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What does it mean to say something is post-modern? Does it just mean "meta"? | [
"Not really an explanation, but here's an interesting way to put it:\n\nPre-modern: This is the truth.\n\nModern: We can find the truth.\n\nPost-modern: There is no such thing as truth.",
"No, it doesn't just mean meta. \n\nThe correct way to use the term is derived from the fact that everything goes through stages, specifically in art. In art (music, theatre, painting, etc) there are movements that arise from common styles of the time. However, one style cannot remain the same way forever, so when a new \"style\" emerges, in hindsight and mainly for historical purposes, the era is given a title. One of those titles is \"post modern\" which literally means \"after the modern era\". \n\nFor example: in music history there was a group of people called the romantics. They thought music was only for the educated, that you had to \"get\" music to appreciate it, and that life was so beautiful you just had to escape. Then, another group emerges that says that music isn't just for the intelligent, it's for everyone and that amateur music is the \"real\" music. They are called Modernists. AFTER THEM a group emerged that said that the 8 tone scale in music was oppressive and that music didn't have to have melody or even harmony to be real music and that the 12 tone scale was better! They are called \"Post Modernists\". You see? Stages, cycles, modernists, post modernists. There's a similar example in theatre but I won't bore you with that. \n\nThat's what \"post modern\" actually means. The stage or era that comes after the \"modern\" era.",
"Post modernism is this idea that there is no one universal truth (like what rationalism, or standard traditional religious beliefs would hold as an axiom), but that each person has their own truth. Each person is their own bubble."
] |
What is Aum Shinrikyo? What do they believe/work towards? | [
"They were a sort of Buddhist doomsday cult who were led by a man named Shoko Asahara, a spiritualist and a con man. They were responsible for the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in the late 1990s.\n\nI don't think they exist under that name anymore, I seem to remember reading about them rebranding themselves as Aleph following Asahara's conviction.\n\nI used to be very interested in them and read everything I could find, but it's been a while since I last thought about them. These are the basics as I recall them though."
] |
why doesn't baby poop smell bad? | [
"Their GI tract is still colonizing. This is part of why they need certain nutrients more than others, because we get some of it from bacterial metabolism in the gut. Regarding why it is that way until solid food is beyond what I can say with certainty, but breastmilk itself is aseptic and it may be metabolized in such a way that doesn't leave much or anything for bacteria to thrive on, delaying colonization.\n\nEdit: and yes, the smell is related to bacterial composition and byproducts"
] |
Differences between copyright, trademark and patent. | [
"Copyright is automatic, and protects all original artistic works, including photography, visual arts, film, music and writing. Another person cannot use your work without your express permission. \n \nTrademarks are specific business identifiers, and cannot be used by others to make it look like they are associated with that business. This can be extended to marks that look too much like an existing one, or use parts of one. You could not, for instance, market a soda with a typestyle that looked like the Coca-Cola one. \n \nPatents protect the design of physical objects. There are two types: one protects the way the product *works* (utility patent), the other protects the way that it *looks* (design patent).",
"Copyrights apply to \"creative\" works like music, writing, and art. \n\nTrademarks apply to anything related to brand recognition.\n\nPatents apply to inventions.\n\nTrademarks are the broadest in the sense that you can trademark things too simple to be eligible for copyright (like a single word) and they last forever as long as you continue using and enforcing them. But the protection is limited to things that could cause confusion among customers. That's why Hershey's can call their candy \"Whoppers\" and not be sued by Burger King. \n\nComputer code can be copyrighted, but unlike a patent, it only protects the code itself, not the function of the code. So if someone comes up with a different way to do the same thing, you can't sue them for copyright infringement. \n\nTrademarks and copyrights are automatic. You can register them, but it's not required to enforce it. But getting patent protection requires applying. You have to be able to prove that your invention is new, useful, and non-obvious. So if you don't want to bother patenting your invention (because it's expensive and time-consuming), but don't want someone else to patent it, you can just publish something about it, so no one else could claim that it's new."
] |
Why do babies and young children add -ey sounds to the end of words (ex: Doggy, eggy ducky)? | [
"I think it's just mimicry of adults talking to them that way.",
"I think it's because that's the way adults talk to them."
] |
What is happening when we suddenly forget something, then go back to a previous activity and remember it? | [
"Memory is heavily rooted in context, like the room or environment in which a memory is made. This is called the Encoding Specificity Principle. When you are going about your life trying to accomplish some goal you will occasionally forget what exactly it was that you were trying to do, however it is important to note that this event of fogetting usually occurs shortly after stepping into a new room, or otherwise moving to a different environment other than the one in which you had initially created the memory of your goal. \n\n\nThis occurs because forgetting is an adaptive and necessary function of memory. If we remembered everything we ever saw, it would take hours to load a single save file. In this way forgetting allows us to quickly load more relevant memories. And one such factor for determining the relevance of a memory is your environment!\n\nSource- [Walking through doorways causes forgetting: Further explorations, Gabriel Radvansky]",
"Yep, the other comment is right, memories and thoughts are really connections in our brains. If I'm working on something, say, fixing a car, all those thoughts are connecting, tools, car, instructions. If I leave the garage (to get a spanner) and get distracted, I sometimes can't find the thought that I need, our minds are huge, its a needle in a haystack. The room that I'm in makes it harder, it connects to totally unrelated networks (kitchen, hungry? thirsty?). Walk back into garage, see car, thought network located in brain, easy to find specific thought (get spanner)."
] |
How far does a speaker move in and out when it vibrates? And do the air molecules next to it move the exact same distance? | [
"This parameter in speaker design is called XMAX and can be in excess of 2\" peak to peak for subwoofers designed to produce high sound pressure levels. Source: worked in mobile audio retail for a number of years.",
"Take a look at this. \n_URL_0_\nIt helps explain quite a bit about how speakers work, how they move sound and what they are made of.",
"The speaker cone moves in and out by a different amount depending on the amplitude of the signal. The cone covers a larger distance when producing a louder sound."
] |
Why can other animals eat raw meat from a corpse but humans cannot? | [
"We can! The danger comes form they way the meat is prepared before it is given to us. America is notorious for poor regulation of sanitation standards for butchers and farmers. In America it is just safer to assume your meat was poorly handled and contaminated, because it most likely was/is."
] |
Relativity (also difference between general and special) as well as string theory | [
"Special relativity: The speed of light is the same in all reference frames. You can't accelerate to the speed of light. You can't travel at the speed of light unless you're massless, in which case you must travel at the speed of light. Time passes differently in different rest frames.\n\nGeneral relativity: As above, plus gravity is the effect of curvature of spacetime around massive objects. This is why it affects massless things like light.\n\nString theory: Trying to describe reality in terms of tiny vibrating strings. If successful, would overcome existing problems in relativity and quantum mechanics where these two fields are not compatible. Would be a leap ahead in our understanding of reality. But currently makes no testable predictions.\n\nIf you want to know more, search. These things are asked all the time. If you want a more helpful response than that, ask a specific question; we have no way to know what your problem with the existing explanations is."
] |
If weight gain/loss is as simple as energy in versus energy out, how do some competitive eaters remain slender? | [
"They are not eating contest level calorie numbers as part of their normal diet. When they train they eat lots of low calorie high volume foods like cabbage and lettuce and drink a lot of water to stretch their stomachs and only eat the contest meals a few times in training for the competition. The occasional massive intake of calories will not make you massively fat, the consistent intake of them does. What they do is not much different than a Thanksgiving or Christmas feast.",
"In addition to eating low-calorie foods when preparing, there are also no rules against them puking up all that food after competitions. And I've read that a lot of them do vomit that crap up once finished.",
"You can only absorb a limited amount of calories in any given timeframe. Suddenly gorging on a massive amount of food means that a lot of it just goes through since your body just doesn't have the capacity to process it all. Obesity is the result of _constant_ surplus of calories."
] |
Why is there sometimes a slightly enjoyable "shiver" after urinating? | [
"Well, I don't know if I'm doing this right, but since I've wondered myself, here's what I found so far:\n\n > According to Sheth, our parasympathetic nervous system (responsible for “rest-and-digest” functions) lowers the body’s blood pressure “to initiate urination.” One leading theory behind the shudder is that peeing can unleash a reactive response from the body’s sympathetic nervous system (which handles “fight or flight” actions).\n\n > On the cellular level, the body is theoretically flushed with catecholamines (which you know better as chemicals like dopamine or hormones like adrenaline). Those are dispatched to help restore or maintain blood pressure, Sheth says. But the microscopic energy bullets “may also trigger the shiver reflect.”\n\nI know this isn't the 5y-old explanation, but it's the best I can find. Maybe someone else can put this into laymen's terms :)\n\nSource is [NBC News](_URL_0_), I have no idea how reliable they are."
] |
How does motion interpolation work? | [
"There's a million approaches to interpolation.\n\nOne is: have a good algorithm to find consistent \"control points\" on the image. Corners on places of high contrast, etc. Notice how those control points move between frame 0 and frame 2. Calculate a new intermediate frame by taking the average of (frame 0 warped to put its control points halfway to where they are in frame 2) and (frame 2 warped to put its control points halfway to where they are in frame 1).\n\nAnother is (closer to things I've done): Train a neural network to try and predict frame 1 given frames 0 and 2 on real 60FPS sources."
] |
What does Netanyahu want the USA to do with Iran? | [
"In the short run, add more sanctions. In the long run, either engage in or support military action."
] |
what does an equalizer do? Why do I need it on my computer? | [
"Sound is made of pressure waves. The sound that comes out of your speakers is a combination of waves of all sorts of frequencies. The higher the frequency, the higher pitch, and lower frequency is lower pitch. The equalizer is kind of like a volume control for little bits of the spectrum of frequency that the human ear can here, so you might turn up the low end if your speaker has poor bass response and normally requires you to turn the total volume up in order to hear the bass well. \n\nedit: Also, regarding Boom, Windows has a system-wide equalizer, so you can make changes that will get affected whether you're playing music (or whatever sound) through your web browser or itunes or vlc or whatever, rather than just the itunes equalizer which only affects itunes. OS X doesn't have one built in for the whole system though, it's up to individual apps to provide you with specific EQs, so this would alleviate that by giving you a system EQ"
] |
What is the most immediate thing China can do to eliminate the smog like that of Shanghai today? | [
"Shut down the coal fired power plants. Stop using coal and wood to heat homes and cook food."
] |
Why do we know very little about sleep/dreams? | [
"Dreams are entirely subjective, usually with no outward signs to gather info from. We've only (relatively) recently started creating machines that can read our brains to help us learn more about mental processes. To contrast, we've had thousands of years to study the rest of our bodies."
] |
Why is it that certain toys are hard to find? Why don't they just make enough? | [
"They don't always anticipate the demand and are afraid of making too many. Nobody wants to be stuck with merchandise they can't move. This is why they'd rather err on the side of caution and not make enough (you can always make more) than to make too many and lose money that way."
] |
Why are metals with low melting points (eg mercury and lead) more poisons or harmful? | [
"They're unrelated. Gallium, indium, bismuth, sodium, potassium, rubidium and caesium are all metals with low melting points that aren't particularly toxic. \n\nGallium melts slightly above room temperature. You could have it melt into a puddle in your hand and suffer no ill effects.\n\nIndium is a soft metal that melts below 200 C. It's not particularly toxic.\n\nBismuth has a melting point below that of lead. It's non-toxic to the point that pepto bismol's active ingredient contains bismuth.\n\nSodium and potassium have melting points below that of boiling water and both are essential to life.\n\nRubidium and caesium are not very toxic. The toxicity of their compounds is comparable to table salt.",
"Lead's melting point isn't that low. Gallium will melt in your hand and isn't toxic in the pure form.\n\nMercury itself isn't particularly toxic either. The pure metal form isn't very reactive and will pass through your system without being absorbed.\n\nThe compound [methylmercury](_URL_0_) is the form to be concerned about.\n\nSo to answer your question directly, the two properties are unrelated.",
"The other commentors are correct, but there is something to be said for the ability of gases and liquids to infiltrate fabrics, skin, and orifices. This probably contributes to the toxicity of mercury (or, rather, Mercury's toxic compounds)."
] |
In purely practical terms, what is life like for illegal immigrants in developed western countries? Can they drive? Get married? Have children legally? Get healthcare? Get a job? | [
"I've worked in construction in Toronto for 12 years alongside illegal immigrants from all over the world. Typically there will be an ambitious worker that will take the lead and find a way to get a driver license, SIN or a business number, and start to get work contacts and hire other workers. Those people tend to get by very well, but the hired workers are often given just enough to get by and treated unfairly. It varies from crew to crew so that may be an unfair assesment, but it's the most common situation that I've seen. When it comes to renting an apartment, getting married, and living life in general, almost all of the people I've known have had no problem, but have told me they're always looking over their shoulder and are terrified any time a cop car drives by. I knew a guy that stitched himself up (6 stitches) cause he was scared of going to the hospital. It's much better to immigrate legally, sometimes countries will ban you for life if you're caught.",
"Child of an illegal immigrant and a legal citizen for a while(they got their citizenship and all that now though). I don't think they can really do anything legally since them even just being there is technically illegal. \n-In my caseI, I was a US citizen when I was born since I was born on a US hospital on US soil. \n-Illegal immigrants technically can drive, but not legally, they'll get busted if they get pulled over. I don't think they can legally buy a car either. \n-My parents did get married when they were in the US. \n-There are people that will hire illegal immigrants to do work(typically other immigrants), or they can start a business under the name of their spouse and work as an employee. \n-My family have healthcare of insurance until after my mom got citizenship. I don't think illegal immigrants can get healthcare."
] |
Why do brand new discs have trouble playing? | [
"I've never had this happen with new Blu-ray's, DVD's, CD's. This sounds like a problem with your disc player."
] |
Why are sites such as Netflix and Youtube able to stream high definition video on relatively slow internet, while other sites struggle to stream that same quality of video on even the best internet? | [
"Compression is a wonderful thing. When you go to Netflix or YouTube, you aren't actually streaming 1080p or 720p. The feed you're getting is highly compressed, and your computer then renders and upscales it once you've received it.",
"* Netflix partners with ISPs and locates their content servers *inside* ISP facilities. This means your Netflix video doesn't always travel across the internet to get to you, it only goes from your ISP to you which is a dedicated hi-speed connection.\n\n* Netflix uses video compression to reduce the amount of data being sent to you. You don't really notice it because it's very good and also because most video you watch is compressed and you're used to it. Both cable and Sat TV providers use video compression even on their \"HD\" channels.",
"1) Netflix and Youtube have some of the fastest internet connections on their end with extremely high traffic capacity. \n\n2) Netflix and Youtube have good compression algorithms that lets their streams take up less data mid transit and are decompressed on the watchers end. \n\n3) They both have tiers of quality and do not actually allow their HD video to transmit to people who have too low of a connection."
] |
Are there any countries without debt? Is it possible to not have a deficit in a global economy? | [
"The USA had a budget surplus in the Clinton Administration. Note there is a difference between deficit and debt"
] |
Why, when most people orgasm, they instinctively want to vocalize their excitement/expressions? | [
"No scientific answer here, but I can only assume it is like any other \"unexpected\" rush of emotions or feeling. When you step on a nail, you shriek. When you burn your hand, you shriek. Just like anonoman925 said, it is probably an involuntary reaction to too much stimulus.\n\nTL;DR: Too much stimulus = Involuntary reaction."
] |
Why do we attribute some quotes to characters, while others to the author? | [
"The difference lies in whether or not the quote is representative of the ideals and opinions of the author. Is it something the character just says, or something the character believes (but the author doesn't, necessarily), or is it something the character said because the author was deliberately using them as a vehicle for expressing that idea?\n\nAlso, it could just simply be an incorrect citation.",
"It probably has something to do with how memorable the character is. When you have a fantasy story with deep character background and which is also quite memorable — as is the case with Gandalf — it feels much more natural to think of the character as a real person rather than as pen on paper written by the author, especially when you also have film adaptation with said characters. \n\nOn the other side, when you have less character depth and focus, you tend to think of the text you read as coming from the author rather than the character itself.",
"Usually, at least for me, if it's a character's dialogue, I'll attribute it to the character (or maybe put the author's name following the character's). If it's in narration, I'll say the author.\n\nI can sort of agree with your choice to quote the author rather than Calvin in that instance, but I think that's slightly different than quoting from a large novel. Calvin can be seen as a stand-in character for Watterson to express his philosophical and playful thoughts. Gandalf was a character in an epic tale, so anything he said would be his voice, not necessarily the author's."
] |
What are the concepts of intrinsic value and instrumental value in philosophy? | [
"Intrinsic value is when I value something for itself. Instrumental value is the \"I can use this!\" sort of value. This is a tool that lets me better get what I want, so it's valuable to me.\n\nI value the well-being of those I care about, for instance. Is this so I can get something else? No, I just want them healthy. I might admire an art and want it around because I like it, and not because I can use it to get or do something else.\n\nI value having shoes because they help me get to work -- shoes are a tool that gets me to work better. I value work because it's a tool that gets me money that's a tool that I can use to get shelter and food and healthcare and stuff.\n\nIt gets a bit fuzzy between \"I want this because it will have a mental effect on me\" and \"I want this for itself\". I tend to be a bit generous here -- for instance, I have a cute hair clip, and I value it because it helps me look cute. That's pretty close to the outside world / internal mind divide, so I'd say that I intrinsically value that hair clip. But another person might say that my intrinsic value is on being cute, or feeling like I'm cute, and the hair clip is a tool that helps me achieve that goal. Except it was also a gift from my spouse, so I value it for that reason too. Things are complicated.",
"Say the only thing want in the world right now is some chocolate.\n\nThat has intrinsic value, it's all you currently value. But there's a second class of things you value, things that allow you to get chocolate.\n\nSo in this situation money would have instrumental value, because it allows you to buy chocolate.\n\nSo you want money, _but_ you only want money to get chocolate. That's the difference."
