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5sawko | Which evidence exists that proves Russia interfered in the 2016 Presedential election? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There really isn't any, the way the emails were hacked was done very simply through a phishing scam, were a person sends a fake email pretending to be someone else, in this case google, in order to fool the person into giving away their Password. Podesta fell for this, I think after someone in his campaign said it was a legitimate email. One of the only things I've seen was that they said the email originated from an IP from Russia, however if anything this is evidence against Russia being responsible, because hiding the location of an IP would be the easiest and first thing a hacker would look to do. The reports that were done never provided evidence, they just asserted that Russia was involved. Recently, the ex-ambassador to Russia from Britain said that he had gotten the emails from a disgruntled Clinton aide, of which he then gave them to Wikileaks. He also mentioned that the CIA couldn't know who did it because if they did, there would be some actions being taken. Obviously the ambassadors comments can't be fact checked but at least there is a name to that claim. Edit: Spelling mistake",
"Evidence hasn't been exposed as of yet. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There is huge speculation that it is being suppressed by powers in the US and Russia that have an interest in Trump remaining President. Here are some good links for you to make your own determination. URL_4 URL_3 URL_0 URL_2 URL_1",
"Even if they are the ones that hacked the emails of the of the clintons campaign manager I don't see it as interfering. They exposed some shit they shouldn't have been doing. They didn't lie, they didn't tamper with voting procedures, they didn't threaten or coerce. But if that sale of the russian oil company leads back to trump we need to impeach immediately.",
"Whilst Russia probably did help with hacking into the DNC, it's largely an irrelevance. Remember, the real issue that swung the last minute votes towards Trump was the FBI re-opening the Hillary Email question, after finding more of them whilst investigating Anthony Weiner's computer, and thus causing outrage on one side, and suspicion on the other; Combine that with Hillary being a poor choice of candidate and an exceptionally poor campaigner, who managed to lose the Electoral College whilst winning the Popular Vote despite losing millions of former Obama voters, and you got a situation where almost all the major players in the US Establishment helped lead towards Trump winning on the basis of a few swing states. And they're *desperate* to forget that now. Including the FBI and CIA, John McCain and the Republican Party, and everyone else who Trump has rapidly alienated within days of becoming President Elect. So it's \"Russia, Russia, Russia, RUSSIA\" all the time now. Far easier to blame all powerful, all evil Commies in America rather than face your own political culture has finally started sliding into outright fascism. After all, Russia didn't actually *want* Trump to become President; I would recommend reading Dr Mark Galeotti's Blog, [\"In Moscow's Shadows\"]( URL_0 ) for an expert's opinion. Moscow disliked Hillary because she was much more Hawkish than Trump, but still expected her to win, and be a far more realistic politician overall; their aim in boosting Trump was to weaken a Hillary Presidency and constrain her ability to interfere with Russian actions by having a closely divided electorate at her back. They, like many protest voters in the US, assumed Trump was such an outsider he couldn't possibly win and risked a punt on him to make a point. Except, he *did* win. And now Moscow, like everybody else, is in uncharted waters... Of course, *now* Putin is rapidly scrambling to make common cause with Trump: because Putin is an extremely brutal realist and will change tactics if need be in order to serve his always primary goal; doing what is best for The Motherland. But there are plenty of people within the Russian Deep State too that are really, really *worried* they can't predict where things go from here. Seriously, read that blog for an actual informed opinion on Russian politics; what you're getting about \"Russian Interference With Our Elections!\" is largely bullshit for the US market. \"Don't blame us, blame the big bad bear for Trump!\"",
"There's been no evidence released. Wikipedia claims the Russians were not they're source. Podesta sends to have fallen for a simple phishing attack with their weekend IT tech encouraging him to click the link. The fbi never looked at the dnc server, instead they took the word of a company run by a Ukrainian refugee hired by HRC. All that said, the Russians, like any country, the U.S. included, do their best to ensure foreign regimes are the least hostile so if they weren't trying to influence the election, they weren't doing their jobs."
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5sawwj | Why would an electric company such as nrg buy the naming rights to a stadium? What's the benefit for them? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The name of the stadium is mentioned in ads for events. Better for a product like Minute Maid - IMO . Reminds consumers that they are a big deal. Ultimately, their board probably gets a lux suite to entertain in.",
"It builds goodwill in a brand. If you have to make a relatively uninformed choice between two fairly similar products, the company with better goodwill is more likely to be chosen. You are more like to select the company that you have heard of. The same applies for any political or legal issue. If you have to vote on a referendum and don't know much about it other than that company you once heard about in a nice context would be hurt if you vote 'no', you are probably going to be more likely to vote 'yes'. Other than this, I suppose the answer could simply be that the company has more money than it needs and the board likes to have a suite for monster truck rallies as suggested by u/Camsradiomom."
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5saxh6 | Planck constant... | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The proportionality constant between a photon's energy and its frequency. E = h * f It ends up showing up a bunch of other places in quantum physics.",
"When we look at light with a powerful microscope, we see that it is made of very tiny pieces called photons. These tiny pieces are wiggling, and moving around. *Proceed to wiggle entire body on the spot to demonstrate the particle vibrating, declaring \"I am a photon!\" And then walking forwards whilst wiggling to demonstrate it's motion through space* If I, the photon, were to start wiggling faster, I would start rushing around the room. *Proceed to run around the room whilst doing a madness jig to demonstrate* So we know that if one thing about the movement of the photon changes, the others will too. We have called this connection we have noticed, the Planck Constant, because if one of these things changes, the others will too, and by a certain amount every time we measure it. (I'm sure we could have more bodily demonstrations to explain how momentum and distance are related for the photon but I'm not that familiar so maybe someone else could run on with the metaphor...?)",
"Planck was working on light bulbs and trying to work out how to get the most light for the least power. As part of his work he was trying to make a mathematical model of energy moving smoothly and continuously. To do this he first imagined energy moving in \"chunks\", then shrank the size of the chunks to an infinitely small size - infinitely small chunks means smooth, continuous flow. (think of breaking chunks of ice up smaller and smaller and smaller - do that infinitely and you get left with fluid water). Catch was that when he tried to fit his maths to the observed data, it turned out smooth continuous flow didn't work - but his maths DID work if he didn't shrink his chunks of energy all the way to infinitely small. h is the observed size you have to shrink the chunks to to make the maths match the real world. you have to split the light energy up into chunks h times the size of its frequency. (remember h is just a number - it could be 5 times the size of the frequency, 3 times the size of the frequency.. but it happens to be h times the size of the frequency). If you've studied calculus in high school maths you may see a parallel here - shrinking the value \"h\"to zero is how we solve derivatives from first principles, and same goes for integration. This is why the same symbol - h - is used in both cases."
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5sazvw | It's winter, I'm cold and I'm getting a static shocked by everything i touch. Why is it that during winter I get so much more static than in the summer? | Just like in the title, I'm getting shocked by every door knob, metallic surfaces or person even when there is no carpet or rug. This seems to happen a lot during the winter and I'm afraid of leaving my house because of door knobs. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You're getting shocked more often because of low humidity. This low humidity is caused by both the cooler air outside (cold air hold less moisture), as well as your furnace heating system (which boils off moisture). To avoid getting shocked, you have to increase the humidity of your house."
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5sb0cq | How are they able to leave a Supreme Court seat vacant for so long? | Aren't there still cases being heard by the Supreme Court (I heard on the news today that the travel ban might go to the Supreme Court.) Isn't it unfair to have an even number of justices since a lot of times the one swing vote decides the decision? How can they leave the seat vacant for a year without any repercussions? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's no law or anything in the Constitution that mandates when a vacant seat must be filled by. This isn't to say that the delays are right or wrong, only to say that they are legal."
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5sb0q8 | Why is red eyes in pictures not as big of a problem as it used to be? | With more selfies being taken than 10 years ago why do I never see red eyes in pictures anymore? Every photo editor used to come with a red eye fixer, but it doesn't seem as common anymore. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A selfie generally doesn't use a flash. Flash photography, especially from a flash that is positioned directly next to the lens, is still very much a problem for red-eye.",
"Now that most cameras are digital, most pictures aren't taken using a flash. (It is the flash that causes red-eye, by taking the picture at the same moment it exposes the subject to a bright light, before their pupil has had time to respond. The red you see is literally the blood vessels in the retina.) Smarter cameras do a little mini-flash before the main flash, which causes the pupil to dilate before taking the picture."
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5sb243 | How do NFL/American Football coaches coach using their headsets? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One player on offense (always the QB) and one player on the defense has a headset. When there are 15 seconds left in the clock to snap the ball, or when the ball is snapped, the headset is turned off, so they don't work in the middle of plays, only between plays. And the coach is talking to other coaching staff as well."
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5sb6q2 | Why is talking on your phone (not texting) while driving more dangerous than talking to a passenger? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You feel more pressure to prioritise the conversation over driving because the person on the call can't see the load you're under. By contrast, a passenger can see when traffic stuff is happening so you assume they'll cut you some slack.",
"A couple of reasons come to mind. First, holding a phone in your hand only leaves one hand to drive with. It should be apparent that is less safe than using two hands. Second, the flow of a phone conversation is a two way thing. Most conversations require both parties to put roughly the same amount of concentration into the conversation. When a passenger sees heavy traffic or senses the driver is concentrating especially hard on driving, they will naturally slow the pace of the conversation or pause it entirely for a short time. Conversely, in a phone conversation, the other party has no idea what the traffic is like and will tend to pace the conversation at a constant rate, likely a constant rate for a person who has nothing else to engage them. This will generally be faster than a person driving would naturally pace the conversation and may cause them distraction as they try to keep up. Basically, even hands free phone conversations will tend to take too much of the driver's attention occasionally while conversing with a passenger who is also aware of what the driver is facing will tend to allow the driver to concentrate more on driving when necessary."
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5sb796 | What is a mouth ulcer? | What exactly is a mouth ulcer? What's in it, what is it made of? Why does saline and mouthwash help, and why does acid encourage it? Also, can I cut it out of my lip? EDIT: When I say cut, I mean, it's sticking out more that the rest of my mouth gummy skin, so like, how'd you'd peel a scab, but with the ulcer. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"No you cannot cut it out of your lip, put down those scissors! It is more like a blister than a cyst; you need the skin etc., don't cut it out! I'll let someone more knowledgable answer the rest of your question. But just wanted to make sure someone said this before you got impatient and picked up a bread knife.",
"Try the avoid acidic foods (coffee, citrus, etc) they will irritate the ulcers and will slow the healing process. I've found plain yogurt with honey to be kind of soothing Source: I get mouth ulcers some times when I get really stressed. They blow.",
"I don't understand the logic behind \"cutting it out\". Imagine you had a cut on your arm or your leg, would cutting it out help the situation?",
"Are you talking about a canker sore? Put a Tums on it. Stop drinking OJ.",
"An ulcer is basically a broad open wound that eats away a layer or two of skin, but doesn't go deep enough to result in bleeding. It's a hole. The reason it seems to protude is that the increased blood flow to the area to accelerate healing also causes swelling. One thing to note about ulcers that we didn't know until about a decade ago is that they can be caused by bacterial infections, not stress or excessive acid. Aussie chaps got the Nobel Prize for it.( URL_0 ) Saline and mouthwash help clear out the infecting bacteria, while acidic environments are bad for your native bacteria, which makes it easier for infecting bacteria to move in."
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5sba32 | How were the lights synchronized in Lady Gaga's halftime show? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The drones use Intel's realsense technology combined with infrared LEDs, allowing the drones to know where each other are and form a sort of wireless mesh network. Once the drones know where they are and where they are supposed to be, you can program them. Example of drone formation from 5 years ago: URL_0",
"I'm assuming you're talking about the people surrounding lady Gaga, and not the drones? There is a company that makes DMX controlled wrist bands. Using some crazy RFID technology they can control the lights based on the position of the wrist band. Then a light operator just controls different areas, and the wrist band location determines what commands it receives. Now the people at the halftime show weren't wearing wrist bands, but the technology works the same. Here is a link to the company who makes this technology URL_0 Not sure if they are the company that was responsible for the Super Bowl. But regardless it's the same technology.",
"I was just thinking about this. My guess we're that they were drones. Hence the Intel drone commercial and logo after the show",
"The sky was definitely drones. They even showed it at the end of the show \"drones powered by Intel \"",
"It's an Intel drone program. It's a group of 500 drones synchronized via a single computer. [Here's a cool video on them]( URL_0 ) Edit: I now realize you where probably asking about all the lights in the crowd, not the lights in the sky. I was really excited to see the drones, so that's the first thing that popped in my head when reading your question lol",
"I was just trying to figure out the same thing. I know the sky ones were Intel drones but I more curious about the lights everyone had on the field. It didn't seem their positions were pre determined.",
"Since the lights at the beginning were clearly drones and can be individually addressed, I'm going to cover those handheld lights for the people dancing around on the field instead. There's a number of ways this could be done. Most likely, they set up an array of low power transmitters which send out a unique identifier or broadcasts a carrier on a unique frequency, something like that. The position of these transmitters are all known by each handheld light. The controller inside each handheld light knows, through radio triangulation, where it's own approximate location is, relative to the transmitters. Next, there's a second transmitter which sends out commands which look like this: \"If you are within 3 feet of [x,y], set rgb color to [#ff0000]. If not, disregard.\" I'd love to see a project like this on hackaday. It seems like something they could cobble together out of a bunch of Philips Hue bulbs, a Raspberry Pi, a 3d printer, and a bunch of Arduinos. tl;dr: It's done with radio and magic."
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5sbdby | What makes an employer decide whether they want to do 4/10 hour days vs 5/8 hour days (for 40 hour work weeks). Are there pros and cons to both? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For me it's a matter of \"cuz everyone else is doing it\". I'd love to operate my business 4 10 hour days. If I did, and my competitors didn't, I would be losing customers that want my product on my extra day off. I would lose not only that sale but potentially lose a customer to future sales who finds a competitor that is more convenient, cheaper, etc. If my competitors did it so would I and so here we are stuck with 5 day work weeks."
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5sbfje | Why when I'm hungry and don't eat, I end up moving past the hunger and reaching a stage where I'm no longer hungry? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"You start to consume the fat inside your body, then when extreme starvation kicks in the stomach consumes organs."
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5sbgl9 | How do we measure the value of currency relative to each other if all curriencies change value? Must there be some kind of constant to measure everything by? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"nope, no constant. they all float freely, thanks to ridiculous volume, arbitrage (risk free profitable trades due to misaligned price chains) is eliminated before it can happen.",
"The ELI5 is this: there is no common standard. This is possible because in the modern economy the price of currency is, in short, determined by the market's value of it; in other words, to own a dollar or a euro is a highly desirable thing, because the financial system evolved in such a way to make it possible to exchange that thing (a coin, a piece of paper) for other things. This kind of currency is known as fiat currency. They do all float free, but I think what some of the answers here are missing is the idea that the US dollar, and other currencies like the euro, are \"reserve currencies.\" Large quantities of these currencies are typically held by central banks of many countries due to their relative stability. Think of it this way: if there were to be an objective value on something (a lofty assumption, but humor me), we would say with a 100% certainty that we knew what that value would be. With reserve currencies, in which the price is relatively stable, we might say that relative to non-reserve currencies, the certainty that the value will stay constant approaches 100%. This is a simplification - it's probably much less than 100%. But, relative to currencies whose value fluctuates regularly, reserve currencies are the closest thing we have to an \"objective standard.\" This plays out daily in forex markets: there are many currencies in the world, but only a few currencies - like the dollar, the euro, and the yen (amongst others) are the ones that are highly traded. The exchange rate of between the currencies of turkey and say, Brazil, fluctuate at much lower frequencies than currencies like the dollar. Even if a Turk is trying to convert his currency (lira) into Brazilian reals to buy a Brazilian good, he will first convert it into dollars and then convert those dollars into reals. This is because the US dollar is a 'vehicle currency'. Again this demonstrates how the relative confidence that the global economy places on vehicle currencies and reserve currencies somewhat achieves the idea of having an 'objective'/standard currency."
