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1sohma | how do police investigators 'lose' crucial evidence obtained in investigations without explanation? | It seems that there have been many cases in which evidence disappears during an investigation, greatly impacting legal proceedings. For example: in the murder of Adam Walsh, the murder weapon (a machete), and a bloody CADILLAC (yes, a whole car) were 'lost' by police. How does this happen and are there professional consequences for this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sohma/eli5_how_do_police_investigators_lose_crucial/ | {
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"Have you ever lost your keys or been unable to find a matched pair of socks? Have you ever been through the drive-through at Taco Bell at 1am and not gotten your chicken quesadilla even though you **explicitly** told them not to forget it because they've forgotten your fucking quesadilla 4 times in as many months?\n\nCops are just people. Evidence is just stuff. People get bored & lazy when filling out paperwork and filing things. Something could be shelved in the wrong row or put in the wrong box."
]
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48pl6v | why do some people feel the urge to bite and nibble to show affection? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48pl6v/eli5_why_do_some_people_feel_the_urge_to_bite_and/ | {
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"Good question!! I do it a lot and have no idea why. \n\nI suppose it's a kind of primitive thing. Animals do the same. They nip at us and "
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5c1qji | what is the modern theory of rent? | I've done some research on the internet about the issue but I wasn't able to grasp it. What determines the rent prices according to this theory? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5c1qji/eli5_what_is_the_modern_theory_of_rent/ | {
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"The idea of \"rent\" in this context is not what you think it is. It is the surplus gained from a product, land, person or capitol currently compared to what it could be used for in the future.\n\nFor instance, say you have a farmer that owns a plot of cotton. Currently, he earns $100k for his usage of the land for specifically planting cotton. However, the land could potentially be used to grow wheat. But Wheat will only earn the farmer $50k. The farmer now has a \"rent\" or surplus of $50k ($100k from cotton - $50k from wheat). In this case, this is an opportunity cost \"rent\" of switching from Cotton to Wheat.\n\nHere's an example that applies to labor: Say your current job gives you $100k a year in salary. You find a new job that has the potential to pay you $120k a year. The rent or transfer earnings will be that extra $20k ($100k current earnings - $120k in potential earnings) in earning potential. In this case this is a transfer earnings of \"Rent\".\n\nIn essence, \"Rent\" is the opportunity cost or transfer earning of going from one form of production to another. \"Rent\" can either be gained or lost depending on the potential secondary usage of production."
]
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2k5brl | how does a solar eclipse occur? | Saw today (October 23rd) that there was a, "visible" solar eclipse in America. And this question just came to mind. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k5brl/eli5_how_does_a_solar_eclipse_occur/ | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The moon orbits the earth. On occasion, the moon lines up perfectly between the earth and sun, creating an eclipse."
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36pi97 | how does a vr headset work? | Do you still have to use a Keyboard and mouse with them? How does it work? How do you move? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36pi97/eli5_how_does_a_vr_headset_work/ | {
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"The head set is simply an output peripheral, like you monitor or your speakers, the computer tells it what to show you and they display it, now, how you get the information in to the computer of what you want the headset to show you is the question you are asking, and that is up to you and what equipment you have, you could play a VR game with keyboard and mouse if you can manage not looking at the keys, or you can use a mouse and joystick, BUT most VR sets available also include sensors that detect the position of your head, the information about where you are looking is fed in to the computer and the programmers decide whether or not to use it to follow your head motions or to make you use a joystick to move around , \n\nThere are many different technologies you can use to track your head, they may or may not be included in the VR visor, some I can think of right now are: {NOTE: I am making the names up, i dont know exactly what they are called}\n\n\n\nVisual marker tracking: your webcam points at your face and there are 4 or 5 LEDs on the VR set that the webcam picks up has bright points of light and guesses where you are pointing your head depending on the relative positions of the lights, the lights may be different colors to mae it easyer for the computer to distinguish them, \n\nSame thing has above can be done with infra red LEDs , that makes it very easy for the computer to follow them but you need an IR camera \n\nMagnetic orientation sensors, Simply an electronic compass that knows where north is, its kind of unreliable tho, \n\naccelerators and gyroscopes, the measure how fast you are moving your head and in what directions BUT they do not know where your head ACTUALLY is, they just guess it by the accelerations, so after playing for a while you could hand up with the action happening behind you and having to start turning your chair around , because error adds up.\n\nusually its a combination of many of those and possibly many more like ultrasound sensors, face recognition sensors and so on"
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6a0l89 | torrent dht. | ELI5: torrent DHT.
How do distributed hash tables work?
How, given just a magnet link, with no centralized server, can I find peers?
I understand how one peer could tell me about other peers, but how do I find that first peer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6a0l89/eli5_torrent_dht/ | {
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"Your bittorrent client and/or the .torrent file will have a list of initial DHT nodes to connect to. Therefore DHT isn't decentralised in the strictest sense, just more decentralised than trackers. \n\nWithout that initial DHT node, it is simply impossible to connect to any peers.\n\nOnce a connection is established with the initial DHT node, the client will be able to connect to other DHT nodes and so on."
]
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4t4i9w | why is a passport required to travel to china from taiwan, if china insists that taiwan is a part of it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4t4i9w/eli5_why_is_a_passport_required_to_travel_to/ | {
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"When the communist revolution happened in China, the revolutionaries, known as the People's Republic of China, pushed the previous government, known as the Republic of China, out of the mainland, but never actually took control of Taiwan. So, \"Taiwan\" is actually just the ROC, which, as you can imagine, causes a lot of tension between the two.\n\nHowever, the rest of the world isn't able to acknowledge Taiwan or the ROC as a country, because doing so would cause the PRC to cut economic ties. So, they're just in kind of a weird legal gray area, where both claim the other is a part of their country, but they're each forced to participate in the modern world by pretending they don't think that, and issuing documents such as passports.",
"Even Chinese mainland citizens are required to show their papers when making this transit. Chinese citizens are required to carry identity papers at all times.\n\nSo they're not singling out the Taiwanese. "
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3r9epn | how do mosquito's survive the winter, when they aren't draining my precious blood? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3r9epn/eli5_how_do_mosquitos_survive_the_winter_when/ | {
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"text": [
"They don't survive longer then 2 weeks as an adult. During the winter, the larva / eggs freeze & delay development. It's only when it gets warmer that they actually turn into adult mosquitos"
]
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2n8mxu | how do i go about buying a commodity on the stock market or otherwise? | Corn, Gold, ect. Would it be possible to buy direct from the source? Thanks | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n8mxu/eli5how_do_i_go_about_buying_a_commodity_on_the/ | {
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"text": [
"Any of the investment houses will let you buy whatever investment you want. Open an account online right now, put in an order and it will attempt to get filled when the market opens Monday morning. "
]
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7vzyi4 | why were barclays so keen to avoid a government bailout during the 2008 financial crisis? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7vzyi4/eli5_why_were_barclays_so_keen_to_avoid_a/ | {
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"The bailout involved the government taking over a large share of the bank in return for bailout money. Barclay's probably figured they could recover without a bailout from the government and thus avoid having to give up any of the company."
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29rbdr | how is google continuously getting strong-armed by corporations/eu/ceos to delete or censor information? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29rbdr/eli5_how_is_google_continuously_getting/ | {
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"text": [
"Access to a market of 500m wealthy, educated, technology using customers. Most of whom don't care anywhere near as much about 'corporation rights' as the voting US populace does."
]
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24nink | why doesn't boyle's everflowing flask work? | I know its impossible for a perpetual motion machine to work, but in this case I don't see why it wouldn't. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24nink/eli5_why_doesnt_boyles_everflowing_flask_work/ | {
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"The narrow piece wouldn't fill itself all the way, only as high as the water on the big reservoir.",
"It is supposed to work in the same way as a siphon which requires for the output to be lower than the input but in the case of this flask they are equal.",
"_URL_0_\n\nThe short answer is that when you set up a siphon like this, were the water comes out has to be lower than where the water starts from.\n\nA more theoretical answer would be what is driving this siphon is the potential energy in the raised body of water. If you expend that energy to move the water the most it will ever move (vertically) is back to the same height, this is without friction or any other energy loss. To get this idea to work the water would somehow have to be driven higher than it was originally. \n\nIt's very much the same idea as if you held a marble just below the lip of a bowl, then released it and let it roll down one side and up the other. Would you expect the marble to fly out the other side of the bowl? No, not unless you put additional force on the marble by pushing it to start."
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8r85ec | where did the standard five paragraph essay format come from? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8r85ec/eli5_where_did_the_standard_five_paragraph_essay/ | {
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"The five paragraph essay is really easy to understand if you are being taught how to write as an elementary student; list your three ideas, use the next three paragraphs to go into detail about your ideas separately, and use the last paragraph to tie them all together. It makes it really simple for students to focus on what they need to write. \nHaving the three points in the middle is probably because usually three points is needed to argue a viewpoint, also for statistics, three trials to do an experiment. The three points can also make it easier for teachers to grade papers, they can find the topic and the points readily, generally points are worked on separately in each paragraph and they are tied together.\nThe five paragraph essay is mostly for analytical works, describe how the protagonist in a book showed a trait. While it does excel in that field, it can hinder in summaries where I might not be trying to prove a point.\nFrom a non-teaching position view, a five paragraph essay is invaluable for a teacher to have students write efficiently and to be able to grade papers efficiently, however as skill increase students may be more open to writing about subjects that might not have to prove a point, however for testing purposes the five paragraph essay still stands out for its beautiful simplicity. \n(note my lack of five paragraph essay format)"
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5kf6wx | why is it so bad to bury waste in landfill? isn't it just putting carbon back into the ground where it belongs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kf6wx/eli5_why_is_it_so_bad_to_bury_waste_in_landfill/ | {
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"Depends on what the waste is. A lot of our stuff doesn't break down or takes a loooooong time to do so. It may also have toxic or other not-so-good materials mixed in with it.\n\nIt's not just a pile of viable carbon ready to go back into the ecosystem, unfrotunately",
"For many items to break down they need access to oxygen, burying them tends to prevent that. Some studies have dug into landfills and have found newspapers from the 1970s that haven't decayed at all yet."
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4vesmp | what did ronald reagan do during his presidency? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vesmp/eli5what_did_ronald_reagan_do_during_his/ | {
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"\"Reaganomics\" has several other names: supply-side, trickle-down are two. George H.W. Bush even called it voodoo economics during the 1980 Primary. It's basically the theory of cutting taxes to enable the public to spend more money, thus employing more people, who in turn pay more taxes. \n",
"Reaganomics is merely a coin termed to describe the Reagan administration's economic policy during the period. It's technical term is supply-side economics. \n\nThis is the belief has been unproven thus far:\n\n[link](_URL_0_)\n > Generally, economists have found little support for the claim that tax cuts increase tax revenues\n\n\nIt is the belief that giving the rich personal income tax cuts will encourage them to become entrepreneurs and open businesses, thereby creating more employment and naturally stimulating the economy. \n\nIn order for supply-side economics to work, however, it has to accept a massive decrease in the revenue that would otherwise be obtained from the tax income of the wealthy classes. As a result, certain actions need to be made - principally cutting federal spending, which has proven difficult to do in general. Other unpopular options, such as raising other forms of taxes (sales tax, taxes on the middle-class and poor, estate tax, sin taxes, etc...) are often also difficult to obtain. \n\nThis is the reason why supply-side economics tend to create large deficits in the budget. A deficit is when there is more spending than revenue for that year - which means the government didn't make as much money as it spent. Years of doing this have left us with a debt - which is an overall negative accumulation of our assets, or in other words how much we owe to lenders who paid off the deficits occurred.\n\nSupply-side economics was originally a small theory called the **laffer-curve**. \n\n[link](_URL_0_)\n > Although economist Arthur Laffer does not claim to have invented the Laffer curve concept,[5] it was popularized in the United States with policymakers following an afternoon meeting with Ford Administration officials **Dick Cheney** and **Donald Rumsfeld** in 1974 in which he reportedly sketched the curve on a napkin to illustrate his argument.\n\nDick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were big fans of the laffer-curve when introduced to them, which is potentially a good reason why the laffer-curve / supply-side economics has played such as crucial role in the Reagan administration and both Bush administrations, as both were of high positions in all three.",
"* Those mentally ill people in the streets you see: it all started when Reagan let them out of the hospitals.\n* Deregulation of many industries: leading to the Savings and Loan crisis.\n* Traded arms for hostages (Iran-Contra Scandal) while denying it to the public. Then claiming he couldn't recall basically anything in testimony (this might be true as there are suspections of him being deep in Alzheimers in his 2nd term, with other people actually running the presidency).\n* He espoused trickle-down economics (less tax for the rich means they spend more and the money \"trickles down\" to everyone else), which has since been discredited.\n* He spent and spent and spent on military; the Soviets couldn't keep up... this lead to the collapse of the USSR.\n* He has ascended to the position of a God to Republicans.",
"Reagan allowed a military arms embargo to be lifted on the murderous Guatemalen army. \n\nDuring the Reagen years, over 200,000 Mayas Indians where genocided by their own army, armed by Reagan´s actions. \n\nHe armed them, trained them at the school of the americas and gave them money to wipe out a innocent Mayan population. \n\nFor this alone, Reagen should be regarded as a war criminal, but the US names airports and streets after him.",
"The national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan. He is the grand father of bloated out of control government spending. ",
"Reagan loved wearing [sweatpants](_URL_2_) but was [shot](_URL_0_) because many thought he looked ridiculous.\n\nDuring his recovery, like Hugh Hefner, he never stopped wearing [pajamas](_URL_3_) in public but no one ever gave him a hard time for his [fashion choices](_URL_1_) again.\n\n "
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1s8bgf | what happens when a man loses his testicles? | Edit: How significantly would it affect his quality of life if he were past puberty? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1s8bgf/what_happens_when_a_man_loses_his_testicles/ | {
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"I'm not sure why people are giving you bullshit answers, it's a legitimate question. It depends on where the man is in his life. Regardless of the age, it will lower the man's testosterone levels and he will likely have to be on hormone therapy. If he is pre-pubescent, it's going to throw off a few key aspects of puberty, such as secondary sex characteristics (deeper voice, facial and body hair, etc), typical growth, etc. As he gets older, particularly after puberty, decreased testosterone levels would lead to a decreased ability for hypertrophy (building muscles), decrease energy level, sex drive, etc. Hope this gives you a bit of insight! ",
"He would obviously be infertile (no sperm production), but he could still have and maintain an erection (not directly related to testosteron production) - but it might be more difficult than before.\n\n As far as I know, the testosterone levels fall naturally when men get older (like estrogen levels in women but not as rapidly). Men therefore experience something similar to menopause, but not as severe and therefore not as remarkable. There are even various forms of therapy for prostate cancer that artificially reduce testosterone levels in a patient, because testosterone is a growth factor for the tumor (This is where I got the following information from).\n\n\nWhen Testosterone levels fall rather quickly, various effects will occur:\n\n* episodes of hot flush\n* decrease or loss of libido\n* erectile dysfunction\n* weight gain\n* pain and maybe growth of breast tissue\n\nover time, other things may happen as well:\n\n* decrease of muscle tissue\n* anemia\n* depression\n* osteoporosis"
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3u6wif | several people have asked what cause wwi, but what kept it going? what were the entente and central powers hoping to achieve? | So the general explanation of what started WW1 is that Franz Ferdinand got shot, Austria-Hungary blamed it on Serbia, and then a whole web of secret treaties got the rest of Europe involved. However, that doesn't explain why the major European powers stayed in the war so long, despite how costly it was. Why didn't the Entente or Central Powers just cash in their chips and push for diplomacy when it was clear that the war would last longer than anyone expected, and cause a horrifying number of casualties? Was there something that would make the high death toll pay off in the end? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u6wif/eli5_several_people_have_asked_what_cause_wwi_but/ | {
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"They tried, but whenever one side suggested it the other side said oho! You must be weakening and we'll win! \n\nThere was no objective. Millions died for nothing."
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4vxjmk | how holographic stickers work , how are they made? | Is the science behind the 3D cards the same , where you get perception of depth , when viewed cross eyed / closer to nose? I've read about laser holography in my engg , but still I have no idea how those stickers work which comes free with candies and gums. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4vxjmk/eli5how_holographic_stickers_work_how_are_they/ | {
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"i have tinkered around with trying to replicate holographic effects to be printed on tobacco packagings.\n\nDuring that time i learned how this is made in most cases.\nYou generally need to differ between holograms that just swap around between different colors and the one that actually show different images.\nBoth generally work the same way but the pictures require some extra work to be done where i dont have the details how they do it.\n\nPrinted holograms in general work with micro embossing, they print layer of lacquer and press it against a foil that holds the negative of the wanted pattern.\nAfter drying the lacquer remains in this state and acts like a fresnel lens.\nHow the hologram looks is then also determined by what is printed underneath so it can differ greatly.\n\nso for the pictures i would imagine they line up the picture which will be printed with different lines that match the embossed fresnel lens to create the effect but i cant stay that for sure."
