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4uqozq | if computer monitors are pixel based- how can vector images be shown? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uqozq/eli5_if_computer_monitors_are_pixel_based_how_can/ | {
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"The video card will usually rasterize the vectors (convert to pixels), and it gets done after the monitor resolution and final image resolution is known (so its always done at a high enough resolution)",
"They can't really show vector images. Computers can \"think\" in terms of vectors but to display them they have to convert them to a raster format which is displayed as pixels.\n\nIts sort of like how computers can model 3d objects but can only output a 2d image."
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57owpo | how did british aristocracy earn their money | i have a question, hopefully someone will be able to explain it to me.
whenever i watch a movie or read a book that is set in let's say 18th or 19th century England and involves their aristocracy, none of them seem to be doing anything to acquire money, yet the money flows in relentlessly and there's shitload of it to spend it.
real estates bought and maintained by their money, servants paid by their money, hunting financed by their money, world class horses, travels, you name it, all while doing nothing and sitting on their asses all day long.
so what i am really asking you, where did their money come from? there must have been some kind of a source of it and they obviously must have had some way of generating it so please, i beg you, enlighten me. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57owpo/eli5_how_did_british_aristocracy_earn_their_money/ | {
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"They owned shit, mostly land.\n\nDepending on timeframe the wealthy nobles may have been drawing literally millions of dollars a year (in today's money) from the rents, produce, and other payments from their land. The modern system where companies and stocks generate the majority of income only came about in the 1900s. Before that it was all land with a some investments.",
"In the Middle Ages, the feudal system was in place. The way it worked was this: a large population of peasants worked an area of land. They gave a portion of what they grew/raised/etc. to their lord. In return, the lord was supposed to protect and watch over them.\n\nThe feudal system did end, but the noble families became landlords instead: they leased land out to small farmers and generated income that way.\n\nBefore the Industrial Revolution, when the majority of people were farmers, he who controlled the land, controlled the wealth. Britain's nobility controlled the land. After the rise of industry, some of them were smart enough to become factory owners or otherwise invest their money and remain wealthy.",
"It varies slightly depending on the time period, but generally what you thought of as the nobility or aristocracy were wealthy landowners. During feudal times peasants would live on their land and work it while paying taxes to the lord. Gradually peasants, particularly in England, became more autonomous, but the landowners could still count on revenue from their lands even if they lost their cheap labor. Farming, a winery, mining, etc. They were in charge of administrative duties, but of course there was plenty of time for leisure.\n\n",
"They owned land. All the land. And farmers and stuff lived on their land. As it got more and more modern that relationship became more like being a landlord or something where the farmers pay rent on the land they are farming, but as you go back it gets more like \"they own the land and also the farmers on that land also\" ",
"Nobility were landlords - in fact, that's where the term comes from. They owned land, and everyone living on their land paid them rent.\n\nThis system goes back a long ways. Medieval European feudalism has its roots in Rome. By the Middle Ages (10th century and onwards), the system was already firmly established in most parts of Europe: nobles owned the land, and peasants worked it, paying rents and taxes (usually in produce, rather than coin). The nobles, in turn, held the land in a usually hereditary contract from a higher noble, and this went all the way up to the king (in theory, anyway; a king trying to disenfranchise a duke would be in for a civil war).\n\nNobles who owned land with plentiful resources, like minerals or large woodlands, could also sell or rent licenses or rights to utilize those resources.\n\nAs time went on, the power of the nobility weakened, and the middle class of merchants, etc., gained power; but centralized governments also gained power; and eventually nobles no longer owned all the land. But they still tended to own and rent land.\n\nIn those movies and books, all those people living around the nobles' manor are generally their renters. They rent land - and often the buildings - to live on and farm.\n\nTL;DR: The aristocrats are landlords, literally, and their income is from rents.",
"Historically, the majority of their money came from farming.\n\nMore recently, because farming is not as profitable, the aristocracy (lords/earls/etc) tends to hemorrhage money and can barely (or cant) afford to maintain their own estate. But they tend to be clever people, so they do find ways to make ends meet...including bizarre things such as becoming movie stars. They also have recently started marrying rich americans.\n\nThe male aristocrats were never just 'sitting on their butts' all day long. In fact they had arguably the most difficult and hazardous job in the nation: combat. In times of peace they still practiced their military skills (hunting and travelling was part of that in fact)...and in times of war they WERE the front line...the first to charge the enemy and the first to die. They could at times make some collateral income with plunder after victory in war.\n\nThe gun and rise of professional armies certainly eroded the value of the english aristocrats. Most of them sold off their estates...or simply abandoned them...and many fell into disrepair and decay. A few were preserved with taxes because of their historical relevance, but most of the old english estates are in ruins now. ",
"Land. \n\nThey took a share of all products produced by the land (crops, animals, ore, wood, etc.), take a share of all income from products made on their land (textiles, pottery, smithing, etc), and charge rents for those that live on their lands. \n\nTaking the share from what the land produces is the largest historical source. ",
"It was actually a problem in the 19th century, many estates were nearly bankrupt, one solution was to marry wealthy American women into British Aristocracy in exchange for cash. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
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33vyv8 | why do xbox one/ps4 games need to be installed to the hard drive, but every console before this generation you could just put in a game and play. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33vyv8/eli5_why_do_xbox_oneps4_games_need_to_be/ | {
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"My PS3 loads some game data into the HD the first time. The reason it's advantageous to do this is because the HD can be read faster than a game disc. So bus speeds.",
"Game sizes (and therefore texture sizes) have increased. Larger files take longer to load. Especially if you're playing an open world game where parts of the map are constantly loading in. The disc drive could never keep up.",
"Blu-Ray discs store a lot of data (up to 50GB), but they're not very fast to read- the Blu-Ray drives in the Xbox One and PS4 can only read 27MB/s meaning it will take half an hour to actually read all the data off a full disc. Your choices are either install the game to the hard drive or have the world's longest load screens every time you need stuff that's not already loaded into RAM.",
"My suspicion is that some future versions of the consoles may not come with a bluray disk drive and become download only, thus they are requiring game developers to not need a bluray drive to play the game (aside from licensing validation by seeing if the disk is there).\n\nI definitely agree that loading from hard drive is faster and gains the game more performance, but it doesn't explain why the games don't read from the hard drive and bluray simultaneously. This is would give games much more performance and is easy to do for developers, yet this isn't happening."
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4e2mdf | why do joggers insist on running on the road even though there is a sidewalk? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4e2mdf/eli5why_do_joggers_insist_on_running_on_the_road/ | {
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"It has to do with the softness of the material. Usually road surface is softer than concrete(sidewalk). Believe it or not, constant runners notice the difference in material. It's even something I was trained to do in college running for a cross team."
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761uoq | if the law can't change, why are some lawyer better than others | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/761uoq/eli5_if_the_law_cant_change_why_are_some_lawyer/ | {
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"Some lawyers are better at researching the law, arguing their case, and persuading people with the facts. You could have two lawyers competing, but one of them is better at doing their research and making their case. ",
"Scripts don't change, but some actors are better than others. Reality doesn't change, but some scientists are better than others. Almost anyone can spell, but some writers are better than others.\n\nSame for attorneys. Just because the laws are available to all doesn't mean that their work ethic, research abilities, or skills in writing and convincing are equal. "
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47mnz1 | the effects of the tech bubble crashing and the companies like snapchat, uber, etc... | I recently came across an article explaining the issue with the tech bubble about to burst. I didn't understand what the article was saying at a basic level. Guys like Mark Cuban say that the bubble is about to burst. What would happen to companies like snapchat that haven't had any income for their company? What would we see as a result of the bubble bursting? Would companies just close up shop? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47mnz1/eli5_the_effects_of_the_tech_bubble_crashing_and/ | {
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"Snapchat has no income? Every one of those location histories can cost up to a million dollars iirc",
"Not sure about the \"tech bubble\" but I can say without a doubt with all the ads they're running in their app now, snapchat is making a pretty penny"
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edt15i | how do phishing scams find your email and manage to make their own email that looks like a professional email? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/edt15i/eli5_how_do_phishing_scams_find_your_email_and/ | {
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"Hi :-)\n\n\n > find your email\n\nBad guys...\n\n - ...just try a list of common names at common mail services, (e.g. a.smith[at]gmail.c0m, b.smith[at]gmail.c0m, c.smith[at]gmail.c0m,)\n\n - ...or buy your e-mail-address from some companies that collect them (e.g. raffles, sketchy companies), \n\n - search the internet (e.g. some forums or websites where people published email addresses)\n\n - or find your emails in hacked databases (when hackers manage to get into a company's server, forums, social media platforms, they can get thousands of customer addresses- and even know your name and other personal data that makes it seem even more real).\n\n & nbsp;\n\n > looks like a professional email\n\nSadly you can pretty much send emails with any header, e.g. George.Washington[at]USA.c0m, even if they don't own the domain.\n\nMany phishing emails will use similar sounding domains though: \n\nInstead of a company name, e.g. micros**o**ft.c0m, they will register domains such as micros**0**ft.c0m.\n\nOr they create some subdomains such as *microsoft.c0m*.legittechnicalsupport.c0m that sound like the real domain in the first part, but have some random main domain. \n\nIn the eMail, they create a text-link that says microsoft.c0m but in reality leads to wearethebadguys.c0m.\n\n & nbsp;\n\nThe best method is to always go to the website and never follow links in the eMail. Or at least check that the domain is really what you expect."
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7ghizn | how do motion detectors detect motion in the dark? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7ghizn/eli5_how_do_motion_detectors_detect_motion_in_the/ | {
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"Most low cost (and thus most common) motion sensors sense infrared light, which won't correspond to light/dark as you understand it. A room being bright or dark on the visible spectrum doesn't have anything to do with the infrared spectrum. If the room is too 'dark' in the infrared spectrum (or the IR emissions are too similar for the sensor to distinguish), then it won't work, but you wouldn't be able to tell that visually since your eyes don't work too well in the infrared spectrum.\n\nThis is why most motion detectors work wonderfully at night (they're looking for variations in the infrared spectrum which are independent of the time or day), but they don't work through glass because glass is transparent to *visible* light, but opaque to infrared light.",
"You have two common types of motion sensors - passive infrared(PIR) and Ultrasonic. The most common type is PIR which sees IR which is emitted by hot objects. There is a special lens in front of the sensor so a warm object moving through its field of view creates sudden transitions that are easy to detect. Since it is relying on heat emissions it works fine with or without light.\n\nUltrasonics send out a sonar burst and effectively echo locate like a bat. They check the sound they get back after each one and compare it to the last one, if it changed significantly then something in the space moved and they trigger",
"While I can't speak to the newer tech I've seen discussed here, older motion detectors *do not* work in the dark. I've fooled them many times.\n\nOlder detectors use a [cadmium sulfide cell](_URL_0_) in front of a fresnel lens. The sensor is a resistor that passes electricity depending on the amount of light hitting it. \n\n Passing that light through a [fresnel](_URL_1_) lens scatters it. Now you have a sensor that trips according to light variations it \"sees\" over time and because of the scattering the sensor \"sees\" a nice, wide, blurry area. \n\nStand still, let all the light and shadows remain static, and nothing happens. Move through the lenses ( < -sp?) eye and the resistance on the circuit changes, tripping the alarm. Move *really* slow and the sensor doesn't trip because the incoming light doesn't change fast enough. Not sure how the timing works but you don't want your alarm to trip because the sun moved a shadow a bit.\n\n \n\n"
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3wqxb3 | what do military drum lines do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wqxb3/eli5_what_do_military_drum_lines_do/ | {
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"Keep the rest of you rhythm deficient SOBs stepping correctly. The drummer is a champion of tempo and rhythm. In the military marching and drilling are rhythmic activities. Having someone keep the beat helps. In years past the drummers cadence would also be used to communicate with other units over a distance. Today the drum line is largely ceremonial. "
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2vgere | why are standardized tests timed? | So I understand why there is no unlimited time, but whats the advantage of having an SAT/ACT(or whichever test) with a tight time limit? Isn't the purpose of the test find out if someone knows something, not how fast can they answer it? I assume something like an IQ tested is given a short time because it is trying to measure problem solving. However, to test if someone is educated enough to go to college or the next grade shouldn't have much to do with how fast they can do 100 math problems. Right? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2vgere/eli5why_are_standardized_tests_timed/ | {
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"Figuring things out quickly is part of scholastic aptitude, which is what the SAT is intended to measure. So no, I don't agree with you. It's not about measuring education per se.\n\nEdit to add - dealing with time pressure is also part of scholastic aptitude.",
"With respect to math problems, some could be solved by brute force rather than using accepted math procedures if a test-taker had eight hours, for example, rather than one. Also, the instrument and its questions have been validated using time limits--if the standardized test company tried to validate test questions without a time limit it would make it much more complicated because of the new variable, time.",
"No, the SAT actually IS testing your problem solving, not your education. The math section is designed so that no more than algebra and geometry is needed (maybe some trig too, it's been a while for me). So someone who has taken Calc II will not necessarily do better than someone who is in Precalc. \n\nSame with the verbal. The reading comprehension sections are not informational exams; all the answers to the questions can be found by carefully reading the passages. "
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5nboy3 | do we experience sound in 2d? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5nboy3/eli5_do_we_experience_sound_in_2d/ | {
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"On a very technical level, we only experience sound in one dimension - amplitude; adding the dimension of time, we get a second one, frequency. Everything else is post-processing in the brain.\n\nIn the same way that we perceive images as three-dimensional via brain processing to account for the stereoscopic effect of having two eyes, we perceive sounds as three-dimensional via brain processing to account for the stereophonic effect of having two ears."
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7irvgz | how can the fcc force a vote? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7irvgz/eli5_how_can_the_fcc_force_a_vote/ | {
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"Not sure I follow the question. The FCC is an independent agency created by Congress. There are five commissioners and one of the commissioners is selected by the president to be the chairman. The chairman controls the agenda and decides what the commission votes on. He can \"force\" an FCC vote on just about anything he wants. \n\nThe current FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, opposes net neutrality. So he's going to hold a vote in a few days to repeal regulations that were put in place by the previous FCC chairman during the Obama administration. Does that answer the question?"
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4lnb4i | what is absolute magnitude and how is it measured? | I'm working on a study guide for Science and I need to know absolute magnitude and how to measure it. I got a question asking me "According to this H-R diagram, which are the brightest stars" apparently it's super giants? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lnb4i/eli5_what_is_absolute_magnitude_and_how_is_it/ | {
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"There's two measures of how bright/big stars are.\n\nApparent magnitude is based on how they look in the sky to us. This can be measured by simple observation.\n\nAbsolute magnitude requires you to know how far away they are from other & adjust for the distance.\n\nIf you have two identical stars, A & B, but B is twice the distance from earth, A will have a greater apparent magnitude than B but they'd both have the same absolute magnitude."
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2g54ut | net neutrality movement | Hey guys, pretty frequent internet user here and I hear so much about this Net Neutrality thing but I never want to read a ton on articles that could end up being biased. I know it's bad for people like us but could someone give me the long and short of it?
Edit: Its now my understanding that this is a good thing. comments appreciated. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g54ut/eli5_net_neutrality_movement/ | {
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"The internet has a speed limit of 100.\n\nAll traffic on the internet was treated the same. They could all go 100. \n\nNet Neutrality was removed by the US Congress, allowing those who owned the infrastructure of telecommunication lines to be able to charge extra money to whomever they liked (like competing companies) just to be able to go 100 (or maybe just to keep them at, say 15, so people wouldn't use them).",
"Net Neutrality was what we had before the Cable Company Fuckery started. It's a good thing, not a bad thing. it just means that all traffic across the Internet is treated the same, and big companies don't get to charge extra for special treatment."
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5z9ufv | if the earth is in fact "slightly pear-shaped", why does it appear round in photos taken from space? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5z9ufv/eli5_if_the_earth_is_in_fact_slightly_pearshaped/ | {
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"Because the distance and focus of the shots taken of the earth don't quite catch the subtle shape changes of the earth. The difference, although it is there, is rather hard to detect in photographs as the spherical shape of most planetary bodies will appear near perfectly round in most cases.\n\nIf you were to take a photo with a high enough resolution, from the correct distance then you would be able to make it out, but even then it's very slight.",
"It's what's called an oblate spheroid. It means the Earth is a sphere that is slightly flatter at the poles and slight bulged at the equator. It's a very minute difference though, so it's close enough to it look perfectly spherical to our eyes. Saturn is somewhat more oblate, and if you look at if from the right angle, it's definitely noticeable.",
"Because the bulging that gives it the pear shape is very, very, very, very slight. How slight? [According to Wikipedia](_URL_0_), the difference in radius at the equator (6,397,300 meters) versus the poles (6,363,806 meters) is 33493 meters, or about 0.5%. \n",
"The earth is an ellipsoid. Specifically, the diameter at the equator is 12,756 km, while the diameter from pole-to-pole is 12,714 km. That's due to the centrifugal force of the Earth's spin counteracting gravity, slightly.\n\nLet's do the math. That's a difference of (12,756-12,714) / 12,756 = 0.32%\n\nSo, If a poster has earth appearing about 10\" wide, the difference works out to be less than 0.032\", about 2x the thickness of the paper it's printed on.\n\nSo, the difference is almost Impossible to detect, visually.\n\n "
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ekpo1j | - why combustion engine cars still use lead acid batteries when more advanced batteries like those used in smartphones are available? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ekpo1j/eli5_why_combustion_engine_cars_still_use_lead/ | {
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"Lead acid batteries are more suitable to cars because they have a high input/output compared to lithium ion, and lithium ion is crazy expensive",
"Cars don't need a lot of energy in their batteries - they need to get the energy out *really fast*. Lead acids are really good for this and can take a fair amount of abuse, and while a comparable lithium battery could be significantly smaller it would also require bulky and expensive regulator components while itself being more expensive. Easy to just stick with the bigger battery that goes for half the price.",
"In addition to the \"cold cranking amps\" that /u/TheJeeronian mentions, lithium batteries do not do well in high temperatures (\"high\" being > 45 C / 113 F). At all.",
"A few of them do. My 2016 BMW M4 uses a lithium ion battery for example. The advantage is it's supposed to last about 10+ years and it weighs less than a standard lead acid battery. The downside is it costs close to $1000... That's a price that the vast majority of car buyers and owners are not willing to accept."
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1zdcsw | why is there a standard federal deduction and an itemized deduction on my taxes? | I was doing my taxes and now I cannot choose either of them. This is the first time I have seen them before. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zdcsw/eli5_why_is_there_a_standard_federal_deduction/ | {
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"A deduction lowers the amount of money you have to pay taxes on. You would like to lower the amount of money you pay taxes on!\n\nYou can deduct specific things. Like (and there are a lot of details missing) mortgage interest, healthcare costs, charitable giving, moving, sales tax, etc. You can list all these things, add them together, and figure out how much money you get to deduct.\n\nOr you can take a \"standard\" deduction. This is a lot simpler. You get to deduct a certain amount of money depending on whether you're filing singly/jointly/etc. \n\n* Itemized: add up your deductions and subtract that number\n* Standard: deduct a set amount of money"
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4gpz2u | why do our bodies metabolize carbs first and not lipids or protein? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gpz2u/eli5_why_do_our_bodies_metabolize_carbs_first_and/ | {
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"Fat is a great way for an animal to store energy long-term. It's like asking why people spend money with their credit card before their 401k. Having so much extra food that it causes health problems is a fairly recent innovation, evolutionarily speaking.",
"Actually read something yesterday on how every part of the body has a different metabolic profile. There may be a wrongful assumption in the question since different parts of the body use different things. For example, adipose tissue seems to prefer fat, whereas the brain uses glucose (broken up carbs) almost exclusively.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Our bodies use carbohydrates (i.e. glucose) as a quick energy source because glucose has the potential to be used by any of your cells. Think of glucose as CASH--your cells can spend that shit anywhere in your body. Your cells don't always have cash on hand though, unless you spend 24 hours a day eating and ingesting glucose. Your body also stores glucose and there are a lot of other competing metabolic processes involved, but this is ELI5!\n\nLipids (Fatty Acids) represent the most efficient energy storage molecules in the body. Lipids can be stored in our fat cells as triglycerides. They also pack together tightly, which is convenient for storage. Think of lipids like your savings account. You will tap into your savings account when you don't have cash to spend. Similarly, we break down lipids in order to make energy for our cells when we haven't eaten in awhile and we're low on glucose. If you eat too much food too often, you will always have a lot of $ (gluclose) lying around to spend. Your lipids will stack up and your bank account will get FAT. You will also get fat.\n\nAs for proteins -- your body doesn't like to use proteins for energy because they cost a lot of energy to make. Think of proteins like your watch or your gold chain or whatever. You can pawn your watch or sell your chain, but man do you really want to do that? You worked hard for that fucking chain. But, if you starve yourself for long enough, your body will use proteins to make energy. \n\n"
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4vhdzj | how to use a comma | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vhdzj/eli5_how_to_use_a_comma/ | {
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"There are many places and rules for comma usage, and a lot of disagreement amongst people who care. The biggest one is that commas are used to set off clauses that are separate. Take the sentence \"My brother, who went to college, is now successful.\" If you lifted out the middle bit separated by commas, the sentence would still make sense. It would be \"My brother is now successful.\" So that's one use.\n\nAnother similar use is to separate distinct but related parts of the sentence. See above with my \"If you lifted out the middle bit . . . , the sentence would still make sense.\" It's tricky, but the key here is that the first half (the \"if\" statement) is actually grammatically equivalent to the middle from the previous example. If it went away, the rest would make sense as its own sentence.\n\nThe last one I'll get into (although far from the end of their usage) is in lists. When you list things, place commas between the items. \"I like to eat apples, pears, oranges, and pineapples.\" Keep in mind, though, that there is *serious* disagreement about the correctness of that last comma, which is known as an \"Oxford\" or \"serial\" comma. The most important thing for it is to be consistent. If you use the final comma, always use it. If you don't use it, never use it. But don't switch between, especially in the same piece of writing.",
"My junior year high school teacher was such a stickler for the comma that he would fail our papers if we had even ONE comma splice. He made us this guide and forced us to memorize it. Years later, I still look to this for reference. Hopefully, this will help you too.\n\nUSES OF THE COMMA\n\n(1) Dates and addresses\n\n\n On January 3, 1997, Josh was born.\n He has lived in Newtown, Connecticut, all his life.\n\n\n(2) Letters – salutations and closings\n\n\n Dear June,\t\n Sincerely,\n\n(3) With quotation marks in dialogue\n\n\n “Heres's one on the house,” said the bartender.*\t\n “Today we stunk,” sighed the coach.* \n John said, “What's new?”\n [*note comma position inside the quotes.]\n\n(4) With mild interjections\n\n\n Darn, I don't think I studied enough.\n Gee, I won't be able to party tonight.\n\n(5) Direct address\n\n\n John, pick up the packages at the front desk.\n Come to the phone, Bill.\n\n(6) Confirmatory questions\n\n\n It's going to be cool out today, isn't it?\n Jack said to get there at three, didn't he?\n\n(7) Items in a series of three or more\n\n\n We ordered hamburgers, fries, and milkshakes.\n It took time, money, energy, and luck to get us through\n [note no comma after the final item.]\n\n(8) Co-ordinate adjectives\n\n\n Out the window we saw a band of five, fully grown deer munching the azalea bush. \n The lengthy, thorough exam enervated the class.\n\n(9) Parenthetical items\n\n\n The film, in my opinion, did not deserve four stars.\n The principle, without question, is in charge of the school.\n\n(10) Yes or No at the beginning of a sentence\n\n\n Yes, I'll be happy to help you study.\n No, the tv cannot be turned on\n\n(11) To prevent misreading\n\n\n Those who can, walk up and down the halls.\n To George, Washington is a capital city.\n Inside, the dog is growling.\n\n(12) After introductory elements\n\n\n When you're hungry, nothing's as good as a pizza.\n Believe it or not, I won.\n Because I had no money and no transportation, I was stuck at home.\n [note: in most cases, such a construction at the end of a sentence is not set off by a comma.]\n\n(13) To separate independent clauses joined by coordinating conjunction [FANBOYS – for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so]\n\n\n The yellow moon rose, and the flashing stars came out.\n [note: this error is very common. Do not put a comma at every instance of a 'FANBOYS' element;\n an independent clause must both precede and follow it.]\n\n(14) With most appositives\n\n\n Imiri Baraka, an American poet, was honored at the reception.\n Brendan, an all-around good guy, was down in the dumps.\n\n(15) In place of omitted words when the omitted words are an exact replica\n\n\n John went to Harvard; Yvette, Yale.\n [note: for professionals only. Don't even attempt this unless you really know what you're\n doing!]\n\n(16) Before phrases introducing certain kinds of lists\n\n\n The spring semester is offering great courses, such as biology, art, and history.\n With a professional staff, including teachers, coaches, tutors, and administrators,\n it's hard to fail.\n\n(17) With non-restrictive phrases and clauses\n\n\n Parker Boulevard, which runs past my house, will be paved on Monday.\n [note: restrictive: The street which runs past my house will be paved on Monday.]\n\n(18) With absolute phrases\n\n\n The day being warm, we headed to the beach.\n We assembled our rods, having set up the tent, and went off to catch supper.\n [note: The absolute phrase is comprised of 1)a participial form – i.e., an 'ing' or 'ed' verb\n construction which is utterly dependent – and 2) a noun.]"