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5sbgw8 | What is concern trolling? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's when you pretend to be concerned for someone's well-being but really you're just criticizing them. Like saying \"I support single mothers, but I can't help but feel that it isn't in the best interest of the child. You aren't going to be able to provide for them in the way that a two-parent family would, and they'll grow up with the uncertainty of never knowing their father. I just worry that it isn't the best environment to raise a child.\" Like you're not really worried, you're obviously judging someone else's decision.",
"Well, you can always check Wikipedia but there are two definitions: Theirs and mine. 1. The wikipedia definition describes going to a rival political faction - say, a democrat going into republican groups. Then, they become \"concerned\" that a platform issue, like Pro-Life, is detrimental to the conservative movement, so they try to inspire the party to change from within by \"trolling\" them. In essence, this is a backdoor way to try to change the opposition's policy position. I don't call that concern trolling, but that is the pop culture definition. Nonetheless, the concern is fake and the person is saying things they don't believe, so they're trolling by using concern. 2. My definition is when someone who has a real or fake concern uses their concern to crybaby everywhere. Think about the anti-smoking campaign \"The Truth\" commercials, or the conservative propaganda against marijuana. They are being loudmouths, bothering (trolling) everyone about their concern. What makes it trolling or not under my definition is the techniques - for example, heroin is really bad but it would be concern trolling to hire a performance artist to go to a high school and pose as an OD'd heroin victim with a syringe and bloody scene designed to get attention - think of the butchered fetus billboards of pro-life, that is certainly concern trolling by my book - trolling because of the methods. (overt appeal to pathos, attempting to emotionalize an issue so much that logic is lost)."
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5sbouw | How does the hardware inside pregnancy tests works? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pregnancy tests use antibodies, protein molecules that react to the presence of particular chemicals. Pregnant women produce a particular hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), so antibodies that react to it are mixed with chemicals that change colour when the antibody reacts. [More info]( URL_0 )"
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5sbtgs | Why are the speeds of light and sound what they are? What causes these "limits"? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Light: Nobody knows. Its a fundamental limit of the universe. When we say \"the speed of light\" we're referencing light moving through free space or a \"vacuum.\" As for sound: The speed of sound has to do with the material that sound is moving through. Sound is made up of waves that propagate (move) through a medium (material). Basically the waves are areas of high energy and low energy, like the crest and trough of an ocean wave. In free space, sound can't exist. The speed of sound in a material is determined by how heavy the the particles of the material are and how dense or closely packed those particles are. For the fastest speed of sound you'd want a really dense material with low particle mass. For the slowest speed of sound you'd want a material with very heavy particles that are not closely packed. This pattern is because the energy of the particles has to be transmitted through physical contact between the particles. They \"push\" eachother in the direction the sound is traveling. A heavy particle is hard to push because of inertia so it moves slower, a light particle moves easily. Highly packed particles transfer energy faster because there's less space between them to travel.",
"Light moves at the speed it does because it is the rate at which changing electric and magnetic fields induce magnetic and electric fields, respectively. What's really interesting about light is that, since it's based on fields and doesn't have to move through a medium, like other waves, it's speed is constant for everyone. This means that, if you watch someone riding by in a relativistic train (with a laser pointer), their clock must be moving slower. This leads to all sorts of strange effects and means that the speed of light is the maximum speed at which a causal connection can be possible. We can say now that light can't be faster because relativity demands it. Light is massless. It carries energy, but it doesn't have mass in the classical sense of the word (Perhaps it's a little more exact to say it has no REST mass). The only way light can have momentum or energy, while still being massless, is if it moves at this maximum speed of causal relationships, or causality (physicists just call this \"c\"). This arises out of the relativistic definition of energy- a body's energy approaches an infinite scale of its mass as its relative speed approaches c. For a massless body, this energy is zero unless the speed IS c. As for why the speed of light is the actual NUMBER it is... That's simply because of the values of fundamental constants of the universe. These are arbitrary (in a sense), so c too is essentially arbitrary.",
"The speed of light is more or less the speed of causality in the universe, and the rate at which it can understand, decode, and change due to spreading of information. It's not that light only \"travels\" at the \"speed\" (in MPH) of light, but, more so that light is limited by the universes fundamental understanding of itself, for lack of a better synopsis. Photons are a timeless particles, they do not experience time in the conventional sense that we do. When a photon is emitted, from it's frame of reference, the distance it is travelling, be it 2 feet or 2 billion light years, is done instantaneously. There is no time between being at point A and point B when measured from the photons reference frame. However, as an outside observer we measure this speed at 299,792,458 meters per second (in a vacuum). Due to special relativity and time dilation, the closer you travel to the speed of light the slower your reference frame clock ticks. It's a bit of a pickle to try and explain without using all sort of weird words and quoting theorem and formulae.",
"In order for any wave to propagate through a medium, that medium has to have some relaxed position, that it wants to return to (equilibrium). How much the medium wants to return to equilibrium, and how fast it wants to return to equilibrium are what determine wave speed. For sound, as it is a physical wave, the speed is determined by spring and damping attributes of a material. A soft sponge will have sound traverse slower than a hard steel cube. It has been observed that in a vacuum, there is a resistance to a change in magnetic field. It was also observed that in a vacuum there is a resistance to changes in the electric field. It was originally believed that these resistances were associated with a medium known as the 'ether', but none has been discovered so far. However, combining the two resistances with induction formulas (also derived from observation), it was determined the speed of the wave solution is c (speed of light). Initially the hypothesis made was that light was this exact wave solution. I don't know off hand, but I'm sure very many experiments have attempted to test this hypothesis, and so far everything agrees. So at the end of the day, the speeds are what they are based on the nature of the medium (it's just that it appears that light can travel through a vacuum...and that the vacuum possesses certain properties). Of course, in the light situation, it is not known if the resistances are the cause or the effect of the speed of light... It was observed that the speed of light stays constant regardless of reference frame. The only mathematical solution to keep physics consistent for all observers (since everyone has to agree on exact events), are the Special and General Theories of Relativity. If you lay out the math for the special theory of relativity, which describes exactly how certain aspects of our local space dilate (time/length/mass), it becomes evident that some aspect of reality scales down actual speed (0- > infinity) to observed speed (0- > c). In that respect, c isn't just the speed of light that everything is clamped to...it's more that c is the upper scale limit, and anything without inertia (such as a photon), will instantly 'accelerate' to 'infinity' (observed to be c). edit: clean up",
"The channel [PBS Space Time delves into the nature of the speed of light pretty well.]( URL_0 ) For there to be a set of laws for electromagnetism that can work in all inertial frames of reference (which it would be since magnets don't change by simply being thrown), there needs to be a finite and specific speed limit. That limit describes the speed at which electromagnetic waves propagate through the universe which includes light. Gravitational waves and other massless particles also travel at the speed of light.",
"Sound is caused by molecules banging into other molecules, which then bang into other molecules, and so on in a wave of collisions. So the closer together the molecules are, the sooner they'll bang together. Which is another way of saying the denser the material, the faster sound travels. Light is not the same kind of wave. Light is energy. It has no mass, so it doesn't even *experience* time. Time is something that happens to other things. So light travels at the speed of time, the speed at which time gets \"created\" by the universe. Which is why time goes slower for you the faster you go: you're catching up to it. And that's also why a bit of light emitted at the beginning of the universe and absorbed at the end will \"experience\" the whole thing all at once. And because \"fast\" has to do with time, it's meaningless to say \"faster than light\", because that means \"faster than time.\" (When people *do* say \"faster than light\", they usually mean \"slower, but going the other direction, towards the beginning of time.\") So the speed of light really is the speed limit of the universe, by definition. Light *seems* to go slower in air or glass or water, because it gets absorbed by atoms it bumps into, which then emit new light a short time later.",
"All these comments are too wordy. You're five after all. Sound is a form of energy, like heat. Different materials allow energy to go through it faster or slower. A t shirt let's heat (cold) go through it easier than a winter jacket or heavy blanket. Similarly in air or water the sound travels at a certain speed depending on how easy or fast that material allows the energy (sound) to move. The same basic concept can be applied to light. It travels at different speeds through different materials (mediums). The difference is that light can travel with in space with basically no material and sound can't.",
"I can't answer on the speed of light, as i don't know why it is what it is. The speed of sound varies from material to material. A sound wave is literally a wave of mechanical force travelling through a material. An impact of some kind pushes a bunch of atoms away from the source of the impact, these atoms push even more atoms away when they hit them. The speed of this wave of movement is determined by how densely the atoms are packed. These changes in movement occur at such a high frequency that they are picked up as sound by our ears, rather than just vibrations by your skin."
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5sbwxk | What happened in the Superbowl and how did the losing team choke? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Falcons were playing guns blazing up until the half. Then, their fatigue and inexperience (playing @ Super Bowl) caught up with them and Patriots saw that and did what they do best. Win."
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5sbxk7 | why did the football commissioner got booed while holding the super bowl cup? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He pushed for the deflate-gate investigation and had Brady suspended for 4 games. He didn't really get along well with the Patriots owner to begin with.",
"He and the owner were good friends until it came out that Tom Brady was having footballs slightly deflated so he could grip them better. Owner got fined a million dollars and a draft pick to make it go away in an apparent handshake agreement but the commissioner kept pressing and eventually Tom Brady got suspended for four games. The owner (and the team) felt like they were betrayed. He's also generally unpopular amongst the players and fans for being arbitrary in his punishments and not caring about issues (player safety, domestic violence, etc.) until they start to affect revenue. He's also basically the judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to punishments unless there is a way to take the NFL to court (which happened in the Patriots case explained in the first paragraph)."
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5sbxrk | Why have Super Bowl ads have become less comical, unique and memorable and more like regular, dull commercials? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Marketing has drastically changed. In 2007, most of our social media was not very old. YouTube was not all that old. Marketing is all about audience, and the best way to at the time to engage the most people was the Super Bowl. You drop your ad there, if it's a success it becomes huge. You can base a whole campaign on this ad, and it stays relevant and even part of pop culture. We no longer do that. We have cell phones that let us tweet and share while watching the game. We have YouTube where anything good goes viral, hits your feed in a moment, and you've seen it and probably forgotten about it pretty fast. To put simple: marketing no longer needs the Super Bowl to reach a huge audience anymore thanks to the rise of the internet, video streaming sites like YouTube, and social media that let's you target a specific audience.",
"Because everything funny and unique has inundated youtube. What seemed original and edgy ten years ago is available at your fingertips."
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5sc1ua | How does a VPN protect your data on a public network from hackers, if the data still has to go through the modem? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Imagine you're sitting in a magical cafe and want to browse a website. You call him up, and the website sits down at your table. > **You:** Hey, Website! I want to see this image, could you describe it to me? > **Website:** Sure! It's a kitten lying on its back with all paws outstretched. Its fur is spotted ginger tabby, and it's lying on a green sofa. > **You:** Cool! Thanks, Website! When someone wants to snoop on your data, they are essentially putting a mic on your table. It's weak and doesn't have a lot of range, but they can hear everything the Website tells you. Now you're using a VPN connection. Instead of Website, it's the VPN Server sitting with you at the table over a nice cup of mint tea. Website is sitting at the next table near you. The VPN Server speaks both English and Klingon. You now also speak Klingon because it's a magical cafe. > **You [in Klingon]**: Hey, VPN Server! I want to see this image, could you describe it to me? > **VPN Server, turning away [in English]**: Hey, Website! This handsome fellow over there wants to see this picture, I need you to describe it. > **Website [in English]**: Sure, it looks like this: (...) > **VPN Server, turning back to you [in Klingon]**: It's a kitten lying on its back with all paws outstretched. Its fur is spotted ginger tabby, and it's lying on a green sofa. > **You [in Klingon]:** Cool! Thanks, VPN Server! Now, the mic that someone put on your table can't hear the conversation between VPN Server and Website, it's too weak. And what they hear from your table is useless because it's in a different language they first need to figure out. \"Tunneling\" is when you switch to a different language and speak only to VPN Server, and they ask everyone your questions on your behalf. The different language is the encryption that VPN Server uses to be discrete.",
"Most popular sites you use, like Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Amazon, are already encrypted. If you're using a public network, like at a coffeeshop, others can snoop and realize you're using Reddit right now (because they can see you're connecting to URL_0 ), but they don't know what you're doing on Reddit (because the actual data is encrypted), and they can't modify the data in any way. However, some sites like CNN, eBay, IMDB, and Forbes don't offer HTTPS encryption at all. Someone hacking your coffeeshop network can not only see exactly what web pages you're looking at, they could even intercept the traffic and insert their own content, or their own ads. With a VPN, you're \"tunneling\" all of your connections, securely, to some other location, and making your Internet requests from there. Everyone on your public network only sees that you have a connection to that VPN host, and has no idea what you're doing otherwise. They can't see what sites you're visiting, and even if you visit insecure sites they can't see what you're doing there or modify the content."
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5sc2wx | Why does incest cause genetic mutations? | I'm wondering how it works, as specific as you can explain it. Follow up questions: would a closer relationship promote a higher chance of genetic mutation, or a more severe mutation (i.e. brother and sister vs. second cousins)? I'm curious if early humans had some different build, but because of having to reproduce and fill the earth, we had incest upon incest, making what we see as normal now a genetic mutation then. And if that ^ is not the case, why the heck not. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Incest doesn't cause any more mutations than normal - it just makes it more likely that mutation that already exist will become dominant. Everybody's DNA is made up of matching pairs - One from your mother and one from your father. Normally if there is a \"faulty\" gene on one side it is counteracted by the healthy gene on the other side. This is because healthy genes are usually stronger (dominant) and unhealthy genes are weaker (recessive) But with incest the amount of genes the two people have in common is greatly increased which means that if there is a \"faulty\" gene somewhere is their DNA then there is a much greater chance of two faulty genes matching up. That's what causes the sort of issues you see with inbred children (and other animals as well)",
"My basic understanding is this. Every person has a certain amount of genetic mutation in them. I believe most are recessive genes. Recessive genes require both parents to pass on these genes for them to be activated. The closer the relationship between the parents of the child the more likely it is for these recessive genes to be activated. For instance a brother and sister are likely to have the same recessive genes. Cousins a little less likely. 2nd cousins even less likely. Etc. As a result closer relatives are more likely to have children with a large number of genetic mutations. Probably the most famous example is the Hapsburgs. The ruling family of the Austro-Hungarian empire. They were known for having a very large nose. Since the kids kept being married off to cousins it became a very inbred family and eventually the family started to lose power because they couldn't produce heirs."
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5sc7n0 | is it logistically possible to choreograph sports games like football to make drama and determine the winner? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dddzof9"
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"text": [
"they do it in sports movies. I don't see why they couldn't do it in real life. everyone has a price."
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5sc92d | When selling stock in the US, why is there such a capital gains taxation disparity between short-term and long-term holdings? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dde46db",
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"text": [
"It's to encourage long term investment by average people and boost the economy. Day trading is considered regular income, so it is taxed just like any regular income.",
"day trading is akin to income, you do it with a hope of actively earning money. long term holdings are considered passive investments. commissions are not the govts concern. Promoting safe and responsible investing is beneficial for investors and companies, which is the govts concern."
