query stringlengths 8 249 | answer stringlengths 45 7.8k |
|---|---|
Why do computers get slower as they get older, even after reformatting? | Hard Disk Drives are the main cause of 'a computer slowing down.' The write heads become less accurate, and the hard drive slowly runs our of continuous magnetic space, because you can't keep writing to the same spots indefinitely. [Protip, buy Hitachi hard drives, they last the longest. I suspect because those are the... |
How do signatures prove anything? Are they not easily forged? | The big thing about signatures is that they are intentional. You can't accidentally scribble your signature, or spill some ink and have it magically plop in the shape of your signature. What a signature proves is intent, through a deliberate action. Of course, wither that intent is honest or not is a different matter, ... |
How and why does our body function relatively normally if we don't eat healthily? | I actually asked a medical professional about this.He explained that - mainly young - body can make up for a lot without any external signs, as it stores nutrients and is very adaptable to changes. He also added, that you essentialy borrow healthiness from the future when you don't bother maintaining healthy lifestyle. |
My uncle believes that drinking alkaline water will kill my brain cancer. How could I simply explain to him that this is totally false. | You're body keeps it's pH levels very tight as anything outside this range could damage the body. We have 3 main ways to regulate this: a buffer system using bicarbonate, our respiratory system and our kidneys. Regardless of what the pH is of what you're drinking your body is going to react accordingly to keep the pH i... |
Why do fluffy, soft blankets feel warmer to the touch? | Blankets feel warm because they keep your own body heat close to you and don't let it escape into the air. The air around you is easy to heat up, but it moves around. So you have to heat up the air that replaces it. This heat loss makes you feel cold. Fuzzy blankets have lots of room for air in them, but doesn't let th... |
Why do restaurants like McDonalds and Burger King not allow customers to order burgers for breakfast? | The grill temperatures for lunch and breakfast items is different. Most fast food places don't have the room to have more grills than what they need for the lunch rush just to have one set to a temperature that isn't used very often for those hours. |
Why are large tourist attractions such as beaches and amusement parks allowed to charge $4.00 for something like a bottle of water and still avoid being charged for price gouging? | Price gouging laws usually have a requirement that the price increases in response to something like a natural disaster. If the place always charges high amounts for these things, it probably doesn't meet the legal requirement ", 'Price gouging is extreme over charging in reaction to a disaster of some kind to extort f... |
Why do people call for the abolition of the Federal Reserve System and denounce the United Nations? | For the UN - it's effectively a world government, but is primarily controlled by the US, UK, China, France, and Russia. Other nations are still at the mercy of those five. If other nations break the rules, they get punished. If the US breaks the rules, they look the other way because no one is gonna fuck with the US. |
why do drug cartels kill? | It's used as a tool in many ways. Say someone inside your organization steals a lot of highly valuable drugs and you just fire them. It says anyone in your cartel can just steal your money or drugs and walk away. You kill the 1st guy who steals it's a deterrent to future theft. Outside your cartel your competing fpr hi... |
Speakers and headphones? What makes a cone + magnets produce AMAZING sound? | If I'm not mistaken, the sound itself doesn't travel through a small wire, but the digital signal that the sound produces does. It's been a while since I've read into this, but IIRC: the signal goes from the source through the wire into the headphone, which has a large coil around a cone, and the cone has a magnet on t... |
When there was hyperinflation in Germany, why didn't they just use the money they print to pay off the reparations | They would have had to purchase foreign currency to pay off their debt, and the more their own currency inflated, the more they would need to print for exchanges. The more they print, the less it is worth, et infinitum. If you want to buy a US treasury bond, you need US dollars. If you are not American, then you need t... |
Why is it generally acceptable to eat raw fish, but not beef? | That isn't necessarily true, steak tartare for example is raw beef and a popular delicacy in France. |
How does flipping the video remove copyright? | It doesn't negate the copyright claim, it just makes it harder for automated bots to detect it and take it down. If the bot can't detect it, then it needs to either be flagged by a user or a person working for the copyright holder needs to scour the internet looking for flipped or pitch shifted videos of their copyrigh... |
