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aeoob9
How does comparable gpu's have completely different power needs?
I don't know if it's the right subreddit, but I wanna ask: how does nvidia geforce gt 1030 need 30W, and gtx 560 needs 150W, while they have basically the same performance? (In benchmarks gt1030 has 140th place, while gtx560 has 141th)
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edr776h" ], "text": [ "More modern manufacturing process, using smaller transistors that leak less heat during operation, and improvements to the arrangement of those transistors that results in a more efficient architecture." ], "score": [ 4 ], "text_urls": [ [] ] }
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aepuae
Why does 30fps look and feel so much worse on pc than it does on consoles like the ps4?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edrka0x", "edrno26" ], "text": [ "Cap a PC game to 30 FPS and you will find it feels better than the same PC game that has a constantly fluctuating FPS between 30 and 60. When the frame rate fluctuates the amount of time it takes for each frame to draw varies from one frame to another. Th...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aern8g
How do people get away with filming pranks without their consent?
Movies like Borat and shows like The Eric Andre Show always make me laugh due to the raw reactions of the people they end up pranking. How is it that they get away with pulling off these stunts? Do they go through the pain of making every single person sign a film consent waiver, or do they continue to do it in secret?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edrzsem", "edt0usb", "edskb62" ], "text": [ "a common variation of your question is why doesn't snoop or the people on drugs inc get arrested. What you see on tv or on some youtube video is not always real. URL_0 If it's shown on TV, everyone there is a aware that they are on a show, ...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aes1vu
Why can't cell phone batteries be charged by kinetic energy (like the Seiko kinetic watches from several years ago)?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eds2e2z", "eds1f18", "edsea71" ], "text": [ "It is just way too much energy needed. That Seiko watch uses about 0.9 microwatts and a modern smart phone consumes about 2.5 watts. That is like 2.7 million times more energy, it isn't even close.", "Watch need little energy. Cell phon...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aes37j
How do different types of brain scans work and what is the difference between them?
EEGs are pretty straight forward but what purpose do MEGs, CT scans, CAT scans, MRIs, and PET scans serve, how does each imaging machine work, and what is the difference between them?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edsbafa" ], "text": [ "MEG scans work by mapping the magnetic fields produced by the electrical currents in the brain. It can measure brain activity in specific regions in real time. CT and CAT scans are the same thing, CT scan is just the more modern, commonly used term. This machine uses x-...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aes6b2
In videogames, why is it so difficult to program objects to not go through other objects?
For instance, characters going through the landscape, capes and other articles of clothing going through the character, etc.
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eds31iu", "edsent1", "eds35p0", "edsxu6s", "edsna95" ], "text": [ "It is a huge amount of math to calculate the actual shape of objects down to the polygons of their models. Instead game engines \"cheat\" by only calculating a simplistic model of the objects, where a character...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aeupeg
How does DDOSing work?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edsrvzk", "edsrvk3" ], "text": [ "Think of the internet like the roads going everywhere. On a normal day traffic. Moves fine and people to to places on time and without issue. Now think of getting thousands or millions of people to all visit the local coffee shop at the same time.... Your...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aeuvwz
How do phone systems experiencing mass calls at once (such as on radio shows) select calls to connect through?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edstwuc", "edt4kua" ], "text": [ "It is usually the first call that reaches the phone switch which gets routed through. However some systems allow calls to get priority in certain conditions. This all depends on the configuration. If there are multiple phone lines then there may be multip...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aevb5o
How do fuel pumps automatically stop filling up gas when filling up?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edsyoiw", "edszg2h", "edt4uuj", "edt3spe", "edt6cgx", "edt5o7v", "edt2wuk", "edt5mip" ], "text": [ "Found on google.... & #x200B; Near the tip of the nozzle is a small hole, and a small pipe leads back from the hole into the handle. Suction is applied to this pipe ...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aew1y0
Can a company disassemble commercial products to "get ideas" for their own? Assuming no, how then do new technology companies get started if they have to re-invent everything? Why do "innovations" (touch screens, for example) seem to appear everywhere at roughly the same time?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edt6bbn", "edt6wdw", "edt7ren" ], "text": [ "If something is patented, the people patenting the object has to explain how it works, so all you'd need to do is read the patent to figure out how it works, you don't have to disassemble it. As long as the product isn't illegally similar t...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aew5s9
How does silicon turn into a CPU that can calculate things?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edt7ddh" ], "text": [ "That silicon (along with some other stuff) is shaped into transistors. Transistors are essentially switches with no moving parts that run entirely on electricity. By organizing switches in complicated patterns you can construct engines capable of handling logical statem...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aewacg
How can most cell carriers all claim to have "The most reliable 4G network"?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edt9ev1", "edt8a2o", "edtbffu" ], "text": [ "“Reliable” could also mean different things. Maybe it means coverage area, or speed, or it rarely has issues. That’s why they pick a vague term.", "Because they all have different sources for their data. If you watch television commerci...
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[ "url" ]
aex4p7
on the fundamental level, how is the passage of time programmed in to a computer?
