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30hznj | why should a company be allowed to patent two old drugs that cost $8 and $5 mix them together and charge $1400 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30hznj/eli5_why_should_a_company_be_allowed_to_patent/ | {
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"Patent law does not touch on what people are able to sell the resulting product for. Patent law has nothing to do with sales price.\n\nThe new drug is patentable because they \"invented\" the way to combine these 2 medicines. They are then free to charge whatever price the market will allow.\n\nThe real problem here is the doctors. The medical system as it exists is essentially relying on Doctors to police this kind of thing. The Doctor should know that drug A is a more expensive version of drugs B and C, and therefore should only prescribe drugs B and C. \n\nBut the system as it exists allows drug companies to basically buy doctors ability to prescribe. That's what needs changing, because that's where the real problem is. It's not that the new drug exists, or that it's patented or that the price is so high. it's that the public is relying on a recommendation from a source that is not independent. "
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atnijp | why do american fuel pumps have one nozzle for multiple fuel selections? surely they'd all mix | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/atnijp/eli5_why_do_american_fuel_pumps_have_one_nozzle/ | {
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"It'll mix, but not a lot. Getting a little bit of 87 octane in your full tank of 93 octane isn't going to make a bit of difference.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nHowever, there are different infrastructures, pumps, and hoses for gasoline vs diesel.\n\n & #x200B;",
"It's like having one faucet in your shower for both hot and cold water. The amount of mixing doesn't really matter in this case because it's all unleaded gasoline. High octane gasoline won't hurt regular cars, and the tiny amount of 87 residue won't hurt high performance cars. If the pump had diesel, the diesel will always be in a different nozzle.",
"At most, you would get 1 hose-full of different octane gas in your tank. It would be diluted enough that it wouldn’t have much of an effect.\n\nAlso, modern engines have systems that can adjust their timing to account for different octane gasses. It’s not as important to use the right grade as it was 20 years ago.",
"They do mix a little bit. Whatever octane was pumped previously will be filling part of the hose when you go to purchase your own fuel. So, if the person before you bought 88 octane and you buy 93 octane you are going to get maybe half a liter of 88 octane before you start getting the 93 octane you paid for.\n\nThe price difference comes out to a few pennies and there is no harm to the car. The vast majority of the fuel you pump (assuming you're filling a decent fraction of your tank) will be the correct octane.\n\nThere would be much more of a problem if gasoline and diesel were mixed so you'll never see a single hose for those two types of fuel.",
"Pipelines do this too. They used to seperate products in pipelines with plugs called pigs, but they realized it didn't matter and stopped.",
"Actually, what you get IS a mixture of fuels, by design. In the pump, they combine a couple different grades of fuel in varying amounts to produce the multiple grades they sell. \n\nThere may be some residue of a different grade in the hose, and other posters have already addressed that issue. \n\nDiesel fuel is usually dispensed from a separate pump. ",
"A small amount, about 1/5 gallon is in the hose from the top of the dispenser to the nozzle, and perhaps about that much from the internal plumbing to the actual valves.\n\nWorks out in a even in the long run.\n\nOften vapor and product leak testing both for testing contractor and the regulator inspector is based on the number of hoses and number of dispensers. Using 8 hoses for 8 filling spots on 4 dispensers is much cheaper than using 24 hoses. \n\nDiesel is usually it's own hose, sometimes flex fuel with a higher ethanol concentration is a different hose."
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3mr1it | why do predictive text/autocorrect seem hell-bent on using typos you made one time a month ago? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mr1it/eli5_why_do_predictive_textautocorrect_seem/ | {
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"If it doesn't catch the typo, or if you make the same typo multiple times, it will add a new word to your phones dictionary (which is designed as a way to always be improving your autocorrects).\n\nMost phones will let you access the dictionary of new words that have been added, so you can go in, find the typo, and delete it, so it won't auto correct to the typo anymore.",
"Because if you accepted the tyop it's added it to the dictionary and will use it as the preferred spelling. After all, a human told it to, so it must be good, right?\n\nFind your custom dictionary one night when you're bored and do a little gardening. A few minutes weeding out mitsakes and errers will help a lot.",
"And why does it predict the country \"US\" before the pronoun of the English language \"us\".?"
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3jr0sx | how can we prove someone died due to smoking cigarettes? how do statistics work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jr0sx/eli5how_can_we_prove_someone_died_due_to_smoking/ | {
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"Technically, we can't ever say a specific case of lung cancer is due to smoking. Cancer is caused by random mutations in the affected cells, and there's no way to trace why these mutations happened. We just know that smoking can cause cancer, and that smokers have lung cancer a lot more often than non-smokers, so when a heavy smoker develops cancer we make the assumption."
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qpf3y | the relationship between html, css, php, javascript etc | I know all of these are involved in websites, but have no idea how, or what they do. There's probably some other important stuff I've missed out too. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qpf3y/eli5_the_relationship_between_html_css_php/ | {
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"Okay, for a five-year-old:\n\nYour web browser requests a page from a web server. The server runs PHP code (or any other similar language), which returns other code to your browser. Your browser then reads this code:\n\n- HTML describes a web page's information - what text, images, etc. are on the page\n- CSS describes how the information should look on the page - color, size, etc.\n- Javascript controls actions on the page, and anything else dynamic that your browser can do; this can include things like tracking time, doing something when a button/link is clicked, updating the page's code or style, or a lot of other things.",
"HTML is the wood frame of a house.\n\nCSS is the curtains, carpet, and other styled elements.\n\nPHP is the landlord that you rent the house from. \n\nJavaScript is what you do in the house.",
"I don't want to pretend that you are 5 years old, but I will try to explain it on very basic level.\n\nThere is a computer somewhere that is connected to the internet all the time. The programmer writes **PHP** code that will generate **HTML** code(it can generate all kind of output actually, but most of the time it is used to generate HTML) and puts it on that computer. Your browser download that generated HTML code along with CSS and JavaScript code.\n\nHTML is basically definition of how the page will look. It has descriptions like \"Put a box with the following text on the far left corner and put a picture next to it\". It also tells your browser which CSS and Javascript files to download.\n\n**CSS** is the description about the look of these things described in the HTML code. For an example you can tell that box on the left corner should be 120px wide and have yellow background.\n\nthe **JavaScript** is responsible for the actions of these things described in the HTML. For an example, using JavaScript you can make that box described previously to move to the right corner when clicked. \n\n\nSo in a nutshell, PHP generates HTML, HTML describes what you will have on the page and how they are organized, CSS describes how these things will look like and JavaScript controls how they will act."
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c6m1vt | why using mdma can reduce our standart serotonine level | I've seen somewhere that using MDMA in medium to high doses can make our serotonine standart level (assume that's = 4) drop to 3 and if used constantly keep reducing this level, until you finnally get something like depression because your new level will be below of the usual | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c6m1vt/eli5_why_using_mdma_can_reduce_our_standart/ | {
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"Your serotonin receptors get used to the massive amounts of serotonin being dumped into them. Once you're off the MDMA, there isn't that much serotonin being sent to the receptors, but they still expect the massive amounts, resulting in the effects you speak of",
"Yes, bodies are adaption machines. No matter what you put inside it the human Body will try to keep up functional levels. If you flood it with serotonin it will adapt to this high supply and will constantly demand it from the outside."
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4rtfll | why dim lighting is considered romantic | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rtfll/eli5_why_dim_lighting_is_considered_romantic/ | {
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"The main reason is because it hides people's physical flaws which makes them more comfortable and they find it easier to engage in romantic behaviour without worrying about zits or stretchmarks or other issues that they may not feel good about. It also makes peripheral and background objects softer which means focusing on the other individual is emphasised. ",
"I believe one factor is that dimly lit places add to feelings of privacy and intimacy among people who know each other, and somehow adds to less self-consciousness and more comfort among those people who do not know each other.\n\nI can give you an anecdotal example. A Halloween dance for kids and teens with a turnout of about 80 kids in a gymnasium. They have a great DJ with a great system, fog machine, decorations, food, the works. At first, they have the gym lights on and no kids would dance, they barely even talk to each other. It is pretty dead. However, dimming the overheads and just using the side emergency lights, quickly, the teens start talking to each other, the little kids start chasing each other around, and soon most are gathered around the DJ shouting requests and dancing. Having to turn the overhead lights on for a few minutes, everyone yells, and then go to the sides of the gym again. Dim the lights again, and the party starts up quickly.\n\nAlthough a portion of these kids has attended night time dances, most have not. I can be fairly certain that they had not spent time in clubs and bars. However, they might have learned from TV and movies that the dark is supposed to be traditionally more fun. In observation, the dim light seems to make the kids more interested in social interaction, and in some ways, braver.",
"One reason is low light makes the pupils of people's pupils eyes expand (dilate). This also happens when people experience sexually attraction or arousal. So the low light amplifies the appearance of sexual attraction by both people, making the situation more sexy. "
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m2hhe | the oj simpson trial and why it was a big deal | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/m2hhe/eli5_the_oj_simpson_trial_and_why_it_was_a_big/ | {
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"Professional athletes running from police after being suspected of brutally murdering their exes tend to be a big deal. \n\nAlso, Kim Kardashian's dad was there. ",
"He was a professional footballer, and he was suspected of murder. The case was highly controversial because it split public opinion according to race. When he was found not guilty, he was sued in a civil case and lost.",
"1. It involved a celebrity\n2. It involved a black man who was accused of murdering a white woman, lots of racial tension\n3. Despite overwhelming evidence, a team of very expensive lawyers were able manipulate a less competent prosecutor and judge, and allow their client to get away with murder\n4. Both before and after the trial, consensus about his guilt or innocence ran along racial lines",
"OJ wasn't simply a celebrity, he was almost universally loved and respected, and accused of a heinous crime. ",
"Anybody else suddenly feel fucking old?",
"Also, on top of all the reasons mentioned already, it was...dramatic. After all, he was a beloved celebrity, accusing of murder, in a televised Los Angeles car chase airing on multiple channels, and during the NBA Finals (which got pushed to a little small box in the upper corner of the screen).\n\nIt was pretty damn crazy.",
"Fast forward 10 years:\n\nOJ is in prison and Johnnie Cochran died of cancer. All's well that ends well.",
"Two words: Chewbacca Defense ",
"Besides the obvious reasons, it was a turning point in mass media coverage and reality television in general.",
"I believe it was the first fully televised trial of its kind. It made stars out of everyone in the courtroom from Kato Kalen to judge lance Ito to whoever. It created a dialog about wealth, race, and justice right after Rodney King. \n\nThe car chase was also crazy, but at the time courtroom drama was limited to sketches. I watched a huge portion of it on CNN as a kid. \n\nI can't imagine the country tuning into a case quite so much ever again. These other pop cases are just aftershocks of that first celeb case: OJ.\n\nAlso, he was so damn funny in the naked gun movies. ",
"It was a symptom and symbol of two major themes in contemporary American life: 1. racial tensions (as noted by others); 2. the commodification of entertainment and identification with celebrities as if we actually knew them.",
"So is the case closed now? Did anyone just assumed OJ was the killer and never tried to find another suspect?\n\n\nSame thing about Casey Anthony case. If she is innocent, who really killed the girl?",
"A very famous person got away with killing 2 people even though there was an incredible amount of evidence he did it. This was a big deal in and of itself, but it was also a big deal because it was a black man and getting off using money and fame was previously seen as something only famous white people could do.\n",
"All I remember was it ruined afternoon cartoons for me. That trial was on ALL the time in L.A.",
"I can't be too much help since I was just a little one when the trials happened but I would recommend [this](_URL_0_) Frontline episode if you still want to learn a little more. I had never really heard anything about it besides he was guilty so hearing more was interesting. ",
"What caused so much drama about the trial was the fact that not only was he a celebrity, the trial was televised. It was one of the first major trial to allow cameras right in the court room. People were able to see inside his court session beyond pictures drawn by hand. Along with the whole, murder thing. ",
"I didn't see this mentioned so I will add it: This happened before reality TV took over everything. This was before sex tapes and Survivor and celebutants and \"famous for being famous.\" US culture has changed a lot since then - I think if it happened today it would still be headline news but it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal.\n\nI knew people (generally middle-aged housewives) who watched news coverage of the trial ALL DAY for MONTHS. It was in a sense the first mainstream reality tv.\n\nIt was also one of the biggest racial divide stories since the civil rights era. Whites overwhelmingly wanted him to be found guilty and blacks overwhelmingly wanted him to be found innocent. It's not so much that they thought he WAS innocent but a lot of them felt like the justice system fucked blacks over so much, it was only fair that a black guy fuck the system back if he could. I saw that on an hbo documentary or something where they interviewed a lot of people. But whether you agree with that or not, it was a way for a lot of people to talk about race.\n\nIt ended a lot of relationships too. In fact I had a good friendship that ended over it. A lot of companies had tv's brought in to work on the day of the verdict so people could watch. At the time I was doing IT tech support at a law firm (called MoFo if you can believe it), and I remember all the white lawyers freaking out when they announced the verdict.\n\nPersonally I didn't see it as a white vs. black thing, I saw it as a rich vs. poor thing. Not many people felt that way though.",
"It was an amazing Ford commercial, it took up a fair bit of the highway. Cameras were everywhere.\n\nA majestic scene with a whole array of Ford Crown Victoria's \"chasing\" after a white Ford Bronco II. \n\nMan I tell you, that was the best Ford commercial too date! It made news everywhere!",
"Professional athletes running from police after being suspected of brutally murdering their exes tend to be a big deal. \n\nAlso, Kim Kardashian's dad was there. ",
"He was a professional footballer, and he was suspected of murder. The case was highly controversial because it split public opinion according to race. When he was found not guilty, he was sued in a civil case and lost.",
"1. It involved a celebrity\n2. It involved a black man who was accused of murdering a white woman, lots of racial tension\n3. Despite overwhelming evidence, a team of very expensive lawyers were able manipulate a less competent prosecutor and judge, and allow their client to get away with murder\n4. Both before and after the trial, consensus about his guilt or innocence ran along racial lines",
"OJ wasn't simply a celebrity, he was almost universally loved and respected, and accused of a heinous crime. ",
"Anybody else suddenly feel fucking old?",
"Also, on top of all the reasons mentioned already, it was...dramatic. After all, he was a beloved celebrity, accusing of murder, in a televised Los Angeles car chase airing on multiple channels, and during the NBA Finals (which got pushed to a little small box in the upper corner of the screen).\n\nIt was pretty damn crazy.",
"Fast forward 10 years:\n\nOJ is in prison and Johnnie Cochran died of cancer. All's well that ends well.",
"Two words: Chewbacca Defense ",
"Besides the obvious reasons, it was a turning point in mass media coverage and reality television in general.",
"I believe it was the first fully televised trial of its kind. It made stars out of everyone in the courtroom from Kato Kalen to judge lance Ito to whoever. It created a dialog about wealth, race, and justice right after Rodney King. \n\nThe car chase was also crazy, but at the time courtroom drama was limited to sketches. I watched a huge portion of it on CNN as a kid. \n\nI can't imagine the country tuning into a case quite so much ever again. These other pop cases are just aftershocks of that first celeb case: OJ.\n\nAlso, he was so damn funny in the naked gun movies. ",
"It was a symptom and symbol of two major themes in contemporary American life: 1. racial tensions (as noted by others); 2. the commodification of entertainment and identification with celebrities as if we actually knew them.",
"So is the case closed now? Did anyone just assumed OJ was the killer and never tried to find another suspect?\n\n\nSame thing about Casey Anthony case. If she is innocent, who really killed the girl?",
"A very famous person got away with killing 2 people even though there was an incredible amount of evidence he did it. This was a big deal in and of itself, but it was also a big deal because it was a black man and getting off using money and fame was previously seen as something only famous white people could do.\n",
"All I remember was it ruined afternoon cartoons for me. That trial was on ALL the time in L.A.",
"I can't be too much help since I was just a little one when the trials happened but I would recommend [this](_URL_0_) Frontline episode if you still want to learn a little more. I had never really heard anything about it besides he was guilty so hearing more was interesting. ",
"What caused so much drama about the trial was the fact that not only was he a celebrity, the trial was televised. It was one of the first major trial to allow cameras right in the court room. People were able to see inside his court session beyond pictures drawn by hand. Along with the whole, murder thing. ",
"I didn't see this mentioned so I will add it: This happened before reality TV took over everything. This was before sex tapes and Survivor and celebutants and \"famous for being famous.\" US culture has changed a lot since then - I think if it happened today it would still be headline news but it wouldn't be nearly as big a deal.\n\nI knew people (generally middle-aged housewives) who watched news coverage of the trial ALL DAY for MONTHS. It was in a sense the first mainstream reality tv.\n\nIt was also one of the biggest racial divide stories since the civil rights era. Whites overwhelmingly wanted him to be found guilty and blacks overwhelmingly wanted him to be found innocent. It's not so much that they thought he WAS innocent but a lot of them felt like the justice system fucked blacks over so much, it was only fair that a black guy fuck the system back if he could. I saw that on an hbo documentary or something where they interviewed a lot of people. But whether you agree with that or not, it was a way for a lot of people to talk about race.\n\nIt ended a lot of relationships too. In fact I had a good friendship that ended over it. A lot of companies had tv's brought in to work on the day of the verdict so people could watch. At the time I was doing IT tech support at a law firm (called MoFo if you can believe it), and I remember all the white lawyers freaking out when they announced the verdict.\n\nPersonally I didn't see it as a white vs. black thing, I saw it as a rich vs. poor thing. Not many people felt that way though.",
"It was an amazing Ford commercial, it took up a fair bit of the highway. Cameras were everywhere.\n\nA majestic scene with a whole array of Ford Crown Victoria's \"chasing\" after a white Ford Bronco II. \n\nMan I tell you, that was the best Ford commercial too date! It made news everywhere!"
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54brsc | why do babies sit up so straight? is it simply because they don't have a lot of weight to support? | I've even heard that it's because they have no toxins in their stomach. Is there any truth to that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/54brsc/why_do_babies_sit_up_so_straight_is_it_simply/ | {
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"They have proportionally big heavy heads and little strength. If they don't sit up straight, they'll flop right over."
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41cttm | the big short movie | As someone with no experience in economics, I came out of the theater somewhat confused. If anyone could explain all the financial mumbo jumbo that happened over the course of the film, that would be great. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41cttm/eli5the_big_short_movie/ | {
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"The main idea of \"The Big Short\" is that a small group of people saw that houses were overvalued. Banks and investors had been paying a lot of money to buy and build up houses all over the United States up till 2008, with the expectation that these houses were going to go up in value. Because houses had been steadily increasing in value for so long, everyone got the crazy idea that houses never go down in value. So everyone kept investing more and more and more money into houses, creating what is known as \"a bubble.\"\n\n\"Bubbles\" like this have existed throughout the history of economics. The oldest recorded [economic bubble](_URL_0_) actually revolved around [tulips](_URL_1_), of all things. Bubbles always pop, causing people who get out early to make a lot of money, and people who get out late to lose a lot of money.\n\nThe housing bubble was unique for two reasons. The first was that the housing market was supposed to be well regulated, to prevent it from becoming so overvalued. Much of \"The Big Short\" explores the many ways in which this regulation became corrupt and malfunctioning.\n\nThe other thing that made the housing bubble unique was how broad the effects of the collapse were. So many things were tied to the housing market, because it was considered so dependable, so when that market crashed, it had huge, far reaching effects. Because of this, the government had to bail the financial sector out to, to prevent the US economy from collapsing. But this had the unfortunate effect of sparing the financial sector from punishment for their misbehavior.",
"I will ask... What is \"shorting\" in ELI5 terms?",
"Honestly, the best explanation of the housing crisis probably comes from [this episode of This American Life titled \"The Giant Pool of Money.\"](_URL_0_) It's fantastic, thoughtful, and doesn't try to make heroes of guys that got rich off the collapse. It's fantastic journalism. ",
"It's really hard to ELI5 this but I'll try. I didn't feel like the other comments really explained the point of the movie.\n\nThe bankers wanted to make more money. So they started another industry altogether - gambling. They gambled on whether or not people would pay for their homes or stop paying and move out. The banks see that most people want to pay. The bankers figure out what percentage of people will stop paying. They begin to base their bets on this. They get really good at betting. Other people see they're making a lot of money with this new \"betting on the housing market\" thing so they come along and start making more bets on whether or not the bankers will win. The home-owners keeps making their house payments, the bankers keep winning the bets, the people betting on the bankers keep winning their bets, and everyone is happy. For a few decades. \n\nThe banks learned that when people don't buy as many houses, the bankers don't make as much money because they can't make new bets. So, they wanted to sell as many houses as possible, because then they'd make as much money as possible, betting on them. \n\nSo the banks changed the rules regarding who could buy a house. Before this change, you had to have a good job and good credit to get a loan to buy a house. After this change, anyone could get a house. No job, no income, no assets applicants (NINJA is their acronym/nickname) could get a house just because they wanted one. Obviously, these applicants have a higher default rate than applicants with good jobs and good credit. \"Default\" = stop paying and move out. \n\nThe banks kept betting on who will pay for their houses and who will stop paying and move out. BUT - and here's the whole problem - they didn't change their betting patterns at all. They still bet on the housing market as if everyone was going to keep paying and there would be no defaults. They bet so much and for so long that it created a situation where if even 8% of all the homeowners defaulted on their payments, they'd lose their gigantic bets on the market entirely. In other words, if on average just one person out of ten stopped paying and moved out of their homes, the banks would lose all the money they'd bet. \n\nThe guys from The Big Short came along and pointed out the obvious: \"Well if you changed the rules about who could buy houses, then you should've seen that more people would default on their payments. So you should've changed how you bet on them. But you didn't, because you were making so much money and didn't see this problem. Now, you're fucked because I've bet against you. In a couple of years, when all of those new, NINJA home-owners default on their payments, I'll take a huge payoff from betting against you.\"\n\nAnd the banks didn't see it or didn't want to see it because they were being told that the party was over, they fucked up everything, and they wanted to just believe that they'd keep making money off these bets like they had for decades. They were wrong, and lost a ton of money. The guys from The Big Short were right, and made a ton of money. ",
"So I get the whole aspect of how they made money off foreseeing the outcomes of these banks not changing the ways in which they would bet, but can anyone elaborate a little more on this betting? I know economics can be very complex, and the numbers tend to be more imaginary than physical, and it is not like there is physical money being exchanged with these bets, but when these banks are \"betting\" who are they betting through? Where is the flow of money ultimately coming from and whose pockets is it exactly going into?"
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68uibp | in this day and age of plenty what has caused a famine in sudan? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/68uibp/eli5_in_this_day_and_age_of_plenty_what_has/ | {
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"War and drought. War is usually the main cause of famine these days, where fighting displaces people so they can't grow food, and blocks access of humanitarian efforts to provide food. Shipping food to people in a war zone is the main problem, not finding donated food."
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1ic5vh | how do authors make money off of libraries, a free service? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ic5vh/eli5_how_do_authors_make_money_off_of_libraries_a/ | {
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"Libraries buy books. That's where the authors make money.\n\nThey *don't* make money on the actual book lending, though.",
"First, there is no such thing as \"free\". Ever. \n\nThe \"price\" of library service may not be obvious to you unless you are working and paying taxes. Even then the price of library service is not obvious because it gets included in a lot of other services that taxes pay for things like police and firemen.\n\nPublishers sell books to the \"middlemen\" - bookstores, libraries, and wholesalers at different discounts which are based on several different criteria. Libraries do not get as good a discount as bookstores, because libraries do not need to show a profit. The publisher says, \"I will let bookstores pay a little less partly to make sure they stay in business and keep ordering books from us, partly because bookstores promote individual books but libraries don't, and partly to cover the cost to bookstores when they return unsold books to the publishers.\"\n\nThe contracts with authors takes into account the number of books sold out, and the number of unsold books returned, to pay an author. Since libraries do not return unsold books, an author of a strictly reference book that doesn't really get sold retail, will have a different income than an author who writes for the general public."
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4twe6d | when is something cybernetic or bionic | I'm doing research for a book and can't find an easy line in the sand that explains when X is a cybernetic and X is a bionic. As an example, advanced prosthetic limbs, Cyber or Bio? Implant to connect to machines, Cyber or Bio?
Thanks in advance. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4twe6d/eli5_when_is_something_cybernetic_or_bionic/ | {
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"Both of these are crossings between engineering and biology. However the methods is a bit different. Bionics are studying nature to find the optimal way to solve engineering problems. A bionic arm would therefore have the same structure as a biological arm but enhanced using synthetic materials. Cybernetics on the other hand is the application of modern engineering methods to solve problems that are found in nature to see if there is a better solution. A cybernetic arm would have a newly designed structure. There is of course pros and cons of both methods. It might be easy to miss certain features and methods using cybernetics that have been tested and perfected by nature over billions of years."
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bk2urf | if i were to be standing in an extremely radioactive environment what would it feel like? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bk2urf/eli5_if_i_were_to_be_standing_in_an_extremely/ | {
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"From the wikipedia on the Demon Core, the 3rd Uranium core made in the Manhattan project:\n\nInstantly there was a flash of blue light and a wave of heat across Slotin's skin; the core had become supercritical, releasing an intense burst of neutron radiation estimated to have lasted about a half second.[6] Slotin quickly twisted his wrist, flipping the top shell to the floor. The heating of the core and shells stopped the criticality within seconds of its initiation,[15] while Slotin's reaction prevented a recurrence and ended the accident. The position of Slotin's body over the apparatus also shielded the others from much of the neutron radiation, but he received a lethal dose of 1,000 rad (10 Gy) neutron and 114 rad (1.14 Gy) gamma radiation in under a second and died nine days later from acute radiation poisoning. The nearest person to Slotin, Graves, who was watching over Slotin's shoulder and was thus partially shielded by him, received a high but non-lethal radiation dose. Graves was hospitalized for several weeks with severe radiation poisoning and developed chronic neurological and vision problems as a result of the exposure.[8] He died 20 years later, at age 55, of a heart attack. It may have been caused by hidden complications from radiation exposure, but could also have been genetic in nature, as his father had died from the same cause.\n\nSlotin described seeing a blue flash of light, an intense burning in his left hand, and sour taste in his mouth.",
"It would feel warm / hot depending on the type and intensity of the radiation. There are a few different types of radiation, but they all involve energy. Energy ultimately moves from more ordered to less ordered states, so you would feel this as heat. When people die of radiation, they can die quickly from radiation burns (LOTS of radiation) or slowly from damage caused by the radiation to their DNA (cancer)."
