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5uxh5n | If women are being paid less than men for what is TRULY the same work, then why aren't companies only hiring women? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a myth and there is no serious economist on the planet that will perpetuate the tired factoid narrative that women get paid less than a man for the same job - period. And, the simple tidbit of logic you just dropped seems completely lost on the masses who continue to repeat this false narrative. *If* we can assume that all businesses have one central goal, and that goal is to benefit their bottom line (profits). And *if* they could legally get away with paying women 75 cents to a man's dollar (as we are being told women are getting paid). And *IF* those women could get paid that amount while working the same hours as a man and doing the same exact jobs as men while producing the same output as men....then the obvious question is **why would businesses *ever* hire men....ever?** They would be useless and expensive when women can do the same jobs and get the same results. Obviously this is not what is happening. If women are getting paid less than men, it is because... * They are not working the same amount of hours * They are not producing the same amount of output * They are not taking the same risks * They are not working in the same specialized fields (in-demand highly-specialized fields that are harder to fill and demand a higher pay grade). And this is exactly the reason women get paid LESS overall than a man does. Because, if women are in the same field as a man and have the same education, they still end up working less hours than a man...which contributes to getting paid less. Or, as statistics show, the majority of women in the world (the more developed the country, the more true this is by the way - women in less developed countries tend to strive for more technical degrees) opt to obtain degrees in low-paying, less technical fields such as early childhood education or nursing. And, women are significantly less likely to work in highly dangerous jobs that involve high risk of personal injury (either because they are physically incapable or simply not interested...the very fact that something like 90% of all work-place deaths are men is testimony to this...I for one have literally never seen a woman working construction for example). And, as many studies show, there are only about 50% of college-educated women still working after the age of 40 while something like over 90% of college-educated men are still working after 40. So in many instances women just opt out of the work force completely, sometimes for years or decades. So no...women do not get paid less than men for doing the same work. They get paid less than men because they DON'T do the same work or produce the same output.",
"This is a growing issue in Iran, funnily enough. University-educated women there find it considerably easier to get work than men because they can legally be paid less. In western countries the wage gap is widely misunderstood (which is not the same as it being a myth, as is often claimed). The question is not \"why do women get paid less for the same work as men\"- the evidence for which is debateable- but \"why do the jobs women gravitate towards pay less\".",
"The long and short of it is, the wage gap is crap. Otherwise they'd be doing exactly what you're saying. Men and women make different choices and when you control for those the wage gap disappears. Anyone who pushes this lie are doing a disservice to women because it distracts from real problems that exist.",
"Look, any serious economist knows that this wage gap argument is false. If you take the time to actually look at the statistics that have been out for years, it's all across the board. Men are more likely to ask for a raise, least likely to take time off work, and work in deadlier jobs. I lost my amazing boyfriend last week due to his line of work, and we both knew why he was doing it. Money, plus he loved climbing trees. It all comes down to choices. And I'm sorry, but I have only met a few women who actually weld or have went to training schools. Women are more prone to be nurses, vets, or stay at home moms. Which aren't bad things.",
"The argument is that an unconscious bias pervades business. Even though women can be hired less expensively than men, people feel that women cannot do as good a job as men. They might not even know they are acting out a bias. I'm just the messenger. Don't hate on me. ;)"
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5uxhno | why the moon is visible during the day sometimes | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the orbit of the Moon around the Earth (which determines when we can see the Moon) has nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth around its axis (which determines when it's day and night). Earth rotates around its axis once every 24 hours, while the Moon revolves around the Earth at a much slower rate - once every 29.5 days. So sometimes the moon is on the side of Earth's that's away from the Sun (so it is visible at night), while at other times it's on the side of Earth that's closer to the Sun (so it is visible during the day)."
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5uz168 | Why did fully wireless earphones/earbuds take so long to reach the market, when those quirky bluetooth headsets have been around for so long? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A big part of the problem was and still is that the buds need to receive a stereo signal at exactly the same time. The phone being in your pocket on one side of your body is enough to throw that off. URL_0",
"For a long time, bluetooth audio streaming was not good enough. It would use massive amounts of power consumption in relativity to the range of operation - and would be interfered by lots of things. It wasn't until bluetooth 3 and 4 that it really got better, and added functionality for multiple device connection (ie, connecting your phone via bluetooth to the headset and at the same time your computer or another phone, or even a second pair of headphones) The audio quality still isn't all there, in my opinion. At a rate of 25MB/s, one would think that it would be able to stream at lossless audio quality - but almost every bluetooth audio device i've seen implements some form of audio dithering (reducing the bitrate to make it smaller and easier on the network) before sending it out via bluetooth wireless protocol. *Edit - spelling/grammar*",
"The wireless package has been around for quite a while already. The problem was battery life and size. Newer technology allows for long enough battery life to last a day of listening. I had wireless ones 5 or 6 years ago and they only last 4hrs.",
"Bluetooth is not \"broadcast\" where the signal is available for anything listening. It is a two-way \"conversation\" which is why you need to \"pair\" your phone/source to your listening device. In short, two Bluetooth devices doing the same thing with the same source at the same time involves at least moderate difficulties beyond making two clones of the same device. As others have mentioned this was not actually possible until later revisions."
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5uz2ko | Why is water transparent, but snow and ice appear to be white? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For the same reason that the individually transparent hairs of a polar bear look white in the aggregate. You're seeing the result of scattering and absorption of incident light, and the end result for snow is white. The denser the ice however, the more you'll see a deep blue emerge, not unlike the case with liquid water. It's just another case of why the sky is blue, if you know what I mean. See; Rayleigh Scattering. The reason why you get white is that the scattering isn't preferential (until the ice becomes sufficiently dense)."
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5uzg6j | Are the different shampoos and soap actually different or is it all just a marketing trick? | if they aren't then is there is any ultimate product that includes everything? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I assume it's the same for soap, but as a hairdresser I can say that yeah, shampoos and conditioners for different things actually are different, especially if it's a professional product -cheaper products may contain lower quality ingredients and are often much harsher but should still do the job of cleaning your hair. To keep it simple a colour protecting shampoo will be sulfate free, a shampoo for fine hair may be silicone free while one for coarser hair may not be, shampoo for curly hair may be designed so that it won't lather as much, and one for damaged hair will contain more protein than a shampoo that isn't for damaged hair. Designing a \"one size fits all\" product is very difficult since ingredients will contradict each other and using something good for one hair type could be terrible for another. For example, for damaged hair to really get the benefits of a shampoo there would have to be extra protein, and extra protein isn't good for healthy hair and can actually make it brittle since it's too much.",
"I recently learned on Reddit that tide is more expensive because the enzymes and ingredients they use are more expensive then most other laundry soap. My son gets bloody noses frequently and tide gets his sheets clean every time. We have tried others and would love to save money on a cheaper detergent, but whatever they use in tide is unique and worth the price.",
"I worked for an industrial soap making company, and yes, each of our soaps were designed to lift a specific range of grimes from specific surfaces. There are surfactants which help wet a surface so the soap molecules can cosy up to the grime, chelates which help the molecules disperse the grime into solution, the soap molecules which are double ended. One end sticks to a bit of some kind of dirt, the other end sticks to water. Flush and rip dat dirt outta there. But there are many other things that affect the performance of a detergent like moderating bits, protectors and conditioners for the clean surface, perfumes and colors. Heat improves activity in most chemistry so a temperature range for best results is according to the formulation. Complex stuff. Your mileage may vary.",
"Correct me if I'm wrong here: I was always taught shampoos/soaps that boasted about containing vitamins were bullshit because your skin/hair can't absorb them and it's all a marketing ploy. I've tried googling it, but of course all that pops up are beauty blogs talking about vitamin enriched products.",
"I bought shampoo at the dollar store and it wouldn't bubble or really spread through my hair.",
"I think soaps all use the same detergents, just varying amounts of it. The cheap soaps have mostly fragrance & sulfates, while better soaps contain less sulfates (or none at all, like lye soaps) and more moisturizers. I buy most of my soaps locally, as they are cheap and I have very sensitive skin. You can make your own soap from a kit at Michael's and make your own scent. Better quality soaps are completely worth it and they aren't ridiculously more expensive for a better soap. Shampoo is a completely different story and doing your research is tedious. Cheap brands are mostly water & bubbles.",
"Interesting, I just went to a soap making class yesterday. We made cold pressed soap using coconut oil, palm oil, olive oil, lye - this makes the soap, but it needs time to turn into soap. You add whatever color and fragrance to it that you want. My teacher said that Dove and Irish Spring aren't real soaps, but instead fragrance bars. Something about their ingredients. I'm not too sure about the specifics of it, but it was something she was very adamant about. To make cold pressed soap you can use a lot of different things. The oils I mentioned above or fats (like chicken fat) or even butters (like coco butters). There's a whole online recipe guide that helps you pick ingredients for the type of soap you want. Creamy, more lather, for dry skin, etc. So yes there appears to be many differences."
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5uzp4h | Why does adding salt to water make it boil faster? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Adding salt won't make it boil faster. If you have two pots with the same amount of water, and add salt to one, it will heat more slowly because you're heating up the same amount of water, but also heating the salt in the second pot. However, if you were to take one pot with 1Kg of water, and one pot of 20% salt solution totaling 1Kg, the salt water pot will boil faster. That's because it takes more energy to heat up water than it does salt. And the salt water pot has less water than the plain water pot.",
"Adding salt to water actually increases the boiling point. About 2 degrees Celsius on the usual. However, salt water will still reach its boiling point before non-salt water. This is because \"pure\" water takes a lot of energy to change temperature. Large heat capacity in other words. When you add salt the water is then no longer \"pure\" and thus has a lesser heat capacity. Now even though the boiling point is greater it takes less energy to raise the temperature."
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5v0639 | If all of the cells in your body are replace d every ten or so years, how do small blemishes like moles stick around? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your skin contains several different types of cells. The skin cells you're thinking of that regenerate and slough off every so often are called keratinocytes. The cells that make up moles/birthmarks are a different cell type called melanocytes. Melanocytes do not get replaced by keratinocytes. As far as cancerous moles go, the skin regeneration is the problem! UV light causes damage to cells by forming abnormal linkages in the DNA. Often this damage can be corrected, but the more UV exposure, the more damage that occurs. If it cannot be corrected, then it is possible that certain regions in the DNA are not read correctly during replication. Some mutations can cause this new cell to become immortal, and it will keep on replicating. This abnormal growth is cancer."
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5v07mf | What do words fascism and fascist mean? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Fascism has a few key ingredients. Here's my paraphrasing of some of them: 1. Nationalism 2. Dictatorship/Totalitarianism (it's explicitly anti-Democratic) 3. Economic nationalism, protectionism 4. Violence and oppression used against political opponents and perceived social or political threats (unpopular minorities, for example) 5. Traditional roles and scripts (in whatever culture it starts in; and it only really needs to be the perceived traditions, not actual ones). 6. Cultivating a national paranoia and vigilance against political opponents. Legit fascism and the fascism we use in modern language are a bit different: we use fascist as an insult these days. In general, we call anyone who has different ideas about how to use the national government to achieve some goal a fascist (because they're mustering the national government to \"force\" a certain policy position across the country). This isn't necessarily fascist. But it can be, depending on whether the other factors are present.",
"Are you asking what fascism is, or what the word itself means? I'll answer both questions for you. **What fascism is** Fascism is a specific populist political ideology which starts with the premise that war is not only inevitable, but actually desireable: it purges society of the weak and ultimately makes it stronger. A fascist regime rules the country on almost military lines, with a strict hierarchy and the believe that the entire population should be ready to form a fighting force, should the need arise. Government is run by the military and big business, not politicians, and everyone in the country is expected to do their bit. Fascism also strives to make the country self-sufficient, insisting on growing all its own food and manufacturing all its own goods instead of trading with other countries. Fascists also believe that democracy has failed, and the only way to run a state is through a one-party dictatorship. If you take all of that, and add to it violent anti-semitism and a doctrine of racial superiority, you get National Socialism, which is the ideology of Adolf Hitler. That's the basic definition of fascism. In a wider sense, though, people use \"fascist\" to describe any right-wing political ideology; occasionally, some people use the word as an insult to apply to any political movement they disagree with, in much the same way that some people on the other side of the political spectrum will use \"communist\" or \"socialist\" to describe any political movement *they* disagree with. **Where the word \"fascism\" comes from** Originally, it comes from the Latin word \"fasces\", which described [a bundle of wooden rods tied together, sometimes with an axe protruding from it]( URL_0 ). It's thought the bundle of rods represents strength through unity -- a single rod can easily be broken, but tied together they are virtually unbreakable -- while the axe-head represents the power of the Roman magistrate, who could order the death sentence. In 19th century Italy, political organisations called \"fascii\" were formed, which campaigned for some sort of revolution and used the fasces as a symbol of strength. They were scattered about Italy and didn't belong to any one particular part of the political spectrum, until Mussolini brought them all together and gave them direction. This became the Fascist Movement, which gave its name to the political ideology of fascism.",
"Imagine a society run like a large corporation with a single CEO and his private army. That is fascism."
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5v28kl | Can someone explain to me how time dilation works? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine that you and your friend are standing 10 feet away from each other, and you're throwing a football back and forth. That football is traveling 10 feet. Now imagine that you're both standing on the wing of an airplane flying through the air. You're still 10 feet apart, and you're throwing a football back and forth. From your point of view, the football is still traveling 10 feet with every throw. But from the point of view of the ground, the football is traveling 10 feet across, and also 10 feet to the side, in the direction that the plane is flying. 10 feet forward, and 10 feet to the left is a hypotenuse of 14 feet. So from your point of view, the football went 10 feet. From the point of view of someone on the ground, the ball went 14 feet. The faster the plane is moving, the larger the disparity. For you, it will always seem like 10 feet, but if you're going near the speed of light, including momentum to the side in the direction the plane is flying, the ball might be traveling *miles* from the point of view of the ground. The distance is relative, depending on where you're seeing it from. Time works the same way, though understanding why takes a lot more than an ELI5."
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5v2mfa | How do the "I'm not a robot" check boxes work | They are becoming more and more common and i'm happy but how come sometimes it'll have me select signs or extra junk but others nothing | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are looking for things like how quickly you click the box, if the mouse scrolls or clicks directly on the spot with no discernable movement, and other things that would identify you."
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5v2pbv | How exactly does a human die when they are exposed to the vacuum of space? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are a number of different things going on at once, any one of which can ultimately be fatal. The one that is likely to kill you first is the lack of oxygen. You can't hold your breath in space because, with no atmosphere to interact with, the air in your lungs is going to expand rapidly---and if you don't let it out, your lungs will swell and burst and you will die. When you do let it out, it means you will have 5 or 10 seconds before blacking out and dying of lack of oxygen just like on earth. At the same time, the fluid and gasses in your skin are doing the same thing. So the water is evaporating rapidly and turning your exterior into leather. This causes widespread---though not irreversible---damage and will lower your body temperature pretty rapidly. Over your whole body, the pain and heat loss might be enough to put you into shock and kill you. Even if it doesn't, within a few minutes the pressure changes start to impact the balance of gasses in your blood stream. Just as a diver is at risk if they surface too quickly, \"the bends\" starts to become a serious possibility as gas bubbles form in your blood stream and spread to your organs and brain. This, too, can be fatal. And, in the longer term, if you're close enough to the sun you'll eventually cook/roast, and if you're far from the sun you'll eventually (i've seen measures in hours) end up so cold that life can't be sustained. source -- spouse asked whether Chris Pratt's helmet-but-no-space-suit thing would work in real life. Looked at a bunch of websites.",
"Well first off you don't explode like you see on TV and movies. Your skin does stretch alot because of the expansion of gases in your body and the lack of pressure in the vacuum of space. Your blood would bubble and circulation would pretty much cease, you'd get horrible sunburn, and ultimately you'd probably just be rendered unconscious and then die after a few agonizing minutes. Oh, also, the water vapor in your lungs would freeze. Just overall a terrible way to die"
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5v2rhc | Why can't we throw human rubbish/waste to space? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It is extremely expensive to put things in space. Far, far more expensive than it would be to do almost anything else with the garbage. For instance, the goal of [space X is 1,000 dollars per pound]( URL_0 ). The U.S. alone produces about 200 million tons of solid waste a year. That's 400 billion pounds. So just getting the U.S.'s waste into space using the cheapest launch system available (assuming you could launch fast enough, that you have no catastrophic failures that spread garbage over half of a state, etc...) it would cost you 400 trillion dollars. The world's GDP is only 75 trillion."
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5v3xzk | When choosing the 'Restart' option on my computer, how does it know how to turn itself on, after being turned off? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Short answer: it knows you want to restart because up until you actually do the restart it can remember things, including whether you clicked \"shutdown\" or \"restart\". If you tell it to restart, it doesn't actually turn off power - it just wipes the CPU back to a \"clean\" state. Long answer: Your OS will shut down normally (flush writes to disk, park the drives, etc). However, while doing so it will also know whether it's going for a halt or a restart. Once it's finished shutting down, the processor will then send an ACPI command to the motherboard. Again, depending on the shut-down mode you've selected, this will either be a \"shutdown\" command or a \"restart\" command. In the case of a shutdown command, the CPU basically tells the motherboard to turn off the power supply. You wouldn't want your power supply running all the time and consuming power, so normally only a small part of the power supply is turned on while idling. When your motherboard wants power turned on it completes a circuit which tells the power supply to turn on power to the rest of the system. Normally this is when you push the power switch - but modern motherboards can start themselves on a timer, or from a USB event (clicking the mouse), or from a [network command from a remote computer]( URL_0 ). During shut-down, it simply breaks this circuit and the power supply turns off. If it wants to do a restart instead, the CPU executes an instruction which returns everything to the \"default\" state. This clears all the registers, the internal modes (by default every CPU boots up in [an ancient mode]( URL_2 ) that would let it boot very old operating systems), the cache, etc. It's just like the CPU had just had power applied to it. In theory there's no reason you couldn't actually have the system shut off and set a start timer for one second later (since the motherboard can start the system on a timer). It's just easier and faster to reset the CPU. One problematic area can be the other components in your system. The CPU may be wiped clean, but things like your graphics card's frame-buffers will not be. Some applications (particularly games) won't wipe their window buffer before they start - so while they're loading it may display a picture of the URL_1 page you were on before you did the restart. Memory, also, is pretty notorious for having the ability to hold data for much longer than its specs would imply (especially if you hit it with something ultra-cold like liquid nitrogen). On the software side of things - one interesting aspect of modern OSs is they never really \"shut down\". It used to be that when you shut your computer down all the operating system internal code (the kernel) would have to be re-initialized from scratch. This takes a really long time, several seconds even on a fast computer. So modern OSs (Windows 8 and up) will actually write the kernel's state to disk before they shut down. Then they will just load the kernel state from disk rather than set everything up from scratch. This is the \"Fast Boot\" mode, officially called Hybrid Boot because it's a hybrid of a shutdown and a hibernate.",
"The computer never fully turns off. So long as the power supply is connected to power, it'll deliver standby power to the motherboard. Once you tell it to restart, it'll shutdown the operating system and then send a reset signal to the motherboard which is, as I described, still powered on.",
"The parts of the motherboard which control these things (power control, etc) are aware of whether they are performing a \"hot\" or a \" cold\" start. Cold starts are coming up from no power to the machine, when you physically give the start signal to a powered off machine, and the machine completely initializes itself from nothing. When you perform a soft reset, or a hot reset, you aren't reinitializing the hardware of the machine quite the same way. Some of the management controls just roll back to a certain point of their power-on cycle (we'll call it step 2, whereas step 1 is actually providing power to everything) and kicks the BIOS off and back into your operating system. Because a soft reset like when you do a \"restart\" command never interrupts power to your computer, the management controllers can influence how they turn back on. If you want to think of it in a flowchart kind of way, hitting the power button initiates step 1 of the power on process, and the power controller(s) will provide power to all of the peripheral devices to get them initialized. Step 2 will load firmware/BIOS and run them to get everything on the motherboard synchronized with eachother. A soft reset would skip step 1 and go right to step 2, because it knows step1 is already done. that's a very simplified (to the point of some minor inaccuracies or assumptions based on computer architecture) explanation. Source: am computer engineer for a company that makes embedded processor boards.",
"When it's bedtime, how does your body wake up again? Because part of your brain never completely turns off. A computer has a little part inside of it that never completely turns off.",
"It doesn't actually turn off. Back in the 90s you would often see a message like \"it is now safe to turn off your computer\" as the computer didn't actually have the ability to power off. It was usually a physical switch. Then some power management features were designed and made standard. This was know as ACPI and one of those features was to do a full shutdown of the machine so that \"it is now safe to turn off\" message was relegated to the past.",
"~~I think I have more grounds to answer this fully, since I'm working around issues with restarting.~~ (crossed out, as I am too full of myself) I actually work on components and programs that are involved in restarting computer. It is true, that as long a s computer has power, it's not fully turned off, but it's not the case in 100%. I mean, you have, in fact, more than one computer in your case, and in your motherboard. In modern computer there are at least 3 (4 in business-class motherboards) independent systems, two of them are inside the chipset, one is located within the CPU itself. ~~They have their own memory, operating systems, clocks and are restricted. They are for controlling power distribution (one in CPU), for low-power device management - like SPI BIOS, LPC, I2C, general I/O (second in chipset - and it offloads that control to main CPU after boot), and one controlling interfaces - HSIO, PCI-Express, and couple of other inter-device links, temperatures and power (that one is always active). In business class systems there is one extra system, that is responsible for offline network interface handling, security, and other features that are required for effective management in enterprise environment - this one is also always active.~~ **(this is valid, but too technical, so I crossed it out as not important)** ~~They sip very little power, and generally operate at 30-400 MHz frequency range, and in most cases are single core CPUs.~~ **This is also not important** Back to your original question: When you say 'reset', the firmware (the program that runs directly on the small embedded computers inside your motherboard) inside the chipset just executes a program that says 'shutdown this, this this, and this, cut power to this, and this, and then activate this and this, and go', and then computer boots. Manufacturers have a lot to say about what firmware does while doing reset and power on, especially when they use custom power delivery control systems, like Asus and MSI.",
"Lots of really good answers here, but nobody mentions one thing **B**asic **I**nput **O**utput **S**ystem ---- ELI5 The BIOS is the thing that makes it take a few seconds before you get the windows logo. It checks to see whats connected, what the processor is and it's timing, and a couple other things. It can do that because it is a processing system separate from the CPU and the OS. When you tell the computer to restart, the OS tells the BIOS \"Hey we need to restart\". The BIOS then shuts down (not off) everything except the power, and then when everything has reported back \"I'm down\", the BIOS triggers the restart. Remember when you added RAM to the computer that message you got? > System memory changed from 512KB to 640KB. Continue? (Y/n) That was the BIOS. Windows has no idea how much RAM there is, nor most things about the hardware attached to the system, until the BIOS decides to tell it.",
"It's kinda like when you go to sleep, you are like the computer restarting. It might look like its turned off, but it isn't all the way turned off. So the computer is really just taking a really short nap.",
"Short ELI5 answer: It doesn't turn off when you click restart. It just reloads the operating system.",
"Lots of very good replies here. One thing I'd like to add is with the adoption of the ATX form factor/spec gave the operating system the ability to control the power supply. The old AT form factor did not, hence the \"You can now turn off the your computer\" message after the hard drive had parked.",
"Restart doesn't actually turn off the computer at all. The OS turns off all of its processes, cleans up its open files, and then when it's done, it sends a signal to the processor that says \"act like you just turned on.\" The PC then goes to the BIOS and starts loading it all over again, which leads to finding the hard disk, reading the master boot sector, and starting up the OS over again.",
"When the computer turns on it have a known state. Normally everything is zeroed out as that is the simplest to implement in electronics. From this zeroed out state the CPU will by default start to execute the code at memory location zero, which by default is the BIOS, in non-restricted mode. So to restart the computer the operating system needs to get back to this initial state. So it resets all the devices that needs to be reset, makes sure the BIOS gets back its memory location if that have been changed, etc. Finally it will reset the CPU back to its original boot configuration using a special restart command. The first CPUs did not have this restart command. Instead the OS used an unspecified behavior in the error handling routine that most CPUs would handle by restarting. However nowadays the specification includes a way to reset the CPU back to its initial configuration.",
"Minor details that might be interesting more for an ELI25: 1) A restart doesn't just \"wipe the CPU back to 'clean' slate\" on modern x86 computers, but something like that was more common a long time ago. It actually causes the reset signal (an actual wire that goes to a lot of the chips on the motherboard, including the CPU) to be asserted. Think of this as the wire going from zero volts to 5 volts. in practice, though it's more likely asserting reset means going from 3.3V to 0V (inverted and different voltage). This should wipe ALL of those chips to an initial state, so the video buffer issue described by /u/capn_hector isn't really an issue these days. Even so, there are often different levels of reset that are probably invisible to the end user and are utilized for different purposes. 2) While shutting down almost always involves turning off the power supply, that is all abstracted from the CPU/operating system. What the OS actually does is tells the motherboard something like \"put the system into the deepest sleep state\" which happens to be off, but is different than the power being unplugged. Yes, your computer can tell the difference between being turned off with the power button and having the power cable unplugged.",
"Your computer shuts down windows first. Your BIOS is still active and your computer can still think about basic things. After windows is shut down your BIOS gets sent a restart command and your PC restarts without losing power. At no point did your computer ever really lose the ability to \"think\"."
