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2w71vc | can "playing dead" really trick bears? whats the reasoning behind this? bears dont eat/kill seemingly dead things? | Also, does this "trick" work on any other predators? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2w71vc/eli5_can_playing_dead_really_trick_bears_whats/ | {
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"Playing dead is only suggested for Brown and Polar Bears and it does two things.\n\n1 - It makes them think you're not something they would want to eat, bears aren't usually scavengers.\n\n2 - It makes them think you're not a threat and therefore they don't want to fight you."
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qd7cc | why do people's voices generally get higher when attempting to sound polite? | This is something I noticed the other day. I am a waiter at a local restaurant and I overheard one of my friends speaking to his table. Normally his voice is rather deep but when speaking with them it was at a higher pitch. I then began noticing this in a lot of other people, including myself. Is there a scientific reason behind this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qd7cc/eli5_why_do_peoples_voices_generally_get_higher/ | {
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"A low voice sounds big and intimidating. A high voice sounds like a harmless little child. So it implies \"no offense intended!\" instead of \"hey get out of my way\"."
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4i88c2 | why do we do things, which we know are dangerous or bad for us long term? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4i88c2/eli5_why_do_we_do_things_which_we_know_are/ | {
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"Easy access to sugar and the use of fossil fuels have both been around for an extremely short time, evolutionary speaking. There hasn't been enough time for natural selection to gradually result in adaptations that discourage these behaviors.",
"Some reasons:\n\n\n*It's easier.\n\n*The short term benefits outweigh the long term risks. (For example, drinking coffee to keep you awake and alert for work.)\n\n*It's common behavior for your culture/environment. \n\n*Lack of better options. (For example, cars in the US are reliant on fossil fuels. If you want to get around anywhere and you don't live in a major metropolitan area, a car is the best option for travel.)\n\n*Life is full of risks. There is no way you can avoid everything that can potentially kill you or hurt you, so you just cancel out the riskiest things, like drugs, but still go with milder risks, like an occasional glass of wine.\n\n*The addictive nature of some of the substances, like sugar or caffeine. \n\n*People reason that bad things can happen to them even if they do everything for their body and the environment. They decide they would rather enjoy themselves now than spend their entire lives avoiding anything that poses the slightest risk to them.\n"
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3ujyey | why is the "black lives matter" toted towards police when statistically they seem to matter least to other black lives? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ujyey/eli5_why_is_the_black_lives_matter_toted_towards/ | {
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"Because the police aren't actually supposed to be killing people, perhaps? Besides, statistically, white people kill mainly white people, and the same for the other ethnic groups. \n\nThey're angry that a group who are supposed to *avoid* killing are not only killing anyway, but keep getting videotaped killing in situations where it's clear no attempt to de-escelate was made."
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1vdueh | how do websites, such as _url_0_, that have no advertisements and provide a free service stay in operation and even grow larger? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vdueh/eli5how_do_websites_such_as_craigslistcom_that/ | {
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"The overhead to run craigslist is pretty minimal, meaning much of it is automated and web hosting is pretty cheap these days.\n\nSomeone, somewhere, is running craigslist as a business expense, and using the cost to run as a tax deduction for their other business.",
"Businesses and car dealerships pay to post ads. I think other groups pay as well. ",
"Craigslist specifically operates by charging for certain posts. Here is a list of postings that have a charge and the associated fees:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n > 1. Job postings in SF Bay Area—$75 per job per category (e.g. 1 job in 2 categories is $150).\n > \n > 2. Job postings in the following areas—$25 per job per category (e.g. 1 job in 2 categories is $50):\n > Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Central NJ, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver,\n > Detroit, Houston, Inland Empire, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Long Island, Los Angeles, Minneapolis,\n > Nashville, New York City, North Jersey, Orange County, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh,\n > Sacramento, St. Louis , San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, South Florida, Tampa, Washington DC.\n > \n > 3. Brokered apartment rentals in New York City—$10.\n > \n > 4. Therapeutic services in the United States—$10 (reposting of live ads $5).\n > \n > 5. Tickets by-dealer in the United States—$5.\n > \n > 6. Cars/trucks by-dealer in the United States—$5.\n\nMany companies start out operating at a loss with whatever investment money they have in the early years to build up a user base, then change to another model later on to generate revenue. Facebook is a good example."
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73h2yy | why is "w" pronounced "double u" and not "wee"? | English consonants are generally sounded out by adding "ee" after the letter, e.g., "Bee" for "B", "Dee" for "D," and so on. So why does W stand out, the only letter that is described using an adjective with another letter of the alphabet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/73h2yy/eli5_why_is_w_pronounced_double_u_and_not_wee/ | {
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"At a very basic level, it's because W literally came from two Us, hence \"double U\". Hundreds of years ago, there was no distinction between U and V. U was written as a V and so two Vs made W. Later, when the distinction between U and V came about, the name for W still carried over, despite V now not being a U anymore.\n\nAlso, this may be why writing W with a curly bottom (so literally two Us) is also acceptable handwriting.",
"Because historically it was a ligature (single graphics shape combining two or more letters) of two U/V. And U and V was the same letter in ancient Latin. Let's start with the classical Latin alphabet:\n\n ABCDEFGHIKLMNOPQRSTVXYZ\n\nThere are no J as I and J were just graphical variants of the same letter. There is also no U or W as U was just different graphical variant of V and W is just double U. Then in middle ages the Latin alphabet started being used to write other European languages. It was needed to somehow distinguish sound \"U\" from \"V\" and therefore latin U/V evolved into three separate letters \"U\", \"V\" and \"W\" (\"I\" and \"J\" separated too). Also some of the other ligatures eventually became letters on their own. Following ones made it to present times:\n\n* V + V = W\n* E + T = & *(\"et\" is latin for \"and\")*\n* A + D = @ *(\"ad\" is latin for \"at\")*\n* /100 = %\n* S + S = § *(also: ſ + s = ß in german; where \"ſ\" is the long s, a letter not used nowadays)*\n\nAnd many other not used in english, like \"Œ\" or \"IJ\" (this one may render as \"IJ\" or as non-continuous \"U\" depending on font).",
"U and V used to be pronounced similarly and were used depending on where it was in the word Us being in word and Vs at the beginning of the word. Sort of like V was a capital u. Likewise uu /VV were used similarly. They started to become distinct sounds in 1300s but wasn't fully accepted as separate for a few hundred years."
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37v4sg | what happens when someone declares bankrupcy in us. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37v4sg/eli5_what_happens_when_someone_declares_bankrupcy/ | {
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"Don't know about people. When companies go bankrupt, it actually can help. This is an ELI5 of what happens:\n\n0.) **why does it exist?** - the issue in bankruptcy is that there's not enough money left (in terms of assets) to pay off all of the debts the company has or is about to have at 100% of their value. So, since everyone is going to sue to get their share, they created a system to try and distribute what is left as fairly as possible. \n\n1.) **company files for bankruptcy** - Company goes to a bankruptcy court and submits a paper. Instantly they get bankruptcy protection, meaning no one can sue them to collect debts individually. \n\nSometimes the company will go into *chapter 7* bankruptcy, which is just a liquidation of the company. Assets are sold, the money is collected, and then divided up. Different kinds of debtors (people the company owes money to) get money in a different order, depending on the type of claim they have. After that, the company disappears. \n\n2.) **Make a plan** - the company comes up with a bankruptcy plan. This is when the company is going for *chapter 11.* The idea of chapter 11 is that the company can pay of all its debtors more if it stays in business then if it liquidates. But, it needs to convince the debtors that this is true. So it makes a plan, explaining what it will do, and how much different classes of debtors will get paid. \n\nSo, for example, imagine if Amtrak went bankrupt. They don't have many assets, since they just own the trains and the track, which won't sell for much. So they come up with a plan saying that rather than everyone getting say, 1% of their debts, everyone will get 50% of the profits of the company for the next 10 years, which will be way more than 1% of the debts.\n\n3.) **have a vote** - all the different debtors look at the plan, and then they vote. If every class of debtors agrees, then the plan goes forward. If some groups of debtors disagree, than you can have a *cramdown*, where if at least one other group agrees, and the judge decides that everyone is better off than if there's liquidation, the plan happens anyway. \n\n4.) **the judge approves** - the judge hears objections, and may or may not send the plan back for revisions. \n\n5.) **the end** - If the plan isn't approved then the company liquidates. If the plan is approved, the plan gets followed. Usually when a company is in bankruptcy---like with a person---it will become much harder for them to borrow. "
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7e1at2 | how do music/video editing programs isolate vocals, frequency, pitch, etc.? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7e1at2/eli5_how_do_musicvideo_editing_programs_isolate/ | {
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"It’s pretty complex but I think what you don’t understand is that the editing softwares are not meant to isolate anything, they’re meant to take the isolated vocals and turn them into a final product. So with each recording you can edit its pitch and frequencies and do whatever other mixing you wish to do, and then you mix everything together so it’s one big composition. Basically like a puzzle.",
"I don't think there's a good ELI5 answer to this, but basically it's math. Sound is a waveform, you can add multiple sounds together to get a new one. It's just like adding two numbers together.\n\nBasically if you want to isolate vocals you just do the opposite. You look for parts of the signal that look like vocals and subtract them out.\n\nThe hard part is finding vocals. Typically programs will look for frequencies that correspond to vocals to find them but there are many tricks that involve very advanced mathematical techniques. ",
"in audio editing programs, you usually have a lot of tracks. each instrument or vocal will go on a track, ideally recorded in such a way as to not have a lot of sound from other instruments that would go on other tracks. \n\nin this way, you can target your adjustments to exactly which instrument / vocal you want. \n\nif you don't have a multitrack recording but are already using a stereo or surround mix it is a LOT tougher to make fine adjustments to specific instruments in the mix. however, if the instruments are separated from other ones in terms of when they play, what frequency they occupy, or where in the stereo / surround field (pan) they are, or if they are very fast and dynamic compared to the rest of the instruments (in terms of transient sounds) or very stable in dynamics (don't change in volume or dynamics much) - in these cases some wonders can be worked on whole mixes to change them."
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1uxu58 | if your pouring molten steel into a cast, what prevent the cast from melting or distorting? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uxu58/eli5_if_your_pouring_molten_steel_into_a_cast/ | {
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"By having a different melting temperature than the metal that is being poured into it.",
"sand and plaster in a container to hold them in place. internal distortion is controlled with binders in the sand. Bentonite and horsehair come to mind although there are lots of others. Basically anything that will hold the sand grains in place, especially when the mold is preheated."
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zwc9s | how do they get the caramel in the caramilk? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/zwc9s/eli5_how_do_they_get_the_caramel_in_the_caramilk/ | {
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"First they form the top of the bar. Looks like an ice cube tray. They then turn it over and fill the depressions with caramel. Then they place a chocolate slab on top (and that is the bottom). \nLook at the bar and you can see the seam\n\nYou owe me a carmilk now because I now crave one"
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2gemn1 | why do all animals, even insects, seem to go nuts over the red dot? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2gemn1/eli5_why_do_all_animals_even_insects_seem_to_go/ | {
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" > Felidae (all kinds of cats from large to small) brains and eyes are geared to a) notice motion and b) play with their prey. Playing with prey is the best way to kill possibly dangerous animals... especially things like venomous snakes. Dodge in, bat the hell out of it before it can strike, dodge out. After 5 or 6 repetitions of this, the snake is bleeding to death and/or has massive internal injuries. The same thing goes for any other animal that might fight back, like a cornered rat or mouse.\n\n > Lasers are BRIGHT. You don't think of the little red dot as very bright because it's so small... but if you measure its brightness, it's usually much brighter than the average lightbulb. \n\n > So laser light is a intensely bright spot of color (despite the fact that cats don't see red well. It looks mostly green to them) and motion, much brighter and more intense than anything it would be exposed to in nature. It hits all those feline eyes and brain cells like a ton of bricks and kicks their 'play with the prey' instincts and emotions into full gear.\n\n > The cat will happily exhaust itself chasing the laser dot in circles.\n\n > Imagine yourself watching a really good, suspenseful, action movie that gets your emotions up and makes you want to cheer. It's probably more intense than anything you'd experience in real life.\n\n > Same exact emotions and feelings, but kitteh gets it from running itself ragged chasing the dot.\n\n_URL_0_",
"Hadn't heard about insects going crazy over a laser dot. Anyone has anecdotes?",
"So the laser pointer definitely works on cats, dogs, some fish, and birds. There's got to be something to this. Anyone know if it works on reptiles, too? I feel like that's an important part of the question that got missed; ALL animals seem to delight in the red dot (apparently even insects)! Is it always the hunting instinct like top comment mentioned with cats?",
"They are not going crazy over only the red dot. It is also a combination of the erratic movements that indicate it is some sort of prey that triggers them. The brains are probably tuned to a \"attack\" response when it sees a simulated \"flee\" response. It is somewhat the same way that people can go into wild lion dens, by not \"behaving\" like prey.",
"The clear red dot is what biologists call a superstimuli or supernormal stimulus. It is appears not only be to be a distinct entity, but also it is maximally distinguible from the surrounding environment. Other prey normally camouflages itself at least to a very small extent. The cat decision threshold to attack normal prey is building up slowly in most cases ('Is this a mouse or a rock?'). Then at some point it's 'attack time'- when the cat is absolutely sure it's a mouse. With the red dot, it's in this attack mode all the time.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThen it's highly likely that it has to do with you moving the laser and not a machine, giving it the features of biological motion: directional change and nonlinear acceleration properties.\n\n_URL_1_",
"This will be buried, but I have to mention, that laser pointers are extremely dangerous to dogs and cats. They can cause serious OCD, reflection obsession/fixation, shadow obsession/fixation, etc. So be careful, and do not use laser pointers to exercise your animal as it may only cause issues."