] |
Bill C-51 | [
"Recently, there have been a couple of incidents in Canada that have been quite regrettable.\n\nOne was the case of a young man who posted on Facebook that he wants to join ISIS. The RCMP started watching him, and sat regularly with him and his Imam to discuss extremism. Unfortunately, the man was quite unstable. During a confrontation, he ran over a police officer in outrage.\n\nThe Canadian Government wants to be able to arrest people who try to join ISIS. But the thing is, being part of an organization isn't the same as committing a crime - technically, unless they go to Syria and kill someone we can't arrest them.\n\nThe law would make it illegal to be a part of a terrorist group, and allow the RCMP to prevent people from traveling if they suspect that they are traveling to join a terrorist group.\n\nThe controversy arises from the fact that the government could declare anything to be a terrorist group. It would allow the Canadian Government to arrest people for their political opinions, even if they have not otherwise broken any laws.\n\nIt's a difficult and controversial topic. How should society deal with people who want to join ISIS? How can we make sure that those powers aren't used against targets that don't deserve it? There are no easy answers, and I urge you to fully consider the ramifications of both responses - declaring that Canadians can join ISIS without legal repercussions, or declaring that the Government can outlaw certain political groups.",
"You can read it here: _URL_0_\n\nFrom what I understand of the bill, it allows agencies within the Canadian government to share information that they could not previously share. Among a myriad of other things."
] |
What is my cat doing when it's looking at nothing? | [
"Perhaps you have mice or insects in the walls and your cat can hear them?",
"Could be something as simple as dust or a shadow. Mine loves staring at and following/trying to attack sunlight shining through my curtains.",
"About \"see something I can't?\"\n\nYes, cats can see more wave lengths of light than humans, for example UV-light.",
"Looking at something that you regard as \"unimportant\""
] |
Why do a lot of companies develop apps for iOS first, when Android holds 70% of the 'Smart' Market? (inspired by the new Reddit iOS app) | [
"For many reasons, but the most obvious commercial reason is this:\n\niOS users consistently spend more money buying apps, and buying in-app purchases, than Android users. Even though there are more Android users than iOS users, they spend less money.",
"It is just easier to make apps when you have less variations to worry about. With android there are hundreds of different devices with all different specs, but iOS only has like 6 devices with mostly the same specs.",
"There are a few reasons. \n\nMoney. Apps sell more and people pay more on the ios platform. So there's immediately a benefit; if you develop for ios first, there's a greater chance that you'll make more money and so this becomes desirable.\n\nPlatform. There aren't that many 'different' iOS devices. Just a few. So it's very easy to target and test on those devices. \n\nCulture. A lot of targeting decisions are often (not always) made by iOS users who will of course prefer iOS first. \n\n\nDepending on how well the app does, they can then make an Android app. In some cases, they make a very poor port and in some cases they make full use of the Android platform and its features. That in turn depends on whether the app did well and how invested they are in a native mobile app.",
"Meanwhile, Windows Phone users are sitting in the corner telling you all to screw off.\r\r(Seriously, though: develop for us. All 12 of us will happily pay you many dollars.)",
"My company is developing an app for our connected device and I can tell you our reasons for prioritizing iOS are:\n1. iOS means both the iPhone and the iPad. Many people might have android phones, but most of them also have iPads, it's usually not the other way around.\n2. Prestige - we will definitely work on an android version, but out the gate, it's cheaper to develop for 1 and port to the other. If you have to pick one to go first, you want the one that has a stronger brand. Apple means quality and polish, that's the impression we want to give.\n\nAnd those really are our main reasons. Purchases always get pointed to, but even if you don't plan to sell your app, iOS is preferable.",
"1) Money. As someone pointed out earlier, there is a notion that iOS (Apple) users are more willing to spend money. I agree with this but have no data to back it up. \n\n2) Ease. Up until the recent release(s), there was more or less one size of iPhone to code for. One screen size. Easy to code for. I want to make my app look good on the Android platform... well, because the OS software is divorced from the hardware, I know a lot less about what my app will look like on any given android phone, and have to spend more making sure the app looks good on and works well with a much larger number of devices. \n\n3) Fragmentation and ease of support - related to above. iOS users consistently upgrade to the latest versions of their OS much faster and more consistently than android users. If I wanted to start making an app now, I can just say \"I'll make one that works on iOS version 8.1.x, and I know that 95% of people with iPhones will have that software\". The Android market is more more fragmented and have slower adoption rates for OS releases. That means if I want to make an app for the Android platform, I have to put more work into making sure that it will run on KitKat, and IceCream Sandwich, etc etc. There are simply a lot more support issues. \n\nELI5 TL;DR. If I go to make an app for iPhones, I can make one version and release it to the market knowing that it will run well and reliably on a large number of devices owned by people who may or may not be more likely to spend money on apps. If I want to make an \"Android\" version, even though there are more Androids, it's not so easy to just reach that whole audience. To make an app work on all iPhones is much less work than having to make an app that \"works on Android\" - there are too many types of Androids!",
"I've a friend who works for a small company who develops an iOS app, and the reason her company only works with iOS is simplicity. Apple apps need to work on three types of devices and their very similar OS. There are so many different versions of Android on so many devices that in order to test and debug the same apps on Android it just isn't worth their time. What works on a GalaxyS won't work on a Galaxy Note or an Xperion. The list goes on. It is simply that it is more difficult to write an app that will work on a wide variety of devices.",
"As a mobile engineer I can tell you that going Android first makes a lot of sense for two major reasons:\n\n1. Ease of release. Waiting on Apple to approve your releases when you first launch is painful. Your first launch is probably gonna have many iterations early on while you fix and tune. Android is gold here.\n\n2. Build your app for the multiple screen sizes and resolutions early. Solving this problem after you go to iOS is gonna be painful (depending on the app of course). It's better to solve this early in development rather than having to go back and do it. \nBonus: once you're good on android you're probably pretty close to go out on iOS! The opposite can not always be said. \n\nCheers,",
"70% market isn't 70% profit. There are more Android device because around the world there is only a small population that can afford $700 phones. Android's growth in market share is directly the result of all three different segment of the market. However, in terms of profit, and the segment that spend additional money on perks, IAP, Apps, IOS still generate a very steady stream. Another key issue is that all IOS device operate on the same platform, as to Android where you might have to develop the same app 5-10 times to fit on all Android device.",
"Many answers here. One that I haven't seen:\n\nAndroid has a bigger overall market share, but that might not be the case for the target audience. My favorite newspaper didn't have an Android app for ages because the majority of their readers were iPhone users.\n\nThis will not be the case for every company, but definitely a few.",
"tl;dr: because the people who shell out $200 for a new handheld device _every two years_ are much more likely to buy $5 apps instead of using free or ad-supported ones.",
"App Developer here.\n\nPiracy Piracy Piracy.\n\nAndroid apps approach 95% piracy, with a minimum of 90%, even for our most innocuous ones. The test is apps that connect once to the server, then comparing with the sale id.\n\nAndroid is a black hole for developers. Nobody serious in the industry even thinks about it.\n\niOS sales even drop a bit when something comes out on Android, because people with multiple devices will not buy the iOS because they can pirate it.\n\nThe only app worth porting to Android is a freemium one, and even that only after the iOS one has saturated, because a hacked one will be out immediately.\n\nCompanies put apps on Android to advertise their iOS ones. Nothing more. The reason they don't flat out say this is saying piracy actually hurts you is a alarm for all the PJWs on the internet to drop massive amounts of hate and bad review on your games.",
"The company I work for developed the iOS version first for 2 reasons. \n1. The boss uses an iPhone \n2. Apple users seem to be more willing to spend money on apps.",
"1) It's way easier to pirate apps with Android\n\n2) People who have iPhones are, in general, spending more money with apps",
"Not all market share is equal. The majority of Android volume is very low end. When you look at the mix of handsets in the, say, $400+ range, iOS is a much much higher percentage. Similar to the $1,000+ laptop market mix of Windows vs OSX.",
"Because apps made on ios tend to work on all newer and last Gen ios devices. Whereas for android,they would have to test them on different phones with different processing powers and oem's",
"- Most designers use iPhones, you could also argue that most CEOs, entrepreneurs, founders, product managers and so on use iPhones or that the ratio is at least higher than the general population. These obviously biases app choice\n\n- iPhone may have lower overall penetration but it also has much lower device and OS fragmentation. This is important if you plan to use any of the newer features. Android apps must support older devices and a wider range of devices that may not always support required features\n\n- iOS has a consistent aspect ratio. The old 3.5 inch screens are quickly dying, so now the playing field is even better. The iPhone 5 & 6 both have identical aspect ratios (although different screen sizes) making layout an order of magnitude simpler. Android is however improving drastically, and Android phones seem to be settling on a similar aspect ratio.\n\n- Until recently, Android didn't have a simple, built-in payment mechanism. iPhone always had iTunes and both app and in-app purchases. Further, a lot of iTunes accounts have credit cards attached. Until recently, only larger companies could afford to implement all the different payment mechanisms on Android.\n\n- iPad is still a very popular tablet, and only a year or two ago it was the gold standard in tablets. iPhone apps are very easily ported to iPad so this was attractive to developers who wanted both platforms.\n\n- iPhones are considered the upper end of the market. Their users are thought to be more affluent and happier to spend money on apps and content.\n\n- Although this is changing with Material Design, iOS always had far superior graphics capabilities and apps were expected to be smooth and animated. Designers love this, users love this, and investors love this. It's much easier to sell a concept that looks and works like an iPhone app. Only now has Android realised that animation is critical to showing context",
"A few reasons.\n\nFirst the vast majority of iPhone and iPad users are using the most current IOS version, and only a small set of hardware, perhaps 6 different devices. That makes development and testing much easier.\n\nSecond IOS app users tend to spend more on apps when compared to Android app users, that makes it more profitable to make the Apple version first. \n\nThird, almost every Android phone is unique. Every phone company has their own custom skin such as Samsung TouchWiz, Motorola Blur, etc. Each phone has different processor, different levels of memory, different sensors, different touch screen. This makes development much harder and therefore more expensive.\n\nFor example, pretend you are making a race car game where you tilt the phone up and down to go faster or slow down, and rotate left/right to turn. Perhaps touch different parts of the screen to change gears, use nitro, use different power ups, etc.\n\nHow big is the screen in size and resolution? How close together can you put the buttons? How sensitive are the sensors? Is a slight tilt or rotation enough? Do the sensors tell you the angle of tilt?",
"I feel like android is getting poorly represented in this thread. \n\nYes, the reason most people develop for ios first is money. There is more money in the ios ecosystem than android. It's an older, more established app store, and every ios device pretty much has the same access to it. Android has a few different app stores, and certain devices have certain access. \n\nBut it's not that difficult to support android. However it does depend on what you are doing. If you make an app in objective c, it's going to be harder to port than say a game made in unity. \n\nYou don't have to test on every android device. Just the lowest end one you support, and a few of the more popular ones. It's rare for a specific android phone to have an issue. Mostly you look at optimizing memory, and I've noticed android in general seems to have slower disk read speed. I've only ever had 1 issue that was caused by different hardware, and that was some weird open gl error on one gpu that a few phones use.",
"I develop apps for a living.\n\niOS users are WAY more likely to download an app than an android user. \n\nAndroid is more cumbersome to test an app on due to all the handset variations. \n\nSo it makes more sense to develop for iOS first, get all of the issues out of the way there, and then port over to Android. \n\nTypically you want to spend about 30% of your iOS budget on an android port because you'll only get about 30% of the downloads.",
"I own a mobile app development company and have worked in mobile almost exclusively for the last six years. \n\nFirst of all, if you look at the North American market, where a lot of these apps are being developed, the split is closer to 50/50. Plus a huge chunk of the Android users are the kind who never install apps. They just buy their cheap HTC whatevers and move on with their life. Maybe install Facebook and Snapchat. \n\nSecond, OS and device fragmentation. Not a huge percentage of android users are running the latest OS, and there's hundreds of devices out there at any given time. That means a lot of screen sizes and hardware to test against. Makes development take longer. \n\nLast, like everyone else is saying, iOS users spend more money on apps and are more likely to use new and unproven apps. They like to get the latest fad app and check it out. They'll even spend money on it, maybe. Once they're in the app, they can use their thumbprint to make in app purchases with almost no friction.",
"Because apple devices are considered premium devices and cost more. Therefore the people buying them are more likely to spend more money.\n\nSince apps have been around, ios has consistently beat android in terms of how much money users spend on apps and in app purchases.\n\nso as a business you will target the people more likely to spend money than the ones that are not. \n\nAlso with apple you have 3 phone sizes and 2 ipad sizes, so thats total of 5 hardware models a lot of which have similar specs so creating something that works across all of them is simpler.\n\nAndroid may have more users, but they have also fragmentation where not everyone is on the latest version of diabetes.",
"_URL_0_\n\nYou're confusing 'market share' with 'profit'. Market share is nice, but profit is what you really want. Android has a bigger market share, but iOS app generate more money. Possibly because people who pay higher prices for Apple products are more willing to spend on apps too? You could speculate the reasons for this, but the numbers generally show that iOS is the way to go if you want to make more money.\n\nAnd... plus some of the other stuff... easier to make apps because fewer screen size variations / resolutions / hardware / OS version number differences to worry about, yada yada.",
"I see a lot of people debating on this issue as if it's debatable or even close. Let me start by saying I am a rabid android fanboy ever since the G1, and numerous studies have indicated that IOS users spend far more on Apps/games. I'm sure the much more stable OS Is a bonus, but the Devs go where the money is. I'm just happy to be around at a time where android share is big enough that we will have a port of any good IOS game shortly after the iphone release",
"I went to an indie-game Dev panel at pax east last year and someone asked the same question. The answer is simple.....\n\nEvery iPhone is identical, they don't have to worry about different processors, resolutions, screen size, etc. If it works on one iPhone, it works on all iPhones. That compared to the many different android manufacturers, is why things will typically come to iOS first, then if it's successful they start on android versions.",
"Maybe it's because all the execs are using iPhones and want a working model on what they use.",
"Because market share does not equal profit share.",
"Well, I can only answer this for a subset of apps that are games.\n\nI have an iPhone game that I developed with a small team. We opted to work on iPhone because it was what we had, and making an iPhone game is a much more difficult process than making one for Android.\n\nWe developed in Unity (a game engine and game development program that is pretty convenient and handles the back end stuff of getting the game onto the phone for you). Here's the process to get a game on iPhone:\n\n1) Create a developer account on Apple's website.\n\n2) Get an iOS development license. We have a student license provided by our college. As such, we can't sell the game unless we get it on a commercial license (which we might actually do).\n\n3) Register your developer account to the development license.\n\n4) Register the project with the iOS dev license.\n\n5) Register every iOS device that will be running the app during development with the license and the project.\n\n6) Open iTunes with the device plugged in and enable the phone for development in the iTunes menu.\n\n7) In Unity, change the development platform to iOS.\n\n8) Build the game. This will transform the game into a neatly wrapped XCode cocoa project.\n\n9) From XCode, click the \"play\" button with the device plugged into the computer. This will put the app/game on the phone and launch it. \n\n10) (We have not done this yet) You have to submit your app to the iTunes store for approval.\n\nOk, so it's pretty involved. Once you've done all that, the hard part is over. So now you want to put your game on Android. Here's what you do:\n\n1) Check the box for the Android development platform.\n\n2) Build the project.\n\n3) Drag the app to the phone.\n\nDone.\n\nYou might have to mess with the aspect ratios and you may have to compress some images/textures (sometimes if a texture or image is too big, Android will simply not render it. For the hell of it, I made a build of it for Android and gave it to a friend), but for the most part, it'll just work without much tweaking. That's why, in my opinion, they go on iOS first and Android as an afterthought. You do the hard work first.\n\nNow, another reason IMO is the sheer variety in Android devices. Each has a different memory, hard drive space, and other technical capabilities. Whereas with the iPhone, there is generally just one current iPhone (the big version of the 6 is kind of an exception). All that generally varies is the hard drive space, and good luck making a game larger than 16 gigs (which is totally doable, but don't).",
"Mobile developer here. Two major reasons:\n\n1) Variety of devices, Android distributions. It's easy to make an Android app. It's REALLY annoying to make a good Android app. Android's power lies in it's ability to be customized, but at the same time, that wide possibility space means that a good developer has a lot of work to do before their app sees the light of day. Something like 25% of the market still runs Android 2.X (the latest version is 4.4.3, for reference). Still others run custom-made versions of Android which can behave differently for seemingly no reason at all. For example: I was animating some things in my application using the high-level Android animation system. This worked fine on every device I tested it on... except the Nook, which ran it's own version of Android that, for whatever reason, would spaz out during a specific case which occurred quite often in the program and was fine everywhere else. iOS, though it may have it's quirks, is GUARANTEED to have two screen sizes, and at most TWO different software versions per generation (phone and tablet, which have slightly different ways of accomplishing some tasks). \n\n2) iOS is elegant programmatically. Objective-C is also quirky, but the way that iOS has been laid out is very simple and easy to use. Android, conversely, is very clunky in many different ways. This is a matter of personal opinion, but it's one that's pretty universal at my office.",
"> To me it seems common sense to make it for Android first considering it's the dominating market, easier to publish to and easier to monetize.\n\nActually common sense would dictate the exact opposite of what you're suggesting. \n\n1. The fact that it's the dominating market is a moot point. Android OS is free, therefore the market is flooded with free or cheap Android mobile phones. People who need a new phone and don't care what kind will opt for the cheaper option. That is why Android has 70% market share. \n\n2. Not easier to publish since there are a variety of phones and screen sizes to account for in developing the app. \n\n3. It is harder to monetize; Android users spend next to nothing on mobile apps while iPhone users are willing to spend money.",
"In my company we decided it based on development time and return. \n\niOS has a shorter development time (mostly because of QA on the variety of Android devices) and we expected less support overhead as well (also because of compatibility on the multitude of Android devices).\n\niOS users also spend significantly more money per-person, so even counting the fact that there are fewer users overall we stood to make equal or greater return from them.\n\nAfter iOS was out, we then had the time to port it to Android while the low-maintenance iOS money was generating revenue.",
"_URL_1_\n\nEven though more android hardware is sold, more people are still using iOS as an actual smart phone.\n\nPeople who buy androids mostly just use it as a regular phone, rarely using the browser or apps.\n\niOS has the larger share of mobile browser usage, so it makes more sense, if you're going to write an app-- even a free app, to write it for the platform it'll actually get used on.\n\nBasically, people who want a smart phone buy an iPhone, people who just want a phone by an Android.",
"The monetary part is huge, but one thing I didn't see here that I think is worth mentioning is cultural.\n\nI have no data to back this up, but my observation has been that educated, urban professionals not working in a technical position overwhelmingly prefer Apple. These are also the people who work in business and are heavily involved in a lot of these kinds of decisions. They and almost everyone they interact with on a regular basis has an iPhone, so of course that's the platform to develop for.",
"The fragmentation of hardware and software for android makes it very difficult to create an app with Android as the lead. iOS is much easier because there are only a few variations and adoption happens much faster. We currently develop a number of apps for huge retailers, factors like Gingerbread still make up a significant portion of a shopping population, generally due to socio-economic factors. Whereas iOS has less of those factors, and when they do - they degrade more gracefully.",
"I can answer this from a real world business case.\n\nWe made our App for iOS simply due to the fact that 66% of the mobile + tablet traffic was from iOS devices as well as the ECR% is quite higher for iOS users than Android users on our platform.\n\nIt thus made sense for us to make an app for iOS but it was not for Android.",
"Is it really true that Android is \"dominating the market\"?\n\nI feel like everybody I know has an iPhone and/or an iPad. I don't know anybody who has a tablet that is something other than iPad, and I only know a small number of people with non-iPHone smart phones. Maybe it's just where I live.",
"Its true that Android has more phones but what developers care about is how much money can they make per phone. Turns out iOS users are more likely to spend money in their app store than android users. Here is an article that should answer your question exactly.\n\n_URL_2_",
"Android is not a larger market. Many (most?) android users have one because it was the free phone. iOS users spend A LOT more money on apps than android users. Like anything else, the developers focus on marketing toward the buyers.",
"You don't get the entire android market at once. You get much of the iOS market (basically) by just working on that.\n\nIt's not 30% vs 70%, it's basically 30% vs (10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10%)",
"From the last time I paid attention to this, I remember it being a two gold money answer: you make more money on iOS and piracy is outrageous on android.",
"Because it takes twice as long to put out a good Android app as a good iPhone one. TTM you heard of it?\n\n/thread",
"My game apps in Apple's store sell 300x more units then in Google. It's the exact same app. I use Unity3d.",
"To add to the number one guy, ppl who have apple are more likely to buy* the app",
"More \"creative\" types (design/music etc.) use iPhones. They develop apps for the phone they use.",
"Because iOS is harder to port to.\n\nSource: Personal experience porting Android to iOS.",
"Because investors are rich and rich people have iPhones."