Explain what the point of having health insurance is when you still have outrageous deductibles? | The primary purpose of any insurance is to cover an unexpected expense that isn't manageable. Health insurance has been warped into a scheduled payment system for relatively small expenses. Most families have the ability to budget paying for doctors visits and generic prescriptions in full. Other types of insurance lik... |
What is the reasoning behind the statement, "Your first offer is usually your best offer" - in regards to selling real estate? | In real estate, the reason a piece of land or a building hasn't sold is often because it hasn't sold. In other words, the longer it's on the market, buyers begin thinking there's something wrong with it. Therefore, the interest in a piece of property usually declines the longer it's on the market, making the first offe... |
Why can't you inject dopamine to get high? | Dopamine can't cross the blood brain barrier.That's why its produced in the brain itself and not anywhere else in the body |
All pleasure is basically dopamine being released in the brain, right? So why isn't dopamine a drug that junkies use directly? | Dopamine is thought to be the neurotransmitter most responsible for maintaining addiction due to it's involvement in the reward/motivational system. It is not the only one, however, that generates the pleasant effects of various drugs. For example opiate receptor activation produces euphoria, which is also implicated i... |
when towns or beachline properties get flooded, and streets have at least knee deep water, how does the electricity from those houses not energize all that water? | There simply isn't enough electricity to do it, and the electricity has no intention of going through all that water. Electricity takes the easiest path to equalize the charge, and this means dispersing into the ground. Some of the water is electrified, but there's no reason to electrify most of it. |
if rates of autism are skyrocketing and there is no clear cause could it be that we are over diagnosing? | Nowhere in the article does it say: > Having 1 in every 2 children in Jersey being diagnosed I don't know how you got 1:2 from 1:45. I can assure you the number of diagnoses varies from state to state depending on the services offered and it's going to be higher in New Jersey than Alabama just because it's New Jersey a... |
Why is it that whenever there's a strong gust of wind in my face I find it hard to breathe? | My guess would be that the pressure is too low for you to be able to inhale the air. When air is stationary. As in not moving it has its maximum pressure which is close to 303.2kPa. As the air's velocity increases its pressure decreases so you require more effort to inhale. It might even be sucking the air out of your ... |
Why does tickling cause laughter? | If you tickle yourself, it doesn't tickle, as we all know. That is because you are prepared for where it will happen. The interesting thing is that if you guide someone else's hands over you to tickle you, it will also not tickle for the same reason. |
How did Einstein "predict" the existance of black holes simply by looking at his equasions? | Even with Newtonian physics, you could make something with gravity so strong that escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. It doesn't work quite like that for general relativity, but it's interesting enough for someone to check what does happen. |
Why do burns blister and why do burn wounds remain warm long after the injury occurred? | Think of it like an actual fire! When you burn yourself. It's like a part of the city of you catches on fire, so the firefighters rush to the area to try to prevent the damage from spreading, they do this by flushing the area with fluids. All this activity is known as inflammation and the extra heat you feel after the ... |
What's the point of pardoning a convict after execution? | It doesn't make anything better for the executed guys, but guys like Sacco and Vanzetti probably have family members that are still alive. Pardoning the guy won't bring him back from the dead but it will probably make their family members feel better.Dignity. Honour. Peace for those who bear his/her legacy. |
Why do we need to warm up our cars before driving? | You don't. Letting the car idle to warm up only prolongs the time it is running cold. This is when wear is most accelerated. Best practice is to only let it idle long enough to get oil pressure and then drive nice and easy until it warms up. |
Why do Americans have to face the flag during the national anthem? | Americans don't have to face the flag or even partake in the anthem. Facing the flag is tradition because it symbolizes the union. |
why do some Black people in America identify with Islam? Wasn't it imposed on Africa just like many other religions were? | Actually, what Mohammed Ali and Malcom X converted to was the Nation of Islam which has very little to do with traditional Islam. In fact, it is identified as a hate-group by the SPLC. The NOI blends some traditional Islamic theology in with highly racist beliefs . Much of the doctrine revolves around how Blacks have s... |
What happens when you get deported? | Probably every country handles deporting people differently, but in the EU for example if you are being deported they give you a specific date by which you should arrange for yourself to leave the country. If you don't have money for a ticket, you can file a request at your country of origin . As you can imagine this d... |