Without a mechanical spring as is used in an wind-up clock how does a collection of on-off switches know how long a second is?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edtgida" ], "text": [ "There's basically a miniature Quartz clock in the computer that still runs while the computer is powered down via a battery, and then when you connect to the internet it'll use the internet to sync its clock unless you've turned that off." ], "score": [ 4 ], ...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aeyc2l
how a pedometer/step counter works?
I had one as a kid and assume it added 1 step every time it felt the jolt of the step. Now I have a Fitbit, I can’t imagine this is still true. Bonus: if you know how a Fitbit works, eli5 please, how does a green light know my heart rate, how many steps etc etc Bonus Bonus: I’m now even wondering how the scales (Fitbit...
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edtu4n0" ], "text": [ "In the old days, pedometers had a little ball that bounced up and down with each step. Nowadays they use piezo-electric crystals. Those are crystals that have a tiny electric charge when they are under stress. As you move, the stress changes, and that change can be dete...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aeyqf5
High impedance headphones
Please can someone explain to me why a high impedance headphone is good, but you don't seem to see 300 ohm speakers?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edu7kwc" ], "text": [ "High impedance in headphones or speakers is neither good nor bad. It's just that there are various ways to make headphones, and some result in a higher impedance than others. Headphone impedance does have implications for the circuitry they connect to. In the pre WWII e...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
af0l07
Why do batteries die faster in the cold?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eduf9xb" ], "text": [ "They don't die faster in the cold, they last longer. But the chemical reaction that generates the electricity can slow down in the cold which can cause your electrinics to shut down from low power. Once the batteries warm up though they will work again." ], "score":...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
af14fz
Extracting metals in the ancient civilsation
I was wondering how the people could, in the era of the ancient civilisation, extract metals like steel, gold and silver? And they could distinguish the different types of metals they were extracting? I mean what were the signs they were looking at when they wanted to dig it from the ground?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eduk5zs" ], "text": [ "They looked for shiny things at first, native gold and copper are both pretty shiny. Eventually people learned that green rocks sometimes have copper in them. Then they got lucky and found a deposit of copper with some tin mixed in and invented bronze, or a copper and z...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
af3cgi
Why does 5ghz Wi-Fi penetrate less than 2.4ghz?
Not sure if penetrate is the right word. Basically high frequency electromagnetic waves penetrate more than low frequencies. You can see this with how x-ray machines work ( high frequency x-rays travel through flesh that visible light bounces of). But on the other hand 5ghz wifi has more problems with obstructions than...
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edv5mhg", "edvruhw" ], "text": [ "There are two different factors at play here. Both are very important and could easily be compared to am\\fm radio. It's about wavelength. In the case of 2.4 vs 5 gig Hz it's more than twice the wavelength difference. How does wavelength impact the way th...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
af5be5
Why is it that a screenshot in a game is so easy to take but rendering the same image in a 3d software like blender takes so long?
For example, in the witcher 3 you can easily take a screenshot. Recreate the entire scene in blender, and suddenly it takes so much power to process. What kind of optimization do games use to do this?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edvm8fs", "edvk8oy" ], "text": [ "Games use a completely different technique than programs such as Blender to create 3D graphics. Games have to run significantly faster to provide fluid motion and so use many tricks to essentially \"fake\" many effects that make a scene seem realistic. Th...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
af5o5l
Are file read & write permissions actually secure? Can't anyone just create a livecd that just "forces" writing to a certain file in the main drive? (for example, the file that contains the root password [or the hash of the password])
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edvohuj", "edvotxx" ], "text": [ "Security ends when attacker has physical access to the device, more or less. In many cases however, attacker lacks this access. Say, you download a virus that tries to do stuff. Or maybe you connect to a remote server and try to mess the server up. In eit...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
af7ufz
how can smartphones manipulate every single pixel on the screen through a thin ribbon cable with a few electricaö connections?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edw76q5", "edwqedp", "edwtn8c" ], "text": [ "There isn't a single wire for every pixel on the screen. The graphics system will send information about what is on screen in small batches and the display processor takes this and controls what's actually on screen. To greatly simplify the...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
af84dy
If dial up and DSL uses the phone line for internet, how come DSL is much faster than dial up?
Also, how does a telephone DSL filter work to remove the DSL noise?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edwbzad" ], "text": [ "This is a really good question. You're right, they both use the same physical bits of copper and you can use both the send digital data like an internet connection. What makes them different? The biggest difference is what frequencies they use. As you might know, sound ...