] |
What are the advantages of using a Bullpup-Style rifle over a conventional one? | [
"Bullpup rifles provide barrel length of longer rifles(M-16), but overall length closer to carbines (M-4).\n\nThe barrel length helps increase bullet energy and long range accuracy, while the shorter overall length makes it more manageable, especially in close-quarter fighting."
] |
How does our nervous system work in regards to how we feel through the use of neurotransmitters and medication? | [
"Please note that a lot of our information about neurotransmitters (and how the brain works in general) is correlative, not causative. \n\nWe know certain neurotransmitters correspond with certain conditions. We know that the lack of them, or an excess of them can be correlated with certain disorders. \n\nFor example, dopamine is linked to movement, learning and motivation. Too little dopamine has correlations with jittery movement (think Parkinson's). Too *much* dopamine has correlations with schizophrenia. \n\nA lot of medications for mental disorders try to help by either reducing or increasing the amounts, rates or absorption of neurotransmitters. \n\nThe thing is, a lot of times this is guesswork, and a lot of times you have to really trial-and-error it. Say, for example, we have someone diagnosed with schizophrenia, and we want to treat it by reducing dopamine levels. Reduce it *too* much and the person's movement can be affected. Not enough, and you're not helping the patient. And possibly dopamine levels weren't at fault to begin with, so you have to try other things. \n\nAs for the withdrawal thing - that's pretty anecdotal, but imagine living with depression (and if you have not, it's pretty hard to imagine), and then *not* living with it for a while, perhaps an extended period. Feeling that all come back... that can be incredibly harsh."
] |
LI5 Can somebody explain to me in layman terms how a CDO works? | [
"Oh man, you are going to love [this](_URL_0_).\n\nReally, if you fully understand the first sentence you wrote, you fully understand CDOs, but maybe NPR and I can make it a little more clear.\n\nFirst, what is the purpose of any financial organization and financial instrument? Allocating capital and managing risk. In other words, getting money to people who want money and making sure that everyone knows how likely it is that they'll get that money back.\n\nNow, what is a CDO? As you say, a bunch of mortgages get bundled together and put into tranches (or levels). On the top level are the mortgages that are least likely to fail. Those mortgages are the most likely to pay off, but their payoff isn't very high. As you go down levels, you get to more and more unlikely payoffs, but, if the payoff occurs, it gets higher.\n\nThe idea is that **by combining mortgages, the overall investment is less likely to fail than a single mortgage**. In theory, that might seem like a great idea. If you buy one mortgage, that could be a big risk; if the owner defaults, all of your money is gone. But, if you buy a piece of a bunch of mortgages, and an owner defaults, its not that big of a deal (in statistical lingo, both of those investments have the same expected value, but the CDO has a smaller standard deviation).\n\nSo, how does this allocate capital (get money to people)? It makes more investors want to buy mortgages, and that makes it easier for families to get mortgages (they'll be cheaper).\n\nAnd, how does this manage risk? That \"expected value\" and \"standard deviation\" mumbo-jumbo I talked about earlier.\n\nOf course, the premise of all this was that one mortgage default is completely unrelated to any other mortgage default. But, that isn't true. If one person can't make a house payment, it's because that person doesn't have enough money. Why wouldn't he have enough money? Because he's out of a job. Why is he out of a job? Layoffs. What do layoffs mean? Hundreds of people out of a job. So, there are probably hundreds of other people who won't be able to make their payments. The idea that combining mortgages would make them less risky just didn't pan out."
] |
What is the advantage to a professional athlete signing a contract extension? | [
"\"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.\" - an old proverb.\n\nThere are lots of priorities that can go into a contract, and those priorities have to be balanced to suit the needs of both the team and the player. Those priorities are not always money, either. If money were no object to you, would you rather play for a team that wins regularly or a team that loses regularly? Athletes are competitors, and when you've got money saved up sometimes the desire to win outweighs the desire to get paid as best you can. Also consider other working conditions - are you friends with your teammates? Are you willing to leave all of them behind for some money? That's a big thing when you get older and it becomes harder to make new friends. Is your coach a good guy or an asshole? No one likes working for an asshole - if you offered me twice as much salary but were going to make me work for a tyrant who made my life miserable every day, I'd turn it down without even blinking. Is the organization well run? Nobody likes working for an incompetent organization. Or maybe there's a factor of loyalty in it -[ take the case of Tyron Smith, whose family was bleeding him dry and basically saw him as a giant ATM](_URL_0_). He could have made a lot more money, but to him it was more important to show respect to those who helped him out.\n\nBeyond that, you have to factor in how the money gets paid out as well. In the NFL, many contracts aren't guaranteed. Players may sign a 6 year contract, but when the details come out you'll find that only 2 or 3 years are guaranteed and then the player can be cut with no contract. If you can lock in a contract that guarantees money over a longer period of time, that's often better than a contract with a high ceiling but no guarantees. Andy Dalton signed a $115 million dollar contract with the Cincinnati Bengals, but if he sees $50 million of that money I'd be decently surprised. Is it better to have high incentives or guarantees? A wide receiver might sign a contract paying him $300,000 per catch, but if every team he plays sticks their best defender on him he might only get 2 to 3 passes thrown to him per game. Would it be worth signing a contract guaranteeing you $550,000 per game or $300,000 per catch if you were constantly playing good defenders?\n\nSo contracts can get very complex, and what the player might value most is often not maximizing their money at the cost of other aspects of their life."
] |
Does "nothing" exist? | [
"It depends on what you mean by \"something.\" \n\nConsidering physical reality, there is a minimum size a 'thing' has to be in order to be considered 'real'. We can talk about Planck lengths, quarks, and leptons all day, and we can even toss around numbers like 10^-35 metres until we're blue in the face, and it misses the spirit of your question. \n\nThere's an amazing discussion about the nature of \"nothing\" and whether we can consider it to be \"real\" in one of the Isaac Asimov memorial debates. Take a look when you have some time, because I think this at least touches on what you're asking. And even if not, it's a truly breathtaking and fascinating discussion. \n\nPay close attention to Lawrence Krauss' answers, because of all the physicists I've heard discuss this question, he seems to make the most sense to me, a hobbyist/layperson like yourself. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nedit - I've heard cosmologist Sean Carroll say that the default or 'typical' state IS nothingness; that, in fact, existence itself is a mathematical improbability. Now, I'm fairly certain he's equating 'nothing' with a thermal equilibrium state (what we know as 'heat death') and his definition is sort of limited to the idea that in the absence of events (which are simply, at their core, fluctuations in HEAT and that's pretty much it), we can consider such a state to be \"nothingness.\" But this is more of a 'mathematician's answer,' if you will. It's technically correct but again misses the philosophical spirit of your question."
] |
How does the finding of 2 new subatomic particles affect our understanding of the universe? | [
"I'm assuming you are referring to this\n\n_URL_1_\n\nParticle physicists make their predictions from the Standard Model\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's really the best theory we have to explain the particles and forces we see in the universe. And like any good scientific theory, we can make predictions. These particles were predicted to exist and their properties could be calculated. So we found these particles and their properties were in line with the predictions. So we really haven't found out anything new and unexpected about the structure of the universe. (In the popular press, they tend to hype things up) That sounds like a good thing, but really scientists are looking for times when they find something they don't understand. Right now we know dark matter must exist, but the properties of the particles are known from the Standard Model, so we know it must be incomplete. They are looking for anomalies which might give hints of \"new\" physics beyond the Standard Model. And it is believed that more massive particles will couple more strongly with the dark matter giving a detectible signal."
] |
Musical forms, codas, del signo, Middle 8's (MUSICIANS OF REDDIT) | [
"Let's start by saying that a coda is an ending to a piece or movement of music which doesn't follow linearly. By that I mean you don't play the music measure 1, measure 2.... measure 64, CODA! Instead, the sheet music tells you to repeat a section of the song, and then instructs you to jump to the coda. There are 2 common ways for this instruction to happen.\n\nDa capo al coda, or DC al Coda, is (loosely) Italian for \"from the head to the tail.\" When this instruction shows up in music, you move to the beginning (head) of the piece, play until you see the Coda symbol (a bullseye-looking thing) and then jump to the coda. \n\nDal segno al coda (DS al Coda) means \"from the sign to the end\" and just means that instead of jumping to the beginning, you just jump to the segno symbol. Then you play until the coda bullseye, then play the coda.\n\nBoth instructions are the composer saying \"I want people to hear the best part of my song again, then hear this cool ending I wrote.\" Whether DC or DS is used depends on whether that best part is the beginning or somewhere in the middle.\n\nA middle 8 can absolutely be 16 bars long. Middle 8 just refers to a bridge in ballad form songs and later songs that developed from it. If you have a section in the middle of a song, in a very different key, different dynamic (loud or soft) or otherwise very distinct from what comes before and what follows, middle 8 is most often a valid way to describe it."
] |
Why is the movie Frozen seen as a metaphor for homosexuality? | [
"Elsa has a condition that is shameful, and that her parents want her to hide and never let anyone else see. If they could cure it, they would, but they can't. Elsa suppresses her feelings and lives a sad, unfulfilled life hoping that no one figures out the truth about her. When people do find out, they react poorly, and she runs away.\n\nBut then Elsa decides that she's not going to hide who she is anymore, and lie to herself. She's going to Let It Go and be free, changing her style. At the end, Elsa finds happiness and realizes that people will still love her even if she is different. \n\nSo yeah. It's a metaphor for being different and alienated, and being gay is an example of that."
] |
Why do months have different number of days? | [
"I just copy and pasted this from another site:\n\nIn ancient times, when calendars were first put into place, the year-measured by the cycle of changing seasons-was divided into months. The lengths of the months varied slightly from one culture to the next, but the basic length-from 28 to 31 days-was consistent across many cultures. That number of days was based on the cycle of the moon, which lasts about 29 and one-half days and is easily noticed by just observing the moonlit sky. The months could not all have the same number of days because the number of days in a year, approximately 365, is not divisible by 28, 29, 30, or 31.\nIn the time of Roman emperor Julius Caesar, who instituted the Julian calendar in 45 b.c., it was decided that all months would have 30 or 31 days, except February, which at that time had 29 days. Why did February get short-changed? Before the Julian calendar, the new year began in March, and perhaps simply because February was the last month of the year, it was seen as the logical choice for having the fewest number of days.\nOne version of calendar history relates how February came to have 28 days. After Julius Caesar's death, the month that was then known as Quintilis was renamed July in his honor. During the reign of Julius's successor, Augustus Caesar, the month that then had the name Sextilis was renamed in honor of the new emperor as August. While July had 31 days, August only had 30, and in order to make his month as long (and as important) as Julius's month, Augustus took a day from February and added it to August. From then on August had 31 days and February 28 (except on leap years, when it once again has 29 days).\n\n\nRead more: _URL_0_\n\nEDIT: So I have been doing some extra research in order to understand this theory fully. Turns out there are some fallacies in it. What I have learned is that originally the months alternated with 29 or 30 days to compliment the lunar (moon) cycle. However, the year was a solar (sun) year, and thus days were added to each month to increase this so that the two coincided. When January and February were added by Nuna, he split them up with January having 29 days and February having 28. The reason why February never really changed it's number of days may have something to do with the festivals had during the month (all the months had festivals - it was The Roman Empire) as they differed from the rest of the year. The not-actual-emperor Julius Caesar probably had to deal with the festivals rather than dividing them all up equally like us mathematical pagans.\n\n*TL;DR* originally to do with the moon, then the sun got in the way. Also, Romans like festivals",
"Does anyone here also use their knuckles to check the months with more and less days?",
"Why not just have 13 months of 28 days. February keeps it's 29th for leap year, and occasionally have a \"Free\" day between the end and beginning of years, actually make that the New year's Day?\n\n13 * 28 = 364, which leaves one day to be used for the 365. Why not have this day be the end of the year that celebrates the end and the beginning? We could even call it the Omega Alpha day or just Omega or something like that. It isn't part of any month, but it is just the New year's day?\n\nShit, rename the months so that actually match up too! December = 10th month same with November for 9, October for 8\n\nGeez!",
"The real question is how come I pay the same in rent for every month?",
"Short answer: Historical reasons plus [standards issues.](_URL_2_)\n\nA little longer answer: Humans like references to celestial objects. Humans also like rounding and simple fractions ( a week is a 'fourth' of a month). Although humans didn't know the following truths at the time they used these references, here they are:\n\nDay: length of time it take the earth to spin on its axis once\n\nMonth: length of time it takes the moon to go around the Earth rounded to the nearest day\n\nYear: length of time it takes the Earth to revolve around the sun rounded to the nearest day\n\nBut these don't match up evenly and [they never will](_URL_2_) (in fact, Newton went nuts (not literally) trying to find an equation to predict the future positions of the Earth, Moon, and Sun). So humans started rounding to nearest day amounts and shoving extra days were they saw fit. This is evidenced by the fact that August and July are named after the Roman emperors Augustus and Julius Caesar. Also, we use the Gregorian Calendar, which is of course named after Pope Gregory XIII.",
"Most of the cycles in the calendar come from the sun, the moon, and the earth. A day is the time it takes for one cycle of the sun (one rotation of the earth). A month is time length of one cycle of the moon. And a year is the time it takes for one cycle of the seasons (one revolution around the sun). \n\nThese are all good things to use to keep track of time because they happen regularly. Unfortunately, they don't always work very well together. You can't divide the year into an even number of cycles of the moon. You also can't divide a year into an even number of days. \n\nTo solve the problem with days, people invented the leap year. Every four years we have an extra day that works to line things up again. \n\nTo solve the problem with months, people decided not to use the actual moon cycle any more, and instead to just make the months a little longer so that it all worked out. When you take 365 days and divide it by 12, you get 30.4. Since months can't have half days in them, we alternated between 30 and 31 every other month. That still left one month with one day less, but it was still pretty regular and predictable: 31,30,31,30,31,30,31,30,31,30,31,29\n\nThen things got a little messy, because some of the months were named after important people. July was named after Julius Caesar and August was named after Augustus Caesar. Augustus didn't want his month to be shorter than Julius's, so he stole a day from the short month at the end of the year to make his month 31 days long too. \n\nAnd then to make things really confusing, we decided that the year should start in January (mid-winter) instead of March (spring), but everyone was used to the length of the months at that point and didn't want to change them, so that put the short month in the middle instead of at the end.",
"The Roman calendar has always had 12 months.\n\nThe term month is derived from Moonth... which is a 28 day cycle of the moon. So some calendars have 13 months (moonths)\n\nLater, they discovered and then modifed the months, moving to a solar calendar, as they figured out the solar equinoxes and solstices. (the two equal length days, and the longest and shortest days) where a more accurate way to guage a year. Calendars were originally invented to help with agriculture, and knowing when to plant and harvest, was important.\n\nOriginally every other month was 31 days... Thus January- 31, March-31, May-31 but that all got changed.\n\nThe Roman Senate voted to deifyJulius Caesar and named a month after him. Julius Caesar (July) they thought it was appropriate that it be the longest month of the year, and that it follow June (named after Juno [Jupiter] ) So they took a day from February. \n\nLater, when they deified Caesar Augustus, they decided to name a month after Caesar Augustus (August)- coming after July, as Augustus was Julius nephew. They felt that he was as great as Julius, and his month should have 31 days as well, so they took another day from February.\n\nThat's why February has 28 days, and July and August each have 31 even though they are one after the other.",
