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ELI5: Sleep Paralysis
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sqmum
| 8
| true
| false
| 0.9
|
Now I've googled this many times but I still can't seem to get an accurate description. When I get sleep paralysis, I know I'm sleeping and I'm laying in my bed waiting to wake up. I can sometimes wake myself up by jerking my body (in my dream at least) in one direction and it wakes me up, but I've noticed that when I do it like that, I wake up in an incredibly tired and overall shitty feeling. I literally have about 5 seconds to move around from when I wake myself up because I'll just fall back asleep again and go back into the paralysis. I'm curious if this is actually sleep paralysis or something else.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce09isd",
"comment_text": [
"I'll give you my layman's explanation. I've \"suffered\" from sleep paralysis my whole life although now I rather enjoy it.",
"When you sleep, your brain produces a concoction that mostly paralyzes you, ostensibly to prevent you from physically acting out your dreams. Sleep paralysis occurs when your brain wakes up but for some reason does not stop producing said concoction. Most people report waking up, but still being paralyzed; some report becoming paralyzed while falling asleep (that is, the body falls asleep, the mind remains awake).",
"What's interesting is that this mind/body disconnect occurs along a spectrum, with fully lucid sleep paralysis on one end (you wake up but can't move) and fully lucid dreaming on the other (you're definitely dreaming but are fully aware and can manipulate your surroundings). Some people refer to super lucid dreaming as OBEs or Astral Projection (google it) and attaining sleep paralysis is sometimes the first step towards purposeful lucid dreaming.",
"It's also common to feel fully awake but paralyzed, but still be experiencing dream-like hallucinations. Often this feels like some sort of evil presence in your room or sitting on your chest. Back in the day, sleep paralysis was referred to as \"Old Hag Syndrome\" for this reason."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0awdo",
"comment_text": [
"Yes. Or, it sounds very much like it. ",
"RYouNotEntertained explained what happens; I won't repeat that information. ",
"Other symptoms of sleep paralysis can include:\n * a sensation of pressure on the chest, or of difficulty breathing\n * a sensation of a presence in the room",
"Several things make an episode of sleep paralysis more likely:\n * being relatively young\n * being male\n * sleeping on your back \n * sleeping outside your normal sleep times\n * sleeping during the day",
"Sleep paralysis is not dangerous and tends to diminish as one ages. The \"treatment\" consists of not doing the things that make an episode likely. ",
"The only thing that is potentially medically significant is the possibility of sleep apnea, which means you breathe irregularly while you are asleep. Sleep paralysis is not known to be associated with apnea; however, you should have all the information. Indicators of apnea include: \n * obesity\n * snoring (heavy or frequent)\n * waking up tired even when you've gotten a good night's sleep\n * someone tells you that your breathing is irregular while you are asleep \nApnea is not an immediate hazard to your health, but it can be treated. If you have some or all of those risk factors for apnea, you should consider seeking medical attention. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0diqo",
"comment_text": [
"When you sleep, you dream. Dreams involve the activation of muscles, as you're frequently attempting to DO things like walk around.",
"To keep you from hurting yourself and/or losing sleep, your body paralyzes you.",
"Sleep paralysis is a condition wherein the paralysis of the body's muscles is still in effect even through the person is awake.",
"Your description is pretty vague, but, if I'm reading it right you're saying that your cognizant (aware) while asleep, which is rare, to say the least. There are a handful of people who are able to maintain consciousness throughout the night.",
"Now there's also something called a hypnagogic jerk usually experienced by people AS they're falling \"asleep\" (sleep itself is a complicated subject I'm not going to get into here). Usually it's when people will suddenly jerk awake, typically associated with a muscle spasm or brief \"dream\" of something that would require you to react (I generally briefly see a car coming at me and try to jump out of the way).",
"Now it should also be noted that people wake up all the time when they're \"sleeping\" and generally have no idea. We tend to either forget that we were awake for a few minutes or we associate it with when we were trying to fall asleep. However, if you do a sleep study, you can see how your body moves through the different sleep stages, enter REM (Rapid Eye Movement, dreaming), and then probably achieve consciousness for a while before falling \"back\" to sleep.",
"Serious cases of sleep paralysis are generally associated with becoming conscious with a paralyzed body for several minutes, also frequently being associated with a sense that \"someone is watching\" which is hard to explain (we don't know).",
"I know it's a lot of stuff, but I'd need a more accurate description of exactly what you're experiencing."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0ev5x",
"comment_text": [
"A lot of people who have sleep apnea experience a form of terrifying sleep paralysis where they not only can't move, but also can't breathe. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0fcia",
"comment_text": [
"I had sleep paralysis the other day, not nice I had this dream where I was suffocating, woke up with my head under my quilt and no means of getting out from under it. Felt weird all day after that."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do dogs of the same breed look practically the same when humans of the same race look so different?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sqlry
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.57
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce07fjp",
"comment_text": [
"because your brain is wired to see differences between people not dogs"
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce07jkj",
"comment_text": [
"Just to expand a tiny bit on this, dogs of a similar breed are less diverse than humans, even of similar broad ethnicities because most dog breeds are the result of severe in-breeding. This lack of diversity compounds with our lack of sensitivity to the differences in dogs compared to humans to make it difficult for people without a lot of interaction with them to easily recognize their differences."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce07gcr",
"comment_text": [
"They look so similar to each other for the same reason that we often see people of other races as similar-looking; we simply haven't trained our minds to see the differences."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce07lqg",
"comment_text": [
"The breeds of dogs we have today were created by humans. Each breed was controlled so that there would be very little variation. So each breed has a very restricted gene pool (a restricted set of traits). So dogs of the same breed end up looking mostly the same.\nIt is not the same with humans. No one has been succesful at controlling the reproduction of humans so as to restrict the gene pool of a specific race. As such there is larger variation of traits between humans, even between humans of the same race."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce07gpq",
"comment_text": [
"They don't. Not really. \nWe are just unused to seeing the very fine details. \nIf you own one kind of dog you will see how unique each dog is. ",
"We are super used to read human faces. This is why we can tell the slightest difference between two. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
How would life have started on a planet that none exists?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sqmxe
| 5
| true
| false
| 0.86
|
I am curious that if there is no life when earth started, how would life have started? Would it be chemical reactions or rocks from another planet? How does life start?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce08adc",
"comment_text": [
"You kinda asked one of the big ones there.",
"Since 1828, it's been known that organic compounds could be made from inorganic precursors, although it was a hell of a shock to a lot of people when Friedrich Wohler did so. Things got even weirder in 1953, when Stanley Miller (an effing grad student, by the way) showed that if you seal a chamber containing the gases believed to have been in Earth's atmosphere 4 billion years ago, then run electric sparks through it to simulate lightning, you get amino acids, the building blocks of protein. It's been further shown that amino acids can spontaneously form chains, and then tiny spheres, not unlike very primitive cells.",
"Now, the conditions on early Earth exist plenty of other places, if you substitute UV light for lightning. Indeed, a meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969 contained a bunch of amino acids. Of course, saying life came from another planet isn't much of an answer, since it leads to the question of how life started on THAT planet.",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6hler_synthesis",
"\n",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis",
"\n",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microspheres",
"\n",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murchison_meteorite"
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0cczr",
"comment_text": [
"To put this in perspective you need to understand the basic chemical mechanics of organic life forms.",
"They all consist of these proteins called amino acids. The chemical makeup of these acids arent that cool, but when doing organic processes they work amazingly.",
"What happened way back then is a ton of radiation was zapping all kinds of these volatile chemicals, and the environment was all kinds of hell. Little primitive look Alikes of life forms started to prop up, and around this time the first life form popped up. These primitive beings lived off sulfur pools and little lakes of actual water on early planet earth. ",
"After this, and tons of freaky mutations from radiation (what gives you cancer and mutates your cells) somehow a strain of this first bacterium mutated the first chlorophyll in its cells. Once this happened respiration took place through carbon dioxide -> water and oxygen and glucose(plant stuff). The planet slowly filled with oxygen and nitrogen and water, all over the place. This filled the ozone and made our atmosphere, also covering the planet with liquid and vapor water. After millions of years these bacteria took over the planet and formed our atmosphere just perfect for life forms. ",
"The important part to realize about this is that the radiation that sparked these first life forms to come to life would've thunderfucked them out of existence if it wasn't for this strain of bacteria making the ozone. When radiation was blocked it allowed these life forms to slowly thrive and mutate over billions of years.",
"So through a lot of chance I meanALOT of a chance, the first life forms came to be and were able to terraform the planet to ensure they keep their existence. ",
"Another cool thing is the cousins of these bacterial ancestors are still alive today, and make like 85% of all the oxygen we breathe in our atmosphere today. Global climate change is threatening this basic life form and in turn our oxygen supply."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0b0uc",
"comment_text": [
"We've known this for thousands of years: 'God said, let there be life, and there was life.'",
"But seriously, first comment nailed it."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0fmsu",
"comment_text": [
"\"And the Lord smote the primordial soup with lightning; and there were brought forth amino acids. And the acids did spontaneously assemble into polypeptides, and the polypeptides into microspheres. And the Lord spent the rest of the week resting.\" --Genesis"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0fxpx",
"comment_text": [
"The origin of life made easy",
".",
"There is much unknown about the origin of life, but there are certain steps scientists are fairly sure happened, such as the need to get amino acids somehow."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: What makes an expensive lawyer better than a cheap lawyer?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sqoyk
| 2
| true
| false
| 1
|
More experience for sure but do they know like more laws or something. If you have proof and witnesses, how can an expensive lawyer win? Might be a really simple question but I want to know.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce08cp8",
"comment_text": [
"It really depends. The best thing you get from an expensive lawyer is time. Lawyers who are cheaper need to have more clients to pay the bills, so they are spending less time on your particular case. Less time means less familiarity with the facts, less polish on the arguments, and less knowledge of the law.",
"That being said, there are public defenders and cheap lawyers who will do 100% of what you need at a fraction of the cost. It really depends on what you need done. If the stakes are high and the issue is complex, consider paying more. If it's a routine matter with low stakes, you can probably get by with a cheaper alternative."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce08gyg",
"comment_text": [
"First it's not always true, smart lawyers aren't exclusively expensive. Legal arguments tend to be about which case law applies to the situation at hand. Better lawyers will have a better understanding of case law which means they're more likely to be able to cite the most applicable case that supports their arguement. ",
"It's been said that the American justice system is a bargianing table, smarter lawyers are more likely to realize opportunities when they have a better bargaining position and press those advantages to strike the most favorable bargains for their clients. ",
"Also in a trial, they may be better at understanding the jury and it's biases so their \"story\" fits the jury's belief of the facts better than the opponents. A good example was OJ's case where the defense team played up the jury's fear/experience being railroaded by police to present a case that the largerly white police force was framing OJ. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce08plc",
"comment_text": [
"If you have proof and witnesses, how can an expensive lawyer win?",
"The US is an adversarial system which means the prosecution is pitted against the defense to make their case to a judge or jury. If the defense can cast doubt into the methods of evidence collection, the evidence itself, or discredit a witness they can be very successful in winning what would be considered an \"open & shut case\". ",
"OJ Simpson killed two people in the 90's and was able towalk away from a double murder charge after the prosecution bungled the case and the defense was able to discredit what most analysts would describe as very solid evidence. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0dr7x",
"comment_text": [
"You may think the sole purpose of a defense attorney is to get a guilty guy to look not guilty of the crime to a jury, but the defense counsel has another responsibility. That is to make sure the accused committed actions that fall within the exact definition of the crime of which he was accused and the sentence passed is comparable to other sentences handed out for the same action. ",
"A cheap lawyer may suggest the accused plead guilty and not do a lot of other work if it seems as though the prosecutor has a good case. Then the lawyer may try to negotiate a sentence based upon what the prosecutor offers. ",
"An expensive lawyer will have a staff and researchers who will find other cases that are similar to the current one and bring those cases to the judge's attention. The expensive lawyer will have to pay this staff and most of that cost will be passed on to the accused. The expensive lawyer will also have researchers to identify cases in which the facts of the case are similar and the actions were not shown to fit the definition of the crime the person is accused of. Those researchers are also getting paid and again, the cost is passed on to the client. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0qj85",
"comment_text": [
"Expensive lawyers aren't better than cheap lawyers - better lawyers can charge more for their services because they are better lawyers.",
"But also, when you pay more you're often getting multiple lawyers working on your case who can pursue more avenues and spend more time on your case, finding things a single lawyer might miss."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How is "Ghoti" pronounced "Fish"?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1squ1o
| 1
| true
| false
| 1
|
It seems like they took the sounds out of context of the rest of the verb.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce09yru",
"comment_text": [
"gh is pronounced like an 'f' as in the word 'tough'\no pronounced like 'ih' as in the o in 'women' and\nti is pronounced like 'sh' as in 'nation'"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce09zi8",
"comment_text": [
"That's the joke. I don't remember who famously came up with it, but it's a joke to illustrate how all over the place English pronunciation is. It's the 'gh' from enough (pronounced like an f), the 'o' from women (pronounced like an i), and the 'ti' from nation (pronounced like sh)."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce09zk8",
"comment_text": [
"In the english language some letters make different sounds when in different scenarios so when some one says \"Ghoti is pronounced like fish\" they really mean that those letters in the correct senario would make a sound the is like the word fish."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0bg6m",
"comment_text": [
"Your examples of o making an i sound are very accent dependent. I say the last syllable of mission and fusion more like \"un\" than \"in\". The example I always saw for the o making an i sound was in \"women\" which seems more universal."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0a1l8",
"comment_text": [
"I haven't seen this particular spelling of the word, but GH can make an f sound (tough, enough, etc.), o can make a flat i sound (mission, fusion, etc) and ti can make an sh sound (station, partition, etc.)"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do men from far eastern countries such as Japan, China, South Korea etc. almost always show no sign of facial hair?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sr5ht
| 3
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0dmim",
"comment_text": [
"Beards have gone out of fashion in east asia for about a century and these cultures have a stronger social pressure for uniformity, so shaving is extremely common.",
"Also the Han are a large ethnic group from which large portions of all of these countries have descended and people with Han heritage tend to have slow-growing facial hair and difficulty growing full beards (their hair is mostly limited to around the mouth). When you think of a 'Chinese' person, you are probably thinking of someone with Han features. There are many other ethnic groups in these areas which can and do grow magnificent facial hair."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0de71",
"comment_text": [
"Because they always shave it off before anyone can see."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce795qx",
"comment_text": [
"Many thanks for your reply"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0dxbn",
"comment_text": [
"We don't like to shave. Evolution and all that."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce0e55m",
"comment_text": [
"Why don't I like asians?"
],
"score": -1
}
|
||
ELI5: Dungeons and Dragons
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sldj6
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyph9v",
"comment_text": [
"Can you be more specific.",
"It's a tabletop RPG. The dungeon master tells the story either makes up his own or uses a pre-set model. The players have their characters with their stats and then they go through the game."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdypl7z",
"comment_text": [
"Are the characters pre-determined? Can you choose them? Can the story go in any direction? How long does a typical game last?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdypu5v",
"comment_text": [
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_&_Dragons",
"http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/whatisdnd",
"You're not really asking anything that wouldn't be difficult to find out yourself.",
"You chooses your character from various classes and can modify them.",
"The story can go in a limited number of directions depending on what has already been designed.",
"The time varies depending on who designed the game."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyplfa",
"comment_text": [
"Your post is way too general, and thus has been removed. Feel free to resubmit your question more specifically, or even better do a search in the sidebar searchbar to see if your question has already been answered on ELI5."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdypljl",
"comment_text": [
"It's a Role Playing Game (RPG). There will be many people who will play characters in a story, one person who is the Dungeon Master or Game Master (DM/GM) and will guide the story and let the players know what is happening. ",
"The players will start off by creating their characters, ideally choosing a mix of different kinds of players so that you have a well-rounded team who can take on different kinds of challenges. So, you might have different people in your party who are strong, intelligent, can wield different kinds of weapons, are good at detecting traps, can disarm certain kinds of foes, or are adept in magic. ",
"Just like in real life, it's exceptionally difficult to be good at everything and many games will limit what you can do, so that if you're a really big hulking tank of a guy, you may not have much stamina. Or that wizard who can deal lots of damage may have little strength. The healer in your group who helps everyone else, may ironically, have little health himself and is prone to attacks.",
"There are printed rule books (many, MANY variations and editions) that govern how the rule is played - think of the differences between American football, rugby, and soccer/football. They're similar, but have differences in how you score and play the game.",
"Your GM/DM will have a story in mind and try to guide the characters along, meeting non-player characters (NPCs) who may act as allies, giving them information or much needed items, or may act as foes, requiring your party to flee or fight. There is usually an overreaching arc to the story and an end quest, but may be several side quests or mini quests along the way before you finish the story. ",
"The name itself is derived from the fact that one common setting is for the players to be in a dungeon, exploring the darkness for treasures and monsters, and one particularly formidable monster is a dragon, which may require the entire party, working together to defeat."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
Why is hundred degree weather so uncomfortable when our internal temperature is like 98 degrees?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1slf18
| 14
| true
| false
| 0.64
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyqaoy",
"comment_text": [
"Our bodies create heat and we lose it to the outside. We are optimized for temperatures lower than 98 degrees. If it's actually 98 degrees outside, we can't get rid of the heat easily and we can overheat."
],
"score": 21
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyxnuj",
"comment_text": [
"Technically optimum temperature is \"room temperature\", 25* C or about 77* F. But yes, we do tend to lose heat that our body produces at ~98* We maintain our internal temp. through the chemical reactions our cells constantly undergo, mostly from processing food. But as it grows hotter outside out bodies those chemical reactions, if they are occurring at the same rate, will make it easier to increase the heat inside our bodies, raising over 98",
". The reverse happens when its colder outside our bodies and our metabolism speeds up and produce more body heat."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyyq9l",
"comment_text": [
"This is why you feel so lazy when it is too hot, your body is slowing itself down in an effort to be more comfortable/not die."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyu6s8",
"comment_text": [
"Article",
"The bigger the gradient between our body and the environment, the more rapidly we can get rid of that heat.",
"Your body is constantly generating more heat. All that heat has to go somewhere, so it tries to escape through your skin. The greater the difference between the outside temperature and the temperature of your body, the faster that heat will escape. That's why you'll feel much cooler on a 60-degree day than on a 90-degree day.",
"The article goes on to say that the sun is another important factor; just like the wind chill in the winter makes everything feel colder, the sun shining down on us makes us burn and feel hotter."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz3eju",
"comment_text": [
"Jerk."