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1nxj47 | why are there so many atheists on reddit? | This isn't meant to be condescending to anyone's beliefs in any way. I'm just genuinely curious. Aside from the specific "atheism" themed subreddits, nothing about Reddit exactly seems to promote atheism in any way, but yet it seems as though the vast majority of people on here are atheist. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nxj47/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_atheists_on_reddit/ | {
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"The site is generally full of younger people more likely to be Atheist, and a lot of the popular reddit sections are based on learning things, science, world events etc... that's going to skew towards people who want to be more educated. ",
"Reddit appeals to a younger demographic, and younger people tend to be less religious (a trend which has been ongoing for many decades). For example, 20% of Millennials (those born in 1981 or later) are not religious. [[source](_URL_0_)]",
"Theists are frequently turned off by the comments they hear, and leave.",
"People don't have to pretend they are something they are not on the internet. ",
"* The internet in general, and reddit in particular, skew young, liberal, and technically savvy. That demographic runs towards atheism.\n* /r/atheism is probably the largest and most active atheism forum in the world. It attracts atheists to reddit.\n* Between the two, reddit has attracted enough of a critical mass of atheists and near atheists, that they are comfortable enough to express their beliefs openly in a way they often can't in other places.\n* Conversely, people of faith may find the atmosphere hostile to their beliefs, and be less likely to express them.",
"Reddit is hivemind, and also a lot of younger people. People often come to different conclusions based on stuff but it's it feels good to be in a group host makes more fun of others especially if it's less popular to the masses but popular within your secret club. \n\nPeople saying anything regarding intelligence are being silly. Being religious or atheist has nothing to do with your intelligence level. There are as many dumb and uniformed Christians as there are immensely trivial and stupid atheists as well. "
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1pbdev | what (if any) is the practical biological purpose of my beard? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pbdev/eli5_what_if_any_is_the_practical_biological/ | {
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"To keep you warm. \n\nTo keep dirt from you face, mouth, nose. \n\nTo act as a social signifier of post-pubescent\n\nTo make you look cool. ",
"Bear repellent.\n\nAlso, women have probably sexually selected for beards over time, but mostly:\n\nBear repellent.",
"Panty-dropping capabilities and Pansy repellant to ensure optimal virility",
"To attract a mate",
"A full and healthy beard is a good sign of a health man. Think of a beard as being very similar to a peacocks feathers. It shows potential mates and potential rivals that we are healthy and strong. On top of that it does have its practical uses like keeping your face warm.",
"SOME women love them. SOME hate them. Many are indifferent.",
"Male lions grow a mane after puberty, gorillas backs turn silver. I believe it is to signal females that you are capable of mating and to signal males that you are a competitor. It does not work like that anymore because we have become so disconnected with our hunter-gatherer animal instinct. Females are no longer looking for signs of breedability and (most) men don't find beards intimidating. So now its just an evolutionary bi-product that may someday be phased out as future generations react to evolutionary needs. In fact it may serve a reverse purpose now and actually be seen as a sign of a man who is behind in human evolution and be very unattractive to women, as their inner instinct would drive them to mate with the best human possible (human 2.0), because evolution defeats disease and genetic defects, and with evolution man is growing less hair, so hair is a subliminal signal of possible genetic defects.",
"Beards can provide warmth and UV protection for your face, but the best theory is that beards evolved as a secondary sexual characteristic. They send signals to both potential mates and rival males. A beard creates the illusion of a larger jaw, which seems more dominant. To mates, a beard signals not only that your are sexually mature, but also that your testosterone levels are high enough to grow a full beard, since testosterone is what controls the growth of facial hair. ",
"To catch cornflakes",
"Excessive testosterone causes baldness and beard, which is a visual cue for dominance, violence tendency and chemistry proficiency.",
"Same reason a male lion has a mane. It Protects your neck from attacks while not diminishing its motion range. Try to cut something through a thick cloth and see how that works out. Women don't have them because they didn't go out to hunt and fight but were protected by males.",
"**Your true answer: Soup straining.**\n\n1- Just because evolution selects for favorable traits, doesn't mean the reverse is true -- that all the traits we have must have some sort of evolutionary benefit. (This would be a logical error in thinking.) Some traits exist simply as genetic drift. Probably most of them. After all, a LOT of people don't have a lot of facial hair at all. The existence of the beard trait may not confer any particular advatnage or disadvantage *at this point in time* but in the future it may always prove beneficial/harmful if and when the environment changes because evolution acts on all traits.\n\n2- No one can ever really give you a definite answer anyway. Is there is a reason why you have two, rather than six, nostrils? One can speculate endlessly because we can't be sure of the many many variables that acted in combination with each other over a few million or so years...so isolating a cause-effect (\"we have beards because xyz\") relationship is simply impossible.\n\nFYI The evolutionary biologists who do engage in this sort of speculation are fun! They're usually sex-mad and influenced by a very 50's view of the world which combines a good dose of sexism and pop psych with a view of evolution that emphasized conflict and selfishness rather than cooperation and community bonds. So, they would speculate that beards are for proving dominance over other men, and getting chicks, naturally. For example, Desmond Morris' claim that men are attracted to boobs because they remind us of asses. One track mind!",
"Girls like beards. You'll understand when you stop thinking girls have cooties.\n\n*I know that not all girls like beards.*",
"Clearly you dont live above 8000 ft in the dead of winter.",
"I learned in my human evolution class that aside from head covering hair, the hair on human bodies is strategically placed in places that produce pheromones or identifying smells. Like your arm pits and pubic area. \nWe produce pheromones on our face (which is why we kiss) so I think that's why.",
"It helps larger people distinguish boundaries between their faces and neck.",
"To be awesome.",
"I don't know the real answer here, but want to add something for perspective. We didn't get beards as an additional feature as humans. We just didn't lose that hair like we did elsewhere. So the question shouldn't be necessarily be why we have beards, but rather why we lost our other hair, and why men's faces were treated differently.\n\nThis could have been sexual selection, or simply that face hair didn't matter enough to effect selection. Such that losing hair elsewhere gave those humans an advantage, but losing facial hair didn't matter. This would also suggest that hair on the face may actually be controlled by different sets of genes than other hairs we did lose. This on it's own could explain why we didn't lose it.\n\nThose passive possibilities aside, there seems to be a general pattern for us to have kept hair near our orifices - eyes, ears, genitals, in or noses, doesn't seem out of place that we have it around out mouths. Specifically why we have this hair, idk. Why the sexual dimorphism? Idk\n\nIdk much, just my 3 cents\n\nEdits: spelling, answered this on my android.",
"Because I find facial hair attractive.",
"She keeps your friends from finding out you're gay!",
"It strains microorganisms from the air for you to feed on, much as whale baleen strains seawater for krill.",
"The beard, like our eyebrows, or the antlers on deer, is a social organ.\n\nIt's purpose is to make the jaw appear larger and more intimidating.\n\nOur biological predecessors would fight with their mouths, so the appearance of large mandibles implied a powerful bite.\n\nIn more recent epocs, the ancient adaptation to make the jaw look more dangerous has been re-purposed to make it appear tougher and more resistant to striking attacks, which became the norm in fights.",
"To store food for later."
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3h90k1 | how come people in america need $15/hr jobs if people from asia can apparently live off ridiculous wages like $2/hr? | What causes everything to be so expensive in America vs. other countries? Why don't prices fall to meet those other nations when things like outsourcing and free trade come up? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3h90k1/eli5_how_come_people_in_america_need_15hr_jobs_if/ | {
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"Accepted standards of living, and societal expectations of what you will be capable of doing. \n\nOur standard of living requires that everyone have enough food for 3 meals a day, electricity in our homes, running water in our homes, plumbing in our homes, air conditioning, entertainments (books, tv, cable, internet, video games, etc), communication devices (e-mail, physical mail, telephone, instant messaging, texting, skype, etc), personal transportation, medications, and many other things. The reason people in Asia can pay so little is that they do not have these same basic standards of living. To them those things are luxuries. \n\nWe also require people to be accessible. Many jobs require you to be able to transport yourself to your work or to travel fairly significant distances on your own. Many jobs require you to have a cell phone or at minimum a landline phone. Many jobs require you to have regular access to e-mail. Without these things it can be difficult to get a job or keep one. ",
"[like this](_URL_0_)\n\nthis is going to get removed because it's just a link, right?",
"The cost of living is also different. Thing are much cheaper in a lot of poorer countries then in say, LA or NYC.",
"Part of it is supply and demand. The more popular a place is to live the more expensive it is to live there. In Asia, not every place is cheaper than the US. It's actually more expensive to live in Hong Kong or Tokyo vs some American cities. Similar if you look within the US itself. $15/hr is okay for Los Angeles but that money would go further if you lived in a small mid-western town.\n\nThe US also benefits from cheaper products than most countries. So not everything in America is more expensive than elsewhere. Food in Thailand is cheap but electronics, clothes and make-up can be 30% to 100% more expensive depending on the brand. \n\nLast, you should consider that lots of governments around the world view income disparity as a societal problem and work hard to close the income gap between the rich and the poor. A worker in China might get by on $2/hr but he or she lives in squalor compared to other Chinese who probably makes almost as much as an American and enjoys all the benefits and luxuries as you do.",
"Part of this has to do with a concept called [Purchasing Power Parity](_URL_0_). Basically, it looks at a country's currency in terms of, how much does one unit of the currency buy? It's complicated, as the price of everything is going to vary greatly depending on the location, and what things are people actually buying. But what it shows is that often wages that look really small to us when converted to American dollars, are actually capable of buying more for those people than Americans can afford on $15/hour."
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a6muwx | what is the difference between disk capacity and density with a ssd? | I'm trying to upgrade my system and have a vague idea. Want to clarify before I buy. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a6muwx/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_disk_capacity/ | {
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"Capacity is what you really want, that's how much total storage the drive provides\n\nDensity is about how much storage we can fit in one flash chip. Higher density chips enable higher capacity drives in the same size, or drives with the same capacity but fewer chips\n\nDensity matters in the long run, it's what has enabled us to go from 256 GB 2.5\" SSDs to 2 TB 2.5\" SSDs; but when you're building a machine you only care about what you can get right now and that's capacity"
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2klv9y | eli:5 - what is with the giant outrage of texas demanding id for voting? | I understand a lot of underprivileged adults don't have the valid identification required to actively vote. If we don't hold up for voter fraud inciting instances that, like the 2000 request for recount by the Bush Administration, completely change the outcome of the election. Why are people saying doing these things are bad saying the GOP trying to suppress poor voters (which they are) instead of attacking the facts that we DON'T as a nation demand these COMPLETELY RELEVANT documents for our nation's leaders | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2klv9y/eli5_what_is_with_the_giant_outrage_of_texas/ | {
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"I don't know how many Texans are commenting here but as one I'd like to believe that Americans are the only ones determining the outcome of American elections. ",
"Because some people argue that as these IDs require money and time to acquire, it constitutes a poll tax, which is unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause as determined by the case of Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966).",
"Texas wants every voter to provide government issued proof that the voter is who they say they are in order to vote. Interestingly, this ID requirement does not apply to votes by mail. There has recently been strong evidence that votes have been cast by people who are not eligible to vote and this is a means of preventing that from happening.\n\nVoters who do not have an ID can pick up an election identification certificate from any Texas driver's license office at no charge.\n\nYou are misremembering the Bush-Gore contest. The Bush campaign did not request a recount because they had won the election day count, and the following mandatory machine recount. The Gore campaign attempted to have a quartet of Gore friendly counties hand re-counted and was quashed 7-2 by the Supreme Court on equal protection grounds--you can't cherry pick counties to recount in a state wide election.",
"Every time I voted I had to show my ID and they ticked my name off of a list of registered voters. So when did you just get to walk up and vote willy nilly? ",
"The outrage is because the type of voter fraud these laws *allegedly* prevent just about doesn't happen at all (and CERTAINLY not enough to make even the faintest detectable dent in even a county election), so one must wonder why the \"party of smaller government\" is so keen on passing them.\n\nAnd the answer to that is because the laws were designed by Republicans to make it just a little harder for poor and elderly people to vote, and by an incredible coincidence, they are groups that overwhelmingly vote Democratic.\n\nThis is not partisan speculation. At least three Republican party officials have admitted it on camera:\n\nHere's one:\n\n_URL_1_\n\n > > “cut Obama by 5 percent” in 2012... “probably Voter ID had helped a bit in that.”\n\nHere's another:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n > > \"Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”\n\nAdmitting on camera that you passed a law specifically to favor a particular party or candidate...done!\n\nNow how this can be even in the same time zone as legal, I cannot explain. But courts have begun to strike down these laws.\n",
"There's no problem with voter ID laws in and of themselves. The problem is that these laws are being created specifically to suppress the vote of people who historically tend to vote for Democratic candidates. If you don't see this, then you haven't been affected by this or know someone that has been affected by this...and that's not your fault. It is, however, the truth.\n"
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9hcitw | how can the fbi seize a website? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9hcitw/eli5_how_can_the_fbi_seize_a_website/ | {
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"The website is stored on a server which is physically located somewhere. If it's located in the United States then the FBI can get a warrant to take possession of it (or at least the section of it that the website is on) to shut the service down. If it's located in another country then they have to cooperate with the local authorities and come up with an agreement to take the site down. In some cases the authorities in the other country won't cooperate because they don't care. ",
"There are different ways.\n\nSometimes they can do little more than size the DNS entry and simply have the name of the website now direct at their servers.\n\nOn the other hand of the scale is them getting their hands on the physical server that actually host the website and taking possession of it.\n\nA lot fo that depends on the way the website is set up and on jurisdiction.\n\nUS law enforcement will have trouble getting a hold of a computer stuck in some criminals basement in a foreign country, but they can more easily get warrants to compel US companies hosting websites on servers in the US to give them full access.\n\nJust because you see a FBI notice when you visit a bookmarked site does not mean that the FBI has actually gotten to the data that used to be on that site (and more importantly the users data that visited it).\n\nSometimes they can however get full control, like when they arrest someone they think trades in child porn or something and they can get warrants and or cooperation to take over his website. Mostly by making a copy of the original data, putting the original into evidence and running the copy on some infrastructure they control.",
"For foreign websites on servers in someone's basement, they can direct (via international agreements) the companies that run the domain name system to stop directing requests to see that site to the actual server, and instead direct them to a landing page run by the FBI (with the logo and the seizure message).\n\nThe website is still up, but the foreign agent has lost control of their domain name and routing information to their website, which will significantly lower traffic. \n\nOf course there's not just one domain name system in the world, but there's only one that Joe Average uses, so this method is fairly effective."