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5v4a2s | What is that voice in your head | to which some have just thought " what voice " I am referring to *that voice* | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, there's 'hearing voices' and there's your internal monologue. One is some people's stream of consciousness - the way they think - in a verbal way rather than visual way. The other is often a symptom of schizophrenia or a hallucination. Whether these two things are linked is an interesting question. i.e is the fact that I recognise my inner voice as my own thoughts the only thing that differs? I believe this inner voice is (at least one of the things) that Buddhists are trying to escape from by meditating. Which I don't really understand. e.g I was out walking last night and I constantly converse with myself, think of different ideas and mull things as I'm doing that, to the point where I can have covered a large distance without really being aware. To me that's what makes activities like cycling and walking relaxing. Whereas it seems to be that Buddhists believe that ignoring your thoughts and instead trying to focus on being in the moment is important. Perhaps a lot depends upon what kind of thoughts you have. If you're fretting and anxious about things maybe you would want to escape it. I can't help thinking that a lot of epiphanies in maths and physics were reached by this kind of inner conversation - I'm sure most of us are thinking about more mundane things though.",
"This wiki article is my favorite that addresses it. URL_0 It basically talks about how there is a part of our brain that appears to be \"speaking\" and a part that \"obeys\" Much like when you are very nervous or unsure and ask yourself \"Am I really going to do this?\" And you truly don't know but then you somehow decide and either do it or don't! It also mentions how this type of inner dialog may have influenced humans view of religion because they literally heard someone telling them what to do. Like the voice of God \"Go find food and water, you can do it\" and as this part of our brain evolved it became more of a part of us and less \"disconnected\" I definitely recommend checking out the link. :) Edit: As I stated in the 1st sentence this is my favorite article that addresses it. I did not state that this is true or scientifically sound. Its interesting and talks about it."
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5v4ll4 | Why is it a persons natural reaction to grab whichever part of the body has been injured? For example, if you get hit in the back of the head, the first thing you do is grab your head. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's the quickest way to protect the injured part. You pull it away from danger and protect it with an uninjured part of the body.",
"Had a psychobiology professor explain that since we have way more touch receptors than pain receptors (like 10:1), that grabbing the injured body part is an attempt to overwhelm the pain we are experiencing."
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5v4sif | What is the difference between sound waves and electromagnetic waves (light)? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sound is a vibration through a medium. It requires something to move through. You hear sound when the vibration reaches your ear. You can feel a sound if it vibrates your body. Electromagnetic radiation is a self propagating electric and magnetic field. Electric fields can make magnetic fields and magnetic fields can make electric fields. These fields can interact with matter (you see light when it hits your eye) but they dont need matter in order to move."
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5v4xi7 | Why does the tray in a microwave rotate? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because there are hot and cooler spots due to the way the microwaves reflect around inside the oven. Rotating the food attempts to distribute the heat in the food more evenly."
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5v72sk | How do scientists measure the speed of light? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"With a rotating prism. Start with two observatories on mountain tops (a good place for observatories) that are far away from each other, but still close enough that they can see each other. Being on mountain tops helps to see over all of the stuff in between them. Measure how far apart the observatories are. Carefully put up a mirror at the far observatory so that the other observatory can see itself in the mirror (very far away, but they have telescopes in observatories for that.) From the near observatory, shine a beam of light at the mirror at the far observatory. Thanks to the mirror, you can see your own beam of light shining back at you from the far observatory. Now take a prism, but not the triangle prism that makes rainbows, no. Use a prism with an even number of sides, like a square or an octagon. This way you can look straight through the prism from one side and out the other. Put the prism in the beam of light. If you hold it perfectly straight, then the light will still shine all of the way to the far observatory and back, but only if it is straight, not crooked. Now spin the prism. Use an electric motor so that you know how fast it is spinning. As the prism spins, when it lines up with the beam of light, a tiny flash of light will go straight through and to the mirror at the far observatory. But by the time the flash of light gets back, the prism will have kept spinning and it won't be lined up with the light beam any more. But if you speed up the motor that is spinning the prism to *just* the right speed, then the little flash of light that gets through the prism and reflects back from the mirror will arrive at exactly the right time to go *back* through the prism when it lines up with the light beam the next time. So if you know how fast the motor spinning the prism is turning, and you know how far away the mirror at the far observatory is, then you know how long it took for the little flash of light to travel that distance. Distance/Time = Speed. And that is how you measure the speed of light.",
"Now-a-days we have extremely precise equipment that can measure the time between a photon being sent from a source and it being detected some distance away. Distance over time = velocity (or speed). Back before the invention of fancy lazers and what-not, one of the more famous examples was done by Danish Astronomer Ole Römer. He noticed that eclipses on one of Jupiters moons would happen at slightly different times at different points in the year. He used the radius of Earth's orbit and Jupiter's orbit, as well as Earth's position at varying points in the year, to estimate the speed of light (he got 220,000 kilometers per second just 27% off in the 1700s!)."
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5v8e4n | Why does the brain not start recording memory for the first few years of life? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your brain saves every single little detail, emotion, color, smell, sound and taste you will ever do starting from day 0 when you're born. It's the greatest and most efficient super computer that exists (today). Problem with that is that certain information is just not relevant for you and you tend to \"forget\" certain things. You might have some slight memories once in a while that you don't even recognize because they are that deep inside your brain. So if there is something really important that happened in your earliest years you would remember (most times that would be some kind of trauma) because the brain filters the importance of information that it gets.",
"Your brain is always recording memory- in fact, it lays down more memory in the first few years than it ever will later. Thing is, there's more than one kind of memory. Memory as your question defines refers to events- specific patterns of behaviour in specific locations with specific people. Early on, we have little need for such memory, since we don't have the brain development to make sense of it. Instead, the brain is laying down vast quantities of memory in relation to how your body moves, what faces and people are, what sight and sound is, how words and language work, etc. This type memory isn't linked to specific events, but rather the brain processing other information."
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5v8wph | how does a memory card permanently delete a file or Photo? Data is stored somewhere, so does it just vanish with no trace? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It marks the sectors containing the photo as free and deletes the record with the file name from the directory. The data is still there, but not accessible without special software"
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5vbvtx | Why is it that after 3 years or so laptops become so slow they're almost unusable even if you're just using them for the Internet and nothing huge? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"85% Poor maintenance with people cluttering their laptops up with junk and never clearing it. In my experience the older generation does this more, my dad literally had 3 different full install programs to \"test his internet speed\" running all the time. The last 15% is a mix of websites/programs getting updated and modernised and using more resources, with a tiny bit of hardware and software wear and tear depending on useage amounts. Personally I am typing this on an inherited 2011 macbook air that still runs as fast as the day I got it. Open the laptop to typing in 2-3 seconds, full restart in under 60 seconds etc. Never had any issues with it beyond some of my top line keys randomly not working sometimes. Compare that to my mothers macbook from the same period...",
"You probably are doing something wrong tbh. You probably accumulated a lot of crap from internet that slow your computer down. You should reformat your computer and reinstall windows. Then protect your computer better, anti-virus, scan, firewall, etc. Maybe you are going on unsafe websites and should limit that. It's normal to reformat your computer from time to time to clean all the stuff that accumulate. It's also normal for computer to slow down over time because new program and operating system need more resources than old ones. But if it become unusable after 3 years either you bought a crap computer, or you don't protect your computer much.",
"So many answers but nobody mentioned overheating. Yes, bloated Windows (or other OSes) will get slowed down, but even if you format your computer, it might still be slow. That's because of two reasons. The first is, your hard drive will get slower. Buy an SSD, should be good for the next 5 years. The second, more common one (since as seen in this thread, nobody cares about it) is the fact that your processor starts overheating after years of use. That's not because the processor gets bad or anything, it's because the thermal paste on the processor is old, it dries up, cracks, fills with air bubbles which overheat. If you change the thermal paste on your processor (and graphics unit) your computer should be as good as new. You won't even necessarily notice your computer is overheating. That's because most laptops opt to slow down the processor instead of letting it overheat too much, but in some extreme cases your computer might end up turning off whenever you put too much strain on it. I've seen a case of a core2duo that should be running at 3GHz running at 600 MHz. Change your thermal pastes people!",
"The most basic reason for computers \"slowing down\" is that users are asking them to do more work. Imagine you buy a car to drive around town. It's got a top speed of 40mph. Works perfectly. Now you want to take the highway to the next town. The speed limit is 65mph. Your car can't keep up because it wasn't designed to go that fast. It will still drive around town the same as it always did though. Your computer's hardware was designed to run the software of its day. New software (including web browsers and sites) makes use of newer, better hardware available. Much like the car that wasn't designed for highway speeds, your computer is having a hard time keeping up. However, if you want to run the same software you always did, the computer should be able to do that more or less indefinitely. This is the reason you'll often see ancient computers in commercial settings, such as a restaurant or warehouse. They don't need to upgrade the hardware because they never upgrade the software. Those computers can easily last 20+ years if all they do is operate a delivery database or manage shipping and receiving. tl;dr: your computer slows down because it needs to do more work than it can handle.",
"Also consider the increased RAM requirement of your web browser as computing power increases. I'm picking on RAM because I've personally noticed my web browsers eating all of mine on occasion. Two factors: - updates to the software make it less efficient by adding more resource-hungry features - as compute and network grows, \"web applications\" grow their resource requirements as well In both cases, the developers don't notice the relatively minor increase in resource use, and by the time it's added up to affect you, they've upgraded their computers. So ideally you'd notice this at 5 rather than 3 years, and you'd not notice it if your \"internet use\" involves one window with one tab on one page at a time. I notice it because I leave my browser open 24/7 with 10-50 tabs, 3 of which are pinned web apps like Gmail and Facebook. So many fucking memory leaks.",
"In a general sense, people whom purchase laptops expect them to work the same forever and thus do not partake in any sort of care or maintenance. This means that they will never delete temporary files, uninstall unused programs, or clean out the exhaust or intake pipes and holes with compressed air. Another major problem is that laptop users excessively rely on the lid-closed standby mode, which does not in fact turn off the computer. They will often go weeks or more before properly turning off their laptop. This means two things: one, your hardware is getting unnecessarily strained and two, the components which store voltage-volatile data (data that is erased upon power-down) are never cleared, which only slows things down further. A hard drive will decrease in performance the more information that is stored upon it, especially those slow, 5400 RPM laptop drives. Finally, many laptop owners will accidentally allow their laptop to overheat many times over its lifespan, will drop it, spill things upon it and more. You combine *all of these factors* and on average, the laptop physically and electronically is not nearly as functional as it once was. Edit: forgot another important factor in that almost every laptop at the sub $800 has strong compromises in its design. An old mentor of mine once said that a laptop engineer would sell his grandmother if it meant saving money on the laptop design.",
"They don't, they are just like any other computer and last as long as you take care of them. If you've been updating your operating system and installing software down the years then it's not a fair comparison with when you started. Try backing up all your files (remember this bit) the re-installing the operating system.",
"Computer repair tech with over 20 years experience here. Laptops and desktops with standard hard drives will slow down after a few years because of several reasons. The main reason is that the drives actually spin slower over time, which will slow down the computer, especially during startup and when running programs. Also, malware software will accumulate causing the internet to load pages more slowly because the malware will be sending info out over the internet while you are trying to browse. Most people have poor upload speeds on their home internet which means that the info being sent out by the malware will clog your bandwidth. Another problem causing slowdowns is hard drive fragmentation. You can run a defrag program, but in my experience it is best for performance to erase the hard drive and completely reinstall windows. If you want a computer that is fast, and will stay fast for more than a few years, invest in a computer with a solid state drive or upgrade your current computer from a standard hard disk drive to a solid state drive. Also, make sure your computer has a cpu with speed above 2.0ghz, or it will be slow as molasses. Many manufacturers sell cheap laptops with low speeds and standard hard drives to keep you coming back every couple years for another cheap laptop. Don't fall victim to the scams. Educate yourself and make a good choice based on specs, not just the lowest price.",
"Im still in my 2012 MBA and it's still fan-freaking-tastic. Battery life and standby still rocks.",
"Depends on the laptop. If you're talking about older laptops with hard drives then that's your issue. Hard drives are mechanical; the components wear and tear as a result they crawl to a stop. The new SSD laptops will last a VERY long time before becoming slow; even your lifetime. But sometimes it's usually that there's lots of junk processes running built up over the years that crunch valuable CPU time and consume memory; not so common with consumers that only browse the web using chrome. Sure Linux laptops & Apple Macbook's are generally better because the OS is better made (Read Patch vs. Core; basically about how Unix programmers fixed core issues while Windows developers patch n patched n patched'ed over crap)",
"After three years time, there's only a few reasonable causes I can think of for a severe loss of usability in a computer. 1) The computer is cheap, and is using hardware that is already several years out of date at the time of purchase (I'm looking at you, Intel Celeron and Pentium). As far as a solution, well, don't buy dirt cheap laptops. The \"Diminishing Returns Curve of Computer Hardware\" is a term I like to throw around. Basically, it's a graph of dollars spent v. performance yield of the computer. Despite somewhat popular belief, it is curved on both ends. Spend more than, say, $800, you will start to see less performance gain per dollar, and the strength of this effect gets stronger and stronger as you keep spending more money. Spend less than, say, $300, you will start to see *more performance loss* per dollar taken off. Those dollar amounts are rough and not true values to live by, but the point is there is a middle ground. 2) Very poor treatment of the operating system, be it Windows, OSX or a Linux distribution. This kind of piggy backs on #1, as newer hardware can better cope with the abuse, but if you have a ton of junky programs on your computer, you will find it is going to run quite poorly. If this is the case, some single use programs (for Windows systems) I like are [Junkware Removal Tool] ( URL_0 ) and [adwcleaner] ( URL_2 ). I hesitate to say antivirus will help, because those are targeting malicious software that is actually trying to steal your information or damage your system, and junkware isn't always malicious. That said, antivirus is always a good idea because malware can end up causing system slowdowns. Some antivirus names I am familiar with and haven't had a bad time with are Malwarebytes, Kaspersky, Avast and Sophos. 3) A bit of a stretch, but a failing storage device in a computer is extremely disruptive to system performance. Not to mention, your data will be in danger if you don't back it up to another device before it fully fails. There are tools, such as [Piriform's Speccy] ( URL_1 ) that can tell you what is called the \"SMART status\" of your storage devices. Basically, SMART is a system that makes your storage device self aware of it's own health. If it's not \"Good\" or \"Verified\" or some other synonym of the word \"Good\", then something is wrong with the device and you should back up your data before it inevitably fails. edit: formatting didn't work as magically as I wanted it to",
"I've had the same laptop for about 8 years. I put a new Linux install on maybe once every six months. Runs like a dream.",
"A lot of really great insight and advice going around here, but I've yet to see a pretty obvious reason. Three years is a long time for a computer of any kind to go without hardware upgrades as well as reformatting. Heck, most people only keep their cell phones for 2 years or less. That all said, I agree with the others here saying it's a little strange that your laptop becomes basically unusable after only 3 years of internet browsing. Almost certainly a maintenance issue. Periodically reformat your HDD with a fresh install of your chosen OS. Don't ever use your laptop on a fabric surface to avoid overheating internal components. If you carry your laptop around a lot in a case or backpack, be gentle with it. If you have a tech friend have them show you how to use Event Viewer and Resource Monitor to better diagnose where your problems are originating. Computers are like cars - if you don't take care of them they'll eventually break down."