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4ape4u | why do my armpits sting after putting on deo sometimes? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ape4u/eli5_why_do_my_armpits_sting_after_putting_on_deo/ | {
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"are you using antiperspirant? I've found that those irritate my skin a lot of times. I'll switch between antiperspirant and deodorant to help keep irritation down. But as for antiperspirant i believe it's the Aluminum-based compounds"
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1wt5y1 | why, if i feel full eating one meal, don't i feel full if i eat a different meal that has the same number of calories? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1wt5y1/eli5why_if_i_feel_full_eating_one_meal_dont_i/ | {
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"Totally not a doctor or anything but could part of it be density of calories? ie: 400 calories of celery is a lot more food than 400 calories of a steak. Again I'm guessing and have no medical background but that was my initial gut instinct. ",
"Wow. Front page and not a single answer. I would also like to know this. Could it just be that your stomach has a certain capacity and that's filled up by food size, not calorie count? ",
"RD here. It's what you're eating (or not eating). You need a variety of macronutrients (protein, CARBOHYDRATES, and fat) to give your meal \"staying power\". \n\nCarbs are found in breads and fruits and sugar. They're good for instant energy BC they're broken down fast and absorbed quickly- but they're used up fast. Protein (found in meat, dairy, beans) takes longer to digest than carbs, and fat takes even longer. An ideal meal will contain all three (plus fiber, which helps you feel full because it's bulky, but isn't actually digested or absorbed by your body).\n\nSo if you eat 200 cal of like, fruit or crackers, the energy will be used up faster and you'll feel hungrier sooner than if you ate 200 calories of meat and cheese. \n\nI can elaborate if you have questions! This is my favorite topic :)\n\nEdit: said more\n\nEdit: that escalated quickly! Thanks for all the awesome questions and respectful discussion. I'd love to do an AMA later :) Thanks for making me feel useful and thanks for the gold! ",
"I read in \"It Starts With Food\" a kind of paleo-diet idea.\n\nAnd in that idea, the most important part of your meal is fat. \n This is their idea:\n \nOur bodies are conditioned to feel full in two ways: one, our tastebuds, and the other our gut.\n Taste buds are easy to fool. Once upon a time, our tastebuds evolved to like sweet tastes, protein-y tastes, fatty tastes and...vegetable-y tastes (they kind of skipped over that one) as a mechanism to keep us enjoying the things that were giving us the proper nutrients. But, as food agriculture started, and we started making \"fake\" food with added tastes, our taste buds never evolved to accommodate that. So our body is still expecting a piece of cake to give us the nutrients that fruit does, which is why we love it so much. It has like a million times the sugar, and we've evolved to like sugar.\n \nOur gut is not so easy to fool. It still knows when all that shit gets down there that cake, and bread and dairy products don't have the nutrients and energy that we get from vegetables, fruit, and meat. Our bodies still know that they can only derive quick energy from so much glucose and lactose, but no good nutrients, which we need.\n \nSo, they suggest fat, with the highest calories per gram (while still a \"natural\" food) is the food that satiates our gut the best, giving us that \"full\" feeling, but it stays full in the gut, because of it's nutrients.\n \n \nIt is conjecture, and my answer was all over the place, but I hope it helped!\n\nEDIT: a letter\n\nEDT 2: _URL_0_",
"Satiety after a meal isn't directly determined by calories. Your stomach can't actually tell how many calories you've put in it. The feeling of fullness immediately after a meal is directly related to how much your stomach has increased in volume, so you can eat a lot more calories before you feel full if the food is densely packed with calories. As you begin to digest, the feeling of satiety is maintained by your gut suppressing the hunger causing hormone. This is partly correlated to how many calories you ate, but also a bunch of other things like fat/carb/protein/salt content of the food, how rapidly digestible the food is, how hydrated you are, and what your body thinks you need. The hunger hormones also then go back and change how strongly your stomach food volume is felt as fullness, so if the hormone isn't suppressed you can feel like you can go for more even if your stomach is still pretty full.",
"Three mechanisms can lead to hunger:\n1. Blood sugar drop\n2. Stomach volume empty\n3. Macro/micro-nutrient status [are you taking in protein, fat, essential vitamins and minerals]\nA healthy diet will work on ALL of these satiation mechanisms . You could see how certain foods may or may not satisfy all the requirements.\nExample1: lets say you ate 1kg of salad. Stomach volume will surely be full and there will be enough carbohydrate to increase blood glucose. But your bod will still FEEEL hungry because of (3). Where is the protein, fat and certain vitamins not found in vegetables? You won't be ravenous but you'll want a snack.\nExample2: eat a bunch of donuts. Blood sugar raises, then crashes. Stomach volume is moderately full but also moderately empty. Nutrient status in donuts? You're kidding. So junk food has a special ability to leave you hungry despite ample calories.\nExample3:fatty cut of fish with a side salad. You're satiated as can be. Understand that most people, most of the time, never get/feel this full.",
"A difficult question to answer like you're 5 but I'll give it a go:\n\nCalories are just like little energy packets you get from food.\n\n\"Feeling full\" is dependant on more than just the number of calories you're eating. It depends on;\n\n1. How fast you eat the food - it takes 20 minutes on average for your brain to register your stomach is full.\n\n\n2. What makes up the food -\n\n (i) Whether it is made of things like proteins, or starch which is a complex sugar (carbohydrate) and is not as easily (read:quickly) broken down.\n\n (ii) Most sugars and fats have different energy values to things with a lower glycaemic index (read: Low G.I) and are broken down faster, but add up faster in terms of calories. \n\n\n3. Volume - You could eat a 25g Twinky bar or at least 2 bananas to be able to get the same amount of calories, but obviously it will take you a) longer to eat he 2 bananas than the Twinky and b) the mass in terms of volume is far greater and will definitely stretch your stomach which sends the signal to your brain telling you you are full.\n\n\n4. Knowing the difference between being hungry, thirsty, or just \"craving\" something - \n\n (i) Feeling a little bit hungry can be a way for our bodies to trick us into ingesting fluids if we have been dehydrated for a while, but have not responded to the thirst messages.\n\n (ii) Actual hunger can be triggered by low levels of readily available energy in the blood stream (after the effect of insulin), or increasing levels of hydrochloric acid in your stomach (read: stomach acid). This can be because you have been swallowing a lot of saliva which makes your stomach to think food is coming and produce more acid to get ready to digest it - but the food doesn't arrive so the brain sends messages to order you to provide your stomach with food (read: hunger).\n\n (iii) Cravings - If you're hungry but you don't feel like eating X, Y or Z then you are more likely to be getting non-specific cravings rather than actual hunger and while you can eat a whole lot of food to the point where you feel overly full, you will never be able to feel satisfied until you mentally or physically satisfy that craving. Cravings are not always a bad thing - if it is specific and you haven't just watched a MacDonald's ad then chances are your body is in need of a certain vitamin or mineral e.g. chocolate cravings can be a sign of magnesium deficiency.\n\n ",
"Calories are just a measure of energy contained in the food you eat, that number doesn't tell you anything about the composition of the dish. You can drink a bottle of coke faster and easier than you can eat a big steak with a side dish, but in the end they might just \"contain\" the same number of calories.",
"The simple answer is caloric density. The less calorically dense your meal, the bigger it is for the same number of calories. Foods with a lot of fiber and water (vegetables) are the least dense (large), and foods that are mainly fat (oil, fat, nuts, cheese) are the most dense (small). \n\n_URL_0_\nBoth meals in this picture have 1575 calories. But because the one on the left is calorie-dense (packed with sugar and fat), it is a much smaller meal. The food on the right is not as dense (low fat, low sugar, more fiber, more water), so it is a much larger meal. \n\nA head of lettuce takes up a lot of space in your stomach, but only has 53 calories. You can get the same 53 calories from 7.5 almonds (very tiny), or a half-stick of string cheese, or 15 regular sized chocolate chips. The head of lettuce would take up most of the space in your stomach, making your stomach send signals that it is filled. The cheese, chocolate chips, and almonds would do very little to fill the space in your belly, therefore you would not \"feel full\" because you are not. \n\nAs for remaining \"not hungry\" over time, foods that take longer for the stomach to break down will feel \"longer lasting\". Foods that are high in protein and fiber are the best (animal protein and vegetables). Foods that are high in sugar/starch and water are dissolved almost immediately and leave the stomach quickly (grapes, soda, fruit juice, watermelon, candy, potatoes, white pasta, white rice, white bread, jelly). These will make you feel empty sooner. \n\n",
"You can feel full after drinking water, it's a mechanical sensation, not an accurate calorie counter",
"Calories are not what produces satiety. In fact, fructose actually impairs it to some degree. Which explains a lot.",
"It's because calories don't fill up your stomach. Food does.",
"when I feel hungry, I take a shot of heavy whipping cream. the fat is very satiating. I feel satisfied even though I have only taken in 50 calories.",
"Although the RD has touched on one of the elements, he/she has missed a lot of important components. This may get a little above ELI5, but I'll try and keep it ELI10\n\nSatiety, or the feeling of fullness, has a lot of psychological and biological mechanisms. \n\nFirst, there's a hormonal component. Certain hormones like leptin and ghrelin trigger the motivation to eat. Some foods, more than others, help stabalize those hormone levels.\n\nSecond, there's a neural component from the Intestines. Basically the more food you have (weight-wise) the more it will signal your brain that you are full. \n\nThird, there's a nutrient component. In addition to what the RD was talking about, You will feel hungrier if you are low on things like blood-sugar, amino-acids, fatty acids, certain vitamins or minerals, and water. In other words, if you eat a big carb dinner, and skip proteins and fats, or if you eat a big steak, but don't eat your vegetables, you'll get hungrier sooner\n\nFourth, there's a psychological component to it. We need variety and our brains trigger higher levels of hunger when we are presented with it. It's why we can sit at a big family meal and say \"I can't eat another bite\" but then continue to eat when a new dish comes out on the table. It's also why people can eat more at a buffet - Can't eat what's on your plate, it's ok, get another plate and you'll be good to go!\n\nThose are the basics, however, it actually gets pretty complicated, and there's no unanimous consent about exactly all the reasons as to why we get hungry and full.\n\n",
"We need an ELI can't think.",
"Sugar : The bitter truth\n_URL_0_",
"Nutrition. Has little to do with calories as its just a number created to do more to do more with the *energy* you're receiving from the food. Our bodies crave food because its our fuel. When you get filler items that have less of a nutrient intake, you'll might feel full but the hunger returns soon after when your body senses that your intake didn't contain the nutrition it needs to function. However, if you eat a meal of similar calories but much more dense in nutrition, you'll get fuller faster and for much longer.",
"Calories aren't a physical thing. They are a measurement of energy, just like an inch is a measurement of space in one dimension.",
"if your belly cant hold any more food you will be full. Say you eat 10 candy bars. You wouldn't be full, there would still be space, but you just ate like 2500 calories. But, if you eat 5 pounds of celery, your stomach would have no more space to keep food even though you have not consumed any calories.",
"same reason that if you dump a bucket in a small sink it overflows, but if you leave the tap running it does not. Fat people typically are defined by how much more they snack. Hormones aside; fullness is primarily defined by how much physical space is being taken up in our stomach before it has a chance to dissolve foods and pass it off to our small intestine. As others have pointed out; some foods such as meats take alot longer to digest, but beyond that a big meal is a big meal.",
"Depends on the number of fat and fiber.\n\nBoth elements make you feel heavier than just empty calories.\n\nThat's why some people suggest to eat fiber so it will make you feel full and eat less to control the calorie intake.\n\ntook a nutrition class - hope it was simple enough"
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1gxd2k | why my nose makes weird popping sounds and suddenly i can breathe through it again when i have a cold | Happens when I'm laying down | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1gxd2k/eli5_why_my_nose_makes_weird_popping_sounds_and/ | {
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"I believe I know this one. You're nose has two nasal buttholes. When you get sick these buttholes become mad and bulge up. This makes it hard for air to pass through your nose. Air also gets blocked by boogeys. When you hear the popping sound, that means they are getting small again and letting your air pass through your nose buttholes easily."
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8at78n | why does rendering take so long? | Edit: I mean image synthesis, or computer graphics, for example turning a 3D model into a realistic animation. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8at78n/eli5_why_does_rendering_take_so_long/ | {
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"TL;DR It's just lots of calculations that get easier over time as hardware gets more advanced and cheaper so you can do more calculations in a shorter time, and better algorithms/engines are made that limit the number of calculations needed to get a nice-looking render.\n\nRotating models:\n\nFor something very simple, take a model of a person. The model is made up of points, each of those is made up of 3 numbers (x,y,z). Depending on how realistic you want the person to look, the model could be a thousand points so that you get very fine details. That's already 3,000 numbers just for that person. Now to do something as simple as rotating the person a bit to the left, you have to multiply all 3,000 of the numbers by something called a \"rotation matrix\" made up of the cosine and sine values of the angle you want to rotate them by. So you have to get the cosine and sine values of the angle you're rotating by, then go through all 3,000 of the numbers and multiply them. Another minor problem: the rotation matrix rotates the points around (0,0,0). So if your model is sitting at (1,0,2), you have to subtract (1,0,2) from all the points, multiply all the points by the rotation matrix, then move it back to its original position by adding (1,0,2).\n\nSome lighting:\n\nThen if you want light reflection to make your person look better, you need to look at polygons. Each polygon is made of 3 of the aforementioned points (some points are shared by different polygons, so it isn't just 1,000/3 polygons). The infamous low-poly Lara Croft with pyramid boobs was made of just a few polygons. Each of these polygons has a \"normal\", i.e. the way it faces. Each of those normals is 3 numbers. If your model is moving around and going through animations, you have to calculate the polygon normals any time you want to use them, which is done with a few subtractions and multiplications of the polygon's points' components. Once you have all those normals, you can go through and get rid of the polygons that aren't facing the camera, which itself takes calculations but will save you calculations later. Once you have the polygons that matter and their normals, you take into account the lighting position (sun, a lamp, etc.) and camera position, and brighten up the color of certain polygons based on their normals.\n\nColoring:\n\nSpeaking of color, now you have to apply color to all those polygons, so you take the texture of the person model and wrap it around all the polygons. The problem is, the artist drawing and coloring the texture was working with and coloring textels in their artist software. All you have are the pixels on the screen. If you have a really high res texture slanted to the side on a low res screen, you have way fewer screen pixels than the textels that the artist crammed into the texture. So essentially you just end up going along the texture, sampling it as often as you can and coloring the pixels on the screen. You can try to fix that by sampling multiple textels and coloring each pixel based on that, but that's more calculations. Then, because you're working with a grid of pixels on a screen, edges of polygons look jagged and overly defined (go into paint and use the line tool, it will look sort of \"terraced\", breaking up the smoothness of the line). This is called aliasing. There are anti-aliasing techniques that smooth out the jaggedness of polygon edges, but again, that creates more calculations.\n\nNow if you want something like a mirror, you essentially just render a new viewpoint looking outward from the mirror, crop it down to the shape of the mirror, and paste it over the scene. More lighting, more coloring, fewer polygons you can cull, more calculations.\n\nNow rotate every model in the scene, move it to its appropriate position, calculate normals, wrap all the textures, make them brighter based on the polygon they're wrapped around, and do it all 30-60 times for every second of video that you want.",
"The mathematical equations that describe the way light bounces through raindrops and off of oddly-shaped objects, the way smoke disperses in the air, the way the wind blows through blades of grass and so on are all incredibly complex. The more precisely you want to model these interactions, the more time it'll take for a computer to finish the computations. ",
"Think about it from the other way around, how amazing is it that you can render a video game at 60FPS.\n\nA good console graphics card can perform O(1 Trillion) floating point multiply/add/subtract/etc. per second. It's doing so 60 times sec, so only ~16 billion / frame. It's mostly doing matrix multiplies (~50 multiplications each) and vector additions (~4 adds each). So you're looking at maybe ~150 Million / frame, and anything useful you want to do takes several matrix operations. So you're looking at maybe 50 Million useful things/frame, and anything that's going to look at all cool on screen is going to be made of 1000's of triangles that need useful work done. All of a sudden you're looking at being able to draw on the order of thousands of things.\n\nSo you look at a fancy movie, like Transformers, where each transformer was built up of multiple segments, each of which had hundreds of small moving parts consisting of thousands of triangles each. You're looking at levels of detail way larger than any game, and thus it should be no surprise that it takes hours of time to work through the math for a single part of a single frame. Ontop of that, movies have more detail in everything else besides the shape itself, all of which takes even more math.\n"
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4qzra3 | where does the lava inside the earth get the energy to remain liquid from? shouldn't it turn solid? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qzra3/eli5_where_does_the_lava_inside_the_earth_get_the/ | {
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"Some of the heat is new heat from radioactive decay but a lot of it is just that something big as a whole earth just takes a very very very long time to cool down. The earth is very big and is insulated by a whole heck of a thick shell of rock. ",
"The inside of the earth is REALLY hot, and a lot of that heat is from its original formation. \n\nAdditionally, it is sitting in vacuum which means that heat doesn't have a lot of ways to easily escape. It has a nice crust to help that, like a blanket. Heat can only radiate outward, which takes a very, very, very, very long time. During that time, we have energy falling on us all day every day.\n\nIt is also radioactive. Earth is very *heavy*, for a planet of its size. We're a dense planet, with dense radioactive metals. These radioactive materials are constantly decaying, and providing huge amounts of heat as well.\n\nAll that combined means we have billions of years of crazy amounts of heat flowing beneath us."
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4hgw7n | if animals such as dogs have such a sensitive sense of smell compared to us humans, why do they get their noses so close to what they are smelling | Wouldn't the smell be insanely overpowering for them, if I can smell cooked food from upstairs and their noses are stupidly more sensitive than ours? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4hgw7n/eli5_if_animals_such_as_dogs_have_such_a/ | {
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"You have a much better sense of sight than a dog, and yet you sometimes hold things up close to your eyes to get a better look, right? \n\nSame deal. The closer you get to an object, the more information you can gather. ",
"Smells are not completely one-dimensional. A smell can be a concoction of a great many chemicals, some of which are hugely present and others are more subtle. \n\nWhen a dog zeroes in on something they're processing the more subtle and harder-to-detect elements of the smell. So they know from ten feet away that a dog pissed on the fire hydrant and strain the leash to get over there... but when they jam their schnozz into its side they get that it's that cute little shibi and she had a bacon treat yesterday and her master dated a guy wearing Axe and OH HOLY LORD OF DOGS JACKPOT in about two and a half hours she'll be in estrus CMON MASTER BOOTY CALL CMON LETS GET OVER THERE NOW",
"Their nasal exhalations stirs up more scent molecules from things they're smelling up close. "
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2lvje1 | how come only the founders of the pirate bay have been held liable for maintaining a torrent site, whereas other torrent sites exist and don't seem to get threatened by the entertainment industry at all? | Is it just that Hollywood can't be bothered anymore or do other torrent site owners hide their true identities more actively? Or aren't the news interested in file sharing stories other than those about The Pirate Bay? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lvje1/eli5_how_come_only_the_founders_of_the_pirate_bay/ | {
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"Well the only reason I can think of is the notoriety they have.",
"Basically the torrent sites you see aren't hosted in countries with laws governing file sharing. It's a very drawn out process to try to make someone accountable who owns it. ",
"how does the notoriety of one absolve others of the same persecution",
"It's not just them. Anyone remember IsoHunt before they got fucked by the long dick of the law? Suprnova? Demonoid?",
"Tons of torrent websites was shut down both before and after The Pirate Bay raid. And it makes sense to go for the biggest target. And there are many Swedish politicians who are in the arms of US lobbying groups: many torrent trackers (or search engines, as is the case with the pirate bay nowadays) operate in countries where US lobbyists has much less power."
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9f2xj7 | how did musicians used to make money when their songs got played on the radio or their videos got played on mtv back in the 90s? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9f2xj7/eli5_how_did_musicians_used_to_make_money_when/ | {
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"They made money because people back then would actually go out and purchase an album instead of just streaming it on Spotify. Musicians made way more money then then they do now.",
"They primarily made their money the same way they do now -- by touring. \n\nRadio play, and even music sales don't pay an artist very much, unless you are an absolute monster of an artist. Radio pay is small beans (and only goes to the writer of the song) and for album sales, the artist would only get about $1 per album sale (the rest went to the label).\n\nTouring however, thats where the real money is for almost all artists, it can be very profitable and thats where they really make their living. Their albums might as well just be a marketing campaign for people to go see them live.",
" Live shows, personal appearances, and license agreements with movies, tv, and even some other surprising partnerships can be lucrative. It's not always about selling a few records, but who is willing to pay for exclusive rights or a personalized experience.",
"Former musician that actually had music on MTV back in the early 2000s. For me, it was songwriting royalties. I go through a company called BMI and they keep track of all the plays my songs get. Every so often I get checks from the royalties that are paid by MTV, radio stations, etc. Members of the band that aren't the primary songwriters make money from album sales (but just a small amount because the record labels typically have to recoup their costs and drive a hard bargain), touring, and sometimes merch if they're good at negotiating. Hope that helps in some kind of ELI5 form!"
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3sbabc | how do bugs and glitches in electronic software occur? isn't code just a formula? how can maths break? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3sbabc/eli5_how_do_bugs_and_glitches_in_electronic/ | {
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"Code is written by humans. Humans make mistakes. Specifically, when code becomes complex there might be more scenarios that the programmers didn't account for, resulting in unexpected behavior by the program. ",
"Bugs are usually when the code actually works fine but when user triggered something unaccounted for. Or when something didn't go as expected. It isn't that \"oops, this time 2+2=5\" it's more like \"user entered a word and we expected a number\" or \"we tried to load a graphic and it doesn't exist\". ",
"Code is a set of instructions; literal instructions. The computer doesn't know what you *want* it to do, it only knows what you *told* it to do. Bugs can happen when your instructions are faulty, or something unexpected happens.\n\n**Faulty Program for driving a car**\n\n1. Walk to the driver's side front door of the car\n2. Open the door and get in\n3. Insert your key ring (oops!) into the ignition.\n4. Drive car (you can't, because key rings can't start cars).\n\n**Car Program with unexpected situation**\n\n1. Walk to the driver's side front door of the car\n2. Open the door and get in\n3. **ERROR** Car door is locked and won't open\n3. Insert your key into the ignition (you can't, because you are locked outside of the car).\n4. Drive car (you can't, because you are locked out).",
"Code is a formula in a sense but if it's not 100% complete a bug can happen.\n\nThink of it this way, A piece of code might say something like:\nIf a value is 1 do THIS\nIf a value is 2 do THAT\nIf a value is 3 do THE OTHER THING\n\nNow imagine the value it gets is 4, either by some calculation or by user input. What happens in that situation? What does the program do. That's a bug. \n\nEDIT: Also keep in mind, if no one enters any value besides 1, 2 or 3 no one would ever know there was a problem with the code. That's why some people might experience a bug, and others might not.\n\nThe program was never told what to do with 4 and if the action in that particular routine isn't critical you'll likely get an error message of some kind saying \"Don't know what to do with '4'\". If it is critical, as in the program cannot take any other action until it figures out what to do with 4, well that's when you can get a full on crash of the program.\n\nNow imagine that scenario only 1000x more complex using multiple variables both generated by the software as well as user imputed as well as possibly generated by other software (like an OS).",
"My favorite example of this is the original Civilization game. Ghandi was meant to be peaceful with his willingness to use nukes only 1 out of 10.\n\nLater in the game some peaceful policies could reduce that even further... The value would have been -1 but it looped up to the highest possible value, because it wasn't stored in a format that allowed for negative numbers. \n\nAs a result, when Ghandi should have gotten even more peaceful and less likely to go to war, he nuked everybody. \n\nNow, the math wasn't *wrong* here. In fact it's quite easy to understand what's going on, and if you know the rules it follows for calculating/storing numbers you would be able to predict that behavior. But a program like Civilization is so complex it's easy to overlook a mistake like that one. And easy to miss it in testing, too-- it requires a specific, slightly unusual, series of events. "
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37ihfw | why is there an underground market for ginseng in the us? why is it illegal? | Why is there and undergo, illegal market for ginseng? Like in such shows as Appalachian outlaws. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37ihfw/eli5_why_is_there_an_underground_market_for/ | {
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"Ginseng isn't illegal, you can buy it at most grocery stores.\n\nThe reason black-market ginseng is illegal is that there's no oversight to make sure that it isn't being grown in an environmentally harmful way and nobody is able to check whether there are dangerous contaminants like pesticides. It's the same reason that bootlegging is illegal even though alcohol is perfectly legal.\n\nI am frankly not sure who is in such desperate need of bulk quantities of ginseng that they need to buy it through the black market."
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e1k4v4 | how can we tell a picture is taken zoomed-in even with the same framing as a regular picture taken closer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e1k4v4/eli5_how_can_we_tell_a_picture_is_taken_zoomedin/ | {
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"Zooming in is not the same as walking closer. When you walk closer, your perspective is also changing because you are viewing the subject from a different spot. When you zoom in, you are making the subject bigger without changing perspective, which is not something you can do IRL.\n\nMost camera actions have real-life equivalents - e.g., panning the camera left is like looking left, moving the camera sideways is like walking to the side, etc. But zoom does not have a real-life equivalent. If you want to give the appearance of walking forward, you have to actually move the camera forward.",
"The way things change size with distance would be different. For example if there are 2 equally sized people, one standing 5 feet from the camera and one standing 10 feet from the camera, the second person looks way smaller because they’re *twice* as far away. \n\nIf you back up by 100 feet, a 5 foot difference is now a small fraction of the total distance. So these 2 people will be about the same size on camera. Actually, this effect can trick your brain into thinking the further-away subject is *larger*, because we expect the distance to make them look smaller than they actually are, but they’re full size. \n\nSo backing up (and zooming in) “flattens” the image, causing the foreground and background to be more similar in size. And of course, this has other effects on the picture— if you’re closer, so foreground subjects look larger, this might also cause them to block the view of background subjects, but at a distance you can see past them.",
"You can see an example of the difference between them by trying to \"cancel out\" a zoom with a move. It's called a \"dolly zoom.\"\n\nYou can see an example here:\n_URL_0_\n\nAnd one day, God willing, video game developers will learn that zooming and moving the camera in space are not the same thing, and will stop producing nauseating and ridiculous camera moves while trying to be cinematic..."
