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it83ev
|
how much money (in $ worth) is actually circulating around the world?
|
This may seem like a stupid question but just out of curiosity, is there like a fixed amount on how much all the money in the world is worth? Or at least, just in USA
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"I think you’re asking is how much much currency is in circulation which is a separate question from much money there is. As of September 9th there was $1,980,000,000,000 in circulation, according to the Fed’s website. According to Wikipedia, the 2016 value of worldwide circulating currency was just under 4.7 trillion US dollars."
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"score": [
3
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[
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it9239
|
When artists draw or paint with no reference is there a transparent or opaque mental image that guides them, if so, how does that work ?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"I can only speak for my own experiences, I'm assuming it's different for different artists. If you've ever had a dream and can recall it the next day? How you visualise that dream in your head, is what I see when I paint or draw with no reference. That visualization is called the mind's eye. A lot of artists can conjur very clear mental imagery. There are some people that don't have a mind's eye and can't picture things in their mind at all (called [aphantasia]( URL_0 )). And there are some people in the middle who might see parts of an image or a transparent image, like what you're describing. I think you can do a quick test to check your own mind's eye, the red star test (I think it's called).",
"Artists have tremendous visual spatial intelligence from thousands and thousands of drawings and observations. When drawing from memory, artists are essentially recalling \"symbols\" which can be used to represent certain shapes, forms, and textures. It's just like remembering how to write letters, and how to put them together into coherent words and sentences.",
"I can't explain exactly how the mind's eye works, OP, but you may want to look up \"aphantasia\" if the concept of how it works is difficult to grasp.",
"I draw from memory and it’s not so much that I begin with a plan of what it’ll look like. It develops one step at a time. I draw a vague shape for a head, then a line where I know eyes go, mark out the size of the eyes, halfway between the eyes and the bottom of the chin is the nose, half again for the mouth, etc. it’s a combination of symbols, measurements I have memorized in relation to each other, and sketching out first. Even drawing from memory, I change my mind a lot about what I’ve put down. It’s something that develops, not something that I’m just copying from a mental image.",
"Artists have a strong ability to break down images we all see as a complete picture down to its components. So when they build out a scene they take what we all see and start (sometimes very literally) at the straight lines and build out. Many artists don't need to be staring at the thing to draw it, a room is a room, there are only so many configurations of a room. If they are copying an example room, obviously they need the model. If they are just creating a room, they don't need an example. If you are drawing a man, you don't necessarily need to stare at one. If you are drawing the man who happens to be me as a faithful representation of who I am, the artist will stare at me and study me for long periods of time. It isn't unlike musicians, I can hear every instrument in an orchestra, not just the amalgamation you get from everyone playing at the same time. I can literally hear every instrument independently and ignore all others. This is because I played for many years when I was a kid. You don't need to be able to do that to enjoy music, that would be madness, but I don't necessarily hear the same things as everyone else does when I am listening to the same music. That is the same thing for visual artists, they don't really see the same things we do even though they are looking at the exact same thing."
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it962e
|
What does the half-life of a prescription drug mean? And why is it longer than the duration of the medication?
|
So I take a medication that has a duration of 4-6 hours, and the pamphlet said the half-life is 11-13 hours. How does that work?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"The half-life is the duration after which only 50% of the initial dose remains in your system. The duration of the medication is shorter most probably because said medication needs more than 50% of its initial dosage to be effective",
"You take a drug. The concentration in your blood rises. When it gets to above the level that the drug works (called the “therapeutic range”), it starts working. As your body processes the drug, the concentration of drug in your blood falls. It eventually falls low enough that it is below the level that the drug works at (below the “therapeutic range”). Then it stops working. The time between it starting to work and stopping working is called the “duration of action”. However, the drug is still in your system for a while after it stops working - just not at a high enough concentration for it to work. Eventually, with more processing, the drug is completely gone. The half life is related to, but not the same as the duration of action. The half life is the time it takes for the concentration of drug in your blood to fall by half. This length of time is different depending on the drug, because some are processed faster and some slower. After one “half life” there will be 50% of the drug left. After another there will be 25% left. After another there will be 12.5% left. And so on and so forth. In order to keep the drug in the therapeutic range you will need to keep taking repeated doses. In the situation you describe, it could be that the drug has a very high therapeutic range, and so the drug is only in the therapeutic range for a relatively short time after taking it. Maybe it needs to be above 90% of its maximum concentration to work at all. It quickly falls below this threshold after 4-6 hours. However, maybe it doesn’t fall to 50% until 11-13 hours later. So the half life is longer than the duration of action. Edit: this may not always be the case. Imagine a drug that is very potent and works anywhere above 12.5% of its maximum dose. It would take 3 half lives for it to fall to 12.5%. In this case the half life would be shorter than the duration of action (3 times shorter), the opposite of your example drug."
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9
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"url"
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[
"url"
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it9kjc
|
Often after giving out my email address to a legitimate web site I start receiving spam email on that exact same topic. How do they track me and know what web sites I've been visiting?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Multiple possible explanations, including compromised accounts/hardware on your/the business’ part, up to and including them deliberately selling customer data to marketing agencies that collect/resell it."
],
"score": [
7
],
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[
"url"
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[
"url"
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|
it9kyt
|
What are MLM/Pyramid schemes? Are they the same thing? Why do they have a bad reputation? What should I know about them?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"It’s my understanding that they’re the same thing. They really only benefit the few at the very top, and can actually cost those on the bottom money. Episode 1 on the Netflix series [un]well has a really good discussion about pyramid schemes. The episode is about essential oils but they explain the MLM part as well.",
"As for the difference between a pyramid scheme and a MLM: It's a legal loop hole. A pyramid scheme has no product and is purely financial trickery and fraud, a MLM has an inflated product to disguise it's fraud and sits on the line between legal and illegal",
"\"Businesses\" where your income relies on constantly recruiting people (and generally are required to keep buying your own product). MLM is a term they use to make it sound legitimate, but essentially the same thing. They're bad because well over 99% of participants lose money even with a ton of effort. Listen to \"The Dream\" podcast for a very good look into MLMs."
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|
ital1c
|
Why is the world in debt? who do we owe the money to?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"Governments need more funds than they collect in tax revenue, so they borrow money by issuing bonds. The money is borrowed from investors, both individuals and (primarily) institutional investors like retirement and pension funds, university endowments, insurance companies. About 70% of US debt is owed to American investors while the other 30% is owed to foreign investors, companies, and some foreign government investments (like soverign wealth funds).",
"Depends on what you mean by 'we'. If you're talking about individuals, it's usually a bank or business. If we're talking about the country, it's split between foreign governments, banks, investors, and the reserve bank. One thing that people forget also, is that you can have debt and be owed debt at the same time, so there's all this debt but it doesn't all come from one place and sort of cancels out.",
"The world is not in debt. Generally when you see things that say \"the world is in debt\", they're adding up all the debts that everyone has. So your mortgage, US Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, etc. However, what's important to remember is that every debt is an asset to someone else. For example, when you borrow money, that's a debt for you but it's counted as an asset on the balance sheet of the bank that you got the money from, because you're going to have to pay it back eventually. Or when you buy a US Treasury bond, you're loaning money to the US government. That's a debt for them but an asset for you. So this means that overall, the world is not in debt. If you add it up, the debts are cancelled out by their corresponding assets, and what you're left with is the total value of all the stuff in the world - houses, cars, gasoline, computers, etc. etc. etc. Total global net worth is estimated at around [350 trillion dollars]( URL_0 ).",
"The world is in debt is the same as when a person says he is in debt. The world and the person both owe the money to their future selves. It's like committing our future time and energy to enjoy the fruits of labour now. ------------------------- I'd highly recommend everyone to read [this awesome twitter thread to fundamentally understand the relationship between money and time.]( URL_0 ) Edit: some people in the comments below are arguing that it's a different case when we talk about the person or the world in regards to debt. It's the same, let me explain. To simply understand the world debt - it is calculated by the total credit supply on the central banks balance sheet. Central banks have the monopoly in creating money, for example central banks inflated the money supply by 2 trillion to keep the prices stable because of the deflationary effects of the pandemic. Now if you really want to go deep and understand this in a fundamental level try to think of this statement - how can banks create money out of thin air while I have to work my ass off to earn it. The US federal reserve is the central bank of the world (USD is the world reserve currency) and its a Private bank. 😉 So, the world owes everything to a few individuals( stakeholders of federal reserve). So to summarise the world debt is owed to the privately owned central banks, yeah you slave your life away for money that somebody can print for free.",
"US money is borrowed from the Federal Reserve WITH INTEREST. Where does the initial interest come from? Money is also created out of nothing via fractional reserve banking.",
"We owe it to ourselves. All of the debt in the world cancels out against all of the receivables in the world. It all zeroes out.",
"As far as the US is concerned, we owe the money to our future selves. The government needs to spend $1 billion more than it makes in taxes. The federal reserve prints $1 billion in money (most of it digitally), and then the government sells bonds that the fed buys. So, we owe money to ourselves. If we did not buy them back, then we would have rampant inflation.",
"Take the US debt as an example and a section of debt. We had nowhere near the amount of money required to persecute the war in Europe and Japan. So the government obviously taxes , beyond that they sell bonds. War bonds are an easy way to think about it. A citizen buys a war bond and the government can us that capital right way to buy bombs and planes. The citizen is then the debt holder, so you better win the war. After some maturity, the government will pay that war bond back. OK, so we aren't in a war anymore and yet we still have debt. Using the same analogy, we still sell bonds, in fact there is an entire market called the 'bond market' where the USA and others will sell debt as financing for money we need RIGHT NOW. So who do we owe money to? Whomever bought the bonds on the market, and a lot of it is held by the Chinese Government. Don't worry, it isn't as if they aren't totally riddled with debt so we probably wont come to blows over that. In fact, financially speaking, the dumbest thing the Chinese and Americans can do is get in a shooting match with each other. We (the USA) would easily win, but it would cost and it would cost for a very long time. So every time we cut taxes but don't cut expenditures in any meaningful way (which, oddly enough, normally happens during Republican administrations starting with Reagan) that money doesn't grow out of nowhere. We create bonds and sell them. That is the flip side of the 'always cut taxes' mantra, anyone who seriously governs can never subscribe to such a mantra if they analyze everything honestly.",
"Unknown Trillionaires...a couple of families who own the Reserve Banks. They want to be unknown, power in secret. The Head of the Reserve Bank was grilled by Congress. “So the Federal Reserve is a private bank?” - “Yes” “You are not the owner?” - “No” “Who owns the bank?” - “I do not know.” Was never touched again. Hell there is a video that the head of the IRS and Congress are talking about Income Tax being Voluntary. It’s a casual conversation and never addressed. Who owns the IRS? The Federal Reserve. It’s all a big cycle to control you.",
"money is debt. inherently. all money that the federal reserve prints is debt that must be paid back to it as it is a private entity and not a bank.",
"Ourselves. Every dollar of that one person has to pay in the future is also a dollar that another person expects to receive in the future.",
"Let's say you're a government and you need some money to do government things. You can tax people, but people tend to not like to pay taxes. If you raise them too much you might lose your next election, be deposed, or otherwise have a bad time. At the same time though, if you don't do enough of the government things people want you can also find yourself in trouble. Thankfully there are people out there with money who simply want a small and safe return on that money. They don't want to risk it in the market and they don't want it to lose value to inflation. They just want to be able to get their money back whenever they want and to know it is very safe. So you borrow money from them. You do this through something called a bond. This is basically just something that says a government owes you money. They buy the bonds from you and can either hold it until you pay it back, or sell it to someone else. If you are a country like the US or Germany the fact that your bonds are very very safe means you can do this for very little interest. If you are a country like Kenya where the risk is much higher you are going to have to pay people more interest. The advantage is you get money without having to tax. The downside is that you have to pay this money back with interest. Though, depending on the county, you might also be in charge of the money supply. So if worse comes to worse, you can just make some money to pay them back. Though doing this too much makes your money worth less over time..."
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|
itasoq
|
What's happening with our muscles when we get that 'pump' feeling?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"The muscles become engorged with blood in response to physical exertion, as muscular contractions require a great deal of oxygen. The blood swelling in the muscles is what gives you that feeling."
],
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3
],
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[
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[
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|
itbpnn
|
what causes a blackout/ loss of memory after drinking too much alcohol?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"/u/Ischemia37 is right. Alcohol is a depresssant, which mean that it inhibits neurons firing between each others. Some brain regions are more susceptible than others, like the cerebellum and the hippocampus, two brain regions highly implicated respectively in motricity/balance and memory. When you get to a very high level of intoxication, the neurons in those regions will function at such a low rate that it will impair motricity and memory. You don't forget things, your brain just stop recording events.",
"My understanding is that the brain is so impaired that it's basically not able to record memories. So there's nothing to recall later."
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5
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[
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|
itbuif
|
Why is it so difficult to fall asleep at night and then so hard to stay awake during the day?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"You're depressed, have sleep apnea or some attention disorder like ADHD. This is not normal sleep behaviour.",
"It's quite possible you have a sleep disorder that is messing with your sleep cycle. The obvious answer is that if you don't sleep well at night (finding it hard to fall asleep) you will be more tired during the day and thus find it hard to stay awake. There is almost certainly a medical explanation for this, unless for example there is something in your environment (you sleep in a baking hot room, it is always noisy at night etc.)",
"You can try a rhythm reset, but this requires time off from work and major responsibility. Basically you need to deprive yourself of sleep for long enough that the moment you try to sleep, you go into REM sleep nearly immediately. It has to be done in 2 hour chunks, and clever use of alarms so that you train your body into sleeping immediately or near immediately at bed time. It's a tricky process but worked for me(in combination with an SSRI medication prescribed when I was diagnosed).",
"You're doing something wrong, or there's something wrong with you. Maybe see a doctor. Your circadian (internal \\`clock\\`) has long evolved to go to sleep when it gets dark, and wake when it gets light. Fuck with that too much at your peril. On a more trivial note, as you mention, it can make you feel a bit shitty/tired during the day - on a more serious note long term abuse of this pattern can cause significant hormone related issues (night shift workers have significantly higher instances of various metabolic/hormonal diseases and disorders) So try and go with that as much as possible. If you are up after dark (let's be honest, most of us are since the whole electricity thing happened) then try not to overstimulate your brain with bright/blue dominant lighting. Go with dimmer/red dominant lighting, less screen time, etc. If you are using a screen at night before bed you should check out f.lux (PC) or similar products. I think some newer O/S / Smartphones have their own versions installed by default."
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|
itbvgo
|
How come chewing gum prevents or lowers the effect of your ears popping when flying?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"The reason your ears pop is because there is a small tube that connects your middle ear to your throat, called the Eustachian tube, that fills with pressure. The tube naturally opens when you open your jaw, so chewing gum prevents pressure build-up in the tube. When you pop your ears, you are releasing the pressure in the tube.",
"Put you pinky slightly in your ear. Now open and close your mouth several times. You can feel movement and that's why gum is helpful. The movement releases pressure that builds in the ear. Pressure builds, the movement opens up the ear tube and releases the pressure.",
"There's a pocket inside your ear that traps air at a certain pressure. Yawning, chewing gum, etc., helps open up that pocket. The higher the pressure, the louder that \"pop\" effect when you *do* release the air. If you're constantly letting the air out and equalize, it's not going to have a chance to reach such pressures to begin with.",
"Can anyone explain why this doesn’t work for some people? I.e. me. I get excruciating pain in my ears when I fly and no amount of gum chewing or jaw moving helps. My ears stay plugged for several hours after flying. I absolutely hate flying because it hurts so badly."