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5exzov | why do humans have different blood types, and is there a purpose to the variations? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5exzov/eli5_why_do_humans_have_different_blood_types_and/ | {
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"Human blood types most likely came to exist to fend off infectious diseases. The incompatibility of some blood types, however, is just an accident of evolution.\n\nThere are four main blood types. Blood type A is the most ancient, and it existed before the human species evolved from its hominid ancestors. Type B is thought to have originated some 3.5 million years ago, from a genetic mutation that modified one of the sugars that sit on the surface of red blood cells. Starting about 2.5 million years ago, mutations occurred that rendered that sugar gene inactive, creating type O, which has neither the A or B version of the sugar. And then there is AB, which is covered with both A and B sugars.",
"They're involved in the immune response. \n\nYour body has immune cells that recognize \"self\" and \"nonself\". When the immune cell recognizes something that's not supposed to be there, they initiate an immune response in order to kill whatever is \"nonself\" (bacteria, virus, etc) \n\nVariations in the makeup of your blood cells determine which blood type you are. The reason why we find these letters important are because if we inject blood of a different type into someone, their body will think that this blood is \"nonself\". This would create an immune response that would launch an attack against your red blood cells- not what you want if you're in need of blood!!! \n\nHope that was clear! ",
"Each blood type is determined by the dominant antibody (antigen) on the RBC in the blood. The blood of humans can have different variants that correspond with a certain antigen, ie: A-A, B-B, O-A or B etc. However, each person's blood also has a charge which affects the compatibility of the blood. This is called an Rh factor. The reason why changes in the blood types have occurred is believed to be product of evolution. Certain blood types may be susceptible or immune to certain blood born infections or illnesses depending on the area in which the person resides.\n\n\n",
"I remember reading somewhere that people with B type blood who caught the Bubonic Plague died from it, those with A type blood got really sick but could recover, and those with O type (the rarest) were immune.\n\nI have B type, my sister has A type. One of my parents had O, the other with A or B (or AB possibly?). I forget theirs exactly.\n\nEdit: typo\nEdit 2: black to bubonic ",
"Are blood types common in the animal world? Does everyone animal/mammal has a blood types? How many animals with blood types we know?",
"I always thought I was A+ because both of my parents were. Turns out I'm O+ because they both carried a recessive O from their mothers, who were both O.\nSo I had a 25% shot at getting O.\nSo I'm rare?\nOr weird.\nOr adopted.....\n\nEdit: Typo",
"Think of a wet paint on a wall as your blood and someone else's blood as the paint. O-type is clear paint, A is red, B is blue, AB is purple and the + (positive) is glitter. Now think of panting a blank room with no glitter, this is O-, you must use clear paint without glitter. But you can also use clear paint without glitter to paint a purple glitter wall, AB+. Other examples follow this logic, such as not painting a blue wall with red paint but red paint can be used on a purple glitter wall, as long as there's enough paint on the wall to mix it with (hehe, dark humor a kid might miss). \n\nYou can take this thinking to how parents pass down blood types. We might have to get into the Punnett square, but the analogy still works. If one parents is Ao and AB, the child can have red, blue or purple paint/blood. And if the parents are Ao and Bo, all four opposition are possible. \n\nThis is a simplified and I'm not sure if it's completely accurate, therefore exactly how I would explain it to a five year old. Please correct the analogy if I'm off. ",
"Why if you're pregnant and have negative blood type it puts you and the baby at risk?",
"Blood types are part of immune system.\n\nImmune system genes work differently than normal genes.\n\nFor most genes, there's usually \"better\" and \"worse\" variant for every environment - like if you like in Africa, genes for dark skin are \"better\" than genes for light skin etc. Organisms living in similar environment will end up similar, as genes different from what's best will fade away with time. Or maybe multiple variants are just as good.\n\nGenes for immune system work completely differently. Here \"better\" means as different from others as possible - if your immune system is same as other people, their diseases will infect you, and there's a lot of possible infection sources.\n\nIf it's very different, their diseases can't affect you, and any disease that would affect you but not them - well, who are you going to catch them from?\n\nThat's why immune system genes show much higher levels of diversity than other genes.\n\n(having unusual immune system has downside in that it might cause immune conflict between mother and growing baby)",
"How do blood types get passed down from parents? Is it possible for a mother and her child to have incompatible blood types? ",
"My parents and my brother have B+ blood group and I have B-. Why?",
"Most of these analogies make me cringe. The comparisons some of you are trying to make, such as paint on a wall, not being able to catch diseases between blood types, etc. are absolutely incorrect. Good job though scholars of Reddit, your Wikipedia and googling knowledge should make you proud. ",
"In general, evolution does not make sense in terms of \"why\" and \"purpose\". Changes are 100% random. There is, however, a logic to whether or not they are passed on. A better way to think of it would be \"How did humans come to have different blood types, and what is the benefit, if any?\" \n\nIt may seem like a semantic argument, but the difference is important. While it may be true that if a species didn't evolve a specific trait at a specific time it would not have survived, it is never true that a species evolved a specific trait for the purpose of surviving that evolutionary pressure. That is not to say that evolutionary pressure does not influence the types of random mutations that tend to be successful. ",
"I started reading this thinking I was reading he item above about worst Black Friday stories. \n\nWas slightly shocked when it kicked off with reference to different blood types...",
"Ok. Lets start with the basics. After whole blood donation, it is separated into: packed red cells (what the layman usually just refers to as blood), plasma, and platelets. Red cells have antigens on their surface which determines what type it would be categorized as. These antigens are really just proteins which fit like lock and key to corresponding antibodies. The whole idea behind blood banking is that you don't want the lock to find the key. Then the cells start sticking together and let's just say it's not good. There are two main antigens. A & B. If you have both, you are type AB. If you have none, you are type O. Typically you have antibodies in your plasma that correspond with the other existing antigens; the one(s) you don't have. So...I'm getting to the point here...Type O is the universal donor for red cells because they do not have any Antigens on their surface, and Type AB is a universal plasma donor (because the cell have both antigens, they do not have the A or B antibodies in their plasma!!). I am a medically laboratory scientist and one of the hats I wear is a blood banker in my local hospital. Please restrain from spreading misinformation. It can be deadly. It is not as simple as saying hey I'm type O, I can give my blood to anyone! If you tried that, it could be absolutely devastating. Remember someone who is type O has antibodies against both A and B cells in their plasma and could kill someone type A, B, or AB. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Stay woke my friends.",
"Follow on question. My grandma used to be really into the blood type diet. I was never sure if there was any science to back this up. Anyone care to weigh in?",
"Asked my wife, who is a Doctor and she says it allows the body to detect self from other. The sides of the cells are different. I've forgotten the word for it because she's just walked downstairs to make breakfast.",
"Type O is due to mistranslation or lack of translation of the sugar attachment.\n\nType A is an N-acetylgalactosamine atttachment on the surface of the blood whereas Type B has a galactose attached.\n\nThese types as in evolution occurred spontaneously but the variation in blood types help out the species in general because if there was a disease that affected only one blood type it wouldn't affect the other.",
"All modern bananas are genetically identical (gmos for those of you who didnt know) and we almost lost all bananas a few years ago due to one disease \n\nSame reason applies to humans. You need diverse genetics to fend off a large range of stuff",
"Evolution doesn't follow a purpose, the only purpose is survival and as soon as this is achieved, further perfectioning stops. Most traits exist because they don't impact survival negatively too much rather than because they improve it.",
"May be mistaken but rh factor is the most recent evolution of human blood. Being \"O\" Neg. \ndoes get you special attention from blood banks.\n\nThere is another factor in O neg type blood but I cant remember the issue except that if you dont have it, you get even more attention. Maybe a exposure to a virus?\n\nRemember O neg donors, the pint you give may be the pint that saves YOUR life.\n",
"Is it possible that there is an unknown blood type we do not know of yet?",
"Not an explanation, rather a friendly little side note. I'd try not to ask for purpose when it comes to biology. You'll get alot of different answers and very few (if any) satisfactory answers . Rather, it is better to look for how something works, or how it may have developed.",
"It's so we can tell who is closer to God. While my blood type being that of a king others are born into a lesser bloodtype. In short blood type was created to prove my divinity over lesser men"
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3rnvya | why does receipt paper turn black if you put it on a hot lightbulb? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rnvya/eli5_why_does_receipt_paper_turn_black_if_you_put/ | {
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"Many receipts are done on thermal paper. It allows for very fast and quiet printing of the receipt. The paper turns black when exposed to heat, so the receipt printer generates heat at precise points to make the images it wants.\n\nIf you put the paper on something hot, then *everything* gets exposed to the heat, and it all turns black.",
"Because receipt paper is coated with a thermal dye, which blackens under heat. The printers that paper is made for have an array (usually row) of fine heater elements which \"burn\" that dye as the computer commands them to.\nWith that scheme, the only consumable is the paper itself, not ribbons or ink rollers plain paper receipt printers used."
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11eyrx | the eurozone crisis, greece's financial woes & why it should/shouldn't revert to the drachma | I stumbled across [this](_URL_0_) post and have heard tidbits about Greece's financial problems, but don't understand what the problem is.
What would happen to the euro if Greece left the European Union?
How did Greece get into financial problems in the first place?
Thanks :) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11eyrx/eli5_the_eurozone_crisis_greeces_financial_woes/ | {
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" < EU and eurozone are not the same. But let's keep it simple > \n\nGreece is like a large family that lives on a farm. Over the last few years they spent more than they make and racked up a lot of debt. Even worse, they are still spending more than they make every month and putting it on credit cards.\n\nPeople are becoming reluctant to let them buy on credit because of the big debts/low income/high spending we mentioned already. Problem is, there are some things they just have to buy every day. Food, rent, toilet paper. Obviously, this is a problem. There are two general solutions:\n\n1. Cut spending and eat cat food for every meal, cancel cable and internet, work overtime every day, and promise everyone that they have really changed their ways and they will pay them back they promise. Hopefully people believe them and offer them money at better rates. (Austerity)\n\n2. Start paying people with monopoly money that they print on their printer in their basement. This is a little awkward because they owe people regular money, and after this episode they won't loan money to them/only loan to them at crazy interest rates for a while. On the one hand, people are now encouraged to come to the farm to buy tomatoes/enjoy the countryside because their real money is worth a lot compared to monopoly money. On the other hand, its going to take a lot of monopoly money to buy toilet paper. It might be the people selling toilet paper might not sell it no matter how much monopoly money you offer, in which case you better start stockpiling some soft leaves. (Default, switch to new currency)\n\nBoth of these options suck. The second one probably sucks slightly less in that the eating cat food is terrible and even if you do it people might not think you're not doing enough and still refuse to lend you any cash. But there are no easy ways out of this situation.\n",
" > How did Greece get into financial problems in the first place?\n\nWhen the eurozone finally came together, there were certain financial standards member countries had to maintain, like keeping deficits below a certain level. Some countries cooked their books a little to make it.\n\nGreece cooked their books a *lot*, and everyone pretty much knew it. But it was such a historic moment, no one wanted to derail it by being a buzzkill, so they let it slide and let Greece in.\n\nGreece continued to lie about their economy, and went on a bender for the better part of a decade. Using their new found eurozone clout, they went on a borrowing spree, spending the money on infrastructure, public sector jobs to keep unemployment down, and turning a blind eye to rampant tax cheating. Times were good.\n\nBut all good things must come to an end. They debts mounted, and when EU auditors stepped in, not only did they discover the deficit was 2-3 times larger than reported, but the gov't didn't even have an effective way to track it. It was like someone shredding they bank statement so no one could see the overdrafts. People stopped lending them money overnight.\n\nSo here we are, giant debts, giant deficits than can't be fixed without massive cuts to social services and public sector employment, and a population so used to bread and circuses they riot and vote out anyone who tries to make the hard choices to fix it. Is it any wonder the rest of the world is reluctant to bail them out?"
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2lblxm | why does the post office have a key to the apt. building but ups/fedex don't? | How does this even work? Who gives the key to USPS? Is there a magical master key? Why don't we do this for UPS? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2lblxm/eli5_why_does_the_post_office_have_a_key_to_the/ | {
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"depends on the building I would imagine as my Fedex and UPS guys have access to the buildings also. "
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8o95ps | why is gold is the most valuable “currency” that can get accepted almost everywhere | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8o95ps/eli5_why_is_gold_is_the_most_valuable_currency/ | {
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"You'd have a hard time actually spending gold in most of the developed world. Retailers only take government currency.\n\nIn past centuries though, gold was valuable for its rarity, workability, and corrosion resistance.\n\nSilver oxidizes to a dark black tarnish over time. Copper turns green. Iron turns to dust. Gold is gold for all eternity.\n\nGemstones were and are still valuable for their looks and rarity, but they're not workable. Gold can be shaped and molded without advanced tooling.\n\nThese days gold has the added value of a corrosion resistant electrical conductor for electronic applications."
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1hhdgf | why is there unrest in egypt? if the egyptians elected the current president, why are they surprised/upset at his actions? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1hhdgf/eli5_why_is_there_unrest_in_egypt_if_the/ | {
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"Like you're five:\n\nSo there was a election to see who would be the president. And so 52 out 100 people wanted Mr Mursi, and so he became the president. But there's also 48 people out of a 100 who didn't.\n\nTo those 48 people, he's a bad guy. To them, he is ignoring their wishes and making their country into something they don't want it to be.\n\nBit of a deeper explanation:\n\nMursi believes in political Islam, which a large set of the population does not believe in. They all feel what's called \"tyranny of the majority\". See, modern democracies shouldn't operate under the idea that since the majority has won that they should ignore the minority.\n\nWhile it's *technically* right, that's a very dangerous game. To fully ignore over 40% of the people you claim to represent breeds resentment, anger, and eventually revolution. This is kinda similar to what Turkey is facing."
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bfk27q | do a certain number of germs need to enter my body in order for me to get sick? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bfk27q/eli5_do_a_certain_number_of_germs_need_to_enter/ | {
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"Well, it depends. You immune system will hunt down and destroy individual germs before they make you sick, but if a single manages to multiply fast enough, that will make your sick.\n\nThe key is that you need enough in your body to start doing damage. Whether that many enter or body, or multiple to that level later, it still makes you sick. The exact number also varies from germ to germ, and the type matters too.\n\nIn other words, it's complicated and there is no simple answer.",
"Yes, typically a single bacterium will not be able to cause any infection. The number that is needed is highly variable depending on the type of bacteria and probably on the strength of your immune system though. Of course, it's not like there's an exact \"cutoff\" at which point a certain number of bacteria are guaranteed to infect you, it's a function of probability. The Wikipedia article for [minimal infective dose](_URL_1_) actually does a pretty good job of explaining it, and showing how much it can vary (e.g., compare number of bacteria needed for 1% chance of infection between enterohemorrhagic *E. coli* vs. *Listeria*, which is over a billion times higher). And if you want to read into it more, here's [two](_URL_0_) [papers](_URL_2_) that discuss the relationship between virulence and infective dose for different pathogens.",
"There is definitely a certain number needed, but it varies wildly from germ to germ. On a purely statistical level, odds of infection go up with more germs just like your odds of getting shot go up with more flying bullets, but specific germs have different tactics that can change the odds. For example, if you ate a salad, most of the germs on it would die in your stomach acid, but some of them may be able to resist your stomach acid long enough to get into your intestines where they can make you sick. \n\nOther tactics can depend on their numbers. Germs can communicate with each other and will change how they act based on how many of their friends are around. This is called quorum sensing and the basic idea is that they won't do certain things if they don't have any buddies around to back them up. So its possible to have some nasty bugs inside you, but they might not have the numbers to do any damage. \n\nOther things to consider include where the bacteria are (in your gut vs in your bloodstream) and how healthy the person is (normal and healthy vs on their deathbed). So basically, while you might be able to drink a whole glass of some germs and be fine, others can get you sick even if only 100 cells got inside you.",
"As someone has already said, most infection causing bacteria are already on or in us. I use the car thief analogy to explain opportunistic pathogens to students, \nThe thief is casing lots of parked cars, the first is locked and has a high end alarm system so no way in, the next has a window open, the thief gets in but leaves when the alarm goes off, and then finds an unlocked car with an outdated security system that they can disable,\nIt also helps to understand the difference between colonisation and infection, just because the bacteria are there, they're not necessarily causing harm and many are beneficial, but breaks in skin integrity or invasive devices (in a medical scenario!) allow organisms to get to places where they can take advantage and cause infection",
"[this is a really good ted talk](_URL_0_) on how bacteria operate in your body.",
"ELI5 response: \n\nYou as an adult you can easily fend off a couple 5 year olds in a fight. \n\nOnce the number of 5 year old increases to a sufficient number, they're able to over power you. \n\nSo, here, you are your immune system and the 5 year olds are germs."
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2qwdrn | why don't dogs colors mix when they breed? | Say a Yellow Lab and a Black Lab breed. Why don't we get a Grey Lab? Humans Color mix, why doesn't theirs? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qwdrn/eli5_why_dont_dogs_colors_mix_when_they_breed/ | {
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"Gene dominance. Some genes when paired together resulting in one being expressed, and the other not. You've probably heard of 'recessive' and 'dominant' genes with regards to other matters - coat colour is a similar matter. Typically only one of the allele sets (either the mom or dad's) is expressed. Human skin tone is not decided in that fashion, hence why human skin tone can 'blend' but coat colour is more fixed with clear-cut divisions.",
"Because the difference between Yellow and Black Labradors is only one single gene variant. The yellow version is recessive and the black version is dominant. That gene only has two versions, black and yellow. A dog gets two copies of the gene, one from each parent, so the only possible combinations are Black/Black (Black), Black/yellow (Black), and yellow/yellow (Yellow).\n\nThe chocolate color involves one single other gene, diluting black to chocolate. It does not affect yellow.\n\nIn contrast, like CommissarAJ says, human skin pigment is determined by many different genes, possibly dozens, so mixing a light skinned and dark skinned person is likely to result in skin tone that's somewhere in the middle."
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4uax37 | what does directx12/11 etc. actually do? and what is vulkan and what is its significance? | I hang out in a lot of tech subreddits, just out of interest and I'm starting to see a lot of support for Vulkan and it replacing DX | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4uax37/eli5_what_does_directx1211_etc_actually_do_and/ | {
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"DirectX (more specifically direct3D) provides a methods for programs to draw 3D graphics. Obviously, this is a great concern with most modern games since a good deal of them feature 3D graphics. Though DirectX is only officially available for Windows. If you want to write games that run on any operating system, you use DirectX's competitor, OpenGL. The problem is that previous versions of DirectX (before 12) and OpenGL didn't allow very direct access to graphics hardware, making it difficult to squeeze out all the performance that you can. In response Microsoft introduced more direct hardware access in DirectX 12 and the Khronos group (the consortium that controls OpenGL) released Vulkan which, again, allows more direct access to hardware. But again, DirectX is only supported by windows while Vulkan can be implemented for any operating system. Additionally, DirectX version is tied to Windows releases and I believe that DirectX 12 isn't available for anything other than windows 10, while Vulkan is.",
"DirectX (and Vulkan, and OpenGL, etc) are APIs. An API is a set of code that \"talks\" to other software/hardware for ease of use. These APIs in particular talk to GPUs.\n\nSee, those 3D environments you play through in a game are actually a result of a very large and complex set of mathematical instructions. It takes a lot of expertise and a lot of time to do all of this from scratch to not be a buggy, unplayable mess. So, for the benefit of everyone, people have come together to make a set of commonly used instructions that are made easy to use that will always work one way - making graphics easy so you don't have to.\n\n**What's the difference?** \nRemember how I said the APIs do the work so you don't have to? Well, a side effect of that is you're going to run into problems if you need something done and your API can't do that. Other APIs are made in response to that.. so the simple answers are:\n\n* DirectX is the standard for Microsoft Windows and Xbox.\n* OpenGL is multi-platform, so it will work in non-Microsoft areas.\n* Vulkan is new, also multi-platform, and intends on being easy to use and lighter on your hardware.\n\nThey all have varying sets of instruction, levels of performance and usability and it's up to the developer to ultimately pick the right tool for the job.",
"Taking this a different direction. Sorry if this dips out of ELI5 but I don't go too technical.\n\nDirectX is a way to talk to your graphics card from the Windows operating system.\n\nOpenGL is a way to talk to your graphics card from any operating system.\n\nVulkan is the successor to OpenGL (also I'm excited).\n\nDirectX is maintained by Microsoft, Nvidia, and AMD. It is first party to the Microsoft ecosystem, has a very tight governance, and is built by people who need it to work for Xbox as well as your PC. Because of this, DirectX has been more agile than OpenGL for a while. Old DirectX was basically a copy of OpenGL, but as Microsoft got smarter and more invested, it added in new features that started to make OpenGL less capable for real time rendering - like games. This is because Microsoft was really focused on two markets: PC games and Xbox games. DirectX 10, 11 and 12 has involved an impressive and gradual architectural change to better enable multi-threaded hardware and more advanced modern features like tesselation.\n\nOpenGL is maintained by the Khronos group, which is governed much more openly by Microsoft, Nvidia, AMD, Google, Epic, Huawei, Samsung, Qualcomm, ARM, and a very long list of others. It has a very open governance and was originally built and maintained by rendering companies focusing on correctness with real time performance as a secondary concern. In addition to that the open governance makes it harder to have a unified direction, as well as agility: because OpenGL is used across more platforms and architectures, and in more scenarios, it is harder to get changes pushed through. In addition, because it isn't first party it is sometimes less performant.\n\nVulkan is the successor to OpenGL and allows Khronos to make breaking changes in architecture. Ideally this will allow for the best of both worlds: the modern capabilities of DirectX, along with the multi-platform nature of OpenGL. It is a challenger to DirectX's power and capabilities. Since it has the mobile market by virtue of Android, it will hopefully see uptake in the PC and console environments.\n\nCouple notes:\n\n1. DirectX is sort of tied to your version of the OS. XP users are capped out at DirectX 9.0c, which is the last of the older architecture. DirectX 10 died with Vista, but DirectX 11 and 12 should be able to work on 7 - 10. I haven't tried 12 on 7 yet.\n\n2. I purposefully left out some of the bigger discussion points around OpenGL vs. DirectX, because I haven't been in that space for two years."
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ahd3qq | cinema aspect ratios | I understood the original need to switch from 4:3 to 16:9 to give that cinematic feel that you are watching this through a human-like field of view.
But now that 16:9 is pretty much standard on HD Display's, the industry seems to keep going *wider.* Is there an actual reason for this? Or is it an arbitrary artistic choice?
No matter if you are buying the latest and greatest HDTV, you can't escape those darn black bars... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ahd3qq/eli5_cinema_aspect_ratios/ | {
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"Movies have (almost) always been filmed in more (larger) widescreen formats, of which there are a variety, such as 1.85:1, 2.35:1, and 2.39:1. The person making the movie will decide what aspect ratio to film it in, for both aesthetic purposes, and their equipment. You could probably have a crazy field day of arguments discussing with people who make movies exactly what aspect ratio they prefer and why.\n\nTV, meaning HDTV, is filmed in 16:9 (aka 1.77:1).\n\nAs you can see, these aren't the same. Which means most movies will need to be fit to a different aspect ratio when shown on a TV.\n\nOccasionally, you will see a TV show (generally a high drama) that may play with their aspect ratio in some scenes to give it a more cinematic feel and quality. The impact of this is debatable.\n\nThe movie industry isn't going wider--its always been wider. \n\nNow your next question will be \"well why aren't HDTV's made in these bigger aspect ratios?\" ... well thats a really complicated question, and in short, 16:9 became a good compromise aspect ratio that was agreed upon, and it was decided this was going to be the HDTV standards, and for movies, they would continue to use black bars and such to adjust the aspect ratio",
"16:9 is the gemoetric mean of 4:3 (1.33:1) and 2.35:1. 4:3 (1.33:1) was the standard of TV and 2.35:1 was the most common movie aspect ratio.That mean that 16:9 is the aspect ratio where when you need to show both you get the least amount of unused screen on top or on the sides.\n\nDevelopment of new higher resolution/better TV standard have happen almost all the time since the first TV was broadcastst back in the 1930s. In the 1980 16:9 was suggested for the reasons described above before that 5:3 was the main candidate. There was limited deployment of analog HD TV system back then but no one was that common. When it was clear the digital tv would solve part of the problem of HDTV it was 16:9 that was choose. So in the 1990 widescreen analog PAL t in 16:9 started to be common on the market, It was not HD the same signal but the stretched out to 16:9. The HD standards that followed used the same aspect ration. It was also the only standard widescreen resolution that DVD supported.\n\nSo the aspect ratio was to minimize black bars both for movies and 4:3 tv that was common when widescreen was introduced.\n",
"Cinematic release movies have almost always been in formats wider than 16:9. The content is just cropped to fit the same way movies on VHS used to be cropped to fit 4:3 sometimes. There are monitors you can buy that will display full width cinematic content in 21:9 without letterboxing, but the downside is that your 16:9 content will be pillarboxed. "
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2l8nm8 | psychology behind r/oddlysatisfying | There has to be a reason other than all the stuff just looks cool | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2l8nm8/eli5_psychology_behind_roddlysatisfying/ | {
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"We are pattern seeking animals with a survival mechanism to avoid unfamiliar things. Things in that subreddit are sorted or at least in a pattern of some sort, so we are calmed by them since patterns are familiar."
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6ovfhx | why do farmers keep their grain in silos? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ovfhx/eli5_why_do_farmers_keep_their_grain_in_silos/ | {
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"It keeps the grain in a safe place and silos are a great way to transfer the grain into trucks because of gravity. ",
"Actually it's silage kept in most of the tall silos. \n\nGrain is kept in grain bins which are shorter than silos. They are metal and usually raised off the ground (but not always) which keeps out mice and rats. ",
"Silos are basically storage vats that stand free from the ground. That means they're free from moisture that collects on the ground and out of reach from vermin while being able to use gravity to empty themselves when needed."
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4iecd8 | why do native english speakers sometimes have problem understanding grammatically incorrect sentence while non-native english speakers don't? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4iecd8/eli5_why_do_native_english_speakers_sometimes/ | {
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"When I turned 16, my daddy gave my first car. When Jim turned 16, his daddy sent him to the junk yard. Jim learned how to build the car on his own, how parts work and don't work. He learned how parts worked in context, whereas I just drove the parts as a whole. \n\nWhen both our cars broke down, Jim knew how to fix his or knew what that weird sound was. Since I was just given a car and never bothered to learn anything besides what the nobs and twists do, I needed a mechanic. ",
"Native speakers don't learn the language....they acquire it. So, they don't learn the grammar rules, they just naturally pick them up. This process isn't perfect.\n\nAlso, English doesn't have a lot of information about gender or part of speech encoded into the pronouns, adjectives and noun endings like other languages have. This results in ambiguity between subject and object in English that is blatantly obvious to anyone who has that in their native language and then learns English. \n\nOne of the reasons why so many high schools in America require a year or two of foreign language is actually to make the students understand English better.",
"If you know that one is a native and the other is not, then they have more than likely identified themselves. The native speaker is probably lying about being unable to understand in order to indirectly insult the non native speaker. As a native speaker of English I have never been unable to understand any English as it was written, though of course if someone wrote something the wrong way (so that it means something different than what I expect it to) and I notice, I might ask for clarification."