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3q7cqx | why is there so much distance between objects in space? | Is there any reason they couldn't exist in closer proximity?
I understand the expansion of the Universe has caused the distance between Galaxies but does this explain the distance between objects in the solar system? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q7cqx/eli5_why_is_there_so_much_distance_between/ | {
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"There is just aloooooot of space and only so much stuff to go around. That stuff in general is clumping closer together locally (gas of nebulas condensing into stars) because of gravity but getting more sparse universally as expansion literally creates more space without really creating that much more stuff to fill it."
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fhbyhl | why is it a bad thing for people to buy n95 masks right now? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fhbyhl/eli5_why_is_it_a_bad_thing_for_people_to_buy_n95/ | {
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"Masks are to protect others from you. They do not protect you because they are often worn incorrectly and cause you to touch your face more than normally. \n\nTouching your face the least amount and washing your hands frequently while staying away from crowded spaces is your best defense.\n\nEdited to add: hospitals buy from the same suppliers that Walmart does. Huge demand means there's nothing to fill their orders. Places are going through a year's worth of estimated use in one day. \n\nOur supply system just isn't made to quickly get usually low demand items to the hands that need them in the way that is currently needed."
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4t5246 | why are handdryers so unhygienic compared to paper towels? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t5246/eli5_why_are_handdryers_so_unhygienic_compared_to/ | {
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"When you dry your hands with a paper towel, and bacteria remaining on them are wiped onto the towel and put in the trash. \nWhen you put your wet hands under the electric hand-dryer, the warm air blowing out scatters all of that into the surrounding air. \nThis might not be so bad if everyone did a very thorough job of washing their hands, but this is not the case. Many people do just a very cursory wash, and what is left on their hands becomes airborne.",
"Plus, in a bathroom without towels, hands must touch handle. Not everyone washes hands. Poop and pee on hands migrates to handle where my recently washed, untoweled hands now tread. ",
"They're not.\n\nThey spread bacteria from your hands out across the room. Unless you're in a hospital where disease and contamination is a real issue, then there's nothing wrong with spreading bacteria from your hands. There's bacteria everywhere; everyone has bacteria on your hands. \"Bacteria\" in general are not a bad thing, not an infestation that needs to be killed. They just live on you, and they're nothing to worry about."
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383taz | how did "we the people" let the government and most of our politicians become so corrupt? | It's unbelievable. We have all these politicians receiving all these "donations" (legal bribes) from all of these corporate lobbyists. This is just one example of how corrupt the system is, just please explain where we screwed up and if there is anything we could have done in the past to keep the America that the founding fathers envisioned. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/383taz/eli5_how_did_we_the_people_let_the_government_and/ | {
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"Politicians promise to do things, and then don't do them, and then get re-elected. As long as people vote for liars, politicians will compete to see who can tell the biggest lie. \"I'll change the tone of government.\" \"The most transparent government in our lifetimes.\" \"If you like your insurance, you can keep it.\" These people are running to be one small part in a big machine. If they tell you they can do something, they are lying. If they say they will \"work hard to\" something, that means nothing will happen. \n\nThe Founding Fathers presumed that land-holding gentlemen, the only folks they thought of as \"voters\", would be smarter than this. They envisioned a future where thoughtful proposals would be the centrepiece of political campaigns and voters would choose the person who's plans and platform they most agreed with. If Americans would act like that, even the young, the women, and the minorities that are voters today, the country would be much better off. I'm not holding my breath.",
"The problem is that the advertising works.\n\nThe founding fathers never intended for the people to micromanage policy. The people were supposed to elect great scholars and scientists to actually debate the issues and then come to the correct answer. You look at people like Benjamin Franklin and you're not seeing someone who was a politician - you're seeing someone who was a scholar and scientist, who could actually help other members of congress to understand issues.\n\nHave a look at this [comedy short](_URL_0_) about polls. The problem is that as people we're easy to mislead. The politicians that lie to us are the ones who claim to match our individual opinions about every issue, because they're the ones who are just following the polls, and since every politician is doing that, the only way to be elected is to be the one who does it loudest - with the biggest budget.\n\nThe truth is that political and government matters are as complicated as medicine or engineering. You wouldn't want people to vote on what good medical advice is, or you'd end up with anti-vaxers in medical congress and a growing tide of anti-vax movements, where pro-vaxers are just seen as partisan. What you want is to vote for doctors who are knowledgeable and trustworthy, people with a lot of qualifications and professionalism, and you want those people to give you the truth, even if you won't like it. Our politics were supposed to be the same way, but because we became 'issue' voters who ask not 'is this man a good man who is well educated?' but 'Which of my uneducated and advertising-informed opinions does each candidate agree with?'\n\nAnd in that world, the only way to become elected is to tell us whatever we want to hear and get as much money as possible to do it as loud as possible.\n\nImagine a congress with Elon Musk, with Neil Tyson and with dozens of university professors in policy studies, economics, environmental science, along with army generals and other people who are actually experts who discuss their expertise together to try to arrive at the best solution, rather than participating in some kind of 'cultural war' on behalf of the voters. That's what the Founding Fathers were, and that's what they envisioned for the future.",
"I see a lot of answers blaming politicians and while sure they are to blame. 90% of people you elect will succumb to the corruption, just the way it happens. Their perception changes, their goals change, and the means to reach these goals change.\n\nThe real issue is the simple fact that power corrupts. When people see influence and power, they realize how it can be used in their benefit. And people do things for their benefit. That isn't going to change.\n\nLet me give you an example of how this happens: \n\nA person, Tom, dies of food poisoning. It is really sad and even though sometimes bad things happen, some people in society feel like there is no excuse of these things to happen. These people form an organization, people against food poisoning, or PAFP. \n\nSo Tom a becomes a martyr for PAFD, they bring his heart stricken mom to talks and interviews. She does this because she believes people need to be aware of what can happen, PAFD though thinks thats not enough and that we need a law in place. So PAFD wages a war on the food industry and uses Tom and his mother to further their cause and create public outcry. And it works because people can emphasize with the situation and they think they can prevent accidents from ever happening. \n\nEnough public opinion begins to support this idea and then some politician, called Joe, decides that he will run on the idea that he will prevent this ever from happening again. How will he do this? well he will regulate every business that sells food in his district. He will make them apply for permits and creates a rigid set of regulations for these business to maintain. Which is alright, because now people are safer. \n\nThe problem is some businesses think process A is the best and they are really good at process A. While other businesses think process B is the best and they are really good at process B. So they both get their own research labs, funded by different interest groups. These labs, who employ scientist produce articles, one saying that A is better, one saying that B is better.\n\nSo now that new information is out Joe needs to redesign his law. Both processes are good and the articles out there seem to be quite equal. Well so Joe needs to make a decision. The special interest group behind process A, thinks that they are losing ground but don't want to make the conversion to process B, they also have some competition using process B they would love to kill off. \n\nSo Joe is having a hard time making these decisions, he decides to hire some scientist to look into the issue. BUT WAIT, the foremost scientist are the ones hired by the interest groups. Well technically they are the best people in this field (btw this happens ALOT in politics), and now the scientists are behind their own findings. Why? because they dont want their integrity to be discredited, and the process is fundamentally strong.\n\nJoe talks with some scientists, if he feels like one is better than the other he might go with it, but keep in mind hes betting on scientists paid by special interest groups, which do not have the general populace as their benefactors.\n\nAnyways Joe cant make a decision, so the group behind process A, would love to keep their jobs and businesses. So group A has a big benefit for their research and they invite Joe, all expenses paid. They get him a nice hotel room, a limo to the event, and make him a guest of honor. Everyone makes sure to be super friendly and nice to Joe, they invite him golfing.\n\nThe time has now come for Joe to make a decision, now both processes are good, which one is better for the industry? for small business? for the employees? and most important the general populace? These factors are now void because Joe cant dismiss the solid science of group A and all his new friends.\n\nThe fact is that most processes will hurt almost everyone. The industry as it kills competition, it will hurt small businesses that cant convert to process A, employees might have to do more work and now want more pay but wont get it since profits have not changed, and the general populous loses the ability to chose any businesses that do not conform to process A.\n\nBut wait we aren't done process B supporters are still adamant they are right, they spend even more money on research, spend money on events for other politicians. And the cycle continues.\n\n\nTL:DR\n\nWhat happened was something bad happened. People took action to make the district safer. Joe appeased the people. But in doing so he had to make a decision, and there was no right answer. But he benefited from it, he got elected and got all these new things from the special interest group, his voters are super happy with the new law. His opponents naturally say B was the right choice, and that Joe did too much or too little. The process A group is happy, the businesses who supported process A is happy. There are alot of happy people.\n\nBut theres those who lost. Process B, the process B scientist, the businesses who support process B, the small business who cant afford process A, the employees who worked in process B, and almost always the general populace who lost the ability to chose the businesses who followed process B, though they gained a sense of safety. \n\nWhether or not you agree with if this is the best outcome of Toms death, it is the way it happens.\n",
"It's a bunch of nonsense to act shocked by this. The politicians match the people who elect them.\n\nThe voters are greedy, and they get corruption because they demand it.\n\nIf your congressman does not get you goodies and pork-barrel, then you vote against him next cycle for someone who does. This happens everywhere, and is lamented by everyone. A district usually has a high approval rating for their representative, while congress as a whole has a terrible approval rating.\n\nLobbyists organize money, but the bulk of what they do is inform politicians of what policies are helpful for their business/intersts.\n\nThe amount of money a special interest group has is pretty directly tied to the degree of interaction they have with the American people. Everyone hates big oil, but they love low oil prices, and big oil's power in politics comes from this relationship, rather than from giving a senator a bunch of money in a suitcase. \n\nPeople allow representation from special interest groups becaus they like it when their groups are represented. There is no conspiracy, people just like to kid themselves."
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42j3j3 | what does the filter-looking thing in front of studio microphones do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42j3j3/eli5_what_does_the_filterlooking_thing_in_front/ | {
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"It's called a pop filter and it reduces or eliminates popping sounds from fast moving air hitting the microphone. It also helps keep spit off the mike so that also improves the life span of the mic. ",
"It's a pop shield. When you say words with P or B or are a mouth breather it makes an irritating pop sound. This muffles that"
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6fufvc | why do lcd displays (like alarm clocks) sometimes appear to rapidly jump around when you clear your throat or eat something crunchy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fufvc/eli5_why_do_lcd_displays_like_alarm_clocks/ | {
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"Is this a thing? I've never experienced this. ",
"Your eyes are moving all the time, but your brain stabilizes the image to make it seem calm. However, the LCD is *so* much brighter than its surroundings -- plus flashing on and off 60 times a second -- that your brain fails to fake-stabilize the quickest movements correctly.",
"Many digital clocks (and other displays) flash their lights hundreds of times per second, rather than keeping individual cells on/off steadily.\n\nWhen your eyes are stationary relative to the display, they average out the flashes and you perceive the lights as steady.\n\nWhen your eyes move relative to the display, the flashing can become noticeable. This is especially noticeable with 7-segment LED displays used in many clocks, which are typically red.\n\nIf you were to point a high-speed (\"slow-motion\") video camera at a display, you'd be able to see the flashing quite easily.\n\nThis is also why some video recordings of TV screens will show a band of dark passing over the screen over and over - the screen being recorded is refreshing at a rate out of sync with the recording device.\n\nI'd also like to clear up:\n\n* LED = Light Emitting Diode. If the numbers on your clock glow, they're probably LEDs.\n* LCD = Liquid Crystal Display. If the background glows and the numbers are black, you're probably looking at an LCD. LCDs work in a fundamentally different way, and don't usually exhibit the flickering behavior OP is asking about, so I assume OP is actually asking about LED displays."
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cskf2f | how does a sailors clock work? | My husband and I recently inherited a sailors clock. It goes off every hour and then it will ring at 30 minute intervals around 7am and 5am. Sometimes it will ring every two hours. I'm wondering if there is a reason behind the odd and changing rings or if our clock isn't working. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cskf2f/eli5_how_does_a_sailors_clock_work/ | {
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"What exactly is a \"sailor's clock\"? A quick search didn't turn up anything in particular other than clocks that have sailor themes to them (anchors, ship wheels, etc). My best guess is it may be related to a [ship's bell](_URL_0_), where the bells are used to indicate specific things, however that doesn't exactly match with your \"odd and changing rings\", as they follow a specific pattern that doesn't change.",
"This kind of clock is known as a \"ship's bell\", and it has a chime of eight bells at 4, 8, and 12 to mark the end of standard four hour watches. There is also a single bell for the first half hour, along with an additional bell for every following half hour.\n\nSo you go on watch and a half hour in you get one bell. An hour in you get two bells, an hour and a half into your watch you get three bells, etc. After four hours you are up to eight bells and you switch with the next person on watch."
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clhd4d | how does data travel wirelessly through a sea of omnidirectional signals and maintain it's integrity? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/clhd4d/eli5_how_does_data_travel_wirelessly_through_a/ | {
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"Radio signals are transmitted on a variety of different bands and channels.\n\nThe radio you listen to in your car operates between 87.5 to 107.9MHz (megahertz) in North America, Western Europe, and a few other places, with 0.2MHz spacing to keep the center frequencies on odd decimal points.\n\nWiFi broadcasts are between 2412MHz and 2484MHz with a 6MHz separation, or 5180MHz and 5250MHz with a 10MHz separation.\n\nBy having a wide range of frequencies to operate, and because radio receivers can be tuned for a frequency and filter out other frequencies, you can have a large number of different channels to operate on. Like having different individual telephone wires, the different radio channels allow multiple different signals to coexist in the same place while not interfering with each other.",
"* Waves of any kind only interfere with each other *at specific points of space* and only really if they are the same frequency. \n* Waves can physically pass through each other and come out the other side unaffected. \n* You can try this with two flashlights. Point one at the wall and notice how bright it is, then take another one and cross the beams somewhere in the middle. If you look at the first bright spot, it's the same brightness, it's not darker or brighter.\n* However if you did the same thing but instead of crossing the beams in the middle, you \"crossed\" them at the end where the light hits the wall. The spot *is* brighter. Again it's because waves only interact with each other at specific points in space."
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yakkm | what all this "other memory" is on my iphone and how i should get rid of it. | Thanks, would be a great help. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yakkm/eli5_what_all_this_other_memory_is_on_my_iphone/ | {
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"It's the files that come with iOS by default. Some of these files you don't need, but Apple doesn't want to bother every user and ask them if they need the files, so they just put them in for everyone.\n\nYou can erase some of these files by jailbreaking your iPhone and getting access to the file system, but this won't make that much of a difference anyways. The difference is made in CPU and RAM when you delete daemons that you don't need.\n\n\ntl;dr: your iPhone needs most of that memory to work. Some of it is useless, but the only way to delete it is to jailbreak your iPhone, and even then there won't be much of a difference."
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6gl7yd | how are university tuition fees so cheap or free in europe compared to america or britain? | Where are they getting all the money from to fund this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6gl7yd/eli5_how_are_university_tuition_fees_so_cheap_or/ | {
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"State subsidies and research grants. While public uni in the UK isn't state owned it is state subsidised. Private uni in the UK isn't state subsided and cost a lot more to go there, private uni also isn't very popular. ",
"College education is a business in America. It has been increasing exponentially since the 1980s, far past the rate of inflation. Granted, American universities have added some more services in that time... but, taxpayer funding for public universities has been largely been reduced in those years as well. \n\nEdit: Grammar",
"Tax. We have just a bit more tax but mostly we have just preferered use public money for service like pension, Healthcare and instruction other than military",
"The simple answer is taxes. I'm in the US, and from what I've heard from friends in the UK they have a system there that provides government loans for students who need them, and (if I'm right) those loans are forgiven if not paid back in 30 years. Many universities there are also paid for by taxes eg Oxford and Cambridge.",
"As was said, it's because of taxpayer dollars that universities in Europe are cheaper.\n\nI, personally, think it's the best system because of a few things.\n\n* A) Having an educated populace is essential to the growth, economy and success of a country\n* B) It reduces debt, making it so people don't have to start in the red when they leave college, so that leads to having more disposable income, which can be used to stimulate the economy and/or pay tax dollars.\n* C) Combining both of those things, it leads to a stronger economy which would increase tax revenue. Leads to better employment, which would reduce the strain on welfare and etc. etc.",
"As most people pointed out the main thing is taxes. But I also think it's important to point out that college in America is actually very cheap/reasonable if you want it to be. You can go to community college for two years and then two years at a state school. Get a very good degree for a very reasonable price. The problem is a lot of people go to a very expensive school for 4 years and get a degree that doesn't provide a good career opportunities. Going to a private school where tuition is 40k per year and getting a gender studies degree is a bad investment. Going to community college for two years and then a state college for two years and earning a degree in a STEM field is a very good investment. ",
"Most people think it's taxes or demand or some shit but it's pure greed. There was a time when American college tuition was reasonable. Then, the government made it a lot easier and more likely people could get a student loan. Then all of the sudden tuition skyrocketed because now people could afford to pay more. If you look at the actual numbers, the average loan was a couple thousand back then which is exactly how much tuition rose \"coincidentally\"",
"First of all, the cost of delivering a service and the cost of purchasing that service are only vaguely linked.\n\nIn the case of college education, public universities generally charge what they can given the availability of FAFSA funds. This sets a market rate, so private universities will charge up to double this - to seem more exclusive - and then heavily discount tuition on a student-by-student basis - allowing them to retroactively 'soft reject' students to balance their numbers for an incoming class.\n\nHowever, there are also some significant differences between U.S. and (continental) European schools:\n\n1. Lack of amenities. European schools do not have dorms, gyms and stadiums. They're *just* lectures halls and offices.\n\n2. Lack of administrative overhead. Most of the administrative functions of an American University simply don't exist at European Universities because of that lack of amenities. Consider that at an American University, the President's primary role is that of alumni fund-raising (and they are lavishly compensated for their ability to do this) while the head of a European University is just a paper-shuffler who keeps the lights on (and they are paid accordingly).\n\n3. Different cultural attitude. European Universities are specifically not constructed to be accessible to all students. In secondary school, students are 'tracked' via exams into certain places. As a result, most of the students who would be indifferent C students at an American University end up going to trade school or equivalent places. Similarly, once you're in college, there's very little in the way of remedial or supplementary work offered. If you can't handle the material, that's on you.\n\n4. Bare bones instruction. European Universities generally use large lecture halls, inaccessible (and poorly paid) professors and grade a very limited number of exams. Regular, graded assignments throughout the semester are almost non-existent and if you fail a test, that's on you. Discussion groups overseen by a professor are almost non-existent.\n\nSo, to some extent, you do get what you pay for.",
"I don't see many European schools with 100,000 see football stadiums. Basically, schools over there are not large for-profit institutions masking themselves as school.",
"People keep stating that taxes is the main reason, but what they fail to mention is that the US government guarantees the loans. If people were allowed to default on the student, Universities wouldn't be able to charge a hundred grand for a degree, because most of their attendees couldn't afford it. But since Uncle Sam bails out every failed student loan, Universities can charge ridiculous sums, straddling you with debt before you even get out of school, because the ones that can't/ won't pay, the government covers anyway. It's a win win for them. ",
"I see many answers in this thread were some are blatantly trying to state only the negative side of one or the other. What it really boils down to is a matter of what the countries are striving for and how they hope to achieve that. \n\nEurope in general, and very much as an example Sweden(where I live), stand by the belief that education should be available to all no matter where you were born or in what situation. This has it's obvious downsides and upsides. There are small fees in some schools but those are around the 800$ range for an entire 4 year program. For this to be possible, taxes are alot higher than in the U.S, especially income taxation. Schools are also completely without sports programs and a lot of other things because it's there to educate and nothing more.\n\nAs someone said, why most swedes are basically united on this political topic(it's rarely, or dare i say never brought up in parties campaigns). Is because this is how it's always been and most believe that the equal possibility for education will in turn make the countries economy stronger through an educated population. \n\n(I also saw someone say that uni-professors are paid poorly in Europe. This could be compared to the U.S., ofcourse true, but the fact is that in Sweden it's one of the most well paid professions under the governments control. I know this because my girlfriends dad is a professor in engineering at a very large public school in Stockholm.)\n\nI can't say I know a ton of how the loaning system works but from spending a fair amount of time in the U.S. I can tell you that it mostly boils down to that the capitalistic train of thought that is that if can't promise that you will, or have already, worked for it, you dont deserve it. Some believe that the perks heavily outweigh the consequences. For example the sports programs and the (debateably) higher quality of education. Some may instead argue that the capitalistic system along with higher level schooling splits society by wealth and lets school charge a lot more than many can afford because the demand of schooling is enormous in a world where a degree is almost required to land a job with deceny pay. ",
"My accounting professor used to go on rants about various subjects and this happened to be one of them. His position was that Universities in the United States were so expensive due to the relatively easy access to various forms of student aid. His argument was that if the schools were confident that every incoming student could procure a certain amount of student loans and grants then they would simply adjust their tuition to match this amount in order to maximize revenue. As long as the government kept increasing financial aid limits the schools could raise tuition levels without worrying about students not being able to pay for it. I don't know how truthful this is for non profit Universities, but I have noticed that the \"for profit\" Colleges and technical schools set their tuition costs at exactly the dollar amount of government student aid a student can receive for the period of instruction, usually with nothing left over for living costs.",
"It's not free, it's just paid for through taxes instead of loans. The decision comes down to whether you think someone should pay for their own education, or whether everyone should pay. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but in America at least (where I live) people are so passionate about freedom from the government that they resent the idea of having to pay for someone else's education. ",
"Because in the United States education is a business, not a service. Teachers, administrators, and employees all make good money. Colleges are terribly expensive and sports programs are worth billions of dollars. \n\nTl:Dr schools are a business, and only some students are there for education. Professors at some schools make all over $100,000 a year for essentially part time work. ",
"An explanation for a 5 year old.\n\n* We pay lots of tax.\n\n* Our tax gets used to make education free.\n\n* More of us become more educated. \n\n* More of us get quality jobs and pay lots of tax. \n\nIf you want to build a big sand castle, it only makes sense to give all your friends free spades to help build it. ",
"Inflation calculator shows 55 million in 1984 is 132 million today. Doesn't look like funding has even kept up with inflation.",
"It's not cheap there. It's expensive here. The college/university system in the US is a business system set up for profit. There's entire industries around it putting students in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.\n\nThey also don't do the ridiculous 'college'- > 'postgrad university' thing. Only subjects relevant to your degree. No english and history in my IT degree.\n\nMost elsewhere in the world, tertiary education is set up to get people career-ready in 2 - 4 years. The US system is designed to get money out of people.\n\nSee also: American prison system",
"You don't actually need all that money to fund it. American Universities are for profit companies selling what many people see as a necessity. Hence they are free to jack up the price as much as people are willing/able to pay. Government loans just push the \"able to pay\" bar higher. In Europe, the profit motive is removed and universities cost the state whatever running that thing costs (though there is an argument to be made that private business would run a leaner business - however those savings would not transfer to consumer)."