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itbwrx
|
why do mobile games that look... underdeveloped... have so many ads and hundreds of thousands of downloads?
|
You know all those annoying ads on YouTube for mobile games. Yeah those. How do these games actually survive?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"You sort of answered your own question, as long as your ad campaign pushes your game as far and wide as possible, it doesn't matter if your game is shit because the majority of people will play it for like 30 minutes to an hour and by that point you've made a bunch of ad revenue off them by spamming ads.",
"the most shitty games actually *pay* people to play for sometime. you can find tasks like \"reach level 30 within a week in this game\" on specific web-sites. quite probably, paid money are a fraction of what you generate as ad revenue while playing them, and also your download makes the game look more popular, which both inspires others to download it and the ad companies to pay for the ads."
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5
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itceob
|
Why does making a projectile spin (bullet, football) have anything to do with how straight it travels?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"There's multiple factors. For spin that makes projectiles go straighter, like bulltes, it's because of the gyroscopic effect. When something spins fast, it's hard for its rotation axis to move (it can go in a straight line fine, but wobbles less). That's what makes it so that it's easier not to fall when your bike moves. The wheels spin and it prevents them from falling. That's the same with spinning tops. It's different when you give an effect to a ball. In that case, the spinning means one side of the ball is faster relative to the air around it than the other side. The friction then slows one side of the ball more than the other and it makes it curve.",
"Conservation of angular momentum is the answer. When you get things spinning (bike wheel or a bullet) they want to stay spinning in the same direction. This is why a bike is easier to ride once you get some momentum. The bike wants to stay upright simply because the wheels REALLY wants to stay spinning in the same direction (conserving it's angular momentum). The football is doing the same thing. It becomes stable because it is spinning very fast and it takes an external force (gravity, friction, a big hairy hand) to change it's direction.",
"I see a lot of answers talking about the conservation of angular momentum, and they explain that point really well, though those responses still don’t totally answer your question. Of course an obvious question is “why should the stability of the flying projectile matter?” Bullets and shells are designed to be most aerodynamic when flying tip-first. If the projectile is allowed to tumble then it’s interaction with the air flowing around it will push it around in a way corresponding to its abnormal spin due to the setting-up of low pressure zones behind the tip and tail when the bullet goes sideways and – especially for pistol-caliber ammunition – the Magnus effect.",
"For oblong objects, like bullets and footballs, traveling straight requires pointing in the right direction. A spinning object wants to stay pointed in the same direction, and any small rotational forces applied to it won't cause it to rotate much."
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6
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|
itcpme
|
Why is front yard two words and backyard one word?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"'Back yard' is correct when referring to the location itself (yard is the place, back is an adjective describing it), but we use 'backyard' as a compound adjective to describe certain things like a backyard party. We never really use 'frontyard' as an adjective, so it's always seen as two words when referring to the location. URL_0"
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[
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[
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|
itcxkh
|
How do plastic straws and bags get tk the sea?
|
I've heard many times that plastic consumption such as straws, plastic bags, bottles etc. eventually lead to sea creatures' deaths and to an ecologocal disaster. How do all this plastic get from garbage bins to the oceans?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"It blows around, getting torn and broken into smaller and and smaller pieces until eventually some wind strong enough carries it far or high enough it comes down somewhere in water, or it ends up in storm drains (those manhole openings you see aren't usually really \"sewers\", they're for storm water) and gets sent into the water directly. Once it's in water it doesn't get picked up and moved around by wind anymore, and gets pulled along by the water. Rivers eventually lead to the ocean.",
"The wind likes to pick up plastic bags and light things like that. Overflowing trashcans, trash falling out of garbage trucks, strong gusts over landfills are the biggest contributors, and straight up littering are the biggest contributors.",
"Anything that doesn't degrade either ends up buried on land or floating out in the ocean. Plastics are light enough that water can carry them around so anything that isn't trapped somewhere ends up in a river then out into the ocean."
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[
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itd39d
|
Why is Among Us (A game that came out 2 1/2 years ago) seemingly out of nowhere suddenly blowing up now?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"Twitch streamers and youtube videos caught the attention of a wider audience so led to an increase in people talking about it.",
"A bunch of high profile Youtubers and streamers started to play; most notably the group Offline TV. Plus the game is dirt cheap and easy to pick up for a beginner."
],
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4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itdd32
|
How do the fires on the west coast make the sun look red all the way on the east coast?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5dn41n"
],
"text": [
"Smoke and dust particles still travel far. When blue color wavelength hits these particles it scatters allowing the longer red wavelength to come through."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itdqup
|
Why does putting an ice pack on the back of your neck help with nausea?
|
It's my go-to fix when I feel like I'm going to throw up and it works flawlessly 9/10 times. Why is it so gooooood?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ehdz9"
],
"text": [
"It relaxes the muscles on your neck easing tension in that area this can help you feel better but it generally won’t get rid of the nausea"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itdrrn
|
How was the first computer programmed?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5dprp2"
],
"text": [
"The first computers were mechanical. Like those old school calculators/cash registers that had all the gears and wheels to do math, but on a massive complicated scale. So programming was really just, flipping a switch caused something else to move or happen. Then when electronics started to become part of the system, at the basic level they were the same thing, flip a switch, or series of switches, and something happens. Just this time it is electrical current instead of mechanical rods/gears. This “programming” then just gradually grew and grew and became more complicated as computers grew and evolved and became more complicated. Edit: this is just a fun fact that doesn’t answer the question, but one of the first reported cases of a bug being found in a computer, was when a computer stopped working and when the technicians opened up the casing, they found a dead moth."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ite1up
|
In chess, why is “castling” not called “rooking”? In the same way, why are the pieces on the corners of the chessboard called “rooks” instead of “castles”?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5drusr"
],
"text": [
"If you do it while the pawns are in their starting positions, you end up with the king behind rectangular walls (pawns at f2/g2/h2, rook at f1), in a position that's not easy to attack. You can see how that's kind of analogous to a person taking refuge in a castle. I've read that 'rook' comes from an old Persian word for a chariot. In their version the corner pieces were chariots to account for their high mobility. (The modern Persian word for chariot is ارابه but I have no idea what that sounds like.)"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ite67m
|
Why does food taste better when hot? (most food items anyway...)
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5dwvzs"
],
"text": [
"Most of what we perceive as taste is actually smell. There is even a direct channel from the mouth to the nose so that food we are chewing can still register various smells, which combine with the more rudimentary tastes to a full flavor profile. Many of those smells are compounds that don't get into the air unless they are warm, so warm food actually produces more smells than cold food."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ite7le
|
Why older songs on youtube (VEVO) are censored but new songs not?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5dt646"
],
"text": [
"Those used to get tv time (\"when mtv/bet/cmt played videos\") now with streaming and people look for the explicit videos and lyrics. That and we have all been desensitized."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itf1sw
|
How do credit/debit card transactions work?
|
I have never owned a credit card, and I have never used a debit card for buying stuff online. In physical stores, I have seen people swipe/insert their cards into a machine. The machine shows the amount to be deducted, and sometimes the user enters a 4-digit PIN, and then the transaction succeeds. What prevents merchants from using a corrupt machine, that shows me "you will be charged $30" but actually charges me $1000? And what prevents the machine from scanning the card (and recording the PIN) and later buying things on my behalf? As far as I remember (from watching friends/family), to buy something online using credit/debit cards, we're supposed to give our card number (and maybe other info) to the merchant, and the merchant will communicate with our card issuer, and then the card issuer will pay the merchant. Is this correct? What prevents the merchant from asking the card issuer to charge me $1000 instead of $30? I see multiple things on a card - a 16-digit number, a 3-digit number, and a chip. There's also maybe a PIN that's not written on the card. What is the purpose of each of these? What information am I supposed to hide from other people to prevent them from buying things on my behalf? (I have used other online payment systems. In one of them, I login to my bank's website and confirm the payment, so as long as I trust my bank, there's no risk of losing $1000. It's like me telling the bank "pay this merchant $30" instead of the merchant asking the bank "charge this customer $30".) (My instinct says that something like 2-factor auth *must* used for credit/debit card transactions to make sense if the merchant is not trustworthy, but I'm not sure if my instinct is correct. Is this how it works?)
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5e1dvr",
"g5dzqt8"
],
"text": [
"Super simple version: Merchant scans your merchandise and gets an amount. They tell the cash register how to process the payment, if it is card they send an amount to the card reader that is to be charged. From that point it is out of their hands. You put in your card, the credit card company validates you have funds and it asks you to sign or ok the purchase. Once okayed you’re card details go through with the purchase information and then it returns the verification to the merchant and gives you a receipt to sign completing the transaction. Any unauthorized charges can be challenged and the merchant has to defend the purchase with your signed receipt or some other authorization or else they lose all the funds. This ability to challenge unauthorized charges is one reason to use credit over debit. They can change the amount. That is how waiters add your tip to the check when you go out to eat, but then you sign the receipt showing the change. If they put in $1000 instead of $30 you call the CC Company and tell them the charge isn’t correct and they will advocate for you. Even against big companies like Microsoft. A couple years ago I had pre-ordered a game for my kid and a charge showed up six months later and I questioned it. They refunded my card, took it up with Microsoft and Microsoft took the game back from my kid because now it hadn’t been paid for.",
"The reason merchants don't use a corrupt machine is the reason you should use a fake card: its the law! If a store does this they can get prosecuted and the card machine owners can refuse to allow credit card machines on that premises."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itf4a0
|
Why is nicotine tolerance developed so quickly in comparison to other mild drugs like caffeine and alcohol?
|
What I mean is that people can drink constant large amounts of alcohol and coffee and still fill the effects of caffeine and alcohol after months or even years (although those effects tend to be less intense over time), however when it comes to people who smoke daily it only takes a few months for them to feel virtually no effects from nicotine aside from reducing cravings . What makes nicotine different?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5e0o70"
],
"text": [
"From my understanding, nicotine causes the creation of new nicotinic receptors, therefore requiring more nicotine in order to control imbalances. Whereas, caffeine merely blocks adenosine receptors, and does not create a physical change in the receptors."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itfbdl
|
When water goes down a drain, why does it cause a whirlpool?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5e73c9"
],
"text": [
"Well water doesn’t ALWAYS form a whirlpool, often you’ll just get that kind of gluging bubbling. But for why whirlpools form. It’s because when the water flows down into the drain, the air in the drain also has to flow up through the water. Sometimes it just bubbles and gurgles, but If the water around the drain is moving the right way, it can catch it and start a whirlpool becuase a whirlpool efficiently allowed the water flowing down and the air flowing up to pass each other quickly with less interference. Then if there’s no air left in the pipes the momentum of the water keeps the spinning going. You can google a video of water flowing out of two bottles, one where they start and whirlpool, and one where they just turn it upside down, and you can see the water flors out of the whirlpool much quicker"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itfps4
|
Why is nuclear-fission energy not being discussed much while some data shows it is the safest and the most enviornmentally friendly?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ed913",
"g5ecco6",
"g5edyr7"
],
"text": [
"it's expensive, takes a very long time to build, and is political and regulatory nightmare however, just this month a company called NuScale got first approval for a small, modular reactor that could be used in future power plants. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )",
"Mostly fear of what can/will happen if something goes wrong. See Chernobyl, Fukushima mostly. 3 mile island also was a close call. Yes it’s ‘clean’ energy, but if you have something go wrong large parts of the planet could be seriously screwed.",
"The short answer is: 1) A couple of bad accidents--Chernobyl and Fukushima--have given nuclear power a very bad image in the public eye. Those incidents went badly because of a string of *very* poor decisions which could have been easily avoided, but most people don't realize that. 2) Storage of nuclear waste is a problem. We have some good ideas on how to do it safely, but it's not cheap, and for-profit companies have a poor track record of making good decisions when profits are on the line. 3) Most people don't understand nuclear power, and people fear what they don't understand."
],
"score": [
8,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/09/first-modular-nuclear-reactor-design-certified-in-the-us/"
],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itg3iy
|
If mass can't be created from nothing, how did the mass in all the universe appeared?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5e8hpn",
"g5e72tw",
"g5e9ogs"
],
"text": [
"We have no idea. Right now the prevailing theory is that everything was in a big ball then it went boom and then there was the universe. From what we can tell all of the stuff was always there just in different form.",
"We don't know that there was ever \"nothing\". There are models of the big bang era that show this. For example, a photon is a bundle of energy \"pinched off\" of the electromagnetic field (a field that is basically the potential for light and stuff like that). The energy, and eventually mass, of the big bang could be all of the different quantum fields pinching off a bunch of stuff all of a sudden. Also, the current laws of physics are as you describe, but in the very early stages of the big bang, all of the 4 fundamental forces were united into one which made for a very different set of rules that we don't have the math for. The same rules very likely didn't apply.",
"We accept the fact that energy can turn into matter. E=mc(squared). The whole Einstein thing Edit: it's hard to understand that space, what's in between, isn't empty, it's energy that expands our universe or inflated The big bang didn't come from nothing. It came from a singularity"
],
"score": [
16,
7,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itg66n
|
Why does dead skin get hard after a while?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5e88zh"
],
"text": [
"...for the same reason leaves get hard and brittle once they’re off a tree- it dries out. Leaving a slice of bread out to get stale would also be similar."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ith0w6
|
What is Horseshoe theory?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5edoyz"
],
"text": [
"In political science and popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, closely resemble one another, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together. The theory is attributed to French philosopher and writer Jean-Pierre Faye. Proponents of the theory point to a number of similarities between the far-left and the far-right, including their supposed propensity to gravitate to authoritarianism or totalitarianism."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ith1l8
|
how flies manage to get into our house through the smallest gap but somehow struggle so much to exit?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5egopq",
"g5eed71",
"g5eescy",
"g5emkh8"
],
"text": [
"So think about it like this, imagine that you are in a huge football stadium that is completely dark except one candle in the middle of the field. It is really easy for you to find your way TOO the light, but a dim light does not help you at all when walking away and trying to find the exit. Similiarly, when there is an attractant (like garbage) it will be very easy for a fly to follow the trail back to the source. However, once the fly is in, there is no clear source of something to follow from the outside. There isnt a trail that leads back because whatever it followed to get in is now all over on the inside.",
"To be fair, you dont know how much they've struggled to get in, cause you dont notice them until they're in already, but it's can be equally a struggle both ways.",
"I don't have a science-backed theory, but in my opinion those bastards are so damn smart that they're actually pretending to struggle on their way out just to stay inside. Given their well developed senses, thry know what they look for is easiest to be found around bigger creatures' remains or trash, rather than outside. Pair that will their speed and senses of danger and they realize humans aren't much of a threat to them. Anyway, that's all based on my own observations, so take my thoughts lightly.",
"I'll just share my strategy of evicting them. Basically: 1. Identify the fly you want to evict. 2. Open a door (ideally) or a window 3. Heard the fly towards to open door by making yourself large (use your entire body in creative ways). They naturally avoid large moving objects - they'll go in the opposite direction. 4. Walk them out of the house. 5. Close the door/window. This is surprisingly efficient. I've found this to be a lot easier than smashing/killing them."
],
"score": [
13,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ith1po
|
What’s the difference between 4G and 5G?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5edxa3"
],
"text": [
"The radio waves used are different (different frequencies). Each \"G\" iteration has essentially meant that the signal that can carry more information, but less of a distance. That is to say, web pages and videos download faster on 5G, but it's easier to lose 5G signal. As a result, many more 5G \"towers\" must be installed to make it work since the signal can't travel as far or penetrate obstacles as well."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ith7x0
|
how come some websites work with www prefix and some websites dont work with www prefix?
|
what exactly does that prefix do and how does it impact the ability to pull up the web page? an example of a webpage that does not work with www is URL_0 and URL_1 I always assumed that if I do not put "www" in the webpage, it is ok because it get added in automatically either by the web browser or by some "internet magic" for lack of a better word, but those reddit pages are the first ones that I have come across that actually break cause of it, with the exception of "www2"
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ekzs9"
],
"text": [
"Whether a site works with or without www depends on the configuration of its main webserver. That is really just up to the administrators and the needs of their servers. If they're doing their job properly though, they should redirect you automatically to whichever one they use if you use the other, usually using a rewrite or redirect rule."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ithtq0
|
Why does the brain respond so much to classical music?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5elvll",
"g5eltuv",
"g5esq2b"
],
"text": [
"Watering this down a LOT but, classical music (any music, but classical-romantic era music does this the most) engages a part of the brain involved with space and time reasoning. Music engages the brain in a way where it has many sounds that only “work” if they’re played at precisely the right time. It’s like satisfaction-overload for the brain to recognize so many patterns in such short amounts of time. That feeling of anticipation before a musical climax is your brain anxiously awaiting what it already knows is coming, and yet it’s excited anyways. Most predictable things in life are incredibly boring. Music is one of those things that is incredibly predictable, but infinitely fascinating no matter how many times we hear it.",
"Classical music typically has over a dozen types of instruments playing, melody, countermelody, harmony all being exchanged and presented. Often without lyrics. Because there isnt only a single item to focus on, you are forced to listen to it fully and try to extrapolate emotion, meaning, or just beauty from music. You get the same effect from types of music that don't just have a droning bass drum or repeating the same melody throughout, jazz being the best other example.",
"Depth, theres a lot of instruments producing chords and melodies in different ways. That's why the best guitar players are the ones who can play like theres two guitsrists."