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5scl79 | How do pulleys make things lighter? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Pulleys do not make things lighter Energy is expended in lifting a mass by a distance By using a system of pullies you reduce the movement distance that is travelled with each pull of the rope or chain or whatever The same mass is moved a smaller distance in each pull so less energy is expanded To move the object the same distance takes a number of pulls on the rope or chain The total energy expended is actually higher as the pulley system has an additional amount of friction that must be overcome",
"Pulleys can reduce the *acceleration force* required to lift an item, but the total amount of *work* is the same. Pulley's can also change the direction of force, allowing you to take advantage of the force of gravity to lift things upwards. Lets say you want to lift a 100 lb weight. If you tied a rope to it and tried to lift it directly with the rope, you would have to pull upwards with 100 lbs of force to lift it. Now, lets add 1 pulley on the ceiling. If you run the rope up over the pulley and back down to the ground, you'll still need to apply 100 lbs of force to lift the weight, but now you can use gravity and the weight of your body, which may make it seem easier. Now, let's add 2 pulleys - 1 on the ceiling and 1 above the weight -- similar to [this arrangement]( URL_0 ). Because of the arrangement of the pulleys, for every inch of rope you pull, the weight will only raise by 1/2 inch. Because you're pulling the rope twice as far, you only have to pull with half the force, so 50 lbs in this case. The total amount of work is the same. To raise the weight by 1 foot, you could use 1 pulley and pull 100 lbs for 1 ft., or you could use 2 pulleys and pull 50 lbs for 2 feet. This will continue for every pulley you add. With 3 pulleys, it takes 33.3 lbs. With 4 pulleys, 25 lbs. Of course the exact figures will be a bit more because the more pulleys you add, the more friction you add to the system.",
"To lift an object by a rope and a pulley make the object half as heavy - but you need to pull the rope twice as long.. Using two pulleys makes the object weigh a quarter of its original weight, but the rope needs to travel 4 times longer etc.."
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5scvoe | what can a hacker do with my IP address? | I'm not tech savvy. Someone got butthurt on warframe (ps4) and said they were going to 'grab my IP address'. Scare tactic or threat? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"Generally they can start by scanning your ports to see if theres any vulnerabilities they can exploit. In some cases they can even find your location just from the IP. This can lead to doxxing. If they find a vulnerability then what happens next depends on their intentions and what the vulnerability is, it can be very open ended.",
"Its a bit like asking \"What can a burglar do with my address?\" the answer is, \"That rather depends on your house\" If your local network is properly set up (And most ISP's set up your modem to be locked down by default in order to prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot and costing them time and money) they can't get in. If you do have some open ports and vulnerabilities they could theoretically execute code on your machine and gain control of it. (until you unplug it ofc) Alternatively, they can DDOS you, which is basically spamming your machine until its to busy to do anything else. Note that you generally have a dynamic IP, which depending on your ISP refreshes either at set times, or when you unplug your modem for X amount of time. (If you don't have a dynamic IP, you can often get it changed by calling the ISP helpdesk)",
"Your IP is just your address. You live at \"gummybear street 210\", your computer live at \"111.222.333.444:25075\" Just like a burgler, they would have to break in. Knowing your address means nothing. All websites knows it (It has to, to send you the info) Everything online realy.",
"If your system is secured in the general sense (no open ports or those ports that are open and listening are from a program that is up to date and generally considered secure), then the worst they should be able to do is a DDOS attack. DDOS attacks don't have to attack servers, and ontop of that can be much smaller if attacking a personal target while still affecting that target. Most routers are by default configured to detect and drop unwanted communication. To do that, your router has to do some checks, and your router is, like any other network enabled device, a small computer, and a computer has limits. It has limited bandwidth to work with, limited RAM to work with and limited CPU power to work with. While a few packets of unwanted traffic are easily filtered out, once an attacker starts with an attack of thousands if not tens of thousands of devices that bombard your router with that kind of traffic, there isn't much your router can do. At that point, multiple things can happen: * Your internet connection becomes unusable slow or is gone completely * Your router crashes and restarts * Your ISP temporarily terminates your connection If you don't have a static IP address (and for the normal user there is no reason to have one), then those things will cause your router to lose the connection, and with it, it's public IP address. Once reconnected your router should request a new IP address (depending on the ISP you might actually be assigned the old address again until a certain amount of time has passed). At that point the DDOS attacks no longer reach your router and you are safe unless the attacker can find out your new IP address."
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5sd0su | are repressed memories real? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dde5r7m"
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"text": [
"Yes repressed memories are real. But there are also things called false memories. False memories can be: Misremembering something (like what happened to a friend, or what you saw in a movie) as happening to you or otherwise differently than it really happened. Thinking a dream or other wistful thinking was a memory. As a result of a traumatic event. Both in the form of replacing a bad memory with a good one, or adding bad memories to flesh out a traumatic event more. If this bothers you, bring it up in therapy."
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5sd1x1 | What causes us to feel tired, and what naturally causes us to wake up after sleeping? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dde61rm"
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"text": [
"Melatonin, which is produced by the pineal gland (also known in many cultures as the 'third eye'). Basically Melatonin is the sleep hormone. It regulates our sleep cycles. It's supposed to be hindered by unnatural light, meaning that staring at your phone, or having too much artificial light on after dark can very seriously ruin your sleep pattern. This is why we have \"Night Mode\" or \"Night Shift\" settings on our phones. So that the light coming off of it isn't too harsh, and doesn't severely affect our ability to produce melatonin."
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5sd3e8 | Why are some English words spelled with a Z in America but swapped with an S in Britain? | For example, realize - > realise idolize - > idolise economize - > economise | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dde6guu",
"dde68rq"
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"text": [
"After the American Revolution, there was a movement in America (led by Noah Webster of dictionary fame) to rationalize English spelling so that things would be spelled as they sounded. There was a patriotic as well as practical element to this movement as its proponents sought to define an \"American\" English distinct from British. Obviously, it failed. It did leave some traces on American English spelling, however. Among these are \"color\" instead of \"colour\", \"realize\" instead of \"realise\", and \"theater\" instead of \"theatre\".",
"Americans wanted to change things because they wanted to prove they were not part of the empire anymore, and in doing so, fucked up a bunch of words."
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5sd7qs | What are Active Directory Sites and Services | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dde7epi"
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"text": [
"Microsoft Active Directory is a role you can install on Microsoft Windows Servers to help you create a unified rights and login infrastructure across several windows computers and applications. To explain the above a bit more in depth. You have probably a computer at home and may even be sitting in front of one as you read this. If you have a computer with windows at home you may even have it set up in such a way that it asks you for a user name and password on startup. (Many people who are the only users of their computers set it up so it skips that part and automatically logs you in). If you are a bigger organization you will have many different computers and on each one there may be different users who need to log onto the computer. As you can imagine it can be hard to keep track of all the different logins. Microsoft AD makes it so that a central computer (or several working together) have a central place for all the users and their passwords in the company. The same user logging in one computer can use the same name and password to access all computers in the company. It can also be used to login to all sorts of server applications. If the system is set up correctly a user will only need to have one username and password for everything they do in the company. This simplifies things a lot. This piece of software can be managed with a number of programs among them \"Users and computers\" which is the main one, but also the management console called \"Sites and Services\". \"Sites and services\" is not a tool anyone will need very often because you mostly use it configure different locations. Your organization may have offices in a different city with their own networks and in sites and services you configure which place has which network and how theses different sites are connected to together. It also is where you configure where the Microsoft AD servers are. Unless you are a sysadmin setting up or changing things for a branch office or similar you will never have to use this tool."
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5sdgfu | Everytime you hear children laughing in the distance in a movie or on tv, it's almost always the same "kids laughing track" | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dde90ws"
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"text": [
"There are lots and lots of these samples that becomes part of several productions. A library with sound bites is essential for anyone working with sound and the libraries are put together with the best sound bites from the previous releases. The Willhelm scream is widely used and have turned into an inside joke but there are bites out there that have been more used but are less famous. When every sound technician in Hollywood sits with the same sound bite library you will see that a lot of the same sounds appear in several films and series. The same is true in music as well where several songs are using the same exact sample throughout the song. You also see it in visual effects where the same effect is cut and pasted over lots and lots of productions. The same thing in model making where everyone have the same kits they mash together and you end up with the same WWII rear gun turret used on almost any spaceship in any movie."
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5sdhyj | Why do babies put everything in their mouth? | I've been babysitting a one year old recently and he puts absolutely everything in his mouth. Is there a reason that so many kids his age put everything in their mouth? I would assume part of is teething, but is that the only reason? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Babies have far more touch-detectors in their mouths than in their fingers (or anywhere else on their bodies) at that age. Their tongue, lips, and mouths in general are far more sensitive to touch than anywhere else. So just like how you run your fingers over something to feel its features, babies put things in their mouths to do the same."
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5sdui2 | Why do we have nightmares and what causes them? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"URL_0 fears. I don't normally just post a link as the answer but it sums it up neatly and isn't a full book long. Cheers."
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5sdvjc | What is the “star” system of Reddit? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ddeam5c"
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"text": [
"Those stars are Reddit Gold. If you've got money to spare and someone makes a particularly good post/comment, you can gift them a month of Reddit Gold (also known as \"gilding\" the post). Reddit Gold is the premium subscription to Reddit and it allows extra features and exclusive subreddits, while also supporting Reddit (Don't gild me for this :P) **Edit:** Spelling is hard :P"
],
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5sdy94 | If less harm is done to your body when you relax your muscles before an impact, why is it that the human instinct is to brace yourself and tense up? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"if we are thinking about the same instinct, it is to protect the weaker and more important organs like the head or stomach area. the reflex will make you put your arms and legs(if you don't need them to stand) in front of them as some kind of shield. you will also often turn away so your back faces the danger. all this moves can't be done while relaxing the muscles.",
"It depends on the impact. In small impacts the muscles is able to protect the body by soaking up the blow. Think of getting punched. However if you get a great impact then it is often better to relax your muscles to prevent the force getting transferred to other areas. During most of human development we have mostly been subject to small impacts. Fighting with animals, falling from a rock, getting hit by a falling tree, etc. However today we are subject to cars and high buildings which produce a much greater impact.",
"The other answers here are good, especially /u/Gnonthgol's point about small forces vs large forces. The other way to look at it is for the most part, our limbs are \"expendable.\" That is to say, if we are subject to trauma (falling for instance) and we brace ourselves with our arms or legs, there's a chance those break. You can look at this as a bad thing, but it's actually a good thing. Our limbs in this case act as a \"crumple zone\" and absorb the impact so our torso/organs don't have to. You can look at the injury (up to and including use of the arm) as a failure, but you will still live. If that same force was transferred to your organs, you might not. So your body is just hedging it's bets, and accepting a smaller (relatively) injury rather than risk a catastrophic failure of a larger one.",
"Said instincts evolved when the maximum impact a human could expect to be hit by was much lower. Bracing/Tensing up would have increased survival rates vs going limp. In an evolutionary time frame, our activities have and associated impact forces have gone up faster than adaptation can occur - much like how we have not adapted to plentiful food supplies or to, socially, handle the reality of virtually instant communication worldwide."
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5se4sz | why do companies continuously lose experienced employee for salary raises? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bad management and the belief that the employee can easily be replaced. Any employee *can* be replaced, but there is always a cost. The stocker at a grocery store can be replaced at minimal cost. Giving a stocker a raise of 2$ might be less profitable than replacing them, given that introduction for such a position will be minimal. A sysadmin will be a different thing, depending on the set-up weeks if not months will be needed to replace such a person. So yes, it is probably not profitable. However, if you got an employee who is willing to work for less than they could expect on the free market, it would of course be profitable. The question is whether you want that. Bad managers will opt for this because they only see the bottom line at the end of the month, but not the extra profit that experienced employees mean.",
"[I'm seeing a lot of \"management is stupid\" posts that don't really examine the issue. Here is a little devil's advocacy for you.] You are making a lot of assumptions that don't always hold true. Everyone *thinks* they are a good employee, and often overestimate their value to the company. Not everyone is, and companies are glad to let people like that leave. Nor do those people always tell you the whole story. They might have gotten a $5000/yr raise, but lost opportunities for advancement, and went from 4 weeks to 2 weeks vacation. Even assuming things happen exactly as described, it is not necessarily a bad thing in the big picture. Managers have to work with limited resources, and one of those resources is salary. Most managers would happy give a marginal employee a big raise to keep them, if that didn't mean losing money to spend elsewhere. Without salary discipline, a company would wind up spending too much money on low and average performers. The price of that discipline is occasionally letting a good performer get away. Also, a lot of people overestimate how hard it can be to replace someone. While it is not ideal, if you have three sysadmins, and a manager who used to be a sysadmin, and you lose one, that is not a huge step backward. The institutional knowledge is still there, and the remaining employees just have to take up more responsibilities while the replacement comes up to speed. Finally, changing the corporate culture to make it easier to give big raises to retain employees would not solve the problem. The same freedom that lets a manager keep an employee will make it easier to poach one from someone else. Same risk of losing people, you are just paying more for the privilege.",
"> because the current employer would not appreciate them For the situation you've described, you've given the answer. The 'problem' is that the company thinks, in the long run, it would be better to take that short-term hit employing a new person than to raise the salary of the old person. The new employer clearly values the person more than the old employer (and is therefore willing to give them a higher wage) - although which valuation is 'right' depends on the person, job etc. It may in fact be that the new job is slightly more suited to the persons skills than the old job, and they are in fact more valuable in that position.",
"Most, if not all, companies are predicated on their employees being easily replaceable identical cogs, and if they aren't then they work hard to make that the case and removing or limiting the number of key personnel (i.e. ones that aren't so easy to replace).",
"employees also do a bit of gambling by moving. they have to do probation period again, and also lose benefits that come with company loyalty (employee stock option/program, more vacation days, etc2). because of that, companies can afford to not give as much raise as how much the person can get in open market because they know that there's non-salary benefit for employees if they stay vs if they leave.",
"What you described is the case often, but not always. Many companies do promote from within and continue to give people higher titles and pay that matches their experience. As for when it does happen, there's eventually a limit to how much value the employee can generate for the company even if their skills go up. Say the company hires someone fresh out of college for a junior position because that's all they need. Their employee gains experience over the years, becoming more and more senior and expecting more pay. However, if the company still only needs a junior person, they don't want to pay a senior salary to someone because they are overqualified for the role the company has to fill. Better for everyone if the experienced employee moves on to a higher paying job that actually requires their experience and the company just gets another (low salary) junior employee. I've seen both examples happen at my company. Some people come in fresh out of college into junior roles and eventually climb higher and higher because the company has need for people in higher positions in those disciplines. Other times there are small departments that are effectively salary capped because the company just doesn't need someone with years and years of experience in those roles, so people come in, work for a bit, and then move to either a different department or a different company."
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5se7ey | What happens to stomach acid when we drink while eating? Does it dilute? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes, but your stomach can absorb water pretty well so the dilution doesn't last long. Drinking water with your food actually helps digestion because churning food with a liquid breaks it up better than without (your stomach \"churns\" food to a degree. The liquid component gives more surface area for enzymes to contact it the food. This is why liquid diets are preferred for the very very weak and sick; they are absorbed faster.",
"Not in a real day-to-day scenario. In order to hinder digestion noticeably, you need to raise pH from 2 to 3.5 (at this point digestive enzymes denature). You'd need about half a gallon of water to do this, so you'd be too full to eat anything else way before this happened.",
"Your stomach has cells that line the outside of it that produce something called \"Gastic Hydrogen Potassium ATPase\". ( URL_0 ) It's essentially just a natural proton pump designed to acidify the contents of the stomach which is mostly just water and whatever you recently ate. You stomach always has some amount of water in it that is full of these acidic particles. As it fills up from food, more water is pulled in and more acid is produced as it passes through your small intestine (which is really just an extension of your stomach). Then the large intestine pulls most of the water along with nutrients out of there."
