.e. when you pour boiling water over coffee grounds vs other fine powders. Coffee grounds will absorb the near-boiling water, but hot cocoa mix almost repels the water/milk and remains a powder.
Edit 2: I'm not referring to instant coffee, but rather actual coffee grounds, which I would think are similar in nature to ground cocoa. There are other examples of coagulation: cinnamon, nutmeg, and the like. Even courser grounds, such as flour or oats will have dry clumps in water. But for some reason coffee doesn't seem to behave the same way, even espresso. There are of course other powders that don't clump, but rather dissolve in water, such as sugar and salt, but to my knowledge coffee doesn't actually dissolve either.
Edit 4: deleted edit 3 per Mod's request. Sorry for my confusion. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ag26l/eli5_why_does_ground_coffee_not_coagulate_like/ | {
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"So coagulation only applies to fluids, solid powders cannot coagulate by definition. I believe what you're referring to is clumping, which is almost always due to moisture. The powder will stick to wet surfaces/itself trying to absorb water. This is only present in soluble powders, or essentially dehydrated mixes which usually contain a lot of sugar. Sugar causes the behavior you're describing of cocoa powder, but since coffee grounds do not contain sugar nor are they water soluble they don't have the same behavior to moisture. ",
"Done a bit of work on silica powders and I expect the science is similar. \n\nDifferent substances have different compounds on them. I don’t know the chemistry behind it but different molecular structures on the surface will give a different attraction to water. Certain molecules will have a surface charge which repels water- this causes the particles to clump and float in an attempt to stay as far away from the water as possible. \n\nEdit: As someone else, the oils present in coffee may be what causes this hydrophobic behaviour",
"You're likely talking about instant coffee, which is not as prevelant throughout the world as you might expect.\n\nInstant coffee is produced by grinding and boiling roasted coffee beans, then filtering and freeze drying the extracted coffee.\n\nThe majority of the extract is soluble in water so dissolves quickly. Freeze drying also creates a porous structure with lots of surface area, this helps the coffee dissolve without clumping."
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2azbgz | why do some people cross the number 7 like a lowercase t? where did this come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2azbgz/eli5why_do_some_people_cross_the_number_7_like_a/ | {
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"Because some people's 7s look like 1s - Most do it so others won't mistake their 7 for a 1.",
"A lot of people, myself included, cross 7's because they have less than perfect handwriting, and their 7's might otherwise be mistaken for 1's. They often do the same with Z's, which might be mistaken as 2's.",
"It's often done doing equations in math to distinguish 7 from 1. Also some people drawn a line through Z if it is a variable in the equation to distinguish it from 2.",
"My wife worked for a bank for several years and she hated when people made their sevens like that. A closed top four too. The computer that read the numbers would frequently misread the seven as a four, and the closed top four as a nine. So if you like to make your numbers fancy, you may have a bad time with your balances at your bank, and your $7,000 deposit may turn into a $4000 deposit, and your $7,444 deposit may turn into $4,999. She saw variations of that theme many times, and it is extremely difficult to repair."
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2fq5aj | in the islam religion do women pray in mosque's or only men? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fq5aj/eli5in_the_islam_religion_do_women_pray_in/ | {
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"Women have a seperate section in Mosques it's like second floor for them put it other words they've got the balcony of theatre. That\ns in theory, in practical nobody attends but men.",
"They both pray but it's segragated.",
"Women usually pray in different part of the Mosque, most likely behind the men or in the different floor than men.",
"Some mosque's don't have the seperate section, but many do. The key here is that prayer is segregated.",
"It is permissible for women to pray at the masjid, but they pray either behind the men or in a separate space, usually behind a curtain or something. However, it is better for the woman to pray at home.\n\nMany misunderstand this as being oppressive or sexist, but this is not the case.\n\nPart of the Islamic prayer involves bowing and prostrating, both of which involve a basic motion of bending over. In Islam, protecting women's modesty is paramount, as well as maintaining *khushu* (focus and concentration) in prayer. Because of the nature of men, if a woman is bending over in front of you, odds are highly likely you're going to end up staring at her ass instead of focusing on your prayer, which is both disrespectful to the woman and to God. Because of this, women pray behind the men.\n\n[Ruling on women going to the masjid \\(mosque\\)](_URL_0_)"
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87oddc | when kim jong un is having talks with president xi of china, do they speak a common language, or do they have interpreters? if interpreters are used, who's vetting the translation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/87oddc/eli5_when_kim_jong_un_is_having_talks_with/ | {
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"They most likely use translators. Kim Jong Un’s foreign language skills are in English, which he learned going to an English-language international school. Xi Xinping probably speaks some English from time he spent in the USA in the 1990s, but isn’t fluent. "
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7abujp | why is a decreasing population considered a bad thing for a country? | Why is a decreasing population seen as a negative for industrialized countries? Doesn't increasing automation technology mean that with less people everyone will have more? Surely cities being less crowded with higher average wealth is a positive?