],
"score": [
14,
12,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
iti183
|
How does psychological stress cause headaches?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5eovgd"
],
"text": [
"I believe it is your physical reaction to the psychological stress. An example is the typical tightness in the upper trapezius muscles (shoulders/neck) that people experience when they are stressed at work or driving in bad conditions etc. We tend to tighten muscles without realizing we are doing so and can then cause a headache. This also occurs on a more microscopic level with the tiny muscles that work the blood vessels. Under stress these can vasoconstrict causing less blood to pump which can cause headaches too."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itiaz6
|
. Can someone please explain the ramifications of today's peace signing with isreal and uae and bahrain?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5eo6uw"
],
"text": [
"Israel agreed a peace deal with two countries a thousand+ miles away that is has no land or sea borders with and has never had direct conflict with. In exchange for agreeing to a continued state of not being at war, and some normalization of relations, some of which are already informally in place, the US is agreeing to let Bahrain and the UAE buy weapons from the US, possibly with the intent of arming surrounding countries for a future war with Iran."
],
"score": [
13
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itj2fp
|
Why is phosphine considered a biosignature? How can living organisms create/have it, considering it's very toxic and boils on -87 degrees C?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5evi9j",
"g5fez9d"
],
"text": [
"The atmosphere on Venus is toxic to Earth life. For example, there is a region about 32 miles above the surface of Venus where the temperature and pressure are about the same as they are at ground level on Earth. But no Earth based life could survive there because the air there is made out of sulfuric acid. So if something is going to survive in Venus' atmosphere it already has to be so foreign to anything on Earth that you can't really apply Earth chemistry to it. That being said, its incredibly, incredibly unlikely that life is responsible for the Venus phosphine. The far more likely source is some sort of geological or atmospheric reaction that is specific to the chemical conditions on Venus - and if you read the articles on this most of them will say that, albeit hidden in half of a sentence towards the end of the article. Its just that because we don't know what is causing it we can't rule anything out, and in the current sensational media environment that is an easy hook for a journalist to be able to present their article as being \"truthful\" even though it is incredibly misleading. \"Unknown chemical reaction causes higher than expected phoshine reactions in the Venusian atmosphere\" doesn't get anywhere near the same number of clicks as \"aliens potentially discovered on Venus\" so the latter ends up being the headline and focus of most articles. And just to be clear, the concentrations of phosphine that have been found are incredibly, incredibly low. Its just that they are higher than what would be expected naturally given our understanding of natural processes on Earth that produce phosphine. It may also not be that phosphine production on Venus is any higher than it is on Earth, but that there is something that we don't know about on Earth that breaks naturally occurring phosphine down. If this process didn't exist on Venus then you would expect to see the same result. For example, its possible that phosphine is produced geologically, but bacteria break it down before it can be released into the atmosphere on Earth. If those bacteria *didn't* exist on Venus then you would end up with \"elevated\" phosphine levels.",
"It' can be a byproduct of decaying organic matter. The fact that it's toxic doesn't mean much, we produce methane which is flammable and not the best gas to have around you. The fact that it boils at -87 just means that it will be a gas at the temperatures that life is found."
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itjetm
|
Sending messages on mobile devices - How does it actually work?
|
When I type a message in to my phone click "send", what is the actual physical process that happens and results in the message manifesting on my friend's device? I'm especially interested in wireless devices here, such as a cell phone. Does the message literally travel through the air? Is this data all around us every day but invisible to our eyes? Is it a gas?! What is it?! I'm looking for a extremely layman explanation of what is physically happening. Literally explain like I'm five, please.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ewgll"
],
"text": [
"Radio waves! Inside your phone is a little antenna which can be energized with electricity, on and off, at a super high frequency - millions of times per second.When this happens, the antenna sends out invisible waves which can be detected by other antennas. When you send a text message, a picture, or talk in a voice call, basically the same thing is happening inside the phone: your picture, voice or text is converted into a pattern of radio waves, and your phone beams that pattern out through its antenna. Radio waves can travel through the air, through walls, even through outer space! They have trouble traveling through certain materials, and they get weaker the farther you are away from the source, though, so the cell phone company has to set up towers all over town to make sure you're never too far away from one of their antennas. So at the other end, your friend also has a cellphone with an antenna, which is also talking to the cellphone company's tower. The cell phone company receives the message at their tower from your phone, and figures out which phone it needs to be delivered to, and then sends it back out the same or a different tower, to be picked up by their phone."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itjjyj
|
How is time different on the moon?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ewie4",
"g5eyph3"
],
"text": [
"Where did you find this out? Time passes at a *very* slightly different speed on the moon due to relativity, but this is so slight as to be measurable by only the most precise of scientific instruments. Days last much longer, but time itself, as in the relationship between cause and effect, remains pretty much the same.",
"Time is relative. Meaning you will always experience time at one second per second. But to someone else, my one second is not one second to them. They would see me moving faster than them or slower than them depending on how I move through space. The faster you move through space, the slower you move through time (compared to the other person) Larger masses, which means larger gravity forces also make you move slower through time (compared to the other person). This was illustrated in the movie Interstellar. The crew on the space ship was very close to a black hole. Way more gravity than Earth. Therefore 1 hour passing for them was years back on earth. In the span of them getting out of their ship, performing the mission, getting back onto their ship, the main protagonist's daughter had aged decades back on Earth when he looked at her. We can see this in real life when satellites in earth orbit (which are moving faster than we are) have to have their clocks adjusted frequently. They're not off by much, milliseconds, but they are off because of the speed they're travelling. GPS satellites run 7 microseconds slow every day. & #x200B; To your question, will people in space be alive longer - yes. But if they're just in Earth's orbit, it's not much of a difference. If they start moving closer to the speed of light, they will be alive a lot longer (to us on earth. To them it will be a normal lifespan)."
],
"score": [
9,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itjva6
|
Why are humans leagues above other animals in intelligence while also evolving in the same environment.
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ezr9m",
"g5eydya"
],
"text": [
"Big brains require more energy. Humans were able to feed our brains because we could harness fire and cook our food. Cooking helps break down food so that it digests easier and we could extract more nutrients from it. In return, we don't need huge jaws to rip apart raw meat or constantly chew food to break it down. This allows more space for our heads to house our large brains. It also means we don't need a huge gut to process plant matter like most herbivores, making humans more agile to perform long distance jogging. Our brains allowed us to find patterns and pass them down. This gave us the ability to make tools and hunt every known animal. It also allowed us to find patterns in weather and crops to grow our own food. The downside is that our large brains take a long time to develop. Babies are born quite premature in terms of mental and physical ability simply because the babies' large heads wouldn't fit the birth canal if they were larger. It also takes many years for children to mature to adults.",
"It suited our lifestyle better. As high-stamina hunters, we were able to use intelligence to stalk and track prey well. This would not have benefitted something like a lion as much, which relies more on its ability to quickly catch and violently overpower its prey. Furthermore, having evolved from ape-like creatures, we had a fair amount of dexterity which our intelligence paired well with, starting basic tool use. Being great hunters already, we were able to get enough calories to sustain a further improved intelligence. This paired nicely with the discovery of fire, which gave us a significant boost to our ability to collect calories from food, allowing us to spend more time using our brains to do creative shit (instead of hunting and surviving). This spiraled into modern humanity. Edit: small but important correction"
],
"score": [
10,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itk0b7
|
why do you feel different kind of drunk from the different alcohol you drink? E.G wine drunk vs drinking beer
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5f2yr5",
"g5f2fzw"
],
"text": [
"There are a lot of ‘it doesnt’ replies here which fail to capture some basic facts Yes alcohol is alcohol. However, different types of alcohol have other ingredients. Heavy sugar content in champagne is absolutely going to make you feel different from drinking straight 180 proof alcohol. Also the amount of liquid can vary. drinking beer might make you feel different because you are full of liquid and have to pee a lot which can dehydrate you vs doing shots and having a water between them. Setting makes a difference too. You might feel a certain way when doing tequila shots with your friends at a club vs champagne at a wedding, or even a beer with a friend on the porch",
"I brew beer. Depending on how good/poor fermentation goes or how many husks are in the mash, you can get some pretty gnarly bubble gut and/or hangovers. Beers and wines both contain tannins. Tannins are partially responsible for headaches you get from drinking too much wine or beer. I work in the alcohol industry, also. Lots of information from sales meetings for wineries."
],
"score": [
16,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itkryo
|
How can google track you if you use search engines like Qwant instead if you use Google browser inside the Qwant.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5f4x1d"
],
"text": [
"Because google and other tracking cookies are on almost every site, not just their own search engine's site."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itkun9
|
What is life support and how does it work?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5f5xeb",
"g5f62hc"
],
"text": [
"Life support is an overarching term for a variety of systems designed to take over or assist vital bodily functions. It can include a respirator to help with or replace breathing, dialysis to aid or replace kidney function, temporary or permanent pace makers to keep heart rhythm, etc etc etc.",
"Assuming you mean in the hospital sense... It does not always mean the same thing. There are different levels but the TL:DR version is when one or more devices are helping you breath or circular blood. For breathing typically we mean a ventilator. In the past this would have been an iron lung. For circulation of blood, it could be a pacemaker (low end,) a balloon pump (middle high,) upto a heart lung bypass machine (the highest level. Typically used when doing cardiac surgery.)"
],
"score": [
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itl417
|
Why does wine taste different when you pair it with certain foods?
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fb337"
],
"text": [
"You know how orange juice tastes different after brushing your teeth? Like that"
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itl85a
|
When did Ukraine stop being called "the Ukraine", why was it ever called "the Ukraine", and why was "the" dropped?
|
Maybe this reveals my age, but I remember that Ukraine used to be called "the Ukraine". Then suddenly I realized that nobody says "the Ukraine" anymore. Someone please explain this.
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5f7j8t",
"g5fa4h0"
],
"text": [
"“The Ukraine” was what the USSR called it when it was a province of the USSR. Ukraine has been a sovereign nation since 1991 and the breakup of the USSR, and they prefer “Ukraine.” So, it changed 30 years ago.",
"Parts of the US are often defined by their relationship to the national capital, e.g. as \"the North-East\", \"the South\", \"the Mid-West\". Likewise, \"ukraine\" meant something like 'borderland' -- its position in the Russian Empire. It was also known as \"Little Russia\" in comparison to \"Great Russia\" -- the area around Moscow. When it became an independent state, the country wanted to get rid of that subordinate status even in its name, so it asked other countries to drop the \"the\". URL_0"
],
"score": [
22,
18
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Ukraine"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itll0g
|
how do electronic devices know how full their battery is?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fahc6"
],
"text": [
"Simply speaking it is about voltage measurement. The device measures the voltage and from the device specs it concludes that it is at a certain equivalent battery level. There are most likely more advanced algorithms that can refine those results to give better battery level equivalents."
],
"score": [
11
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itlqyo
|
how do the TL;DR bots work to reduce an article’s length?
|
It’s clearly not random or that would be almost unreadable, but I’m not a computer person and am just unclear on how it functions and still usually captures the core of whatever article it’s shortening.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fexoy"
],
"text": [
"The simplest answer is that you can use knowledge of a language to compare the importance of words and sentences and take only what is important. A by hand example of the above may produce this You use knowledge of a language to compare words and sentences and take what is important."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itlrof
|
how do they take the caffeine out of coffee and teas?
|
It’s got to be a fancy chemical process, right??
|
Chemistry
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fbiys"
],
"text": [
"There are two processes for coffee-caffeine is very soluble in water, so you can just rinse it out. Or you can use liquid CO2 and rinse it in that - that process somewhat reduces the loss of other flavor compounds. I am not familiar with tea processes."
],
"score": [
15
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itmcgn
|
it’s a well known fact that you can’t deposit $10,000 to a single bank without alerting the irs. Can a person deposit slightly less to multiple banks and evade scrutiny?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ffcnw",
"g5fg8kr"
],
"text": [
"Depositing multiple amounts just under the 10K limit is a felony on its own, called \"structuring\", and people will notice because it's something people attempt to do all the time because it's an obvious way to try and get around the limit.",
"Sooo much misinformation about this: First of all, it’s the Treasury Department, not the IRS. This rule is for catching money launderers and drug dealers, not tax cheats. Second of all, it’s triggered by $10,000 *cash*. They don’t give a fuck if it’s an electronic deposit."
],
"score": [
16,
11
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itmowl
|
How come fat isn’t distributed evenly across the body but instead is in specific places?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fj19o",
"g5fjare",
"g5gd0vh"
],
"text": [
"Fat is insulation. It protects important areas. It also cushions us. So like for example, your butt. Your bones wouldn’t be good to sit on, so this is the solution. Your abdomen has many of your most important organs, and doesn’t have a rib cage to keep them safe. Your sex hormones are a huge determining factor in where your body stores it’s lipids. Different fats in different areas have specific receptors for hormones. Hormones signal important pathways in your body! Fatty acids are what we get when we break down lipids. They are by far the most energetically favorable thing for your body to break down. It doesn’t take nearly as much energy to break them down, compared to the cellular energy we get out. Some lifestyle choices, like smoking, poor diet, etc., can determine some of where we store our fat. However it is mostly genetics.",
"Survival of the fittest. You can move easier, escape a predator or catch prey, because most of the extra mass in fat is near the *center of gravity*. The fat also is an extra layer of protection around your torso, where most of your vital organs are.",
"Fat is not stored in the body like a lump or layer like butter. The 'fat' that we talk about in meat is actually specialized tissue that stores fat. Tissue is made up of cells. When we eat fat is extracted from food and bundled up by our intestines and secreted into blood. Certain specialised cells take up this fat from the blood and store it membrane bound vesicles inside the cell. These vesicles are called 'lipid droplets' - a historical name due to their resemblance to oil drops. Only certain types of cells do this. The most efficient ones are called adipocytes. Adipose tissue is what we typically call 'fat' in meat, and holds about 50% of the fat. Besides this major store, fat is stored in cells of the liver and the mesentry (that's the beer belly) as well. The distribution of fat in the body depends on where the fat storing cells are. The activity of these fat storing cells is regulated by a variety of factors - sex hormones, nutrition, lifestyle, genetics etc. Source: scientist working on a major fat storage disease called NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease)"
],
"score": [
27,
13,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itmta2
|
How come there is no “cure” for male pattern baldness?