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2on0or | when earphones start to break, why does some sound make it through, whereas the bass and some other parts of the song does not? | I have a pair of headphones. Listening to music I can only hear the songs without the beats. Really strange when you listen to things that are bass heavy. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2on0or/eli5_when_earphones_start_to_break_why_does_some/ | {
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"The sound going in is split to create a more realistic sound. One channel will be working and another will not.\n\n*Stereophonic sound or, more commonly, stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that creates an illusion of directionality and audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two or more independent audio channels through a configuration of two or more loudspeakers (or stereo headphones) in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing.*\n\n_URL_0_"
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2eaars | how do i distinguish between directing and cinematography and between directing and editing? | So, I love movies and I really enjoy when the camera is so well used that it really makes you *feel* whatever the characters are feeling.
To give some examples:
- In **12 Years a Slave** (spoilers) there's that scene where the protagonist is hanged and the camera stays still for like 2, 3 minutes non-stop and you see the kids running around behind him just having fun and you really feel his pain, because the scene is so well executed. Also in this movie, during the climax, there's the whip scene where the camera just goes around with no cuts spinning as the scene gets more and more brutal and noisy and you just feel so nervous and even sick.
- In **Gravity**, near the beggining, when Sandra Bullock's character just starts spinning, we see a POV shot of the Earth just spinning vertically and it also makes you feel sick and almost in panic (like the character).
- In **There Will Be Blood** there's the scene where Daniel Day-Lewis' character first meets someone who says is his brother and he looks at him from far away, suspicious. The camera stays over his shoulder the whole time, as if we are also suspicious, seeing whatever the character is seeing, not being able to really identify the other man's face. As if we're hiding behind the protagonist until we know for sure...
- In **The Matrix**, in the infamous bullet time scene where Neo just bends backwards...it's also a beautiful image that just makes you open your mouth and say "WOW!" when you see it for the first time.
Anyway, these are all beautifully shot films and these scenes in particular make great use of camera work. What I would like to know is how much of it is the cinematographer's work and how much is the director's. Because I think the scene is executed the way it is because the director wants it to be. But if that was the case, then wouldn't the cinematographer just be a cameraman? So, I'd really like to understand the difference between these two roles when planning and executing a scene like the ones I mentioned above.
Same goes for editing. First, what *really* is editing in a film? What does the Oscar for "Best Editing" stand for, really? Excluding irrelevant pieces of the movie? Organizing the scenes in the best possible fashion? And, again, what are the differences in the roles of the director and the editor in the editing process.
**TL;DR:** What exactly and how much of the camerawork and the editing of films is due to the cinematographer and editor's work, respectively, opposed to what the director's role is?
I think this would also be a good question for /r/movies, but I'm new here, so I'm still not sure where to put stuff :P
EDIT: typos and commas... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eaars/eli5_how_do_i_distinguish_between_directing_and/ | {
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"The director is the ultimate decider. He/she hires all the other collaborators, and he has final say. (Actually the producers are the most powerful, but lets just assume it's an independent project.) So the director brings on a cinematographer (or DP, director of photography) because he likes their vision and trusts them to make it look good. Some directors let the DP do what they do with little interference. Others are more involved. The final product should be a collaboration between the two, but the director is ultimately to blame or praise.\n\nEditing is the same. The director will be in the editing room for the entire process, telling the editor what he wants. But the editor can of course come up with ideas as well.\n\ntl;dr: Unless you're on the set and witnessing what goes down, you can't tell who is responsible for the final result. Some directors delegate and give people free reign, some keep a tight grip and everyone does exactly what they say. But the director is ultimately the boss. Who gets awarded is ridiculous because no one knows exactly who did what.",
"In general, a cinematographer is responsible for making the shots happen, physically. Depending on the director they may have more or less latitude, but basically they work with the camera operators and lighting crews to make the shot happen the director wants it to and may even operate the cameras themselves.\n\nThe director mainly works with the actors while on the set, but prior to that they will generally work out all the shots before hand in the form of story boards, so the nature of the shots would likely be their idea."
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3ztz4f | what does it mean to "judge" someone? | I've heard of people saying "don't judge me" when others have commented on something about them. I think I have a general idea of the concept, but not an articulate, clearly defined understanding of what it is and where the borders between judging versus acceptable, educated, tentative guesses fall.
I think it would be helpful if various examples could be provided in addition to an explanation.
Thank you. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ztz4f/eli5_what_does_it_mean_to_judge_someone/ | {
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" > but not an articulate, clearly defined understanding of what it is and where the borders between judging versus acceptable, educated, tentative guesses fall.\n\nNeither do most people, despite it being a commonly used word, so any dictionary definition is kind of moot.\n\nGenerally, it means that you form an opinion on someone, usually critical. \"Don't judge me\" can sorta be deciphered as \"don't form an opinion on my entire personality based on this one thing I said or did.\" It's rather a fluid term though and whatever your gut says is the best meaning to go with.",
"I've always hated this phrase people say. We judge everyday. I judge the distance from me to the stoplight. I judge the homeless man prior to providing a donation. Judging is not a negative thing. It is what it is. Judging. And it is vital society does this. It's how we choose to act upon the judgments that people find fault in.",
" > I think I have a general idea of the concept, but not an articulate, clearly defined understanding\n\nThat's the point.\n\nSaying \"don't judge me\" is an act of defensiveness. Anyone who says that knows they have done something bad, but doesn't want to be seen as a bad person.\n\nSo they say \"judge\" as though it is a bad thing, based on biblical passages like \"judge not lest you be judged\", implying you are as bad for forming a negative opinion about them as they are for doing bad things."
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crd2wg | perpetual stew. how is it safe to consume? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/crd2wg/eli5_perpetual_stew_how_is_it_safe_to_consume/ | {
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"It never comes off the heat, so no pathogens (disease causing organisms) have a chance to grow in it. At least, that's how it works in modern times, I would imagine that in medieval times it would have possibly been a bit more dicey.",
"There's a post-apocalypse novel \"Dies the Fire\" where they call it eternal soup and keep adding to it and eating from it for months. Makes me wonder.",
"Subway Sandwich meatballs are a modern stew. But every meatball will get served in a reasonable abount of time. The stirring randomizes the meatballs.\n\nWhen people did get sick, they blamed bad water or air. Or the Devil."
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38jm9o | what will happen to the "last mile" of copper telephone lines when everyone switches to cellular? | Lots of people have dropped the land line to their house and exclusively use cellular as their only telephone. There is a significant amount of infrastructure pulling copper telephone lines to homes and businesses. What will happen to all that infrastructure? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/38jm9o/eli5_what_will_happen_to_the_last_mile_of_copper/ | {
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"It will rot on the lines with the fiber and cable that we use for internet until it absolutely has to be removed.\n\nmost likely being removed when it's fellow fiber or cable lines are in need of replacement.",
"A lot of that infrastructure is used to carry broadband internet service to the home.\n\nExamples of technologies that use the copper phone line infrastructure for broadband internet service include: ADSL, ADSL2, ADSL2+M, ADSL2++ (aka ADSL4), VDSL, VDSL2.\n\nEven some companies offering fiber internet don't actually bring fiber to the home, they bring fiber to the neighborhood or curb and then use the existing copper phone line to bring ADSL2+ or better (but usually VDSL or better) into the home. VDSL2 can provide up to 100 Mbps downstream and 100 Mbps upstream of bandwidth over a copper phone line (roughly equivalent to a typical Fiber to the Home connection).",
"In the future, most homes should have \"Fiber to the Home\" connections, like myself with FiOS, where the phone line is the same as the TV and Internet line. \n \nPhone poles are actually utility poles, which carry electricity too. So unless you get electric not through a pole, you still need them."
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33a3us | how do insanely successful people manage to or so productive on only 3-4 hours of sleep? | While reading Chef Ramsay's AMA yesterday, I saw he claims to only get 3-4 hours of sleep a night. I know this isn't uncommon among individuals who are super successful, but isn't it unhealthy? How do their bodies function after so little sleep every day. If I don't get 6 hours I feel groggy the entire day. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33a3us/eli5_how_do_insanely_successful_people_manage_to/ | {
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"Some people function perfectly well on less sleep, and this is an advantage they have over the rest of us that we really can't do anything about yet.",
"Naps. I bet you money they power nap between phone calls, and between speaking engagements. ",
"By violating social customs concerning politeness.\n\nI kid, partially.",
"The human body is very adaptable. But you'll notice people like Gordon Ramsay seem to age far past their years, as he's 48 and looks much older.\n\nAll that sleep debt, the sleep he should be getting, is taking a huge toll on his body.\n\nA similar effect is shown on Presidents, as stress is a main factor in premature aging, and sleep deprivation is another form of stress.",
"The vast majority don't. a few people (read: < 1%) can function with under 6 hours of sleep. The rest of us need between 6 and 8. \n\nIf it's true or not about Ramsay i cant say, i dont have the data, but even assuming it is, take with it a few things:\n\n- The amount of stress removed when you have 70k or more in income yearly is HUGE compared to when you are below it.\n- Sleeping in nap-cycles is considerably more effective (Look up REM Cycle Naps) then the lie-down-and-wait.\n- Learning to FALL asleep can safe you an hour on it's self.\n\ni have about ~5 hours average of actual sleep. I might dip in and out of sleep if i have a chance (read a chapter in a book, or browse reddit or something) and get a few more hours. i find this helps me function just as well as i would do without that break on 1-2 hours less a night.\n",
"When you are sleep deprived, your body gets adapted to making the most out of the sleep you do get. 5 hours of knockout super high quality sleep is often better than 8 hours of some tossing and turning, getting up to go to the bathroom, interupted sleep cycles, etc",
"Diet is extremely important- if you are consistently eating too much food or the wrong food or a combination then you will find it difficult to sleep less. If you are generally looking after yourself diet wise it helps I've heard, processing food can tire the body out. Think tiny portions, nuts and seeds and fruit and loads of water each day, meat very occasionally and lots of fish, low amounts of butter and rich sauces like mayonnaise. I'm not sure why but I've heard it from a stock broker friend who's boss used to have very little sleep ",
"I'm not insanely successful or whatnot, but I am in the military, and I've been on deployment and similar where the mission ends up taking most the day; 18+ hour workdays and such. Before I joined the military, I couldn't **imagine** working that much and getting 4 or so hours of sleep for months on end.\n\nAfter a while though, you just *do*, and your body stops begging for mercy and just submits to it. I'm not saying the military is like being a world class chef or a similar high pace job, but I can imagine its similar; you go into the 'gotta get shit done' mindset and your body goes along for the ride.\n\nAlso, naps. Grabbing a nap whenever you can helps.",
"I can't function on less than 8 hours of sleep and it takes me two hours to fall asleep each night. Makes being successful kinda hard"
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2c9iny | what determines how long until a joint is ready to be cracked immediately after cracking it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c9iny/eli5_what_determines_how_long_until_a_joint_is/ | {
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"Cool, one I can answer.\n\nYour cartilage protects the ends of your bones from rubbing against other bones (which is painful, so try to avoid not having cartilage) BUT there's also fluid between the two pieces of cartilage as well. This fluid is under pressure (obviously) and because of that pressure, the dissolved gasses within it (primarily CO2 and oxygen) stay within it. When you crack your knuckles (or any joint, really), you pull the two pieces of cartilage away from each other and lower that pressure. The result is a bunch of those gasses form bubbles REALLY quickly (Like when you pop the top of a can of soda), causing the \"crack\" you hear. Over time (usually 20 minutes or so) the gasses dissolve back into the fluid and the process can repeat; until then you really won't be able to crack that joint again.\n\nBonus info: cracking your knuckles (or other joints) do not seem to have an effect on your likelihood of getting arthritis later on in life. Professor Donald Unger won an ig-Nobel prize in 2009 for the culmination of his life's work; he only cracked the knuckles on his left hand, leaving his right hand un-cracked. After 60 years (**!**), his left hand showed no more signs of arthritis than his right did.\n\n_URL_0_"
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c0etee | how is it possible people can create things like working internet and computers in unmodded minecraft? also, since they can make computers, is there any limit to what they can create in minecraft? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c0etee/eli5_how_is_it_possible_people_can_create_things/ | {
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"In theory you could create a functional microprocessor, but clock speed would be an issue. Basic logic gates are easy to create and you can expand from there. World edit would certainly speed things along.",
"Computers are basically lots and lots of switches, on for 1, off for 0. This creates binary, with each digit referred to as a \"bit\". Knowing this, and with knowledge of how binary works, you can create a length of switches to do the same thing.",
"Minecraft provides the fundamental elements required to build a computer: circuits (wires), logic gates, memory and a clock, as well as mechanisms for input (programming) and output. With these basic building blocks you can theoretically simulate a functioning computer, though there are practical limits to how easy it is to build it and how fast it can process instructions.",
"There is a limit, as Redstone blocks use a software simulation of a binary switch, which in and of itself takes processing power more than a single transistor gate on a processor. Thus, the only limit to what can be made in Minecraft would be the power of the user's PC.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI assume at some point you'd probably break Minecraft too by making it do too many things at one time.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nAlso, since it's a person making them and not a machine(I would imagine anyone that can make things like these could probably automate the process, but I don't know, and not to the extent that a laser can make transistors), building millions or even billions of Redstone circuits is not viable, thus it will remain at relatively simple computing, and not complex 3D graphics or anything.",
"there is a whole part of mathematical logic called \"computability theory\" that describes how one thing can be computed from a set of (base) elements. There is a (somewhat sloppy) definition called \"turing complete\" which basically stipulates that if you can create a very specific type of \"super basic\" computer called a Turing Machine, you can use that as a building block to create any other computer you want. Minecraft is turing complete, so you can theoretically build any type of modern computer from/in it. [_URL_0_](_URL_1_)",
"You could in theory build a working computer from almost anything. The only problems you get when not using microelectronics are size, low speed and energy consumption.\n\nAll you need is a basic element of a switch that can turn on other switches.\n\nThe first crude computers were built mechanical, and then with electromagnetic switches. But you could make one with pressure opened valves and make a water or steam computer.",
"the limit is the chunk limit. minecraft loads visible terrain in chunks, based on how far your render limit is set. even at the farthest settings, with the world stripped down to nothing but redstone circuits, you won't get nearly enough space to do anything approaching what we consider a crude computer, let alone anything modern.\n\nbasically, minecraft only activates what is in sight range, and at the widest setting steve can't see far enough.",
"Any machine that's considered \"Turing complete\" can simulate any other such machine. Generally, most computers will roughly fall into that category with the right language or platform that acts as one. You can build a smartphone in Little Big Planet. It just wouldn't be very useful. The practical limitations are things like:\n\n- the capacity of your storage media\n\n- the performance of the virtual machine\n\n- the difficulty in writing this machine\n\netc.",
"I don't know about internet, but there are several concepts necessary to be able to create computer, like r/s latch (basically just a switch that remembers the last state of its input) and logic gates, of which both can be simulated using redstone (there are a lot of other useful things you can simulate, like tape memory, but it's not necessary to build a computer). Since you can simulate those concepts using redstone, there is no reason you couldn't simulate the whole computer, and some madmen indeed did.\n\nThe biggest limitation imo is the tick speed of redstone, which is by default 20 ticks per second, which is, compared to the clock of your computer, especially, if you have a bomb-ass machine that could run the beast that is minecraft, very very slow. About 150,000,000 times slower actually.",
"A computer is made of power.\n\nPower can only go on or off.This explains all the 0's and 1's you see, something is either on/off, and thats how hardware in computers work\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThis is the same case for redstone in Minecrafteven though redstone can have a pulse from 0 to 15 (where 0 is off) people make mostly use of it of the fact that its either on or off (pulse on 0 or above 0)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nSo what they do is they build hardware circuits thats similar to reallife computers which then can do certain operations, like basic calculations\n\n & #x200B;\n\nYou can notice however these computers are pretty slow inside mc, but that is because your computer's hardware is running software that simulates hardware that has software. \n\n\nRegarding the limit: \n\n\nThe blocks and redstone that has to work, has to be loaded obviously so that depends on the load distance (which differs per PC, as an higher load distance requires a better computer)",
"With Minecraft you can create logic gates which allow you to emulate all other finite state automatons, including your computer.\n\nHowever although there are computers in vanilla minecraft, they require mods to use working internet.\n\nThe limit to what you can create in Minecraft is defined by the tick speed (20 ticks/second), and the range that chunks are loaded in.",
"Even the most complex, advanced red stone computers are completely outclassed by irl pocket calculators.",
"Does this mean someone could create a minecradt universe inside Minecraft?",
"maybe we are just one instance made in minecraft?",
"Seems most people have explained how computers are made, so I'll explain what and why the limits are.\n\nAll computers, even in real life, have physics limits. Moore's law predicts that the number of transistors on a microprocessor will double every 18 - 24 months. This prediction is no longer true as our transistors are now becoming so tiny that we cannot physically shove any more transistors onto the same area. transistors are quickly being made out of just a few dozen atoms.\n\nMinecraft has different physics limits than the real world, ones that are much more restrictive when it comes to computer science. For example, Redstone cannot rise to a higher block if there is another block above the redstone, it would cut off the current. This means that making something like a monitor display in Minecraft that is even remotely like one in real life is impossible because as opposed to real life where electricity can be sent through copper wires towards the LEDs in the monitor tightly packed together, Minecraft can only have at most 1 pixel per block.\n\nLets do some math. Even if we assume that the speed minecraft runs is infinite and the computer sends data to the monitor instantly, the Max view distance in unmodded Minecraft is 64 chunks. Each chunk is 16 by 16 blocks. that means the max viewable distance is 64 x 16 = 1,024. Maximum build height is 256 blocks. If we assume that the chunks load in around you in a perfect square (64 by 64 chunks) then the absolute maximum monitor size would be 1,024 by 256 blocks. That might seem like a lot, but chances are that you are reading this on a 1920 by 1080, which is often considered the standard monitor size for todays computers. which kind of puts it into perspective.\n\nIf you are still reading, lets do another quick mathematical exercise!\n\nA Nand gate is the basic building block of a computer microprocessor, you can literally build a computer from scratch as long as you have a couple million Nand gates. [You can build this gate in minecraft](_URL_0_). All you need is about a 3 by 3 area of space. I'm not 100% sure when redstone stops working in minecraft, but lets assume that redstone signals stop being transmitted once you leave your 64 by 64 view distance area. That means that the total amount of working Nand gates you could shove into an area would be 1,024 divided by 3 (since the gate is 3 x 3) squared, times the max build hight divided by two (since the Nand gate is two blocks high) (1,024/3)^2 x 256/2. This would give us a total of just under 15 million possible Nand gates shoved into the same area. Again, that might seem like a lot, but todays microprocessors have well over 250 million Nand gates inside them, and their computer case still has room for RAM, Storage, and the works, while our little mathematical thought experiment doesn't even have enough room for you to stand in.\n\nSo now you can see. My mathematics were kinda hastily put together, and I might not be 100% correct in my explanations, but I hope that I gave you a basic idea of why there is a limit to what we can create, and why computers in minecraft will never be able to get anywhere near the capabilities of computers made even 20 years ago.",
"Imagine a river flowing through a pleasant meadow.\n\nNear Mr. Winston's apple farm, the river splits into two smaller rivers. Sometimes Mr. Winston piles rocks into one of the littler rivers, which makes the other little river twice is big.\n\nMr. Johnson, who is a fun guy and owns a milk farm up the river, has a fun idea. He's going to send Mr Winston a letter on Monday with a simple yes or no question. If Mr Winston answers yes, he is to block the river that leads to Mr. Johnson's farm, which will stop the river. If he answers no, he blocks the other, which makes the river twice as big.\n\nMr. Winston and Mr Johnson have made a simple computer that can have two states, \"Yes\" or \"No.\" If the river also splits at Mr. Johnson's farm, he can choose to block one path or the other, too. This gives us three possible states, \"Yes,\", \"No + Yes\", \"No + No\". \n\nAs long as there is more space for more farms, we can have a state of any size. We can keep any information in this series of rivers, even the instructions to run a computer game, like Minecraft.\n\nSince you can make a computer out of an infinitely long river, you can definitely make one in Minecraft.",
"The limit is really the limit of the engine and your computer. \n\nMy son (currently finishing his EE degree) learned programming and digital logic in Minecraft when he was in middle school. He says its still easier for him to lay out a latch or other basic circuits in redstone than using traditional gates, because he did so much of it. He still plays Minecraft - servers with advanced players where he can automate parts of a city, etc. \n\nComputers are comprised of a very small set of primitives. In fact, if you can build a NAND or NOR gate (2 inputs, one inverted output) then you can build a computer. They're considered universal gates because with them you can build everything else. The Apollo guidance computer was nothing but NOR gates. Now, these aren't efficient, but they are sufficient. Because you can build these gates using redstone in Minecraft, you can (in theory) build anything.\n\nNow, there are a few downsides here. One, these gates are emulated in a pretty inefficient way. The game has to handle all of the animation rendering and everything else, which is WAY more expensive than just evaluating a NOR gate. Further, by default there are limits to what the game will calculate. To make the game run reasonably well, areas of the map that are out of range don't calculate, so the resulting computer needs to be reasonably compact, or else parts of it get turned off. With mods you can alter that behavior, but the reason why it works that way is that there's a limit to what a computer running Minecraft can calculate, so eventually you'll just run out of hardware or the game will get overloaded and crash. Programmers and engineers tend to enjoy the challenge of making a system do something it wasn't intended to do, so this limit tends to get explored.\n\nAnd you can do this in other games as well. I helped push the state of the art in Dwarf Fortress for computing using water logic using pressure plates and flood gates. In DF you can build computers with water logic, mechanical logic, minecart logic, and creature logic (immortal vampires that don't need to eat/drink/sleep were a handy addition to the game here). Factorio also has the necessary primitives. So does Starbound. \n\nThese are great ways for kids to learn basic digital logic and programming.",
"Could someone theoretically design a minecraft simulation inside the game?",
"You know how Redstone exists, right?\n\nPeople have figured out how to make logic gates similar to those used in real world circuitry. Smack a gazillion logic gates together, wire up inputs and display (usually in the form of a display) and boom. It then just spiralled out of control from there (especially with the addition of command blocks), but working computers have been a thing for a while now.\n\nAs for limits? Considering that worlds are finite (but enormous to the point where this barely matters) if it can fit in that space somehow it can work, but a better check I'd say is how much computer strength and render distance they can throw at the game to have it all running at once.",
"There is several limiting factors for building a computer inside minecraft. \nThe Redstones signaling speed is far slower than real curcuits. \nThe render distance inside MC is relatively low, so signals can only go X distance away from the player before its cut off, is another example. \nIt does however have benefits over real computers in that cooling isnt an issue and in/output locations. So you can utilize the entire 3D space and compact circuits (no need for flat bourds)."
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42kl2x | how did we arrive at the current situation where wealth is mostly concentrated in hands of 1% of population? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/42kl2x/eli5_how_did_we_arrive_at_the_current_situation/ | {
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"First of all, interest. If you have money left, you'll get interest from it, which raises the amount of money you have. Moreso, you don't need to take loans, so you don't have to pay interest (which is even more important because the interest you get for savings is smaller than the one you have to pay for loans). Beyond that, it's easier to make money when you have a lot of it; one of the reasons being how investing works.\n\nIf you don't have enough money, you won't do any investing at all; you'll spend your money on daily spending (food, clothing, rent).\n\nIf you have a lot of money, you won't be spending it all and start investing it, let's say stocks. Now doing so carries the risk of losing your money; but if you have enough, that won't matter that much (if you're not entirely reckless). You can only lose as much money as you put in, but you can gain an unlimited amount of money if stocks go up - so if two companies you invested in go broke, you'll still have gained money if another position went up 300% in that time. That is a very simplified view of course."
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a2iubw | if a substance has no hydrogen in it, does it have a ph? | pH stands for/measures Power of Hydrogen, so if something has no hydrogen to measure, does it also have no pH? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a2iubw/eli5_if_a_substance_has_no_hydrogen_in_it_does_it/ | {
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"PH only works for solutions in water and its measuring not Hydrogen, but the concentration of Hydrogen ions in the solution. If you take a litmus test to a dry block of iron (which contains no hydrogen and isn't solved in water) nothing happens, if you throw the iron into the water and test the water, the litmus test will show you the pH of the water. ",
"pH is a literal measurement of how many hydrogen ions are in a given solution - really, you can have a p anything, such as OH - in aqueous solution, pOH and pH are inversely related, that is as pOH goes up pH goes down \n\nTo clarify a bit: any aqueous solution has a pH (such as one with boron triflouride) because water tends to split apart into separate OH and H groups to a certain extent. This is where the H comes from, and the compound dissolved in it can bond to some of the H or some of the OH"
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a6rtsl | how does bluetooth low energy work? | I've seen it on my phone before. I have a Samsung S9+ and I look into settings and says it uses Bluetooth Low Energy. Or LE. It uses it's microphone to find devices to connect to and to transfer data files with.
What is Bluetooth Low Energy exactly?