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45wwvr | how do those gel heatpack work? | you bend a piece of metal.....boom heat, how? i dont get it | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45wwvr/eli5_how_do_those_gel_heatpack_work/ | {
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"They use a compound called sodium acetate - also sometimes known as 'hot ice'. \n\nIt is a material that can easily be supercooled - taken well below it's melting point without solidifying again. When you click the disc on the handwarmer, this starts the gel crystallising/solidifying. At temperatures colder than 50-somethingºC it wants to be solid. As the bonds break and form to move from liquid to solid, they give off an excess of energy as heat (an exothermic process). \n\nWhen you boil the gel pack in water, the heat takes it back past its melting point to turn it from crystal back to liquid and the heat from the boiling is what provides that energy (endothermic process).",
"They give off heat through \"phase change\" which is when something changes states, in this case liquid to solid.\n\nThe energy involved in the actual change is a lot greater than the energy involved in just raising or lowering the material's temperature. Think of a cooler of ice water, when it is at the point of melting ice takes a huge amount of heat to fully melt into water. This is why the cooler of ice water can keep something cold for a long time, the changing phase from ice to water absorbs a lot of heat. \n\nThe heat pack is the exact opposite change, it goes from liquid to solid which in turn gives off a lot of heat. This heat (energy) was put into the gel in the microwave to turn it into a liquid which ended up storing said heat.\n\nThe seemingly magic part is how it is stored until it is needed. This is something called \"superheating\" and \"supercooling.\" What this means is that the material is beyond the freezing or melting point without freezing or melting. This can happen for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that phase change usually requires a starting point, called a \"nucleation site.\" If the substance is pure and doesn't have a starting point it can go beyond its normal phase change point without changing. You might have heard that all snow flakes have a spec of dust at the center, this is because the super cooled water vapor only turned to ice when it nucleated on the dust particle. Another neat trick is to put a beer in the freezer, so long as it isn't given a nucleation site, such as a carbon dioxide bubble, it can go below its freezing point. Once you shake it and release CO2 it will instantly freeze. _URL_0_\nWhen the bottle does this it actually is giving off heat because it is lowering the temperature of the beer as it freezes and when you lower the temperature of something it gives off heat by definition. \n\nThe gel in the heat pack is very pure and designed to super cool without freezing (solidifying). Now unlike the beer it is also designed to do this in a specific temperature range (I believe somewhere in the ball park of 100 degrees F) which is the range that we want a heat pack to be at. Different substances have different freezing points and energy levels involved and this one is specifically chosen/designed for this purpose. The final part to the \"trick\" is the nucleation site which is the clicker. After you microwave the gel it sits as a liquid that wants to change into a solid but can't. Once you click the metal disk it creates a nucleation site which changes the liquid to a solid (gel). This gives off the heat that was introduced by the microwave as the liquid turns rapidly to a solid.",
"The gel inside is a supercooled liquid.\n\nTo explain supercooled liquids, consider a rope net that is rated to hold 100 kg. If you put anything heavier than that in the net and there is some disturbance, the net will rip apart and change forms to tattered pieces of rope. \n\nBut what if there is no disturbance? You decide to test your luck and put a larger weight in the net, stretching the rope even more taut. But the net holds! You realize the net can carry even more weight than 100 kg as long as you don't disturb it!\n\nThis is how supercooled liquids work. For example, water can be cooled lower than 0 degrees C (freezing point) if there are no impurities (called nucleation sites) or disturbances that start the freezing process. Normally, dissolved gas bubbles or any small particles will cause water to easily freeze to ice at 0 C.\n\nFor the gel in the heatpacks, they are made of food grade salt sodium acetate which freezes at 54 degrees C! Higher than room temperature! They are in a liquid supercooled state at room temperature. When you bend the metal, you are causing a disturbance that starts the freezing process. The gel then starts freezing into a solid and shoots up to 54 degrees C. Energy is released as heat as it freezes.\n\nTo restore the liquid, you have to boil the pack so that it turns into a liquid and then as it cools back to room temperature, it returns to a supercool liquid state."
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41xy3h | how are advertisements for facebook games allowed to get away with promoting their games with false images of other popular games such as pokemon, marvel, dbz, etc? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41xy3h/eli5_how_are_advertisements_for_facebook_games/ | {
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"This is just so common online that it's basically impossible for any company to make enough lawsuits to hit every single case of this kind of copyright infringement. It is just like the world biggest game of whack-o-mole, it is hard to nail down any of them with your hammer, and for every one you hit, you missed 48 others."
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1st66s | how do credit card readers never charge the wrong account? | Moreover, how do the credit card strips work exactly? Dirty or not, they never seem to get it wrong. How is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1st66s/eli5_how_do_credit_card_readers_never_charge_the/ | {
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"Credit card numbers have check digits. There is a mathematical formula that has to be correctly solved to verify that the card number is valid.\n\nIf the formula can't be solved, it disregards the entire number, and you have to re-swipe."
]
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3kg3c2 | what would happen if i were to turn off my system when it told me not to? | Such as when you're saving a game or downloading something, and it says "Saving. Do not turn off your console or eject the disk." | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kg3c2/eli5_what_would_happen_if_i_were_to_turn_off_my/ | {
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"Well, it often saves the data on top of the old save.\n\nSo when you turn it off, it has already erased the old data, but not yet placed in the new data. Turning it off means that you loose both.",
"If you turn it off during a save it will probably create only part of the file so you won't be able to read it and will lose your save (it will be corrupted)."
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a6fuqc | why is that i stutter when speaking one language but not another? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6fuqc/eli5_why_is_that_i_stutter_when_speaking_one/ | {
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"It entirely depends on your knowledge of one language. I’m learning french, and I know that sometimes, I can stutter when speaking in French."
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2cmmbf | how doritos and mtn dew became the poster child for gaming? | How did this happen? What led up to it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cmmbf/eli5_how_doritos_and_mtn_dew_became_the_poster/ | {
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"Because they sponsor it. It's a marketing method",
"It wasn't an accident, it was the result of deliberate marketing agreements. As gaming became mainstream the two brands knew that they were generally liked by the gaming demographic so they advertised together. ",
"There's a lot of marketing for Doritos and Mountain Dew towards gamers, particularly the Call of Duty/Halo crowd. \n\nSome of it was considered quite ridiculous. One of the most famous examples of this marketing was an [interview with Geoff Keighley where he's surrounded in Doritos and Mountain Dew products.](_URL_0_) \n\nPeople made fun of it and it's stuck around as a meme and has become a part of the dudebro gamer stereotype (which is why Call of Duty montage parodies often have references to Doritos/Mountain Dew.) ",
"Well before energy drinks were really a thing, Mountain Dew was known as one of the highest caffeine content sodas. So gamers who wanted to stay up all night gaming drank a lot of it. "
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2dg1tm | why are atlantic city casinos dropping like flies? | I do have a general idea but I'd like a detailed explanation. Why are some of them seeming to do just fine, like Harrah's and Caesars but Showboat and Trump Plaza are going under? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dg1tm/eli5_why_are_atlantic_city_casinos_dropping_like/ | {
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"A big part is the presence of online gambling. It's very expensive to go to Vegas to gamble when you can so easily do it from home, even more to fly there. It's a different experience, sure, but you save a boat load of money and can still gamble. And a lot of local governments are looking to sponsored gambling (sports pool lotteries, for example) to increase their own coffers as \"living right\" standards have relaxed over the years.\n\nSome of those casinos do a better job of financially managing the reduction in business that's lost to those new forms of competition. Those that are left have developed enough of a consistent clientele, big-name accompanying entertainment, balance of cost versus revenue, and a polished gaming model to keep money coming in. So the massive number of casinos that was there back when it was one of the few legal ways to gamble is being eroded in a 'survival of the fittest' process. \n\nThere will always be some people that want the experience of being dealt physical cards in a casino setting, so they'll likely always be some casinos there. But they're no longer a monopoly gambling location and there was just too many of them for the changed market to bear.",
"While online gambling has an effect on the profitability of the casinos it really has much more to do with that fact that there are casinos in Pennsylvania (many of which opened in the last 5 years) now and more and more opening in New York. This is where Atlantic City got most of its gamblers, and they're simply going to different places. Can't say I blame them, the areas surrounding the casinos New York and PA are actually nice areas with other things to do. Have you ever been outside the strip in AC? It's a total shithole and some parts are quite dangerous. "
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33hm1n | the aftermath of a sneeze. | Why do I get tingly/mildly euphoric sensations after a sneeze? What creates this? Does everyone get that feeling as well? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33hm1n/eli5_the_aftermath_of_a_sneeze/ | {
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"Everyone gets the feeling, I don't know what causes it, probably something to do with blood pressure and heart rate stimulation",
"I just can't get enough of it"
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389tyn | why isn't there a "life skills" class offered in highschool to teach kids how to change tires, get credit, and other necessary information to function in the real world? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/389tyn/eli5_why_isnt_there_a_life_skills_class_offered/ | {
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"Great idea.\n\nLearn to compute compound interest... already know? Learn why you needed to learn it. Because, credit cards.\n\nThere should be a question and answer session between couples before they get married too. Seldom do people talk about the really important stuff in their future before they tie the knot.",
"we had one in high school (not in the US) it included:\n\n* Checkbook balancing - basic financial skills. (loans, debts etc..)\n* Cooking.\n* Sowing and knitting. (You can't imagine how useful it is to know how to hem or fix something!)\n* Basic vegetable gardening.\n* Basic electricity. (how to wire a plug etc.)\n* Basic car stuff. (change tires/check pressure, check oil, add wiper fluid etc..)\n\nIt was awsome!\n",
"Those classes have existed for decades. 24 years ago, as a junior in HS, I was required to take \"life skills\" which consisted of 1 quarter each of home ec (cooking, sewing, etc), auto shop (oil changes, tire changes, etc), wood shop (some woodworking, home repairs), and personal finance & law.\n\nedit: That was in the olden days before debit cards when people still wrote checks. One of the best things I learned was to enter credit card purchases into the check register, deducting them immediately, and then paying off the card balance each month. I wish I could say I actually followed that advise.",
"Older lady here... There used to be, but over the years due to budget cuts in the US educational system they were phased out. When I was in middle and school during the 1970's we had elective courses for these kinds of things. One was called \"Basic Math\" and it taught you how to balance a checkbook; do household budgets, and other \"Basic\" life skill maths. There was also \"Home Economics\" which taught cooking, sewing, cleaning and other household type stuff. That one was originally primarily for the girls, but as this was the 1970s my class was pretty evenly divided between the sexes. They also had a basic auto shop class that taught you how to change oil, change a flat, and real rudimentary auto maintenance skills. I didn't take that one because my Dad taught me all of that at home.",
"It's because parents are expected to be able to teach simple things like those. And many places do have classes that cover some of those things like personal finance and home ec. ",
"The idea of school is, in theory, not to teach you useful things, bit rather how to figure out useful things for yourself. Math teaches you how to figure out which option is best for financing a loan, history teaches you how to understand consequences so you don't get scammed as easily in contracts. English let's you communicate easier so you can get help on other stuff. Plus you've got home ec and shop classes to help with the easier daily skills.\n\nThe problem is you can't really teach things like how to file you taxes because there's no guarantee they won't change the tax code next year. So instead they teach you how to figure it out for yourself\n\nI don't think there's a class that teaches you how to change a tire, but honestly its not that hard to change a tire. I believe in you.",
"School is an institution designed to raise the populations intelligence to make a more efficient work force and boost the economy for your country. School is not an institution to walk you through life",
"Eli5: why don't parents teach these things? Mine did. ",
"Generally, U.S. schools spend their time teaching things that wouldn't be all that easy to learn on one's own, or at least things that could greatly benefit from some guidance and instruction. That's why a lot of schools still teaching things like cooking and sewing, although those are usually taught at the middle school level (which I suppose is better in some ways - get people started earlier). Changing a tire is a very easy/routine task that could be learned in a few minutes. Building good credit is just about making credit card payments (and other payments) on time - nothing to really teach there, other than responsibility. People also complain about how schools don't teach them to do their taxes, but that's also a fairly obsolete skill now; most people pay someone else or are guided through it via turbotax. Basically, there aren't a lot of life skills that one can't simply pick up on their own or should be otherwise taught by parents. ",
"Because if people are self-sufficient and know how to deal with things they won't be stupid and waste money, and our corporate overlords can't have that!\n\nThis explains most problems with schools.",
"I had a class in High School (in the US) similar to this called Life Management.\n\nIt covered:\n\n* Checking account basics\n\n* Credit building basics\n\n* how to make a budget\n\n* self-cancer screenings\n\n* drug and alcohol abuse\n\n* building a resume\n\n* job interview tips\n\nThere were probably more things but that's all I can remember. It was required for graduation with no exceptions so most people took it Freshman year to get it out of the way.",
"Personally I don't want my tax dollars going to a class that teaches you something that you can easily learn on your own in a short amount of time",
"Because it would be hard to decide what counted as necessary to function. Changing a tire isn't needed because you can call a tow truck. Not everyone needs credit, etc. \n\nAs for simple things like balancing a checkbook or whatnot almost all schools teach math.\n\nEDIT: I'm playing devil's advocate. When you introduce a budget to a school board that includes money for this class that requires supplies these are the sorts of arguments that are brought up. \"This is a place for academics, not life skills.\"",
"Because\n\n1. Your parents are supposed to teach you that stuff. School isn't a replacement for parenting.\n2. Both of those things can be looked up on the internet in 5 minutes.",
"They do that in England it's called \"functional skills\". They literally only put the people they expect to fail school in those classes as having someone who doesn't know how to take care of themselves and also does not have any qualifications is a recipe for disaster. Otherwise you are expected to learn those skills by yourself which is not difficult if your parents help you out.",
"Honest question, but why don't more kids just ask their parents how to do this stuff? I feel like that's what people in my generation did. (At least that's what I did.)",
"Because there's google?",
"The debate over teaching applied skills or academic knowledge is ancient. Generally, testing academic knowledge is easier to apply, teach, and standardize. \n\nYour physics class taught you the necessary information to deduce how to change a tire, your mathmatics class taught you the skills necessary to use a credit card. \n\nA disconnect between knowledge and its application is common among new learners. Mentorship (by a parent, teacher, or older peer) helps to unpack that knowledge, but it seems with each passing year there's less of an interest in asking for and offering help.\n\nThen again, it can all be easily learned by a curious mind with internet access.",
"I am a teacher in a high school in NY. Most schools have auto, business management and other life skills classes. When you're a teenage dickhead (which most of us were) You don't take those classes/topics seriously. \n\nAlso like other people said, your parents are expected to teach you these simple things. This is a joint effort in teaching/raising younger people. I have some kids only 42 minutes a day. Parents have them much longer and can reinforce what is taught.",
"Because knowing how to do things is some peasant level shit.\n\nWho even knows how to do things anymore? We're in the goddamn USA of A motherfuckers. USAA! **USAA!**",
"In middle school 6th-8th grade. We literally had a class called life skills that taught cpr, how to write checks, ect. The teacher's name was Ms. Trail (fitting name) and is still one of my favorite teachers to this day",
"My high school (midwest USA) had Life 101 as an elective. It was primarily taken by students looking for an easy A to pad their GPAs (no weighted grades, yay!). ",
"The assumption is that\n\n1. Kids aren't absolutely retarded\n\nAnd 2. They have parents that can and should teach that shit\n\nUnfortunately, both assumptions are nowhere near true",
"I don't know exactly why, but for a real life example, in my entire school education (all in California) all the way up to highschool I learned how to count money in grades 3-4, and a quarter of a semester of Finance Senior year of High School. I never thought how much money could ruin my life, because basically I never experienced debt until I was conned into it right out of High School. Call it ignorance, call it what it is, there is nothing I can do to undo the horrible crippling financial burden it's put on my life over a decade later. I signed my life away to the U.S. Government and and Private debaters didn't know it.\n\nWhen you're 19, don't know much about finance, grew up in a poor County, you don't make the smartest decisions. I know now because I am dealing with my consequences, but had I known then what I know now about finance, I would never be in this situation. \n\nI went to Culinary School in San Francisco. I had no bills because I never got a credit card but when I got a card in the mail to tour the CCA. \n\nTheir main focus was saying how much money you can make being in an industry you love and have fun doing it! You have no idea what they just had you sign to be a part of this awesome experience. You don't even think about it because it was never really brought up.\n\nYou're sold to Sally Mae who promptly sells your debt to a different company. Then that company makes your interest rate unbelievably high, you would never come close to paying off even the minimum monthly with the 100k education you pay for. Giving credit where it's due, pun intended, a third company bought it with much less dramatic interest, but not before incurring over 130k in private debt and 9k in government debt (who promptly takes 100% of my shitty tax return).\nAnd a lot of cooks STILL make on average $9 as hour, for at least 10 years.\n\nWe were a class of lemmings. The first half of the class abandoned it because I'm sure they knew better. Another quarter left for personal reasons, and by the last class, you have about 12 people left. \n\nWe were all victims for life. I think we all knew it, talking among the group at graduation. \n\nI can't stress how bad it is for me because of the dumb uneducated choice. It's like when you hear about \"those idiots\" who fall for the Nigerian Prince scam and you're like \"Who would be dumb enough to fall for something like that\" and then that idiot is you, and worse, you lost hundreds of thousands of dollars you never had in the first place and it gains massive interest a month until you default.\n\nI would gladly be scammed by Nigerian Prince than the US Government and Private Loans. It's hard to comprehend people could be so stupid. Trust me, as the one living it, I can scarcely believe it, myself! \n\nI will never know my true potential because I will never have money. Ever. Money is all about choices and I will never know my true potential in life because I have no choices, I am indentured to my debtors. \n\nOf course it's my fault, but am I more so for my ignorance than those clever enough to prey on ignorance such as mine?\n\nAnd what do I have for it? An Associate Degree. I am very good in the food and beverage, but in this cutthroat industry it's hard to make an honest buck. Why stop at 140k? Why not 500k? Why not a million billion dollars? I can at least tell people I have a hundred thousand dollar education..lol.\n\nSo I make it my goals to prevent new generations from getting scammed into debt. Anyone whom I've met who is passionate about the food and beverage I teach for free, and then they don't have to go to some stupid culinary school, and they can make $12 an hour with benefits with no debt and live a good life. It's the least I can leave behind. \n\nPray debtstrike grabs it. I would just as soon win the lottery or get stuck by lighting, it feels.\n\n(Minus the bad finance skills I did take homech, auto shop, and lots of other conventional skills, so there's that)\n\nEdit: a lot of you are like \"oh hey yeah why don't you Google it\" because you are so used to instant gratification. Keep in mind in my day it was dial up modems, metacrawler and askjeeves. There was no Wikipedia and most internet interaction was using it at the school library and it was very limited. There was no /r/finance. It all depends on your upbringing and class. When you're raise around a bunch of indigenous California hicks, it's like the blind leading the blind. Sometimes you won't have a working phone and a flat tire at the same time and when that day comes you'll understand how much choice and temporary knowledge you have at your fingertips, today."
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1voz6p | is dyslexia a disorder of the eye, or the brain? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1voz6p/eli5_is_dyslexia_a_disorder_of_the_eye_or_the/ | {
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"Dyslexic brains are wired differently. Neurologically atypical. It isn't so much a disorder as a different set of advantages and disadvantages. ",
"On general principle, I would assume it's a brain problem. The eyes, on their own, don't do anything so complex as recognizing written text.",
"It's a brain problem, rooted in trying to jump ahead in reading. (People who read both English and a right-to-left language, like Hebrew, end up having mirror behaviors in each language. That wouldn't happen if it were an eye disorder.)"
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3gaf2j | why is dyslexia so common these days? | It feels as though 90% of people I meet end up admitting to having dyslexia. Is this a common thing now, or...?