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1tqmb6 | does it rain over all the oceans and seas? are any areas over an ocean or a sea classified as deserts? | Well I was watching some documentary and they mentioned ancient dried up seas. This got me wondering why they dried up, the obvious answer was the geology changed. But then I thought to myself, so why didn't a giant lake form here instead and I realised that since the geology had changed, there had been so little rainfall that the water all evaporated.
Which means that a area over this Sea would not have gotten rain, making it a Desert, right?
Does that question even make sense? I am a bit high.. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1tqmb6/eli5_does_it_rain_over_all_the_oceans_and_seas/ | {
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"There are definitely bodies of water which get rained on more or less depending on where they are. The amount of precipitation which falls in the arctic is very small compared to that which falls in a tropical region. Areas of ocean which are downwind from deserts also get very little direct precipitation.\n\nOceans and seas which can accept ocean water can maintain their water levels because the water will slosh around to roughly even things out. If a body of water gets cut off from oceans, then the area which it can draw water from becomes a lot smaller and this sea is now going to be much more affected by local weather than the larger oceans. All surface water bodies evaporate and most seep into groundwater as well and many lose water to creatures (particularly humans in recent timse), but if the water isn't being replenished fast enough, then the water level will drop and eventually disappear, but many water bodies surrounded by land are able to find a balance point for a long time where their levels stay within a particular range across the seasons.",
"/u/eideid is correct. There really are regions over the oceans where it doesn't rain at all or does so only very rarely. There is a large area in the Pacific west off of Chile where so far no rainfall has ever been observed. Off the coast of Namibia, where the sand desert immediately meets the ocean, rainfall is also extremely rare or absent. \n \nHowever, land deserts are not only characterized by their lack of rainfall. They are also empty places where living things are rare and far between; of course this is a consequence of the lack of water. \nIn an ocean, that is not an issue; so you can argue that there is a different definition of 'desert' for oceans that concentrates on the availability of nutrients in the water. \nAnd in fact, such places exist, too. There are areas like large swathes of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans that are blue, 'pure' water - water with little nutrient content where primary production (Algae & Cyanobacteria photosynthetising) is very low. Other spaces, often near coasts, are 'green' water full of life. Both regions exist independently of rainfall; the region off Chile is really empty while the Namibian coast is anything but. Here cold, deep nutrient-rich water is pushed up from below and together with the intense sun makes for a very productive area and huge amounts of fish live there. Rain doesn't concern them. "
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2sm36r | why is it ok to insult religion in name of freedom of speech, yet not ok to be a racist? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sm36r/eli5_why_is_it_ok_to_insult_religion_in_name_of/ | {
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"Because no-one is responsible for the colour of their skin, but they are ultimately responsible for their own belief system.....\n\nYou can only ridicule someone based on the stupid choices they have made (such as believing in imaginary friends as adults) & the things they have done, & not on things they have no control over, such as race, sex, or handicap.",
"Neither is ok. Both are forms of protected speech.",
"Being racist is also protected by free speech. \n\nIt is illegal to discriminate based on race or ethnicity, but you are fully allowed to think, speak, draw or do anything you like that is racist so long as you do not directly harm or call other to harm someone. ",
"Insults to race and insults to religion are the same as far as \"freedom of speech\" goes. \"Freedom of speech\" just means the government won't punish you for the idea you are expressing. \n\nInsulting religion and insulting a race will still make people mad, depending on how they feel about the insulted race or the insulted religion. These concepts aren't necessarily related.",
"There's a difference between \"legally OK\" and \"socially OK\". It is legally OK (in the United States) to say or write things that are racially or religiously bigoted. It is not, however, socially OK to do either, in general.\n\nSometimes you will find a group of people within society who think it is OK to express bigotry of one kind or another. You will generally find those people are, in fact, bigots. Unfortunately, society isn't always polite, and sometimes it's a *very large* group.\n\nThat said, the distinction between legal/social can be summed up as \"I don't think you *should* do this, but I think you should be *allowed* to.\"",
"Religion is a choice, race is not. Its perfectly fine to criticize and ridicule someone's choices. ",
"You can choose your religion. You can't choose your race ",
"Its not really OK to do either. You are free to do so, as in you wont be jailed, but that doesnt mean you *should*.",
"People have rights. Ideas don't. \n\nSimple as that, I can talk shit about whatever idea (wich includes religion) I want to and mock them. They are not people. ",
"Probably has something to do with religion being a threat to humanity as a whole. "
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5rorcg | was fighting in ice hockey allowed since the beginning of this sport, or was it introduced later - and if so how that happened. | I always wondered how it turned out.
The first time I ever seen a fight in Ice Hockey game I was really surprised that referees allowed it to finish. I started questioning myself, if I was watching Hockey game where you score the goals or two guys fighting in a ring until the one falls on the ground. With time I started understanding why this is a thing in Hockey, but I still question how that began.
So like in the title. I was wondering if fighting was in this sport since beginning or if it was introduced later. And if it was introduced later then how the process of that looked like?
Cheers. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5rorcg/eli5_was_fighting_in_ice_hockey_allowed_since_the/ | {
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"It's not allowed. That's why there are penalties for fighting. \n\nFighting is a result, usually, of three things. \n\n1. Get your team to raise their game. I'm willing to drop gloves and get into a fight. What are you willing to do to get our team back into the game?\n\n2. Defend a team mate. That little a-hole just unloaded a dirty hit on my guy, I'm going to make sure he doesn't think about doing that again. \n\n3. To pay the price. I need to fight him to atone for a bad play that hurt someone or nearly hurt. This one is a rare one. \n\nHockey is a sport of passion and grit. Players are tough as nails and don't like having their ice disrespected. If you allow a player from the opposing side to disrespect your team once what's to stop him from doing it again? Even worse if the ref keeps missing it or doesn't think it's a penalty.",
"I read a book on this once and it talked about how the fights could extend up into the crowd like in Slap Shot. I have no idea what the name of the book was since this was decades ago. Wikipedia has a decent primer on how it evolved in the rules and some theories as to why.",
"Fighting in most sports will get you ejected from the game. \n\nIt will only get you a penalty in some hockey leagues, the NHL being the most famous. Many other hockey leagues (especially youth and amateur leagues) won't allow any sort of fighting. \n\nThe origins vary since people fight for all sorts of reasons. If you see a hockey fight today it might be because one team is playing too recklessly (or focuses that recklessness on one player) and so a fight breaks out to show the opposing team you aren't going to take it lying down even if the referees aren't calling other penalties. \n\nAnd many in the audience like the fights. Hockey already suffers in being an underrated sport and if people go to games because of the prospect of a fight then why get rid of it? ",
"Ice Hockey is brutal. Much more so than it seems. Ice is hard, the boards are rock solid, the puck is solid, heavy, frozen rubber. Everyone has a piece of hooked lumber and they all have sharp metal blades on their feet. The players move fast and there is body contact and it's crowded. \nSo players take tremendous abuse, hockey is painful all the time, teeth knocked out, cuts stitched up and you keep playing. \nNow you get big men playing a painful, brutal sport and there is a broad range of ways to inflict extra pain, called a cheap shot. An elbow to the face can damage a person for life, but may be penalized in a minor fashion (2 minutes penalty) or not penalized at all. \nFighting occurs in hockey, generally, when a player is playing over the edge and is hurting players regularly and certain players will take it upon themselves to curtail this behaviour. So if a player throws out a few cheap shots he may find himself in a fight. Or a player causes pain to a player who's having a rough night and suddenly he's in a fight. Or a player tries to injure a star player, more so if this star player is known as a sportsmanlike player or is known to shun playing to hurt others. In this case a player may fight this person as retribution. Or two players known for fighting fight just to see who wins, but that generally is a lot harder to explain. "
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6v8so3 | why does damage to eyes not become apparent immediately and takes time ranging from a night's sleep to years to show up? | Read a few posts in an AMA request where people say it took years to see the damage in the eyes from viewing a earlier eclipse without appropriate protection. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6v8so3/eli5_why_does_damage_to_eyes_not_become_apparent/ | {
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"It's like a sunburn. At first, it's just all red and painful (but your retina has no pain receptors, so it doesn't hurt). The next day, your skin is literally falling off your body. In that time, the damaged cells were figuring out that irreparable damage had occurred and that they might be cancerous. When they do, they enter mass suicide mode."
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3v9uwj | why does the us senate always seem so empty? | Often when I watch a speech a Senator is giving or a Bill is being discussed the senate is practically empty. Shouldn't the Senators be in there doing their jobs? Or what am i missing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v9uwj/eli5_why_does_the_us_senate_always_seem_so_empty/ | {
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"Most of them are doing their jobs. Their jobs just have very little to do with the debate floor. Think about it, how inefficient is it to have one guy speak to a room of a hundred about some issue while everyone else has to feign attention. During that time a politician could be meeting with lobbyist, working on acquiring new votes for a bill, discussing the matter with his staff, etc.",
"Many senators defer the decisions and voting to the committees and sub-committees as they are likely more knowledgeable of the details in the proposed legislation. Outside of a few key bills, there is usually far less debate necessary than, say, in the House, as the senate is less adherent to party lines."
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1jz5ey | can someone explain the difference between a university and a technical school? | A technical school just seems like a far better option to me by far. But what are the pros and cons of each?
P.s. Already applied and got accepted to one. Just don't fully understand why people are against it in my life. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jz5ey/can_someone_explain_the_difference_between_a/ | {
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"In the US, technical schools focus mainly on job training and associates degrees in specific fields. They're great if you want to be a plumber, electrician, automotive tech, or some other sort of skilled trade.\n\nThere may be a stigma against the sort of jobs you'll likely be training for. You wouldn't be able to train as a physicist, doctor, or get your MBA at a trade school (and maybe those as the aspirations those other people have for you), but the world will always need plumbers and electricians, it doesn't need another twenty something with a liberal arts or philosophy degree."
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typsw | hare krishna | What is it? Why the yellow smudges? Basic teachings? Yes I am curious after seeing it on Mad Men. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/typsw/eli5_hare_krishna/ | {
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"They are a branch of Hinduism that started in New York in the 1960's. Sort of.\n\nSpiritually they try to grow closer to the Supreme Lord Krishna, through various methods.\n\nThey require members to be vegetarians and abstain from 'illicit' sex, gambling and intoxicants. They highly regard four virtues: self-control, mercy, truthfulness and cleanliness.",
"\"Hare Krishna\" is a chant used and promoted by the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). They're called the Hare Krishnas because of that, but it might be pejorative. The rest is as TasfromTAS said."
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338xpk | why has no one crossed a dandelion with a carrot or parsnip, thus creating a nutritious vegetable that grows wild as a weed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/338xpk/eli5_why_has_no_one_crossed_a_dandelion_with_a/ | {
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"A few things. First, dandelions *are* nutritious vegetables that you can eat lots of ways.\n\nSecond, a weed is just any unwanted plant - they typically grow more aggressively than cultivated plants because they are evolved specifically for the environment in which they are found and because they don't waste any energy producing something extra for humans. For example, there are wild carrots, they just don't produce as large and tasty a root as cultivated carrots. Cultivated carrots need more support, because we've bred them to be *inefficient* as plants in order to be efficient as food. It's hard to get the weedy-ness of a weed and the wasteful extravagance of cultivated plant.\n\n(Also, it's typically only possible to cross plant varieties of the same species or at least the same genus. Otherwise you're crossing wildly different species - it's like trying to get a chicken and a pig to successfully mate. Maybe it would produce delicious bacon flavored wings, but too bad cuz it ain't gonna happen.)\n\nYou might be interested in heirloom plants varieties, though - these are older varieties of cultivated crops that typically offer a lot more variety than more modern versions and tend to be more adapted to specific areas.",
"Carrots do grow wild as a weed; they're extremely common in North America, although they aren't native. [Wild carrots are Queen Anne's Lace](_URL_0_) and they grow in almost every vacant lot. People seldom eat them, because they have reverted to wild genetics, which makes the root smaller and more fiborous. Also, growing in rough conditions makes the root much tougher. Finally, there are a few lookalike plants that are toxic, including deadly water hemlock. \n\nBut your dream of widespread wild carrots is already a reality. The fact that they aren't widely eaten throws a spotlight on how farmed crops differ from wild foods.",
"I think the question you are asking might be better phrased like \"Why are there no plants that are edible that act like an invasive species, and just grow like crazy?\" \n\nThere are may of these plants actually. The wild parsnip is one that is currently spreading across Ontario and other places. The dandelion, as mentioned previously here, is also edible. \n\nThen the question might be \"Why aren't we eating them?\"\n\nI think the main issue is twofold. First, invasive species often don't have the same history as native species do with local populations. A meal of dandelion salad, nutria chops and wild parsnips doesn't sound too inviting to most people, but how would it sound of you grew up eating such things?\n\nSecond, we are used to the lush/plump/mild tasting food, made available to us at the local supermarket. Wild plants and animals often have a taste/look about them that is not as appealing as these store bought alternatives, not to mention the work often required by the end consumer to gather them. ",
"a few plants that might be interesting to you, as they are all edible and generally considered weeds.\n\ndandelions, plantain ([not the banana looking thing](_URL_0_)), clover and kudzu \n ",
"Because they aren't even slightly related. It's the equivalent of asking why no one has bred a pig and a blue whale to create a more efficient Bacon source.",
"Cow parsnips or queen annes lace can cross with carrots.",
"What the fuck is a parsnip?",
"Genetics just don't work that way. It's much more complex than taking A plant and B plant and getting half of the properties of each. Even assuming you successfully cross a strain, you'll likely end up with a plant that's more weed like than a vegetable but not as weedy as weeds and more nutritious than dandelions but less so than a vegetable. So it's all about careful, slow selection for the optimal plant.",
"A few people are telling you that wild carrots are abundant. Please DO NOT indiscriminately eat something you think -might- be a wild carrot. There are a few plants that are difficult to tell apart from wild grown carrots (they even kinda smell the same) that will make you very sick, maybe even kill you. Poison hemlock is the most famous.\n\nIf you wish to start foraging for food I recommend doing some thorough research first, and if possible take a class locally. This will let you know what your particular area has to offer and mitigate some of the risk."