"tl;dr: Nature + superstition.\n\nA \"month\" was originally the time it took for the Moon to go through its phases and come all the way back around to when it started. That length of time - which we now called the *synodic month* to distinguish it from other kinds of \"months\" like the ones on the calendar - is not a whole number of days. (It would be a coincidence if it were, like finding a branch in the woods that happened to be exactly 100 centimeters long). \n\nIn fact, a synodic month is not even a constant amount of time, since it depends on where the Earth, Moon, and Sun are relative to each other, and the speed of the Earth around the Sun changes throughout the year. But on average, it's about 29½ days long. \n\nWhen people were just looking at the sky and talking about how many moons it would be until some event, they didn't need to be very precise. But eventually people needed more precision and started naming individual days; a system for naming days is what we call a \"calendar\". The month was a logical way to divide days up into easy-to-count chunks.\n\nBut a 29½-day month is not convenient for a calendar; a calendar where the date changes in the middle of the day one day out of the month would make things more complicated. So the calendars generally had a 30-day month followed by a 29-day month followed by a 30-day month, and so on. That's the first reason months have different numbers of days.\n\nThe Romans thought even numbers were unlucky, so they didn't use 30-day months; instead of the pattern (30, 29, 30, 29, 30, 29) their months went (31, 29, 29, 31, 29, 29). That's where we get the idea of 31-day months, even though the Moon never takes that long to go through its phases.\n\nWhen using the calendar to predict things that depend on the seasons (like harvest time), you need to know how long a year is. And a year is not a whole number of months (again, that would be a big coincidence). The moon goes through its phases twelve times in a year, but twelve 29½-day months make only 354 days - there's 11 more days before you get to the same spot in the seasons. Most calendars deal with this by inserting extra months - \"leap months\" - every few years. But since you need to be able to do math to tell when to do that, and most people couldn't do math, in Rome the people who controlled the calendar took advantage, and things got very confusing.\n\nSome other calendars - like the Egyptian one - went another way: they decided to throw away the whole idea that months had to match the Moon. Julius Caesar decided this was a good idea and, with the help of some Egyptian astronomers, changed the Roman calendar to do the same thing.\n\nTo get the extra 11 days needed for a full year, they added days to most of the 29-day months so they had 30 or 31 days, not worrying about the even-number superstition. But superstition still played a role, because February was thought to be an unlucky month, so it was left at 29 days, and even then only in leap years; it got only 28 days in regular years. Putting the leap day there was also done partly for that reason - changing lengths was just creepy, so better make it the month that's already unlucky. (The other reason was tradition: March had once been the start of the year, and putting the extra day at the end of the year made sense. But March wasn't the first month of the new calendar - January was, just like it is today.)",
"A lot of cultures noticed that there were about 12 lunar months in a year. About because it was 12 and a bit lunar months to the year. This means that the Moon orbits the Earth a little bit more than 12 times in an actual year.\n\n12 lunar months eventually became 12 months with a total of 365 days (the amount of time it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun...... it's actually about 365.25 days which is why we have a leap year every 4 years to account for gaining a day every 4 years). 365 doesn't divide by 12 evenly.",
"The funny thing is, they didn't always. Back 2000 years ago, there were 10 months to a year and each month was exactly the same length. But then along came Julius Agustus Caesar, and he was by all rights, a badass. But maybe a little self absorbed too. He decided that there needed to be a way for people to remember him for eternity, so he added the months of August and July to the calendar. But that threw all the mathematical calculations of the previous calendar out of whack, so then they had to adjust the length of each month so that 12 months would be one year. But there was no even way to do that, so they ended up having to give some months 30 days while other months got 31 days, and February got 28 days.\n\nThere was still a leap year before this, but it came once every 4 years on the end (or beginning, there's a bit of historical debate about that) of the new year. \n\nPoint is, there are different amounts of days in each month because a guy with a big head decided to mess up a good system.",
"Really long story short: \nThe earth goes around the sun in 365.25 days \nThe moon goes around earth in 29.5 days \nWe hate fractions",
"One year = the earth goes around the sun once. Months were supposed to be the time from one new moon to the next, 28 days. A day is one full revolution of the earth around itself. Now 28 days times 12 months equals 336, and suddenly you're running out of sync. So months were assigned to have different, varying lengths. They might as well have given 28 days to August and 31 to February, doesn't matter, as long as you end up with 365 days for your regular year.\nNow since one orbit of the earth around the sun actually takes 365 and a quarter day, every four years, a leap day is added to the year to catch up with that.\n\n_URL_3_",
"Many great post of why we have calendars all messed up. I personally feel it is time to move to a 13 month calendar. I forgot where I read it but it does make sense. All months would the same amount of days as 13 almost divides evenly into 365 (28.07), giving each month 28 days (except for new years day which wouldn't get a month but be a transition day into the next year).\n\nThis would make things easier as you wouldn't need to bank on that one month where you get three paychecks, credit cards would get paid down quicker and less interest would be paid each year, pregnancy would be easier to measure, etc etc.",
"Well, for one thing, the only factors of 365 are 1, 5, 73, and 365. So we'd have to split them unevenly unless we just wanted to have 5 months of 73 days each. But then it'd be a total abstract and have nothing to do with seasons or lunar cycles, which is what we used to use as our markers for the passing of time on a larger scale.",
"Im all for a 13 months, 28days a month system. Every 1st. would be a monday...also, 1 more salary.\n\nThe 1 day thats left over...thats party day! The las vegas of days",
"12 months, 30 days each month\n\n5 days to celebrate the new year. 6th day to celebrate on leap years.",
"\"Month\" is derived from Moon as it's how long it takes the Moon to go round the earth once. The Moon's relative position gives the impression of 4 \"phases\": New,Waxing,Full, Waning. These equate to weeks.\n\n A year is how long it takes the Earth to go round the Sun once. \n\nIt actually takes 27 days for the Moon to do a lap; the Earth takes ever so slightly more than 365 and 1/4 days.\n\nConvenience, and a belief in a mathematically perfect universe created by God, required some adjustment to make them all relate...\n\n7 days to a week, giving a 28 day month, is as close as you can get with whole numbers. That would give you a 336 day year so you need to slip in a few extra days. Having 12 months nicely divides into 4 seasons and only leaves you 5 days left over to distribute over the average of 30 days a month. Adding a day to February every 4 years almost sorts that pesky quarter of a day, the odd \"leap second\" is thrown in occasionally too. 30 June 2012 saw the last one.\n\nThere are 360 days in the Islamic calendar, which is why Ramadan happens earlier every year, and where the 360 degrees in a full circle come from. \n\nThe French also opted for a 360 day year, after they lopped off their King's head in 1793. They had 10 days to a week, each of 10 hours. Three weeks combined to make one of 12 thirty day Months. They conveniently took any days left over as holiday at the end of the year.",
"Always thought the names were interesting as well. For instance September, October, November, and December were originally the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th months in the old 10 month roman calendar. Thus the prefixes in their names. And July was named after Julius Caesar (because he was born in that month) but the month was originally called Quintilis - the fifth month. Likewise August was named after Augustus Caesar but was originally Sextilis - the sixth month. [From [Wikipedia](_URL_4_): About 700 BC [August] became the eighth month when January and February were added to the year before March by King Numa Pompilius, who also gave [February] 29 days.]",
"* Day: 1 earth rotation\n\n * Month: 1 trip for the moon around the earth\n\n * Year: 1 trip for the earth around the sun\n\nThese a completely independent events. They do not line up with each other. A month is 29.5 days and a year is 365.25 days.\n\nSo long ago, to make it somewhat pretty, somebody decided to have months of 28-31 days and to have leap years.",
"weren't there 13 months originally?\n then some roman dude decided he deserved one and then proceeded to change nearly all of them.\n\n28 (number of days in a moon cycle) x 13 = 364\n\nThere are almost EXACTLY 13 moon cycles per year. we just HAD to go and be awkward",
"To put some numbers around this... Months are based on lunar periods (29.53059 days) and years are based on sidereal periods (365.25636 days). Nothing lines up nicely.\n\n\nMyburger explains well the historical reasons behind selecting between 28 and 31 days for each month.",
"When I was a kid I did the math and figured out the only way you could have months with an even number of days would be with a 5 month year, with 73 days each.",
"This video from CPgrey explains it. \n\n_URL_5_\n\n\nEdit: after watching this for a second time it only covers the subject a little. Still very interesting.",
"The Egyptians had 12, 30 day months and the remaining 5 days of the year were spent worshipping their gods.",
"should instead have like 13 months of 28 days, with 1 day in the middle for summer/winter solstice",
"you were already on the internet. Google couldn't have answered this for you?",
"Did not know this. I shall quit school and Reddit full time."
] |
How the spread on sports teams works when betting? | [
"Team A is playing Team B. If the spread is Team A plus 3.5 then If Team B wins by 3 or less the bettor wins. If Team B wins 4 or more, the house wins. No tie bets, regardless of the rules of the sport."
] |
why did animals grow larger in the past? Is this because of human development? It seems like sharks, birds, turtles, snakes, etc. used to be a lot bigger | [
"We are a short period (relatively) since the last mass extinction event. Small animals flourished because of the conditions and have been evolving since. Some of the largest animals you see now are survivors of that mass extinction. There just hasn't been enough time passed to let evolution take it's course and allow for much larger animals to grow. In theory, there is no reason that in a few million years there couldn't be animals the size of dinosaurs again."
] |
Why are products in airports priced so abnormally high when compared to other businesses? | [
"Because they have a monopoly. Once you're past security, you can't leave to shop at their competition. You have to pay their prices or do without.",
"Where else you going to go?\n\nYou're stuck at the airport. \n\nYou need to buy things. \n\nThey are going to get you for all you have.",
"Because of the restrictions on bring said prices items into the airport. Thus making the demand high"
] |
Why do the pupils in our eyes dilate when we see someone that we are attracted to? | [
"This is an effect of activating your sympathetic nervous system. Basically, your nerves have two settings: sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest). Both systems are active harmoniously, but the balance can be shifted in response to the environment.\n\nWhen you're just sitting there chilling, the parasympathetic nervous system is dominant. This emphasizes functions such as digestion.\n\nWhen something triggers it, such as seeing your crush, or being chased by a bear, or trying to kill a wasp that flew into your car when you rolled the windows down and now you're flailing for dear life, a hormone surge and the sympathetic nervous system becomes dominant. The physiological effects of this are what someone might describe as an adrenaline rush.\n\nSome physiological effects of the sympathetic system are pupil dilation, increase in heart rate and contractility, and dilation of blood vessels in your skeletal muscles and extremities which diverts blood flow away from your gut, slowing digestion.",
"recent graduate from an optometry school in texas.. this is tied into the sympathetic nervous system if you know anything about \"fight or flight\" thats this system. An increase in the sympathetic nervous response results in pupil dilation to allow us to take in more visual stimuli if your life was really in danger.",
"Here is an interesting article about what happens when you see someone you love. _URL_0_\n\nTL:DR - dopamine goes up, seratonin goes down, and if youre in love with someone then nerve factor growth accompanies this. Perhaps some adrenaline too.",
"Next ELI5: Why our penises gets large and hard when we see someone we're attracted to?",
"As a neuroscience student, my first response was \"nobody knows\". Then I read lots of answers just saying \"it's the sympathetic nervous system\". After a few years in academia you tend to forget that most people are satisfied with the vaguest of answers. To me it's same as asking \"How am I able to walk?\" and answering \"Because you have muscles\".\n\nWhen you question your most basic assumptions, remember that scientists don't know how we coordinate our muscles to do something as mundane as keeping ourselves upright. Roboticists can tell you it's no easy task.",
"another question- do some of you people actually notice when a person's pupils dilate? I never really catch it.",
"It is common for people to feel anxious around anyone they are attracted to. Anxiety affects the human body in a multitude of ways. Mentally, your thoughts may race. Physiologically, epinephrine is released, which increases your heart rate and breathing rate, activates sweat glands, dilates certain arteries while constricting certain ones as well (your GI tract), and dilates your pupils. This is known as your flight or flight response. Hopefully when you see someone you're attracted to, you don't do either one of those things. \n\nEdit: added more description.",
"Mydriasis or pupil dilation occurs in response to many things, such as a dimly lit environment to attempt to capture more light to create an image with, but so does activation of the sympathetic nervous system. \n\nThe sympathetic nervous system is colloquially referred to as the 'fight or flight' system that is activated in response to fear, stress, danger, etc.\n\nThe dilation of your pupils improves your peripheral vision, and that, combined with hyper vigilance, and a rush of energy, and blood flow to all of your muscles could be helpful in a life or death encounter.\n\nPossibly this dilation in response to seeing a girl you like is from anxiety/nervousness/feeling of high stakes/fear of failure is activating your sympathetic nervous system and causing your pupils to dilate, your heart rate and blood pressure to increase, muscles get jacked up, urine and poop to hold off for a moment, and ability to talk coherently diminish.\n\nOther reasons could be a large laundry list of commonly prescribed medications for depression, allergies, ADHD, blood pressure, etc etc. Or the use of psychoactive or other recreational drugs as well, and you may just notice it most predominantly after these encounters and created a temporal association, and the cause/effect isn't nearly as clear as you think.",
"The eyes dilate in general when humans see things they like. It's to absorb more light of the image that you are looking at.",
"Hmm I know a chemical in your brain is released, oxytocin I believe, when you have sex. Your pupils dilate and other physiological aspects happen. Maybe it's also when you're attracted to a person, hence wanna have sex with them. It's a bonding chemical that is also released when women breastfeed not so much 'sexual'. But that's just what I assume.",
"Wow I didn't know this happened. Now I just need to learn how to look people in the eyes without my brain screaming for help and I'll know who likes me.\n\nEDIT - Just been trying this trick out and I'm just wondering. Dilated means 'shrunk to the size of pin pricks', right? Because I'm starting to think I might be the most attractive man on Earth."
] |
why does one get heartburn after eating specific food? | [
"From what I understand, each body, while very similar, contains moderately different ratios of stomach acid. Some things offset certain balances resulting in heart burn."
] |
Why Fedoras are so "cringe-worthy" | [
"From the same question that got asked yesterday:\n[Answer](_URL_0_)"
] |
Why do companies put so much value into the price of their stock on the secondary market? | [
"A few reasons.\n\n1. They have a legal duty to do their best to deliver a positive return for investors.\n\n2. Issuing more stock to the market is a good way to raise capital. For that to work, you have to have a high stock price at the point at which you sell your stock.\n\n3. Many companies' executives are paid, in part or in the majority, in stock options (the ability to buy the stock) or directly in stock.\n\n > I guess they could issue more stock but wouldn't that be bad for current stock holders if their shares become diluted?\n\nYes, but that depends on what your goal is. If you want to just increase shareholder value forever, then you're right, it's a goal with no real reason behind it (aside from executive compensation). But companies know that funding important expansion is more important than keeping a stock price high. It'd be like stocking up on canned food for the Apocalypse, and then refusing to break into it because you are afraid of running out."
] |
Desertification | [
"Deserts are not defined by Sand but by drought. Anything with annual rainfall under 250mm can be considered a desert. In those conditions only few plants can grow. Plants stabilize the soil. If the soil is loose the smaller particles get blown away, leaving the bigger particles, sand, behind."
] |
Why does apple juice make me need to piss so quickly after drinking it? | [
"Things get digested faster than others. Fruit and fruit products are digested very quickly (10 - 15)\nSource: Observations and experiments.",
"High acidity. You'll see the same results with orange juice and low quality coffee (think has station coffee)."