What am I missing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7abujp/eli5why_is_a_decreasing_population_considered_a/ | {
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"Because it means in future years there will fewer people to tax and fewer people to buy goods and services to keep the system going. ",
"The negatives of a declining population are that there are fewer people for the lower-tier jobs, even though demand for those jobs remains high. 30-year-olds don't want to do jobs that 20-year-olds tend to do; fast food/restaurant industry, construction, manufacturing, services industries (call centers, secretaries, cashiers, etc). This is largely due to the fact that they have already worked in those fields, or have experience/education that allows them to bypass those fields. \n\nYes, automation helps, but it isn't at the point where we can rely on it to replace a rapidly ageing work force. \n\nIf these kinds of jobs make up the backbone of your economy (like farming does in the US, for example), your economy is going to suffer. This is a bad thing.\n\nHowever, there isn't a country on the planet that is in real fear of any of these problems at the moment. It'll likely even out really well in places with high quality of life measurements. \n\n",
"People are an input into the economy, just like oil or farm land or machines. As a general rule, the more people you have, the more you can produce. So, on a surface level, a shrinking population is bad for an economy in the same way that a dwindling oil supply or lack of capital is bad.\n\nUnlike most of those things, people also create demand, not just supply. So fewer people can also mean that people aren't out there looking to buy new stuff---especially land and houses. which can also upset the economy quite a bit. \n\nOn top of that, shrinking populations also usually mean aging populations. As people get older they tend to go from being net producers to net consumers, especially when health deteriorates. This can force a country to make hard choices about how, and how much, to support an older population that increasingly can't support itself. This is made worse by the fact that some jobs simply aren't suited to older people (There are very few 80 year old coal miners, or 70 year old ER nurses, and even when people are only 40 or so they may find that family and health makes it hard to work the kind of job or hours they could have worked when they were 50.)\n ",
"The most important factor is that these are the young generations which decrease in numbers. A small generation of kids now will have to support the bigger generation of their parents in a few decades. Population ageing is already a big problem in industrialized countries, and it's only getting worse. ",
"Many industrialized countries have welfare systems where younger workers pay taxes for programs to assist the elderly. If the ratio of elderly to workers gets out of wack, the government either has to cut benefits to the elderly, raise taxes on workers or borrow money. ",
"Well, suppose you have a country with a requirement of 10 people, i.e. 10 people are what you need to do all the jobs needed to keep the country running.\n\nNow, say out of these 10(5 couples) 3 couples don't have children, for any number of reasons. The other 2 have 2 each.\n\nWithin a few years, by the time these 4 children grow up, get to their jobs, there will be a few jobs that the previous generation can't do. \n\nAs more time passes, this deficit of workers will hurt. As more and more youngsters have to support more and more people who can't work.\n",
"IMhumbleO the biggest problem with every society on Earth is that we assume growth equals success. It’s not true but we’re just starting to think that way",
"A decreasing population doesn't result in more jobs for fewer people. Because there are less people, fewer products will be needed, therefore fewer factories and resources will be needed for those products, therefore fewer jobs will be needed to run those factories, and then a new equilibrium is established where people are once again saying \"there aren't enough jobs for all these people\". \n\nAt the same time, you have that peak generation right before the population decrease thats too old and weak to work, with not enough production to support it, but they still consume resources, so everyone becomes poorer overall. \n\nAlso, while automation is increasing, it is nowhere near where it needs to be for our society to become a utopia running on auto-pilot. Still a ways to go. Until we all have Mr. Handys, you better get to work.",
"There are several dimensions to it. \n\nFirstly, there are two main inputs to economic activity: labor and capital. The rewards of economic activity are split between labor and capital based on their relative bargaining power. The more people willing to supply their labor the more they push down wages and increase the relative bargaining power of capital owners. Capital owners want a larger population and larger labor force so they can extract more return from each unit of their capital. So they encourage the idea that a higher population is better, even if it's actually worse for the majority of people. They love spouting \"Jobs and growth! Jobs and growth!\"\n\nThere are some other effects, but they are typically second order of magnitude. A shrinking population is typically associated with an aging population. But the working population typically stays a constant percentage of dependants. As elderly dependants increase in number, they are roughly offset by fewer school age dependants. Also more people means more demand, which increases the absolute size of the economy, but that does nothing for per capita economic measures. \n\nIt all comes back to propaganda from owners of capital wanting to increase the labor supply, suppress wages and increase their return on capital. "
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5rmlj7 | how can the us senate change their own rules as they go along? | If they can do that, what's the point of rules at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rmlj7/eli5_how_can_the_us_senate_change_their_own_rules/ | {
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"If there is not a quorum (for the Senate this is a supermajority of 60%) but all those that are present unanimously vote to disregard that requirement they are able to continue voting on issues. This is not \"changing the rules\" really as it is an existing option for them. This was originally implemented so that they could pass needed laws even if more Senators than normal are ill or otherwise unable to attend. For the Senate specifically they still need a majority (51) votes on any issue for it to pass, but they do not need the supermajority of 60 for it. "