EDIT: I don't mean 90% as an actual, solid statistic. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gaf2j/eli5_why_is_dyslexia_so_common_these_days/ | {
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"It isn't, 90% is absurdly high... so high that I think you are exaggerating.\n\nAs for why it seems more common - because we've gotten much better at diagnosing it, defining it and correcting it.",
"It is not as common as you feel it is. Only 10%-15% are dyslexic. \n\nThe reason that it would be a thing now is that more people are literate. ",
"I've never in my life met anyone who's had, or even claimed to have it. Perhaps we just travel in different circles. \n\nThis is the first I've heard of it being an issue. So this is interesting to me. ",
"A. The reason more people are known to be dyslexic is probably related to it being a more recognizable problem, so more people are actually being diagnosed. \n\nB. The reason many people *tell you* they are dyslexic is because people tend to use medical/psychology terms to make minor difficulties they have sound like a big deal, the same reason someone that likes things a little more organized than the average person claims to have OCD, or someone with good memory saying they have photographic memory, which 9 times out of 10 they do not. This is someone that doesn't like reading trying to sound like there is a psychosomatic reason for it, when if fact they just don't enjoy it. ",
"well back in the 50's f you have a problem you dealt with it. if you struggled reading you jsut struggled reading. you took time to learn to read better or you avoided reading. that was the end of the issue.\n\nthen in the 2000's we decided everyone should be the same everyone should be able to read the same amount. then we realized some people are bad at reading and cannot no matter how hard they try get better at reading. in order for them to be cast aside we must have a doctor label them. so they are labeled and forgotten, they carry this label around and do not ever need to try to read nor work around their problem it is for their employer to find a solution. or their boyfriend. \n\nso lots of people today are being diagnosed with dylexia because everyone who cannot read the \"normal\" amount is different and labeled as such. "
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pjekx | can we please do more to discourage questions that can easily be answered by google? | Can it be added to the rules, or guidelines, or related links something that encourages people to search Google for easy questions? "ELI5 how a phone vibrates"? Maybe I'm alone on this, but I think that's a question for Google, not ELI5. If it takes less than 5 seconds to find an answer using a search engine, it probably doesn't belong here. Am I missing some important aspect about the spirit of this subreddit? Or do people agree with this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pjekx/can_we_please_do_more_to_discourage_questions/ | {
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"This is ridiculous. Crazy. Madness.",
"No. Because sometimes I haven't thought to ~ask~ those questions, so I learn something. Let's keep Reddit free, not make it more censored because you don't want to be bothered.",
"Yes, because ELI5 is clearly flooded with too many questions",
"scumbag ELI5 subreddit:\n\nwants lots of subscribers and activity\n\ntells people to \"google it\" instead of encouraging questions that could spark interesting conversations",
"\"How a phone vibrates\" is a poor example because the explanation may be too difficult for some to understand. Sometimes simple answers produce more complicated questions. There are going to be some bad questions on this subreddit just like any other subreddit. When I see one, I downvote, sigh, and hide it. But once every week or so, a really fascinating one comes along with incredibly well-written answers. It's worth it to stay subscribed for those.",
"What if it can be easily answered by google, but all of the answers are too hard to comprehend for a layman?",
"What I would like is if people would at least search this subreddit first. You're already here! Just type in a *different* box before making another post about the deep net or ocean marketing.",
"I disagree. Though some of the questions here could be googled for a satisfactory result, posting them on ELI5 will likely result in a more interesting and easier to digest set of answers with a wider variety. Also, while I might not have been before, I am now curious about what exactly makes a phone vibrate, so I will now go check out that thread. You suggestion would decrease the overall quality of this subreddit.",
"According to Google...this is actually a valid point...and this post does not exist. QED",
"Besides, isn't the whole idea of this subreddit to not judge anyone based off of their questions?",
"Can't you yourself just vote down any questions you feel are 'easy' and be done with it? Why add to the rules, it just takes the fun out of something like this. ",
"If we could do this in real life it would greatly help people asking annoying questions like \"what is the capital of Montana?\" It's called Google....use it",
"ELI5 is used to explain anything in the most simplest of forms. Google gives you so much information that it can overwhelm the person if they want to get the basic idea of something.\n\nWhat would be wrong with this subreddit is when people neglect to put the answers in simple terms causing ELI5 to be no different than google.",
"The point of this subreddit was to explain things someone may already understand in terms more simple than ordinary. \n\nThe point of asking a community rather than using Google is the feedback. If you have a follow up question, you can ask without having to start your search all over again. \n\nAnd, as others have said, people might not have thought to ask the questions others have asked. If you think it's a simple answer, maybe that's an opportunity to answer the question! Someone else clearly didn't think it was that simple. ",
"I agree with you. However, the spirit of this subreddit is the answers themselves and the social interaction. Some people like explaining complex topics in easy to understand terms, and others like listening to that because it's easier than dissecting many pages on Google for what you want to know. \n\nAlso, you might not find the idiosyncratic answers you're looking for on Google.",
"Seems like you're getting hammered here OP but I tend to agree with you. And there's probably a ton of people that actually do search the web for their answer before posting, and we're left with either those that didn't understand the explanations they've found or they want karma. And even those questions are sometimes fun to entertain and dialogue about, but when you see the same topic a few days or weeks in a row, asked in a different form, it does grow old. ",
"Downvote for you sir. \n\nWould a five year old really think to look in an encyclopedia before asking why the sky is blue? \n\nBeyond that, I look at ELI5 as a place where people can ask questions that they normally wouldn't ask in a normal subreddit because it might be something simple that they are embarrassed to ask but do not know.\n\n\"A friendly place to ask questions and get elementary school-level answers, without fear of judgement. Appropriate for questions about current events, history, politics, culture and more.\" \n\nAnd the only guidelines that are set up about posting are to search and make sure the question hasn't already been answered. It says nothing about doing a google search first. Let people ask whatever question they want, it will get up/downvoted as the community sees fit. ",
" > Maybe I'm alone on this, ...\n\nYes... yes, apparently you are. Don't get all frustrated when trying to explain to people why you find those questions annoying, and go on with your daily life.",
"So.... like... everything?",
"The obvious solution is to \"employ\" a warehouse full of 5 year olds. When someone posts a question, it will first be given to the youngsters - who will have computers - and if they can find the answer in 5 minutes on google then the question will get thrown out. The 5 year old that finds the correct answer to a question the fastest will be rewarded with extra food rations at the next mealtime. ",
"I trust a redditor's answers a hell of a lot more than those knuckle draggers on Yahoo! Answers.",
"can a five-year-old understand answers to google?",
"I think instead we should discourage people from posting responses that were obtained my simple googling the OP's question.\n\nThe problem isn't the questions. its that a lot of the responses don't really ELI5. I'd say the average age level of responses is somewhere closer ELI13+.",
"Why not just unsubscribe to ELI5 subreddit and be done with it?",
"Lemme see if I can answer this one like I'm five...\n\n*No. Nyah-nyah. :P*",
"Pretty much everything can be answered by google, doesn't mean we should shut down the sub-reddit",
"No, that's too boring.",
"almost any question that gets asked on reddit can be answered with good googling...",
"So pretty much everything? What would be an example of a question that can not be easily answered by Google?",
"downvote them or hide them, that's how reddit works.",
"99% of questions on any of the ask subreddits could be answered by a few minutes on the Google, but that's why we have them -- so you don't need to look it up yourself, and so you can get a human answer. ",
"If google is going to index answers, it might as well index reddit answers. ",
"News Flash: ALL of these questions can easily be answered by Google.",
"Google is fine and all, but some answers on ELI5 are so wonderfully written by users, and in such a simple language, that other answers on the internet are not comparable with them.",
"How about if it's a rubbish question it just gets downvoted into oblivion like everything else?",
"Google doesn't answer your questions as if you were five, and thus, it does not serve the same purpose as this sub. The answer given to your example question is just one of poor quality for this sub, and should be down voted.",
"If you feel something can be easily explained by google, downvote it and move on with your life. \n\n$0.02\n",
"How about you use RES and click hide. (I'm not sure if the default has the hide option)",
"I like learning random facts through ELI5 and ask reddit/science etc. If you don't want to answer it, ignore it.",
"Why would you do that, someone wants an easy answer and this is the right subreddit for it, I do not agree with this at all",
"Ask more questions because chances are someone else wants to hear the answer!\n",
"ELI5 is kind of like having a math teacher.\n\nYou can look up that theorem you need in your textbook. The book is giving you the correct information, and the right formulas. Heck, it even explains *why* it's right.\n\nHowever, sometimes just doesn't make sense until your teacher explains it. Sometimes it's having it explained to you in a simpler way, sometimes it's just having it explained in different terms.",
"I don't mind some of the questions that seem simple to google. I personally try to answer questions related to electrical engineering/radios because it's what I choose to enjoy. \n\nSome of the answers can be pretty easy to find on google. In my eyes though, it's not just having an answer. It's getting the answer from someone who is genuinely trying to teach it to you. Someone willing to stop and write an answer as clearly as they can for you shows that they believe in their answers and want you to understand them. A google search might return answers. A google search doesn't return passion for those answers. That's what I feel sets them apart."
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chw0i6 | how is light scattered? by absorbtion, or reflection? | I understand why light gets scattered and why blue light more than red, but when a photon hits a molecule, is it absorbed and then radiated as a lower energy photon? Or is it reflected off of the molecule with the same energy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/chw0i6/eli5_how_is_light_scattered_by_absorbtion_or/ | {
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" > \tis it absorbed and then radiated as a lower energy photon?\n\nThat is called \"reflection\". If it is just absorbed it isn't flying around as light anymore so it isn't scattered.\n\n > \tOr is it reflected off of the molecule with the same energy?\n\nThat would be a perfect mirror and likely can only exist in imagination.",
"Scattered and radiated with the same energy is called Rayleigh scattering...most common. Some probability of scattering off with a different energy because vibrational states of the molecule can add or subtract energy from the incident photon (Raman scattering)",
"Light gets scattered off liquids and solid by refraction (e.g. sand, clouds) - light bending at interfaces. For molecules and very small particles see kvlk's answer",
"You must differentiate between individual photons and macroscopic rays of light.\n\nAs someone else mentioned, a photon can get absorbed and scattered off in a random direction without losing energy. This is called Rayleigh scattering. \n\nBut Rayleigh scattering does not explain mirrors or prisms, because those don't reflect or diffract light randomly."
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6sz9es | why is it in some cultures parents prefer their adult children to stay at home until they get married? | In Chinese and East Asian cultures I read that parents would like their children to stay at home until they are married. And even after they are married the grandparents often expect to live with the family in the same house. If more young adults move out as soon as they are 18 in China, it wouldn't necessarily be seen as a good thing | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6sz9es/eli5_why_is_it_in_some_cultures_parents_prefer/ | {
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"Historically, parents helped children find suitable mates. \nOnly in recent history have children selected their own matches. ",
"I'm quite sure this is not the case in the countryside. But in very densely populated cities such as Hong Kong or Singapore. People at that age simply cannot afford their own housing, be it through rent or buying. Buying a 3 bedroom apartment that is reasonably close to the city (less than an hour and a half away) would easily be in the range of a million US dollars with anything closer being over a million. Also there is the asian culture concerning the parent-child relationship. Typically parents would spend all their money on their child and save very little for themselves under the assumption that their children will give them a portion of their salary each month. These factors have lead to young people living with their parents all the way into their 30's, even if they get married, where the husband/wife just moves in with their spouses parents. \n\nEdit: in the case of Singapore, the children don't get a choice until their married. In Singapore, over 80% of the population lives in government provided public housing and this housing is the only affordable type (starting at around 220k USD, if buying from the government) . The government won't let you apply for this housing if you aren't married or 30 years old. "
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5bqt8d | wouldn't it waste cost more resources to get to asteroids so you can mine them then what you would actually get from them. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bqt8d/eli5_wouldnt_it_waste_cost_more_resources_to_get/ | {
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"Depends. Right now? Probably. As our need for resources grow, our earth reaources get depleted, and our space tech improves... that may change. 100 years ago drilling for oil in the bottom of the ocean would have been rediculous. It would be near impossible and who wants that inky stuff anyways.",
"It would probably be cost prohibitive for the first few trips out, but once the infrastructure was in place, it'd balance, then be worth it easily.\n\nAstronaut and engineer Buzz Aldrin, came up with a system he calls The Cycler, which was primarily designed for Mars Missions, but could easily be used for asteroid mining; Essentially, a ship is placed in an orbit of the Sun and wherever you want in the asteroid field. It will, with no extra power, just continually loop out, then back. You want a ride? Catch the Cycler Train.\n\nIt would be expensive to lift one off from Earth and put it in the correct orbit. But after a little while, you could build them from materials in the asteroids and put them in the right orbit for much cheaper...no expensive rocket fuel and no gravity to fight. Eventually, we could have daily trains heading out. ;)",
"It would help if our method for getting into space was a little more fuel efficient instead of blowing ourselves up there."
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3v10bq | in the first manhattan project nuclear test (codename trinity), how did they know what was a safe distance to keep if nobody really knew what would happen? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v10bq/eli5_in_the_first_manhattan_project_nuclear_test/ | {
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"They had theoretical knowledge of the amount of energy that would be released, which they could use to calculate a safe distance. They probably also went with the principle that it's better to be further away and have an unexpectedly small explosion than it is to be closer and have an unexpectedly large explosion.",
"While they might not have known exactly what would happen, they certainly did a bunch of calculations to determine the most likely outcomes. Scientists rarely do such dangerous experiments without first running a whole bunch of numbers to make sure they will probably survive the experiment.",
"We already knew how much the fission of an atom of U-235 gave off and (obviously) how much U-235 was in the bomb. A simple back of the envelope calculation would give a pretty reliable estimate of the maximum theoretical yield of the explosion.",
"They didn't know for sure. Reasonable measures were taken based on the action of previous nuclear piles and theoretical data, but there was substantial risk of miscalculation or under estimation. These were bold (right or wrong) people, remember there was a theory that the bomb might trigger a chain reaction in the uranium in the Earth's crust, either cooking the surface of the planet into Fallout times, or possibly cracking the whole thing apart."
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3i0w3k | why do movie studios tend to photoshop the posters for their movies? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3i0w3k/eli5_why_do_movie_studios_tend_to_photoshop_the/ | {
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"Almost every other photo used for marketing is digitally edited, airbrushed or somehow touched up. \n\nA movie poster is a static image, it's not always easy to convey a message of action or drama from a still photo, so it's edited to enhance to emphasis whatever the marketing department is trying to convey. ",
"I'm inclined to assume that 100% of marketing photos have been digitally manipulated to some extent. At the very least for cropping and color correction.\n\nWhen you have to get your message out with only one still image, of course you're going to want to make that image perfect. Companies aren't just going to snap a pic with their phone and call it good enough.\n\nAre there certain adjustments you were asking about, specifically? "
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272qgm | why do publishers release paper-back and hard cover books at different times? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/272qgm/eli5why_do_publishers_release_paperback_and_hard/ | {
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"Price discrimination. Serious readers will spend more on the hardback when it comes out, while casual readers will wait for the cheaper paperback. If both were released at the same time some serious readers would buy the cheaper copy, costing the publisher some marginal sales."
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5k4na9 | why aren't there any major coastal cities in antarctica? | The temperature in coastal Antarctica has a maximum temperature of 10 degrees Celcius and a minimum temperature of -40 degrees Celcius. In the city of Yakutsk, temperatures reach well below -60 degrees Celcius, so why is it so difficult to live in Antarctica?
Also, wouldn't Antarctica be a prime location for trading ports since ports wouldn't be too far from South America, Africa, and Australia? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5k4na9/eli5_why_arent_there_any_major_coastal_cities_in/ | {
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"Usually trading ports start because there's some resource **on the land** being farmed/manufactured/mined/etc to bother shipping. They really don't need relay points, freighters can stay at sea for a very long time on a straight voyage.",
"The cost of shipping in all the supplies, fuel and people (and keeping it all warm) would be huge. There's also no Antarctica market to offload cargo to.",
"The main problem is that Antarctica except for a tiny scientist installation, is completely remote, devoid of human presence, most life including plants. There are no real resources to support that type of city, it would have to be subsidized to even function. The main function of coastal cities is to move it's natural resources out and uncommon in. Also the seas in the southern hemisphere are a lot harsher than in the north. Tips of South Africa and South America being some of the worst. Australia wouldn't import anything, because anything could be imported cheaper anywhere else especially nearby counties like the Philippines.",
"* the coast of Antarctica may not have as severe lows as some cities, but its average temperature is still much, much lower, below freezing for most of the year\n* due to the low temperatures, liquid water is scarce and agriculture is not possible...a city in Antarctica would never be self sufficient with current technology\n* the seas are rough and treacherous, and impassable for some winter months\n* the coast of Antarctica is *not* particularly close to New Zealand, Australia, or South Africa...and the portions of South America it is near to are sparsely inhabited\n* there are not many resources in Antarctica that make it worthwhile to have a city there",
"Because Antarctica did not previously have a human population, because it is off-limits for resource extraction and territorial claims, and because Yakutsk has diamonds.",
"1) Most of the coast of Antarctica is still below freezing for the majority of the year, and only the peninsula really gets above freezing by any significant measure. That means raising crops and animals for food is virtually impossible so they would be fully dependent on imports. \n\n2) The seas of Antarctica are extremely dangerous and erratic so coming into the city would be a major risk during summer, and nearly impossible during winter. \n\n3) Antarctica is not actually close to any of the other continents, it just looks that way on maps. \n\n4) There are international treaties preventing any nation from setting up a permanent colony and claiming territory in Antarctica. It is only to be used for scientific research. ",
"The coast is an ice shelf that moves. Built a city in winter and see it sink to the bottom of the ocean each summer...........",
"International agreements forbid resource extraction on Antarctica, so there's no economic motivation.\n\nEarly on there were a few small whaling outposts on outlying islands and that's about it.\n\nBesides, it's far harsher than Yakutsk. To put it in perspective, there are exactly two species of vascular plants (both little herbs) native to the entire continent, and they are limited to some islands and the peninsula. Yakutsk has trees.",
"Antarctica is not on the way to or between anything. [here](_URL_0_) is some info on where freight shipping actually travels.\n\nPorts of value in the modern world either have a lot of big spendy buyers (is a destination for goods), cheap labor (is a destination for raw materials), or has a lot of manufactured goods or raw materials for export.\n\nIt takes a lot of infrastructure to make a new settlement habitable. Farming to provide plants to eat. Fresh drinking water (wells, dams), and waste water removal and treatment. An energy source for general power needs, heating/air conditioning, vehicles, communication. Roads, bridges, piers-- and raw materials to make them, and all the buildings. Garbage/ waste management.\n\nIn the future, if the Earth becomes quite warm overall, it may turn out that humans populate and farm more and more remote, formerly icy regions. The extreme north and south are the final frontier (on land). So imagine any frontier story (Wild West for e.g.). Settlers on virgin land needed to fell wood to have wood for shelter and heat, dig wells and latrines, till the earth, and everything else.\n\nIn the US frontier days, the land provided necessities. Imports were for luxuries like glass, and sugar. If Antarctica was a frontier now, would it be viable, or would it need to import necessities like food? In the future, could the land support farming? What would the land and sea not be able to provide?",
"Everyone is hitting on the \"No resources\" point but Antarctica might have tons of oil, it's just *illegal* to drill for oil in Antarctica."
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9ullug | insider trading is illegal. if someone comes to you, completely unsolicited and divulges nonpublic information that spell disaster for a company, would you be at fault if you were to try and exit the company at that point in time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ullug/eli5_insider_trading_is_illegal_if_someone_comes/ | {
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"Are you talking about leaving the company's employment? Perfectly legal. \n \nSelling the company's stock? Illegal. If you want to dodge the train, you have to also tell all of the other people sitting on the tracks with you. Just jumping aside and letting all of those other innocent people to get hit by a train while you escape scott-free is a total dick move. \n \nSuch a total dick move that it is illegal. ",
"Let's craft a scenario.\n\nI am the CEO of KinCo, of which you own stock. One day, I decide to kill myself, and decide to do it by jumping in front of the subway.\n\nBut because I want to convince myself to do it, I talk to you, a random person on the street to me, about the business and why I want to do it.\n\nYou, being a dutiful citizen, talk me out of killing myself, and I go home.\n\nYou then sell all your stock in KinCo, owing to your knowledge that her CEO, me, is suicidal.\n\nI then complete my task the next day and the share price plummets.\n\nThat is insider trading.\n\nThe key pieces needed are:\n\n1. An actionable position - do you have access to buy and sell stocks? This can include the ability to short sell or buy options.\n\n2. Important Knowledge - Do you know something about the company or it's business that would directly impact the price of the stock?\n\n3. Clairvoyance - Did that thing occur?\n\n4. Action - Did you act upon your knowledge before the consequences of the action occurred?\n\n5. Underhandedness - Do others know about it before you sold?",
"Technically/legally, it's probably not insider trading, although colloquiually most people would assume it is. While we often shorthand insider trading as anything that's \"cheating\", strictly speaking it's illegal because you're using someone else's info that you're obligated not to (ie, an employee insider trading is \"stealing\" from their employer), or you got a \"personal benefit\".\n\nHowever, a jury might convict you anyway, so there is still risk. The line is kind of fuzzy since it's kind of a terrible kludge. (Also, other countries have a much more common sense definition- the US is the outlier.)\n\nA wonderful (and funny) read on these sorts of scenarios is Matt Levine's articles on insider trading. Here's just a few:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\n_URL_0_",
"At the nexus of the concept of insider trading is the concept of Material Non-Public Information, or MNPI; everything else is secondary. This is a very important aspect, and the subject of most of the decisions taken by courts on insider trading cases. But what does it mean?\n\nMNPI can be very varied in nature, it can be the content of a conversation, a written or digital document, etc.. \n\nLets break it down : \n\nMATERIAL : an information, when talking about the stock market, is defined as material when it is relevant to the decision to buy or sell a stock, AND when it comes from a source that is privy to information that might add to the relevance or make it credible. \n\nWhen the CEO of Railco tells you that they will announce stellar financial results, the information is material because it will very much affect the stock price, and because the CEO is a reliable source on that topic.\n\nWhen your hairdresser tells you that Railco's stock price will rise because it always rises when the price of potatoes goes down (which is currently happening), it is NOT material because its relevance is very dubious, and because your hairdresser is not a reliable source and probably an idiot.\n\n---\n\nNON-PUBLIC : this one is easy, the information must be voluntarily restricted in diffusion. Note that the restriction must not necessarily be restricted inside the company in question : any other organization that is privy to confidential information that might consitute MNPI at that company extends the domain of confidentiality : that includes their accountants, auditors, lawyers, but also government regulators etc...\n\nWhen the CEO of Railco sends you a document that is confidential to the company and describes the enormous cost of a potential lawsuit, it is non-public.\n\nWhen the CEO of Railco publishes the same document as part of a transparency campaign and you are the first to see it and sell your stock, it is NOT non-public.\n\nWhen your buddy at Dewey, Chittem & Howe (attorneys at law) tells you about that Railco document he saw because they are his clients, it is non-public even if it does not come directly from Railco.\n\nWhen the CEO of Railco accidentally reveals some very damaging information during a public hearing where you are present and you immediately sell your stock, it is NOT non-public because even thought the information was supposed to be confidential, it was disclosed as part of a public speech. If you hear him say the exact same thing to his colleague on the bus it IS NON-PUBLIC! Context is important!!\n\n---\n\nINFORMATION : This aspect is the most difficult to ascertain. The Information must be, well, information. It has to pretend to convey a fact or a reality; it cannot be a \"feeling\" or an \"intuition\". Warning though : the fact that it is not information but something else must be done in good faith and not as a concealment measure. Furthermore, anything that pretends to not be an information but is coming from an individual who is very likely to hold that information would never fly as \"oh that was just an intuition\" in court.\n\nWhen the CEO of Railco tells you that he is sure he will blow the competition out of the sky, it is information.\n\nWhen the CEO of Railco tells you that he has the intuition that their competition isnt going to fare very well *wink wink*, it is STILL information\n\nWhen the CEO of Railco tells you that he has a feeling that the next year isnt going to be a very good year for the rail sector, it MIGHT NOT be Information, based on the data that he has available at his disposal.\n\nWhen your buddy at Dewey, Chittem & Howe (attorneys at law) says he's got a bad feeling about this while making a Harrison Ford impression before going into the court room on behalf of Railco, it is PROBABLY information.\n\nwhen your Hairdresser who loves potatoe stock says he feels the potato sector is doomed, it is not information, and it's probably not material anyway.\n\n---\n\nFrom the moment you get MNPI in your possession or knowledge, you CANNOT act on it. It does not matter who or where you got it, if it qualifies as MNPI it puts you in legal jeopardy.\n\n\nHope that gives you some clues.\n\nEdit : typos and grammar\n",
"There is a TON of bad info here. \n\nThis is super counter intuitive, but here is the correct answer ***no, that would not be insider trading b/c the 'preexisting relationship' and 'personal benefit' tests have not been met.*** I'm sure you might get investigated, but I seriously doubt charges would be brought if the person that approached is a true stranger. This is consistent with both the recent [Newman and Salaman rulings](_URL_0_).\n\nThe ELI5 is this: under the law, the person who gives you the information must 1) have a relationship with you (eg you have to have a reasonable suspicion that the info you get is 'real'), and 2) the person who gives you the info has to get some sort of benefit from doing it (this is the personal benefit test).\n\nIn your example, where a random person comes up to you and says, \"sell all of your TSLA! The whole company is a gigantic accounting fraud!\" and then runs off into the darkness, neither 1 nor 2 have been achieved.\n\nThe guy that writes the best about all this is Matt Levine at Bloomberg View. And FWIW, I'm a former securities lawyer who moved into hedge funds - I follow this topic very closely. "
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"https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-07-31/when-can-investors-talk-to-companies-"
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3cdyeg | how dogs are able to sense and know when something medically wrong is about to happen in a person before it actually happens? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cdyeg/eli5_how_dogs_are_able_to_sense_and_know_when/ | {
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"Dogs (and cats, and horses, and many other animals too!) are much more heat-sensitive than humans. \n\nWhen the human body is in distress, it's temperature changes by either getting hotter, or getting colder. \n\nWhen you are fighting an infection, your body gets warmer (you have a fever). When you are suffering organ failure, your body gets colder (as blood is shunted from extremities to the affected organ). Animals are able to sense this change in temperature, and can be trained to react appropriately. \n\nInteresting tidbit: in nursing homes with cats, care workers note that the animals will sit on the beds of people who are dying, almost as if they can predict the person's death. The actuality is not nearly so occult; most nursing homes have heating pads or electric blankets, and people who are dying get cold and turn them on/up, and the cats are attracted to the extra heat. ",
"This depends on the effect you mean. \n \nSome cancers can be smelled by dogs. There are 'cancer sniffing dogs' that have been trained to detect cancer and are better and cheaper than our imaging equipment. \n \nSo they're using their superior senses to pick up on things that humans can't detect. ",
"I don't know the answer to this but I'm constantly in awe of how well my dog perceives my mood and my more 'negative' feelings. If I am even a tiny bit anxious when I'm walking her (I live in a relatively unsafe area) she is immediately on high alert. If things are smooth sailing, she is happy as ever just sniffing stuff. I love that she can feel me feeling weird about something. ",
"Thank you for helping me to better understand u/AnecdotallyExtant and u/belowthreshold ! \n\nThere's a video on youtube of [a dog detecting an earthquake 15 seconds before it starts](_URL_0_) - can someone help explain how THIS is possible?? Goddamn, dogs are incredible. "
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3eaq7f | how can rei have such a dope return policy and still make a profit? | Members of the Co-op (membership is a one time $20 fee for families) can return any item, even used or broken, for up to a year after purchase and get a full refund. What's in it for REI? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3eaq7f/eli5_how_can_rei_have_such_a_dope_return_policy/ | {
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"REI gets crazy good publicity out of it and can justify higher prices based on the return policy. A customer at REI knows they're protected by that policy if the expensive item they buy breaks, wears out, or turns out to be a bad fit for some reason. Because of that the customer is willing to spend a little more cash when they shop at REI. Now most of the stuff REI sells is in fact pretty good stuff, so most people won't return it."