How does google search the internet so quickly? | When you run a search in the google search bar, it is highly likely that the search you've entered has already been searched. Previous search results are stored on Google's servers so they can be retrieved for your very quickly. Its fast because it was already done. Google also creates indexes of their stored data that... |
How did Neanderthals communicate? | yes. _URL_0_ They communicated babies into us, that's for sure. _URL_1_", 'Many here pointed out we don't know much, but let me add something: Language is the tip of the iceberg. Sure, it gives us the ability to communicate accurate information and abstract thoughts, but for most situations in human society, those are ... |
Why does nobody counterfeit casino chips? | And why don't people just print their own money with their printers?!", 'You can go to anyone on the street asking them to exchange your counterfeit twenty for a few fives. You can only go to a casino, where people are trained to spot fakes, to exchange chips. Choose the easier wayMost people who have tried for any sig... |
Why doesn't Lance Armstrong fight the charges brought by the USADA? | Because he would lose and the dirt would be out in the air, now it is going to be hidden in ambiguity so the casual fans who know little of cycling will think that he was clean, he is attempting to rescue a shred of his integrity. You have to understand that since cycling got serious in regards to doping 5 years ago th... |
How accurate expiration dates are and how are they determined? | Just went to a food hygiene symposium and heard from an industry leader about food spoilage. These are the high points I took away from it: -Like others have said, there really isn't any regulation to dating food, other than maybe eggs? So it doesn't really take in consideration any real data of time vs spoilage. -Also... |
How is water supply pressure high enough at the end of the line, while not being too high close to the source? | Finally! a ELI5 topic I can respond to! For a transport system involving a pump, the point of highest pressure is right at the pump outlet. We take this value, give it a safety margin , and assign it as the design pressure of the entire system. So the entire line is designed to handle the highest pressure. As far as th... |
how do tv writers/producers etc get the right amount of time for each episode? | As LasertagSP mentioned, these writers have a general idea for how long their script will shoot for. When they have a script ready for development, it goes through many revisions and many eyes take a look at this script. It is edited/re-edited constantly. Scripts go through table-readings to ensure it's approximately t... |
why blowing in Nintendo cartridges worked/didn't work. | It's probably the combined act of blowing and retrying.The cartridge has a bunch of metal strips on it that has to touch with all the metal pins in the cartridge holder.Dust on the pins or strips would prevent contact and they need to be on them pretty precise. |
If almonds are so high in fat, how exactly are they good for you? | Fat isn't bad. Saturated fat maybe damaging if you're diet is high in sugar and carbohydrates along with lack of exercise, but thousands of years ago, our so called ancestors would likely have a diet high in saturated fat, high protein, and low carbohydrates . Many people today try Ketogenic diets which consists of ess... |
If we are always shedding and growing skin, why don't scars and stretch marks go away? | One of the problems with scar tissue is the lack of blood flow through the area. It's just like cartilage. Your body can't adequately get anything to the area that it needs to do repair work so it just kinda sits there. |
How are cryptographic hashes like MD5, SHA one way? | The reason is that hashes like MD5 and SHA **are used not to compress digital data, but to validate the integrity of such**. Call it files or passwords, let's say passwords: When checking the integrity of a password in a website, it is not necessary to know the password in order to verify that it is being submitted cor... |
The May 21st, 2009 youtube porn day. | They flooded youtube with porn, and did not label it as porn. They couldn't report and delete it fast enough. |
In an age of Internet tickets, how come hackers can't steal/illegally produce tickets to major events that don't necessarily require a seat number? | Electronically issued tickets will have some sort of serial number when you enter the venue, this number is checked, and if it doesn't match the list of good number, you won't be let in. |
Are there more dimensions beyond X, Y, and Z? | Physically, we live in what looks almost exactly like a 3d world. Newton was a famous scientist who wrote down how physical world, from his vantage point, appeared to work, and his work is still taught today even though we have found out that at massive scales, or at very tiny distances this everyday experience leads t... |