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1k7bis | different funds. hedge funds, mutual funds, etc. | I hear these terms all the time and have never received a decent explanation | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k7bis/eli5_different_funds_hedge_funds_mutual_funds_etc/ | {
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"To understand these you have to have basic information of the stock market. today Apple (AAPL) is valued at $462.81 per share; Google (GOOG) is $884.80 Yahoo is $27.86. You can't just buy one share of any of these they would be sold in bundles of 100, 500, or 1000 shares.\n\n If you bought 1000 shares of AAPL and AAPL tanked you would loose big. On the other hand if you bought shares of all three you would have a better chance of not loosing because the risk is spread out between the three. If you had to buy 1000 share of all three that would total at $1,377,470. Not everyone has that much cash on hand but say you got 100 friends together and each pitched in $13,774.70. That way 100 people would have a relatively small investment in 3 companies.\n\n A Mutual Fund work the same way but it uses money from thousands of investors and puts it in to hundreds or thousands of different stocks. diversifying like this helps to alleviate some of the risk.\n\nA hedge fund works in the same way but it is not open for people. It is more for large banks, investment bureaus and 401Ks.\n\nThe whole idea for either one is to allow the investor to spread out the risk over a larger portion of the market.",
"Hedge funds and Mutual funds are \"pooled\" investments among many investors. You buy a share of these investments, and receive gains or losses proportional to the money you invest. Depending on the fund, this pooled money will be invested exclusively in stock, bonds or commodities, or a combination of all of them. A Mutual fund will be very explicit about what it can and can't invest in. A Hedge fund won't.\nMutual funds are regulated, traded on an exchange, are very liquid (easily bought or sold), and are usually very well described as to what their investment strategy is. The company who manages the fund can advertise to attract new investors. They are required to publish their investment holdings within the fund frequently. They are an easy way for the \"common\" investor to diversify among many different companies, as mutual funds tend to have strict guidelines requiring the maximum percentage that can be invested in any one company (usually 5-10%). The fees are usually small, and only investors in the fund receive (any) profit.\nHedge funds are the same general principle of \"pooled investment\". However, they differ from mutual funds significantly in that they do not face the same rules of diversification; they are not allowed to advertise; they are usually not liquid (many require that you invest for a minimum amount of time - called a \"lock-up\" period.) Hedge funds usually have a 2 & 20 expense ratio - 2% annual management fees (similar to a mutual fund) AND will take 20% of any profits earned over the course of a year. Traditionally, hedge funds are a lot more opaque - you do not have the ability to see the individual holdings of the fund that you are investing in. \nMutual funds are considered \"suitable\" for anyone given the amount of regulation/disclosure/liquidity. Hedge funds are considered only to be suited to \"sophisticated\" investors (basically investors who won't need their money immediately and can afford to lose it)\n(Disclaimer - gross generalization coming) The attraction of hedge funds is the belief that because they are riskier, they generate larger profit compared to mutual funds. ",
"These are really long answers for such simple things.\n\n1. Hedge Funds: A collection of money (a fund) from many different investors pooled together and ran by a hedge fund manager (someone who many thinks is smart) who invests in his specialty (stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, real estate, private equity, etc.). High minimum investment to be in a hedge fund.\n\n2. Mutual Fund: Basically a shitload of money from a shitload of people (like you and I) that invests in a shitload of stocks, all for an annual fee.\n\n3. ETF - Exchange Traded Fund: A mutual fund that has less fees and can act as one stock with one ticker even though there are many stocks underneath it. It is basically a mutual fund that can be traded like a stock. Mutual funds have to be entered and exited at the end of the trading day.\n"
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5n9ehk | have any technologies peaked? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5n9ehk/eli5_have_any_technologies_peaked/ | {
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" > anything we still use\n\nThat would imply that many technologies have peaked. Are you asking whats next?",
" Since almost anything could be made out of improved materials, it is hard to prove that anything has actually peaked. \n\n Even extremely boring things, like pencils or belts or socks or tables, clearly can be improved if someone invents a superior material to make them out of. ",
"Firearms. We can keep making them to tighter tolerances by shaving off thousandths of inches here and there, but the fact is the designs are pretty much perfected. You can't do much to alter the basic physics involved in feeding bullets into a gun. \n\nEven experts agree that unless a radically new kind of technology shows up (like directed energy weapons) the basic design of a gun isn't going to change much. There have been some innovations like the Kriss Vector, but results have been mixed and the jury is still out on it.",
"The incandescent light bulb. It's gone as far as it can go efficiency wise, and competitors like LED are pushing their cost down. There are already laws restricting the supply of them, and certainly no new companies going into the market. They are in a declining niche, which doesn't justify the investment to continue to pursue vanishing returns.",
"Another question is, what can be improved upon, but other things take priority and therefore isn't researched? Look at basic hand tools, hammers and screwdrivers, or garden tools for example. You might see someone add a better grip or some simple twist, but a hammer is a hammer. Can that simple thing be improved upon? Do we bother to try? Or is the simple design all we need?",
"Engines are pretty well at their top peak. There isnt much you can do to the engine itself to make it run more efficient. Unless a lighter and stronger material than aluminum can be used to create the engine block. The design for an internal combustion engine hasnt really changed since the first ones were made."