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5vdh7q | Why do people invest in US government bonds if they are in trillions of dollars of debt? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine that you have founded a new Business trying to create a new Factory to produce Widgets. You don't have the cash on hand to build that Factory, and you don't have the Credit History to borrow it all from one place. You *could* issue Stock, but that would reduce your control over the business significantly. Instead, you decide that you will issue Bonds. Bonds are *promissory notes*, basically an IOU. A Bond is a promise that you will pay whoever legally owns it back what they bought it for, plus a certain amount of interest, on or after a certain date. Bonds are *much smaller* than Loans. The big benefit to Bonds over a Loan is that Creditors get to choose how much of a risk they're taking on you. Also, if you want, you can offer to buy back Bonds early for *less* than they're going to be worth if people hold onto them. Bonds don't work like Loans or like Credit, which are the two types of Debt that most Americans deal with every day. You know *exactly* what you're going to owe, and *exactly* when you're going to owe it. If someone forgets to redeem their bond, they **will not** continue to accumulate interest past the date it could be redeemed. Bonds \"growing\" past their Redemption Date is a Myth, and I blame Sitcoms for it. The present it as if it were compound interest, when it's really just the Bond's Terms allowing for its value at the date of redemption to be adjusted for Inflation. It should be noted that some Bonds *do* expire after a reasonable period of time, for the same reason that Gift Cards expire after a reasonable period of time. It's to keep the Accounting Ledgers from accumulating *countless* entries that will never be redeemed, because the Bond has been forgotten. Government Bonds *usually* don't include an expiration date, though. --- The United States Government *looks* like it has an unmanageable amount of Debt. Indeed, were it a Line of Credit (Credit Card) or a Loan with a reasonable interest rate... I'd doubt that we would ever be able to pay it off. Compound Interest would *murder us*. Fortunately, our government isn't **stupid** enough to go with Credit or Loans when it comes to the National Debt. We know when *every* Bond that has been issued will be due and how much they will be worth; and we have planned accordingly. The United States pays off *every* Bond that someone wants to Redeem. In its entire history, the United States Treasury has never failed to pay a Bond that it has issued. There aren't many Countries that can say that, and that's why US Treasury Bonds are seen as a safe investment. The Debt *will* be paid off as it comes due. It has *always* been paid of exactly when it comes due. The United States is nowhere near being in a position where we can't pay off our Debts as they come due. You'll know when we get near that position, because the Head of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Secretary will appear on all the News Channels talking about the situation. --- Interesting Side Notes: **We owe most of the Debt to ourselves.** ~$5.54 Trillion Dollars of our Debt is owed to Agencies within the United States Federal Government. I've checked, and there is no typo in the sentence that preceded this one. Almost *a third* of the Debt is owed to the US Federal Government. ~$2.463 Trillion Dollars of our Debt is owed to the United States Federal Reserve Bank. The Feds alone hold ~$8 Trillion Dollars of our National Debt, if you count the Reserve Bank (which we should, since Federal Appointees make up half of its Board). That's kinda interesting, considering how Foreign Governments only hold ~$6.281 Trillion Dollars. Yep, that's right. The US Federal Government owes more money *to itself* than it does to all Foreign Governments *combined*. You'll notice that there's a lot of debt missing there, though. That's what the Feds owe to *American Citizens*, and the lower levels of Government (State, County, and Municipal Governments). Most of it is held in Mutual Funds, Pension Funds, and so on. So... yeah. Considering how the Social Security Fund handles its Investment Mandate by buying Treasury Bonds, it's fair to assume that the Average American's Retirement Fund is mostly made out of US Federal Debt. **The Countries that own our Debt might surprise you.** There are certain segments of the Media that like to talk about China \"coming over to collect.\" However, the biggest Foreign Holder of American Debt is not China, it's Japan... which doesn't have the capacity to launch an invasion across the Pacific (running a supply-line across an ocean isn't easy). The most current list of Debt Holders that I could find is the following: 1. Japan 2. China 3. The United Kingdom 4. *Ireland* 5. The Cayman Isles Japan and The United Kingdom are both major players in International Banking. China has the second-largest Exporting Economy in the world, behind the United States by a fairly large margin thanks to the Trade Sanctions other countries have leveled against them due to their labor practices. The holdings in Ireland and The Cayman Isles are probably Tax Shelters. Those countries get used for Tax Dodging *a lot*. Oh, yeah... didn't mention that, did I? The amount we owe to these \"Foreign Nations\" aren't just owed to their governments. We combine Debt held by their Governments with Debt held by their Citizens. As we've already established: US Treasury Bonds are a ludicrously safe investment, so they get *bought* and *resold* on the International Market. I could literally buy one from London, if I wanted to, and own it as an American Citizen. Most Debt owed to Japan and the UK is actually owed to Banks and Businesses there. The Debt owed to China is split between their Government and their Corporations... which is a blurry line due to their weird Capitalism-Communism Hybrid system. **Tl;Dr:** We aren't anywhere close to defaulting on our Debt, and most of it is owed to ourselves. **Edit**: Removing a few things that were vaguely political. Also, something that was factually inaccurate but irrelevant to the point.",
"> US government bonds are seen as a safe investment aren't they? Yes, they are. > Why is this the case? Because the US is a $17,000,000,000,000 economy with strong stable government and hasn't defaulted on its sovereign debt in its entire history. > It seems like this will never be paid... They are paid off everyday. The US has been continually paying off and issuing new debt for decades (if not longer).",
"The US has hundreds of years of history of paying bonds off exactly on time. They've never missed a payment so you can be sure that they won't miss yours.",
"Basically if the US defaults on it's debt to the point that it can't pay your bonds back then there are much much bigger issues and most of your other investments are likely in trouble too.",
"Because even though the aggregated debt is enormous, the U.S. still has a strong likelihood of paying back the loans. For now at least. You will find that although U.S. public debt is 80% of its GDP (in the most recent year sampled, using the leftmost metric on the Wikipedia chart), this is only 25th-highest among the countries that provided numbers. Here are some notable countries that have higher percentages: • Japan (174%) • Greece (158%) • Zimbabwe (129%) • Portugal (116%) • Italy (115%) • Ireland (110%) • Singapore (110%) • Belgium (91%) • UK (90%) • France (87%) In theory (ignoring the governmental & legal idiosyncrasies between these countries), the economies of these countries are less likely to support debt reductions than the United States economy. (Note that the World Average for this metric is 64%. There are also a few countries with negative-debt, such as Norway and Saudi Arabia.)",
"I'd add that the debt is in dollars. The US government CAN create any number of dollars at any time to pay off its debts. That's not how it's done because that causes other problems, but it COULD be done. Therefore no lender to the US government is likely to ever not be paid.",
"Because the US government bonds are the safest investment on the planet. The US has never defaulted on its debt when it has come due in its history and the interest is at a set locked in rate when you purchase the bond.",
"Many people don't quite put this together, but U.S. government bonds ARE the debt. The reason the debt is so high is not because the U.S. spends too much and must therefore seek out lenders, cap in hand. Just the opposite--investors all over the world simply love buying the bonds, because they're such a stable investment. There's no shortage of people willing to buy bonds (i.e., people willing to lend the U.S. money for cheap). So the government supplies what the buyers want--bonds. The U.S. has never defaulted on a loan, and every bond issued to date has been paid in full. If, magically, the U.S. national debt were to be paid off instantly, in full, it would rise up again. Because people want the bonds.",
"The simplest explanation is because they have never missed a \"payment.\" Any bond is just ownership of a piece of debt. Owning the debt entitles you to payment based on the terms of the bond, which consists of (a)repayment of your original purchase amount after a set amount of time and (b)interest (called \"yield\"), paid out periodically between now and then. The interest rate reflects the level of risk that the bond may not be repaid. US Treasury bonds have very low yield, due to the fact that they are considered to be among the safest, if not the very safest, investments on planet earth. The US has always returned on and repaid their bonds, exactly as promised. By contrast, a country like, say, Greece, would have a very high yield on their government debt, because they have defaulted in the past, and the likelihood they will default again in the future is very high.",
"Just because there is a high dollar amount of debt isn't a source of concern if there is the ability to pay it back, and the U.S. has always been able to pay its debts. New debts are issued and old debts are paid and retired on a daily basis.",
"The debt isn't something that has to be paid off all at once; as long as the government makes sure to pay back each bond once it reaches its point of maturity (which they have never failed to do, ever), they're golden. At this point the U.S debt is an arbitrary number which has little meaning if they keep increasing it by a steady amount"
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5vf24p | Why does the world need money? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because without money, trading usually hits a dead end. Like in this example. > \"Hey Roof Guy, my roof is broken. Can I trade you two chickens to fix my roof?\" > \"Sure thing, Chicken Dude.\" **Two weeks later** > \"Hey Chicken Dude, I'm really hungry. Can I have some more chickens?\" > \"I don't have anything that needs fixing, go away Roof Guy.\" Once you add money into the mix, Roof Guy doesn't have to starve. Each of us only has so many skills or goods to trade; money allows us to turn that skill into value that can be used now or later, even if our services aren't needed.",
"It's an easy way to make an indirect trade. Rather than be paid in potatoes or grain or whatever the employer or tradesman had on hand, it's much easier to be paid in a trustworthy currency and then exchange that for whatever it is you really need or want, whenever you happen to need it.",
"Because after many tries and experiments, people found that it was really, really inconvenient to buy a water buffalo with skittles. Just as an example.",
"Probably too much of an answer, but this (very long) quote from the fictional character Francisco D'Anconia in the Book Atlas Shrugged (1957) addresses the value of money. “So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? “When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor–your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?\""
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5vfl8q | What do pharmacists do? Doctors write the scripts, big pharma manufactures the drugs, what's the pharmacist do other than select a bottle from the shelf and dole out the pills? | Genuinely interested, sorry for belittling an entire profession. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A pharmacist is basically a specialist in medication, meaning they probably know more about medicines than some medical practitioners. They do so much more than dispense medicine, they also offer consults on use and dosage. They are also the last line of defence when it comes to drug interactions, especially when a patient is treated by numerous practitioners. And last but not least, they deserve a medal for being able to translate a practitioner's handwriting.",
"I'm a nurse in a hospital, and pharmacists do a lot. They dose medication for patients whose liver or kidneys aren't functioning properly (meaning they're not able to clear the meds out of their system like a usual person would) and dose especially toxic medicines based on lab results. Lots of meds my patients get come with a physician order stating \"Pharmacy to dose\" bc the pharmacists are experts in how the drug works in and is processed by the body. They figure out alternate ways of getting a medicine into a patient when the usual ways aren't working, like when the patient needs a pill but chokes on everything they try to swallow, or need an IV drug but don't have an IV for whatever reason, because they have the knowledge to compare different methods if the same drug or alternate drugs that can go in a different way. They also double check medicine compatibility and dosage, which seems like a computer could do, but gets complicated when you have patients on many drugs being used in non-standard dosages for different conditions. They also physically mix the drugs, which requires a lot of knowledge of the chemistry of the body in order to ensure the med is safe to give and being given correctly. They're also in charge of a lot of the facets of making sure med errors don't happen. Pharmacists are experts on the drugs, so the doctor can focus on treating the patient, instead of reinventing the wheel.",
"Canadian retail pharmacist here: - My main job is to \"check\" prescriptions that come my way to make sure they're accurate. My assistant 99 times out of a 100 is the one who types the prescription and counts the actual pills. Common physical things I catch are wrong doses (2.5 mg instead of 25mg), wrong drugs (doxycycline-an antibiotic to be avoided in pregnancy vs doxylamine a morning sickness pill) and illegal prescriptions (narcotic forgeries). Some trained technicians can perform this step but IMO the above are easier to spot with pharmacist training. - Check prescriptions for \"drug related problems\" such as interactions. In my experience, pharmacists tend to be overly cautious people. So yes, we will run certain drug combos through our computer, or glance at the patient hand-out to \"double check\" ourselves-this is a good thing. Sometimes I need to remind myself of a drug I haven't seen in a long time! Once we get the information we can interpret its severity quickly, which a lay person could not. As others have pointed out, there are tons of interactions that get \"flagged\" and a pharmacist is able to determine which is important based on the individual patient. For example, I have prevented very serious problems by contacting doctors over a dangerously high dose of antibiotics in a child, or a drug interaction that was only meaningful because it was for a frail elderly lady. This is a pharmacist's job-doctors are trained for diagnosis, not drug interactions. - I help people understand their medications. For example, the man who just had a heart attack and is leaving the hospital overwhelmed with a pile of meds. Without me they usually will stop taking one or two (or go back to smoking, or try a over-the-counter snake oil instead) and be at risk for a second heart attack. I sit down with them, and based on their personal needs talk about the risks vs benefits of the meds. Then I call them in a few days and follow up, making sure they've made an appointment with their family doctor. Or, I do a medication reconciliation with an elderly woman who has too many medications with side effects, and work with her doctor to see if some can be stopped. - I answer people's questions 24 hours a day with more accuracy and clarity than google. (We are open extended hours) For example- its 2 AM and someone comes in with a sick child: what medication do they use? Should they go to the ER? This saves the healthcare system (or you, if you're American) money. - I give flu shots which saves the government money as they pay us less than doctors, and the patient time. I also give other vaccinations, such as hepatitis B, so if you're going to Mexico you can be protected without the need for extra doctor visits. - I prescribe certain medications for minor conditions, again saving the healthcare system money and the patient time. - I can change some prescriptions with the patient's ok, for example if a product isn't available or something is missing from the prescription. - I specialty make a lot of drugs, for example certain seizure medication for children isn't sold in liquid form- I will make this for you at 3AM when you realize you are completely out of doses for your kid. - I dispense and monitor methadone, helping former addicts come off narcotics and re-integrate back in society (in partnership with their awesome nurses.) - I deal with insurance agencies to try to get medications covered, sometimes contacting your doctor to see if an alternate drug would be acceptable. - I consult on the phone with doctors, nurses, homecare workers etc deciding what course of action would be in the best interest of the patient. - I use math calculations to be able to figure out the correct dose of things like Tylenol for infants too small to be listed on the box, again at 2 AM. Or help someone self-adjust their insulin. - I get annoyed when someone is yelling at me from across the counter wondering why their order isn't done yet, asking what the heck I do all day. ;) TL;DR: Pharmacist's are drug therapy experts who can help you take charge of your health and decide if a certain medication is right for you. Like any profession there are a few dumb/lazy ones out there- but most of us work our butts off to keep you safe!",
"Pharmacists are experts in medications, even more so that doctors. Doctors are responsible for a lot of information and decisions, done quickly. Under those circumstances, it can be easy to order medications that are incompatible in the same patient. One of their chief responsibilities is to make sure medication orders make sense, drug interactions are minimized, doses are appropriate, and so on. That makes it sound like they're only purpose is to doublecheck Dr.'s work, but in truth they tend to have a much more in-depth knowledge of the field of medications, their effects, and their doses. There's a lot more to it than that. The stuff you see them doing is counting to make sure the right number of pills get into your prescription. It gets much more difficult when there are multiple prescriptions on the same patient. Also sometimes doctors need doses that don't exist in pill form. In these cases it's up to the pharmacist to make a new pills, or capsules, or syrup liquids, in order to make the doses precise. For example, let's say there is an antibiotic that is only available in 200 mg tablets. A doctor needs syrup made up to give to a baby that has 75 mg in 1 teaspoon. A pharmacist has the technical expertise and know how to mix the syrup with the pills that are available. They really are an indispensable part of the care team.",
"Makes sure that your Doctor isn't asleep or overworked by checking for interactions. Providing a ton of free advice about what cream for this rash or that minor condition you may have. Teaching about generics which might save you money. Calling your Doc and working out an alternative prescription which IS covered under your health insurance.",
"Pharmacists assume I'm an idiot and view all of my prescriptions as pending death certificates for my patients. And, I can't be more pleased about it. Everyone makes mistakes. Even doctors. Pharmacists have saved my patients from my mistakes many times.",
"My pharmacist has saved my life a couple of times. I take a medication every day that doesn't play nicely with other drugs. When my doctor prescribes me something else like an antibiotic or an anti-inflammatory, even though she always checks her computer for interaction issues with my main meds, I still always double-check with the pharmacist. More than a few times he's had to call my doctor and say \"oh hell no\" and recommend a different drug. His knowledge of medications, uses and interactions is on a different level from my doctor's. Her focus is in diagnosis. So the two work together in concert very well.",
"Pharmacy technician here, They check that the prescription has been written correctly, that the patient can take the drug, i.e. is not allergic to something in it or that any other medications they take can be taken with the drug, and that the dispensed drug is correct. They also answer any questions that the patient has about the medication",
"Typically they counsel patients on proper dosage, potential side effects, any adverse issues when used in conjunction with other drugs, and recommend generics when available.",
"I have to say that my pharmacist is a great guy. I get multiple scripts. Some are mail order through the Caremark, which CVS pharmacy is a part of. Carmark CONSTANTLY fucks up my orders. It becomes a big deal when I ordered my daughter's insulin 2 weeks ago and we are down to the last of it, and the mail order assholes still say it will be another 2 days. Sure I can get it at the CVS directly but it will cost $250 for one vial. This is when Dave, the pharmacist of the year, takes over. He called Carmark, chewed them out, got them to cover the cost of the temp vial due to it being their screw up, and there was no charge. Caremark has fucked up about 90% of any mail order scripts I have ordered. I have gone weeks without my blood pressure meds due to their screw ups. It is one thing to deal with high blood pressure, but quite another when your young kid is T1 diabetic. Thanks Dave! You are awesome and make my life easier."
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5vfq4q | Why do novels always seem to have 2-3 extra blank pages in the back? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Commercial printing is done the same way that a home printer does, one page at a time. They print whole sheets with a bunch of pages at a time then cut and bind them together in bundles. If your book doesn't neatly match the bundle size, you have blank pages & it's easier to leave them than to remove them."
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5vggr9 | why do some commercials get cut off half a second into the content and skip to another commercial? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The commercial that gets skipped to is usually inserted by the local station. The station is given a list of timeslots for commercials and they program their video switcher & playback system to switch to the local commercial at the appropriate time. Somewhere along the way, though, there may be a clock that's not quite synchronized or someone didn't tag a commercial with the exact right length, or in some older systems, someone has to push the \"take\" button on the router manually at the right time."
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5viovo | How do islands float? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The thing in the video is basically a *boat*, not an island. Islands are connected to the ground under the water."
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5vjl2v | Whats the big deal with the new AMD Ryzen CPU? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As stated on the comment above, Intel thoroughly dominated the desktop CPU market for way too long. Why you may ask? Let's rewind back to 2011, Intel just released their 2nd gen of core i3/i5/i7 CPUs and AMD needed to respond. AMD's response to the market is their Bulldozer line of CPUs, Bulldozer failed because it was made with too much emphasis on multi-core performance and as a result, Bulldozer CPU's single core performance were horrible. Combine that with the fact that most programs at the time did not support multi-core CPUs, AMD gave way for Intel. Fast forward to 2014 and Intel knew that AMD weren't a threat anymore, as a result Intel gotten lazy at generational improvements, causing them to \"milk\" the CPU market for time to come. Fast forward to the present and AMD needs to respond badly, and Zen is their last ditch effort at it. Zen was made with single core performance in mind and as a result, Zen is reported to have a 52% improvement in single core performance over Bulldozer, enough to put them in place with 5th generation core i3/i5/i7 CPUs. AMD needs Zen to succeed badly, because if they fail to meet their quota, AMD may never compete in the desktop CPU market ever again. We need Zen to succeed badly, not because of AMD's sake, but for the sake of competition in the CPU market.",
"basiclly intel has dominated amd for the past several years while amd has hade nothing much to combat it. Granted amd does have the budget friendly FX series which has the bottom of the cpu market. The new Ryzen line offers products that match and or beat intels line up and in all having a lower cost to them",
"An article I read earlier showed performance numbers for the $400 Ryzen 1700x matching the performance of the $1100 i7 6900k. For $500, you can get a Ryzen 1800x that BEATS that 6900k. If these are actual, un-altered numbers, this is huge for not only AMD and the PC world, but will really lead to some innovations in CPU technology in the coming years because of new-found competition from AMD."
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5vnf2c | Why does food stored in cans stay good for so long? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the food processing company (or home food preservationist) carefully kills all the germs inside the can either immediately before or immediately after it's sealed. In home canning (which, if there were any justice in the world, would be called home jarring, because nobody uses metal cans at home, but there ain't no justice), you put your food- tomatoes, asparagus, jam, whatever- into a jar, seal up the jar, and then boil the jar, whole, for several minutes, until the jar and everything in it has been at boiling temperatures, killing any germs that might have been inside. Afterwards, there are no (live) germs inside to spoil the food, and since the jar is sealed, no germs from outside can get in.",
"Food is usually heated prior to being filled into cans, but it doesn't have to be. Once the can is filled it is sealed, then it is heat processed. The severity of the heat process usually depends on the pH of the food. Below a pH of 4.6 it can be pasteurised - given a heating process at 100°C or less. Foods above a pH of 4.6 are considered \"low acid\" foods. Commercially canned low acid foods are heated to an equivalent of 121°C or 250°F to the centre of the food, for a minimum of 3 minutes (though usually longer). Because it takes a long time to heat the right through the food it will often take about an hour to process something like a can of baked beans at 121°C. This is done in a pressurised vessel called a retort. The pressure prevents the can from bursting or distorting and can allow the use of water for processing (though steam is also commonly used for heating the cans). This temperature and time combination is enough to kill the highly heat resistant spores of clostridium botulinum. If any survive the process they can reproduce and kill the consumer of the food. The legal minimum processing time for a canned food is designed to produce \"12 log\" reduction in the number of these spores, so if there's a single spore in the very middle of a can it'll have a 1 in 10^12 chance of surviving. Virtually zero. This bacterium produces botulinum toxin (botox) the most lethal neurotoxin known. Interestingly it doesn't need oxygen to grow, in fact it is actually an obligate anaerobe - it needs an absence of oxygen. It prefers the absence of other bacteria, it doesn't produce gas as it grows (so cans don't swell indicating that something is wrong) and the spores often germinate after a significant heat treatment. It's also the most heat resistant pathogen, which is why it is the target organism of the canning process.",
"The can is sealed by a hermetic seam, and must pass several quality assurance checks before it leaves the factory. The food is put in the can, and then sealed before being sterilised to kill all of the bacteria that are present. If there is any kind of leak on the seam, the bacteria are free to enter and the can, can (in extreme cases) explode under the pressure of the increase in volume due to the bacteria. Here's a picture of the double hermetic seam used to seal cans: URL_0 : TLDR: there is nowhere for bacteria to enter the can, and therefore it cannot perish. Source: specialist canning engineer",
"Pretty much just seal the food in an air tight container, like a metal can, then boil the can in water to kill off all the germs inside of it with the extreme heat. Afterwards more germs can't get in the sealed container. Works pretty darn well.",
"Food ruining baddies are killed after the can is closed. No more can get in afterwards to ruin your food",
"Food doesn't just go bad on its own. It has to have bacteria or germs to make it go bad. When you can or jar food, it removes these factors. Without them, it can stay good for an extremely long time.",
"After boiling and killing them what happens to the germs inside the can? they stay inside? evaporate?",
"To ride on OP's question, assuming the container is in perfect condition, will the food ever go bad?",
"ELI5: How does the heating process not end up cooking the food?",
"Food doesn't just go bad on it's own, it's germs that make it go bad. Canning kills all the germs in the food, and stops new germs from getting to the food.",
"This question would be better in reverse, given that conservation of food kill all bacteria and seal it. What makes it eventually go bad? Usually it is that the package itself doesn't hold up. So storing the can in a friendly environment helps it last longer. If the date on the package says 5 year from production, the product can be safe to eat 20 years later. Do not buy damaged cans for long term storage. Avoid humidity or even wet places to avoid rust. Avoid temperature swings so the expansion contraction of the content stress the can and its seals."