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[ "url" ]
af8p63
How can telescopes photograph the galaxy they’re inside?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edwemxw" ], "text": [ "If you have seen a photograph of the Milky Way from outside then it have almost certainly been an artists rendering based on scientific data. This is similar to how you can draw a floor plan from measuring the distances to everything inside and then make drawing of your...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afarvx
How do computers start themselves during a reboot after they shutdown?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edwzpm3" ], "text": [ "There is something called ACPI which is an open standard for operations systems (windows, Mac os etc.) to communicate with the motherboard for a variety of purposes including but not limited to power management. There are many different kinds of reboots and restarts but...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afavsp
How come radio waves can be used to transmit very high quality data for TV/internet but the radios used by police departments and air traffic control tend to be garbled and staticky?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edx4nkt", "edxbahn" ], "text": [ "\"Radio connections\" can be of two types: analog or digital. In an analog connection, radio waves are converted to electricity by an amplifier and this turns directly into mechanical forces on a speaker. Any distortion in the radio waves during travel is...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afbkjb
what happens inside a dishwasher when it is completely silent but still has 45 minutes left on the timer?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edx5uqm", "edx678h" ], "text": [ "Probably the dry cycle. It has a heating element that is turned on to basically bake the inside of the washer to dry and sterilize the dishes. Takes awhile. You can probably see steam coming out at this point.", "Well you see, inside that big box ther...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afclls
Why does turning it off and on again solve almost any issue on electronic devices?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edxfs5u", "edxfyjd" ], "text": [ "Well, essentially with most issues on a device, turning the device on and off again will discharge all the circuits and clear the Ram, clearing up any tangles or knots. This is usually the first thing you do when troubleshooting because it's the easiest t...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afd9z4
How does Google calculate busy times (that bar chart) for businesses?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edxma6k" ], "text": [ "Google has access to location data for people using web browsers or apps that utilize a google service that permits them location data. So if you use google maps to look at a restaurant near you, and you’ve allowed them to access your location while not using the app, t...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afdgdt
Why can't SPAM emails be completely identified and then simply prevented from reaching a user, instead of being routed to a junk folder?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edxo6fh", "edxoc8v" ], "text": [ "There's nothing that clearly identifies something as spam. It's mostly a guessing game based on the origin of the email and another details about the email itself. They send potential spam to a junk folder so you will have some recourse if there are false...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afdo7t
How can companies figure out you rooted your phone even if you factory reset it?
Some of you might know that if you root your phone, it automatically voids your warranty (or so the warnings say). Let's say you factory reset it at some point and after you factory reset it, something breaks and you need to repair it. How do companies know that you rooted your phone before?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edxtbg9", "edy4i9e" ], "text": [ "Certain companies (Samsung for example) have a physical hardware “switch” (called KNOX on Samsung) which is activated once the phone is rooted. This changes the KNOX value from “0” to “1” and it never changes back. Companies use this value which can be ch...
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[ "url" ]
afe5we
why wont disks from one video game console work on another video game console?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edxviop" ], "text": [ "Consoles are very protective of their software and games. But it's very much like a German and a Britt trying to talk. They might understand one or two words, but the whole conversation will not work. And therefore they won't do anything." ], "score": [ 4 ], ...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aff5jy
Historically, Why did some civilizations seem to get stuck in the hunter/gatherer stage while others excelled in so many tangible ways?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edy5ku1" ], "text": [ "Appropriate beasts of burden seem to have been a big factor. Notice that south america didn't have animals like oxen to till fields or pull carts (also, they had yet to develop the wheel) leaving all manual labour powered by human hands. Things like the shape of contine...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afgwhz
How do public and private IP addresses work?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edym136", "edyhrzd", "edyhym6", "edylt7w", "edyij93" ], "text": [ "Exactly! Your \"public IP\" could be compared to the physical address of your house (\"123 Example Road, Exampleville, Examplecountry\" for example). Your \"private IP\" would then be what you call each room in...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afieea
What is a data center?
What is a data center?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edyuqbl" ], "text": [ "A (usually) large building built to hold lots of computers and storage. It'll have communications so people can access the computers, uninterruptible power, air conditioning, fire suppression systems (which aren't water based), a lot of security and IT staff. Often they...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afii7a
How is data actually transferred through cables? How are the 1s and 0s moved from one end to the other?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edz5h4k", "edyvrs6", "edyv1xu", "edyy6fa", "edzutft", "edz8xua", "edz2uh1", "edyw9ar", "ee1dsof" ], "text": [ "You know how when you touch a live wire you get shocked, but when there's no electricity running through the wire you don't get shocked? Shocked=1. No...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afizq0
How A.I. is possible
I searched subreddits, and there's a few questions similar to this. None of them have gained any momentum. So... Is A.I. built the same as a computer chip? Is it just code that defines it? What kind of code? ELI5 though.. Because im not smart.. Thanks. Edit: Thanks for the answers!! One last question. I read a lot abou...