] |
How do soda companies get the soda in the can and make the poppable tin tab, without letting the soda go flat? | [
"The top of the can with the tab is all one premade piece, and the can is another. The soda is poured into the can, then a machine \"folds\" the edges of the can and the top together.",
"here's a video that shows part of the process: _URL_0_"
] |
DRM | [
"The concept of DRM is simple- encode a piece of content with proprietary digital restrictions so it cannot be used outside of ways its publisher wishes it to be used. \n\nThere are many forms of it, some stronger than others, but the concept is the same.\n\nThe problem is in 'real' cryptography, you cannot simultaneously give a piece of data to somebody while also preventing them from having it. You can prevent others from having the data (even others who must transport it to you). 'Real' cryptography does this by encoding and scrambling the data in such a way that only the intended recipient can decode it. 'Real' cryptography is usually open source (or at the very least, the crypto algorithm is published so any weaknesses can be found and examined by researchers and exposed/fixed if they exist). 'Real' crypto is effective because even though everybody understands quite well how it works, it's still effective at protecting a piece of data against anybody who doesn't have the appropriate key.\n\nThe problem with DRM is that the intended recipient is both the recipient (who must decode the data) and the 'attacker' from whom the data must be protected. DRM therefore must work in secret, because if the recipient/attacker understands how the DRM works, it becomes simple to bypass the DRM and obtain the original data. After all, the recipient/attacker's computer must be able to provide him with the data that he paid for, it just has to be paranoid about it.\n\nSo the problem with DRM is threefold. The first, is note the specific wording at the beginning, DRM doesn't just prevent piracy, it prevents the data from being used in ways the publisher does not desire. \n\nTake an eBook for example. At its core, the eBook 'data' is just simple text. Without DRM you can do all kinds of (legal) things with it, such as print it (as long as you don't distribute the printed copy), transfer it to a different device to read on, change the appearance or formatting of the text, or have an automated text-to-speech system read you the text.\n\nWith DRM, all these things can be (and often are) restricted. A publisher will disallow printing because if you want to print it you should have bought the paperback. A publisher will restrict which devices the book can be transferred to, so you can only use devices which also enforce the book's DRM scheme. And many publishers disallow text-to-speech reading of the book as a misguided attempt to increase audiobook sales. **The result is that the DRM-encumbered book is less useful, but often more expensive, than the non-DRM-encumbered book.**\n\nThe second problem is as I said before, the DRM software must be somewhat paranoid to be effective. Because it's running on the 'attacker's computer' it must try to defend itself against attacks designed to steal the data (while also allowing the attacker/recipient access to the data). This has led to all kinds of consumer-unfriendly DRM schemes. Many computer games install DRM software like SecuROM which sets itself up as a system device driver (hooking itself into the internals of the operating system); this software is not always well written or secure, so it can make a computer unstable or insecure. Many DRM systems will detect the presence of various tools which can be used to circumvent DRM (but also have legitimate uses) and refuse to unlock the content if these tools are found. A common example is DAEMON Tools, a software that allows easy access to data stored on CD images. Many games will refuse to run if DT is installed on a system, because DT can also be used to circumvent CD-checks. Newer games have used even more intrusive DRM schemes, such as the Ubisoft system where the game must remain connected to the Internet while playing to continually authenticate itself against Ubisoft's DRM server. This obviously causes problems for people with bad/unreliable Internet or no Internet access at all.\n\nThe third and perhaps biggest problem, is that intrusive DRM schemes do little or nothing to prevent piracy. A game may have extremely complex and intrusive DRM, but that hasn't stopped anybody from pirating it. Piracy groups are extremely sophisticated, and even the most heavily DRM'd games are available on BitTorrent within hours or days of release. And the BitTorrent versions usually have the intrusive DRM removed, making for what's often a superior game experience.\n\nThe music industry slowly figured this out- with lots of dragging from Apple and other such companies, they finally realized that pirating music is going to happen no matter what and making things hard for the honest customer isn't the way to go. As a result almost all music you buy online now is DRM-free, and sales have exploded as a result. Movie, eBook and Video Game industries have yet to catch on.\n\n**To sum it all up (TL;DR):** DRM prevents me from truly owning a thing I paid for. It's used not just to prevent me from copying the thing, but also to restrict my use of it to help the publisher's business model, making the thing less useful for me. DRM systems are intrusive to my use of the thing and my computer, and are often poorly written and make my computer crash or vulnerable to attack. And despite all this, the DRM doesn't stop anybody from stealing the thing, as pirates will release DRM-free versions shortly after the product is released.",
"People are against it because in the olden days, once you bought something, you could do pretty much anything with it. For example, you could buy a tape, then use another tape recorder to make a copy of it or buy a book then photocopy it, etc. Even though these things were illegal, it wasnt as if you had the 'man' standing over your shoulder physically stopping you. But now, if you 'buy' a CD with DRM in it, it wont let you copy it multiple times.\n\nPeople see it as the 'man' trying to stop you doing what you like with the product you've just paid money for. In actual fact, especially with downloading things from offical places, you are only leasing the product, and will never own it. And people find that unfair",
"Companies employ lots of people and spend lots of money to make the games, music, ebooks, movies, etc that you love. These companies don't want nasty people to pirate all of their hard work, they want to rightly get paid for their hard work. However, there are bad people on the internet who do not want to pay for their hard work, so they will pirate all of the games, movies, books, etc that they want without paying a penny.\n\n\nThis upsets the guys who make it as they don't want people using their stuff for free, they say that its unfair to themselves and they say that its unfair to their customers who paid. Therefore, in order to stop the nasty people pirating, they put DRM into their games, movies, ebooks, music, etc.\n\n\nTheir idea started off very innocently, it started off with a view to stop the bad pirates. However, they under-estimated just how clever the pirates were and very quickly the pirates broke the copy protection. Therefore the guys making the games and movies put in stronger DRM thinking that this would stop the pirates, but alas it did not.... so they put in yet stronger DRM, but no matter how strong their DRM was, the pirates could break it.\n\n\nWe now find ourselves in a position where the intent behind DRM has not changed, the companies making the games and movies and ebooks want to protect from piracy, but in doing so they have gone so far that it is now getting in the way of the paying customers product experience - it is stopping people from legitimately playing a game that they have paid for or reading an ebook on another tablet.... yet the pirates can still brake it. \n\n\nAnd it is this which is causing the animosity and why people think it is unethical, because if you become a nasty pirate and download your movies and books and games illegally you have no problems, it will work 100% of the time on any device, but if you pay money you get penalised and it will not work 100% of the time. \n\n\nAs for how it can be made more ethical - in essence it is simple, it must never be the case that a paying customer is given a product / service which is not, at the very least, equal to what the pirates receive. Sadly, as it stands today, this is not the case."
] |
Why do some memories get stronger with repeated thinking and some weaker? | [
"Typically, accessing a memory will strengthen it. But there's a catch. \n \nResearch has shown that accessing a memory causes it to be re-written back into our long-term memory. This helps to preserve it. Memories which are rarely accessed tend to slowly \"fade\" over time, and accessing a memory combats this characteristic. \n \nBut it is possible for us to actually *change* memories during this process. If for some reason we think (or *want* to think) that some detail of the memory is wrong, we can re-write the memory with that detail changed. We essentially corrupt our own memory. \n \nThis is actually good in some cases. For example, there's work being done to help victims of PTSD actively forget or change some memories to help them. Of course, it is not so good when we recall something like an argument we had but change the details to make ourselves come off better. \n \nWhen it comes to speech vs. sunset, I'd speculate that the difference is that a speech is a distinct thing, whereas a sunset is a rather nebulous image with few details for us to latch onto. But I'm really just guessing at this.",
"I'd say state of mind. Why else would dreams be so vivid and 20 minutes later no recollection of what the hell happened."
] |
Why aren't leaves the same color as solar panels? | [
"Of course chlorophyll is the obvious answer, because it reflects green light rather than absorbing it. But the next question is \"why isn't chlorophyll black?\" Some say it's because the plants would absorb too much heat that way, but that might not be true for all or even most plants. The answer may be because plants evolved from a single algae ancestor, and chlorophyll was present in that and met the needs of the plant descendants.",
"Seeing as plants are biological and use the sun to change light in to starches and oxygen. And. Solar panels use photovoltaic cells to change light in to electricity. I would venture a guess that its the material they made from and not the color thats important."
] |
Why are the URL Addresses for Reddituploads so long? | [
"it guarantees that it's a unique URL. the first section is most likely the asset key. that info identifies the content that needs to be fetched. when you're dealing with hundreds of millions of different files, each one needs to be uniquely identified so it can be fetched. second reason is that it hides the original filename that the user used. some people might forget and leave personally identifiable information in the filename."
] |
Why would anyone pay money to subscribe to someones stream on Twitch when it's already streaming for free? | [
"Because Viewers know that Twitch Streams are not free. Someone, somewhere, is creating the content and spending time doing so. If they never have any payment for doing so then they will stop doing it. This could be because they are annoyed at not getting paid or because they simply cannot carry on doing whatever it is that makes the stream watchable. Much like the collapse of Social Networks such as MySpace: there is a limit to the amount of free content that people will provide.",
"They don't pay to follow, they pay to support. It gives the streamer an incentive to keep going. And if you're willing to pay $10 for a film you're willing to pay $10 for hours and hours and hours of interactive streaming",
"The phrase you are looking for is human decency.",
"If you find somebody entertaining, then giving them a little bit of money each month is way to increase the chances that they can afford to carry on doing it. This is particularly true for the professional streamers. People like JP McDaniel, Towelliee, and Trump stream as a job. They couldn't do that if it weren't for their subscribers giving them money.\n\nYou might not find streamers entertaining enough to subscribe, or to watch for more than 10 minutes at a time, and that's absolutely fine. Nobody says you have to love streaming or contribute financially to it. My personal favourite pro streamer (Spamfish) often makes the point that subscribing is a bonus, and that nobody should ever feel pressured to do it.\n\nBut there are plenty of other people who find watching a streamer to be more enjoyable than watching TV or a movie. To them, it's worth dropping a few dollars a month if it means that their favourite entertainment continues to exist, or even improves because of the extra funding.",
"All these comments are right, it's to support the streamer, but the... smaller benefit would be sub-only features, i.e sub-only chat time."
] |
How would China devaluing its currency affect dollar denominated debt? | [
"China devaluing their currency would have the benefit of reducing the world market prices for their exports, boosting economic growth, but will make foreign currency denominated debt more expensive to service, since firms (and individuals?) will need to spend more RMB to buy the same amount of (for example) dollars to service their debt. For an individual firm, if the increased cost of debt isn't mitigated by increased export sales, this policy can drive reduced profitability at best or insolvency at worst."
] |
How a website like craigslist still exists after there have been many murders related to it? | [
"Even more murders have been related to the telephone, and yet those are still around.\n\nJust because there's a very small subset of people who misuse something, that doesn't mean that the whole needs to be shut down.",
"Most people still use it for its intended purposes. And you can't blame a website frequented by psychopaths for being a tool used by psychopaths. There's no law against that."
] |
Why can Google search the Internet faster than my computer can search itself? | [
"While many of the answers that include a statement like \"They have lots of computers doing parallel computation\" are correct to some degree, there are other factors. When your computer searches itself it must (unless you have indexed it) visit every file in the computer. However when google gets a search query it generates a search vector. This vector tells their algorithm to only search in a certain direction. Think of all the data google has as a tree. If you send the query \"Why is the sky blue?\" the search vector generation algorithm will recognize that the information you are looking for is stored in a few of the roots of the tree, therefore they will only search through the few roots that the search vector tells us to and then return the results. Then the amount of available computation they have relative to the amount of information that needs to be searched is a much higher ratio than your computer. Where-as you have 1 processor searching 1000's of folders on your computer google has 1000's of processors searching 1000's of folders.",
"You'd be surprised how many searches on Google are pre-indexed.\n\nSo not only does Google have (as others have said) a metric shit ton of computers, those computers have a metric shit ton of previously and often searched terms queued up and waiting for the next person to ask. These terms are re-searched and re-indexed often to make sure you get the latest info possible,"
] |
I bought a tabletop weighing scale. Why there is this sign written on it? "Not for commercial use" | [
"because there are different (more strict) standards for calibration on commercial scales.\n\nthese would be scales used for deli/grocery checkouts and stuff. so that consumers don't get ripped off.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Grocery store office worker here.\n\nLiterally the entire reason we have standardised weights and measures is for commerce (though these days, science and technology is an equally large concern). Before we had say, a foot defined, you used the length of your own foot (or, more likely, a cubit) and if a merchant had a different length foot to a customer, you got disagreements about which to use. Standardised measurements got rid of this problem but it only works if everyone agrees on the measurement and the standard.\n\nSo everyone has to agree on these things, so commercial scales must be accurate. If you buy 1kg of bananas, that has to be exactly the same as 1kg at any other store, especially competitors and that has to be the same as 1kg from the store's supplier or else, someone is being ripped off somewhere.\n\nSo yeah, it's a pretty huge deal to make sure commercial scales are very accurate. Every scale used in our store is checked weekly (by weighing an exactly 1kg weight on each, and by checking any product that was priced up on scales, such as butchery products), and it's one of the only jobs that absolutely must be done or else we risk being closed down. Any scales that aren't accurate aren't allowed to be used until they're fixed, and our records are audited frequently and the scales are independently tested every so often.",
"Commercial scales have to meet requirements for precision and accuracy and have to have built in compensation for environmental factors that can affect the measuring device. To be use in commercial sale in the US they then have to be certified by your local Weights and Measures board."
] |
Why console gamers and pc gamers cant play together in matchmaking? | [
"Simply, the console players would get crushed. The amount of finite control a mouse+keyboard offers over a controller is pretty apparent.",
"i agree with everyone when it comes to FPS but many other games have no excuse for not being cross platform. racing games and fighters come to mind.",
"Everyone that has posted in this discussion is correct. I'll just add this as a question to counter your question: If xbox/ps3 players can play as well as PC players, why do they have autoaim on public games?\n\nObviously, the answer is that they can't play as well. The control surfaces are simply too shitty and imprecise.\n\nAs a long-time PC FPS player, I could never make the leap to console FPS. It feels like someone cut off my fingers and told me to play using my stumps. I HAVE tried to play both ps3 and 360 (mw1/2/black ops), and while my K/D was decent, the game simply was not enjoyable.\n\nOnce you learn to play FPS on PC, you'll understand why.",
"While there are balance issues between control methods and technical challenges with platform limitations, a major reason for lack of cross platform game is that platform owners don't want it to be.\n\nMicrosoft requires all multiplayer to go through XBox Live. With rare exceptions, they have not allowed PCs to connect to the same servers as their consoles.\n\nLike Microsoft Sony requires all multiplayer to go through PSN, though they have started to show some flexibility in allowing some third parties to do cross platform play. \n\ntl;dr: There are balancing and technical reasons, it is largely a business decision by platform owners.",
"Weird that no one has brought this up yet, but there was a retail product released that did this. It was called \"Shadowrun\". Don't remember it? I don't blame you. It was a an FPS developed by Microsoft that allowed PC and Xbox players to play on the same servers. From the IGN review: \n\n > Since this is a cross-platform game, the shooting is wildly imprecise when compared to games like Counter-Strike. If it were a matter of pinpoint reticule positioning, the PC gamers would undoubtedly dominate. As it's set up, the Xbox 360 gamers get an abundance of aim assists and sticky targeting and the weapons aren't particularly accurate... Weapon controls have been diluted to the point where PC and X360 gamers are on relatively the same footing, making the whole cross-platform competition more of a non-issue. \n\nbasically they gimped the game to try and make it a more level playing field. And it's such a mystery that the game didn't get received well. The review continues on to discuss network connectivity issues as well. It was a total failure.",
"I believe this has been attempted once or twice (I can't remember the titles offhand), but PC gamers have an advantage over consoles in FPSs.",
"The codebase must be kept consistent across platforms, otherwise the game becomes unfair. Microsoft and Sony control the patch release process for their respective platforms, while PC titles can be patched as and when by the developers. It's very difficult to keep all three platforms consistent when it can take weeks or months for a patch to roll out on one of the console platforms.",
"Simple.\n\nFor starters, a mouse will allow you to turn much faster and aim much more precisely than if you were to do the same with a controller.\n\nAs far as \"I can plug a keyboard into my Xbox\" goes, that doesn't necessarily mean everyone can or will do that. That, and a very, very small number of games supports the feature.",
"They can, Portal 2 had cross platform co-op between PC and PS3. However if you talk competitive multi player the controls are very different, as is the hardware and PC players will have a massive edge. A mouse is simply far more accurate then a joystick. \n\nA game on Xbox did in fact do this but it just wasnt any good.",
"You can play Dungeon Defenders with people on their iphone/android from PC. It all hooks into trendynet. \n\nXbox/PS people can't though.",
"Because PC gamers would absolutely destroy console gamers in FPS.",
"In short, it is **EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE**, and hard to justify from a developer point of view. The end result of Cross Platform multiplayer is just more players in the same matchmaking pool, and the novelty of playing cross platform. However, the matchmaking pool is regular multiplayer is usually plenty large and diverse, making it hard to justify.\n\nFirst, it is hard to develop consistently across all three platforms (Xbox, PS3, PC). Each console has its own special abilities. For example, the difference between PS3 trophies and Xbox achievements may not seem like much, but extend that level of difference all the way down to how you draw a pixel onto the screen, and how you capture input from the controller. EVERYTHING is different. ELI5 Analogy: Imagine trying to build a robot to auto-pilot both an American fighter-jet, a Chinese passenger jet, and a Russian personal aircraft. Sure, they're all airplanes, but they have extremely different specifications, the buttons are labeled differently, and are in different locations in the cockpit, and the way that the internal components operate are vastly different.\n\nThis is why developing for all 3 platforms is kind of reserved for big companies with HUGE budgets. Making a game for all three platforms means you need to pay experts from all three consoles to get your game to work smoothly. This is where the second reason comes in. If you are spending obscene amounts of money to create a game, and your career as a game developer, or publisher DEPENDS on you making that money back, you want to make DAMN SURE that the game will sell. Taking risks is not something that you do with millions of dollars. \n\nCross-Platform multiplayer has not been proven to be commercially viable. The only real game to do it has been Shadowrun, which wasn't all that successful ([66 on Metacritic](_URL_0_)). When you are trying to convince the people holding the purse strings that your game will be successful, and your only example is a game that didn't sell very well, you'll have a hard time making the case to spend the time and money to do it right.\n\nWhen writing a multiplayer game, a very important part is writing the code that makes multiplayer possible (netcode) as fast and efficient as possible. The faster the code, the less lag there will be, and the more enjoyable the multiplayer experience. Writing good netcode for a single platform is hard enough. Imagine trying to write netcode that will quickly and efficiently translate from Xbox, PC and PS3 all at once. There really isn't any existing software that does this translation (Xbox and 360 are direct competitors after all, why would they need to communicate with each other quickly?), you have to write it yourself, which will be even more expensive.\n\nIn short, you have just tacked on a LOT of money to take a game from being just multiplayer, to multiplayer across all 3 platforms. It is now your responsibility to convince the businessman holding the purse strings that this feature will be worth the price tag.\n\nDesigning a game that is fun for all platforms is also just plain hard. You want to make sure that nobody feels hindered by the control scheme (hard enough with normal games), and that nobody has an unfair advantage over the other platform. Shadowrun was criticized for giving console players to autoaim, and yet PC still held an advantage. If the game doesn't feel \"Fair\" for everyone, the people on the unfair side won't play. You don't want to spend all that money hitting all 3 platforms, only to have nobody buy the Xbox version because they have a disadvantage. Unfortunately, the current \"best selling\" designs (FPS, RTS, Racing, etc) all have an obvious advantage on one control scheme. Coming up with a NEW design that fits well in all 3 platforms will fall in that \"risky\" category that the investors will be nervous about. Again, people giving away millions of dollars want to be SURE that they will get their money back. The want you to make Halo. Halo was popular. Halo Made money. Make something like that.\n\nTLDR: Catch 22. You have to be a big budget game to make a cross-platform multiplayer game, but if you have a big budget, you don't want to risk it on something that is unproven, guaranteed to be even more expensive, with only a marginal benefit.",
"The framework is there, recently portal 2 allows console players to solve puzzles alongside steam (PC) players. So we know cross platform is possible.\n\nAdditionally to address the argument that console players would get \"pwned\" due to the finite control that a mouse+keyboard offers is moot. Unreal Tournament for the PS3 allows keyboard and mouse support but unfortunately I know of no other PS3 game with this feature.\n\nPersonally I believe it simply is not worth Sony having their fan base become proficient with a Keyboard+Mouse. This could potentially make it easier for them to jump from PS3 to PC and thus reduce their customer base.",
"Microsoft did a test on this some time ago. The technology is their it is just that they found that the PC gamers destroyed the console gamers. So they did not make their games cross platform.",
"Thumbs are harder to use effectively than all ten of your fingers."