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5se9t0 | Why are Czech and German porn so popular that they get their own category? (NSFW) | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"in a nutshell, Czech porn is sweet women having sex for money and German porn is WTF MY EYES kind of porn",
"Similarly, there's over a billion Indians on earth, how is it that there is no indian category"
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5sedzt | Why is Petrichor so pleasing to the body? | Secondly, is there any way to create such smell using artificial means? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is highly beneficial to humans to locate a source of water following a dry spell, so we find the smell caused by water hitting dry soil really pleasant because it is an evolutionary advantage, much the same way smelling fresh cut grass and leaves also do - URL_0"
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5seewq | How is the universe ~15 billion years old yet span over 80 billion light years in diameter? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The universe is expanding. During the early expansion it was expanding much faster than the speed of light. The current [understanding of metric expansion in the universe]( URL_0 ) is subject to some debate, particularly the effect of dark energy.",
"**Short but non-descriptive answer:** Because the universe is expanding. **Longer answer:** Let's try an analogy: You and I are standing in a park *10 feet* apart. And you roll a ball to me. The ball travels at *1 foot/second* so it takes 10 seconds to reach me (ignore friction and what not). I know the speed of the ball, and I know how long it took to reach me (here 10 seconds is analogous to ~13.8 billion years). So I know how far you were when you rolled the ball to me. Looking around us and doing some fancy calculations, I know that you're moving away from me (This goes into redshift/blueshift, but lets assume that the statement - *The Universe is expanding* is true). So I know that 10 seconds ago, you were 10 feet away from me. And if I estimate that you were moving away at 0.5 foot/second, then I know that you're actually 10+(0.5*5) = 15 feet away from me now. So, the relevant diameter is 30 feet. Similarly, a diameter of 80 billion light-years implies a 40 billion light-year radius. Therefore, the objects that were 13.88 billion light-years away that long ago are actually about ~40 billion light years away now. Hope this helps!"
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5sej7p | Why do white clothes turn gray after multiple washings? Is it just soap residue? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As others have said bleeding of other colors in the wash is one source of dulling of whites, another is the water itself. Water high in iron, like a lot of well water, can stain clothes. Hard water, high in calcium and magnesium can hamper the effectiveness of the detergents. Additionally whites are rarely white. They're often brightened with a blue dye, or UV fluorescent dye to make them appear whiter. In the past, many people used to use a bluing wash additive like this. URL_0 In modern times, most popular brands of detergents already have it mixed in. Also see if adding bleach can help reduce any staining.",
"Are you washing white clothes with bark colors? Dark colored clothes have die in them and when you wash them the dies can \"bleed\" out of them and color other clothes. If you are only washing whites with whites then you must be A) using terrible soap B) your washing machine has a problem or needs cleaned C) they are old and where washed with dark colors at some time."
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5semdw | Why does software search for new updates immediately after installing the latest update? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some times it is not possible to go straight from version A to version C without upgrading to version B first. For example a new firmware might have a new way to do firmware upgrades and the most recent upgrade does not have the ability to be upgraded on hardware running the old version. It could also be that there are changes to the name of the software so the last upgrade available in the old name is an update that change the name to the new name. The application might also have changed the format of its storage and needs to run a script to move the data from the old format to the new format and this have been removed for the latest upgrade to save room. So if you are at version A and request the latest version you might get version B, but then as you have upgraded and request the latest upgrade again you get version C. But version C were not available when you were at version A. To help with this it is easier to add a check for new versions as soon as you have upgraded in case there are further upgrades that can be done."
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5semqz | How does the AI in video games convincingly miss? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There's no standardized way of doing it. Generally, the computer calculates the trajectory needed to hit you, then uses the random number generator and slides it's aim to one side that number of degrees. The computer can also intentionally skip over any code it might have for doing things like leading the shot, or recognizing it's not hitting with it's current weapon and try an grenade. This code can be flipped back on to make the game more challenging. (Pretty sure it was Halo which had a hidden \"whuppopotamus\" mode where extra evil enemy tricks like flanking and hearing you reload were enabled). In most modern games, enemy characters have shooting and attack animations, and the game waits until these animations complete before attacking again. This provides the delay human players would believably have.",
"They just generate random numbers that assign a hit probability in terms of a percentage. Like, they might say, \"This guy shoots every five seconds and has a 50% chance to hit.\" You are correct in that the computer does not play at 100% of its ability. Every game's AI is dumbed down in order to give the player a chance. Many times they will also scale the difficulty in accordance with whether the player is doing well. For example, they might say, \"If the player got hit last time, reduce the odds of getting hit this time.\""
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5senvi | What would happen if someone had purely REM sleep? | As someone who is interested in LDing I'm curious about this. What can we guess would happen if REM sleep occurred for the entirety of a nights sleep, say 8 hours? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You would have problems with memory and learning. Different kinds of memory consolidation, processing, and development happen during non-REM sleep. For example, you need slow-wave sleep (N3) to process factual memories. The problem is that spending a lot of time in REM sleep means that something isn't quite right. People who are deprived of REM sleep in some way (insomnia, they just don't get enough sleep, they use sleep medications, etc.) get something called 'REM rebound,' where they experience more REM sleep than usual and get to REM sleep much faster than usual. That isn't a big deal once in a while. But frequently spending more than usual time in REM sleep can be a symptom of narcolepsy, depression, and other illnesses."
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5ses7x | How do websites on mobile browsers automatically open their respective apps on your phone (and sometimes without requesting permission to do so)? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Mobile operating systems allow apps to register to URLs that fit certain patterns. For example the YouTube app in Android is registered to open URLs starting with URL_0 , so whenever you click such a URL, the OS will launch that app. In Android, if more than one app can open the URL then the OS lets you choose between them.",
"I'm not sure how it's handled on iOS, but on Android there's the \"intents\" API, which is a tool specifically built for this purpse. By creating an intent, you can have your website (or app) ask the system to launch another app. It's more flexible than \"please launch Instragram,\" there's extra flexibility in the form of \"implicit intents.\" In the case of one of these, the intent makes a general request about what it's trying to do (get something, send something etc) and the phone's OS asks you to pick from a list of candidates it thinks can handle that request. This is what happens when the system prompts you. However, specific calls to open a specific app just happen. It's assumed safe to just immediately launch the application because you chose to install it, so ergo you must want it."
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5sey7h | Besides advertising, how do tech companies like Google and Facebook make money? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Google takes 30% of all revenue made by paid content in the Play Store (apps, music, e-books). They also sell Chromebooks, Chromecast and the Nexus devices, and some of their Cloud services have paid premium plans. Facebook gets a 30% cut of all payments made to games on their platform. But both companies still make the vast majority of their revenue from various forms of advertising.",
"In addition to all the typical suggestions, they also earn interest on the float of their liabilities. So for instance, when you have an Adsense account you receive a commission for your share of displaying ads, but there is a minimum withdraw limit and funds are paid once a month. So let's say Google has a liability to you for $99 for your portion of Ads displayed as a webmaster, up until you cross the payment threshold of $100, they can use that money - including to invest it or earn interest. Then, even after you cross the $100 threshold, you still have to wait until their next payment date so they can invest that float, which can add up significantly when you multiply the numbers. Investing a float of premium between money coming in and money liable to go out is essentially an insurance companies entire business model, for whatever thats worth as information to you. Look at PayPal for instance and they have a liability to pay you your account balance, but they dont pay interest on your balance, but they can earn interest on what they owe you the longer they can reasonably keep you from withdrawing. On a side note: One thing I'd be interested in is whether a company could strategically invest their float in an aggressive and risky manner knowing full and well their liabilities, such as Googles Adsense lia bilities to webmasters could be dissolved per the terms and conditions if the company were to go bankrupt and then restructure with those liabilities being gone..? Facebook and Google are also making acquisitions outside of their core business and starting to look more like tech conglomerates than a stand alone business model. That said, they also made a lot of money from the sell of their stock, which puts money directly into their pockets from investors valuating their company at multiples of earnings. So in essence, even though the sale of stock represents a valuation of intrinsic value and future earnings potential, they are in essence making money selling equity in the company to use now toward growth at the cost of shareholder liability. Its quite possible a company could sell additional shares and dilute existing shareholder equity if they arent able to use the funds from those shares to further growth substantially. And in the case of Snapchat, they dont need to be profitable to sell equity, they just need to be able to sell investors on the potential of success. Either way, Snapchat will receive money from the sell of equity, even if it all fizzles away and leaves investors holding an empty bag. I mean, there are regulations and laws in place to avoid straight up fraud, but essentially Snapchat could sell equity in the company and decide to use that money to pay off their debt and prior investors, use some of the surplus to give their employees one time bonuses and invest the rest in some stupid idea that fails and that would be the end of it. And honestly, for a lot of such tech companies, they dont really make money (at least in a traditional sensd) their sole purpose is seemingly to bleed money being innovative and disruptive in the sector until they get acquired by someone else that believes their technology can be integrated profitably. So a tech company might not ever make money until right at the end of their existene...when a bigger company comes along and buys them out for a huge sum that offsets all their losses and then some. And so from that perspective, those companies are essentially making money solely in selling their equity to shareholders hoping to get rich in the future when a profitable concept can be derived from the company."
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5sf2r9 | Why has "the man" been able to take down some torrent sites permanently, but TPB still exists? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Preparation and preservance. You can always start another website, find another way to avoid laws, move to a new country, etc. With kickass I think one of two things happened, or likely a mix of both; - They weren't prepared to have their website seized. Perhaps they didn't have backups of the necessary information. Kickass and such rely on a big database of torrent files and their metadata (names, discriptions, cover art, etc), rebuilding that would seem like an insurmountable task. - Perhaps it simply felt like too much trouble to re setup the sight somewhere else."
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5sffhi | How much of our total weight consist of fecal matter? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Usually, about 1-4 pounds (.5-2 kg). Fecal matter is the very last stage of digested food. It doesn't weigh very much because the last stage of food processing in the large intestines (colon) is designed to absorb most of the water from the digested food. Since the fecal matter doesn't have much water weight, it doesn't weigh that much.",
"Thats not an explanation request. Thats a simple question. An ELI5 would be more like \"how is shit stored in my body\". Put another way, its a shit question. ;P",
"At the fraternity I used to live in we had a scale by the shitter and I can tell you from experience 1 lb was about average but 2 pounders weren't uncommon.",
"Even when you take a dump, there is still matter further up the large intestine in the process of getting...processed. So even with a big dump, you don't get it all out. But it depends on your scale. Good measurements to the 1/10th? you'll see a change. You'd see even more of a change with diarrhea and the expelling of lots of water.",
"Weird... i actually weighed myself today before and after i pooped. I was 180.2lbs before and 177.4lbs after. Dont know why, but here i am, contributing to this discussion. I even looked and played \"guess the weight of the poop\" before standing on the scales again. It looked less than a lb to me, minimal splash and it flushed first time, must have been so dense to weigh as much as it did.",
"Story time! Friend of mine was a professional boxer way back when, even fought against De la Hoya when they were both amateurs. The way he tells the story, he needed to cut about 5 lbs to make weight, but didn't feel like sweating it all out. So, being the genius he was, decided to call up his brother (he was in the medical field, not sure of occupation) and get a recommendation for a OTC fast acting laxative since weigh in was the next morning. Well, remember the genius part? He forgot the name of the kind to get, so just grabbed one. Got home, drank some of it, 2 hours later, still nothing, drank some more, still nothing, then finally killed the bottle. This is where the story becomes relevant. He showed up to the weigh in, desperately trying to sweat everything out, but figured he probably wouldn't make it still. Literally as he steps up to the scale, his stomach beings calling upon the terrible wrath of cthulhu, like a thousand didjeridus cursing the sun. The official doing the weigh in heard it and must've been terrified because he just looked and told him to \"Run!\". He said it was by far the most excruciating hour of his life, holding on to the toilet as the stream of projectile shit threatened to rocket him off into space. When he was finally able to get up and to the scale, he was 12lbs underweight! So yes, some people literally are full of shit. Edit: obviously some of the weight lost was via sweat, but definitely not 17 lbs worth."
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5sfl5c | What does it mean when they say the universe is flat? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"> Does that mean all the planets and stars etc. are perfectly aligned and there is nothing above and under? No. It means that triangles have angles that add to 180 degrees, parallel lines never cross, etc. \"Flat\" in this case is referring to the shape of the underlying spacetime and while local spacetime can be curved, on the whole the universe is flat."
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5sflns | What makes a belly button an innie or an outie? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The umbilical cord is cut at typically the same place for everyone, so this doesn't determine outtie versus innie. What happens for the average innie belly button is that the cord is cut, and the remainder of it shrivels up and falls off in level with the stomach. The child then develops more fat around the belly button and it levels off/\"sinks in\" to an innie. For an outtie, a longer piece of the umbilical cord \"stays alive\" rather than shriveling up and falling off, causing the belly button to protrude. The child still of course develops more fat, but since the piece of umbilical cord never died off, it is part of their skin. Instead of growing around it, it just grows with them."
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5sfr2y | Will an observer hovering at 10,000km stationary above a non-rotating planet experience identical time to an observer on the surface? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The observer on the surface should be moving slightly slower to the hovering observer due to gravitational time dilation, but the way you worded it, \"will they experience\" - people always have the same frame of reference to themselves. If I'm moving at 99% of c, I still experience one second per second. It's an observer that sees me moving slower through time, not me."
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5sfslh | If a rock endlessly floats through space forever without coming in contact with anything, will it ever decay? | Exactly as the question reads. I believe that as long as nothing affects it, it will continue to endlessly float and never decay. My friend however, believes that it will eventually break down. Thanks in advance for any answers! | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on what the rock is made of and just what you think of as forever. It turns out that a lot of things that we consider to be stable are only that way when viewed over a short enough time and if you wait long enough all sorts of things that will 'never happen' will happen eventually. You have some effects that are normally not noticeable on the scale that humans experience the universe, but which will if you wait long enough affect stuff on a human scale. Things like quantum tunneling and random chances affecting your space rock and rearranging it. There are some models of physics that say that even protons have a half life and will eventually decay. Eventually in this case means so far in the future as to be basically never, but if you wait forever all matter in the universe may eventually decay. In any case forever is a very weird place in physics as it does things to things that we would not normally expect to happen.",
"Depends on a lot of things, like the chemical composition of the rock, and what you mean by \"decay.\" However, the premise itself is false, as (so far as we know) there is no place in space that said rock wouldn't \"come into contact with anything.\" Space is a vacuum, but it's not entirely empty. Depending on your proximity to gravitational bodies, \"empty space\" can have billions of atoms per cubic meter. Even in the dead space between galaxies, there's some atoms floating around. And of course there's light, which is photons, that would bounce off the rock. Ionizing radiation is created by stars and said rock would be exposed to it, which may or may not cause the rock to break down, depending on its material."
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5sfti0 | How is all this new rain effecting the current Southern California drought? | Since the beginning of the year Southern California has been experiencing a lot more rain. How much is this new rain affecting the long term drought issue and if it does not have an impact then why is that? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"All rain helps for any drought, goes without saying. However, with the years of impact with this major drought, it will take years of normal rain & snow pact to replenish back to \"normal\". Snow pact up in the Sierra's is main factor in supplying with water. Even in best of seasons, it can be stressful what with never ending demands continuing to grow with population & agriculture expansions. Well folks, there's only so much to go around, isn't there. California has down the through the ages been known to have dry times & wet times. Water. That precious commodity should be used sparingly no matter what. Just because it's raining cats & dogs now, it may dry up again at any time. \"1,549 Cumulative Reported Domestic Well Failures (an increase of 1 from previous report) as of January 3, 2017\", in Tulare Co, a major agri. county. ... URL_0 But, everyone seems to have to have green lawns and wash their damn car every weekend. grrr."