|
With how far technology and science has come, how come we don’t have a simple solution to this everlasting issue in society?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fivab",
"g5fmysh"
],
"text": [
"It's not that big an issue - it's not fatal, causes no other health problems, most people aren't even bothered by it. There are 'cures', they just kinda suck. Rogaine, hair transplants (which are much better today than several decades ago). For the remaining few determined to reverse it, they seem content to buy whatever weird shit they can find on some dark corner of the internet. Why spend tons on researching real cures when people will gladly pay for complete bullshit to fix the problem too?",
"Almost everything that defines your finished form is determined by your genetics. The gene that holds the code for pattern baldness is on the X chromosomes. Baldness is a recessive gene, meaning that if one gene has the \"lose your hair\" gene and the other has the \"don't lose your hair\" gene, then the \"don't lose your hair\" wins out. So in order to lose the hair you need to be missing the part of the X chromosome that will tell you to keep your hair (this is what a Y chromosome is) so the recessive gene wins if it's there at all. So in short, to get male pattern baldness, you need to be male and unlucky. (Women can get some hair loss if they get both recessive genes, but the extent of the loss is not as obvious, extensive, or the same classic horseshoe shape, and is much more rare than in men to begin with) Unfortunately, your DNA is in every cell in your body, so in order to truly cure male pattern baldness you would need to block that one gene specifically and hope that you don't accidentally block other genes, as that could be very bad. TL;DR - people don't know how to block that gene specifically enough to avoid other potentially serious issues"
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itmv51
|
What’s a Roth IRA?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fj5ko"
],
"text": [
"It's an IRA where the money has already been taxed, so when you pull it out you don't pay any more. A normal IRA is tax deductible on the front end...you don't pay any income tax on the money you put in the IRA, but when you eventually take it out of the IRA later you treat it like income and pay income tax. A Roth is the reverse...you pay income tax like normal on the money you put in, but you get it out tax free later, including any investment gains that it made while sitting in there."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itmvyv
|
why does the ovum have layers that sperm has to digest in order to fuse with it? Should this layers be easy to pass through becouse fertilization is the end goal?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fmoj5",
"g5fxcs8"
],
"text": [
"You don't want it to be too easy. You want a sperm that's good enough to pass the obstacle course the ovum creates for it. Also, the layers create a mechanism where a chemical reaction can take place once the first sperm has proven it can successfully enter the ovum and complete fertilization. This prevents the entry of other sperm so that the amount of genetic material in the zygote is correct",
"The egg coat isn't actually specific to humans, it is a vital part of the mammalian oocyte and is called the zona pellucida. It has a few main functions, one it protects from mechanical damage and more importantly it serves as a species specific barrier to the sperm. Additionally it prevents polyspermy as well as premature implantation (ectopic pregnancy). The sperm therefore has to bind to and penetrate the zona pellucida in order to reach and fuse with the egg. In order to do this, the sperm binds to ZP3 (one of three glycoproteins composing the zona pellcuida) causing an acrosome reaction. And without going into too much detail, it allows for the sperm to tunnel its way through the zp to make contact with the plasma membrane of the egg."
],
"score": [
11,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itmwp6
|
What is a citizens' arrest?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fjso7"
],
"text": [
"The rules and laws regarding this are completely different between states and even jurisdictions within a state. There is no way to answer this with a general answer"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itneak
|
Why are balloons so loud when they pop?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fmzvp",
"g5fnw7s",
"g5gh1z9"
],
"text": [
"Sound is just a wave of pressure through the air. Our ear machinery is amazing, and we can detect even a very very small pressure disturbance traveling through the air. Suffice to say that the pressure inside of a balloon is quite a bit greater than the ambient air pressure, and so when that pressure is released there is a huge gradient that is exposed and a very strong pressure wave is transmitted through the air that we perceive as a very loud bang.",
"The five year old answer is: Balloon has too much air in it. The air doesn't like being so close because it bounces around and hits itself a bunch, so when the balloon breaks the air spreads out really fast and eventually it hits the inside of our ears and makes us hear exactly how crammed it was in the balloon.",
"Sound is a pressure wave. When a balloon is popped, lots of pressure is released and produces a large wave. The very fast change in pressure makes the amplitude very high High amplitude == loud."
],
"score": [
51,
20,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itns8n
|
why do some emails arrive almost immediately after being sent, and some take a significantly longer amount of time, sometimes hours?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fpjye"
],
"text": [
"Could be network issues if you are referring to emails between the same sender/recipient. If it's between different senders each time, it could be the firewalls involved that are different between one site and another. Or maybe the path it takes has multiple hops. Could be the size of the email. So, it depends."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itnu0r
|
What is the point of airplane mode? Does turning off airplane mode while flying genuinely affect the pilots?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fr91l",
"g5frabv",
"g5g7kp3",
"g5g3hwp"
],
"text": [
"Airplane mode turns off the cellular radio in your device, allowing you to continue to use the remaining features. It is theoretically possible, though unlikely, that the cellular signal emitted could interfere with aircraft electronics, and as a result the FCC requires cellular radios be turned off during takeoff and landing, the highest risk parts of flight. As a side benefit for you, you aren’t going to get cellular signal above 10,000 feet. You’re well above the highest cell phone towers, which are all transmitting downward. So leaving your radio on, your phone will continually seek a signal it can’t find and cause your battery to drain faster. So even if you’re not convinced of the “interference” risk, turn the radio off for your own sake. Edit: as correctly pointed out, the rule is an original FCC rule and not FAA rule.",
"There has been no recorded evidence of a mobile device interfering with a passenger plane in anyway. and the government body that made the no phones on planes rule is the FCC, federal communications commission, not the FAA, which regulates the airline industry and aviation. This rule mostly stemmed from fears in the public when phones were this new fangled thing, it helped calm peoples nerves. With smart phones that can do more than just make phone calls, the phone companies added a mode that only blocked what the FCC rule doesnt allow, phone calls/messaging in flight.",
"The real (historical) reason: cell towers. Cell phones are designed to have limited range. Their transmitters have just enough power to reliably reach nearby cell towers, taking account for various common obstructions like walls, nearby buildings, etc. This limited-range design is important because each cell tower can only serve a limited number of phones at one time. So each cell site are only designed to serve customers who are nearby. Now, when you’re on an airplane, suddenly there are no obstructions and your cell phone can connect with a large number of towers in more distant locations. If many people on many airplanes have their phones on, their connections could potentially disrupt various cell sites around the airport. This was especially true when cell phone signals were fully analog, but less of a problem in today’s digital world.",
"At this point it's mostly that the airlines don't want to deal with hundreds of assholes all yelling into their phones as they try to calls while sitting inside a super cramped metal tube 35,000 feet in the air. There are also occasional reports of instances where airplane electronics are unexpectedly vulnerable to RF interference, but generally these are required to be corrected once discovered. Previous to that, before the cell phone network was as robust as it is now there was a worry that huge numbers of cell phones moving at hundreds of MPH and in a position to have line of sight on dozens of towers would place a lot of load on the cell network as it tried to keep up as the phones hopped from tower to tower. Way back in the past there was actually possible for cell phones to goof up airplane electronics (mostly by generating noise that made the radios unhappy) but this predate cell phones being popular."
],
"score": [
34,
5,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itoe5y
|
How were old maps made to be so accurate without satellite imagery or any idea of what a country looks like from the sky?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fv90d",
"g5fvkgj",
"g5g5i8b",
"g5fvts9",
"g5getez",
"g5gdc9u",
"g5g8jh0",
"g5giimp"
],
"text": [
"A lot of work, and a process called triangulation. Basically, you take a high spot, figure out two other spots, measure the distance and angle between them, and calculate the area of that triangle. Repeat over an entire country. Also, maps were not really super accurate as to what an aerial view would look like, they were just accurate as to the distances between objects, and lengths of roads and such.",
"Geometry. There’s one example of a mapmamker (and his son, and his grandson, and his great grandson) being hired to make an accurate map of France being during the reign of Louis 14th. He did it using triangles, he would would pick two points he knew the distance between, and then measure the angle between those two points and a spot way off in the distance respectively. He could then use geometry to know how far away that point in the distance was by making triangles. He then linked triangle after triangle after triangle going all around France until he had a pretty accurate map: URL_0 (He didn’t actually live to see it completed, his son carried on with the triangles, and then further defendants carried on with filling the map with village and town names.)",
"There were a lot of methods of measurement, combined with geometry. Really once you have one known distance by good ol' fashioned measuring sticks/chains/wheels, the rest can be inferred with math with some crazy accuracy just by measuring the angles on either side of your known distance. Even the circumference of the earth was estimated in ancient times and it was eerily accurate when you think about how they didn't even have electricity. That all kinda falls apart in ocean navigation though because you have no earthly landmarks in the middle of the ocean. For ocean navigation there was the sextant and the clock. Using the sextant you could figure out latitude by measuring the angle at highest point the Sun/stars reached, at the equator the sun would be a straight 90 degrees and going north/south it would descend south/north. You can figure out longitude by when the sun would reach it's highest point, sundown, or sunrise (or via certain stars). Basically using timezones to estimate how east/west you are. The latter was only possible with the spring-loaded clock though. There were lots of early methods of measuring time, but they usually fell apart at sea due to the unstable rocking of sea vessels, pendulum and water clocks were right out. Anything that did work like rope or wick clocks required you to burn through rope for weeks at a time and if they ever went out, there goes your only method of measuring longitude. Sun dials also were not feasible because the gnomon (pointy bit that sticks out of the disk) needs to be at a different angle depending on latitude so it becomes useless unless you're traveling \\*exactly\\* along a specific latitude.",
"Early on, they had to use very crude measures like travel time to measure distances. Three days' sail, at what feels like *about* so-and-so a speed, means these two coasts are so-and-so distance apart. A day's travel by horse over clear land is such-and-such miles. People relied on loose rules like that, and as people crossed the land and sea in different ways in different directions, you could sort of deduce that things are shaped this way or that way. Later, maps were tightened up using surveying. By standing on a high vantage point and getting some friends to stand in other spots where you have a line of sight to them, you can record the compass bearings and altitudes and azimuths, and by combining a bunch of these measurements you can do some math to figure out the relative positions much more precisely.",
"**Triangles.** A **lot** of them. Like, for example, the [Great Trigonometrical Survey of India]( URL_0 ). And basic mathematics. You could probably do it yourself, with time. Start with two points well apart (A and B, say) that can be seen from each other. On top of a couple of hills is good. Measure the distance between them the hard way - measure it by walking it with, e.g., a chain of known length. Now you know how far it is from A to B in a straight line - you have a baseline. Now find a third point (C, say) well to one side, that can be seen from both A and B. Stand at A, and measure the angle between the line to B and the line to C. Go to B, and do the same thing - the angle between the line to A and the line to C. You now have three points (A, B, C) in a triangle. Maths time. You know the length of one of the sides (the baseline). You don't know the lengths of the other two sides yet, but you know the angles they make at each end - and that's enough to work the lengths out using nothing more than the sort of maths you get taught at about 15. And now you know exactly where C is, relative to A and B. Now you just do the same thing again, but this time using a new point, D, and one of the new lines (the one between A and C, for example). You've already worked out how long it is; you can measure the angle at each end to D. So now you have a new triangle joined on to the first one - and again you can work out how long the two new sides are, and exactly where the new point is, relative to the others. Now you just keep going for months, or years, adding more and more triangles to the sides of lines that you already know. Eventually you've covered the whole country in triangles joining points you chose. And you know where all the points are, relative to each other, and you can plot them on a map to a high degree of accuracy. (Just in case you were wondering - yes, every measurement you make is imperfect. And you'd think that, after a while, all the errors would add up, and make the result useless. Fortunately, it doesn't happen like that in practice - errors tend to cancel each other out, and the result is likely to be extremely accurate. It takes a little more than high school maths to show that, but it's the case.)",
"This video is specifically about France, but the principles of Triangulation are consistent around the world. URL_0",
"They were accurate ish. The maps of areas that cartographers spent time in were great, but their estimations of other areas were wildly off. One of my favorite maps from the mid 1700s shows the Mississippi and Missouri River in great detail, and the west coast in great detail, but the 700 or so miles between central Montana and the West coast is estimated to be less than 100 miles. It also deeply misestimated the great plains. This was one of the hand drawn originals from Cooks expeditions to map the west coast.",
"Okay I'll explain it like you're ACTUALLY FIVE ( and a half ) : **Before world-wide sail,** countries would share information with each other, from far and wide, in the form of stories. Visitors to Africa would describe their journeys in the Far East, and help Middle Eastern map-makers understand the rest of the world, to be recorded in places like the Great Library of Alexandria. When empires like the Romans and Chinese and early Americans spread across several continents, they were able to make very accurate maps of all the lands they held, as well as all the lands nearby. Later, European explorers from The Netherlands, Spain, France and England, would sail their ships around the coastlines of foreign continents, using the stars and the sun, and draw what they observed. They combined that with maps created by inland explorers to make complete maps of continents. But maps before 1700 were quite a bit LESS accurate than they became in the 200 years since, due to the lack of ability to travel far distances in ships without getting sick from \"scurvy\", until sailors discovered the solution was bringing horse meat and later citrus fruit and vegetables along for the journey. Even then, they were still navigating by \"dead reckoning\" a lot of the time. In fact, at one point it was unsure what would be reached, if a boat were to continue sailing in one direction around the world. That's when America, and later Australia were discovered, by Europeans. Once the world's continents were able to send each other letters via ship across the ocean, they could combine their maps into a \"world map\" that became much more accurate. But it wasn't until the 20th century that plane flight allowed us to truly map our countries properly using aerial photography, which also helped for spying during wars. Then we combined all of these into a most-accurate world map to date. That's all before the first satellites went up, after which we could see the whole globe, and eventually create Google Earth. Look up **Celestial navigation** for more research. And for some very modern climate maps of the United States see: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) Thanks to /u/Hello_how_is_you_ for the question. I love your curiosity! PS: This is /r/ELI5, guys, not /r/AskScience. Keep it simple. \"Geometry\" doesn't mean anything to a five-year-old."
],
"score": [
1502,
312,
28,
25,
14,
10,
6,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.loc.gov/resource/g5830.ct001183/?r=0.055,-0.476,1.064,1.59,0"
],
[],
[],
[
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Trigonometrical_Survey#/media/File:1870_Index_Chart_to_GTS_India-1.jpg"
],
[
"https://youtu.be/yTyX_EJQOIU"
],
[],
[
"https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itoo6v
|
Does the increase in anonymous sperm donors eventually create a spike in half siblings meeting/procreating?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fvolf",
"g5fxo1v"
],
"text": [
"Hypothetically, yes, but the chances of that happening are likely to be extraordinarily small. But increasing use of sperm donors hypothetically increases the chances of it happening.",
"Sperm donation centres try to avoid using the same donor too many times. Good donation centres set limits to the amount of babies one donor will have. Having our big cities the likelihood of a pair of half siblings meeting let alone procreating together is slim. & #x200B; It would be very rare that two half siblings via sperm donors meet and procreate. If they do it's not really that bigger problem as they are half siblings and the rate of genetic disorder from them breeding would be a minimal increase. The problem with inbreeding comes when it happens repeatedly the chance for genetic disorders increase each time. Royal families inbreeding and small communities without access to new genetic material is where the problem really is. Oh and those weird families which love to inbreed, yeah they are a problem."
],
"score": [
5,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itotav
|
Why are bakeries in the US normally open early hours, but not later when people normally eat dessert?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fwjr4",
"g5fwkbi"
],
"text": [
"Because the baker has to arrive early to bake the bread that people purchase throughout the day. And pastries last better than bread.",
"Most bakeries make bread, rolls ect, that tou will want buring the day. If you want dessert go to a cake shop or a patisserie."
],
"score": [
8,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itp6o0
|
Can someone without language think?
|
Like if you had someone who grew up in a single room with no human Interaction would they be able to have thoughts. Would they be able to tell right from wrong or know that murder is wrong (kinda debatable but you get the point)?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fzocv"
],
"text": [
"They would have severe developmental disorders. It's likely they would not grasp that murder is wrong in the same way we do. However they still may have empathy to other humans unless that had been rotted away by the torture they had endured. Yes they would have thoughts and feelings. The internal monologue would likely be visual. There are some interesting stories in history of studies conducted by ancient figures trying to determine such things by locking children away. Often it was done to figure out if humans had an innate language, those studies concluded by them interpreting the garbled noises as one of the languages. You could also read stories about children who had been lost in the woods raised by animals although that's a bit different as they usually act like the animal which adopted them. Great question by the way. There are many historical incidents you could look up surrounding this."