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5vp30n | Why does all planets have semi-spherical geometry? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lets say a large object is in space, large enough to have its own gravity. Gravity pulls from every side pointing towards the middle of the object. Other smaller objects come along and gets pulled along with the large object. Its very similar to how rolling a snowball into a snowman works."
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5vqdi7 | Why do people think they can tell when someone is looking at them? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As humans, we're often lousy at trusting our intuition when it comes to validating a belief. We tend to ignore evidence that conflicts with an assumption, and overvalue evidence that agrees with it. So if we get a prickly feeling, and we look around, and make eye contact with someone, we think 'oh the prickly feeling was from someone looking at me.' We may get 100 other prickly feelings, look around, and see nothing, and go back to what we're doing, and never think of it again. Then we get a prickly feeling, and make more eye contact, and we think \"See?! I can TELL!\" even though statistics are not on our side. We remember our 2 successes, 3 successes, and so on, and forget about 100 failures, 200 failures, etc. Add to that other factors that can help further the belief: we're predisposed towards eye contact and our brain seeks out faces in our visual field with alacrity, other people are apt to look up when they see us moving around, and they will look towards our face, and we may notice people with other senses than vision without realizing it, prompting us to look around, and you wind up with an easy recipe for thinking we've got an extra sense.",
"You know how when you wash your car, it always rains? Of course it really doesn't, but you are more likely to remember the time when this happen, leaving the impression is occurs more often than it really does. This is known as confirmation bias, and all humans experience it. Similarly, when you look up just when someone is looking at you, it makes in an impression you remember. But you don't remember all the times you looked up and someone wasn't watching you."
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5vt1ss | Pyramid Schemes, what are they and how do they work? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de4mv8u"
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"text": [
"Let's say you tell two people that something good will happen if they give you a dollar, and they can also have something good happen to people who give them a dollar, so long as they give you half of what they earn. In turn, they both tell two people they talk to the exact same thing, so you have four people who give the first two people a dollar for a total of $4. In turn, those people give you half of those dollars, so you get $2 and they're left with $1 each. Those four people do this again, so you have 8 people at the bottom layer. Money changes hands: $8 - $4 - $2. Then again: $16 - $8 - $4 - $2. The people at the bottom are funding the people at the top. That's the basic structure of a pyramid scheme. Of course, IRL, it's not that simple. Usually, people become sellers of a brand's product with the option of franchising, but the money is really in the franchising and not the sales. It's just made to seem like a legitimate sales business so they can sucker new people into joining the bottom layer of the scheme. If new members aren't being added, money isn't being paid out and the business collapses. Pyramid schemes exist worldwide, and almost every country has laws against them."
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5vu2i5 | Why size of same ios apps are more then that of android apps? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"de4yp4d"
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"text": [
"Could be explained by many things: 1. iOS apps might be using a more verbose language. They're developed in Swift or Objective-C. Android apps are typically developed in Java. Java has a reputation for verbosity, but Objective-C might actually be worse. Doing something in Java might just require less lines of code than to do that same thing in Obj-C or Swift. So potentially the application code is just longer in the iOS apps. I don't think this is the case. 2. The amount of code you need to write for an application depends a lot on the external libraries you can include. A \"library\" in programming is just some code that someone else wrote, that you can include in your app. These will cut down on the code you need to write, but may increase the total lines of code in the app (because the library is included). Often, using an external library will be more total lines of codes than doing something yourself, as that library is likely to include edge cases and logic that you don't end up using. So it could be that iOS has more (or larger) third-party libraries, making the total lines-of-code higher in iOS apps than Android apps. This might be a partial cause (you could check by looking at open-source applications and seeing the size of their codebases). 3. Besides third-party libraries, you need to include all the code necessary for your application to work on a mobile device. iOS and Android provide SDK's, so that you can build apps that work on those platforms. So in addition to the user code and the user's libraries, there's also all the platform code necessary. For example, Apple doesn't make it's developers re-create a \"Button\" object - they want to make common stuff easy to use, and they implement that for you. iOS could provide more lines of code out of the box. 4. Before building applications, the code is often run through compilation steps, to turn it into something that the mobile device can actually run. Additionally, some apps may include steps of minification or obfuscation (shrinking or obfuscating the code, for example by replacing a variable name like \"facebookUsername\" with \"a\" - harder to read, but shorter and just as easy for the computer to execute). So compilation steps will be a large factor - it might be the case that Android apps are smaller because Java compilers do better than Objective-C or Swift compilers. 5. Besides code, applications include assets (images, files, videos). To cover different screen sizes and devices, often duplicated assets need to be provided (like one for small displays, one for large). iOS might require more here than Android does - I don't think so though, since they have fewer screen sizes they need to support. Hope this makes sense. The difference is due to either the code and assets in the project, or the compilation steps that turn that code into something that runs (a built, executable program). There could be more causes, but I'm guessing causes 3 and 4 are mostly responsible for file size differences."
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5vwd9w | What is autism? And what is the difference between mild autism and high-functioning autism? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de5ic2l",
"de5rjc0",
"de5lrbz"
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"text": [
"Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder, giving rise to a range of symptoms concerning perception, behaviour and intellectual capacity. People with autism range from severely handicapped to almost normally functioning. The severity of autism is a continuum, referred to as the autism spectrum. In the most recent diagnostic manuals, the several subtypes of autism have been removed, and the diagnose is now Autism Spectrum Disorder, which includes such diverse previous diagnoses as Asperger syndrome (normal to high intelligence) to seriously disabled patients in need of constant care. In reference to another answer here which defines \"high functioning\" autists as \"being able to function, on some level, without constant supervision\", I find this to be seriously under-representing the capacity of these people, as many high-functioning autists are able to live perfectly normal and independent lives. Source: Am parent of \"high-functioning\" autist (Asperger).",
"Aspie here. I don't mean to toot my own horn here but aspies are generally smart but lack the natural development of social skills. Think of it as a permanent item in an RPG that grants +15 intelligence but -15 charisma.",
"What is autism? The important thing to recognize is that \"autism\", as such, does not appear to be a single, discrete disease. Not like, say, Down Syndrome is, anyway. Down Syndrome is the result of a *very* particular genetic defect--having an extra copy of chromosome 21--and it produces a very well-recognized set of symptoms, through a series of very well-understood mechanisms. Precisely what symptoms any particular individual winds up with seems largely random, but we have a pretty good working knowledge of what's going on. This is *not* true of what is now known as \"autism spectrum disorder.\" The term is basically a catch-all for a variety of brain disorders that, for whatever reason, produce a related set of *symptoms*, rather than a term that refers to a specific, identified *disease mechanism*. These disorders have to do with both the internal structures of the brain and the connections between various brain structures, but they're not all the same. If there's any single, unifying cause for the conditions we describe with the term \"autism,\" nobody has identified it yet. It's not even clear whether it's a collection of related disorders with similar mechanisms, or a wildly diverse set of disorders that only produce the symptoms we recognize as \"autism\" by chance. In short: we don't really have any idea what \"autism,\" as such actually is. It's just a diagnosis we apply to anyone that suffers from a particular spectrum of symptoms. With respect to Asperger's Syndrome, the reason people say it's \"outdated\" is that it's no longer officially recognized as a distinct diagnosis. Psychiatric/psychological disorders are officially categorized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (usually referred to by the acronym \"DSM\"). In the previous version of the DSM, the DSM-IV, Asperger's was a formally recognized diagnosis largely independent of other conditions. But the DSM-V has recategorized it as a sub-species of what is now known as \"autism spectrum disorder.\" Again, autism isn't necessarily a single *disease* as much as a related set of *symptoms*. The re-categorization of Asperger's is consistent with that perspective."
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5vwu1t | Why is the USA more conservative on attitudes about sex compared to other developed nations? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de5iuc4",
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"text": [
"I think it's because the country was founded by Puritans who fled the United Kingdom because they were on the other side of religious persecution, being a minority religion in a majority Protestant country. In the New World, they were free to do the oppressing and forbid any fun activities. They kicked Roger Williams out of Massachusetts Bay for \"spreading new and dangerous ideas\" like religious tolerance and separation of church and state. They also kicked out the Quakers and executed four by hanging when they stayed behind and kept practicing. Nice guys, these Puritans, don't you think? The enforcers of religious dogma seem to be obsessed with people's sexuality. Controlling when and how you procreate and what you're allowed to teach your offspring creates a ready-made army of God. There's no higher purpose than that, really.",
"Americans have this thing called Bible Belt. America only tolerates religious fundamentalism and extremism of the Jesus variant.",
"It's because of the way the USA distributes power unevenly to the rural areas of the country. There are many areas of the country with relaxed attitudes about sex on par with Europe (Las Vegas, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco, etc). However, rural areas have a disproportionate voice in the Senate and Presidential elections so they still get to make the rules."
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5vy6f7 | If there's no air in space, that mean there should be little to no friction. Why can't we just reach the speed of light by burning fuel in a particular direction for A while? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de5se0m"
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"text": [
"This works for a while, but once you actually start to get close to light speed the usual f=ma physics stop working so cleanly. At speeds that are an appreciable fraction of light speed (c) the energy required to continue accelerating begins to increase exponentially. Going from .8c to .9c takes far more energy than 0 to .1c, and the energy cost quickly becomes prohibitive. No amount of energy in the universe can propel an object with mass to 1c, the equation approaches infinity. There are also more practical problems like fuel load, acceleration time, stopping, ship controls, and impacting stray dust particles at relativistic speed."
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5vz0en | How do some justify that the holocaust was fake? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de5zg76",
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"text": [
"They deny that the sources attesting to it are accurate. Since we are now reaching a point in history where many of the first hand witnesses are dying, it is in the process of passing out of living memory. This is usually ideologically motivated, because the people proposing it either want to reduce sympathy for Jewish people, or because they want to promote a set of policies widely associated with Nazis. There is usually an element of conspiratorial thinking involved in promoting this viewpoint--that somehow a conspiracy of individuals has lied to the world to create the impression that the holocaust happened. This is also used by some groups as a way to fish for individuals who might be vulnerable to this sort of thinking in general. Many groups will pay special attention to recruiting individuals who accept holocaust denial, because that indicates that they are--at the very least--not strong critical thinkers, and not sympathetic towards Jewish people. This makes them ideal recruitment candidates for ideologically extreme political and religious groups who are historically anti-semitic.",
"When your goal is to prove a point regardless of the facts, you selectively read and pick evidence that supports your position and reject all contrary evidence for whatever reason you can come up with. Holocaust deniers dismiss the testimony of thousands of survivors, archaeological artifacts, and contemporary second-hand accounts made during or shortly after the war. They also make make strawman arguments like \"The gas chambers couldn't have killed 6 million people!\" (that's true, but 6 million people is the total number that died, not the number killed in gas chambers). These threads from /r/askhistorians address this topic more in-depth: URL_0 URL_2 URL_1",
"In some countries, Not the USA, not western Europe, history is taught poorly and press is not free. So you can say to your people who cannot read another language than their own, everything. In my country, many children of North African ancestry did not believe that the killing of 6,000,000 Jews had happened. In 1945 the people of Germany and the rest of Western Europe could hardly believe that that had happened. The children were taken to a trip to Auschwitz to see the Vernichtungslager, to see the human hair that was cut of the death bodies before they were cremated, the spectacles. Then they could also believe the stories about soap made out of human fat, the lampshades made of human skin. The terrible experiments performed by Doctor Mengele. Free press, no censorship is very important. People in the USA or Western Europe who have access to all sources should not deny this genocide. If they do it is blatant lying."
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/57w1hh/monday_methods_holocaust_denial_and_how_to_combat/",
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5vz5bw | How does VX (the nerve agent that killed Kim Jong-nam) kill you even with a tiny amount applied to the skin? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"From Wikipedia: *\"VX blocks the action of acetylcholinesterase, resulting in an accumulation of acetylcholine in the space between the neuron and muscle cell, leading to uncontrolled muscle contraction. This results in initial violent contractions, followed by sustained supercontraction restricted to the subjunctional endplate sarcoplasm and prolonged depolarizing neuromuscular blockade, the latter resulting in flaccid paralysis of all the muscles in the body. Sustained paralysis of the diaphragm muscle causes death by asphyxiation.*\" TLDR? VX stops communication between your nerves and muscles, causing your diapraghm to stop working, which makes you suffocate."
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5w0rwt | Why does eating spicy food make my nose run? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6et0f"
],
"text": [
"It's an inflammation response. Many spicy foods, especially those made with chili peppers, contain an oil called *capsaicin* which is a very powerful irritant to mucous membranes in mammals, such as the eyes, nose, and throat. This is a defense mechanism from the chili pepper plant's perspective, since the GI tract of a mammal would wreck the seeds as they passed through and out. Birds can't taste capsaicin, and along with their relatively gentler digestive system and their ability to fly, the seeds from a chili pepper are much more likely to survive and be spread much farther away. Other spicy foods like horseradish use a different mechanism to produce their spicy taste, but that's a different story."
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5w0uro | Why are human babies born so incapable of survival compared to other animal babies? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6f8l6"
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"text": [
"We have big brains, which means we need bigass heads. Big heads do not fit through a primate pelvis particularly well. So the compromise is to have babies early, before their brains are fully developed. Because we are a smart and social species the group can protect the helpless young, so it isn't a huge evolutionary disadvantage."
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5w13qe | What is an SHA-1 and an SHA-1 collision? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A hash is a one way math function that can't be reversed. It's most common use it to store passwords. So say you have a number 2345 and you have a hash algorithm that adds the numbers together. The total is 15. From 15, you can't get the original number, but you can figure out IFA number you receive matches 15. So you store 15. Now someone says my password is \"3456\" , you add it all up and get 18. 18 doesn't match 15 and you know that it's not the right password even though you dont have the original password. Now someone finds out you have stored 15 and that you add the digits together to get the password and send you 5550. Using your algorithm, you add the digits and get 15. So you know it's the right password. Crap! Now, you have two different numbers but with the same password. SHA1 is like your algorithm but much more complicated. The two passwords are a \"collision\" because they have the same result from your algorithm. Now let's pretend that you use your algorithm to sign something. \" The file I sent you, when run through my algorithm gives a result X.\". A hacker could generate a different file and craft it so it has the same result and you would think it's the original because it has the same result from your algorithm. In the real world, SHA1 is no longer used for security stuff because it was declared unsafe 1-2 years ago. Please excuse any mistakes in my message, I am kinda drunk.",
"SHA-1 is known as a hashing algorithm. Note that I will be talking about hashing algorithms in general here, since the only thing different between them and SHA-1 is that the math behind them is different. This is something which you can use for several different purposes, but generally used to make sure that two different sets of data are identical. You take a set of data, be it a file or a phrase, run it through a program that applies the SHA-1 algorithm to it, and out you get a 40 character hexadecimal, or 20 byte long phrase known as a \"hash.\" For example, I ran the hashing algorithm through a random file I have, here is its hash. SHA1: 0DA324A381B410ACBAF6857BF577C0998FF53842 Now, there are several important things about hashing algorithms in general. Firstly, they always produce the same hash when the same file is run through it. Second, it is destructive, meaning that the hash cannot be turned back into the original file. For example, a simple hash for a bunch of numbers would be just to sum the digits, you take the number 456, sum the digits, you get a hash of 15. Any time you sum the digits, it will always be 456, but you can't get 456 out of 15 necessarily. Point is, it is not reversible. So, what is it used for? A variety of things, but generally to make sure that two copies of data are the same. For example, some smaller software devs, especially open source ones, will list the SHA-1 hashes of their files when downloading them to verify that the download is correct. Another good example is that of WikiLeaks, they have their data mirrored by many people so that in case the main site goes down, people can still access it. But how do we verify the data is legit. Through this algorithm, these hashes are small enough to say tweet or do something similar, so this way, people can verify that their downloaded files are legit. Another use of this is for password storage. Websites (at least the good ones) like Reddit NEVER store your password in a normal text file, or store it at all. Instead, their database will contain the hashes for all the passwords. When you login, you send your password over through an encrypted connection, the server will take your password, run it through the hashing algorithm, and check that the hash matches that for your user in the database. Why is this important? So that in case the database is leaked, your password is not. Beside this, it has significantly more uses with things like SSL certificates and complicated stuff I don't want to get in. Point is, it deals with a lot of security stuff. You might have noticed above for our simple hashing function of summing the digits, there can be multiple phrases that fit that hash. Like 285, or 852, or 366. This is true of all hashing algorithms, it is a basic fact of math that to verify that two sets of data are the same, the only way to do so with 100% accuracy is to check each point of data in each set of data and see if they match. A hashing algorithm works 99% of the time. That brings us into the next question. What is a hashing collision? It is when two files or pieces of data have the same hash. Now, this is not good. Hashing algorithms are important since they verify the identity of a piece of data, and if a piece of data can pretend to be another piece of data... well, this is no bueno. The fact is that hashes are small enough to be feasible to say copy paste or write down, but large enough so that they are complex enough to avoid collisions like this happening just by pure luck (more letters and numbers in the hash, more things it can be). The main thing is that you can manufacture data that has the same hash as another piece of data. For example, if someone finds a phase of numbers and letters that has the same hash as your reddit password, they can login with that into reddit, even though that is not the password you set. So, what happened today. Google released 2 pdf's today. URL_1 URL_0 These are different PDFs. But they have the same SHA-1 hash. They claim to have figured out a simpler way to find a hash collision for SHA-1 and will publish the method for how to do so in 3 months (waiting 3 months so that anything that uses SHA-1 has time to switch to a more complex algorithm like SHA-256 or SHA-3). By simpler, I mean one that still requires $100,000 worth of computing power, but point is, they found a way that isn't unfeasible. Any security relying on SHA-1 has to switch now basically.",
"Sha-1 is a so called hashing algorithm. Basically its an assembly line for your password, where the end product is scrambled, skewed, reversed etc in a way that is consistent but makes it impossible* to go the other way up the assembly line and figure out what the starting product was from an endproduct. Imagine that you create an account on a website and you put in your username and password you want. The password then passed through the SHA-1 chain which outputs a scrambled piece of data. This way, if someone ever gets hold of that scrambled data, he/she could never find out what your original password is. When logging in, the password you put it goes through the SHA-1 chain and then compared to the saved SHA-1 string. * This has now been broken, which ties into the SHA-1 collision where two strings of text could end up being the same result."
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5w1zxx | why do women's periods sync up when they spend a lot of time together? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6ozlg",
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"text": [
"They don't. It's a common myth. What happens is that most women's periods have *roughly* the same length. This means that they will drift in and out of sync as time passes. It's only really noticeable when they're in sync. In a more easily observed example, notice how the turn signals of cars seem to be in sync for a bit then drift off after a while. If you want a visual demonstration [watch all of these pendulums making patterns & chaos]( URL_0 ).",
"They don't. Statistically, any set of sequential events that each occur at a roughly persistent interval are bound to line up eventually. Think of it like a line of cars in the turn lane at a red light. All of those turn indicators blink at their own persistent interval, and each of those intervals is *slightly* different from the one behind it; but if you watch long enough, there will be a few times where a few of them seem to blink in unison a few times before falling out of sync again. And if you watch even longer, eventually **all** of them might appear to blink at the same time. But they eventually fall out of sync again as well, because they each blink at their own specific frequency completely independent of each other. Then there's always the healthy dose of confirmation bias that we're so prone to. You remember all the times you and your lady friends' cycles matched up because that shared event is remarkable. But you disregard the dozens of times they *didn't* line up."
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5w2din | What are Ponzi schemes and why do so many people fall for it even after being in the news so much? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6s8rl"
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"text": [
"A ponzi scheme is a kind of fraud where the scammer uses money they get from \"new\" clients to pay \"dividends\" to older clients. It's a *little* like a pyramid scheme. The idea is to get enough people buzzing about getting good dividends to capture a lot of people. The scammer then just takes the bulk of the money, distributes \"dividends\" as long as they are able to increase their scam base, and eventually just disappears with all their cash. People fall for them because it isn't always abundantly clear that one is going on. Did you just find a really good investment, or is it a scheme? Unless you know how to do your research, you probably aren't equipped to *truly* tell the difference until its too late. The way to avoid them is to: 1) Consider investing in mutual funds and investment houses. Something like Oakmark can yield decent returns. 2) Understand that the saying \"It's too good to be true.\" Amazing profits? It's almost certainly a scam. 3) Avoid 'buying' a way to wealth. If someone is selling you a method to get wealthy, then why aren't they just using it themselves to get crazy wealthy? 4) DO. YOUR. HOMEWORK. Google shit. Find news stories on major financial sites. Go dig around places like reddit. Finance and investment dorks LOVE talking about these things. Find a group and pitch an idea and just like any other topic you'll find loads of peopel ready to say \"yeah that's awesome\" or \"no that's a scam\""
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5w2ji7 | If the stars and planets are light-years away, are we seeing the planets that many years back? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de6tdbp"
],
"text": [
"Yes. Everything we see in the sky is from the light it generated/reflected in the past. Even the sun is several light minutes away, so we are always seeing it as it was a few minutes ago. A star 10 light years away, we will see the light that is now 10 years old. The further an object is away, the further in the past our perception of it is."