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6ktudo | why should you only take 1 allergy pill a day, especially if the allergy medication is not effective 24 hours? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ktudo/eli5_why_should_you_only_take_1_allergy_pill_a/ | {
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"two reasons I can think of as a non professional:\n\nPills aren't perfect. When you take an allergy pill, dampening your allergy isn't the only thing it does (ie it has side effects). You don't want too much of these side effects. \n\nAnd also that you don't want to develop a tolerance towards the allergy pill. "
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4oyzs2 | why are some countries' military independent from the government? | Why is it that some countries have to keep their military happy or brace for a coup whilst other countries don't have to worry about that? What differentiates the two? And how does the military get to a point where they can have such a huge influence in government policies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4oyzs2/eli5why_are_some_countries_military_independent/ | {
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"There is no single answer to this but in some countries the military have managed to own land which they can get income from instead of getting income through taxes. This makes it much harder for the government to control the army as they can not reduce their income. Of course there is a lot of politics and culture as well. If the leaders of Pentagon ordered an invasion of the White House and capitol hill they would have to be sure the men were willing to comply with the order. On 23 February 1981 the Spanish Congress were invaded by the Civil Guard and the rest of the army and police were unsure of what orders they should follow until the king made a televised speech condemning the coup.",
"It's all built on power structure. All government is a sensitive, tenuous set of cultural norms, rules, laws, philosophical principles that steer money, power and influence. I think it comes down to a codified system of laws that is enforced by an arm of government considered legitimate in the whole population. To further the legitmacy point, there should be a consistent enforcement of law for ALL levels of society. That way a five star general knows the repurcussions of defying an order, much less conducting a coup.\n\nSecondly, a government may lose legitmacy and power of they can't provide basic functions to citizens such as safety from invaders or domestic enemies, food, shelter, ability to practice forms of religion and in more modern times work. If they fail to provide that, you could see instability that degrades basic trust in the rule of law. Also their is certain shades of difference in what is perceived as providing. For example, hindu Indians may want protection from muslims from within or outside the country. Muslims may want the government to make sure other forms of religion aren't practiced because they may perceive that as a hinderence to their practice. Food and shelter is pretty straightforward but governments have persisted on high levels of poverty from the beginning of time. But it becomes a problem if a large mass of the population all feel the same pressure of survival. Often times governments avoid this issue by blaming their problems on an outsider or domestic subculture. If one or all these issues start to break down, people's loyalty starts to give way to a more regionalist, cultural or even tribal mentality. You don't know the buerecrats in the Capital but you know the Mayor down the street. For example....\n\nThird, the hand that feeds you. The military and it's soldiers need food, money and safety of their family first and foremost. They, ultimately will be most loyal to the entity that can provide that. If a General, pays them out of his own pocket, he receives ultimate loyalty. If it's perceived the Government provides these things then they'd receive the loyalty. Further, leadership needs weapons, ammo and resources to function. Who are they beholden to for these things? Foreign governments like the US or Russia? Or their own Government. Can private citizens or corporations provide this? Can illegal activity like drug sells? The perception of who provides these things is integral because a general needs soldiers motivated to fight and fear and torture only get you so far if they're suffering from starvation. If you can convince soldiers the government did this to them you might make some headway. \n\nLastly, Culture is important. The US, as far as we know has never had a coup, unless you count the confederacy seceding. I think this comes down to a culture of tradition in which the military members pledge alliegence to the constitution, not a person but an idea. Discipline is emphasized and a chain of command in which lawful orders are to followed all the way up to the general lead to a culture of devotion to the government, so long as they provide basic needs and maintain the legitmacy of that very idea soldiers pledge too. I think the US is unique though because of the religious and cultural context. We don't have a situation like Pakistan, India, or south America or Africa where you may have large subsets of very different cultures and groups within the same \"nation\". These cultures, religions, tribes and groups have existed for millenia longer then the concept of a nation. So if legitimacy breaks down, it's citizens are far more loyal to their sub groups then they are the nation. A problem that could go further if the military has access to weapons and supplies without the support of the government. They use the cultural and religious differences to drive a wedge between a soldiers sense of national patriotism and his alliegence to a sub group and his desire for his family's basic needs. The US history exists exclusively in the context of nation states existing. In contrast, middle eastern \"nations\" african nations, etc may contain several ancient kingdoms and religious holy lands within the same borders. These kingdoms have histories that stretch far longer than the modern nation states that replaced them. So if basic need breaks down. It's hard to keep these places together.\n\nStable nation states should really analyze their complicity in inflaming this issue. From, allowing people to starve, propping up illegitimate governments, supplying opposing forces, committing illegal atrocities in other sovereign territories etc... they all create the perfect ingredients for coups and instability that cause strong men to step in and rule unapposed."
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1bjxz5 | what is the physical difference between normal cds and rewritable cds? | I know data is stored by "etching" on the CD, but what makes a rewritable CD...rewritable? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bjxz5/eli5_what_is_the_physical_difference_between/ | {
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"A \"static\" CD that can't be rewritten can be made in several ways, and one of them is to let every spot that's supposed to hold a bit either have a \"mirror\" that reflects the laser or something that absorbs it. Reflection or non-reflection reveals what the bit is.\n\nA rewritable CD has a chemical that can change state when heated by a laser. By using a stronger laser than the one used for reading, the chemical can be made to either reflect or absorb the reading laser once it has cooled off.",
"The recording process for CD-R is made possible by the fact that CD-ROM readers don’t actually touch the surface of the disc—they only look at it. A home-recorded CD need not actually have the pits and land areas of a normal CD, as long as it appears to have them.\n\nRecordable CDs are physically different than mass-produced ones. They are coated with metal and then overlaid with photosensitive organic dye. The dye layer reflects back to a CD-ROM drive just as a blank CD would (that is, all land). During recording, a laser heats the metal and the dye layers in certain spots so that they change their reflectivity to resemble a pit on an aluminum-pitted CD. When a drive reads the CD, the CD appears to have the normal pit and land areas of a commercially produced CD, even though there are not actually any pits.\n\nGreen dye, gold metal: This is the standard type of CD-R and the first to be developed. It has a rated lifespan of 10 years and uses cyanine dye, which can be more forgiving of disc-write and disc-read variations than some other dyes. This results in a CD that will likely play well in any CD player. Manufacturers include Imation, 3M, Memorex, Kodak, BASF, and TDK.\nGold dye, gold metal: The gold dye used here is phthalocyanine. It is a more sensitive CD with less tolerance for power variations and might be less likely to work in a wide variety of drives. Manufacturers include Mitsui, Kodak, Maxell, and Ricoh.\nBlue dye, silver metal: The blue dye is azo. This combination has similar properties to the green-gold combo but is rated to last much longer: 100 years. These discs are great for long-term data storage.\n\nWhat’s the difference in media between CD-R and CD-RW?\nThe CD-RW medium is physically different from a CD-R disc. It’s more complex and costs more to manufacture, which is why CD-RW discs cost so much more. Earlier, you learned how data is burned into a CD-R by heating the dye and metal to change how it reflects in certain spots on the disc. That change is permanent.\n\nA CD-RW disc, in contrast, does not have the traditional dye-and-metal coating. Instead, it is coated with a metal alloy (containing silver, indium, antimony, and tellurium, in case you’re curious) with reflective properties that change depending on the temperature to which you heat it.\n\nA CD-RW drive has a laser that has three different power settings. The high setting heats the alloy to around 600 degrees Celsius, at which temperature it liquefies. When it solidifies again, it has lost its reflective properties. This imitates a pit. The same spot can be reheated to a lower temperature (around 200 degrees Celsius), causing it to revert back to its original reflectivity, imitating a land area. That’s how it rewrites an area. The lowest power setting is used to read the data without changing it.\n\nEDIT: Here is the link I got the info from. I posted the short and sweet for you. I hope this helps. _URL_0_"
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d4s88b | how did wasd become the standard for movement control for video games on pc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d4s88b/eli5_how_did_wasd_become_the_standard_for/ | {
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"For a long time, gamers used nothing but the keyboard to move and look around in 3D third person and first person games. Many people didn't even really think to use a mouse to play, especially since mouse looking in very early first person shooters was limited to moving on the x-axis (moving left to right) - it didn't give any huge advantage over looking left and right with the keyboard.\n\nOver time, as mouse looking became more popular, people started experimenting with other sets of keys to use for moving around. WASD was one option. ESDF was another one, some people even experimented with random crap like ASZX or ZXCV. \n\nWASD started becoming the most popular during the days of Quake, since people kept asking one of the bigger name tournament winners of the time what his setup was and he explained it. So, he wasn't necessarily the first person to come up with this control scheme, but he definitely helped make it more popular among the gaming scene of the time, and with time it just became a natural standardized configuration for PC games.",
"WASD controls have existed since the 80's but it was hardly a standard. Popular FPS games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D had controls all over the place until the late 90's.\n\nQuake player Dennis “Thresh” Fong is credited with popularizing the control scheme, as his recommended configuration was packaged along with versions of the game.\n\nAfter Quake's success the control scheme was used as the default in Half-life and it's most successful mods Counter-Strike and Team Fortress which made it the de-facto standard for FPS games.\n\nAs for why WASD vs WADX or the arrows keys or number pad?\n\nWASD is naturally comfortable for the left hand on the keyboard, the thumb can is in position to hit space and the pinky shift+tab. This complements using the mouse in the right hand for aiming. \n\nPrior to mouse aiming in games the left and right arrows or A and D keys would turn left and right vs strafing side to side."
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1kdegx | why are magazines (i.e. maxim, rollingstone etc.) called magazines? | googled this and all i got was gun magazines and references to german/french words. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kdegx/eli5why_are_magazines_ie_maxim_rollingstone_etc/ | {
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"The origins of the word come from Spanish, Italian, and other root languages all essentially meaning a \"storehouse.\" The first every \"magazine\" was Gentleman's Magazine in 1731, which used that term as a \"storehouse\" of information. Since then, publications like this were magazines. [Source](_URL_0_)",
" > Magazines, periodicals, glossies, or serials are publications that are printed with ink on paper, and generally published on a regular schedule and containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three.[1] **At its root, the word magazine refers to a collection or storage location. In the case of written publication, it is a collection of written articles.**\n\n[...]\n\n > The Gentleman's Magazine, first published in 1731, in London, is considered to have been the first general-interest magazine. Edward Cave, who edited The Gentleman's Magazine under the pen name \"Sylvanus Urban,\" was the first to use the term \"magazine,\" on the analogy of a military storehouse of varied materiel, ultimately derived from the Arabic makhazin (\"storehouses\") by way of the French language.[4] **Wordsmith offers this origin: \"Plural of Arabic makhzan: storehouse, used figuratively as \"storehouse of information\" for books, and later to periodicals).\"**[5]\n\n_URL_0_\n\nHope it helps."
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2b8hrs | what's wrong with microwave meals? | What's wrong with microwave meals?
I used to guzzle them down at least twice a week and I was allways told that they're extremely bad for you, or "Pieces of Sh & *" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2b8hrs/eli5_whats_wrong_with_microwave_meals/ | {
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"They aren't as bad as many people may think. Frozen microwaved meals often have less salt/preservatives due to the fact that they are flash frozen for preservation. Now, they certainly aren't chock full of nutrients or vitamins by any stretch of the imagination, and can certainly have plenty of bad qualities, but there's nothing inherently \"bad\" about it being a frozen and microwavable meal, if that's what people are insinuating."
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44wt8f | why is it seen ok for people to earn below the wage of living? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44wt8f/eli5_why_is_it_seen_ok_for_people_to_earn_below/ | {
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"Because there is much to do so Uncle Sam doesn't pay attention to the fact that people who make such little money are forced to find other (sometimes illegal) ways to make money. \n\nIt's a downward spiral for some. It's really not OK, the US govt. just hasn't really noticed.\n\nImagine being in a position of power; you don't really live life the way everyone else does. Thus you don't have the same concerns as the general population.\n\n---\n\nIt's almost like owning a community forum and not being a part of the community. So the people who are contributing to the forum are usually more avid and knowledgeable about what goes on there. Whereas the owner is blind in that regard, and only focuses on the \"structure\" and \"integrity\" of the board in addition to the number of members and sometimes diversity. \n\n(I ran a community forum back in the day.)",
"1. The idea is that people who earn less than a living wage should work harder in order to survive.\n2. A lot of people blame them for not working harder during school. They see their low wages as punishment for laziness.\n3. Many harder working people around the world make significantly less. Over 2 billion people around the world live on less than $2/day, even after adjusting for cost of living. If they lived in the US, they would have to live on $750/year, compared to the American minimum wage of $15,000/year. If they can't get a living wage, why should Americans who have the same level of education? The difference can be as slight as being born 30 miles above or below the US-Mexico border.\n4. Paying for others to make a minimum wage often means taking money away from those who work hard and were successful. If money is to be taken away from the rich to support the poor, why is it being given to people who make $7.25/hour instead of those making $2/day?\n5. Taking money away from the wealthy means taking money away from long term infrastructure investments. The poor buy rice. The rich buy machines that make rice faster and cheaper.\n\nYou can come to your own opinion about these points, but these are common reasons people give. I assumed you wanted to know about this argument with regards to the US (which is usually what people mean when they say living wage,) but there is a separate, but related logic when considering it internationally."
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8gkw26 | why do movie companies add noise to movies when tv companies try to remove it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8gkw26/eli5_why_do_movie_companies_add_noise_to_movies/ | {
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"Noise requires more bandwidth to transmit faithfully, and TV is heavily encoded to fit into a pretty small band. Movies don't need as much compression, as they are sent in very high bandwidth channels like FedEx.\n\nNoise, on the good side, prevents objects from looking \"shiny\" and makes small movement more obvious. This helps you see facial expressions, the \"acting\" part of the images."
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at0yjd | how can phones have 8gb ram in such a small formfactor and pc needs these huge 4gb ram stick? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/at0yjd/eli5_how_can_phones_have_8gb_ram_in_such_a_small/ | {
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"This has to do with industry standards. The RAM slots on PC's are almost always the same size. A 64GB RAM stick is the same size as early 256MB RAM sticks. The size does not really represent the power/storage anymore. It's just a matter of standardization. \n\nAddition: RAM chips in phones are often integrated and can't be swapped. Cell phone RAM is also a lot slower. It consumes less power, which means it doesn't reach the same temperatures as the far more powerful equivalents in desktop computers. In larger chips, it is easier to distribute heat than in smaller chips, so a larger stick is beneficial for desktop RAM. And well... Desktops simply have the room for it.\n\n",
"RAM chips on a standard PCB with the DIMM standard make PC RAM sticks.\n\nRAM chips crammed as close as possible on a custom PCB inside a phone make phone RAM.",
"Space isn't a premium in desktop PC's, so the DRAM on PC memory can be made larger and therefore cheaper. \nSpace absolutely is a premium on mobile phones, so the DRAM has to be made as small as possible - which is expensive.\n",
"For mobile phones, they use very lower powered memory chips, running at a lower clock speed, lower voltage and often lower bus width as well, that is how much data can be transmitted at the same time. This allows them to put the chips into smaller packages without risk of overheating, possibly even stack multiple chips on top of each other into a single package like they do with memory cards.\n\nBut the 4 GB modules aren't anywhere near their maximum capacity. You can buy 16, 32, 64 and in the near future even 128 GB modules, which all fit into the same form factor. ",
"The RAM chips themselves may not differ much in size (I'm honestly not sure whether it's the same modules or not) but on PC RAM the chips are soldered to a RAM stick that will make the RAM fit in a standard motherboard - whereas in a phone the RAM is soldered directly to the PCB in the phone, in a way that optimises space. \n\n & #x200B;\n\n(In a PC that'd be the equivalent of the little black chips being soldered straight on the motherboard instead of going on a stick and then into a slot)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe advantage of the stick in the PC as that you can easily swap it with a different one. ",
"I've seen 1MB DIMMs that are recognizable as such, I think desktop parts have more to do with a standard form factor than the limits of technology. Whenever you see RAM soldered down, it's smaller because it's designed with that specific device in mind. So I don't think the desktop \"needs\" the extra space, it was just never worth building a new shape for a RAM interface. A good analogy would be comparing 2.5 inch SATA SSDs to an M.2 SATA SSD. The technology is similar, just a different shape. In some cases, bigger may be better just because it fits where you want it to fit. Space isn't at as much of a premium in a desktop, if it ain't broke don't fix it",
"In addition to what others have said about existing standards:\n\n* The RAM stick standard size is based off RAM sticks from well over a decade ago. Desktop RAM sticks have larger contacts than laptop RAM for more stable contacts (see ref pic halfway down on [this StackOverflow article](_URL_2_)). Part of the reason is the NUMBER of contacts. The DDR4 standard, for example, defines a certain number of pins, the data path 'width' per cycle. Fewer pin contacts would require a different standard but ALSO be much harder to reach the same speeds with.\n* There is the SO-DIMM standard. However, it's not MUCH smaller (about half the length) and requires far more compact traces, which are more failure-prone. It's used heavily in laptops with upgradable RAM, but even this is too big for a lot of devices. In laptops, that stick is laying down - which takes a LOT of valuable motherboard space - while also still adding a good .5\" thickness. Apple is a good example of this - their laptops haven't had upgradable RAM in years, and part of the reason is that they try to minimize thickness (to an unhealthy degree).\n* We don't use SO-DIMM in desktops because the motherboard space isn't as much of a premium, and because we tend to want to maximize speed instead. RAM can have a number of different compromises, but it can't be fast, cheap AND space efficient. Pick 2. :)\n* Many laptops (and even some Small-Form Factor desktops) often have RAM chips directly soldiered-on the motherboard to deal with this very issue. However, this has substantial downsides - more custom engineering, higher manufacturing cost, higher repair/replacement costs.\n* Many phones use higher density modules (RAM chips) to help save space, and package-on-package is being used to save even more. For example, the Samsung Galaxy S9+ has 6GB, and [in this teardown on iFixit](_URL_1_), it's embedded on the CPU in a second layer. This makes sense - the CPU and GPU are in the single SOC, and they are really the only things that need direct RAM access, so all of those connections skip the 'motherboard' entirely and are just in the SOC package. Meanwhile, if you [look at the part number for that RAM chip on Samsung's site](_URL_0_), it's listed as 48Gb (RAM chips, unlike sticks, are listed in Gigabits, not Gigabytes). That's VERY high density. That high density is also VERY expensive. Compare that with [this cheap stick of 4GB DDR4 desktop RAM](_URL_3_); it's not worried about space savings (in fact, only half of one side of the PCB is used!), and is instead using 4x 8Gb chips to reach 4GB. Those low density chips are much less expensive, and PCB traces map them to the full DDR4 standard (with the help of a very tiny chip in the middle of the PCB).\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo TL;DR: The industry never came up with a smaller RAM board standard than DIMM/SO-DIMM because you need a large number of contacts for RAM to be fast. Very high density RAM is MUCH more expensive, and since space is not at a premium and there is the option to put it directly on the motherboard or in a package-on-package solution, there isn't enough demand to justify the work on one. \n\n\nUpdate: Added SO-DIMM to the explanation.",
"the ram in your phone costs waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than the ram that pc takes, the smaller the device the more it costs to minatuarize the hardware. ie parts for a laptop are more $$$ and phones even more so. ",
"4 gigs of ram in a phone will underperform 4 gigs of ram in a pc",
"As I've seen, many people have said that it's because of the standard of desktop RAM. This is entirely correct, but I'd just like to expand on that. I've seen the same size RAM sticks carry anywhere between 512mb (and probably smaller) up to 64gb. All of these were the same size module, but the chips on the module are pretty spread out on something like an 8gb. Those chips are basically put very close together in phones to make the same amount of RAM for into such a small form factor. Phone manufacturers almost always opt to buy more condensed chips that have less speed as well, since it's not necessarily as important on a smartphone with a less powerful CPU. All of this combined helps to pack in more and more RAM into a smaller and smaller package. ",
"The PC memory chips themselves are quite small nowadays vs printed circuit board (stick) they're attached to.",
"thats like asking how can ssd and pen drives be so differently sized if there are pen drives that can hold like +150gb... \n \nthe larger the size, more space for extra circuits, heatsinks and more access to power, higher voltages and frequencies.",
"Mostly it has to do with the number of chips/width of the data path. PCs need 64bit data width per stick, and most chips are 8bits each. That’s why most sticks of ram will have 8 or 16 chips. ECC ram is 72bits wide (64b of data and 8b of checksums), so they are generally 9/18 chips per stick. Sometimes you will see desktop ram with only four chips per stick, these use 16b per chip ram chips, which are slightly more expensive, but this can be cost-effective late in a generation (when 4*1.25$ is less than 8*.85$, for example). Cell phones will generally use a much smaller number of larger, more complex ram chips, so instead of needing 8/16 per stick, they may only use 1-4 ram chips total, but they will be wide (32b-64b) and very high capacity (1-2GB per chip). This is done because paying a much higher price isn’t a problem, because small is valuable, and the chips only need to work for a given design, they don’t have to follow arbitrary standards.",
"There are a few reasons for this.\n\n1. Standardization. A PC conforms to a standard which is the size of that ram chip(which is actually many \"microchips\" soldered to a small PCB). A phone tends to have the individual microchips soldered directly to the main PCB, so they can go wherever there's space.\n2. Heat. A PC tends to run at full speed more of the time, and therefor heat dissipation needs to be taken into account. A cell phone will simply step down the speed (and heat generation) when necessary.\n3. Repairability. A PC, you can swap out that ram chip for another to repair it. In a phone, that ram chip is put \"wherever it can fit\". To fix a phone RAM chip requires precision soldering and tons of flux (so much flux).\n4. Use case. A phone must be portable. Therefor, all design decisions take that into account. If they must make a compromise for portability, they likely will. A PC on the other hand is not meant to be portable, it's meant to be powerful and sit in one place. Therefor, the decisions tend to compromise space in favor of function.",
"Memory chips for mobile usually have internally stack of chips. This makes it harder from heat, power and signal integrity points of view. This is why the modules in phones run at much lower frequency.\n\nPC's can cool them easier and run wider buses (64 bit/72 bit), but in mobile they often only use 16 bit for data bus. This is limitation due to soc design and board space for tracks. This makes them significantly slower.",
"It's all on one little chip. The rest is just the circuit board for the connector.\n\nIf you look at the ram stick in a PC, you'll see a number of little chips. Like a 128gb PC ram stick will have 16 8gb chips on it, 8 on each side.\n\nWith the phone, they just put one of those chips directly on the phone's circuit board instead of having the connectors to make it a replaceable part, since small size is favored over replace-ability\n\nIn the days of 4gb ram, the phone memory was like 512mb, as that's how big the chips were.",
"It's not the same. Stuff in a phone may be called similar things to PC components, but they perform vastly inferior. \n\nStuff in your PC is made for exceptional performance. Stuff in phones are made to be small and to generate as little heat as possible. ",
"Do you see the little black chips on the ram stick. That is the ram just about every thing else is useless filler, to keep it atca standard size. A phone can have just one of those black chips to have 8gb ram and even then the can get made smaller since half of the size of that black chip is just for protection",
"The most common ram standard for most desktop computers is DDR (Double Data Rate). This standard provides for modular memory chips that run with well defined specifications, from electrical things like voltage to logical things like how many connections there are between the ram chip and the board (and what each does) to physical specifications like how long and wide the chip is. The specifications allow for ranges; for instance: the DDR4 standard allows for desktop RAM chips, called DIMMs, that have 512GB of memory on each module. That would be very expensive to manufacture so more common sizes are 4, 8, and 16GB simply because of economics. If you have ever opened up a laptop, you may have noticed that laptops typically have much smaller modules. These smaller modules, called SODIMMs, are still part of the DDR standard, just a different section. Despite both being DDR and performing the same function, they are not interchangeable.\n\nComputing standards are basically just a set of ideas and concepts that are published with the idea of agreeing on certain implementations or solving particular problems. In the case of desktop RAM, different people or companies create the motherboard and the RAM so they’ve both agreed to use the DDR standard so their products work together.\n\nWith a mobile device, such as Apple’s iPhone, power consumption and physical size requirements become very important. To address these important concerns, they went with a different standard (probably a private or proprietary standard) which calls for integrating the RAM directly to the motherboard. This has the disadvantage of removing the modularity and flexibility of the board — if you wanted more RAM or if the RAM chips died, you would have to replace the entire board unless you have the skills and tools necessary to re-engineer those pieces. Even if you did, the parts you would need are usually very specific and may be hard to find if the device is no longer being manufactured.",
"think of it as a 100 car parking, the phones parking space is like of a mall, one entrance and one exit, and the computer as an open land used for parking, both can accommodate the same number of vehicles, but not at the same speed.",
"Computer RAM increases bandwidth by accessing multiple chips simultaneously. \nOne stick of RAM holds either 8 chips (single sided), or 16 chips (two sided)\n\nA byte of RAM (8 bits) is read/written across 8 chips - one bit per chip - rather than accessing all 8 bits from one chip.\n\nTo make bandwidth even faster, computers often run RAM in dual channel mode, where they read/write data across two sticks of RAM simultaneously, effectively doubling the bandwidth.\n\nSmartphones don't have the space or the power budget to run that many RAM chips at once, so they just use one chip. But this means it won't reach the same level of bandwidth. ",
"Everyone else is super right, but I just wanted to add because PCs are also around for a while longer, as you upgrade them and bring new life back. If those ram sticks didnt have to come out ever, they could have made them smaller",
"Pc components can easily be made smaller than they exist as. It's just that with desktops size is something that nobody cares about"
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"https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+S9++Teardown/104308",
"https://superuser.com/questions/18995/how-can-i-tell-what-ram-will-fit-my-computer",
"https://www.amazon.com/Patriot-Signature-Module-PC4-19200-PSD44G240081/dp/B016A3B09U/"
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1zuygo | why don't people take the flu shot? | I have heard of a lot of people that choose not to take the flu shot and I don't understand why they don't. What are the concerns? I've heard that the claims that people make about why the flu shot is bad are invalid. Is this true? If so, why are their arguments invalid? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zuygo/eli5_why_dont_people_take_the_flu_shot/ | {
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"I don't get the flu shot because I'm terrified of needles. \n\n > I've heard that the claims that people make about why the flu shot is bad are invalid\n\nThere are many, many different strains of the flu. To be protected against a particular strain, you must be vaccinated against it. The main factor that causes the flu shot's efficacy to vary is that composition of the strains present in the environment changes every year. Pharmaceutical companies use the strains most common in the opposite hemisphere's flu season to estimate which strains will be common in their area, but it doesn't always work out. The vaccine also varies in effectiveness (some estimates put the range at 20%) based on the immune system of the recipient. \n\nYou can read more about this at the [CDC's website](_URL_0_)\n\n\nThis being said I think it's important for people to know that, at the individual level you might not see a protective effect, heck you might even see a deleterious effect because the efficacy of the vaccine can vary at the from person to person. However, study after study by the CDC has shown that, at the *population level*, vaccination has a protective effect against flu morbidity and mortality. ",
"For a number of reasons. Some people think it doesn't work, since it only protects you from a couple of viruses that give you the flu (it would be impossible to immunize you from all of them). It can be scary thinking that you're being injected with a small amount of the virus, considering there's a small chance your immune system may not be able to fight it off. It just won't necessarily help you. I personally only get it because it working in a retirement home requires you to. ",
"I'm from England, I'm in my late twenties. I have never had a flu shot and I don't know anyone who has had it. As far as I know only babies, the elderly, and people with certain conditions need to have a flu shot.\nEdit: going by what I said above I probably did have a flu shot when I was a baby...",
"There are a variety of reasons.\n\nFirst and foremost, they just decide not to get it because they are too busy/lazy, a lot of people just don't see the need and prioritize it lower on the scale of what they need.\n\nSecondly, some people have adverse effects to any type of needle or vaccination, because they may have an allergy to any of the components of it.\n\nThere are also those who think that it causes the flu and/or think that it is worthless because it only protects against a certain type, which is both true and untrue, it protects against any mutated variants of the most recently updated vaccine. Vaccines are made of mainly \"dead viruses\" this means viruses that our body can handle and won't get sick from. Some people do get sick, but the majority don't. But they protect against any strains that are mutated off from that strain due having antibodies to the common ancestor, unless they mutated into a superbug (a virus/bacteria resistant to drugs, such as MRSA).\n\nAnd lastly there are conspiracy theoriest who believe any shot is the government trying to track you and/or that vaccines cause autism/autism spectrum disorders. Which is false, everyone knows that the government tracks you through your tooth fillings."