],
"score": 2
}
|
||
ELI5: How do any posts in the big subreddits (/r/videos, /r/pics, etc) ever get to the front page?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1slssy
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.63
|
I've seen the "new" pages on the default subs, and they're SWAMPED. Go to , and you'll see what I mean. Most videos in the "new" page have only one or two upvotes. Yet somehow, there are videos that get noticed. It seems unlikely that anyone's watching all of the videos on the "new" page, but for whatever reason people decide to vote something up or down until it has thousands of votes! How does this happen? How does any one post in a bloated subreddit become successful if there are hundreds of posts submitted every hour?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyu20k",
"comment_text": [
"There is a chance that some things get \"featured\". That is the little spot at the top of your page where a random post will come up. This is part of it. ",
"Also, there are MANY people that look in the new area. Lets say about 30 people out of 100,000 on that subreddit see that post almost as soon as you post it. Well maybe 3-5 like it enough to give an upvote. Now you are on the \"rising\" section. That section normally stays up for a bit longer, so more people see it. ",
"Now less people might like it now. In fact, you may have offended people ",
". You receive a few downvotes. Now you may be at the controversial and the rising page at once. Now lots of people see it, and let the karma flow in. ",
"Source: Got over 3000 link karma in advice animals, tracked one of my posts for a little while. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyubav",
"comment_text": [
"They have to have a positive \"score\" I'm pretty sure. They are randomized based on the subreddits you are subscribed too. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyujqg",
"comment_text": [
"I call the little number at the side score. For me that is just all upvotes subtracted by the downvotes. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyu7zj",
"comment_text": [
"How do posts get featured? Is it random?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyugky",
"comment_text": [
"Positive score? As in voted score, or some other calculated score?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
Why is it that when you have more than 20 people in a room at least 2 people will have the same birthday?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sluc0
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvn3c",
"comment_text": [
"Assuming you don't know any one's birthday yes. If you pick n people at random you need 367 people to have a 100% chance at least two share a birthday. I'm not saying that it won't occur with less, I'm just saying it's not guaranteed."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyuany",
"comment_text": [
"That's not true. There's a good chance at least 2 will. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyuc8z",
"comment_text": [
"It's not a guarantee. With 23 people, there's only a 50% likelihood.",
"The reason it's not 1 in 365 is because you have to consider each pair of people. With 23 people, there are 253 pairs of people. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyuj12",
"comment_text": [
"Yes. That is not true. You need at least 367 people in a room in order to guarantee that two had the same birthday. However, the more people you have in a room the more likely it is for two to have the same birthday.",
"To calculate this find the chance that everyone has a different birthday and subtract from 1. For ease and clarity I will disregard the leap year birthday of Feb 29.",
"(ie 1 - (364/365)",
"...*((365-(n-1))/365)) for your case their is ~41.1438% chance that at least two people will share a birthday again disregarding the leap year bit."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvlcl",
"comment_text": [
"You need at least 367 people in a room in order to guarantee that two had the same birthday.",
"That's not necessarily true either."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Can someone please tell me what NSFWL means?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1slxpi
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvcy7",
"comment_text": [
"Not safe for work due to language"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvtgc",
"comment_text": [
"/u/bjf201",
" is correct"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdywcbz",
"comment_text": [
"Because your post isn't asking a simplified conceptual explanation, but rather for an answer, its been removed.\nYou should try ",
"/r/answers",
" instead."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvbwa",
"comment_text": [
"New Structure to Federal Web Locator "
],
"score": 0
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvbda",
"comment_text": [
"Life...not safe for life is something the poster considers particularly traumatic or \"messed up\""
],
"score": 0
}
|
||
ELI5: Does vision move faster than the speed of light?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sm2td
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.57
|
Well, when we wake up, we instantly see our surroundings. So I am wondering, does our eyes pick up everything faster than the speed of light as it is literally a instant event of seeing.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyx2de",
"comment_text": [
"Seeing is not \"sight rays\" shooting out of our eyes, seeing is our eyes capturing light that is focused by the lens and then sensed by the retina. So no, \"vision\" is not faster than light, because it ",
" light. However, when you open your eyes, you don't have to wait for the light to travel all the way from whatever you're looking at to your eye before you can see it, since the light started it's travel before you opened your eye. "
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdywybt",
"comment_text": [
"no, there is about a 80-100ms delay from your eyes to your brain. so even that part is slower than the speed of light."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyxbbe",
"comment_text": [
"Seeing multiple objects at the same time doesn't mean something is happening faster than light, there is still the delay of light travelling from the object to your eyes (a few nanoseconds for objects in your room). Generally, speed of light is a limit for moving objects or information transfer. For example if you shine a laser pointer at the moon and wave your hand, the laser dot seems to move faster than light, but there's still the delay of around 1 second for laser to reach the moon, and no information can be sent faster than light this way."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyxgra",
"comment_text": [
"Seeing is not \"sight rays\" shooting out of our eyes",
"I think we can all shake our heads disapprovingly at Superman cartoons for this surprisingly common misconception. A superhero's \"X-ray vision\" is typically depicted by a beam shooting out of their eyes, but in reality, \"X-ray vision\" would just mean that there are specialized cells in the back of your eye that can detect any X-rays that happen to bounce into your eyeball."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyxtdk",
"comment_text": [
"You forgot the part where it gets filtered through our brain mush and might make us see things that aren't there."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Do we have a form of hydrogen fusion that yields energy on an economically feasible scale?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1slyy3
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvnxw",
"comment_text": [
"No. And this question should not be here, there is nothing to explain. Please read the side bar."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyw9ct",
"comment_text": [
"Feel free to report next time."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvo3a",
"comment_text": [
"We've been trying for over half a century, now, and it's always remained \"about 30 years away.\" "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvrvb",
"comment_text": [
"I just read an article the other morning which discussed how a team of researchers has recently come very close to \"breaking even.\" Which means that the reaction they created used only slightly more energy than it produced. This is a vast improvement in efficiency since the concepts inception."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyvukb",
"comment_text": [
"Yes, the sun technically uses hydrogen fusion which we can harness using solar panels (for the light) or wind turbines(the suns unequal heating of the air causes wind). However straight hydrogen fusion based on planet earth is a no. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5:how do hot air balloons work?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sm5as
| 2
| true
| false
| 1
|
I'm just curious as to how they are able to rise up, float across vast distances, and how they can so easily come back dowwn
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyzdjr",
"comment_text": [
"Buburubu explained why balloons work, but I'll explain ",
" they work!",
"There are two main controls in a hot air balloon: The ",
", and the ",
".",
"A burner is essentially a propane stove on crack. It uses vaporized propane gas at or above 95psi (pounds per square inch of pressure) to heat the air inside the balloon. The set of burners I fly with put out ",
" of energy. Some burners can bring 105,000 cubic feet of air from ambient temperature to above 200F in as little as 30 seconds. This equipment allows us to quickly make changes to the temperature inside our envelope, which allows us not to simply \"go up\" but to choose ",
" we go up and when to do it.",
"But let's say we want to go down! That's where the second control comes in, the Vent Line. The top of an average hot air balloon is actually a gaping hole about 15' across. Obviously if this remained open then all of the hot air would escape the balloon and we'd never go anywhere! To plug the hole we have what is essentially a parachute. The hot air lifts the parachute up until it meets the envelope and creates a seal (ropes and lines inside the balloon prevent the top from rising above the rest of the envelope). If we are flying along and need to drop down or stop going up, we have the vent line! This is a large red rope attached via pulley to the parachute top. By pulling on it we can momentarily lower the parachute and allow hot air to escape from the balloon. When the hot air exits, the total lift on the balloon lessens and we begin to sink down. If we open the top too far or hold it open for too long, the balloon will fully deflate and fall over! This is actually how we deflate the balloon at the end of a flight.",
"Part of the skill involved in being a balloon pilot is the ability to tell simply through touch and feel where the buoyancy of the balloon is. It is incredibly fun to do complex maneuvers with a balloon! Gliding along the tops of trees and grass without touches leaves or blades is a great challenge and very enjoyable.",
"Let me know if you have any other questions about how ballooning works!"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyy0gb",
"comment_text": [
"Precisely. How slowly probably depends on the outside air temperature, the mass of the basket, the heat conductivity of the balloon material, and how wide the hole in the bottom of the balloon is (to allow more cool air to flow in as the volume of the hot air decreases)."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyz6vy",
"comment_text": [
"I'm actually a hot air balloon pilot, and yes that is essentially it. If the burners (that's what they are called) no longer function then the air inside of the balloon will quickly cool below the 'positive buoyancy point' and the balloon will begin to fall. A given hot air balloon with a basket, equipment, and occupants will have a terminal fall velocity, which is a descent rate that will not increase without some catastrophic change to the balloon (for example, the envelope exploding into smithereens). When the air inside is too cool to lift us the balloon essentially turns into the world's most inefficient parachute. The terminal fall velocity of my personal system with me and a friend on an average summer day is around 1,200 feet per minute, or roughly 13.6 miles per hour. That is slow in terms of an airplane, but you still don't want to hit the ground at that speed!"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyxufj",
"comment_text": [
"Hotter gases are less dense than cooler gases, and thereby weigh less by volume. This means that the heated air inside a hot air balloon weighs less than the air outside of it, and so floats like a bubble in water (in which the air weighs less than the water and so rises). They slowly sink as the air inside the balloon cools and becomes more dense, which is why the little flamey engine thing is periodically fired up to reheat the air and keep it afloat."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyxy0r",
"comment_text": [
"so lets say you are floating in the balloon and for some reason you cant get the fire to start up, would you just slowly sink down to the ground?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do I get sick of songs I used to like?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1smax8
| 8
| true
| false
| 0.79
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyzu3l",
"comment_text": [
"If you listen to a song enough times every part of it becomes too predictable. It's like hearing a joke for the 10th time."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyzg6j",
"comment_text": [
"Repeated exposure removes the novelty of any experience. The same reason landlocked people are fascinated with the ocean, whereas those who grew up near the ocean think it's nothing special. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz21pj",
"comment_text": [
"A meme."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz2dzn",
"comment_text": [
"Because the more you listen to a song the more it will be getting stuck in your head and it will just keep playing over and over again. Its over exposure and is kind of like too much of a good thing at times."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzpvfo",
"comment_text": [
"The human brain is designed for a certain level of healthy stimulation. When you like the song, you're getting it (novelty, beat). Once you've heard it a thousand times, that new stimulation effect wears off. In general, the body begins to tune out what is always there so it can pay attention to what's new. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Why do people have to fast before they have surgery?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1smpna
| 6
| true
| false
| 0.75
|
A friend of mine had surgery on her knee today and she had to fast for about 9 hours before hand. I sort of understand why you have to fast if you have surgery on your torso, but I was surprised she had to fast for a knee operation. So, why do people have to fast before surgery?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz3m2y",
"comment_text": [
"Hi, I work as an anaesthetist.",
"Fasting before surgery is to reduce the volume and acidity of your stomach contents. This reduces the risk of regurgitation and aspiration of stomach contents into the lungs at induction and during maintenance of anaesthesia and to reduce harm should aspiration occur.",
"Regurgitation occurs due to loss of muscle tone and the risk of this is increased by a number of drugs and disease states. During induction of anaesthesia a patient may need to be briefly ventilated via a mask before a tracheal tube or other device is inserted to protect the airway. Even with a meticulous technique this can force air into the stomach increasing the risk of regurgitation.",
"Fasting times should be six hours for food (including gum and boiled sweets), milk and carbonated drinks (gas in the stomach also increases risk of regurgitation) and two hours for clear fluids. Allowing patients to drink water till two hours before surgery is obviously more pleasant for them and there is some evidence that it reduces gastric acidity more than more prolonged fasting.",
"That being said, it can be very difficult to know when a particular patient will get to theatre particularly when running on emergency list so most would err on the side of more prolonged fasts to avoid having to cancel a patient's surgery.",
"You should also fast even if you are undergoing a spinal anaesthetic or other regional technique as there are some (extremely rare) complications of these techniques that would mandate emergency general anaesthesia.",
"We see a lot of people coming for elective surgeries with inappropriately long fast times because most surgeons will simply tell their patients to fast from midnight the night before their surgery."
],
"score": 20
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz54p6",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks so much for the detailed response. I understand it a lot better now"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz33t6",
"comment_text": [
"One of the reasons is that some people who have food in their stomachs vomit during surgery. That can lead to breathing the vomit into the lungs.",
"I had surgery a few months ago. The fasting sucked. Not so much the no food but the no water. I went into surgery about 12 hours after my last drink of water."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz370s",
"comment_text": [
"Ok, makes sense. Wouldn't want that to happen."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz33xo",
"comment_text": [
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preoperative_fasting",
"It's to prevent him from accidentally inhaling his stomach contents under the anesthesia."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: The concept of probability
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1smthz
| 2
| true
| false
| 1
|
In a philosophical sense. Isn't the concept of probabilty just an abstract concept that has no impact on real events, even when they are random? So, let's say we have a deck of 36 perfectly standardized cards under ideal circumstances. According to probability it is not wise to bet on one single card, since the probabilty is 1/36. In fact, it is not impossible for the same card to appear 10 times in a row. I know there is the law of large numbers, but isn't it only relevant if you assume infinite amounts of drawings?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz4izd",
"comment_text": [
"Probability is a very, very big branch of mathematics. Also one of the most practical in every day life. Without more information its hard to know what you're actually referring to. I'll try to give a basic explanation of some of the simpler concepts.",
"The probability of something happening is how often that particular result will occur compared to all other potential results. A certain event has a probability of 1, an impossible event has a probability of 0, everything else lies in the middle. Consider a deck of four cards, two aces, a king and a queen. The probability of drawing an ace (often referred mathematically as (P(Ace)) is equal to how many possible situations result in an ace, divided by the total number situations. In this case, P(Ace) = 2 / 4 , or 0.5.",
"That's a very basic case. You can also get more complicated ones, such as what is the probability of getting at least one ace when you draw two cards. In this situation there are a lot more possible outcomes and it is less intuitive.",
"An ace could be the first card drawn, so P(Ace first) is 0.5. However, if we draw the king or queen first, that then leaves 3 cards, two of which are aces. So P(Ace) if the king or queen was drawn first is 2/3 (0.6666). However, a king or queen is only drawn first half the time. To allow for this you can multiply the two together:",
"P(King/Queen) * (P(Ace second) = 1/2 * 2/3 = 1/3. This then gives us the probability of drawing an ace second. We can add this together with the probability of getting an ace first up (0.5), to get the total probability of drawing an ace: P(Ace) = 0.5 + 0.3333 = 0.833333 or 5/6",
"Edit: I'm sorry for the maths, but there really is no other way to illustrate anything more than basic probability without maths."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz51t1",
"comment_text": [
"Thank you for your explanation. I know the maths, we had it in school, but thank you anyway. ",
"\"A certain event has a probability of 1, an impossible event has a probability of 0, everything else lies in the middle.\"\nBut doesn't, in reality \"everything else\" have a probabilty of 50% since it can be either A or (not A) and the probabilty of (not A) is irrelevant since the system has no memory. That's what I'm referring to but I didn't know how to explain."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz565w",
"comment_text": [
"No, your confusing the number of types of results (A vs not-A) with the total number of possibilities.",
"Consider a bag with a dozen marbles in it, 11 of which are red. There are only two types of outcome (red and not-red), but there are 12 different marbles you could pull out, 11 of which are red. The chance of pulling out a not-red marble is therefore 1/12. There may only be two outcomes, but they're not evenly ",
", so the probability doesn't sit in the middle."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz5gtm",
"comment_text": [
"Alright, so probability is basically an abstract way to describe the ",
" between the marbles, right?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz9xol",
"comment_text": [
"Pretty much, though it's not as abstract as you seem to think. If you pull out a marble and replace it enough times, you ",
" get very close to 11 times as many red marbles as non-red.",
"Taking it a step further, you can use probability to figure out the chance that, after pulling out a marble 12 million times, you'll get exactly one million non-red marbles, compared to 1,000,050 (still very possible) or 2,000,000 (virtually impossible)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: In the news today: "Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram" particularly this one paragraph (link)
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1smyhm
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.33
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz5mut",
"comment_text": [
"One of the top, gilded comments on one of the holographic universe threads",
"Should help you understand a little bit better."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz6093",
"comment_text": [
"No, my question is different. I am specifically asking for clarification on one sentence in that article, about the nature of a one dimensional dimension.",
"THanks though!"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz62hj",
"comment_text": [
"That thread might still be of some help - ELI5 is pretty damn good at what we do, but I'm not sure there are enough string theory physicists lurking who can accurately give you the answer you are looking for. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz5tko",
"comment_text": [
"This question concerns one of the most frequently asked topics on ELI5, so it has been removed. Try the searchbar next time please."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz5zlk",
"comment_text": [
"Nope! My question was different than the other's asked. Did you read it? I did not ask about holographic universe, I was asking to clarify a specific statement about the nature of a one dimensional dimension.",
"Oh well, thanks anyways."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Why do fashion shows display outrageous outfits and clothing?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1smuts
| 17
| true
| false
| 0.73
|
Shouldn't they show what the average person wears? I watched the first few minutes of the Victoria Secret show and no one in their right mind would wear any of that. Period.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz50ve",
"comment_text": [
"I find it easier to think of the outlandish fashion shows as being more about art than fashion. They're using fabric and the human body much as a painter would use paint and canvas."
],
"score": 13
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz58fa",
"comment_text": [
"it's like a concept car, which you will never see on the road (in that way)"
],
"score": 10
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz57ia",
"comment_text": [
"An friend of mine who's into fashion explained to me simply as sculpture with the stipulations it has to be worn by someone and they have to move around in it.",
"When you look at it as wearable sculptures rather than wearable clothing it begins to make much more sense. In terms of actual day to day clothing a lot of the techniques and compositions on these \"wearable sculptures\" tend to crop up later as clothing lines."
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz7l6q",
"comment_text": [
"As an aside to this, regular models are generally beanpole thin and don't smile much because the focus is on the clothing, and not on the model. "
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz4icq",
"comment_text": [
"A lot of it is combining a bunch of patterns, designs, stitching, folds, etc etc. ",
"You only get so many models so they combine all this stuff together which then looks weird to normal people but other designers can look at something outrageous and think, \"Oh yes, it makes sense now, if I just stitch the hood like this I can get it to lay like it is on that model.\" "
],
"score": 4
}
|
|
ELI5: Please describe the theory of a holographic universe
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1smyi2
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz5me1",
"comment_text": [
"One of the top, gilded comments on one of the holographic universe threads"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz5tab",
"comment_text": [
"Thank you. I was hoping for something that was slightly easier to picture though. I get the core concepts, however my issue is with being able to picture such things."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz61js",
"comment_text": [
"To be honest, I'm not sure how you can visually think of anything beyond 4-dimensions - Look up Tesseracts or Hypercubes for images regarding 4-dimensional visualizations. Taking it beyond that, I have no idea how that would look.",
"Hopefully that thread might have more information, as its got a lot of activity. For really specific scientific questions, ELI5 doesn't always have users with enough knowledge/understanding to take seriously complicated subjects and turn them into something simpler. Or at least those users aren't always online when these questions are asked."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz63iq",
"comment_text": [
"That was perfect and appreciated. I am actually on that topics from that thread. I suppose asking a 2D being to comprehend the image of hide would be equally impossible.",
"Thanks again!"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz5tg0",
"comment_text": [
"This question concerns one of the most frequently asked topics on ELI5, so it has been removed. Try the searchbar next time please."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Advanced VPN - 'Why should I not use VPN?'
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sn49g
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz7g7u",
"comment_text": [
"VPN's aren't just for anonymity. ",
"I use a VPN set up for my home network so I can remotely 'connect' to my home LAN and access my network storage. We have a VPN at work so that we can access remote files from anywhere we have an internet connection.",
"A VPN is just you connecting to another network, which then allows you access to that networks resources. If that includes internet, then it includes internet. ",
"The reason its not ubiquitous is that VPNs can be costly, and are a bandwidth limitation. Plus, as far as anonymity is concerned, you are dependent on whether or not the VPN Operator is not logging and/or monitoring VPN traffic. You are putting ",
" over that VPN, so if the VPN Operator monitors or tries to log/save your traffic, your anonymity doesn't mean jack.",
"As far as bandwidth, if I have a 1Gbps connection, but the VPN I connect to only supports 100Mbps, then my connection is effectively 1/10th of my actual bandwidth. In order to find a VPN that would allow me to get the full 1Gbps, I am probably going to have to pay a substantial amount - meaning I pay for my own internet access ",
" That's a lot of extra money for the sake of using a VPN.",
"For a business, VPNs are usually carefully monitored and managed so that they are only used for business purposes. You wouldn't use a VPN to browse the internet using the company as a front. You would use it to access the fileserver you are allowed to access.",
"For the average joe, you would never bother with a VPN, because its extra money for a service you don't need - you generally aren't worried about anonymity, and if you were, its not like having a VPN is a 100% guarantee of anonymity or safety in the first place.",
"For the techno-knowledgeable who wants some measure of privacy and/or a wall between your traffic activities and anyone else, a VPN might be worth the extra cost.",
"But to the average person, its a case of 'I don't know what that is, so I don't want to bother dealing with it.'"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz8843",
"comment_text": [
"If that happens, I can see VPNs being more popular - but that wouldn't negate the downsides of bandwidth/price limitations. And even then it would only be used people who really want to watch porn, who aren't the bill-payer, or are trying to access certain kinds of porn that are 'blocked.' That might cause some rise in demand for VPN services."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz9lg6",
"comment_text": [
"If you are running your data through someone else's network, there is ",
" someone who can grab your data. If I can plug into a router at the top of a building's network, I can sit there and make a copy of every single packet that goes in or out if I wanted to.",
"As far as prices for VPN I would guess that the more you pay, the more bandwidth you get, and the higher priority your traffic is through the VPN."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz9lg6",
"comment_text": [
"If you are running your data through someone else's network, there is ",
" someone who can grab your data. If I can plug into a router at the top of a building's network, I can sit there and make a copy of every single packet that goes in or out if I wanted to.",
"As far as prices for VPN I would guess that the more you pay, the more bandwidth you get, and the higher priority your traffic is through the VPN."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz7r66",
"comment_text": [
"In the UK major torrent sites are blocked by most ISPs. There is talk of implementing an \"opt in\" porn filter, which only the bill-payer would be able to turn off, there is also talk of permamently blocking some currently legal forms of porn as well as \"extremist\" websites.",
"VPNs connicting your computer with a non-UK network (say US) would bypass all that"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5 Where is the internet?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1snfk5
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.6
|
I just had a realization today about how amazing computers actually are. It very well may be the exhaustion from exams but the computer is an extrodinary thing. But where is the internet kept? Where does it go? Is all of this stuff physically stored somewhere? Is there a central internet location that we all access? Someone please explain to me the internet.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzaroc",
"comment_text": [
"The Internet is everywhere. It doesn't live on a single computer - in fact, the Internet is nothing more or less than the network of networks that ties all the connected computers together."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzayxy",
"comment_text": [
"\"The internet\" can be thought of as like saying \"the interstate highway system\". Yes, it physically exists. But it doesn't make sense to go to an exit on the highway and say \"So, I have all the highway here, right? Where is it, can I hold it?\""
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzboe7",
"comment_text": [
"Your wireless, or whatever other service you have, connects to an ISP. That ISP has racks (or in the case of larger ones, buildings) full of network equipment. Cables come in underground or off poles, connecting them to upstream providers, who have even more networking equipment, and connections to very-high-bandwidth data connections. The other ends of those connections are in other large providers' facilities.",
"Here in my house, I have several routers, switches, access points, and other network devices connected to my home network. In the garage is the gateway router provided by my ISP. On the other side of that router (in terms of network topology), the Internet starts. When I click save below this text field, my computer will send the text through my home network to the gateway, which will send it along to my ISP. The ISP's equipment will send it to reddit's servers across the Internet, where it will be stored in a database. When you refresh this page, your computer will send a request across the Internet for the latest version of the page, and reddit's servers will assemble it from the pieces in the database and then send the information to your browser, where it will be presented for your entertainment and edification."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzbbf2",
"comment_text": [
"So then its like signals that connect us all "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzbm6e",
"comment_text": [
"http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/gallery/yes/tumblr_lm11bt4OaK1qe6xr2.gif"
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: What is it that makes the stock market go up over the long run?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1snjal
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzbwes",
"comment_text": [
"People are willing to pay more money to own shares of it. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzc0il",
"comment_text": [
"Why? Maybe I need an ELI26, but don't understand the complexities of something. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzc43p",
"comment_text": [