When two drunk persons engage in intercourse do they rape each other because they cant give consent? | That's one for the law books, because *maybe*. Currently, there's some debate over whether a drunk person can give consent. Then there's additional debate over how drunk is legally drunk. Legally, they might have raped each other, but I doubt the courts are going to entertain that argument and will likely throw out bot... |
How do cast of "Jackass" survive all their stunts without a scratch? | They didn't survive without a scratch. I can remember at least one episode where Bam ended up breaking something. They even filmed it when the doc was showing the X-Ray. One of them had a tooth pulled by a fucking car. That's a bit of a scratch. |
How come sparkling water doesn't spray out of bottles like soda or champagne do? | It certainly does under certain conditions. Any time I buy a liter or more of club soda/seltzer, I've learned to open it *very* slowly. |
Why do some people derive pleasure from watching/causing harm to others or animals? Is it a personality disorder or are their brains just wired differently? | Abandon hope all he who enter here. It's like an Emo gathering at a sub-par, community college, creative writing convention. |
What is Community-oriented policing and why don't Police departments in the US use it? | There are lots of police departments in the US that use, or have used, community oriented policing. Here's a [list] from the US Department of Justice. I personally see it being used where I live as demonstrated by cops on bicycles, neighborhood liaisons, and small substations in communities. |
why won't this nonsense that "humans only using 10% of their brain" die? | Once popular culture gets a hold of an idea, it is *incredibly* hard to make it do away. That misconception is only one of many, *many* misconceptions about how the brain works. There's really no incentive for anyone to educate the general public about that particular notion, so it's probably here to stay for a good wh... |
Why is Neo-Nazism such a prominent voice in Greek politics today, when less than a century ago millions of Greeks were starved and murdered by Nazi Germany? ELI5: Golden Dawn | 1) Fascism is actually a pretty good short term economic philosophy. 2) It's pretty natural to assume other people are the reason for your problems, again, fascism is great for that. |
Why can massive games like Skyrim fit on one disc while the first season of Heroes needs seven? | Video is a series of pictures that is exactly what shows up on screen. Each frame of video likely takes up as much space as one texture in Skyrim and there are 24 frames per second in Heroes. Think of a video game as instructions on how to create the world. A boulder is described as being so big, with such-and-such sha... |
My whole family caught the same nasty stomach bug. Some of us threw up a lot, others only pooped. What was happening in our bodies to cause the different course of actions? | As well as the other answers, not every person is the same. We tend to think we are, because hey, we've all got 2 arms, eyes, a mouth, and our innards work more or less the same .but it really isn't the case. Our metabolisms, flora inside our stomach/bowels, fitness levels, general health, and other miscellaneous indiv... |
How does diabetes cause damage to the point that your eyes go blind and they have to amputate your limbs? | Tl;dr ecxess glucose acts like shards of glass through delicate vessels. Ripping them apart. Eyes, kidneys and nerve endings can be obliterated.Source: I'm a dialysis nurse |
How do people wake up from a coma after being under for years? What happens? | The reason none of the articles explain why is because we don't know. Each circumstance is different and rare. |
Why does our voice sound different to us than to other people? | When you speak it will sound different to you live because you are hearing both air conduction and bone conduction of the sounds waves created by your vocal cords. You'll hear your voice via air conduction as the sound waves vibrate through you ear canal just like everyone else does. In addition, because the sound wave... |
why cant windows uninstall 2 things at once at control panel ? | It's really just a safety measure. If you only allow one program at a time to alter the system, you *significantly* cut down on the chance that two separate tasks will have any sort of conflict & run into problems. Since uninstalling programs is a relatively uncommon thing, there's very little reason to put extra work ... |
What makes alcohol addictive? Is it the substance itself or more of a mental thing? | The substance itself is physically addictive, to the point where a severe alcoholic can have such intense withdrawal symptoms that they seizure and die. There's also a mental component, where being drunk becomes a crutch in order to deal with the daily stresses of life. Like most addictive substances, there's a bit of ... |
How do they make decaffeinated coffee? | I saw this on my front page, thinking that it was from /r/jokes. Upon reading the text I thought to myself, that's a terrible punchline. And now I feel like an idiot.Hoboken N.J. used to have a large Maxwell House coffee plant- some of you long time New Yorkers will remember there used to be a huge neon sign visible ac... |