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18n3v6 | the meteor's smoke trail over russia | Why were there two distinct smoke trails in the sky over Russia when there was only one meteor? Included picture
_URL_0_
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18n3v6/eli5_the_meteors_smoke_trail_over_russia/ | {
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"It was breaking apart most likely. The pieces that broke off likely burned up or exploded in the air. "
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8q50hu | why do people find fat animals cute, but other fat humans unappealing. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8q50hu/eli5_why_do_people_find_fat_animals_cute_but/ | {
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"What we find cute is very much determined by what babies look like. It's just instinct. Babies, for biological reasons, are chubby and round. They have large eyes for reasons having to do with wavelengths of light and rules of physics. In babies, these qualities are normal. In adults, they aren't, and that makes them less desirable.\n\nThat's a very simplified version, but this is ELI5. ",
"For one, sometimes chubbiness is considered cute in humans (that kid from UP or Mario are characters designed to look cuter this way). However, it's usually linked to a lack of sex appeal. Most adults in modern western society don't find fatness attractive in adults that are \"valid sex partners of interest\", so to speak. So like, if you want to have sex with someone like them most people think fatness makes them look less attractive and more disappointing and for stuff you don't want to have sex with ever it's okay for them to have a non\\-sexy look. I've heard in some other times and places fatness was considered attractive due to showing high\\-class status (to afford the food)."
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1k3oq0 | how the overuse of antibiotics is making them less effective. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1k3oq0/eli5_how_the_overuse_of_antibiotics_is_making/ | {
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"edit: for clarity, bacterium is singular and bacteria is plural. \n\nTake a population of bacteria. Each individual bacterium has its own set of genes and sometimes, there will be a mutation causing a new or altered gene to appear. Mutations are rare, but there are millions and millions of bacteria, so they do happen every once in a while.\n\nOccasionally, you'll come across a mutant bacterium that has a gene which gives it resistance to a particular antibiotic. So, if you use an antibiotic in this situation, every bacterium *except for* the resistant one will die, leaving only the resistant one free to reproduce and pass on its genes and thus its immunity. \n\nSo, if you overuse antibiotics for things that don't really require one (like a cold, which is caused by a virus), then you're creating a situation in which there's evolutionary selection for immunity to antibiotics. By consequence, there will be more and more bacteria that can survive antibiotics causing the antibiotics to become useless. ",
"Over time some strains of illnesses become antibiotic resistant. \n\nSo imagine if you put lots of squirrels into an environment where only light colored squirrels survived to reproduce. Over time, only light colored squirrels would remain. \n\nIn this case, substitute light colored for antibiotic resistant and squirrels for bacteria. ",
"Okay, imagine a big group of evil germs inside of you. You don't want these germs inside you, so you go to the doctor and he gives this thingy called an antibiotic. I know it's a big word, you say it like this: ant-eye-bye-aw-tick. Think of it as a super hero. Now, even though the hero is SUPPOSED to kill all of the evil germs, he doesn't. He gets almost all of them, and it's those germs that know how to get away from him. So now the next time the hero comes back, a lot more evil germs know how to get away because the evil germs that escaped the first time made a lot more evil germs just like themselves. And eventually, so many bad guys will know how to get away that the hero can't do anything and he gets sad because he can't do his job. \nThe end",
"Evolution. In big things like mammals it takes a long time because it takes generations and generations to adapt to hardships. In a small space you will have millions of bacteria, with short life spans. So if you introduce a poison like an antibiotic, millions will die, but some will adapt and reproduce and reproduce and the adaptation spreads quickly and then they are tolerant to that antibiotic. Well, the more you give antibiotics, the more this happens, and the more it happens the more it spreads from person to person and you start to get outbreaks of bacteria that can't bekilled by that particular aantibiotic until that bacteria replaces the previous kind that could be killed by it completely. And then you use a different antibiotic and it starts again.\n\nRestricting antibiotics to what really needs them will reduce these mutations, and reduce the spread of them because less people will be creating these resistant bacterium. But the problem is that Dr's have been giving them out like candy, for everything. Even the fluand common cold, which are viruses and antibiotics have no effect on them, but they give them to make people feel better via the placebo effect of just don't know specifically what they have. So more and more people get the antibiotics when they don't need them and just become little resistant bacteria farms and become carriers and spread the new resistant breeds. \n\nHope that makes sense."
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3ocrl8 | where do the abbreviations for "number" (no.) and "pound" (lb.) come from? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ocrl8/eli5_where_do_the_abbreviations_for_number_no_and/ | {
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"No. comes from Latin _numero_. Similarly, lb comes also has Latin roots as it comes from _libra_ which means \"scales\"."
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3btg6j | would donald trump have to give up control of his businesses if he became president? | Since Trump owns/controls a lot of companies, wouldn't it be a conflict of interest if he became President? Couldn't he make decisions that benefit him? What laws/rules are in place to prevent this?
I'm less interested in whether you think he can/will win the election and more interested in the hypothetical: what if he does? What happens to his companies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3btg6j/eli5_would_donald_trump_have_to_give_up_control/ | {
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"He would not have to give up his companies. While you are right that it could result in a conflict of interest, there is nothing that explicitly states you cannot run a business while serving as president.\n\nHowever the president could face trouble for specific actions he takes if they are a conflict of interest. ",
"In the event that hell froze over and he won he could probably just sign the businesses I've to his kids. "
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dkkxqh | why do some cancers have a hereditary component, and others do not? | One family member dies of gastric cancer and I'm not supposed to worry, but another dies of colon cancer and it's a big red flag. What's the difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dkkxqh/eli5_why_do_some_cancers_have_a_hereditary/ | {
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"Cancer happens when various genes relating to properly growing are mutated. It doesn't just take one mutation, though, it takes several different mutations in order to make a cell go from normal to cancerous, because there's a lot of redundancy and back-up genes. Cancers that have a hereditary component come from an inherit-able mutation that already deactivates or alters a gene related to proper cell growth. Non-hereditary components come from spontaneous brand new mutations appearing in people, not mutations they started out with from their parents.",
"When a mutation is inherited so is present in the chromosomes of the offspring, followed by a random/sporadic mutation in the offspring’s lifetime, it can cause cancers. These are often referred to as predisposition cancers as the individual is predisposed (more likely) to getting this particular cancer due to inheriting a particular mutation"
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agfh8i | what else is in a human body? | i know that we’re filled with veins and organs and bones but there must be some extra space in there that we need to fill up. like if you were to take a cross section of an arm, it wouldn’t be packed to the skin with veins and arteries, so what fills up the rest of our body?
edit: ok turns out i’m just rlly dumb i forgot muscle and stuff | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/agfh8i/eli5_what_else_is_in_a_human_body/ | {
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"Depending on your build, you could most certainly expect to encounter muscles of varying sizes as well as fat. You’ll also see membranes that hold certain tissues together, ligaments, joints, as well as all the things you already listed. It’s pretty compact for the most part. Even our body cavity is pretty full of stuff. The only real “empty space” I can think of is inside the lungs and even then, I wouldn’t qualify it as empty space. ",
"Most of the remaining space would be filled with muscle and then depending on your body fat percentage nearly all of what remains would be filled with fat. Especially between organs there is a lot of fat to cushion and support them. Muscle takes up a huge portion of the space inside your body."
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3l7nsd | why are almost all blockbuster video game releases rated m when an r rating for a film is usually considered a huge bottle neck on sales? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3l7nsd/eli5_why_are_almost_all_blockbuster_video_game/ | {
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"M rating is pretty much the same as an R rating for a movie, its when its A/O (which to movie studios is similar to a NC17) then its a bottleneck",
"Nobody really enforces age limits in video games to the same extent that movies do, so it's harder for a parent to bring their child to the theater than it is for them to buy them a video game. ",
"~20 years ago, video games were considered to be something that mainly children play. Therefore, if you had a Mature rating, it would exclude the large number of children playing video games at that time.\n\nBut now after 20 years, these children have grown up and some of them still like to play video games. The demographic is now much more balanced since the average age of a gamer is now 31 years old. Therefore, an M rating doesn't exclude too many players since many of them are older than 18."
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2bpmtu | why are hybrid batterys and ev batteries considered bad for the environment? | And are Tesla batteries any better? I hear a lot of people mention that prius batteries cause more damage because we can't recycle them and the mining process. But I never hear anyone say anything about Tesla | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bpmtu/eli5_why_are_hybrid_batterys_and_ev_batteries/ | {
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"That idea is largely rooted in misinformation and confirmation bias, starting with the Prius. Let's start with the sources: The first big one was the Daily Mail (original text of the article [here](_URL_3_)) which claimed that nickel mining for the Prius had devastated Sudbury's environment. That article [was retracted](_URL_4_) after someone pointed out that the environmental damage both happened, and was cleaned up, decades before the Prius ever existed.\n\nThe second article came from CNW Marketing, which infamously claimed that the Prius was worse for the environment than the Hummer. That article, too, was [thoroughly debunked](_URL_0_) for making faulty and biased assumptions that contradicted the literature.\n\nNow, even though these articles were ultimately refuted and debunked, a lot of people only heard about the articles when they were initially published, and failed to hear about the retraction/refutation of them. In the absence of knowledge of the corrections, the idea continued to grow in spite of the facts, perpetuated by people who dislike the Prius, and became uncritically accepting of any negative information about it as a result.\n\nIn actual fact, hybrids and electric cars [do have a lower environmental impact](_URL_5_), even [accounting for the chemicals released into the environment in the mining process](_URL_2_) (it more than offsets the environmental impact through reduced fuel extraction thanks to efficiency gains) and there is an [well-established recycling stream](_URL_1_) for automotive batteries.\n\nFinally, I feel the most likely explanation as to why Tesla doesn't get hit with the same objections is because people generally see Tesla's cars as performance cars, meaning that people would be seen to be buying it for reasons other than environmental conservation, which was a reason readily attributed to Prius drivers."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://www.pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/hummer_vs_prius3.pdf",
"http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/what-happens-to-ev-and-hybrid-batteries.html",
"http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/es903729a#",
"http://priuschat.com/threads/toyota-factory-turns-landscape-to-arid-wilderness.25933/",
"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-417227/Toyota-factory.html",
"http://www.environment.ucla.edu/media/files/BatteryElectricVehicleLCA2012-rh-ptd.pdf"
]
]
|
|
6agu7o | why isn't there a display technology that uses the actual full color spectrum, instead of rgb lights? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6agu7o/eli5_why_isnt_there_a_display_technology_that/ | {
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"There are receptors in your eyes called cones that process color. Theee are three kinds of cones that process three different wavelengths of light: red, green, and blue. \n\nEvery color you have ever seen in your entire life has been a combination of those three colors. That's why an RGB display can generate every color. ",
"Speaking specifically about displays, modern rgb diodes are formed of crystalline tubes suspended in a clear liquid filled box. Three of these boxes put together form a rgb diode, or the pixels you see. When an electric current is applied, the crystals flex and bend, and light passing through bends to follow the tubes, like a car moving though a tunnel. \nThis bent light wave appear as red green or blue, depending on which section of the bulb has electricity moving through it.\nEach section (you can see when you look closely) has only one type of tube in it, and when electricity passes through, flexes in only one way, though the amount of flex is variable. This is why we only use rgb. \nWe can mix nearly any color using them, as well as its simple to make. in order to do it with a single \"range\" diode, it would have to be able to flex in infinite directions to bend the light appropriately, which is literally impossible to engineer with current tech . The other reasons are the manufacturing process (lots of chemicals) as well as the convenience of hexadecimal references for colors in coding a display (rgb works great for this), both of which are far beyond the scope of an elif.\n\nEdit: spelling and clearer explanations \n ",
"That's at least a little impossible. Even if we narrow your question down to just the colors human beings can see (excluding ultraviolet, infrared, x-rays and such), we've got some issues.\n\nLet's start with a picture. Here, the curvy \"horseshoe\" shape represents the full range of human vision. The assorted outlines represent different *color spaces* that are available using *color models*. A color model is just a set of math equations that let you describe colors.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI suppose, at least in theory, you could probably write a color model that describes a range of colors that extends far beyond human vision. \"ProPhoto RGB\", in that image event, manages to accomplish some of that towards the blue end of the spectrum, as you can see by it poking outside of the horseshoe. But, in practical terms, you need actual hardware that's capable of performing like you modeled. That might be a difficult ask, but that much, I don't honestly know.\n\nNext up, a given color model works with discrete variables, which causes problems with *density*. We usually work with the RGB model with 24 bits per color channel, meaning each of R, G, and B can only take integer values from 0-255. That \"only\" gives you 255 x 255 x 255 ≈ 16.7 million colors, which leaves out an infinite number of in-between colors. Still, that's plenty of accuracy for most purposes.\n\nBut then you also have the question of *brightness* as applied to the display device. This is why HDR is a big thing on new TVs. On older displays, even when pixels are showing \"black\" (0,0,0), they tend to be partially lit, whether by nearby pixels or simply by virtue of the screen being on. You've probably seen the subtle tone shift when you turn an LED screen on, when the pixels go from truly off to merely \"black\". At the other end, each display element can only reach a certain maximum brightness. So, even if the color model is great, the screen can often fail to live up to \"real life\" because the display is physically incapable of reaching the necessary highs and lows of brightness. HDR is improving this dramatically, but your TV is not going to match full sunlight any time soon.\n\nA bit late here, but maybe it's worth discussing why we bother with color models and additive color in the first place. After all, why not just have some display element that's capable of emitting absolutely any color of light (or at least within the range of human vision)?\n\nI don't know of any technology that can do that. Even if you find tech that *can*, it's going to need intercompatibility with our existing tech, and comparable power consumption, for widespread adoption.\n\nUltimately, I suppose the simplest \"why\" is simply that our display technologies started at \"good enough\", and they're incapable of ever reaching \"literally photorealistic\", so we'll just keep iterating indefinitely.",
"The answer to why there isn't a full color technology is cost and memory. For example, diagnostic medical imaging devices produced color images from black and white filtrations of Red, Green and Blue scans. If you look at the RGB channels in Photoshop you will see that the channels are in black and white, yet when you view them combined you see them in color. Thus when a printer prints out the image, each ink cartridge printer head prints the black and white data in each RGB channel. As a black and white channel image, it transmits a lot less data to the printer and memory than one with millions of color channels. A similar situation exists with the monitor. RGB computer monitors, like a CMYK printing press, limit the process to a few colors that are able to cost effectively produce millions of colors.\n\nOn the other hand you cannot possibly perceive all the individual colors involved in a gradation from one color to another. Even if you were to isolate one pixel from the next pixel, while the numerical data for each pixel would certainly be different, you likely could not visually tell them apart using either RGB technology or full spectrum technology. So why spend all that money and memory on full spectrum when digital RGB functions far better than you can perceive it?"
]
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45llj1 | the us congress, the house of representatives and the senate. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45llj1/eli5the_us_congress_the_house_of_representatives/ | {
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"The Congress is our federal legislative body. They make laws. \n\nCongress is made up of two houses. The Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate is made up of two elected officials from each state. The House is made up of a few hundred people; each state has at least 1, with more awarded based on the population of that state. Big states get lots of Representatives, small states get less.\n\nNow, each house technically does a few different things, but you don't really need to worry about that right now. You just need to know that when we're making laws, they have to be passed by both the Senate *and* the House of Representatives, before they go to the President for approval and the Supreme Court for potential Constitutionality issues. ",
"Back when they wrote the constitution that organized our government there was a pretty nasty debate. They wanted the bulk of power to lie with a representative government, which they called Congress. \n\nThe argument was how many seats each state got in Congress. The big, populous states argued that when it came to stuff like taxes, they had more population and the laws would impact them more so there should be proportional number of seats given to each state based on population. \n\nThe smaller states argued that when it came to things like war, they all were affected equally and didn't want their opinions trampled by big states so they argued for equal representation in congress, each state gets the same number of seats. \n\nThe New Jersey Plan aka the Great Compromise was to have two houses of Congress. One would be decided by equal representation and vote on issues related to all the states equally, like going to war, foreign treaties, etc. The other would have proportional representation based on population and would vote on things like taxes and spending. \n\nThe \"upper\" house of equal representation is the Senate. Way back when, the state legislatures (not the people) voted on who each senator would be. The \"lower\" house of proportional representation is the House of Representatives, and they would be voted in by the people. The senators would serve 6 year terms, with one third of the Senate being elected every 2 years. The representatives would serve 2 year terms and be elected every 2 years. \n\nThe 17th ammendment changed the election process so senators were elected directly by the people, which happened in 1913. \n\nAs it relates to the Presidential election, the only big thing is the electoral college. Again, the small states argued that they wanted equal voice, and the large states wanted it to be proportional to population. So they used the same compromise, each state got a number of electors equal to the number of senators and representatives from their state. The electors vote for the President. It is up to each individual state to decide who those electors are. \n\nNow that's why a President can be elected without winning the popular vote. It's not a bad thing, the idea was to balance the interests of the large and small states (which keep in mind are supposed to be their own micro nations). It is to prevent both mob rule and rule by a minority interest. "
]
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j74xe | on short trips on airplanes, why must the airplane go above the clouds? | Would it make the trip a lot faster to simply a few hundred feet below the clouds to cut down traveling upwards? I took a plane trip from Chicago to St. Louis and it seemed like as soon as we got up in above the clouds, the pilot was saying, "We'll start our descent soon."
Or is there a minimum altitude that a plane has to be at? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j74xe/eli5_on_short_trips_on_airplanes_why_must_the/ | {
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"Just stumbled upon this question, so I know it's old. Almost all commercial passenger aircraft use turbine engines as their power source. Turbine engines are much, much more efficient at higher altitudes, especially jet engines. There are other factors as well, which others have pointed out.. weather, speed restrictions, safety, turbulence, true airspeed, etc., but efficiency is the biggest reason. ",
"Just stumbled upon this question, so I know it's old. Almost all commercial passenger aircraft use turbine engines as their power source. Turbine engines are much, much more efficient at higher altitudes, especially jet engines. There are other factors as well, which others have pointed out.. weather, speed restrictions, safety, turbulence, true airspeed, etc., but efficiency is the biggest reason. "
]
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3okb4q | why is it that when i'm in a phone call and start losing network i often can still hear my caller clearly but he doesn't hear me anymore ? | Resulting in me hearing him saying "Hello ?! Hello ?" But him not hearing my answers. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3okb4q/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_im_in_a_phone_call_and/ | {
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"The cell phone tower's antenna is much more powerful than your phones antenna. You will most often be able to receive data in worse locations than you can send it. After a short while, the cell tower realizes it isn't getting any data from you, and tells both your phones the call was lost.",
"There are actually two separate \"half-duplex\" connections. One incoming, one outgoing - these are often at two different frequencies. When the outgoing connection goes bad, the incoming connection may still operate for a little while before it gets cancelled. There's a feedback control loop between the two connections, allowing for changes of frequency, and timing (GSM) or code (CDMA), and even handoffs between cell towers to be negotiated as the call continues. When the feedback loop can't be closed, though the call will eventually be dropped.\n\nHalf-link loss can also happen the other way, where you don't hear anything, but they can hear you - but in that case you don't get to find out that they could hear you, at least until you call back and discuss it with them - so it's not so memorable.\n\nFor myself, when I can't hear the other party, I'll say something like, \"Can't hear you, I'll call back,\" to reduce the chance that we get into the double-outgoing-call-gets-voice-mail problem. \n\nBy the way, that's one major issue that I wish the cell-phone industry would solve - when two callers are calling each other, connecting the calls together is clearly what the callers want to happen. Sending both calls to voice mail is just frustrating."