"Because the company is stronger. If Coca Cola makes twice as much money this year as it did last year then my shares of Coca Cola are worth twice as much. Thus, there are people who want to pay me twice as much as I paid for the stock. Therefore the stock of Coca Cola went from 1 dollar a share to 2 dollars a share. As companies make more and more money then owning a piece of that company will be worth more and more and thus the stock will go up."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzcqdb",
"comment_text": [
"Also, if a stock is going up, people want to keep them until they're worth more money, and because nobody is selling, the price goes up even more. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzc5x7",
"comment_text": [
"The trends of the stock market are not ELI5-able because the stock market is not a single, amorphous thing.",
"the stock market is ",
" markets, each with their own dynamics. Where some markets will do poorly, others will do well. ",
"even within a particular market, analysts will go back and forth about whether forecasts are good or bad, high or low. Depending on what your goals are and your investing strategies, you might stand to make more from the stock market going down than up, and would base your analysis off of that.",
"Suffice it to say that when a particular part of the stock market goes up, its because it has a lot of value, for whatever reason."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: What is an arduino, and how does it work? Also, what is a raspberry pi, and how does that work? Then, how do those two work together?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1snk0b
| 12
| true
| false
| 0.88
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzcnp2",
"comment_text": [
"They're tiny computers. They have a little bit of RAM memory, and they have some \"non volatile memory\" similar to SSD drives. The arduino doesn't necessarily run with an operating system; the programs tend to have complete control of the hardware. The Raspberry Pi is a bit beefier, akin to a computer cira 1988... ish. Most people using the Raspberry Pi will use Linux on it.",
"The devices are meant to be really friendly to electronics hobbiests. People use them in their projects to control motors, relays, lights, and so on, and also read in sensor data. The two projects are mutually exclusive, but that doesn't mean you can't make them work together.",
"To program for the Arduino, the manufacturer provides a \"compiler\" which is a program that reads program code and generates machine instructions, a binary, the literal \"ones and zeros\" that makes the processor do stuff. The developer environment performs a sort of hand-shake that uploads the program into the NV memory. Provided the device has power, the program is running.",
"These boards are popular in the community, and addons are prolific; there are expansion boards that give this device the ability to communicate over bluetooth, or other wireless channels, there are giger counters, motor controllers, drivers for lights, and so much more that kind of gets advanced.",
"The Pi is just more and bigger.",
"The point is that these devices are cheap. Above all, simple and cheap. IT doesn't take much computing power to do a whole lot with an electronics project, and now days these things are cheap enough that the Arduino can even exist. This is still a new thing in the electronics hobby. I have an Arduino knock off called a Digispark, it was $8. A tiny computer the size of a quarter for $8. It can run off a watch battery. The Pi's original goal was to be as much computer as possible for $25. I haven't kept track of the thing so I don't know how much it has advanced since. "
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzi78c",
"comment_text": [
"The Arduino is an example of a microcontroller. Microcontrollers are typically used for a dedicated purpose and have some number of inputs and outputs. Examples would be controlling a microwave, a clock radio, or a relatively simple robot. Microcontrollers often do not have a full operating system, but rather a single dedicated program that runs continuously. Your first program might be: if a switch on input 1 is closed, power up a light on output 2 for 5 seconds.",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcontroller",
"Arduino is designed to be an easy to use microcontroller for electronics beginners. Your first functional program can be written in minutes without knowing anything about voltages, clock crystals, resistors, etc.",
"The Raspberry Pi is an example of a single board computer. It is much more like regular desktop computer or laptop than a microcontroller. The Raspberry Pi runs an operating system (e.g. Linux) that allows multiple programs to run and even a desktop graphical environment with a mouse, icons, etc. that a normal personal computer user would expect. Any custom programs or applications on the Raspberry Pi can be much more complicated, making use of the graphical display, built in network connection, and local file storage.",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_computer",
"A search for \"arduino vs raspberry pi\" will result in many well written results. Here is a sample:",
"http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/arduino-vs-raspberry-pi-which-is-the-mini-computer-for-you/",
"\n",
"http://lifehacker.com/how-to-pick-the-right-electronics-board-for-your-diy-pr-742869540",
"The Arduino and Raspberry Pi are often used together because the Raspberry Pi provides a powerful system to develop advanced applications while the Arduino provides a simple means to have many digital and analog inputs and outputs. The Raspberry Pi provides some GPIO pins that can be used to connect to the Arduino. This pairing works well together."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzjjv6",
"comment_text": [
"Both are small single board computers that are aimed at entry level hobbyists and education, and meant to be as open source as possible, and as it happens have a strong user/developer community.",
"Arduino is a system that uses an Atmel AT-Mega microcontroller, with USB serial to a computer, and a number of GPIO lines. You program it from a PC with the Arduino Dev tools (editor/compiler/programmer), and write PC tools to interact with your device. Once programmed it can run standalone doing lower level things.\nIt is made for those that don't care to get involved with chip level hardware, especially QFP and smaller packages ICs come in.",
"Raspberry Pi is more advanced, in that it is more standalone, in that it does not need a PC, for it has an OS, connections for a screen, HID devices (keyboard/mouse), audio out, local storage (SD card), wired network, and some GPIO. It is made to be a modern answer to the 8 bit home computers of the early 1980s, which could be easily programmed and tinkered with, which was lost with at least Windows 2000/XP PCs, if not the Intel/Windows PC at all. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzhiwe",
"comment_text": [
"use them in th\nCan you upload android operating system on a raspberry pi?\nand if so can you use aps like \"talk\" on it?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzhwzj",
"comment_text": [
"I don't think you can load android onto it because android is built for mobile touch-screen devices and as far as I know there isn't a way to get a touchscreen to work with a raspberry pi. I could be wrong, but that seems a little more than it was designed for. Also, Android is based on Linux anyway."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: how does the NSA have he capability/manpower to spy on citizens of a country?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sno0u
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.63
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzd9v4",
"comment_text": [
"The internet. Computers are pretty good at gathering data and most people aren't very good at hiding their data. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzdfkx",
"comment_text": [
"They aren't reading all of the messages. They are just holding them in a supercomputer and then pulling out the one's they want. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzdfkx",
"comment_text": [
"They aren't reading all of the messages. They are just holding them in a supercomputer and then pulling out the one's they want. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzdfwb",
"comment_text": [
"Nope, they aren't.",
"Well not all of it. They have complex computer programs grinding through all the data looking for keywords and patterns. This is hugely complicated and probably classified so I don't know the processes but that is the basics. People don't come in unless the computers find something of interest.",
"So contrary to what some people seem to believe, there is ",
" someone watching your data and laughing at your porn search history. (Well probably not)"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzgidw",
"comment_text": [
"Yep, they've used ",
" to measure computers since at least the '90s. What they do isn't all that different from google's search engines except they've got more mathmaticians/engineers and have been doing similar things since before Google's founders were born. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:How do dogs know to make eye contact?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1snq0x
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.43
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzeqvy",
"comment_text": [
"Dogs have evolved with humans since we were gatherer-hunters (or whatever term you want to use). They're social animals, and in the same way that they would look for body language cues from other dogs, they will look for body language cues from people. Humans emote a lot in their face, and dogs have evolved to respond to our emotions. If you've ever noticed, many dogs will kind of mimic your emotions."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzevav",
"comment_text": [
"great answer"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdze15w",
"comment_text": [
"They have adapted to pay attention to our sclera (the white part of the eye). Humans are the only animal with the white showing in full - it demonstrates what we are looking at."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzh536",
"comment_text": [
" mammals know to make eye contact. It's an evolved instinct, because knowing where other creatures are looking can provide a survival advantage (it helps prey know when to run and when to freeze, and it helps predators know whether or not they've been spotted yet). "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzef67",
"comment_text": [
"Yes, I understand they see with their eyes, SHEESH! But why do they look into our eyes, why don't they look at our chest or something?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: How can Germany abolish tuition fee for university students while we are paying thousands of dollars or more each year?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1snt85
| 15
| true
| false
| 0.75
|
see title.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzfq7v",
"comment_text": [
"The German political culture is not opposed to socialist policies like the nationalization of a university system. ",
"Another huge factor is that German education is much more rigid than in America and the standards for being in a path towards University are very high. This means that a large volume of Germans that are not serious about furthering their education are not running off to University as in America. "
],
"score": 18
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzewc2",
"comment_text": [
"Because the government is paying it for them. "
],
"score": 10
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzffm6",
"comment_text": [
"Because the United States has this fear of any additional government involvement would create a socialist state. So banks and governments just hand out loans for whatever Universities are asking for, because it is a loan, they'll get there money back with interest.",
"The German (and some other nations) give the Universities the tuition required knowing they won't get it back, but see it at an investment in their nation by giving more people the skills and knowledge to make there nation a better place, and raising everyones quality of life by not having massive debts following them for the rest of their lives. "
],
"score": 9
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzeyht",
"comment_text": [
"Because the german government taxes the rich and they don't spend all their money on the military"
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdznrp7",
"comment_text": [
"Yes, overly simplistic in ELI5. There's a line between \"explain so that a layman can understand\", which is the point of this sub, and \"making broad, unsubstantiated generalizations\".",
"The US does indeed spend more than the next 10 countries combined on military, but it's worth noting that the US economy is far bigger than most of those countries combined, and the US serves to defend and assist not only the US but also other countries on that list. German defence spending is still quite significant, too, given the state of the German military and its equipment. ",
"The article you linked about taxes is actually quite good, and brings up a few of the points I was going to bring up to rebutt your point about taxes on the rich; namely, that one cannot simply look at personal taxes, given the nature of the income of very wealthy people. Rich people don't typically make most of their money off of their salaries - they make them off of things like capital gains, which are taxed very differently. In addition, as your article pointed out, the US doesn't have any form of federal goods and sales or value-added tax, while Germany very definitely ",
". This means that Germany is actually taxing all its people more than the US does, and is able to use this money to finance university education. ",
"Of course, there are plenty of other factors at play in terms of university tuition rates and financing education in the two countries."
],
"score": 4
}
|
|
ELI5:Could Jurasic Park really happen
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1snnjb
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.3
|
If we found some dna of dinosaurs, could we recreate them? and if so, how far are we with this (research wise etc)
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzd4eb",
"comment_text": [
"Not likely. ",
"Recent science has come out saying that DNA more than 3 million years old ( I think that's the number) or so is too damaged to attempt cloning."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzeon0",
"comment_text": [
"Having said all that, there could very well be a hypothetical situation in the future where humans have the capability to build DNA from scratch, i.e. design their own dinosaurs. All that is required is that we know the correct order of the bases.",
"However, this would be a different situation to that in Jurassic Park, so as others have said, the direct answer is no."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzf47t",
"comment_text": [
"I agree, all I was suggesting was that in the future we may very well be able to do exactly that"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzdh7b",
"comment_text": [
"Nope. Can't find their DNA, it's too degraded at this point.",
"http://io9.com/5950612/new-study-proves-jurassic-park-could-never-happen"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzf2ob",
"comment_text": [
"there could very well be a hypothetical situation in the future where humans have the capability to build DNA from scratch",
"We already have artificial gene synthesis, we just don't have enough control to say \"We will now synthesize a T-Rex\"."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: If you're born deaf what language are your thoughts in?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1so4jl
| 13
| true
| false
| 0.72
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdziat9",
"comment_text": [
"Probably the language they have been reading most."
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzkoy8",
"comment_text": [
"You also \"think with words,\" you just ",
" attach sounds to them while you do."
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzkenx",
"comment_text": [
"If you're born deaf and learn sign language, you think in sign language. If you don't learn any languages, you don't think. Not in the way that most humans do, at least."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzreih",
"comment_text": [
"People have tons of thoughts that aren't in syntactical language. When you imagine images, rhythms, etc, you are thinking without imposing the structure of language on you your thoughts. "
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzq9ic",
"comment_text": [
"This might also be a good question on ",
"r/askreddit",
" or ",
"r/deaf",
"! "
],
"score": 5
}
|
||
ELI5: Why is the pope so important? Do his quotes and views really change the whole Catholic church?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1so2mw
| 4
| true
| false
| 0.76
|
I'm not a Catholic and so I've never really understood why the pope is so important. Does what he thinks and says really change the Catholic church and what Catholic's believe and how they treat people (athiests, LGBTQ, etc.)? From my non-Catholic view all I ever see is a pope that really only exists to make quotes and put the church in the press. Selected as TIME person of the year this year, I'm curious just to what extent this man influences Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Thanks.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzovzw",
"comment_text": [
"The Pope opinions are claimed to be \"infallible\" only when they are expressed through an \"ex cathedra\" document. This is very rare and has only happened ",
"7 times",
" in 2000 years"
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzis9b",
"comment_text": [
"Not exactly. If the pope muses in an interview he is fully capable of error. It is only in very specific and formal circumstances, speaking ",
"ex cathedra",
", that he is infallible and then only on a matter of faith. "
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzke30",
"comment_text": [
"The catholic church has a structure to it that you don't see as much of in other christian religons. All priests report to a local Bishop. All bishops report to an Archbishop. The Archbishop's are overseen by Cardinal's and the Cardinal's report to the pope.",
"So the pope is like the head of the government that is the Catholic church. Everyone below has to do what he says. In addition, a Catholic believes that god speaks through the pope (not all the time, just on occasion). So in addition to literally being in charge, the pope's attitudes tend to set the tone for the church as a whole. ",
"Now, the Pope saying something might not change people's worldviews over night. But his direction will trickle down to the individual congregations eventually. It stirs discussion inside churches and helps direct the sermons that people hear every Sunday."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzhxmy",
"comment_text": [
"The pope acts as a leader for the Catholic Church. When it comes to matters of faith, he is \"right.\" ",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility",
"\nThis means that his opinions and quotes have a pretty powerful impact on most Catholics, and can in turn affect those of others"
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzisyr",
"comment_text": [
"No. We don't. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: When electricity reaches a gear, what happens?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1si82q
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.6
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxts9g",
"comment_text": [
"The electricity passes through the gear. In short, nothing.",
"Are you asking why electric motors work?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxttbq",
"comment_text": [
"I am asking how electricity activates electrical components to do something. (Like a blender, for example.)"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxtzop",
"comment_text": [
"Blenders are usually direct drive.",
"The different speeds are from an electronic speed controller which sends pulses (longer or shorter) to the motor."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxuuhh",
"comment_text": [
"...surely you've heard of electric motors?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxtmqs",
"comment_text": [
"What do you mean"
],
"score": 0
}
|
||
ELI5: When you're mining for bitcoins, what math problems is your computer trying to solve?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1so7s1
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzjpud",
"comment_text": [
"Bitcoin mining is based on hash functions. Specifically the SHA-256 hash function, which maps arbitrary bit strings to 256-bit outputs in such a way that nobody knows how to find a collision (two inputs with the same output), although the pigeonhole principle implies collisions exist. Bitcoin mining doesn't involve finding collisions, which would be way too hard. Instead, one has to find inputs that lead to outputs with special properties, namely a lot of consecutive zeros. This is a scaled -down version of inverting the hash function. ",
"Hash functions are primarily used to generate fixed-length output data that acts as a shortened reference to the original data. \n It's especially good for cryptography, it's easy to generate and certify that the hash is legitimate but fairly difficult to fake a hash.\nOne practical use is a data structure called a hash table where the data is stored associatively. Searching for a person's name in a list becomes more difficult as the length of the list increases, but the hashed value can be used to store a reference to the original data."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzkxw2",
"comment_text": [
"To expand on ",
"/u/afcagroo",
", a hash function is one way only. If you have the output it's impossible to tell what the input was.",
"Hashing an input into an output is fairly easy for a computer. Computers do it all the time, your computer can likely do one in a millisecond. The trick is that with mining you are looking for a hash (output) that has many zeros all in a row so you are attempting to go backwards, and you can't do that. So the only way is to brute force it, So to do this you take the base data (bitcoin transaction information), add some gibberish, and try to hash it. If you get the result you want, then BINGO you \"win\" and you get the reward. but much more likely is that your computer tries again with different gibberish. Now redo it a 1,000,000 times and see if you get lucky.",
"The end result of this is that the money you can make from mining is directly related to how many attempts your computer can do per second. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzkxw2",
"comment_text": [
"To expand on ",
"/u/afcagroo",
", a hash function is one way only. If you have the output it's impossible to tell what the input was.",
"Hashing an input into an output is fairly easy for a computer. Computers do it all the time, your computer can likely do one in a millisecond. The trick is that with mining you are looking for a hash (output) that has many zeros all in a row so you are attempting to go backwards, and you can't do that. So the only way is to brute force it, So to do this you take the base data (bitcoin transaction information), add some gibberish, and try to hash it. If you get the result you want, then BINGO you \"win\" and you get the reward. but much more likely is that your computer tries again with different gibberish. Now redo it a 1,000,000 times and see if you get lucky.",
"The end result of this is that the money you can make from mining is directly related to how many attempts your computer can do per second. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzkeus",
"comment_text": [
"You take some digital information (a file, or whatever) and mathematically \"smush\" it down in a way that it is (usually) much smaller and no one can reasonably use the hash to reconstruct the original. Kind of like running meat through a grinder, turning it into hash. ",
"But it's different, because it is totally repeatable. If you take the same original file and run it through the same hash function, you will always get the same output. But if you change so much as one bit in the original, you'll get a very different output. ",
"All of these properties make hashes useful in creating digital signatures. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzkinc",
"comment_text": [
"Namely the main idea behind Pretty Good Privacy encryption and decryption practices."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How did living organisms develop eyes?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sicpm
| 4
| true
| false
| 0.76
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy1dmi",
"comment_text": [
"So now we have no explanation AND no link. Dammit. Great job. I was interested in what this topic had to offer."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy2k30",
"comment_text": [
"Primative creatures evolved cells on their back which could detect changes in light, whenever this cell noticed changes in light the creature knew a potential predator was nearby and could hide away.",
"Over millions of years, creatures evolved several of these cells, because there were many light-detecting cells they were able to detect general direction based on the order in which the light changed around them.",
"Further evolution meant these light detecting cells were in an indent in the creatures body, this meant the creature could turn and face its body in a desired direction to detect changes in light.",
"This became the foundation for the eye, millions more years of evolution refined the eye. The human eye is one of the worst final designs of the eye compared to creatures like the octopus, the falcon and the mantis shrimp."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxvl4n",
"comment_text": [
"That's why I limited to just the picture. It seems to me that the problem is that the person asked a question that doesn't require much explanation. I really don't know what else to explain besides just saying what happened."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxvg9w",
"comment_text": [
"Top-level comments are for explanations or related questions only. No low effort \"explanations\", single sentence replies, anecdotes, or jokes in top-level comments.",
"ELI5 isn't for just linking to wikipedia. Top level posts require an attempt at an explanation. Removed."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxvg9w",
"comment_text": [
"Top-level comments are for explanations or related questions only. No low effort \"explanations\", single sentence replies, anecdotes, or jokes in top-level comments.",
"ELI5 isn't for just linking to wikipedia. Top level posts require an attempt at an explanation. Removed."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: Why don't I see black out of one closed eye, but do with two?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sigbr
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxxkvd",
"comment_text": [
"You do, but your brain is smart enough to compensate by focusing on the useful information coming from you open eye, and ignoring the closed one."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy50t7",
"comment_text": [
"Because, with our stereoscopic vision, our brains automatically combine the two individual images of each eye into one. This is to compare the positioning of objects in each picture to create a sense of depth, since we don't have an intuitive 3rd dimensional perspective, and to make it a little easier on our brains compared to always having two images to keep track of. So, when one eye is closed, the other eye's image is just superimposed on the black the other eye sees."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxxszx",
"comment_text": [
"Makes enough sense :) Thanks for the explanations."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxwwsn",
"comment_text": [
"This has to be the dumbest novelty account I have ever seen...."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxwwsn",
"comment_text": [
"This has to be the dumbest novelty account I have ever seen...."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How to drive in a multiple lane roundabout with only single lane exits.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1si6c6
| 2
| true
| false
| 1
|
I've looked up how to drive in multiple lane roundabouts and it makes sense when there's more than one lane to exit into but what about ones that don't? Is it poor planning or is there a different way to drive on ones such as this?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxt5vc",
"comment_text": [
"Its just like any normal street with multiple lanes. The cars exiting quickly use the right lane while the ones going further around the roundabout use the left lane."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxtbmh",
"comment_text": [
"How do you have time to change into the inside lanes and then change back when it only takes 10 seconds to go around?"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxuamo",
"comment_text": [
"You need to be in the correct lane before you enter the intersection. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxubuf",
"comment_text": [
"Habits picked up from fast paced european travel. They love roundabouts. They are a bit awkward at first but once you get the hang of them, they are really useful and time savers."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxunh4",
"comment_text": [
"The signage in that traffic circle isn't very good. ",
"Take a look at this one from Springfield, Oregon.",
" How each lane should be used can be seen by observing the arrows painted in the lanes.",
"The first rule of traffic circle club is that ",
" Traffic not yet in the circle must yield. So let's say a car is approaching the circle from the bottom of the picture. The drivers decide which lane to get into as they approach the circle. A driver who plans to go straight through can get in either lane. Drivers turning right get in the right lane, drivers turning left get in the left lane.",
"When it is safe to do so, the driver enters the circle. A right turn is pretty clear, I'd say: the driver takes the very first exit. A driver in the left lane enters the inner or \"left\" lane of the circle; a driver in the right lane enters the outer or \"right\" lane of the circle. A driver in the inner lane can proceed to any exit (it's the second exit to go straight through, and the third exit for a left turn). A driver in the outer lane ",
" use the second exit to go straight through."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How much can I make at maturity from a US Treasury note if I put in $10,000 for 2 years? Is it completely safe? Thanks
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1siutf
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.75
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy1hpc",
"comment_text": [
"Depends on what kind of T-note you are getting.",
"According to the website",
" a 2 year treasury note today has about 0.03% interest. ",
"You buy in $100 blocks, so you would be buying 100 2-year t-notes, which would compound interest every 6 months until maturity, as I understand it.",
"At 0.30% interest, if you bought today, in 6 months you would have - well, not a lot. But its 100% safe - its absolutely guaranteed to give you a return. $10,000 might not seem like a lot back in 2 years, but if you're putting millions or even billions into it, you get steady money out of it and its guaranteed return.",
"A 30-year bond has better interest rates that pay out 6 months, but - well its 30 years. Three are also 6-month Treasury Bills that have an interest rate in at 0.1%, which is at least a little better, and thats about the same rate as 1 year CDs.",
"At the 10K level, I'm unsure how good of an investment it would be, but if you're looking for completely safe investment with a guaranteed return, that would be it.",
"I didn't do any math because I'd do it wrong, but you should get the idea :)"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy2788",
"comment_text": [
"Note that at 0.03% you are actually losing money effectively. Because while you are getting .03% interest! due to inflation! that money is losing about 1% per year! leading to a return of -0.97%. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy3tna",
"comment_text": [
"Surely they're still marginally better than gov bonds?"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy1t75",
"comment_text": [
"Thank you. I appreciate it."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy2iak",
"comment_text": [
"You'll be losing more by keeping it at a bank, as I understand it. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
From an earlier post, ELI5: Why can't children carry asthma inhalers in school?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sin8s
| 6
| true
| false
| 0.8
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxypat",
"comment_text": [
"Well some schools have the 0-tolerance for drugs policy including prescribed drugs. They have that to prevent lawsuits. "
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy0ge9",
"comment_text": [
"They have that to prevent lawsuits.",
"And ironically, the school in question here probably brought on a huge one."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy14pi",
"comment_text": [
"Because drugs are bad. seriously. I know how ridiculous that sounds but that's what it is, they are so afraid of anyone possibly doing anything related to drugs that they ban the good right along with the bad. the 1% chance that something bad might happen justifies banning the 99% of good it would do."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy13mv",
"comment_text": [
"I'm sure some kid somewhere sprayed it in a classmate's face."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy31bb",
"comment_text": [
"That kid was me. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
||
ELI5:The four examples Kant gives of the categorical imperative.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sj1t4
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.56
|
Can someone please explain how these relate to the CI and universal law? I did a search and found some clarification on the CI, but I still cannot fully relate these to the examples Kant gives. And also, please no Kant puns!