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5w6voe | Theory of relativity | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de7qu7i"
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"text": [
"Einstein made two postulates: * All observers in frames of reference with constant motion (i.e. no acceleration) will always observe light to be travelling at the same speed, approximately *c* = 300,000,000 m/s. * There is no privileged reference frame with which all things move with respect to, or in which observations are inherently correct - all observers move relative to each other. From these two postulates and some basic maths, Einstein draws some remarkable conclusions: * Observers will see the clocks of others who are moving with respect to them tick slower - this is called time dilation. The closer they travel to the speed of light, the greater the dilation. * Observers will see the path they travel shorten parallel to their direction of motion - this is called length contraction. The closer they travel to the speed of light, the greater the contraction. * Observers will not necessarily agree on whether two events were simultaneous or not, depending on their state of motion. * No object with mass can accelerate to the speed of light. Velocity is also no longer linearly additive. * Mass is a form of energy, and an object's energy tends towards infinity as it gets closer to the speed of light. This is the special theory of relativity. If you want to see an intuitive and simple derivation of time dilation, look up the Light Clock example. In the general theory of relativity, which is a lot more complex, Einstein deals with gravity. He tells us that space is curved by the presence of mass (like a bowling ball on a trampoline) and the curvature of the path of objects through space is the force of gravity. I realise I'm essentially listing things about relativity, and that's because the reasoning behind it is deep. If you want to know more about any particular things, or you have some confusion (there are plenty of apparent paradoxes when you start to think about the logic), then I can try to elaborate."
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5w8jbu | Why are Microsoft computers more prone to viruses compared to Apple computers? Also why does Microsoft have so many more operating system updates compared to Apple? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Microsoft is maintaining backwards compatibility with operating systems which presumed that each PC was an island, unconnected to anything else. There were few security checks, because there were few security threats. This approach encouraged lots of hardware and software vendors, making the windows marketplace the largest market (for making money) and the largest target (of evildoers). Apple had a different market strategy, strictly controlling who could make what hardware and software. They did this to control the user experience, but it accidentally turned out to promote security once all personal computers were on the Internet. They did it to promote \"Apple computers just work\" even though that might mean \"they don't work with that non-Apple stuff\". Since Apple doesn't make malware (neither does Microsoft, by the way) this turned out to make malware much harder. Evildoers are not going to work harder to target a smaller part of the marketplace. It's a little like having a security sign in your front yard, the crook just decides to break into the house next door.",
"Not enough people use Apple Computers to justify making viruses for them? #ShitPost",
"It's the economy of scale, more people use Windows. Therefore there's more incentive to create viruses for it. Also Apple is expensive, and most viruses come from poor Eastern Europe and Russia. Not many hackers can afford one."
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5w9es3 | Why do sounds like fingers scraping on chalkboards get a reaction from our body? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de8c4co"
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"text": [
"Overall, research shows that this ear-splitting noise has the same frequency as that of a crying baby and a human scream, indicating that these sounds are tied to survival. For instance, people attuned to these frequencies may rescue a crying infant sooner, improving the baby's longevity."
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5w9pb5 | Why can't relative speed go above the speed of light? (That is two objects moving towards each other, both near the speed of light) | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is the basis for relativity - even relative speeds can't go above the speed of light (I might call it c below to save time) because space and time bend in order to make it work. I'll try give a brief explanation, but it all comes down to reference frames. A reference frame is the \"point of view\" you use when you measure your speed. If you're driving along a road at 20 mph and you pass a pedestrian who is stood still on the sidewalk, then I'm sure you know that your relative speed is 20 mph. From the point of view of the pedestrian, he is perfectly still and your car goes past him at 20 mph. That's his reference frame. From your perspective, it's perfectly valid to say that you and your car are perfectly still, and the pedestrian, and even the rest of the world, are moving past you at 20 mph. That'd be your reference frame. In everyday life you usually don't consider things this way, but from a maths/physics perspective it's completely valid to define your point of view like that. In case that's difficult to get your head around, I'll give another example. If you're with me so far, you're welcome to skip this paragraph. But consider you're in a spaceship, flying away from teh earth at a relative speed of 1000 mph. From the perspective of (or in the reference frame of) people on earth, they are stationary and you are moving away from them at 1000 mph. But from your perspective, it's equally valid to claim that you are sitting still and the earth is moving away from you at 1000 mph. This is because there's nothing which is \"absolutely still\" so all speed has to be defined as relative to something else. Now this is all fine, but when we start approaching the speed of light, funny things happen. We observed through a range of experiments that it doesn't matter if you're moving relative to the direction of the light, no matter how you measure it, the speed of light will always come out as the same number. Before we go further it's worth noting that this isn't accounting for optical phenomena like refraction - things like the speed of light moving at smaller proportions its speed in a vacuum in certain substances. When I say the speed of light in this explanation, we ignore all the stuff like that because it's irrelevant and would only make things more complicated. But it turns out, from various measurements that **the speed of light is constant in all reference frames**. That's in bold because that's the \"postulate of invariance\" of special relativity, which is one of the basic laws of the theory we derive everything else from. To give an example of this - consider you're in your car (which has had a bit of an upgrade to allow it to travel at very, very high speeds) and you're travelling alongside a light beam. If you measure how fast the light beam is relative to you when you're not moving, you get the ordinary speed of light, as you might expect. But if you start driving alongside it, it doesn't matter how fast you go - even if you go at 0.99c (that's 0.99 * the speed of light - in reality it's a very messy and long number so proportional terms are easier to think about) then you will still always measure that light beam as going at the same speed relative to you. That may not make sense at first, and you may expect that when you're travelling close to the speed of light that then the beam would appear to \"slow down\" relative to you, but it's simply not the case and has been shown through various experiments. It also follows that you can't ever reach the speed of light - the amount of energy needed to accelerate you tends to infinity as you approach c, and we know that there isn't infinite energy in the universe, so that simply means that we can't ever reach the speed of light. Now consider your example of two objects moving towards each other at approximately the speed of light - how about we assume that they are both travelling at 0.8c in a \"stationary\" reference frame to make the maths easier. Non-relativistic mechanics would suggest that their relative speed is 1.6c. Now we know from above that it's perfectly valid to consider the reference frame, or point of view of one of these objects - and in that reference frame, if not for relativity then it would be stationary and another object would be heading towards it faster than the speed of light. As we've seen above this would lead to serious inconsistencies - in the reference frame of the object, this would mean that the object hurtling towards it must have infinite energy, whereas in the \"stationary\" reference frame both objects have finite energy. We know that both reference frames must be equally valid, but that inconsistency would mean that they can't be - the solution, then, is that even relative speeds can't be above the speed of light. Now it's tricky to explain what actually goes on, but ultimately space and time start to distort when objects start approaching the speed of light. Length contracts and time dilates to such a degree that no matter your reference frame, no object can travel faster than the speed of light, and we can express and measure this mathematically with a [Lorentz factor]( URL_0 ) where v is the velocity of the object and c is the speed of light. This may sound crazy or made-up but it has been measured experimentally. The [Hafele and Keating Experiment]( URL_1 ) in 1972 put two perfectly synced caesium atomic clocks on planes going around the world, one in one direction and the other in the opposite direction. This meant that they had a relative speed which while a long, long way below c was enough for relativistic effects to kick in. After a few trips, the clocks were no longer in sync - one had gained a few nanoseconds and one had lost a few nanoseconds - and the amount of time they had gained or lost was almost exactly the amount predicted by relativity. Ok, I've written a lot there. I hope I'd helped to answer your question, but if not then feel free to ask me anything you need in terms of clarification."
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5waan3 | What is Red Pill and what does it have to do with sexism on Reddit? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Red Pill refers to the film the Matrix, where taking the red pill allows someone to free their mind from the Matrix, a giant computer which all humanity is hooked up to creating the illusion of a free world when they are in fact enslaved by ~~aliens~~ robots far in the future. Taking the red pill lets freedom fighters bring people out to the real world to help free humanity overall. In today's parlance, it refers to the idea that society has brainwashed people into some kind of PC liberal ideology where women are getting a free ride at the expense of the rights of men. This often also applies to minority ethnic groups and white people. Those who have taken this so-called Red Pill have seen the world for what it truly is, recognise that sexism is made up, the Patriarchy doesn't exist, women have it easier and feminism is slavery, and they are trying to free all the rest of us. It is used to justify the attitude these people have towards women and minorities and it commonly goes along with far right political leanings akin to fascism. Please note that I do not agree with this point of view."
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5wdng4 | How do woman's periods sync up? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They don't. If you have a number of women living together for a long time, it's likely that at some point at least two of them will have a period at the same time. People present this as evidence for the claim, when it's really just chance. The end of this article has an interesting visualisation of this: URL_0",
"They don't. It's a pretty common myth, and a lot of people still believe it, but it isn't true. It's just a coincidence that people tend to notice, especially since periods can last up to 7 days. Two women with 1 overlapping day cover nearly half the month, so add 1-2 more women in to the equation and it's nearly certain that there will be some overlap.",
"They don't. The original study was published in 1971 and subsequent attempts to replicate the study failed. Also, there were problems with the original study as well. [Wiki link]( URL_0 )",
"Most women's cycles aren't truly 28 days, they vary and can change month to month, that's just the average. And some women vary wildly in the length of their period (before the pill my periods would last anywhere from 2 days to 8, but usually 4-5). Ultimately, its a stupid myth. Anytime you get a bunch of women (who aren't on then pill) together, someone will 'sync' eventually. For a week.",
"Have you ever been on a turning lane at a stop light with other cars in the lane and everyone has their blinkers on? And every once in a while a few of the cars blinkers seem to \"sync up\"? But after a while they get out of sync again? Similar principle. If you have many women together for long enough, it will appear that their cycles will sync together, but as others have stated, it is a myth."
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5we9bb | How are different domains(.com, .net, etc.) created and how do we connect to them? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There's a set of servers called \"root name servers\". These servers are managed by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and form the basis of the domain name system. Only top level domains (.space, .io, .tv, .com, .net) that are recognized by ICANN and placed in these root servers are visible on the internet. You can't just arbitrarily pick a TLD like .zoiggy and start using it because it is not registered in the root servers. Now, if you want to get your own TLD, all it takes is a $250K check to ICANN and some legal paperwork."
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5wenpn | why did the natives (north and South America) die to diseases from Europe but Europeans didn't die from native diseases? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de9i88l"
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"text": [
"Europeans had been living in denser populated cities for a lot longer, and they had wider trade routes across more of the world for a lot longer, exposing them to more diseases over longer periods, helping them build immunities (or at least weeding out people with the least resistance) to a wider range of pathogens. Thus the Europeans were far more likely to be resistant to whatever the new world people had than the other way round"
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5wh2vn | Why do we get sick of eating the same food? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"de9z3n2",
"dea104s"
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"text": [
"I know people who don't and it's weird. My ex husband would eat stuffing and hard boiled eggs everyday for months and months",
"A balanced diet is important to make sure you ingest al the necessary vitamins, proteins... and such that your body needs to make it work. As an example: your body needs a certain component of proteins it makes, an amino acid called lysine we cannot make in our own body (that's why it's called an essential amino acid). A person eating lots of cereals and nothing else (which was / is the case in some poor countries), won't get enough lysine, as it is (almost) not present in those foods. Their bodies won't be able to make some proteins necessary to get their bodies to work properly, and they'll get sick."
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5whzc4 | Since we use programs to write new programs, how were the first computers programmed ? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dea6db5"
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"text": [
"There's something even earlier than punch cards, though the other guy's example is good. URL_0 Sit through this quest of tedium, if you dare. Early computers were programmed with switches. Up for a 1, down for a 0, press a button to put that data in and move onto the next memory bank, do that dozens or hundreds of times, press \"run\", then watch the red lights on the front for your answer. That's. It. This required understanding binary and figuring out exactly what the code should be with nothing but scratch paper and your brain."
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5wi8gs | How do airlines get away with overbooking flights? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"dea8qey",
"dea8jlr"
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"text": [
"Because there's no law against it. When you buy a ticket they are not guaranteeing you a seat, it's right there in the contract. If you don't like it, use an airline that does not overbook their flights. You should expect to pay a higher price for that airline. You can't have the best of all worlds, part of how airlines get their prices down are by overbooking flights. (the flowing numbers are 100% fictional) They know that on average for every 100 seats sold only 98 will show up at fight time. So on a 300 person flight they'll have 6 empty. While that 98/100 is a simple average, they also know what the standard deviation on that average is. This means that they can make a statement like if we sell 306 tickets for a 300 seat flight, it'll only be a problem 1 out of 100 times. They make a business decision that it's OK to piss off 1 out of every 3000 customers if it means more revenue per flight (and therefore a lower price per seat).",
"I've heard that there is a certain percent of no-show among passengers (non-refundable tickets). Knowing that airlines sell more tickets than they have seats. Surprisingly, they prefer the risk of paying a compensation to a person who they didn't have a seat for, meaning that they get more money from 'no-show' people. So, basically, it's a gamble.",
"Because on average a certain number of people won't show up, and flying with empty seats is more costly since they use the same fuel either way (more or less) but sold less tickets for the flight with more empty seats. They *could* only sell as many tickets as there were seats, but this would mean the planes would almost always fly with empty seats so the price of the tickets would have to go up to compensate for this loss."
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5wiytl | What is true socialism, and why do people think it will save America? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"deafsqq"
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"text": [
"Literally nobody thinks it will save America. But certain socialist policies have proven highly effective in the past and in other first-world countries. First, socialism is not a form of government in and of itself. Socialism is an economic model in which the government controls industries and exerts significant control over how revenues are shared. Practically no one, save perhaps North Korea, is 100% socialist. Every modern country has a mix of socialist and capitalist policies. Second, it is entirely possible for a country to implement socialism and still fall into ruin through incompetence and mismanagement (see: Venezuela). When people talk about socialism in America, they normally mean socialized medicine and increased welfare (such as a minimum guaranteed income). The goal is to alleviate poverty and prevent wealth from accumulating in the hands of the very few. That ends the unbiased explanation. My *personal assessment* is that the only rational course of action is to implement at least some socialist policies. Ruthless, cut-throat capitalism as the GOP supports it is untenable. It never has worked and it never will. The market will always require government intervention in order to make it function properly and safely. Certain functions, like medical care and education, have completely failed as capitalist institutions and need to be entirely recast as government-controlled operations. Social welfare programs, especially for the sick and the elderly, are vital to alleviating poverty. And as our planet runs out of fossil fuels and suffers the burdens of overpopulation, we will increasingly require rational government control over how resources are allocated. Again, I must insist: Not saying that all capitalism is evil, but certain functions will inevitably require significant government interventions that would qualify as \"socialist.\"",
"Socialism is a system of economics, not government. It's seen as preferable to capitalism (though not necessarily superior) because it allows for more even distribution of wealth and resources eg universal healthcare and tuition-free post-secondary education. This must obviously be funded somehow, and the solution most often proposed is a tax increase, generally applying most to the wealthiest members of a given society. The issue is that very few people honestly want to pay higher taxes regardless of the benefits."
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5wj1yx | Why does milk spoil when it's left out at room temperature, but safe to drink warm or add to coffee? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"deagbuv",
"deafr4k"
],
"text": [
"Milk spoils from bacterial growth not just heat. Bacteria grow better in warm temperatures and much more slowly when kept cold. Brief periods of warmth or heat does not leave enough time for the bacteria to grow.",
"Milk doesn't immediately spoil at room temp, its just a temp at which bacteria will grow faster. Milk can still spoil in the fridge, it just takes longer. Am I misunderstanding your question?"
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5wjera | how do you determine when to use affect vs effect? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"deaizri"
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"text": [
"An Effect is a reaction of something. Affect is an action taken (by you or someone or something. A verb). So you can affect something, and cause it to have an effect. That effect it has could in turn affect you in some way."
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5wk39u | Why does America need a $58bn increase in the military budget if it's already more than the next 8 countries combined? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"deapc2z",
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"text": [
"It is subjective if the US *needs* such investment. However there is an enormous benefit to being untouchable militarily and you don't do that by being stingy.",
"Short answer we don't. There are many reasons why we increase military spending and one is the fear of decrease. The military in the US doesn't run the US but it benefits greatly from our current system. Their biggest fear is a new Jefferson who asks why we need a standing military so big with no real enemies. So if your budget is $700 billion it's easier to take a 25% cut. There is a smaller portion in my opinion where fear drives the military growth. Not an expert just a reader of history",
"It doesn't. But the current leader thinks that spending a lot more on the military provides good optics, and that a bigger military is always better. And the other things the money could be spent on (healthcare, the environment, infrastructure) are not as neat (or he is downright hostile to them). So, with the limited resources we have, he wants even more on the military. It's not about needs. It's about wants.",
"2 primary reasons. There was a requirement (by the bush administration) to be able to wage two full wars. This means that while they are fighting a war in iraq, that they can still defend other territories as needed. This leads to the other reason: that there exists many contractual agreements with other countries that while they have stations on foreign soil, that they would agree to defend said soil. It takes large sums of money/resources to defend one's country in order to abide by certain un standards, and some countries can get away with this requirement because the american army is their defense. There are other reasons, but the bulk of why the NA budget is so enormous is because of these. The reason places like norway doesn't have a military budget is because the usa does it for them.",
"All these people who dont get free access to healthcare have to choose between saving their mom and keeping their house, but good thing America can take out any nation in the world."
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5wkurj | How do Captcha's know that I'm not a robot when all I had to do was click on a box? | So I understand how most captcha's work, but what I'm wondering is how sometimes it doesn't even make me fill the entire captcha out and automatically decides that I'm not a robot. It just seems odd to me that it can do that right after I click one button and how botters/spammers can't abuse this on their bots. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"deaxir0"
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"text": [
"The boxes usually capture mouse movement, to see if it's \"natural\" movement, versus just sending the commands directly. It also looks at your public cookies to see if they're consistent with a real internet user, versus a single-purpose bot."
],
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5wl1dq | How do professional mathematicians make a living? Excluding teaching, what other careers exist for pure mathematics? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"deaxweg"
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"text": [
"Lots of things involve math, and many pure math PhDs do not work in academia, mainly because the wages are far lower than in other fields, like finance, technology, and security work. I know quite a few mathematicians due to my line of work. A few have worked in the academy, but as much as being a professor looks like a great job, there are many drawbacks as well. Many find teaching tedious, the academic world boring, or pure research a chore. Academics have to publish all the time, and many find that merely \"busy work.\" So many mathematicians work in other places, particularly in banking and finance. In the old days, people would research different stocks, bonds, and financial instruments and try and pick ones that they thought would grow or pay dividends. With the rise of financialization in the 1980s, and the rise of computational power in the 1990s and early 2000s, lots of trading and investing is increasingly done by algorithm, that is by computer programs. But these computer programs are very difficult to write, so they need people with strong mathematics backgrounds to write them. They need people who can figure out complex patterns in the markets and the ways to make money off of what is basically a very large real-world math problem. People in this field make a lot more money than professors, and many find the work challenging and fun, because they can put their problem solving skills to the test and have them compete in real markets with real money. Another place mathematicians are working is in robotics and automation, and what could be considered pre-artificial intelligence, or machine learning. These problems all require high levels of mathematical ability, and they pay a lot more than academia as well. I have a friend who works for the government working on cryptology and spying, cryptology is the process by which one takes intelligible things and makes them unintelligible without a special key, sort of like a lock. They are a mathematician, and they break codes for the government. They cannot talk about their work much, but the government needs people who are good at math who can work at really complex problems like trying to figure out what people are hiding from the government, like picking a lock except with computers. There are many other jobs for mathematicians. I know one who was an air traffic controller, which is a very stressful job that requires a strong knowledge of math and excellent quick problem solving skills. Pure math is a very good field, but it is also very difficult at an academic level. There is very little writing, but a great deal of work. Many people who start PhDs in maths do not finish their degrees, as they are offered jobs that pay much better than professors before they graduate, so there are also not that many maths PhDs to actually teach. It is one of the few positions within the university that is difficult to find workers for. Hope this helps!"