]
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d0yqjb | how do they do instant replays so fast? | Sports games are the primary one I can think of where they do instant replay. For example, a person hits a ball somewhere and they show an instant replay less than 10 seconds later. How do they know where to get the footage or where to start playing the instant replay footage? Who controls this and can get that video so quickly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d0yqjb/eli5_how_do_they_do_instant_replays_so_fast/ | {
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"Most televised sports events are on a delay. So when you are watching something live, it may actually be like 1-2minutes behind. This allows for a buffer time to do things like censor or instant replays. \n\nThis still means there is limited time tho. So the camera people and producers in the control room still have to get the piece they want and have it prepared for the replay in a short amount of time. In these control rooms they have excellent staff and equipment to make the process somewhat easy.",
"Most sports TV productions have several people responsible for watching a few camera recordings as they happen, and immediately rewinding the recordings to play back a replay. It takes only seconds to rewind and be ready to play back. \n\nIn more detail, most TV trucks or facilities will have several video servers, typically EVS, that will be recording 4-6 cameras, and have the ability to play back 2 independent recordings. There may be 2-4 replay operators on an event (each with their own server, camera recordings and playbacks). These servers are always recording, and an operator can rewind and play back a recording immediately, and without stopping the recording. The operators can then show (or “sell”) their replay to the producer, who decides which replays to include in the broadcast. This can all be done in a matter of seconds."
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1bnc7k | the immigration/refugee policy in australia for the last two decades. | Has it changed that much.
Are less or more people being let into the country?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bnc7k/eli5_the_immigrationrefugee_policy_in_australia/ | {
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"text": [
"Depends on status.\nThe number of migrants reach it's peak under the Howard government which nearly 250,000 a year, but may has declined under the Rudd/Gillard government (maybe due to the GFC).\nRefugees numbers have steadily increased in recent years from 20,000 in 2010 to 25,000 I think i planned this year."
]
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7s0zr8 | why are there trees in the mountains, but as soon as the land flattens out the trees disappear and it turns into grass? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7s0zr8/eli5_why_are_there_trees_in_the_mountains_but_as/ | {
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"text": [
"Here in Montana this happens when the mountain accumulate more snow through the winter and melt off more slowly through the summer, providing a source of water through the hot dry season. Down in the flatland there's less snow and it melts faster, running off downriver, so there's less late-season water to support trees or broadleaf vegetation.\n\nExcept right next to rivers and streams, fed from the mountains, so you'll see narrow snakes of forest right along them running through the grasslands.",
"Once you have open areas it is hard for trees to grow there because most wildlife loves the taste of saplings. As such in open areas when new trees try to grow they are often gobbled up. \n\nHow the open areas got there in the first place, I am not exactly sure, but wildlife do sort of keep those grassy areas grassy...",
"Most, if not almost all, land has been logged for lumber or firewood or simply to create farmland at some point in the past. Things were quite different before human intervention and true prairie grasslands were not as common as we think.",
"Another consideration is that the higher elevations of the mountains mean cooler temperatures. Many trees, especially conifers, (pines, firs, and spruces) grow better in the cooler temperatures."
]
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2ie693 | why do children prefer the taste of less nutritional foods such as candy over beneficial foods such as vegetables? shouldn't evolution have taught them the opposite? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ie693/eli5_why_do_children_prefer_the_taste_of_less/ | {
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"Junk food is a new invention, and hasn't had an effect on human evolution. From an evolutionary perspective, things like candy, while they lack vitamins and minerals, have sugar, which is calorically dense. Since humans are built to survive famines, it's natural that they'd crave something with sugar.",
"Vegetables have a very low nutritional content compared to meat or candy. Children are growing very fast, doubling their size and weight many times. That required a lot of energy, one the sugar provides and there for, kids crave. It's not like sugar cubes grew on trees, but when a tree bore sweet fruit, it was important to eat as much as you can before the fruit turned.\n\nWhen you reach adult size, you are no longer growing. You just need to maintain your body. Vegetables are good enough to provide enough nutrition to keep you going. ",
"Evolution has taught us to eat salt, fat, and sugar. "
]
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3cwt3o | how does dipping a car's rear view mirror still show what's behind me, but in darker shades? | Is the mirror slightly curved? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cwt3o/eli5_how_does_dipping_a_cars_rear_view_mirror/ | {
"a_id": [
"cszog6n"
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"text": [
"There are actually two mirrors. The outer one only reflects part of the light. Normally they are right next to each other so they both reflect together like one normal mirror. \n\nWhen you flip the nob it titles the back mirror away so it reflects the light away. Only the front partial mirror is still reflecting the light back at you. You still see what's behind you but you only get part of the light. "
]
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vk6b4 | what does being 'high' feel like? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vk6b4/eli5_what_does_being_high_feel_like/ | {
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"Really great. But Being a little too high can be frightening until you learn how to control it and relax.",
"Like you could eat Smores poptarts forever",
"There are different kinds of drugs that produce different kinds of 'highs'. \n\nCould you mention the drug that you are attempting to understand while referring to its high?",
"Assuming you are talking about marijuana…\n\nImagine that one day you wake up, three or four years old, in a room full of strange, exciting objects you've never seen before. They are so interesting that you feel compelled to explore them, design things with them, ask questions about them, etc. Everything about these objects, and even the room itself, are so completely foreign and new to you that you are completely enthralled with them. Every day is filled with new experiences, for better or for worse.\n\nHowever, as you stay in this room for a long period of time the objects begin to lose their luster. You are no longer as curious about them as you used to be. Partly this is because other people will come into the room sometimes and force to you to use the objects in specific ways. They force you to count and inventory the objects. They demand you describe the objects a certain way. It gets to the point that even when you experience new objects you don't get particularly excited or curious because you are so focused on maintaining the room or being forced to pay attention to mundane details. The room begins to get dusty and everything begins to seem rather boring.\n\nOne day, you discover a plant. Upon smoking it, after a short period of time, you feel a mental \"click\" and suddenly curiosity comes flooding back. All of your life experience is combined with the previous excitement you had as a four-year-old, and you view even the most mundane objects in the room with renewed interest. You see connections between things you had never even thought of before. Laughter comes easier to you, and you find it almost impossible to get angry with other people. \"They are just PEOPLE, like me,\" you realize. When under the effects of the plant, you find yourself able to experience the present moment without the normal lenses of diminished perception those years of jaded object-sorting and inventory-tracking cursed you with… you find yourself enjoying everything, relishing the little details. You make a three-course meal and it is the tastiest meal you have ever had. Movies and music become utterly epic.\n\nThere are drawbacks. You no longer wish to count and inventory the objects in the room. People who have not tried the plant demonize it, or listen to people in positions of power who demonize it. They claim it makes you lazy, when it fact it makes you realize your infinite capacity for creative thought.\n\nIt helps you stay in the moment and just enjoy it for what it IS, rather than constantly worrying about the future or pondering over the past and never really experiencing the NOW. This is partly, imho, why time seems to slow down when high.\n\n… this is personal view, of course, but it is the best way I can describe it. As a previous poster said however… \"it is like describing colors to blind people\".\n"
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1u6xs8 | why do mannequins have hard nipples? | The question is pretty straight-forward. You see them at all kinds of stores, even at maternaty stores. What purpose do the hard nipples serve? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u6xs8/eli5_why_do_mannequins_have_hard_nipples/ | {
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"To show consumers how the clothes on the mannequins will look. The nipples allow the purchaser to better judge the thickness of the material. ",
"The primary purpose is to get your attention, and it worked. They also help people see how the clothing handles a situation that may be a little embarrassing."
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3na70q | why do dealers sell new cars for so much more than msrp in the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3na70q/eli5_why_do_dealers_sell_new_cars_for_so_much/ | {
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"text": [
"They don't. Sticker price is generally equal to MSRP. They do sometimes add on options after they get the car from the factory, which they will then add to the price.\n\nThe only time a car will get sold for above MSRP is if the car is extremely rare and hard to get.",
"They dont. You can actually expect to pay less than the msrp. Im not sure where you got that information ",
"The MSRP on new cars is largely a meaningless number. Car dealers sell the cars for as much as customers are willing to pay for them. That price fluctuates with the supply and demand of the specific vehicle.",
"Very few people pay MSRP on anything. It's mostly a marketing trick. For example AV equipment has huge markups. I'm talking between 40% to 70% and not just on high price electronics, even the metal racks and brackets are marked way up.\n\nWhy? Because many manufacturers have a dealer system and the giant markups lets the dealers go to the customers and say hey, this is how much this thing costs but I can get you a deal if you buy a bunch of them or if you buy exclusively from us. The dealer then offers the customer what looks like an insane discount but really the dealer is still making 30% markup. "
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fhiufb | how do movies stage avalanches? especially in ski movies. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fhiufb/eli5_how_do_movies_stage_avalanches_especially_in/ | {
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"For much of movie history they used archived footage of natural avalanches, or they caused actual avalanches by setting off explosives in strategic locations. They will also sometimes build model cities/buildings and film tiny avalanches rather than triggering full ones. \n\nIn modernity they will modify such footage with computers or created completely via computer generation.",
"Usually by causing avalanches. They will take an area That is expecting a good amount of snowfall. They will play small charges on that mountain in key locations. They will let the snowfall for a day or so, and then they detonate the charge and cause an avalanche.\n\nThey will then splice those scenes together with miniature scale models that they flood with snow, or CG snow over real buildings."
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2cl1xx | how does a tow missile work | in This [video](_URL_0_) the missile explodes about 2 metres (6.6ft) above the tank, yet it is distroyed. Is this caused by the shockwave of the explosion?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cl1xx/eli5_how_does_a_tow_missile_work/ | {
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"No, it's not from the shock wave. It has a specially shaped piece of metal inside by the warhead. When the warhead goes off, it uses the force of the explosion to form the metal into what is, essentially, big bullet, and then blast that bullet into the tank. It's a very specialized form of shaped charge.",
"Many anti tank weapons use what is referred to as a shape charge, essentially a hollow cone of explosive with another hollow cone of copper or other metal nested inside the explosive cone. When this explodes it creates a jet of molten metal focused on one point of the armor. \n\nSimilar, albeit smaller devices like this are also used in the oil industry to perforate the metal well casing in the production areas.\n\nEdit: relevant Wikipedia Article: _URL_0_"
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5wd2d1 | how did the color blue and pink become associated with masculinity and femininity (e.g. newborns are wrapped in blue or pink blankets from the get go)? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wd2d1/eli5_how_did_the_color_blue_and_pink_become/ | {
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"Blue was for girls because it is the colour of the virgin Mary's coat. So pink was for boys then girls wanted to be masculine and started wearing pink so pink became feminine. Same thing with high heels",
"Pink is faded red, men used to wear pink all of the time because older red dyes faded easily...Red is a power color and is traditionally associated as such...This is why men gravitated to it.",
"If I recall, they switched after WWII, and not because of the Nazi's use of pink for homosexuals, despite popular belief, but because of marketing to make women's clothing \"pop\".\n\nInitially, I believe boys had pink to represent Mars, and girls had light blue to represent Venus.",
"I know this isn't actually an answer but Vox has an entire YouTube video on this question, it's only a few minutes long and really good!!",
"In the 1920s and 1930s there was a trend to dress little boys in sailor outfits, which were traditionally blue. Hard to say if this was the whole reason for the switch, but by the 1940s pink for girls and blue for boys was widely accepted. ",
"I've read that pink was the colour chosen for boys before the second world war. It changed after the nazis used pink to identify gay men (pink triangle) \nWill find a source when I'm home ",
"And let's not forget, president FDR [had long hair and wore a dress](_URL_0_) in his childhood, as was the custom of the time.",
"Eleanore Roosevelt had a big influence upon the change. Pink was her favourite colour. She wore pink and everyone wanted to emulate the great First Lady of the USA. She stood for women's rights and girls started to be dressed accordingly. ",
"Edit: My apologies for posting a myth. \n \n~~It's pretty recent (1940's) and I'm unable to find any credible explanation.~~ \n \n~~*The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink , being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.* (1918 edition of the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants’ Department)~~ \n \n~~In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart highlighting gender-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. retailers. Filene’s (in Boston), Best & Co. (in New York City), Halle’s (in Cleveland), and Marshall Field (in Chicago) all advised parents to dress boys in pink and girls in blue.~~ \n \nRegardless of color, in both cases, they wore dresses. \n \n\n \n \n",
"Tangentially related is that it was usual to dress boys and girls in what today would be considered feminine clothing up to a certain age, maybe 3 or 4. I don't know if throughout Europe but I think this was true in England and USA at least in certain circles.\n\nI think this practice did not stop until the early 20th century.\n\nRelationship to OP is that male/female colors would not have been a thing then, either probably.",
"Both boys and girls used to wear while dresses, which were easy for diaper changes and easily bleached. The concept of an individual color for each gender was appealing to clothing manufacturers who realized that they could sell an entire new set of clothing to families with a mix of boys and girls.",
"I'd suggest reading Michel Pastoureau's book \"Le petit livre des couleurs\" along with his other books focusing on each color, where he details the perceptions we had and have of colors and how they changed, especially between the middle ages and now. \n\nPetit Livre Des Couleurs (English and French Edition)\nISBN-13: 978-2757841532, ISBN-10: 275784153X\n\n(Amazon has it out of order unfortunately, but it's absolutely a delightful read)",
"A history professor once told me that prior to WWII, those color roles were reversed. However, because the Nazis used the color pink as a label for homosexuals, soldiers returning home now associated the color with femininity. So the colors switched naturally as people adopted that sentiment. ",
"In ny country almost all newborns are dressed in white. Presumably because that is the color angels wear.",
"Interestingly enough, this is definitely a cultural phenomenon in America. When I did a study abroad in Spain, I bought a pink shirt and told my host mother that I felt funny for wearing pink, and she could just not understand that a color could be feminine.",
"Here's a post from askhistorians:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe question comes up fairly regularly there.",
"From the Smithsonian, [When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?](_URL_0_). The article provides sources for many of the comments others have provided.",
"[This study shows](_URL_0_) that the rule has been in place, at least weakly, since the 1880s. And other research mentioned in that article suggests that it goes back much further. \n\nI have also heard (though I'm afraid that I have no sources) that during the Dark Ages pink was actually seen as a very masculine color, because it was the color of blood in water. If that's true, then we didn't just go from no rule to the rule we have now, but actually have reversed the original. I wish I had a source to back that up, but I can't recall where I heard it.",
"I did a psych paper while an undergrad and was hoping to find the answer there. What I did uncover was that it was actually the reverse around the 1920's but have no clue to why it changed. \n\n\"The definition of masculinity and femininity is inherited by the generation of that time and is manifested by the attire of infants (Maglaty, 2011). In a June 1918 article of the trade publication Earnshaw’s Infants Department it dictated that the “generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls.\" The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” In the current 21rst century Infants whose sex is ambiguous are identified by the colors of their attire it is common knowledge that pink is for girls and blue is for boys (Ben, 2007).\"\n\nYeah I definitely stop caring when writing this paragraph. Sorry OP"
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d3nqzb | what would happen if all the frogs went extinct? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d3nqzb/eli5_what_would_happen_if_all_the_frogs_went/ | {
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"Much the same as would happen if any broad-ranging group of animals went extinct - a bunch of other species would, in turn, go extinct.\n\nIt's worth noting that \"frog\" is a hugely broad order of vertebrates. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of species that come under that description, and they exist in every country on earth. Multiple other species rely on frogs (and their spawn) as a food source. If that food source were to disappear, it would have catastrophic knock-on effects, potentially changing the global ecosystem on a permanent basis."
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3sgiaz | why is such a big deal made about hiring veterans? | I'll often see businesses with a sticker or something that says "we hire veterans", or I'll see something on the news about how businesses should hire veterans. Why? Is there something about veterans that makes them undesirable employees? What makes them different from regular people? Why is there such a push to hire them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sgiaz/eli5_why_is_such_a_big_deal_made_about_hiring/ | {
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"Simply put, veterans are at a *much* higher risk than civilians at suffering from psychological dissorders (such as PTSD) as well as physical disabilities as a result of the various mental and physical wounds they've had to endure through their service. This makes them undesirable candidates for even simple jobs because they can be seen as high risk employees. Also, if you mistreat employees and you're mistreating a veteran - that looks **really** bad because we're **supposed** to value them in our society. Also, veterans have served our country, and employers want to service them with job preference. ",
"Huh. All these answers (which are good) are different than what I expected. I figure it is a marketing ploy, like saying your company's initiatives are green, or all-American (or whatever your country may be), or local, or you don't use MSG, GMOs or Trans fats.\n\nHiring veterans is a big deal. I mean, these are people who fight for our freedoms. When their service is done, it would be a raw deal for them to come home and discover there are no jobs for them. So, if a company makes it a priority to give soldiers a job when they return, that is doing a huge favour for the country. And by deliberately hiring a veteran, a company is, in theory, choosing the veteran over somebody else who might be more qualified for the position because they spent their time gaining relevant experience instead of fighting for their country."
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5r8h1t | why is our organ of equilibrium located in our ears? | Is there any logical explanation why it's in our ears and not say in our nose, our eyes, our feet...? It seems pretty random to me that it's located in the ears.
(Sorry for maybe not so good English)
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r8h1t/eli5_why_is_our_organ_of_equilibrium_located_in/ | {
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"Well, i dont know exactly, but it has to do with your balance/eyes. \n\nDid you ever notice, that, if you tilt your head the image you see is still somewhat leveled? Thats because your equilibrium aligne with your eyes. If they where in your feet, your brain wouldn't know if your head is tilted and could not correct the image in your head. \n\nAlso it balances you as your head is the highest point of your body, think of it as a water level on your head to keep you from falling to one side or the other. It also works like the water level.\n\n[Link](_URL_0_) with detailed explanation.",
"If you want to keep balance you want the system measuring it somewhere that experiences the least acceleration during normal movement and that is the head. The position in the ear is useful, too, as it is further and on opposite sides from the center of the head and therefore experience more movement and in opposite directions when you turn your head which improves signal strength. If it were near you nose it would be more or less just measuring in one spot while the ears are far apart so you have two points for measuring.\n\nIt also needs to be close to the eyes as it causes/controls eye movement to compensate head movement so that the image you see is stabilized. ",
"Adding on to a lot of answers about why the head in general, the ears make the most natural location when you think about evolution. Almost all animals have an extremely acute sense of hearing. Even humans can use the millisecond discrepancy between ears for locating the source of a noise. Because ears are used for a sort of echolocation (not the way bats do), they are a good organ to have the parts for balance. Hearing uses an extremely delicate form of sensory perception, unlike sight or smell which is fairly basic or analog if you understand them. Detecting subtle changes in pitch, frequency, and amplitude require high precision, and so does balance.\n\nAlso, the fact that we are bilateral organisms is important. Having two senses of balance as far away from each other as possible improves balance and ensures that there isn't a local problem interfering. If the balancing mechanics were in the eyes, for example, each would be very susceptible to anything affecting the other since the two sides are so close.\n\nEdit: It seems that balance developed before hearing so my first paragraph would be the reverse, though I'm going to leave the paragraph there because it does show a nice correlation between hearing and balance. The second part of my answer seems to be a better one, since the ear evolved from the lateral-line on fish that detected pressure changes in water. They had one on both sides to increase stability. Since fish are horizontally directed they required it along their whole body, where as we only need it in the control center.\n\n",
"Your brain is in your head.\n\nOf all your senses 4 are entirely based within three inches of your brain, and completely in the head. Only touch, something important for your whole body to do in order to avoid injury, is mostly something you think about as being in the body (and specifically hands). But it makes sense for your \"sensors\" to be as closely attached to \"you\" (the brain), as possible. ",
"Because hearing and equilibrium are fundamentally the same sort of sense in vertebrates. Both are senses that detect acceleration. In fact, it might be better to say that our ears are located in our equilibrium organs, since there's a decent chance the equilibrium organs came first. The thing to realize is that equilibrium organs in the \"ear\" region go waaay back. The very first vertebrates had them. In primitive fish hearing and orientation are accomplished in the same way. You've got a small \"bone\" (an otolith) located in a sac lined with cilia. There's also a tube or two lined with cilia. As the fish moves, the heavy otolith falls to a different side of the sac, always resting on the lowest side. The cilia \"feel\" where it is. This lets the fish know which way is down. A sudden twist of the head generates a current in the canal (try holding a glass of water and twisting it, and note how the water stays still as the glass moves past, now imagine tiny hairs on the inside of the glass detecting this relative motion). Likewise, hearing occurs when sound waves travel through the fish, accelerating the ear back and forth and causing the otolith to bounce around inside the sac. That's detected as sound. \n\nNow, both hearing and orientation have gone on to become more complicated in humans. But they are both basically refinements of the same system and so they remain in the same place.\n\nAs for why both systems are in the head, there's a tendency called \"cephalization\" which is apparent in many animals and certainly in early vertebrates. It makes sense to cram the sense organs near the brain, because this lets them send signals to the brain more rapidly. When a fraction of a second makes a difference in, eg, being eaten, you want to minimize ping time. \n"
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4xjljh | why do we generally get things done faster when we are angry/upset? | I just had a petty argument with my girlfriend which left me quite upset. I went for a run along my usual route and i ran at least 1 minute faster than I've always been running. Afterwards i did the laundry and felt that i did it super quick. Anyone care to explain why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xjljh/eli5_why_do_we_generally_get_things_done_faster/ | {
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"When your opinion is doubted, it releases the same chemicals as if you are in a survival situation. Physically causing you to be irrational/narrow minded. \n\nThe human psyche can control ones own emotions of they know how. So this might of happened to you.\n\nYou get in an argument, norepinephrine releases into your brain."
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5m3caq | how do himalayan salt lamps work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5m3caq/eli5_how_do_himalayan_salt_lamps_work/ | {
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"They don't.\n\nBonus answer: They aren't.\n\n\"Himalayan salt lamps\" and other similar products are 100% bogus.",
"nothing. they're a gimmick. it's a chunk of salt that has a light bulb inside. it looks cool as a decoration, but it has no \"health\" benefits. producing a few negative ions in a radius of a few feet has no measureable impact on your well being. "
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1jymxq | new moderators | Well god damn.
We received **526** applications for moderators. A fair chunk of those were spammy, but most of them were good. Some of them were outstanding.
We narrowed down the group based on the thoughtfulness of responses, activity on reddit (both what you told us and what we saw in your recent history). While not posting a link didn’t disqualify anyone, saying that you were a lurker who rarely comments didn’t generally help. We appreciate the honesty though!
A few people were concerned about the RES question. This was not a consideration in our selection, it was just for our personal reference. Honestly, timezone was not a large consideration either. Seven of the nine chosen mods are from the Western Hemisphere, mainly from the United States.
It was a long process, and almost every mod (yes, even /u/explainlikeimfivebot) participated in the selection process.
Every one of our chosen applicants was unanimously selected.
They have not all joined yet, and some of them for one reason or another may choose not to, but we're hoping they all do.
Thanks to everyone who applied. We read every application, all of the "thanks for reading" or "I bet you won't see this." We saw it.
Cheers!