It says it will use a bit of battery (3500mAh Capacity from the phone)
How much can it use theoretically? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6rtsl/eli5_how_does_bluetooth_low_energy_work/ | {
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"Bluetooth is a way to communicate to other devices wireless, The most common application on a cellphone is to connect to headsets, spearker etc\n\nBluetooth low energy is the latest bluetooth standard that do what is say and used less power. The amount is usages depend on what you do but it is low. The lower power usage is more important for something you connect to like a headset or a fitness trackers then for a cell phone as the have smaller batteries and you still has to charge the cellphone for other thing is uses energy for. So it can result in standby time on devices like that for days, weeks or even longer.\n\n\nIf you look at example for a bluetooth low energy beacon I found tests that show usages of 38 uAh per hour that is 0.038mAh per hour. That would mean that the the battery could power it for 92000 hours or 10 years. Bluetooth low energy is designed so a button cell battery that might have 200mAh could power it for months or years.\n\nThe cellphone that need to listen for signal uses a bit more but it will be negligibel for a cellphone. That is for standby if you stream to speaker or headphones it might use more power\n\n\n"
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f8me9d | how does the us military deliver tanks and other heavy equipment to battlefields overseas? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f8me9d/eli5_how_does_the_us_military_deliver_tanks_and/ | {
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"Sea, rail, road and air are possible deployment modes. Sea and rail are much more economical.",
"By air and sea, pretty much like you transport anything else. The U.S. Navy Military Sealift Command is responsible for transporting equipment and supplies via sea, and it operates a large fleet of ships for that purpose. You put just about anything on these cargo ships - tanks, planes, artillery, ammunition, fuel...etc. Ships can carry far more equipment are are much more efficient so this is the preferred method of transport unless you need something to be somewhere fast.\n\nYou can also move equipment by plane. The Air Force Air Mobility Command operates a fleet of massive transport planes like the C-5 Galaxy or the C-17 Globemaster that can move large equipment around the world quickly, although obviously a plane can't carry as much stuff as a ship, and these large plans can't deliver the equipment directly to the battlefield. There are also smaller planes like the C-130 that can actually deliver equipment directly to forward operating bases.",
"Propositioned equipment is one thing - armor and transports in storage so it's a shorter trip to the front.\n\nMostly though it's by ship from port to port.\n\nAircraft can't carry more than one or two armored vehicles so that's not a great solution",
"* Pre-positioned equipment: there are stocks of equipment setup in Europe, Diego Garcia (in the Indian Ocean) and other places waiting for the US to use them.\n* The [Military Sealift Command](_URL_0_)and the [US Merchant Marine](_URL_2_): ships that the US military either owns or can use to get cargo into the fight.\n* The USAF Air Mobility Command: all the \"airlifters\" of the USAF, mostly the C-5, C-17 and C-130 cargo planes.\n* The [Civil Reserve Air Fleet](_URL_1_) \\- US flagged airlines that get contracting deals commit to making a percentage of their fleet available to the military. However, this is mostly for troops and spare parts."
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96s5ua | when we look at a galaxy and see colorful cloud-like shapes, what exactly does the cloud consist of? what are we seeing? why is it a certain color? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/96s5ua/eli5_when_we_look_at_a_galaxy_and_see_colorful/ | {
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"Those are nebula and they consist of many different kinds of gases. The colors are usually fake. The raw images telescopes like the Hubble take are typically in black and white. They take multiple images with each one filtered to just show a specific element. Those images are assigned certain colors, like red for hydrogen, blue for oxygen, and green for nitrogen. Those images are then combined to give you the cool colorful pictures.",
"In the case of most images you see on the internet, the images are rendered in false color. The normally invisible spectra of light (x-rays, gamma Ray's, infrared, microwave) are detected by telescope and colored in by computer in the visible spectra. \n\nSince a page of numbers or a black and white picture of dark space do not capture the imagination, colors are chosen to produce striking images that engage the public and encourage support of space programs."
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6h415k | what exactly is "explain like i'm five"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6h415k/eli5_what_exactly_is_explain_like_im_five/ | {
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"When you take a complex topic or a question with no easy, simple, one-size-fits-all answer and distill it into straightforward language so that a five-year-old could theoretically understand it.\n\nEinstein said the mark of understanding a topic is if you can explain it to someone else and they understand it, too."
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881qeq | why is there smh between different religions now and throughout history? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/881qeq/eli5_why_is_there_smh_between_different_religions/ | {
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"Many religions have a combination if factors that form “teams” (us vs them). These arent unique to religion though they are most common, most forms of politics take advantage of the human love of teams.\n\nReligions have tenants for lifestyles, clearer differentiators between religions. Different lifestyles make it harder for people to relate.\n\nReligions, particularly abrahamic religions, also differentiate between members of the religion (going to heaven) and pagan/infidel/not-in-the-club people (not going to heaven), and use them as a source of outside conflict for the internal “team” to unite against."
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cvkr8g | how cellular transmission works and why it drains the battery so much. what is the phone actually doing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cvkr8g/eli5_how_cellular_transmission_works_and_why_it/ | {
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"In order for a mobile phone to talk to a cell tower a two-way communication channel has to be set up.\n\nThis involves your phone yelling out ‘listen to me’ in the hope that a tower replies. If no tower replies, your phone will shout out louder, and louder, and louder until either a tower replies or the phone is at maximum transmission power. All that shouting will drain batteries, particularly if there are no towers around.\n\nOnce you do find a tower, it will also tell your phone if you’re shouting too loud or too soft. So if you’re traveling between cell towers or at the edge of a cell, the tower will tell your phone to shout as loud as it can, so it can maintain the channel.\n\nAnd just to chew up your battery even faster, phones which continually look for wifi shout loudly looking for wifi too.\n\n*AND* there are other things your phone does continuously to burn batteries - GPS location calculations is significant also."
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10pi1k | what is the sensation in the brain when i accidentally inhale a little bit of water through the nose? | Is the feeling the water touching a specific area in the sinuses or is it the brain creating the reaction? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10pi1k/what_is_the_sensation_in_the_brain_when_i/ | {
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"The mucous membranes in your nose have a certain level of \"saltiness.\" The water has no salt. Water molecules can pass through membranes easily; water molecules with various salts clinging to them cannot. We call this Osmosis. So the water that goes up your nose over-saturates the mucous membranes, causing pain.\n\nIf you were to add the right amount of salt to the water to make it \"isotonic,\" you could comfortably rinse out your nose with the salt water. This is an actual hygiene practice in some eastern cultures, and gaining popularity in the west. [I have used it to prevent post-nasal drip.](_URL_0_)"
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1you1b | why do most people drink? | This seem like a pretty dumb question, but this is coming from a 17 year old. I've tried some alcohol before, and most of the time, it really just isn't good. I really don't favor drunk people's breaths either, along with their personalities. I've sort of pledged that I'm not going to drink a whole lot when I'm older, but I know there's going to be plenty of my people my age going to bars, and loving every second that they're drinking, but I just don't understand what exactly is so great about alcohol. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1you1b/eli5_why_do_most_people_drink/ | {
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"Well I think that is more of a preference thing for each person but I think for a lot of people it has to do with the fact that it removes inhibitions so with the right amount (not so much you are wasted but just above a \"buzz\") you feel a lot more social.\n\nEdit: Thought I should add a disclaimer that I am not saying that it's a good idea to drink to be more social I am just saying that from my observations many people do it.",
"Its a personal experience thing. Everyone has their own reasons.\n\nFor myself, it helps loosen me up, makes hanging out with friends a slightly different experience and (if I keep it reasonable on the consumption) let's me let loose a lot of stress in short order by just turning off my \"give a fuck\" sense for a bit.\n",
"It makes me think the way I can never think when sober. When I'm sober I observe and get influenced by even the most trivial of things like a fly or a speck of dust flying in front of my face, or while talking to people I analyze my words over a gazillion times before spouting them. But when I'm drunk, every minute bullshit doesn't exists anymore and I'm the most basic, most default and the truest version of myself.",
"As a seventeen year old, you may hate the taste and hate the feeling now but you get used to it to the point where you learn to enjoy it quite a bit. I don't know the exact science but it does help you loosen up a bit and be able to open up to people. It helps you feel numb, painless and say things that are normally on your mind that you wouldn't say if you were not under the influence. It's good for you, as long as you can control yourself and it is consumed in moderation. It's also developed over time to become a social norm. \n\nCheers. ",
"There's a lot of reasons alcohol is so popular (besides its legality, which itself is due to its popularity). \n\n- Alcohol acts as a sort of leveler in social situations. You might come into a social situation feeling awkward, or sad, or simply on a different level emotionally to your company, and alcohol levels this out with those around you: having a few drinks puts you in a similar mindset to everyone else, making it easier to interact with people (this only really applies to people who haven't had a huge amount to drink though, and will probably become more obvious when you can legally drink and excessive drunkenness loses its novelty)\n\n- You can drink alcohol fairly heavily your entire life and still end up reasonably healthy. Of course alcoholism is terrible for your health, but compared to other drugs, the level of alcohol use that constitutes \"alcoholism\" is huge\n\n- Alcoholic beverages genuinely taste good. I understand you said you don't like the taste, and some drinks are certainly an acquired taste, but from my own experience it's probably got more to do with what you're drinking. If your drinking below the legal age, you tend to be drinking cheap spirits and cheap wine, because they're easier to smuggle around than beer, which is too bulky to carry in reasonable quantities, and the consequences of getting caught with them and having it confiscated by police is substantially less finacially. These drinks usually taste awful.\n\n- Lots of cultural practice relates to alcohol consumption. Christianity and Judaism both require it in certain rituals, and lots of secular cultural rituals heavily feature alcohol (horse racing, sports, going out to restaurants, clubs or bars, dinner parties, house parties etc.)\n\n- You can drink a lot and still go to work the next day, which isn't true of many drugs\n\n- Being buzzed in itself just feels fun. Conversation is better, you're more relaxed, company is more open etc.",
"I was in the same boat as you for a very long time. I thought drinking was really stupid. A lot of the time it sort of is. But it can also be fun (even when it is stupid), and drinking is a huge part of culture and history and art and human interaction. Read up on where IPAs came from, or the earliest alcoholic beverages, or the wonderful work of the Trappist monks; think about a martini \"shaken not stirred,\" or the setting of shows like *It's Always Sunny* or *Cheers*, or the very concept of a toast.\n\nA friend and I have tried a huge amount of beers. We like to try to describe the tastes and decide which ones we like the most and why. We go to beverage centers and see if we can find new ones, look for local breweries, go to restaurants with craft beer nights. Beer is very varied and has a huge range of interesting tastes. Just check out sites like ratebeer or beeradvocate; there is an entire art to it. We started homebrewing recently out of this interest, and it's a fascinating process that can lead to a lot of fun learning about chemistry and DIY construction (of wort chillers, pumps, etc). \n\nI also have bi-weekly wine-tastings with friends, usually paired with cheeses (although we're becoming more adventurous as of late). Wine has a lot of interesting flavors, and, no bullshit, actually is different when you pair it with different things. Five to ten of us get together and taste a couple of wines, talk, and have a good time. It's a social experience, and it's a learning experience. I certainly know a hell of a lot more about France, now. And Argentina, and Portugal, and... South Africa? Wine grows in a lot of places, guys.\n\nI saw a recipe on Food52 the other day for a cider shandy. It called for creme de cassis. By the time I was done learning about this drink I knew a little more about kir, France, blackcurrants, and Hercule Poirot, to name a few things. For me, drinking is largely a small part of a larger web of information and interaction and joy, and in that it is wonderful.\n\nAnd in some social situations the little loosening of inhibitions/anxieties is fun, or helpful. I know that my girlfriend, who was at first nervous about physical intimacy but wanted to do it anyway, felt more comfortable doing it after she had a couple of drinks (slightly to my chagrin; I sort of wanted her to do it sober, but alas). At a holiday party at my job it took me a few beers before I started to actually open up a bit (I tended to be shy and aloof prior to this experience). And sometimes it's just plain fun. Sometimes my friends and I get a little drunk before playing music together, or watching a crappy movie like *The Room*, or playing *Mario Party*. \n\nAlcohol might not seem good at first. Perhaps it is an acquired taste. I hated beer for a very long time. It wasn't until I had a Yuengling, when the planets were correctly aligned or something, that I began to like it. And from there I tried white and black russians, Irish Car Bombs (sorry Irish people), Old Fashioneds, Mint Juleps (thanks Faulkner), Bloody Marys... \n\nThere's a lot to it. Maybe it isn't for everyone, and I don't really feel comfortable convincing other people to drink, because I have known a few alcoholics myself. But what I do want to do is dispel the myth that drinking is stupid or immature. Something irks me about people who feel themselves morally or intellectually superior due to their teetotaling. Perhaps because it reminds me of my younger, obnoxious self.",
"Similar to what most people have already said, I drink to relax. I can be quite highly strung and over think things so a glass of wine or two can help me chill out after a stressful week. It also has to do with your upbringing. My parents used to drink every night and family catch ups revolved around alcohol so I was always exposed to it (although not allowed to drink myself). So I guess I was used to it by the time I reached legal drinking age. \n\nI get what you're saying about not liking the taste though. I hated beer when I was 18 but forced myself to like it because it was the cheapest thing to drink as a poor uni student. Now I love it.\n\nEdit: autocorrect",
"As a 28 year old who has never gotten drunk, I'd say most people drink to hide from their self-perceived inadequacies. From this thread alone:\n\n1. Alcohol makes it easier to approach girls: \"No girl was too cure to hit on\", \"If we go out to a club and dance with some girls and get a little wild, all the better.\" You know what else helps you get with girls? If you would stop being a pussy.\n\n2. Alcohol helps you de-stress from work: \"So on the weekend, turning all that off (with alcohol's help) really makes a difference in my mental state.\" You know what else helps you de-stress? Exercise and productive hobbies, but those take work and skill.\n\n3. It's an excuse to be stupid: \"The common 'oh, I was drunk' excuse is universal and understood.\" First off, this is wrong, and leads to things like drunk drivers going the wrong way down the interstate. IMO, people who think this are the lowest scum of humanity. What you should do is man up and take some responsibility. If you are drinking, you aren't a two year old anymore. Act like it.\n\nUnless you don't have access to sanitary water, there is no good reason to drink alcoholic beverages. If someone tries to get you to drink, it's probably because you make them feel insecure. Their excuse that \"everyone does it\" doesn't work when you are standing right in front of them proving them wrong.",
"The ONLY reason anyone ever drinks is ultimately, \"Because I enjoy it.\"\n\n\"Because it helps me relax after a hard day.\" Enjoyment.\n\"Because it makes everything seem warm and rosy and good.\" Enjoyment.\n\"Because it makes my friends funnier.\" Enjoyment.\n\nLike every pleasure, it requires judgment to protect yourself from overindulging. Food, tobacco, rudeness, bling-bling--all things that are fun but you need self-control to balance it with the rest of your life. Alcohol is a little harder because of its disinhibiting effect: a lot of people make bad decisions while drunk, such as to continue getting drunker. \n\nNot every pleasure is for everyone. You don't like alcohol; I don't like pot; plenty of people don't like tobacco or sweets or exercise. Find something you do like.",
"A deep-seeded need to be liked that they fill by drinking because everyone else does it?",
"I would think thirst is a factor at some point",
"Why do most people drink? I just don't get it. \n\nBack in college everyone (teachers and students) joked about drinking and getting drunk; \"I was going to assign this exam for Monday, but we all know you guys won't be studying THIS weekend\" *entire classroom laughs/chuckles* Meanwhile I'm sitting there trying to understand when/why partying became more important to everyone than getting an education.\n\nJoking or not taking drinking seriously still happens after college too. One of my co-workers goes to New Orleans almost every weekend and blows a few hundred bucks on alcohol alone. He doesn't have much in terms of savings, but it's worth it for all the \"hilarious\" stories he has every week at work. \"Yeah I woke up butt naked in my apartment Sunday afternoon and don't remember what I did or how I got home last night. Hahahaha.\" or \"I've definitely driven home waaay too drunk to drive several times, but I must be a good drunk driver because my parking is still decent. Hahaha\" Like WTF??? What's even worse is all the other co-workers laugh and agree and have their own drunk stories/drunk driving stories. It's like some competition to see who has the craziest story! This kind of stuff should not be taken lightly, people! You can definitely kill yourself or others because of your stupidity and need for attention.\n\nSuddenly in college everyone is an expert on alcohol. For some reason it's okay to judge people heavily based on their personal tastes (or lack of taste) in alcohol. \"Oh gawd you ACTUALLY like drinking Budweiser? That's like piss in a bottle!\" or \"Yeah I make my own beer, it's pretty awesome and way better than overpriced store beer\" People who are normally friends suddenly put down each other for their tastes in alcohol, and to me that is really sad. Everyone has a different taste in clothes, food, drinks, etc. so why is it acceptable to harshly judge alcohol preferences?\n\nI miss the days when my friends and I would get together and play some Frisbee/volleyball, have bonfires with intelligent conversations, hang out and watch movies or play games. Now everything isn’t fun unless alcohol is involved. Sports become dangerous, people try jumping over the bonfires or tossing in plastic trash etc, no one can sit through a movie, and games just turn into annoying people yelling, pushing, and cheating to try to win. I miss having conversations with my guy friends without them staring at my body and hitting on me and excusing their actions “because they were drunk.”\n\nI know a lot of people will disagree with me or say I wasn’t drunk enough to enjoy on the fun with everyone, but to me it isn’t worth it. I don’t want to make bad decisions that could hurt myself or others. Alcohol is expensive and doesn’t taste that great IMO. I have since found new friends and we have plenty of fun without being under the influence. Everyone is different, and I’m sure OP will find the right people to hang out with and not be pressured into doing things he doesn’t want to do. \n\nHave fun but please be safe!\n"
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28yu89 | how does soccer, the most popular sport in the world, not have a decent play review/challenge system? | Watching the World Cup recently, in one of the games (forget which) there was a goal and the defending players were signaling for offsides which the ref didn't call. On the replay, the striker was clearly like 2-3 feet offsides and it lead to a goal. Why the hell does soccer not have a review system? It's the most popular sport in the world! Almost every American sport (Football, basketball, baseball) has an official review on close plays and it makes the sport better overall. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/28yu89/eli5_how_does_soccer_the_most_popular_sport_in/ | {
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"The main reason is that FIFA, the sport's governing body, deems such challenges as interrupting the flow of the game and slowing it down which they don't want. \n\nOn top of that, they think it's part of the sport only having one referee making these decisions.",
"There are two main reasons.\n\n1.) Football (I'm European) is a flowing game that stops as little as possible and only ever 'resets' at a goal or half time. When the ball goes out of play (Throw In/Corner) the game hasn't actually stopped, both teams are moving into position to attack/defend when the ball is put back in. \n\nA review/challenge system would be a full stop. Players wouldn't be doing anything while they wait for the decision and when it comes the game would have to be reset it some way. \n\n2.) A review system would probably have to involve video review. FIFA care deeply about not introducing things like that because unlike many other sports Football at the very top level isn't actually all that different from football in a park.\n\nAll the aspects of football you get in the world cup final are just improvements on what you can have in the park. Instead of two sticks for goals you've got a proper goal with a net. Instead of imagining where the halfway line is, you've got a painted one. Instead of agreeing together if something was a foul, you've got an appointed official.\n\nA video review system would be something the kids in the park **can't** have, on any level. FIFA believe that detracts from the appeal of Football, removes it from poor kids who play it because they don't have the facilities/equipment to play other sports. To play football you literally just need something you're willing to kick.\n\nThis is why goal line technology took so long to get implemented. It took massive uproar, mainly after the Lampard incident in South Africa 2010 and even then FIFA were *extremely* demanding of the systems. For example they must automatically tell the referee if it was a goal or not within 5 seconds, otherwise they don't get to be used officially. It's to try and keep the flow, to make it seem like the referees just got *better*, not that they have some huge outside system that costs millions to implement."
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7pvkun | why do mobile phones lose reception when going up/down an elevator? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7pvkun/eli5_why_do_mobile_phones_lose_reception_when/ | {
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"Well, your phone \"has reception\" when it can receive electromagnetic waves carrying the signal. The more energy these waves have when your phone receives them, the more reception it shows it has.\n\nThese waves can pass through some materials without losing much energy; however, other materials - and I'm talking mostly metals here - will catch those waves and cause their energy to dissipate on their surface. Your phone also has a tiny piece of metal that catches the signal - it's your antenna.\n\nNow that we know these waves lose energy when passing (or trying to pass) through metalic objects, it kinda makes sense that when you're inside an elevator, which is kinda a big metal cage, the signals reaching your phone are much weaker than normally. You could also simulate that, e.g. by wrapping your phone in tinfoil, as snuggly as you can; the reception should fall down, either a bit or completely.",
"Yarr! Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Why are cell phone signals lost in elevators? ](_URL_0_) ^(_2 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: why in the modern world where cell phones will work deep into concrete carparks and shopping centers, will an elevator instantly cause the signal to drop out? ](_URL_1_) ^(_5 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: Why does my cellphone lose reception in an elevator? ](_URL_2_) ^(_6 comments_)\n"
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5xaqjz | how do atomic bombs work? is it just one atom torn apart? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xaqjz/eli5_how_do_atomic_bombs_work_is_it_just_one_atom/ | {
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"A neutron is fired into a cluster of unstable radioactive particles. HOWEVER it must go at a certain speed; too slow and the bomb won't explode, tok fast and the particle will go right through it. The amount of energy released will split the rest of the particles in the reaction, causing the huge energy released. The neutrons are fired from a small cell within the bomb, via electricity (or magnetism)\n\n\nThis is what prevented Germany from figuring out how to make the bomb and the US being successful; Germans fired the neutron as fast as they could while the US figured out it has to go at a certain speed",
"Nuclear fission starts when a neutron hits a heavy nucleus, the reaction produces more neutrons and so on and so on. The more atoms you have in a contained space the faster fission will be and more energy will be created. Uranium fueled nuclear bomb is a ball of uranium surrounded by an explosive. During ignition the explosive is pressing the atoms together going to critical mass(when fission is self sustained) and over that to the point when a lot of fission happens at once producing a lot of light and heat. Little boy contained 64.1 kg of U-235 but only 0.8 kg went through fission and only 0.1% of that was changed directly to heat and light. The rest 63.3 kg was scattered around Hiroshima during the blast.",
"The first neutron hits an atom of U-235 or Pu-239. These are special, unstable atoms. The atom splits in half, and releases 2 neutrons. These hit the next 2 atoms, which release 4, ... Many atoms are split.\n\nThe rest of the special physics is trapping the very rare and unstable radioactive materials in a casing where they can be forced together well enough that the first 10% of the reaction doesn't just vaporize the rest of the weapon. It's very difficult, and mostly against international treaties, to make them.",
"There's an ideal ratio of protons to neutrons for an atomic nucleus to be stable. Even when their protons and neutrons are at the right ratio, big atoms have a nucleus that is kind of wobbly and unstable to begin with. Over time those big atoms, left to their own devices, will tend to split into fragments. This is called *radioactivity*. Exactly what fragments an atom splits into depends on what kind of atom it is (which is determined by how many protons and neutrons were there in the first place).\n\nWhen a big atom gets hit by a neutron, an already-unstable atom has its proton-to-neutron ratio suddenly be \"wrong.\" Which causes it to become extremely unstable and split into fragments almost instantly. A bunch of binding energy is released which causes the fragments to fly apart, like what happens when you cut a tight-stretched rubber band. How fast atoms are moving determines *temperature*, so when an atom is split, it creates heat as well as fragments.\n\nLeo Szilard, a Jewish physicist who left Germany when Hitler became chancellor, realized that if we could find some atom that splits into fragments that include multiple neutrons, you could create a *chain reaction*. In a chain reaction, one atom breaks and releases two neutrons, which breaks two more atoms, which releases four more neutrons, which breaks four more atoms, which releases eight neutrons...Szilard convinced other influential physicists, including Einstein, to advise the US government that this was possible and might be able to be used to create a powerful bomb.\n\nIf you have only a small amount of the right kind of atom, the chain reaction can't get properly started -- too many neutrons escape off the edges of the sample. But once you have enough atoms -- a condition called *critical mass* -- the chain reaction will be able to sustain itself. If you're just over critical mass, the sample will start to heat up and get hotter and hotter until it melts itself and its container, this is called *meltdown* (the flow will eventually spread it out enough that it stops being critical and cools down, but before that it can cause lots of damage in places that are difficult / impossible to safely repair because of radioactivity). If you have way more than critical mass, then incredible amounts of heat and neutrons will be produced very quickly, which causes an enormous explosion.\n\nOne use of this chain reaction phenomenon is to build a power plant: Use neutron absorbing rods which can be inserted/removed from a sample to keep it near critical mass, enough so that it heats up enough to boil water to create steam and generate power, but not to the point of meltdown. Another use is to build a bomb: Use regular explosives to smash two samples together to create a single sample far above critical mass, which will cause a very powerful explosion.\n\nThe right kind of atom for this process, a kind of uranium, turns out to be fairly common all over Earth, but since it is unstable, a lot of it has split into fragments over the billions of years that have passed since it was formed. The remaining amounts of useful uranium are mixed with large amounts of useless uranium that doesn't release multiple neutrons. So the useful uranium needs to be separated from the useless uranium.\n\nNormally when scientists or engineers want to separate things, they will rely on different properties of the things they want to separate. For example, you can melt the sample and let the liquid settle into different layers (taking advantage of different liquid density). Or by making the sample hot enough for only one of the mixed things to boil away (taking advantage of different boiling points). Or by adding chemicals which react differently with the things they want to separate (taking advantage of different chemistry). But none of this works for uranium, because the two kinds of uranium are very similar and have almost identical properties.\n\nThe best method they found for separating uranium involves vaporizing the uranium into gas and then spinning the gas really fast with a machine called a *gas centrifuge*. The two different kinds of atoms weigh different amounts, allowing the right kind of uranium to be separated and purified. This process is incredibly expensive and inefficient, which is a good thing. Hobbyists or terrorists can improvise regular bombs fairly easily, but can't feasibly build a nuclear bomb in their backyard. Even for a government, in the age of satellites it's not really feasible to hide the enormous facilities needed, so countries basically know which other countries can / are trying to build bombs, and can pressure each other not to create weapons.\n",
"So a nuclear weapon uses fissile material. A fissile material is one that both undergoes fission (the atoms of a given isotope are unstable and will decay) and can sustain chain reactions (a decay byproduct includes neutrons that strike adjacent isotopes that cause them to decay). This is primarily Plutonium and Uranium, and I think there's one or two others that are fissile. You can also \"breed\" fissile materials, which is how we get plutonium from uranium, and thorium will break down into uranium. So of the few isotopes that are fissile, U235 is preferred over U233 because it's more energetic, and Pu239 is preferred over Pu241 for the same reason. Plutonium is preferred over uranium because it's much more energetic, meaning they need a lot, lot less, but uranium is used often enough because it has a longer shelf life and is more abundant.\n\nThe goal of kicking off a nuclear explosion is to get the fissile material to go \"super critical\", in that chain reactions occur at an exponential rate. They do that by compressing the \"configuration\" (shape is as important as total mass) to where the neutrons from decay can't be avoided and there's a cascade effect.\n\nThere are two ways of doing this.\n\nOne is the \"gun type\" weapon, where a \"puck\" of uranium is fired into a \"plug\" of the same. The puck is fired using conventional explosives down the barrel of a cannon, and the plug is at the end. The two smash into one another and compress. It takes about 90-120 lbs of uranium to pull this off. It can't be done with plutonium because reasons...\n\nThe other method is the \"implosion type.\" A hollow sphere is encased with conventional explosives which are detonated in a precisely timed sequence so the shockwaves evenly compress the fissile material. It takes about 30 lbs of uranium or as little as 4.5 lbs of plutonium. The configuration is extremely important, the shape of the mass, the explosives, the shockwave, the timing... These are complex weapons to get right.\n\nA hydrogen boosted weapon uses a glass bead of hydrogen inside the fissile sphere, the nucleus of hydrogen is a neutron. It only takes about 100 hydrogen atoms to get a sufficient multiplier in efficiency.\n\nThere are other things you can add to increase efficiency, such as beryllium on the outside to reflect neutrons back into the mass, and lithium-6 and lithium-7 which rapidly decays, releasing neutrons. Castle Bravo was the largest test shot by the US because we miscalculated what lithium-7 would do. At 15 MT, it was several orders of magnitude larger than expected.\n\nA thermonuclear bomb uses hydrogen like a boosted weapon, but the goal is to use the nuclear explosion to generate heat and compression to cause the hydrogen to fuse into helium, lithium, and beryllium. Castle Bravo was also the first thermonuclear test.\n\nYou can actually use a nuclear weapon to kick off another nuclear weapon. Instead of surrounding a core with conventional explosives, surround it with nuclear weapons! These are multi stage nuclear weapons, and they make very big booms. Russia built the largest such weapon called the Tsar Bomba, and it used 3 stages. The bomb itself was so big the carrier had to be gutted and modified to hold it, and it hung out the bottom of the plane. They wanted to demonstrate a 100 MT explosion but such a detonation would have covered the Earth in 1/4 worth of all nuclear fallout of all weapons ever tested to that date, so they dialed it back to a 57 MT explosion.\n\nIn 1815, Mount Tambora, a volcano, exploded, completely obliterating the island it was on and killing *everyone instantly* in the surrounding *100 or so miles*. So much ash was thrown into the atmosphere, 1816 was in perpetual winter, world wide. It was called the year without a summer. That explosion was estimated to be around 400 MT, just for comparison.",
"Hey, your question has been answered pretty well, but I want to add that there is a book, called *The Making Of The Atomic Bomb* (Richard Rhodes) that won a Pulitzer and the National Book Award in the year it was published. I picked it up secondhand for a long plane flight, and could not believe how good it was. \n\nIt starts out very slow. But it's like a chain reaction itself--if you can push through to the halfway point, everything before starts to click together and things start getting more and more intense. It's one of the best books I've ever read. \n\nIf you're interested in learning more, he covers everything from top-secret missions in Germany to high-stakes political drama to spies and counter-spies, to the existential horror of being a crewman on the Enola Gay and realizing what the gadget you just dropped could do."