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5sfwru | Why cant we manufacture water by combining 2 parts H: 1 part O in gas form. | Why doesn't it seem to be done? Why is water bottled more commonly?Isn't this a way to increse water? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You can certainly do that. However the costs for pure hydrogen and oxygen are very cost prohibitive to do so on a large scale. Also both are very flammable.",
"There are a few reasons. First of all, can't just combine hydrogen and oxygen, because they both form gases by chemically bonding with other atoms of the same type. That is, hydrogen atoms bond with other hydrogen atoms, and oxygen atoms bind with other oxygen atoms. They're happy to just stay that way unless you introduce some extra energy to break those bonds so they can recombine as water, which is a reaction that releases energy. We have another name for this type of reaction: an explosion! Basically, when you heat hydrogen and oxygen together, the hydrogen burns/explodes, and the byproduct of that reaction is water. I don't think you want to be carrying around explosive gases in pressurized containers when you could just carry around water. Also, one of the main ways to get hydrogen is by passing electric current through water to break it into hydrogen and oxygen. Essentially reverse-burning it. So you'd be converting water into hydrogen so you could explode it back into water later. Just skip the middleman and carry around water!",
"You can do that but pure hydrogen and pure oxygen are in much lower supply than liquid water. It would never be economical compared to pumping aquifers or even desalinating the ocean. In fact, the primary way of producing hydrogen gas is electrolysis; i.e. reacting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.",
"The short answer is that liquid water is far more plentiful than gaseous hydrogen. Its just cheaper ti find it than make it.",
"[Some rockets did this]( URL_0 ). Burning hydrogen and oxygen to create water is what pushed them up into space. Of course, that water was emitted as steam into the atmosphere... kind of hard to capture it out of the fiery exhaust of a rocket.",
"We can. It's called combustion. The problem is that hydrogen gas is fairly expensive compared to water. and also, hydrogen is usually made from fossil fuels or pyrolysis or gasification of woody biomasse - both of these resources are a lot scarcer than water. Another way we usually use to make hydrogen gas is hydrolysis, where we, funnily enough, split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This brings us to a more non-sciency answer which is, it's more expensive to make water from hydrogen and oxygen, than it is to desalinate (removing salt), do wastewater treatment and/or simply transporting it from a non-dry area."
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5sfwwq | Why were Milkmen once a thing in America, and why did they stop being a thing? | The Milkman is a standard feature in the image of a wholesome, idyllic mid 20th-century America. However, having been born in the 90s, it's only a thing I've seen in cartoons and old media. Was milk hard to store in markets or something? Why did daily milk deliveries used to be a thing, and when and why was it phased out? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Milkmen have been a thing since long before refrigeration existed. You can even see it in things like \"Fiddler on the Roof\" which is set in the early 1900s and it was a well established job for a long time before that point. The local dairy would deliver milk every day to people who could not raise their own cows (such as city folk) and they would also sell things like butter to them. After refrigeration was developed the job still remained a fixture for a few decades because stores were not built to have large refrigerated and freezer sections. But after enough time passed new Stores were designed to have a lot of refrigerated stuff and people started to buy their milk from stores and the home delivery model became too expensive for the dairy to use as it used too many workers."
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5sfwyk | Before scissors or nail clippers... how did people groom their nails? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They were usually worn away by working. Before civilization, we can presume that humans worked enough for their nails to erode away by themselves, whether by dirt or other factors. And same goes until less intensive means of providing food were used - so humans would either chew on their nails in their spare time or, due to nature of work, their nails still eroded naturally. Anyone who didn't have to work that much had their nails done for them by someone/used less conventional means."
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5sg1ym | If I everything I see is inverted, then why is the sky considered up? Do we actually look down at the Sun? | I've always been confused with the science behind our eyes seeing everything inverted. I feel like the entire Universe would be visually mind boggling if everything was actually upside down. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That's just because of the shape of your eye. The interior of your eye isn't flat, it have a concave shape. So the light from the sky, enter you eye and illuminate the bottom of your eye. The light from the ground enter your eye and illuminate the top of your eye. So your eye see everything upside down. You brain swap the image so you see it the right way. The only thing upside down is the image on your retina. The real world and how you see isn't upside down."
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5sgfzh | Parallel was faster than serial, why isn't there an UPB - "Universal Parallel Bus"? | The maximum data transfer rate of RS-232 serial is about 115kb/s whereas parallel is about 1.1Mb/s when using ECP. When I discovered Laplink transferred files between computers via parallel much faster than serial, I always used the parallel port to transfer data. So I was wondering, why wasn't UPB invented, and why USB is faster/better than a theoretical UPB? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It comes down to being able to group that parallel data at very high speeds. Say I'm tossing a ball to you and think of this as a serial bus. Now take seven of your friends and I will get seven of mine and we will all toss the ball back and forth at the same time and that is the parallel bus. Now start increasing the speed of the ball toss back and forth. It becomes difficult to keep all eight pairs transferring the ball at the same time. It is much easier to find one pair that kind transfer the ball very quickly than multiple pairs that can do it without one of the pair getting ahead or behind the others.",
"At high clock speeds it becomes difficult to transmit and receive data in parallel because propagation delays cause the different data lines (wires) to be very slightly out-of-sync and at high frequencies you have to manage that synchronization. When you transmit the data in serial then you don't have that problem. Modern buses like Thunderbolt and PCIe are serial though much more sophisticated and faster than old RS-232 ports.",
"Parallel = faster Serial = cheaper For most problems where USB is the solution: **cheaper > faster**. SCSI and ATA are still around, but SATA (Serial ATA) is displacing ATA because as the technology gets faster: **cheaper > faster**.",
"There is. Thunderbolt use two lanes in each direction compared to the one shared lane in USB. USB-C is the same. USB 3.0 also have two lanes but shared between the directions. If you look at PCI-E they have up to 16 channels. When you are talking about multiple channels it is not exactly the same as a parallel bus since the signals is not synchronized but it turns out with modern electronics it is no problems synchronizing the data afterwards which improves the transfer rate and reliability. What Thunderbolt and USB 3.0 have in common is that they are more expensive. You suddenly need as much hardware for a single USB-C connector as you needed for an entire USB 2.0 hub with multiple connectors. And the cables are more expensive, thicker and more fragile. This is fine for some applications, for example when hooking up a TV. But it is not fine in cases where you do not need it which is where USB have found its market.",
"Software developer here, The problem with parallel cables is that the signals each have to arrive at the destination *at the same time*. As signal frequency increases, this synchronization becomes impractical.",
"To summarise others' contributions here and add a couple of minor points: Problems with parallel: 1. Synchronisation of data across multiple parallel lines at very high data rates is very difficult due to variable propagation speeds of those lines (due to variations in capacitance, inductance and resistance of those lines) 2. Increased cost due to increased complexity of the transmit-receive electronics and mechanical connectors and wiring. 3. Increased size of the connectors and cable, which is at odds with increased miniaturisation and available space on the connected devices. 4. Potentially increased noise due to cross-talk between the data lines, which can only be reduced by increasing (3) and hence (2). 5. Not all data transfers need to be at the maximum bandwidths possible with either serial or parallel connections, since both the data source and destination are likely to have other internal systems that have more limited bandwidth, such as a mechanical hard drive. So, why not stick with the smaller, cheaper serial solution? Back in my day as an electronic engineer, when RS-232 was standard, few could possibly have imagined the data rates that are achievable in serial connections today. There has been an evolution over the past couple of decades in our understanding of the signal propagation and EM effects in wires at very high frequencies, and a corresponding evolution in the mechanical, material and production technologies necessary to deliver such wired connections."
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5sggw0 | When Europeans first came to America, a lot of native people died of diseases from Europa. Why didn't the same happen to the Europeans? | So I recently saw a post asking if it were just the diseases that made it so (relatively) easy for the colonists to conquer so much land from the natives. Did I miss something, or did the colonists not suffer from any diseases "brought" by the natives? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They did not. I'm sure some of them got diarrhea or something, but there was no equivalent of smallpox for Europeans. Europeans came from a much more diverse region, with greater genetic variety, more domesticated animals, and more opportunities for contact with foreign cultures. The Native Americans, by contrast, had not been exposed to foreigners and had comparatively little exposure to zoonotic diseases."
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5sgk7g | Why does tea infuse better in hot water rather than cold water? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Infusion of tea just means that the tea is spreading out and dissolving in the water. Things dissolve quicker in hot water because hot particles move faster. That's what temperature is - how quickly particles vibrate. So if particles are vibrating faster then they move around quicker.",
"When water is heated, the molecules of water spread farther apart leaving more room for tea, sugar, salt, or any other additive. This principle is why it is possible to make water sweeter by heating it before adding the sugar and is the method necessary to make simple syrup."
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5sgll0 | How is the observable universe (approximately) 93 billion lightyears in diameter if the big bang occured 13.7 billion years ago? | I suppose my question could be naive, but I was under the impression nothing could travel faster than the speed of light, so even if the universe expanded at exactly that speed, it could only be 27.4 billion lightyears wide? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Space itself is expanding. We know this because the light from distant galaxies is redshifted (stretched out), and the farther away they are the more redshifted they are. So while it is natural to think of the time since the Big Bang as a bunch of galaxies expanding out into empty space - in which case the universe would, as you say, be only 27.4 billion years across - the expansion of space *itself* means the galaxies have moved farther than that. There are some problems with it, but the 'spots on a balloon' metaphor is pretty good... the galaxies are moving away from the Big Bang, but space itself is expanding too. (This has some interesting repercussions. At some distance, the speed at which distant galaxies are moving away from us becomes faster than the speed of light, and we will never see those galaxies again... they will have become causally disconnected from us.)",
"Nothing can travel through space faster than the speed of light. However, space itself can, and has, expanded faster than the speed of light.",
"Crash Course explain it very well here. URL_0 It's space itself that expand. So the further two object are from each other, the faster they will go away from each other. So let take two object. The earth and a galaxy. This galaxy is 10 billions years away from us. So in theory a photon will take 10 billions years to reach us. But in practice that's not the case. Space will continue to expand between us so the actual distance that photon will have to travel is actually bigger than the 10 billions years.",
"The answers thus far have missed a critical element to the real answer to your question: space is *accelerating* in its expansion. The explanation /u/BennyPendentes gave is correct: space is expanding and has been since the Big Bang. However, the speed with which space has been expanding has not remained constant since the BB. About 2.5 billion years ago, the expansion started to accelerate. This acceleration was first measured accurately by the High Z Supernova Project in the mid 1990s (see the [wiki]( URL_0 ) for details) and was a complete surprise (that's why folks got Nobel Prizes for it). This acceleration also affects the age of the universe, but in the opposite way. If we use Hubble's law (which assumes a constant expansion rate), then you get an age of the universe of about 14.5 billion years. Including the accelerated expansion, you get the 13.8 Gyrs that is usually quoted."
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5sgn95 | Employers of reddit: Why do you put "minimum work experience of X years required" into entry-level job postings? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When making a hiring decision, a lot of it can be a gut feeling. How well will this person mesh with the existing team? So, part of the decision is objective, like qualifications, and some is subjective, like my example above. The problem comes in when someone feels that the hiring decision may have been made based on illegal reasons -- \"we don't want to hire a woman\" or \"No Jews in our workplace\" or \"I'll never hire a Hispanic\". I'm not saying that decisions are never based on those reasons -- there is a reason they are specifically prohibited by law. But when the deciding factor is subjective, like \"wouldn't be a good fit\", it could open the door for a lawsuit, or at least some letters to the EEOC to harass the company. One way to help prevent this is to list requirements a little above what you need. An employer can always justify \"They didn't have all of the qualifications, but they impressed us and we hired them anyway.\" The point? If you want the job, apply for it. If they want two years of experience and you don't have any? Apply anyway. Let the employer worry about that. A generation ago it would only cost you paper and a stamp; today it doesn't cost you a dime.",
"I'm ball parking here but entry level is often defined as: 0-5 years exp. Mid-level: 5-15, Senior-level: 15+. A common misconception is that \"entry level\" is straight out of school when its not."
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5sgnao | How does Math describe Nature so well ? | I'm studying physics at the moment and am astonished at how beautifully interconnected all the equations are and how it all makes sense. How does math describe physics and all other sciences so well? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I disagree with most of the other posters. Math was NOT made to understand or represent nature. It is entirely separate. Mathematics is pure logic. There is nothing in nature we could find to contradict any mathematics, nor is there any possible universe where math could be different. Mathematics is the study of implications. If we know X then Y MUST also be true. There is nothing new we learn in terms of the world. Mathematics is usually understood as starting from a set of unprovable assumptions and then deriving what you can from it. Now the history of mathematics is filled with examples of us studying the type of problems we may see in our lives. How much material do I need to construct a fence around my field. How much stone do I need to build a pyramid. So a lot of the things we study are basically the abstractions of these type of problems, but there is nothing that necessarily makes that so. Now Mathematics is used in science mostly since it is good at showing the implications of structure and our universe has structure. The link to the world is usually grounded in the things which are seen as explaining that structure. Mass and distance are what is important about how an object moves due to gravity. We then know since the world has structure that if we know mass and distance, then we must know the gravity force. It is the same type of things as before. We find the things in nature such that we know some things, then we also MUST know these other things. Math is good at that. In some sense, the world must be predictable and uniform to some extent to even allow things like humans to exist, so predictable and uniform basically means there is structure we can codify in math.",
"Math came about and evolved from our attempts to understand the universe. It was not developed independently and then found to describe physical processes. What you are being taught is the end result of centuries of refining the mathematical models of observed phenomena- the efforts of hundreds of mathematicians, all building on what came before. The math was evolved specifically to show the beauty you are seeing now in how the universe operates. Just like a painter mixes colors to match what she or he sees, the mathematician derives formulas to match physical observation. They may not be showing you all the false starts and incorrect theories. If this interests you, a couple recommendations: Einstein's own book on relativity is surprisingly accessible. James Gleick's book on Chaos is a fantastic example of how math is evolved to match nature, and it's a great read.",
"This is a serious philosophical issue. Here is Wigner's take on it URL_0",
"Well, remember, we designed the math to describe nature. There are tons of theories in mathematical physics that didn't describe natural phenomena all that well, so we discarded them.",
"In my experience, it doesn't describe Nature that well. Being an engineering student, there are many things that analytical mathematics just cannot do. For example- if you want to know where an orbiting body will be, even for the simplest case of a single gravitating body, a time relation for position is impossible to find. The only way to do this for the two, restricted three, three, or n body problem is repeated iteration, so you get a very accurate approximation, but not the exact answer. Many other things are this way in engineering. Fluid mechanics, turbulent flows, all of these can only be well approximated even though they're a natural process. Coiling honey falling from a spoon? Math can't explain that exactly either!"
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5sgrfc | Why and how do we cry when we're upset? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Crying is a stress reaction. The physical act is used to decrease levels of stress hormones in the body. That's why we feel better after crying.",
"Is crying from being happy also a stress response?"
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5sgsca | since many YouTube ads can be skipped after five seconds, why are advertiser's not tailoring thier ads to this limit? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Many times, ad producers don't make a youtube-specific ad, instead using the same ad across multiple platforms. However, some ad producers have made specific ads for youtube, usually using some strategy to convince the viewer to not press the skip button. GEICO has been one such advertiser.",
"Advertisers only have to pay for users that interact with the ad (e.g. click on it) or users that watch more than 30 seconds of the ad. In other words, YouTube does not charge the advertiser when you skip the ad before the 30-second limit.",
"If you haven't looked up the 5 second Geico ads, might be worth a look, they were pretty decent. URL_0"
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5sgugj | If one is not supposed to mix tylenol and alcohol, why does NyQuil do exactly that? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The reason you're told to not have both is that they both go through the liver. It is safe to have a little of both as the liver can process it. Tylenol products recommend not having more than 3 drinks a day while on a normal dosage. Nyquil's alcohol/acetaminophen content is in perfectly safe amounts. The warning about Tylenol and alcohol is more about using Tylenol to deal with hangovers. You do not want to do that as typically your liver is still processing all the alcohol you had that got you the hangover in the first place.",
"I think they warn that you should consult your doctor if you're planning on taking acetaminophen while consuming more than three alcoholic drinks per day. So three beers for example (assuming ~5% ABV, 341 mL/bottle) would be ~50 mL of alcohol. The larger Nyquil bottles are 354 mL and contain 10% ABV (~35 mL), so there isn't even enough alcohol in the entire bottle to cause any concern in tandem with the acetaminophen."