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edz2gxv", "edyz0ow", "edz80kr", "edz1c9m", "edz8qpd", "edz87vh", "edz24jf", "edz6ftx" ], "text": [ "In the interest of sticking to the spirit of ELI5, I'm gonna gloss over some really interesting and complicated things. If anyone has questions or wants greater deta...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afjlag
How to the astronauts and everyone on the International Space station have oxygen?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edz32dz" ], "text": [ "Electrolysis of water (H2O) is the main method to generate oxygen aboard the ISS. Water is split into oxygen (O2) and hydrogen (H2). The oxygen is vented into the breathable cabin air system, known as theOxygen Generation System, while the explosive hydrogen is vented e...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afjvqa
Why are my passwords secure with a password manager, and not just a huge target with everything in on place?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edz5gda" ], "text": [ "Password managers keep your passwords encrypted, so they wouldn't be accessible to anybody who \"broke in\". They also encourage you to use unique, random alpha numeric passwords for each account, so if somebody breaks into one of your accounts, your others aren't compr...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aflwr8
Why do bunker freezers still work in grocery stores even though they have no lids to trap cold air inside?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edzn37x" ], "text": [ "1. Cold air sinks while warm air rises, so unless there's a strong breeze it's not really going anywhere. 2. Some of them generate an artificial recirculating cold breeze (an \"air curtain\") to further limit unwanted air flow." ], "score": [ 23 ], "text_url...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
aflyuj
How does a black and white photo decide which colour to show as white and which to show as black?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edzni6w" ], "text": [ "It's simply based on brightness — the total amount of light reflected. Most colors show as various degrees of gray, depending only on how light or dark they are." ], "score": [ 4 ], "text_urls": [ [] ] }
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afm4zr
If cables transfer data in "1/0" by being "on/off" with electricity, what's the difference between cables? Like what happens in an HDMI that doesn't happen in an aux cord?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edzq218" ], "text": [ "That's how digital cables work. By chance you've actually picked a digital (HDMI) and an analogue (AUX) cable in your question. An analogue cable transmits data in a continuous flow where it changes the voltage over time. A digital cable, like you described, sends pulse...
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[ "url" ]
afmqvr
How come in many cases, when a program crashes, it will not close even after clicking "end process" when prompted. However, it closes instantly when ended through task manager.
I never quite understood this. When a program crashes and the PC prompts the user whether they would like to terminate the program or wait for it to respond, it often times will not close even when the option is selected. However, when using task manager to end the process, it closes instantly.
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "edzuq75" ], "text": [ "Programs are managed by the operating system. Clicking the red x or using the prompt asks the program to close itself, but the program is stuck and cannot respond to the request. Using the task manager tells the operating system to just kill the process." ], "score"...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afn9xl
What is the difference between 3G, 4G, LTE, and the new supposed 5G besides the fact that they are faster? Why are the called what they are called and why has it taken so long to get to what is classified as 5G?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee007dl" ], "text": [ "From the customer's perspective, it's simply speed and capacity. A higher generation technology can provide more speed to more people at the same time. 5G is a little special because it uses really high frequency radio waves that don't penetrate buildings well. So, we'r...
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[ "url" ]
afnhkj
How do emergency flotation devices inflate quickly?
I'm talking about those vests in airplanes where you pull a cord and also this post that's been floating around URL_0 What makes it expand so fast?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee01pzz" ], "text": [ "Generally they have a CO2 cartridge that releases into the vest for quick inflation. There’s a tube you can use to blow it up if that fails." ], "score": [ 5 ], "text_urls": [ [] ] }
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afovgd
How is (or has) technology improving so quickly, when computer science/math is one of the hardest subjects?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee0d0q0", "ee0jni6", "ee0ieug" ], "text": [ "Not everyone considers math and science hard topics. Those people are the ones doing the advancing.", "I think computer science and math are easy. They follow logical rules and patterns, so as long as you know the patterns and can recog...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afpp72
Why do washers have temperature settings such as "hot cold" or "cold cold"?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee0j2a9" ], "text": [ "It's just missing punctuation. \"Hot, cold\" means \"hot wash, cold rinse.\" And so on for the other combinations." ], "score": [ 36 ], "text_urls": [ [] ] }
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afqwa4
How are older movies remastered into HD if they were shot with old cameras that didn’t shoot in HD?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee0suev" ], "text": [ "HD is merely a resolution standard. Film has traditionally been scanned to digital at 4,000 pixels wide and HD is only 1900 wide so there is plenty of room for remastering." ], "score": [ 8 ], "text_urls": [ [] ] }
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afrggb
How can a microSD card the size of your thumbnail hold 1TB of data?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee0yvs6" ], "text": [ "Transistors store data. Transistors can fit into a 3d-space and can be stacked. Right now transistors are usually ~20nanometers. Human hair is 100000nm. For a 1TB microSD the transistor would need to be ~5nm. Theoretically, a transistor could be as small as a single mol...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
afrr6x
why does a radio start at 87.7 and end at 107.9?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee0z88m", "ee126k9", "ee0zt0w" ], "text": [ "Those are the radio station frequencies that are \"allocated\" (given) to radio stations that are designed for broadcasting consumer-based media (music, talk shows, etc.). There are a ton of other frequencies but a lot of them are reserved ...