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ektlzv | why/how does pregnancy brain happen? | Example: I received an Amazon package last week, which I placed on the counter. My wife is 11 weeks pregnant and she moved the back to "declutter" the kitchen. She has no idea where the package is now and it's completely missing.
I get the some symptoms are because her body is changing, I get the nausea happens because of the rise in hormones, but was causes the pregnancy brain and short term memory loss? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ektlzv/eli5_whyhow_does_pregnancy_brain_happen/ | {
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"The foetus is actually stealing tissue from your wife in order to grow and sustain itself.\n\nThis goes for calcium in the bones and teeth as well as protein from muscles and all sorts of other things. Unfortunately this also includes brain tissue and literally leads to the brain shrinking.",
"Two main reasons. The baby is taking up her blood glucose etc away from her brain, and secondly she's not sleeping well, which also affects cognitive function. It's a big double whammy."
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bopqk0 | ph (potential hydrogen) | im getting into gardening cannabis and ph is a confusing concept to a new guy. i know how to balance the ph level of my nutrient solution ... but that is the extent of my knowledge of ph. why would something have potential hydrogen rather than just having a hydrogen level or? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bopqk0/eli5_ph_potential_hydrogen/ | {
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"If you just want to garden, you don't need to go looking at the technicalities of what pH actually means. You just need to know that it's a measurement of the acidity of a substance. It's a scale that goes from 0 (very acidic) to 14 (very basic) with 7.0 being in the middle as perfectly neutral.",
"pH is a measure of how acidic or basic something is. \n\n > why would something have potential hydrogen rather than just having a hydrogen level or?\n\nThat is exactly what it is though. It’s a measure of the hydrogen ion (H^(+)) concentration. If something is acidic it has a pH less than 7, with lower numbers being more acidic, if something is basic it has a pH greater than 7, with higher numbers being more basic.",
"It actually stands for *Puissance de Hydrogen*, which is French for \"power of hydrogen\". But it's just an old term really, it does mean the amount of hydrogen (in the form of hydronium) in solution."
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ucqio | how seemingly random youtube videos go viral | I understand 'viral' part of it given that a funny or unique video will exponentially gain traffic as more people pass it around, but what actually starts this off?
Are there people who just sit in the recent uploads queue on YouTube and wait for a golden video to pop up and then post in on some forum?
Or is there a more scientific explanation? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ucqio/how_seemingly_random_youtube_videos_go_viral/ | {
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"This is 100% impossible to explain, otherwise people would be making them because any video that goes viral will make that person quite a bit of money from add revenue. \n\nYour essentially asking why things become popular, no one really has the answer. "
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17k65s | what needs to be changed or reworked when porting a game to xbox, playstation or pc? | Many games nowadays are developed for console first and then ported to PC. How can this be possible if the game is made on a PC in the first place? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17k65s/what_needs_to_be_changed_or_reworked_when_porting/ | {
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"I'm an iOS developer, and haven't worked with 360 or PS3, but what I say here should apply to all cross-platform development.\n\nEssentially what changes between platforms is two major things: the relationship between the hardware and the software, and the hardware specifications.\n\nAt work we develop on PC and then make sure everything works on a Mac & device. As a result we have several sections of our code that only work on one type of machine vs the other. It's a bit like language. Imagine that the PC only speaks Japanese, and the iOS only speaks Swedish. You speak both, and you are told to describe to both of them a picture. The languages are fundamentally different - what you describe to the PC and what you describe to the iOS may ultimately the same thing, the words you used to describe the picture are completely different and usually in a different order.\n\nWithout metaphor, what changes is usually system calls such as how you display graphics, and how you do things like achievements or online systems. You can imagine for yourself that XBox Live necessarily works very differently from standard PC multiplayer, and Xbox achievements work differently from steam achievements.\n\nThe other thing that changes is the available hardware. On iOS we're often working with multiple devices which all have different hardware requirements, much like PC development. The iPad 1 will force close apps that use more than 75 mb of RAM for long periods of time, and has only 1024x768 resolution. The iPad 3 has much more RAM and double that resolution. Our PCs have many gigabytes of RAM and high resolution monitors. So simply what we are capable of displaying is vastly different between platforms. Sometimes that means we compromise, because with extremely short development cycles, we don't have time to go our of our way for extras. For example, on PC we run the game as though it were an iPhone 5, because writing the game to take full advantage of the power of the PC would take too much time and not be useful to us.\n\nAs for developing for 360 or ps3 first and then porting to PC, I haven't done this myself, but my guess is: the graphics engine must be almost entirely rewritten, which is a lot of work and can be very hard, and the porting may be done by a different group of devs, which means extra time spent just figuring out the code.\n\nTL;DR: just because the code was written on a PC doesn't mean it's made to run on a PC, so porting still has to happen.",
"Each console and the PC will use what is known as a \"kit\" or \"framework\". What this Kit does is allow the programmer to make generic instructions, instead of having to \"explain\" in detail the whole thing the programmer wants the console/PC to do.\n\nAn example that applies more to game engines than console/PC kits, but serves the purpose anyway: I want to create a light source, say... the sun.\n\nRather than coding the physics and behaviour of the light source from scratch, the programmer can use the Kit. The Kit already has a pre-defined \"Light source\", so rather than explaining to the console the entirety of how a light source should be created, I just have to say \"Create a light source, and I want it to be this big, this bright and in this position in the sky\".\n\nSince each console has a different kit, these \"quickie\" instructions are different, and need to be adjusted. Sometimes a kit may have an instruction that another kit doesn't, so another approach needs to be taken, hence the time taken for porting, and occasional disastrous port (Skyrim DLC for PS3, for example).\n\nSource: I'm a software developer",
"Imagine you're building three houses, each should have the same layout on the inside, but the foundations are different. Those are like the systems.\n\nBefore you build, you have to create the blueprints, and let's also say that you begin with one blueprint, which has the first foundation already drawn (this might represent the pc). And along with that, you have a list of differences between the foundation you know of, and the other two. You make a copy of the original blueprint, and using the list of differences you can draw the outline of another foundation onto your copy.\n\nIf you use this new blueprint to create a model, it won't fit on another foundation, even though it was created on top of the original blueprint.\n\nThis is my first time answering one of these, apologies if it doesn't make any sense. ",
"Think of something you do subconsciously, as part of your daily routine. Let's go with tying your shoes. Pretty much everybody ties their shoes, but there are plenty of different ways to tie them. Tiny variations, like do you make a cross with the left lace over the right lace or with the right over the left? Bigger, like do you double knot or single? Do you make bunny ears, or loop, swoop, pull?\n\nNow imagine if you could never remember how to do tie your shoes right, so you always needed a parent to tell you, step by step. Weirder still, you couldn't remember the individual steps, but by golly you could tell if you did it differently than normal - you knew how a tied shoe looked, so if you were told to tie a double knot when you usually do bunny ears, as far as you were concerned your shoes weren't tied. That person would have to tell you *your way* of tying your shoes. But your brother Bobby can't remember either, and he normally does a loop, swoop, and pull. Your parent can't just tell you both \"tie your shoes,\" because you don't know how. But if they're on top of things, they can take their time and tell you how to tie your shoes, and then tell Bobby how to tie his, and you'll both wind up with successfully tied shoes.\n\nThe programmers are the parents in this situation, and the different platforms (PCs/Xbox/PS3s/Wiis/Phones/whatever) are the children. Tying your shoes is akin to a platform displaying a picture on a screen (but it could be a number of other things, like BreadPad mentioned). Each platform has its own way to do things, usually because of hardware constraints meaning there's a different *optimal way.* (Consider if Bobby only had one hand... he'd tie his shoes differently, wouldn't he?). Porting between the platforms means determining which way the platform feels is the right way, and then telling it, step by step, to do that.",
"Think of each device - XBox, PS3, PC, etc - as a family unit. Each family member has likes and dislikes.\n\n* Dad, the CPU, rules the house and likes a specific language. He won't talk using any other language.\n* Mom, the motherboard, holds the family together. She keeps things pretty (graphics), and maintains the house, making sure everyone remembers to do their chores (RAM) and that everyone works together in harmony (control interface). Mom uses Dad's resources, who is quite happy to provide them as without her he's useless.\n* The Son is the the person people have to talk to in order to communicate with the household (Keyboard, Controller, Mouse), as Mom and Dad are too busy and cannot be contacted directly by most people.\n* The Daughter is the family representative. She's dolled up with makeup and nice outfits (Display, User Interface, feedback).\n\nEach family has access to different resources. Some are rich, some are poor, some live in weird foreign countries with strange customs.\n\nDad may speak English (x86 processor), German (ARM), French (RISC) or even Swahili (whatever TI calculators use). There are a surprising number of languages available, and only one may be used by each family.\n\nSoftware must match the target family precisely. The square hole must be filled with a square peg. You can get away with a smaller round peg, but the results won't be great.\n\n* The software must match Dad's language.\n* The software must not exceed Mom's capabilities.\n* The software must understand the Son's way of talking, and not expect anything more.\n* the software must accept the Daughter as is, and not try to pass her off as anything more.\n\nThe PC family has the prettiest Daughter (extreme high res graphics, multimonitor, etc) and the most flexible Son, who can talk with the house using any modern method, whether it's a PS3 controller or a custom built flightsim rig. Dad uses the most common language, but Mom is really cryptic and her house is a bit messy. You need to be really careful with Mom.\n\nConsoles, Tablets and other handhelds are more limited. The Daughter can range from subhuman to pretty (VGA- > HD graphics), and the Son is a special needs kid.\n\nWhen games are ported from one to the other, the biggest challenge is the Son. How many buttons? How easy are on-screen elements to access using the controller? Simply mapping button B to Q on a keyboard works, but exactly like putting a round peg in a square hole. Consideration must be made for accessibility. Does the on-screen element's location and behaviour still make sense using a keyboard?\n\nNow you get to the game itself. Is the game too complex for a keyboard- > controller conversion?\n\nThese controller issues tend to be why console- > PC ports suck. The menus and in-game controls are rewired and duct-taped for mouse/keyboard control with little to no thought towards the end result, gameplay.\n",
"A game platform is like a factory that makes games. As a programmer, you are the boss at the factory, and you have to give very specific directions to each department to get them, to produce the desired product.\n\nThere are clear similarities between factories, because they are all meant to produce the same sort of thing: As the boss you have to coordinate an art department, a manufacturing department, an accounting department and a records department.\n\nBut once you get inside there are a lot of differences in the particulars. The artists may have different art styles from one factory to another. The manufacturing plant has varied machinery, so the process for turning out a widget may be different. The filing system at the records department may vary and so forth. Then there are organizational issues: who manages whom, who communicates with whom and how quickly they can do it, how they expect to receive their instructions and what they do with the products of their work to integrate them with other components to produce the final product.\n\nAdd on top of all this that, particularly for consoles, it is critical to keep all departments operating at close to their limits, getting the most output from a limited staff.\n\nSo if you naively write a plan at Factory A and then take that plan to Factory B, they're going to tell you they don't know what to do with it. First off, your plan is written in English and they all speak French. Then, once translated, it uses jargon they don't understand, requires parts they don't have, machines they have never seen. Oh, and their records department is in Finland, not the basement, so your plan for a process that has people requesting files and getting them back that same day just isn't going to work out.\n\nIn the past, factory bosses would specialize, because all this work to transform a plan so that two factories produce roughly the same product is hard, but customers are very loyal to their local factories, so if possible it's better to have many factories make your product. Thus smart bosses now develop skills at understanding how each factory works and building out processes to write a plan at can be easily adapted to multiple factories. They figure out common things that apply to all of them, employ good translators and have lots of conditions specific to each factory.\n\nNow, because the factory owners want your business, they will alternately try to make it easier for you to use their factory, but also lock you into using only their factory, because they want your product to attract customers to them. So Apple owns more than one factory, including a very capable one and a more limited one, and a plan for one can be very easily adapted to the other. Unfortunately, their factories speak Norwegian and have limited understanding of English.\n\nMicrosoft, too, built multiple factories. One is the largest, most capable factory in existence, and the other is more limited, and showing its age, but very efficient. They both speak English, and in fact they built the smaller factory specifically to handle the same sorts of plans as the bigger one. Unfortunately Microsoft invents all its own inner workings, so if you're not careful, plans you write for Microsoft factories are very hard to implement elsewhere. What's worse, the homegrown Microsoft facilities aren't necessarily consistent with each other, and in the big factory they like to change things around and install lots of shiny new machines, so that it won't be too long before they have to tear down the little factory and rebuild it with versions of their favorite shiny machines from the big factory so that plans keep translating easily.\n\nThe Sony factory, as I understand it (I've never been) has a little of both those problems. It's super efficient and very popular, but they invent all their own manufacturing equipment and processes *and* speak an obscure, abbreviated dialect of Japanese. You can instruct them to make amazing things, but it's much harder to write a plan that uses them to their fullest potential.",
"So along the same vein, instead of how, why are games now made for console first and sometimes later ported to PC (if at all)? Has the popularity of PCs waned that much?",
"Really I can handle everything else in a bad port...except for menu navigation. Please for the love of god change the controls to be able to be used with a mouse better than the joystick. Also don't make menus require a mundane amount of clicks to accomplish a task. (I'm looking at you Far Cry 3.) Really turns me off from the game.",
"It's all about the language.\n\nMost games are written in c++, which does not run through a VM (virtual machine) like java or c#, so these games need to be compiled on their respective platforms (ps3, Xbox, PC, etc..) and with different compilers come minor changes that need to be made to small pieces of code (almost none). \n\nc# or Java run through VMs so instead of running on the system, they're running on a VM which is running on the system. So no matter what machine they are running on, they are still running on the same Vm, so no changes need to be made.\n\nhope this helped."
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cqswy0 | how are a cpu and graphics card different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cqswy0/eli5_how_are_a_cpu_and_graphics_card_different/ | {
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"GPUs are programmed and built specifically for visual render. CPUs are more multi purpose but less efficient in specific tasks. If you want a more in depth explanation here is a good article. _URL_0_",
"To be concise; a GPU is really, really good at doing math. That's what it was designed for, that's what it's good at, and that's all that it does. The CPU is a supervising agent, it tells things what to do and makes sure that all those tasks get put together in the correct way.\n\nWithout the CPU, the GPU wouldn't know what to do. Without the GPU, the CPU would have to do all that math, which isn't what it's good at. The CPU can do the math, but it's slower and clumsier at it.",
"So, deep down, computers run on binary - ones and zeros, yes's and no's. Think of it like a giant pile of coins, with heads and tails. \n\nBecause computers are not actually smart, binary is a code that computers use to keep information as small and simple as possible, so that they can appear smart. \n\nImagine flipping over some of the pile of coins, and using them to build a secret code for your friends. Heads will mean '1'. Tails will mean '0'. Two coins, heads and tails, is '2'. Two coins, heads and heads, means '3'. And so on. You soon realize that even with only two choices (heads and tails), but with an infinite supply of coins, you can hide a lot of information in the heads or tails.\n\nSo, if I wanted to write the number 23 in binary code, I would instead write 10111 (heads, tails, heads, heads, heads). This new number (10111) is easy for the computer to understand, and easy for the computer to bash with other simple numbers (add, subtract, multiply). You get results so quickly it feels like magic.\n\nCPUs are parts of computers made to be really, really good at sorting and flipping coins as needed. This is oversimplified, but when people are talking about megahertz/gigahertz, they're actually talking about the number of times -per second- the CPU can shuttle information back and forth inside itself, deciding which coins to flip to heads or tails.\n\nBut what happens if you get a number with a decimal point in it? That is a LOT of coins suddenly... And (oh no) what if there are dozens of numbers following the decimal, like in Pi? Or what about the 3D models that make up the models in your favorite Steam game? How do you track these points floating around in an imaginary world?\n\nSuddenly, flipping coins is not the best solution anymore - it's going to take SO much longer to have the CPU flip over thousands of correct coins to write out this long, ridiculous decimal point, AND do math with it! The computer will stutter, the framerate will drop, and suddenly your computer doesn't run like magic anymore. So what is a programmer supposed to do?\n\nA GPU is a part of a computer that specializes in that complicated decimal point \"floating point\" math. A programmer can then take this complicated decimal math away from the CPU, and make the the GPU work on it instead. \n\nThis is why the graphics card is the most important part of a gaming PC build - it is literally the part of the computer that is handling the most-complex math, which you see as fancy graphics in your game. \n\nBut, it is not the only important part, as a slow CPU won't be able to do the basic coin-flipping to get the GPU what it needs. Think of it like when the whole class is dismissed and everyone rushes for the door - the class leaving is the info from your GPU, and a bad CPU is like a narrow door that won't let everyone through at once."
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47e0qr | how can food be too hot to touch but the perfect temperature to eat? | We've all went in a little too soon on a piece of pulled pork or quesadilla...it's burning the tips of our fingers...we're tossing it back and forth to lessen the pain...but when we pop it into our mouths, it's not too hot to chew/eat. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47e0qr/eli5_how_can_food_be_too_hot_to_touch_but_the/ | {
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"Your mouth is better able to handle different temperatures than exterior skin, which is sensitive in order to maximize your ability to differentiate between different sensations. \n\nIn the mouth, saliva forms a nice barrier that keeps things from burning us as easily and helps to cool things down quicker.",
"A few reasons:\n\n1. Your teeth are, within reason, more or less immune to heat. As long as something isn't so hot that the thermal shock cracks the tooth your teeth rarely ever complain about how hot the thing they are holding on to is. This is largely helped because they only have one nerve buried at the very center of the tooth; you have to heat all that mass in between the nerve and the tooth before you notice your tooth is hot, and that takes several seconds.\n2. Blood flow: Your cheeks and tongue all have a dramatically higher blood flow rate than your fingers. Your blood will work just like a liquid cooled PC, absorbing heat and carrying it away to be dissipated by relatively colder spots in your body.\n3. Saliva: While this actually makes it easier to burn yourself (water conducts heat far more efficiently than air) it is actually quite dense, compared to the dead skin layer on your fingers, and thus can absorb a fair bit of thermal energy as it heats up. Combine with #4 (breathing) and the enhanced air current will help encourage any warm saliva to sublimate, removing a great deal of heat from the system in the process.\n4. Breathing: Lungs. High air flow can work just like the air heatsink in a computer, you breathe over your food and it both cools any part of your mouth said food touched, and also cool the food itself.\n5. Mass: Your mouth weighs pounds, your fingers way ounces. It takes 2 minutes to microwave a chicken strip, but 20 minutes to microwave a turkey. Mass matters in terms of how long it takes to heat said mass up."
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13jry0 | why is compression/normalization so freaking rare and/or difficult to achieve? | I have Pandora on at work, with a range of 60s funk/jazz to modern Electronic/Rock type stuff. Too often I have to run to the back of the shop to adjust the volume one way or another. Pandora can't compress/normalize, most mp3 players can't compress/normalize, most computer music players, TV, movies that go from ultra-soft whispering to ultra-loud explosions...
I have general knowledge behind audio engineering, so I understand concepts like compression and whatnot.
It just seems crazy to me that this shit is still so difficult to achieve. Why can't my mp3 player look at my songs and go X% is the volume, adjust everything accordingly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13jry0/why_is_compressionnormalization_so_freaking_rare/ | {
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"Because then you lose the dynamics of the song. You will end up with songs that are really distorted and sound horrible. ",
"Many reasons.\n1. There are many types of compression and configurations on a compressor, each for different sound. A high transient sound will use one setting while a sound like a violin will use a different one. Improper settings can lead to pumping sound (which sounds incredibly unnatural and causes ear fatigue) or be ineffectual, amoung many other things. \n2. Theres more to compressing than just volume, but frequencies are effected as well, IE sounding like being played over a radio, telephone, or stereo system. Different genres of music utilize different methods of compression.\n\nThats not to say you can't do it. There are some mp3 players that do have it, if so desired, but not well. My Cowon D2 even has some BBE effects on it. \n\nRunning your sound through a DAW would be overkill but can solve the problem. For best results you would probably want to run something like multipressor, which would be hard to do in real time on a mobile device (processing speed). \n\nMastering is one of the hardest parts of the production process, because one phrase or frequency can make it very troublesome to sound good. For most people, the trade offs aren't worth it. If they are worth it for you, there are ways to accomplish the task",
"**ELIF:** It's hard to achieve because many different things need to be measured.\n\n---------------------------------\n**Details:**\n\nIt's hard because what we call loudness is influenced by several different psychoacoustic and acoustic factors, so it's hard to measure and interpret. \n\nLoudness doesn't equal volume. A very short sound (transient) with a really high volume can be perceived not as loud as a sound that has lower volume but lasts longer. This depends on the crest factor: _URL_2_ Harmonic content will also affect the perceived loudness. Equal-loudness contours need to be considered too: _URL_1_. Our perception of amplitude dynamics changes with frequency. Those just off the top of my head. \n\nIt's not impossible though.\n\n > Why can't my mp3 player look at my songs and go X% is the volume, adjust everything accordingly?\n\nIt can: _URL_0_\n\n > How it works:\n\n > When Sound Check is on, iTunes scans the songs in your library and computes characteristics of their playback volume. As new songs are added, iTunes computes this information in the background. This data is stored in either the \"normalization information\" ID3 tag or the iTunes Music Library database. The audio data in your music files is never changed. If you encode or \"rip\" a song with iTunes, the sound check level is stored in the song's ID3 tags. For songs that were encoded with iTunes 1 or iTunes 2, or another application, the sound check levels are stored in the iTunes Music Library database.\n\n > When Sound Check is off:\n\n > If you turn Sound Check off, the Sound Check data stored for each song is ignored, but not removed from the iTunes Music Library or the ID3 tags.\n\nThere are other examples, like Windows Vista (video): _URL_3_\n\nThese use simple volume control to achieve loudness equalization. Using compression would change the original dynamics of the production.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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7svzru | how dashcams work around the clock? | One thing I don't understand is how dash cams work around the clock. How is it that they are able to record constantly? I've tried looking up how specific ones work and they never have it in their user guide. So I'm completely confused. Can anyone explain? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7svzru/eli5_how_dashcams_work_around_the_clock/ | {
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" > One thing I don't understand is how dash cams work around the clock. How is it that they are able to record constantly?\n\nThat is easy enough. Electronic devices don't \"get tired\" and as long as they are supplied with a source of electricity can keep on doing what they do.\n\nIf you are confused as to how they can keep on recording an endless string of video the simple truth is that they don't; a dash camera will overwrite their storage device after a period of time so you might only have the last couple of hours of recorded video available.",
"A lot of dash cams record things like they had a loop of tape. Once they go all the way around, they record over what was there before unless something happens. If they get shaken, they cut out that part out of the loop with most recent recording for later use and later keep recording over what is left."
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a08glr | do animals go through a "teenage" phase like humans do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a08glr/eli5_do_animals_go_through_a_teenage_phase_like/ | {
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"Yes. Hell yes. Especially the males. Puberty is hell even to the animal kingdom. That's why many are neutered/castrated. ",
"\"Here Simba, eat this antelope.\"\n\"Dad, I've already told you I'm vegan. That means I don't eat meat anymore.\"\n\"Is this another one of your ph...\"\n\"IT'S NOT A PHASE DAD THIS IS THE REAL ME!\""
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2n8hho | how do the flamboyant mating displays of birds work? | What is the evolutionary advantage to a female bird of paradise (for example) choosing a male with brightly coloured feathers or patterns, or the ability to do a weird mating dance? It's obviously working whatever it is, but I'm unsure how female sexual selection works in this way in species like this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2n8hho/eli5_how_do_the_flamboyant_mating_displays_of/ | {
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"Genetics. Herd mentality..\n\nThe biggest, strongest, healthiest mate. The rest, well, they end up lurking.\n\nHmmm."
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6wjzn1 | why does nafta need renegotiation? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6wjzn1/eli5_why_does_nafta_need_renegotiation/ | {
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"One of the parties is unhappy with the present terms, and all three parties want to suggest changes."