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5sgx2g | How does our taste in music develop? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your taste is music builds from what you are exposed to. The more you listen to a certain genre, the more you will get used to the sounds and rhythms contained in that genre and enjoy it. Say, you don't like jazz music. If you were to listen to jazz everyday for a year, you would love jazz by the end of that year. Study for those over 5: URL_0 Summary of study: URL_1",
"Oh, finally - something I know a little bit about. Music actually has a funny way of entering the brain, in that it causes most parts of the brain to activate. Because it hits almost every fundamental part of the brain, the neuroplasticity of the cells enable a sort of imprint of the music into our processing. The music becomes part of a fundamental reward pathway of what's pleasant equating to what is good for survival. What's really interesting about this is, because music is one of the most fundamental 'keys' to accessing memory - those with dementia and degenerative mental disorders can actually be treated using music from their childhood. The first places to be hit by music, are also the last to go. Edit* spelling",
"You like something, you listen to it, you learn the ins and outs of it. You grow used to it, and then you find something with similarities but like an advanced or upgraded version of it. Repeat I guess?",
"(33 now)Its weird growing up in canada i always listened to rock..hiphop..i moved to europe at 21..since then iv fallen in love with trance. To most people its just thumping..to me its like listening to a orchestra,i hear every subtle note and have gained a great appreciation for it.(i ended up working for a trance record label for 6 years) My holiday in ibiza exposed me to it first..never looked back. So as what the top comment said,its what your exposed to most..you learn the intricacies of what makes it great and you start to hear things that others may miss . whatever genre it may be",
"This is a psychology question, in other words neuroscience from the top down instead of bottom up. Identity is a major reason. People choose certain music to represent them, to show they can relate to certain other groups of people. If you go to a country music festival, there's gonna be a lot of people who either do relate or would like to relate to the experience of living in the country or a small town. If you want to appear fearsome, or have a lot of pent up negativity, you might go for music that sounds violent (e.g. metal) or tortured (Nine Inch Nails) or dominating (Gangsta Rap). If you want to fit in, well, there's pop music! There's also more practical reasons. If your a professor, you better like something erudite and critically acclaimed like classical, experimental music, jazz, or something obscure but lauded like traditional Indian music (assuming your white). People listen to happy and sad music for the same reason fundamentally, to feel better. You go for happy if that's your current state and your afraid something will upset it. Sad if you're feeling crappy and want to extinguish the bad emotions. For most though, fitting in is the most important part. Most people do not especially care for music as art, the same way most people don't have a favorite style of painting or poetry. For them the social aspect of music is above the music itself, which is OK.",
"There are many great answers here and even some very interesting studies but something I see missing from the discussion is that we really don't have the whole picture yet. We know that exposure and familiarity are factors and that age at the time of exposure matters but we still have many other questions. As far as I have seen no answers have been found for why members of a family can have such dramatically different tastes in music as well as why our music tastes can completely change as we get older."
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5sh24a | Is hunger a signal that your body needs calories or that your stomach needs volume? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Both. There are hormones in your body that are triggered when you have enough or are in need of glucose. These are known as leptin and ghrelin. Your grehlin levels increase as your body uses up the glucose. When you are consuming it, your body will produce insulin to process it, and also leptin, which inhibits the receptors the ghrelin attaches to, so you will lose that urge. There's another chemical called galanin that has a similar function for fats. On the other side, there is a chemical called cholecystokinin that is released when your stomach and intestines fill, making you feel full and turning off your appetite.",
"This [wikipedia article]( URL_0 ) does a good job of explaining it in simple terms. I would say the answer is neither. Hunger is a result of the activity of a number of hormones. Your stomach never needs volume. The signal (hormones) that you are hungry could be a false positive.",
"In your most likely case, it's neither. In the typical modern person, hunger is actual a signal that you feel like you should eat because your used to doing that at regular intervals",
"As far as I understand its neither. Some peoples hunger signals can get completely messed up and get hungry a lot to permanently regardless of food intake. Not sure exactly the mechanism but its something in the brain not related to your current nutrition or emptiness.",
"Related question: sometimes when I'm super hungry if I push my stomach out all the way it creates this nasty stretching/squishing noise. What IS that!?"
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5sh6yl | How do fans turn room temperature air into cold air? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The air isn't actually cooled. The fan doesn't neccessarily effect the actual temperature, it's just that it helps your sweat evaporate by blowing air over your skin. The evaporation has a cooling effect.",
"Normally warmer air rises and cooler air settles closer to the floor. Turning on a fan circulates the air, drawing cooler air upwards in the process but it does not change the temperature of the air itself. Also, air blowing across your skin speeds up the evaporation of perspiration (one of the processes by which heat leaves the body), carrying body heat with it, which is why moving air may *feel* cooler even though it is really the same temperature as the rest of the air in the room."
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5sh7zy | Why is Canada and other Commonwealth countries considered independent yet it's still under Britain's sovereignty? | The title doesn't really say anything but why does UK still have an influence over an independent country? I've never really learned this during highschool and I honestly don't know why. Most of my mates doesn't even know that we actually have an actually living monarchy (or are a part of) Unlike the U.S. (which became a fully sovereign state after seceding from the Union and the Civil war) why won't Canada do the same? 1st world countries such as Australia and NZ is also part of the Commonwealth and I honestly have no clue the reason why. Why do we have a queen that's thousands of miles away from us, and why do people say that she owns most of our land? How powerful is her influence? I know that we have a long history with Britain but IMO monarchial governments are outdated. First and second generation of Canadians that came from other countries aside UK doesn't seem to fully understand or accept the fact that we have another head of state aside from the Prime Minister. I just don't understand. Edit: I wrote this while I'm in the subway. The format is terrible I'm sorry | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"While the countries you mention have the British monarch as their sovereign, these countries are, for every practical purpose, completely independent from the UK. And yes, in Canada and other commonwealth countries, the PM is not the head of state -- the PM is the head of government, and the Queen is the head of state, represented in the country by a governor-general. Why won't Canada do what the US did? Because it doesn't need to. The states that formed the US would have been *absolutely delighted* to get a deal like Canada and the rest of the Commonwealth has now. And the right to govern their own internal affairs was exactly what the colonies were asking for, and what they went to war over. Basically, the Commonwealth nations were able to maintain their cultural ties to Britain yet have independence in every single way that is important. And really, this was possible because the US showed that it was possible to break away.",
"The answer is it isn't. The UK doesn't rule over the other Commonwealth countries any more than they rule over the UK. The Commonwealth evolved out of the British empire, but now it is a sort of club of equal, sovereign nations. *Some* of those countries have the same person as their head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, but most don't. And the ones that do aren't ruled by the UK either, she is separately Queen of each one, and its not like the Queen personally decides what laws to make anyway. I can't really answer why Canada still retains the monarchy, as I don't live there. But I know it's completely up to Canadians."
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5sh8e5 | Why is it that when watching a movie at 24 frames per second it seems perfectly normal, but when playing a video game it is almost unbearable? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Film frames can capture motion blur of fast moving objects, essentially the object is appearing in several places at once. Video games render a series of still images of objects in a single location at any point in time (for the most part). When viewed at full speed, the motion blur captured on film is much more pleasing to the eye than a bunch of sharply rendered video game frames.",
"About half due to motion blur, the other half because we've been conditioned since birth to regard 24fps as the natural look for media. Higher framerates _are_ superior for media - Peter Jackson and James Cameron know this - but it's going to be a long time before general audiences embrace them. Two experiments to try: 1: Next time you're watching a movie at a genuine 24fps (in a theater or on a TV that is displaying a multiple of said), watch for scenes where the motion is faster than normal, such as fast pans or action. The limitations of such a low framerate start to stand out as the judder becomes hard to ignore. 2: Play Doom while artificially limiting the framerate to 24. Doom has the best motion blur ever achieved in a video game, so that is a non-issue. It should look decidedly cinematic. (Actually just check out [this video]( URL_0 ).) Just more evidence that 24fps sucks.",
"A lot of good responses here, but there is one important factor I haven't seen addressed. Input lag is greater at lower framerates. When you press a button on your input method of choice, the time it takes for the display to reflect that input is determined almost entirely by how long the interval between frames it, because it's usually the slowest thing going on in the computer. At 60FPS, input lag is around 16ms, at 24FPS, input lag jumps to about 42ms, which is definitely noticeable. Your eyes can't detect things changing that fast, but your brain can easily measure the time between your finger moving and the screen updating down to the low tens of milliseconds. It makes you feel like you're moving through water, the lag feels like resistance, and that's annoying as fuck.",
"cinematographers rarely pan at high speeds when shooting 24 fps. They generally are very conscientious about strobing.",
"There's a big difference between passively watching something unfold on a screen and taking an active role in what is happening on the screen.",
"A whole slew of reasons. 1) Movies rarely move the camera. The camera is a fixed point and the actors move. Computer games you are moving the camera. People go to great lengths to plan out how this is going to work. The bullet time for the matrix was conceptualised as a camera on a rocket sled, but in reality was a few hundred still cameras on precise timers. 2) Fixed frame rate. The frame rate on movies is low, but rock steady. Calculations in games are run based on how long the last frame took to render. When frame rate varies those calculations go astray very quickly, especially when physics is involved. 3) Perfect motion blur. Thanks to the fixed frame rate every frame of film is perfectly motion blurred and naturally.",
"If you turn on motion blur in your video game it would be much better to watch, but then you should also be able to run the game at higher frame rates as motion blur takes a lot of rendering time. However playing would still be just as bad. This is because games are interactive so your actions gets delayed by a lot when the frame rate is low. When you watch a movie you do not care if there is a bit of lag, in fact there is several months of lag between the action you see on the screen happened to you see it. However when you play a video game the lag is very important. Imagine an enemy popping up on the screen, the enemy might pop up right after a frame is drawn. So the game should be on the screen but that information is still only stored in the game. When the next frame is rendered the game sends this information to the graphics card so it can render the next frame. But then the information is still only in the graphics card while the screen displays the last frame. When the graphics card is finally done rendering the frame it sends it to the screen and you can see the enemy. In your 24 FPS game it have already gone almost 100ms since the enemy should have appeared on the screen. If you have a reaction time of say 600 ms then 100 ms is a long time. And if your reactions are good and you are able to aim your gun at the enemy and fire then you are still firring at where the game thinks the enemy is and not where it is displayed on the screen so you can end up missing your target unless you lead by an unnatural amount. So at low frame rates the game might not look too bad but will feel sluggish and lagy.",
"Somewhat related. If I remember rightly, intel did a frame rate study that showed viewers were most bothered by changes in frame rate, not low frame rates. There was an exception to this when the frame rate was too low. Can't find a link to this because I didn't try very hard."
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5sh8i6 | Why do whales, dolphins, and other aquatic animals jump out of the water? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not known why. A few theories as to the reasons. Maybe play, especially with smaller dolphins and porpoise. they also swim more efficiently as they jump out of the water, because air has less resistance than water. You often see this when they swim along side boats. Maybe part of their communication with members of their pod. Maybe to help rid parasites and barnacles that grow on their skin. Maybe to just look around. See also: URL_0",
"Ultimately, no one knows. Theories range from the equivalent of scratching an itch, to a form of communication, to mating displays, to it just being fun.",
"Why do we jump or play in swimming pools and oceans? Obviously not a necessity just a fun past time. Maybe it's theirs too",
"It's so wide spread, it's probably playfulness, as much as anything. It's stimulating to see outside of the water. Consider, that most behaviors are least energy. It takes a LOT of energy to jump out of the water. Some feel that flying fish do it to escape predators, but it's still very, very energy costly. So, the reason is stimulation, very likely. See the world from a new view, literally. The whale breaching, esp. the humpback, makes a HUGE noise, as tons of mass hit the water. It's likely communication in that case, too. But there would be several reasons for it, but getting rid of skin parasites, is simply silly. Scratching up against subsurface rocks would be LOTS more efficient,right? And we've all seen animals doing that, OK? So, it's stimulation, communication, escaping predators, and just plain ludic behaviors. They could even be using visible coastal landmarks to figure out where they are for migrating....",
"For whales and dolphins specifically it's because they're mammals and not fish, they have to breach because they're really just holding they're breath for extended periods of time while under water but still need to replenish the oxygen gas outside of liquid water (unlike fish gills). As for leaping fish like salmon it's to gain advancements up stream, other aquatic animals have ranges of theories depending on the species you're talking about."
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5sh9hn | How are companies that are non-profitable so massive/successful? | For example, while Uber is present in countries all over the world, and a near ubiquity in the United States, they've yet to reach profitability. How does this work? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Uber generates a ton of revenue, and reinvests that revenue back into itself in order to grow market share and improve services, features and hiring lawyers. They may not create much in profits yet, but the company is creating value for investors as it continues to grow. At some point, the growth curve will level off. At that time, you'll see more focus on driving profitability, reducing costs and managing expenses. It's hard to drive growth and profitability at the same time. Not impossible, but usually one takes precedence at the expense of the other."
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5shax5 | why isn't water flammable yet its constituent parts are? | Both hydrogen and oxygen are combustible (or necessary for combustion in the case of o2) but why is it when they are combined to form water the final product is not combustible/flammable? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Water is a product of combustion, not a source. Think of how fuel cells work. They combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce usable energy, with water as a byproduct.",
"Ah ok. So in essence the hydrogen and oxygen because they share electrons etc kind of balance themselves out? They don't react (burn) coz they have all they need form each other? (Kind of)",
"Water is not flammable because water *is* the final product from the burning reaction. Burning is oxidizing something(unless you have something else to oxidize something, such as a halogen), so when you ignite hydrogen it combines with oxygen to form dihydrogen oxide, which is water. You can't oxidize something that already has all the oxygen it could ever want. The end result though is that water does burn. It just needs something that grabs hydrogen more, such as fluorine."
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5shffw | How long does salt put down on roads damage your vehicle? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes, and yes. The salt will start to corrode the car immediately but will continue to corrode it as long as it stays on or gets saturated. Eventually the brine will drip off the vehicle and the process stops. But this might take a few hours and you might get brine caught in places where it can not escape. After weeks it does not get worse but it does help to wash your car often on salty roads, especially as you stop driving on salty roads."
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5shj5y | Does California need federal funding more than the federal government needs California's tax payer money? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The simple answer is no. California pays the federal government in taxes far more than it takes from the federal government. It's the 7th largest economy in the world if it stood on its own.",
"I remembered awhile back in the Obamacare debate, that devolved into a brief movement for some states to secede, that I came across an article that ranked states' dependence on the Federal Government in the form of how much tax revenue was sent versus how much revenue in the form of grants, funding, etc. was received. Unfortunately, that's not an easy question to answer, because it involves not only tax revenue, but grants, contracts, and other sources of funding. I couldn't find that original article, but the [tax foundation]( URL_0 ) has an article about the states that rely the most on Federal Aid, and I found [this]( URL_1 ), which also does a good job at answering that complex question. The short answer is that while some states are \"in the black\", in a manner of speaking, the whole concept of one or more states breaking away misses the entire idea that as a country, we're much stronger together, and even stronger states won't necessarily be better off on their own. The question of if a President can threaten a state by withholding Federal Funding is similarly a tricky point to answer, but the short answer is most Federal funding has already been allocated to grants and contracts, and the President does not have the authority to summarily withhold it."