] |
How come we don't make Italian Holocaust/Nazi Jokes? | [
"Because when the war turned against them, they overthrew their fascist government and switched sides.\n\nMussolini is not given a free pass. The man is often listed among other monsters of history. But in the popular consciousness, the Italian people redeemed themselves, so they didn't bear the same guilt as the Germans or Japanese.",
"After World War Two, the Allies were extremely reluctant to pursue a Nuremberg-style investigation into Italian war crimes and other atrocities carried out under the Fascists. Many senior allies to Mussolini now formed a direct or indirect part of the new Italian government and were seen as a necessary and pragmatic means of stopping the Italian Communist Party from taking power.\n\nWhile that's not to say some individuals were not tried, charged and sentenced for carrying out war crimes, etc., it is something that was downplayed in the years after the war and which subsequently holds less cultural memory.\n\nAlthough Italian atrocities lacked the industrialized methodology and genocidal aspects of Japanese and Nazi activities, they did carry out a large number of them during the Fascist period. They participated in the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War; opened concentration camps in Libya, the Balkans and Ethiopia; used chemical weapons against military and civilian targets; carried out acts of ethnic cleansing and mass-executions, utilized slave labour and (reluctantly) transported Jews to the Germans during the Holocaust.\n\nI think Italian activities before and during the War are overshadowed by the Nazis and, to an extent, the Japanese. Italian Fascism did not have a racist or antisemitic side comparable to that of Nazism (this was in fact a major point of contention between the two countries), and the fact that they were more concerned with Italianizing people at gun point rather than carrying out genocide seems to have let it slip out of cultural memory.",
"\"We\" do, though obviously not to the extent - and this is likely because Hitler and the Nazi Germany overshadowed just about everyone else pretty much in Human history. And they pretty much started the whole thing. \n\nBut watch movies like *The Great Dictator* which was made at the time all that stuff was happening. Mussolini gets quite a bit of a bashing in that one (also it's a phenomenal movie and you should watch it regardless). \n\nWatch propaganda from that era - Germans, Italians and Japanese people are treated in a way that's shocking by today's standards.",
"Because Italy did very little in WW2 compared to its allies. Didn't massacre that many people (relatively) and failed in most operations.",
"Genocide and war crimes are unfortunately pretty common human activities. The real difference with hitler is he was the first and so far only one to do it at an industrial scale. They had train networks shipping in prisoners from the far reaches of the german empire and they had massive gas chambers to kill people en masse with ruthless efficiency while also making the bodies easier to dispose of at the same time.",
"[Yeah,this is the Italian Hitler from what I remember](_URL_0_)"
] |
Exactly why are curse words considered "bad" in modern day society? | [
"Language codifies ideas and brings them into broad daylight in a context that everyone can understand, and there will always be ideas that people tend to find more offensive or disgusting than others."
] |
Why do viruses kill living things, if they need a living host to continue to exist? | [
"Accidentally.\n\nOften, it doesn't actually end up killing enough hosts as to prevent the spread of the disease, which is what makes them continue to exist.\n\nFor example, if it made a person explode violently into billions of tiny airborne particles which would then be easily inhaled by other people, and it lay dormant in a person long enough for them to have a baby or two and raise them before it \"went off\", then it would work just fine at continuing to exist.\n\nWhat you're asking is basically similar to asking \"If carnivores need to eat other animals to continue to exist, why do they kill those animals?\"",
"Evolution is blind. If they can spread even if the host died, it can evolve that way just fine. If killing the host stops it from spreading then it'd die out.",
"viruses aren't conscious so don't decide to kill things. viruses aren't even alive. they're stray DNA fragments that if absorbed by a cell, cause it to make xerox copies instead of doing its normal cell functions. \n\nhow do they exist? because those stray DNA fragments that don't cause cells to abnormally behave....aren't viruses! they're just inanimate bits of DNA fragments floating around.",
"Also your body can identify the virus as something foreign to be eliminated. So when your body starts attacking it in order to survive the virus has to be aggressive enough to fight back. So the more aggressive viruses survived to replicate. Now the problem is that viruses can't think so don't stop attacking your body even if they are winning against your immune system. As the virus wins more it reproduces more and your body is overwhelmed.",
"Viruses that can kill us didn't evolve to be in humans. They couldn't evolve if they would mutate in us. E.g. Bats have very effective immune system that prevents them from dying from ebola virus and they are the natural resevoir for that virus and many more other.",
"Interesting question. Makes you wonder if there is an advantage for the virus if the host does.\n\nI don't know too much about viruses, but it's a very interesting concept to think about or look into, there might be something we don't know"
] |
Why do I function less when I get more hours of sleep than usual? | [
"There are two main factors at play here:\n\n1) Your body likes consistency. If it's used to getting 6 hours of sleep, it expects to get 6 hours of sleep that night, and will regulate its daily hormonal cycle accordingly. Messing with that in any way, even if it provides more rest, will make your body confused and stressed.\n\n2) Humans have cycles of sleep that last ~90 minutes. Waking up close to the end/beginning of a cycle leaves you feeling refreshed and alert, while waking up in the middle makes you grouchy and tired. 6 hours is 4 full average cycles; sleeping exactly 8 hours is 30 minutes into a new cycle, and therefore undesirable. If you want to get extra rest, try for 7 hours 30 minutes or 9 hours.",
"The idea that teens are supposed to get between 8-10 hours of sleep is largely false. The appropriate range of time varies from person to person on a scale of 90 minute increments. Some folks barely need 2-3, but that's rare. If you feel worn out after getting between 8-10, try sleeping *less*.",
"I challenge anyone here to provide an academic source for the 90 minute sleep cycle \"fact\". It's surprisingly how that gets repeated over and over on reddit.",
"In another ELI5 a redditor said try and make your entire sleep divisible by 90mins. They said if you hit R.E.M and are woken up you feel like shit."
] |
A duodecimal system. | [
"[From Wikipedia:](_URL_0_)\n\n > The duodecimal system (also known as base-12 or dozenal) is a positional notation numeral system using twelve as its base.\n\nIn layman's terms, each digit in a duodecimal system can be anything from 0-11 (with A representing 10 and B representing 11). We normally use the decimal system (base-10), where each digit can be any number from 0-9.\n\nBase-12 doesn't get very much use; base-16 (hexadecimal, or 'hex' for short) is much more popular. The reason hex is so much more popular is because of something we all use every day. Computers! Now, you're probably thinking \"But wait a minute… I thought computers could only use binary, 1's and 0's. where does hex come in?\" And that's correct, computers only store 1's and 0's. However, 4 digits of binary just happens to line up with a single digit of hexadecimal! So computer engineers love this, because it means we can see the raw data, but it's much easier to read than a bunch of 1's and 0's.\n\nNow, time for some numbers! Let's take a look at how we can write some different numbers in duodecimal and hexadecimal, starting with base-12:\n\nLet's start with the arbitrary number of 2BA. Now, it's not quite as simple as just replacing the A with 10, the B with 11, and just adding everything together. Since it is a base-12 number system, the value of each digit gets multiplied by 12 as you move left from the rightmost digit. So this means that the A is worth 10, the B is worth 11\\*12 (or 132), and the 2 is worth 2\\*12\\*12 (or 288). Add these all together and we get 430.\n\nNow lets take that same number, but assume it is in hexadecimal format. This time, we are using a base-16 number system, so the value of each digit gets multiplied by 16 as you move left from right. Again, the A is worth 10, the B is worth 11\\*16 (or 176), and the 2 is worth 2\\*16\\*16 (or 512). Adding these three digits together will give us a final answer of 698. That's a pretty big number for something that originally had two as its first digit!",
"I think you mean \"Dewey Decimal System\"\n\nIt breaks down all books into a system, every book falls into one of the following categories\n\n* 000 – General works, Computer science and Information\n* 100 – Philosophy and psychology\n* 200 – Religion\n* 300 – Social sciences\n* 400 – Language\n* 500 – Pure Science\n* 600 – Technology\n* 700 – Arts & recreation\n* 800 – Literature\n* 900 – History & geography\n\nFrom there, there are further categories. 800-809 is all about literature, rhetoric, philosophy, how to write properly, etc. 810-819 is all about american literature. 820-829 is all about English Literature. And then find the proper number, English fiction for instance is 823\n\nLet's say you were looking for the Hobbit.\n\nYou would go to 800 (because that's the literature section). Then find the English Literature (Since Tolkien was British), and look for English Fiction (823) and then look for Tolkien, I have seen libraries go by three letters and four. But you would look for the \"TOL\" section of the shelf, and there you would find the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion, etc.\n\n[Here is a complete list of DDS classes](_URL_1_)"
] |
Why MLB parks are different lengths and yet, baseball tries so hard to keep even and accurate statistics with Homeruns | [
"Baseball parks are different sizes due to constraints related to a ballparks location, a desire to make a field unique, attempts to give the home team an advantage, etc. This is not hidden information. It's no secret that Hank Aaron, for example, hit a good deal of his 755 homers in a ballpark so hitter-friendly that it was nicknamed \"The Launching Pad\". \n\nThere is currently a revolution in baseball statistics called sabermetrics. Basically, there is a move toward more complex stats that account for weird things like playing in a smaller ballpark. For example, there's Equivalent Average (EqA) that is like batting average accounting for the stadium and the league someone's in. There are also things like ERA+, which is a measure of how many runs a pitcher would give up in a game adjusted for ballpark and opponents. So, to answer your question, new stats do account for advantages like home ballparks.\n\nThere are two main reasons why you still mainly see numbers without these corrections. First, sabermetrics are relatively new. Back when guys like Babe Ruth were playing, batting average was about as complicated of a statistic as anybody cared about. The second reason is that fancy statistics can get confusing. If I say that a player has 755 career home runs or gives up 3.00 earned runs per 9 innings, you probably can imagine that in your head and understand it. However, if I say a pitcher has an ERA+ of 140, it's much harder to figure out how that translates to a scenario of a single game or season.\n\nBut what about steroids? The big difference now with steroids is that there are rules against them. The rules have always changed throughout baseball, but players still have to play by the standards of the game at the time. Sure players 100 years ago had no night games, heavier bats, taller pitcher mounds, white players only, fewer teams, fewer relievers, different pitching styles, larger ballparks, different fair/foul rules, etc., but they still had to play as the league required them to at the time. Needless to say, the current rules make it clear that the current way baseball is to be played is without performance enhancing drugs. \n\nTL;DR: New stats are gaining popularity that account for things like ballpark size. However, these stats are not familiar to the average fan and they did not exist during the careers of past famous ballplayers. Steroids are viewed negatively because they violate current rules, rather than being an accepted component of 21st century baseball.",
"/u/upvoter222 makes good points, but to add a bit on that:\n\nA smaller ballpark does not necessarily mean the odds of hitting home runs is greater. For example, Coors Field is actually pretty average regarding dimensions (with an insane 415 feet to straight-away center), yet it's largely a hitter's playground. This is because altitude and atmospheric conditions have a big impact on the baseball. Wind also plays a factor and if a park is situated in a certain position in a bay, you could be finding yourself fighting an uphill battle to get a ball out of the yard. I'm not an expert at how different temperatures and conditions would affect a baseball, so I can't really address how AT & T Park impacted Barry Bonds' homeruns.",
"im a huge baseball fan. and it is a great question. it is entertaining to see different parks and the different play style whether a hitters/pitchers park, but i can only guess why the parks are not the same size."
] |
How can congress sneak CISA into the NASA bill? | [
"Congress makes its own rules. There are very few rules for Congress in the Constitution. The rest they write themselves. They can even ignore rules they write if no one in Congress objects.",
"It's called a rider, and it's actually a fairly standard operation that happens all the time. It's just that it only makes the news when it's controversial bills that are getting stuck together.\n\nWhen a bill is in the House, any amendments to it have to be germane (revelant) to the content of the bill. After it makes it to the senate, it's a lot less stringent.\n\nA couple examples:\n\nThe majority party in the senate wants to pass Bill A. Bill A is controversial in the party, and there are enough senators in the majority party that do not support it that it won't pass if it comes to a vote. The Minority party has Bill B (which has nothing to do with Bill A), which they unanimously want to see pass, but the majority party isn't in favor, so it also won't pass. If enough members of the majority think that getting Bill A passed is worth having Bill B passed, and vice versa from the minority party, then they will amend Bill A with Bill B as a rider and vote to pass it.\n\nAnother example which might be the case here is a power play by the majority senate party against an opposition president. Take a bill that is widely regarded as necessary, like an appropriations bill, and attach a controversial rider. After the bill passes the senate, it goes to the president's desk to either be veto'd, or signed into law. The President doesn't have the power to veto only a portion of a bill, so his choices are to either sign the bill and allow the rider he doesn't like, or veto the bill and send it back to congress while taking criticism for blocking the original appropriations."
] |
Why do different countries drive on different sides of the street and choose to have the wheel on a different side of the car? | [
"The side of the road people drive on is due to most people being right handed and the most common form of transportation at the time the rules were decided upon. A horse drawn cart would have the owner walking on the left side of the horse holding the reins with their dominant right hand. When passing another cart, you would keep to the right to keep your body between the passing horses for control and to see clearance. \n\nIn other areas if you were riding a horse drawn carriage, you would sit on the carriage with the reins in your left hand and the whip in your right dominate hand as that requires more control. If you sat in the middle or left side of the carriage, you would whip anyone sitting behind you so you sat on the right side of the carriage. When passing another carriage you would pass on the left so again you could see clearance as you passed. \n\nWhen the rules were decided, it was based on what most people were doing at the time. Over time some countries have changed to be more compatible with their neighbors and to reduce accidents. Most of the countries that still drive on the left are island nations that have little incentive to switch. Driving on one side of the road is not better than another but regardless what side you drive, you will always be on the inside to watch for clearance as you pass another vehicle.",
"The driver's position switches because it gives him longer sight lines and better overview of the most relevant traffic around him - it's easier to see and yield to traffic from the right if you're on the left side of your car, and easier to see traffic from the left side if you're on the right side of your car. \n\nThe choice of left- or right-handed driving is arbitrary and is mainly decided by tradition and law. Continental Europe is mainly right-handed thanks in part to Napoleonic France imposing that law on their conquests, much of the former British Empire is left-handed, and so on."
] |
Why do conspiracy theorists often claim that there is significance to words/phrases being spelled/played in reverse? | [
"Conspiracy theorists, almost by definition, find patterns in things that are not patterns, or logic in things that are not logical.",
"It stems from a belief that was popularized by Christian fundamentalists during the Satanic Panic in the 80s, that if you say something backwards it will subliminally implant itself in their mind and brainwash them without realizing it.\n\nThere's no real science behind it.",
"Because they take the fundamentally fallacious approach of determining the outcome first, and then looking for the supporting evidence afterwards. This is compounded by a relatively low standard for admitting something into evidence.",
"JackKevorkian\nJackian\nian\ni\nilluminati\nnice try, illuminati"
] |
the phenomenon in our universe known as Dark Flow | [
"The first and most important thing to know about it is that it's not actually known to be a thing at all.\n\nFor starters, ignore everything in the universe smaller than a galaxy. In fact, you can *pretty much* ignore everything smaller than a galactic *cluster.* We're talking about a very large scale here.\n\nIf you look at all the galactic clusters we can see in the sky, you'll find that they're all moving a little bit, kind of like dust motes in a sunbeam. This one's drifting that way, that one's driving that other way, and so on. This little random motion is called *peculiar* motion. Not because it's *weird,* but because it's *specific to* each galactic cluster we look at.\n\nIt's widely assumed — because the math tells us this should be the case — that the peculiar motions of the galactic clusters should be evenly distributed. That is, there should be no *net* peculiar motion. Everything should be drifting around randomly, not moving in some overall direction.\n\nHowever, *one particular* analysis of astronomical measurements suggested that maybe there is a very tiny net motion to the galactic clusters we can see. But this is just *one particular* analysis. And it's not a simple analysis, either; it comes only after a lot of very complicated math has been done to crunch the raw data collected.\n\nWhich means, in essence, nobody knows if this thing really exists or not. It's entirely possible that it's just a methodological error; in fact, several prominent cosmologists have gone on the record saying this is probably the case, and some researchers have crunched the data in a different way and haven't found the anomaly in question.\n\nSo until cosmologists collect a *lot* more data — over many more decades — it will probably remain an open question. If it were a simple methodological *error,* like a mistake in the math, it probably would've been identified by now. But if we collect more data and analyze that, cosmologists may find that what looked like a meaningful anomaly was actually just part of a bigger, entirely consistent picture.\n\nSo worst case, it's something unexplained that will never have any direct affect on any person who ever lives. Best case, it's just a math glitch that will go away when subjected to better examination."
] |
Why do you feel full faster if you eat slower? | [
"It takes some time for the chemicals responsible for fullness to be released and move from the stomach to the brain. When you eat slowly, these chemicals are released gradually and so your brain's levels of them rise gently. When you eat quickly, you suddenly shift from no fullness to tons of fullness, but it's delayed."