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5woc2x | Why does a photo of a monitor taken from a phone switch form and color as soon as I zoom in or out? | I don't know if it's a common phenomenon, but when I take a picture of my desktop monitor, the pixels look really weird, it swirls around in every direction and it's all full of little squares. But as soon as I zoom in a bit, everything starts to clear up and none of the structure of those swirls and whatnot ist gone. Why does that happen? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"debltlf"
],
"text": [
"You're probably describing moire, which is the optical illusion you'll see when you see a grid through another grid. I'll not try to describe of explain it with words (it's difficult to, since it's a visual phenomenon), but have a look through this article, and it'll explain what you're seeing: URL_0"
],
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5wsb3n | What makes rape so traumatic? And why does it's emotional effects stick for so long? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"There are a lot of factors to this. I'll talk about three of them. [Statistically]( URL_0 ), most rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim knew, not by a criminal leaping out of a dark alleyway at night. This betrayal of trust can hurt a lot. In addition, sometimes people will climax during a rape, despite their conscious wishes. This feels like your own body turning against you. The way rape is viewed culturally can also have an impact. \"Don't drop the soap\" jokes trivialize male rape victims' experience, and many people don't even think men can be raped. Legally, not every area recognizes this possibility, depending on how they define rape. Contrary to how it may seem in the media, female rape victims are still made to feel like it was their fault for trusting the wrong guy, wearing the wrong thing, drinking too much, etc.",
"Intimacy and closeness are elements that affect multiple levels of consciousness. We are sexual beings from the moment we are born and experiencing closeness and intimacy from the way we interact with our care givers. Intimacy is hard wired into our brains and an assault and force within that framework is devastating because it's how we hold our self- esteem, self- efficiency, and sense of security. It's devastating to have that which makes us feel loved and close to be used as an angry and possessive act. It's a terrible to be a victim and incredibly difficult to stop feeling like one.",
"I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're asking this because you genuinely want to know. Rape affects survivors on multiple levels. First, there's the physical aspect. It's usually a painful ordeal, even if the rapist doesn't engage in violence as a means to an end. Tissue tearing, bruising, fissures, and more. Then there is the mental and emotional toll. There is the abject humiliation. The fear. The degradation. Someone has taken your autonomy, they've violated you not just physically but violated your trust, they've robbed you of your sovereignty, inflicted their will upon you in the most intimate way. They've taken a piece of you. It is the ultimate breach of the boundary between your self and the outside world. Add to this the other ways in which it takes a mental and emotional toll on a person. Self-doubt and self-blame. Fear. There's abundant research to show many rape survivors experience PTSD. An estimated 1.3 million people have rape-related PTSD. But that isn't the only mental after-effect. Not by a long shot. Anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation. Fear. Previously unknown levels of fear. And it isn't just fear of being raped again. It's fear of the aftermath. Of getting pregnant, contracting a disease. Of how others will see you. Of being \"damaged goods\". Of how you'll be treated. Other long term outcomes include eating disorders, sexual dysfunction, alcohol and drug abuse, physical symptoms absent medical reasons, maladaptive beliefs, perceptions of lack of control, nightmares, night terrors, extreme social anxiety, and more. However it happened, whatever the outcome, you will be put on trial. Did you ask for it? Were you drinking? What were you wearing? How many relationships have you had? Were you popular in high school? What color were your clothes? Where were you? Why? Were there marks? Did you know the rapist? Had you had contact with them before? Do you flirt? Do you laugh in public? Have you ever enjoyed rough sex? Did you resist enough to count as a victim? Unlike ANY other crime, the effects of rape are traumatic in two major ways: first, the rape itself. Second, the reaction to the rape *from others*. In no other crime where you are the victim will you be made to feel like you did something to make it happen the way you will, with such vehemence, as with rape. In no other crime where you are the victim will you be made to feel like it is you who was the criminal. Additionally, it can take what *should be* the most intimate, loving act and turn it into something ugly and horrifying. It can take the very act by which we show love and attraction for our mates and make it a weapon used to destroy us from the inside. And then, when you're feeling the most alone it is possible for you to feel, some asshole will tell you you asked for it, or make a joke about it, or use it as a weapon with which to hurt you in an argument or tell you how damaged you are or how no one will ever be able to love you now. Do you see how that might be traumatic?",
"From a female point of view, someone is forcing their way INSIDE your body. We all like to pretend sex can be casual and maybe for some it can be but truly at least for women we are letting you into our body. That isn't casual it's very intimate, the vulnerability in inviting someone to go there with you is partly why it's so intense. If we got all the same chemical and physical effects from thumb wresting it wouldn't be such a traumatic experience. One should certainly get to decide who does and does not get to be inside. To have that taken, to be broken into like with a battering ram or drugged till you cannot turn an intruder away. It's violent, traumatizing, embarrassing to have lost power over your own body. I know men are raped too, I'm sure there are facets I cannot fathom to that. Feeling a loss of control over ones own body as a male is likely equally upsetting. But in both cases deep down we are hard wired to physically express affection, acceptance, connection, passion and if we are lucky love through sex. To have that incredibly beautiful act overlaid with violence, disrespect, and degradation is a pretty upsetting thing to experience one that could very easily have long lasting emotional impact."
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5wsqpw | how are chip cards more secure than swipe cards? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The chips generate a rolling code and would be imposible to predict or duplicate. So suffice it to say that you cannot spoof the card. So unless you actually steal the card (easy to identify and report) you are out of luck. so any retailer that uses a chip is effectively immune from credit card fraud or atleast bogus claims of fraud."
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5wsquw | the problem in the image, can the plane take-off?? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a trick question: something breaks, either before or after the plane takes off. Let's work backwards. If the plane has no air moving over its wings then it cannot take off. That much is true. If the plane is not moving relative to the ground then it does not have air moving over its wings and cannot take off. Again, a true claim. If the speed of the treadmill (backwards) matches the speed of the wheels (forwards) then the plane is not moving relative to the ground and does not have air moving over its wings so it cannot take off. This is as far as the (trick) question wants you to get, because once again we're left with a true statement. There's one final question to ask, though: can you set up the treadmill to match the speed of the wheels? In the question we just assume that this is true, but if we're starting from a false premise then we can't expect to get sensible results. It turns out that the question is \"no\" for this question, at least for most sets of simplifying assumptions\\* (things like neglecting friction). As you point out, the wheels spin freely. This means that you should be able to keep the plane from rolling backwards while sitting on a treadmill using almost no force (exactly zero if we completely ignore friction, but even in the real world bearings are very good and the rolling friction is very low). As soon as you start applying thrust on the 747 it tries to creep forward. The treadmill, attempting to keep the plane from rolling backwards. However, the treadmill doesn't slow the plane: it just makes the wheels spin faster. In response to the faster wheel speed the treadmill increases its speed, but again it is unable to slow the jet and just makes the wheels spin faster. This feedback loop rockets off towards infinite speed until the wheels shred or the treadmill breaks. Meanwhile the jet is still picking up forward speed, violating the assumption that the treadmill speed will equal the wheel speed. The jet moves forward, gets air over its wings, and takes off, or it would except that all of its wheels shredded their tires and subsequently their hubs as the treadmill broke the sound barrier a hundred times over, sending shrapnel into orbit. But hey, in the ensuing explosion caused by the exponentially accelerating treadmill I bet *some* part of the airplane would become airborne. ******* \\* I mentioned that the answer to that question is \"no\" when we make simplifying assumptions. Generally we'd look at the wheels as having no inertia of their own and as simply an interface between the plane and the ground with either zero friction or a friction that is independent of speed. In reality wheels do have a bit of inertia to them. Increasing the speed of the treadmill will impart a bit of force to the wheel (and thus to the plane) to increase the wheel's rotational speed. There's also some speed-dependent friction and if you could get the treadmill up to a sufficiently high speed then that could, in theory, hold the plane. In all likelihood these problems can be safely ignored as the speed or acceleration necessary to make them relevant are so far outside of the realm of practicality that the answer of \"you'd break things\" is still correct. The question evokes the idea of a treadmill that runs at roughly 747 takeoff speeds, but for these things to be relevant you'd need to be going well over the speed of sound.",
"A plane does not use its wheels to accelerate. It produces thrust by pushing against the air, which in this scenario is not moving in any unusual way. The ground moving backwards as it contacts the wheels shouldn't matter since the wheels are not involved in changing the speed of the plane. The wheels would spin faster than normal since the ground is moving \"backwards\" and this could cause heat, stress, or even failures of the wheels. Whether these practical concerns would actually cause major problems is a question for a flight engineer (which I am not). But with an ideal plane working as intended, it won't make a difference.",
"so if i understand the question, the conveyer belt is moving in the opposite direction of the plane? Planes generate lift by air flowing over and under the wings at different speeds, a plane can't take off if it isn't going fast enough for air to flow over/under the wings."
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5wss5g | Does Freedom of Speech in the USA grant the right to heckle your opponents? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The principle of freedom of speech only applies to the government. That's where the guarantee is, that the government won't be infringe our right to free speech. Individual people are not barred from heckling their opponents by the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Human decency should limit heckling, but not the Constitution."
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5wvbca | how are computer processors designed? Do engineers actually design it diode by diode? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First of all, the important component of a processor is the transistor. A diode simply allows current in one direction but not the other. A transistor can be thought of as an on/off switch for current flowing in one direction. Processing happens at a binary level. Ones and zeros in different arrangements mean different things, essentially different on off switches in sequence. Modern processors have a massive number of transistors to allow for the processing power we use in modern devices. Systems that use binary logic are described as digital systems. These types of systems are usually design from a top-level perspective, where the engineer has a function in mind such as memory and signal specifications. Then they decide how to arrange and connect the components to accomplish the task. Design of this level is all done on a computer with simulations to check if the design works because the materials the processors are built on are very expensive.",
"No. There are libraries of existing designs for subcomponents that can be used. And these are often collections of subcomponents. Eventually you get to a point that was designed component by component, but those will have been designed by other engineers, many will have worked for different companies.",
"No, they write a description of what the circuit is supposed to do using a *hardware description language*. They run that through a simulator to test its behavior before they commit anything to hardware. When they're confident it will work, different software converts the HDL code into a transistor layout. When chips were less complicated, this used to be done by hand by actually \"taping out\" a huge version of the layout that was then photographed and reduced, but no human could design a modern CPU like that these days."
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5wvocj | Why is W called "double U" when it is clearly "double V"? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When Old English was written, it used a mixture of Latin letters and older runes. One of these runes was Wynn, which was used to represent the wound that w gives today: URL_0 That runes was sometimes replaced by the combination uu - a double u - for the same sound. In german, the letter v changed in sound to be pronounced as f in most cases (it still is). In a few cases the v-sound was retained. To distinguish these cases, scribes began to write vv for these. When printing was developed in what is today Germany (and to some extent Italy, but that is less relevant here), the printing press manufacturers made types for the letters that they had. Since the combination vv was very common, they made a letter for it - w. In most languages letter is called \"double-v\". These printing presses and the letters for them were exported everywhere, including to England. The English quickly realized that they didn't have types for all their letters, so they made do with what they had. Since English didn't have the w before printing, they simply reused that letter for the Wynn rune, which was missing. It is called \"double-u\" because it was also sometimes written as \"uu\" Similar story for the letter Thorn, which was also missing when printing and became the \"th\" combination. URL_1",
"In the 7th century, the old English language was starting to be written in the Latin alphabet, but it had a sound that the Latin didn't, the W sound. To get around this, they doubled the U symbol to represent it. The following century, the \"uu\" digraph was replaced with the Ƿ (wynn) rune. This died out after a while and in the 11th century, the Norman (French) scribes reintroduced the \"uu\" digraph as a single, though jointed instead of curved, character, the \"w.\" Source: URL_0",
"In French \"w\" is called \"double v\". I wonder how it ended up like this, and what other languages call it.",
"I'd rather want to know why English went with \"double-u\" instead of something like \"Wee\". It works perfectly fine that way in other languages.",
"At one point, U and V were not regarded as different letters (and in fact, F, U, V, and Y are all ultimately derived from the same Phoenician letter). You may be familiar with this to some degree if you've ever seen a picture of [a Roman inscription like this one]( URL_3 ), whose first two lines read *senatus populusque romanus*. A holdover of this usage appears in the [branding of some Italian luxury products]( URL_1 ). UU and VV, the ancestors of modern W, were similarly interchangeable. In Middle English (during the Middle Ages), the pointed V was used at the beginning of a word, while the round U was used elsewhere. As time went on, English and other languages began assigning more discrete, well-defined roles to what started off as two visual representations of the same letter. By and large, V has become a consonant and U has become a vowel, but W is a bit of an odd case. The [w] sound it makes in English is a kind of consonant often referred to as a \"semivowel\". In German, it is strictly a consonant (representing [v]). In Welsh, W is a vowel. It is also [a word]( URL_0 ) in Welsh, and you can even put an accent mark over it, like in [the Welsh word for 'water']( URL_2 ). Whether you call it \"double-U\" or \"double-V\" varies from language to language. In upright type, it tends to have a pointed appearance, but in italics (as in cursive handwriting), many typefaces give it a more rounded look, a relic of when it was written *uu* in a calligraphic hand.",
"Originally, U and V were just different ways of writing the same letter, a bit like a and & #x1d4b6;. Later they became separate letters, but the name of W didn't keep up with the change. Some languages do call it \"double V\", though, and w is sometimes written as & #x1d4cc;.",
"In spanish it is \"double V\" doble ve. URL_0 URL_1 EDIT: apparently it depends on where in spanish-speaking-land you are. It may be double you, or double vee.",
"W is the only letter you could \"spell out\" as a word without using the actual letter itself. 4th dimension stuff, I know. Edit: lol. If only all this processing power was used for good. Nice work all. The podcast I heard this on didn't think of any others.",
"> when it is clearly \"double V\" That depends on the font used. I learned to hand-write \"W\" with curves rather than angles. Most computer-based fonts use a more \"V\" looking shape.",
"Funny thing I've noticed about these odd letters... #**Italian** For example, the Italian alphabet has only 21 letters. It does not have J, K, W, X, Y. They do, however, often know those letters and use them to make a name sound exotic! You would often see that in small business, where the business owner wants to create a sort of foreign 'intrigue' and appear different or exotic. One way is to spell your name with one of those funny foreign letters - often a \"W\" or a \"K\". In Italian, the letter K's work is done by \"CH\" - pronounced as the English K. You can still find the word 'Yacht' in an Italian dictionary - the only entry with the letter 'Y' and practically the only word I know in Italian that does not end with a vowel. **Polish** There is a similar story for Polish where the Polish alphabet does not have the letters \"Q, V, X\". An exotic name for them would begin with a 'V' for example. EG: Viktoria instead of Wiktoria. **Spanish** Spanish says \"Double V\" (*'doble ve'*); while Italian does not have this letter at all and it is rare in French mostly reserved for foreign words. This is somewhat surprising as otherwise, Italian and Spanish are often so similar they are often mutually intelligible if spoken very slowly.",
"F, U, V, W, and Y are all descended from the same Phoenician letter, *waw*, and they branched off at different points (and ended up making different sounds in different languages). In Latin, the W and U sounds were made with a V (remember, vini vidi vici is pronounced \"winy widy wicky\"). And Latin was the alphabet that mattered. But the V had started to be pronounced like a V, so people needed a letter to do what V had formerly done. So, W is actually a doubling of the letter that made the U sound, V.",
"While it is most commonly seen as w, or two v's, when I was a kid I was taught to write it as a double u, meaning it was curved and didn't have those points that make it a v. Also in cursive it's written as uu",
"The \"U\" as we know it as a more modern version of the Roman \"V\" which represented our U and W. In earlier versions of written English before spelling was more standardized, U and V could be used interchangeably, but would most often be reversed from their modern usage. It's not uncommon to see \"Uery Trve uirtve\" instead of \"Very true virtue.\" Essentially, the name \"Double U\" stuck from this time period, but the usage of the letters changed. EDIT: My source for this is anecdotal, but I have an English degree and have read A LOT of texts using outdated spellings.",
"So the add-on question. Why isn't 'm' called a 'double n' ?",
"In French it's pronounced as the equivalent of \"double v\", even if you type double u in google translate it comes out as double v in French.",
"So I took a years worth of Latin a while back and there is a letter, \"v\" which in latin is easily confused with the other letter in latin, \"v\". Whereas the letter \"v\" is familiar to a modern speaker, as in the word \"very\", the letter \"v\" is not so familiar because it is pronounced with more of a \"w\" sound, so in Latin a \"v\", as in \"veni, vidi, vici\" (Caesar's famous quote) is pronounced \"weni, widi, wiki\" (the \"c\" in Latin is hard, but began to change around the time of Cicero to a soft \"c\"). It can be wery confusing for a learner of Latin, so our course (the Oxford course- not the school, its a curriculum) preferred that in cases where the latin \"v\" was to be pronounced as a \"w\" we should just write a \"u\". Based on this I like to imagine that the \"w\" is really just an adaptation of the Latin alphabet's letter \"v\" (\"u\") ( < ---- thats not supposed to look like a face.) edit: here's a [wikipedia link]( URL_0 ) that might be interesting.",
"Isn't it normally written as double-u when handwritten? That's how I write it.",
"Well, it was double-u back when the shapes of U and V were switched up, I believe. I was reading an excerpt of Genesis for an English assignment, and both letters were swapped.",
"Am I the only person who writes my W's rounded? So essentially I'm writing double U",
"Not an explanation because I'm not sure - but a protip: when talking to a Scandinavian language native, often when they say \"V,\" they mean \"W.\" I've had a few interesting conversations about motorcycles with coworkers where they talk about the \"VR450\" when they are talking about the \"WR450.\" It can get very confusing very quickly.",
"In all fairness, while in English it does make little sense, in other languages, they did get it right, like German, they call it double-v or something. But at the same time, when written softly, or in other type faces, it can look like a double u, and not like Vs. I had a friend in primary school who always wrote it is a double u, and never with corners. meh",
"UUhere did you learn to uurite your uu's?",
"forgetting the technical explanations, lower case W's are normally like uu when written by hand",
"In the french language, this is exactly how we describe the letter \"w\". The direct translation means double v.",
"Am I the only one never thought of W as \"double U\" Lol took me quite sometime to figure this out",
"Despite good historical justifications, I propose a movement where we begin calling it a double V. Hell, that can be the name of the movement.",
"a lot of historical talk here, but... is nobody aware that different fonts exist? [this one]( URL_0 ) is clearly a double U, not a double V",
"In Italian, it's called doppia vu which just means double v. I used to hear on the radio where the DJ would shorthand websites www as vu vu vu.",
"It's called double V in French but in the last 18 years of my French education life i don't ever recall reading a French word with W in it.",
"In portuguese we say \"Double V\" (Dobre-vê), but its so ugly that nowadays everyone says \"Da-blee-u\" which sounds a lot better when u r spelling any website ( URL_0 )",
"Different languages call \"W\" different things. In French it's \"Double Vay \", in Italian, it's \"Doppia Vu\". (Pronounce the French version Doobleh). As noted, there is probably a source that is very old, coupled with the exigencies of needing ways to print sounds that were either written out or handed down orally in the traditional fashion.",
"In fairness, a lower case W is w, and when written BY HAND: the lower case version tends to look like it has two curved u's in it. If that makes any sense at all. Not sure about the origination of the way we say our letters but, especially in cursive; it definitely looks like two lower cased U's.",
"Look at the sounds. The w sound is basically the \"oo\" vowel sound turned into a consonant, so it makes sense why they would call it that. Plus originally I think it was actually made with two u's, like uu, and it became easier to write is as two v's. Now what I'd like to know is why in German, Polish, and I believe other languages, w makes a v sound.",
"Despite we don't use the letter in Portugal, when talking about it, even in school, I always heard it being pronounced as something like double U, but also very often as double U V. So I consider this very interesting to see what you all think about it. Personally I think the double V makes more sense, but I also understand that it all depends on the history of the language or perhaps cultural influences."
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5wy5sk | If melting ice in a glass of water does not change the water level, why would glaciers at our poles? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Ice *in water* melting does not change the water level, because the ice is already displacing the same amount of water as it would do when liquid. The problem is ice *not* in water. For instance covering the landscape of the continent of Antarctica. When that ice melts, it flows downhill into the ocean, which rises because it now has more water in it.",
"To add, ice reflects radiant heat at wavelengths that can penetrate our atmosphere and out into space. Without ice, the exposed land and waters will absorb that heat. The heat can be radiated out again, but it will be at wavelengths greenhouse gases will absorb and trap in the atmosphere. The loss of ice makes the Earth hotter *faster*. Edit: Think *planet Venus*.",
"Wow I just posted this and already there's a lot of great responses! So what I'm understanding is the main factor to rising water levels will be Antarctica, and the Arctic will have little to no effect. Thanks for all the responses, and let's hope we don't have to see this experiment acted out in real life.",
"Glaciers are on land, not floating in water. So they are not displacing water. So when they melt you are just adding water to the oceans thus raising their level.",
"Antarctica is a continent. It is land and ice sitting on land does make a difference in water level. So do glaciers on land elsewhere in the world.",
"First, ice on the land (Antarctica) will melt and run into the oceans. This isn't ice in a glass melting, this is ice from the tray in you freezer being added to the glass. Second, it's a feedback loop. Ice reflects the Sun's rays back into space. Water is much darker and absorbs a lot of the Sun's heat, then slowly releases it back out in another form that gets trapped by the atmosphere. Ice is not only a result of a cooler Earth, but a cause of a cooler Earth. Less ice means the planet will warm up more. (This is called the Runaway Greenhouse Effect, and could theoretically boil away the oceans if we raised the average global temperature by about 34°C/61°F.)",
"While melting the glaciers that are floating on the water or submerged in the water would not change the level of the ocean (or at least not significantly due to density differences with salt water ice), we need to also account for the ice on solid land melting and flowing into the ocean. [source]( URL_0 )",
"The ice in Antarctica is on land, mostly, so when it melts, it's only adding to the ocean volume."