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5shlvt | What sort of job can't be automated? What can be done about automation? | Not as in stopping it, but in terms of sustaining the livelihoods of people. Automation will take most jobs which will leave a lot of people out of work. Would a base income for all citizens in a country be a solution in a way? What would people be doing in the future? Seeing as "work" which has been a large part of the day of any person will be eliminated for a lot of people. | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Software developer here, The only job I can think of that can't be automated is a designer. Even my job can be automated. Computers have demonstrated they can write very efficient software, but the techniques involved haven't been thoroughly explored for commercial exploitation because of liability - we don't know how the software works, just that it does. The designer's job, then, would be to direct the automation process. A designer's job would be to direct automated processes to produce the product of a new idea as they describe it. A computer can perfect anything already in existence, but it can't invent anything new on it's own - without sentience, a computer has no agenda, and that is the part that can't be automated. Otherwise, physical tasks are increasingly automated, and intellectual tasks can be automated, though I don't actually know how much of this is being commercialized. *The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed* is the first work of fiction entirely generated by computer (I'm still looking for a physical copy), and it's trivial to generate any sort of music. I've seen animated sequences fully driven by content that can itself be generated. I think a good deal of science can be increasingly automated, not putting scientists out of a job, but their technicians. I have a friend who is working for a company that is automating centrifuge extraction, where it's currently a manual process. Plenty of hands on science and biology in particular requires testing a lot of samples and cultures, and a lot of this repetitive work can be automated. So I see my job changing from writing raw code to describing a solution the machine implements. Fun times for the future."
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5sholr | Why do some people experience music more than others? | I can hear a song that makes me tear up and feel overwhelmed with emotion and my friend can hear the same song and not show a hint of acknowledgment. I don't understand how this could be. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are several factors at work. Brain chemistry, life experiences, and even what music they were raised with will affect how someone reacts to the sounds. For brain chemistry, it is like some people are easily addicted to drugs, and some people are almost immune. Life experiences are pretty obvious. If you had something good happen while listening to a certain sound that sound will bring that good memory back. Our brains link sounds and memories pretty deeply in most people. We also tend to get \"locked in\" to certain musical sounds by adulthood, it is why most people think their generation's music was awesome and all the new stuff is crap."
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5shom0 | How is it that the President can have the authority to authorize a nuclear attack but not a travel ban? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"He actually does have the authority to implement a travel ban under section 212(B) subsection F of the immigration and nationality act. URL_0 \"Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.\" Judges, however do have the ability to block any law that they deem unconstitutional which is what happened in this case. So from here, the justice department will issue an appeal of the judge's decision, it will move to a higher court and we'll start the process over",
"He can't immediately authorize a nuclear attack either unless there is clear and present danger, immediate military force is required to safeguard the populace of the United States, there's no time to convene the legislature to debate and vote for war measures, and the military has determined that a preemptive or retaliatory nuclear strike is either the last resort/only remaining option. Under those conditions is the nuclear football used. He can't just order Lt. Nelson to pop the football down, phone up the Pentagon and say \"Those dudes in Crapmenistan tweeted bad things, lets glass their shitty country.\" There are checks and balances in place. Further more, members of the armed forces are duty bound (if I'm not mistaken) to disobey orders that are ludicrous.",
"> If we (the people) entrust the President with the ultimate authority to wage a war (which the Secretary of Defense can approve but not veto) Just to clarify (just in case), we don't allow the president to declare war. Strictly speaking, he's only allowed to wage it after Congress declares it (although in modern history, this power has been expanded,and Congress hasn't pushed back). Practically speaking, the President has a lot of power, legally speaking, he doesn't. It's not just a funding thing. > how is it that he could be super-ceded by the courts in a (lesser) effort that he obviously believes is a matter of national security? The President has a wide range of power in implementing immigration policy, but that is still checked by the judicial and legislative branches. Even if the President claims it's an issue of national security, the judges will weigh the odds of whether it is actually true. He can't just claim \"national security\", with no proof. While the President has some power in declaring things like martial law, there are strict rules so that it isn't abused.The President does get a huge amount of deference from the judicial branch, but they do need to show something. From most accounts, they essentially had no evidence. In addition, I'll mention that the logic in the OP is inherently flawed. there are are million things that we don't allow the president to do. That's just how the Constitution is set up-he's Commander in Chief. The fact that other things are \"lesser\" doesn't really matter. (although i will mention, this is largely intentional, we have separation of powers for a reason). Aside: In the comments, i see mention that it's \"not a Muslim ban\". While the ban itself doesn't use the language, it doesn't have to. The President's comments outside can be used as context for animus. In addition, even if it doesn't explicitly mention a Muslim ban,if you can show that a certain religion is disfavored, that can still be a violation of the equal protection clause. common sense tldr: Because in war, you can't always wait for congress/courts to dither. When not at war, you can. You can override that with valid national security , but you do need to show some kind of compelling evidence. The court decided that evidence wasn't enough. edit: If you want to read more on how the court actually came to it's decision, here it [is]( URL_1 ) It's only 7 pages, i recommend reading. It goes into the reasoning, and it's pretty easy to follow (for the most part) edit2: In a comment, you mention: > I see no reason why a President couldn't be protective in keeping non-citizens, from any region, out until he felt proper vetting procedures were in place Noncitizens is actually a tricky question- while you're incorrect (they still have equal protection under the law), they might not have standing to sue in court. In general, the administration made a lot of mistakes (not running it by legal counsel) which tripped them up, and they might have been able to save the EO if they had. But they didn't. I'd highly recommend [this]( URL_2 ) and [this]( URL_0 ) for further reading. They cover the questions you're asking pretty well, and in far more detail than I did. They're written by a constitutional law professor, whose book is one of the top in the field, to boot. (the articles are written for laymen)",
"Immigrants to the US, and especially US residents, have a lot more rights under the Constitution than random foreigners who may be nuked. Nuking Americans would be a constitutional issue, and would be within the jurisdiction of US courts. Nuking Russians is not a constitutional issue.",
"The logic you are using would suggest that the president has the authority to make any decision that is less important than a nuclear attack, which is to say--most decisions. For example, should the president decide also that everyone has to go to college and pay for it out of pocket? That is less consequential than nuclear war. Or should the president decide that every Friday we follow the old Catholic tradition and only eat fish, because that is also less consequential than nuclear war? The president cannot make laws. He may create an executive order to enforce a law in a certain way, but there's a reason the ACA wasn't an executive order. Finally, the president only has the power to order a nuclear attack within the context of a war that congress authorizes. He cannot just randomly attack other countries."
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5shonw | Why do emojis show up differently on iOS vs Android devices? | Why aren't there universal emojis? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well consider it like a different font type. It still conveys the same information, but it is a separate style.",
"When your phone sends text back and forth, it's encoded as numbers. These are standard, so 33 is !, 65 is A, and 128512 is 😀. All your phone gets are these numbers, and to show them, your phone has a list of little pictures for all these characters that it puts on the screen. The pictures should all be similar, but there's no reason why each company has to use exactly the same pictures."
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5shqrm | Why does McDonald's choose to own some stores themselves, instead of franchising? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It gives them tighter control over some key locations, and gives them an avenue to test out new products, marketing campaigns, etc - in a controlled environment, as opposed to relying on franchisees to do it for them."
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5shxpk | How does a "word" become a word? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A word becomes a word when people use it and other people recognise and understand it. As simple as that. Dictionaries are just books, written by people. They put words and definitions for them into the books as they become common enough to need looking up. The word \"quiz\" was famously popularized by a man trying to win a bet. [\"Quiz: what is it?\"]( URL_0 ) Shakespeare famously invented dozens of words, many of which are still in use today."
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5shyap | How can a vessel so small as the human heart pump blood around the body despite the massive amounts of pressure that would seemingly be required? | And how can it do so as consistently and quickly as it does? Currently doing a report on William Harvey's scientific contributions and this popped into my mind and won't leave. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically: your heart is a badass strong pump. Secondly, it has a little less work to do than you think: basically it just needs to do the uphill bits, and gravity does the rest of the work (with valves stopping gravity from causing too many problems with the uphill bits). It also doesn't make much to make a strong pump. [This one]( URL_0 ) for example, is cheap, comparably sized to the human heart, and pushes 3,000 L/h (10 times more than the human heart)."
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5shyic | What makes gravity so strong inside a celestial body's core? (Why can the core of a planet hold said planet together?) | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The core of the planet isn't really what holds the planet together. The planet is what holds the planet together. Every single particle that composes the planet, or other celestial body, is attracted to all the other particles that compose that body (and everything else in the universe, but that's another story). Because of this, over time, they \"congeal\" or \"coalesce\" into a shape. Sometimes it's a lumpy shape, like a potato, if the mass is small enough. Other times, it's a spheroid, if the mass is large enough. The reason there's a dense core is because the heavier particles, like iron, nickel, etc, attract each other more strongly, and thus sink towards each other, eventually ending up in the core. But it's not really accurate to say that the core is what's holding everything together. If you magically removed the core, there would obviously be a catastrophic sequence of events. But if you observed the destruction from a safe distance, you would see the shell of the planet crumple inwards under it's own weight, and, over time, eventually a new core would form as the particles rearrange themselves into a new gradient based on density and mass.",
"Gravity isn't what is strong in a celestial body's core. Theoretically, the force of gravity in the dead center of a celestial body would be zero as you would be pulled the same amount in all directions. Instead, think of a planet as a collection of atoms, each of which is pulling on all other atoms of the planet. The result is the atoms form into a sphere, as a sphere has the lowest potential energy as atoms move and shift about. Denser elements such as iron will be pulled into the center during this process, eventually resulting in a dense, metallic core."
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5si4sd | How do headphone splitters no longer "half" volume of headphones? | I just got a passive headphone (3.5mm) splitter to watch movies on an airplane with my girlfriend, so we can each have our own headphones. I was just testing it to make sure it works and noticed that with both headphones plugged in, and it plugged into my iPad, there was no reduction in volume. I tested it by plugging a pair of headphones directly into the headphone port of the iPad and set the volume to 50%. I then plugged in the headphone splitter and plugged two pairs of headphones into the splitter and listened to through the same pair of headphones at 50% volume. The volume was indistinguishable. Does this have to do with new hardware/software inside the iPad? The headphone splitter doesn't have an amp or anything, as it is unpowered. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The movement of a speaker cone depends on the magnetic field in the voice coil, and this in turn depends on the current. So it seems as if dividing the available current equally between two loads should result in half the current and therefore half the volume ability in each. The \"gotcha\" here is that at moderate volume levels, most amps aren't running anywhere close to their ability to supply current. The volume control doesn't act as a current limiter per se: It sets the gain of the amp, and therefore the voltage swing at the output; current in the load depends on this voltage and the impedance of the load, up to the amp's ability to provide. ( If you doubt this, think about lights on a 120V circuit. When you plug in two lamps instead of one on the same circuit, do they each get half as bright? Of course not, because two lamps are well within the circuit's current capacity, and your load impedance is still many many times that of the source. ) So, if you're within the amp's current limits, there isn't a problem. But there will be a significant reduction in maximum available volume and if you push the setup to that point you'll get significant distortion, too (clipping)."
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5si9b8 | What's the difference between crimes where someone has to press charges and crimes where you're simply arrested no matter what? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Criminal offenses (crimes) are prosecuted by the state, and do not require anybody to press charges. However, in certain cases, it is impossible to convict without the victim cooperating (testifying). In those cases, if they refuse to testify (aka do not want to press charges), the charges are generally dropped. On the other hand, there are also civil offenses. These can be brought by anybody. In many cases, both criminal and civil offenses occur. For example, if somebody breaks into your house and steals stuff, they committed criminal offenses of breaking and entering, as well as others, which the state should prosecute them for, but you can also sue them for damage to/loss of property."
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5sib28 | Why the act of squeezing your hands together really hard does not kill cells in the affected area | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because though the force you apply is high, it's spread over a (relatively) large area, which means the pressure (P=F/A) overall is lower.",
"The brain does everything it can not to hurt the body. That's really all it is. The muscles in the jaw can produce enough force to shatter teeth, but that doesn't happen."
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5sigqf | Why are chicken wings so cheap? | I understand that chickens in chicken farms are mass produced and stuff, but its two wings per chicken. and a whole chicken costs like 15 times more than a wing | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are actually four wings per chicken. Not actual wings, of course, but what you would eat as wings. It's the equivalent of your forearm and your bicep/tricep. Also, the majority of chicken that's sold in the US is the breasts and thighs. The backbone and scraps go to make chicken broth/stock. What's left is the wings. And wings are somewhat difficult to cook (that is, compared to a boneless, skinless breast) because you generally deep fry them. This, on top of the fact that you don't get a whole lot of meat per pound, causes the price to be lower than other cuts of chicken."
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5simkl | Why do all currencies undergo inflation over time? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is a very broad topic to talk about, however I shall do my best, I've included a tl;dr at the bottom if you want to skip. I've tried to keep it brief but I could literally talk for days about this all in detail. Please let me know if you have questions or disagree with anything I wrote, I love talking about this stuff and would love to share what I have learnt with you. In order to understand inflation, first we need to distinguish money. Money in the modern day is fiat money - it is not backed by anything such as gold or other precious metals - and is just a generally accepted form of payment. It only has value because we are told it has value. During the times of the gold standard, yup, you guessed it, it was backed against gold. Inflation occurs when the supply of money is increased to the point where the value of the money starts to decrease. This is because there is a greater abundance of the money and since value is normally related to the quantity of a good (I say normally since there are goods where price does not change regardless of supply, i.e. oil/petrol/diesel), the greater the quantity the lower the value and vice versa. - As a side note, this is based on the assumptions of neo-classical thought. A more accurate description of reality is presented by the Post-Keynesian School of Thought, and is often referred to as Horizontalism, Structuralism (which itself includes more than just money theory) or the Endogenous money supply. Even though there is an increase of money, there is no simultaneous increase of material goods or assets, because this is fiat money remember. This can get out of control and lead to hyperinflation (examples include Post war Germany and Zimbabwe). Since money hasn't got a real physical value, it cannot be exchanged directly for anything physical, it is instead a form of payment, or an IOU of sorts. When you run out or run low on cash, you turn to the commercial bank to draw credit and borrow from them. You can only receive credit if someone else has debited their cash into an account (at least in the Neo-Classical School of Thought). This demand for money (credit or borrowings) increases, and is matched by an increase of supply. - I should note, that this is also matched by the effect of the money multiplier, where a bank will lend out a certain percentage of a deposit to create a new debit, which is then lent out again, etc. Banks (commercial banks specifically), create money from the money they are receiving from the people (and yes it is essentially fraud but its up to interpretation really). I should also note that if you are curious of horizontalism then the causality is the opposite, the supply of money is anywhere between 0 and infinite at any given moment in time, and will be granted to anyone so long as they are creditworthy (known as credit rationing), which in turns causes a deposit later on. As the supply of money increases, and inflation rises, the purchasing power of the money decreases. You can buy less goods with the same amount, for instance £1 used to buy you 5 Freddo's, now £1 will buy you 2. You could argue that this is just a price change by the manufacturers, however, the root cause is the reduction of purchasing power. The reduction of purchasing power forces consumers to turn to the banks once more and demand more credit to support their lives and needs, which in turn causes inflation to rise. It is an endless cycle, however, it is in reality a slow process, and normally, inflation is targeted through interest rate targeting policies by the Central Banks (like the Bank of England). Do not get me wrong though, inflation does not spell disaster for an economy. Generally speaking, it is beneficial, as inflation equates to growth. It means more people are spending money encouraging expansion of industry and services, causing increased trade both domestically and internationally. Problems only arise when there is no change in physical goods. If people are spending more but not getting more then it is not a good thing. tl;dr - The current supply of money is exhausted by the consumer (spent or saved). Money is demanded by the consumer in the form of credit (i.e. borrowings or overdraft). Money supply is increased by the banks to match the increased demand. The value of the money drops, as there is a greater abundance of said money. Inflation increases causing a higher demand for money again. The cycle continues unless it is controlled.",
"That's an over-generalization. The underlying resources that give value to a currency tend to expand over time. In the rare instances where they contract over the long-term - such as the Japanese population declining - currency can go in the opposite direction and deflate."