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1iy11r | how come we sometimes all of a sudden start nosebleeding? | I also wonder, how is it so much blood up there? And where exactly does it come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1iy11r/eli5_how_come_we_sometimes_all_of_a_sudden_start/ | {
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"I'll try and share what little knowledge I have. I used to be a long sufferer of constant nose bleeds that were quite rapid. According to doctors that I saw regularly, the bleeding was caused and is commonly caused by a vein very close to the surface of the skin inside of your nose. And in some cases, it may enlarge and break the skin, causing a bleed. The enlarging may be caused by a number of factors, I was told changes in temprature or heartrate could enlarge it! Hope this was helpful, I'm no expert! \n",
"Tahles is pretty much spot on. It can rupture because of heat, high blood pressure, high pulse rate; basically anything that will increase the pressure of the blood in the vein. \nWhen it heals, it never quite fully heals. This leaves a weaker point in the vein that can rupture again fairly easily. This is why you can get recurring random nosebleeds from the same spot. "
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2p1o9r | why can't they restore the area around the nazca lines? | _URL_0_ TL;DR- Greenpeace, in an effort to send out an eco message, possibly permanently destroys an ancient wonder of the world. I do a lot of bunker raking for a living, and I don't see why the area can't be restored by some meticulous landscaping. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2p1o9r/eli5_why_cant_they_restore_the_area_around_the/ | {
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"There is so little wind erosion, and there is virtually no water erosion. Every footprint, tire print, and the like will last for centuries if not millennia. No matter how meticulous we are in landscaping we cannot undo all of that because the landscaping itself destroys the area. "
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"http://imgur.com/gallery/rxR57"
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1lza7p | why was the change from cellular 3g to 4g such a complicated thing, when 2g to 3g happened with no fuss? | Until Sprint came out with the HTC EVO 4G in 2010, no one really seemed to use 3G/4G as a big selling point for phones, and clearly at some point we went from 2G to 3G without any fuss; however, Sprint's 4G WiMax rollout was a complete disaster, with many people paying a premium for a speed they would never see, especially now that WiMax itself is outdated. How is it we went from 2G to 3G silently and seemingly without any issues but 3G to 4G (and 4G LTE) is taking a very long time and is a big deal? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lza7p/eli5_why_was_the_change_from_cellular_3g_to_4g/ | {
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"Because when 3G first rolled out the term smart phone didn't exist and most people hadn't heard of data plans. 4G on the other hand is rolling out as mobile data usage is exploding."
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2cinvd | - how do touch screens work? how can i use a stylus on my 3ds, but not on my iphone? | My kids have been asking, and I don't have a good response for them... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cinvd/eli5_how_do_touch_screens_work_how_can_i_use_a/ | {
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"There are two types the one for the 3ds works through touch from anything either a finger, stylus, stick ect. The other works via electricity such as your finger to an iphone screen. Certain stylus' work on iphones by having a metal body which transfers the electricity.",
"Capacitive touch screens _URL_0_",
"Both have a an X grid and a Y grid.\n\nThe 3DS actually closes the x grid and a Y grid to a common, when you touch the screen.\n\nMost tablets/phones the X grids are looking for signals from the Y grid, which each transmits a radio signal, which your finger (a low capacitance wet sausage) sends to the X grids.\n\nThe 3DS stylus is a small non-conductive plastic tip. A phone stylus tip is a conductive rubber that carries the signal the tablet sends. ",
"There are two main type of touch screens.\n\nOne is called resistive touch screen. This is what I believe is being used in the 3DS. It detects pressure on the screen to perceive a \"touch\". Since it is only pressure you can press the screen with anything and it works.\n\nThe other main type is a capacitive touch screen. This is commonly used in phones and tablets. It works by sending out a electro-magnetic wave and sensing how it interacts with the environment. Something that interacts with this wave (such as a human finger) is detected and reported as a touch.\n\nPoking this type of screen with any object won't create a touch as it isn't detecting the physical pressure. Try using something organic like a fruit, or even a bag of water and you will be able to interact with the screen. Of course some styluses are designed to work on this type of screen."
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bliug4 | how do birds find new bird feeders so quickly when there was never a bird feeder remotely close to that before? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bliug4/eli5_how_do_birds_find_new_bird_feeders_so/ | {
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"Birds are hunters and foragers and are pretty observant. Crows can remember people and will give warning calls if they see a person who they feel threatened by. The local birds in your neighborhood probably watch the goings ons quite a bit and of course will take note when they see someone put up a feeder."