Chinese people at the gym | weight training workout gyms are practically non existent in China. so it's a new thing. just like all the kids that want to try out lifting weights or doing the leg machine at the sporting goods store. just like what foreigners do when they first learn how to use chopsticks. they take selfies and high five each other ... |
How .99 repeating equals 1 | It's because our way of writing numbers is ambiguous. Here's an example from outside mathematics. Let's say your name is Mike. Your mom might call you Mike, Michael, or Mikey. These are 3 different names, but you're aware that they all refer to the same person - you. In the same way, you can look at **.999 ** as just a... |
How are Nuclear Tests able to avoid the consequences of radiation? | Early nuclear tests didn't, beyond being done far from major population centers. Later tests were conducted in mineshafts to contain the fallout, but a few were detonated in space or the ocean before such activities were banned by treaties. |
Why is windows so bad at estimating file transfer time? | As a side note; Windows 8 doesn't get any better at this, but it does give you a graph to show you just how badly it's doing.I've seen transfers on to my external drive hop between 300kbps and 10mbps, but it's more consistent with larger files. bitwaba's explanation fits this, so I think sense is spoken here. |
Why aren't Arabs black? | Arabs are Semitic Europeoids, not Negroids. Blackness of skin due to high melanin content is genetically inherited, and is not a phenotypical adaptation - no matter how much you sunbathe, you'll never be black unless you already are. |
Romance languages. What makes them similar to each other, and different from other languages? | Romance languages all share the same root language - Latin. They're the language of Rome, hence the name. Because of that, they're all very similar in grammatical format and word etymology. Pronunciation and spelling has drifted apart over the years, but the general structures of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, a... |
What exactly is, and the significance of, NASA's announcement today? | In the near term? Not much. We have no way to reach those planets and none of our current telescopes have the resolution to get a good picture of them. In the longer term it's more evidence that virtually every star seems to have a planetary system and they're close enough that near-future telescopes can attempt to mea... |
Why does it seem to be the case that there are so many more MtF transsexuals than FtM transsexuals? [NSFW] | Cost is a big factor, along with the psychological effects, therapy required, etc. I haven't seen the studies but I know a few people who have undergone the surgeries. They are mostly MtF except two who are FtM and they had penises made. There happy now and I think that's all that matters. But to answer your question, ... |
If Siddharta Gautama was an acetic, why is he depicted as a rotund figure in many Buddhist sects? | The statue with the big belly is usually going to be [Bùdài/Pu-Tai/Hotei/Bố Đại] a Chinese monk who is generally considered an incarnation of Maitreya - someone who achieved a significant awakening and became a Bodhisattva. But more interestingly Gautama Buddha , when he Awoke *abandoned* asceticism and developed what ... |
How, in this day and age, can it take "five to ten days" to unsubscribe from an email? | The trick here is that most email marketing campaigns are outsourced to third party companies that specialize in sending these kinds of Emails. Once every few days, or once a week, the email marketing company gets the list from it's customers of who to send the emails to. Clicking unsubscribe removes you from the maste... |
Why is Catherine of Aragorn's name always spelled with a 'C' when she signed her own letters 'Katharine'? | In the past spelling was not unified, and still today you find a lot of variations in names that are homophone . Before the introduction of IDs and passports the only place to look up the first spelling of a name was in that person's birth town's birth register. Since this was not readily available, people tended to be... |
Why are some people better than others at painting/drawing? | You can be genetically gifted, that applies literally for every single human ability, but that's improbable and even if you are, it's not major. Of much greater effect is the amount time you spent doing it. |
How people get caught not having a TV license?(UK) | I think it's done on a post code system, if they know that that address doesn't have a licence they'll send letters. I'm not sure how they find out if you're watching without having a licence but then they send a warning and then I think they come round to check to see if you have a tv. |
Why is adobe against the use of the verb "to photoshop" and google has no problem with "to google"? | I believe Google actually does object to this as well. It has to do with trademark becoming somewhat invalidated in the case that a company's name becomes interchangeable with their service provided. Other companies would be able to use that word as describing what they or their products do. So, if the term photo shopp... |