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5wyjtx | Why and how do we get dark circles under our eyes when we don't get a lot of sleep? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you don’t get enough sleep or you’re always stressed out, your body will produce more cortisol in an effort to keep you alert. Over time, cortisol can constrict blood vessels or, in this case, dilate them and make the ones under your eyes bigger. Allergies can be a major cause as well. Allergic reactions cause your body to release histamines, which also dilate blood vessels. Also, sunlight can damage the skin cells around your eyes and kill them off if you don’t protect your face. Less skin cells means thinner skin, which means darker circles. And lastly, as you get older, you have less fat underneath the skin and it gets thinner. (source: URL_0 )",
"In my experience (I'm not a doctor or a beauty therapist) but I used to have horrendous black circles until I read an article about dehydration and skin issues. I read; The skin on the face is very thin, which is why we gain and lose weight on our faces so noticibly and when we drink too much water we get 'water bloating' on our face. The skin under the eyes is very thin so it's the first spot to show any dehydration in the skin. If you personally suffer with eyebags try getting 40 winks and drinking the right amount of water. * I knew a girl who used sleep with her propped up and eyebags on each night to keep her eyes hydrated. I alwayd told her she didn't need them and she would tell me \"that's exactly the point! They work!\""
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5wz5gd | Why do different types of alcohol, such as beer vs vodka vs whiskey, produce a different feeling of being drunk? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Alcoholic beverages contain substances called congeners. These substances include small amounts of chemicals such as methanol and other alcohols (known as fusel alcohols), acetone, acetaldehyde, esters, tannins, and aldehydes. Different types of liquor have different amounts and types of congeners based on how they were made. This is partly responsible for the taste and aftertaste of the alcohol as well as contributing to the felt hangover effects. As far as different liquors producing different \"moods\" or kinds of being drunk (ie, \"whiskey makes me angry and violent, tequila makes me happy and flirtatious\"), that is entirely inside your head and either the result of social pressure or confirmation bias. Ethanol is ethanol is ethanol. It all does the same thing to the body and the brain. If a certain kind of liquor makes you feel like you get more angry or more touchy and flirty, that is just your own preconceptions and social pressures acting subconsciously to make you more prone to acting like that. There is nothing different about the liquor that makes you act or feel one way over another. It's just in your head."
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5wz9mt | What is bad about a country being in debt? US is in debt trillions and they seem to be fine. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's bad if your country is unable to make the payments it has set on its debts, because then other entities will decide it isn't safe to lend you money anymore (since they aren't getting it back as agreed) and won't want to do so. That takes away a valuable tool for funding activities in your country, limiting you to cash on hand. If you *can* make the payments, then it is not necessarily bad at all. But it does *sound* scary to many people, and so politicians will still use it as a scare tactic.",
"There is nothing wrong with being in debt as long as you can pay what you owe on time. Anyone with a mortage, car payments, students loans are also in debt, but they pay their payments on time so the banks trust them, With a country its no different.",
"These previous posts might be helpful, this is a common question: URL_1 URL_0 URL_2"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=title%3A%28national+debt%29&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/search?q=title%3A%28U.S.+debt%29&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all"
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5wzo62 | Why do countries have different power outlets & sockets when they could share one universal standard? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"When countries electrified, they were much more economically isolated from each other than today. They built up their electrical infrastructure from scratch, and their specific needs, resources, and arbitrary choices led to some differences from country to country. Over time, other industries built up around using that country's standards - e.g., consumer products needed to have cords that fit the sockets. So there is a lot of money and existing infrastructure invested in a given country's system. Unifying standards worldwide would save money in the long-term, but in the short-term a lot of businesses would have to invest to change their infrastructure and product design. Governments could subsidize the transition, but there is not much political will to pay for such drastic changes for the sake of long-term savings.",
"Each electrical system grew independently. Frankly it's amazing that there are so few given the number of electrifying governments/companies that sprung up around the same time all over the world. The answer why they do not switch to make things easier for you is because they do not care about you. Tourist's struggling with adapters is a tiny problem compared to rewiring whole continents of electric customers."
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5x0zxt | What exactly is going on when food feels like it's "going down the wrong hole"? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You have two \"holes\" one leads to the esophagus, where food is supposed to go, the other leads to the trachea where air is supposed to go. When foreign objects (food, water, etc) go down towards the trachea there are tons of highly sensitive nerves that detect this and initiate the cough reflex to try to get it out. Your airway is sterile and does not like any foreign objects there as they can cause infection and block the airway, so you will cough and cough until the foreign object is expelled.",
"You breathe through one hole and you eat through the other. When you eat food and it misses the food hole it hits the breathing hole. The breathing hole has an alarm system on it that prevents food from going in it. When food gets too close it trips the alarm and all the air in breathing hole comes out in a blast to get all the food out of the way. Sometimes it takes a few blasts to clear the food. All that blasting is called coughing and its just your body trying to keep air in the right hole and food where it belongs."
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5x26me | Why does the US debt keep going up? Will it ever be repaid? Will China ever stop lending? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your understanding of the basic situation is off. Most years, Congress allocates more spending than the projected tax revenue, which means the US must issue bonds to make up the shortfall. There's no requirement that Congress pass a balanced budget, and they routinely don't. Also, the executive branch has basically no control over spending, Congress has eliminated most of the opportunities for discretion. If Congress allocates a certain amount of money for a purpose, the department in charge of that has to spend that much money, they usually can't choose to spend either more or less. As far as the sustainability of this, note that governmental finances are significantly different than private finances, so trying to treat them similarly is a bad idea. First, the US government can borrow money extremely cheaply, often below the rate of inflation (the current interest they pay on a ten-year bond is 2.36%; a year ago it was 1.75%), which means that effectively investors are paying the US government to borrow money from it. Second, unlike a private party, the US government is in control of both its revenue and its spending. That means that it's very unlikely to be unable to pay off its debts, because it can raise taxes to bring in more money if it feels the need. Third, the US government doesn't need to be time-limited in its outlook. If taking on more debt today means that the country is better off in the future, that's a fine tradeoff to make, because the US government doesn't need to plan for retirement or save up to buy a house or worry about dying or any of the other things that cause regular people to modify their finances. The US is nowhere near being unable to borrow. The interest rates they pay are so low because US Treasury bonds are considered among the safest investments in the world. Something catastrophic would have to happen for the US to default on its debt.",
"This is not a direct answer to your question but just a correction of one of your assumptions. You mention China assuming (as many people do) that borrowing from China is significant. This is not the case. The US national debt is about $20 Trillion (2016). Of this Japan and China each hold about $1 trillion each. That is only 5% of the total debt so China is not the biggest lender by any means. The overall debt breaks down (very) roughly as follows: * Intragovernment holdings: $5.5 trillion (mainly government trust funds & retirement funds) * Public held debt: $8.0 trillion (federal reserve, mutual funds, private pension funds, banks, insurance, private investors) * Foreign governments & investors: $6.5 trillion (China, Japan, Ireland, Brazil, Switzerland, UK, etc) So most of the money is owed to organisations both private and public within the US. They in turn get their money from the American public as investments, savings, pensions etc. More information [here]( URL_0 )",
"We had a huge surplus until the Republicans got in control in 2000. They went from having a $200 billion surplus, plus another $150 billion surplus in Social Security, every year. But they spent, and spent, and spent, but never raised any taxes to pay for it. They gave huge tax cuts to the rich, that we have to borrow money to pay for. They did this both in 2001 and 2003. Tax cuts, but didn't pay for it, this means borrowing to give rich guys tax cuts, and they are about to do it again. Also, they gave a huge prescription drug benefit, without paying for, for Medicare recipients. While this may sound nice, without paying for it, it bankrupts the Medicare trust fund. So Obamacare make the rich pay more, so Medicare won't bankrupt as fast, and the Republicans want to repeal it giving billionaires an $11 Trillion dollar tax cut over the next ten years. Had we stayed on the path that President Clinton set out for us, we would have paid off our debt in 2012. Instead we got huge tax cuts for the rich, huge medicare benefit not paid for, and two wars that cost over $1.5 Trillion so far. Now they want more tax cuts, which means higher deficits and more borrowing. If interest rates get up to 4%, we will be Greece and unable to service our debt. Do the math, there is a huge difference between 2% interest on $20 trillion and 4% on $20 trillion of debt."
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5x31j9 | Why do scientists immediately dismiss alien life if there is no oxygen? How do we know that other life needs oxygen versus any other chemical to live? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Quite simply, we know for a fact that life can exist in the conditions we live in now, so that is what we search for. We don't know for a fact if life can exist in other ways so there is no point looking. We look for what we know works, not guess and look blindly. Edit: by no point looking I mean, we've already got millions or billions of planets just within the scope of our life needs to look through, adding worlds that could support life if they had other needs than oxygen would just make the task impossible.",
"The main reason we're looking for life *at this time* is to answer the \"are we alone\" question. To that end, our search focuses on finding life **as we know it,** because it's familiar; we know it's possible for life to flourish under Earth like conditions. We don't know how likely it is for life to exist in different environments, and we don't have experience in recognizing it. That being said, liquid water is more indicative of this than oxygen. Many microorganisms are anaerobic. It's not that the possibility of life is dismissed, but that we don't know how likely it is to exist in other environments - we are choosing familiar targets first due to limited resources available for the search.",
"There are simple organisms living on Earth right now that do not need oxygen to live and will actually die in the presence of it. Source: URL_0"
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5x3oe7 | I know that we get vitamin D from being in sunglight but how? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There's a molecule in that your body uses to make cholesterol called 7-dehydrocholesterol (let's call it 7D). 7D that gets exposed to the UV-B light emitted by the sun or tanning bed is converted into vitamin D3."
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5x49g6 | why is 'turning it off and on again' a fix-all for so many technological problems? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Have you ever done a really complicated math problem and gotten lost half way through? Sometimes you can fix your mistake, but sometimes you just need to scrap it and start all over. A computer program is just a really, really complex ball of math. If there's a mistake somewhere, sometimes the only way to get things working again is to start all over from the beginning."
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5x4mth | National debt, is there even enough money to pay it all off | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Why would you think these debts are insurmountable? The US, for instance, has absolutely huge numbers in its debt, yet it is successfully paying it off. It doesn't 'go away' because the US pays off some debts and accrues new ones. It is not a goal of the US government to reach \"0 debt\" because this doesn't offer a lot of particular tangible benefits.",
"First thing to remember is that most money is imaginary. Debt is really just an agreement to pay off a certain amount of money eventually, and so long as you continue to pay interest on that loan, everything is fine. Nations aren't actually interested in debt being paid off, as the endless paying of interest is actually more profitable for them. So, there doesn't have to be enough money to \"pay off a loan\" so long as governments can afford to keep paying the interest on all those loans. This is why Greece almost collapsed, because they couldn't afford those interest payments anymore.",
"Do your parents have enough money to pay off their mortgage? Probably not. They make payments on the interest and pay down the balance regularly. If they couldn't do that or didn't want to do that they might sell the house and that money would pay off the loan.",
"There are a lot of agencies that track national debt health, and almost all of them are quite healthy, the United States included. The US has a debt-to-gdp ratio of 104%. That means that it owes 104% of it's annual income in debt. So, it's comparable to someone who just bought a $31,200 dollar Ford pickup truck with a few features who makes $30,000 a year. Something people do in their lives all the time. Now, the fact that it's ever-increasing is, in the long term, a little concerning. But it's not really concerning in the immediate or unsolvable sense. The US can afford to wait on the global economy to be in boom times to raise taxes and/or cut spending to balance the budget."
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5x51wd | Why do Britain and other English empire countries still bow to monarchs? What real purpose does the queen serve? | I just read the entire Wikipedia entry on Elizabeth's reign, and it seems like she does almost nothing at all. She goes on tours, gives speeches, holds dinners, and gives her opinion on certain matters. Of her accomplishments, the only things I can find read like "The Queen's composure and skill in controlling her mount were widely praised." Or "the Queen's "calmness and courage in the face of the violence" was noted." To me, an American, it seems ridiculous that anyone would respect such a person. Nonetheless, when I make fun of her on Reddit, lots of people rush to Elizabeth's defense. They seem very offended. I suppose she is a symbol for their culture, but why? Her office is completely unnecessary. Is it just because they don't want to change the old ways? Is there more to it than that? I just don't get what all the fuss is about. To me, she is an old bat in a silly hat. | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The monarch is head of state, as opposed to head of government (that would be the Prime Minister); in European republics, the monarch is usually replaced by a President, who may have more definite powers and is either directly or indirectly elected. The head of state basically represents the country, while the head of government sets the broad agenda for the legislature and also chairs the cabinet. The US President effectively combines the roles of head of state and head of government, which is sometimes problematic in terms of diplomacy: a recent petition (signed by 1.8 million people) called on the government not to accord President Trump the honour of a full state visit due to controversies surrounding his conduct as head of government. In the last few centuries, the role of monarch has declined, and since Victoria has kept out of party politics altogether -- in public, that is. In private, she has regular audiences with the Prime Minister in which they talk of matters of state. In theory, the most important role the British monarch has is to ensure good governance, but it's unclear how much she can actually do to that end. It's also unclear just how much influence she does have on government policy, since the details of her meetings with the PM are confidential. It is known that Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative, once complained that if the queen could vote, she would vote Liberal Democrat. The murky nature of her exact role, given that she is unelected and accountable only to constitutional law (whatever that may be on a given day), obviously makes a lot of people nervous. On the other hand, given her very long reign (her first Prime Minister was Winston Churchill), her experience may well be extremely useful. Diplomatically, she performs a role that is arguably very important. As head of state, she meets other heads of states, and that certainly helps to oil the complex machinery of international relations. It may be helpful that, since she is a hereditary monarch, she doesn't have to toe the party line or keep one eye on her approval ratings.",
"She's like a living historical monument to all of the monarchs that have ruled before her. You also have to remember that the monarchy creates an additional £300 million/year for the UK. Maintaining the monarchy costs the UK about £50 million/year, BUT because of a hundreds of years old agreement, the monarchy owns land that it lets the UK government collect rent on to the tune of about £350 million/year.",
"Probably because of the following: \"The monarch and his or her immediate family undertake various official, ceremonial, diplomatic and representational duties. As the monarchy is constitutional, the monarch is limited to non-partisan functions such as bestowing honours and appointing the Prime Minister. The monarch is, by tradition, commander-in-chief of the British Armed Forces. Though the ultimate formal executive authority over the government of the United Kingdom is still by and through the monarch's royal prerogative, these powers may only be used according to laws enacted in Parliament and, in practice, within the constraints of convention and precedent.\" [Sauce]( URL_0 )",
"She had a lot of diplomatic duties. She meets with foreign leaders and dictates broad policy. The Queen is basically the face of Britain. She represents her country in the global scale. She also has religious duties as the head of the Church of England. And she has the public eye. She's basically the world's most famous celebrity. It's a power that can be used to a very strong effect if done right. Like if the British Parliment decides to pass a law she strongly objects to, all she has to do is say something. She can't legally stop it, but she is respected enough that going against her wishes would cause a massive public backlash. So she can use this to subtly influence policy by persuading voters to weigh in on things she wants done or undone.",
"In simplest terms, here's the British Public's relationship with the Queen: We agree to do whatever she says, as long as she agrees to never actually tell us to do anything. As for what actual role the Monarchy actually performs, the Queen is a figurehead, similar to an Ambassador. If a world leader visits the UK and is invited to an audience with the Queen, it's a show of respect. The other part is basically tradition. they're a huge tourist draw and a merchandising empire. They generate about £500m a year for the UK through tourism alone.",
"[Australia had a government shutdown once. In the end, the queen fired everyone in Parliament.]( URL_0 ) It's her royal prerogative as head of state to dissolve Parliament if it's in that country's greater interest. It's the ultimate in checks and balances / separation of power.",
"It is all ceremony and tradition, a way to keep in touch with the grand thousand year history that has revolved around the British Monarchy. The British follow royalty like Americans follow Kardashians, there doesn't have to be much point to it. The monarchy exerts almost no real political power, and should it try to exert what little powers it had against a Commonwealth member's wishes, the country would almost certainly leave the Commonwealth. In practical terms, the monarchy is a significant tourist draw, and by some analyses, it pays for itself.",
"I'll take Sweden as an example. Our king has no real power. He serves only a purpose of representing the country. In the constitution, he is referred to as \"ceremonial power\", to give you an idea. So I guess it's more of a patriotic thing, that honnoring the monarchy is like honoring the history of the country. The only real power he has is to accept the letters of credence (basically authorising the ambassador to be in the country for a diplomatic purpose) from foreign ambassadors coming to Sweden, meaning that in theory he could refuse a person coming for diplomatic purposes to stay in the country."
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5x56ub | What is sleep paralysis and why do we 'get' it | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When your brain goes into sleep mode, your nervous system sort of \"shuts down\" your body's responses to brain signals. This is because if it didn't every time you did something in a dream, your body would do the same and you'd injure yourself. So when you're dreaming about running, your legs don't (usually) flail around in bed, for example. Sometimes, when you're in a state where your brain is on the verge of or just into sleep, but you're still aware, your body may not respond to your brain's signals because your body is basically in \"sleep mode\". More reading here: URL_0"
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5x6j82 | 4th dimension | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Dimensions are how many numbers you need to identify a point. In our normal 3D space, you need 3 numbers to describe any point. For exapmle: * (latitude, longitude, altitude). * Or you can describe where your lamp is compared to where you are by saying something like (turn 40 degrees left, 10 degrees up, then go 5 feet forward along that line). In 4D you need 4 numbers to uniquely identify a point. In physics, time is often described as the 4th dimension. If you describe the location of your lamp, you have to give a time number too. The lamp wasn't always there, so you have to specify the location in time as well. In more advanced physics, you *must* consider both space and time together to make sense of the universe. ____________________________________ BTW you don't have to be describing *physical* space. For example if you are measuring temperature at any point on earth, you are working with a four dimensional space. Specifically the four numbers you need are (lattitude, longitude, altitude, temperature). In fact there don't need to be any physical aspect at all. For example, colours in computers are often described with three numbers (r,g,b), where r describes how red the colour is. g and b do the same for green and blue."
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5x6mpr | If I dug a hole to the other side of the world like Bugs Bunny, and jumped in it, would I come out the other side or would gravity do something weird around the center? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"In theory, and this is assuming that you don't get burnt up by the heat of the planet, and this hole doesn't automatically fill with water and magma and doesn't take the planet apart or anything of that nature, and ignoring air resistance, you'd fall through to the other side, slow down, and start falling at the same height above ground there as you did here. And it'd be about 42 minutes of constant falling. In reality, other than all of the ways you'd be dead, if we consider air resistance you'd probably hit terminal velocity relatively quickly, so you likely wouldn't make it to the other end, just bounce around in progressively smaller and smaller steps until you stop at the centre of the earth.",
"(Sidenote: There *must* have been a show that had this recently. This is like the 5th post asking this question.) Anyway, assuming: * the tunnel sides don't crush under the pressure deep in the Earth, * you don't burn to death * Earth isn't rotating, so you don't bump into the side of the tunnel * Earth is perfectly round * there is no air (or other source of friction) Then yes, you would pop out the other side of the Earth in approximately 40 minutes. Gravity would switch directions once you get past the centre of the Earth, but you'll have built *exactly* enough speed to be able to get to the other side.",
"If the hole contains a vacuum, and we can ignore air resistance: You come out of the hole on the other side of the planet 38 minutes and 11 seconds later and at exactly the same speed at which you entered the hole. You would achieve a maximum velocity of around 18,000mph during your trip. If the hole contains air: You reach the terminal velocity of a free-falling human (around 125mph) after the first 15 seconds and then continue falling for another 32 hours or so until you get to the center of the Earth, at which point you yo-yo back and forth for a bit before coming to a stop."
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5x6mw3 | Why do we hiccup? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"There's not much of a 'reason' as to why we hiccup. Hiccups are caused by involuntary contractions of our diaphragms, the muscle that allows us to breath. These are pretty much just 'twitches', and there's no scientific reason why we hiccup once in a while."
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5x6sxy | If a hole was drilled so that it passed through the exact center of the earth, would an object dropped through that hole "float" at the center due to gravity on all sides? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Assuming you hollowed out a protected space free from heat, pressure, and all other factors, then: If it was placed there, yes. If it was dropped there, no - it would oscillate around the center with a strange periodic motion due to the increasing gravity off center."
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5x6tu9 | How do we not lose data when compressing text or software files into .rar or other zipped formats? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are many different types of compression. Some types of compression do discard data, but others do not. Compression that discards data is called **lossy** compression. Compression that does not discard data is called **lossless** compression. Video, audio and image compression is generally lossy. You can discard a surprisingly large amount of data before it can be easily perceived by humans. RAR and ZIP are lossless compression formats. They work because most real world data has a lot of repetition in it, and the same information can be represented in a more compact format. For example, if I have a file with the contents \"aaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbbb\", I could represent the same data as \"13a7b\", meaning that there are thirteen a's followed by 7 b's. Real compression algorithms are more complex and general purpose, but that's the basic idea."