],
"score": [
6
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itp8ny
|
Why do somePC programs require restarting your computer but cell apps never require a reboot?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fz950",
"g5gdkgy"
],
"text": [
"the thing is, most programs don't require a reboot, but they want you to reboot \"just in case\" there are any issues with the installation. you can generally ignore the reboot and the program will work fine. if it doesn't work fine and a reboot is actually required, then it means that something about the OS was modified, like a device driver needs to be loaded, but it couldn't be because something was in use/locked by the OS, or it needs to start a service that it can only do at boot time, or something along those lines.",
"Design. Cellular operating systems were more or less designed to be on 'always on' devices. They were also designed much later than desktop operating systems. Cellular apps are not really given as much access to the deep internals of the operating system and desktop applications can be. Finally, desktop OS has to deal with a possible change in hardware and drivers. Hardware on cellphones never really changes from the user side. On the other hand desktop OS architectures were designed more or less 50 years ago. In those early days, a computer would be something that you use like a microwave - use for an hour an turn off. As of 2020, most desktop programs do not really require a reboot - unless the program is dealing with something deeper in the OS or on the hardware/driver level. Still, the legacy of the 'reboot' continues, because it is more reliable and modern computers boot within a few seconds anyway."
],
"score": [
11,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itpbpp
|
how computers can keep track of time when they are completely turned off, even when they aren’t connected to the internet?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5fzn2n",
"g5fzn8i"
],
"text": [
"Because computers aren't ever really off unless left powered off and unplugged for a very long time. Even if you unplug one, there is a battery on the motherboard that keeps all your settings and keeps the time. That battery will eventually go dead, but it takes a long time.",
"In most computers, there is a small battery on the motherboard. This is used to power an internal clock, which is always running to keep track of the time. This battery can last for many, many years (think how long a watch battery lasts) because it is only really being used when the computer is unplugged."
],
"score": [
18,
6
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itpnry
|
Why are EV batteries a series of tiny batteries instead of one big upsized one?
|
I’ve been seeing videos of Tesla battery packs and they seem to be just a bunch of tiny batteries similar to AA batteries just stuck together. Why can’t just upsize the individual units to one big battery? EDIT: Just thought about it and wanted to add on, why are some batteries always a series of units and not just one big thing?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5g2mu1"
],
"text": [
"A few reasons: Regardless of the size of a battery cell, it produces a set voltage. This is based on the chemistry of it. All a larger size does is allow it to put out higher current and or hold a larger charge to last longer. AAA, AA, C, and D batteries are all the same 1.5V batteries. Them being different sizes doesn't change their voltage, but the bigger ones have more capacity. Lithium ion cells produce about 3.7V. Doesn't matter if it's a phone battery or a car battery. However, 3.7V is not going to drive a car. To get higher voltage (a few hundred), you stick the battery cells in series. Same as how many devices need two AA or AAA batteries in series to get the 3V they need to operate. Modularity. Making one large battery limits you. Making small cells means you can combine them into a variety of batteries of various capacity and form. Manufacturing defects and maintenance. A lot easier to swap out one faulty cell then abandon an entire large one. Cubed-squared law. Increasing the size of something increases the area by the square and volume by the cube. As such, just make a bigger battery of the same shape doesn't actually behave the same at all. The dimensions, cross sectional area, and volume are completely different proportions. Probably even more that Tesla engineers are very familiar with. Likely some safety issues with the volatility of lithium. Likely some intelligence in the batteries to use cells as needed for varying demand and abandon faulty ones without interruption. Could be some cooling considerations."
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itptj9
|
How is the United States simultaneously one of the wealthiest nations in the world while also being 23 trillion dollars in debt?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5g4av4",
"g5g2v24",
"g5gciik",
"g5gdumb"
],
"text": [
"> How is the United States so wealthy but so in debt? The US debt is the government debt. The US wealth is the entire country's economy. They aren't the same entity. > Who is the United States even in debt too? To whoever bought their IOUs, strictly called securities. Basically, a loan. You can go buy a security from the US, or most any government. Meaning, you gave them a loan. > How is the wealth of a nation measured, because it doesn't seem like debt is a factor. Many ways, but most obvious would be gross national product. The sum of goods and services the nation traded. The debt of the government, corporations, and individual involved in that trade don't come into that. > Is there any entity that is trying to get the United States to pay this debt? The entities are countless. And they don't just try, they succeed. The US always pays its debts, it has amazing credit and gets loans with incredibly low interest rates. Don't mistake taking out more loans with failing to pay them.",
"\"Wealthiest nation in the world\" is based on per capita economic output, whereas government debt is a loose concept, because US debt is similar to cash in a lot of financial ways. US debt is so reliably paid that interest rates are considered incredibly low, so the US can virtually borrow immense quantities of money without paying THAT much interest on it. (of course 1% of 23T is still 230 billion dollars...)",
"If i make $40,000 a year and am $100,000 in debt im in a bad situation. If i have $1 million in debt but make $100 million a year even though i have more debt my higher earnings means i'm not in any trouble. In fact the US is so large that it can borrow money so cheap that it can spend it's money on improving e.g. infrastructure and grow it's tax base faster than it's debt grows through interest.",
"The money is mostly owed to itself - both to other parts of the government and to individual Americans (and large investors and banks). Primarily, the US has to answer...to the US for its debts. And all its debts are denominated in dollars. Which the US can just print more of (it controls its own currency). But also, if it needs more money, it can get it from the American people and banks, and the rest of the world remains interested in buying US debt because it is seen as a very safe asset (since the US always pays back its debts). Just like getting a home loan, there is a large debt that gets paid back on a regular interval. All the older debt just slowly gets paid back over time, and if they need money (even money to pay the old debt), they just borrow and make some new debt. You see countries that have trouble because their debts are in other currencies. Their economy has problems, they can't just print more money, and the foreign banks want their money back, and only the foreign banks have the ability to fund new debt. The UK, after the Napoleonic Wars, had a debt to GDP ratio of over 250%. And it was almost 250% after WW2. But they still paid it off. It's not about the size of the debt, it's about the ability to make the payments. The US is a very rich country. It can always pay its debts. The cost to service all its debt is low."
],
"score": [
155,
20,
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itpysc
|
How do we have nuclear test footage?
|
How do the cameras and tape survive a test blast? Especially if buildings and inside buildings of the test area.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5g69lw",
"g5g3l7n"
],
"text": [
"Several types of cameras were used, but the standard ones were the Bell & Howell 16mm using a special emulsion to account for the x-ray exposure; film canisters were also lined with lead. Another type used was the Rapatronic camera. Shutter speeds were electrically controlled remotely from other bunker locations. Cameras positioned in the blast zone to show the effects of the 300 mph blast wave generated by the detonation were encased in specially constructed concrete-steel rebar mini-bunkers some with small apertures of singlass mica. They were thin transparent sheets \"isinglass\" mica layered together carefully to create a peephole aperture because they are less likely to shatter than glass when exposed to extreme temperature gradients.",
"I believe it’s a bit like how a GoPro sealed in a case doesn’t get damaged or ruined by being submerged. The cameras used to film the nuclear test footage were put in “bomb proof” cases with very thick glass and thermal protection. They were also placed quite a ways from the actual blast. I imagine it would be more or less impossible to protect a camera if a nuclear device was set off 2 ft from it."
],
"score": [
8,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itq5d4
|
Firefox 79 making links more secure, how does that work?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gaxhn",
"g5gc7i9"
],
"text": [
"Back in the old days of the web, they made it so that when a link opens a page in a new window (or tab), the new page can edit stuff on the page that has the link. That's because it was useful for something and they weren't really thinking about security. In Firefox 79, it can't.",
"Let's say you're on URL_1 , and you click on a link that opens URL_0 in a new tab. URL_0 is a completely different website from URL_1 . However, because of the fact that the URL_1 tab opened it, browsers typically allow the URL_0 tab's webpage code (JavaScript) to interact with your URL_1 tab to a certain extent. For example, the URL_0 tab could cause the URL_1 tab to refresh the page or go to a different page. There are bad things URL_0 could do with this feature. At any time, it could make your URL_1 tab switch to an evil website that's made to look like URL_1 , to trick you into entering your login information or other private information. This would be surprising, since you don't normally expect a tab from one site to be able to do things to another tab. Some websites (especially old websites) might rely on this behavior for non-evil purposes. However, the Firefox developers decided that it's just too unsafe. Now, when URL_1 opens URL_0 in a new tab, URL_0 will normally not be able to interact with the URL_1 tab directly. If URL_1 really wants to allow URL_0 to interact with it, URL_1 can code the link a little differently to tell the browser that it's okay."
],
"score": [
8,
7
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"b.com",
"a.com"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itq9g0
|
I’ve heard the saying that if you throw something off a building that weighs 10 pounds, it’ll reach the ground the same time as something that is 100 pounds.
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5g51dv",
"g5g5824"
],
"text": [
"Yeah, that's right, in a perfect vacuum a feather and a hammer would hit the ground at the same time. They tested this on the moon and it worked. The problem on earth is air resistance. A feather has a much larger surface area to mass ratio so it sinks slower in air.",
"There will be a slight difference due to air resistance, but in an airless environment (such as the moon) [they will reach the ground at the same time]( URL_0 ). On one hand, a heavier object is harder to move. On the other hand, gravity is proportionate to mass, means a heavier object is pulled harder. These two cancel out, so both objects are pulled at the same rate. Another explanation: Imagine if you took the 100-pound object and broke it into ten 10-pound objects. Would any of them fall at a different rate than the single 10-pound object? Would they fall at a different rate than the single 100-pound object?"
],
"score": [
14,
9
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDp1tiUsZw8&ab_channel=AIRBOYD"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itqi5f
|
Do people really enjoy the taste of alcoholic drinks or do they just enjoy the effects of the alcohol?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5g6isd",
"g5g7kbs",
"g5ga2ya",
"g5gij4k",
"g5ghrar"
],
"text": [
"At first, just the effects. But if you drink often, over time the taste may grow on you to the point where you'll enjoy a beer with that burger or pizza, just for the taste Edit: one letter",
"In general, both, but yes, the taste is an important feature of alcoholic drinks. There are two main reasons for this: - first, alcohol is an organic solvent, and most things that smell or taste are organic compounds. This means that they will not dissolve very well in water, but will dissolve better in alcohol. This is why there is alcohol in perfumes: you need a solvent to keep all these compounds in the liquid. But alcohol is also soluble in water (unlike oils), and only mildly toxic (unlike most water soluble solvents), which means you can have drinks that are water based but still contain plenty of aroma. The alcohol is the part of the drink that fixes the aroma in, and you cannot achieve the same result without alcohol. - alcohol preserves the drink, which is a necessary step for aging the drink. Typically, if you let water, or fruit juice in a wood barrel, you'll just end up with moldly/bacteria filled water. Alcohol prevents that, which lets your drink acquire or change aromas over time. The issue with alcohol (aside from its toxicity) is that alcohol itself doesn't taste great, so you have to become used to that part of the taste to be able to notice and enjoy the more subtle aromas of a drink. Another problem is that alcohol will keep the good aromas, but also the bad ones, so cheap alcoholic drinks have more potential to taste horrible than non-alcoholic ones. But expensive wines and liquors are indeed most often consumed for the taste, otherwise people would just drink vodka.",
"I rarley drink enough to feel anything from it but I can confirm one person likes the taste of some drinks, beer, wine, cider.",
"You can learn to love anything if you associate it with a reward. The psychology of enjoying things is way more fluid and malleable than most people want to believe.",
"At first it's just the drunken high that is likable. But the more often you repeat this, the taste easily becomes associated with a good time and guess what, the booze starts to taste good. It's the same with cigarette smoke. If you never smoked, you might find the smell disgusting. If you somehow became a smoker, you literally crave it. That's also why there are so many brands and flavours of cigarettes and booze, despite the ingredient causing the high are always the same: Nicotine and ethanol."
],
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8,
7,
5,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[]
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itqi5m
|
After a drop my flashlights LED turned blue, why is this?
|
After a 2 foot drop my flashlights light turned into a blue rather than the usual white, is there a reason this would be the case?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5g72l4",
"g5g7rg3"
],
"text": [
"White LEDs don't really exist. LEDs can only emit one wavelength oflight and white is a lot of wavelengths together. So white LEDs ar just blue LEDs with a layer of phosphor painted on them that absorbs the energy of the blue light and emits white light. You knocked that layer off. That LED must have been impressively shittily made, wow.",
"It could also be that the white LED was just a tri-color LED and the wires for red and green broke when you ropped it. This is not very likely though."
],
"score": [
10,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itr1ol
|
Why people who take time to fall asleep, fall asleep faster with a TV on?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ga2lf",
"g5hjo39"
],
"text": [
"When people are struggling to sleep they are often thinking too much, thinking about what happened that day and stressful thoughts. Having the TV on occupies your mind and the thoughts of the TV show can transition to dreams quite easily.",
"I used to do this... TV was like a lullaby, kind of. If it was off and there was no background noise, i'd get those thought flashes, mind going in circles. Edit: ...overthinking absoluteley everything @_@"
],
"score": [
14,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itr1ov
|
How does Anxiety manifest into causing more health problems?
|
Aside from other mental health issues, some symptoms I've read about range from muscle weakness to severe heart/organ problems. How can anxiety do so much damage to the body???