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8spo5x | why does a contused (bruised) rib hurt more in the morning when getting up and improves during the rest of the day? | Well, see subject. I have a contused riband I can clearly feel during the course of the day that it hurts less than the day before, however in the morning the first hour or so after getting out of bed, it hurts more again (which is demoralizing).
I do sleep on my side, but I don't really feel any pain when lying on my side.
I often hear that it's normal for a contused rib to hurt more in the morning, but I'm curious to know why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8spo5x/eli5_why_does_a_contused_bruised_rib_hurt_more_in/ | {
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"Your body relaxes while sleeping, so the body might be getting used to a position. Changing said position would mean agitating the rib from muscle and body movement. In terms of nerves, nerves that detect pain lose effectiveness over time with constant stimulation (agitating contused rib via movement). Those nerves are losing their sensitivity to pain, hence it gets less painful later in the day. To be more concise, your nerves become less sensitive to the pain, but the ailment causing the pain is still there. Now at night where your body is resting and not moving, those nerves are not being triggered, allowing them to be more sensitive. \n\nSomeone correct me if I am wrong, please. Also, hope your contusion heals quickly."
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1d0y6o | how does the stock market drop after hearing the white house has been attacked? | Could it be because the White House is a major investment? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1d0y6o/eli5_how_does_the_stock_market_drop_after_hearing/ | {
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"If an attack were to happen on the White House, business and consumer spending would drop because in times of crises both corporations and people prefer to save money than spend it on big investments or luxuries. \n\nStock traders try to anticipate consumer and business behavior when valuing stocks and deciding when to buy or sell. An attack on the White House would certainly hurt business and consumer confidence and cause everyone to spend less, buy less, and take out fewer loans. Thus stock in most businesses would go down in price while everyone tries to sell it off.\n\nThe traders don't want to be stuck with stocks that are losing value both because they are trying to make money, but also because they too might be scared and would rather have the cash on hand."
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6969xk | why is the magna carter so famous ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6969xk/eli5_why_is_the_magna_carter_so_famous/ | {
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"It is the \"Magna Carta\" and it was a document signed by the Nobles of England and was the first document to start to limit the powers of Monarchy in \"modern\" European history. It is the touchstone base for what became the British Parliamentary system and was at least in part one of the influential documents for the US constitution. "
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6cxi0f | can you denounce your citizenship and be technically and officially a citizen of no country? | _URL_0_ it possible to denounce your citizenship and be a citizen of no country?
2.If this were possible what would that look like on official documents and would it be impossible to get a passport?
3.Can you also renounce this citizen ship in later time?
_URL_1_ it also possible to renounce and denounce your citizenship constantly? As in, there is no limit to how many times you can become an american and then subsequently denounce your american citizenship?
5.Finally is there a limit to how many citizenship you are allowed to have?
6.does renouncing or denouncing a citizenship have any effect on this?
7.If you were to have 2 citizenships and another country would not recognize you as a citizen unless you remove one would that mean your technically force to denounce a previous citizenship to become a citizen of that specific country? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6cxi0f/eli5_can_you_denounce_your_citizenship_and_be/ | {
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"In general, yes, it is possible to voluntarily give up all citizenship, at least in some scenarios: _URL_0_. \n\nA stateless person is not eligible for a passport, and many things become difficult, for a person without citizenship in any state. \n\nThe specifics of gaining and losing any particular citizenship vary by country.",
"Wow lots of sub questions there! 😁\n\n1 - depends on the country. If your American then yes you can. Other countries you can't but can have it taken away\n\n2 - you wouldn't have any official documents and could not get a passport as you don't have a country to get one from\n\n3 - what? You just denounced your citizenship you now don't have one\n\n4 - yes. It you can't just turn up back at the border and get it back once you denounce it you have to pass the **new** citizenship requirements like someone emigrating\n\n5 - no\n\n6 - no\n\n7 - dunno you can be told you will loose x citizenship if you don't denounce y but I don't know how that works. ",
"As signatories of several international treaties, most states won't let you renounce your citizenship if it means you'll become stateless.\n\nThe United States is among the minority of countries that lets its citizens do it.",
"It's called statelessness, and it's possible. More often it happens at birth or involuntarily. Several UN conventions have aimed to reduce it. However, the U.S. hasn't signed them, and unlike many countries, will allow citizens to renounce their citizenship with nothing to replace it. This has happened at least a few times. Renouncing U.S. citizenship as an adult is irreversible.\n\nYou don't want to be stateless. No country is obligated to give you a passport or legal documents, provide protection or services, nor even to take you in. You can be in limbo indefinitely.\n\nThere's not an obvious limit on multiple citizenships, though it's hard to get more than a few. Some countries won't allow their citizenship to be held in combination with others.",
"To add a bit to #5: while there's no international set limit on how many citizenships you can hold at the same time, some countries do not allow dual citizenships (if you obtain a new one, you're considered to have automatically renounced your previous citizehship) and some countries do have a nominal limit of how many you can hold or which specific countries you may be a dual citizen of. Considering the requirements for obtaining citizenships, I think there was a discussion from a while back where it was shown that the maximum number you can feasibly obtain and hold at the same time, assuming you're wealthy and live a long life, is around 15-18.",
"Here's a subsequent question to this one- Let's say I'm an American citizen and I renounce my citizenship, where do they put me afterwards? I've only had citizenship in america all my life. Do they bring me to the nearest airport and leave me in the customs gate? I am genuinely curious.",
"Yes... but unless you have money it's going to be a shitty experience. \n\nThe man behind Tupperware did it... look for a Earl Tupper. \nDo you also have enough money to buy an island? ",
"For the US, you can denounce your citizenship by going in front of officials and denouncing it, or by joining another country's military. If you're stateless, nothing much will happen to you until you need to prove your citizenship. That means that your social security number will probably become invalid, which then makes it hard to verify your identity. Therefore, you can't get much public or private services. You'll have a hard time getting a job, opening bank accounts, credit cards, buying a car. Basically, you'll have to be paid and use cash only. It'll be pretty hard to lead a normal life. Also, you won't be able to travel to any other countries because you have no origination country.",
"Some countries won't let you give up their citizenship, even if you want to. Other countries may recognize that you have given up your past citizenship, but the home country won't. Although, if you're no longer in the original country, it really doesn't matter what they think.",
"Not a direct answer to your questions but I went through something similar so here's my story. \n\n\nI renounced my foreign citizenship for a job I got hired for in the USA that required a secret clearance. I was a dual national before this.\n\nI walked into the embassy in NYC, explained what I was trying to do and why, they checked to see if I could stay in the US if I did (I could), filled out some forms, they punched a huge hole in my passport, gave it back to me and wished me farewell!\n\nThey said I would always be welcome back as long as it did not bring any shame to their country, lived in the country for minimum 5 years, promised not be a strain to society!\n\n",
"1 - You're using terms wrong. Denouncing a country is to say bad things about them. Renouncing a country is when you decide you're not a citizen. And absolutely, you can renounce citizenship. Or have citizenship stripped, without a second country.\n\nEnes Kanter, the NBA player, is in a similar sort of situation. He's a supporter of Fethullah Gulen and opposed to President / Quasi-Dictator Erdogan. He basically had to high-tail it out of a couple of countries because Turkey issued an arrest warrant and invalidated his papers.\n\nHe's currently trying to become a US Citizen.\n\n2 - You can't get a passport for a country you're not a citizen of, with some exceptions. Some countries will give asylum seekers a temporary travel document. I know that's happening a lot in Europe because of all the Syrian refugees.\n\n3 - I am renouncing statelessness? Not sure what you're asking here.\n\n4 - I've never heard of a country giving citizenship back to a citizen who renounced citizenship. \n\n5 - I would assume the limit is simply how many countries don't have regulations requiring you to renounce other citizenships. \n\n6 - Well, in order to be a citizen of some countries, you need to renounce your citizenship of all other countries, so yes.\n\n7 - You're forced to renounce. What do you think denounce actually means?\n\n[Edit: Fixing numbered list formatting issue.]"
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73okkz | does chugging water hydrate us the same as drinking the same amount slowly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73okkz/eli5_does_chugging_water_hydrate_us_the_same_as/ | {
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"Your body can only process a certain amount of water within a certain amount of time. Anything extra gets pushed through the system faster. \n\nThink of it like putting a bucket under a faucet and another bucket under a waterfall. Your body can only process one bucket at a time, so even though the waterfall will fill the bucket up faster, once it's full, the extra water is just overflowing. The faucet fills up the same bucket in a little longer time, but you have less wasted water. "
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3lz9qs | why does it take 30 seconds, or less, to download a whole movie from netflix to watch on my phone, but it takes 2-5 minutes to load a 15 second .gif on my reddit app? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lz9qs/eli5_why_does_it_take_30_seconds_or_less_to/ | {
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"You're not downloading a whole movie. You're streaming it, meaning you're only downloading a few seconds of movie every second, but as you're watching it is still downloading the next few seconds of the movie.\n\nGifs are extremely inefficient for motion, and 15 seconds is extremely long and will lag at any meaningful resolution. Netflix uses high video compression to get the best possible quality:file size ratio.",
"You don't download the entire movie from Netflix to your phone. You download a couple of minutes of it, and it continuously streams to your phone.\n\nYou can test this yourself. Start the movie, then put your phone in airplane mode. See how long the movie keeps playing.",
" > Why does it take 30 seconds, or less, to download a whole movie from Netflix to watch on my phone\n\nIt doesn't. Netflix is a streaming service. You don't download the entire movie before watching it. Rather, you start downloading the movie, and then watch it as it's downloading. That 30 seconds is how long it takes to connect to Netflix and buffer enough of the movie that it's confident of what quality it can stream to you without surpassing your available bandwidth.\n\nIf you wanted to download the entire movie, it would take quite a long time. maybe up to an hour, depending on the movie quality and the speed of your connection.",
"Netflix has a team of incredibly smart people who get paid very well to compress and deliver their media in the most efficient manner possible. \n\nPeople who make gifs are not those people.\n\nAlso, you are not downloading an entire movie when you watch on Netflix's apps. You are streaming it. If you were to lose your internet connection mid-show, you would not be able to finish watching it past the point where it had buffered. There are services though, like Dish's app where you can download a show from your DVR to your device and watch without internet. And that is awesome."
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3064mc | what did apple sue microsoft for in the 80s/90s, who won, and why? | A co-worker and I got into a discussion about who ripped off who in the case of Apple Computer vs Microsoft and both of us are now second-guessing ourselves. Tried looking on google and ELI5, but didn't get anything specific to this case, so I came here. Please berate me if this has already been asked. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3064mc/eli5_what_did_apple_sue_microsoft_for_in_the/ | {
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"Is this what you meant? Seems pretty straightforward from the Wikipedia introduction to the case.\n\n_URL_1_.\n\n > Apple Computer, Inc. (now Apple Inc.) sought to prevent Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard from using visual graphical user interface (GUI) elements that were similar to those in Apple's Lisa and Macintosh operating systems.\n\n > The court ruled that, \"Apple cannot get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface, or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]...\"\n\n > Apple lost all claims in the Microsoft suit except for the ruling that the trash can icon and folder icons from Hewlett-Packard's NewWave windows application were infringing.\n\n[Here's another article about it.](_URL_0_)\n\n > The suit arose from a 1985 license agreement between Apple and Microsoft. Apple had objected to Microsoft’s release of Windows 1.0. The two companies struck a deal whereby Microsoft could continue marketing Windows 1.0 and all derivative versions. Microsoft was also permitted to sublicense these rights, and did so, to Hewlett-Packard. In return, Apple was granted rights to use certain Microsoft products and Microsoft agreed to delay a single IBM-compatible product.\n\n > The legal fighting began as a result of Apple’s contention that Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard copied more of the Macintosh display than the original license agreement permitted.\n\n > In the Apple case, the District Court had ruled that the usual test for determining whether copyright infringement had occurred did not apply to functional or generic elements of a screen display. Typically, a plaintiff in a copyright infringement lawsuit must show that the alleged infringing \"copy\" is \"substantially similar\" to the original work. But here, the Court refused to apply this standard. Instead, it said Apple must prove the allegedly infringing elements of Windows and NewWave were \"virtually identical\" to the allegedly copied elements of the Mac display -- a much higher standard."
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3ot55v | stochasticity. different to "random"? | I've checked wikipedia, etc. I get that it's about randomness, but it's used to make specific predictions?
Is this just a fancy word for normal 'randomness' and probability? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ot55v/eli5_stochasticity_different_to_random/ | {
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"It is more or less a fancy word for a \"wild card.\" It is the inability to be able to predict the outcome of an event based on a \"wild card.\"\nThe term relates to an actual event. The outcomes of this event are unknowable, because some factor is unpredictable.\nIt is like if you had a friend who had a problem with keeping times straight. If you schedule a surprise birthday party, and tell him to come somewhere at 8:00, he may or may not show up. If another friend asked you if your first friend was coming, you could not give him a straight answer. The outcome of this birthday could be called stochastic. The outcome is indeterminable because your friend could do anything.",
"Stochastic processes, in mathematical usage, are usually \"random but in a particular way\". For example, if you flip a coin over and over and over, and record the number of heads at 1 flip, 2 flips, 3 flips, and so on, that's a simple example of a stochastic process. But it isn't 'random' in the sense that no statements or predictions can be made about it - we can, for example, say with very high certainty that after 100 flips you'll be between 30 and 70 heads.",
"Stochastic is closer in meaning to unpredictable or uncertain. When you toss a coin, while the coin is still in the air you may describe the outcome as stochastic because you can't predict it given what you know. However to say that the outcome is random may be misleading because if you observed the coin accurately and could quickly do Newtonian physics, then you could perfectly predict the outcome. Of course in general conversation you would sound like a pompous ass if you said that a coin flip is stochastic, however if you are trying to formalize a mathematical concept about uncertainty then stochastic is often a more accurate way to describe it than random. The source of the uncertainty might be a lack of computational resources, model simplifications, non-perfect senses, or actual randomness.\n\nRandomness is a very complicated philosophical idea that is hard to formally understand. Uncertainty or unpredictability is a much neater concept that can generally also be used to analyse what we think of as randomness.\n\nIn practice what you use depends on what you use it for, for most concepts we have for the most part agreed on whether to use stochastic or random and any change from that will just be confusing. For instance we normally talk about random variables even though they probably should be called stochastic variables (and a few people are trying to introduce this terminology). On the other hand we talk about stochastic processes, not random processes (again a few people choose to be contrarian and call them random processes). Stochastic processes are really just a certain kind of random variables, so it makes no sense, but that is just the convention we have adopted."
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1vyr4l | why do states' attorney generals get to decide if they want to defend a law passed by a state's legislative branch or not? what are the ethical and legal implications? | Obviously I am not a lawyer or anything. But this got me thinking today because the new Attorney General of VA has decided not to defend the anti gay law. I am pro-gay marriage so I am happy with this. What are the legal and ethical implications behind this? I am thinking from the opposite side. Let's say the democrats pass a law the republicans don't like and the attorney general is a democrat and defends the law. Then he gets replaced by a republican AG who decides not to fight the law. Is that always ok? Does this happen often or is there just a lot of press because it's gay rights, which are big right now nationally? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vyr4l/why_do_states_attorney_generals_get_to_decide_if/ | {
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"The judicial system permits \"Prosecutorial Discretion\". There are always more crimes that could be tried than there is time and money to pursue. So the Attorney General, and the prosecutors who work under the Attorney General, have wide latitude to decide how to deploy the resources of the state in their best judgement of the various options and tradeoffs.\n\nElected officials in the United States all take an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution of the United States. This oath takes precedence on oaths they may also take to follow their state constitutions. If an official believes that a law violates the US Constitution, they are actually required to refuse to enforce it. \n\nIf the executive believes the AG is wrongly allocating resources or wrongly interpreting a law as unconstitutional, the AG can be fired. If the legislature believes the AG is wrong, the executive can be impeached if the executive refuses to fire the AG. So there are checks & balances in the system; a rogue AG can't just turn off the judicial process and refuse to prosecute if the will of the people requires those prosecutions to proceed.\n\nI should note that by precedent and by tradition, meddling with the decisions of the AG is fraught with peril. Everyone recognizes that if the judicial system becomes politicized there will be no end to the bad outcomes that result. So it is very, very rare for an executive to fire an AG because of prosecutorial discretion issues, and it's essentially unheard of for a legislature to impeach an executive over such a matter. The *potential* that it could happen is believed by most to be a sufficient check on the system so that it doesn't *actually* have to be done."
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348qem | why do americans learn a foreign language so late in their educational career(i.e. high school and college) while foreigners are practically fluent in english by the time they're in their late teens? | And on a related note, why is it that American schools only offer 2 or 3, maybe 4 languages (usually French, Spanish, German and maybe Latin)? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/348qem/eli5_why_do_americans_learn_a_foreign_language_so/ | {
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"I'm asking because I'm an American who has an Italian friend who can understand me perfectly but i know little to nothing of what she says in Italian\n\nEdit: i am 19 and fluent in German, but only after 5+ years learning it",
"The value that is put on a second language is less in American education. The same is true for schools in England. English is THE international language, it's a shame but in reality if you can speak English you have less reason to learn another language.",
"Part of it is that in Europe it's more important to learn other languages because of proximity. Look at Germany France and Belgium. The countries that all have different *majority* languages and they all touch. \n\nIn the US we have a one of Canada's provinces to the north that speaks French and then then entire height of our county before you get to Mexico where people speak Spanish. ",
"It is *because* so many people speak English that a second language is often superfluous. I, for one, am a firm believer that Esperanto or another constructed language would be easier for everybody. Europeans wouldn't spend so much time on the complexities of English and Americans wouldn't waste two or three years on a language they'll likely never use (e.g. Spanish or French.)\n\nWe had a German exchange student in Spanish class, and not only did she speak perfect English but she sounded more American than many of the actual Americans at the school (then again Latinos and Asians outnumbered Whites by a significant margin.) \n\nEdited.",
"Because of geographical diversity? I live in India and we have like SO many languages. I know my mother's native tongue, my father's native tongue, Hindi (most indians know this as a common communication way) , English and also I am now able to speak my best friend's native tongue quite fluently.",
"Because English IS the world language\n\nIn Europe you pretty much have to learn it of you want to do anything with your life, while in the US, if you already speak English, a second language is completely optional.",
"It's true that (us) foreigners have some functional English under our belt by the time we reach our late teens. But I think your impression that we are generally fluent is selection bias. Most of my acquaintances, both online and offline, are insecure in their English, particularly when it comes to speaking rather than just passively understanding, and they are from countries with a high English proficiency.",
" > And on a related note, why is it that American schools only offer 2 or 3, maybe 4 languages (usually French, Spanish, German and maybe Latin)?\n\nI'm pretty sure most schools in Europe usually only offer English, French, and German, and sometimes Spanish. I'm sure there are some schools that offer more regional languages, but the vast majority of schools only offer those.",
"English. I travel quite a bit. I speak one language, English (I am currently learning Spanish), and even though I have set foot on 5/7 continents, the only language I need is English. In airports, on planes, taxi drivers, hotels, restaurants, business meetings, offshore, they are either English speakers, or they can find someone who speaks English. ",
"I actually did a paper on this. The foreign language most countries are learning is English. And as an American it's a crap shoot as to which language will be most useful as an adult...but more than likely it will be english. ",
"Someone who speaks two languages called bilingual, and someone who speaks three is trilingual. Someone who speaks one language is called an American."
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be09h6 | do i use less cellular data directly to my phone, or through a wifi hotspot, which is using cellular data? | Self-explanatory. Curious. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/be09h6/eli5_do_i_use_less_cellular_data_directly_to_my/ | {
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"Theoretically, if you are asking if using your phone as a wifi hotspot for a laptop will use more data than using the browser within the phone itself, the anwser would be using the phone itself.\n\nBeing a phone it will request the mobile version of websites first which are built much liter and easier to run on smaller processors. While you use a laptop via a mobile wifi hotspot you will request the full page, and every little page detail."