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy3rft",
"comment_text": [
"I'll try to help, but it's been a while since my Kant class and I was by no means an expert, but with Kant, who really is?",
"So first the categorical imperative can be summed up to say \"act in such a way that your actions would became a maxim for the world.\" Basically, act how you would want others to act, also like \"treat others how you would like to be treated.\"",
"I hope that helped, since Kant is not easy to understand. I am not too sure if what I said on suicide and helping others is correct, but is the best that I can remember. In short I would summarized the CI as \"act in such a way that you would want everyone, and I mean ",
" to to act.\""
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy33f5",
"comment_text": [
"Damn. Isn't there immanuel on it that I could read?"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy5ryx",
"comment_text": [
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. \nLet's take your borrow with a promise example. If everyone borrowed with no promise to return. This would not be moral because you are using the lender as a mere means to an end. Therefore it does not follow the categorical imperative."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy6kyy",
"comment_text": [
"Beginning to wish I'd taken this topic seriously ...",
"http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russian-man-shot-in-quarrel-over-immanuel-kants-philosophy-8820327.html"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy2znr",
"comment_text": [
"Kant help. Sorry. "
],
"score": -3
}
|
|
ELI5: How did shaving your vagina become such a wide-spread trend?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sj88p
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.56
|
(You're going to sound like a pedophile)
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy4xft",
"comment_text": [
"Having hair on your head is a cultural expectation. ",
"There's also menstrual blood, which is a real pain when it gets dried and stuck on pubic hair. "
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy4xft",
"comment_text": [
"Having hair on your head is a cultural expectation. ",
"There's also menstrual blood, which is a real pain when it gets dried and stuck on pubic hair. "
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy72cm",
"comment_text": [
"I read not too long ago that \"crabs\" (body lice) have disappeared by 90% from levels they were at 20 years ago or so since this trend of waxing/shaving became so popular with women and even men. Might be one good reason for it's being so popular. Also, cunnilingus is much nicer. Who wants to stop every 3 minutes to remove a pubic hair caught between your teeth?"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy52hb",
"comment_text": [
"no, but i see what you mean. shaving your crotch in general is a personal preference for women and men alike too. and it's true that when a woman has her menstrual cycle, it's just messy, so having no hair down there makes easier clean up, and feeling better."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyx95w",
"comment_text": [
"Its hard to stop once you start,the hair gets thicker and thus more itchy.\nPlus it keeps cleaner,and I just don't like body hair."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: How are police checkpoints/roadblocks legal?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sj7vm
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.63
|
Shouldn't you be protected by the 4th amendment if they had no reason to stop you solely on the fact you decided to drive down that road?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy4ox9",
"comment_text": [
"Because they are stopping you based on public road safety, and they are stopping everyone",
"If they were searching for drugs, it wouldn't be legal (unless it's at a border)",
"If they were only stopping young males, it wouldn't be legal (unless they were searching for someone who matched that description and it was linked to public safety)",
"But as it stands, they are stopping you for a completely legitimate reason (trying to stop drunk drivers), and they are stopping everyone.",
"The 4th amendment stops unreasonable search and seizure",
"\" ",
" \"",
"As it stands, they have a reason to stop you, but they can't search you unless they have probably cause (they smell drugs, you're passengers are drinking, etc)"
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy4xav",
"comment_text": [
"I think something that should be emphasized here is that if you get stopped they don't have a right to search your vehicle. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy5076",
"comment_text": [
"Not without legitimate suspicion."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy8ru2",
"comment_text": [
"but they can't search you unless they have probably cause (they smell drugs, you're passengers are drinking, etc)",
"Since i don't come from the US, i need to ask. Is it illegal to have a drunken passenger?"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy4jg5",
"comment_text": [
"This comic explains exactly this in a great ELI5 way, starting from this page. ",
"http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1917"
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do we sometimes hesitate on multiple choice questions if the perceived right choice comes up multiple times in succession (eg Four As in a row)?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sj9hx
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.57
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy4xml",
"comment_text": [
"Because we expect the pattern to be random. Seeing it as not random makes us feel like we must be doing something wrong (\"there is no way they would have such a long string of C's\")"
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy54xc",
"comment_text": [
"I guess... I wasn't really talking about a pattern, when I said \"pattern\" I meant the distribution of the answers."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy5gn7",
"comment_text": [
"When I was in 3rd grade taking multiple choice tests, I would also look at the scan-tron and change any answer that appeared more than 3 times in a row, because I thought that the statistical chance of a correct answer being the same letter more than 3 times was too small..."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy63jm",
"comment_text": [
"Gambler's fallacy. Humans expect outcomes that have not appeared recently to happen because they are \"due\". However in a random process this is not true. ",
"On the other hand, the test writer's answer key is not a random process..."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy4yhb",
"comment_text": [
"How can a pattern be random? Isn't that the exact opposite of a pattern?"
],
"score": -2
}
|
|
4WD vs. AWD
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sjdkf
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy6c87",
"comment_text": [
"They are two different driving assists that do different things when they encounter limited traction situations. ",
"All Wheel Drive (AWD) is a system that accepts the power from the engine and distributes it to all four wheels at the same time. The power goes from the engine and then gets distributed evenly to the front and rear differentials. These differentials manage the power to the wheels on the front and rear axle. And almost sure that on a AWD vehicle, there are 4 brakes, one that manages each wheel when you push on the brake pedal, 4WD does not, it's just the front wheels on 4WD.",
"4 Wheel Drive (4WD) is where the power is always going to one axle and you use a switch to engage the transfer case that powers the front axle (this is all if you are driving a truck, I'm using this example) and then doing this will transfer the power to all four tires. However the greatest difference between 4WD and AWD is that 4WD is highly suggested to NOT be used on asphault as the mechanical parts that engage the 4WD system will be damaged because they do not distribute the power around like a AWD system does. ",
"When you are off road or on snowy surfaces, both 4WD and AWD are great helps...However, there are two things you need to keep in mind. ",
"1.) Both do not make you invincible the conditions and you'll crash if you drive beyond the limits of traction in your vehicle.",
"2.) You will end up crashing your car if you drive a 4WD through a turn in the snow (or brake in offroad/snowy conditions) at speed, thinking it will act like a AWD",
"The hugest thing to remember about 4WD is that when you put on the brakes, since you only have 2 active brakes (front wheels), you will be using just the fronts to stop 4 wheels spinning. This will be overbearing as the rear wheels will spin unopposed and not actively managed by a braking system. This will lead to your brakes not working adequately and you will not maintain proper traction when going through a turn at speed in 4WD. You might end up understeering or doing other undesirable executions... :( ",
"There are videos that can explain this better, I'm just putting in my .02 on this. I have driven an Audi, Subarus and Tacomas and have been able to experience this stuff first hand.",
"AWD:\n",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL9LmT3fzbQ",
"4WD:\n",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN6xHc7Nz-E",
"And then there are also locking differentials too....",
"Way too much to think about, but if you hadn't heard of some of these things and are considering a vehicle purchase, take these videos to mind, consider where you're driving and have fun!"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy67k4",
"comment_text": [
"I don't think this is entirely accurate. For instance, my Nissan Juke is AWD and I can choose at any time between two AWD modes and FWD. ",
"The bigger difference to me is that, at least originally, 4WD vehicles were not meant to work continuously in 4WD. It was something you engaged only on terrain and conditions that warranted it. Daily driving in normal conditions with 4WD engaged would be detrimental to the drive shaft and transmission. I don't know if this remains true with modern 4WD vehicles, but as recent as the late-90's I was instructed by the Chrysler/Jeep dealership not to drive around with 4x4 engaged on my Jeep unless I absolutely needed it. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy67k4",
"comment_text": [
"I don't think this is entirely accurate. For instance, my Nissan Juke is AWD and I can choose at any time between two AWD modes and FWD. ",
"The bigger difference to me is that, at least originally, 4WD vehicles were not meant to work continuously in 4WD. It was something you engaged only on terrain and conditions that warranted it. Daily driving in normal conditions with 4WD engaged would be detrimental to the drive shaft and transmission. I don't know if this remains true with modern 4WD vehicles, but as recent as the late-90's I was instructed by the Chrysler/Jeep dealership not to drive around with 4x4 engaged on my Jeep unless I absolutely needed it. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy6ybj",
"comment_text": [
"The bigger difference to me is that, at least originally, 4WD vehicles were not meant to work continuously in 4WD.",
"This is correct. The reason is because 4WD usually involves locking the differential, so you have to be driving in low-traction conditions in order to allow the wheels on the inside of the turn to slip a bit. If you don't, you're looking at a broken axle."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy70e4",
"comment_text": [
"A \"locked differential\" acts differently than a 4WD I think."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Why do children and adults like to build LEGO?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sjews
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.43
|
Please, only serious answers.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy6dyr",
"comment_text": [
"Once I started reading this. I already knew I was in the presences of greatness. Tell me where I need to fwd this huge shipment of Legos. I hope it is to your liking. "
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy6cv3",
"comment_text": [
"I think, no expertise whatsoever, that for young children it gives an immediate sense of achievement when they finish building their creations "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy6h4g",
"comment_text": [
"Sense of accomplishment, and a wee bit of intelligence when you make something you wanted out of bits and pieces of other sets.",
"Turns out some people I knew who never liked Legos either never knew that they could make whatever they wanted from the pieces, or lacked the craftsmanship to build something else besides what was advertised on the box."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy6u8d",
"comment_text": [
"People like to create things. I get around \"Lego\" blocks, \"Lincoln Logs\" or \"Tinker Toys\" I immediately transform into an 8 year old. Nostalgia?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdycly7",
"comment_text": [
"Unrestricted imagination. The pieces are so modular that you can, with enough pieces and desire, make something that resembles anything you want, from a tiger to the Starship Enterprise."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
How accurate are the blue strips on a razor blade at indicating when the blade should be replaced?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sjpuj
| 3
| true
| false
| 0.72
|
Seems like when I shave the little blue strip that disappears and is supposed to indicate when to replace the blade wears off after about a week. I use my blade for a long time after that because I always assumed it was a scam. Am I right?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy8y2q",
"comment_text": [
"I think the marketing people are getting the edge over the strip scientists at razor companies \"Look I hear you about the empirical effect of water on dyed rubber but lets just make that thing fade as quick as fuck\""
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdybm1c",
"comment_text": [
"I'm thinking its similar to the expiration date on bottles of water and canned goods. Most of the time, it doesn't indicate when the contents go bad. It seems to be there to encourage you to buy more."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdycp5h",
"comment_text": [
"AFAIK the blue strips refers not to the blade but to the small brushes that have some kind of gel so it wont irritate the skin."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy8wzf",
"comment_text": [
"/r/wicked_edge",
"Spend $20 on a handle and use $0.05 blades for life. No longer will you feel compelled to use a blade longer to save money (unless you're a major tight ass)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdygiy5",
"comment_text": [
"No, that's marketing."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why does ice cold water taste better?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sjr8b
| 4
| true
| false
| 0.65
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy96dl",
"comment_text": [
"Personal preference. I know people who prefer it at room temperature."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyivyy",
"comment_text": [
"The theory is that we developed a preference for cold water because it is less suitable for large bacterial colonies. No conclusive proof for this, I just heard about it on \"The Life of Mammals,\" can't remember which episode."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy9u4i",
"comment_text": [
"There's a few explanations to this, and one of them has to do with the fact that taste buds become numb. When your buds get numb, it becomes harder for it to taste the \"tap water taste\". ",
"Other explanations are:\nDepending on where you live, lukewarm water travels less than cold water in the pipes. This means cold water is usually more fresh compared to lukewarm water that's been sitting in the pipe/tank for a while. Longer pipe-time means stale water. ",
"Also, warm water dissolves more chemicals and other impurities compared to cold water. ",
"These could be the reason why cold water tastes better..? At the end, i guess it comes down to opinions... "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyg1hq",
"comment_text": [
"Varies from place to place. Water in the town I live in isn't that good, but the water in my home town is better then any bottles water I've had.",
"Taste of water depends on the source 100% so nothing you said makes a point.",
"Also all water is the same until it reaches your house except hot, which is stored in your water heater. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyfl1b",
"comment_text": [
"More oyxgen."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How does a .zip reduce the file size of its contents?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sjt9z
| 5
| true
| false
| 0.6
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy9urk",
"comment_text": [
"At the most basic level, a compression algorithm reduces non-unique data to an instruction for how to re-construct that data.",
"Think of your great great great great great great great grandmother. Obviously that's a long piece of information, but you could compress it by writing about your great(x7) grandmother. You've taken information that was repeated and reduced it to a single instance plus how many times to repeat it. You can also take a pattern that repeats a lot and designate a symbol to represent it. We do this in English with things like copyright and trademark symbols, road signs, bathroom designations, and acronyms and initialisms. This is why some types of data are more compressible than others. Things like a Word document is going to have a lot of repetition due to the standard formatting operators, but something like an MP3 is almost all unique with very little repetition.",
"Compression algorithms in reality are much more complex, but these are the basic techniques."
],
"score": 29
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy9w6q",
"comment_text": [
"First, it finds repeated sequences of characters and builds a table that attributes a code to each different sequence.\nThen, it replaces each sequence with its code, thus reducing the file size.",
"There is a lot more going on, but this the base for any reducing algorithm."
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdycf5x",
"comment_text": [
"This is pretty much spot on. Like a lot of data is:",
"1111000010100100000100000100100100111111",
"so to compress it, it's like ",
"4x1,4x0,10100,6x0,1,5x0,3x100,6x1",
"which is shorter. In many cases, especially with text files, the binary is very very compacted because there are very few combinations. But something like an image or MP3 file, which have millions of combinations, and usually already compacted, barely shrink at all."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdycsmr",
"comment_text": [
"The best explanation I've heard for compression goes something like this:",
"Take a phrase\n\"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country\"",
"Some words appear more than once, make a dictionary\n[1]what\n[2]you\n[3]country\n[4]can\n[5]do\n[6]for",
"With the dictionary, replace words",
"\"Ask not 1 2r 3 4 5 6 2, but 1 2 4 5 6 2r 3\"",
"The base phrase has 78 characters, but the condensed phrase + dictionary has 70 characters. We have effectively removed 10 percent of the letters without sacrificing any information. As you can imagine, this example could be scaled up to a book without any real changes in methodology",
"On a related note, you will see that the condensed phrase + dictionary is harder to read than the original phrase. This is a trade-off that all compression algorithms make, and, in general, the more condensed a file is, the more computational power it requires (the harder it is) to read"
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdybe43",
"comment_text": [
"Here's a video explaining the basics of compression. They use a picture as an example, but the basic concept is still the same: look for a pattern then find a way to store the pattern more efficiently. ",
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lto-ajuqW3w"
],
"score": 4
}
|
||
ELI5: Nurses
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sjw53
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyb9ux",
"comment_text": [
"My wife is a nurse, and I work in a hosptial. We both work for large hospitals in the Boston area, so we may not be representative of all, but there a very large number of male nurses. Women still outnumber them, but male nurses are not all uncommon, except in certain specialities, like OB and GYN.",
"I would say most of the nurses in our Ortho department are men.",
"A Dr who doesn't respect the nurses is going to be in for a very bad time. It is something I think most learn soon after Med School. Nothing slaps down a know it all resident like a charge nurse who has been in a unit for 30 years.",
"As for the types, there are RN's, LPN's and CNA's mostly. Though there are also nurse practitioners and nurse anesthetists, who handle some of the roles more traditionally associated with MD's. Of the more traditional nursing roles, the RN's are the top dogs, followed by LPN and CNA's. If you want to work at a top hospital, you need the RN, ours won't even look at the others for anything but menial tasks. Most big hospitals also requires a BS to go along with that RN, but smaller ones probably won't."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdybf0o",
"comment_text": [
"Nures Practitioners work under a Dr's name and Nurse Practitioners have a Masters Degree in Nursing. So yes quite a lot of schooling."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyakfh",
"comment_text": [
"There is less stigma than there used to be about male nurses (but I'm sure there is still some). ",
"RN is a registered nurse and has the most training\nLPN is a licensed practical nurse and has less training (and less opportunity for advancement). ",
"Most doctors have a lot of respect for nurses - there is still some old school thinking, but modern healthcare is a team. The bulk of the responsibility lies on the doctor, so there is a bit of a hierarchy, but there are many doctors who realize that the nurses play an integral role in patient care and effective care would not be possible without them. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyb5wn",
"comment_text": [
"Don't forget ",
"nurse practitioners",
" - they have more schooling than RNs and can work \"like doctors\"."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyawy7",
"comment_text": [
"Best you can get with out alot of school is CNA. The LPN exam NCLEX-PN is very hard. There are State requirments that need to be fulfilled before you are able to get licensed. I work with multiple RN's and LPN's and I was also intrested in it. The Dr's I work with do respect the nurses but again there is not a male nurse on the team.",
"\nCNA is Certified Nursing Assistant. It is an Unlicensed assistive personnel job. Which means that you do not get a State License."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do people vote for the Republicans?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sk43q
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdycpl4",
"comment_text": [
"Your question is loaded (comes with a clear bias), and so it has been removed. Try rephrasing objectively or else post in ",
"/r/changemyview",
"."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyd3gr",
"comment_text": [
"Without getting in to who is right and who is wrong politically, it's a lot more complicated than \"republicans bad democrats good\" or vice versa. Regardless of political affiliation, how a politician presents his views is as important as what those views are. \"We need more money for bombs\", for example, wouldn't get as much support as \"We need to keep our country safe\". Likewise on the liberal side. \"We need more taxes\" doesn't sound as appealing as \"We need to help the poor\". I'm boiling both of these down to simplicity, as both of these issues are far more complicated than a simple answer can provide. ",
"The other side of this is how you present the other party's ideas. This guy wants more military spending, he's a war-monger who's lining his own pockets with corporate payoffs. That guy wants more environmental regulation, he's a bleeding heart who cares more about the spotted owl than the safety of our country. And this is all very basic as well. It gets MUCH uglier than that. ",
"I know as a foreigner, it's hard to understand American politics, and especially as a Eurooean, it's hard for you to understand the Republicans, but try to remember that we live in different cultures with different attitudes. What is perfectly reasonable to those in a more liberal country screams of anti-Americanism to a lot of conservatives in The U.S."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdza5za",
"comment_text": [
"Thank you for your responce. It really helped to get someone elses view on the matter. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzaly1",
"comment_text": [
"Sure thing. Again, it's way more complicated than that, but I hope I shed some light on it."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyd3zh",
"comment_text": [
"As a life-long Republican, it's getting harder for me to answer that question. I played with crossing over to the other camp and voting Democrat but it was even more depressing. Choosing to be an Independent puts me on the sidelines. At the age of 60 I'm questioning why I bother. Why can't we vote a-la-mode -- for issues instead of people? I find most all politicians to be liars and thieves, not just Republicans. I'd like the chance to vote for a woman President -- such as Elizabeth Warren. Somebody honest."
],
"score": 2
}
|
||
ELI5: Public key exchange -- in practice
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sk9hv
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
According to Wikipedia: The public key is used to encrypt plaintext or to verify a digital signature; whereas the private key is used to decrypt ciphertext or to create a digital signature. Each user has a pair of cryptographic keys – a public encryption key and a private decryption key. Similarly, a key pair used for digital signatures consists of a private signing key and a public verification key. The public key is widely distributed, while the private key is known only to its proprietor. So if I want to encrypt email and send it to my mistress, she has to have my public key stored in her email client? If I am distributing my public key to everyone, what is to keep my girlfriend from reading the same damn email? And if none of my friends or contacts are running PGP, what good is any of this going to do me, since none of them can read it? Or what am I missing? Cheers.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdye8kn",
"comment_text": [
"So if I want to encrypt email and send it to my mistress, she has to have my public key stored in her email client? ",
"No, ",
" have to have ",
" public key stored. You encrypt with her public key, she decrypts with her private key.",
"If I am distributing my public key to everyone, what is to keep my girlfriend from reading the same damn email? ",
"Basically see above. Everyone can encrypt with the public key. Only your mistress can read the message, because only she has the private key. ",
"And if none of my friends or contacts are running PGP, what good is any of this going to do me, since none of them can read it? ",
"Cryptography for communication is useless if you're the only one using it. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyekm4",
"comment_text": [
"And suddenly, all the tetrominoes fall into place.",
"\nHoly shit.",
"\nCheers."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdygv4d",
"comment_text": [
"The common analogy is that public codes are like locks and private codes are like keys. You have a lock that only you can open-- so you open it, and send it to a friend. They snap that lock onto a box and send it back to you. If someone intercepts the first message, there's no harm done, because you can give away your lock as many times as you want. And if someone intercepts the second message, there's still no harm done, because nobody but you can open your lock once it's shut.",
"Of course, with some clever lockpicks (math) or brute force (cluster computing) you might be able to break a public lock without the matching key, which is where the encryption arms race starts."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdylw51",
"comment_text": [
"My confusion lay in not understanding the practical application of the process. I was under the misguided impression that people ready your encrypted stuff with your public key",
"If you do it that way, then that's essentially a digital signature. It's not secure communication in any way, but because you're the only one who can encrypt it, that's proof it came from you. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyh51r",
"comment_text": [
"I had not heard that analogy before. Thank you.",
"\nMy confusion lay in not understanding the practical application of the process. I was under the misguided impression that people ready your encrypted stuff with your public key. Which did not make sense to me. ",
"/r/The_Serious_Account",
" set me straight.",
"\nI do like your analogy though. I am stealing it as my own.",
"\nCheers."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
If global warming is real, then why are there still record setting low temperatures?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sk8dd
| 3
| true
| false
| 0.59
|
I'm a big believer in taking care of our planet, but I'm curious if these extremes have anything to do with the fact our atmosphere is being torn apart by CO2 emissions. EDIT: just woke up (in Asia) and saw a bunch of responses! I'll be reading in a little bit? Thanks everyone!
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdydwsb",
"comment_text": [
"Global warming doens't mean that every day is the new hottest day on record, it means, on average temperatures are increasing globally. There is still summer and winter, and days and nights, so there is always changing temperatures.",
"But temperatures globally have been hotter in the last 10 years than in any 10 year period on record, by a big margin, that's what \"global\" means, it's long term and across the planet, it's not really about an individual town somewhere which had a random cold day."