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4jqanm | why does the body store fat (or so much of it) if we can not realistically live off what the fat cells provide, why not have a cut off point? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jqanm/eli5_why_does_the_body_store_fat_or_so_much_of_it/ | {
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"People can live off what fat cells provide. If you are severely obese you can live months without eating anything. However that is not suggested because you will start to miss some minerals and vitamins that you need. But it will keep you from starving for some time.",
"Too much body fat was never a health concern for 99.999% of human existence. It is only a concern now because of how much food we have access to and the sedentary life the modern world has made.\n\nEvolution only kicks in to traits that affect reproduction or survivability *until reproduction*. Evolution does not made things \"better\" for us, or make things more ideal. "
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42w49z | do hydrogen bombs cause fallout? | Me and my friend are dum-dums, can someone explain if hydrogen bombs create fallout? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42w49z/eli5_do_hydrogen_bombs_cause_fallout/ | {
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"So, the way that thermonuclear bombs (h-bombs) work in general is something like this. You have a typical nuclear device composed of your favorite fission bomb (uranium or plutonium), and then you've got your fusion material. Encasing the fusion material is often a uranium shell, too, to help the fusion occur.\n\nYou've probably noticed that there are lots of things in h-bombs that aren't h. These things do leave fallout.",
"Yes, because a regular atomic bomb is used to trigger the hydrogen bomb.",
"An ideal hydrogen bomb has no fallout. Fallout is only generated by fission reactions. However, weapons designers use a \"boosted fission\" device instead of a pure fusion bomb. How this works is that first, a fission reaction occurs. However, this reaction is limited by a lack of neutrons. To solve this, a fusion reaction occurs, which generates lots of surplus neutrons. This makes fission much more efficient, and has allowed us to increase bomb power beyond WW2 technology.\n\nBasically, the fusion portion is a smaller, secondary reaction used to make the fission portion more powerful.\n",
"Yes they do. However, they create less per MTonne of explosive force than fission bombs, and the amount of fallout also depends on the method in which they are used.\n\nA fission warhead gets its explosive power from the fission of Uranium or Plutonium (There has been efforts to find stable isotopes of heavier elements to use in bombs, as they could theoretically be smaller, however this hasn't panned out so far). Thus they produce a lot of radioactive isotopes as a result of the fission.\n\nH-bombs also use a fission warhead to provide the energy required to fuse the LiD that acts as the source of light atoms. This fusion gives off the majority of energy in an H-bomb. This is why H-bombs are also known as *fission-fusion* weapons .This process makes less radioactive isotopes.\n\nTherefore, for a given MTonnage of explosive energy, a H-bomb will release less fallout.\nIn fact the 'cleanest' weapon ever fired was Tsar Bomba, the largest weapon ever fired.\n\nThere are some complications however. If you want to boost the power of an H-bomb even more you can make the tamper (a part of the bomb that is basically a heavy metal shell. It holds the bomb together long enough for it to work, basically), out of U-238 rather than Pb or W. In this case the U-238 will fission due to bombardment by fat neutrons released by fusion, increasing the yield of the warhead, but also increasing the fallout. In this case the H-bomb is a *fission-fusion-fission* weapon.\nIn the original design of Tsar Bomba, the tamper was made out of U-238, which would have given it a yield of 100MT, and released fallout equivalent to 1/3 of every other nuclear test combine. The USSR decided that this was unwise, and made the tamper out of lead instead. The yield was 'only' 50 MT and 90% of that energy came from fusion.\n\nThe manner in which a weapon is used also affects the level of fallout created. If a soft target like a refinery or a city is being hit, the bomb will detonate above ground, to allow the pressure wave created to damage the greatest area possible. In this case the fallout is lower than a ground-burst.\n\nA ground-burst is when the bomb is detonated at ground level in order to damage hard targets such as missile silos. In this case, the explosion irradiates a lot of soil and shit that is also thrown into the air, leading to a high level of fallout (sucks for you if you live downwind of Montana, North Dakota, or Wyoming)."