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4v0sd1 | flossing | In almost every "lifehacks" thread there's at least one post about flossing your teeth.
The thing is, my dentist never talked to me about flossing. She, however, told me to use intradental toothbrushes, a thing I have never seen discussed on reddit.
Is flossing just an American thing? Do the intradental brushes serve the same purpose, or should I floos in addition to them?
Thanks for explanation. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4v0sd1/eli5_flossing/ | {
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"Teeth have bacteria on them. The bacteria produce a film on the teeth (sometimes called plaque). The film itself is acidic so can damage teeth. This is what brushing removes.\n\nOver time this film becomes hard (sometimes called tartar) and it can't be removed by brushing. It take 24-72 hours for this hardening to happen, so it's a good idea to floss once a day. Once it has hardened, your dentist needs to use metal tools and a polisher to carefully remove it.\n\nThere are little (2-3mm) pockets at the gum line where your tooth enters the gum. The tartar can also develop along the base of the teeth, inside these pockets. As the tarter gets thicker it can irritate the gums and cause the gum to separate from the teeth. Initially this just makes the pockets a bit bigger (4-6mm), but this means the teeth are more difficult to clean, but also that parts of the tooth that aren't covered with enamel are exposed to the film.\n\nWhat flossing does is remove the film from the pockets before it can harden into tartar. Brushing doesn't do this and it's important for the long-term health of your teeth.\n\nGenerally brushing is more important when you're young. Baby teeth have quite thin enamel, and we aren't really worried about the gum pockets. When you're older the enamel is generally thicker (this depends a bit on the person), but you need the gums to stay healthy if you want to keep your teeth for 70 years.\n\nDamage to enamel isn't reversible, but this isn't the complete picture. There is another layer called dentin, which isn't as hard, but which [can regrow](_URL_0_).\n\nThe larger gum pockets can also heal. If the tartar is removed, and kept away by regular flossing, the gum can reattach and the pockets can shrink (going from 6mm to 3mm in 6 months is possible, but it depends on the person).\n\n[Here's a video about how to floss](_URL_1_). If your dentist hasn't talked to you about this, ask. Some dentists forget who they've told and get tired of repeating themselves. (I'll assume that's what it is and not that your dentists seen poor flossing as a way to make more money in the future.)"
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8qj1iw | why when the bathroom mirror fogs up does it “defog” itself from bottom to top and not top to bottom? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8qj1iw/eli5_why_when_the_bathroom_mirror_fogs_up_does_it/ | {
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"Remember the old expression, \"Heat rises\"? Well, that means that as the air cools back to \"room temperature\" in a bathroom, it appears to do so from the floor up. That's because the cooler air is dropping to the floor, pushing the still warmer air to the ceiling.\n\nCooler air is able to absorb more heat from other matter, like glass, than warmer air. So the lower, cooler air is able to draw away heat from the portion of the mirror that it touches, which is near the bottom. That air then becomes warmer and rises again, pushing now cooler air down, and continuing the process.",
"I'd like to add that in addition to the \"heat rises\" responses you're seeing, this will depend on the airflow in your bathroom. If your bathroom has ceiling vents, your mirror might defog *there* first. ",
"The hot air in the bathroom is hot because it's been heated by the hot water in the shower, so it's hot but also very heavily laden with moisture. \n\nWhen the air hits the coldness of the glass it cools and (opposite to the other answer) cant hold as much water so the water drops out on the mirror. \n\nThe hot wet air from the shower and the cold dry air from the house form layers, which you can't see with your eyes, but as the hot air escapes around the ceilings of the house the cold dry air rises up the mirror. The moisture on the mirror evaporates only when the cold dry air is on it, so the fog appears to clear from the bottom up. ",
"Air can contain a certain amount of water vapour (this is how clouds are formed). Hot air can contain more water vapour, cold air less. \n\nWhile it's true that hot air rises, moist air rises faster, so after you finish your bath the hot humid air that's causing your mirror to fog (because the mirror is colder than the air) rises out through your ventilator (even if it's off) and dry air is sucked in from under the door. \n\nWhen this dry air comes into contact with your mirror, some of the water on the mirror will vaporize, turning the air humid and causing it to rise, sucking more dry air in below it (and slowing evaporation from higher on the mirror). \n\nThis also takes energy - A LOT of energy, which is why you can boil water in minutes and then keep it boiling for hours before it evaporates completely - which cools the dryish air, making it unable to contain any more water. "
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3kjn9g | how are classical taxis at an unfair disadvantage compared to uber? | I know there is lot of ill will from taxi drivers against Uber, and I know that a lot of people's spontaneous reaction is to say that if taxis can't compete, the old model should die. But the comment wars also seem to suggest that taxi are regulated differently than Uber. Can someone explain the situation with a little more detail and nuance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kjn9g/eli5_how_are_classical_taxis_at_an_unfair/ | {
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"A badge in NYC costs around $1,000,000 . You need a badge in order to drive as a cab driver. Uber requires nothing.",
"Taxis are regulated, for two key reasons: one, to reduce abuse aimed at riders, and secondly, to control the number of cabs to keep the cab economy healthy.\n\nIn most cities, there's a distinction between a cab and a car service. A cab is something you can wave down on the street, and a car service is something you schedule (\"pick me up at 3 pm to take me to the airport\"). Such car services are often either unregulated, or at least far, far less regulated.\n\nSo, here's where Uber comes in. It is technically a car service, and not a taxi. But, because of the technology involved, it's possible (especially in busy cities) to \"schedule\" a car for two minutes in the future. The result is that while it's *technically* not a cab, it functionally is.\n\nThe taxis are at a disadvantage because they have purchased licensed (often costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars) for the right to pick up street fares, and their Uber competition just has a car and a smartphone.",
"There are lots of little differences, but the big one is classical taxis must own a medallion which costs several hundred thousand dollars, which in a business sense means their fares must cover its financing even if the driver owns one outright, since if he weren't using it he could loan it out and collect interest for its value (in New York and at current interest rates that's about [$40,000 per year](_URL_0_) in extra costs for the taxis--though it's less in most other cities). Uber is designed to offer taxi like (from the client's point of view) service without requiring drivers to own medallions. ",
"There is a somewhat funny southpark episode called \"handicar\" if you are looking for further education on the subject.."
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4c7j8d | in the early centuries people died at around 30 but did they look like they were 30 today. | did people that were thirty look like they would be thirty today or would they look like they would be older in today's standerdands | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c7j8d/eli5in_the_early_centuries_people_died_at_around/ | {
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"People didn't actually die around thirty. The average life span was thirty because that also included a huge amount of childhood deaths. If you adjust for that, many people lived into their fifties.",
"It's a misconception that most people would live to around 30. While it's true something around there was the average age of death this is because people were **so** much more likely to die as a child. If you made it to 15 or so you had a good chance of seeing your 60's/70's. No idea if people would look older or younger.",
"I get what you're asking about the physical appearance... why would a 30yr old from 100 years ago look much older than a modern 30yr old? Several reasons including nutrition, sunscreen, dentistry, hygiene, etc."
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a6z8jd | are sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems synonymous to adrenergic and cholinergic respectively | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6z8jd/eli5_are_sympathetic_and_parasympathetic_nervous/ | {
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"Heh. I'd say not really.\nSympathetic nervous system implied norepinephrin release AND acetylcholine release respectively in the post ganglionic neuron and the pre ganglionic neuron while parasympathic implies acetylcholine release both in pre and post ganglionic regions. \n\nSo sympathic is a bit of both, plus you have the hormonal pathway with the medullosurrenal gland and epinephrin. But you still need an acetylcholine stimulation.\n\nHowever, the parasympathetic system is greatly different from the cholinergic system. One is for recovering energy and being in a \"relaxation\" state while the other is for memory and muscle control among other thing. \n\nSo you can say that parasympathetic nervous system implies acetylcholine release and the use of cholinergic receptors (that bind the acetylcholine) but it's not properly say a cholinergic system.\n"
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4d68jc | why greece are upset at the imf and why the imf apparently hates merkel. | I've seen a lot of pieces on the IMF and Greece over the last few days but I still don't understand what is going on. Seem to be a lot of small facts but don't seem to add up to an overall picture.
- EDIT - Are the recent Tax Evasion leaks linked to this at all? Either something to distract us from this or a part of the "event" to cause more financial meltdowns? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4d68jc/eli5_why_greece_are_upset_at_the_imf_and_why_the/ | {
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"There are three sides to this: Greece, Germany, and the IMF.\n\nTo run their goverment and economy, Greece offers loans which pay an interest rate (just like most other countries). Despite Greece being a total mess of an economy (poor tax collection, too many services and pensions), German banks decided loans from Greece (as an EU member) were safe and bought them.\n\nBut now it's been found that Greece lied about their finances (to get into the EU) and it has so much debt, that they won't be able to pay back the loans or the interest to those German banks. \n\nSo those loans are worthless and German banks stand to lose alot of money. Germany wants Greece to pay their banks back even though there's no money.\n\nIn comes the IMF. The IMF believes that the debt Greece owes German banks has to be written off but Germany refuses to consider it. So every few months, the three agree to this charade:\n\nThe IMF agrees to bailout Greece every few months with a few conditions to let everyone save face. They give Greece money to keep operating. As a condition of that bailout, they demand Greece make changes to their economy (pension cutbacks, austerity, etc.). Greece does not writeoff their debt, but there's no payback date and the interest they owe is set to zero so German banks can still claim they are owed money even though noone believes they'll get the full value. So Greece gets money to operate while criticizing the Germans for not cutting them a break, Germany gets to scold the lazy Greeks while not telling the voters that they've lost a ton of money.\n\nNow, as you can imagine, this would mean the IMF would bailout Greece forever. \n\nSo this recent Wikileaks article suggests that the IMF wanted to force Germany to accept a writeoff of Greece debt by causing a financial crisis by not bailing out Greece the next time. The Greek economy would grind to a halt without a bailout right around the time that Great Britain is voting on whether to stay in the EU or not (Brexit). \n",
"Incomplete picture being painted by some comments here. Let me shed some light - I'll be pretty simplistic as it's an ELI5 and as concise as possible since there's a lot to cover.\n\n**The history**\n\nBefore the EU unification banks made a lot of money by lending to governments. That was because the rate at which they lent (essentially the bonds etc they bought) was pretty high - think in the 15-20% region and more. However this came at an end with the unification, as even low rating countries (like say Greece) were able to get loans vastly cheaper. \n\nWhat was their solution? Since it's EU we're talking about and the associated risk is very low, loan more. And since these \"loans\" are essentially capital for the banks the more they loaned, the more they were able to loan. So the circle was: Loan > get \"bigger > Loan more > etc.\n\n**The customer**\n\nWhat do you get when you have two political parties that are always neck in neck during elections suddenly get a hold of cheap money? Well, during their time in the office, they go on a spending spree to be able to win the next elections. Here people, free money. Inefficiencies? Spend more money. Corruption? Spend more money. So for many years, the Greek governments instead of fixing things by tightening the belt (and losing public support) they got more and more loans. They hid that fact so the \"next\" government would take the blame, not them. The banks of course were happy to oblige, for the aforementioned reasons, EU as a safety umbrella, as it really did end up happening.\n\nEventually the debt was too much to hide, they revealed it and all hell broke loose.\n\n**The bailout**\n\nWhat happens when a government can't pay their loans? The same principles as companies, they default. They then get together with the creditors and try to work something out. Usually that's not a problem, since that's the cost of business. Lending money carries an inherent risk and that's why there's a rate attached to them loans.\n\nHowever this time it was different. This time the banks loaned *too much*. Not only to Greece but to other \"at-risk\" countries. Which meant that if Greece were to default, those other countries would feel immense pressure and a domino effect might happen. A domino effect that would start by Greece, but then followed by Spain, Portugal and then maybe even Italy. Greece alone would probably be fine - the banks would be able to cope, but no way with the others involved. Especially not Italy.\n\nSo what was EU response? Buy the debt of off the banks. So, save the banks, shave a couple of billions of off the Greek debt in return for measures. Here's where IMF started to get involved.\n\n**The last few years**\n\nHowever the debt cut was not enough. The IMF/ECB/EC-Council plans were not realistic. IMF starts to get cold sweats because the situation wasn't evolving as they expected. They bent (broke) their own rules about lending to countries that may not pay. Also, those loans were their biggest one yet. Fast forward more bailouts, more unfruitful measures, lots of political turbulence both in Greece and in the EU circle, we've reached a three way Mexican stand-off:\n\nGreece doesn't want IMF involved because it's a fund. And their primary mission is to get their money back - no matter the cost. So strip the pensions, cut the hospital care, it doesn't matter. Money comes first.\n\nIMF, in order to get/stay involved, need to have the assurance of a debt cut. So no debt cut - no IMF involvement.\n\nEU (aka Germany) only wants to proceed with IMF onboard. But have expressively stated that there will be no debt cut.\n\n**The leaks**\n\nWell, if we're being honest, they don't say anything we didn't already know. We have shown that we (EU) prefer to kick the can down the road so-to-speak instead of actually finding a -painful and politically costly- solution.\n\nThat's what the IMF officials talk about. That in order for countries to start dealing with the situation, an \"event\" must happen. You see EU now has more \"pressing\" matters to pay attention to, like UK's referendum. Some people have interpreted that the IMF was considering in creating that \"event\", however I read the leaks and if it was the case, it was very VERY subtle and between the lines.\n\nRegardless, the tone of these talks and the fact that Greece doesn't really trust/want the IMF prompted the response that the Greek PM gave. Basically, simply grandstanding, nothing more.\n\n----------------------\n\nHope someone found it helpful. "
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2xhu38 | without being condescending, what was life like before cell phones/smart phones? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2xhu38/eli5_without_being_condescending_what_was_life/ | {
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"There was more time for reflective thought. Interpersonal skills were much higher due to actual human contact being required. Productivity in the workplace was lower. Work stayed at work and did not follow one anywhere they went. It was much easier to have a personal life. Things like that based upon my own experiences.",
"I was up to my 16 years old before I had a cell phone.\n\nAnyway, when you met someone to go out in town or whatever, everyone had to arrive on time. When you wanted to call a friend, or ask a girl out, you called their parents' house, and usually got their parents on the phone, and had to ask to speak to their child. \n\nWhen you had a social gathering, people would look at eachother and listen to eachother, instead of constantly interrupting the conversation to text or whatnot.\n\nAlso, answering machines at home were very important. When we came back home, we'd check it for any important calls. And people would leave messages on the answering machines.\n\nOverall in some aspects it made for a simpler, better social life, I feel. But one can't deny the huge practicality of mobile devices. It really changed the world.",
"On a month long train trip through Europe in the early 90s, a friend and I went separate ways in Prague: he went to Copenhagen, I went to Budapest. We agreed on meeting again on track number 1 in Venice central station at 6pm a week later. In case something happened we agreed on calling my mother at home to leave a message there. I haven't seen my friend since.\n\nJust kidding: we meet in Venice a week later.\nWithout cellphones we used to plan ahead and keep agreements. And we read books, talked to strangers and looked out of the window in trains. "
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85dnzq | why are people in some countries generally richer than people in other countries? what can be done to reduce poverty in the world? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85dnzq/eli5_why_are_people_in_some_countries_generally/ | {
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"From the perspective of some economists the best way to reduce poverty would be to increase trade.\n\nBy allowing people who are in poverty to compete against everyone else for a job they can be pulled out of poverty. \n\nThere are drawbacks to this approach as it is tends to transfer significant hardship to other groups, but usually less than is gained across the globe.\n\nThis is hard to appreciate when you lose your livelihood and your life is falling apart while everyone blames you.\n\nAnother perspective would be the Peter Singer model. We should all give a percentage of our income to charity until it hurts.\n\nMany suggest this is not a good solution based it would reduce the incentives of both those who are giving and receiving charity to work.\n\nSome combination of expanding capitalism and directed aid is probably best."
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2oesek | binding vs. non-binding agreement | In the legal sense, such as with a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2oesek/eli5_binding_vs_nonbinding_agreement/ | {
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"Binding - The agreement is enforcable by law and all parties must complete the requirements laid out within. Failure to hold up your end of the agreement is cause for a lawsuit for \"breach of contract\".\n\nNon-binding - The agreement is NOT enforceable and simply represents an understanding or verbal agreement. If the agreement is broken there is no legal recourse."
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ejpf2v | why can’t we take a set of dna and get its sequence or whatever into a computer and rebuild it | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ejpf2v/eli5_why_cant_we_take_a_set_of_dna_and_get_its/ | {
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"We actually *can*, to a degree. Several years ago, researchers from the University of Alberta wanted to study horse pox virus but they didn't have access to a horse pox specimen: all they had was the sequence of the horse pox genome. By synthesizing certain horse pox genes and using another virus as a backbone, they were able to create a functional horse pox hybrid. Very cool and very terrifying.\n\nThat being said, viruses generally have tiny DNA sequences because they've very uncomplicated genetically. To do this in more complex living things like people or even earthworms would require a lot more creativity. Most of the problem lies with the instability of DNA. DNA isn't very stable. If you make a string of DNA longer than a few thousand base pairs, it starts to degrade. The human genome (your entire genetic code) is made up of about 3 billion base pairs. \n\nYour human cells get around the DNA stability problem because human DNA is usually condensed around proteins called histones. Sections of your DNA may be unspooled from around these histones when you need to replicate your DNA for cell division or when you need to transcribe or translate certain genes, but usually it stays packed pretty tight inside the nucleus, not only to save space but also to protect it. When you also consider that humans have 23 pairs of unique chromosomes, and that adds up to a lot that can go wrong.\n\nThink of it a bit like a book. If each of your 46 chromosomes is a book, we currently have the ability to type up a few paragraphs at a time and can put them on a page, but we have no way to make sure they go in the right order or even go in the right book.\n\nMolecular biology techniques have a long way to go before we figure out how to synthesize long fragments of DNA and properly spool them around histones and put them inside a nucleus inside a cell and actually reverse engineer life."
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ayx2c5 | is there just a wave of the cold constantly being spread or does the illness live on something else | Is the cold just constantly being spread around the population getting people sick or is there some place that the cold constantly lives. And if everyone who has the cold suddenly vanished then would the illness go away or would it come back some how? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ayx2c5/eli5_is_there_just_a_wave_of_the_cold_constantly/ | {
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"The common cold is usually caused by a virus, and viruses aren't like most living things - they can \"survive\" without a host, sometimes for a while, and they're very small. So there are viruses in the air all around us, and on a ton of different surfaces, meaning that if everyone with a cold vanished they'd still be there and could still infect healthy people. Also, the common cold is probably caused by a bunch of different viruses, so it'd be an imperfect process. \n\nBonus: inactive viruses exist as \"virions,\" which are even smaller and can \"survive\" longer without infecting a host, and they disperse through the air super well.",
"It's constantly being spread. The virus can only survive outside a host for a very limited time. An infected individual will inevitably shed millions of them into their environment. Most of them die, but a few might find a new host and continue the chain.",
"There are several hundred different viruses that cause symptoms associated to the common cold. They are all constantly being spread around. When a cold virus sweeps through your work place or school it is very unlikely its the same virus as the last time it happened. And sometimes it's multiple viruses being transmitted concurrently. Viruses can survive on surfaces by going dormant. So when all the sick people leave and healthy people come into the area it's possible for them to get sick if the area hasnt been cleaned and the virus survived."
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2i1mk4 | if the ocean was void of water and i went down to the bottom, say, the mariana trench, would the area be habitable for me? | Would the pressure be too great even without the water? Would there be enough oxygen for humans? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i1mk4/eli5_if_the_ocean_was_void_of_water_and_i_went/ | {
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"If I may rephrase your question, you're asking what the atmospheric pressure would be at 35,000 feet below sea level? Keep in mind that the air pressure is just the weight of the air column per unit area; increasing the depth increases the \"length\" of the air column, and thus the pressure. Using the \"barometric formula\" (exponential dependence of pressure on altitude) at _URL_1_, using 101.325 kPa for the atmospheric pressure and 15C for temperature, the calculated pressure at -35,000 feet is... about 360 kPa. Or 3.5 atmospheres. Contrast this to the 1000+ atmosphere pressure present of a water at that depth. Just for comparison, 3.5 atm is equivalent to a water depth pressure of about 115 feet. \n\nAs for the survivability of such an atmosphere, I found the following article: _URL_0_. You'll want to focus on HYPERbaric ( > 1 atm) effects; Figure 1 seems a good spot to start. The article suggests that hyperbaric oxygen chambers generally work in the ~3 atm pressure range, which strongly suggests such pressures (even under high oxygen levels) are not problematic. ",
"It would be hot and humid, but the pressure would not be a problem. There would actually be more oxygen for you to breath at that depth."
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"http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/barfor.html"
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96zuix | why is it when driving over bridges at a high speed it makes such a high pitched noise, unlike driving on a regular highway? | Sounds similar to URRRRRRRRR or EEEEEERRR... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/96zuix/eli5_why_is_it_when_driving_over_bridges_at_a/ | {
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"Concrete has a finer texture than asphalt and so creates a higher pitch noise. Regular asphalt creates a lot of noise, you just tune it out. You only realize it when you suddenly drive on to fresh quite pavement, or ride in a luxury car. ",
"The part is seems others have failed to point out is - \n\nMost places, bridges are surfaced differently than the rest of the road. Due to things like icing, rain removal, infrastructure that may follow the roadway, and just the fact that unlike a road, bridges got nothing under them, they have to be built and surfaced differently than your normal roadway. This also causes them to sound different when travelling over them."
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2551nv | what is oracle's lawsuit against google claiming is copyrightable about the java api? | The lawsuit is described here: _URL_0_
There was just an appeals ruling that reversed the lower court's decision (Google won original, Oracle has won the appeal).
So as a programmer, I know what APIs are but what exactly is it that Oracle is claiming that Google did which violates their copyright? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2551nv/eli5_what_is_oracles_lawsuit_against_google/ | {
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"Copyright does not protect function of a source code. Basically, if you write an algorithm to carry out task A, you can copyright it. However, that only prevents people from copying your code verbatim. If I write a code that runs the same algorithm, I do not infringe your copyright. \n\nIn the case, Google copied a bunch of Oracle's APIs. Google's specific implementation code was not the same, however, they used the same declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization. The district court said that those elements were functional and not protected by copyright. The Circuit court reversed the district court decision because how the APIs were structured wasn't entirely functional. There were many ways to implement the function of the APIs. Because Google copied the structure, they infringed the copyrights.\n\nIt is a little more complicated than that, but that's the general gist. "
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_v._Google"
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1r18yj | what happens when i boot up my computer? | How does my computer go from being off...to working? What data comes from where? How is it loaded? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1r18yj/eli5what_happens_when_i_boot_up_my_computer/ | {
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"Your computer has a PROM - a \"programmable read only memory\" - which is similar to regular computer memory except that the stuff in it is hardcoded. It was put there in the past and it doesn't go away when you turn off your computer, and your computer never stores new stuff there. (Technically this isn't entirely true, since what your computer may actually have is EEPROM which can be rewritten if an update is needed, but you can ignore that for now).\n\nIn that PROM are a few programs that were written to be run when you first turn the computer on. When you turn the computer on, its processor starts running code from a specific memory location, and the designers of the computer knew which memory location that was so they put the PROM right there. Your computer turns on, and the processor starts running instructions from the PROM.\n\nUsually the first thing run is some sort of POST - a *Power On Self Test* that checks out a bunch of things and makes sure the computer isn't badly malfunctioning. If the POST fails it knows how to display some text on your screen to tell you what's wrong, and it may stop right there and do nothing more.\n\nWhat runs after the POST varies a lot. It may be some sort of very very simple operating system, often called a \"boot monitor\" or \"power monitor\" or something like that. Or it may be a \"boot loader\". Even if your computer does start running a \"monitor\" (super-simple OS), chances are that monitor program is configured to try a boot loader first, though it may give you a chance to hit a key in the first few seconds to make it do something else.\n\nAnyway, usually one way or another, a program called a boot loader runs. It's a program that looks at the very beginning of whatever device your computer is set to boot from - usually a hard drive, but maybe a CD/DVD drive or perhaps a network interface. Let's assume it's a hard drive. It knows to look at a specific place at the logical beginning of a hard drive, read whatever is there into regular memory, and then start running whatever it just put in memory.\n\nSo, on your hard drive there's an area with a name like \"boot sector\" that has a program that will be loaded and run when your computer boots up. And this is the program that, in most cases, knows where on the disk to look for your operating system. Windows, OS X, whatever - this program finds it on your disk, and loads that into memory, and then jumps over to that part of memory, to start your operating system running.\n\nFrom this point it gets even more varied, depending on what kind of operating system you have. Each operating system has a bunch of stuff it's been programmed to do when it first starts up. Some of these things include:\n\n - Set up device drivers - pieces of computer code stored on your disk that the OS knows how to find, that include all of the logic for interacting with various devices and interfaces like USB, Thunderbolt, your graphics card, etc.\n\n - Begin managing memory protection and CPU multitasking, and start assigning time slices to other processes.\n\n - Run through a series of startup scripts that have been supplied by the user - often the company who packaged the OS for you, but maybe some were added by you, and plenty were probably added by programs you installed that want to do something at startup or start themselves running.\n\n - Bring up a display & window manager program, and start it with a few things, like maybe a menu, and a user login window.",
"A simple explanation \n\n_URL_0_",
"To simplify it a little more, like cos said, the first thing it does is POST. The POST test is basically a head count of necessary parts, or a roll call. \n\n\"CPU, you here?\" \n\n\"Yep.\"\n\n\"Do we have a video output?\" \n\n\"Over here!\" \n\n\"What about RAM, we got RAM?\" \n\n\"2Gigs reporting in.\" \"\n\n\"Where's keyboard? Do we have input?\"\n\n....\n\n\"Keyboard?\"\n\n.... \n\n\"Crap. We've got a problem. Stop everything! Where the hell is the keyboard? Monitor, put an error up.\"\n\nIf everything's ready and can talk back and forth, it moves to the boot loader."
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a7orzf | why is a led light more intense to look into than a fluorescent or incandescent? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a7orzf/eli5_why_is_a_led_light_more_intense_to_look_into/ | {
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"As far as I'm aware, it's simply that LED bulbs have a much smaller light-emitting region, so for a given brightness the light density is much higher. Fluorescent and incandescent bulbs tend to be frosted for consistency and aesthetics, whereas with LED bulbs you're often looking straight at the diode itself. There are frosted LED bulbs: I'd expect those to give you roughly the same experience as staring at the other two."