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5g9qop",
"g5hmrbz",
"g5gepg8",
"g5g95l6",
"g5gp2wh",
"g5hdewq",
"g5gpylb",
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],
"text": [
"Fear causes your fight or flight response, and anxiety causes a similar response except its a fear of something that isn’t real. If it gets really bad, you become terrified of something that isn’t there or even real. Hormones including the stress hormone cortisol and adrenaline are released at these times, which are meant for short term escape/survival situations. Adrenaline increases heart rate, blood pressure and use of energy reserves. Cortisol alters immune response, digestion, reproduction and growth processes. Almost all of your body is affected in a way which isn’t sustainable long term.",
"ELI5 analogy. Go turn on your car, sit in it, and while it's running (but still in park, with parking brake on), floor the gas pedal. Turn on radio full volume. Turn on your windshield wipers full blast. keep squirting fluid on your windshield. Flip on headlights and your brights on and off. Tur on every function in your car you can. With the foot firmly on the brake, and the parking brake engaged, shift in out of different gears non stop. Keep doing this until you run out of gas. Refill the tank, repeat the next day. And the next. And the next. Take it to a mechanic and watch as he says \"how the fuck does this wear and tear happen on a car with so few miles??\" That's what anxiety does to your body.",
"Speaking from personal experience, anxiety fucks up my digestion, makes me lose my appetite, causes vomiting, hot flashes, dizziness, breathing problems, changes in heart rate among other things. There are also reproductive issues, for women you can miss periods or it can exacerbate your PMS symptoms. Over a period of time these things can cause many health issues. Stomach ulcers are a common side effect of anxiety. Losing or gaining significant amounts of weight is also common. Having you body constantly on high alert is not good for you. Apart from that it also increases the chances of developing dependencies or addictions like alcoholism, smoking, drug abuse among others. People with anxiety disorders are also more susceptible to depression and suicidal ideation.",
"Anything to an extreme is bad. Anxiety is a form of stress and stress for any animal is unhealthy over prolonged time. If I put a rat in a drum and I beat that drum for a very long time. That rat is not gonna be ok.",
"Some people try to go against their fears with drugs. Drugs cause multible other problems and if they get addict, they have one mental problem more. Other ppl isolate themselve bc fear. The isolation and lonelyness causes often other mental problems. Beeing together with ppl is very.. the english words.. People can be exhausting. Even for healthy people. When you are alone for a very long time, contact with people becomes very, very difficult. You know the words, but the emphasis of the words is difficult, sometimes they come at the wrong time. A little too early or too late. Hope this help to understand.",
"well my anxiety is at its peak right now and i’ve only been able to eat maybe 500 calories a day for the last month. I can’t sleep, can’t eat, it’s awful. it really fucks everything up",
"Primarily it's exactly what u/twoscoopsblue said in the first comment. Side effects of a long-term physical stress reaction, that is meant to be a short-term bodily response only to specific triggers, and as such very useful, but that becomes damaging if it just doesn't 'deactivate' anymore and stays active 24/7. Aside from this physical/biological explanation, there are also psychological and social factors that play into the mix. There are a lot of studies, surveys, all kinds of research, that suggests a relatively strong connection between loneliness/social environment and health, even life expectancy. For people with general anxiety disorder it's harder to make friends, to socialize, to build up and keep up a solid, supportive social circle, and that can indirectly affect someone's health in multiple ways too. (source: had to write a paper once on exactly this topic in medical school)",
"Anxiety is is literally physically draining. It makes you physically tired but without leaving you out of breath. It also makes a lot of people lose their appetite. Those two things are ot good already. Basically it is not the anxiety itself that can make you physically ill but rather the side effects of anxiety. The constant exhaustion plus lack of eating weakens your immune system. Increased stress levels puts unnecessary pressure on your heart. Increased sweating also increases risk of dehydration. The lack of eating does not stop your stomach from producing digestive acids so those are not diluted by food and slowly over the years damage your stomach lining eventually leading to indigestion, acid reflux or stomach ulcers. The lack of food intake can also cause nutrient deficiency"
],
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192,
42,
33,
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9,
6,
5,
3
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"text_urls": [
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|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itr72o
|
how it is possible to create nanometer transistors.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gds0c",
"g5giej7"
],
"text": [
"The entire CMOS process is kind of hard to ELI5, as you need to know what a PN- / NP- transition is on the molecular scale. Anyway. The structures are etched into silicon wafers. In order to tell the acid where to etch and where not, a photosensitive paint is put onto a piece of silicon. The paint will become acid resistant under light. A special lamp and a laser-cut mask are put above it to literally print these structures into the paint. Then the thing gets washed with acid. This process is repeated layer by layer. Inbetween there will be some controlled diffusion of atoms with one more or one less electron into these layers. This will leave you with a layered stack of n- and p-dotted areas in the silicon which are basically the diodes the transistors are made of. This all can happen at scales, basically a couple of atoms wide. The limiting factor here is literally quantum tunneling of electrons inbetween transistor gates that are too close to another.",
"Get a sheet of special stuff. There's layers to it with some special properties, but whatever, it does some electrical stuff. If you cut out the right shape, it makes transistors. They've made lasers that a crazy-good levels of accuracy and can cut very fine lines. It turns out that photons are small. So they shine these accurate lasers at sheets of stuff and what's left is a computer processor or whatever."
],
"score": [
8,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itr9qn
|
How do people get diabetes ?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gbtbe",
"g5gawi9"
],
"text": [
"There are two types of diabetes. The cause for both is unknown however genetics plays a huge part in it. First, how insulin works to control blood sugars. A person when eating will breakdown complex carbohydrates (complex sugars) into simple simple carbohydrates (glucose, fructose and galactose) and then the body will produce insulin in a relative amount to the amount of sugars in the blood. The insulin acts as a key to allow cells in the body to use the simple sugars in the blood. Type 2, the less harmful of the two is where your body doesn't produce enough insulin or produces damaged insulin meaning that the are unable to correctly use glucose in their blood but can to a certain extend. This can be managed by medication and if treated will be very simple to manage. There have been developments in treating this permanently with varying degrees of success. Type 1, this is the most dangerous but only about 10% of diabetics have this form of diabetes. Type 1 is classified as an autoimmune disease wherein the immune system is actively attacking the healthy cells in the body as it believes them to be a problem. The immune system here attacks the cells that produce the insulin and as such type 1 diabetics do not produce any insulin. This means they have to use a glucose blood meter to check their blood sugar levels and then inject the relating amount of insulin themselves or this can be automated using an insulin pump fit to the person. Extra fact: insulin today is produced by genetically engineering bacteria to produce it.",
"There are different types of diabetes. I'm thinking you are asking about type 2, which a once healthy person gets. I think when people eat the food, the food is broken down into sugars. The body produces insulin to dissolve this sugar. When the body cannot produce enough insulin to dissolve the amount of sugar, it is expelled by urine. This is diabetes, where the body cannot produce enough insulin. Exercise can help to use this sugar as fuel to do work, thereby reducing the amount of sugar insulin has to deal with."
],
"score": [
10,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itrh02
|
How can a group of hobbyists or whatever make a deepfake that sounds exactly like Bill Gates, while digital assistants made by the world's biggest tech companies still sound like robots?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gdtq0"
],
"text": [
"1. Creating a small individual clip of bill gates talking realistically is reletively easy compared to the millions of phrases a voice assistant might say at any moment 2. People actually prefer the robotics voice compared to the human due to the uncanny valley effect you get when an artificial object becomes \"too human\". It creeps people out more if it sounds like there's another person talking when it's the assistant. 3. Cost, it'd be way more expensive to invest in having a realistic voice when people prefer the more robotic voice which is easier to synthesize."
],
"score": [
17
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itrh4l
|
How do you short sell?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gbwnr",
"g5ge37a"
],
"text": [
"You think a stock will have a far lower price in the future than now. You borrow stock from someone (against a small fee) and sell it immediately. In the future you buy the same amount of stock (at a now hopefully lower price), hand it back to the original owner and pocket the profit minus transaction and borrowing fees.",
"It's easily overcomplicated. Borrow something. Sell it. Buy it back at a lower price. Give it back to the person you borrowed it from."
],
"score": [
6,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itrit7
|
What makes something look edible?
|
Like this post: URL_0 And basically all of r/forbiddensnacks?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gdaf9"
],
"text": [
"Nothing specific triggers the \"edible look\". We eat a variety of things that look very different. Rather, in those examples, it's things that look like specific things we do eat instead of looking like something we'd eat in general. I hope this sentence makes sense.. Say I made up a recipe that looked like a slice of a bike tyre inner tube. Say that people really like it and get used to eating it. Then an actual inner tube slice would look like a forbidden snack. Candies are a good example of that because there's quite a few things that look like candy and look edible on forbidden snacks but that effect would most certainly not work on someone from the middle ages that never knew those candies."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itrjln
|
What does a chaplain do when someone confesses a crime?
|
Hi all, & #x200B; In regards to branches of service, it is a chaplains duty to also be a form of counselor for servicemen. I find the career really interesting and want look more into it but, from what I been told: anyone can come to a chaplain and confess anything without repercussion. Is that measure applicable to someone that admits guilt to a crime or one who wants/shows intent to commit a crime?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gdhg5",
"g5hn54u",
"g5gctez"
],
"text": [
"Speaking from experience, they will run to the nearest senior officer and repeat verbatim what was told to them. You are not granted the same confidentiality you would have with a psychiatric or clergy professional in civilian life.",
"> Rule 503 of the Military Rules of Evidence states that communications made as a “formal act of religion or as a matter of conscience” to either a chaplain or a chaplain assistant while serving in the capacity of spiritual advisor are considered confidential and are not to be shared with third parties. There are no exceptions listed to this rule.",
"Priests, doctors, lawyers and to some extent journalists are excepmpt from some of the laws and do not have to tell the police about crimes that were told to them in confidence. Most churches do have guidelines for what to do in certain situations. However this protection from the law does not extend to future crimes. So there is a big difference between someone confessing that they have commited a crime in the past but there is no suspecion that they will do similar things in the future and someone confessing that they are going to commit a crime. The reason priests are given exteption from the laws is that people who have commited crimes often needs councoling, medical care, legal advice, etc. without having to fear being procecuted. If a criminal knows they will go to jail if they confess to a priest then they will not be able to get counseling for their trauma. In fact if they are not getting the help that they need it might cause them to harm themselves and others."
],
"score": [
7,
3,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itrz03
|
why does many people hates Nickelback?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ge0al"
],
"text": [
"It's quintessential pop-rock designed to make sales. There's nothing innovative, new, or exciting about it. It's safe as milk and commercialised to appeal to as many people as possible. People love to hate it because it's easy to listen to and there's nothing not to like about it."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itsg5m
|
How is the other side of the pillow colder?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5ggam7",
"g5gh6ku"
],
"text": [
"You warm one side of the pillow up with your head. But the pillow is a poor heat conductor, so the other side is much closer to room temperature which is colder.",
"The pillow is an insulator - it doesn't conduct heat very well. Your head is warm, but the heat can only get a small way through before it's stopped. It doesn't make it to the other side of the pillow (and if it does, it's a tiny amount), so the other side is much cooler."
],
"score": [
15,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itsgfi
|
Why does the blood from menstruation not clot
|
Well we learnt in school that if we have a wound and blood starts flowing platelets immediately start clotting and cover up the wound, then why does this not happen during menstruation periods?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5he3xx",
"g5hmwfg"
],
"text": [
"It does. The body produces anticoagulants to help break down thickened blood and tissue, but [blood clots are not uncommon]( URL_0 ), especially during the first few days of menstruation when flow is typically heavier, and can outpace the body's ability to produce these anticoagulants.",
"During menstruation it's not just the random bleeding but the lining shedding as well. The purpose of cramps is to help remove and expell that lining. The blood does clott, people with normal levels of clotting generally have less bleeding while people with clotting issues may have heavier bleeding. If you have ever gotten a cut, you should know that even if it starts clotting immediately, it doesn't fully clot over for a while. You do bleed for a time before it clots which comes into consideration. What happens during a period is that the lining starts separating which causes some bleeding. As each piece gets removed, some blood comes with it. The lining doesn't just separate all at the same time but rather sheds in small pieces. Each small piece that separates results in some blood. This is also why a normal period lasts over multiple days rather than just one. So a period is really a mix of fresh blood, clotted blood, lining and other bodily fluids."
],
"score": [
99,
14
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.healthline.com/health/womens-health/menstrual-clots#underlying-causes"
],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itswbo
|
What does 1920*1080 resolution means? I know this is 1080p HD resolution. But what does these numbers represent exactly?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gioz8"
],
"text": [
"Your screen, as well as any computer image, is a grid of tiny dots called pixels, each of which can be a different color. The resolution is simply the number of pixels. 1920\\*1080 means the screen or image is 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels tall."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ittaek
|
What is a worse forest blaze season? A drought season or wet season?
|
I questioned this in my fire academy and could never get a straight answer out of anyone. My logic was that during a drought season the grass is of course super dry and easily ignitable. On the other hand, having a really wet season would in turn create a lot more fuel for the fires to burn come summer. Which is worse and why?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gms7x"
],
"text": [
"A dry season following a wet season. The wet season encourages growth then the dry season incinerates it. That's why fire control entities do control burns. To reduce the fuel load."
],
"score": [
9
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
ittj7t
|
. How does money laundering actually work?
|
Economics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gluah",
"g5go25q"
],
"text": [
"One common way: running a business that would expect to do a lot of transactions in cash. This may be something like a resturant or a laundromat. With such a business, it may be possible to artificially inflate customer activity using the illicit funds (you could say 1000 people did a load of laundry instead of 500), and while you would have to pay taxes on those funds, they now have a seemingly legitimate origin for them. At least until investigators look into your business in detail.",
"A step by step: 1. Get lots of cash through illegal means. 2. Acquire a business that deals in lots of cash, such as a laundromat or restaurant. 3. Lie about how much cash that business is taking in. 4. Deposit a mix of the illegal obtained (dirty) cash and legally obtained (clean) cash to the bank as revenue for the restaurant. 5. Pay tax on all the money and safely be able to spend it now that it's in your account and digital, so nothing ties you to the original dirty cash."
],
"score": [
7,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itu7j9
|
How does Disney+ prevent screen shots?I'm having a hard time imaging that a website can do that.Like cant you just snip it or us another program?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gtgx6",
"g5gwpt5",
"g5h3bp1"
],
"text": [
"1. In Android and iOS apps, the ability to take system-level screenshots can be disabled in certain pages of the apps as a security measure. 2. In the web browser, the browser is just drawing a blank area and telling the graphics card what to put there *after* it renders the stream. This bypasses the Operating System, so OS-level screenshots don't work.",
"They use something called Google Widevine, and basically the way that works is the encrypted video stream is passed directly to the hardware, the OS draws the window as having a black box where the video player should be, and the processor at the hardware level decrypts and draws the media over that black box. So to the OS, because it doesn’t have access to that portion of the hardware rendering the video, all it sees is the black box it was told to draw. Actually, iOS and Android apps work in exactly the same way—this is why you can’t get around it with just a jailbreak or root tweak to bypass the screenshot security restriction. Because this is a feature the hardware has to support, that’s why on older devices and TVs you get an error saying Netflix or other streaming services aren’t supported—they don’t have a chip certified for secure processing of the video stream. I believe in order to record these streams at the moment a hardware mod is needed since the data is simply never passed to the OS, but I have been out of that scene for a while.",
"It's part of encrypted video steam support. The OS has features that disable it. You can still take pictures of your screen using a camera. It's more or less the same reason when you plug a suspicious cheap flat screen TV (like you may find in hotels) your video steam goes black on all your screens. It detects an uncertified video output. The goal is to make ripping content not as trivial. (It's really weak protection in practice, but it makes investors happy)"
],
"score": [
39,
18,
4
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itu9cc
|
how did Galileo's leaning tower of pisa experiment worked?
|
well he proved that a heavy object and light object would land at the same time , but if he did experiment on leaning tower of pisa there must be air resistance , so heavy object should have landed in less time , so how did he prove?
|
Physics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gsgkt",
"g5gpmnw",
"g5h3mw9",
"g5gq826",
"g5hkffe",
"g5gpij6",
"g5h8dht"
],
"text": [
"If the object you drop has a high mass compared to the crosssection the effect of air resistance in legible. So take two metal rods where one is twice as long as the other so twice the mass. If the light with 20 kg and the heavy 40 kg you will not have any effect of air resistance that is measurable with the technology back then. The demonstration that was done used metallic spheres, I suspect cannonballs & #x200B; There is no evidence that Gallileo did the experiment at all but that it is a thought experiment that is stated below. The experiment was done later by others. & #x200B; > Imagine two objects, one light and one heavier than the other one, are connected to each other by a string. Drop this system of objects from the top of a tower. If we assume heavier objects do indeed fall faster than lighter ones (and conversely, lighter objects fall slower), the string will soon pull taut as the lighter object retards the fall of the heavier object. But the system considered as a whole is *heavier* than the heavy object alone, and therefore should fall *faster*. This contradiction leads one to conclude the assumption is false.",
"1. If the objects are roughly the same shape, then air resistance would make relatively little difference. 2. There's no evidence that Galileo ever performed the experiment.",
"Galileo was under house arrest while he was working on his model of gravity, so going to the leaning tower of Pisa was not likely. The experiments he performed involved rolling balls down a slope. They would be going slower than free fall, so air resistance would make much less difference.",
"From a short height like the top of a tower to the ground there is not much effect from air resistance. My first experience with this was with a rock and a lump of ice being thrown off a bridge and there was no way to tell which landed first even though the rock was over twice as heavy as the ice. Given that Tuscany rarely have much ice this experiment probably involved other objects though. Using the classical theories by Arestoteles you would expect that a rock with double the mass of the ice would take half the time to fall as the ice would. However the demonstration shows that this is not the case and they would land almost at the same time. You might be able to observe the ice landing a fraction of a second later due to the air resistance slowing it down as the speed picks up but throughout most of the fall the speed is too low for air resistance to play any major role. And the result would be very far off the classical theories predictions.",
"It’s a logical thought experiment. The key is the string connecting the objects, that once pulled tight would effectively become a single object heavier than even the heavier object, and therefore should fall faster, but it obviously cannot and therefore is logically inconsistent. There was no actual leaning tower experiment.",
"There is air resistance but it's negligible compared to the force that gravity exerts on objects vertically. What Gallileo's experiments actually proved was that gravity exerts the same force on all objects, no matter the size. This was groundbreaking because natural philosophers at the time believed that bigger objects \"wanted\" to return to the Earth as soon as possible.",
"OP I think you are worrying about exact precision to much. If the experiment was done at all there weren't high speed cameras to count for the slightest deviation as long as it was 'close enough' everyone would conclude that he was right they do fall at the same speed with the explanation that he dropped them at slightly different times."