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5ahsb8 | how does a barometer actually measure air pressure? | I've known it does for years but I never exactly knew how. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5ahsb8/eli5_how_does_a_barometer_actually_measure_air/ | {
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"Inside a barometer is a sealed can, containing air. This makes it a bit like a metal balloon in that air is trapped, and can neither flow in or out of the can.\n\nIf the air pressure outside of the can changes, it'll squash the can slightly. If the air pressure drops, the can will expand. It's these changes in shape that drive the needle on a barometer.",
"When you [look at a barometer](_URL_0_) one of the unit of measurement it uses is mmHg.\n\nmillimeters of mercury. What this means is if you fill a glass tube with mercury. Turn it upside down. The distance between the glass bottom and the mercury. The weight of the mercury is pulling it down but the air pressure is pushing it up. The higher the pressure, the higher the distance. Lower the pressure, the lower the distance.\n\n[Example Image](_URL_1_)"
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59qowq | how did all matter fit into an area less than an atom at the beginning of time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59qowq/eli5_how_did_all_matter_fit_into_an_area_less/ | {
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"We don't know! But it probably wasn't really what we would consider to be \"matter\" at that point anyway as even subatomic particles wouldn't have been precipitated out yet.",
"anything before t=1 is useless to theorize about. The rules that govern the universe where non existence before then. you might as well ask how many chess pieces is a touchdown worth. there simply no way to know if what rules if any governed the time before t=1.",
"As others said: we dont realy know. We just can see the universe is expanding and therefore it was very smal in the past. So sientists apply the known formulas, like how strong an electron pushes another one, to very small space and see what should happen if this space comes closer to zero space. These results are strange for some formulas, like infinit force or something becomes negative. So we experiment (like in CERN) what happens with particles pressed together in small areas, but this way we will always just come closer to the big bang/the begining/t=1 but never reach it."
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xfucu | why gas mileage goes up the slower you go | I've always heard how if you go 5 miles under the speed limit you get better mileage. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xfucu/eli5_why_gas_mileage_goes_up_the_slower_you_go/ | {
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"Your gas mileage depends more on the RPMs (rotations per minute) than anything. Have you ever noticed when the pedal is pushed down, the RPM meter goes up? Well, that's when more gas is spent. Because not only is gas being spent on making the wheels turn, but it's being spent on how fast the wheels turn. That's why when you put larger tires on a vehicle, it gets less gas mileage. It takes more work to get a higher RPM, because the tire is larger.",
"How much fuel is used is directly related to how much energy it costs to move the vehicle forward. The two main forces that influence how much it energy it costs to move a vehicle forward are rollingresistance and air resistance. \n\nRolling resistance exists because gravity is pulling the car down, the car wants to move over the ground but it costs energy to do this. This is why we use wheels, they minimize rolling resistance. As long as there is gravity on earth there will be rolling resistance, no matter how smooth the road and the tires are. \n\nAir resistance is caused by the air that you are pushing as you drive. In the vacuum of space where there are almost no particles in the air and there is no gravity to pull you down, something can keep moving for a long time. Down here on earth, the air that you are pushing away slows the car down. This costs a lot of energy. \n\n\nSo, here is the kicker. It turns out that when you measure air resistance, it goes up exponentially the faster you go. This is counter-intuitive because it feels like going twice as fast would cost twice as much energy. However, it's closer to something like four times more energy to go twice as fast. Rolling resistance goes up almost linearly, but air resistance goes up exponentially as you speed up. \n\nThat means that the faster you go, the worse your mileage gets. You probably would get the best mileage if you drive very slowly. \n\nEdit: Small corrections.",
"Each car is a little different but there are two things to consider: Air resistance and RPM.\n\nAir resistance doesn't go up at a constant pace, the resistance going 20 mph is not double the resistance going 10 mph, it much higher. And the faster you go, the more air tries to stop you moving. So the difference between going 55 mph and 65 mph looks small from inside the car, but it makes a big big difference to the air hitting the car.\n\nRPM is how fast your engine is spinning, not how fast your wheels are spinning. When you change gears as you go faster, the engine can start spinning more slowly because the gear connecting the engine to the wheels changed. The amount of gas the engine uses is mostly based on how much the engine is spinning so when the gear changes and the engine slows down you get more mileage. \n\nEach car is a little bit different, some are affected by wind more because they are boxy, and not all cars have the same kind of engine or gear. But, **the statistical average is that the most efficient speed for a car is 53 mph**. For some cars it's more, some it's less, but that is the rough average. \n\nThis is because **53 mph is around when most cars hit the most efficient part of their last gear**, which is the most efficient gear for maintaining speed. In the last gear, the car covers the most distance per rotation of the engine, making MPG higher by covering more miles. To make the car go faster in it's last gear you have to make the engine go faster and that uses more gas. \n\nAnd 53 mph is also about the time most cars start have **wind resistance increase dramatically**. The difference between 53 and 58 mph is huge compared to say 33 and 38. More wind means more energy needed means the engine works harder.\n\nEach car is different, but most are within a few miles of that target. Unless you have a specialty car (BMW has a much higher \"peak efficiency\" speed for example) it might be different but chances are it's around 53 mph and it's for the two reasons above. Hope that was like-you're-five enough.\n\nEdit: On a side note if you want to increase fuel economy, drive calmly and avoid sudden anything. Sudden stops slow you down more than gradual stops (which means more acceleration), sudden turns slow you down more than gradual turns, and gradual acceleration uses less gas than sudden acceleration. Also try whenever safe and possible to not accelerate up hills, it uses so much more gas than accelerating before the hill and maintaining the speed up the hill. "
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180rzy | the usps is struggling financially and therefore eliminating saturday deliveries, while ups and fedex are doing just fine. why doesn't the usps try and model itself after them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/180rzy/the_usps_is_struggling_financially_and_therefore/ | {
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"The USPS has a government-mandated monopoly on letter delivery, granted on the condition that they deliver to every single valid address in the country. Private carriers like FedEx and UPS can refuse to deliver to specific locations.",
"Got it backwards, kind of. UPS, Fedex and other carriers were modeled after the USPS.\n\nAs for why the USPS is struggling, the answer is that the USPS has an albatross around its neck that nobody else has: In 2006, the Congress — *God* knows why — passed a law requiring the USPS to shovel *vast* sums of money into a fund set aside for paying retirement benefits to workers who haven't yet retired. This is the *only* reason why the USPS is losing money. If it weren't required by law to stuff all this cash under its mattress — a requirement no other enterprise *on the planet* has, and which no sane person would ever choose to do — the USPS would be back to operating close to break-even, as is appropriate for a publicly owned enterprise.",
"Something else I haven't seen mentioned yet is that FedEx and UPS also charge more for Saturday delivery. USPS would be doing great if they could convince millions of Americans to pay a dollar a week to keep getting mail on Saturday.",
"The USPS is also financially struggling because it is the only government agency required to prefund pensions for each employee. ",
"1. FedEx and UPS don't offer regular delivery service on Saturdays.\n2. FedEx and UPS are not obligated (by the US Federal Government) to deliver letters to rural/residential addresses at the lowest imaginable prices. Their minimums start around $8 for most rural deliveries, and usually hit double that amount for even the smallest parcels.\n3. The USPS is being forced (again by the Gub'ment) to pre-fund the retirement pensions for ALL employees, for the next 75 years. The USPS is the *(edit:) second* largest employer in the United States, and this burdon to prefund those accounts at an accelerated rate has broken their backs. They would be solvent if it weren't for this pre-funding requirement.\n4. The volume of mailings have gone *down* exponentially, over time, with the advent of electronic documentation, signatures, and even advertising.\n\n*edit: my claim the USPS is largest employer is disputed. Wiki and other articles cite 574,000 employees. While USPS says 546,000. This places them at second, right after Walmart.* ",
"its illegal for the USPS to compete in the market in many ways because it is run by the government, changing this would have to ultimately be passed by congress who have been at a near standstill for years",
"It should be mentioned that the USPS will continue package deliveries on Saturday because that is still profitable. It is only shutting down Saturday mail deliveries.",
"All this, also:\n\n > Other Innovative Foreign Postal Programs: In addition to offering hybrid mail services, the foreign postal services studied by the GAO have partnered with retail facilities like grocery and drug stores to offer postal services, including parcel pickup. Along with being more numerous and more conveniently located than post offices, the retail facilities are open longer hours. In many cases, the postal services are owned and operated by the retail partners, thus reducing costs for the postal services. From 12% (Switzerland) to 98% (Germany) of the foreign postal services' facilities are now owned and staffed by their private retail partners.\n\nUSPS has all these awesome locations where people flock to every single day. Why not take advantage of this? Sell other items-- prepaid phone cards, etc.\n\nHOWEVER, we do have something to be proud of:\n\n > Efficiency may not be the first word that comes to mind when Americans think of the USPS, but U.S. mail carriers are better at using their limited resources than any of their counterparts, according to OSC's study. In one year, America's mailmen and women delivered 268,894 letters and 2,633 parcels per carrier -- more than any other country -- to 151 million addresses. All told, the USPS accounts for 40 percent of the world's mail volume (yes, that figure counts your Victoria's Secret catalogues). And despite complaints about customer service, when researchers in a different study tested 159 countries' post offices on how fast an average letter sent to a fake address would be returned, the United States also came in first.\n\nSupporting sources:\n_URL_0_\n_URL_2_\n_URL_1_\n",
"There was a The Economist story on how the post office is unique in that it charges a flat rate no matter the distance (within US, charges are by weight) and that was something private enterprise just wouldn't be able to do. I can't be arsed to find it though. ",
"Don't FEDEX and UPS use the USPS for faster delivery of many of their parcels????????????/\n",
"It's struggling because it's been under attack via \"oversight\" since the 70's and every few years some chucklehead gets it into his politically driven noggin that he's going to \"fix\" it's issues. This usually means that someone notices that the independent arm of the government has alot of money tied up in pensions/benefits and they want to soak it for whatever they can. \n\nThe easiest way to explain why the USPS is having financial issues is the PAEA which has been noted but the second easiest is how the mail carriers get paid. \n\nYour average mail-man/women/alien gets paid against a chart scale. That scale is defined by mail volume per route against costs of delivery per route. Each route is designated, metered and logged for mileage, time and whether or not it's rural or urban. \nSounds simple right?\n\nWrong. \n\nHere's why... Mail volume is estimated in \"counts\" these counts used to happen when you would get a good median; a high volume like December against a lower volume like July. This got changed a few years back and now they happen in May and October (IIRC) both lower months. Now, that would shift the ledger a little if that was the only thing that happened during counts but every mail carrier I know will tell you 'plain as day', that during Counts, mail(particularly pre-paid and bulk mail like catalogues and adverts but just about anything if there's a goal in mind) is held at the distribution centers to be delivered after the Count. That is unless there is a national conspiracy of retailers to not send bulk mail during count events which is really tin foil hat territory.\n \nChanging the counts and holding bulk mail lowers the overall mail volume and shows a lower expense on your USPS costs ledger which means the cost of sending a piece of paper from Maine to Hawaii stays low rather than inflating to cover the actual costs. \n\nThe other way they cut corners is in the way rural route carriers are paid. Most rural carriers use their own vehicles and are reimbursed a portion of their costs. *A portion* not all of them, because when a route is Metered by a guy that drives it once in a Honda Civic he's not going to get the same results as the guy who actually delivers it. Most rural carriers need a 4x4 SUV to deal with the terrain/weather and have enough cargo space to carry everything. That means that the carrier actually has higher costs than the projected costs done by the Metering. This again shifts the numbers in the ledger to show lower overhead but it negatively affects the people actually doing the work and costs them money out of pocket to deliver your mail. \n\nFor every Mail carrier there are two Substitutes who get paid on a per run basis. Don't worry...they don't' affect the bottom line...or didn't until someone decided that Saturday was meant for fighting and they dropped the pay rates for Subs. They not only dropped the rates for subs, they changed how they classified subs and the ones that made more were given a choice to run mandatory routes 2 or 3 days a week at a lower wage or be let go. While the ones that were paid less, or were only available certain days, were told to kick bricks. This has led to a huge issue between the regular carriers and the subs because they're currently losing tons of Substitute Carriers. This means if your mail man is sick you might not get mail until he's better. If it's something serious like cancer you might not get Gramma's brithday card with $5 in it for a month or two. That's until they can trick someone into delivering it or you trot your happy ass down to the post office to pick it up. \n\nThe big issue is the bottom line. The people in charge of oversight want smaller costs and the people directly under them are responsible for destroying a fantastic institutional means of communication by purposefully altering costs analysis to meet a political demand instead of raising the costs to the consumers and re-obtaining solvency. \nNeither wind nor rain nor sleet nor commonsense can overcome bureaucratic confunglery.\n\nEdit: IF you find something I'm incorrect on let me know. My info is all from chatting up Carriers I've known. \nEdit 2: Formatting & Such ;)",
"FedEx sends around 1/3 of their shipments by USPS so that's a hard business model for the USPS to follow.",
"FedEx and UPS are for-profit institutions. USPS is not. When funding gets cut for the USPS, they can't simply raise the prices on other aspects of their business model to compensate.",
"UPS and FedEx raise rates yearly....",
"The USPS is like a 20-year old Chinese guy. He moved out and has to make his own money, but at the same time, he can't make any decisions without his parents agreement (Congress).\n\nHis parents do not give him allowance, so he has to make money working. He can't do his work well, cause his parents are basically poopooheads.\n\nAlso he's way too nice and afraid to lose his friends, so he has a piggy bank with way too much money in it.",
"Part of it is that fedex & UPS are not required, by law, to deliver to the middle of bloody nowhere. The USPS, on the other hand? If your mail box meets federal regulations, they have to deliver mail/packages to you 6 (5?) days a week, or as often as it comes, whichever is less frequent.\n\nOn the other hand, UPS and FedEx can, theoretically, wait until there are enough deliveries in your area to make it worth spending the money to drive out to your area. What's more, I have seen packages that are nominally delivered by FedEx/UPS which were actually dropped off at my house (easily within a major metropolitan area) by the USPS. Apparently the shipping company handed the package off to the Post Office, and paid them to do the final delivery. USPS don't have that option.",
"Also because the USPS is not allowed to make a profit. They are so cheap that UPS and Fedex often have USPS transit their shipments as much as possible."