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3napso | in an accident, what is the paperwork, and steps that i should take if i get rear-ended, or if i hit someone else? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3napso/eli5_in_an_accident_what_is_the_paperwork_and/ | {
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"DO NOT ADMIT GUILT! Do not say anything that could be implied as an admission of guilt. Your insurance company should have instructions somewhere in the paperwork on what to do, and what not to do.",
"Your insurance company can provide you with a guide and a form to fill out. This is more of a legal question, try r/answers or r/asklegal",
"Here's a great guide.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nBasically:\n\nIf possible, move the car to a safe area. Check if everyone is OK. If there are any injuries or serious property damage, call police and wait for them to arrive. If not, exchange names, addresses, phone numbers, insurance info (on your insurance card). Also get this info from passengers and from any witnesses who saw the crash. Do not admit fault, or imply fault, or ANYTHING about the crash. Don't apologize, but express concern. Take pictures of everything. Don't leave the scene until all this is done! It could be considered a hit and run. \n\n",
"Let's assume this is not a high impact accident. It's an annoying happening, not a tragedy.\n\nStep 1, immediately after the impact, do a quick assessment.\n\nStep 2, put on your hazards and pull to the side of the road. Identify the car you hit or that hit you and write down their license plate or anything to identify the car. If they drive off and they hit you, its a hit and run, call the police. Otherwise, let's say they pull over too.\n\nStep 3, keeping in mind whatever traffic is passing you don't get hit. Approach the person who hit you. Ask if they are okay. Do not apologize. Do not admit guilt. Do not get angry or blame them. Remain calm. If anyone is around who saw the accident, ask them if they saw it and if you could get their info (name and phone).\n\nStep 4, take pictures of their car and your car where the impact occurred. Take pictures of their license, insurance card, and registration. Get their name and phone number. Be polite.\n\nStep 5, call the police to report the accident. Do not let the other person convince you otherwise. An accident is not the time to cut corners. Follow the dispatcher's instructions.\n\nStep 6, while you wait for the police to come, call your insurance company to report the accident. Don't do this next to the other person. Your insurance company is your advocate. Answer their questions truthfully and concisely.\n\nStep 7, follow the instructions of the police that shows up. If no police show up (because you were told they wouldn't by the dispatcher) and your car is safe to drive, drive on.\n\nStep 8, relax. You didn't die and you didn't kill anyone. You have insurance and this is why. If you were not at fault, it is very likely that that will be what is found, especially if there are witnesses. If you were at fault, same deal. Do some research into how your insurance forgives accidents and what potential rate you are looking at if it was your fault. Do not obsess. Make sure you are okay, physically and mentally, and move on with your life.\n\n\n"
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4baygm | why do scam emails ask people to use western union for transferring funds? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4baygm/eli5_why_do_scam_emails_ask_people_to_use_western/ | {
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"dont know if its the way it still being done but 7-8 years ago, scam worked like this. You want to buy something, seller ask to do WU transfer and email him receipt of transfer with blacked out transfer number, as proof. then he send you item and you tell him number so he can get money. The thing is if transfer is done, you dont need number, just your name and exact amount. so scammer could get your money without sending you anything.",
"Western Union's wire transfers are often non-reversible. That means that if you send money via Western Union, and it goes to the person you sent it to, you can't get your money back, even if you learn that the recipient was cheating you.\n\nWestern Union is also often involved in scams from the other side, because it can take up to several days for its money orders to be processed. So if you try to sell something on Craigslist, scammers will offer to buy it, then send you a Western Union money order for more than the price. (They will tell you some lie about why this implausible error has been made.) They will then ask you to send change, again via Western Union. By the time you realize the first money order was a forgery, your own money will have been sent, received, and vanished.",
"If I buy something and pay by credit card, then discover the seller was a fraudster, I can usually file a chargeback and recover my money from the seller.\n\nIf you pay with Western Union or Bitcoin, however, once the money leaves your hands it is pretty much gone.",
"I heard from a little birdie somewhere that money orders in general are excellent ways of sending cash off shore with no actionable paper trail as long as the IRS limits are followed."
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1el92r | why a coffee creamer that contains milk products is allowed to be called "non-dairy." | Most powdered coffee creamers call themselves "non-dairy" but actually contain sodium caseinate that was derived from milk. (The labels even say: "contains milk")
This seems fraudulent to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1el92r/eli5_why_a_coffee_creamer_that_contains_milk/ | {
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"When foods characterized on the label as 'nondairy' contain a caseinate ingredient, the caseinate ingredient shall be followed by a parenthetical statement identifying its source. For example, if the manufacturer uses the term 'nondairy' on a creamer that contains sodium caseinate, it shall include a parenthetical term such as 'a milk derivative' after the listing of sodium caseinate in the ingredient list.\n\nThey can list it as nondairy so long as they basically add fine print stating it has milk products in it. Same can be done with vegetarian foods and lots of other things. Pretty much a loop hole."
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1awtmn | congratulations explain like i'm five on 250,000 subscribers! | Congratulations! We are now 250,000 strong. That's a quarter of a million people who are subscribed here.
I personally think it's just a testament to how valuable a forum where everyone can ask, answer, and understand truly is.
We have some stats for y'all.
* [Traffic data](_URL_0_)
* [Subscriber count](_URL_1_) (why would you open this?)
Don't forget to check out the themes in the sidebar, and while you're at it read the relatively new rules if you haven't already. And one other thing: you can sort by answered posts or unanswered posts by looking at the bottom of the sidebar! Working on making that more aesthetic.
If you haven't subscribed already, please do so and then proceed to autodefenestrate in shame. Don't actually though (but *do* still subscribe of course). We love you.
***
Your humble moderators,
bossgalaga
Dr_Merkwurdigliebe
anonymous123421
sje46
Amarkov | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1awtmn/congratulations_explain_like_im_five_on_250000/ | {
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"Congratulations ELI5!\n\nNow can you please ELI5 what \"autodefenestrate\" means! (Only joking, couldn't resist!)",
"Congratulations! I've lurked this subreddit for months, even though I've never posted here, and I've always been impressed by the quality of responses here. I personally think this should be one of the default subreddits, but still an amazing community nontheless.",
"Just joined yesterday when I came across it by using Random. So, thanks!"