],
"score": 9
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdydzg8",
"comment_text": [
"Plus global warming causes weather patterns to change which could include bringing cold air to places that usually don't get it."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyfhi5",
"comment_text": [
"TL:DR most these other comments...\nGlobal warming = entire planet's CLIMATE over long periods of time",
"record low temp = local WEATHER fluctuation relative to about a century of records for the area"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyemn0",
"comment_text": [
"Think about it like the tides. If I tell you the tide is coming in, it doesn't mean that every wave will go farther up the beach than the wave before. In fact, you could still have many waves in a row that don't go very far up the beach at all, especially if in the area where you happen to be looking there's a strong wind, or something similar. But, ultimately the pull of the moon wins out, and the tide rises. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyh48y",
"comment_text": [
"I think 'melting glaciers'. Things like Greenland melting means lots of cold water spreading out. The planet absorbs more ",
", but the temperature (in some places, and at some times at least) may be lower."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: Why does no one on this sub explain anything like they're talking to a 5 year old
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sktx2
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.22
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyk20s",
"comment_text": [
"\"ELI5 is not for literal-five-year-olds.\""
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyk2pf",
"comment_text": [
"\"LI5 means friendly, simplified and layman-accessible explanations, not for responses aimed at literal five year olds (which can be patronizing).\"",
"If you ask a question and the explanations given are not layman-accessible enough for you, it is your prerogative to ask for further explanation, just tell them you still don't understand, or ask specifically about what part of the explanation you didn't get."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyk3wg",
"comment_text": [
"\"ELI5 is not for literal five year olds.\" - It's in every submission box on this subreddit.",
"Please read the sidebar. Removing this question.",
"It's obvious that every top answer is a cut and paste from google",
"This is definitely not true. Feel free to report things that are copy-pasted from the top google result though."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdykfku",
"comment_text": [
"Whatever, I removed this post. You'll want to read the sidebar if you want to be a part of this community."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdykliy",
"comment_text": [
"k"
],
"score": 3
}
|
||
ELI5: Why do we use different words to name different groups of animals (e.g. cattle/herd, whales/pod) and why are some so weird (crows/murder, fish/school)?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sf8wm
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
What was the scientific/linguistics reasoning for using different names for all sorts of animal groups? Why didn't they opt for a single, broader term, such as a herd or flock?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx00pd",
"comment_text": [
"Each word has its own definition, which relate closer to that type of animal. I'd say its a question of linguistics. You would sound weird saying \"bird group, whale group, cow group\""
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx0hde",
"comment_text": [
"It sounds weird because we are used to the other words we have implemented.",
"So, going off of this, why is it called 'a murder of crows' when 'a flock of crows' sounds just fine?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx0l9z",
"comment_text": [
"Have you ever heard anyone actually say a murder of crows?",
"Edit: would make a great band name."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx1eyq",
"comment_text": [
"Sounds kinda weird, doesn't it?",
"So, we're back where we started. I'm still wondering why the different names exist. You said that without them, it would sound weird. Then agreed that with them, some still sound weird."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx1j4u",
"comment_text": [
"I guess I mean, calling them all the same would make you sound dumb. Changing up your wording makes you sound smarter. Its like starting every sentence in a story with the same word."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
Why do we poop and brush our teeth in the same room?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sf6i9
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.44
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwzhbp",
"comment_text": [
"That's where the water is."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwzpzs",
"comment_text": [
"The bathroom is designed to be a one stop shop for cleaning and health maintenance. It has water and everything you need to clean yourself in it. There's nothing unhygienic about doing it in the same room (unless you have some strange practises) "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwz6gn",
"comment_text": [
"Privacy."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwzxbz",
"comment_text": [
"That's where the sink is. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx0bip",
"comment_text": [
"And the Mythbusters found you can place your toothbrush just about anywhere in your house and it could still wind up with fecal coliform bacteria on it (the aerosols generated by a flushing toilet can travel pretty far).",
"The presence of a germ, or even many germs on a toothbrush isn't what makes you sick. It can take several thousand or millions of the same germ to give you the same illness fast enough for your immune system to have difficulty responding to it. This is why commercial food preparation areas don't need to meet a standard of sterility, merely \"sanitary.\""
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How to drink different kinds of alcohol
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sffsm
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx27t7",
"comment_text": [
"A shot (44.3602943 milliliters) is when hard liquor (usually a cheaper variety) is all drank at once. It may be followed by a chase which serves to wash it down and get the taste out of your mouth. More expensive hard liquors (i.e. scotch) are generally sipping drinks. I would also classify wine as a sipping drink, though I'm no wine drinking expert. Beer, coolers and cocktails are generally drank much the same way you would a pop. Chugging is best reserved for St. Patrick's Day and homecoming and is done with cheap beer at a party or during a drinking game."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx240w",
"comment_text": [
"it's explain it to me like i'm five, not explain it to me like i'm retarded."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx2cut",
"comment_text": [
"thank you very much, if I had any money I would give you reddit gold"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx2dtu",
"comment_text": [
"Well it's the thought that counts"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx2bre",
"comment_text": [
"Because your post isn't asking a simplified conceptual explanation, but rather for an answer, its been removed. ",
"You should try ",
"/r/answers",
", ",
"/r/askreddit",
" or even one of the more specialized answers subreddits like ",
"/r/askhistorians",
", ",
"/r/askscience",
" or others too numerous and varied to mention. ",
"Rest assured this doesn't make your question ",
", it just makes it more appropriate for another subreddit. Good luck! "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: If we have an electrical "grid" why do we still lose power? At what stage of power delivery is the grid no longer a grid?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sfi4k
| 1
| true
| false
| 1
|
Why do we still lose power during a storm or if a power pole is hit by a car? If electricity is delivered via a grid losing a power pole shouldn't affect entire neighborhoods.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx2s58",
"comment_text": [
"It's called a grid but often enough for the end-user, like you in your home, there's a single point of failure... actually more than one. If the power substation that serves you goes up in flame, for example, you're cut off. A tree falls on the power line? That's the end of your power until it gets put back up. The griddiness of it is only really something an engineer talking about a large geographical area will see."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx2t1b",
"comment_text": [
"If a car hits a power pole down the block why do entire neighborhoods or city blocks lose power?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx2t1b",
"comment_text": [
"If a car hits a power pole down the block why do entire neighborhoods or city blocks lose power?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx3xw1",
"comment_text": [
"I see it as more of a tree in a way. For instance in the northeast say some really bad storm hits Canada, you can actually lose your power due to it because some of the power and the grid stems from Canada."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx4dvq",
"comment_text": [
"The 'grid' refers to the large-scale infrastructure level. Your whole state is connected to neighboring states so that power companies can trade electricity.",
"By the time it gets to your house, there's only a single line running in for the \"last mile\". If that goes down, you're in the dark."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:Why does a car battery only require the positive red terminal to work, but other batteries like those in a flashlight require both positive and negative?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sfm6m
| 3
| true
| false
| 0.81
|
For example, my car battery's is able to function with just the red terminal connected to the engine/alternator. The other terminal is attached to a painted metal surface in the engine bay. However in a small flashlight both battery terminals are required to be connected to the light bulb in order to complete the circuit.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx55u5",
"comment_text": [
"This diagram here",
" exactly shows your flashlight example. One terminal of a battery is connected with wire to one terminal of a light bulb (let's say this wire is black in color). The other terminal of the battery is connected to a one terminal of a switch, and the other terminal of the switch is connected to the second terminal of the light bulb (let's say that these wires are red in color). When you turn on the switch, the circuit is a complete path on both sides of the battery to both sides of the light bulb. Electrons flow from the battery through the light bulb and return back to the battery (in the process, the light bulb lights up). ",
"Now for your car example: To keep this simple, let's relate it to the flashlight example. You car battery will represent the flashlight battery, your car's dome light and its switch will represent the flashlight light bulb and the flashlight's switch. ",
"Just as with the flashlight example, there is a red wire that leaves your car battery, and is connected to the switch that controls your dome light, then the other terminal of that switch goes to one terminal of your dome light bulb. ",
"So now we have half of the circuit wired. But in the car example, how do we complete the circuit to get back from the light bulb to the battery? ",
"In the flashlight example, we had a black wire from light bulb back to the battery. The property of wire that allows it to conduct electricity is that it is made of metal. ",
"So if we aren't going to use a piece of wire to go back from the light bulb to the battery, what other metal object can we use? How about the metal chassis of the car it self?!!!. ",
"What if we bond the the second terminal of the light bulb to the car chassis (perhaps through a short piece of black wire) and then in the engine compartment, we bond the second terminal of the battery to the chassis of the car (also using a short piece of black wire)? It works! The light turns on!",
"The car's chassis (being a conductive metal) completes the circuit between between the second terminal of the light bulb and the second terminal of the battery, while the red wire connects the first terminal of the battery to the switch and then on to the light bulb's first terminal. ",
"With a complete electrical loop (circuit), the dome light turns on when you press the switch, just like in the flashlight example you started with! But with the car, we are just replacing one of the wires with a large piece of folded sheet metal!"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx3wmu",
"comment_text": [
"For example, my car battery's is able to function with just the red terminal connected to the engine/alternator. The other terminal is attached to a painted metal surface in the engine bay.",
"That should be an ",
"painted metal surface. The engine is connected to the black/negative terminal through the metal frame (that unpainted metal surface that's attached to the negative terminal), and to the red/positive terminal through wires directly from that terminal."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx6hhz",
"comment_text": [
"The entire steel frame of your car is being used to connect the other side of all of your car's lights and devices to the black terminal of the battery. This is called a \"chassis ground.\""
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx4feo",
"comment_text": [
"In a related question, why do car battery cables have to be tight as fuck, while in a flashlight the batteries only have to touch the terminals?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx5zhi",
"comment_text": [
"The main reason is that every connection has a resistance, and the looser that connection is, the higher the resistance is. Since U = I * R, we can see that an increased resistance increases the voltage drop. We can also see that an increased current also increases the voltage drop.",
"Now, when a car starts, it's drawing hundreds of amps through those connections, so you really want a small resistance in order to keep the voltage drop small. A large voltage drop across the connections is bad for two reasons:",
"1: Any voltage drop over the connections means that there will be less voltage for the starter motor. Less voltage means less power, and on a cold day you really want all the power you can get.",
"2: Voltage drop equals power loss, heat, I.e. the material around the connections heats up, wasting power. ",
"A flashlight has such a small power consumption compared to a starter motor that the resistances on the connections become negligible. P = I * U, and since U = I * R, P = I",
" * R. So say the flashlight is using 1 A of current, and the resistance in the connection is .1 ohm, then the power loss is only .1 W. If you were drawing 10 amps, the power loss would be 10 watts. A starter motor for a diesel car with a large engine can easily draw up to 1000 amps..that's would be 100 kW of power loss on that connection (albeit momentarily). "
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why did NASA didn't make the moon landings more apparent by doing something which was visible from Earth?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sfn56
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
I don't know, they could have used fireworks (or lasers) and asked us to look through a telescope or something? Considering Earth's light is visible from the moon, I assume it should be the other way round too?
Well.. I'm not sure if it would have been possible but I think it'd have been really cool.
Sorry if I actually sound like five
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx4p53",
"comment_text": [
"They did. They installed mirrors on the moon that scientists can bounce lasers off of, to make certain measurements."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx47jr",
"comment_text": [
"The Moon is 360,000km to 400,000km from the Earth. You'd be hard pressed seeing a nuke go off. "
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx4bo8",
"comment_text": [
"Space flight and the surrounding technologies that enabled it were nowhere near advanced to pull off those kind of coordinated efforts for such a trivial reason in the grand scope of things. NASA wasn't even sure that the landing would be successful and very real preparations, including a speech by the President, were made in the event of the death of all astronauts involved. You have to appreciate that NASA was only founded in 1959 and by 1969 they were sending people to the moon. It was, and very much still is, a very new and emerging technology. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx4qwn",
"comment_text": [
"They left mirrors on the moon that lasers can be bounced off of. That's pretty rad in my opinion."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx4cbr",
"comment_text": [
"Fireworks wouldn't explode well, and carrying explosives on a spacecraft is a terrible idea. NASA did in fact have the astronauts leave evidence. There are mirrors placed on the landing site that allow us to reflect lasers off the moon and you can in fact ",
"see the lunar landing sites from earth",
"."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do I see sparkles in the air after I throw up or if I'm choking?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sfogm
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.75
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx4onv",
"comment_text": [
"I'd love to know the answer to this, since I see the entire world with these sparkles. Its like shiny ants are moving on every single thing i see."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy2hhw",
"comment_text": [
"I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but ",
"http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/questions/question/3465/"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyaff6",
"comment_text": [
"I think this is exactly what I'm describing. Thanks!"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx4zfa",
"comment_text": [
"Hulk Hogan is why"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx4wup",
"comment_text": [
"Never heard of these, but doing a search on them it seems this a constant thing like ",
"/u/KniveVideos",
" is suggesting he has. Mine only appear after coughing hard or vomitting. ",
"Great to know though, thanks!"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:Why does it cost so much to get a building permit?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sfu75
| 1
| true
| false
| 1
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx6ryz",
"comment_text": [
"Your post is a blatant violation of the rules of this subreddit and has been removed. Please familiarize yourself with the rules of the subreddit (specifically wrt top level answers being helpful explanations and not one line jokes). "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx6ryz",
"comment_text": [
"Your post is a blatant violation of the rules of this subreddit and has been removed. Please familiarize yourself with the rules of the subreddit (specifically wrt top level answers being helpful explanations and not one line jokes). "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx74gz",
"comment_text": [
"That sounds unusually high. Where is the building that you are thinking of? What kind of a building is it? Does that cost include legal fees spent trying to get a permit the land owner wasn't entitled to automatically by existing zoning law?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx8cam",
"comment_text": [
"Varies a lot from place to place, and what you need a building permit for also varies. ",
"Probably a tax. Someone has to pay for various services, and if the city has a lot of people wanting to build it's an easy way to get some sweet money. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxhbao",
"comment_text": [
"Building permit fees are one of the revenue streams that cities use. A fee that high is likely to dissuade",
"They also raise them to stifle developments, or to encourage denser development, if they need to. $200K might be suitable for a several unit residential building.",
"The fee may cover installation of services as well, and the cost to the city for street work related to property development."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why does a negative times a negative equal a positive?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sfyo6
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.75
|
Seriously, what's going on there?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxb0uv",
"comment_text": [
"To explain like you're 5, it's like needing ",
" apples.",
"-2 is like ",
" 2 apples.\n-1 is like ",
".",
"So -2 x -1 is like ",
" to ",
" 2 apples, which means you have 2 apples you don't know what to do with."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxgipj",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not a math expert, but the way I think of it is by comparing it to language.",
"If I say \"I am tall\", the answer to \"Am I tall?\" is yes.",
"If I say \"I am not tall\", the answer to \"Am I tall?\" is no.",
"If I say \"I am not not tall\", the answer to \"Am I tall?\" is yes again.",
"This is basically the linguistic equivalent of a negative times a negative being a positive. Adding the word \"not\" basically turns a sentence into the opposite of what it originally meant. And taking the opposite of an opposite brings you back to where you started (think about it- the opposite of white is black, the opposite of black is white, so the opposite of the opposite of white is white again).",
"If you apply the same concept to math, a negative is just a way of saying \"the opposite of\", i.e. -4 is the opposite of 4. So --4, a double opposite, is 4 again."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx7svg",
"comment_text": [
"They do a great job of explaining it here. You have to break things down into first principles, i.e. distributive property:",
"khan academy"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdybb53",
"comment_text": [
"Thank you. As someone with no math background this makes sense to me. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxef2e",
"comment_text": [
"This is one of the better explanations."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do 'tall thin young white males' more likely to have spontaneous pneumothoraxes?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sggzm
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
I've had 5 pneumothoraxes (pneumothoraxi?) in the past 3 years. I'm a non-smoker, ran track, no blows to the chest or car accidents. Every doctor I've seen, from my general care to the OR guys to the pulmonologist, has pretty much said 'we see this happen a lot with your body type' and left it at that. Why is this so? Oh, and for those interested
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxcik3",
"comment_text": [
"ELI5. What is a pneumothorax?"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxcppk",
"comment_text": [
"Pneumo means air and thorax refers to the chest. It means there is air inside the chest, but outside of the lungs. This is a problem because the chest (pleural space) is a sealed compartment, and the ability to breath is dependent on this space remaining sealed. Air trapped in the pleural space or a break in the seal prevents the lungs from fully inflating. The common name is \"collapsed lung\""
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxcqmo",
"comment_text": [
"A collapsed lung.",
"Your lung is held up by a vacuum - there's no structural support, just 'negative space' in between your lung and your chest wall. If air leaks into that space, the negative pressure holding your lung up weakens, and your lung deflates, causing more air to get in there, etc. Pneumothorax literally means 'air in chest', which can be really bad because that air can put pressure on your heart, which can kill you right quick. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxcqwn",
"comment_text": [
"Damn. That's crazy for a young healthy guy to have to deal with. Good luck. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxcuv1",
"comment_text": [
"Do you have really long legs, arms, and fingers. Abnormally tall and skinny is a primary indicator of Marfan syndrome, but it could also just mean you are tall and skinny. Long appendages, loose joints, and heart problems are the major symptoms. The only reason I thought of Marfan's is because spontaneous pneumothorax is also a common symptom. I would think if you showed signs of it your doctors would have looked into it already after 5 incidents in 3 years. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
What the hell is going on when I rotate my eyes to my extreme periphery and experience a sort of electric jolting?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sg6t9
| 4
| true
| false
| 0.83
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxa46q",
"comment_text": [
"Can you describe what you mean by \"electrical jolting\"? Where is it located?"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz1gq9",
"comment_text": [
"And thus was born a beautiful relationship. And, c'mon... combining the user names? Beautiful. FuckinPizzaMadeWithRealLemon. ",
"You can't get better than that..."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz1gq9",
"comment_text": [
"And thus was born a beautiful relationship. And, c'mon... combining the user names? Beautiful. FuckinPizzaMadeWithRealLemon. ",
"You can't get better than that..."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdz1gq9",
"comment_text": [
"And thus was born a beautiful relationship. And, c'mon... combining the user names? Beautiful. FuckinPizzaMadeWithRealLemon. ",
"You can't get better than that..."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxa9x1",
"comment_text": [
"You're not. I get it too. I think there's a nerve there"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:How come it feels infinitely more perilous walking down an icy incline than it does walking up one?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sgj9k
| 8
| true
| false
| 0.8
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxcx8z",
"comment_text": [
"My guess, going downhill if you slip you will fall backwards and won't be able to catch yourself and possibly hit your head, going up hill you will fall foreward and be able to use your hands to catch yourself"
],
"score": 12
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxd1kr",
"comment_text": [
"Also you are going up under your own power, as opposed to just trying to fight gravity on the way down."
],
"score": 10
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxdmaa",
"comment_text": [
"Both of these, plus relativity of where your centre of balance is. Going uphill, your view of the hill is of it rising, bringing it closer to your centre of balance. Downhill the opposite is true; it's further, so my guess is your body subconsciously notices it more. Or something? Blah."
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxo2dy",
"comment_text": [
"Probably, I have gone down steep slopes in the woods backwards and it feels safer/easier."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxo2dy",
"comment_text": [
"Probably, I have gone down steep slopes in the woods backwards and it feels safer/easier."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: What causes genes to mutate?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sgmdb
| 10
| true
| false
| 0.81
|
As in, what causes them to not copy properly? Are some genes more likely to mutate than others? Am I even phrasing this question correctly? I've heard that it's "random", but is it truly just...random? Like rolling a dice? No rhyme or reason?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxfu7k",
"comment_text": [
"\"LI5 means friendly, simplified and layman-accessible explanations, not for responses aimed at literal five year olds (which can be patronizing).\"",
"Thats from the subreddit mods themselves."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxdtdl",
"comment_text": [
"When DNA is copied it's split into the two separate strands at multiple points along each chromosome, sort of like a zipper which has been forced open in the middle. Special protein complexes (DNA polymerases) then bind to the open strands and build new strands on them. As you may know, there are four bases (or information types) in DNA, G, C, T and A. G and C bind to each other as do A and T. This means that when the DNA polymerases reach an A base, they \"know\" to connect a T base to it for the other strand. It is complicated slightly in that the DNA polymerases can only move in a certain direction along the strand (and the strands run in opposite directions), one strand is built in a nice long chunk, whilst the other keeps \"bumping\" into the end and has to be built using a slightly more complicated process.",
"The problems arise when the base matching process doesn't quite work. There are a lot of reasons this can happen, for example UV radiation can cause T bases next to each other to disconnect from their respective A's and bind to each other. This can lead to malformed proteins and issues when the cells replicate. There is also the issue that the four bases, whilst quite stable aren't entirely so, and they can change type. Other mistakes in replication can also include deleting or adding a base (these have a much larger effect on a protein, so tend to be a lot less likely to produce surviving cells).",
"Of course, cells have developed lots of mechanisms to minimise these effects: other DNA polymerases constantly \"patrol\" your DNA looking for mismatches. I can't remember the exact numbers but without these the mutation rate increases by several orders of magnitude (it is usually about 0.003 mutations per genome per generation which is shockingly low considering how large your genome is).",
"As far as the chances of certain genes mutating, there is nothing about a particular gene which will prevent it happening. Different nucleotides will tend to mutate in different ways but the ratios of nucleotides within each gene is basically the same, so all genes will mutate at the same rate. The caveat to that statement, is that some genes are a lot more important to cell survival than others, and are ",
". This means that this particular gene is very similar for a wide range of organisms, even a slight change to the proteins it produces being fatal.",
"There is a lot more complexity to this, I've not really touched on how nucleotides are encoded into amino acids and proteins. Or the difference between missense, nonsense and silent mutations. If you want more detail, just ask."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxdxm8",
"comment_text": [
"Genes are made up of long strands of DNA, which in turn are made up of 2 strands of \"nitrogenous bases\" arranged in a line and paired with each other. The most common types of mutations affect these bases and prevents them from fitting together properly. They can be changed (losing or gaining small pieces), fused together with the next one on their line, get paired with the wrong base while copying, or even get removed. There are many mechanisms that try to fix these mistakes, but they occasionally get through.",
"Another common way genes mutate is through the movement of pieces of DNA. When people make sperm and eggs, their genes line up side by side before getting pulled away to different cells and parts of them can switch places. This is important because it allows diversity, instead of just passing on the same gene."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdyjj9u",
"comment_text": [
"Fair enough, but that wasn't really layman-terms anyways."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxdpmb",
"comment_text": [
"Transcription errors are innate -- simply, the protein that performs the duplication doesn't latch properly. Our bodies's mechanisms are not an exact science and frequently don't operate as they are expected to.",
"Some genes are more likely to mutate than others based on their composition -- not all DNA bonds are as strong as others. Frequently though, a singular gene expression is known to break into something more fatal, rather than 'failing safe' as most genes/mutations do.",
"It is random, in that there is no means of predicting when or where it will occurs, excepting those mutations caused by known and researched external mutagens -- even these will frequently break things at random with specific breaks known to occur more commonly."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How come my car needs 4 gears to get to 35mph, but only 1 for any higher speed?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sgucs
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.6
|
Seems like you would need at least 1 or 2 more go 60, 80, etc....