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"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/06/the_world_s_best_post_offices"
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642def | how can someone open a credit card under my name. | thanks all! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/642def/eli5how_can_someone_open_a_credit_card_under_my/ | {
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"Did he actually open it under your name? If he did, you would see the bank summary and transactions as far as I know. He probably added you as an authorized card holder to one of his accounts. I have cards from my parents that are like that",
"What you are describing sounds your uncle opened a credit card account for himself, then added you as an authorized user.\n\nIt's his card and his credit, you just get to use it. That's a pretty generous uncle."
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7phbwc | how did the notion of sharing blood with family members came about in ancient and medieval times? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7phbwc/eli5_how_did_the_notion_of_sharing_blood_with/ | {
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"Even before our understanding of DNA, there was still a conception and understanding of inherited traits. At the time, the blood was considered the essence of a person's life and contained your personality.\n\nSince offspring inherited a parent's physical and behavioral traits, it is not a big leap to suggest they inherited the \"blood\" of their parents.",
"it was pretty clear when one human being gave birth to another human being that they were related... Tracking family trees isn't super hard, and they did it for royal families pretty rigorously.\n\nIts not about dna (though in modern times we can tell it is) its purely about family relation through birth. ",
"The idea of inheritance of traits are not a new thing. The understanding exactly how it works it quite new.\n\nSelective breeding of animals and plants gave been know since prehistory times. The roman had treatises written of how to selective breed animals for different purposes.\n\nThat it is the case is quite easy to observe if you have animals with short development times. Especially when the difference is the color of the fur. They also know that the same was the case for plants and humans. "
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2ps3sv | how come if a car sits for an extended period outside, the tires get dry rot, but the tires on my daily driver which sits outside all the time don't? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ps3sv/eli5_how_come_if_a_car_sits_for_an_extended/ | {
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"Because tyres work via friction on the road. Friction generates heat. Heat cycling a tyre causes chemicals used in the curing of the tyre to be released which stops them from cracking/rotting. Tyres that do not get heat cycled by driving the chemicals in the tyre remain in one place.\n\nYou can see this on motorbikes especially well. You go out for a ride and scrub the tyres in. That is to remove slippery waxy white layer that covers a tyre when it is new from the factory.\n\nYou can go hit some corners and ride like crazy and scrub your tyres down to the edge (what bikers call chicken strips). You heat cycle your tyres. Within a few days the the edges of your tyres (the bit you do not ride on) turn blue from the curing chemicals coming out from the heat cycling. Because motorbikes don't always ride up to the limit on the bit which contacts the road you can see the blueing. \n\nCar tyres are designed to go through many heat cycles as a balance between life and grip. Racing cars and motorbikes are designed to go through limited heat cycled as they want grip."
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2yo1gk | why was it a trend to add 2000 and 3000 to the end of products? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yo1gk/eli5why_was_it_a_trend_to_add_2000_and_3000_to/ | {
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"text": [
"There was a time when year 2000 was the future."
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2ycr8e | with websites using shortened links(reddit, youtube, twitter ect), why do they still use the full link at all? | _URL_1_ vs _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ycr8e/eli5_with_websites_using_shortened_linksreddit/ | {
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"It's just semantic. With the long URL, you can tell what subreddit it's in and what the title of the post is. You only need the thread ID to grab the thread's data, but it doesn't mean anything to any of us because we aren't relational databases.",
"Short URL are very useful when you share them on Twitter. I think that micro blogging is the main reason why shortened URL are so common. But the long version help people to know before visiting the links.",
"One tells you what the link points to, the other doesn't. ",
"It has to do with search engine rankings.\n\n\nSee this for more information: _URL_0_",
"Another reason I don't see mentioned is search engine optimization (SEO). You get a higher ranking for terms that are in your URL, so having a name that is meaningful to humans is going to increase your ranking when people search for those terms."
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dy7fos | how does a website know i mistyped my card number before i even click “place order”? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dy7fos/eli5_how_does_a_website_know_i_mistyped_my_card/ | {
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"Part of the card number identifies the type of card so it can tell immediately if you have tried to put a debit card instead of a credit card (or vice versa) or if that part of the number doesn't match any type of card.",
"There are calculations that can be done to determine if it's valid before you submit. There is a pattern that they all follow - without going into too much depth. Similar to how it knows an email address needs to have characters followed by \"@something.something\" which all emails follow. Anything that doesn't follow that pattern at least is invalid.",
"Credit card numbers are not random. They have information that identifies the type of card and even a \"check\" digit that helps ensure that the rest of the digits were received correctly. \"Good\" payment pages will include some code that will check/validate the card number before it's even transmitted to the server to not waste the time processing a bad number.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"There are two quick and easy ways. The first digit usually indicates what kind of card it is: Visas always start with \"4\". If you have indicated you are entering a Visa, but the first number is a \"3\", they know you've made a mistake.\n\nThe other way is the last number is a check digit. You can look up the exact formula, but the idea is you take the first number, multiply by the second number, take the rightmost digit from that and add the 3rd digit, and so on down the line. If the last digit doesn't make what the formula says it should be, you have a problem.",
"* the first one or two numbers identify the type of card (Visa, MC, Amex, etc), it is obvious if you don't have a valid value for those\n* the next few digits identify the bank (Chase, Citibank, BoA), and again only certain values are valid\n* most cards have 16 digits, but Amex only has 15 and Diner's Club and Carte Blanche have 14\n* the last digit of the card is a usually checksum, a digit computed from the other numbers, if you get a digit wrong, the checksum won't match up...this is probably the most common way bad numbers are rejected"
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bfekp4 | why iron is considered the most 'stable' element. wouldnt helium or the inert gases be it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bfekp4/eli5_why_iron_is_considered_the_most_stable/ | {
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"It’s a different kind of stable. Helium is stable since it doesn’t react with other elements, while iron is stable in the way that if you have a single iron atom, it isn’t going to fall apart.",
"Helium and the noble gases are stable in that they don't want to make friends with other atoms and form molecules because their electron shells are already full and perfect\n\nIron is stable in that it takes the most amount of energy to change its nucleus out of all the atoms.\n\nYou get energy out of fusing atoms together until they get up to Iron at which point it takes more energy to ram the extra parts into the nucleus than you'll get back out. The same goes for fission, splitting things larger than iron will give off energy because they move to a more stable state and don't need all that energy anymore, but once you hit iron it'll take more energy to split it than you'll get back out.\n\nThe electrons around an iron nucleus want to make friends, but the protons and neutrons in the iron nucleus have the perfect amount of friends and don't want any more."
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3dr9lx | is there an actual law stating that the opposite genders aren't allowed to go into the other's restroom in a public space, or is it just a common courtesy being practiced? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dr9lx/eli5_is_there_an_actual_law_stating_that_the/ | {
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"AFAIK, there are no existing laws at the federal level that make it illegal for a man to use the women's restroom, or vice versa. It could theoretically open you up to charges of sexual harassment or something similar, but that's not really the same issue.\n\nSome members of the Florida House of Representatives did try to pass a bill earlier this year, but it failed in April. [House Bill 583](_URL_0_) would have made it a first-degree misdemeanor, with up to $1,000 in fines and a year in jail. ",
"I dont think there's any law. I was at Belmont a few years ago to see Smarty Jones, there was a record breaking crowd there. I am in the mens room taking a pee as some nice looking well dressed girl walks right past me, as I am standing in the urinal. Jeezus that freaked me out. I told her what the hell! and she's like \"the women's room is filled\" \n\nJeezus, just try this as a man. ",
"It would surely depend on the jurisdiction, but I am not aware of any specific laws on that. It would generally fall under the catch-all provisions of the \"disorderly conduct\" laws. Which basically means \"does the judge and/or jury think you ought not have done that\".\n\nNow if you were being lewd and lascivious, or trying to be a peeper, that could fall under other more specific laws.",
"While not the norm, there are places that simply offer \"unisex\" restrooms/locker rooms. Universities and cities with a sort of hippie/liberal/libertarian bent will tend to have more of these. They are NOT required, but do exist in some restaurants/gyms/schools/whatever. I don't mean the little one-person rooms, but the general large restrooms.\n\nYou might be taken up on a lewd/misconduct charge as it is fairly unusual for someone to use the opposite sex restroom, but afaik there is no law (unless local) against just walking into one.\n\nThat said, using the wrong public restroom in a moment of desperation is really unlikely to get you anything resembling legal trouble--perhaps someone will yell at you, but as long as you mind yourself in a stall and don't loiter the worst you'll get is some uncomfortable stares/comments, and possibly be asked to leave if the other party really pushes things. There are far easier ways to get in trouble--there was just a news article recently about someone leaving their camera phone on 'video' in a Starbucks restroom, for example. Or looking over the stalls, urinating in public, flashing in public, lewd and suggestive behavior in any number of situations...using the wrong bathroom on accident is so far down the list as to be negligible :S."
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2grkut | why is it i feel more comfortable walking around while im on phone? am i alone in this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2grkut/eli5why_is_it_i_feel_more_comfortable_walking/ | {
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"I do the same thing and have always wondered why. I always guessed that it was because it's a habit to move away from other people while talking on the phone as to not be rude. ",
"I recall this answer being helpful when this question was asked previously:\n\n > You do your best thinking when you walk. \n\n > It's well known that your mind is stimulated when you are active and upright. Many scientists and composers adopt this method for idea generation and some of the greatest artists and thinkers from Darwin to Britten were at work whilst walking:\n_URL_0_[1]\nWhen you are on the phone and focused on the conversation your mind switches to focus on the 'place' where the phone call is happening. If you watch people who are deep in conversation they will also be facing downwards and very slightly huddled. As a result you become far less aware of your surroundings and subconsciously your body is telling you to go for a wonder so you can do some thinking - as a sort of coping mechanism. It's the same as people rubbing their chin or wringing their hands in a meeting (although this is a stress relief). Stress balls also perform this task.\n\n > In the UK driving whilst on the phone causes more crashes that drink driving and is banned.\n\nCredit goes to /u/orwellsocietyguy\n",
"My boyfriend walks when he talks on the phone, sometimes not even noticing how far he has walked. One time, he talked to his mom for half an hour, and had walked around the neighborhood, bare-footed, and hadn't even noticed. \n\nHe says that walking while on the phone is just a habit. He likes to take his conversations elsewhere, so as not to disrupt the people around him. He also feels that walking away and being by himself while on the phone allows him to give all of his attention to whomever is on the phone.",
"You're not alone. \n\nGenerally when I make a call I start walking in a circle around my apartment with my cat chasing me and grabbing at my feet (it's a game to her) for the entire call. "
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[],
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2jdhgy | why are spray bottles cold, instead of hot, to the touch? | I would think that spray bottles with compressed air would be hot because, according to the ideal gas law and what not, air gets warmer as it is compressed and colder as it expands. So why is it that it is the opposite of just that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jdhgy/eli5why_are_spray_bottles_cold_instead_of_hot_to/ | {
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"1. they aren't hot or cold when resting. If they stayed hot while under pressure then you'd have just discovered infinite energy! The bottle may _feel_ cold because it absorbs heat readily (e.g. it's made of aluminum).\n\n2. you may be feeling the bottle after it has lowered its pressure. The bottle will become - as you mention in your post - colder when the pressure is released. (e.g. spray an aerosol can for a while and it will be cold)."
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|
4fzhk4 | why do we have to go through us customs in canada, but not the canadian customs in the us? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4fzhk4/eli5_why_do_we_have_to_go_through_us_customs_in/ | {
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"It used to be that you went though US customs in the US, and Canadian customs in Canada. Some smaller airports continue to work this way.\n\nBut then the US introduced customs pre-clearing, so instead of checking after you've arrived in the USA, the check everything before you get there. ",
"In the Airport? When flying from Canada to the US?\n\nIt's called US Preclearance and you do it in Canada (or in other countries like Ireland) then you land like your flight originated in the US\n\nIf you didn't do that then you would have to go through Immigration and Customs in the USA\n\nIn the other direction you just go in Canada, they usually have less issues",
"You always have to go through customs...somewhere.\n\nAs a matter of convenience, US customs has a presence in larger Canadian airports. It is much easier to show up a little earlier and clear customs before your depart than to try to do so on a layover.\n\nAlso, the US, unlike most other countries, does not have a \"in transit\" customs status...everyone who enters the US has to clear customs, usually at the first US airport they reach. Have US customs in major Canadian airports makes it easier for Canadians who fly through the US to another destination. The reverse isn't true, because Americans who just have a layover in Canada don't have to go through customs."