] |
Why is tomato a fruit but not a chili? | [
"It depends if you are talking about cooking or if you're looking at it from the scientific perspective. \n\nHere's the scientific view: A fruit in general is the vehicle that angiosperms (flowering plants - the majority of the plants that you see outside belong in this group) use to distribute their seeds. That applies for tomatoes as well as for chili. Apart from the \"obvious\" fruits like apples and bananas, all kinds of \"beans\" (including e.g. peanuts or peas), cucumbers and pumpkins, even wheat grains are fruits. \n\nIn botany, fruits get classified mostly according to their morphology and their development. Usually, a fruit contains the seed (that contains the plant embryo) which is often surrounded by an outer layer - the pericarp. The pericarp is sometimes fleshy and edible - thats what most people outside of botany refer to as \"fruit\".\n\nThere are many different kinds of fruit morphologies and compositions. For example, some fruits contain a seed surrounded by a hard shell - those are called nuts. Peanuts, Chestnuts and Acorns are botanically nuts, while coconuts are not.\nThings like strawberries are composed of many tiny nuts embedded in a fleshy tissue - in fact, all those tiny nuts developed from different ovaries, the fleshy parts however did not develop from an ovary. Things like that are called aggregate accessory fruits. Botanically, those are NOT berries.\n\nBerries, in the view of botany, contain a pericarp (the fleshy part), that developed from the outer layer of a single ovary. Per definition, bananas, cucumbers, grapes, pumpkins, melons are berries - as well as tomatoes and chilies.\n\nSo, in summary, tomatoes and chilies are both fruits. In fact, they are even the same kind of fruits, which is a berry.\n\nDisclaimer: I am a biologist, but not a botanist. There may be mistakes in my explanations and if a botanist wants to correct or confirm my statements I'd be grateful."
] |
Why is it colder inside a plastic bin than the surrounding room? | [
"I assume the bin has a lid to keep the pretzels fresh? \nSo 1) you have air trapped inside there that doesn’t circulate. It would pick up the ambient temperature very slowly —warming up slower than the office all day and cooling down slower than the office all night. So inside the bin it would be the same as the average of the past few hours in the office. \n \nBut also it *might* be 2) inside a big bin of pretzels the humidity is going to be lower. You have salt and you have starch in there. Both will suck moisture out of the air as your pretzels become sad and stale. When you put your hot, sweaty hand in there for a treat, you might actually get your sweat evaporating faster into the dry air. This would cool off your hand more rapidly than more humid air in the rest of the office. I am honestly not sure this effect would be big enough to matter, so maybe save the bin when the pretzels are gone, put some water in there overnight and then try it. If it’s still colder then this crazy idea is not a thing.",
"Where the heck do you work that you have a communal bucket of chilled pretzels?\n\nThis whole thing intrigues me.\n\nIt's likely do to working with a bunch of mouth breathers who warm the office air but not the pretzel bucket. This is good, it means said mouth breathers aren't breathing into the bucket.\n\n(Edit: language. OP seems like too nice of a person to use language like I did)",
"I’m no expert but the room itself has lights, bodies and sun warming the room. Inside the bin there isn’t any source of hear. The exterior of the bin shield the interior: hence a cooler temperature.",
"Have you demonstrated this with objective measuring equipment? Sounds like some psychological effect to me rather than the temperature actually being lower."
] |
Why does tapping on the top of a shaken up can stop it from fizzing when you open it? | [
"This is actually a myth. \n\nThe only things that affect the level of \"fizziness\" when you open a soda is temperature and pressure. Since you can't really alter the pressure in a can, the only thing you can do is change the temperature. Gasses dissolve more readily in colder temperature, so your best bet if you don't want a can to foam over is to put it in the fridge for a few minutes to let the CO2 re-dissolve into the liquid.\n\nYou can read more about why on the Snopes article that debunked it.\n\n[Link to article](_URL_0_)"
] |
If you pour water in front of a light, how does it have a shadow if it's clear? | [
"It's not completely clear, if it were you wouldn't be able to see it. So the part that is deflecting light and hitting your eye allowing you to see it also blocks/absorbs the light and creates a shadow",
"The water still does absorb some of the light, which creates a shadow. Most glass does the same.",
"Water being poured isn't perfectly cylindrical (or flat, depending on how it's being poured), and the small angles in on the water's surface scatters the light in different directions, reducing what makes it through the stream to whatever surface is casting the shadow.",
"Also, try lighting a lighter or match, and watch the shadow. You will be able to see far more of the heat waves in the shadow and see just how far they actually go.",
"Water has a different index of refraction than air does. Due to this, the light will bend from it's 'normal' path when it hits the curved surface of the poured water. Some of the light that was on its way to the table is now experiencing a detour, if you will. So there is a regional lack of photons in the areas where those detours occurred. A lack of photons is equivalent to a shadow. This also explains why some parts of the 'shadow' are brighter than they should be, as the poured water is basically a lens moving light from its normal path to other areas. And yes, as others have pointed out, some of the shadow effect is due to particulate debris in the water. The dirtier the water, the darker the shadow, but the shadowing effect as I explained would still occur even if the water was perfectly distilled (no debris)."
] |
Why do people feel the urge to shake their leg, jiggle their foot, etc.? | [
"Muscle contraction is the only way to squeeze blood back up from the lower legs. When sitting still, contracting the calf muscles allows the blood to be squeezed up and avoids pooling."
] |
What is the difference between shower gel and body wash? | [
"The primary difference between the two is texture, Gels are firmer and more gel like while body wash is more like liquid soap.\n\nGels also often have more fragrance and \"go farther\""
] |
Why is a production possibility frontier displayed as a curve, rather than a straight line? | [
"Because usually the marginal product cost increases as your output for that product goes up.\n\nIn other words going from catching 5 rabbits to 6 rabbits is harder than going from catching 0 rabbits to 1 rabbit."
] |
Why don't "large", sluggish animals like Crane Flies and naked snails have more enemies? | [
"Slugs, at least, are eaten by a wide varity of species of all types and classes. However, like many prey species, slugs have evolved to produce huge numbers of offspring--and for slugs in particular, being hermaphrodites means both halves of a mating pair can and will bear young. I believe the average litter (if that's the proper term) is around 30, so two slugs can produce 60 more slugs between them.\n\nIt's also possible that human activities have disrupted and killed off some of the natural predators of these animals, which is why you're seeing a higher number than what might be considered normal.",
"Some animals hatch all at once, so that their predators are overwhelmed by the numbers and don't eat them all.\n\nFor example, baby sea turtles almost all hatch on the same night -- it's quite amazing to see. Many are eaten, but the predators just can't eat that much."
] |
How can game programming be so amazing? | [
"> it can't be a bunch of \"if\" and \"elses\", \n\nActually, yes kind of is. Modern languages have ways to allow you to write a lot of machine code in fewer hand-written lines of code, but essentially it all gets converted back into a set of instructions which all basically get and set register values, test comparisons, and change which instructions to do next.\n\nTo make the task easier, developers tend to write libraries for other developers to use. You don't need to know the instructions to take to the graphics card because the people making the card wrote them for you and bundled them up into nice libraries for you to call. Likewise, the operating system allows ways so you can receive input and send output in relatively few lines while the complier links to libraries with many more lines of code to do those functions.",
"There isn't really that much to explain here. It really is just lots of ifs and else's and for loops and so on. Computers are really fast, they can do trillions of individual operations a second.\n\nGames do rely on doing a lot of stuff in parallel though. So there are multiple CPU cores running code at the same time, and GPUs work by operating on lots of different pieces of data at the same time."
] |
CP vs. loli | [
"Pretty much. Different countries have different ideas about what should be acceptable - both legally and socially. Japan considers drawings distinct from photographs, so it's acceptable. AFAIK, it's illegal in the US."
] |
How does a computer trash can work ? | [
"The Trash Can/Recycle Bin works like another folder until you empty it. When emptied, the computer will make the space on the hard drive taken up by the file be able to be overwritten. The file will stay there until the computer writes something over it. You can secure delete the trash on Mac, which means the computer will randomly write numbers over where the file was.\n\nFor more explanation, check out [this link](_URL_0_).",
"If you're talking about the 'Recycle Bin' used on Windows computers then it works like a real life trash can being emptied on regular intervals (If the settings say so) files are stored there temporarily until something overwrites them or they are just cleaned away however if you put something there and lose certain programs such as 'Recuva' can help bring back your oh so precious data."
] |
How does a VPN protect your data on a public network from hackers, if the data still has to go through the modem? | [
"Imagine you're sitting in a magical cafe and want to browse a website. You call him up, and the website sits down at your table.\n\n > **You:** Hey, Website! I want to see this image, could you describe it to me?\n\n > **Website:** Sure! It's a kitten lying on its back with all paws outstretched. Its fur is spotted ginger tabby, and it's lying on a green sofa.\n\n > **You:** Cool! Thanks, Website!\n\nWhen someone wants to snoop on your data, they are essentially putting a mic on your table. It's weak and doesn't have a lot of range, but they can hear everything the Website tells you.\n\nNow you're using a VPN connection. Instead of Website, it's the VPN Server sitting with you at the table over a nice cup of mint tea. Website is sitting at the next table near you.\n\nThe VPN Server speaks both English and Klingon. You now also speak Klingon because it's a magical cafe.\n\n > **You [in Klingon]**: Hey, VPN Server! I want to see this image, could you describe it to me?\n\n > **VPN Server, turning away [in English]**: Hey, Website! This handsome fellow over there wants to see this picture, I need you to describe it.\n\n > **Website [in English]**: Sure, it looks like this: (...)\n\n > **VPN Server, turning back to you [in Klingon]**: It's a kitten lying on its back with all paws outstretched. Its fur is spotted ginger tabby, and it's lying on a green sofa.\n\n > **You [in Klingon]:** Cool! Thanks, VPN Server!\n\nNow, the mic that someone put on your table can't hear the conversation between VPN Server and Website, it's too weak. And what they hear from your table is useless because it's in a different language they first need to figure out.\n\n\"Tunneling\" is when you switch to a different language and speak only to VPN Server, and they ask everyone your questions on your behalf. The different language is the encryption that VPN Server uses to be discrete.",
"Most popular sites you use, like Google, Facebook, Reddit, and Amazon, are already encrypted. If you're using a public network, like at a coffeeshop, others can snoop and realize you're using Reddit right now (because they can see you're connecting to _URL_0_), but they don't know what you're doing on Reddit (because the actual data is encrypted), and they can't modify the data in any way.\n\nHowever, some sites like CNN, eBay, IMDB, and Forbes don't offer HTTPS encryption at all. Someone hacking your coffeeshop network can not only see exactly what web pages you're looking at, they could even intercept the traffic and insert their own content, or their own ads.\n\nWith a VPN, you're \"tunneling\" all of your connections, securely, to some other location, and making your Internet requests from there. Everyone on your public network only sees that you have a connection to that VPN host, and has no idea what you're doing otherwise. They can't see what sites you're visiting, and even if you visit insecure sites they can't see what you're doing there or modify the content."
] |
What is really going on with North Korea? Should I be worried? | [
"There are many theories about what is really going on with North Korea currently and I can't come up with a definitive answer to what is going on. However, you should not be worried because North Korea and The United States and their allies know that if North Korea strikes another country with their nuclear weapons then that would mean the end of their regime. Even if they were just to target South Korea, there would be a large amount of United States military personnel there and they would suffer casualties as well, meaning an open declaration of war with the United States and ultimately their allies. North Korea does not have the military capacity to withhold a war with China, the USA, and the members of NATO. North Korea knows this as well and in most likely hood, these are false threats. Also, the range of North Korean missiles would reportedly only reach about the western United States (California coast, Washington, Oregon coastlines) and the USA has anti-missile defenses all around the Korean peninsula so if a missile would actually be fired, then they could be destroyed in air before being a real threat. \n\nSource: I go to a quasi-military/naval academy and one of my classes focuses on the International Relations of countries and in particular what is unfolding in the Korean Peninsula.",
"Due to what many are claiming objecting behavior, DRPK lost the support of their only ally in China recently. China is so entrenched into capitalism, that it would be suicidal for them to support DRPK. It's a common belief that the United States and it's allies would destroy the desolated northern peninsula. I would have more concerns with North Korea selling off their nuclear weapons to terrorist and/or radical groups further down the road. With a lot of focus with what is going on in the Pacific, I think it's even more important to strengthen our homeland security right now. If DRPK strikes first, it will also be their last. Unless something incredibly drastic happens."
] |
Metallic Bonding | [
"A metallic bonding is a chemical bonding between the same metal or between (many) different metals.\n\nThe electrons in the metal is delocalized, you can imagine there is a cloud of electron which can move freely (eg. cables can transport \"electric energy\").\n\nThe outer electrons (valance electrons) are only weakly bound to their atom, you cannot differentiate which of these electron belongs to which atom: Due to this, metals and alloyings have these natures:\n\n-able to transport electrons (conductible)\n\n-good conduction of heat\n\n-metallic look\n\n-deformable"
] |
cars like VW Beetle proved that a motor can be refrigerated by air. Why this kind of design never succeeded to be the most popular and water/liquid refrigerated won? | [
"Just because somethings possible doesn't mean it's a good idea. Liquid coolants have a *much* higher heat capacity, and so can absorb much higher amounts of heat from the engine. This is good, because the engine generally runs more efficiently as it's operating temperature increases, but this necessitates a better coolant system to get rid of the waste heat from the engine block, which allows you to get all of the positives of a hot engine, with none of the negatives.",
"It's more likely to overheat. If you're at a standstill or going up a steep hill with a heavy load for example it's not being cooled enough for the amount of work it's doing.",
"What works in a cheap, low powered vehicle doesn't necessarily scale to more powerful vehicles that generate a lot more heat and have more complex engines.",
"Aircraft engines have been almost exclusively air cooled for decades.\nThe thing with a car is designers want to have a handy source of heat for doing different things like heating the interior or defrosting the windows.Coolant solves that and has the added bonus of making the car safer when it comes to exhaust fumes getting in the passenger cabin.Plus the coolant also heats up the transmission to operating temp faster with a heat exchanger and keeps it from over heating as well.(automatic). When you use the heat from an air cooled engine (either off the heads or from the manifolds) you have an increased risc of exhaust gas getting in the passenger compartment and putting you to sleep,(bad). And the gas burning heaters (vw beetles) just killed your gas mileage.",
"Liquid cooling can be used for more precise, in-block cooling.\n\nAir refrigeration is limited by the engine's geometry and is less efficient."
] |
Why is pink considered a 'girly' color? | [
"It actually used to be seen as a very masculine colour, before the 20th century. The idea was that it was a shade of red, and red is a strong colour, representing passion, blood, and other such things.",
"Fun fact: Technically, pink is not a real color because there is no such thing as pink light: [NPR: They Did It To Pluto, But Not To Pink! Please Not Pink!](_URL_0_)",
"It is cultural and does not apply to all countries in the same way and depending on the country colors are often associated with different things. \nIn Thailand for example pink is a popular color, worn both by man and woman. ( for various reasons)\nWhile in Europe at a wedding the bride wears white, in china the bride wears red because red stands for love and white is associated with death/ghosts. \nYellow in Asia is often associated with royalty, you will also see a lot of gold and a combination of gold/yellow and red. \nOften it also is purely fashion, it only takes some celebrity to stand out wearing a certain color and many will follow."
] |
Car insurance. | [
"Liability: Whatever damage you caused to other people will be covered, Whatever your losses are, you cover yourself. \n\nCollision: Same as above but if you at fault for the collision, Insurance will also pay for your damages\n\nComprehensive: Should anything happen to your car, regardless of fault or if it was even being driven at that time (fire, theft, hail damage, etc), Insurance will cover it."
] |
How the women's only screening of Wonder Women is affected by antidiscrimination laws | [
"Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination by employers \"on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.\"\n\nHowever, Title II of the same act prohibits discrimination \"based on race, color, religion, or national origin in hotels, motels, restaurants, **theaters,** and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce.\"\n\nCongress made no attempt to enforce gender equity on the Boy Scouts, men's clubs, women's groups, restrooms, or half-way homes for \"troubled\" women. Gender discrimination is completely legal in the United States in many sectors. \n\nEmployment isn't one of them, but theaters are."
] |
Can astronauts masturbate in space? | [
"Why not? If you can recycle paper covered in shit or napkins covered in food I'm pretty sure you can recycle a tissue covered in spooge."
] |
How can there be any HD videos of WW2, when there wasn't any HD cameras back then? | [
"\"HD\", today refers to a digital image that is 1920 pixel wide x 1080 pixels high - this is about a 2MP image. Video from WWII is shot on real analog film - silver halide crystals on film. Analog film does have a \"theoretical max resolution\" that it can be scanned at, and compared to today's HD picture it's very high. 35mm film is estimated to contain about the equivalent of 25MP of information - or about 6000x4000 pixels. So, a 1080 HD scan of a good 35mm analog film print is still losing about 12x the resolution of the original image (converting a 25MP image to a 2MP image).",
"OP's next question: How did they take photographs in WWII if old rotary phones didn't have cameras?",
"'Definition' as in HD, SD and so on, is a purely digital term and generally refers to the resolution of the image.\n\nFilm is an 'analogue' type of technology, it doesn't have resolution in the digital sense. Of course quality of the recording/film will limit how useful it is to keep zooming in, but in a perfect world enlarging a film image won't make it pixelated like a digital one. Therefore you can keep re-digitising the film in higher and higher definition.",
"WW2-era video cameras used film, which does not have a limited resolution like a digital camera. Digital cameras store images as an array of pixels, whereas non-digital cameras project the image onto a physical piece of film.",
"Resolution is for digital visuals only.\n\nFilm is analog visuals, and the film is of high enough quality that it can be scanned at HD resolutions. If it's good enough, which it almost always is, it'll probably be able to be scanned at 4k in the future."