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5cpk2l | what do coders, programmers, and software developers do at big name companies like twitter, facebook, apple, etc all day. why are they in need and do they work round the clock. would apps survive if work discontinued? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5cpk2l/eli5_what_do_coders_programmers_and_software/ | {
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"Programmers are constantly fixing bugs and developing new features. The apps will definitely survive without them, but they might stagnate as the technology and their competition move forward without them.",
" > ELI5: What do coders, programmers, and software developers do at big name companies like Twitter, Facebook, Apple, etc all day. \n\nThey work at maintenance (bug-fixing, data-\"fixing etc.) and new features for the companies software.\n\n > Why are they in need \n\nBecause programs have bugs. Which, for example, might also lead to the corruption of the users data. \n\n > and do they work round the clock. \n\nYes, because those companies typically have departments on several continents. So you can get round-the-clock coverage while having most people work at normal office hours. A programmer at the east coast would come to work for example at have e-mails, tickets etc. from India on his computer. And when he leaves, his work is beeing continued at another location.\n\n > Would apps survive if work discontinued?\n\nThey would stay at the current state. Depending on the app tehy would stop working someday because, for example, there's a new generation of smartphones and the code for the facebook app would need changes to work on these devices.\n\nPlus, if you don't add new features but the competition does, people will sooner or later use their apps."
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1zyhph | planned obsolescence, what is it? | And why do we need it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zyhph/eli5_planned_obsolescence_what_is_it/ | {
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"you come up with a complete product: take 5 features from it. every year you can release a new version with a new feature and sell 5x the products, while making your old product look old and dated (even though its only a year old)\n\nthere is also another side to this: you can develop a product that can only be expected to work well for a short amount of time (~2-3 years) so that everyone who buys your product is forced to buy a new one when theirs becomes so worn it no longer fulfills its function.\n\naka: apple",
"It is when you design something to be obsolete after a certain amount of time for the sole purpose of selling a replacement."
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3pj28q | marijuana solves social anxiety for me. how exactly does that work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pj28q/eli5_marijuana_solves_social_anxiety_for_me_how/ | {
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"Everyone who's smoked marijuana knows how it ruins your memory. It is thought that this is the reason for all the good stuff. You don't remember exactly how things taste or feel, which leads to the novelty of eating ice cream and having sex. Likewise, you forget how you're supposed to act, and how you think other people are judging you. Of course, if you are not reacting well with the marijuana this can all backfire and result in paranoia, but that's one theory.",
"MD, psychiatry resident, here. \nThere are a lot of substances that influence your brain in Marijuana. \nOne of them is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) , that is (probably) more associated with the sensory distortions, or even hallucinations, some people feel. \nAnother one is cannabidiol (CBD), that is likely to have an anti-psychotic and anti-depressant effect, and those are drug classes regularly used to treat most anxiety disorders.\n\nWe still have a lot to learn about cannabinoids, but the effect you're talking about is likely due to CBD. "
]
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||
21bsuo | why is fifa so against using technology in football? | Other sports (rugby, hockey, cricket, American football) use video etc - why is football lagging so far behind in terms of using tech to improve the sport? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21bsuo/eli5_why_is_fifa_so_against_using_technology_in/ | {
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"text": [
"Because Blatter is idiotic and corrupt. ",
"Football is one of the fastest games out there. The clock doesn't stop, there is only one break, and if the ball goes out of play it comes straight back in again. \n\nTechnology is seen as interrupting the flow of the game and causing stoppages. Many believe that it is the speed and intensity that the game is played at that makes it so great and therefore do not like technology being introduced.\n\nThe English Premier League has introduced goal line technology, however, and in a way that does little to affect the game. The ball may have crossed the line, the referee looks at his watch which will instantly tell him, if the ball didn't cross the line then play continues.",
"Well one argument is that there are so many competitive football matches happening around the world it would be unfair to add required technology to the rules. Soccer or football is a sport that has transecnded its so easy to pick up and play. Hosting a competitive match is easy as well. Mixing technology into the rules or to enforce the rules would limit how accessible the sport is. ",
"Besides pace of the game, there's a lot of old school football fans that feel like the humanness of judging is part of the drama/excitement. Which is why they're even against goal line technology sometimes (as it wouldn't interrupt the game anyways since the game is stopped anyways). Don't downvote me for this, I think it's a dumb argument too, but that is an argument I hear often.",
"Because the game was designed to be judged at full speed. Judging fouls and penalties is different when done at slow motion. Player intentions get skewed and that's a big part of the ref's decision. Imagine how every hand ball and every push off would look intentional in slow motion replay. \n\nThe goal line technology is great because it doesn't involve judging players."