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vycop | ocams razor and the burden of proof | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/vycop/eli5ocams_razor_and_the_burden_of_proof/ | {
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"**Occam's razor:** The original, from William of Occam, is: *\"plurality should not be posited without necessity.\"* This means that you shouldn't add assumptions that are not needed to explain something.\n\nNowadays it is used to say that, of several possible explanations, the simpler one should be preferred, because it is most likely to be true. Note that it's not true all the time, but in an argument it puts the holder of a more complex explanation in a weaker position, and puts the burden of proof on them.\n\n**Burden of proof:** If the burden of proof is on you, it means that it's up to you to prove something, not up to other people to prove you wrong. This happens when you make a claim that strays for the default position (sometimes called the null hypothesis). \n\nFor example the default position of the existence of things is that they don't exist. If you make the claim that something exists, it's up to you to prove that it does. If I claim that there's a teapot on my desk, I can get proof: I can see it, touch it, I can take a picture of it and show it to you, etc. If I claim that there's a teapot orbiting the sun somewhere between Earth and Mars orbits, I can't prove it. You can't disprove it either, but the burden of proof is on me. In the absence of proof of its existence, we shouldn't consider that it exists.\n"
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2re1zi | what happens to a copyright when the company that holds it goes out of business? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2re1zi/eli5_what_happens_to_a_copyright_when_the_company/ | {
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"The rights would be considered an asset by the liquidators and sold in order to pay creditors"
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dq33ya | why do objects that are the same temperature as our average body temperature feel hotter than our hand when we touch them? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dq33ya/eli5_why_do_objects_that_are_the_same_temperature/ | {
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"text": [
"Because 37 degrees is the body core temperature. Your fingertips are often colder than that, especially the skin, where your thermoceptors are.",
"We can not feel \"temperature\", our senses measure \"heat loss\".\nBecause of that, we also sense iron \"cold\" and wood \"warm\" although both materials were at the same temperature; metals can take away our heat production faster and in consequence we feel it colder."
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8v2itq | how are deisel-electric engines more energy efficient than direct-drive deisel engines? | Why are deisel-electric engines more efficient than direct drive systems? Wouldn't it be more efficient to remove the "extra step?" | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8v2itq/eli5_how_are_deiselelectric_engines_more_energy/ | {
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"It comes down to being able to run a diesel electric engine at the optimum efficency while a straight diesel engine is responding to the load of the train. ",
"The diesel motor can run constantly at its most efficient rpm to charge the battery, rather than having to scale up and down as the vehicle accellerates. You can also get benefits from regenerative braking.",
"It eliminates the need for a mechanical transmission, which for a train would be massive, complicated, and inefficient. The engine can run at its optimal rpm, and the electric motors it powers serve as the transmission. ",
"So all engines have a power band, and within that band is a precise set of operational conditions (so, speed and fuel flow rate) where you maximize your fuel energy efficiency.\n\nHybrid powertrain engines (not just diesels, but Spark Ignited engines as well) are able to sit *right on that precise spot* for maximum efficiency, whereas direct-drive engines have to rev up and down by user input, dependent on what precise speed the user wants at the wheels (which correlates to your vehicle's speed).",
"Don’t think of it as an “extra step”. There has got to be *something* getting the energy from the engine to the wheels. Drive trains and transmissions don’t have perfect efficiency either. \n\nA big factor for diesel efficiency is the speed of the engine. With diesel electric you can always run the engine at the exact most efficient speed, and that’s a big factor in making it better. "
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24pxho | why do i find it so hard to change my eating habits? how do i get myself to like eating something? | I haven't really eaten vegetables or fruit since I was around 12. I was spoiled and wasn't made to eat them and now I've fallen out of habit and can't stand the texture. Why do I find it so hard to eat healthy and how do I get over the texture of something so I can appreciate taste? Any time I've looked it up nutrition talk has been like jumbo jumbo and has as baffled me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/24pxho/eli5why_do_i_find_it_so_hard_to_change_my_eating/ | {
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"The way I see it is that the keyword is habit. It's amazing how closely related food and smells are to conditioning, think Pavlovian conditioning and the salivating dogs. When we eat or smell something high in fat or sugar our brain releases chemicals, most of them feel good. Seeing many of us have a choice in our food and they usually tend to be high in these we tend to get conditioned to feel good when eating them and bad when eating something else, hence we are conditioned to eat them more often. In this way a person could become a \"chocoholic\", but not to that extreme. Also food and smells are very closely connected to memories, this is why nostalgic food exists. This also leads back into the conditioning where you remember and associate foods. To my knowledge there is no way that you can force yourself to like another food, accept for dong exactly that. Studies have shown that if you lie to your self and generally have a good reason to you may start to believe that lie to an extent. Also if you can form a positive association with that food, eat a carrot when ever you do something you like."
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1n3b8y | why does steam/valve insist that linux is the future of gaming? | I can't wrap my head around this idea that Steam/ Valve are pushing forward. Firstly the range of games available at the moment (which I know is ever increasing), but then the issue of hardware drivers not being great, graphics cards being the primary problem. Why does Gabe have such confidence in an OS that accounts for lowest percentage of the gaming community?
EDIT: Thanks /u/stumro and /u/MnemonicZebra well explained
EDIT 2: Thanks to all others that are contributing, keep it coming! I feel like I've learned something today! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n3b8y/eli5_why_does_steamvalve_insist_that_linux_is_the/ | {
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"There are a variety of reasons, I'm probably not the best person to try and answer this, but I'll give it a shot.\n\nFirstly Linux is highly optimized and can be dedicated to running just steam whereas with windows, you will have to run heaps of their applications.\n\nWith Linux being so streamlined, a player can have cheaper components and have a game run amazingly.\n\nWith steam making the big move towards Linux, it will force the GPU produces to be more open with their driver creation and to create better drivers.\n\nWith more than Microsoft as an OS, developers are more likely to use an open source encoder which will allow more platforms to play and thus more money for the creator.\n\nUltimately, it will be cheaper for the gamer as they wont have to buy an OS also. It will be better for the industry as more people can play great games.\n\n\nThis is just things I have picked up about it from reading around, though it could be a bit off with stuff there.\n\nEDIT: simple spelling errors and some grammar",
"There are several reasons for Valve pushing Linux or specifically SteamOS.\n\nFirst reason is streamlined PC gaming, providing a more console like experience where everything just (usually) works. I.e. by taking all the weird crap people often have installed on their Windows machines out of the loop and instead just provide a gaming focused OS with good driver support there should be far less of the compatibility issues often associated with PC gaming.\n\nSecond, is Valve trying to optimize graphics and audio performance, although to be honest I doubt they can really do it that much better than Microsoft. You can say a lot about MS but DirectX is actually pretty good. I think the whole L4D2 working better on Linux is more about Valve wanting to create a good story for their Linux support than any inherent Linux performance edge.\n\nThird, what I believe is the most important reason and the reason Valve don't talk about is, platform control. Valve sees what Microsoft is doing with the Windows Store in Windows 8 as a major threat. On Windows 8 RT devices, the only way to install apps is the Windows Store. Valve fears that Microsoft will eventually move in the same direction with non-RT devices, this would be a deathblow to the Steam platform. Such a move from Microsoft will take time, but Windows 8 is the first step and Valve recognized that they would need to move early to counter it.\n\nBy creating their own platform, SteamOS, Valve gains complete control. They can kiss competition from Origin and other digital game pushers’ goodbye. I can promise you that in SteamOS you only buy from the Steam platform. Using the trusted platform technology already built into many PCs today, they could also make SteamOS more resistant to game piracy, a huge incentive for game publishers to support SteamOS.\n\nSo yeah, I’m excited about SteamOS as much as most here on reddit, but I doubt it will be a huge gaming revolution for Linux distros that aren't SteamOS and don't think that Valve is doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. This is a business decision, plain and simple. \n",
"I believe the most important factor seems to be that Microsoft have started moving towards windows no longer being an open operating system (with the introduction of the windows 8 store)\n\nIf this happened (it hasn't yet any software can be run on windows with no problems) then Microsoft could start asking steam for a cut of the money from all sales, which steam don't want.\n\nWith large companies motivation is almost always money, right now steam can sell on to windows with no fees being paid to Microsoft. With windows 8 Microsoft laid the groundwork for windows to become a lot less open, requiring a fee to publish software for the OS, much like the IoS store or Xbox. In response to this it seems steam are laying the groundwork to fully transition its service to free (for them) open platforms, Steam OS and Linux.\n\nThe reason i believe this is a larger factor than anything else is that before Microsoft made these moves towards a more closed system i saw very little from steam that indicated they cared at all about linux as an OS for gaming.\n\nI also don't believe that Linux will ever be a widely used home/office operating system without a complete rethink of its user interface systems (or unless programming and computer science become compulsory)\n\nalso where i say linux read Ubuntu as that is the linux version i have most experience with",
"Microsoft really is the gatekeeper on PC gaming. And let's face it, they have a conflict of interest in helping PC gaming flourish. They have sunk tens of millions into their proprietary gaming platform. Others here have already touched on Windows 8 so I won't repeat that, but combine that with the increase in tablet/laptop sales and declining desktop sales the writing is on the wall if we stay current course. Valve is diversifying.",
"A lot of companies have pegged linux as the future of a lot of industries. It's attractive because it is open and easy to customize to the needs of a specific idea. For example, android is linux based and in a short 5 years has revolutionized the mobile phone industry. We are now using android to game both on consoles like ouya and phones and tablets.\n\nValve is putting a lot of money into optimizing linux for gaming. With increased interest you will see better hardware drivers. The most recent builds of valves source run just as well under linux as they do on windows.\n\nAs for game availability, I believe \"If you build it, they will come.\" is appropriate here. With Valve dedicating so much effort to the platform, their ability to work with game developers to not only convince them of their ideas but help them accomplish them...its just a matter of time before this blows up.",
"Dev: \"Hey Sony, can I make a game for PS4?\"\n\nSony: \"Sure, for a huge platform licensing fee.\"\n\nDev: \"Hey Microsoft, can I make a game for XB1?\"\n\nMicrosoft: \"Sure, for a huge platform licensing fee\"\n\nDev: \"Hey Valve, can I make a game for SteamOS?\"\n\nValve: \"Sure.\"",
"There are a few reasons.\n\n1) From a business standpoint Valve doesn't like relying on Microsofts good graces to continue to exist. Valve started Steam when Windows was considered an \"open\" operating system. You can install any program you want from anywhere with no approval process. Lately in Windows 8 Microsoft has started to close down the OS. Valve is concerned about its long term viability if the dominant OS is closed. Valve wants PC Gaming to remain on an open operating system, it's good for not only their business but for the whole industry.\n\n2) From a consumer standpoint Valve thinks it can provide a better experience for its customers if it has its own OS. Valve can fix a lot of issues that plague PC gaming (compatibility, drivers, ease of installation). An operating system designed for gaming will be inherently better for gaming than one that isn't.\n\n3) Another potential reason is because of PC industry trends. People aren't buying desktops anymore. Large PCs are starting to trend towards a niche market of gamers and a/v professionals. Regular consumers are preferring laptops, tablets and phones. Microsoft is beginning to target the smaller, touch based form factors which has a completely different set of priorities than a gaming computer. Essentially Valve is trying to keep PC Gaming in its current form alive.\n\nWhen it comes to market share, the existing Linux installation base doesn't really matter to Valve. Its best to think of SteamOS as a new console platform that happens to run on basically any machine imaginable. It already has 200+ games and supports streaming of games that aren't compatible with it. Compared to other consoles, that is a huge starting lineup of titles with a MASSIVE catalog of streaming titles. All in all its a pretty attractive proposition for Valve, consumers, developers and hardware manufacturers. It's pretty much a win for everyone but Microsoft (who kind of did this to themselves)."
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67t1ld | title ll of net neutrality. how could isp's benefit from having control of internet speed on certain websites and apps? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/67t1ld/eli5_title_ll_of_net_neutrality_how_could_isps/ | {
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"They would get the power to censor as they see fit (we don't want you to visit site X, so we'll just restrict all data flow to and from it) and they would get the opportunity to add extra fees - an example would be to limit data speeds to the point where streaming becomes impossible, and then they'd charge you extra to raise the limit so you can watch Netflix, or have Netflix pay them extra not to do that so their customers can access their service.\n\n"
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9dc72a | how do arms deals work? | Here in the UK there is seemingly never ending controversy about UK sales of arms to counties like Saudi Arabia. The news often talks about government involvement in these deals but presumably it's private companies delivering the arms so is it accurate to say "the UK sold arms" rather than, for example, BAE systems? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9dc72a/eli5_how_do_arms_deals_work/ | {
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"The deal is between the UK government and the Saudi government. Regulations prevent BAE Systems (or anybody else) from just selling dangerous weapons on a retail basis. They sell them to the UK government, deliver them in Saudi Arabia, and get paid by the UK government with money they got from the Saudi government.\n\nIf you just set up your own munitions factory and sell to anybody - you're a terrorist."
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1szbb2 | the egg grading system, ie are there grade b eggs? | Also, who decides egg grades and what are they based on? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1szbb2/the_egg_grading_system_ie_are_there_grade_b_eggs/ | {
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"\"A very fresh egg has a small air cell and receives a grade of AA. As the size of the air cell increases, and the quality of the egg decreases, the grade moves from AA to A to B. This provides a way of testing the age of an egg: as the air cell increases in size, the egg becomes less dense and the larger end of the egg will rise to increasingly shallower depths when the egg is placed in a bowl of water. A very old egg will actually float in the water and should not be eaten.\"\n\n_URL_0_",
"the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides a voluntary grading service for eggs. See [Haugh Units](_URL_0_). They established certain formal egg grade standards and weight classes. *Other countries have other standards.* That said, there are no government standards yet for some terms, like \"free range\" or \"organic\".\n\nGrade AA\n\n* whites are firm, yolks are round, shells are pristine.\n* are beautiful, and best for frying, where appearance is important.\n\nGrade A\n\n* everyday grocery eggs.\n\nGrade B eggs\n\n* are used for commercial baking and restaurants, rarely sold in retail.\n* white is thinner, yolk is flatter. shells are rough, dirty or both.\n\nGrade C eggs (lowest)\n\n* are used in manufacturing, never sold in retail\n* white is thinnest, yolk is flattest. shell is cracked.",
"As a kid, my dad joked that he wanted grade B eggs when he sent me to the grocery store on my bike. About fell out of his recliner when I came home with them. Literally have never seen them again since that day."
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1h1jrc | how were measuring systems created? why are less convenient methods still being used? | How do we came to the consensus that 1 pound/1 inch/1 second/1 gram was just that?