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxfreh",
"comment_text": [
"You don't actually need 4 gears to get to 40. You shift that early for better fuel economy. You could possible shift later for better performance. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxfo20",
"comment_text": [
"think about it like a bicycle, the slower you start the more you need to get going but once you're already going it doesn't take much more"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxibkp",
"comment_text": [
"The purpose of gears is to match engine speed (how hard the engine is working) to road speed (how fast you are going).",
"We do this via progressively larger gears. Small gears move you slowly, but have the full power of the engine behind them. Larger gears don't have to work as hard because the vehicle is already moving. So you don't need as much engine power to move the vehicle, and you can convert power to road speed.",
"Since gears are \"round\" their size doesn't increase linearly. The increase expoentially. 1st gear gets you to 5mp, 2nd DOUBLES that, which brings you to 10mph, 3rd DOUBLES that getting you to 20mph, and 4th gets you to 40mph, and 5th gets you to 80mph. (this is very rough math to highlight a point)",
"In vehicles with larger engines, and more gears, like a Big Rig, you can end up with 20+ gears, because the movement speeds are much smaller."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxgmxz",
"comment_text": [
"You shift that many times for better fuel economy. If you were trying to get the most out of your car you probably wouldn't shift until about 5k rpms, first gear would probably take you up to 35, second to about 50, third to 70 fourth to almost 100 and fifth would take you to your limiter. ",
"Go find a parking lot and floor it until you're close to the redline, if your car has any balls at all you'll be surprised your car can move that quick, and you'll probably love it, you won't love the 3mpg though"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxgrgk",
"comment_text": [
"So does that mean my car's redline is more an indicator of terrible fuel economy moreso than me 'hurting' my engine?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How do security questions make your accounts more secure and not the opposite?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sgyda
| 3
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
I hate security questions. I think they are absolutely pointless and make you more at risk someone hacking into your account. How are they just not another set of passwords? So if someone doesn't have your password, but knows facts about your life, they can effectively hack into your account. If you put weird/bizarre answers that no one can know, then you need to keep track of them. So it just becomes another set of passwords that need to be remembered, which equals more hassle for you. How is this a good idea?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxgqu1",
"comment_text": [
"It's not to make your account more secure. It is to give you a way of recovering your account in case you loose your password. Most sites want to have someway for you to recover your account (especially banks) so they need some way of doing this. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxgsvg",
"comment_text": [
"So it makes it less secure then. If a unscrupulous person knows info about my life, they can hack my accounts. Why don't sites give you the option not to have security questions? They are time consuming and a hassle to keep track of."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxgx9o",
"comment_text": [
"Because sites that are important enough for you too care if you get hacked need some way for you too reestablish your account, and can't trust that you'll remember. Then you have the sites that you don't really care if your account gets hacked which don't have enough of an interest to add further security. Also, most security questions only allow you to recover your account from your e-mail which should still be protected.",
"They are time consuming and a hassle to keep track of.",
"Are they really that time consuming? And how hard can personal information about your life be that much of a hassle to keep track of? You should just put obscure questions about your life on there that no one else knows but you obviously remember. For example I commonly put down \"What was the first R rated movie you saw?\" Only one other person knows the answer to that question and he probably doesn't even remember.",
"Edit: Also, usually security answers are strict about multiple entries so they make it harder to guess them."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxh0bo",
"comment_text": [
"When you reset a password it goes to your email, so long as you have access to your email (and no one else does) it does nothing to make your account less secure. ",
"Don't misuse the word hack, if someone hacked your account security questions would never come into play. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxhdpv",
"comment_text": [
"If you are concerned about the security question why don't you just put in a false answer?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5 why airlines (after boarding 1st class passengers and disabled passengers first) don't board the plane from the rear seats to the front seats.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sgv5s
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
After having my flight get cancelled yesterday because too many idiots were taking their precious time to get seated, I wondered why don't airlines board people according to seat location. In other words, in order to speed the boarding time up, why don't airlines board people from the back to the front. It's annoying and rediculous standing there waiting for 5 people to put their 5 bags (even though they are supposed to have technically 1 bag) into the overhead bins, while yours along with 20 other people's seats are further back. Airports would be a hell of a lot more efficient if they were boarded this way. EDIT: Minor grammar/typos.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxfvt9",
"comment_text": [
"The actual most effective method of boarding is to do window seats, then middle, then aisle - with rows being staggered. The back to front plan doesnt have that many benefits over the free-for -all approach",
"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14717695"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxg4ug",
"comment_text": [
"Wow never thought of it this way. Very interesting read, and it'd be very interesting to see airliners try this technique. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxfyby",
"comment_text": [
"Some do, some don't. And indeed sometimes they use both the front and rear doors for boarding."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxfv49",
"comment_text": [
"Depends on the airline.",
"Southwest, for instance, is free seating - so you sit where you want. This seems inefficient, but they load up in phases, and its generally pretty quick and painless",
"Other airlines, like JetBlue, let you pick your seats, and they load up row by row.",
"If you happen to fly an airline that is more of a free-for-all, then you are screwed just because a lot of people are trying to get on at the same time, and that never ends well.",
"I flew southwest about 2-4 times a month for about 4 months during a project, and boarding was always pretty damn fast. What took the longest wasn't so much getting seated, but the inevitable person who brings a bag larger than the overhead bin, who then has to find somewhere to stuff that - then they have to find somewhere to stuff their oversized carryon, which doesn't fit under the seat. Then they have to throw a fit because they can't find a seat near their oversized bags."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxgb4y",
"comment_text": [
"Jetblue does - you pick your seats when you purchase tickets.",
"Southwest gives boarding in groups, 'A', 'B', and 'C'. A is priority, B boards second, C last.",
"I've flown both and had no issues with either - Southwests priority system is such that even when I came in as 'C', I still had a decent seat, and there was very little chaos. ",
"The reason I liked both Jetblue and Southwest is the free checked bags. Southwest is two, Jetblue is one. When I was travelling, I was also moving from coast to coast, so I factored in the cost of shipping and it was cheaper to pack my shit into bags and fly via Southwest. Plus their service is top-notch on SW at least, and I rarely had a flight that wasn't entertaining."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
What is a coma? And how come some people are in comas for days while other for years?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sh2fr
| 17
| true
| false
| 0.88
|
What causes people to go into comas and why does the length of a coma vary so greatly between people? Also what causes people to wake up from a coma?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxmmkz",
"comment_text": [
"A coma is one of several ",
"disorders of consciousness",
". Basically, we know rather little about what actually causes coma, but we know that in order to ",
" be in a coma, you need two things:",
"Functional neocortex (although lesions to specific cortical regions do not necessarily translate into a disorder of consciousness)",
"A functional ",
"Reticular Activation System",
". This is basically a set of neurological pathways that emanate from ",
"thalamus",
" into the cortex, and then back down again.",
"Since we don't have a complete functional model of consciousness, it's very difficult to say exactly where the failure point is in comatose patients. Similarly, it's hard to pin down which type of functionality gets restored when they wake up. For now, suffice to say that the brain has a limited ability to heal, and also exhibits what's called ",
"neuroplasticity",
". In this context, neuroplasticity basically means that other areas of the brain can take over the functions of damaged areas.",
"Functionally speaking, it would seem as though consciousness is a function that allows for specialized areas of the brain to share information to other, more distant, areas. Ignoring the phenomenal aspects of consciousness, we can say that we are conscious of a piece of information when it is made available to the entire brain (more or less). Analytical philosopher Daniel Dennett is quoted as saying \"Consciousness is fame in the brain\".",
"This sharing of information allows specialized modules to work in concert, producing more complex behaviors such as language. This sharing of information also seems to stabilize perceptual information such that the information can be maintained over long periods of time (a few seconds to a few minutes) -- a hallmark of conscious processing."
],
"score": 9
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxmphy",
"comment_text": [
"brain's decision to either wake you up or not.",
"Sorry but this doesn't make make much sense and is in direct contradiction with current models of neurological pathology. There's nothing to suggest that coma is in any way strategic. Instead, it appears to be the result of an absence of functionality (often due to physiological damage)."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxndih",
"comment_text": [
"I guess you learn something new every day.",
"And that's why I love this place =)"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce8bj32",
"comment_text": [
"How can people be put into an induced coma then?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_ce8eyqr",
"comment_text": [
"It just so happens that some drugs will induce coma, but we still don't really know why or how."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
[ELI5] why does light travell in waves as apose to in a straight line?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sh3yh
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
This just kinda struck me the other day so I asked my physics teacher but he had no idea. Any help?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxkstp",
"comment_text": [
"Actually no, it doesn't. Light travels in the direction of 'least-time'. This can be shown when it moves through materials having different indexes of refraction. Light will choose a bent path rather than a straight line and that path can be predicted by finding the path that would take light the least time to traverse the entire distance.",
"This is most evident on a hot day with a very hot stretch of road. You will see reflections of the sky on the surface of the road (a mirage) because light from the sky took the long way around due to the fact it could travel faster in the hot air near the surface."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxif4c",
"comment_text": [
"Light ",
" travel in a straight line. Light itself is a wave -- or, more accurately, a quantum object that has both wave-like and particle-like properties-- but that wave-like, particle-like light travels in straight lines."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxkupw",
"comment_text": [
"Good point. I had forgotten about refraction. Was thinking larger scale, curvature of space-time, and all that jazz."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxio70",
"comment_text": [
"We cannot say for certain that light is a wave, nor can we say that it is a particle. Instead we say that light (photons) exhibit both wave",
" and particle",
" phenomena. It is the perpendicular electric and magnetic fields that are implied from the wave illustrations of light. ",
"Other wavelike properties include light having a measurable \"wavelength\" and \"frequency\", which are both proportional to the speed of light given by c=λv, where c is the speed of light, λ is the wavelength and v is the frequency. Other phenomena are the ability of light to interfere with itself both destructively and constructively, as well as the different refraction rates of various wavelengths.",
"All in all, an actual wave like you are probably imagining has not been observed, it is only the effects of light that match with the known properties of waves. Of course, the same could be said about its particle-like properties, but there you have it."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxl0kw",
"comment_text": [
"Short answer: because light is a wave. The equations of Maxwell describe the oscillation between the electric and magnetic fields that cause the propagation of EM radiation. The really interesting question is then why light seems like a particle.",
"Light seems like a particle because it's energy is quantized: it can only be created and absorbed in specific fixed units of energy. When a specific electron absorbs the light wave, no other electron is allowed to absorb it: the energy of the wave no longer exists anywhere else. How this could be possible is mind bending and impossible, and yet it's true."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: When a homeless person requires emergency surgery in America - who picks up the tab?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sh5ax
| 2
| true
| false
| 1
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxiqvv",
"comment_text": [
"They are given a bill, but when it's clear they won't pay it the hospital pays for it, and to cover the cost they charge insured people (and their insurers) slightly more."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxishu",
"comment_text": [
"Eh, not exactly. The government pays about 20 billion annually to hospitals to reimburse them for the uninsured. So it's a combination of taxpayers and the insured."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxiw03",
"comment_text": [
"So it's a combination of taxpayers and the insured.",
"There is a significant overlap there, though. Most taxpayers (or at least those of them who actually pay taxes), are insured, and pretty much all of the insured pay taxes."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxiuzr",
"comment_text": [
"Fair enough, thanks for the extra details"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxjto9",
"comment_text": [
"Because your post isn't asking a simplified conceptual explanation, but rather for an answer, its been removed. ",
"You should try ",
"/r/answers",
", ",
"/r/askreddit",
" or even one of the more specialized answers subreddits like ",
"/r/askhistorians",
", ",
"/r/askscience",
" or others too numerous and varied to mention. ",
"Rest assured this doesn't make your question ",
", it just makes it more appropriate for another subreddit. Good luck! "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5:Rainbow universes or something
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sh5wq
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
I have no idea what this artical is talking about. It was posted in the physics reddit but no one seems to know what it means in a way I can understand.
I'm normaly pretty good at physics but I was blown away by all the jargon these people use. Please help.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxj4q6",
"comment_text": [
"Basically it is saying that different wavelenghts of light corresponding to different energies (by c=λv) would be affected differently by gravity. This is because in relativity, mass is just one expression of energy. If this theory is correct, then our techniques of tracing the origin of the universe (through telescopes which see light waves) could be fundamentally flawed. ",
"Apparently the new (decade-old) theory has two outcomes. Either the function plateaus at a high density where these conditions are dominant, or it reaches a tangent and undergoes infinite regression. Either answer is contradictory with the big bang theory.",
"Edit: Thanks for the downvote"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy40pc",
"comment_text": [
"Eh, compared to the article I feel like I did decent at least."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy3nif",
"comment_text": [
"your answer is not particularly layman-accessible, maybe that's why you got downvoted."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzfx80",
"comment_text": [
"I didn't downvote you Idk who did"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzhwwf",
"comment_text": [
"I wasn't assuming it was you. No worries."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:Why do small phantom files appear whenever I copy folders from a Mac to a PC?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sh3mv
| 7
| true
| false
| 1
|
This files are always exactly 4KB, begin with a period, and are hidden. There's also a DS Store file, and a copy of the DS Store file which fits in with the other hidden files.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxing7",
"comment_text": [
"The phantom files are bits of information made by OS X during the copying process to help Windows track bits of information about those files that its filesystem isn't able to support by default.",
".ds_store files tell the Mac how to display a particular folder. For example, if you drag the icons around to be arranged in a certain way, or if you zoom in on them to make them bigger, the .ds_store file for that folder stores that information. ",
"Both sets of files are completely normal; they're not visible from OS X because it's a UNIX system. Files that start with a . are hidden by default."
],
"score": 6
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxjhqn",
"comment_text": [
"Basically, traditionally the MacOS filesystems store ",
" of metadata (that is, information about the file) that other operating systems generally don't bother with. For example, most operating systems just look at the file extension - say, .mp3 - and just figure out it's a MP3 file and open it with the MP3 player the user prefers to use. But OS X will store the information about the actual ",
" too: Some files created by MP3-creating applications might be tagged to open in ",
" application, ",
" when the user prefers something else (and if the user prefers to open the file in, say, iTunes ",
", it will still work perfectly). All that information is saved in file metadata. Also, for folders, it stores the information where each file is located in the Finder, since you can drag files around in folders.",
"Of course, if you copy the files to (say) an USB drive with your typical FAT32 filesystem on it, that filesystem doesn't actually have ",
" to store that extra information. So OS X creates a ",
".DS_Store",
" file (and sometimes other files that start with dot and underscore) where the extra information is stored. OS X also creates a separate Trash folder for the drive. The dot in front of the filename means the files are hidden in Unix-based systems (including OS X), but Windows sometimes gets a bit confused about them."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxif6p",
"comment_text": [
"You have no idea what you're talking about.",
"@Op: I don't know where they come from either. I would assume they're some hidden files used by OSX that show up on Windows. I never notice it going from PC > Mac"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxif6p",
"comment_text": [
"You have no idea what you're talking about.",
"@Op: I don't know where they come from either. I would assume they're some hidden files used by OSX that show up on Windows. I never notice it going from PC > Mac"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxnbtg",
"comment_text": [
"Windows has similar files that are visible if you view a windows directory from a NIX (system volume information and recycled, if I remember correctly)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How do parapalegics drive?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sh7ws
| 2
| true
| false
| 1
|
I have a neighbor paralyzed from the waist down, how do they operate the pedals and such? Thanks! Edit: He lives alone and drives himself to work.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxjhss",
"comment_text": [
"They have specially customized cars with speed controls on the steering wheels."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxjjf0",
"comment_text": [
"In many cases the throttle and break are hand activated. Like on an airplane (the pedals on a plane control the rudder) so you have one lever that is the gas, and another that is a pull brake. You won't be braking and gassing at the same time, so you don't need to take your hand off the steering wheel. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxjm1s",
"comment_text": [
"Thats pretty cool. Thanks man. I thought it'd be indecent to ask him personally he's a new parapalegic. :p"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxjr6s",
"comment_text": [
"Maybe not, he might enjoy describing how he manages to drive to you. Pride and all that. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxjq3i",
"comment_text": [
"So do they have to keep a hand on the lever anytime they're moving?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do global timezones exist?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1shhtz
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.75
|
Why not just have everyone on Greenwich Mean Time globally, and one uniform global clock, rather than always having to add or subtract hours from various parts of the world? Would it really matter if you went to work from "2 am to 11 am" as opposed to "9 am to 5 pm", timezone adjusted?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxmake",
"comment_text": [
"Because the earth orbits and the sun hits the earth on different sides at different times. What would \"noon\" even mean to people if its the middle of the night on the other side of the world, and they also call it noon? "
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxmfa4",
"comment_text": [
"Bingo:",
"with timezones, no matter where I am on earth, 9AM is always morning, 12PM is always noon, 5PM is always evening, 9PM is always night.",
"If I have to call someone in London, I know to schedule my call just before lunch - so I want something between 9AM and 11AM, and do my time zone conversion from there.",
"On the other hand, if I try to do the same thing in GMT, it gets confusing. OK so I have a meeting between 0500 and 1100 GMT. Is that lunch time for the client? I don't have a bloody clue, I have to look where they are on the map and see whether that time corresponds to when its around lunch time for that part of the world. 0500 for me is early in the morning, but in London its noon, and in Malaysia its close to night time. Maybe? This was easier when ",
". I know 9AM means morning no matter what."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxnrwa",
"comment_text": [
"We kind of do. When individuals are communicating with people across the world they usually use GMT or some standard time zone (such as military forces). However, in most people's day to day affairs they don't need to communicate with the rest of the world, so it is just more sensible to use standard time as it is really helpful for the whole world to know noon is for lunch, you work 9-5, etc."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxu3ey",
"comment_text": [
"Because people prefer their local time to reflect the actual time of day (given that noon is midday), rather than using the Greenwich Time and adjusting for the offset."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy05ih",
"comment_text": [
"Unless you live in Alaska during the winter lol, 9am is morning 10am is noon 12pm is night :). And that's basically how it is here in Juneau..."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: what exactly happens in my car when I press the sport or snow button
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1shj2o
| 2
| true
| false
| 1
|
It's a Scion FR-S but I've seen similar buttons in several cars.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxnk8m",
"comment_text": [
"Sport button usually disables some sort of traction control I'll use my car for example",
"2013 Ford Mustang GT",
"A regular car with all the nannies on it will either engage the brake or cut throttle if it detects a number of \"unsafe\" hazards. Most of these nannies work very well and should be on at all times because sometimes you don't know if you're tire is spinning out of control or not. Here's some of those things it governs.",
"Loss of tire traction, Wheel hop, Sideways slide sometimes referred to as \"yaw\" like an aircraft. There's more but these are the basic ones I'll talk about",
"So in regular mode your vehicle has very stringent limitations on what the car is allowed to do before these things turn on. Which is good for almost all drivers. Some people believe they can react faster than the electronics in the car, but that's just a fallacy and the nannies should be on always unless you're doing something other than daily driving, like drifting, or racing.",
"So it will brake/speed up a wheel if it detects your wheel or wheels slipping on any sort of dirt, ice, anything of the sort almost immediately, but not enough for you to even notice it most of the time. The only time you may notice this is if you try to do a burnout with the nannies on, or accelerate hard on wet pavement, as compared to dry you will notice an acceleration difference. It will also brake if it notices a wheel coming off the ground or hoping around too much, very similar in function to regular traction loss. It will also engage brakes, speed up the tire, or cut throttle if it \"thinks\" I'm under conditions that will cause me to slide, like too much body roll for an example. It does this before I start to slide, sometimes an annoyance to enthusiasts who know they aren't going to slide. Certain things can trigger it and it isn't always right but still, doesn't effect daily driving.",
"Now to sport mode, on my vehicle it does the same thing as regular mode, but the limitations are widened to allow more freedom without compromising too much safety. This mode allows my to spin my tires to a certain extent, and allows me to slide out to a certain degree. The actual degrees of the slide or RPM I spin the tires until it will turn on I'm not sure. But the wheel also gets tighter and I feel more of the road, it's more of a spirited driving mode as opposed to a race mode. I can slide a little going around corners without my throttle or brakes being cut or engaging, and burn some rubber if I so choose, I obviously don't, race tires are expensive.",
"I can then turn off all nannies by holding down the TC (traction control) button and the brake at the same time for about 5-7 seconds. This turns EVERY nanny off and I then gain free reign of my horsey. I can now make her gitty up all I want without anything engaging. This is considered dangerous for daily driving especially in the rain, and I agree with it completely. Some rules are meant to be broken, but this is a safety feature that shouldn't really be messed with. Will you be able to make it to your destination 99% of the time? I would bet so, but I rather not take the risk.\nSometimes I like to have fun and I will turn the nannies off and use the track timer to see how fast I can get 0-60 which is 4.7s for me on my stock GT. rated at 4.5, dang professionals! And have raced a few ricers because I can stomp almost all v6s unless they're turbo'd, and a lot of V8s even with mods.",
"Snow button will engage AWD if your car has it, puts even more stringent limitations on your car to not lose traction or slide, and may even disable cruise control, which you should never use in the snow. I've never had a car with a winter button so I don't know exactly what it does, but that's the basics of it I imagine, hope I was able to explain it effectively.",
"EDIT: words should make sense and stuff"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxpf4r",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks much for the detailed reply."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxmv88",
"comment_text": [
"Here are two quotes I found:",
"All snow mode does is it starts you on 2nd gear when you are at a complete stop, prevents wheel spin .. and you get a slow start with very low torque.",
"Other modes include a standard Snow mode that softens throttle application and starts the transmission in 2nd gear to aid in slippery conditions.",
"Basically, it makes your pedals put less power into the engine and wheels so it is easier to move from a stopped position.",
"In the Scion's wealthy grandfather, the Lexus LS, the button also turns on a traction control computer which reduces the power to the wheel if it thinks the wheel is going to slip. So if you get stuck in the snow with the button off, and push on the gas, you're wheels will spin. If you turn on the snow mode/traction control, you can floor it, but the computer will detect the slippage and stop moving the wheel."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxmvet",
"comment_text": [
"I can't say exactly for the snow button, however there are/should be noticeable differences with the sport button (speaking from experience). The sport button does 2 main things upon others. The first being, it increases the sensitivity at which \"full throttle\" can be achieved, so less pedal pressure is required to get the vehicle to high rpms (revs per minute) and speed. The second noticeable difference is, the vehicle is maintained at higher rpms through gears, this means that the car is \"ready\" to accelerate quicker than usual without having to build up the neccessary rpms."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxmy4w",
"comment_text": [
"These sorts of buttons change the way an automatic transmission shifts between gears, to either increase the torque or prevent large applications are torque. Torque being effectively how hard a wheel spins. You want to avoid the wheels suddenly spinning with more force in the snow, so snow mode might adjust the timing of the shift from 1st to 2nd to 3rd gears so you spend more time in the lower gear before moving higher...the result being you don't accelerate as quickly, but you do it more smoothly which prevents you from spinning out or fishtailing. Or it may start you in 2nd gear instead of 1st from a stop, meaning you apply far less torque to the road initially and accelerate smoothly up into 2nd gear. It sort of depends on the car, but the end goal is to keep your car moving slowly and smoothly.",
"Car engines often have a torque rating where it says how much force they can apply at X RPMs, if you want to accelerate quickly in a manual car, you would time your shifts such that just as the engine was passing that X RPM number you shifted in the next gear, which by being larger forces the engine to slow down so that the engine can now accelerate back through that RPM sweet spot."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why can I play football (soccer) better outside on grass but I not as good indoors?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1shy4k
| 1
| true
| false
| 1
|
For some reason when I play indoors on a concrete/wood floor I not play as well as I do on a pitch. Thanks
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxr4sp",
"comment_text": [
"There's generally more friction on grass, so the ball doesn't roll as quickly. Even if it's a small difference in speed, it can make a big difference to your game, particularly in regards to things like dribbling and passing. Your muscle memory is likely built upon playing on grass, and so the ball doesn't move the way you intuitively expect on hard surfaces.",
"If you want to really see the difference clearly. Stand at one end of the field and make a light \"passing\" kick along the ground. Try it both on grass and then on concrete, kicking the ball with about the same amount of force both times. The ball will only go so far on the grass, but will likely travel all the way across the concrete \"field\" unless it hits something. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxrv1h",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks, I was getting worried that I was getting worse. xD"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxs4hf",
"comment_text": [
"If you played exclusively on hard surfaces for a while, your brain would relearn a lot of its habits. And then when you went back to grass, you'd probably have trouble all over again.",
"Regularly playing both and switching back and forth is probably pretty tough. I'm sure with enough practice, you could get used to both and your mind could make the switch easily as needed, but getting to that point will likely take some time. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdy2v99",
"comment_text": [
"This is very accurate. Don't forget how much more the ball will bounce on a hard surface as well!",
"If you do play a lot of indoor on hard surfaces, I highly recommend getting a Futsal ball. They are heavier and are much easier to control on hard surfaces, making for a much better game."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxykc2",
"comment_text": [
"Footwear plays a part too. On grass, your boots/cleats have studs for traction and are tightly fitted around your foot. Indoors or on concrete, you can't wear these and whatever you do wear(often trainers/sneakers) will likely not have that same 'comfort'. This comfort is not necessarily comfort in the normal sense, but that muscle memory that you have of the feeling when you strike the ball. There's a noticeable difference in the feeling between kicking a ball wearing boots/cleats and when you wear trainers/sneakers, due to the different materials."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5:Why do we save people in Africa, when Earth is already overpopulated? (Evolution)
|
explainlikeimfive
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1shsyo
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.33
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxpqdn",
"comment_text": [
"The ",
"population growth rates in Africa are rising much faster than anywhere else",
" ",
" Africa is so poor; because mothers in Africa have a lot of kids so that they will live to support each other when they get older. By \"saving people in Africa\", we are reducing the population."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxpe7p",
"comment_text": [
"We don't believe in letting people die for natural sselection. that is why you take care of handicap or disabled people and the elderly."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxpfmb",
"comment_text": [
"Who are we? Do you want to watch the world die so you get to save a few handicapped people?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxpizc",
"comment_text": [
"basically no modern society lease handicapped people to die. Some might not offer as much help to handicapped people as others but None of them leave a handicap person to their own devices."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxpmks",
"comment_text": [
"I really didn't want to talk about handicapped people. The overall image that we use a huge amount of resources to save people from a place where they eventually can't be saved is what's relevant. I might be completely out of line, but why don't we just let them die and call it the end of a chapter? And no, not handicapped people, but people from places that will dry out further in a few years."