~123421 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jymxq/new_moderators/ | {
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"Congrats, new mods!",
"Welcome to Thunderdome",
" > what we saw in your recent history\n\nWhy are you discriminating (I use this word in its truest sense) based on applicant's comment and posting history? Someone speaking their mind in a comment vs. someone posting as a mod are two entirely separate things. \n\nMay I ask what criteria was used while reviewing applicant's comment and posting history?\n\nFull disclosure: I did not apply to be a mod.\n\nedit: no idea why this question is being downvoted. As a member of /r/explainlikeimfive I feel this is a legitimate question.",
"Congrats new mods! Welcome to the team!\n\nIt was really great seeing just how many of you care about ELI5 and wanted to do more to help. Nothing makes me more confident about the future of ELI5 than the hundreds of people who want to see good things for it!\n\nFor any of you who are disappointed about not getting picked, **please** continue to help by reporting and messaging the mods on issues you see. Hopefully we can keep ELI5 being an enjoyable and useful place for everyone :).",
"Oh well, I tried. Welcome new mods.",
"Hi Guys, I'm new here on the mod team. I'm like long walks on the beach, classical music... and ~~ruling with an iron fist~~ laissez-faire moderation.\n\nI'm excited to help the subreddit. I've always felt \"part\" of the eli5 community, and I'm excited to do what I can do help out. ",
"Thanks to the mod team for accepting me! I'm looking forward to trying to make things a little less chaotic around here.",
"Thanks for having me, looking forward to continued involvement with ELI5.",
"Glad to be joining the team, and I hope my contribution will help keep this a high quality subreddit!\n\nThanks to the existing mods that saw it fit to give me a go at this! \n\n**To the community:** Help us out! If you see a post/comment that's out of place, in violation of the rules, spam, or just plain dodgy.. Report it and/or send us a mod-mail.. The more we hear back from the community, the easier this job becomes, and the better this subreddit gets for everyone!",
"Ok, no idea if Mods are going to see this or not and no idea if this is the kosher place to put this, but can y'all get on your shit? I know it's not like you get paid, but ever since ELI5 has been a default sub, there have been an awful of of circle-jerking, karma-whoring going on in the comments.\n\nJust look at the Hotel Bible thread. So many top comments aren't helpful at all and aren't the answer anyone is looking for. Obviously, we should be downvoting those and I always do, but it's getting out of hand. I don't care what your religious beliefs are...in ELI5 it doesn't matter, people want information not snarky responses from angsty teenagers. Go away.\n\nthanks\nboobooaboo\n\nedit: link to hotel bible thing.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Hello ladies and gentlemen!\n\nI am but one more of the new batch of mods recently added to the mod team. I look forward to helping keep the quality of this subreddit high, though of course the quality comes first and foremost from the users, not the moderators.\n\nSee you guys around!\n\n\n\n",
"Hello guys! Super pumped for this opportunity. This is hands down my favorite subreddit, and I look forward to making sure thats how everyone else feels as well!",
"Grateful to be given the opportunity to help one of my favorite subreddits remain one of my favorite subreddits! :D Thanks everyone!",
"Can you explain it to me like I am 5?",
"So can we go back to posts for literal five year olds? This is not /r/explainlikeimanaverageredditor."
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64xjxg | how come we can make an ai that can beat humans at chess on a level playing field, but ais in computer games like civilization can only beat humans when they have access to extra resources? | Difficulty in chess programs is scaled by AI behaviour, whereas difficulty in the Civilization series (and other computer games of that sort) is scaled by 'cheating' to give the AI less or more resources than the human player. Why the difference? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/64xjxg/eli5_how_come_we_can_make_an_ai_that_can_beat/ | {
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"The goal of AI in a computer game isn't to win - it's to present a calibrated challenge to the player.\n\nHowever, if you were to attempt to design the 'perfect' AI for a game like Civilization you'd first need to determine what that perfect strategy should look like. Lacking the millennia of thought about the rules of the game as you have with Chess, this would be a fairly difficult task with little reward - especially considering you'd need to redo all your work whenever a new version came out.\n",
"You are making a lot of assumptions about the similarity between both AI and in the game they are playing.\n\n* These AI have different goals. The chess AI is trying to win, plain and simple. The Civ AI is looking to challenge the player and offer an interesting game to them.\n\n* These AI are nowhere near each other in terms of intelligence, complexity and even hardware available to it. You could also just measure the sheer man-hours gone into coding it and compare the dev teams skills. Paradox Interactive are good, but no way are they better than the likes of IBM/Google/Microsoft at sheer coding.\n\n* These games are nothing alike in terms of sheer possibility. In Chess it is viable for a computer to calculate every possible action going forward and decide on a move that statistically favours them. A game of Civ has far too many variables to do this and not all the information is given to the player (the Fog of War is the easy example).",
"Chess is actually very predictable game, at least compared to some. There are only 64 squares. There are only two players. A maximum of 32 pieces. Those 32 pieces are of 6 types, and each type has rigid limits on how it can move. The starting position of every piece and every type is pre-determined and always the same, so there is very little variation in opening moves (to the point where even humans can memorize all of the possible board variations after the first two moves, because there's only a few hundred). And the entire board is visible at once, so every player knows the position of ever game piece. Also, chess is a game of reduction: over the course of the game, pieces are removed from the board, which _reduces_ the total number of possible moves as the game progresses. There are never more than the starting 32 pieces.\n\nA lot of what chess AI's have traditionally done is brute force computation of all the possible moves several moves ahead and ranking of those outcomes. They can do that _because_ chess is more predictable than other games. \n\nNow, compare this to something like Civilization. There are thousands of hexes on a Civilization map. There are as few as two and as many as a dozen (?? maybe it's less, I don't recall) players, human and AI. There is no real maximum number of game pieces (although there's probably a computational limit determined by the computer's processing power). There are dozens, if not hundreds, of different types of game pieces, each of which might have a different combination of moves and attack power. The starting positions of every piece is not predetermined, so you never know where on the game map an opponent will start or will add new pieces to the game. And most of the game field is unknown for most of the game. And new pieces _can_ be added: the game is additive, with new pieces being added all the time (even as a players overall force is being reduced), meaning that the number of possible moves increases much more rapidly than in a game like chess, particularly in mid-game. \n\ntl;dr Chess is simple, so AI's can learn it. Civilization is way more complex, so AI's have to cheat to be smarter than humans. ",
"There has been a lot of interest in making a strong chess program. Firstly to try and beat the best humans, and once that was done to try and objectively evaluate the play of humans. There's been decades of research into it.\n\nBy contrast the AIs in computer games don't get anywhere near the same level of research. The developers just come up with something good enough, and it's easy to bias the game against the player for extra challenge.",
"A big part of it is that millions, perhaps billions have been invested into chess AIs over they year, and big companies like IBM spent a lot of money for what amounted to bragging rights.\n\nCiv is a big franchise, but they aren't investing nearly those kinds of resources into AI. Especially since cheating is good enough. It is a reasonable way to increases the degree of challenge, and is a whole to easier to implement."
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um69r | the scott walker controversy in wisconsin | What happened and why are they recalling him? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/um69r/eli5_the_scott_walker_controversy_in_wisconsin/ | {
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"The super short version is that once he was elected, Walker pushed some really controversial changes through the state congress. \n\nThe most controversial of which is basically weakening unions for public employees in the name of fixing a large budget deficit. There are a couple reasons it was viewed as controversial, but the highlights are: \n\n* Unions are generally viewed as strong pro-Democrat supporters. While the changes proposed and passed were under the notion of closing the budget gap, there are some *arguably* suspicious circumstances like some unions with *generally* more conservative members being exempt from these changes -- implying the move is a mostly partisan (politically motivated) change. \n\n* These changes were pretty controversial (lots of protests at the time), but since there was a Republican majority, they could push it through. The democrats in state congress tried to stall it (more controversy) by not being present to vote but it was forced through anyway. \n\nLots of people are upset with these changes and went out and collected enough signatures to force a recall vote. \n\n"
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3l0fdo | why don't video game cutscenes use videos instead of rendering using the game engine? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3l0fdo/eli5why_dont_video_game_cutscenes_use_videos/ | {
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"Videos, while being less resource heavy, tend to look different than the in game actors simply because it was rendered on a different machine. It takes away a lot of the immersion of a game. \n \nI think someone at Bungie explained this a few years ago when showcasing Halo 3",
"I can imagine a few reasons, right away:\n\n* Uses simpler assets, maybe even the assets that are already used in the game, which saves artist time and reduces memory footprint.\n* No need to re-work or re-render the entire cutscene when user changes settings such as resolution or localization; potential for cutscenes to be edited much closer to release, in case of development crunch.\n* People who work in games are used to working in game engines, and the dev team will want to focus their efforts in that direction. Embedding a decent video player into the game is quite a bit of work and cost all on its own.\n\nSome games do include pre-rendered cutscenes, but you'll notice that they usually seem kind of divorced from the game itself. Characters don't wear the same gear, don't behave in the same way, and any diverging plot points usually won't be accounted for. The complete shift in visuals may make it hard to tell what's going on, or how it relates to the rest of the level.\n\nIf the cutscene is generated in-engine, all of those issues can be avoided, or at least mitigated.",
"They used to use videos a lot, back when 3D graphics were still really crappy. [Half-Life](_URL_0_) was kinda the first game to really popularize the idea of 'ingame cutscenes'.\n\nI think part of the reason cutscenes are rendered ingame these days is to ensure that they'll scale to whatever size of monitor the game is running on, avoiding blurry video on high resolutions. But perhaps a bigger reason is that it makes it easier for gameplay to merge seamlessly into the cutscene and then back out when it's finished.",
"1. A cut-scene rendered in the engine can be customized for each player. For example, if the player chooses a specific outfit for their character then a rendered cut-scene can use the chosen outfit rather than a generic one, which creates a greater sense of immersion. This isn't possible with a video.\n2. Rendering a cut-scene in the engine allows it to be rendered in the player's chosen resolution, while a video file has a fixed resolution; it would either have to be scaled up or down if the resolutions didn't match.\n3. High resolution, high quality video files take up a lot of disk space. A cut-scene rendered in the engine can be very small, as it uses most or all of the existing assets; it can be done using a few small scripts and animations.\n4. Rendering a video file requires video and audio decoding, which adds more complexity to the game. If everything's done in-engine, cut-scenes can be created without having to add anything new.\n5. The designers can create cut-scenes using the tools that are already available to them and with which they're already familiar - they use these to create content for the rest of the game.\n6. Rendering a cut-scene in-engine allows the game to seamlessly transition between cut-scene and player-controlled segments, which creates a better sense of immersion.\n7. When assets (e.g. a weapon model or piece of scenery) change during development, the existing cut-scenes continue to work (though may need to be checked again), whereas a video would have to be redone."
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30jodi | australians of reddit, why is your government in such denial about climate change? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30jodi/eli5_australians_of_reddit_why_is_your_government/ | {
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"Because Gina Rinehart has each and every one of the conservatives firmly in her filthy rich pocket. This is the woman who complained that her Australian mine workers should get paid the same as her African mine workers-$2 a day-while she pulls down $600-every second of every day. ",
"The minister for climate just got rebranded, I forget what to. \n\n\nI'm not sure what protected ecosystems you are talking about?\n\n\nCarbon Tax repeal is due to the governement thinking there is a better more effective model. \n\n\nI fucking hate the current government, but everyone is entitled to a different point of view, and if the majority agree's with them, well who am I to say they are wrong. ",
"The Australian Government believes in climate change. They believe that something needs to be done to stop it. \n\nBut they don't believe that a Carbon Tax is the best way to deal with it. They have implemented a \"Direct Action\" policy, which provides funding to industries to implement cleaner technologies, rather than penalise carbon emitters with a tax. \n\nThe previous government which implemented a carbon tax was voted in on the promise that \"there will not be a carbon tax under a government I lead\" and yet implemented a carbon tax. So at the next election, the Australian people voted for the party which promised to remove the carbon tax. Now I'd say that pretty clearly the Australian people don't want a carbon tax. \n\nSo to say that the Australian government doesn't believe in carbon tax is a lie. It is a lie invented by those who oppose the government to make the government look stupid. It is a lie invented by people who are sour that democracy has spoken loudly that the Australian people do not want a carbon tax. "
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2gbi4j | why does the clock on my microwave keep gaining time? | I have a basic idea of how clocks end up losing time, but this thing with the clock on my microwave is baffling me. It's like it gains time in microseconds. I'll set it so it's in sync with the time on my iPhone, and over time it'll gradually gain time until it's minutes ahead of the time on my phone. Last week I knew it was a little over a minute fast, and today it was up to a little over two minutes fast. Can someone explain to me how this is happening, and possibly why?
EDIT: My question has been answered. Thank you to all who replied. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gbi4j/eli5_why_does_the_clock_on_my_microwave_keep/ | {
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"The manufacturer did not calibrate the clock source correctly, and likely used a very cheap clock source such as a simple crystal. There is different types of clock sources, crystals are very cheap, but not so accurate. The best conceivable clock source, an atomic clock, is many orders of magnitude more accurate, but also many orders of magnitude more expensive. ",
" > It's like it gains time in microseconds.\n\nThat's exactly what's happening. The crystal inside it which oscillates to run the clock is going just a little faster than it's supposed to, so the clock runs just a little faster than it should.",
"The microwave almost certainly contains a real-time clock as part of its control circuitry. The clock is given some kind of time based input (such as from a quartz crystal like a standard watch uses), and the input is slightly wrong. \n\nTL;DR: Yes, your microwave is gaining time at a rate of a few microseconds every second.",
"That's weird, usually appliances use the AC frequency as a timing reference which is pretty exact. Unless it is cheaper to use the CPU's clock to derive the time."
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3jrdca | why do youtube videos stop playing when you back out of the app? | And why hasn't that been fixed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jrdca/eli5_why_do_youtube_videos_stop_playing_when_you/ | {
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"I think it was to stop you from using it to stream music for free.\nIt's much more inconvenient for you to use it for music streaming if you have to keep the screen on and the app open."
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3qpcxv | how come we can say "aren't you?" but, if we remove the apostrophe, "are not you?" doesn't make sense? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qpcxv/eli5_how_come_we_can_say_arent_you_but_if_we/ | {
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"That phrase would rearrange to \"are you not\" \n\nIts just a result of people using similar words and phrases interchangeably to result in odd norms.",
"There are auxiliary verbs in English which undergo a process called inversion, where the subject and the auxiliary word switch places. For instance in the formation of a question:\n\nHe was home. Was he home?\n\nYou actually likely use this sort of inversion a lot. In contractions it's a bit noticeable because the contracted words are basically inverted as their contraction, and not as their component parts.\n\nYou aren't there. Aren't you there?\n\n So when you split it out literally after the fact, you get more 'inversion' than you bargain for. \n\nNow if you want a real headache, try to cobble won't together out of 'will not'\n\nedit: Bad spelling in an English lesson, whoops. "
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88mkvo | how does google "know" how busy a place is? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/88mkvo/eli5_how_does_google_know_how_busy_a_place_is/ | {
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"If you have a Google account goto:\n\n* _URL_0_\n* Top left click on the 3 vertical bars (aka. Menu)\n* Click \"Your timeline\" \n\nNow you should understand :)\n\n_If You're Not Paying for It; You're the Product_",
"everybody using an android phone with their location on in one area sends data to google. Google uses this to populate areas. It also uses the same way to tell us where traffic is etc"
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8hdn1u | the reason why personal hotspots on mobile phone can only share mobile data connection and cannot share wifi connectivity where the mobile is connected | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8hdn1u/eli5_the_reason_why_personal_hotspots_on_mobile/ | {
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"Because phones have one WiFi ‘device’ for want of a better word. It can either connect to a network, or create a network but not at the same \n Time. With computers, you could do what you ask, but only by addicting a second, additional WiFi interface. ",
"They can now. My LG v30 has an option when tethering to share the WiFi connection instead of mobile.",
"They absolutely can - on paper. It's not a feature you see because what would be the point? If you're connected to WiFi, the other device can be too; mobile data (and hotspots) is generally used only when there is no WiFi. The only reason I can conceive if is to create a relay to extend the range of your router but that's very niche and probably not worth the added development cost; you can get a serviceable bridge for like £20 anyway."
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11nvb2 | explain like i'm five - the service provided by companies like bain capital | I'm having trouble understanding what companies like this do and their purpose. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11nvb2/explain_like_im_five_the_service_provided_by/ | {
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"When a company is in trouble (usually financially) then one of these companies like Bain Capital will buy the company. They will take over and reform the company, often by firing workers or otherwise reorganizing the management. They then sell back the company to make money.",
"Bain Capital (and other firms or individuals like KKR, Carl Icahn, etc) are looking to buy poorly-performing companies and turn them around through better management. \n\nTo give an example: in 2008, Carl Icahn expressed interest in Yahoo. He thought that if he fired Jerry Yang and brought the right CEO in, the company could be salvaged. He thought that the board was incompetent and wasn't ready to make tough choices (which might involve firing some dead weight). If *he* ran it, however, things could be different.\n\nPart of what makes people mad, though, is when dead weight is large chunks of the company with a lot of employees. Let's say that General Electric starts to lose a lot of money. Their microwaves, their washing machines, and their light bulbs are all making billion-dollar profits year after year... but their wind turbines are losing hundreds of billions. A Bain Capital might come in, buy a large enough share of the company to make a difference, and cut the wind turbine division. Thousands of people get laid off, but the company returns to profitability. Bain would then sell their share of the company back to another investor and walk away from General Electric, having done their part. \n\nI suppose the moral questions are: should Bain make a profit off this type of work, even if people lose their jobs? What if Bain hadn't taken an interest in General Electric, forcing the company to go under and EVERYONE who worked there lost their jobs, not just the wind turbine employees? What if Bain walks away from the sale making a lot of profit, but there are a lot of unemployed people out there who used to make wind turbines?",
"As the other posts have covered, a part of what Bain Capital does is use their business expertise and liquid assets to buy controlling shares of failing companies, return them to profitability, and then sell their share of the company at a much higher rate than what they paid for it.\n\nHowever, a company need not be failing to attract the attention of Bain capital. Let's say a company is doing quite well and wants to expand, but lacks the capital to do so. Rather than take a line of credit from a bank (which the bank may not be willing to give them, or at least not at a reasonable interest rate.) They will sell shares of their company to Bain in exchange for the capital to expand. This usually means that Bain will provide not only money but financial and business expertise in the form of higher level managers to help run the expansion process. The idea is that once the company has successfully expanded, Bain's shares are worth much more than their initial investment, and they can cash out; giving them more liquid assets with which to invest in another company.\n\nCompanies like Bain take a lot of heat because \"returning a company to profitability\" often means cutting off parts of the company not performing, which translates to terminations. Especially when companies have a long history (maybe the founder is still the CEO) the upper management would rather not have to face the idea of firing much of the workforce. Bain has no emotional attachments. Companies like Bain are an essential part of the modern economy, and Bain is very good at what it does."