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4auybh | what is different about female disposable razors other than color and packaging. | I buy the ladies ones as a dude and they work great on my face. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4auybh/eli5_what_is_different_about_female_disposable/ | {
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"The blades themselves are usually the same (some of the razor companies go to great lengths to point this out) however the actual design of the razor differs. \n \nThe big one is that the angle that the head is attached to the stick is different. This is because a men's razor is designed to keep your hand below the cutting head (so it doesn't get between you and your mirror as much) but a women's razor is designed to keep her hand away from her leg so it doesn't end up in the woman's line of sight. \n \nIn addition the 'head' of the razor is usually designed differently. Women's razors usually have features to help stand up fine hairs and make it harder to cut yourself when shaving large areas quickly, all of which make the head of the razor larger. Mens razors on the other hand favor smaller heads for increased accuracy when shaving. \n\nTLDR; Womans razors are designed to be used when looking down a leg, mens razors are designed to be used when looking in a mirror.",
"Interestingly, enough, they are completely different products for completely different needs. \n\nMen tend to shave much less than women with their razors. Multiple blades, a thin edge, and the handle design are made with beards and necks in mind (the design curves to be used underhand below the chin). Depending on what brand you use, some bend more to go over the contour of the face and chin. Generally, men's razors tend to last much longer because they shave off so little hair when men shave.\n\nWomen's razors, on the other hand, are broader and wider, with greater spacing between the blades to spread out the shaving 'action' more. The lubricating strip (little green bar that makes your skin slimey) tend to be bigger and thicker too, because women shave a lot more: legs, underarms, whathaveyou. The handle is also designed to be used flat and downwards (some brands might bend less to make a long 'leg-following' shaving action smoother).\n\nEssentially, they both do the same job. They just do it slightly differently. "
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13vdcd | why notes have to be transposed when being played on different instruments. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/13vdcd/eli5_why_notes_have_to_be_transposed_when_being/ | {
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"There are a few reasons, the least confusing of which are instruments that are transposed at the octave (Glockenspiel, guitar, piccolo, and more). These instruments have ranges that are at the extreme (high or low) so to make the music easier to read for the musician as well as conductor reading the score, they have been written (or transposed) closer to the middle C even though they sound in a different octave. \n\n\nAnother reason (have to leave for work, so I've got to take a shortcut):\n\"Many instruments are members of a family of instruments that differ mainly in size, such as the saxophone, clarinet, flute, etc. The instruments in these families have differing ranges, with the members sounding lower as they get larger. If the music for each was not transposed to maintain the same fingerings for the same written notes, players would have to learn to read differently for each pitch of instrument. As a result these instruments are transposed based on their range so that the written notes are fingered the same way on each instrument.\"\n-_URL_0_\n\n\n^^Explanation - A family of instruments, such as the saxophone family, contains many different sizes of the same type of instrument( soprano, alto, tenor, bass, contrabass.) In order to keep a musician from having to learn different ways to play every one of those instruments, if they're \"transposed\" the same fingerings can be used across the entire instrument family. ",
"I'm not sure this is the primary reason, and it probably isn't the only reason, but here's my understanding of it:\n\nDifferent instruments are tuned differently, and many types of instruments have several possible tunings. Have you ever seen an old herald trumpet? No valves, it is essentially a trumpet played \"open\", so you can do herald calls. So it can play middle-C, G, C, E, G, (there's another note here but it doesn't matter because it doesn't sound very good), high-C (there's a good reason for this order, and it's also the reason that these notes harmonize with each other, if you look at the frequency for each of these pitches in Hz, they all have a factor in common, and are just 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x, etc., that number). But that may not match the tuning that it needs, so it might be lengthened a little bit so it plays: B-flat, F, B-flat, D, F, ?, B-flat. Or it may be shortened so that it plays: D, A, D, F-sharp, A, ?, D. A modern three-keyed valved instrument essentially takes eight of those trumpets and combines them so that putting the different valves up or down lets you pick between them (two of those trumpets, fingerings 1-2-0 and 0-0-3, sound the same). \n\nMost trumpets are tuned so that, when all valves are open, they play the intervals of the second trumpet. That isn't the only option, though. The fingerings I learned when I play trumpet still apply to whatever trumpet I pick up, whether it's tuned to B-flat, C, D or F-sharp. But the new trumpet doesn't actually sound the same, because it's tuned differently. If I know that, I can transpose whatever piece I'm writing ahead of time, so I don't have to teach myself new fingerings every time I pick up an oddly-tuned trumpet.\n\nEDIT: My post should actually be a footnote to iteachband's post... his/hers is more generally applicable and fits the \"explain like I'm five\" criteria better."
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1srzf5 | in light of recent news, eli5: why are drones not held to the standard as their human-operated counterparts? | i.e. - why do you have to go through so many political processes to launch a normal jet, but not a drone?
> Dude seriously I was in Afghanistan when they restricted close air support. We almost never engaged anybody unless they were actively trying to kill us. Now you got these fucktards with drones bombing anybody they want in areas that aren't war zones. Meanwhile I get people trashing my service because of the multitude of idiocy it takes to engage innocent civilians in Yemen.
[From here](_URL_0_) | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1srzf5/in_light_of_recent_news_eli5_why_are_drones_not/ | {
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"There's an old wives tale about the British introduction of steel helmets in WWI. After they introduced them, the number of head injuries in British field hospitals actually went up. This surprised the military leadership until someone pointed out that the helmets made head injuries out of what would otherwise have been dead soldiers. It wasn't that the helmet caused the injury, it's that the helmet was being used where injuries happened.\n\nThe drones parallel this. It's not that drones are held to a different standard in a meaningful way. It's that we use drones for the kinds of attacks that skirt the line between legal and illegal. If we didn't have drones, then we'd do the same attacks with manned aircraft and face largely the same issues. The only difference is that we might not be physically capable of doing those kinds of attacks if it meant risking pilots or keeping them in the air for so long, so there'd be fewer of them.\n\n(Although syd is partly right, from what I've read in the news, the CIA does have it's own rules when it comes to engaging, but it doesn't seem like those rules are different in a way meaningful to your question.)"
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27p42u | why do us government agencies have a "use it or lose it" budget model? why hasn't it been changed to something that stops waste? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/27p42u/eli5_why_do_us_government_agencies_have_a_use_it/ | {
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"The reason is because money is divided into what are colloquially known as \"pots\" at the beginning of each budget year. One pot may be for repairing roads, another pot for schoolbooks, and another pot for printer ink for the military. You cannot move money from one pot to another. If you could, then politicians could, for instance, decide in the middle of the budget year to take the money that was budgeted for running the court system, and use it for a new CIA computer system. If the government could move money around throughout the budget year, it would be chaos.",
"The idea of the system is to minimise waste.\n\nIf the government provides too much money to a particular agency, they won't spend it all which signals to the government that they need to provide less money in future years.\n\nOf course the reality is that all agencies would like more funding, so will always work out a way to use up the funds they're given. But giving them all additional funding upfront won't suddenly make them spend the money more appropriately, so it doesn't really achieve much.",
"Not only the government, but many companies have this thought process as well. I think it stems from some old business style of thinking. I don't fully understand the logic, if there is any, behind it myself some I'm going to take an educated guess here.\n\nThe idea is the people that set the budget don't know what the people that use the budget are going to do with it. The assumption is if the department didn't use all of the budget during X time period, they must not need all of that money for the next X period of time and can just function just fine on Y money instead. \n\nFact of the matter is many things have a lifecycle of use. One year a significant portion of the budget may be spent on one particular type, but wont need to be replaced until a couple of years later. If the budget isn't spent entirely the next year, even if it is not needed, the bean counters may decide that the department can function on less money so the lower the budget for the following year when that is the year that they need the larger budget the most.\n\nIMHO, a reasonable budget should be put together with some kind of motivation to not spend it all and not have the budget decreased because it wasn't used. ",
"\"You didn't need it this year\" \n\nso \n\n\"you won't need it next year\"\n\nThat's what \"use it or lose it\" really means.\n\nThe problem is that you can't see in into the future. Or you can see into the future, and you know you are going to need every dime.\n\nLet's say your rent is $1000/month, so you need $12000/year. You are allocated $12000/year from your parents for it. In October, your AC breaks, and the landlord gives you a break on your rent by $500, so you only spent $11500 on rent that year. Your parents see that, and they only give you $11500 for the following year. But... The following year you KNOW you need $12000 to pay your rent. Now you're $500 short. You Have to spend that $500 on \"rent\" So you tell your landlord to charge you anyways. Yes, its fraud, yes, its waste. But it's the only way to keep the system running.",
"The other answers do a good job of answering the first question, but to the second question \"Why hasn't it been changed?\" I think a good answer is \"Because there is no incentive to do so.\" Occasionally, you get some negative publicity about a \"bridge to nowhere\" or a over-budget healthcare rollout. However, in general, \"wasted\" money goes to the people who vote in the form of contracts to businesses who employ workers. The business owners and workers vote for people who can bring money to their families. Most politicians have the attitude that they should bring \"more jobs\" to their constituents, which means funneling money to projects, programs, etc. where their constituents are employed directly or indirectly. An elected official may run on a platform of \"reducing spending\", but justify it by saying that the money would have been spent elsewhere, or with fuzzy math claiming future gains will pay for the spending. Changing that attitude will require taxpayers and officials realizing that it's not sustainable and agreeing on an alternative.",
"Because it's easier. A better model is a zero-base budget, where each agency starts at zero dollars and defines their specific needs to get to a budget. This is hard and time consuming and doesn't work because of our political process. \n\nMeaning sometimes Congress requires agencies to buy things they do not need or ask for or spend a required minimum amount (known as a floor) in order to appease a constituency. For example, if a major employer in a district creates widgets...and the federal government is a major buyer of widgets, even if the agency no longer needs the widgets to operate...congress may direct the agency to buy the widgets anyway to maintain the employment of the folks in his/her district.\n\nThe final reason is that there is a lack of trust between those giving the funds and those receiving the funds. Most \"needs\" are slightly irregular, thus you may need $100 next year but only need $50 this year. If you told Congress I need $50 this year and $100 next year, they may balk. But if you told Congress you need $90 this year and $100 next year, it seems more reasonable. This is more about human physcology.",
"Because the government is poorly organized and operated. Furthermore, it has no incentive to change. \n\nNow, if we were to reorganize it by an Article V state convention amendment... we could implement something intelligent (perhaps, by applying fiduciary law to Congresspersons; or giving a citizens' review counsel line-item veto power but no legislative or executive power and giving that counsel statutory standing to sue Congresspersons under a fiduciary theory; among other possibilities) then they might have an incentive to write laws that make sense... \n\nUntil then, the bureaucracy is going to be poorly organized and poorly run. Incentives drive efficiency. Lack of incentives creates inefficiency. ",
"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy --Leonard Nemoy, Civ 4",
"An economic motivation: this is Keynesian fiscal stimulus. Government agencies are encouraged to spend in order to circulate funds into the economy. The vendors that the agency purchases goods and services from are privately held and benefit economically from the government spending. "
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1ved34 | how was the number of different possible chess games found/calculated? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ved34/eli5_how_was_the_number_of_different_possible/ | {
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"There are two main ways to try to estimate this.\n\nOne is to start with the total number of positions. There are 12 different chess pieces (K, Q, R, B, N, P, x2 colors) and 64 squares, so there can be no more than 64^12 legal positions (technicially, en passant and castling changes this, but not by a lot). So you start with that number, then start pairing it down, eliminating positions with more than 32 pieces, more than one king to a side, etc., until you have as low of an upper bound as possible.\n\nThe other way is to make estimates like there are about 30 legal moves in typical position, a typical game has 45 moves to a side, and try to refine things from there.\n\nThe thing to know is that these numbers are either estimates or upper bounds, and have a pretty high margin of error. If someone told me they knew within a factor of 10 how many possible chess games there were, I'd call him a liar."
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5bvemr | what created the trend of seemingly tight 49/51 election results in the last 25 years? | Pre-George Sr. things seemed to slant hard one way or the other. Was there any major change made or unmade to cause it? Was it the individual? Illuminati? Internet?
For context these are the relevant [images](_URL_0_) that inspired the question.
| explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5bvemr/eli5_what_created_the_trend_of_seemingly_tight/ | {
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"Point of order on that - Most of the votes were not 49/51 type things. There is typically a 3-4% different which is standard.\n\nIt's nothing new really. The American political landscape is basically divided 40%/20%/40%. The two 40% are basically hardcore/dedicated *insert party here* and the 20% in the middle is where the swing voters are. \n\nA typical presidential election would have 40% \"built in\" for both sides, and then the winner scraping up maybe 8-12% of the rest with the remainder going to the other guy and third parties. That's why a 56-44 split in the vote would be considered \"a blow out\". \n\nEdit: The 2000 election was notable *because it was so wacky and close*.",
"Parties as well as people have gotten better at being partisan. In the past nominees/ parties would be based around a plan and people would vote more on the merit of that plan vs his opponents plan. Now things have boiled down to a series of yes or no answers to appeal to as many voters as possible.For example if you think that abortions should be illegal unless in certain circumstances saying that will lose you the ultra far right vote so instead you say you are pro life. Your opponent then says they are pro choice and takes all the voters that disagree with you. So now all voters fall into one of two categories. ",
"You have to remember that each party is trying to win. So if their stance on any issue is \"fringe\" they will likely pivot to the middle to try to get to 51%. Usually, both parties do this which leads to a tight race. For example, Hillary was very anti-gun in the primaries, because that's what democratic voters want. She pivoted though when she won the nomination. She still supports gun-control but has emphasized that she supports the second amendment and fought against Trump and others attacking her as being too anti-gun. \n\nUsually, both parties do this pivot to the center and with that we get a rather close election. However, it has been noted that Trump has not pivoted in this election much but that has not hurt him like it likely would have in most elections because this election has been driven by their personalities and not necessarily their stances. "
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6jonmx | what happens to a cucumber or other food when it's pickled? | How exactly does the vinegar solution pickles are in saturate and preserve them? What changes about the cucumber's chemistry that changes the taste and keeps it from spoiling? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6jonmx/eli5_what_happens_to_a_cucumber_or_other_food/ | {
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"Pickling is a fermentation process involving lactobacillus bacteria that can tolerate a high salinity environment which kills almost all other micro-organisms. The lactobacilli break down the structure of the cucumber changing its structure and also produce different compounds which change the flavor and increase the acidity of the cucumbers. Additionally, osmosis infuses the pickle with flavors from spices added to the pickling liquid. You end up with a salty, acidic, spice infused pickle that is not only preserved against rot from the action of other micro-organisms but a much different flavor",
"_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI think this is appropriate for this sub.",
"Fermentation with natural bacteria is the traditional method of pickling. The bacteria are anaerobic, so the do not use oxygen. The veg to be pickled is submerged in salt water to keep out oxygen and inhibit growth of dangerous bacteria.\n\nLactobacillus is the main bacteria that ferment pickled veg. These guys are everywhere all the time. They are rod shaped and use the lactic acid fermentation pathway. This makes an acidic solution that gives the characteristic sour taste to the salt brine. \n\nIncidentally, garlic cloves turn blue during pickling. This was alarming the first time, but Google assured me it was normal and safe, and the garlic was delicious! For your first go, use 2-5% salt solutions (20-50 g salt per liter water), sprigs of fresh dill, whole garlic cloves (peeled), and cucumber spears. Alum supposedly keeps the pickles crisp; that's my next project as my last pickles were slimy and inedible. I also recommend something like [this] (_URL_0_) to vent the carbon dioxide has without letting oxygen into your pickles. Oxygen would allow dangerous bacteria to grow. \n\nGood luck!"
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63q9m8 | where does one start in order to get into public office? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63q9m8/eli5_where_does_one_start_in_order_to_get_into/ | {
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"City counsel seat is probably one of the easiest to get and learn the ropes. But there are plenty of small member meeting groups that take minutes/vote/do roll call.",
"Start small. Be active in your community, volunteer to be on various boards/commissions so you have experience when it comes time to run for your first office (city counsel, school board, etc.).\n\nIf you want to go further you'll need to start bowing down before the established parties and getting in their good graces.",
"As someone who has done so in the past:\n\nGet yourself known in the community. Get involved somehow. Go to council meetings. Talk with the local newspaper. Volunteer for charities. Oftentimes, many towns have a quasi-public welfare organization that is hungry for help and expertise, and is a great way to get inroads to multiple people (they rely largely on donations, so you get to meet with both wealthy people and civic leaders). Work with your United Way or local library, organizations that usually have a board of directors made up of local leaders.\n\nThis doesn't happen in a week. You'll have to get yourself to a point where if someone mentions your name in a public setting, a non-trivial number of people will know who you are. Remember, this is going to cost you nothing but time, but it's going to take a lot of your free time. \n\n(Of course, you can short-circuit this by gaining name recognition in some other way, like owning a small business or being a doctor/lawyer/dentist/etc.)\n\nSo before you start, you will need a modicum of community support. It may not require much, but enough that enough people can tell enough people and vouch for you. Enough that when you announce your candidacy, people will know who you are and sign your petition to run.\n\nAfter that, it's up to you. Running for local office is your best start at this; usually some sort of city council seat or, if you're feeling ambition, a row office or commissioner. (If you live in a bigger city, there's alternate titles for a lot of these positions.) It's extremely rare you'll get to the state or federal level unless you've either been elected to a lower office or you've build up a reputation in some other way.\n\nNow, if you are asking about the mechanics of running for office (i.e., how to get on the ballot)--sadly, there's no one answer. Almost every position requires a petition of some sort, where you have to get X number of registered voters who live in the jurisdiction to sign a petition to get you on the ballot, but the number of voters and their party affiliation restrictions varies greatly. \n\nOf course, I'm leaving out the obvious stuff--you need to know the issues, you need to have a reason why people would vote for you, and so on. \n\n"
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20iw7d | is it possible for people to see the same color differently? | For example, what if the color I see for blue is the color you see for yellow? I have googled this question but I do not understand the answers given. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20iw7d/eli5is_it_possible_for_people_to_see_the_same/ | {
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"Here's an interesting Vsauce video about just that: Is your red the same as my red? : _URL_0_ ",
"I've always wondered this but never took the time to look into it. Thanks for asking this question!",
"At least for old people, this is the case. That is because the lens of your eye gets yellower with age. Why do old people wear shockingly blue colors? Partly because they don't see it as that extreme of a color.",
"Anecdotal evidence here, but I recently took an art class with a guy who can't see the same variations in colors as most people. Where I would see a variety of shades between green and yellow, he would only see one or the other. So it's not as extreme as \"your blue is my yellow\" but we technically were not seeing the same colors.",
"I'm not a scientist, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt.\n\nI don't think your question is worded right. If a colored blind person and me both look at a particular object, there is a good chance that the color we're perceiving will be different.\n\nI think a better way to word it would be \"Do people perceive different colored variations of the same object.\" I think this is really what you're trying to ask, and an extreme example of this would be if you were looking at a box and saw \"red\" and when I looked at it I also saw \"red\" but if there was someway to compare what I saw to what you saw, then it would shown slight color variations. It's all very subjective though.\n\nThat being said, what I think you're looking for is information in regard to tetrachromacy, check out the following link: _URL_1_\n\nIf we concede that some people can see more colors than others, then we can presume that those individuals perceive colors differently than the general public. For example, just as a normal individual can see colors that a dog (which are dichromats) cannot, an individual with more color receptors will be able to perceive an even more accurate depiction of what that color is.\n\nEDIT: I was going to get more into the philosophy of this because I think it's necessary to truly understand this question, but [KDJones](_URL_0_) comment already gets into it.\n\n",
"Yes, not only possible but likely. ",
"While I doubt that there are many cases of people seeing (true) blue as yellow... there are apparently a small number of people that have [Tetrachromacy](_URL_0_). Which, from the one article I read (not this Wikipedia one), it is possible that they see more shades of a color. So, *hypothetically* let's say that their are 100 shades of red... the theory is that people with Tetrachromacy may be able to see 110 shades of red.\n\n\nThe article said it's (obviously) hard to tell though, since sight is on a personal level [meaning that I can't see through your eyes, and vice versa].",
"My left eye sees colour slightly differently than my right eye. Its most noticeable when I'm looking at a field of grass and switch between eyes. Grass appears more brown when looking through my right eye.",
"Thie is a tricky question to answer, but luckily one of my philosophy professors was an expert in color so he gave me some insights. Firstly, what is color. Color put simply is our minds way of interpreting different waves of light. Using this we can argue that what everyone sees as a color by definition has to be different as colors dont exist as a physical thing, but are more the minds interpretaion of light. Unless you share a mind, by definition how you see blue For instance Must be different. This doesnt mean to say that because we see blue differently my blue is your red. As mentioned before we couldnt ever know how other people see color. But it is Possible\n\n Now, there is another interesting thought to consider. Color and how we see it is also a social construct and this means differnt cultures see it differently. I am on my phone so I cant get the sources but ill try my best. Look at one of those color spectrums. Ask yourself where is, say blue. There are ni clear boundaries for where blue starts and finishes. This is where society creates its own labels. What this does is lump all those part's of the specrum into the label \"blue\". This is only arbitrary though and a differnt culture can have that part of the spectrum in 2 different color zones. When we would point to anything in the spectrum and say blue they will be confused because to them they are nothing alike. An example was a tribe that from memory couldnt see a difference between blue and brown I think it was. To them they were shades of the same color like how we might see navy blue anr royal blue as being shades if blue.\n\nFinally a recent finding. Eyes detect differnt light waves by things in our eyes called cones. Humans usually have 3 types of cones which allow us to see the colors we do. Recentoy it has been noted some people rarely have a 4th cone. Near 100% of people with this 4th cone are women and when men have this gene for some reason it often results in color blindness. With this 4th cone some women see shades we can only Imagine but funnily most dont realise. They think its either normal or dont have the societal training to fully understand what they can see.",
"I can't really add to what others have said on this, but I figured I should give you the the name for the topic you're asking about: it's referred to as the \"problem of qualia\", where \"qualia\" (singular: quale) is the term for an aspect of your internal experience. ",
"You'll find this video very interesting OP!\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt's about a group of people called the Himba (they're a tribe in Namibia), and *because of the differences of their language, they literally see color differently*. If you think about the color spectrum, it's just one continuous stream of changing colors. The Himba have words that segment this spectrum differently, so their word for certain colors are different from ours. They see color differently than most other people.\n\nedit: wrong link",
"Not only colors, but other stimuli as well. A big one is taste. For example, if you were to offer me a piece of chocolate or a pickle, I'm obviously going to take the pickle. It just tastes better. The chocolate doesn't taste bad, but it's no pickle. Now some people will disagree with me. In fact, I'm probably in the minority. And given the love I see some people express for chocolates, I have to wonder: When I'm eating a pickle, am I tasting what they taste when they eat chocolate?",
"Well to be fair we are all seeing the same frequency of light, it's our interpretation that changes. I think it's impossible for us to see the same red (for example) because we all assign an exact red, a perfect red, or middle red, in a different way. We are all seeing the same frequency / shade though",
"All of your question are answered [here!](_URL_0_)\n\nCan't believe nobody else linked this",
"Say for arguments sake that we all do see different colors be interpret them as the same color. What if all our favorite colors are the same color? A super color.",
"Short answer:\n\n- Yes it is possible.\n\n- We can never know for sure.\n\n",
"I had an interesting lecture on this recently as part of a course on the visual system (I'm a 2nd year medical student). What we call \"colour\" is actually your brain comparing the output from your 3 types of cone (red, blue and green). Each cone can't actually tell what colour of light is hitting it, but because a green cone absorbs more green than the other colours, your brain can make sense of it.\n\nThis also means that your brain can be fooled into seeing colours that aren't really there. \"Yellow\" on your TV is actually made up of red and green, but your brain can't distinguish it from pure yellow because there's no difference in the cone output.\n\nHowever, some people have mutations that give them unique cones that no one else has. The stunt the lecturer did was show us two yellow dots that were both yellow: a \"pure\" yellow created by a filter, and a mixture of red and green. The colours looked the same to everyone in the room, except one person, who could tell them apart because he had slightly different cones."
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a8hc2h | if the us government shuts down, how can some workers be required to work, but not get paid? | It seems like they should either get paid, or not be required to work. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a8hc2h/eli5_if_the_us_government_shuts_down_how_can_some/ | {
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"they will get paid. just not until later once the budget is set. some essential services cannot be interrupted. so they just keep on working. ",
"Workers required to work will get paid. A majority of payments will happen or have already been set out ",
"I think your logic is sound and you are entirely right. No one would have intentionally designed a government like this and every single other first world country has a system where if the budget is not passed that the old budget simply continues instead of a weird system where the government just ceases to exist and everyone has to work for free on promise that we will probably have a government again someday. ",
"ELI5 is not for hypotheticals. Questions like this are better in r/ask_politics or r/askanamerican."