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[ "url" ]
afw4rj
How did old video games fit into such small spaces on cartridges?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee1q0pe", "ee1pz05" ], "text": [ "Majority of the game's code were shared among all games (libraries etc...) which was directly in the console. The cartridge contained just a small piece of code for that very game", "It's all about detail of the game and what's needed to be stored. Su...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
ag0ot3
Why can’t sound engineers create a consistent volume level throughout an entire movie or TV show, it’s either too quiet or way too fucking loud at different times?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee2r8y4", "ee2sqbe", "ee2sxgj", "ee2zf4u" ], "text": [ "They can, it is just bad. Part of what makes a show or movie better is to have dynamic range in the sound. It makes things more like real life and most of the population enjoys the movie more.", "1) They mix for a listeni...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
ag3gz8
Where do domain names originate from and how are they made?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee3ekg9" ], "text": [ "Domain names and DNS services is quite an interesting topic for computer networks. You will find that there is a central controller who maintains the domain names they are responsible for. For example there is ICANN for America and the .com domains. URL_1 Other places a...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
ag4eqn
How do bullet proof vest stop bullets, but can't stop a knife thrust?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee3jfc7" ], "text": [ "Bullet resistant soft armor is made of very tightly woven, very strong synthetic fibers. Usually a combination of things like Kevlar and ballistic nylon. Those fibers stretch, but don't break when a bullet hits them. This causes the armor to spread out the impact across...
[ "url" ]
[ "url" ]
ag4mf4
How does the touch screen on a touch pad works?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee3l5q0" ], "text": [ "Please use the search function as stated in the rules. This question is frequently asked and answered." ], "score": [ 3 ], "text_urls": [ [] ] }
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ag7r9k
How was wire made in medieval times?
Thin metal wire for making the links of chain mail and nails?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee44wi9", "ee459tk" ], "text": [ "You pull a strip cut from a sheet, or a hammered out, thick piece of wire, through a slightly conical hole in a thick metal plate. You keep doing this with progressively smaller holes until you have wire of the desired thickness. It's just as finicky and ...
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agd0if
How do noise canceling headphones work?
I thought it was the fit of the ear piece, however these headphones have a switch that turns noise canceling on and off. How do thy do it?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee5b80u" ], "text": [ "Active Noice Cancelling ( ANC ) Headphones have microphones to detect noise ( car / train / whatever ) Any sound is a soundwave The ANC Headphones detect the waves, calculate what part of them would reach your ear, and send their own soundwaves. Both soundwaves cancel e...
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age0yq
What is data?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee5hypn", "ee5ipkj" ], "text": [ "Data is portrayed by actor Brent Spiner. Data was found by Starfleet in 2338 as the sole survivor on Omicron Theta in the rubble of a colony left after an attack from the Crystalline Entity.", "Data is any bit of information. For example: You have a s...
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aghev5
Why do loading screens hang at 99%?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee6a4qu" ], "text": [ "There's no universal standard for loading. But here's how it *might* work for many programs. To draw an analogy, for most loading screens imagine it like this: You have a bunch of lego bricks. When you're told to build something out of them, your job is to draw the curt...
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agi09b
How do elevator algorithms work?
How do elevator algorithms work? As in, how does it determine how to get everyone to their desired floor in the most efficient and fastest way? Say, for example, if I wanted to go down from the 30th floor, but someone on the 20th floor pressed down before me. Would the elevator first go up to floor 30 and then pick up ...
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee6hte9", "ee6t553" ], "text": [ "There's a lot of ways you *could* design an elevator to optimally get everyone where they want to be in the most efficient method but generally they prefer simplicity & the sense of \"fairness\" over complicated solutions. An elevator going down will go d...
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agjhc0
Can you use a GPU as a CPU? Why/why not? If not, what's the difference between them that makes it impossible?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee6nxji", "ee6wzua", "ee6xlx9", "ee6wmh1", "ee6nlgm", "ee6zczc", "ee6nz8w", "ee70hr4", "ee71wor", "ee7bii2" ], "text": [ "While a GPU can do all the operations a CPU can (which mean that you could, *in theory* use it like a CPU), the architecture isn't opti...
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agm1he
What is actually happening when you tick the 'I'm a human' box on a captcha? How does it know I'm not a bot?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee742sq", "ee7475z" ], "text": [ "It uses a lot of information actually. First, it can detect your mouse movements as you go to click the button. If your mouse pointer immediately snaps to the button after the page is loaded then that doesn't seem much like a human. However, if you spend ...
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agmpj9
How does my iPhone X know where I’m parked?
It also knows where my house is, but I can understand that a little bit easier. It could just analyze where I go back to every day. But how the hell does it know how many feet away my car is, and on what street? It’s pretty rad, so I’m not complaining, it just strikes me as strange because I never “told” my phone I was...
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee79wb2", "ee7a6wi" ], "text": [ "I believe it uses the accelerometer and gyroscope (and bluetooth if your car uses it, as well as CarPlay) to know you're driving. Then, when it detects you've stopped driving, it marks the GPS location as your parking spot. This is also how the Do Not Dis...
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agmtxx
What network did 70’s and 80’s car phones connect to?