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5x82ev | How do TV shows make money, how do ratings work and do stations receive payment for them? | hey guys, I'm watching Game of Thrones and they're known to spend a lot of money per episode, my question is, how exactly does a TV show make its money, how do ratings work/are measured, and are stations paid for how many people view the show? I've always wondered about all this. let me know! :) thanks | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Since Game of Thrones is on a paid network with no commercials, it works a bit different. HBO gets paid via subscribers, shows like Game of Thrones help pull in people who might not otherwise have subscribed. Add in DVD sales, and you've got pretty much it's whole pool of available money. For most TV it works a bit different through. Ratings: Ratings indicate how many people are watching a show. They're typically measured by the Nielsen group, which hands randomly selected family a special box that monitors what they watch. If 1 in 10,000 families have a Nielsen box, then each Nielsen box represents 10,000 views. It's honestly a terrible system, because certain types of are more prone to be selected/be willing to be a Nielsen family. It also doesn't take into account things like DVR, streaming, etc. Based on a shows ratings, a sponsor can estimate how many people will see a commercial if they buy air time during the show. A show like \"The Big Bang Theory\" that is routinely the highest rated sitcom on TV, can offer a huge audience, which makes its time more valuable. A 3rd string show on a smaller network gets less viewer, and thus demands less money. Ultimately the networks sell ad time to sponsors, at a rate based on ratings for the show. The network \"buys the show\" at a fixed rater per season, by paying the production company that makes the show \"$300,000 per episode\" or whatever, again based on ratings and thus earnings potential for the show.",
"For cable TV, they make money through advertising. For channels like HBO, ShoTime and Stars, they make money through customer subscription. As far as ratings go, that's how TV networks know how much to charge for the advertising time. Take the Super Bowl for example. It is notoriously known for having ridiculously high ad prices because they know a shit ton of people are going to be watching. TV networks don't receive money for having high ratings, per se. There is an independent company (Nielsen) that conducts the ratings and then the Account Executives of the networks use those numbers to sell ads. I worked in radio advertising for a bit and they operate in much the same way as television.",
"Most of these answers explain how TV networks make money airing shows, but shows are also profitable in and of themselves for the studios that produce them. Here's how it usually works: The Studio develops an idea for Awesome Show and sells it to a network. In this case we'll say the network is ABC. ABC doesn't actually buy the show outright though, they essentially rent it for a limited amount of time. This is called licensing. If the show costs The Studio $100 per episode to make, ABC might license it for $30 per episode, for the right to air it first and for the next 5 years. The Studio is now getting $30 back for every $100 it spends. Not enough to make money, so it goes to other networks in other countries and tries to sell the show to them. Maybe a network in Germany buys it for $10 an episode, a UK network buys it for $15, and a French one buys it for $5. That's another $30 per episode. Combined with the $30 from the US, The Studio now gets $60 back for every $100 it spends. Still not great. To cover that deficit The Studio will shoot the show in a location that gives them a tax credit for bringing shooting the production there (many states and other countries have give shows tax credits because the shows create jobs and spend $ wherever they go). So The Studio shoots Awesome Show in Canada where they can get a 30% tax credit (essentially a cash rebate), which is another $30 they can add to the pot. So now they are making $90 back for every $100 they spend. Now surprisingly, this may be all the studio is able to get at first. So they end up making the show at a loss and covering the difference themselves. This is called \"deficit financing\" and it's how most shows are made. If the show runs only one season (or just a few episodes) and is canceled, the studio is just out all that money. But if the show runs a long time (let's say 7 seasons) the economics really start to favor the studio. That's because they will continue to try and sell the show around the world, and the more successful a show is and the longer it runs, the more other people want it. So in season 3 they are suddenly able to sell the show in Belgium, Denmark, Croatia, Italy, Costa Rico and Portugal, for a total of $25. Now they are making $115 for every $100 they spend. AND, that money comes in for all three of the original seasons, retroactively covering their deficit and putting them in profit for every episode the've made. And after ABC's 5 year window expires, the money pot grows even bigger because now The Studio can sell Awesome Show in the U.S. to other markets again. When you see a show that originally aired on NBC run in repeats on TNT, that's the studio selling it again and making serious money. They'll also sell it to other services like Netflix or Amazon, sell it directly to consumers via iTunes, and if it's popular enough, put it out on DVD. All that is more retroactive income. AND, The Studio can continue to Awesome Show like this FOREVER. After TNT's second window expires in another 5 years, they'll sell the show to another market, then another and another. And now when they do the sale, it's for the full run of the show. So it's not just $5 an episode for one season, it's $5 an episode for 7 seasons. All pure profit at this point. And as new markets are created (Hulu, Netflix, iTunes) they'll sell it there too. You know how you see shows like the original Star Trek still appearing on places like Netflix or your local TV network? That's a 50-year-old series STILL generating money for its owner. And once the original cost is covered, that's pure profit for almost no work. This snowball effect can make shows insanely profitable. A successful show that runs for many season and sells well can generate BILLIONS of dollars over time. Seinfeld is estimated to have generated $3.1 billion in profit for example. And it's still selling today. I know of one show that was almost canceled every season and barely made it to five seasons (two of them shortened) and still made $100 million in profit. That's why many companies that own TV networks also own their own studios. They can sell a show to their own network (or surprisingly to other networks), and make money both on the licensing side (through ad revenue) and on the selling side. It's a money machine. (Note: This works differently for pay services like HBO and Netflix, which often pay huge sums to own their shows outright...I'm mostly talking about broadcast TV and basic cable shows).",
"Neilsen ratings are going the way of the dodo bird. If your cable box is connected to the internet, most are. They are collecting information about everything you watch."
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5xcisg | why do grades in school skip "E" and go straight to "F" as the lowest grade? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"deh0n20",
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"text": [
"The oldest grades were given at Yale, optimum, magis, maxime (best, worse, worst). William Farish invented *letter* grades about 200 years ago. He borrowed the system used by shoe factories in determining if shoes were good enough for sale. Shoes were graded as \"Excellent, Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, and Unacceptable\" Excellent and Satisfactory shoes were allowed to go to market (at different prices), Needs Improvement shoes were sent back to be repaired, and Unacceptable shoes were thrown out. These became abbreviated E-S-N(I)-U. The advantage of this system is it allows a teacher to spend less time in the classroom and to have a classroom with more students. With the rapid expansion of education in the 19th century, schools in English-speaking countries adopted the faster, streamlined grading system instead of sitting with each student until he understands the concept. These grades, shortened to E-S-N-U were the most popular system used in grade schools until the mid-20th century. I went to a private school that still used this system in the 1980s. Harvard adopted *alphabetical* letter grades in the 1880s, but, reticent to equate men to shoes, it gave five ranks A-B-C-D-E. In 1897 Harvard switched to A-F grades with no E, to avoid confusion with other schools students had attended where E was the top mark. By the 1930s, the A-E system was entirely replaced with A-F at US colleges using grading systems. In the mid-20th century the notion of a grade of \"unacceptable\" seemed harsh to give little boys and girls. So elementary schools gradually switched to letters which didn't contain value judgments. Students however in colleges had already noted that the F grade could stand for Failure, and that turn was generally adopted as being synonymous with the grade F.",
"The earliest usage of the letter grade system as we know it dates to the late 19th century, most notably at Mount Holyoke College, and it was in fact rated from A-E, and eventually A-F (inclusive of E), before E was eventually faded out as a rule. [Here's a nice article about it]( URL_0 ). D was never initially intended to mean \"Deficient\" as some here are claiming, but that usage may have been colloquially adopted over the years."
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5xesz4 | Why do dead batteries in remote controls work again after you whack the remote one good time? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dehjph5"
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"text": [
"Because they weren't dead. They may have been weak, but they were making poor contact with the remote. They may have started leaking and corroded the contacts."
],
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8
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5xfnjw | What is the significance of having headphones in the correct ears when listening to music? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dehpr9x"
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"text": [
"There isn't one from a music perspective, (some songs have differences in the left-right channel, but it doesn't really matter if it is reversed). The problem is with the shape of the headphones themselves. The right headphone is shaped for the right ear, so if you put it in the left ear then it will be backwards and won't be as good of a shape."
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5xgh6d | How/Where does the electricity used in our nervous systems to send signals come from? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dehvlj6"
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"text": [
"This has been asked before. You should search. It is not electricity as we know it. The electricity we know flows along wires. The electrons flow freely. The nerve impulse is a rapid set of biochemical reactions along the surface of a neuron. The speed is far slower than the speed of electricity along a wire. Cations and Anions move across the cell membrane inducing the movement to continue down the neuron. There is a synapse where the axons of one neuron meet the dendrite of another. Another set of chemical reactions happen there inducing another nerve impulse to travel."
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5xgt9z | Why do we get dizzy from simply spinning around on the spot? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dehxy23"
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"text": [
"Inside your ear you have a little pocket of fluid and a bunch of tiny hairs that are feeling how that fluid is moving. The fluid wants to go down because of gravity. This helps you know where down is. It also moves around when you move around. So you can tell that the car you're in is accelerating, you've turned your head suddenly or even falling. When you spin around and around it's like swirling water in a glass. You get a small whirlpool effect. So the fluid in your ear is still moving and splashing around. Which means the tiny hairs are getting weird messages. Your brain is trying to understand why you're moving all over the place and why down keeps changing. So you keep trying to adjust your balance to counter what movement your ears feel and wherever down seems to be but it's never in the same spot for very long and never where down actually is. So you usually stumble and fall. One solution to the problem is to quickly spin once in the other direction. This cancels out the momentum the fluid has and settles everything down. No more dizzy."
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5xh5od | How is it that I am allowed to take oestrogen if I feel like a woman trapped inside a man's body, but not testosterone if I feel like a strong, attractive man trapped inside a weak man's body? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dei0dno"
],
"text": [
"Um, well...you can. You just can't actively participate in competition sports that outlaw steroid use. So, go for it. I am sure you can find a doctor to prescribe it."
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5xidge | How do chip-embedded credit cards offer more security when in fact they seem more inconvenient? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The data on a magnetic strip is just stored there passively. If you copy the magnetic data, there's no way for the data to \"know\" that it has been copied and put on another plastic card. On a card with a chip, the chip contains electronic circuitry that performs cryptographic calculations when it is read, which means every time the card is used, the card reader gets an unique value calculated by that particular chip. A chip on a different is not able to calculate the exact same values because of the cryptographic functions found in it, and therefore you can't copy the contents to a different card. I have no idea why you'd still need to sign it. That's only a backup solution here. If the chip reader can't get a network connection to verify the code, you have to sign it as a regular non-chip card. Perhaps most of the stores you go to just haven't bothered investing in the devices and services required to give you a safe transaction?",
"The problem is mostly with the way the US has adopted chip technology, which is not nearly as secure as the way the technology has been adopted in other countries. In other countries that have implemented chip technology for credit cards, chip + PIN is usually the default or mandatory standard (meaning that you are required to input your PIN every time you insert your chip card into a payment terminal). However, in the US, most cards are still using the signature method so that if/when a person's credit card gets compromised, a criminal does not need to know a PIN to complete in-store transactions. Another difference is that in other countries that have implemented chip technology, just about every single payment terminal in the country has already been upgraded to support chip cards. Additionally, these chip terminals will not allow you to swipe cards (using the magnetic stripe) if they were issued by your bank as chip cards. This basically means that if someone does manage to duplicate the magnetic stripe on your card (which is relatively easy/trivial to do), the duplicate card is essentially rendered useless because nowhere will accept it (all the stores, restaurants, etc. will require the person to insert the chip which is extremely difficult to duplicate). However, in the US, many payment terminals—especially at restaurants and fast-food outlets—are still not equipped to process chip transactions and still use the older magnetic stripe method, leaving open a massive security hole. Another difference is that in other countries like Canada that have implemented chip technology, the customer (even at restaurants) maintains possession of their credit card at all times. That is to say, employees never ask a customer to hand over their credit card and don't take it away or out of view from the customer. Ideally the employee is never supposed to touch the card and the customer is supposed to complete the transaction using the payment terminal completely on their own. However, in the US, there are many situations—especially at restaurants and fast-food outlets—where employees do ask you to hand over your card and will take your card away (out of view). This provides an additional opportunity for employees to skim/duplicate your card or write down your card details which increases the chances your card may be compromised online or duplicated and used fraudulently at locations that still are using magnetic stripe technology. So chip technology provides many security advantages when it is implemented properly, but unfortunately the way it has been currently implemented in the US provides very limited protections and still leaves a lot of opportunities open for credit card fraud."
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5xj63m | Our bodies have adapted to make sugary things taste good since they provide energy. Why hasn't the same thing developed with healthy items like vegetables? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because vegetables don't provide as much energy as sugars. They are only considered healthy in a modern context of an abundance of food. If you go back several thousand years (an eyeblink in evolutionary terms) finding enough food was a real problem that occupied most of your time. High energy foods like sugary fruits and fatty meats were *way* better than vegetables.",
"In addition to the others, many of the nutrients in veggies are important to overall healthy lifestyle but calories keep you going. In a survival sense it critical to keep calories up to keep you moving. Vitamins and minerals are a luxury by comparison. Edit: An anecdote: I recall a story of a man in a life boat lost in the ocean. He distilled sea water and caught fish to survive. I remember he said for the first days and weeks he was eating the meat of fish but after a while he was suddenly craving the skin and organs of the fish. He had satisfied his caloric needs but as his body started needing those other nutrients his cravings shifted to account for it.",
"Because healthy items such as vegetables provide little energy and what your body wants is not to stay healthy but to stay alive. For that, the first thing it must do is not starve. Energy not used is stored as fat for later. This will keep you alive if you don't find more food this week.",
"In modern society we have access to a shit ton of food. By age 20 you have probably eaten more food than most \"cave men\" ate in their entire lives possibly earlier than that. Eating a full 3 square meals a day is great and when you can get those by simply heading to the store you can balance a proper healthy diet. But back in caveman days you ate what ever the fuck you could get you hands on. Yes you could eat apples on an apple tree as long as it was summer and other competitors for that food source had not eaten it already. But an apple only provides so many calories and is only available at certain times a year. Meat on the other hand is available year round and killing an animal would provide you with far more calories than eating 15 apples would. So the \"cave men\" whos bodies wanted meat instead of apples had a better chance to reproduce because they were able to eat year round and when they ate they ate better. When they woke up and got hungry they chose to go hunt instead of go to the apple tree. Over time the natural selection of these genes that made people want more meat and sugars instead of carrots (via them tasting better than the other options and having stronger cravings for the higher calorie option) survived better and had more offspring because they had denser muscles and better fat reserves (traditionally speaking this is why women like men with big arms and strong shoulders/backs because it means that they were able to actually eat because they could hunt and get the calories to make those muscles and would be able to provide for you). Skip a few thousand generations and you come along with those same genes that make a steak covered with butter or Honey buns taste far better than a salad with no dressing."
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5xjdgy | How did the configuration of the computer keyboard come to be? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"deihpln"
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"text": [
"The QWERTY layout was designed with typewriters in mind to keep commonly used clumps of letters separated, preventing jamming of the hammers while typing."
],
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5xk9n3 | Are GMO foods actually harmful or are people against them for other reasons? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"When people hear \"genetically modified\" it can often times startle them, in truth, there is nothing to worry about. In fact, genetically modified fruits often stay ripe longer and can contain more nutrients than normal. I believe the most common reason is the fact that not everyone fully understands the effects of gmo fruits, which may alarm them.",
"> for other reasons Genetic engineering is not permitted in organic agriculture, thus the organic industry demonizes it in order the protect/increase their market share.",
"There really hasn't been evidence that they are harmful...unless there is some massive food conspiracy. I think it just makes people uncomfortable and it's hard to trust because it is some serious tinkering with nature. We really are kinda playing god and redesigning organisms for our convenience. It's weird, but I don't care about it really...as long as the food is cheap I'll still buy it. I can certainly understand the apprehension but food is still food.",
"[Have you considered reading the last 200+ times this was posted in this sub?]( URL_0 )",
"There 2 major issues that are attached to this: 1) GMO's (some, not all, but blame Monsanto for most) are engineered to be sterile so farmers cannot save seed. This is bad because it could easily lead to mass famine and other issues. In short, it is a business attempt to control food supplies. 2) Some GMO's use 'natural' pesticides like [**BT**]( URL_0 ) that hasn't been tested in the way other pesticides are tested. It is considered safe, but nothing is totally safe and there are always unforeseen circumstances."
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5xn3o9 | What is the purpose of the International Space Station? | And the space program in general for that matter. Like most people reading this right now, I'm a science oriented thinker driven by curiosity and turned on by knowledge. I hear political arguments on the opposing view that (US tax) money is better spent elsewhere. What are the main goals and expectations of the space program as it stands now, funded by 'the people'? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The space station is currently used for conducting experiments in micro gravity. But it can also be used as a checkpoint for longer missions that require heavy payloads. For example: if we want to send a ship to the moon we can send the ship without fuel to the ISS (International Space Station) and then send the fuel tank to refuel the spaceship. Tell me if you require further explanation",
"The ISS is essentially a research station in Earth orbit. The astronauts there perform a variety of experiments that can't be performed on Earth (usually because they examine the effects of microgravity). These experiments cover a wide variety of topics, including, biology, genetics, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and many other fields. A focus of these experiments is to examine how extended stays in space effect humans. If humans ever want to leave Earth (to go to Mars or beyond), we'll need to know how the human body will respond to a long term stay in space. As for the purpose of the space program: In general, its purpose is to explore the origin, evolution, and future of the Earth, the Solar System, and the universe. If you're talking about studying the Earth, this has important implications: Think weather patterns, storms, atmospheric composition, stuff like that. Much of these measurements are taken with space based observation satellites, and it's hard to argue against their results. It's nice to know about a hurricane a couple weeks before it hits your house. We also observe our solar system through the use of telescopes and space probes. These can help us answer questions about our planetary neighbors and their evolution. These can answer questions that are important to our survival as a species. Things like: Why did Mars become such a frozen wasteland? Can that happen to Earth? How did Venus's runaway greenhouse effect turn the planet into the literal definition of Hell? Could that happen to Earth? Are there ways to predict solar flares that could knock out power grids here on Earth? What about asteroids? How many are out there that could hit Earth? In addition, they answer other things about our place in the universe. For example, we now believe (thanks to our space exploration program), that Mars (and maybe Venus, too) were warm, temperate worlds with flowing water, just like Earth. Did they have life? If they didn't, why didn't they? Is life on Earth special, or could it have developed elsewhere? Could Humans eventually live on Mars? These are all questions that our space program strives to answer. Lastly, we have many telescopes in space that observe the rest of the universe (the most famous of these is the Hubble Space Telescope). These telescopes are in space mainly to avoid looking through the Earth's atmosphere, as the atmosphere distorts images (think twinkling stars). These telescopes again help answer fundamental questions about the universe and our place in it. For example, just 30 years ago, we didn't even know if other solar systems had planets. Know we know that almost every star has at least one planet, and about 20% of those have planets similar to Earth in size and orbit (maybe habitable). We also are able to peer into the early universe and examine the way it has developed over its lifetime. This can pave the way to new discoveries about the laws of nature. All in all, I think most of those are pretty noble causes. And the United States has the world's biggest space program, but we only spend about .5% of our budget a year on it (~$18 Billion). So yeah, maybe we can find better short term places to spend them money, but I see it more as a very small investment into our future as a species with huge potential payoffs.",
"This article brings up many good points. URL_0 To summarize: 1. Tech developed for space exploration has turned into important modern tech (MRIs , smoke detectors, etc). 2. Space programs educate the public 3. Creates lots of high skill jobs 4. Gets us closer to becoming a multi-planetary species. It's extinction insurance for when the next mass extinction event happens on earth. 5. We learn more about the origin of the solar system and our universe. The value of this information in intangible but the more we understand our environment the more we can control it.",
"I have done a LOT of research into the station, but I'm in no way an engineer on the project. The station is used to study how people/animals/bacteria/diseases/etc. react to microgravity. The station is large enough to support a LOT of experiments at once, (I'd say thousands but I'm unsure on that number) some even in the vacuum of space (That station has multiple airlocks that can be used to move experiments out into the vacuum). They also search for cures to diseases that may have to be made only in space, such as possible cures for cancer. Also, multiple Earth-observing experiments are onboard the station, such as ones to monitor the ozone layer, rainfall totals, lightning, etc. The ISS may also be used to test out new technologies for space exploration, such as new foods, exercise equipment, spacesuit designs, etc. Finally, many commercial companies can test out large-scale pieces of equipment onboard the station, like Bigelow's inflatable test module, and Boeing's future small experiment airlock. One side effect of having the station that you may know about is the amount of amazing pictures taken from the station.",
"I keep this link in my back pocket every time someone asks why money should be spent on the space program instead of \"things here on earth like poverty, etc.\" Dr. Stuhlinger's letter speaks for itself. URL_0"
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5xnpzk | Why does paper not burn when put in the microwave? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dejgqng",
"dejgjkk"
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"text": [
"Microwaves work by exciting water molecules, and the water conducts that heat into the food. Paper has virtually zero water in it, so it doesn't heat up.",
"A microwave only produces heat in objects that contain water molecules. So items that are completely dry like paper towels won't heat up."
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5xrzl5 | How does a fighter jet's defense system know that a missile has locked onto the jet? | Repost | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dekfa87"
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"text": [
"When missiles lock onto a craft the tracking measures they use ie radar focuses down on that craft and pings much faster to get more accurate and frequent readings . If the aircraft has sensors they can detect this focusing of pings. However not all missiles use aggresive tracking measures (sending signals out) some use passive measures such as heat seaking missiles."
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