],
"score": 1
}
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||
ELI5: cats
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explainlikeimfive
|
1si3n9
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.17
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxsfia",
"comment_text": [
"Cats are mammals. They walk on 4 legs and have a tail and pointy ears. Some cats like to eat tuna fish."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxsgdh",
"comment_text": [
"Yeah this isn't a question, nor something that can explained like your 5. ",
"For your own research : ",
"https://www.google.com/search?q=Cats&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=7FSmUo_VKIjrkAfAoIDACQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=798"
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxske0",
"comment_text": [
"They are sometimes referred to as \"kitties\""
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxstra",
"comment_text": [
"The kitty says \"meow\""
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxttr3",
"comment_text": [
"Your post or question is nonspecific or too general for eli5. Please consider refining it or adding specific questions you're curious about and resubmitting it. "
],
"score": 1
}
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||
ELI5: Why do my fingers become harder to move when they are cold
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explainlikeimfive
|
1scw1v
| 15
| true
| false
| 0.81
|
After riding my bicycle in say 10C weather, not below zero, it becomes
difficult to complete simple tasks with my fingers, typing, keys etc.
However they are not frozen, blood is still flowing, so why is this?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwa88s",
"comment_text": [
"If \"Cold\" blood flowed back to the heart at the same speed as the warm blood flowing out to your fingers your internal temperature would start dropping which would kill you rather quickly. by slowing this down the body re-heats your blood keep your internal temperature and your core body safe. this is how frostbite works as well.\n",
"\nEdit: That explains the reduced dexterity as well. Here's an analogy: The highway to your fingers and back has a tollgate on it and not everybody can \"pay\". Those who can't \"pay\" go back to your organs and make the circuit again."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdw9oz5",
"comment_text": [
"when riding your bike at 10°C the wind will make it way chillier. The cold leads the capilaries to tighten up so the cold blood doesnt return to fast to the heart damaging it. because of this minor slow down of blood circulation sinews and muscles relevant for the fingers are a bit stiffer.",
"At least that was how I got it explained when I asked in biology class something quite similar, several decades ago"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwdr8u",
"comment_text": [
"\"Why do my fingers become harder to move when they are cold\" - it's not because of decreased nutrients in your finger cells, it's because (in ELI5 language) your nerves don't send signals as well when they're cold.",
".",
"it means give the correct answer in layman's terms.",
"Your answer is no more correct than mine. Dexterity is impacted by many different factors. I decided to focus on the metabolic factors whilst you focused on nerve conduction. Both are correct as both contribute to the loss of dexterity. A couple of factors that neither of us mentioned which also contributes to the loss of dexterity is neural sensitivity and also the psychophysiological response to the cold. I guess so long as the OP understands the overall process it doesnt really matter. Check out this review if you want OP: it goes a lot more detail about all the factors. ",
"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/000368709400004I",
"The overall gist of the process is that cold weather --> finger ischaemia --> your nerves and muscles dont work properly along with the psychology of cold affects dexterity --> poor finger performance. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwgb6m",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks!",
"The overall gist of the process is that cold weather --> finger ischaemia --> your nerves and muscles dont work properly along with the psychology of cold affects dexterity --> poor finger performance.",
"This summed it up perfect!"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwe7el",
"comment_text": [
"So you're saying your heart actually pumps slower? I thought it was because the muscle contracted around the fingers to conserve heat."
],
"score": 1
}
|
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ELI5: why don't they sell movies on USB drives. Surely its cheaper and easier than making DVDs.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sd0nj
| 3
| true
| false
| 0.6
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwapj4",
"comment_text": [
"Dvd's are much cheaper. Go compare the price of blank Dvd's to USB drives"
],
"score": 11
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwat78",
"comment_text": [
"It's not cheaper or easier to put a game on a USB drive than a DVD - the actual DVD is an order of magnitude cheaper, and commercially made ones are stamped, not burned, so it's a fast process."
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwbf3d",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not saying that a USB device would be a more efficient (or cheaper) method of distribution, but what you say is not entirely true. ",
"First, it's really not that difficult to rip a DVD or a bluray as it is. I have done it literally thousands of times. It takes a little bit of time, yes, but if you have it down to a science, you can even do this unattended. Pop, run, eject. For TV shows, pull info from thetvdb.com to name all the files. Really not that hard at all.",
"Second, all it takes is a little DRM to make sure that you are using the original USB device for the movie. For instance, you can tie the movie file to the serial number of the device. If it don't match, it don't play. That really would not be rocket science to develop.",
"Third, not all USB devices are created equal. I've seen flash drives that encrypt the contents, I've seen flash drives that can only be read by certain machine vendors or with another device present, and I have even seen flash drives that prevent you from just performing a standard copy operation.",
"Obviously no solution is fool proof, but the distribution of movies on flash drives would not necessarily significantly increase piracy. Any method of DRM can and will be cracked by those that want to. That's just the nature of the beast. VHS, DVD, and Bluray were all cracked relatively quickly.",
"Now, that being said, flash media is significantly more expensive to produce than optical media. One day that may change. But the next evolution of media delivery is already here. Internet streaming is already poised to overtake actual disc sales (if it hasn't already). Expect in the near future to see movies that are only released on the internet. It's already happening in some cases."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwcwj9",
"comment_text": [
"Distributing media on USB drives would actually be much harder than discs.",
"Discs store data through a series of pits and grooves in the material of the disc, and mass produced discs are made by pumping molten plastic into a mould with all bits sticking out to make the pits. After you let it cool the disc is ready to go. You just can't do that with flash storage like you get in USB drives. For a USB drive you'd need to make all the electronics for the drive, put it in a casing, plug it into a computer and transfer the data across before you can ship it out. All this takes a lot more time and money than just moulding a disc, and is far more likely to have failures due to either the electronics or failures during data transfer."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwicy3",
"comment_text": [
"I suspect it's about formatting. the DVD has an area ( track) that can't be written to. it can only be read, a usb drive with data is susceptible to hacking as the data can be altered. it would be great to take your usb drive to wally world, pop it in a programmer, have the movie downloaded for 5 bucks and be re-programmable. but again with the security of said data. Yeah DVD media is also susceptible but then that's why the price is always falling. if someone wrote it, someone can hack it."
],
"score": 1
}
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why would it be bad if the government regulated bitcoin?
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explainlikeimfive
|
1sd4lj
| 7
| true
| false
| 0.81
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwcwv9",
"comment_text": [
"Short answer is, they can't really regulate it because it's not subject to any countries specific laws. The general population of the world controls it. It's at a high right now because it's new, novel and people are taking it seriously. But remember, it's made up. It's not real. Then again, so are stocks, and we have no problem putting our money in those."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwcdrl",
"comment_text": [
"That depends entirely on ",
", specifically, they regulate."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwcwmg",
"comment_text": [
"Laws always trail technology, so whatever laws get passed would be instantly outdated. When you're talking about something so intrinsically technical, you're pretty much guaranteed unintended side-effects. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwhbwv",
"comment_text": [
"in my opinion, this post should not have been removed. It is a legitimate question that deserves an answer. It would be bad if government regulated bitcoin because then the government could control and manipulate the price. The government is afraid of bitcoin because they can not control it - yet."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwc356",
"comment_text": [
"Note that you should add the words \"tried to\" to your question.",
"The governments insane belief that they can fix any problem by passing laws would see them passing more and more draconian laws in an attempt to do the impossible."
],
"score": 0
}
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ELI5:What 'force' actually keeps planets together.
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explainlikeimfive
|
1sd4bo
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.66
|
I admit that I'm not up on gravitational physics but I am wondering what actually holds planets together. Is it our molten core spinning so fast that creates enough gravity momentum to keep everything together? What keeps everything in equilibreum?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwc1bk",
"comment_text": [
"Spinning doesn't change the gravity, gravity is just a function of your mass.",
"The gravity of a planet pulls it all to the centre. Electromagnetic resistance keeps it from all collapsing in on itself."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwfrk1",
"comment_text": [
"Gravity keeps the planets together. ",
"There is nothing more to it really...",
"Now if you want to get into what keeps planets in sync around a star, and on the same plane, that's much more complicated."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxnuen",
"comment_text": [
"More complicated...although still gravity."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwcuzx",
"comment_text": [
"The mass at the core of the earth is very dense; its huge mass creates huge enough gravity to keep the earth together in a nearly perfect sphere. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwhtzy",
"comment_text": [
"no one really knows, and if they tell you they do, they are bsing you and regurgitating BS they heard from someone they thought was a lot smarter than they are. no one has been to the core of our planet so everything is a guess. there is no proof that there isn't a chunk of neutron star at the core with such immense gravitational pull that it attracts everything. I kind of like my notion of neutron star chunk, it can't be disproven."
],
"score": -2
}
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How do gas fireplaces work?
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explainlikeimfive
|
1sd53q
| 11
| true
| false
| 0.68
|
Especially with the fake logs in them.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwev3c",
"comment_text": [
"They work because gas is flammable. But seriously, what do you mean? "
],
"score": 10
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwe7ab",
"comment_text": [
"They are ceramic and they can tolerate many thousands of degrees. "
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwcabv",
"comment_text": [
"Most modern day gas fireplaces works much like a gas stove. Thee pilot light on on the time and when you turn the nob on the fireplace, gas is released and feeds the flame. The flame then becomes a full blown fire, emitting light and heat into your room. Note: A pilot light is a small non-fluctuating flame.\nHope this helps :) "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwcj7y",
"comment_text": [
"The fire actually never makes contact with the logs. The fire is made to go all around logs, and the fact that there made of fire retardant materials protect them from the heat."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwccpl",
"comment_text": [
"Thanks! \nAre the logs in the fireplace like protected by glass or something? Like how do they keep from burning. (I understand they may not be real wood but still...) "
],
"score": 2
}
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|
Why are college basketball/football rules different from the pros?
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explainlikeimfive
|
1sd31x
| 3
| true
| false
| 1
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwdegc",
"comment_text": [
"It's not really a feeder into the pros. College football, collectively, earns more money than the 32 NFL teams. NFL is athletically on a completely different level than college, doesn't make sense to have entirely same rules. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwf5y8",
"comment_text": [
"The governing bodies of each league, be it NCAA or NBA, want to put a good product out. The rules are different because each league has found a reason to have different rules. Some of the rules encourage competition, such as the ground causing a fumble in college football. Some of the rules are just different because that is the way the game is played, like 20 minute halves in NCAA and 12 minute quarters in NBA. ",
"Even in the Pros, you have rule differences sometimes between the leagues, such as the DH rule in the AL baseball. Or the XFL with no fair catch. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwi1sw",
"comment_text": [
"College football and Nfl have different ideas of what the game should be. Remember that in college you have students playing a game and in the nfl you have professional athletes. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwn4c4",
"comment_text": [
"True but here is an example. In NCAA when someone catches the ball they only need one foot in to be considered in bounds. In the nfl you need 2 and possession to the ground. It requires more athleticism for the nfl catch. Something someone in college may not posses and makes the game much more difficult. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwct3k",
"comment_text": [
"Different governing bodies, with different agendas. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: What happens if you slow your breath down as slow as possible and relax as much as possible during meditation? and: Does marijuana have known physiological impact on this? [SERIOUS]
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sd8d7
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.57
|
TI I was raised on western medicine (and science) who several years of ago would have laughed at the idea of a eastern medicine treatment. Somewhere along the way manic depression comes into play and many people recommend meditation as a way of relaxing. So you give it a try. Really nothing bad, its actually a good use of time. Note: I have a tendency to smoke lots of pot at times with intermittent breaks (1 week to 6 months), some would argue its drug abuse. Probably. Others would call it nothing because "its just weed" (I assume) But I digress. The purpose is, when I get high the first few times after starting marijuana (after a 6 mo to 1 wk break typically), it makes an extroadinary euphoria called "being really fucking high." Something really extreme has been happening recently when I've been trying to do a "slow breath meditation" - I've never meditated before, it was recommended by a doctor to reduce symptoms of mental illness (manic depression). But I know nothing about meditation. So I just made shit up based on lots of different random "eastern medical'/weird shit things I'd read or seen. < 'Slow breath' to me is just lying back on the ground and breathing as slow as possible and relaxing every part of the body and eyes resting unforced in whatever relaxing position an eye can be in. > Now here's the need for medical knowledge - as my breath slows, the euphoria rises. Beyond just being high. Just from breating slow. A simple human behavior. Slow breath -> More high. And its reaches a point where I get scared of continuing because it feels like my breath is dangerously low and it could make me pass out or worse. I'm not really into that. Many people would say "its just breathing and its just weed"...Can marijuana and controlling your breath beyond human limits??? Whatever I am writing way to much fucking story..... Is there any potential for physiological damage happen to a human being from doing a "meditation" where they lie on their back and do deep breathing and make their breath go as slow as they possibly can... particularly if they are heavily sedated with marijuana after a "measurable" break --> <Breating super slow, while super duper baked.> TLDR>>> Is there any actual physiological damage than can be done to a human if they are "really really really" high and slow down their breath as much as they can? <Maybe like a thing David Blane would do? SERIOUS
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwdjnb",
"comment_text": [
"Is there any actual physiological damage than can be done to a human if they are \"really really really\" high and slow down their breath as much as they can?",
"If you passed out your body would automatically return your breathing rate to normal. This might be interfered with by some drugs, but I don't think marijuana is one of them. Passing out isn't great for you, but in the grand scheme of a manic-depressive stoner it is probably the least of your health worries."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwe6fc",
"comment_text": [
"Nope. Cannabis is not one of them."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwdg19",
"comment_text": [
"Meditation lets me tune out the world. I don't do drugs, so couldn't answer the second question. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwe58o",
"comment_text": [
"I am not a physician. I am however very well versed in Neurology, Psychology, Psychopharmacology etc. ",
"The easy answer is: No, you wont hurt yourself or die if you smoke pot and meditate. ",
"The long answer: It sounds to me like you are having an anxiety attack. Let me see if I can give you a good break down /puts his bong away/. ",
"First: there are no cannabinoid receptors in your Brainstem/Medulla Oblongata. This part of your brain is responsible for automatic things like breathing. If you were to slow your breath enough, you would simply fall asleep. Your cerebellum would then kick in and fully moderate your breath.",
"Second: What's probably happening with you is a bit of anxiety. It's not uncommon for people who have taken tolerance breaks to have some anxiety/paranoia their first couple of times smoking again after the break. You get a little anxious, your brain starts playing the 'what if' game, and before you know it your on the path to a small anxiety attack. ",
"Relax. It's nearly impossible to die from smoking cannabis. You can't slow your breathing down enough to cause any damage. ",
"Also remember, this is the reason kids wont die when they threaten to hold their breath until you let them do something. They'll hold their breath, pass out, then their Brain stem will continue to regulate their breathing. ",
"Edit: A bad anatomy error."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwmnnf",
"comment_text": [
"Seeing how you mentioned some experience with psychpharmacology - would psychiatric meds play a role? In particular lithium and lamictal? ",
"It's awkward - the experience feels like you're dying - which in this case is absolutely frightening but also feels absolutely amazing. It's like the world is telling me to let go and allow it to consume me and feel amazing wonders of the universe... but I am scared because it seems dangerous."
],
"score": 1
}
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ELI5: Why do humans kiss?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sdj7e
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwhgwa",
"comment_text": [
"There are a lot of reasons, including affection and physical contact of sensitive parts, but there are theories that claim strengthening immune system and checking compatibility."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwhbw1",
"comment_text": [
"Hm. I hadn't thought about that."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwi5js",
"comment_text": [
"I've always wondered that and why it feels so good with the right person"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwh48a",
"comment_text": [
"Hormones. I suspect it gets lots of hormones transferred"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwje2p",
"comment_text": [
"I doubt it is the transferal of hormones but the body making an association between kissing and the imminent engagement in coitus which is something we are all naturally biologically programmed to undergo in order to pass on our genes, so the body would then move in to tell you that you are doing the right thing and encourage you by the secretion of positive endorphins giving you a \"natural high\"of sorts"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why is satellite internet so slow, when satellite tv comes in instantly?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sd9sc
| 3
| true
| false
| 1
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwedfl",
"comment_text": [
"The TV knows what to broadcast in advance, and your receiver gets it in a constant stream. ",
"If you want something specific you have to ask for it, and asking for it via satellite internet requires connecting you to the satellite, the satellite to a ground station, the ground station to the internet, and then through the nodes of the internet... and then all the way back again.",
"That's a lot of delays, especially considering the limited capacity of the satellite meaning very little bandwidth is given to each customer as compared to a cable line connection or DSL. ",
"Also satellite TV doesn't broadcast to your house, it broadcasts to ",
", even those without a dish. You get the dish and that will get the broadcast from anywhere the satellite has a line-of-sight to more or less.",
"So the Satellite is broadcasting once for everybody in range, and its range is large.",
"For internet every single customer has to be dealt with personally because each of them are asking for different things all the time."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwgg8v",
"comment_text": [
"Connection \"speed\" is a word used refer to two different things: bandwidth and latency, depending on context. ",
"Bandwidth is the familiar speed-- ",
" kilobits per second is how much data can be moved through the connection in a second. It's a measure of the capacity of the connection. ",
"Latency is the time it takes for any given bit of data to move through the connection, and it's measured in milliseconds (your local network has a latency around 1ms, while a wired internet connection could connect to facebook in probably 40ms). A satellite is almost 23,000 miles away from the equator, and even further from the uplinks (your satellite dish as well as the land-earth station that's connecting the satellite to the internet at the other end) at higher latitudes. It takes a noticeable fraction of a second (so, up to 1000ms), much more noticeable than most copper/fiber connections, for the internet packets to travel up to the satellite and back down.",
"The satellite TV is still getting to your TV about a second after it was sent out from your satellite TV provider; if you had satellite TV next to a local* broadcast of the same event, you'd notice the delay is present. You could also measure this by sending pings from your computer to the same IP address through a DSL line vs. satellite. ",
"*In this case, the local broadcaster may also be using a satellite link if it's not a local event, so let's say this example requires a local event as the source of the broadcast."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwh6x9",
"comment_text": [
"I'm not aware of what type of satellite internet you are using, but when I use to deal with it, satellite internet was a dual system. you didn't have an uplink to the satellite, just a downlink. you send your request to the provider server though a telephone line which receives your request , puts your request on their uplink to the satellite and send your request on the downlink. some newer systems have a microwave transmitter and connect directly to the satellite, but they tend to be cost prohibitive. once your request is processed you should have an acceptable download bandwidth. at least I did. "
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwpfcy",
"comment_text": [
"Because TV is broadcast, all the channels at once. Your receiver just needs to tune to another channel that is already at it, more or less. TL;DR, it is one way, and all the viewers get to use the same bandwidth at no detriment to each other. Yes there is the up/down delay to a signal, but that is not relevant, as your receiver tunes already downlinked channels.",
"Satellite internet is two way. Meaning your request needs to go up and down, and the result go up and down, both on bandwidth dynamically allocated to you. More users may pinch that to less bandwidth."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwdw1d",
"comment_text": [
"Is this a necessary function for youtube videos?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Why is it that more often than not, people who preach tolerance and acceptance of others (race, religion, sexual orientation etc) are not tolerant of people who aren't tolerant of these things? It seems hypocritical. Please advise.