How did car phones call people back in the day when there weren’t cell towers all over the place? What were they connecting to? I’ve heard there were car phones as far back as the 1960’s. How could they get on a network to call people that were on landlines?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee7bz2c", "ee7c8kw" ], "text": [ "There were cell towers, there were just fewer of them and they weren't available in as many geographic areas. To make up for the sparse distribution of cell towers, old cell phones had far more powerful radio transmitters (about as powerful as CB radios) ...
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agnown
How does a spot vision screener work?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee7i850" ], "text": [ "I think you're referring to the \"autorefractor\". It shines infrared light into the eye (invisible, so the eye doesn't respond and close the iris) and measures the reflection off the back of the retina. From there, the device adjusts the lenses inside itself until the ...
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agpg16
How is a person kept alive during a heart transplant, where the old heart is out, but the new heart isn’t in yet?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee7y6ra", "ee7xwy7", "ee7xlqe", "ee7y611", "ee9bhtk" ], "text": [ "Your heart is just a pump that moves blood around your body. Surgeons have a machine with a pump called a \"Heart Lung Bypass\" that they install to keep blood moving around while they work.", "While the ol...
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agpnvr
How do some video games have a "Playable" state during the download?
How do some of the games ive downloaded have a playable state like 75% through the download yet it still has to download the rest?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee7zq7x", "ee83kws" ], "text": [ "This is a little overly simplified, but gets the concept across. Let's say that you're playing a single-player game that's linear. The actual game engine is relatively small - most of your assets that take up a bunch of space are things like textures, mus...
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agraji
How does my laptop detect when it's shut?
Basically the title; how does a laptop know to enter sleep when closed?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee8od0k", "ee8o9iu" ], "text": [ "This depends on the laptop. Macs use magnets and Hall effect sensors; some use a conductive latch. Some have a pressure switch near the hinge or on the outer edge.", "There’s a switch connected to the lid closure hinge or latch. Basically, it detects ...
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agrwyd
(Cellphones) What is blue light, what is the purpose of a blue light filter, and should certain media be viewed without a filter?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee8jots", "ee8kucu" ], "text": [ "Blue light is said to reduce melatonin (the sleepy drug) in the brain, so 'blue light filters' on screens actually reduce the amount of blue light being emitted so you can hopefully sleep easier.", "The premise is that since blue is one of the spectru...
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agrz7z
What causes significant explosions to produce the iconic mushroom shape cloud to form?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee8kklc", "ee8uroa", "ee8n1hb" ], "text": [ "The explosion creates a region of low density hot gas. This rises. Typically, given it is a big explosion, there's smoke/debris which are then pulled upwards with the smoke. The stem. Once the gas reaches an elevation where the air has the ...
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agsc8g
Why do the advertisements before videos play perfectly fine while the actual video buffers/bad quality/refuses to play?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee8p5z2" ], "text": [ "The ads fit in a single buffer and are supplied from the ad server. Everyone gets the same 20 ads in an area, so the local server cache always has them loaded." ], "score": [ 16 ], "text_urls": [ [] ] }
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agszqo
When you push your finger on a normal, non touchscreen computer screen, why does it make a bright and rainbow-ish color?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee8um36", "ee9dp0g" ], "text": [ "You're deforming the panel and changing the thickness of the liquid crystal layer. That thickness is important to the panel operation.", "These kinds of screens are LCD, or Liquid Crystal Display screens, which use a thin layer of crystals to filter l...
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agt81f
Why is to dangerous to connect to an insecure network and how would they access my information?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee8vzbj", "ee8xgvt", "ee8yteu" ], "text": [ "Dangerous is an exaggeration, an insecure network means that anyone within range can see or manipulate your internet traffic. Depending on the type of traffic it may or may not be secured in other ways. For instance most websites use HTTPS ...
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agwpe2
Why do Netflix and Hulu use long, weird URL's for their shows and movies instead of something simple like " URL_0 "?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee9khib", "ee9nz67", "ee9kosf", "ee9nuhk", "ee9pne3", "ee9tdmn" ], "text": [ "They actually use a pretty simple URL. For example Brooklyn 99 is just URL_0 , and a specific episode for example is URL_1 . Whatever appears after the '?' is just metadata that Netflix adds to t...
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agxlwp
Why haven’t scientists been able to make humans immortal yet?
To clarify, I’m not having a dig at them. I’m just curious, what are the specific problems they need to overcome or solve? I suppose to a greater extent, I’m asking why life currently can’t be permanent? Thanks.
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee9qd4j", "ee9q8lc" ], "text": [ "Scientists have been able to make humans immortal. Sadly only at the cellular level, in the form of cancer, releasing toxins that causes the brain to stop functioning. Still, one of those cancers have been alive for the better part of a century on top of ...
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agxted
What is actually involved in the process of "hacking" into something, and how is it different to that poorly portrayed in movies?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee9s3l0", "ee9u7td", "ee9se5m", "ee9t1ua" ], "text": [ "98% of the time it means tricking somebody into giving you their password. 2% of the time it means writing software that tricks a computer into giving you information you shouldn't have. 0% of the time it means doing that in ...