And why, when we have more convenient methods such as the metric system, are pounds and inches still being used? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1h1jrc/eli5how_were_measuring_systems_created_why_are/ | {
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"A lot of the imperial meausres are derived from what was practical..\n\nFor example in the middle ages, an Acre was the area that could be plowed in a day with a single yoke of an oxen...\n\nCheck out [this article](_URL_0_) on the history of measurement. ",
"A lot of them make sense in the context they were created. The best example is temperatures.\n\nCelsius and Fahrenheit are both based on water. Celsius uses 0 and 100 at the freezing and boiling points of pure water. Fahrenheit uses salt-water, or basically the ocean. Kelvin is basically using the Celsius scale (to make things easier to convert), but shifted so 0 degrees equaled absolute 0.\n\nConvenience depends on who you are. I'll admit the metric system is far more logical. However, try telling a person who spent their life, decades, to switch over to this new fangled system. Fine, the average fifty-year-old is a lost cause. Let's go for the kids!\n\n\nWell, ignoring parents who would feel the use of a \"foreign\" system forced on this kids is an indoctrination and attack on their way of life, these kids will go home to those who use the old system. Their older siblings use the old system. Their teachers largely use the old system outside of science classes. While not as bad, it is like trying to teach a kid to speak a foreign language and to use that as their main language. Let's say Japanese. However, said kid lives in Atlanta, Georgia. (Place your bets! Watch me get egg on my face when it turns out there is a large Japanese community in said city.)\n\n\nAnother way to do it is to phase it in. Speed limit signs? Start with MPH in big letters, but below it in KM/H. Then after so many years switch that. Then finally only KM/H. However... well... who has the money to waste on new speed limit signs? Multiply that by *everything*.\n\n\nAdd to it that there are people making the jump... oddly. I've seen people who decided they like metric's use of decimals over the screwy fraction system. Only they don't want to use metric. I've seen things measured like 4.63 feet. I've seen people going from using ounces (16 ounces per pound) to a decimal system there too.\n\n\nConcluding, basically there just isn't a pressing need to force everyone to change, the cost would be high, and in the U.S. people are beginning to convert to the love child of metric and imperial that combines some of the benefits (death to fractional units!) with the laziness of not having to learn a new system.\n\nTL;DR:\n\nThere was logical reasons behind each system when they were created. For most people it is more convenient personally to keep the old system than to learn the more logically convenient system."
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18vtrl | why do i look skinnier/more attractive when i wake up in the morning? | This has probably been answered before, but Why doI look skinnier/more attractive when I wake up in the morning? Something to do with you spine not being compressed by gravity all night? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18vtrl/eli5_why_do_i_look_skinniermore_attractive_when_i/ | {
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lc2eo | why bus fare (for example) keeps going up | When I was in junior high (in the early 90s), bus fare was 75 cents. Now it's $2.45.
Same goes for the cost of other small items like chocolate bars, canned drinks, newspapers, etc. The prices seem to go up by small increments every year.
Are we going to get to the point where a newspaper costs $5 and the bus costs $7.50? Is there a limit to this? 100 years from now, is a chocolate bar going to cost $50?
Why does this happen? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/lc2eo/eli5_why_bus_fare_for_example_keeps_going_up/ | {
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"One word: Inflation",
"Simple answer is inflation. The price of petrol is always going up, leading to everything that relies on it having to spend more. Buses are directly affected by this as they use petrol obviously. Other energy sources like gas are always increasing in price too, costing companies even more money. This leads them to increase prices to cover the higher costs. I believe the rate of these rises is the rate of inflation? To combat this workers are usually given a pay rise above the rate of inflation, but this also leads to the company having higher costs!",
"The reasons for inflation (which are hotly debated) can be, in my opinion, broken down into two main reasons. The first is that resources are more expensive. An example of this would be the dramatic increase in the price of oil. This cost is passed onto the consumer.\n\nThe second reason is the increase in *money supply*. The amount of money in circulation in a given economy increases year on year ([US Money Supply](_URL_0_)). If you consider an economy with only 100 dollars and in which you were getting paid 10 dollars. If the amount of dollars in this economy then rose to 110 dollars yet you were still getting paid 10 dollars, you are in effect getting paid relatively less.\n\n/drunk explanation",
"The price of the bus fare isn't going up. The price of the chocolate bar isn't going up. The price of the newspaper isn't going up.\n\nThe value of your dollar is going down.",
"This is simply inflation, or the devaluation of currency.\n\nThink of it this way: you are stuck on a remote island with 5 people. You form a small society and determine some form of currency (lets just say some rare sort of shell). You find 100 of these shells and distribute them evenly amongst the islanders (20 each). You use these shells to exchange goods, services etc. So, while some may be richer/poorer than others, the average shells per person is around 20. \n\nSo now lets say 5 more people are born on the island, doubling the population. Now the average amount of shells is only 10 per person. This is actually called *deflation*. Assuming that the islanders are getting the same goods and services, these exchanges will actually decrease in price while having the same value. So while a coconut on this island may have cost 2 shells when there was a population of 5, the price will likely decrease to 1 shell with a higher population and less money to go around.\n\n\nNow, you are probably wondering how this all relates to *inflation*. Well the thing is our government can print money as the population and economy grows. As they inject more money into the system (through government bonds) the prices for things will go up, as there is more currency to pass around. Most world governments want a little bit of inflation in order to promote trade. Think of it like this. If there was *deflation* then the value of your money would go up by simply holding onto it and not spending. The economy needs a bit of *inflation* so that people feel the need to spend. The problem arises when governments print money like crazy and completely devaluate thier own currency. (Look into Zimbabwe and post WWI germany)",
"One word: Inflation",
"Simple answer is inflation. The price of petrol is always going up, leading to everything that relies on it having to spend more. Buses are directly affected by this as they use petrol obviously. Other energy sources like gas are always increasing in price too, costing companies even more money. This leads them to increase prices to cover the higher costs. I believe the rate of these rises is the rate of inflation? To combat this workers are usually given a pay rise above the rate of inflation, but this also leads to the company having higher costs!",
"The reasons for inflation (which are hotly debated) can be, in my opinion, broken down into two main reasons. The first is that resources are more expensive. An example of this would be the dramatic increase in the price of oil. This cost is passed onto the consumer.\n\nThe second reason is the increase in *money supply*. The amount of money in circulation in a given economy increases year on year ([US Money Supply](_URL_0_)). If you consider an economy with only 100 dollars and in which you were getting paid 10 dollars. If the amount of dollars in this economy then rose to 110 dollars yet you were still getting paid 10 dollars, you are in effect getting paid relatively less.\n\n/drunk explanation",
"The price of the bus fare isn't going up. The price of the chocolate bar isn't going up. The price of the newspaper isn't going up.\n\nThe value of your dollar is going down.",
"This is simply inflation, or the devaluation of currency.\n\nThink of it this way: you are stuck on a remote island with 5 people. You form a small society and determine some form of currency (lets just say some rare sort of shell). You find 100 of these shells and distribute them evenly amongst the islanders (20 each). You use these shells to exchange goods, services etc. So, while some may be richer/poorer than others, the average shells per person is around 20. \n\nSo now lets say 5 more people are born on the island, doubling the population. Now the average amount of shells is only 10 per person. This is actually called *deflation*. Assuming that the islanders are getting the same goods and services, these exchanges will actually decrease in price while having the same value. So while a coconut on this island may have cost 2 shells when there was a population of 5, the price will likely decrease to 1 shell with a higher population and less money to go around.\n\n\nNow, you are probably wondering how this all relates to *inflation*. Well the thing is our government can print money as the population and economy grows. As they inject more money into the system (through government bonds) the prices for things will go up, as there is more currency to pass around. Most world governments want a little bit of inflation in order to promote trade. Think of it like this. If there was *deflation* then the value of your money would go up by simply holding onto it and not spending. The economy needs a bit of *inflation* so that people feel the need to spend. The problem arises when governments print money like crazy and completely devaluate thier own currency. (Look into Zimbabwe and post WWI germany)"
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35acww | is our perception of time relative to our mass? eg: an ants lifetime seems to them, the same amount of time as what our lifetime seems to us? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35acww/eli5_is_our_perception_of_time_relative_to_our/ | {
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"There's no particular evidence to support this idea, although since it regards perception, I don't know that you could absolutely rule it out. I'd just say 'Probably not.' There are, after all, humans more than twice the mass of other humans, and we don't see much reporting of this discrepancy. ",
"I see two ways of looking at this, I will explain both.\n\nFirst perception- If I lock someone in a room for there entire life and give them fish to eat only and don't tell them there is other food they will like fish. If I give them fish and have pictures of other food then they will desire that food and not like fish so much.\n\nSame thing with the ants. If the ants know that we live longer than them then their lives will seem shorter, but if they don't know then their life would seem normal.\n\nThis is similar to the question if we were all the size of spiders would we know it.\n\nSecond- The other side I see involves the theme of the movie *Interstellar* in which they age different on planets with different gravity. The ants however have the same force of gravity exerted on them as humans do so the comparative force would be the same, however, this theory suggests that, again, they know it or not."
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5g72jc | what is the difference between daydreaming and psychosis? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5g72jc/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_daydreaming/ | {
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"Daydreaming is mostly controlled, Psychosis is mostly uncontrolled. \n\nDaydreaming you still understand what is reality and what is not. Psychosis and other mental disturbances can make those distinctions much more difficult. \n"
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fmvf1a | how does a company know how many shares to make public? | How would a company that wants to go public decide how many shares to put out?
Why do some companies issue 100 million shares while others issue 1 billion shares?
How much percent wise does a company hold in 1 share? Why isn't there a fixed amount of shares for all companies to issue when going public? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fmvf1a/eli5_how_does_a_company_know_how_many_shares_to/ | {
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"How many shares to make.public is based on what a company wants their stock price to be. \n\nSo the two biggest reasons that different companies have different numbers of shares when going public is that 1) not all companies have the same valuation and 2) some companies want different levels of liquidity than others. \n\nSome companies don't want it to be easy to buy or sell their stock. They want the stock price to remain stable, they don't want people trading it very often, and sometimes they really don't want individual investors to have any, as opposed to institutional investors. Also, remember that the corporation is accountable to shareholders, and shareholders get to vote on things, and the company may not want to have to answer to random jackasses who bought stock. So, they make it too expensive for regular trading. BRK.A, Warren Buffett's firm, costs something like $300,000 *per share*.\n\nSo let's say you think your company is worth $5 billion and you want your stock price to be about $100 per share. You'd issue 50 million shares of stock at $100 a piece. But what if you want your stock to be $500 per share to cut down the trading volatility? Then you'd only issue 10 million shares. \n\nAs far as how many to keep, generally the founder is going to keep at least 51% so they can still be in control of the company. Some founders are playing for the long term and are only going public to raise funds for their company. They'll only release as many shares as it takes to raise the amount of money they think their company needs. Some founders just want to cash in so they'll release as much as they think the market will buy and take the payout."