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3d6qz7 | second cousin twice removed. i've heard this so many times and have no idea what it means | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3d6qz7/eli5_second_cousin_twice_removed_ive_heard_this/ | {
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"Removed is used when there's a difference in generations.\n\nSo my cousin is my cousin. My grandmother's cousin is my cousin twice removed (2 generations different)",
"How many generations before they are on the same level. I'm not really sure how to explain it more indepthly without a diagram, but [CGP Grey](_URL_0_) has a great video on the subject"
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8wjcnx | why isn't it possible to set up a continues rope through the cave in thailand, from the rescuers' side, to where the kids are trapped, and then dive them to safety while attached to said rope? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8wjcnx/eli5_why_isnt_it_possible_to_set_up_a_continues/ | {
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"None of the kids can dive. Half of them can’t even swim. Expecting their first dive to be such a long one, in water with poor visibility and limited space to manouvre (according to the map there’s at least one section where they’ve got about a metre of total space to work in, so there’s no way you could fit both a boy and an experienced adult diver to guide him through there together) while they’re all hungry, frightened and exhausted...that could easily get one of the boys killed. \n\nIf a boy gets into strife in one of the narrow or steep bits, the others will be trapped behind him, and anyone ahead of him is going to find it very difficult to reach him in time to help.\n\nDiving isn’t exactly safe, and these would be a very long way from good conditions. Even a very experienced diver could get into trouble in a scenario like this - a former Thai Navy diver, the nearest equivalent to a SEAL, died today trying to get equipment through to them.",
"Apparently, the problem is not the \"getting lost\" part. It's the \"kids don't know how to swim and breathe properly in such a hideously dangerous environment\" part. They're talking about three or four hours underwater, in a cave, which has just had the rainy season kick in above it. There has already been one fatality of a retired master diver from the Thai military, after the kids had been located. Underwater caving is absolutely not a joke. "
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61ryjg | why do small animals move in quick twitchy movements? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/61ryjg/eli5_why_do_small_animals_move_in_quick_twitchy/ | {
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"To copy unashamedly from [here](_URL_1_), there appear to be three main reasons:\n\n1. Increased detection rate for predators (can listen out)\n2. Increased evasion by prey (less noise from movement)\n3. Increased endurance (taking breaks)\n\nPlanet Earth II has a great example of this in its [episode on grasslands](_URL_0_) (UK only). \n\n\n*Edited for Clarity. ",
"Don't most smaller animals also have MUCH higher heart rates too?\n\n",
"It works the opposite way too: the bigger the animal, the slower the heart beat. A blue whales heart beats about 8-10 beats per minute and can be heard from two miles away.",
"I'm not an expert, but I can explain in 2 easy points:\n\n1. It's easy to move quickly when you're small.\n2. It's easy to be spotted if you're always moving.\n\nIf you can move quickly, then it doesn't makes sense to move slowly. But if you're always moving and can be easily seen, you'd be easy prey. So you should only move a little bit at a time. Thus you would move with quick twitchy movements.",
"Has to do with their nervous system. There is something called the myelin sheath and because they are small they have less of it, so their motor movements are jerky. I wish I could explain it better but I do know that it stems from their smaller amount of myelin sheath. ",
"I get the feeling you're referring to the full-body movement of something like a mouse or squirrel, but my first thought was the twitchy movement that birds make when examining their environment. This is done to aid in their depth perception. \n\nBecause their eyes are on the sides of the head, they're unable to use the fact that one eye sees the same scene slightly different from the other as we do, something known as parallax. In order to compensate for this, they examine a scene, then move their head quickly to get another perspective. Their brain is able to use the two images to give a rough estimate of depth. ",
"Quick and twitchy animals have muscles comprised of more fast twitch fibers. These fibers do not require oxygen to use, anaerobic, and allow an animal to move very quickly for small periods of time compared to animals with slow twitch fibers which use oxygen. ",
"So you know how when you cook most birds they have white/grayish meat? That meat is made up of white muscle fibers. White muscle fibers don't contain many capillaries and get less oxygen from blood flow. They are capable of fast twitches consisting of short, powerful contractions of the muscles that tire quickly. Red muscle fibers (red meat) are more narrow and have more surface area to collect oxygen from blood flow. These are considered slow twitch muscles and contract at a relatively slow rate but don't tire quickly with the abundance of oxygen. \n\nHumans have some of both and you can train the different muscle groups to target the specific slow or fast twitch muscles. When you notice animals twitch or move quickly, they are using the fast twitch muscles. When animals such as birds fly, they use their slow twitch muscles to be as efficient as possible.",
"It is mainly for their finding prey and avoiding predators.\n\nWhile moving, all of your vision moves, which makes detecting prey and predators hard. Also while moving, the wind blowing past your ears muffles sounds: both of which are disadvantageous to detecting predators and prey.\n\nBy holding their heads steady, small animals are able to use their vision to see, and use their hearing to triangulate other predators and prey much better than while moving. They move in these short bursts to have a shorter amount of time wasted while they cannot detect; then they suddenly pause to have the most detection time possible. \n\nYou notice the same behaviors have evolved when small animals dig, and when birds take baths. They quickly do their action for a few seconds (bathing or digging) and then suddenly shoot their neck up high to see if there's predators around.\n\nNatural selection at its finest.",
"I think the question is not why small animals make quick movements but why big animals make slow movements. I think the answer would be because bigger animals having more mass move slower. That is why in the case of movies/shows, giant mondters movr exceptionally slower.",
"Myelin forms a white, fatty sheath around many nerves in higher primates. Birds tend to have much less myelin coverings, creating the appearance of less \"fluid\" motions. ",
"It has to do with evolution favoring fast twitch muscle fibers over slow twitch muscle fibers, along with most animals having some kind of fur or hair covering large parts of their body that created periods of activity that were shorter but more intense. ",
"Physiologically small animals have mainly fast twitch muscle fibres, compared to larger animal which have far more slow twitch. \n\nAs an aside humans are made up of a fairly even split.",
"Many limbs or limb segments behave like pendulums. Legs are like inverted segmented pendulums. The period of oscillation is proportional to length, so small animals with their small appendages make faster limb movements which appear twitchy because of the sudden changes in direction. \nLikewise, muscles also behave like a nonlinearly damped mass-spring system. per Hooke's law, the length of the spring (stretch distance) affects the oscillation. \nsource: i know some things about the dynamical systems approach to motor control",
"Predators typically have senses tuned to detecting motion, both visually and aurally. Anybody who has played with a cat knows this. So small animals will tend to lie very still in between big bursts of brief motion. The idea is to get further away and then stop before the predator gets a fix on you.",
"Force to mass ratio. The muscles can exert a force that increases with their cross section, and have a weight that increases with their volume. If you decrease the size of the muscle, you have less force capacity and way way less mass to move, the acceleration is greatly increased the smaller the muscle gets.\n\nFor very small animals, fast twitch moves are just a byproduct of being small. ",
"Couple of different answers to this. This is a bit long, but it should help. It mostly has to do with avoiding predators and not being eaten. Consider the Rabbit - their movements are either big and strong, fast hops and leaps. Or when are still, only their faces, where their sense organs are, tend to move around quickly, to scan the area and make sure that nothing of danger is around them. \n\nAs to why some motions are larger and stronger than others, you have to go into a bit of muscle biology, a bit advanced for a 5 year old...\n\nAnimal muscle fibers are catagorized in two types - Red and White Muscle Fibers. These types are based off of the amount of Glycogen (White) and Myoglobin (Red) that is found in the individual muscle cells. These fibers coexist in all musculature, in humans and animals.\n\nRed Fibers, those higher in Myo, can carry more O2 to the cells, and are built for long, steady action. Thighs, Legs, Glutes - weight supporting muscles White fibers are higher in Glycogen, a sugar molecule, which gives quick bursts of energy when used, but doesn't have the same overall energy carrying potential that HgB heavy cells would. Muscles more responsible for quick movements than supporting weight\n\nThis is why Chickens have White and Dark meat. The dark is the Thigh, carrying the whole weight of the bird. Take a biopsy of it and you would expect to see a higher concentration of Red fibers. the white is the Wing; doesn't really do too much except the occasional flap, it will have a lower % of Red fibers, and more White fibers. But no tissue is 100% of either. \n\nSo, now that we have addressed these 2 fibers, we can actually answer the question.\n\n\"Small Animals\" say, a Rabbit is going to have greater concentrations of those White Fibers in some muscles, and Red's in others. The hind legs of a rabbit are going to have more Red fiber, while its facial and frontal muscles would be more of the White type - fast reacting, short spastic movements\n\nSo, these animals move by launching with these strong Red Fibers, giving off massive shots of energy to move as far as possible in one motion.\n\nOther movements, like twitching, sniffing, anything else cute that little bunny rabbits do - those are all based off of the White Fibers. They move in quick little twitchy - in fact, their other name is **Fast Twitch** fibers (the Red fibers are **Slow Twitch**). They can move around without expending too much energy. But if a rabbit has to escape a wolf or a hawk? it just has to get from point A to point B as fast as possible, in one single motion, to avoid being eaten. But do it for 20+ minutes and it'd be exhausted. Different types of movement \n\n\nHave you ever shivered in the cold? Your body is putting itself into a Fast-twitch Overdrive to burn as much energy as possible and keep its temperature elevated. Little furry animals do the same. Quick movements to heat up the body, based off the rapid firing of White Fibers. Now, throw in things like Sight and Smell to avoid predators, instinctively being afraid of larger animals, you can see put together the puzzle of why these animals would move around the way they do. \n\nSO! And finally, here's the answer to the question. Small animals are twitchy, because;\n\nIt takes more energy for them to move (a rabbit hopping vs a large dog casually walking), so they tend to save \n\nThe way rodents and other small mammals twitch their noses around, or seem to focus from point to point with ninja-like concentration but ADHD-like speed, is because those movements are controlled by muscles that are predominantly White fibers. Or in some cases, to conserve or produce heat, the way we shiver, or how we blink to produce tears. While the larger motions, such as moving legs, would be done by muscles with a higher concentration of Red fibers. \n\nThey just don't have the dexterity for fine movements, so to us, they seem twitchy and spastic, like a dog scratching itself\n\nI understand that this is ELI'ing a little more than 5 years old, tried to put it as simple as possible, if you have any more questions feel free to ask\n\n\nHere are a couple of sources that will give you some more info on Red v White Fibers\n\n_URL_0_\n\n\n_URL_1_\n\n\nEdit: Obligatory \"Thanks for the gold\"\n\nother users have been mentioning Mass / Force, and they are correct; the muscles of some small animals don't have to be as strong and delicate as those of larger animals - > consider a cow's legs vs those of a gerbil. One is going to be a lot more Red than the other, simply because it needs 1000's of times more energy (O2) than the smaller animal's related muscles would.\n\nAnd, a very common question; Humans have both of these fibers in all of our muscles as well. Your glutes would have a different composition of red and white than your pecs would, as would your triceps from your palmar muscles. Lebron's calves would have a different makeup of the two fibers than Messi's, or Bolt's. The exact makeups are not exact and are subject to change in every individual\n\nas for the user who asked why I Capitalize every Other word? Because I can't gesticulate over the internet and that's how I add emphasis in my text. Eat it :)",
"Our brains (and predators) are designed to focus on \"something new\" in our visual field. We block out stable images and focus in on moving or changing images. \n\nSmall animals move in such a way to reduce the amount of time they spend moving so as to minimize the time a predator has to notice them. So they jump from position to position with near perfect stillness in between movements. \n\nEdit: Here's an example of how stationary objects \"disappear\" because our brains are focused on motion:\n\n_URL_0_",
"As much info as /u/patton66's post contains, he's applying ideas that are relevent to humans to his understanding on what makes small animals tick. He's not quite correct in that regard, as you could tell if you've ever looked at a mouse's muscles: They're red.\n\nThe correct explanation actually has more to do with neuronal signal propagation. A nerve impulse travels at about 119 m/s, so when you flex the longest muscle in your body it begins contracting over the entire length in about 1/100th of a second or less. \n\nFor a mouse, who's longest muscle is about 1/1000th the size, it contracts over the course of 1/100 000 of a second, or 1000 times quicker. \n\nThis combined with less mass to be moved leads to the insertion point of the muscle moving more quickly, leaving the mouse or other small animals fine-motor motions being quicker, appearing \"twitchy.\" \n\nThis is also why it is easy to get a twitchy appearance with small muscle groups (like eyes and facial muscles) while it is near impossible to twitch an entire arm or leg. ",
"What a bunch of smart sounding b.s. answers! Small animals' brains can't process fast enough all of the sensory data that it receives from high metabolism animals. They have to stop in fits for their brain to process. The Tiger Beetle, for example, moves so fast (relative to it's size) that it temporarily goes blind. See the link below for a start: _URL_0_",
"One example is chameleons. They have jerky movements to make them look more like leaves or vegetation. They also can change their skin to match the color and pattern of the surroundings. This makes it so it's easy to look over a chameleon unless you stop and watch it. \n\nI learned it in a BBC documentary but couldn't find the clip, so I found an alternate source [here](_URL_0_).\n\nAlso, [here's a fun video that shows off the jerky movement](_URL_1_), and as a bonus you get to see a showdown between a wild chameleon and a domestic cat :)",
"Because small animals can have much stronger bones and muscles proportional to their mass, compared to larger species.\n\nThis is related to something called square-cube law. If the size of something is changed by a factor of k, its surface area is squared (k^2) and its volume is cubed (k^3). As an example, if something is doubled in size (retaining its proportions), its surface area is increased by a factor of four, and volume by a factor of eight.\n\nThe strength of bones and muscles is, roughly speaking, defined by their cross-sectional area. In essence, if a bone or muscle grows twice as thick, its strength is quadrupled, but at the same time the mass of the animal is multiplied by eight, so in actuality the bone and muscles have become weaker relative to the mass of the animal.\n\nThis means that, not only are the bones of small animals typically much stronger than those of large animals - which allows animals like mice, rats, squirrels, monkeys, or small children for that matter to survive falls and impacts that would be easily fatal to a large animal or a grown human - their muscles are also proportionally stronger for their mass. That means they can produce higher acceleration, either as movement of limbs or head, as part of their locomotion.\n\nTo use a bigger scale factor, if you have a small animal and another similar animal, but eight times as big, the large animal is 64 times as strong but 512 times as heavy. That means, if the small animal can achieve jump acceleration of 20g, the large animal can only muster about 2.5g jump acceleration.\n\nAnd, because they *can* jump and move with higher accelerations, why shouldn't they?\n\nThis propensity for quickness is also compounded by the fact that since these animals *can* move in this fast, twitchy fashion, they also benefit more from fast muscle fibres, which makes them capable of even more twitchy hoppy movements. Though in actuality, they might lose some muscle mass if they don't actually need to jump at 20g accelerations as a survival factor - if they can afford to lose some muscle mass, it may be beneficial to do so since maintaining muscle tissue can require a lot of energy, and being very small animals, they can still move quite rapidly even with proportionally less muscle.\n\nAnd, by comparison, larger animals often need to have stronger bones, different bone structure, and more muscle mass in order to be capable of walking, moving, and obtaining enough food to maintain those bigger muscles. Thus, size is one of the more interesting variables in terms of evolution - both big and small sizes have several advantages and disadvantages. Small size usually means fast breeding cycle which means the species evolves fast and rapidly bounces back from population depletion. Large size means the animal is less vulnerable to predators and can have access to foods that smaller animals literally can't crack, but as a downside it takes a long time for a specimen to mature, taking care of the young becomes a major resource drain, and population upsets have a far more severe long term effects because the population can't replenish as fast as smaller species can.\n\nAs a funny anecdote, when the developers of Kerbal Space Program were designing the Kerbals and animations for these little green menaces, they found that their initially specified size for them made their animations look unnaturally twitchy and fast, and they had to enlarge them a little bit to make them more relatable and to get the animations to look good.",
"Late to the party, but the muscle fiber answer is not all that relevant. I don't study this specifically, but have done some work on animal locomotion and sensing. \n\nSo... if small things don't move in quick, twitchy movements because for some random reason small things have white muscle fibers (this isn't true in all cases, and even if it were it wouldn't be the *reason* they have that)... *why* do small things move fast and then stop?\n\nThere are a lot of parts that go into it, but I think they mostly boil down to three basic reasons: \n1) It's easier for them to move fast \n2) Moving fast is still hard \n3) They need to know what's going on around them\n\n* Small things have much less mass relative to the amount of force they can generate, and can do things much faster because of it. This is the same reason that ants can lift big things. Muscles generate force based on the cross-section of the muscle (area, r^2 ), while inertia changes with the volume (r^3 ). That means bigger is, all else being equal, slower. If you are interested in how scaling affects living things, I highly recommend Haldane's essay [\"On Being the Right Size\"](_URL_1_). It's a great read, and still basically accurate even though it was written in 1928. We've known about some of this stuff for a *long* time. \n\n* It costs more energy to run at a high step frequency (how many steps you take per second) than to run at a low step frequency, even after you take size into account! This sucks for small things that have to take many steps to cover distance quickly. Mouse muscle, for example, uses 6 times as much energy per gram as horse muscle when they are both running. [Here is a paper about it!](_URL_0_) So you can take steps fast, but they cost energy. \n\n* Okay, but how do you control your movement while you do this? Small things see at about the same speed as fast things: it takes ~1/10th of a second to perceive a change, or about 100 milliseconds, almost no matter your size (a few animals are a little faster, like 70-80ms if I'm remembering right, but same ballpark). This means, among other things, that when you're jouncing around taking many steps every second, it is much harder to compensate for the movement of your eye. A mouse takes nearly 10 strides per second at full speed (same paper I linked earlier); that means that each stride takes barely over 100 milliseconds! It is very difficult to figure out what you need to do on the next stride before you take it at this scale, especially with your eyeballs bouncing around very fast. You are mostly relying on faster senses for this, but vision gives you much better long-distance information. So, if you want to move effectively, you want to know where you're going. What's the best way to do this with the slow visual system? Stop running around and take a look! (Weirdly, because hearing is faster but sound takes time to travel, it looks like bat echolocation works on about the same time scale.)\n\n**Summary:**\n\nBasically, if you are small, there are several things you want. One, you want to get where you're going, and you can move very quickly for your size! Two, you want to not use up all your energy at once, and that's hard when you take a lot of steps fast! Three, you want to stop and figure out what's going on around you occasionally! \n\nSo what's the solution? You can take a lot of steps very quickly, then stop and breathe and look, then take a lot of steps very quickly. This also is probably good for avoiding predators, as some other posters have mentioned. It also probably means you're going to want to use a little more fast-twitch muscle, as the current top post mentioned. And seriously, every person who has worked with small animals will be able to tell you that they actually do this, even on treadmills! That paper I mentioned above looks at running at difference sizes, and has this to say about small animals: \n\n > It proved very difficult to obtain data from small animals walking at a constant average speed on the treadmill. The mice, chipmunks and white rats normally maintained slow average speeds by running to the front of the treadmill, stopping, and riding to the back. The animals sustained these oscillations for long periods without utilizing a steady speed walk.\n\n > From [\"Speed, stride frequency and energy cost per stride: how do they change with body size and gait?\"](_URL_0_)\n\nThis really is inherent to how small animals move; they *love* to go fast then stop, then go fast then stop, and even when you really, REALLY try to get them to do something else, they won't do it! It's not just fear, either: people have tried a *lot* of ways to get them to run at a constant speed. They are built for this!",
"I can't address the 'twitchy' part, but here's a reason why smaller animals move quicker:\n\nMuscles aren't 100% effective, apart from doing their job they heat up as well. More movement means more heat.\n\nAn animal in 'scale 2:1' would be twice as long, twice as wide and twice as tall - 8 times bigger, 8 times more muscle. That animal's skin surface would only be 4 times bigger though - twice as long and twice as wide. At the same amount movement it would make 8 times more heat, but only have 4 times as much surface area to lose it. Small animals move quickly not to freeze. Big animals move slowly not to overheat. This is also why, with a few exceptions, bigger animals live in colder climates.",
"Part of the answer is that smaller bodies require less distance to communicate actions between the brain and the muscles. Another part of the answer is that the twitchy movement is beneficial as a way to preserve energy and avoid predators. This is not something I understand 100%, but I hope this portion of an answer is simple enough.",
"We perceive pigeons as bobbing their head as they walk, but in reality they move their body while keeping their head stationary. _URL_0_",
"Also, just a bit of perspective, small animals experience time different from us, so their twitchy movements don't really seem that jagged to them as it does to us. ",
"Fun thing to compare to: watch as you move your hands. It's a lot faster than you'd think! :)",
"Metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information\n\n_URL_0_ \n\nMaybe not like you're five but a good read and interesting theory\n",
"I've always had a theory that time is perceived faster to smaller animals (ants constantly \"changing their mind\") and slower by larger animals (whales are basically trapped in slow motion when you think about it) because perception has to do with how big your brain is and how fast your neurons fire... anyways that always made sense to me!",
"Humans have ~~their~~ our own set of weird twitchy movements, but I imagine it is normal to ~~them~~ I mean us... so WE don't notice it. Just watch some standing/waiting somewhere - their head will dart around, their legs will bounce and shake, their arms and hands will flail around slightly. I'm not a snake.",
"Super late to the party but I have a theory about this, about birds mainly. We see 24 frames a second as fluid movement, but birds would need 125frames a sec to see images as fluid movement because they have sharper eyes. \n\nMy theory was this is why they move their heads so quick to us, because they can process what they see better. We could move our heads faster but our eyes just blur and don't make sense of things, while they can process. \n\nProbably completely wrong but meh. ",
"One answer that I haven't seen that I think is definitely part of it is that any animal with a smaller brain and faster metabolism than us is going to experience the passage of time at a different speed to us. Action potentials take time to travel down neurons, so an animal with a smaller brain can think faster in that signals will take less time to get where they need to go. ",
"Compared to blue whales, humans are extremely twitchy. It's relative to size and metabolism more than any other factor. Hope this helps.",
"Read the current top answers as they all have merit. I'll attempt to add something new.\n\nIn your question, you seem to imply \"unlike us humans\" so I'll turn the question around.\nHow can we humans avoid making lots of small, twitching movements?\n\nPart of this answer could be memory, planning and perception. Our giant, well structured brains give us great memory and planning compared to most other creatures. We can also see long distances with good accuracy. This allows us to sequence our movement choices into more organised and efficient blocks with less stops to take in information or make new decisions. For example, when riding a bicycle to the local store, you can remember the entire journey and the required movements and decisions based on traffic are all stored in automatic memory.\n\nThe decisions fewer and more powerful for you. If turn required then turn, if speed required, move legs faster, if less speed then use break. Continue until store reached.\n\nCompare that to an ant. If it had to find the food that other ants had found, the decisions might look like this:\nWalk forward, sniff, if pheromone level now is greater than pheromone level before, continue, otherwise pick new direction and repeat. \n\nThe ant has limited memory, planning and perception, so must constantly stop to calculate its next move."
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"http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b084xk6m",
"http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/34683/why-do-smaller-mammals-move-intermittently"
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"http://healthyliving.azcentral.com/white-muscle-vs-red-muscle-fitness-17655.html"
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"https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/small-animals-live-in-a-slow-motion-world/"
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"https://books.google.com/books?id=10TCvK-9v70C&pg=PA246&lpg=PA246&dq=jerky+lizard+movements+camouflage&source=bl&ots=KvA6rm_nMr&sig=i-M_IG1UFbZZN1iI1hi0G2Yixys&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA0b7XqffSAhVI52MKHfquCPAQ6AEILjAF#v=onepage&q=jerky%20lizard%20movements%20camouflage&f=false",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbFmRi5Q7DI"
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"http://jeb.biologists.org/content/138/1/301.short",
"http://www.physlink.com/education/essay_haldane.cfm"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgaH8lES39E"
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1ofged | if the human race as a whole decided for whatever reason that we wanted to destroy the entire planet, how easily would we be able to do it? | I'm not a mad scientist, I'm just uh...curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ofged/eli5_if_the_human_race_as_a_whole_decided_for/ | {
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"We do not have the ability to destroy the planet. We might be able to wipe out quite a bit of life, but physically destroying the planet is beyond our reach. And not just now, but for the foreseeable future.",
"What do you mean by destroy? Make the Earth uninhabitable to humans? Destroy all life? Actually break the Earth into pieces?",
"You may find this interesting.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nTL;DR\n\nVery hard.",
"Earth? We would need about 5,361\\*10^22 tons of TNT. Probably a bit more. That's a lot of tons of TNT. \n\nThe biggest, meanest nuclear bomb had yield between 5\\*10^7 5.8\\*10^7 tons of TNT. We would need\n\n1,000,000,000,000,000\n\nof these. That's a lot.",
"Nice try, Lex Luthor.",
"This is turning out to be a pretty interesting question.\n\nHow would we actually *destroy* the planet? It's not an easy thing to destroy a planet, even if you've got the entire civilization working towards that goal.\n\nFirst let's define some terms. By *destroy* I'm going to say that we've accomplished our goal once a substantial fraction of the planet is disincorporated from the rest of it. Basically a *Theia* event. For reference, a *Theia Event* refers to the original formation of the moon, when a planet the size of Mars smashed into proto-earth at an angle, throwing up so much debris and boiled off rock into orbit that it eventually coalesced to form the moon.\n\nI can think of three ways to do at least a *Theia* event to the Earth:\n\n1. Degrade the earth's orbit until it spirals into the Sun. That's the way the earth would *normally* be destroyed in about 5 billion years, when the sun goes Red Giant. We think.\n\n2. Smash the Moon into the Earth.\n\n3. Smash something else, like a comet or an asteroid into the Earth. Let's cherry pick the a couple of large Asteroids: Ceres and 4 Vesta. Strictly speaking only 4 Vesta is still an Asteroid. Ceres has been reclassified as a *dwarf planet.* Blame Neil deGrasse Tyson.\n\nNow, let's do some quick sanity checks before we even think about *how* we're going to to anything:\n\nHow much energy is required? I'm going to focus on the kinetic energy of the satellite in question rather than worrying about the total energy of the system. If, at any time, we can zero out the kinetic energy we can ensure it'll drop into the either an intersection with the orbit of the Earth, (for *Armageddon* and *Despicable Me*) or into the Sun.\n\n1. Earth's velocity is 30,000 m/s around the Sun. It's mass is 6*10^24 kg.\n2. Moon's velocity is 1,000 m/s around the Earth. It's mass is 7*10^22 kg.\n3. Vesta's velocity is 20,000 ms/ around the Sun. It's mass is 2.6*10^20 kg.\n4. Ceres's velocity if 18,000 m/s around the Sun. It's mass is 9*10^20 kg.\n\nThis gives us the following rough, *back of an envelope* calculations for these objects' kinetic energies:\n\n1. Earth: 5.4 * 10^33 J\n2. Moon: 7 * 10^28 J\n3. Vesta: 1 * 10^29 J\n4. Ceres: 2.9 * 10^29 J\n\nNow, the *total production* of energy by all human activities in 2008 was 143,000 TWh. To account for growth and a decent margin of error, let's call it 200,000 TWh. That's *terrawatt-hours*, or 10^12 watt-hours. Simple math gives us:\n\n2 * 10^17 w-hr = 2 * 10^17 * 60 * 60 watt-seconds = 7.2 * 10^20 J.\n\nSo, even the closest, easiest object to destabilize from it's orbit is the moon, and **the sum total** of all human activity couldn't even impact it's orbit to a degree more than 1/100,000,000! We would need to increase our energy production by an order of **one million** just to impact the moon's orbit by 1%!\n\nSo yeah, the short answer is no, we do not have the ability to destroy the earth. Sorry.",
"We could create a cascading effect with self-replicating Von Neumann machines via [this](_URL_1_) scenario. Basically, you'd take a nanoscopic machine that consumes matter to make more of itself, or energy (or whatever). [Very rudimentary](_URL_0_) self-replicating machines have been worked on for a few years now and great strides are being made. Your whole body is, in fact, comprised of them. ",
"The faster you want to do it, the harder it is. So conversely, if you're willing to be (very) patient, this wouldn't be as hard as you might think.\n\nDestroying the planet Death Star style is too hard, because overcoming the planet's gravitational binding energy is, well, impractical. But we could conceivably drop the earth into the sun.\n\nYou'd do it with asteroids. Get yourself a few million rockets, and a few million big-ass ion drive units. Fly them out to the asteroid belt, and outfit a few million big rocks with motors.\n\nThen carefully fly each rock, one by one, *near* the earth on a flyby trajectory such that the gravitational interaction between the earth and the rock steals energy from Earth's orbit in just the right way to decrease the Earth's perigee distance. Do it just right, and you can fly the earth past Venus to get a really big change in Earth's delta-V.\n\nOr, now that I think of it, screw the sun. Just crash the earth into Venus. That would be easier, and still sounds pretty destroy-ish to me...",
"[Here's one of the greatest pieces of the internet, and might be just slightly above ELI5 level, but only just.](_URL_0_)",
"stab the ground with our knives",
"Ask the Vogons."