How does hail manage to stay solid long enough to hit the ground in 100+ degree weather? | It takes a remarkable amount of energy to melt ice. I read somewhere that it takes the same amount of energy to melt ice at 0C into water at 0C, as to heat water from 0C to 80C |
The difference between mandarin and cantonese | They're at least as different as German and Dutch. We probably wouldn't consider them the same language, except that their writing is mostly identical. |
Why are we just learning about Michael Jackson's child porn and animal torture collection now? Shouldn't he have been charged for that stuff a long time ago? | **They did not find child porn**.They found porn. They found pictures of children that were not pornographic . Even if they found them *together* that still doesn't equal child porn under the law. If they could have busted him for child porn, they would have. They were using his collection as supplementary evidence for... |
Why are certain simple looking paintings so expensive? | With art, a lot of it has to do with the artist and the history of art. Paul Gauguin was an important part of the impressionist movement, which is seen as an important, revolutionary period in the history of western art, and he was an interesting character. Because of these things, artworks made by his hand are highly ... |
Why is the sound of a baby crying incredibly annoying? | [Here's a picture of the Equal Loudness Contour] that describes roughly how we perceive the loudness of different frequencies at the same level. The little bump near 1kHz is right in the range of babies' cries . So yes, we're wired for it. |
Why is there a fall in violent crime in a lot of developed countries in the last 30 or so years? | It's not known, but the most persuasive theory is the decreased exposure to lead. Lead exposure in children causes developmental problems consistent with the antisocial behavior that leads to crime. |
Even if global warming/climate change is not caused by humans, why do people still get so upset over the suggestion that we work to improve the environment and limit pollution? | Working together to limit pollution is not something anyone is against. The fact that it would turn into a $1 trillion +++ tax and spend slush fund is what I take issue with. It's a noble cause but to the governments it's all about money and power. They don't give a shit about the climate. It's all just a medium to all... |
Why haven't we found a way to better explore the ocean yet? | James Cameron recently made a film about going to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. It's completely possible to go to the ocean floor, but extremely impractical since a craft would only be able to stay down for a few hours and there is very little to actually see. Most of the ocean floor is a flat, lifeless desert. |
How does MPGe for electric cars get measured? | They are trying to show how efficient the battery/motor system is. There's no such thing as a 'gallon of electricity'. If you burn a gallon of gas, that produces a known amount of energy. That can be expressed as kilowatt-hours which is what the battery can store.Basically, the amount of "energy" within a single gallon... |
Is hoarding money a good thing or a bad thing for the economy/society? Why or why not? | Inflation will happen anyway, so if you sit on your money in cash, it will eventually become worthless. If you keep it in a bank, the bank invests it and keeps the money circulating. It's not a real issue. |
What did Bank of America do that was illegal? | You have to register transactions related to mortgages with the government to prevent abuses. This requirement slowed down the fast-paced trading around of mortgages they wanted to do, so the banks made up their own system, called MERS, and just ignored the legal requirements. Then when they wanted to foreclose on a mo... |
Why is it that our bodies feel heavy after swimming? | While swimming, much of your body weight is supported by the water. You get used to having this support, and when you get out , you feel much heavier. Also, have you ever swum with flippers for a long time, then taken them off? Feels like your feet kick a million miles an hour |
Can you tell if you're standing directly on the top of the north- or southpole just by looking at your shadow? | Only if you know the time of year. And if it's right near an equinox, it might still be hard to tell in that case. But if it is summer or winter, then it's quite easy! Summer : Do you have a shadow? * Yes = North Pole * No = South Pole Winter : Do you have a shadow? * Yes = South Pole * No = North Pole Also, any look a... |
How does death work? | > Like if you had a disease or something, why does the body just shut down permanently instead of continuing to fight it? Depends on the illness and exactly how it progressed. In general: organ failure. An essential organ becomes damaged to the point it's no longer keeping up with what your body needs it to do to survi... |
why in this age of technology are bank transactions not instant. For example If I transfer money to another bank on a Saturday I have to wait for Monday for it to arrive in the account | It because of profit. The stock market has led the way to the fastest transactions ever. If it wasn't for the stock market you might not have fiber. Banks know that by holding a little from everyone for a short time they can run up a ton of profit. Think about it this way. You give ma a dollar. Until I actually acknowl... |