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agxz2j
How did Google create all the 3d objects in Google Earth?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "ee9uqnf" ], "text": [ "They use a technique called [photogammetry]( URL_0 ) with photos from aircraft. It takes multiple photos from different viewpoints, identifies points of common features (such as the corner of a building), and knowing the camera position and direction when the photos wer...
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ah15b5
Why is it a bad thing if companies and apps collect my data?
It seems like everyone is warning you about apps that collect much data if you use them. But to me the “worst“ thing that could happen is that I get customized ads (which I think is a cool thing). What's the big deal if you ain't got anything to hide? I'm living in Germany and I'm wondering if this is a typical german ...
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eealokn", "eean9hk", "eeaq0op", "eeanpo2", "eealceg", "eeav1k4" ], "text": [ "> What's the big deal if you ain't got anything to hide? Your phone knows where it is every second of the day. It knows when you're driving, when you're working, when you're sleeping, etc. It kno...
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ah1ql5
How does a USB or another small storage device keep so much data on it?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eeaup39", "eeat2ov" ], "text": [ "**First things first - Binary** So we know electronics run on electricity (we need to plug them in or give them batteries, after all, and it's in the name). If you compare electricity to water flowing through a pipe, voltage is like the water's pressure a...
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ah2wkl
How does ejecting a storage device or disconnecting an electronic while it is in use cause damage to the data/equipment?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eeazq3u", "eeazyvg" ], "text": [ "Your computer tries to appear \"fast\" to you. You click the \"save\" button, and Windows says \"Ok\" right away, but in fact it may take a few seconds to actually put the data on the storage device. The actual writing of the data on the storage device is...
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ah3enz
Why are disks the best format for playing video games on consoles or PC's?
Why were cartridges phased out and/or why aren't things like flash drives acceptable for large games?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eeb3e8d", "eeb468y" ], "text": [ "IIRC its cost. Disks are much cheaper than cartridges, so if a company can use them they likely will.", "Back in the 90s cartridges lost out because they just couldn't store anywhere near the same amount of data and were more expensive. N64 carts topp...
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ah44jo
Why does bluetooth have a delay when switching songs but turning off bluetooth instantly stops the music?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eebawwr" ], "text": [ "When you transmit audio via bluetooth, there's a small time lag that your bluetooth device buffers. So whatever you're hearing at the moment is being pulled from local memory on your headphones - and that local memory is being filled at the other end from the received w...
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ah4epn
Does streaming a YouTube video use the same amount of data regardless of whether it’s actually a moving image? For example, sometimes I just listen to a piece of music and the “video” is just a picture of the album cover. Does this use less data because it’s not a moving image?
And as a related follow up question - if I watch a video and then use the slider to return to the beginning and watch again, do I use twice the data? Or do you only use the data the first time and then you can repeat it as many times as you want?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eebcgcr", "eebcw1j", "eebcmi3" ], "text": [ "Oh man I hope I can explain well enough. Music with just an album cover image should use less data if it's a static image. Less refresh and painting of images on screen means less data is needed. Rewatching/listening to it immediately could...
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ah51lh
Up until torrent came along, there was constant innovation in the P2P arena. Why has it stopped since?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eebiyxg", "eebh9i2" ], "text": [ "It hasn't BitTorrent is the king protocol in P2P because no one has come up with something better yet. But there's been a lot of development that leverages BitTorrent to do other things. Kodi and streaming via BitTorrent for instance. There's also been to...
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ah7jx9
How do electronics measure the amount of electricity left stored in the battery?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eec5j77" ], "text": [ "A lot of it is sophisticated, depending upon the battery...but for simple designs (such as lead acid car batteries) it is entirely based upon voltage. They are nominal 12 volts. Full charged they are actually a bit overcharged and about 14 volts. Once they start droppin...
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ah7tlu
how do people do a freedom of information request for secret documents that are unknown to the public before the request?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eec6mv7", "eec9dzi" ], "text": [ "Generally, they have some idea that the documentation should exist. So, say, if a reporter was doing a story on a polluted \"superfund\" site, he might submit a FOIA request to the EPA for files relating to that site. Obviously, if you already had more de...
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ah8zju
Why does Alexa respond to me saying a word that sounds similar to Alexa, but does not respond to any commercial that uses “Alexa” in its commercial?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eecdufc", "eecdkcm", "eedupiz" ], "text": [ "Amazon [mutes certain frequency ranges to prevent Alexa from responding to its own commercials]( URL_0 ). For third-party ads, like [this one]( URL_1 ), they pretty much need to blacklist certain audio clips.", "Originally it did have t...
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ah9zaq
Why is is so hard for goverments/groups to shut down The Pirate Bay completely while they managed to shutdown KickAssTorrents in 1 hit completely?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eecmf9o", "eecqnal", "eee041o", "eed1cdw", "eee197z", "eee4318", "eecqf59", "eee8nij", "eeefrzv", "eeejehf" ], "text": [ "Imagine a bully at school. It's the same one each day, taking the lunch money of the same handful of kids. You take note that kids seem...