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6u9mri | how do rice and beans make a complete protein, and how does that compare to normal protein? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6u9mri/eli5_how_do_rice_and_beans_make_a_complete/ | {
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"When proteins are \"complete\", it means they contain the entire set of amino acids that our body can't create on their own. Rice and bean protein both lack some of them, but together it covers all of them.\n\n\"Normal\" protein is just any protein. Animal protein is complete. Finding \"complete\" proteins is a vegetarian thing: if you eat meat, you're probably good.",
"There are 20 aminoacids composing human body proteins, 9 of those aren't synthesized by organism(and other 6 are only conditionally synthesized), so they have to come with food to allow growth/repairs of the body.\n \nComplete protein is one that contains those aminoacids in sufficient quantity. Meat is basically all the same aminoacids humans are made of, so it's a complete protein source on its own.\n\nBut once you get to plants and mushrooms they're made of different stuff and need to be combined to supplement aminoacids that are missing/not present in sufficient quantity(because you probably don't want to eat 2.5 kilos of potatoes a day even if it meets the need for all aminoacids).",
"All of the proteins in your body are long chains of amino acids. Animal and plant proteins use 20 different amino acids, different proteins will have a different sequence of amino acids that make up the protein.\n\n11 of the 20 amino acids are called non-essential amino acids - they can be made by your body out of other things you eat. 9 of the 20 amino acids are called essential amino acids - your body has no way of making these amino acids, you must eat them in your food or your body cannot make the proteins that incorporate these amino acids. \n\nRice protein lacks some of these essential amino acids. Bean protein, also, lacks some of these essential amino acids. The essential amino acids missing in rice are found in beans. Likewise, the missing essential amino acids in beans are found in rice. \n\nBy eating rice and beans together, you are able to obtain all 9 of the essential amino acids. Eating rice and beans together, therefore, give you a complete set of essential amino acids. \n\n"
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adpa3u | why is it considered ok to wash dish soaps, detergents, laundry soaps, etc. down the drain if those things are considered harmful to us? | Is it just easy to filter those things out? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/adpa3u/eli5_why_is_it_considered_ok_to_wash_dish_soaps/ | {
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"Because the drain leads to a water treatment plant that cleans the water.\n\nPoop is pretty harmful to us... but you didn't question washing it down the drain... ",
"Waste water treatment is a very complex series of processes - which is great, because there's a lot of stuff to remove from waste water. I'd recommend doing your own [further reading](_URL_0_) if you want to understand the whole process.\n\nBasically: there's no *specific* process to filter out just cleaning chemicals. If water treatment had a different filtration process for every single contaminant we put in the water, treatment plants would be hundreds of miles long and it would take years.\n\nInstead, we use a couple of different techniques which, when combined, remove enough of the contamination that we're able to release the water back into nature. A few examples;\n\n* Settling - whereby we allow water to sit, so heavy pollutants (anything suspended in the water) sink to the bottom, and lighter ones (like oils) float to the top, where they can be skimmed off.\n* Biological treatment - using human-friendly microorganisms to break down some things that are dissolved in the water\n* Microfiltration - passing the water through really tiny filters to get minuscule contaminants out.\n\nTL;DR: We do a bunch of different things to clean the water. Cleaning chemicals are just one category of contaminant that gets caught by our cleaning processes. They're no easier or harder to filter than any other kind of waste.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nEDIT: Redundancy"
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2odfcu | a guy gets shoot by a homeowner during a robbery attempt and the accomplices are charged with murder, how is that? | _URL_0_
In a nut shell, 4 students tried to rob a house, and the home owner killed one of them in self defense. Now that I have no question about, but if you read the story, the other 3 are charged with murder. How is that possible considering they didn't kill the guy? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2odfcu/eli5a_guy_gets_shoot_by_a_homeowner_during_a/ | {
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"I believe it has something to do with being accessory to a crime that resulted in death.",
"It's called felony murder. It's a law that makes felons responsible for *any* death as a result of their crime. It doesn't matter if the death was accidental or whether it was committed by the criminals or by someone else trying to stop the crime: it's the criminal's fault.\n\nThe justification is that such crimes are inherently dangerous and carry an intrinsic risk of death which includes the natural and justifiable use of force to prevent or halt the commission of that crime. After all, if they weren't trying to rob the guy, he'd have had no reason to try and defend himself.\n\nSince they were the ones that instigated the crime they, therefore, are the ones that are responsible for him needing to defend himself and, therefore, are responsible for the death as a result of that.",
"It's called [felony murder](_URL_0_). If you are committing a felony and someone dies, all participants in the felony are guilty of felony murder regardless of who caused the death.",
"In the United States you can be charged with murder, a felony, in multiple degrees. _URL_0_. Ryan Holle was charged with first degree murder because he \"helped\" a murder occur by lending a car to his friend who later killed someone with intent.",
"Two pieces go into it. Once is the conspiracy. That ties everyone into the entire crime. The second is called the felony murder rule, which has already been explained in this thread.\n\nOne odd result of the felony murder rule is that a robber could be charged with murder in the death of his accomplice in the robbery!",
"Here's a list of people that have been executed under the felony murder rule who didn't directly kill anyone:\n_URL_0_"
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9lccnw | what happens to clotted blood? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9lccnw/eli5_what_happens_to_clotted_blood/ | {
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"I'm not entirely sure what your asking. Like, what happens to the blood that's pooled in a body cavity from internal bleeding after the tear or whatnot has been repaired? Generally, the blood can be reabsorbed, not as blood cells, but as their component parts - much like a regular surface bruise. It takes a long time to do so, though, just like bruises can sometimes take 2 weeks to heal. Also, if the volume is to large initially or in a dangerous location, the person might have to have surgery to release the pressure instead. But, generally the blood cells break down naturally and are reabsorbed by the body."
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1p4bcb | elia (explain like i'm australian): sororities, the greek system and what it all means for a student. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p4bcb/elia_explain_like_im_australian_sororities_the/ | {
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"In principle, Greek fraternities/sororities are a social network of like-minded peers. Keep in mind that they came about before the advent of facebook/twitter/linkedin/facepalm/etc.\n\nThe idea being that a group of gents or ladies would get together, or live together, and become friends. They'd help each other study and conduct charitable events and volunteer activities to better themselves. As they moved into the real world they could help each other in their careers, as well as new members. So, you as a college student in kappa-kappa-kappa might land a valuable internship because the intern coordinator is a former kappa.\n\nIn practice most Greek clubs focus on partying and socializing, and networking not-somuch."
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5ikw5a | one day shipping? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ikw5a/eli5_one_day_shipping/ | {
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"Notice how one day shipping is only offered on certain products, these products are usually very popular and are therefore kept in every warehouse. This means instead of having to be driven from the depot to the warehouse and then to you it only has to go from the warehouse to you.\n\n",
"Do you mean overnight shipping? Or same-day shipping?\n\nOvernight means it's on a plane from the big warehouse to one of the shipping company's regional distribution centers, where it's on the first early trucks to roll out.\n\nSame day shipping means there's a warehouse within your city that houses a selection of amazon (or whoevers) most popular stuff. So it's only available in certain places."
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66neak | what is an epistemological stance? | what does it mean when I have to describe someone's epistemological stance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/66neak/eli5_what_is_an_epistemological_stance/ | {
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"Epistemology is the study of truth and knowledge. Does this person rely on knowledge gained by experience or empirical evidence? What evidence do they accept? Does this person believe that truth is subjective or objective? Talk about stuff like that as it relates to whatever person you're talking about.",
"Epistemology, in simple terms, is the discussion of how we know things to be true. Therefore someone's epistemological stance is how they determine whether some piece of information is accurate or not.\n\nLets say I said \"the sun is yellow\". There a couple of ways we can decided if this is true.\n\n* **Popular Opinion**: something is a fact if most people say it is. In our case, if most people are saying the sun is yellow, then it must be yellow\n* **Seeing is Believing**: If I look at the sun, and it looks yellow, then it must be yellow.\n* **The Authority**: A book, person, or thing who's conclusions I accept unconditionally. If Jesus said the sun is yellow, then it is yellow. Or if I throw the magic 8 ball and it says \"it is certain\" the sun is yellow, then it's yellow\n* **Logic**: Lets assume Hydrogen-Hydrogen fusion releases yellow light and only yellow light. Since the sun is an H-H fusion reactor, it therefore must be emitting only yellow light.\n* **Science**: I think the sun is yellow, so I'm going to shoot a satellite up there to measure the wavelength of light. A bunch of other people will also do this, and if all of us measure the sun to be the same wavelength of yellow, then its yellow until the day someone measures its not\n* **Skepticism:** It is not possible to know anything. The sun maybe yellow or it may not. We will never be certain.\n\nThere's obviously more ways here for someone to decide if something is true or not and even mixtures of one's described above. However they all boil down to the same thing. As /u/TurtleBurgler states, these are all systems for gathering and evaluating evidence. Someone's epistemological stance is therefore what means they prefer to gather evidence for determining truth.\n\n**EDIT:** Thankyou for the gold stranger!"
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5v876l | why are nuclear weapons seen as the "be all end all: of weaponry so to speak | I understand that they do damage which is what you want in a weapon but you can get similar results with cheaper means. I'm not slandering nuclear weaponry or anything like that, just curious as to why they are so sought after. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5v876l/eli5why_are_nuclear_weapons_seen_as_the_be_all/ | {
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"Nuclear weapons tend to be much, much larger than conventional explosives in terms of output. The Hiroshima bomb was a single bomb equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT. That's a _lot_ of TNT. During the Cold War the US and USSR fielded weapons in the tens of _millions_ of tons of TNT, per bomb. You simply _can't_ accomplish that with conventional means — a 10 megaton bomb can essentially destroy the entire New York metro area in an instant (it is 3-4 times the explosive output of _all of World War II_, including the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Modern thermonuclear weapons are on the order of hundreds of thousands of tons of TNT equivalent — smaller than those monster bombs, but still 10-20 times the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.\n\nWhen you can threaten to destroy an entire city in an instant — much less an entire nation in a day — it does change things. Such things are _not_ normally attainable by conventional means. ",
"Conventional explosives can only release the energy from the *chemical bonds* holding chemical compounds together. Nuclear weapons break down (or join) things at the atomic level. Atomic binding energy is orders more magnitude power than chemical energy.\n\nWith our current science, there's no way to release more energy from any given chunk of matter. Maybe, some day in the far future, we'll be able to create matter/antimatter reactions which can convert *all* the mass of the bomb into energy but that's a long ways off. Currently, we can only make a few particles of antimatter at a time in *very* expensive labs and it only lasts for fractions of a second.",
"Just throwing it out there, they also have potential as EMP devices if detonated above the atmosphere. There is a fiction book \"1 second after\" that follows a small town after nuclear weapons are detonated above the US. While fiction, it highlights how terrible it could be were this the case. Communication destroyed, vehicles with any electronics will be worthless, hospital's backup generators dead before they even kick on. Medicine for diabetics will spoil, all the elderly on life support all over the country will begin to suffer and rot. Non perishable food will be hoarded, and folks will either starve, resort to killing their dogs for food, or even cannibalism. "
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3rv8lg | why do movie scores from the 90s have such a distinctive sound to them? | I'm not sure how to describe it but they all seem to have similar tones and motifs to them. However, I am very musically illiterate so I have no idea how to express it in words. Does anyone know how to explain it? Family Guy sort of replicated this style with their Christmas special a while back: _URL_3_
Sample OSTs:
[Richie Rich](_URL_5_) - Alan Silvestri
[Hook](_URL_2_) - John Williams
[City Slickers](_URL_0_) - Marc Shaiman
[Home Alone](_URL_4_) - Also John Williams
[Medicine Man](_URL_1_) - Jerry Goldsmith | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rv8lg/eli5_why_do_movie_scores_from_the_90s_have_such_a/ | {
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"Music and technology go hand in hand.\nThe 90's were really the end of the analog age in music. Now I'm not too experienced in the music you provided (I couldn't just write a song on the spot, but I have dabbled with current metal and edm in which I could.) Music from the outside appears to be an expression of the soul which is true, but music is bound by rules. If I want to play something happy I will use a major scale, if I want something sad I'll use a minor scale. Now the difference between analog and digital is how you can manipulate the sound waves, analog is very limited, digital is limitless, so when trying to portray a certain emotion, orchestrators were bound by musics rules but weren't able to make distinguishable and unique sounds for each of the wood instruments, which made for extremely similar sounding OSTs where as now, you can use the same four chords and it will fit into 100+ songs that sound nothing a like. (Link related)\n\n_URL_0_"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5xhz1xa-5Q",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5H0sCdvZ14",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgWL8Ntrw7Y",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1ez4X3y63k",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-zknwNjRRI"
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29a7n2 | the difference between, dab (digital audio broadcasting), am and fm radio waves/signals | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29a7n2/eli5_the_difference_between_dab_digital_audio/ | {
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"There are some things you should know first.\nSignal = The data that you want to send.\nCarrier wave = Think of it as a big wave that carries the signal because the signal cannot travel by itself.\nAmplitude = The 'height' of the wave. If you look at a [sketch of a wave](_URL_4_), you'll know what I'm saying.\nFrequency = The rate at which the wave goes from zero displacement to maximum displacement and then back to zero again.\n\nAM = Amplitude Modulation\nTo transmit the signal, the power station 'mounts' the information on a carrier wave. In amplitude modulation, the frequency (of the carrier wave) remains the same, but the amplitude is varied. The variation with time of the amplitude represents the actual signal, which is understood by a radio. The radio demodulates these variations into sound. See this [picture](_URL_2_) and you'll understand.\n\nFM = Frequency Modulation\nThe concept is basically the same as amplitude modulation, but it's the exact opposite. The amplitude remains constant, while the frequency is varied. You can see the difference between amplitude modulation and frequency modulation in [this](_URL_3_) picture.\n\nThe difference is that Amplitude-modulated waves can travel really far, but have a poor quality signal and easily pick up noise.\nFrequency-modulated waves travel a short distance (ideal for transmission within a city) and are expensive to produce, but pick up almost no noise.\n\nThe \"Megahertz\" that you read is the frequency of the carrier wave. A wave that goes to maximum displacement from zero and then back to zero again in 1 second has a frequency of 1 hertz.\n\nDAB is something totally different from the above two. All the signals are converted to 0s and 1s. So there is either a wave with '1' amplitude or no amplitude at all. What this means is that there is ZERO noise.\nSee [this](_URL_1_) picture. When 'noise' enters a wave, it is somewhat distorted, as you can see in the bottom diagram. In the above two types of waves, the signal is curvy, so the difference between the end products looks like [this](_URL_0_). In a digital signal, there is either maximum (1) or minimum (0) and the waves are all square, so there is no chance of the end product having noise.\nAlso, more stations can fit within the same frequency range if it's a Digital-Based transmission, and you don't have to remember the megahertz of the radio station you want because the names will be displayed instead of the number."
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5ifc4x | why is it so hard to learn words in a foreign language, but easy to learn a completely made up word as a person's name? | Learning a foreign language is something I've struggled with since high school. Even the most simple part- basic nouns- I just cannot seem to remember. But, as a teacher, I can be introduced to a student with a name I've never heard before and remember it essentially forever. Why is it different? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ifc4x/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_learn_words_in_a/ | {
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"Facial recognition is a different part of memory from language, stored in a different physical location in the brain. We know this from studying people with [face blindness](_URL_0_). People with face blindness *cannot* recognize people by their faces. It doesn't matter how much they try, it doesn't matter what details they memorize by rote (blond hair, retrousse nose, rounded cheeks, beard fuzz...). They cannot associate a face with a name.\n\nKnowing someone is not the same as knowing a word to your brain, specifically because socially it's more important to recognize a person rather than remember a single word. So humans have evolved mechanisms for remembering people.\n\nIt helps that words have to be remembered in the context of meaning and conjugation, while people have to be remembered in the context of episodic memories. You probably don't have a lot of memories associated with a single word. Language just doesn't work that way. That said, any word you *do* have specific memories about probably sticks with you very well - for instance, I can spell floccinaucinihilipilification off the top of my head, because I have a specific memory about it. With words, you have to know what it means and how to conjugate it and what part of speech it is and all sorts of other associated information in order to make it work in real language, which is why you have a whole section of your brain dedicated to knowing and using language. Associating a name with a face just requires a face, or a small detail about that person.",
"A person only has one name to remember.\n\nFor random objects, you need to remember the word in both your native language *and* the language you're learning. Subconsciously, there is a need for your brain to have a label for things, but it doesn't necessarily need multiple labels for the same thing, so you forget those \"extras\" more easily."
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7npvbe | why after hundred years of flying airplanes, when communicating with towers the level of audio distortion and compressing still sucks to this day? | Hundred years of flying airplanes, communicating with towers and the AUDIO STILL TOTALLY SUCKS! The level of audio distortion and compressing is plain pathetic why is that? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7npvbe/eli5_why_after_hundred_years_of_flying_airplanes/ | {
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"Well the audio equipment has absolutely nothing to do with the flying of the plane. Aeronautical technology advancements can progress completely separately from audio technology.",
"It's not as bad as ye think; at times 'tis just a bad recordin'. But the system is slow ta improve because o' compatibility -- they want ta use a system present in *every* airplane.\n\n Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Why is it so difficult to understand radio comms between aircraft and ATCs when it'd be much more beneficial for it to be crystal clear. ](_URL_0_) ^(_7 comments_)\n1. [ELI5: how do pilots and Air Traffic Control understand each other when the audio quality over their radios is so bad? ](_URL_1_) ^(_3 comments_)\n\n\nThere ye have it!",
"Physics, and the way the standard is developed. \n\nThere are a shitload of things that can interfere with a radio transmission, including other transmissions. \n\nThe standard itself is that the radio transmits on a 50Khz-wide band, which creates a lossy signal with regards to human speech. \n\nThe radios in most planes transmit at what looks like 5W-20W, which isn't all that much. It's 20x to 80x more transmit power than a cell phone, but there aren't rely towers every quarter mile to pick up the signal. \n\nSo... relatively low-powered lossy transmission that's affected by all kinds of fun environmental things.\n\nWhy is it still that way? Backwards compatibility is a lot of it, but the lion's share is that it's a mature technology that doesn't *need* to be improved right now, and the cost/benefit of doing so isn't justified at this time. ",
"For a number of reasons, airplanes use radio instead of alternatives (like cell technology). Radio units can operate independently (meaning they don't require ground-based systems to be up and running), they're fairly easy to operate and power, and they work in adverse conditions. \n\nAt the frequencies used for air traffic (in the 118-137MHz) with amplitude modulation (which is what air traffic radios use), you're not going to get crystal clear audio, particularly if you're not sending a super strong signal. In exchange, though, you get decent range that isn't as susceptible to signal degradation from things like rain storms. \n\nIf pilots or ground control wanted higher quality audio, they'd probably have to operate on a higher frequency. That would decrease range, which isn't good as ATC needs to talk to planes that are miles and miles away. I think most pilots and ground crews would prefer longer range over slightly higher audio quality. \n\nAt the end of the day, though, it boils down to this -- operating at their current range with current equipment allows ATC and pilots to communicate effectively enough. Changing that system would require compromising somewhere, which isn't necessary given that the current system works well. \n\nAnother thing to consider is that the audio you hear on ATC tapes probably sounds worse than what the pilot and controller are hearing. The recording equipment used is often low quality (for many of the same reasons why security camera videos are often low quality). ",
"Aircraft radios sound terrible because they use AM modulation. \n\nDespite FM's greater audio dynamic range and better transmission efficiency, aircraft radios still operate on AM modulation for a number of reasons, mostly economic.\n\nWhen aircraft radios were first standardized, AM ruled the day. Its simple circuitry permitted aircraft to communicate effectively with cheap radios.\n\nAs more aircraft were produced, and the air traffic control network grew, AM remained the standard. Even as FM technology gradually overtook AM in most areas of communications, including broadcasting and two way radios, AM remained the foundation of ATC simply because the cost of converting ALL aircraft and land-based infrastructure would have been cost-prohibitive. \n\nAM is good enough. Given modern ATC architecture, it made (and still makes) little sense to convert everything to FM. Every aircraft and ground installation would have to convert simultaneously to keep everyone safe. And no one wants to go through that headache.\n\nSo AM (and the scratchy audio it produces) will reign supreme for the foreseeable future."
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5ajrpw | how come intel is so dominant in pc segment and almost non relevant in mobile segment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ajrpw/eli5_how_come_intel_is_so_dominant_in_pc_segment/ | {
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"Intel focused on developing and improving x86 architecture, and the direction they went with it was to add every bell and whistle possible in order to maximize it's number-crunching capability.\n\nThe issue? That all consumes *quite* a bit of electricity. On a desktop and laptop, that's fine, because they're either plugged in all the time or contain a big battery and only expected to go a few hours on that.\n\nARM architecture, which is used in almost all mobile devices, is a very different beastie. ARM is a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) architecture, and that reduces the amount of transistors needed to handle every possible instruction...which reduces power. ARM cpu's are also often designed to throttle down or stop *entirely*, consuming even less power. \n\nIntel has been able to develop some more efficient x86 CPUs that *can* be used in mobile devices...but in the time they were doing that, ARM manufacturers like Qualcomm have been selling craploads of chips to phone makers, growing entrenched as THE go-to platform. "
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39y96o | how are license plates numbers distributed? | As an avid player of the license plate game, I've noticed that a lot of the plates in my hometown have the combination BNZR then a set of numbers. Why is this one so common? As well, most others in my town start with B. For reference, I live in Ontario, Canada. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/39y96o/eli5_how_are_license_plates_numbers_distributed/ | {
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"Not sure if it's the same in Canada, but states in the U.S. print a bunch sequentially and send them to each local DMV. I'm not sure if they're assigned to an area DMV, or just whichever boxes get loaded. Either way, a specific area will tend to get a whole lot of certain sequences, and not many of others, and the state in general will have more too, since if they print a thousand starting with BNZR[-xxx], there's going to be a thousand more BNZR's than BNZS's, and ~~260,000~~ 676,000 (?) more BN's than BO's."
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48vypn | why do news stations not turn off candidates' microphones if they don't want them to talk over each other or go over time limits at debates? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48vypn/eli5_why_do_news_stations_not_turn_off_candidates/ | {
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"Candidates, the party, and the station all have to come to an agreement on the rules. While all of them theoretically agree on time limits, candidates are never going to agree to their microphones being cut. It also makes for a far less exciting debate.",
"Because even though the candidates agree on rules like time limits beforehand, the sole purpose of a debate is to give the American people an opportunity to hear what each candidate has to say. Being anal about enforcing the rules to the point of cutting off candidates mid-sentence wouldn't be to anyone's benefit. It's not a college debate competition.",
"As people have already said, the short answer is viewership. They could care less if everyone is being treated fairly. ",
"People who talk over each other and deliberately go over time limits are the kind of self-centered assholes that make for ~~good~~ ~~entertaining~~ popular low-brow live television but are notoriously hard to manage, if you cut them off or make them realize the situation is not about them, they will walk.",
"Journalism is supposed to serve free expression and objectivity as ideals of the profession.\n\nAs little as 15 or 20 years ago, it would be inconceivable for any kind of news-type show (even an op/ed show) to consider cutting a guest's mic unless they became profane or completely out of control and it had to be done in order to preserve common decency. This would be regarded as the audio equivalent of cutting to black screen, which would only have been done if the guest stripped or something like that. The journalist's job is not to control the discourse, it's to ask honest questions and present the answers to the public.\n\nWell, things have changed quite a bit since those days. I don't know if it's the disintermediation of journalism in general, the 24 hour news cycle, or what, but shows purporting to inform you about the news in the last 10 years or so have deviated from these traditional rules quite a bit. I think most of my generation (Gen X) and millenials expect interviewers to not even attempt to be impartial and objective these days, making questions like yours seem like reasonable possibilities.",
"Because that would be less entertaining.\n\nThe debates, in theory, are supposed to be a public venue for the candidates to discuss their position on various topics.\n\nThat, of course, isn't the reality.\n\nThe reality is, we get cart loads of empty promises they can't possibly deliver on, mean spirited personal attacks, and, most recently, assurances of adequately sized members from small fingered vulgarians.\n\nDon't touch that dial! The dance off is coming up next!",
"Politicians in USA has major influence on the Media. Due to that they are reluctant to try obstruct them by cutting the mic.\n\nThe politicians themselves especially Republicans use interruptions and arguments as a way to raise their profile. Think of it as the interruption itself strengthening their position by appearing \"strong\" and undermining their opponent.\n\nThe media also WANT them to argue with eachother because people like to watch it. Basically they get more viewers and more money as a result.\n\nIts very similar to how they handle reality TV drama. They pretend to put up strict rules and an intellectual debate but what they actually want is completely different.\n\nThat said there are exceptions where they either go too far or the politician is too weak to stand up against them.",
"I wish there was no audience, so them using generic soundbites would look stupid when there is no applause.",
"Personally, I think its important to see how people handle themselves in tense situations. Not much more tense than being berated on live TV while running for the presidency. If you can't stick up for yourselves then, you likely can't in real life. What if it shows the candidate to be a total jerk. Its important to see.",
"Because they absolutely do want that. ",
"In the vein of ELI5, the presidential debates are run as if the schoolyard bullies got together and decided on the rules in the classroom. The teacher has no authority.\n\nAs some other have pointed out, these performances are not properly speaking a debate. A proper debate is one where a topic is posed to the candidates, they articulate a specific policy and they have the opportunity to cross examine each other about the viability of the plan. In a scored debate they would be judged on the merit of their proposals rather than their art of persuasion. In other words, just because they *believe something* won't make it truth or good policy.\n\nOf course very few politicians want to have a debate like this because they have spent a lifetime playing on the art of persuasion and dodging the real substance of policy discussion. They want the job more than they want to do the job. Shame on us for not demanding a real debate format to expose them, but people want to be entertained more than they want to be informed.",
"The real answer is that this causes controversy and excitement. People watch controversy and excitement. TV networks sell advertising based on people watching controversy and excitement.\n\nThis is why the local news teaser at 5pm sounds like: “What ordinary kitchen product could be killing your children right now? Stay tuned to KRTV News at 11 to find out”.\n\nTelevision is nothing but commercials (which pay for everything) surrounded by silly things designed to get to to watch those commercials that we call “tv shows” or “news\".",
"because its a circus, not an actual moderated debate, there's no fact checking, no sources cited.",
"Because they aren't as much debates as they are television spectacles. An actual debate is not all that exciting but having a Jerry Springer style scream fest makes for good TV",
"These most recent \"debates\" more closely resemble daytime talk shows (e.g. Jerry Springer) than anything else. ",
"Because they aren't really debates, they are advertising slots for the candidates and the party, and valuable content for the network.",
"Not a full answer, but I didn't see it mentioned yet. The Reagan microphone moment has an influence _URL_0_\n",
"People are acting like it is a conspiracy. However I suspect it is that they either havent thought of it or else are worried about technical problems from turning microphones on and off again (we have the capabilities, but the people in charge of the capabilities are not always capable, which has led to some modern fuckups at concerts and shit.)",
"The short answer. Because in reality they are not \"news\" stations. They are entertainment stations. Talking over each other amplifies the drama which the media is seeking.",
"I think the way they do these debates is so dumb. Each person only has a couple moments to express themselves. I think a long form discussion with each candidate would be better; for example, podcasts ( not like the system actually works like we think). If we can hear the person talk without being rushed or watched by a live audience we could get a better idea about how that person truly thinks and feels.",
"Because it good TV, good for ratings\" this time around it really is a big high school popularity contest",
"Because the news networks hosting it have long since given up on being sources of quality news but are instead providing partisan entertainment for the masses. ",
"These debates shouldn't be held in front of crowds who are encouraged to cheer, boo, or respond in any way. Then we wouldn't have the candidates trying to score with punch lines - any zingers, without a laugh track, would just sound pathetic - and they'd have to actually bring some substance.\n\nIn reality, though, I think we're heading to a natural conclusion where the next debate is hosted by Jerry Springer in front of his studio audience. Rubio and Cruz will be encouraged by the producers back stage to literally duke it out; Trump will be cheered on to flick out his tiny penis with his Vienna Sausage fingers; Hillary will be confronted with a paternity test from Jennifer Flowers, with Bill sitting smugly on the couch, nodding and encouraging the jeers coming at him; and Bernie Sanders will just sit looking a bit confused and very, very disappointed in all of us."
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