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sdr1z
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.46
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwjmta",
"comment_text": [
"To add to this, intolerance is usually a product of ignorance. The problem with ignorant people is that they usually don't listen to reason. It's really difficult to tolerate someone who refuses to acknowledge or even listen to reason and facts during a debate. So there's that."
],
"score": 5
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwjjgf",
"comment_text": [
"Because tolerance is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. You can't use the appeal to tolerance to try and make acceptable morally unjustifiable behaviour. We do not tolerate murderers or thieves. We do tolerate those that just want to be left alone to live their lives in peace without other people enforcing a lifestyle on them they may not neccesarily agree with. \nThis goes for both sides of the fence. The tolerance stops as soon as you are trying to tell other people how to live their lives, or trying to limit their freedom. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwjufi",
"comment_text": [
"\"The tolerance stops as soon as you are trying to tell other people how to live their lives, or trying to limit their freedom. \" This is my point. The other day I was on a forum where a person made an off-color remark about a transgender person. The rest of the forum immediately attacked that person telling them to leave the forum, calling them an asshole, telling him he shouldn't think like that etc. The person who made the off color remark wasn't telling the transgender person how to live their life or limit their freedom, they simply made an insensitive remark. However, the rest forum certainly were trying to tell that guy who made the remark how to live his life, how to think, and limit his freedom (by telling him to leave the forum). It is a scary thought that a person makes an unpopular remark and is attacked and asked to leave a community. Why isn't that person free to express his opinion (which again really wasn't even an opinion, it was an off color comment, not a rant about transgender people). Scary stuff. To make it clear, I do not support the remark that person made, I just found the whole torch and pitchfork brigade quite alarming and hypocritical."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwjwcq",
"comment_text": [
"I agree that would be someting undesirable.\nThing is, what you describe sounds like a normal social mechanism to me, under the circumstances. When a group, any group, feels threatened or attacked by an individual this group tends to pull together and indiscriminately attack that individual in what they perceive to be retaliation. It's group-think and a primate means of bonding and ensuring group-safety, apes do it too.",
"That of course does not make it right, I'm just trying to explain how it is common and expectable. I think it would be better for people to act rationally and recognise when they are acting out of instinct, and then take time to investigate if it is an appropriate response. Unfortunately, many people do not have these conscious filters between emotion and action. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwjh2i",
"comment_text": [
"If you want a tolerant society, you have to be opposed to intolerance. So in a sense, yes, they are imposing their values onto others, but their values are much less restrictive than those of the intolerant."
],
"score": 2
}
|
||
ELI5:Whatever happened to Kony 2012
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1se2eq
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.42
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwoxqz",
"comment_text": [
"Kony isn't dead as some other commenters have said. But, he's been so far pushed out that it really matters very little about whether he's caught or not.",
"The problem for Invisible Children's campaign was that the producer, Jason Russell, had a mental breakdown from the resulting scrutiny and went crazy in the middle of San Diego, tarnishing the campaign quite a bit."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwon84",
"comment_text": [
"really? I'm impressed. That guy successfully ripped off people with a very well made video."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwowyt",
"comment_text": [
"Most of the non profits into advertising are actually making real profits that goes to the people running said non profits first and the cause second."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwmqyu",
"comment_text": [
"it was a marketing hoax"
],
"score": -1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwoco9",
"comment_text": [
"It was a hoax. Kony was already dead. "
],
"score": -1
}
|
||
Why can I touch tin foil the moment it's removed from the oven?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1se6ov
| 34
| true
| false
| 0.82
|
It doesn't seem to get hot when shoved in a 200°C oven while covering a tray and food which do get hot. What gives?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwoxlq",
"comment_text": [
"It does get hot from being in the oven, and aluminum (not actually tin) is very efficient at transferring heat. The thing is, it's so thin that there's just not that much total heat there to be transferred to anything else. It cools pretty quickly on contact with air when you remove it from the oven, and even faster if you touch it with your skin."
],
"score": 12
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwwfwd",
"comment_text": [
"The aluminum foil will be just as hot as the oven, but it won't feel hot because of how thin it is (0.016 mm), and its low specific heat (0.9 J/gC) of aluminum. A 4 cm",
" area of aluminum foil (about the area that you might grab with your fingers when pulling it out of the oven) can be heated from 37 C (body temperature) too 200 C (oven temperature) with only 0.01 Joules. When touching the foil with your fingers, this heat will be transferred to them. This amount of energy is so small that it will heat up your fingers by a fraction of a degree, and thus won't burn you. "
],
"score": 11
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwo0kx",
"comment_text": [
"Not only does heat reflect off foil like light does with a mirror, aluminum is also excellent at transferring and dispersing heat. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdww5vp",
"comment_text": [
"heat capacity, how much heat an object can hold.\nso a cup of boiling water will scald you, but not half a teaspoon.",
"Aluminium foil doesn't have much heat capacity since it doesn't have that much mass to hold heat, whereas the oven dish has quite a bit."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdzsvhm",
"comment_text": [
"You're a super hero"
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
EL15: How many FPS does the human eye see?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1se8uh
| 11
| true
| false
| 0.63
|
I've been wondering how many Frames per Second the human eye sees, because when you play a game say, around 60fps, you can see it great, so does that mean that that's how many we see? If we saw at 40fps would 40fps games look just as good?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwp2ux",
"comment_text": [
"This article goes into great detail about how the human eye interprets movies and the real world.",
"http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm",
"For those that don't want to read, this quote pretty much sums it up.",
"\" Seeing framewise is simply not the way how the eye\\brain system works. It works with a continuous flow of light\\information.\"",
"An example they use is that a movie of a slow moving fog can seem fluid at extremely low framerates (<10) because of it's lack of sharp edges and fast movement. ",
"On the other hand, fluidity a game, where quick movement and high detail are present, can be greatly affected by framerate. It's pretty easy to see a difference between 30 and 60 fps, and higher refresh smooth things out even more. ",
"The human eye can discern fluid movement at a wide range of fps, but when viewing the real world, it does not see in \"fps\", as light is constantly streaming into it and being processed."
],
"score": 12
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwqix3",
"comment_text": [
"As a visual example, use ",
"this tool",
". If you set both moving objects to different FPS but low velocity (fog analogy), the eye cannot see a difference. Up the speed and the difference is very clear."
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwouff",
"comment_text": [
"It's not a piece of digital equipment so there's no \"frame rate\" of the human eye. Each light receptor is on its own activate-recharge-activate cycle.",
"You'll usually notice the choppiness in frame rates that dip below 30 or framerates that vary significantly.",
"The resolution of the game and the speed of the action determine when the frame rate becomes noticeable. Slower, blurrier games can get away with lower frame rates."
],
"score": 4
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxt8hg",
"comment_text": [
"Chief Blur Buster here (I am the creator of ",
"www.testufo.com",
" 30fps-vs-60fps \ntest)",
"It's correct that human eyes do not have a frame rate. Even when we lose count of the frames beyond a certain rate (framerates fast enough that we can't count frames, one, two, three) we can still 'feel' the improved fluidity. Then beyond that, even when fluidity is maxed out, there are still side effects like tracking-based motion blur (e.g. ",
"www.testufo.com/eyetracking",
") and stroboscopic effects that still remains even at several hundred frames per second (and beyond). Wagon wheel effects are still noticeable at hundreds of frames per second, as an example.",
"I posted a ",
"good, big, large post here in /r/pcmasterrace",
" that covers this.",
"The 100fps.com article is pretty good; however, it's actually a bit incomplete. As one example, test #3 is actually an understatement -- 1/500sec isn't the limit; humans can easily see a briefer flash than that: For example, a high-speed xenon flash of 1/10,000th of a second is easily seen by eyes. The trick is that the flash needs to be brighter to compensate for its briefness, in order to be seen."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwtsrx",
"comment_text": [
"this is totally incorrect"
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: Why does asparagus make my pee so damn awful?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sefmp
| 23
| true
| false
| 0.66
|
And it only takes about 30 minutes for it to fulfill its evil lifeplan and make my coveted bathroom time into a torturous event.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwszoz",
"comment_text": [
"I tried Googling why Google makes your pee smell, nothing came up. "
],
"score": 14
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx7t57",
"comment_text": [
"I personally love the smell, it's basically the second enjoyment of asparagus. "
],
"score": 10
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwujrm",
"comment_text": [
"It's the sulfur in the asparagus. The funky pee smell doesn't affect everyone, only about 50%."
],
"score": 8
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwt4md",
"comment_text": [
"directions unclear; now looking at gay porn. "
],
"score": 7
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwv6dh",
"comment_text": [
"Glad i'm one of the lucky ones that get to experience it then"
],
"score": 5
}
|
|
ELI5: Difference between Mandarin and Cantonese?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sen3g
| 1
| true
| false
| 0.57
|
I am currently studying Chinese(the writing) and Mandarin Chinese(the language) at school, I used to learn Pinyin(the simplified version for English speaking people). My teacher tells me she CAN NOT for the life of her understand Canton, and that its a cultural language, for example, pop singers sing in Canton... Fir me, Mandarin sounds much nicer to me, and Canton sounds very..angry. Where and why is Canton and Mandarin spoken?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwthwz",
"comment_text": [
"Mandarin is pretty much taught in all schools across China. Whether or not you speak it elsewhere is up to you because there are heaps and heaps of dialects present. Mains ones that I am aware of are Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghainese and Teochew. Cantonese is a dialect of the canton area. From my understanding Hong Kong adopted it at some point and it's their main language. All the dialects sound similar, yet incredibly different to each other. Think English vs French. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwtlnt",
"comment_text": [
"They all use the same writing system. But they are very different spoken language; think of it like spanish and English. Mandarin was forced on most of the population by the communists to standardize language. Many Chinese people can still speak a regional dialect also"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwx00b",
"comment_text": [
"Thank you very much."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwtaqd",
"comment_text": [
"Other piece of info, I am told more business, at least to Americans, is done in Mandarin, that's why its taught in our schools."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxm8ng",
"comment_text": [
"Well, that depends. Hong Kong is a major business market and they only speak cantonese. The only saving grace is that most people there were taught basic british english and most merchants know enough of mandarin to do business with mainland.",
"But HKers are very xenophobic towards mandarin speakers, so if you want a good deal in hong kong, please speak proper cantonese or just talk in english."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
Eli5: the movie man on the moon, with jim carrey
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sep0y
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwtv86",
"comment_text": [
"It's a biopic about Andy Kaufman, a very eccentric comedian."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwtvfk",
"comment_text": [
"What's to explain? It's a biopic about Andy Kaufman."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwtww3",
"comment_text": [
"It's the life of comedian Andy Kaufman. What do you want to know?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwtxrl",
"comment_text": [
"But at the end, U see tony Clifton, Who was played by Andy or Bob..",
"Andy Died, and bob was at Tony's last performance ",
"andy faked his death?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwu2hp",
"comment_text": [
"Some people think Andy faked his death, because he's the kinda guy who would totally do that, right? The movie is just messing with the audience there, right in line with what Andy Kaufman would have done."
],
"score": 1
}
|
||
ELI5: Why is there such a huge gender gap among Wikipedia editors?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1setsv
| 4
| true
| false
| 0.61
|
I was discussing Wikipedia with some people a few days ago, and somewhere in the discussion, one of us encountered this on Google: Apparently, only around 10% of the editors are women. How can they be so underrepresented, when Wikipedia is open for everyone to edit?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdww494",
"comment_text": [
"I had no idea this was true. ",
"It suggests a problematic bias in Wikipedia."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwzert",
"comment_text": [
"Or a bias in who desires to be an editor.",
"I'd be willing to put money that Reddit is disproportionately male in users."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwxpr1",
"comment_text": [
"The key question is whether those differences are culturally or biologically based. If they are culturally based, then they are malleable and we can have control over them. In that case, we should ask ourselves whether those cultural structures are discouraging some people from certain pursuits."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwwu0g",
"comment_text": [
"I don't think it's quite that simple. Culture influences people's desires and aptitudes a lot. ",
"A family friend of mine recently sent me ",
"this article",
". ",
"Women do worse on standardized math tests when asked to indicate their sex. When they are told men and women do equally well on such tests, their performance improves."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdww87g",
"comment_text": [
"Why is there a huge gender gap in <profession/interest/field/...>?",
"Because people of different genders have different interests, goals, capabilities, desires, etc. As long as everyone has equal opportunity to do whatever they want, there's nothing wrong if certain places are statistically over/under-represented by a gender or other group."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
Why do we punish hate crimes differently? - My explanation
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sevks
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdww2i0",
"comment_text": [
"I have never heard of anyone hurting or killing someone because they loved them, hence aren't all crimes against individuals hate crimes(aside from the occasional whacko who kills his/her lover so no one else can have them). IMHO it is to try to correct biased feelings against groups but aren't a person's thoughts and ideas protected by the constitution? "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdww3ds",
"comment_text": [
"Yeah, but you have heard of people killing someone to get their cash. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwwihw",
"comment_text": [
"Personal interpretation, mine vs. yours. Terrorist threats are a different law aside from hate crimes. The constitution protects freedom of expression, even in the event of a crime, if you stab someone because you don't like them and their group you should be charged with stabbing a person, not stabbing and hating. That is what is called double jeopardy, being charged twice for the same crime. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwy1ca",
"comment_text": [
"That is why I am making my distinction. It is not double jeopardy. If I kill you and hide the body. That is murder. If I kill you and hang your body near your neighborhood with a sign saying \"[people of your ethnic persuasion] go home!\" I am not just victimizing you, I am assaulting an entire community. There ",
" a distinction. The difficulty is drawing the line through the gray areas. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwzi24",
"comment_text": [
"You skipped over the part where I assaulted a community. And freedoms of expression has reasonable limitations. Such as assault. "
],
"score": 2
}
|
||
ELI5: Why do betting companies always win?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1seyib
| 0
| true
| false
| 0.5
|
I heard this expression that you can never beat the company. How?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwwvsj",
"comment_text": [
"On a small scale it is possible to win. However, any betting is basically set so that the odds are in the house's favor, and they will win more than they lose."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwx2k1",
"comment_text": [
"The house only plays games where the house has an advantage, or where the house makes money just by being there. ",
"Take roulette as an example: The pay out if you bet on one number to win is 1 to 36. But, there are 38 numbers (1 to 36, 0, and 00). So, actually, the house wins over time. Similarly, if you bet on black you win 2 dollars if you bet one dollar, but since the 0 and 00 are green, you actually won't break even that way. ",
"Now, a sufficiently large bet could \"break\" the house. But casinos usually limit the total amount that a person can bet to avoid that (they don't have to take your bet), so they will win in the long run, so long as they can keep people playing."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwylme",
"comment_text": [
"They don't always win but they win in the long run.",
"If I set up a game with you where you roll a die and get $2 for a 6 and I get $1 for everything else you might win a roll or two or even many. But if we keep playing for a very long time, in the end I'll win more."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx0pkq",
"comment_text": [
"I think all the other answers miss the point: the odds must favor the house, even if only slightly, because the casino has bills to pay: mortgage, payroll, utilities, taxes, etc. Anything the guests are not explicitly charged for, such as rent, food, beverages, and merchandise, is being paid for by that advantage in the odds."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdxfd8t",
"comment_text": [
"Because in order to make a profit, they simply design the games based on statistics that cause them to win most of the time. If the odds are 60% in their favor, they can count on that 20% fairly consistently.",
"Take blackjack for example. You will always be dealt first. Meaning that if you go first and lose... the dealer automatically wins. If you want an example of how obviously it's stacked in their favor, try playing blackjack with someone, where you always go first, and record the wins.",
"Most people who go to casinos either know they are blowing money and do not care, or have so little an idea of how math works that they repeatedly funnel out money on losing odds. So the casinos make money. Professional gamblers may beat them sometimes, but even then in games of chance this will not be the norm."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: Why do stores and shops that sell cupcakes put an unnecessary amount of frosting on them?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sa6zb
| 2
| true
| false
| 0.67
|
I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about. Why do they do this?
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvhk04",
"comment_text": [
"For some reason most baking/decorating classes teach people to put copious amounts of frosting on cupcakes. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that patrons can remove excess frosting, but cannot add frosting. ",
"Plus, the more frosting there is, the more you salivate, the less you notice how stale the cupcake is. "
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvh6yh",
"comment_text": [
"Although I know I don't speak for everyone, I like the frosting. I would be much more inclined to buy a cupcake with heavy frosting than with light."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvhnio",
"comment_text": [
"I'm a bachelor who has never tried making cupcakes. But I think that if I did, I would put a lot frosting on them."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvhnio",
"comment_text": [
"I'm a bachelor who has never tried making cupcakes. But I think that if I did, I would put a lot frosting on them."
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvh9pz",
"comment_text": [
"It's more appealing to the eye. Pretty things sell faster than practical things."
],
"score": 2
}
|
|
ELI5: What does the L on an automatic transmission really do?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1sf5oq
| 1
| true
| false
| 1
|
[deleted]
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwyzum",
"comment_text": [
"It keeps the transmission from shifting up past 1st or 2nd gear. It's not really for getting unstuck; it's usually for towing."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx19xr",
"comment_text": [
"L on an automatic transmissions \"states\" for lowgear option. This is usually a mode which will force your transmission into only \"use\" first and second gear. ",
"You have probably noticed how your car will jump many gears at the time when you've accelerated hard to high speed, leaving you in a gear with low RPMs, giving you small ammounts of torque, but good fuel economics for cruising at that speed.",
"Lowgear is usually used when towing something heavy, to stop your car from going into too high of a gear, making you loose speed because your engine can't produce enough torque in that gear to keep you accelerating, or even cruise at the given speed. ",
"It can also be used as a tool to descent hills easier and more comfortable. ",
"It is not a tool intended for getting you \"unstuck\". Most transmissions wont upshift if you're stuck anyway, so if you're stuck, just go with small ammounts of gas on the pedal and let the wheels do its job, it won't matter if the car is in low-gear mode or Drive, since it will not upshift anyway.",
"(unless you have a really, old, shitty transmission, or even car..)"
],
"score": 2
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwz85x",
"comment_text": [
"So you can use it in a situation where you don't want to go very fast (like going downhill in the snow)."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdwzuv9",
"comment_text": [
"It keeps the transmission in a lower gear, which can be useful for slowing down or accelerating quicker. I use it on approaching stops, while coasting downhill to keep myself from gaining speed, and occasionally for passing idiots on the road.",
"As far as getting out of the snow, I don't see how low gear would help at all. It'd be more likely to break loose and be worthless since the throttle would be more sensitive."
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdx0syc",
"comment_text": [
"As long as your RPM doesn't spike ridiculously, it's not that stressful. I only use low gear if I'm under 40 mph. Speed to RPM ratio in low gear would likely be different for your car, so you just gotta feel it out for yourself."
],
"score": 1
}
|
|
ELI5: How long did it take for Americans to lose their European accents when migrating to America? Why did different accents pick up in different regions?
|
explainlikeimfive
|
1saare
| 11
| true
| false
| 0.77
|
I often watch Westerns and wonder if people back then still had their European accents.
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvif55",
"comment_text": [
"If you're talking general accent, the British founders of America never lost theirs. It was the Brits back in England who did. Modern American accents in the northeast, particularly Boston and New York, are much closer to how the English spoke at the time America was first settled.",
"As for later, non-English speaking immigrants, the accents most likely went away in a generation or two, as their children and grandchildren learned English as native speakers. ",
"Keep in mind, though, that immigration from Europe was ongoing and, in certain parts of the country in the mid and late 19th century (like Missouri and Kansas), you could have heard a lot of people with German accents, for example.",
"Tiny mind-blower for you: Queen Victoria did not have a British accent, since her first language was German..."
],
"score": 9
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvk9kf",
"comment_text": [
"Actually, Americans living in the Appalachians have the closest accent to what the original (British) colonists would have had."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvllt4",
"comment_text": [
"The Americans lost their 18",
" Century British accents at about the same time the British lost thier 18",
" Century British accents...after it stopped being the 18",
" Century.",
"Neither the British nor the Americans talk that way anymore."
],
"score": 3
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvo0gg",
"comment_text": [
"Why did the Brits back in England lose their accents?"
],
"score": 1
}
|
{
"comment_id": "t1_cdvo8zz",
"comment_text": [
"The language and pronunciation evolved. The UK for a long time had (and to an extent still does) have a lot of very regional accents. London used to have many subtly different accents that were varying degrees of regional. Scotland is very different from England, and the Welsh and Northern Irish are different again. ",
"Then with the advent of radio and TV they started to standardize. ",
"The language of Diplomacy used to be French, upper classes spoke french to each other and as they spoke to their subordinates language rippled along. Of course, as was said, some of the British nobility were also german, and so there was an influx of language from German (which itself has gone through major revisions in the same time period). "
],
"score": 1
}
|
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