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2yy7f1 | why aren't more western commercials as crazy as japanese commercials? is it considered false advertising? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yy7f1/eli5_why_arent_more_western_commercials_as_crazy/ | {
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"I am not so sure it is considered false advertising. But it is more likely to annoy the customer rather than promote the sale of the item. "
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2hy4bj | how can companies claim a light bulb has 22 years of lifetime, when it hasn't been around for 22 years? | For example, a new light bulb comes out from GE or Phillips, and they say "Lasts X years!" | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2hy4bj/eli5_how_can_companies_claim_a_light_bulb_has_22/ | {
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"Engineers can calculate the mean time before failure for devices, and it is based on the failure modes of the device, the known properties of what they made it out of, and other factors.\n\nThere are various formulas that can then be used to predict the reliability of the product, which is where they get expected lifetimes from.\n\nOr the marketing people just make it up, either way.",
"What they do is try to predict the life that the light-bulb could have. \n\nFirst of all, in almost every field there are pretty sophisticated simulation softwares that can simulate wear over long periods of time. \nThen you can validate simulation by stress testing light bulbs in abnormal (exaggerated) conditions and then extrapolating the data to normal usage.\n\nThis means they could do something like run the battery at a higher voltage, which will make it use much more power, heat-up more and burn out much quicker.\n\nIf you gather a lot of data at different voltages, you can obtain an approximate but rather precise relation between power and lifespan and use this to estimate the lifespan under normal power conditions.\n\nI don't know if that's exactly how light-bulbs are tested but the principle is always the same. Put the product under high wear conditions and use this information to predict a normal use lifespan.\n"
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4p2v00 | who has the most power in the u.s political system? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4p2v00/eli5who_has_the_most_power_in_the_us_political/ | {
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"No group is suppose to have \"the most power\". Every branch is suppose to have counters and checks on the other two. \n\nPresident: Appoints Supreme Court Judges, Has Veto power over potential laws. \n\nCongress: Approves Supreme Court Nominees, Has Impeachment power over the President. \n\nSupreme Court: Has the power to overturn laws made by Congress, Has the ability to overturn Executive orders. ",
"The power in the American political system is divided up into branches. The president is the head of the executive branch. They oversee the military, and the executive departments which include things like food and drug administration, the state department which conducts diplomacy, the department of justice which includes the FBI and DEA. They are responsible for executing the functions of government. \n\nCongress is the federal legislative branch. They pass laws mainly, they also are responsible for declaring war, and they control the money; the printing of it, the collecting of it through taxes, and budgeting for its spending. \n\nThe Supreme Court is on top of the judicial branch of the United States and has the power to interpret the law. This has broad meaning, but they don't have a lot of other specific powers. \n\nFurther the three branches all have checks on each other. The president cannot pass laws, cannot vote in congress, but they can veto laws after they're passed by congress the president can refuse to sign them, and congress needs a larger majority to force it through. The president appoints the supreme court members and executive leadership, but the senate must confirm them through a vote. The president has the power to issue pardons, essentially saying that the executive department will not enforce a judgement of guilt on a person. The supreme court can establish binding precedent that lower courts have to follow, and throw out laws as violating the constitution. The president also can deploy the military but cannot keep them deployed for long with congressional approval and money. And the president can be impeached, effectively put on trial, by congress. \n\n\nThey all have a lot of power, and they all have limits on their power. But the president is officially certainly the most powerful individual, the leader of the majority party in congress still has to answer to the party even if they have a lot of weight to throw around, and would need to have not just a majority of congress on board, but a 2/3rds supermajority to overrule a presidential veto. The office of the president has also expanded powers with signing statements on laws, and with executive orders, given all the aspects of the executive department, and the fact that president is the clearly defined official head not requiring any other approval for the exercise of the powers that they have, they are the most powerful person as laid out in the law in the American political system. \n\nFurther limits on them exist because they don't want to undermine their party for the next election, and a cynic would say that given the influence of money on politics, its the wealthy that really exert the most power. But in terms of the official systems in place, the president is the most powerful single person.",
"Everyone has so far stated that all branches are coequal. But this isn't true. Congress was always intended to have the most power. But as intended Congress is fragmented; there is no one person in Congress with that authority, but rather it is a body of different people.\n\nCongress is set up in the first article of the Constitution, it comes first. If Congress wanted to it could start impeaching the Supreme Court Justices and the Executive and replace those branches of government with people it wants. One of the President's jobs is to execute the will of Congress. No one gets onto the Supreme Court without the approval of Congress. Congress crafts legislation for the Judiciary to follow and can propose amendments to the Constitution (though these must be agreed apon by the States). The thing with Congress though is that it's split up into 2 houses (the Senate and House of Representatives), and to do anything radical (like removing the President or Supreme Court Justices) requires passing both Houses, and that includes passing the Senate by a 2/3rds majority (plus impeachment is supposed to only happen for high crimes and misdemeanors, but since Congress can decide what constitutes a crime if Congress was really motivated that could become moot).\n\nFunctionally the Executive (the President) has usurped alot of power form Congress by ever slowly giving itself more power, especially through the use of executive orders. So the President right now is the most powerful person, and arguably the most powerful branch. But make no mistake, unless there was coup (ie assuming the Constitution was being followed) a unified Congress could railroad the President and the Judiciary and control the Federal Government in a way those two branches simple couldn't legally; and that is intended.",
"As it stands any individual or group that can garner enough support in Congress has the most powerful. They are, first and foremost, the legislative branch. They are law in many respects.\n\nBased on how things appear it would be safe to say that those with wealth are the most powerful in the country. However that is a bit of a misconception. The people have the most power, but refuse to use it en masse. Now there are plenty of reasons for this, but the biggest, and ironically enough simplest to fix, is that the majority of citizens don't vote when and where it matters and thus forfeit the bulk of our power.\n\nBut one thing to remember is context. The swing member of the Supreme Court, the head of a particular political party, the President, hell even a single individual can be the most powerful person in the country in a particular context. So while ideally everything is evenly distributed by dividing up the powers and rights among everyone, the reality is slightly more context heavy and very much more complicated.\n\nTL;DR: The American voting population has the most power, but because we don't use it effectively things really come down to what particular situation you are talking about.\n"
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7h2ns1 | how does different data traveling on the same cable not get lost with all the other data? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7h2ns1/eli5_how_does_different_data_traveling_on_the/ | {
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"Data is encapsulated into packets with headers and trailers that identify it. Sometimes it does get lost though.\n\nWhen 2 devices establish a connection, they decide on packet numbering. If I send you a packet that says it contains data 1500 - 1600 you expect that my next packet starts with 1700. If it doesn’t, then you your response to me is essentially “I need 1700”.",
"Think of it as a mail service. The envelop have an address to which the mail service knows how to get there. It might travel through many mail triage warehouse but in the end it'll end up at the address on the envelop.\n\nData is the letter, the envelop is a packet and mail triage warehouse are routers.\n\nYour data is encapsulated in a packet which contain the IP address and MAC address of the recipient. So routers get your packet and redirect it to the right router until it reach the IP/MAC address include in the packet."
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520bh9 | how does square cash instantly send money to your card, where as a deposit or check from your company can take days? | Normal deposits and checks take days and have to be cleared, how does square cash do it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/520bh9/eli5_how_does_square_cash_instantly_send_money_to/ | {
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"You're comparing two different cash methods. Payroll uses ACH (automated clearinghouse) transfers, while Square Cash uses the debit card network.\n\nSquare cash works by instantly debiting the sender's bank account, just like if they used their debit card at a store. The sender instantly receives the money, as it is treated like a debit card refund. Debit card transactions have to work fast because funds need to be confirmed available at point of sale. If there's no money availble, the purchase will be declined.\n\nWhen your paycheck is transfered to you, it uses an ACH network, which is a large conglomerate of bank transfers using your bank account number and bank routing number. It is essentially a digital check. These transfers are done in batches, and take longer to process, usually take at least 24 hours.\n\n\n\nTL;dr: Square cash uses debit cards while payroll uses digital checks"
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5ssqni | why does protesting work? you see massive nationwide protests when there is civil unrest, but why can't the government just ignore it until the protestors give up? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ssqni/eli5_why_does_protesting_work_you_see_massive/ | {
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"The government *can* and often does ignore protesting. Plenty of protests have happened where nothing was done about it. Members of the government sometimes do respond because the (US) government is elected. If you ignore the protests of your constituency, you are risking not getting elected next time around.",
"depends on the government. \n\nin a republic, the gov is supposed to represent the population. obviously a huge portion of the population showed up to protest, so the gov must be doing something wrong. \n\nhowever try to mass protest in a non republic and you could just end up getting arrested or shot. ever hear of Tiananmen Square incident? you get machine guned and rolled over by a tank. \n",
"Government does ignore protesting many times, or even counters them by using police/military force (as seen in protests around the middle-east and other third-world countries). There are many discussions on whether protests work or not, but this of course depends on the cause claimed by the population and the nature of their government. In general however people protest to show to their leaders (who are often picked by the people themselves, at least in democratic nations) that they are unsatisfied with their decisions. Many people also feel that protesting is at least *trying* to change something, as opposed to not doing nothing and watching the government get away with poor management.",
"Protesting isn't about getting the government or entity you are protesting to change because of the protesters. They will always be dismissed as a minority opinion and troublemakers. It is about getting a larger group of constituents (the ones who would never actually go to the protest) interested with the issue. It is about attention and media coverage and creating a groundswell. You hope by having 100 people show up you get 5000 to write their congressman. You hope by staying in place for a month that you get 50,000 to care. In short you hope to influence a larger group, create pressure.",
"Another thing I thought was interesting, specifically about the size women's of the women's march, was that it shows a government that there is enough opposition to cause serious serious issues if things are done too far from their wants. It's Practically a show of force by the citizens ",
"Not all protests work. \nIt's about the impact they have on the public, more than the entity they protest against. \nIn Milan, in Italy, the public transport company employees were asking for better conditions, to no avail. \nThey organized a strike, which lasted for less than a day, but that was enough. \nThe economy of the city, which is the most important economy in Italy, was struck so hard that the transport company gave in to their demands. \nThere wasn't even need to go on the street shouting, they just didn't show up at work, **none of them**, and the municipality told the company to fix it...",
"Occupy wall street was ignore by the government as well as the media. This protest happened for many days by many people but it was ignored like nothing happened. _URL_0_",
"It works in a similar fashion to how a petition works but instead of signatures being gathered it's physical people it easy to ignore a couple pieces of paper full of signatures. But ignoring a mob of people is much more difficult. ",
"The government is supposed to represent the opinion of the people, and work for the benefit of the people. Do keep in mind that we live in democracies, not dictatorships. If the government ignores the will of the people, we're not really living in a democracy any longer. ",
"Protesting disrupts economic activity. Keeping money flowing is what congressmen care about. if traffic can't move around or if people aren't working or shopping, that gets the government's attention. (Ideally, it also gets people more involved in the democratic process etc, but mostly it's about disrupting economic activity)\n\nthis is a simplification and arguably cynical, but i do think it's the root of successful protests. Incidentally, this is why \"free speech areas\" are bullshit: a protest that's out of the way and invisible is not going to succeed.",
"Why Civil Resistance Works by Erica Chenoweth is a really good dive into the theories of how and why civil resistance is effective, or rather more effective than violent protest.",
"Your protesting isn't changing anyone's mind. And that's fine, because that's not the point. You are letting people know, your government, and more specifically politicians that have power over this issue that these issues matter to voters. Because people who protest are damn near always voters as well. The more people they see out on the street marching for whatever, the more likely for them to say, wow... All of those votes could be mine if only I would ______.\n\nTl;dr\nProtesting lets politicians know that stance is a viable position and shows them that voters care about these issues.",
"Protests are also a barometer of future voting patterns, and politicians who want to be reelected will try and ride that moment and please the masses.",
"Most protests alone don't work, it just helps people feel like they are contributing. That's not to say protesters are wrong or that protested hasn't don't a great deal of good in the past. But change comes from much physical action. Protesting matched with voting, fund raising, petitioning, boycotts, and legal action are much more effective. A protest is to raise awareness so that the other factors gain more traction. It shows that someone filing a legal action isn't alone in their fight.\n\nBut thinking that 1000 people holding signs outside the capital building is going to change any politicians mind alone is just silly. ",
"Most protests don't work. \n\nThe entire concept of \"peaceful protesting\" people use today, where a bunch of people wave signs and avoid disrupting anything is a huge misunderstanding of the civil rights era marches, which were highly disruptive to the economies and infrastructure of their local cities. \n\nEven then, those peaceful marches were mainly \"peaceful\" by comparison to the outright violence used by other groups, and the threat of more militiant winds of those civil rights organizations. So, in a sense they were the \"good cop\" in negotiations with the government. \n\nYou're absolutely right: if a bunch of people just show up, wave signs around, say their slogans and go home, absolutely nothing will get accomplished. At best, you can use the contacts gathered from the people who get involved, their donations, and their baseline committment towards other more useful activities. \n",
"A successful protest will get national coverage. They get people talking about whatever was protested, and they get politicians getting asked questions about them. That can bring about change.\n\nGovernments can ignore protests, but do so at their peril. Enough people get pissed off enough, and change *will* happen. Governments that ignore their people risk coups, which are often violent. Even dictatorships will try to appease their people just enough to avoid a coup (which tend to be rather brutally fatal to top government leaders).",
"As a french I've made my share of demonstrations, a few comments with my french bias (but most of them are generic for democratic countries) \n\n- In most of the case the government, the corporation, the whatever don't give a shit about protest. I've read that there is like 1500 demonstration a year in Paris, obviously most of them are 3 hippies asking for piece and free love or 2 nazi asking to deport the ~~jews~~ muslim\n\n- Big protests are a place where some people go for the festive aspect, teenager having an excuse to skip school, student going there to smoke pot and ask for the peace, worker bored of the machine wanting to do something else, and demonstration are full of [happy people singing for a better world](_URL_0_) \n\n- Big protest are a place for political activist to do some networking, *you are interested in global warming, that's great we're organizing a conference where African peasant will talk about how the climate change affect them* which let political group hiring new members and spreading their ideas (As I became older during demonstrations I don't buy drugs to a weird punk but books from various think-tanks) \n\n- It's a way for parties and union to show their relative strength which is important for the various elections \n\n- When you are representing 1 000 000 people who accept to leave their home to go protesting on Sunday morning you have a certain credibility to talk in the medias and can at least get appointment with government officials, sometimes it's possible to negotiate something sometimes nothing, As an elected body you have to think about these 1 000 000 voters\n\n- Usually after at most few weeks, the protest stops, worker have to earn money, students have exam to pass. \n\n\n\n\n- ",
"We found out through later sources that during Vietnam, LBJ was significantly impacted by the relentless protesting and it affected the details of his decision making when approving strategic bombing campaigns and escalation. Nixon was also made more and more paranoid from it and it probably factored into many of his blunders including Watergate.\n\nAs robotic as they are, politicians are still people looking for approval. It does often affect them on a personal level.\n\nBut then again, you also have the existence of Ted Cruz so who knows ",
"**Because believe it or not, the government actually cares what its citizens think.**\n\nWhen did everyone just blindly accept that \"government\" was some opposition force? It's literally \"of the people.\"\n\nThat doesn't mean the people in charge will agree with you, or even with the majority of the population, all of the time, and it doesn't mean that people in government won't weigh their own views as highly (or higher) than those of their constituents when making choices, but when people in government suddenly become aware of how strongly a large group of people feel about something, quite often they will actually pay attention to it. It doesn't always lead to direct action, and almost never do protesters get what they actually want, but it almost always *does* have some effect, even if small.\n\nJust because we have an unpopped zit for a president doesn't change that.",
"For the most part, it really doesn't, and that's rarely talked about. We notice when it does, and notice less when it doesn't (which is more often), which through confirmation bias leads us to (wrongly) believe that it's a lot more effective than it is, and more often.\n\nIn reality, protest of any kind needs to be unusually prominent (usually meaning very large scale) or sustained or widespread to get meaningful attention from anyone who's in any position to effect any actual change that it calls for. Most of the time, it's reported on the news but shrugged off by decision-makers as just a bit of whining (which, let's be honest, is often the case), if they even know about it at all (which they often don't).\n\nIn terms of energy and time invested to meaningful gain derived, public protest is often the least efficient way possible to get desired results. However, it does have its place, so I'm not knocking it. Just pointing out that as a go-to tactic, it's usually (but not always) misguided.\n\nDecision-makers will commonly tune out small-scale protest as fringe-group whinging. Because, as I said, if often is. To get real results, you need at least the implication of a large-scale movement of some kind -- something sufficient to have real democratic effect. Decision-makers aren't doing this because they're assholes who don't care, but because let's face it, humanity as a whole is kind of childish and reactive, and they're trying to deal with it the way parents do. If you jump every single time the two-year-old screams, you'll never get anything done, and the kid will never figure out how to solve things on their own.\n\nThere must be reasonable balance between what's really called for and what's just someone's bored complaining. College kids, especially, are very good for manufacturing drama. (Anyone tempted to downvote me for saying that, spend a few years living in the shadow of any urban college, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.) There's even a very reliable market built around that well-known effect: Glenn Beck didn't schedule and publicise a book event walking distance from Brown because he was unaware that they'd likely protest it. He was counting on that free marketing, and he got it.\n\nNone of which is to say that protest is pointless or that decision-makers are all good and decent people. Some protest really does work, and plenty of decision-makers are assholes who need it. But by and large, the majority of protest I've ever seen is cathartic street theatre with little or no productive value, and sometimes the opposite. If the public's not largely already on your side, you can earn a lot of new opposition by blocking roads and irritating people.\n\nHistorically, public protest was a show of force, demonstrating that large numbers of citizens were ready to Do Something about something they objected to. Before modern times, that had real and immediate political effect because it was, in essence, a possible rehearsal for civil unrest and violence. For the better part of a couple centuries, though, it's pretty much inconceivable that any mass of people could really threaten 'government' in the way that they used to. What *is* true in our time, though -- and wasn't in those earlier times -- is that *very* large-scale protest demonstrates a very real *democratic* threat, and is therefore taken seriously.\n"
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9a0ydz | why and how is the feeling of attraction only triggered by certain people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9a0ydz/eli5_why_and_how_is_the_feeling_of_attraction/ | {
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"A big factor of attraction is immune system. Yes other things like sex appeal (gentics) matter but we are also attracted to healthy people.",
"One of the great mysteries of life. Still massively attracted to my wife after over 30 years. "
]
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2rdter | how is it that when our phone screens crack, the glass shatters but doesn't fall out? | SO brought this up recently, thought there might be an interesting answer. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rdter/eli5_how_is_it_that_when_our_phone_screens_crack/ | {
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"Glass in phones is layered, with plastic inside. The glass shatters, but the plastic holds it together. \n\nAlso, car windshields do this as well.",
"In reality the \"glass\" is known as gorilla glass. Which is basically 4 layers of thick heavy duty plastic you might find in Lego's or some such. With a layer of glass for clarity issues...I love messing with the stuff. You can basically set off a fire cracker on top of your phone and won't notice much of a difference unless it of course flips your phone around with it...then it MIGHT shatter the glass but I doubt that"
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3xmuj3 | those trance like moments where your mind thinks about nothing and you are staring into thin air | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xmuj3/eli5_those_trance_like_moments_where_your_mind/ | {
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"It's basically accidental mediation. I'm sure it can happen for many reasons leading up. If you find yourself moving on from whatever you were thinking about, but then never start on a new topic. You just... Think about nothing. Staying totally in the moment. \nThat's what it's like after 30 minutes of meditation. ",
"OH!! my time to shine! I studied consciousness for my degree and have some decent input. Moments like that are actually our natural state, where our self-consciousness has been relieved. We actually have to maintain our self-consciousness (it uses brain power). These things happen when you do simple repetitive task like driving or cooking. You no longer need a conscious active thinking brain, but just an auto pilot, so your brain shuts off the expensive consciousness and leave your zombie self to do the grunt work",
"I saw an FMRI study recently that suggested that not only do we sleep but different portions of our brains can 'sleep' independently. Much like a microprocessor turning off portions of it's circuitry to conserve energy, the brain can also switch portions of itself offline at times. The study went on to link our common observations of behavior like this to the partial sleep state. \n\nI'll link to the study if I can find it again. ",
"This is a reduced activation of the [Default mode network](_URL_0_) in your brain.\n\n\"thinking about nothing\" is actually a hyper focus on something, whether it's a sound or a visual stimuli.\n\n"
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1ltv95 | why does it seem like people only get one disease at a time? | Is it possible for someone to have both a cold and the flu? Are viruses aware of each other?
Excluding genetic disorders. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ltv95/eli5_why_does_it_seem_like_people_only_get_one/ | {
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"The immune system is activated and alert when you have one infection, so it makes it harder for another infection to develop. Disease states, such as cancer, diabetes, etc., may cause weakening of the immune system which often results in secondary infections. "
]
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1jz6uf | why do metronomes, when started at different times, sync up with each other? | Watching this video : _URL_0_
With my current understanding of music and time, I cannot comprehend how this is possible. How is it that these metronomes sync up if their purpose is to click at a constant? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jz6uf/eli5why_do_metronomes_when_started_at_different/ | {
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"\"The energy transferred to the platform from each metronome starts out of sync, but the waveforms of the energy interfere with each other, and at the location of each metronome you end up with negative or positive waveforms which in turn have an effect on the interference pattern. This keeps going until there is a balance – this balance is only achieved when all of the metronomes are in sync. The interference pattern is now a standing wave, which keeps the metronomes locked in phase.\"\n\n|\n\nNow like you are five:\nEach Metronome causes a vibration at it's base, which interacts with the other metranome base vibrations, they cause changes in eachother untill they are all on one single wave pattern, and continue along in sync.",
"Most probably because the surface on which they are all set also vibrates and all these vibrations tend to join into one single frequency. It would probably not work on a concrete floor.",
"They shouldn't. This only happened because the table is moving and outside forces were introduced to the metronomes.",
"A metronome is basically a powered pendulum - it's not some magic time keeping device. If you give it a nudge, it'll move faster on one side than the other.\n\nThe table they're on is not fixed - it's free to move. When the table rocks, it gives them a slight nudge in one direction or another. Eventually the nudges will get them all synced up."