] |
How does a Frisbee fly? | [
"Bernoulli's principle - Lower air pressure above the Frisbee gives it lift and allows it to stay up. The angle at which its thrown, spin and wind all ad to its direction.",
"If you look at the frisbee, it looks sort of like a wing right? And it functions exactly like a wing - [air will move faster on the frisbee's top and create lift.](_URL_0_) This is what makes frisbees fly. \n\nMoreover, the method of throwing the frisbee - spinning - will give the frisbee a lot of *stability* - this forces the frisbee to \"stay upright\" the same reason why gyroscopes stay upright.\n\n\"Stability\" is also what determines if the frisbee turns or goes straight. Depending on the angle you throw the frisbee and how much rotation you put into it, the frisbee will curve different directions. The spinning of the frisbee will bend the air and give a particular side of the frisbee more \"lifting force\" - [namely, the side that spins the incoming air faster.](_URL_1_)\n\nHowever, you can't forget the frisbee's **[roll angle](_URL_2_)**. The roll angle determines the direction of lift generated from the top of the frisbee's airfoil. This too will contribute greatly to where the frisbee turns. In fact, this component may counter the lift generated from the spinning. \n\nThus, you the thrower have a lot of control over how the frisbee turns. You can even throw the frisbee in a manner where it first turns left, then starts to turn right because, say, pitch-generated lift begins to slowly dominate and overtake spin-generated lift.\n\n**TLDR**: The frisbee is an airfoil, that's why it can fly. The frisbee can turn because of its spin and its pitch angle."
] |
Why do dogs drink out of the toilet, even though you give them fresh water? | [
"As far as the dog's concerned, a source of water is a source of water. All he'll care about is that there's always water there, it's clean (by the dog's standards) and at a convenient head height for drinking. Dogs are also creatures of habit and will keep going back to the same places for food and water just because that's what they're used to doing.\n\nIf a dog's drinking out of the toilet, encourage him to drink from his own bowl by making sure that his bowl is always kept full of fresh water, that it contains enough water for him, that the bowl is always accessible and that it is always in the same place (preferably close to where he eats and/or sleeps). Also, reinforce good behaviour by giving him treats for drinking from his own bowl.",
"The toilet water is renewed more often than most people refill their dog's bowl. They probably think it tastes better after a fresh flush than in a bowl filled with standing water. \nIf you close the bathroom door and fill their bowl with clean cool water a few times a day they might stop going to the toilet for a drink.",
"For the same reasons that they drink out of mud puddles, and eat carrion if given the chance. It doesnt matter to them. A humans idea of clean or safe is a complete abstraction that dogs dont understand. Also a dogs digestive tract and immune system is WAAAAAYYYYYY more robust than that of a human. My own observation of dogs is that they prefer gross stuff to clean stuff."
] |
What's preventing us from completely abandoning paper money going 100% cards or credits like in Science fiction? | [
"Because not everyone is on a card and we would need a system that gives away free banking for everyone to be on a card and then we would need a free system to allowing people to trade between each other. Other wise there would be a lot of people and children who would have no way of having money and would make life harder to force people to have a bank.",
"Because it doesn't make sense to make every transaction rely on both power and internet access. If the power goes out, no one can buy anything short of reverting back to the barter system.\n\nPeople don't want a record of every transaction they make. Any number of legal and illegal reasons apply here.\n\nForces everyone to be part of a bank, anyone not literally cant buy anything.\n\nSome people just prefer buying things with cash. My card is purely a way to buy things online and pull money out of an ATM. When I am shopping I prefer to pay with cash as I know tangibly how much I am spending, not abstractly that a number with my name on it is being reduced in a bank. Makes it easier to not make impulse buys."
] |
Why must government prohibit recreational drug use? | [
"Analogy time: Your city is going to host a big soccer tournament, and every neighbourhood is going to compete as a team. You want your neighbourhood to do well in the tournament.\n\nHowever, Timmy down the road smokes quite a bit of pot, and Alice thinks it might be affecting his performance on the team. Jake has a habit of taking shrooms (and possibly dropping acid) just before matches as well, and sometimes complains that the soccer ball is melting.\n\nIn order for your neighbourhood to do well, you decide to ban recreational drugs. Is this oppressive? Well, if your neighbourhood doesn't do well in the tournament, the city will cut your funding and you won't get that new playground you all want. Plus you will have to eat spaghetti for a whole month because you won't have enough money to buy pizza. Everyone suffers because Timmy and Jake have a thing for recreational drugs.\n\nThere is a downside though. Now that you have banned drugs and the neighbourhood police are cracking down, Bob has figured out how to smuggle drugs in from another neighbourhood and now Jake is still doing drugs illegally, and now Bob is armed with slingshots and will occasionally bean you in the head if you get too close to his house because he wants to make sure that his illegal smuggling operation is safe. Also, Jake isn't quite sure of the quality of the acid he's taking, because it is illegal, so it turns out it is low quality and laced with arsenic, so now Jake is in the hospital and can't play soccer at all!\n\nOK, now in our analogy, replace \"city\" with \"the world\", replace \"soccer tournament\" with \"world economy\", and replace \"neighbourhood\" with \"country\".\n\nThe government wants to make sure that all citizens are able to contribute as much as possible to the economy of the country. If they are on drugs (even light drugs) this impairs their ability to do so, thus making life harder for everyone.\n\nThis is the key point to why it can be a good idea for the government to do \"oppressive\" things. Your recreational drug use could be affecting the financial well-being of everyone in the country, because it makes you less able to work efficiently. In countries like Canada it is even worse, because we have a public health system, so if drug users spend more time in the hospital, it literally costs me more money as a tax payer.\n\nBy the way: I'm personally of the opinion that if all the numbers were on the table, the conclusion would be that it is in the best interest of everyone to legalize and regulate the sale of recreational drugs, much like we do with alcohol.",
"Have you ever lived next to a meth user? \n\nI rest my case.",
"As a matter of legal theory, the government can do it because people voted for representatives who passed laws that said it could.\n\nIt is not about fair or unfair, it is about the democratic process.\n\nAs for the \"it's my body, what business is it of theirs?\" Let's say you start a little recreational heroin habit. Who is going to pay for your food stamps after you can no longer hold a job? Who is going to pay for your medical treatment when you OD? You can't say that it is none of the government's business if you still expect them to bail you out.",
"I find it asinine that people think they can be the only ones affected by their drug use."
] |
There are, for example, 50 clouds with rain in them at the sky. What makes them all release the rain exactly at the same time? | [
"Clouds are so large that generally one cloud covers the immediate vicinity around you. So it appears that rain starts and stops simultaneously in all directions from the perspective of a person on the ground. But if you look at a rainstorm from an airplane, you can often see pockets of rain and non-rain across a fairly small area. It just isn't apparent from ground level.\n\n[This picture] (_URL_0_) is a good example. A person in the center of this storm won't notice significant differences in their immediate surroundings but from an external vantage point the rate of rain varies considerably.",
"Each cloud is a large number of water droplets. One major way that rain begins is that winds cause the tiny droplets to begin moving, which makes them bump into one another, thereby coalescing into larger drops. These eventually become too big and heavy to remain suspended in air, and therefore fall to the ground as rain.\n\nThe winds don't happen within a tiny area, but are more extensive spatially, stretching across many clouds. Hence the droplets in lots of clouds start coalescing and falling at essentially the same time.",
"Clouds are made up of tiny droplets, and are able to stay suspended because of the air pressure all around them. Something that disturbs the air pressure- lightning, temperature changes, wind- can trigger the droplets into coalescing into larger droplets which cannot then stay suspended in air. As raindrops fall, they take heat from the air, further changing the pressure, and as the air pressure change spreads, so does the rain, until all of the clouds are raining.",
"They'll release the rain at the same time if they experience the same change in temperature at the same time. This happens when a large mass of warm, moist air collides with a large mass of cold air since the boundary is also large - maybe hundreds of miles long.",
"They dont, which is why you often get bands of showers as one part of teh cloud doesnt release its water"
] |
On the back of my dove deodorant, it says to ask a doctor before use if I have kidney disease. How is deodorant correlated with kidney disease?? | [
"Deoderants and Antiperspirants contain aluminium. Aluminium is abosrbed by the skin and enters the blood, in healthy people, the level of aluminium found in Antiperspirants is safe as it is rapidly removed from your body via the kidneys in urine. But in people who have kidney problems, aluminium can accumulate in the blood and cause toxic effects .",
"IIRC, it's a concern in antiperspirants, not as much deodorants.\n(Covering up the smell v. preventing it from happening)\n\nSource: I have a kidney transplant",
"Deodorant contains aluminum which can be absorbed to the skin. This can cause people with kidney problems even more problems. It's also been linked to Alzheimers."
] |
Why do so many people in america have peanut allergies where as in here in the uk barely anyone does? | [
"_URL_0_\n\nThe UK is one of the top three countries in the world for the highest incident of allergy (The Allergenic Invasion, 1999)",
"I haven't seen any source to indicate that prevalence is any lower in the UK than it is in the US or here in Canada, though there is data to indicate that the rate is growing about as fast in the UK as it is over here. Currently it's at about half a percent of the population, which is not exactly hugely common.\n\nWhat you might be seeing is higher public awareness in N America, but it's also possible that you're simply a victim of confirmation bias.",
"Alot of people in the U.S. think they have Peanut Allergy but don't \n_URL_1_",
"Overprotective moms who don't introduce their kids to foods.",
"Americans couples must eat extra chunky peanut butter sandwiches constantly for 2 days before they procreate to eradicate this weakness in the gene pool.",
"Erm, don't know where you got this fact from but it's utter bollocks. Shitloads of people in the UK have nut allergies, and even more have things like asthma."
] |
How does HD Radio work, and what makes it clearer than non-HD FM radio? | [
"HD radio uses the same type of radio waves as normal radio but the information is digital instead of analog. Analog audio can get warped and distorted as it travels over the air due to interference. \n\nDigital audio doesn't have the same problems. A digital receiver only has to tell if the signal is a 1 or a 0 at any moment. Even if there is some radio noise it's still easy for the receiver to tell the difference between a 1 or a 0. With analog, some radio noise can make it hard for the receiver to re-create the audio signal.",
"Instead of radio stations broadcasting an analog signal, they broadcast a digital one. There are some benefits and some drawbacks. \n \nOne benefit is no more static, it's a \"clean\" signal. Another benefit is more radio stations, every station can now have 2-3 sub-stations, that can play even totally different genres. \n \nNow, onto the main thing, quality. The quality difference is dependent on the station. I believe a single HD Radio station can only broadcast a max of 150Kbps per main/sub-station. Also, there are power usage demands, which usually means that a station with sub-stations will likely be of lower quality, likely 120Kbps. However, that's because they still carry the normal FM signal, if a station drops the FM, than the pure digital signal is 300Kbps per main/sub-station. \n \nIn regards to comparison with FM quality, 96Kbps-150Kbps is around what most FM stations sound like, so actual quality won't be wildly improved in terms of compression. However, FM does have the capability of producing sound better than 320Kbps MP3, but that is very rarely the case nowadays, some stations did sound very good > 10 years ago. \n \nSo, as traditional FM becomes ~~fazed~~ phased out (yes, even portable radios will have HD Radio in the near future), HD Radio will defintetly sound better than FM."
] |
What makes materials radioactive and how does that affect them? | [
"This is a huge discussion and the truth is, we don't completely know. \n\nHowever, a few current theories exist and can easily be translated to ELI5 language.\n\nFor starters, atoms have three basic parts - protons, neutrons, and electrons. The protons and neutrons are stuck together in the core while the electrons zip around in orbits some distance away.\n\nThe properties of an 'element' are defined by the number of protons in the core. If an atom has 8 protons it is oxygen. Regardless of the number of neutrons or electrons. If it had more or fewer neutrons it is a different type of oxygen, but still reacts and combines with other elements like all other oxygen atoms. If it has more or fewer electrons it's still oxygen, but it's considered to be \"ionized\" meaning it has a negative or positive charge. Once its charge is balanced, it'll still act like oxygen. Protons determine what element it is.\n\nNot all isotopes (fewer or extra neutron combinations) are stable. In fact, most elements have a 'sweet spot' when it comes to proton-to-neutron (P:N) ratios. It changes for each element, but in general, a bigger atom can have more neutrons.\n\nHydrogen (one proton) is stable with one neutron. Helium (2 protons) is stable with two neutrons. Uranium, with 92 protons, isn't stable with any combination of neutrons, but has very long-lived isotopes at 238 and 235 (in excess of billions of years).\n\nBut what makes them unstable (i.e. radioactive)? Well, to answer that we need to look at why protons and neutrons stick together. Protons are positively charged and should repel each other. That means the core of every atoms above hydrogen should explode apart! \n\nBut they don't. That's because there's a force, called the nuclear strong force, which is stronger than the repulsive electrostatic force at short distances (those distances found within the core of an atom). So at very short distances the protons are stuck together by the nuclear strong force.\n\n~~If you add too many neutrons you start to push the protons too far apart and eventually the short ranged nuclear strong force will weaken too much and the electrostatic force will push the protons apart, causing the atom to decay (i.e. fission) into new stuff. Fission results in the release of energy, two or more new atomic cores, and sometimes free neutrons. It's basically the atom popping apart.~~ EDIT: Better explanation of this below.\n\nEDIT: Adding neutrons to the core also forces the neutrons into higher and higher potential energy states. You can imagine this akin to placing a ball on a higher and higher hill. If the hill is too high and peaks too sharply, the ball will roll down. The same is true with neutrons, if you add too many you reach a point where there's just simply too much potential energy and the neutron gets ejected (usually with other stuff) and the atom breaks apart (i.e. radiates).\n\nLast Edit: To explain the \"too many neutrons\" scenario more, neutrons themselves are unstable. Isolated away from everything a neutron will survive for a half-life of 10.3 minutes. With other neutrons, the half-life is still ony 10.3 minutes (meaning half the neutrons will decay into an electron and a proton in 10.3 minutes). Protons and neutrons interact in a complicated way (complicated way = too difficult to explain right now and mostly unknown) to balance the neutron so it doesn't decay immediately. If you have too many neutrons no all of them can interact with the protons and be stabilized. That means some of the neutrons will decay into a proton and an electron (called beta radiation). Why this happens isn't fully understood, but it's the biggest reason a neutron rich isotope isn't stable.\n\nAnother theory dominates why atoms with too few neutrons are unstable. Neutrons can provide some 'shielding' of forces between the protons. \n\nLet's say an atom has 90 protons and no neutrons. The inner protons attract each other because of the strong nuclear force. But the outer most protons only get a little attraction by their closest neighbors through the strong nuclear force. The other protons, far away on the other side of the core, provide a repulsive electromagnetic force. If there are enough protons too far away the EM force is greater than the strong nuclear force and the outer atoms are pushed away, making the atom unstable.\n\nThe neutrons don't feel the repulsive EM force because they aren't charged. Neutron do, however, feel the strong nuclear force. So if you sprinkle in some neutrons they'll provide extra binding force (from strong nuclear force) without adding to the repulsive EM force. Therefore, the outer protons will feel more binding force than they will repulsive force and the atom will stick together.\n\nIn smaller atoms, the same it true. Too many neutrons, the protons can't stick together and they'll fall apart. Too few and the repulsive EM force takes over. Smaller atoms typically have more stable isotopes (combinations with more or fewer neutrons) than larger atoms, which may not have any stable isotopes.\n\nTL;DR: The proton to neutron ratio determines which force (the strong nuclear force or the electromagnetic force) dominates the core of an atom. The strong nuclear force holds the core together at short range. The EM force pushes things protons apart. Neutrons help balance the forces.\n\nEDIT: [This guy's blog](_URL_0_) is a pretty good description of how atoms work and why they are unstable. You'll have to read a lot of it, but he explains it well."
] |
Why are planets spherical, is it possible for planets to be Halo or flat edged? | [
"The reason planets appear spherical is because gravity compresses the planet into a shape that most evenly distributes the gravitational force among the planet's mass.",
"Planets are too big to be too far away from spherical - something sticking out too far will get pulled down by gravity over time. A Halo with the mass of a planet would collapse immediately; no known material is strong enough to support such an object.",
"Planets are usually ellipsoids because it's much more stable than other shapes, but it is possible to form a toroidal planet. [This article](_URL_0_) has a very nice analysis."
] |
If you arrive in a country with some sort of incorrect visa, do they just send you back home? | [
"Well, they will detain you in some holding area in the checkpoint, while they try to ascertain your identity - whether it's a genuine mix-up or error, or if you are someone more sinister - like a drug mule, terrorist, or a refugee who has no actual business in this country you are in. The immigration officials may ask you some questions, and maybe run some checks with your embassy and make some calls.\n\nIf it's a harmless error, your visa gets corrected and approved, and then you get to pass on. If it requires more time, you might just have to be sleeping in the airport or train station for a few days while the things clear up. If ultimately they are dissatisfied and refuse to grant you the visa, well, you are plainly treated as an illegal immigrant and arranged for deportation/jail etc. (the former is more common for genuine mistakes). It sounds harsh, but well, you gotta understand that legally on paper you are no different from the other \"wetbacks\" and \"boat people\" and \"border crossers\" and what-not they are getting.\n\nMoral of the story: Don't fuck up your visa. It's as bad as crossing borders without getting your passports checked and so on. Basically, you are seen as just going into another country illegally. Period.",
"The trick here is that it's the carrier's responsibility to remove you in these circumstances. If an airline allows you to fly in to some country and you are refused entry for lack of correct paperwork, the airline is required to take you away again. This is why they will be keen to check your documents at departure. The immigration officials don't have to worry about this cost.",
"I went to Israel for the year. I told them that i would fill out my visa once I got there. I spent the entire year there once I cane to the airport they were all shocked but didn't care and let me go. So i"
] |
Why do your ears and nose slowly and continuously grow throughout your life? | [
"Because while bone growth stops in early adulthood, cartilage growth doesn't. Your ears and nose are mostly cartilaginous, so they continue to grow as you age. In addition, aging skin loses elasticity and underlying fat pads, making it sag more and the cartilage more prominent."
] |
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