]
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|
5lchat | why there was a 'leap second' added to the end of 2016? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5lchat/eli5_why_there_was_a_leap_second_added_to_the_end/ | {
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"text": [
"Because our calendars aren't exactly 1 year in terms of Earth's orbit/rotation. It's the same reason we have leap years, just on a smaller scale.",
"Because the Earth's rotation is slowing.\n\nIf you multiply 24 hours by 60 minutes by 60 seconds, you find that there are 86400 seconds per day.\n\nThe problem is that our definition of the second is based on [an average that is a century old.](_URL_0_) In modern times, the average day is about 2 thousandths of a second longer—again, because of Earth's slowing rotation.\n\nThose thousandths of a second add up, so every few years we have to slip in an extra second to account for them.\n\nWithout leap seconds, we'd eventually end up with noon at 7 o'clock, though admittedly, this would take a very long time.",
"the rotation of the earth is not a constant. in fact the rotation of the earth is slowing down, which means that a full day is getting slightly longer. without leap seconds our clocks would slowly drift ever so slightly out of sync with the actual day. we could deal with this by redefining how how long 1 second is, making it slightly longer so that one day is still exactly 24*60*60 seconds. but in practice that is really inconvenient for a lot of our technology which relies on very precise timing. its easier to just move us ahead one second every couple of years or so.",
"The Earth's rotation is not regular. It varies a bit, so sometimes we add a second. We do this to ensure that noon is always going to be sometime around mid-day. If we did not add leap seconds, over a very long period of time where the Earth's rotation slowly changed, noon could end up being at dusk.\n\nWe want to keep 7am in the morning, noon at mid-day, 7pm around evening, etc.\n\nThough we have never had one, it's also possible to have a negative leap second. That is, taking away a second from the year. This has never happened, but if the Earth's rotation were to speed up, it could happen.\n\nThe biggest thing to know about leap seconds is that they can cause computer problems. You might remember the Y2K bug. A leap second can cause similar problems, and they actually have caused problems in the past. \n\nThe reason for this is that generally we expect a day to have 24 hours, and for time to always move forward. With a leap second this is not true. When writing software, programers try to think of all the possible exceptions that could happen withing their code. For example, the program might expect a word, but instead get a number. A good programmer will check for these exceptions and deal with them.\n\nHowever, a programer can easily forget about leap seconds and not have a fail-safe in their code for when a day have more than 24 hours. When such an exception happens, the program can produce errors or crash. It is an interesting topic, you can read more about it here: _URL_0_"
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_Tables_of_the_Sun"
],
[],
[
"http://adminhacks.com/leap-second-bugs.html"
]
] |
||
2193ey | how does pseudorandom works? | i googled this. and searched on eli5 (still don't understand). i really want to know how does it work. please explain like im five. edit: i know what it means but not how it works | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2193ey/eli5_how_does_pseudorandom_works/ | {
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"True randomness isn't possible for a processor, since it's always just running input - > some function - > output. But there are functions that behave 'almost randomly'. A (bad, but easy to understand) example is the following method for generating a random 5-digit number:\n\n* Start with any 5-digit number. Let's say 12345.\n* Square it. 12345^2 = 152399025\n* Take the middle 5 digits: 15**23990**25\n* Our next 'random' number is 23990.\n\nThen to generate another one, we repeat the process. Our next number in this case would be 55201, then 71504, 28220, etc.\n\nNow, this turns out to be a bad example, because it will always collapse down to a cycle or a repeated number at some point. But there are more mathematically-sophisticated methods that are better behaved.",
"Pseudorandom often refers to a mathematical formula to produce a stream of numbers that appear to be random. But the formula itself is predictable. If you know the last random number to be generated (and sometimes you might also need some internal secret data stored with the formula), you could actually predict the next number.\n\nHere's a super dumb example. Suppose the formula is:\n\nnext number = (last number + 7) MOD 10\n\n(MOD means divide the left side by the right, and return the remainder.)\n\nStarting with 0, this awful pseudorandom number generator will produce the following stream of numbers:\n\n0,\n7,\n4,\n1,\n8,\n5,\n2,\n9,\n6,\n3,\n0\n\nAnd then the sequence will repeat again and again. From the outside, the results might look as if somebody just took a 10-sided die marked 0-9 and kept rolling it. But this random number generator is so simple that its sequence is only 10 numbers long and repeats quickly. After watching just 20 numbers go by anybody could figure out what the next one will be.\n\nYet this generator satisfies certain desirable qualities in a random number generator. It produces an even distribution across all the possible results (just as many 0's come out as 9's, or 2's, or any digit).\n\nThe simplest pseudorandom number generators used in software like games work very much like this one, but they use much larger numbers so that it there are more than 10 possible results, and it takes much longer for the pattern to repeat.",
"The word is most often used in programs which make random numbers. Programs run on algorithms which run the same way every time and thus are not random. Usually, programs will use something like the computer's internal clock to act as an initial seed value then do various mathematical operations on it to generate a chain of numbers. From a human perspective, the numbers usually look random. And for simulations, they are often random enough to be usable. But since the process which generated them can be recreated to produce the exact same string of numbers, the term pseudorandom is used to describe them."
]
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[],
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381910 | how do some animals get enough nutrients to survive by only eat bugs or grass? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/381910/eli5_how_do_some_animals_get_enough_nutrients_to/ | {
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"text": [
"Most animals that eat grass or other low calorie/nutrient foods spend a huge portion of their day simply eating. Cows graze all day, the amount of food they intake is massive. It usually comes down to quantity over quality. "
]
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[]
] |
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