],
"score": [
29,
27,
7,
6,
4,
4,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itucze
|
What is the difference between a debate and a discussion?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gr9ec"
],
"text": [
"A debate is just a fancier discussion, often with judges and a floor/audience. There’s also a declared winner in a debate which doesn’t really exist in an everyday discussion."
],
"score": [
3
],
"text_urls": [
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
ituz58
|
Why do abusive parents usually “not understand” why their child has estranged them, even though the child has repeatedly told them the reasons many times?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5gtnfy",
"g5gueeg",
"g5gusbv",
"g5gveyq",
"g5guzxl",
"g5gwi0m"
],
"text": [
"Denial, they do not acknowledge the situation and take no responsibility for their actions.",
"oh yeah, it's total denial, because they cannot stand the cognitive dissonance between the reality of their parenting and how they see themselves. i experienced this with my father, who i cut out of my life after a childhood of abuse, neglect, and manipulation. some highlights include: stealing bonds gifted to me, keeping communications from our mother from us, hitting; threatening, spending most of his time with girlfriends; leaving us with empty cupboards and no parent, constant criticism and the refrain 'what is wrong with you?'. once he 'apologized' but could or would not take responsibility for his actions. he thinks he did a great job and there's something wrong with me.",
"Many of these abusers are narcissistic and can’t see the fault in themselves, and so blame the failed relationship on the child, illogical as it is. I really recommend reading The Narcissist in Your Life by Julie Hall if you want to learn more about this, and why narcissistically abusive parents are often completely unaware of how toxic and abusive they are.",
"Mine always wants us to 'draw a line under' whatever happened in the past and then goes on to do all the same shitty behaviours as before. To him, I'm just rude and unfeeling. Funny how all three daughters can maintain relationships with each other and with our mother (thigh even this is not all roses) but not with him. It's honestly so exhausting i just asked him not to contact me anymore. He still sends the odd nasty little missive to my sisters, with a tone that tells me he accepts nothing, hears nothing, learns nothing. He literally cannot hear any criticism or take anything on board. I dont know whether this is something we are all guilty of or whether it is those people with this mindset that are most likely to become estranged from their families. Im pretty sure if he just ran his emails past a neutral third party they'd be able to point him in the right direction on why we dont reply.",
"because, quite simply, if the parents had the capacity to understand the reasons, they wouldn't have committed the abuse in the first place. It's not really a good idea anyway to generalise the origins of abuse. child abuse could be from alcoholism, drugs, poverty, mental illnesses, stress, lack of education and care. Now I'm not using these factors as a defence for abusers- I've not known a lot of junkies and alcoholics to have not abused or neglected their children, in my experience. But if these factors were acknowledged, it is well possible to diminish such destuctive behaviour in society. And, further, it is very common for abusers to have been raised themselves in abusive environments, similar to or complementary of their own behaviour. I myself have heard somebody justifying beating their child as *\"well, it was the '70s. That was how it was done in those days!\"* (code: it's wasn't) It should be noted that such gaslighting as this is also very common among predetory physical and emotional abusers. The main takeaway from this, however, for the abuse survivor is that they are not responisble for their abuser's perception and guilt. It's not up to them, just as the survivor is not obliged to accept the abuser's defence in response to the crimes. There are other ways for the survivor to come to terms with their trauma.",
"r/raisedbynarcissists always has a couple prime examples for this. Those parents you speak of are those incapable of looking inside and seeing their own errors, not just in how they treat their children, but in most, if not all, other relations as well. Sometimes, it's how they deal with their own trauma as well. \"I was raised this way and turned out fine so I will raise my children the same way.\" They don't want to acknowledge the many, deep-rooted mental problems they developed due to the way they were raised. It's certainly a generational change, as having problems and needing therapy is less stigmatized these days. In fact, it is seen as irresponsible these days \\*not\\* to treat certain issues that were \"normal parenting\" just a few short decades ago, like hitting your children due to anger issues. Either way, these parents have issues that should be treated in therapy, but see nothing wrong with their own ways because they've never known anything else growing up and refuse to change later in life."
],
"score": [
27,
18,
9,
7,
7,
3
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"text_urls": [
[],
[],
[],
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}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itv2fw
|
Can someone please explain qualified/unqualified audit opinions and modified/unmodified audit reports?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5hf7cc",
"g5hzbre"
],
"text": [
"And unmodified opinion is when a company's financial statements presents a true and fair view. A modified opinion is the opinion and auditor gives when there are misstatements present in the books. The three main modified audit opinions are: Qualified opinion, adverse opinion and disclaimer of opinion. Qualified opinion is when there are material misstatements present but don't affect the financial statements as a whole ( as in not pervasive). Adverse opinion means that the misstatements are pervasive, and is serious enough to distort the company's financial figures. Disclaimer of opinion is the opinion the auditor gives when they lack necessary information to properly audit the financial statements.",
"To add to swed’s wonderful answer, the key point here is that the objective of auditors is to determine whether the data feeding into the financial statements can be TRUSTED. They are NOT making any conclusions on the numbers themselves. If you keep that in mind, the terminology mentioned in his answer might make more sense."
],
"score": [
15,
3
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
|
itv4es
|
How does gut bacteria affect mood?
|
ELI5 what is physically happening with stomach bacteria to affect mood. Ive heard of the gut/brain connection and I understand how the brain can affect digestion through stress. The fight or flight response makes sense to me, but how does it work that the digestive system can influence moods or even effect depression or anxiety symptoms? How is an interaction between those bacteria and the brain possible? Is there a hormonal byproduct of the bacteria that causes this connection? Any clarification or links to some places to read up on this would be amazing. Thanks!
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5h0dya"
],
"text": [
"OP, there is a pretty cool article [here]( URL_1 ), which cites many others that may help your understanding. From the section \"Signaling mechanisms from the gut microbiota to the brain,\" the ELI5 answer to your question is that bacteria can secrete (\"neuroactive\") molecules that are able to activate signals to your brain from nerves farther out in your body, changing activity in various parts of your brain. This includes not just hormones, as you guessed, but multiple, different molecules! A [figure]( URL_0 ) in the article has a neat summary, albeit with some non-ELI5 words in it. Summary of this article: \"The past decade has seen a paradigm shift in our understanding of the brain-gut axis. The exponential growth of evidence detailing the bidirectional interactions between the gut microbiome and the brain supports a comprehensive model that integrates the central nervous, gastrointestinal, and immune systems with this newly discovered organ. Data from preclinical and clinical studies have shown remarkable potential for novel treatment targets not only in functional gastrointestinal disorders but in a wide range of psychiatric and neurologic disorders, including Parkinson's disease, autism spectrum disorders, anxiety, and depression, among many others.\" Please excuse if over-simplified; I'm doing this from my cell phone and need to go to make it to a meeting on time! Edits: bc I hit \"post\" too soon; oops!"
],
"score": [
7
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=6047317_gr2.jpg",
"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6047317/"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itv78c
|
How is possible that you feel really sick at work/at school but you feel suddenly much better when you are on the way home? Is this some kind of placebo effect that thinking about home make you feeling automatically better?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"Your brain can interpret stress as a feeling of sickness or illness. Once the thing causing you stress is no longer possible, you feel better.",
"Anxiety and stress. Your brain will either interpret it as an illness (must be sick, since there's no obvious predator around to cause the stress) or subconsciously invent reasons to get out of the situation.",
"That's depression and anxiety working it's magic. I get the same feeling when I cancel plans. It's almost a like a dopamine rush. So much relief. Anecdotal? Yes, but true in my case.",
"Like others said, stress can effect you physically in multiple ways. I worked at an extremely toxic job for 5 months. The night I quit, I could literally feel the stress roll off my shoulders and I was driving home.",
"The smell of the cleaning products used in schools/some workplaces used to make me feel sick. Could also be the 'fresh air' you get when you leave the building to go home makes you feel better.",
"In addition to stress, fluorescent lighting can cause headaches and nausea for some people. If your school has that type of lighting, that may be contributing.",
"It happens to me with so many things. At a party? Extremely tired. Back home? Wide awake. Also need to pee intensifying as you come back home."
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|
itvu77
|
When we "hear" our thoughts in our mind, what's actually happening? Why does it feel like it mimics sound?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"Well when you hear sounds the sound experience is being generated in the brain. So... When you're thinking thoughts aloud it's activating both memory and auditory processing neurons.",
"I believe it's because we are used to describe things using words, often in the form of spoken words, sound. The brain is practically talking to itself when thinking so it is natural to use the \"talking processor\" part of the brain to make sense of what the brain is thinking. Maybe that's why we can't recall the memory when we wasn't able to talk properly because to our 'talking brain', the data in that memory is just gibberish."
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[
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|
itvwgo
|
What is horsepower?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"text": [
"It's believed One of the first steam engine companies came up with the term to sell their engines by telling the buyer how many horses it could replace. 1 Hp was the average power output of a horse over one hour of work."
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3
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[
"url"
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|
itwkk9
|
why we don't sleep from 8 pm to 4 am
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"Artificial lighting. Before the advent of electric lighting, and gas before them, people rose with the sun and, since there wasn't much point staying up past dark when they couldn't see anything, went to bed not long after sunset. It's only been in the past couple hundred years that we've started staying up later, and that's almost entirely due to the ability to first see what we were doing and, more recently, entertain ourselves with TVs, radios, computers, phones, etc."
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8
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[
"url"
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|
itwtu3
|
How does TMS ( transcranial magnetic stimulation) work?
|
I have been reading about TMS for a while but I just can't understand how the whole thing works so I guess this is the place to ask.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"I’ll preface this statement by stating that the first few lines of Wikipedia probably contain more accurate information than this post will but here you go anyway... I have rather pronounced bipolar 2, anxiety and severe depression that I take several medications for. The most effective is Seroquel although it has the most side effects ie. massive weight gain, drowsiness, mental fogginess, etc. My girlfriend showed me an article on TMS a few days ago and I discussed it with my mental health specialist yesterday. According to her the psych meds I take stimulate neurons in the brain that are not naturally firing due to my diagnosis. TMS uses magnetic waves in order to stimulate these same neurons without chemicals and their accompanying side effects. This is done much the same way as an MRI is performed. She also told me not to expect insurance to pay for the treatment so theres that. I’d love to get off of some or all my medication so to all the wonderful people of reddit who are all smarter than I, please weigh in. Thanks all!"
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4
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|
[
"url"
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[
"url"
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itx3sk
|
Why does an aux cable connected to a speaker/amp buzz when a finger touches it?
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"g5h941b"
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"text": [
"The buzz is the sound of the radio waves created by the electricity all around you. When you touch the cable, you become a big antenna and gather some of those radio waves and pass them into the input."
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"score": [
100
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[
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[
"url"
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|
itx3wc
|
Why were humans able to globally standardize units of time but still struggle to standardize other units of measure?
|
Other
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"There is no struggle, the world has standardized on the international system of units, commonly called the metric system. Even in the US, where feet and miles are still common, those units are defined, legally, in terms of their metric counterparts. The adoption of the metric system by US consumers has been slowed by the stupendous cost of such a change, and the limited value to most users. It's like moving to one language, or one electrical outlet, the sunk cost of the installed base is huge.",
"What struggle? Most of the world operates under the metric system, and while large swaths of the world use imperial units, they tend to use metric units in many (most?) scientific, academic and commercial applications. In other words, for most of the world, most of the time when it matters, we use standardized units of measurement in almost all things. Not too many people measure in hogsheads per league or fathoms per fortnight anymore... Of course, there are some (many?) in the USA who decry metric units as some sort of nefarious plot to impose a one-world government, but it's best to just ignore them until they become relegated to the trash bin of history (IMHO).",
"Ok, well we have been disagreeing on time untill recently too. The Julian Calendar was replaced by the Gregorian Calendar, changing the formula for calculating leap years. The beginning of the legal new year was moved from March 25 to January 1. Finally, 11 days were dropped from the month of September 1752. But to answer your other question - These are pretty much globally agreed upon units. * Length - **meter** (m) * Time - second (s) * **Amount of substance** \\- **mole** (**mole**) * **Electric current** \\- **ampere (A**) * Temperature - **kelvin** (K) * **Luminous intensity** \\- **candela (cd**) * Mass - **kilogram** (kg) But with regards to your seconds have been used for 2000 years. This is slightly wrong.... they did exist as a unit since like 3500BC ... but werent measurable and often were replaced with a pendulum swing or a hearbeat to keep count. In fact.... im pretty sure Galileo (who was born in the 16th Century), invented the pendulum so he didnt have to keep using his heartbeat to count. This could help keep things accurate to the minute level, and it would be nearly another century before we started measuring seconds using a pendulum clock. So the second did already exist before this, but we couldnt measure it until more recently. As for the other SI units - [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) That is a link to a story which sort of explains why we still \"struggle\" with standardising units.... and how NASA were being stubborn with it, until they lost a probe on the way to mars because no one checked to see what units were being used by different agencies involved. And it also goes into a small amount of detail into why the different standards came about. Hope this helps!",
"Depends on what time frame you go by. If you're talking about hours, that's also been relatively standardized. Noon used to be, generally, when the sun was at its peak. So noon in denmark was a bit longer during summer than noon in italy. And subsequently shorter in winter. (to my understanding that's why it's referred to as high noon) I think the standard timezone was set in the 1800s in Greenwich and surprise, where the english colonization occured, the people would be forced to adopt that time frame or any trade partners with the english for easier business transactions. If you are talking about years, that's still not standardized as different countries and cultures have different years (jewish, taiwan, china(?) and etc all have a different year). I believe we have rome and more importantly caesar for the standardization of months. And that might help you understand why months were so quickly adopted because wherever rome concurred or traded, those countries would either have to or adopted this calendar system because the romans did it. Not an expert, just my understanding so take everything with a grain of salt. But definitely some starting points for you to look into",
"Setting aside that most of the world has standardized other units of measure, as others have pointed out, the way we measure the passing of time has been essentially the same in all cultures for at least a couple millennia: we mark the passing of seasons and cycles of the moon. These are observational from most everywhere on the planet. We eventually mostly settled on seconds, minutes and hours as we know them today, but it took centuries to do so. Even as recent as the early 19th century the French under Napoleon were pushing the adoption of a decimal clock: 10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, 100 seconds per minute. In truth we haven't entirely standardized everything: we don't all follow the same calendars. Most of the world follow the Gregorian calendar, but some countries don't. Iran and Afghanistan follow their own calendar, Ethiopians have their own, India nominally uses a different calendar, and many Islamic countries predominantly use the Islamic calendar.",
"A good question... why didn’t people divide the day up, for example, into base-ten hours? We have 10 fingers after all. There’s probably an answer to this if someone knows the first principles of why minute/second is all base-60",
"We don't struggle with units of measure. The metric system is 400 years old and it is based on mass, not weight (because weight changes with height so things at low elevation weigh a little more than at high elevation.). Only the United States refuses to use the metric system for its citizens. It has caused problems, especially on work of an international nature. The truth is most manufacturing in the US is using metric weights and volumes but their packaging reports in imperial units for American consumption. In the EU and Asia, it's all metric.",
"It's simple really. The first guys that were interested in measuring time were astronomers. The Babylonians did that super early, and since they were the guys who were the best at math their system was the dominant from western Europe to India. No one else gave a shit about creating a standardized and exact measurement of time until Europe started oceanic sailing (For everyone else things like \"morning\", \"noon\", \"afternoon\", \"evening\" and \"midnight\" worked perfectly fine). Because then it was important for figuring out longitude (East-West travel) and for figuring out how far you were going in any given direction on a featureless ocean. By that time the renaissance had passed and people were aware of ye ol' babylonians and their math (and navigators were pretty keen on astronomy anyway) so people were \"fuck it, lets use their system\". Our obsession with the exact measurement of time as a general part of society is pretty damn new (and for the longer time periods like \"week\", \"month\" and \"seasons\" societies have developed different systems, although the European system is pretty cohesive since the pope said so. Although for \\*reasons\\* implementing the latest and greatest pope-sponsored system has been a pretty slow process. Russia didn't implement the gregorian calender until the Soviet revolution). Now other things like weight, distance etc has always been a lot more important to a lot more people (traders, builders, bakers, farmers etc etc) so naturally a bunch of societies that were at least somewhat isolated from each other used different systems."