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3jerr1 | my electric shaver ran out of battery and stopped mid-shave. 10 minutes later, i tried it again and got a good 10-15 seconds in. what is happening? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jerr1/eli5_my_electric_shaver_ran_out_of_battery_and/ | {
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"The ions in the battery take some time to migrate through the medium in the battery: when you drain it, you're really just draining one part of it. The ions in the parts that aren't drained will diffuse back into the remainder, and will be available as electric potential.\n\nOn some batteries, this can damage them — so some batteries have a circuit that shuts off when there is not enough available current, to keep from damaging the medium or cathode/anode/ion barrier."
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6zgq94 | is it more fuel-efficient to drive a car fast so less total driving is involved and the engine runs for a shorter time or is it more fuel efficient to drive it slowly so the engine consumes less fuel? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6zgq94/eli5_is_it_more_fuelefficient_to_drive_a_car_fast/ | {
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"Engines have an rpm efficiency range. No matter the speed you're going it's most efficient to run at a certain rpm that changes with every type of motor. We use gearing to keep us in this range as much as possible. It's most efficient to run continuously at peek performance range then to be constantly starting and stopping. This is why we get better highway mileage than city. ",
"It depends on the specific car, but generally peak fuel economy is achieved around 50 miles per hour or so. You get more fuel efficient as you get faster, until you go *too* fast and it takes much more fuel.",
"Very generally, moving slowly is more fuel efficient over the same distance. \n\nIf you've ever put your hand out a car window, you've felt air resistance, also known as drag. The faster the car goes, the more of its power is used to push against drag instead of simply moving forward. And the more power it needs, the more fuel it uses.\n\nStarting a car moving from a stop is more work than keeping it going, so you don't want to slow down enough to stop if you can help it. \n\nAs long as the car is given enough energy by the engine to keep it from stopping, it will use less fuel at slow speeds. ",
"I deal with this dilemma almost every day.\n\nAssuming really bad traffic for the commute home, I often have these options\n\nRoute A is 13 miles and takes 50 minutes.\n\nRoute B is 16 miles and takes 45 minutes.\n\nWhich is best for gas?",
"Idk about other car but i'll use my 05 lancer as an exemple, if I drive 50kmh I'll drive on the fourth gear so my rotation per minute ( rpm) stay around 1.5k but that often means frequent stop. At highway speed It's more fuel efficent to drive on the fifth gear at 100kmh I use ~2700 rpm depending if i go up or down hill, wind and many other factor. \n\nIn a life like situation it's better to drive at 100kmh because you use less fuel to maintain inertia.",
"Many posts have addressed the ideal speed for maximum fuel efficiency, which is the equivalent of lowest cost operation. Running the car in a certain way may also reduced maintenance cost (not a mechanic, just a thought). If you start to account for the cost of your time while driving, that would increase the optimum speed - getting to your destination faster would leave you more time to do other things. If you try to account for safety, that would have you drive slower. It is fun to think of the other parameters that you could throw into the equation.",
"Your engine is most efficient at around 2,000 RPM (internal combustion engine) - that's why most modern cars nowadays upshift relatively quick.\n\nWhen I'm on the highway ~2,000 rpm on the highest gear usualy translates to 105KM/H"
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6upk3l | how / why do birth certificates get changed after adoption? (us) | ( I put US because that's where I live, and that's what I'm asking about. However, I would love to hear from people from other countries if this happens there also, because why not?)
Isn't your birth certificate supposed to be a recording of your birth? It says that you were born, when, and who gave birth to you. So, why do birth certificates get changed after adoption to include adoptive parents?
I know someone who's birth certificate was changed multiple times and eventually had her adoptive parents names on it, instead of her birth parents. How does that happen? And why? I don't know anything about being adopted, or the adoption process, except that it happens, I guess. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6upk3l/eli5_how_why_do_birth_certificates_get_changed/ | {
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"Because, legally, those are the parents.\n\nA key reason to change the birth certificate is privacy. The birth parents are entitled to privacy when they give children for adoption. They may not want their birth children to track them down in later years -- something that would be trivial to do if their names and birthdates are printed on a piece of paper that the children possess."
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5yzhj5 | how does a human cell work? | Or any cell, really. Ribosomes, Lysosomes, Golgi Apparatus and so on. I have no background in biology/biochemistry, so I really need a simple explanation of these things. Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5yzhj5/eli5_how_does_a_human_cell_work/ | {
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"I mean, you could take a semester long course on the functionality of different parts of a cell and how they work together to allow the cell to perform particular functions. \n\nUnless you have a more specific question, this probably isn't something that is ELI5-able.",
"Individual cells basically act like their own lifeforms, living in operation with other cells to complete more complex tasks. Each part of a Cell has evolved to essentially do the same functions that the larger being does, or support it's operation throughout its own lifespan.\n\nCells are also capable of having seperate jobs, such as liver function, liver enzyme production, Kidneys... heart... etc... There are many different cells that make up all larger organisms that all have to work in harmony or the entire system fails.\n\nInside a Cell, you have a few different parts, and these are the most common shared parts between cells:\n\n* Plasma/Cell Membrane - A thin coating of lipids that forms a boundary between the cell and the environment similar to human skin.\n* Cytoplasm - watery material inside the cell that acts as it's blood called cytosol. Cytoplasm suspends all other parts inside of the cell and keeps them floating around.\n* Ribosomes - Create proteins for the cell's use\n* DNA - reproduction material and blueprints for making new proteins.\n\nOther common parts of a cell not found in every cell:\n\n* Nucleus - the brain of the cell\n* Endoplasmic Reticulum - various intracell functions\n* Golgi complex - sorts proteins for use in the Endoplasmic Reticulum and other parts of the cell.\n* Mitochondria - Produces ATP chemical energy for Animals.\n* Chloroplast - Capable of photosynthysis in plants\n* Vesicles - Transports materials throughout the cell from part to part.\n* Vacuole - Cell's storage capacity for excess materials needed for energy and reproduction\n* Lysosomes - breaks down unused or larger molecules into smaller more usable pieces.\n* Peroxisomes - Breaks down toxic chemicals\n* Centrioles - assists in cell division in animals\n* Cytoskeleton - support structure for cells.\n\nThis is a very, VERY basic interpritation and i would suggest further study as the general information here is not doing justice to what really goes on behind the curtains."
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54l4t5 | why don't spiderwebs seem to decay over time? | A few days earlier I noticed, that inside an old barn we played in as kids, a spiderweb is still there, which I recognized for its interesting spot.
It has collected more dust over the years - yet it is still there. What is the reason for that?
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54l4t5/eli5_why_dont_spiderwebs_seem_to_decay_over_time/ | {
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"They do just very very slowly. We know it decomposes because it is organic. It degrades at a slow rate because of the proteins it is made of to create a very strong web with (relatively speaking) high tensile strength."
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2x6wpx | why do adhd medications(schedule 2 controlled substances) take forever to fill? | I was happy today upon receiving my prescription for concerta as my previous medication did not work. i go to the pharmacy and they say it will take days for it to be approved because of the DEA or some shit | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2x6wpx/eli5_why_do_adhd_medicationsschedule_2_controlled/ | {
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"Some of the drugs are potentially drugs of abuse. So there's extra checks.\n\nSchedule 2, the designation used for substances that have a recognized medical value but present a high potential for abuse.",
"Depending on where you live the pharmacy may have to get proof that the prescription is real as well. They also have to assure that your insurance will cover it for you. They may also be suspicious of you if your not a regular customer with them and want to call around to make sure everything is on the up and up. (Pharm tech here)"
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44lq3z | how do different breeds of cats and dogs have distinct temperaments, when they're more or less of the same breed? | How come it's so easy (and often accurate) to say something like "Oh, Pomeranians are feisty and often challenge bigger dogs" or "Ragdolls are pretty sweet cats that can be very curious"?
Is behavior in cats and dogs innate, and how do they differ by breed?
You can't really describe humans or many other animals in the same way because our behavior is so reliant on nurture, so what's the big difference here? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/44lq3z/eli5_how_do_different_breeds_of_cats_and_dogs/ | {
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"IMO it's more of a generalization. I had a pit bull that thought she was a lap dog, gentle as could be.\n\nThe same could go for humans. Irish are drunks, Asians can't drive, English have terrible teeth. We don't all fit the bill. ",
"Dogs have been selectively bred for centuries, specifically to bring out specific skills, temperaments and (later on) appearance. And even then you can never be 100% sure a purebred dog will comply with what you expect they're temperament to be. \n\nCats have been selectively bred for a lot less time than dogs, but it's pretty much the same deal except with less variance than dogs. "
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28gin6 | how do catalysts affect the rate of a reaction without being changed by the reaction? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28gin6/eli5_how_do_catalysts_affect_the_rate_of_a/ | {
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"Yay a catalysis question! (I'm doing a PhD in this field)\n\n\nThere are many different types of catalysts, so the answer depends on what we are talking about.\n\n\nFor instance, in an acid-catalyzed reaction, the acid molecule (or acid group of a solid acid) will actually react with the reactant. Another molecule of acid is generated at a later step. So technically, the acid molecules are being destroyed during the reaction, but equal amounts are produced, so there are no macroscopic changes.\n\n\nAnother example would be Pt-catalyzed hydrogenation. A molecule with a C=C double bond can adsorb onto a platinum surface. The electrons in the '2nd' bond can interact with the d-orbitals of the platinum atoms in a way that weakens the double bond. This makes it easier for a the two hydrogen atoms to react with the molecule. So in this case, the electron orbitals of the platinum catalyst are temporarily changed while the molecule is adsorbed. After the molecule desorbs everything will revert to how it was.\n\n\nAnother heterogeneous catalysis example: redox catalysts. Reducible oxide catalysts can work like an 'oxygen reservoir' to accelerate redox reactions. Instead of one reactant directly oxidizing the second, the catalyst can oxidize it. Then the first reactant can dump its oxygen to fill the vacancy on the catalyst. (This is one of the processes that happens in the catalytic converter on your car in order to oxide the CO and unburnt fuel.) So in this case, the catalyst is also changing at a molecular level, but for every oxygen atom lost to the reductant, it will gain one from the oxidant, so it's just small fluctuations rather than a long-term change.\n\n\nFinal example: photocatalysis. Some materials (such as TiO2), can excite an electron by absorbing a photon. This high-energy electron can be used to reduce one reactant, while the hole (vacancy left behind by the excited electron) can oxidize the other reactant. It loses the high-energy electron by reducing the 1st reactant, but it gains another electron by oxidizing the 2nd one. Once again, the catalyst is changing at an electronic level, but the changes will cancel out.\n\n\nHopefully these examples are somewhat interesting. Everyone learns in high school chemistry that catalysts accelerate reactions, but the mechanisms by which this happens is pretty cool I think (but of course I would).\n\n\ntl;dr Catalysts often change at a molecular or electronic level, but these changes are reversed in later steps, so there are no macroscopic changes."
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635jap | clipping in video games. we've basically photorealistic graphic quality in some newer games, but moving objects still clip through walls like it's 2000. why isn't that manageable? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/635jap/eli5_clipping_in_video_games_weve_basically/ | {
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"Calculating per vertex intersection is expensive.\n\nA model is made up of vertex points. A position in 3D space. Drawing lines between these points creates a model.\n\nTo calculate if a vertex intersects another vertex is expensive (in CPU terms) especially if you have to do it 30 times per second or more.\n\nSo to get around this, developers create an invisible low vertex count (low poly) collider model, that wraps around the model. This gives an approximate outline of the higher resolution model, but the game uses this to calculate collisions with objects. Because it is low poly it is less taxing.\n\nThe downside is that areas of the high poly model that aren't covered by the collider are prone to clipping. So you will see some parts clip through walls, floors etc."
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3usvd0 | how can this 1000w industrial laser blast rust off steel but not burn the operator's hand? | [The laser](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3usvd0/eli5_how_can_this_1000w_industrial_laser_blast/ | {
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"/u/Creativation said\n\n > The rust is being removed via infrared laser ablation. It only works if the substance to be ablated absorbs enough of its light energy to be heated up/vaporized. Since the man's fingers are \nessentially white they reflect nearly all of the laser light and thus so long as the fingers are moving rapidly enough through the laser light they are not burned.\n\n[Here](_URL_0_)",
"The Laser: _URL_0_\n\nUsed for oxide removal: _URL_1_\n\nLaser Ablation of oxides from solid metals: _URL_2_\n\nFrom what I can tell you could definitely burn yourself with a 1000w laser, so I'm sure that warmed his skin up a bit, but he passed it over pretty quickly and apparently it was enough to avoid a burn. Also, to absorb the energy the material needs to be dark enough, the lighter his skin the less energy is absorbed.",
"Dark colors absorb more light than reflect it, therefore the laser is more effective against dark surfaces since it's technically just light.",
"Actually, it's largely the same reason it removes rust, but doesn't cut through the metal. The metal is dark and absorbs the light better. The clean steel and the hands reflect light more. This is similar in principle to how laser hair removal works, with the dark hairs being heated while the skin is only mildly heated. They are not functional for dark skin or light hair, because the absorption is off.",
"Dam that thing looks dangerous. How quickly would it wreck vision should the operator flip out and point it at a group of people?",
"Different materials attenuate (absorb) photons of different wavelengths at different rates. The reason is essentially twofold.\n\nThis laser is evidently calibrated to a wavelength beneficial for irradiating this particular material. Attenuation in skin revolves around targeting a specific chromophore; blood attenuates best at ~450nm, eumelanin and pheomelanin (unsurprisingly) into the ultraviolet spectrum at ~200nm or lower. These chromophores attenuate poorly at certain wavelengths too. [Here](_URL_0_) are two graphs from my PhD thesis showing this (secondary research - can provide sources if desired). Note the log scales.\n\nThe second reason is that this guy is light-skinned; he has comparatively very little melanin concentration. It's a classic problem in any laser therapy; white skin attenuates at a far, far lower rate than black - photons have a high propensity to scatter rather than absorb. Fewer photons means less heat, which means little to no damage. I suspect that if someone with darker skin, around [Fitzpatrick 5 or 6](_URL_1_) were to try this, they'd have more predictable results and see at least a little skin damage. As mentioned, it's a common laser therapies problem; treating melanin-rich structures, such as melanoma works better the lighter someone's skin is because of the contrast between tumour and tissue. Treating darker skin is far more difficult because this contrast tends to be far less.\n\nSource: my PhD is more or less in this.",
"Because and it is this easy. Different wavelengths of light are absorbed or reflected by differing materials more then others.\n\nEvery wonder why glass is transparent? Well it's \"not\" special. Glass is transparent in certain wavelengths due to letting mostly visible light pass through it. In other frequency ranges, you are transparent as is pretty much every material at some range more or less.\n\nHowever the inverse is also true, every material also will absorb as much light as possible at certain frequencies. \n\nThis means you can create lasers tailored for a job. For example you could make a generic laser that will burn anything, but for some materials it uses way to much energy, for others it's great. Now let's say you know you'll only be dealing with iron oxide or other oxides. Why bother using a range of frequency's that uses twice the power to get the job done AND can also hurt the operator?\n\nThere are reasons light can be absorbed more by one material and not the other, but the point here is that is the answer. It's simple and easy to understand.",
"As someone who uses industrial lasers all the time and has pointed them at foodstuffs that mimic human tissue, I can tell you the following things:\n\n1) That is definitely a Q-switched laser. You can tell from the \"plasma\". (White glow if it isn't a camera trick with the Bayer mask showing NIR as white instead of the blueish thing you normally see)\n2) The pulse energy is rather low (less than 10 mJ, maybe less than 1 mJ).\n3) The wavelength is going to be around 1070 nm which is weakly absorbed by water (flesh and skin). However, if the laser hits a dark spot or manages to cause the skin to carbonize through heating even for a couple of milliseconds, the nature of the video will change drastically.\n4) I doubt somewhat that they are actually using a full kW of average power in that demonstration even if the laser is capable of it.\n5) The man's hand is outside the focus of the beam.\n\nI can also say from experience that even 20 W of ~ 1000 nm light focused to a 6 mm spot (very loose focus) is enough to cause pain after dwelling for about 2-3 seconds.\n\nSo in summary: the light is focused on the metal and very strongly absorbed by rust and steel and expanding gas pockets in the material assist in the ablative action. On the man's hand it is weakly absorbed and weakly focussed and scanned so quickly that the heat doesn't have time to build up.\n\nDon't fuck around with lasers stronger than 5 mW without training, goggles or an enclosure. Don't fuck around with lasers stronger than 10 W ever.",
"All of these comments about material attenuation are true but also, focus plays a key roll here.\n\nYou'll notice that as he moves the laser nearer or father away from the metal, the light is blurred because it has a very specific focus plane. When he runs it over his fingers, the distance of the top of his hand from the metal that's being ablated is enough to defocus the light.\n\nELI5: A magnifying glass can only burn an ant if it's a very specific distances from the ant. ",
"12 year laser calibration technician from the semiconductor industry here: The unit used has a fixed focal length, meaning the unit must be held a certain distance from the working surface in order for the beam to be concentrated enough to burn an object. optimal focal distance = burning point, for the laser in this unit. It probably has a fixed focusing lens. Anything over or under the optimal focal distance from the laser emitter after passing through the lens is (still dangerous) but not focused enough to lase through a material. The light is there, but it's not down to a fine enough point. Kind like playing with a magnifying glass in the sun. You can see that as he brings the unit up to and away from the surface, the beam begins to lase the surface at a certain focal distance. The surface of this person's hand is not within the optimal focal distance of the laser in use. Now, if he were to have pulled back and bring the units focal point to the top surface of his hand when he scanned over his hand, he would have burned the shit out of his skin. \n\nMy experience with etching lasers operated within a tolerance of less than 30 micron focal distance to etch numbers onto silicon wafers used to make memory chips. Some lasers were used to etch, some used to count and measure the size of dust particles, and some used to measure the thickness of layers of materials used in making memory chips (down to less than 10 angstroms). I've worked with HeNe, Nd:YAG, Yttrium-Lithium, Argon Ion and a few other lasers over the course of my career. I loved every minute of working with these lasers, because... I'm a laser nerd and it's always what I wanted to do for a living since I was a teen. But then I stuck my pee pee in crazy and everything went to shit. now I sit at home, and peruse ELIF. Hope this helps!\n",
"I haven't seen the focal point of the laser mentioned in the top few comments. Lasers like this, cutting, marking, or ablating, have a fixed focal distance where the laser is most effective at doing work. Once you deviate from that focused point, or line in this case, the power of the laser is spread over a larger area which makes the laser less efficient. \n\nThe most ELI5 way I can think to explain this is the following; Think of this like trying to start a piece of paper on fire with a magnifying glass and the sun, if you don't get the focus just right you could hold it there all day and not burn anything.",
"It *did* something to his hand. Look at the fingers when he removes his hand. The part touched by the laser is a bit clearer than the rest. Also the video says that this also cleans your fingernails, so there's that.",
"One time, I was playing with an IR laser. I can't remember how strong it was, but it'd burn wood fairly easily and start fires in seconds. \n\nI put it to my skin (am white), and felt almost nothing without holding it there for a while. Then I got out a black Sharpie and made a dot on my hand and pointed the laser at it. \n\nCHRIST ON A CRUTCH DID THAT HURT! Even just for the second I let the laser touch the black spot it had caused a blister. \n\nLong story short, don't be black and play with lasers. ",
"What would happen of you ran a tattoo through the beam? "
]
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[
"https://www.reddit.com/r/holdmybeaker/comments/31ni5f/hmb_while_i_use_this_1000w_burning_laser_to/"
],
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"http://www.cleanlaser.de/wEnglish/produkte/high-power-cl-1000.php",
"http://www.adapt-laser.com/ourapplications.php?id=2",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_ablation"
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"http://imgur.com/a/DyOks",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzpatrick_scale"
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3qsjw9 | why is there a wave passing through the tv when seen through a camera? | I was recording the "divine intervention" scene in Pulp Fiction for a friend. And all of a sudden i noticed Jules' nose move up and down in a pattern! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qsjw9/eli5_why_is_there_a_wave_passing_through_the_tv/ | {
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"It's hard to tell from this story, but I suspect that this is actually pretty complicated. I suspect it's the combination of 2 factors:\n\n1: the video is being painted on the screen line-by-line. In fact, if the video is interlaced, it's painting every-other-line by every-other-line. This sort of technique reduces the bandwidth required to process the video (for example, instead of 480 lines every frame, roughly 30 times per second, analog television used 240 lines per 1/30 second) and was used for a long time. This could cause the image to apparently judder up and down one line, depending on when the camera captures the frame. Speaking of which...\n\n2: the recording device you're using is also using a scanning technique to record the video. It starts at the top or bottom, and it can only slurp up the color information so fast, so if the scene that it's capturing changes fast enough, you can get a picture that is a slewed version of the original image. This can either be mechanical with physical shutters: [this video](_URL_0_) is utterly fascinating), or just an artifact of the speed of pulling the data off of a continuously-gathering camera chip.\n\nWhen you combine these 2 things, it produces an effect very similar to the phenomenon where the wheels of a car on video sometimes appear to spin backwards: you're capturing things as a series of instantaneous images, sometimes as instantaneous _rows_ of an image, and seeing the fact that taking a series of snapshots can't perfectly reproduce _every_ physical phenomenon as it appears in the real world."
]
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]
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4xmo9g | why do a lot of middle-eastern muslim women seem to hate burqas (burn them when they can) yet still choose to wear hijabs/niqabs/chadors? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4xmo9g/eli5_why_do_a_lot_of_middleeastern_muslim_women/ | {
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"Imagine if a bunch of dudes rolled into your town with guns, shot everyone in charge, beheaded a few people, and then made everyone else dress like it was 1600AD. Men to wear britches and pageboys, women must have weird pointy hats and huge dresses.\n\nWhen some other guys came around and booted the Shakespearean Militant Front you'd happily ditch the pantaloons and throw on some shorts, but you wouldn't start running around in speedos.\n\nPeople in towns ISIS takes tend to be fairly conservative (it is Syria/Iraq after all) but not like ridiculous head-choppy ISIS conservative. Burqas and the like are a nutty imposition by insane foreigners, hijabs or whatever are *normal* clothes that normal people wear.",
"\"Choice\" is subject to many things. The USA is a freedom oriented country, but there are still speed limits of roads to improve safety. How fast you go is a choice, and it's a choice influenced by the behavior of law enforcement. If they threw you in jail and beat you for a couple of days when they found you speeding, you'd choose to speed differently. Saying it's \"their choice\" doesn't mean there is no context of the choice.",
"Burqas are actually relatively uncommon in the Muslim world; they're mostly only worn in extremely conservative places like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. Syria is not one of those places.\n\nReally though, those women are not protesting having to wear one particular garment or another; they're protesting the insane terrorists who enforced their apocalyptic worldview on them to the point where they couldn't even choose what clothes they could wear.",
"Do you expect them to change their wardrobe overnight? I don't think many GAP stores are opening there these days."