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5sinck | How does drinking small sips of a flat soda help in relieving stomach problems..? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I don't think this is true for any soda. But flat ginger ale is good for your stomach because ginger is known as a nausea aide."
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5siojz | If electricity travels so fast, why does it take so long to charge a battery? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You are thinking of charging a *capacitor,* which simply stores electric charge. It's incredibly fast, but doesn't hold a lot of energy per gram of equipment. By contrast, a *battery* doesn't directly store electricity. Instead, it uses a chemical reaction to deliver electricity, and when recharging it runs this reaction in reverse (using energy to undo the chemical reaction). It's the movement of these chemicals that takes more time -- they don't move at the speed of electricity in a wire.",
"Because charging a battery is not just packing electricity into a box as fast as it can travel through a wire. It is causing a reversible chemical reaction which takes time and releases heat that can damage the battery itself.",
"The amount of energy going into the battery is limited as to not damage the cells. Imagine it like filling a balloon with water, you fill it slowly but consistently you'll be fine, however if you try to put too much water in too fast and you'll risk breaking the balloon",
"Actually the electricity travels slow. It's the energy which travels fast. Pipe full of tennis balls, where the balls are the electricity? Push one ball into the pipe, and a different ball pops out of the far end. Electricity is like pedaling a bike with a very loooong chain, and your rear wheel is at the end of a mile-long bike frame. The chain is the electricity. The bike wheel wheel still turns almost instantly as soon as you pedal. In other words, all wires are already full of electricity, and \"charging\" a battery is only forcing electricity through it and back out again. A battery is a chemically-powered electricity pump. Charging a battery is converting some waste-products into the chemical fuel (it's usually a metal like zinc, lithium, lead.) Battery charge rate, that's a separate issue. Charging a battery is a bit like winding up an old-style watch or alarm clock. You can turn the little winding key quite fast, but it still takes a whole lot of turns in order to wind the spring up all the way. And if you spin it too fast, the gears will be damaged. Hey, why don't we just charge batteries using much higher current? After all, the more the amperes, the faster the battery drains out (and the faster it recharges.) Only trouble is, batteries have a sort of \"internal friction.\" If we run the electricity through them too quickly, they heat up inside. That might be OK, but you take a chance in ruining the battery. ALso, batteries are full of wet chemicals, and **don't let the water boil, or the battery will explode.** That's where insurance companies come in. In products for sale, the rate of charging is carefully controlled, and it's kept far from \"the edge.\" Unsafe battery recharge, we might call it... \"edging?\" To charge a battery at max rate, you'll want to have it right on the edge of a violent explosion. (Cold water might help.)"
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5sip6h | What will happen if the Earth's poles reverse? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"URL_0 You might find these previous threads helpful"
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5sirls | how do we know the laws of physics are constant through out the observable universe? | As in, how do we know that the laws of physics in our galaxy are the same as our neighbouring galaxies or even those on the otherside of the universe? Thanks | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We essentially don't - we just guess But it's a VERY educated guess. Physicists over the years have conducted thousands and thousands of experiments that have shown that the laws of physics remain constant. In the absence of any evidence or any (provable) theory to say otherwise physics is able to proceed under the assumption that the laws of physics are constant. It's a very solid assumption, but it's still an assumption. If anybody was ever able to prove conclusively otherwise they would permanently alter the study of physics",
"Two points. 1) We can observe some of the physics in other galaxies. Mostly in the way they move and things of that nature. 2) Occam's Razor. When solving a problem, it is best to start with the simplest solutions and work your way to more complicated solutions. It does't mean that simple is alway right, it just means that if your lunch keeps disappearing from the office fridge, you should investigate if it's a careless coworker before investigating if it was ninjas. Unless other galaxies behave in a way that physics here don't work, there is no reason to assume that their physics are any different.",
"We can see very far, and nothing we've seen indicates otherwise. For example, all stars in the Universe follow the same cycle, and produce the same spectral lines. Galaxies all have similar shapes. There are no instances where an object appears to exceed the speed of light. So it's pretty safe to assume that gravity and chemical reactions proceed in the same way, otherwise we would observe different spectral lines in stars, and see different galaxy structures."
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5siso7 | In the late 70's, how did they manage to only produce less than 200 horsepower out of a 455 cubic inch engine, whereas today's 350 cubic inch engines crank out 500+ HP? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Carburetion vs. computers. Zero electronic controls means that your fuel-to-air ratios are governed by things like floating bowl valves and venturi suction. And design was largely a process of \"build one and we'll try it.\" Today, millisecond accurate fuel injection, mass-air sensors and computer controls mean that you can get a precisely balanced mixture of fuel and air into the combustion chamber to optimize for either power or economy, dependant on nothing more than the driver's mood and a control setting. Put that on an engine that was simulated and gone through Finite Element Analysis on computers powerful enough to tweak thousands of different variables for better airflow and valve response and higher revs. The result is more power from less metal, because you're burning more fuel, more efficiently, and capturing more of the resulting power than you could with the less in depth understanding available to engineers in 1976.",
"Engines made quite a lot of horsepower up until the early 70's. A few things came together to make this happen: Catalytic converters were added to cars. These devices stop functioning if they come into contact with lead, so it was removed from fuel. Unleaded fuel was lower octane, so engine had to run at lower compression ratios to operate. End result: less power. Measuring horsepower changed. Before, only the engine was tested. Literally. Coolant was poured through from a giant tank, a giant cone was placed over the area that would normally house the air filter, and power came from a battery. There were no accessories being driven. Testing methods were revised and reported horsepower dropped significantly. People suddenly became very concerned with fuel economy thanks to the OPEC embargo. Fuel prices skyrocketed and fuel was rationed. American automakers didn't have small, efficient engines ready, so they took big engines and set them up to run at low speeds since the slower the engine spins, the less air and fuel was being brought in, and the less fuel had to be burnt. Since horsepower is based on torque and speed, horsepower was very low despite massive torque. (Typically, rated torque was double hp, while modern car engines have numbers that are usually almost the same.) In the late 70s and early 80s, designs were coming out that started addressing these issues. Packaging improved, making cars smaller and a lot lighter. Improved engines were released. EFI was introduced, allowing good cruising fuel economy while providing power. By the mid-80s, you could buy a car every bit as fast as the muscle cars from the 60s. From there, engine design kept improving. Distributors were replaced by electronically controlled ignition, so timing could be adjusted on the fly for more power. Lower friction materials and better machining was introduced, reducing power loss during operation. Variable valve timing allowed engines to breath well through a wide range of engine speeds. Compression started going up, squeezing more power out of fuel, even on regular unleaded. Better machining, better fasteners and high strength plastics allow the use of far better intake and exhaust manifolds. Put it all together, and you have massive increases in efficiency leading to far more power from a given engine size."
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5six5n | Why people say thumb is not finger. It hard for me to understand. | All five fingers on each hand have three segments, so what's big deal? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is just a matter of different definition, neither is right or wrong. Most of the time people refer to a single finger (\"I hurt my finger\"), it specifically excludes the thumb. But often when they refer to fingers collectively (\"Use your fingers to count to ten\") the thumb is including. If someone is correcting you for considering a thumb a finger, they are just a pedantic jerk who gets off on telling people they are wrong."
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5sixs1 | Why does stainless steel stain so easily? | Just bought a new house with all new stainless steel appliances. All they do is stain. WHY?! | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"What on earth are you putting on them to make them stain so often? My guess is you either bought cheap low grade stainless steel appliances or you are somehow damaging the stainless steel (for example by using chlorine or sulfide based cleaning products)",
"Stainless refers to oxidation stains. Stainless steel is great because the steel does not react with oxygen, which is in the air, and water, which you'd have getting on it in the kitchen. Normal steel would look something like this after a short while : URL_0 Water stains are an entirely different matter. Water is never entirely pure. Tap water has some salts in there, also calcium, and sometimes other matters, depending on your water supply. When a drop of water gets on an inpenetrable surface like stainless steel, the H2O molecules slowly evaporate, leaving the salts behind, which is why you get water stains. Now, stainless steel is great becasue it is more durable, looks nicer and is easier to clean than plastic. However, water stains are the trade-off.",
"You probably have purchased a product with Stainless Steel Coating. I am only going to say that much."
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5sizd8 | Why do most animals have a natural fear of humans? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I wouldn't agree that animals avoid us because they don't \"trust us.\" That implies there's some sort of communication between generations, because the vast majority of creatures haven't even *seen* a human and are still timid around us. Specifically across generations -- a single individual can learn to distrust humans, but that distrust is lost with the next generation. The answer is much more simple: animals are wary and cautious by nature. You don't survive for billions of years by blindly trusting anything that gets near you. 9 times out of 10, that thing will eat you, so it's statistically more sensible to be cautious around anything you don't recognize as your own species. Even your own species can be cause for alarm, because they might be there to steal your food, your mate, kill your babies, or take over your territory. You have to realize that vast majority of life on this planet is smaller than we are, so to many creatures, our mere presence constitutes a threat. That's not something taken lightly. On the other hand, the creatures that are larger than us will still exhibit caution around animals they're unfamiliar with. Look at any video of two creatures meeting for the first time, usually as babies. It's hesitant and wary, until a rapport is established. The same holds true for us. Humans can frighten elephants if we jump out at them. You'd eventually get stomped, but the initial reaction would be one of alarm and fear. The bottom line is creatures have only survived this long because they hedge their bets and act with hesitation and wariness around things they're unfamiliar with. Many creatures are unfamiliar with humans."
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5sizdb | Imaginary numbers and their practical applications in real life | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Probably the most common way you interact with imaginary numbers is in compression of images and of sound waves, as in jpgs and mpgs. Compression in these files is afaik not always using Fourier Transforms, but I've also not heard of any other common method. So imaginary numbers can all be represented as a real multiple of sqrt(-1). And sqrt(-1) is usually denoted /i/. The basic idea is that you have a wave form (perhaps a sound wave, or perhaps a representation of colors across your pixels), and you want to transform that into a plot of the frequencies that are present. The Discrete Fourier Transform, used because in a computer data exists as discrete values, is a function that will change your wave form into that plot. In the output of this transform, the 'y' values will represent the magnitude of the presence of each frequency that composed the original signal. But there is a caveat. The left and right shift of the input wave will be represented by a shift from imaginary to real in the output. The square root of the sum of squares of the imaginary and real portions will yield the magnitude. By shift, I provide this as an example. Say you have a bit of your sound wave that looks like so 0.00 0.71 1.00 0.71 0.00 -.71 -1.0 -.71 Then that is sine of the base frequency, and it's aligned with the data points. Output would be 0+0i 0+1i 0+0i 0+0i 0+0i 0+0i 0+0i 0-1i The 1i and -1i are in the position of the base frequency, the negative somewhat representing that frequency from back to front. This is the same frequency 0.71 1.00 0.71 0.00 -.71 -1.0 -.71 0.00 But its output would be slightly altered. In the second and eighth positions of the output there would be a real portion and the imaginary portion would be smaller. The other positions would still be only zero. My apologies for not knowing the exact values off the top of my head, for the shifted set. But hopefully this provides a basis from which you can begin a new endeavor if you're curious to explore new areas of math. Post Script; I meant to add, that the visualisation I was explained, was that the sound wave can be imagined as existing as a spiral, that we typical view from the side. If you rotate that spiral on its axis, it still spirals at the same rate, obviously, but you see it from the side as if it shifted left or right. Then the transformation is somewhat related to trigonometric aspects of each point of the spiral, but in relation to its center axis, like points on a unit circle. Hence the sqrt()'s of sums of squares."
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5sj2yb | With advances in camera technology, especially in the phone and handheld market why hasn't webcam quality improved also? | Even with "1080p quality" webcams, its seems the generally quality of webcams seem bad, why hasn't webcam camera tech advanced in the same way as Mobile cameras or Go-Pro's | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First, they definitely have. Second, you're probably using either a shitty/cheap webcam, a shitty/cheap laptop, or an ultrathin laptop without space in the lid for a decent camera. Edit: This article from today is an example of innovation in the Industry: URL_0"
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5sj4id | If Luhn's algorithm is so easy to calculate and we know the number structure for all major credit cards, why is it so hard to generate a working yet fake credit card number? | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Luhn's algorithm isn't about security, at least not anymore. It is about having a quick and easy way to catch transcription mistakes. It will catch all single digit errors, and most transposition errors. This was an important feature before credit cards could be quickly verified online. Having a credit card number alone doesn't get you much. Unless it is tied to a real account, you won't be able to use it, and there are way more possible numbers than accounts. Even if you got lucky and found one that matched an account, you wouldn't have any of the secondary verification information."
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5sjamh | Why do international bodies refuse to recognize Taiwan? | I recently read that Taiwan was a founding member of the UN and held the seat for China until 1971, when the People's Republic of China replaced it in UN functions. Why were they replaced, and why have international bodies ostensibly opposed to communism recognize the People's Republic instead? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The *Republic of China* is a founding member of the United Nations. During the Chinese Civil War, the rival government calling itself the People's Republic of China defeated it and took control over most of Chinese territory. The Republic of China government retreated to Taiwan and its minor surrounding islands. Accordingly it is often called just \"Taiwan\" for short. Both governments agree that China should not be split up, and so there must be only one legitimate government of China. This is called the \"One China Principle.\" When other governments started to recognize the People's Republic as the legal government of China, mostly for the practical reason that it had actual control over nearly all of its people and territory, they could thus not also recognize the Republic of China (that is, Taiwan). That's also why the People's Republic replaced the delegation from the Republic of China in the United Nations, instead of both having seats.",
"Because Communist China is a nuclear power ruled by psychopaths, and it was [previously feared they would have no hesitation starting a nuclear war if they didn't get their own way]( URL_0 ).",
"Because China doesn't want them to, and China is the second largest consumer market in the world. China has over a billion people, and they have money with which to buy things. Other countries want China to buy their things, and China won't do that if those countries formally (and even informally) recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Why *China* cares is a history of politics and honor and trying to save face back when they first became the Peoples Republic of China and not everyone appreciated the communism. Taiwan claims to be the \"real\" Chinese government in exile, while China claims to be the \"real\" Chinese government because, hey look we actually control China. It's a lot like when the American south decided to be its own country and the north said, \"No you can't do that.\" Except in this case, China didn't go to war over it - because of more political reasons. China is kind of stuck in this grey area where taking Taiwan would requires some pretty brutal policies and probably military power, which would look suspiciously *imperial* and aggressive of them, but admitting that Taiwan is a separate country makes them seem weak and not in control over the \"whole\" country (which should include Taiwan). So the rest of the world is also stuck in this grey area where recognizing Taiwan formally would *really* piss off one of their largest trading partners, but also Taiwan has an economy worth engaging in, and no one wants to just let China have it (in the same way that no one wants to just let Russia have Crimea). So basically everyone is just kind of dancing around the problem and hoping it goes away or sorts itself out somehow, and in the meantime everyone wins! Except Taiwan! (They kind of win in that they get to be independent, though. Antagonizing China over Taiwan might be the impetus for China to decide to finally get around to taking it back.)"
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