The role of producers in Hollywood | Let's say you have a great idea for a comic book. But you don't really know how to draw, and you can't write all that well, not good enough anyway. And how does the layout get done and the printing? You can't do any of that stuff. But you've got a bunch of money. So you can hire people who know how to do all that stuff... |
Why were futurists always thinking that life in the year 2000 was going to be futuristic? | Today's smart phones were unimaginable even in 2000. Just imagine what people would think of us now. Also, people tend to think that technology will fundamentally change society, ( as in the way we treat one another, laws, etc. |
Why are mass shootings more common in the U.S. than any other country? | After careful consideration I think it's much harder to perform a shooting when things that shoot are not readily available in a country. |
what happens when I click "report spam" on Gmail ... does anyone actually do anything about it? | inheritance" and "nigeria" were marked as spam. So going forward it can look for those words and say, AHA, this email contains those words so it is probably spam! In reality the algorithm google has to handle this is far more complex, but it operates on the same idea. TL;DR: no person does anything, but it helps train ... |
If the world ran out of fresh water, can we have ice and snow shipped from Antarctica or the North Pole? | It's not remotely practical. It would take *dozens* of ships the size of the largest oil tankers ever built to move enough water to offset a half-inch of rain on a mid-sized city. |
Why some people are so addicted to social sites like facebook or twitter? | It is designed to make your brain release dopamine. Approval and acceptance from other people is a very strong source of dopamine. You get a hit every time somebody likes, shares, or comments on anything in your profile. If you get enough of these every day, assuming you care at all about other people's approval , you ... |
Why is it when you take a picture of an image on your computer monitor, the pictures always look funny with a lot of lines when you zoom in? | It sounds like you're talking about the flicker you see when computer monitors are photograpped or filmed. If so, it has to do with the refresh rate._URL_0URL_1_ If not, ignore this comment entirely. |
Why don't companies like McDonald's and Taco Bell deliver food like Pizza Hut and Domino's? | Because no one wants to wait 30 or so minutes at a pizza place for their pizza to be cooked, so waiting for it at home is the most convenient for the costumers. On the other hand with Taco Bell or Mcdonalds there is no waiting. They have your food ready right away, and even have drive-thru's for added convenience and h... |
if the average cloud weighs 216,000 pounds, how does it stay in the air? | TO add: Clouds don't stay in the air indefinitely. Rain is essentially a cloud falling from the sky.If a boat is so heavy how does it float? |
Why if CO2 is only .038% of atmospheric gases, does it have so much impact on global warming? | You know your favourite food fish fingers? Well, there are tiny tiny amounts of something called arsenic in there. You don't notice because it's so small but if you increased the amount of arsenic it would make your tummy very unhappy and you would go to sleep for a long time. It would still be a tiny part of your fish... |
How do DNA/Ancestry kits work, and how accurate are they? (Like the ones from "23 and me" and "_URL_0_") | **[Here's]** an example of what an _URL_1_ report looks like. This is mine from about a year ago when I was investigating a rumour that we had some African blood in our family. As it turns out we don't. What I did find out, however, was that rather than being the quarter Italian that I thought I was, I'm in fact just 1... |
How did we tolerate the smell of each other years ago before soaps, toothpastes and regular showers? | When exposed to smells for a long period of time, your brain will filter it out. It's the same effect that causes you to not be able to smell your own house. |
Why do manual transmission vehicles tend to be louder than automatic transmission vehicles? | A) Because lots of sports cars are manual, and either the more powerful engine makes more noise, or, like the Ford Mustang, they engineer the exhaust to sound louder because they're too cheap to manufacture a respectable engine that does what it sounds like it does. B) The driver is shifting at a higher RPM than most a... |
Why do most vehicles use petrol engines instead of diesel engines even though diesel engines have much greater efficiency? | Okay, Diesel engines are bigger, and they rely on autoignition. There usually isn't a spark plug in the engine and the gases are compressed to a ridiculous high PSI then the diesel ignites and produces significantly more power than a gasoline engine.However, the use of this autoignition at high temperatures/pressure is... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.