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86lvyj | why are sports injuries allowed to be reported in detail | How does that not violate HIPAA law? And if it does, does no one care? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86lvyj/eli5_why_are_sports_injuries_allowed_to_be/ | {
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" > How does that not violate HIPAA law?\n\nHIPAA would prevent a doctor from just handing out detailed information on the injury of a patient, sports icon or otherwise. What HIPAA *doesn't* prevent is the sports organization which employs that patient releasing details on their injury as per their prior agreement in their employment contract.",
"Since injuries in sports are common and effect a player's ability to do their job - the contracts they sign with their team gives the team full access to the player's relevant medical reports. The player acknowledges and agrees that this could become public information. \n\n",
"People have already answered OP's question, but I will say that while reporters are not bound by HIPAA, hospitals and healthcare institutions take HIPAA's privacy rules *very* seriously in regards to athletes. My stepdad is a surgeon at a hospital affiliated with an NFL team, and he once had to fire someone just for *acessing* an athlete's records. The guy didn't leak them or anything \\-\\- he was just dumb and curious, and looked them up. But the hospital had zero tolerance for it.",
"With certain sports they're not. The NHL is usually intentionally vague so as to not let specific injuries be targeted by other players. Hockey injuries are normally announced as \"upper body\" or \"lower body\" and that's it.",
"It was always my understanding that injury reports existed primarily for the gamblers and bookies. Without those reports it would be much harder to create accurate spreads for betting."
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6hb9kv | why is drinking hot water good for us when we're sick? is it good for us even when we're not sick? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6hb9kv/eli5_why_is_drinking_hot_water_good_for_us_when/ | {
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"Is drinking hot water when youre sick a thing? Never heard this before.",
"The warmth can help with the feeling of chills, and the steam can open your sinuses and allow you to breathe a little better. Nutritionally, it isn't better."
]
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9qqgzf | how does collegiate recruiting work? | Take football for example there 1,050,000 high school football players in the US. How can scouts and collegiate coaches possibly see all of them or know where to go to see who is good or bad? Not to mention even good players have bad games, how are the million players vetted? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9qqgzf/eli5how_does_collegiate_recruiting_work/ | {
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"You don't need to vet a million players, nor see all of them. There is a weird misconception that talent is uncommon, and this applies to either sports, or general recruitment. \n\nIf there are 1 million players, and you only want to take the best 1% then that is still 10,000 people, and you have space for like 50. It doesn't matter if you miss people because you are saturated with talent anyway. They do their best to see as many as they can, but at the end of the day they are guaranteed good players through sheer numbers."
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ajevyu | why is it safe for babies to sleep on their back when they are always spitting up when if an adult passes out drunk its safer to roll them on their side to prevent choking | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ajevyu/eli5_why_is_it_safe_for_babies_to_sleep_on_their/ | {
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"An infant will have a hard time lying on his/her side. They just roll around.\n\nA sleeping baby unlike a drunk person is not unconscious and can turn their head sideways. However if they lie on their stomach they have an increased risk of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Therefore it is recommended for them to lie on their backs until 1 year of age. ",
"Sleeping on the stomach is dangerous because of smothering/asphyxia. Small babies don't have the strength or coordination to move their heads into a position where breathing is possible. Laying on their back with head turned allows both breathing and adequate room/safety for vomit to pool. ",
"The problem with someone who is passed out drunk is that they are so unresponsive that they won't wake up, turn their head, spontaneously cough to clear their airway, etc. Babies have those self-preservation functions working normally. ",
"Actually, once baby has strength to pick up and move their head from side to side, there is no need to worry about it. The more time they spend on their stomach the faster their strength grows. \n\nAnd for the \"always spitting up\" - it really depends on the child. Most of the time spitting up occurs during/after a meal. Mine never spit up, a friend's baby spit up all day every day. It varies. \n\nWe coslept through the 4th trimester, she slept on her side next to me and had access to her food, if she spit up, I never worried about her choking on it and I was able to maintain my rest. ",
"If a baby throws up while it sleeps, it will wake up, turn its head and spit out. Alcohol messes with the body's natural responses though, so a drunk person may not be able to wake up and turn his or her head, which could lead to choking.",
"Finally something I can answer. I work for an organization that works to reduce SIDS and infant mortality.\n\nFirstly I'll say that the statistics are firmly in favor of \"Back to Sleep\" when it comes to reducing the risk of infant mortality. Lying on their stomach puts more stress on all of the organs in an infant's body, and they could quietly slip into a hypoxic coma -- basically they could appear to be asleep when they are really experiencing organ failure from lack of oxygen. An infant lying on their stomach is also at risk of suffocation if their face is pressed against a mattress that is not air-permeable enough.\n\nAs to your question. The positioning of the esophagus in relation to the trachea is the key. Your trachea is actually closer to the front of your neck, so when a person is on their back any fluids are more likely to passively drain through the esophagus, leaving the trachea clear. Although it was previously considered safe to lay a baby on their side during sleep, it has been proven that infants are more likely to shift onto their stomach than onto their back while they're asleep.\n\nWhen a drunk person passes out, it is absolutely safer to place them on their stomach or side. An adult is not likely to suffer any of the ill effects from the prone position that make it unsafe for an infant. A drunk adult would also be throwing up a larger volume of fluid. Babies should ALWAYS sleep supine, alone, in a crib that contains only a fitted sheet (no toys, pillows, or crib bumpers). This is the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics and most major authorities around the world. _URL_0_",
"New born babies typically have the strength to turn their head but not lift their head. If they stop breathing involuntary instinct typically wakes them up (as with all humans) but if they are lacking oxygen because their face is buried in the mattress they don't have the strength to maneuver enough from that position (lift their head) A drunk on the other hand may not wake up if they are choking as they are likely half conscience ",
"Ok- let me clear some stuff up here. I am a pediatric emergency medicine doctor- \nNewborns have an intact gag reflex- unless they have an abnormality in their development- and will roll their head to the side if they vomit and not get liquid into their airway. The risk of SIDS is lowest with an infant laying on their back on a flat firm mattress. Infants have a hard time moving their mouth/nose out of a position if their body weight is on their face. Research on thousands of infants and SIDS cases has shown laying on their back is safest. We do not know what causes all cases of SIDS deaths but asphyxiation is likely a common cause in many of the cases. Some infants have to lay in other positions due to prematurity, airway floppiness, and frequent spitting up and a known risk for aspiration. \n\nIntoxicated people can have dampened reflexes because of the effect of drugs/alcohol and have a much higher risk of aspiration of liquid into the airway because of an impaired gag reflex- which is why on their side in the ‘recovery’ position is safest\n\n"
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8j2xjf | how nascar races work ? | Normally race tracks have corners, turns etc
So the best driver wins
But how does it work in nascar races where the tracks are simply oval ?
I dont see how anything else matters other than car's performance ..
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8j2xjf/eli5_how_nascar_races_work/ | {
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"Cup cars in NASCAR are driven right at the absolute limits of their mechanics and aerodynamics. It takes a lot of skill just to stay on a decent racing line on the track. Competing with 40 other cars, at nearly 200mph, with only inches between you and the cars around you is an incredibly demanding thing to do.\n\nAnd that doesn't even consider race and team strategies.",
"The wins are usually down to the car more than the driver for NASCAR. It does take incredible skill going 200mph inches apart for hours, but the cars are equal, to an extent, so it comes down to pushing the car to the absolute limit in the slipstreams and corners, which comes from fine tuning the suspension and aero. Navigating the car to do those things requires a very skilled driver, which is the other ingredient. Mix all that with stage racing on an oval and you get a very boring sport"
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1pl1ub | why after 7 iphone launches apple still can't properly supply the demand | I went to the apple store yesterday to pick up the new iPhone 5s for my mom and they told me they were still sold out. Why is it that after so many launches there's still a shortage issue? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pl1ub/eli5_why_after_7_iphone_launches_apple_still_cant/ | {
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"It could be for a few reasons. It could be either that they are having a shortage of one of the components used in the phone, they want to release the phone as soon as they can so they don't have enough time to make a ton of them before it goes on sale, or it could be done on purpose. Some companies do this on purpose to make their product look super hot and get people excited. ",
"You answered your own question. Why were you at the store getting a new phone for your mom? Is hers broken?\n\nNo, you were there *because* of the new iPhone. So was everyone else. When a new iDevice is listed, Appleheads everywhere storm the stores and buy them all out.\n\nYou could argue that Apple does it deliberately to ramp up hype, but the simple fact of the matter is if everyone behaved like rational adults and didn't bumrush the stores, there would be no supply problem.",
"Believe it or not, the iPhone 5s you could buy off the shelf right now would not be identical to the iPhone 5s that someone bought when it was first released.\n\nVery large quanties of electronics are usually made at different locations and may even be made by different companies in terms of who runs the factory. This leads to various hardware revisions (e.g. \"A001, A002, etc). This is why product recalls only apply to certain revisions or ranges of serial number, which correspond to time periods (flaw in the design schematics) or manufacturing location (flaw in factory production run). This serves to mitigate widespread design and manufacturing defects. Problems are then corrected and a new revision being made. Those that do get a defective device will warranty it and get the new revision.\n\nAll that being said, despite mass production, there are hard limits on how many units can be produced a day... last minute stuff is probably being done right up to and past the launch date, so it's not like it's perfect 5 months early and then factories can churn out millions of them before they hit shelves. That would be a bad idea too in case there is something wrong that only shows up for, say, 1 out of 1,000 users. This could be 1,000s of devices replaced and millions in revenue.\n\nLong story short, companies like Apple actually use you, the consumer, as a last step of product testing. Ever get a weird issue with something and have to warranty it? You were just a part of the last stage of development."
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2pzjq4 | where does the air come from in microwave popcorn? | So you start out with a sealed bag of microwave popcorn, but when finished it's inflated with both air and popcorn. Where does the air come from? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pzjq4/eli5_where_does_the_air_come_from_in_microwave/ | {
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"The air comes from the environment. Paper bags aren't airtight, which is why microwave popcorn bags typically come wrapped in plastic."
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2u8kif | the major difference between by current 1080p tv and the uhd and 4k tvs that are on the market? | Also , from what i understand, its really only good if you have an UHD input, so if i was to have one with my current HD movies and games would it improve their current quality some what or would i not notice anything since its not an UHD source? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2u8kif/eli5_the_major_difference_between_by_current/ | {
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"Ultra HD TVs have a resolution 4 times greater than a 1080p TV. But in the same way as playing a 480p video on a 1080p TV won't look any better than on a 480p TV or a 720p TV playing a 1080p video on a 4K TV won't look any better. You also need a video or video game in 4K resolution to appreciate the difference. Since they are so new and not at all the standard or even common you will have trouble finding videos in 4K but as time goes on there will be available movies and TV in 4K like there are in 1080p today. ",
"There would be no difference. A TV with higher resolution will just make the abundant pixels look like the source pixel. \n\nI.e. If for argument sakes a 1080 pixel is one square, a 4k pixel would be like four squares, one quarter of the size of the 1080 pixel. \n\nSo if you play a 1080 movie on a 4k TV it would just show those four squares as one color (the one color the 1080 pixel would be). But if 4k material is played, it could show those pixels as four different colors. ",
"4k TVs have 4 times the pixel density as a 1080 TV. For instance, the Vizio P series has a pixel density of around 5300 per square inch while their 1080 TVs ar around 1350. In terms of your video games, you won't notice much of a difference. Your console outputs 1080 video. Your TV will do some upscaling, but it's not a huge improvement. If you want 4k gaming, buy a PC, a good video card and a 4k monitor.",
"UHD and 4K are interchangeable terms. A UHD TV is a 4K TV. They contain twice the vertical and twice the horizontal resolution of an HDTV, four times time total number of pixels.\n\nHDTV: 1920x1080 - 2,073,600 pixels\n\n4KTV: 3840x2160 - 8,294,400 pixels\n\nYou will not see an improvement if you use a source that is only HDTV (1080)."
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48f71e | why do crumbs not get mouldy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48f71e/eli5_why_do_crumbs_not_get_mouldy/ | {
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"text": [
"The moisture evaporates out of them before the mold can spread due to the greater surface area. This perseveres them like a mummy or beef jerky. \n\n"
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5pyw19 | why do most mouthwash not include fluoride? | Seems illogical to not have fluoride in a substance meant to fight tooth decay. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pyw19/eli5_why_do_most_mouthwash_not_include_fluoride/ | {
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"I didn't realize this was a thing. Ive been buying ACT mouthwash (which has fluoride in it) for years and never really looked at any competitors. Also if I had to guess mouthwash wasn't originally designed to fight tooth decay but instead improve bad breath which doesn't require fluoride."
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
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|
4d3j48 | why are some beers allowed to be imported to the u.s. while others are not? | I would love to find a way to get my hands on some Speights Gold or VB but it doesn't seem to be possible. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d3j48/eli5_why_are_some_beers_allowed_to_be_imported_to/ | {
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"text": [
"There's nothing illegal about importing that sorta stuff. If there was enough demand, someone would find out how to import whatever the hell they think they could make a profit off of.\n\nAs it stands, there are so many beers on the market, its almost certain that these simply have such a low demand and profit compared to others that no one is interested in importing them.\n\nFor those specifically, Aussie and NZ beer is not really a thing in the US. For imported beers, the US almost exclusively wants Mexican, Canadian, and European beers. Australia, South America, Africa, aren't really on the radar. Even Japan which has a lot of beers, only has imports of just a handful of brands, and those get the vast majority of their sales at Japanese restaurants (Kirin, Sapporo, Asahi). Other Asia beers only make a tiny tiny segment as well, and again are usually only drank at Asian restaurants (such as Chang, Tiger, or Singha)"
]
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| []
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[]
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|
4zo27o | why are countries trying to take control of the internet by banning sites and bringing new rules? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4zo27o/eli5_why_are_countries_trying_to_take_control_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"d6xcumv"
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"score": [
4
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"text": [
"If you control the information, you control the thoughts and opinions of the people, and thusly control them as well. "
]
} | []
| []
| [
[]
]
|
||
24ejvy | how can a company like microsoft fall so far behind and not have the best programmers money can buy for its os and ie? | This is not an opinion post, but I don't understand how IE has fallen so drastically far behind a handful of other browsers, while the OS has not improved in a decade.
It's not like they have to invest money in much else outside of human talent, so I don't imagine it costs too much. How can they not offer like 150% of what the next closet competitor does and as a result attract an army of the best programmers to get IE and their OS back to the industry standard? (side note: I do get the atmosphere at google and those type of places replaces the monetary difference a more corporate place like Microsoft has).
Can someone explain who knows more about the tech world? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24ejvy/eli5_how_can_a_company_like_microsoft_fall_so_far/ | {
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"text": [
" > This is not an opinion post, \n\n > the OS has not improved in a decade.\n\nWell, it is an opinion post. And only someone who's never used Windows would ever think that Windows 8.1 isn't superior in almost every way to Windows XP.",
"1. Microsoft makes a lot of products. A lot of them are things you don't know about, like Dynamics. They don't actually have a ridiculous number of people working on each product.\n\n2. You're underestimating how big Google is. Sure, they're still smaller then Microsoft- they only made $4 billion in profit last quarter to Microsoft's 6 but Microsoft also competes in a lot more areas than Google does.",
"My take (Software Product Manager at a big company before and medium sized company now) - Developer's talents have much less to do with making the product successful than setting the right product direction and priorities. For this example, take HTML 5. All browsers are moving towards it but they can't do it in one big bang (aspects of the spec not finalized, different ways to implement, time to market considerations) so they role it out pieces at a time. \n\nGo here: _URL_0_ See the different aspects of HTML 5 your browser has elected to do. Someone chose what to do first and a technical person decided how. This was balanced against the need to get things to market quickly, integration(and exclusion of competitors) with their existing products and services (like Silverlight for MS). \n\nA product manager also decides whether they focus on 1) performance 2) integration 3) user experience 4) compatibility 5) etc. etc.... \n\nNot to say good developers don't make a big difference, but if you have them working on the wrong things, their talent doesn't matter. ",
"In short: by choice. In the dark times after releasing IE6 they've moved most IE developers to other projects. \n\nIE has been ahead of other browsers until IE6, and and lately IE is catching up quickly and in many areas on par with other browsers. Overall it's still a pain for developers, because users don't want/care about upgrading crappy old versions, but the dev team is doing good work now.\n\nI don't have any insider knowledge *why*. Maybe they've thought they've \"won\" browser wars and can move developers to more lucrative parts of the business. A popular rumor is that Microsoft got scared that the web will make Windows obsolete, so they wanted to keep it sucking:\n\n > [Netscape will soon reduce Windows to] a poorly debugged set of device drivers. [[source](_URL_0_)]\n\n\n"
]
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| []
| [
[],
[],
[
"http://html5test.com/"
],
[
"http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen"
]
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|
|
3xuo82 | why do vr devices use two displays instead of one big one? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xuo82/eli5_why_do_vr_devices_use_two_displays_instead/ | {
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"text": [
"3d vision works because each eye sees a slightly different image (from two different angles). Our brain merges the two images to create a 3d picture. Two displays, one for each eye, allows the VR device to display a different image for each eye.",
"To perceive 3D your eyes need to send slightly different views to your brain. Goggles like the Oculus use two different screens so they can show two different images, one for each eye, that the brain is able to interpret as a 3-dimensional image. Some 3D screens are able to get around this with other trickery (the Nintendo 3DS is an example) but having two separate small screens remains probably the easiest way to trick your mind into a 3D experience on a small platform like VR headsets.",
"They report the pixels available for each eye, but the actual screen might be just a single one, split in the middle.\n\nIf you mean, why it's split in the middle, both screens paint a picture what world would like if looked from position of that particular eye. If you removed middle split and just painted the world from single viewpoint, you would essentially feel like a cyclop, one eyed man. Much of the fascination around VR stems from option to get feeling of the depth into virtual environments.\n\nIt's more honest for VR devices to report pixels available for each eye, because the perceived number of pixels is just the ones available for single eye. You don't really see that you're seeing two different pixels when you fixate both eyes on some location in virtual world, rather, your brain thinks of it more like dot in the world viewed from two different angles."
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[],
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||
dgry99 | what is so special about vinegar that it is used as a cleaning solution? | I see vinegar being recommended for all DIY home cleaning solutions (even for cleaning urine, which I would have thought needs an enzymic cleaner). What is so special about it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dgry99/eli5_what_is_so_special_about_vinegar_that_it_is/ | {
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"text": [
"Distilled white vinegar, which is usually around 5% acetic acid, has pH of somewhere between 2-3. This is quite acidic. That means it can disolve common household greases, grimes, and mineral deposits, and it can kill a fair amount of microbes. It is NOT, however, a good disinfectant, as it can't kill certain kinds of bacteria, molds, and viruses. It's a good general-purpose cleaner where disinfection is not required, which covers a lot (but not all) of household cleaning.",
"Vinegar is the diluted form if acetic acid. As an acid bacteria and other microbes don't like being around it making it a disinfectant. It's also good at eating through other items like soap scum and calcium buildup.",
"Vinegar is just a cheap diluted acid. There is nothing special about it. You see that a lot of the same DIY tips recomend things like soda or lemon for the exact same thing which is also using their acidity for cleaning.",
"I notice that 4 others have already answered this by pointing out that vinegar is dilute acetic acid. Kudos to them for their answers.\n\nThe point I would like to add, that they seem not to have touched upon, is that vinegar is an organic product which has been used successfully for probably at least 3000 years. Many of the other \"household cleaners\" that you can buy in a supermarket are strange chemicals that have only been introduced to nature within the last 50-100 years. Chemical Safety is usually defined as: it didn't kill too many rats, or we havent YET noticed any horrible long-term effects. Recent research is pointing out effects like \"the stress levels (war or starvation for instance) that an individual experiences during their lifetime may affect their descendents for up to 4 generations.\" If the long-term effects of some new product may not be recognized for 4 generations (about 100 years), then how can 2-10 years of testing on rats possibly be used as a measure of Safety for humans?\n\n\"Roundup (TM)\" (glyphosate) was loudly touted by producer Monsantos as a COMPLETELY SAFE weed-killer -- couldn't possibly harm humans. Courts are now awarding millions of dollars in damages to agricultural workers who appear to have been harmed by this product, and there is a backlog of THOUSANDS of cases waiting to be heard by the courts. This product doesn't seem so safe now, after decades of use.\n\nDDT (an insecticide) was once (in the 1950's) recommended for use in your kitchen. Then it killed all the birds and polluted the environment from bottom to top. It is now banned in many places -- although other countries still allow its use. It is especially good for killing lots of disease-spreading mosquitos that would otherwise cause many human deaths by malaria. DDT is useful, but deadly. Better to find an alternative.\n\nThalidomide was recommended once to treat morning-sickness in pregnant women. It caused terrible birth-defects. It is still used to treat some cancers.\n\nSo, back to vinegar: it is a mild acid that has been known to successfully clean many things in your house. It has been used for thousands of years. We know and understand this product. In normal dilute forms, it is safe for external and internal use (pickles you eat are made with vinegar). The environment understands vinegar, and can bio-degrade it (unlike plastics and many other newer chemicals).",
"One thing that hasn't been touched on is that vinegar and other carboxylic acids have hydrophobic and hydrophilic parts, meaning that they aren't necessarily repelled by either fatty substances or aqueous/polar substances, though they are relatively polar. Point is, it happens to make it easier for water to wash grime away at that point. This is all in addition to the fact that it is an acid, as well. \n\ntl;dr: It's a combination of factors with polarity and acidity being the most significant ones."
]
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