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2je1at | how were big publishers (cnn, abc ect) able to get interviews with osama bin laden, yet took the us forces so long to locate and kill him? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2je1at/eli5_how_were_big_publishers_cnn_abc_ect_able_to/ | {
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"It’s possible to meet with a guy like Bin Laden when he *wants* to be interviewed. His guys show up, pick up the news crew, drive them into the countryside, conduct the interview, and then drive the news crew back while Osama promptly drives to a waiting helicopter that files to a private jet and takes him elsewhere. US forces aren’t journalists and can’t arrange a meeting like that. ",
"They didn't.\n\nNobody from the West interviewed Osama bin Laden since the September 11th, 2001 attacks.\n\nHe did record a few videos and distribute them - those were not interviews with Western journalists.\n",
"Because most of the times these things are faked. ",
"I don't actually remember CNN or ABC ever interviewing Osama. As far as I remember he only had tapes of him speaking mailed to news places.",
"\nThe problem with the question is that the first half applies pre-9/11 and the second after. \n\nIn the 1990s it was easier; the US was after him but not to the same degree post-9/11. IIRC Mike Wallace got an interview with him in the 90s that was subsequently published in Reader's Digest; it even mentioned sleeping overnight in a cave. To that end, back when the Taliban/AQ movement was in its infancy, the publicity would have been good for Osama."
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609qrh | - how did we verify that gravity has a speed? | Gravity apparently travels at or near the speed of light, but how do we know that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/609qrh/eli5_how_did_we_verify_that_gravity_has_a_speed/ | {
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"It was a theory that came out from general relativity. When people started to apply the new theory of general relativity on different mechanics to see if they could find a flaw it was discovered that the observed motions of Mercury were much closer to the calculations if you used the fact that gravity were limited to the speed of light. This was one of the first big observations that would help make general relativity accepted.",
" > Gravity apparently travels at or near the speed of light, but how do we know that?\n\nThe simple answer: from observation.\n\nWe can measure gravitational effects as we see them, not before, not after. If \"gravity\" was slower or faster than light, we'd see cosmic events - for example fast-spinning double star systems - before or after the gravitational effects are measurable. But that is not the fact, graviational effects show up just as the light reaches us.\n\nInteresting is that Newton, who had no \"cosmic scale\" observation that were precise enough, still assumed that Gravity would propagate instantly through space. ",
"Everything we know about modern physics (deriving from special relativity) says no information can travel faster than light. If gravitational waves did travel faster than light, then we could conceivably build machines to transmit information faster than light. What about slower? Well, general relativity tells us one thing but nobody *really* knew for sure until last year. When the LIGO detector (actually made of two detectors) detected the gravitational waves from the black hole merger, it's possible to measure how fast the gravitational waves traveled due to the distance between the detectors."
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7dfzj4 | why is that smartphones experienced more vast improvement than laptops in the recent years? | It seems to me that Android devices especially have been getting massive specs and features boost, even in 2 years frame (I mean by standards now my HTC One M8 is considered subpar potato). On the other hand, I haven't seen any laptop worthwhile an upgrade from my 4 years old laptop. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7dfzj4/eli5_why_is_that_smartphones_experienced_more/ | {
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"1. Companies are having their engineers work super hard on smartphones because it's where the most customers are. For example Apple has most of the best people on iPhone and iOS, not on Mac and OSX.\n2. Much of what they're doing is taking existing capabilities that good laptops already had, and just making them smaller and less power-hungry.",
"Your perception is mistaken. The improvements to cell phones are pretty minor, and the improvements to laptops and PCs have been as steady as ever. The difference is that the focus in laptop computing has shifted. Rather than reasonable power (which has become pretty common and cheap), laptops are focusing on battery life, small form factors, and beautiful displays like the retina display.\n\nFor a more accurate picture, look at improvements to GPUs, CPUs, and RAM for desktop computers vs the improvements to phones. Yes, the new ones are better, but the improvement to phones is waiting for a breakthrough in battery tech before more space can be allocated higher performance hardware."
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baqsw4 | if a few ants get separated many miles away, such as a car, what becomes of their life then? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/baqsw4/eli5_if_a_few_ants_get_separated_many_miles_away/ | {
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"Depends on the subspecies. Some ants, unsurprisingly the widespread and successful ones, can and will start a new colony if a few get separated from their old home. Some ants can even become queens and start laying eggs.\n\nSome ant subspecies will build new tunnels and start bringing resources there, working like they did in their previous colony.\n\nBut not all ants can do those things. Many will just walk around looking for their colony until they die. With no chemical trail or landmarks to follow they search in vain until they die since they have no other purpose or goal in life. They mainly just join forces and wander around looking for a chemical trail, ironically leaving a trail themselves so they may get stuck in a loop and walk in circles until they die of exhaustion. There's a name for that phenomenon: an ant mill.\n\nThat said, ants generally aren't strong enough to protect themselves away from their army and they don't live for more than a couple of months (apart from queens that can live for decades) so they may not have much time to build or search in a new environment anyway, especially since ants from other colonies tend to be very aggressive with strangers",
"One certain thing is that they will not adopt a new colony. Ants recognize the pheromones of other colonies, even of the same subspecies, as \"enemy\". Any other ant colonies are one of the many dangers that they will face.\n\nHowever, if it is a group of them, many types of ants can form a temporary colony even without a queen. That is why \"ant farms\", which have no queen, work. The group, lacking a clear path back to their colony, after windmilling for a little while, may begin digging a new one, and just will not have a new generation to replace them when they die.",
"If you are interested in ants and their communities and how they act in certain situations, check out AntsCanada on youtube. The dude posts some super interesting educational videos. \n\n\nI ended up binging them big time when I found them. ",
"If they're Argentine Ants, they'll just integrate into another colony. Those bastards are literally everywhere, except Antarctica. ",
"I always wondered if you dropped a lone ant into a colony of other ants - of the same species - if the ants would be like: 'hey bro, you lost? Come join us, we gots loads of jobs on the go and you'd fit right in...' or would it be more like: 'Outsider! Imposter! Tear him apart for food. Nom, nom, nom...'",
"Little bit off-topic but this thread makes me want to pick up Bernard Werber's - Empire of the Ants. Amazing book. It's a trilogy, actually. \n\nI remember watching were i was stepping for a good week after reading it. Don't wanna kill no adventurous ants. ",
"Such as a car? What?",
"If you have any interest in ants at all, I'd highly recommend [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/user/AntsCanada"
]
]
|
||
7jzk8g | why is internet considered a utility and not charged for larger consumption, but charging extra for phone data/internet is allowed?...pre-nn repeal question | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7jzk8g/eli5_why_is_internet_considered_a_utility_and_not/ | {
"a_id": [
"dracpt6",
"dradjzh"
],
"score": [
2,
2
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"text": [
"The same way ISP charge if you get over your download limit. Don't know in your country but in Canada some internet plan still have download limit cap same as cell phone.",
"Some companies tries charging by usage, particularly AOL which charged by the hour connected. When competitors offered \"unlimited\" plans, they were much more popular and customers moved to the competitors. Eventually everybody offers \"unlimited\" plans, some with more limitations than others.\n\nUnlike electric power, where the company has to buy more coal to make more electricity, most ISPs are not paying variable fees for the data they deliver to you."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
||
6igdz8 | how is it "too hot" to fly airplanes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6igdz8/eli5_how_is_it_too_hot_to_fly_airplanes/ | {
"a_id": [
"dj608oe"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"It's not too hot to fly any airplanes, it's too hot to fly certain airplanes. \n\nHeat means lower air pressure, which means a given wing generates less lift, at a given speed. When the given speed is more than the airplane can generate in the space of a runway, it's not leaving the ground. \n\nMilitary planes are designed to get the job done, with less concern about the cost of the plane or fuel burnt, so have wings that produce enough lift to take off in even extreme heat. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
2ygvi1 | how do servers remember food orders and customers for a few hours/days if humans are limited to "sensory memory," "short-term memory," and "long-term memory"? | I remember taking college classes in Psych and working as a server, thinking, "none of these memory models fit my job capabilities".
Wikipedia (and my old textbooks) say that sensory memory lasts a few seconds, short-term memory lasts several seconds to a minute (or up to a few minutes with rehearsal), and long term memory lasts a lifetime (granted no medical/psychological issues).
In my experience, I could take several tables' orders without writing them down and remember them long enough to do several other tasks, send the order, and repeat it to my boss hours later if there was an issue. I could also remember customers, who had only dined in once, if they came in a few days or even weeks later. I remembered, in detail, the entire menu, and sometimes prices, for months at a time, but I don't remember that now.
Is there a name for that kind of memory? Is it even recognized scientifically? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ygvi1/eli5_how_do_servers_remember_food_orders_and/ | {
"a_id": [
"cp9e2ri",
"cp9extf",
"cp9fj3p"
],
"score": [
3,
5,
2
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"text": [
"It's a very rare thing called \"Good-at-your-job\". ",
"The easy answer is, some servers just write it down.\n\nThe hard answer is, and I don't know for sure, but my expert status after five minutes on Wikipedia tells me it may actually be using your long-term memory via pattern recognition and repetitive familiarity with the menu.\n\nE.g. If someone orders a double cheeseburger once, you may draw on that long-term memory and apply it to this new person. You may better remember specifics that way, as in the original memory they had it well done, but this person wants it medium rare. The differences stand out and help you keep things straight.\n\nAgain, I'm just speculating.",
"The definitions you give for memory types are a bit simplistic. Long-term memory *can* last a lifetime. Servers on the show *Law and Order* can remember a customer from last week, but if they don't solidify this memory through repeated recall, it will most likely fade.\n\nIn the same way, students (sometimes) remember yesterday's or last week's lesson to continue building on it today, but few will remember it twenty years from now. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[]
]
|
|
52e9s6 | why does true silence, like in an anechoic chamber, drives one crazy? | The longest anyone has survived in anechoic chamber of Orfield Laboratory is 45 minutes. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52e9s6/eli5_why_does_true_silence_like_in_an_anechoic/ | {
"a_id": [
"d7ji7yw"
],
"score": [
11
],
"text": [
"short answer is that they don't: _URL_0_\n\nPeople are very susceptible to suggestion and set events like the ones mentioned about the Orfield Laboratory were probably not done in a neutral setting. Chances are that if someone was invited in to sleep there and given a good 'this is going to be the most relaxing thing you've ever had' conversation, they'd be able to stay in there all night."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[
"http://io9.gizmodo.com/5829343/everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-sensory-deprivation-tanks"
]
]
|
|
67qm4p | why is hunger so affected by everything under the sun? | From temperature to our mood and stress, it seems like something that is easily affected by everything. Is there a reason for it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67qm4p/eli5why_is_hunger_so_affected_by_everything_under/ | {
"a_id": [
"dgsjo5k"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Your body gauges hunger based on how empty or full your stomach is and how long it's been like that because that is the simplest way to tell if you need to eat.\n\nThings like the temperature, mood, stress, etc all effect how you feel emotionally towards being hungry. If everything is calm you can generally feel OK with being hungry. If everything is stressing you out you will have no willpower to your hunger."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
|
6fh32q | how does lighting in a concert interfere with musical equipment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6fh32q/eli5_how_does_lighting_in_a_concert_interfere/ | {
"a_id": [
"dii43qm"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"Although LEDs and other technologies are becoming more commonplace and have their own funky ways of dimming them built in, a lot of stage lighting still uses a variant of the old fashioned filament bulb that you might have in any number of lights at home, assuming you've not fitted some sort of energy saving bulb anyway.\n\nThe most common way of dimming these is with a device called a triac. A triac is a sort of electronic switch. When we dim a light, what we actually do is use the triac to cut the power to it for short periods of time (fractions of a second). Because the filament in the bulb stays hot enough to continue glowing for the short periods where there's now power our eyes don't see the periods where there's no power being applied, but the effect is that in all we're pumping less power into the light, and it's therefore less bright.\n\nNow, the problem here is that every time we cut the power or put it back in, it causes a little spike of current to appear on the electrical system. If we've got sound gear attached to the same supply as dimmers, then these spikes that are coming from our dimmers can cause interference in the sound kit."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
376fwm | oxygen masks on planes only have enough oxygen for a few minutes, to give the pilot enough time to descend the plane to 10,000 feet where there is enough air to breathe. what if there is a loss of cabin pressure when the plane is flying over mountains higher than 10,000 feet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/376fwm/eli5_oxygen_masks_on_planes_only_have_enough/ | {
"a_id": [
"crk38sk",
"crk3f6d",
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"score": [
3,
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"text": [
"The bigger danger is not oxygen but the temperature. Air at such altitudes is really cold and people are more likely to die of hypothermia than suffocation.",
"You can get enough oxygen to breathe over 10,000 feet. From my experience as someone who flew on Marine helicopters, the cutoff for us was 12,000 feet. Above that altitude we were required to have oxygen. Can you breath above 12,000 feet? Absolutely. For how long? Depends on the person. \n\nI have no idea what happens in the real world, but to answer your question, I would think that they would descend to the lowest altitude possible, with the greatest chance of reaching a lower altitude due to terrain. \n\n",
"While passengers use chemical oxygen generators that will provide oxygen for 12 minutes, pilots and crew members have access to oxygen tanks.\n\nIn case of a cabin decompression over a mountain range, the crew will descend to the MOCA (Minumum Obstacle Clearance Altitude) and will continue their descent when they cleared the mountain range.\n\nMedically wise this isn't a severe issue as hypoxia isn't dangerous on its own: a person can breathe and live at lets say 20.000 feet.\nThe real danger lies in the deteriorated situational awareness that accompanies hypoxia. The crew uses oxygen tanks in such an emergency to keep their minds sharp.\n\n[Recorded audio from a pilot suffering from hypoxia, notice his increasingly sluggish conversation](_URL_0_)"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IqWal_EmBg"
]
]
|
||
7u0ye6 | where does the internet come from? is it generated? i hear about tiers and that google is at tier 3, who is at tier 1? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7u0ye6/eli5_where_does_the_internet_come_from_is_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"dtgomaz"
],
"score": [
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"text": [
"The internet is simply a bunch of interconnected computers. When you get yourself hooked up through a provider, you become a small part of the internet. You can even become a provider yourself, by for instance getting a long network cable, plugging an end into your router, drilling a hole through a wall, poking the cable through it, and allowing your neighbour to use your connection. That would make you a tier 3 by the way.\n\n* Tier 3: You connect by buying a connection from other providers.\n* Tier 2: You peer with some, and pay for some.\n* Tier 1: You peer only.\n\nPeering means you have a mutual agreement with another provider to allow traffic back and forth for free. Typically this is done because they're both peers, rough equals, and both benefit in roughly the same amount from the relationship. For instance if you form an agreement where your neighbour and you share your respective music albums with each other that would be something similar.\n\n\n\n\n"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
192zjf | rpgs | i just bought a wii u, and after a lifetime of only playing essentially mario platformers, i'd like to branch out into other kinds of games. there are tons of interesting and popular RPGs, but ... i don't understand how they work! please explain. i'd also like to hear what your favorite RPG is and why. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/192zjf/eli5_rpgs/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8kblvs",
"c8kbz7j",
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"text": [
"RPGs are supposed to be very open world, where you can choose what to do for most games. You're supposed to play as if you're the character. Of course, you can choose to play a murderous psycho or a character with multiple personalities. Of course, these are the good ones, there are some bad ones where you're forced to play in a specific way.\n\nIn most RPGs there are stats and equipment. The SPECIAL (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) system from Fallout is a pretty good system, and then there's many substats, like weapon stats (One-handed vs. Two-handed weapons, blunt vs sharp weapons etc in a game set in medieval times) (Pistols vs. Rifles and then different types like Laser/Conventional/Plasma weapons in science fiction games) and stuff like that.\n\nReally, it's just a term for a game where you can play a character you want to play, in a way you want to play, and which employs different skills and upgradeable equipment. Also, there's numbers. Many older RPGs work on the Dungeon and Dragons system, where every action takes a dice roll, and you then roll a dice to see if you succeed.\n\nI'm going to only mention new-ish games, there are FANTASTIC games that are pretty old, but their mechanics are shit, and might just turn you off.\n\nSome of the great RPGs out there are Deus Ex (fantastic story, little old by now, the new game (Deus Ex: Human Revolution) people say isn't AS great as the first one, but I found it amazing. The story is amazing (from Wikipedia: \"A central theme to the game is the rise of corporations in globalization, espionage, human survival, poverty, and the ethics of advancing humans with artificial replacements for body parts.\"), and it's something you really should try and play.\n\nThere's also the Fallout games (3 and New Vegas in particular, 1 and 2 are great, but old, and their mechanics are increadibly clunky). These are pretty much some of my favorite games. The story in 3 and NV is pretty easy, nuclear war is about to break out and underground vaults have been built. In 3 you start in one of these vaults, you grow up in them, and then you're forced outside, and you're pretty much forced to learn to live on your own. The game takes place on the east coast, around Washington D.C, Southwest Maryland, Western Pennsylvania and Northeast Virginia, whereas you don't start in a vault in New Vegas, and it's centered around (you guessed it) Las Vegas, with areas in Nevada, California and Arizona. This is science fiction, with laser and plasma rifles, robots, cybernetic dogs and all that good stuff.\n\nThird there's The Elder Scrolls series. This is pretty much Fallout in medieval times, with magic and dragons and shit. You use swords and bows to fight instead of pistols and rifles and all that stuff. Nothing more to say, it's also fantastic games (Morrowind is generally considered THE best game in the series, but it's also getting outdated). These are also a must-try if you want to get into RPGs.\n\nMass Effect is also a pretty good RPG game, although it went more towards action in 2 and 3, so I would start with 1.\n\nThere are many more, but I have to go now, so just write me if you have questions!",
"I just finished playing FF3 for the Wii as it only cost 10 dollars to download. I'd recommend it highly.",
"Which games are you looking at? Japanese RPGs especially vary a lot between individual games. If you don't mind older graphical styles, I'd also recommend browsing the virtual console; Final Fantasy VI (3), Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario and Secret of Mana would be good introductions. The \"systems\" in each aren't overly complicated (especially the Mario RPGs) and they're each charming/pretty/enjoyable. \n\nYou might want to look at a PS2, if you don't have one, also. JRPGs are a bit of a dead genre, and some of the newer games available aren't especially good starting places. The PS2 has a pretty good library, though, plus backwards compatibility with the PSX, which has loads of outstanding JRPGs. \n\nAs far as Wii/U games, I'm not sure if I'd recommend Xenoblade, personally, (though lots of other people would, so keep that in mind; I just have mixed feelings about it) but The Last Story looks surprisingly good and I'd keep my eyes on the upcoming Xenoblade sequel. I'd highly recommend Muramasa and Fragile; both are gorgeous, unique games that play down the \"systems/levels/stats\" aspect of RPGs for a much more streamlined experience."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[],
[]
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|
|
3hsb21 | what is so hard/complicated that reddit cannot use essentially the same app for ios on android? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hsb21/eli5_what_is_so_hardcomplicated_that_reddit/ | {
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"cua4nyn",
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"text": [
"Well for one of the main things the applications on the two phones are written in different programming languages. Android utilizes code similar to a mix of Java and XML while apple uses C# I believe. Thus to create the same application for both os, u need to write two versions of the application code. One being C# and the other being java",
"Nothing. Reddit has created a growing market.\n\nBefore I explain, you should know that Reddit does not have any control/say in the apps.\n\nWhat reddit has done is create a set of API's for computer programmers to use. An API is just an easy way for code/programs to retrieve data from a website. This allows the programmers to start creating their own app for Reddit. Those programmers have ideas, and they can use those ideas in their apps. Because of this, there's now a competition for Reddit apps. (see BaconReader, Reddit Is Fun, Reddit Now, Alien Blue, iReddit, etc.) This is good, as the users can choose what apps they like better. The ones that are heavily disliked will fall, and better app designers/programmers will create something better.\n\nAlso, Reddit is open-sourced. That means the community can see how _URL_0_ is programmed. I don't know if this has any influence in the app market, but I believe it may have helped.\n\nEdit: just did some research... Reddit has made an app for iOS, called iReddit. It was made in 2011. In the 6 months after it released, it had a lot of issues. (heavily dislikes search, missing buttons, etc.) As you can see, Reddit is participating in their market that they've helped create.",
"From a developer standpoint iOS and Android apps have little in common, as far as implementation is concerned. The design and model used for the development may be similar or same, but it's two totally different things when it comes down to creating them. They can and are considered two totally different apps (projects).\n\nAs to why doesn't reddit have an Android client, I don't know. Maybe they don't think it will justify the development costs? \n\nCurrently there's only an official reddit client for iOS:\n\n[Alien Blue] (_URL_0_)"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[
"Reddit.com"
],
[
"https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/alien-blue-reddit-official/id923187241?ls=1&mt=8"
]
]
|
||
cs5qof | how does your phone turn overheard words or phrases into targeted ads? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cs5qof/eli5_how_does_your_phone_turn_overheard_words_or/ | {
"a_id": [
"excpkob",
"excuibn"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"It doesn’t. You just google stuff a lot and forget about it mostly and then get ads for the things you Googled.",
"The targeted ads are chosen based on a bunch of data they collect on you. While this is kind of creepy, it does mean that you get a tailored experience. As far as the spoken data, most of the cookies (or bits of information about you) are collected through google or one of its partners. Google devices, or things that are listening for you to say, “hey google” typically have that feature on because they’re listening for your commands anyway and might as well. For most other people it is generally automatically off. There is also a google settings page where you can tell it to not listen or pay attention to certain things you do. Hope that helps!"
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
||
x4jjk | how do game bits work? 8-bit, 16bit, 32-bit etc. | a | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/x4jjk/eli5_how_do_game_bits_work_8bit_16bit_32bit_etc/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5j3pb6",
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"score": [
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"text": [
"The NES comes from the \"8-bit era\" of consoles, which included the NES and the Sega Master System. These consoles are based around 8-bit processors, which generally store and process data 8 bits at a time.\n\nIn computer parlance, 8 bits make one byte. Many NES games have a limit of 255 on certain items (such as The Legend of Zelda's Rupee counter) because 255 is the maximum unsigned integer that can be stored in 8 bits of data. In the early days, this was a serious limitation on computer technology, and many workarounds were needed in order to program even moderately complex games like Punch Out! that included large sprites with many frames of animation.\n\nAs computer technology evolved, so did the processors available for video game consoles. The SNES featured a 16-bit chip, the PlayStation a 32-bit chip, and the Nintendo 64 featured a 64-bit chip.\n\nHowever, the number of bits the processor generally handles at a time is only one measure of the performance of the system; the original Xbox was based around a 32-bit Pentium III chip 5 years after the release of the Nintendo 64. At the same processors were increasing in complexity, their overall computing power increased as well, and the cost of storage (both in terms of memory chips and optical media) declined.\n\nThe intersection of these technological improvements and the rise in popularity of video games as an entertainment media is what caused the increase in complexity and graphical quality that we see in video games today.\n\nThe \"8-bit\" moniker used to describe the NES and its peers is the same distinction we talk about today when we talk about a \"64-bit\" PC processor or \"64-bit Windows\" - these architectural terms are ones we use in more areas than just video games.",
"Not really ELI5, more ELI12: the bits indicate the architecture that was used for the hardware. For example, the NES (8-bit) has an 8-bit processor (CPU). The N64 was based on 64-bit architectur for its CPU, etc. The CPU is one of the most important parts of the console, so they advertised with its architecture.\n\nModern day consoles don't really get advertised any more for their architecture though. It was really a trend in the beginning of game consoles."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
|
33o2kx | why does the car's steering wheel lock when you turn the ignition off? is there a benefit or safety features? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33o2kx/eli5_why_does_the_cars_steering_wheel_lock_when/ | {
"a_id": [
"cqmrb1l",
"cqmreu6"
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"score": [
5,
7
],
"text": [
"It's a safety and anti-theft feature.\n\nIf you're parked on a hill, the car won't roll into traffic if the wheel is locked to the side.\n\nIt also makes the car harder to steal if the wheel can't turn.",
"It means that if someone hotwires your car they still won't be able to drive it."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[],
[]
]
|
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