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itxpaw
|
Why do we have 2 nostrils when they both lead to the same lungs?
|
Couldn’t we just have one large nostril? It’d probably not get stuffy as much. And maybe it be less of a hassle to blow your nose?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"If that one big nostril gets plugged, you're pretty screwed - plus, easier for foreign objects to get up there. With two nostrils, if one gets plugged you still have one to spare, and with the smaller holes and fine hairs, it's easier to protect from things getting up in there",
"It actually has use for stereo smelling. One of your nostrils is currently moving less air than the other one. This is because some particles require more air to be smelled, and some require longer exposure to be smelled. Both of these requirements can be made when you have two nostrils, one pulling in more air, and the other pulling less. Which nostril doing which task changes throughout the day, but it's always one or the other."
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itxyq3
|
How do calculators solve complex problems like matrices graphing etc. do programers have to write out every solution or are there shortcuts?
|
Mathematics
|
explainlikeimfive
|
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"Ingredient 1: Computers are machines that perform simple operations VERY fast. Ingredient 2: Most complex math can be decomposed into (or approximated by) simpler math. For example, imagine that you know how to add 2 numbers. Well, with that tool, you can also multiply numbers (by performing several additions) and even calculate exponentiation (by performing several multiplications, which we already mentioned you can do with addition). By combining the two ingredients (a set of simple operations and knowledge on how to decompose complex math into simpler math), you get a machine that can perform complex math.",
"Are you referring to a complex math program like Matlab? The hard part of most of these is actually parsing out the bits you type in, either for a 4x4 matrix, a summation or just a basic linear formula. There is almost always an algorithm to do this, a set way to do it that works for every problem. If you give Google y = sin(x\\^2) - cos(2x) and ask it to graph, it works out what the variables are, turns that into a formula internally and graphs it using the exact formula you typed. If you try entering y = sin(x\\^2) - cos(x\\*y), Google doesn't interpret that as a formula since it gets way more complicated and Google chose not to bother.",
"Like everyone else said. Computers do math, really fast. That's actually *all* they do. The programming / firmware inside your calculator interprets the user input, applies the formula / method to solve the problem, and then does it. Much like you would show a person 'how to do algebra', a programmer 'shows' the calculator how. It's not like they have every possible answer preprogrammed in, no; that would be insane. And impossible. As others said, there are actually lots of shortcuts and specific tactics for increasing efficiency, but it doesn't change the fundamental idea.",
"Many mathematical problems have general solutions. The calculator has a library of those solutions, some place where instructions to solve the particular collection of problems it knows how to answer. The library of solutions was created at some time by a programmer or engineer. Some combination of button presses, keystrokes will activate the appropriate solution and cause the calculator to insert the values you have entered where it needs them. For instance, the calculator has a button labeled [C° - > F°]. You enter 15 and press the button. The calculator has the rule {1.8*[entryValue]+32} stored. That set of instructions are activated when you press the [C°- > F°] button and the answer 59 is displayed. When you enter a list of values that represents a matrix and press the [Determinant] button, the set of instructions for solving the determinant of a matrix is activated and applied to your list of values. When you press the [Graph] button the calculator creates a list of values then inserts those values into the function you have entered. For instance, if you enter X^2 as your function and press the [Graph] button the calculator might take a list of values {1,2,3,..}, insert each of them in place of the X in your function and return a list of solutions {1,4,9,..}. Another set of instructions will turn On or turn Off pixels (points) on the display corresponded to the list of solutions. < edit > to correct 1.4 to 1.8",
"You write a general solution and then use those solutions to solve harder ones. Your basic arithmetic is in the chip itself. So Matrix math is just looping over each cell and doing your basic arithmetic. Even the most simple chips these days can run millions of operations per second.",
"These little computers use what’s called “numerical analysis” to solve most problems. Basically, some nerdy programmer put some “algorithms” into the computer which are series of simple steps for the computer to follow to solve certain types of problems. Once it recognizes the kind of problem it will put it into an algorithm it knows can solve it. The numerical analysis algorithms will “guess” the answer to the problem, plug that guess back into the problem, and check if its guess was correct over and over until it has a really good guess. If it wants to find the square root of two (sqrt(2) = x) it might use a “guess-check” algorithm something like this Guess: sqrt(2) = 1.5 Check : 1.5* 1.5 = 2.25 (too big! Try again) Guess: sqrt(2) = 1.25 Check: 1.25*1.25 = 1.5625 (too small! Try again) Now it knows the answer is between 1.5 and 1.25, so let’s try something right in between, AKA the average Guess: sqrt(2) = (1.5+1.25)/2 = 1.375 Check: 1.375*1.375 = 1.89 (too small! Try again) Okay, so it has to be between 1.375 and 1.5, take the average again which is 1.4375 Guess: sqrt(2) = 1.4375 Check: 1.4375*1.4375 = 2.066 (so close! Let’s try this again...) It will keep doing this until it “converges” to one number, in other words, until two guesses in a row are basically the exact same. Then it knows it found the answer, or close enough anyways. This is just of many different “numerical methods” and is probably one of the most simple. More complicated methods will basically try to get a more precise answer with less guesses for more different types of problems. The thing about sqrt(2) is that it doesn’t have an exact answer because it’s an “irrational number.” In other words, the computer could run this algorithm until the end of time and not converge to one answer, so we settle for “good enough.” The number literally goes on forever like pi. People actually solved problems like that by hand for a long time. We found a Babylonian clay tablet where someone used numerical analysis to solve sqrt(2) = x as early as 1800BC: URL_0",
"Computers perform very simple arithmetic extremely fast. This allows them to solve harder problems numerically by using iterative approximation algorithms. Taylor series are a good example of this idea (though not necessarily the exact algo a calculator may be using). For example, in my work I needed to invert a large matrix without access to a mathematical package. So we implemented [a simple approximation from scratch. ]( URL_0 ) Our code relied purely on basic arithmetic like addition and multiplication to accomplish the more complicated operation of matrix inversion.",
"> write out every solution or are there shortcuts? The shortcuts are generally referred to as \"math\".",
"I used to use an expensive Texas Instruments calculator to invert matrices in a galaxy far, far away. We could go up to 9x9, which took about fifteen minutes. Computers are just faster at doing these endless strings of simple calculations today.",
"Programmers write algorithms, which are predefined steps that result in solutions to problems. Basically ready equations written in programming language, you pass the numbers you want and get the result. It is true for anything really - you can't program something when you don't know how it works. That's why programming is hard - you don't only have to be tech savvy, you also have to get a deep understanding of business domain you are working on, like all crazy complicated insurance rules for insurance software etc.",
"In some cases tabular data is used. In the days before computing machines, people labored for years preparing tables so that we didn't have to do the same set of complex calculations over and over.",
"Your question is truly worthy of \"ELI5\". What you're asking is how programming works, in the end. This is by finding said shortcut. Most things that appear very complex are actually quite easy, once you understand them. This is the essence of mathematics, and of programming. Just as you can \"divide in writing\", just about any problem that has ever been posed can be solved \"mechanically\" - by a computer. As it turns out, there basically aren't shortcuts. Today's programs are where they are supposed to be, and they work as they are supposed to work. If there'd be a better program, everybody would be adopting it. It's safe to assume that IT is nearly optimal. I could state what it would take to solve a linear equation system (\"matrices\") or how to *plot* a graph, or to render a triangle (\"graphing\"?!), but that explanation would be rather mundane and interest appears to be strictly confined to small numbers of numberphiles. Think of it as of exercises in bookkeeping with the help of enraged customers. It's a bit like knowing many digits of the number pi: it'd help you in some way, but in what way that would be is not easy to explain. That being said, there are (many) problems computers can't solve well at all. For one, there is \"artificial intelligence\", which we are now understanding a little better. And then there are some problems that simply can't be solved by a computer. For example, a computer can never check if \"it crashed\". This is the reason for some operating systems to show you a prompt along the lines of \"Application X appears to have crashed, do you want to kill it or wait some more?\". This appears to be shallow, but it is actually a deep insight about language and the nature of things. (For those who are curious: this is a consequence of [Gödel's incompleteness theorems]( URL_0 )) But for said mundane tasks, as bookkeeping or drawing some pictures pixel by pixel on a screen, computers are an invaluable tool.",
"Functions. For example, taking inverses of large Matrices is computationally expensive. LU factorization, which can be programmed easily and is less computationally expensive, can be done. If you are using MATLAB and can figure out an algorithm that is faster than what they have at math works, you can submit it to them and they may use yours instead.",
"FYI: every calculator comes with two internal scientist tiny enough to live inside it and help you solve the math problems.",
"There are mechanized processes that developers and creators of calculators can easily replicate As to Integrals and other algebraic methods, even though sometimes they cannot mechanize the algebra itself, we use something named *numerical methods*, which is a fancy name for clever approximation",
"There's actually simple algorithms from numerical analysis that can solve a LOT of math problems. The thing is that you need to run these approximation algorithm a lot of times to get a good result. Luckily, processors (even ARM) can do that very quickly.",
"There are short cuts. For example, when finding the inverse of a matrix, if you are doing this by hand you will use the classic method you learn in school, which is very computation intensive, but simple to solve, which is ideal for humans working stuff out by hand. If you are coding it you will use a completely different method called a QR decomposition, which when solving by hand seems like a mess, but it uses operations that make a lot of sense to computers, and can be resolved very fast.",
"All math is built out of simpler math. `4 * 5` is adding `5 + 5 + 5 + 5` - we just turned multiplication into a simpler operation - addition. Multiplication simply, uh... \"sums up\" that process. In this way you can build ever more complex tools and operations. You trade simplicity for tediousness. But calculators don't get bored and are happy to do long, boring operations that produce the same result as shorter, but more complex operations. This goes somewhat beyond ELI5, but there is a concept known as the \"[Foundation of mathematics]( URL_0 )\" which explores the idea of where math comes from and what lies at the bottom of the pyramid, so to speak.",
"A little high level but most programming languages have a math library which includes all the functions a calculator will do. The programmer will just program the buttons to call the right function and then they execute. One of the best ways to learn about circuitry is to build your own calculator. So what do I mean by a 'math library'? It means the developer doesn't have to tell the compiler *how* to do 5+5 (which is to break both values into binary, send it through an adder circuit, take the result in binary and convert it to decimal, print it to the screen) you can simply code it using pretty standard language. So, if I am coding in C++ and I am using the CMATH library, here are all the functions it supports. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) If you are doing different kind of maths, you may need different libraries. There is a cottage industry of developers whose only job is to develop reliable libraries for different tasks. That way developers themselves don't have to remember how to do whatever math, they just type it into the computer. In fact, in looking at my FX-991EX manual, it tells me that it solves quadratics using Newton's method."
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|
itytec
|
How do painkillers.. Actually work?
|
Biology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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"This really depends on the type of painkiller to which you a referring. narcotic painkillers i.e opiates/opioids work by biding receptors which are responsible for the transmission of pain signaling in your nervous system. They work almost like a cover for a light switch. When they are present it is much more difficult for your body to transmit the pain signal to your brain since the neurons cant activate the switch on the connecting neuron thereby limiting the propagation of the pain signaling. NSAIDS or Non Steroidal Anti inflammatorys (ibuprofen, naproxen etc) work by inhibiting the production of an enzyme which is responsible for producing inflammatory responses (cox-2) This type of \"painkiller\" \"works\" by reducing inflammation thereby reducing pain since inflammation is 1 source of physical pain. There are others as well such as ketamine and other dissociatives, however due to their powerful psychological effects they are rarely using in humans",
"There are a few different types of painkillers, but one of the most common groups, which includes ibuprofen, is believed to work primarily by temporarily stopping the activity of a certain type of enzyme. This enzyme produces molecules that act as signals for inflammation. By stopping it, it halts or slows the inflammation process which can sometimes be an overreaction by the body that causes pain and swelling."
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[
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itzgfv
|
What are the differences between the new AMD processors and the more established Intel processors, and does one truly offer a real benefit over the other?
|
I've been hearing about the new AMD Ryzen processors for a little while, however I'm not tech-savvy enough to understand whether these offer a true benefit over the more established Intel processors.
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
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],
"text": [
"AMD makes their own chips from scratch which are compatible with Intel's x86 chips. (hell, AMD invented the 64 bit x86 instruction set). They don't fit into motherboards for Intel chips, but that's expected and okay. They still run Windows, Chrome, and Steam video games so to most users it doesn't really matter what they have inside their computer case. For a few years before the Ryzen launch (in 2017) Intel was the undisputed king of performance with AMD being more of a low cost, low performance alternative. Then along came Ryzen and it changed the market. The CPUs weren't quite as good as Intel chips when measured by \"calculations done on 1 core at a certain speed\", which is a big deal especially for video games, and Intel still tended to have more GHz on their best chips. However in every other way that mattered AMD was kicking Intel's butt. Work done for power consumed, number of CPU cores, price for performance, number of PCI-E lanes, AMD had a significant and rather unexpected advantage. If you can make use of a lot of cores Ryzen was a no-brainer for your next PC. Fast forward 2 years and AMD is still making improvements. Even in the server market AMD has more cores for cheaper. With AMD you can get a CPU with 64 cores for around ~7,000 USD. Intel's 28 core CPU costs over 10,000 USD and some benchmarks has 1 AMD chip beating 2 Intel chips. 5 years ago AMD wasn't an option for someone who wanted a kick-ass computer. Today they are a very serious competitor to Intel.",
"There are a lot of differences between the processors, most of them very subtle at first glance. This means that you have to look at benchmarks for the specific workload that you want to use them for to be able to compare them properly. One of the highly featured difference is the manufacturing technique. Intel have been struggling with developing manufacturing procedures with under 10nm precision while AMD have outsourced the manufacturing to TSMC who are manufacturing the chips with 7nm precision. This does give AMD processors a power and heating advantage. However there are other design features that might negate this advantage. Perhaps the biggest benefit of buying AMD processors is that they are pushing Intel on performance and price giving us consumers a better deal. If Intel gets a monopoly there is nothing stopping them from cutting down their design department and increase their profit margin as we would still be forced to buy their processors."
],
"score": [
7,
5
],
"text_urls": [
[],
[]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
itziwt
|
How does YouTube algorithm works??
|
Technology
|
explainlikeimfive
|
{
"a_id": [
"g5hpzrv"
],
"text": [
"It looks at what you like and watch, then shows you more videos and channels that you like and watch. Stuff you're subscribed or likely to subscribe to gets promoted first. They can scan the videos for stuff like Cats, Dogs, Funny, Serious, Runtime, \"For Adults/Kids\", or whatever else you can think of to compare one video vs the other vs your watch history. On top of that, folks can pay money to get their videos at the top of the algorithm. Both to youtube directly and to other companies that spoof views to fiddle with a particular video's algorithm directly. [Here's a video]( URL_0 ) that can help you give some insight on how to game the system. As for something more specific, that's all a very closely held trade secret that YouTube and almost every other internet company will never disclose, because it's the core of their business."
],
"score": [
4
],
"text_urls": [
[
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfpjlxgJMMc"
]
]
}
|
[
"url"
] |
[
"url"
] |
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