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ahb42q
What does having an extra exhaust pipe (2 in total) do for a car’s performance?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eed6qpi", "eecw0sa", "eecxdv9" ], "text": [ "In most modern cars, engines come in what is called either an \"inline\" package or a \"v\" package, and this has to do with how many banks of cylinders there are, one bank or two. Each cylinder is going to have an intake and exhaust port, ...
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ahbbml
Why do some pictures taken on my phone take up more storage space than others?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eecyuhz" ], "text": [ "The phone is compressing the data to help save space, but some images are more compressable than others. Lets say you accidentally take a picture of the inside of your pocket. It's a 1000x1000 pixel image, and they're all black. Instead of saving \"black pixel\" one mil...
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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 cho...
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eedf49v", "eedmbl2" ], "text": [ "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 ...
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ahdayc
What is the highest possible resolution of an image?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eedkxfp", "eedglng", "eedos8i", "eedmss6", "eeea1ua" ], "text": [ "There are multiple definitions of resolution. Pixel count is just one. Subatomic particles can't be imaged with visible light because they are smaller than the wavelengths of light. Even so , the smallest thing...
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ahg4nz
How can search engines query search results in just a matter of seconds from all over the internet?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eee858v", "eeepkiq" ], "text": [ "Search engines use bots that constantly crawl web pages all over the Internet for content and keywords. This creates an index which is much smaller in size than the web pages themselves. What the search engine is actually searching is the index these craw...
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ahj4lt
Why is there no TV equivalent to pirate radio?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eef1lcc", "eef11as" ], "text": [ "Here’s a pretty good example from decades ago. (Not a true “pirate TV station”, but an impressive feat for its time. URL_0", "There have been, just not as long lasting nor easy to create. According to Wikipedia, it wasn’t until early 2000s that the eq...
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ahjbj4
How do they generate unique MAC addresses?
How do companies that make computer components generate unique MAC addresses? How do they make sure no other company is making a component with the same MAC address somewhere across the world?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eef23bq", "eef516c" ], "text": [ "The first six characters of a MAC address are assigned to a manufacturer. Allocation is controlled by IEEE. After that it's up to the manufacturer to make sure they don't make duplicate devices. In case you are curious: URL_0", "Sometimes there are du...
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ahk7zz
Why did early color TV programming look so artificial like the color was added in later?
URL_1 This is from the early 1960s and President Kennedy's skin color looked unnatural, as everyone else's. To me, the quality is like early 1900s colorized pictures from National Geographic that was added later by hand. Most of the JFK footage is black and white and there are some color films but they still look off U...
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eefbxhk" ], "text": [ "Film ages, and with age, fades. I see it when I look at old still pictures of family from those days." ], "score": [ 3 ], "text_urls": [ [] ] }
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ahlxwn
How much computing power do we need to simulate a brain?
Why was a Pentium not enough? Now we have computer clusters like the supercomputer to compute and it is still not enough? How can i imagine the computing power needed for simulating our brain?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eefvp7y", "eefxv46" ], "text": [ "The answer is that we simply don't know. We don't know how much computing power the human brain has to begin with. Then, we would certainly need orders of magnitude more power than that in order to inefficiently simulate the brain.", "A human brain is...
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ahm4gi
When Copying a File from one HDD to another, why is the copying Speed decreasing over time?
Whenever i copy a big File from HDD 1 to HDD 2 on my computer (for example a downloaded Movie), i have a Copy Speed of 300-200 MB/S, but after a few seconds it decreases to 100-50 MB/S...why is that so? & #x200B; & #x200B;
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eefruq9" ], "text": [ "Hard drives have a buffer of faster memory. This is so that if you are transferring smaller files it can do it quite fast. Once the buffer gets filled (as it does with large transfers) then the write speed has to drop to the slower platter write speed." ], "score": ...
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ahm6ci
How does a cellphone receive texts while it was turned off, once you turn it on?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eefsn4l", "eefsjy4" ], "text": [ "It doesn't receive them while turned off. The network knows which texts have been delivered and which ones have not (because your phone is off or you're out of coverage etc), the ones not delivered it keeps trying to deliver. Once you turn it on and the n...
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ahn5xc
Iphone lightning cables are sold at lots of gas stations which will sporadically decide to charge the devices or not. Either apple's special chip-cable, or selling blatantly bunk cables should be fraud, no?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eeg2cng" ], "text": [ "This either cables are lower quality. Smaller wire will have more voltage drop under load, which is which the iPhone thinks it’s charging initially, then rejects the cable. There’s just not enough juice. On the other hand, go to eBay. You can get plenty of OEM cables an...
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ahn6vx
How does a signal from a cellphone know where to go?
So if I'm in let's say, Hawaii and my buddy is in Toronto and I send him a text message how does my signal get to him?
Technology
explainlikeimfive
{ "a_id": [ "eeg35zl" ], "text": [ "The signal from your cell phone initially goes everywhere. That is, it radiates out in a sphere. It should pretty quickly find a cell tower. From there it's up to your cell phone provider to look up your buddy's phone number and hand off the message to your buddy's cell...
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