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816icz | with bee populations being decimated why haven't we seen major shortages of any produce? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/816icz/eli5_with_bee_populations_being_decimated_why/ | {
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"Simply put, it takes a while for that to have a noticeable effect. Consider the episode of *The Simpsons* with the Ribwich. In the context of the episode, eventually Krusty Burger has to stop selling it because the critter they were processing to make it went extinct. There are a lot of plants that are pollinated by bees, and many are found in multiple locations.",
"Because they're not collapsing.\n\nThe amount of bee commercial honey bee colonies in the US has increased from 2.3 million in 2008 to 2.8 million in 2016. So, pollination is fine.\n\nThat's not to say there aren't issues. Even with CCD receding, losses remain high. But because we're dealing with bees, and new colony can be created in less than a year, the number remains stable. This however results in greater costs for bee keepers. The cause of the losses is varied, ranging from parasites to pesticides to loss of good flowers.\n\n_URL_0_",
"One thing people never speak of is the fact that bees are actually invasive species to America and there are other insects that pollinate plants as well. In fact one could argue that bees are bad due to the fact that they compete with and often crowd out native pollinaters due the fact that they are raised and protected on farms in mass numbers compared to other local pollinators.\n\nAdditional note: my use of \"bees\" is obviously horriffically simplified. I am aware of this but I feel that the specifics of it were not important to my overall point that the imported bees have upset the natural balance of pollinators. Yes there are native bees to America but the most common bee used for honey is now bees that were not native to America and this has changed the landscape of pollinating insects in many areas of America.",
"Because the bees that are suffering are the wild honey bees, like bumblebees. NOT the commercial European honey bees that we use to pollinate plants on big grow fields.",
"It's not the general bee population that's collapsing, it was the wild bee population that collapsed. Commercial beekeeping is what keeps them alive at this point. ",
"A lot of farmers rent bees so they know their crops will get pollinated. My neighbor runs a bee business. Transports them south to work in the winter, brings them back north in the summer. \nMy friend owns an orchard and they rent bees during flowering season. It is a business and they make sure they have enough bees to do the job. \nIn China there was a bee shortage and they pollinated by hand which resulted in a much higher yield (because bees are inefficient) but also a higher cost.\nThis article is from several years ago. My understanding is that return of the bees and higher wages mean that they have gone back to natural pollination. _URL_0_",
"Bees are not the only pollinators. Mosquitoes, butterflies, moths and even flies among other insects also pollinate. It's also not all bees. Certain bee species are declining, but not all are affected.",
"Becsuse the CCD apocalypse was a fad. Really the European Honeybee we use had a brief decline and then rebounded. Also many native bee species were just fine.\n\nIt's a sign of the dangerous of removing genetic diversity, but it wasn't the end of days like many people thought it would be.",
"Because 9/10 are still alive?",
"Ironically I watched the film theory for bee movie that was made recently and learned something about bees.\n\nWe often think honeybees are the sole pollinators but there are many other species of bees, as well as beetles, moths, and butterflies can all act as pollinators.\n\nIn the video it's mentioned there are some studies talking about how the environment would be better without honeybees.\n\n_URL_0_",
"My father since I was a child till my early 20's owned bees. I often helped him out with them. There are a few deases that kill them and will kill your whole colony. My father got out of bee keeping because his colonies kept dieing on him and it was a hobby for him. The money back then wasn't the best but it supported the hobby at least. Now there is a documentary on Netflix called rotten that will get you up to speed on what's the true issue of the industry. With the organic craze honey consumption had increased because people see sweetened products with honey is healthier than cane or vorn sugar but really sugar is sugar. The demand has increased larger than supply so people started cutting honey with maple syrup. I remember when the story of a major company got caught cutting honey with chineese honey from my father's beekeeping magazines. Check out rotten on Netflix I beleive it's episode 1 as it does a good job explaining it. When a country starts producing more honey than their bee population can sustain more than likely they are cutting it with sugar. \n\nJust a side thought incase people wonder you don't water down honey. You add some water for fluidity but there is a art/science for it. This was a major juding point when you send your honey to the county fair for judging.",
"The 1st episode of Rotten in Netflix goes into detail about answering this question. A quick and short answer is because the Chinese are adulterating honey with rice syrup. Unlike sugar and corn syrup scientist can’t detect it in honey. ",
"It depends on what you mean by decimated. While there are certainly declines of natives (which btw some are much better pollinators than honies, it’s not like the populations are on the brink. There is one bumble bee( for America) on the IUCN red list of endangered species.",
"There is a documentary on Netflix called Rotten. One episode talks about honey and how a lot of it is imported from China and cut with rice syrups or similar. \n\nThis may also explain why there is no shortage of “honey”. ",
"There is an episode of Rotten on Netflix that describes exactly this :\n\nRotten episode 5. Milk Money\n_URL_0_ \n\nHoney production is nearly flat, but consumption is way up. Studies account for the disparity with counterfeit honey from Asia. Asian producers mix a small amount of honey with lesser sugars, derived from rice or sugar cane and sell it as 100% honey.\n\nIt is a big enough problem that there is an arms race between the counterfeiters to produce undetectable fake honey and trade regulators to devise a test to identify fake honey.\n\nThis and the rest of the series are really high quality. I recommend it to anyone with any interest. ",
"Because its more fear mongering and a push by \"organic\" fans and farmers. Our food supply has been under attack for thousands of years by insects and ever year a new insect will emerge as the top threat to wipe out a large chunk of production. Every year farmers have to worry about the new insect or in this case the damage done to bee populations. Evolution happens whether you use modern chemicals or 1000 year old practices. The difference is modern chemicals allows far more ways to combat it.",
"Because the honey you eat isn’t really honey. It’s mostly synthetic honey from China mixed with real honey from around the rest of the world.\nEdit: Buy Local Honey\n\nThere’s also a tv show on Netflix called “Rotten” \nand the first episode explains a lot about this",
"So this is a case of an environmental issue being simplified for the general public to understand. \n\nSo first of all, what we have to know is that produce is almost always pollinated by the domesticated honey bee, which came from the European honey bee- Apis mellifera. Now these bees are one of 20,000 or so bee species, keep this in mind for a bit later.\n\nAt one point back around 2006, domesticated honey bee farmers were seeing something odd. They were seeing massive die offs in their hives, and hives collapsing. They called it Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD.\n\nNow we do have to keep in mind that some collapse is normal. Winter loss is especially large, due to the stress that winter causes. New colonies can be made by making/buying new queens and splitting colonies- I'm not a bee keeper, so I don't know the details here. \n\nSo the statistics out there are a little confusing, because there is annual loss rate and winter loss rate. Winter loss is when the most happens, as mentioned. It gets even more confusing, because I can't find data for annual loss percentages before 2010. I can only find winter loss rate. Oh, I'm taking about the US only.\n\nSo, winter loss rate in 2006-2007 was about 32%. An acceptable rate would be around 15%. This got higher in 2007-2008 at around 36%. This has gone down since then, but some years have been better than others. Winter loss in 2014-2015 was about 22% or so, but in 2015-2016 it was about 28%. Annual loss peaked 2012-2013 at around 45%. Last I heard, in 2016-2017 it was 33%.\n\nKeep in mind not all of that is from Colony Collapse Disorder. Some are due to other things, like a queen dying, or other things. One of the key symptoms of CCD is that there is a live queen left. The other two are a capped brood and a food storage of honey and bee pollen. A capped brood just means that their are larvae and pupae in capped honeycomb cells. Usually the hive takes care of these, and won't leave until they have metamorphosised into adult bees. \n\nOkay so now that all the stats are out of the way, why did this happen? That's a tough question. Environment issues are almost NEVER one thing, keep that in mind when you read stuff about the environment. So some people might have heard about parasites, pesticides, and diseases. Which one is right? Probably all of them. \n\nVarroa mites not only weaken bees by sucking their hemolymph- basically invertebrate blood- but they also carry diseases, like deformed wing virus. That name means exactly what it says too- the bees come out of their pupae with tiny, malformed wings and can't fly. They also don't really eat if they are sick too, which leads to their death. There's also other parasites, like trachea mites, that might cause issues.\n\nSo where do pesticides come in? Well neonicotinoids were shown to stress bees in a lab setting. Stressed bees, and really animals including humans, are more susceptible to diseases and parasites. This is... Kinda controversial though, because some argue the lab concentrations were too high and bees in the field would never see those concentrations unless they were directly sprayed... \n\nAnother factor that may play a role is travel. So beekeepers travel with their bees to reach all sorts of crops. They move from almonds in California, to blueberries in Maine and everything in between. When the bees are in transit, they eat sugar syrup. It's thought that this syrup doesn't have the right nutrient balance for them, and may stress them too. \n\nIt's interesting to note that Australia did not see massive bee colony decline. They don't have Varroa mites, but they do have neonicotinoids. Just an interesting bit, I don't know enough about the relationship to say much more.\n\nAnywho, varroa mites don't like high temperatures, and can be killed by raising the hive temperature to over 100 F, but the bees just continue to work. So, we're figuring out ways to solve this issue. Some researchers and organizations say bee populations are growing, though some others question that... The decline numbers are going down though!\n\nBUT. What about those other bees? The 19,999 or so other species? Well, some of them are doing alright, others, not so much. I know the rusty spotted bumblebee, which exists near me, is Critically Endangered. \n\nThe main issue I've heard they face is habitat loss. Corn and wheat are wind pollinated, and soybeans are self pollinated, so bees don't really visit those flowers. Unfortunately, that means the fields we have of them take up area that could be food for bees, like wild flowers and trees. Neonicotinoids may also play a role in this. Varroa mites have also spread from honey bees to bumblebees, so... That might be an issue too.\n\nSo some species in Hawaii are also endangered, though island species have their own set of problems, like being susceptible to diseases, having a smaller, more sensitive habitat, and invasive species. I haven't followed their issues as much.\n\nFun facts, some flies and beetles look like bees! Woo Batesian mimicry!\n\nTl;Dr The domesticated honey bee is showing signs of recovering from Colony Collapse Disorder, but some wild bee species are seeing declines.\n\nOh if you want sources, just ask! I'm on mobile so it gets messy with links everywhere. I do think the stats source is important though, so here's that one!\n_URL_0_\n\nEdit: I removed an extra \"are\" in the part about the Hawaiian bees. Sorry!",
"Bees aren't the only pollinators there are plenty of species that pollinate other than bees ",
"Because bees are an invasive species in America and our ecosystem is not reliant on them to pollinate. [This Film Theory episode](_URL_0_) does a pretty good job at explaining it in a way anyone can understand with some added humor for good measure.\n\nThe short of it is bees are not native species to the Americas and are not the only bugs that pollinate plants here. For millions of years plants did just fine without them. \n\nIts basically a lie that bees are needed for plants (atleast in north and south america, they are native to europe so im sure they are more important there), hundreds of other insect species can do and have pollinated plants long before bees came around. \n\n",
"Wild honey bees are declining in numbers. In recent years , here in Ohio, the bumblebee, wasp, and yellow jacket population has risen. Plants are getting pollinated , just commercial handlers are making the honey. I don't really think any honey we would eat is natural anyways, it's all farmed.",
"Butterflies and flies and other bugs also help our bee friends out in the huge job of pollinating too. So the little guys arent alone ^_^",
"I didn't see it posted yet but I may not have scrolled far enough. A little nit-picking, but decimate means to reduce by 1/10th specifically.",
"While the wild bee population has been hit worse than commercial bees, beekeepers have seen a dramatic decrease in their bee numbers. For several of them, they can no longer stay in the black, so they use their colonies pollinate orchards for extra cash. \n\nAs far as honey goes, imported honey as well as artificial honey make up a huge part of the market. In fact, theres a pretty good chance that the \"pure honey\" that you've bought in store wasn't made by bees, but in a lab. On top of this, pressure from China, who illegally imports honey and undercuts American honey farmers, has also led to a significant decrease in real honey. \n\nHere's a couple of sources about the illegal imports:\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_2_\n\nIn addition, I would recommend that you watch the episode about honey on the documentary \"Rotten\" which is on Netflix.\n\nEdit: I just realized OP was talking about vegetables. ",
"Because honey bees aren't the only [polinators](_URL_0_) out there! I wonder how well posting a Film Theory video will go..."
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"https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/hsi-chicago-seizes-nearly-60-tons-honey-illegally-imported-china",
"http://www.craiggoodwin.com/year-of-plenty/2010/09/03/feds-bust-chinese-honey-smuggling-ring-has-ties-to-pacific-northwest",
"https://modernfarmer.com/2015/02/feds-seize-2-million-worth-illegal-chinese-honey/"
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4lphf1 | if a baby is born on the iis, and the mother and father are astronauts/cosmonauts from different countries (usa+russia), what is the citizenship of the baby? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lphf1/eli5_if_a_baby_is_born_on_the_iis_and_the_mother/ | {
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"Citizenship is determined by the citizenship of the parents rather than the location. A person born in Germany to two English parents would get English citizenship by birth. So in your example the baby would have duel US + Russian Citizenship."
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76skd7 | what causes chromosome abnormalities? | Besides smoking, drinking, drugs. What are other reasons of errors in cell division, and what causes it to happen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76skd7/eli5_what_causes_chromosome_abnormalities/ | {
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"There are lots, but one *major* issue that contributes to many cancers is recombination. \n\nNormally recombination isn't really a bad thing, and gives us genetic diversity. When your cells are dividing to make sperm or eggs, the chromosome you have from both mom and dad line up. Because they are structurally similar, it is possible for them to \"swap\" segments, [like this](_URL_0_). This means you could pass on one of your dad's chromosomes, but with your mom's \"blue eyes\" gene inside of it. \n\nThe problem comes in when the swap doesn't work very neatly. Instead of having Chromosome 9 swap with another Chromosome 9, it might swap with Chromosome 22. Sometimes this is fine because the DNA is *still there*, but in different places. However, it often turns out that DNA is lost, or gets coupled to another segment of DNA that makes it inappropriately active."
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1e6n75 | everyone in the world raises their arms/fists to represent success and victory. why is that? | Every culture (to my knowledge), every country, and every civilization that all developed independently of eachother, and yet everyone raises their fists or arms up in the air to proclaim 'yes!' or 'victory!'.
Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1e6n75/eli5_everyone_in_the_world_raises_their_armsfists/ | {
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"It is just a human reaction. Recently, saw a video on TEd talks about body language. It said there was a study done and when someone who was blind and has always been blind won a challenge they raised thier hands up in the air, in victory. Even people who have never seen that done, react that way.",
"I'm just assuming, in the same way a hug is used because it shows vulnerability so therefor trust, that raising fists makes the person appear more vulnerable, as their chest is an easier target. \nAlso it makes them look bigger. \nTherefor it is kinda intimidating/ look at me I'm so powerful I can stand in a vulnerable pose like this and still not be killed?",
"Like you're five: This is a human universal emotional expression for pride. \n\nTo go a bit beyond the 5-year-old level: There are many universal human expressions of facial features (see work by [Paul Ekman](_URL_2_)), and it has recently been established by Jessica Tracy and colleagues that shame and pride have similarly universal innate expressions. [Here's an awesome article about blind athletes in the paralympics making the same expressions as sighted people make](_URL_0_). Jessica Tracy is the leading authority in this area, and you can find her lab page [here](_URL_1_). ",
"It's an important part of our evolutionary communication systems. However, culturally it isn't always accepted. For example, in Japan performing this motion in a show of victory is considered unsportsmanlike. However, being a fan it is okay to do so. So there certainly can be a cultural override.",
"There is a really awesome TED talk that is all about body language and how our own body language affects ourselves. In the beginning she talks about how across all cultures throw their hands in the air to signify victory because making our body language bigger releases endorphins etc. Totally worth the watch. \n\n_URL_0_",
"It's not just humans. Our closest biological relatives seem to do it as well. I would venture a guess that it is an instinctual reaction of appearing larger than your opponent, as seen in the animal kingdom where the alpha stands tall and the beta cowers. I'm not a behavior scientist nor biologist but it seems to make sense. ",
"When you raise your arms, it makes you \"taller\" than others and the center of attraction. Another thing I noticed is that it it makes you feel more opened up and relaxed than with your arms down. ",
"You just did something great and want to draw attention to it. When you're ashamed of something or trying to hide, you slouch and draw less attention to yourself. \n\nHiding one's face while laughing at the misfortune of others is another global expression. "
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"https://www.paulekman.com/"
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"http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html"
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47w4or | slow charge vs fast charge overnight | So is it better to slow charge a smart phone (nex 6p) overnight with a low amp charger (750 mah), vs plugging it in to the included fast charger(I think it's 3amps)?
Info:
I have a cheap charger that's only 750mah and it obviously takes FOREVER to charge my phone to full. Before going to bed I imagine the slow trickle to full is healthier than blasting the battery with the higher amp charger it comes with. Is this true? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/47w4or/eli5_slow_charge_vs_fast_charge_overnight/ | {
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"It doesn't matter. It automatically regulates power supply to prevent anything from damaging the battery; for instance, when the phone reaches 100% it stops charging, and only starts charging when it falls below like 98%-95%."
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4l24o1 | what is the significance of splitting an atom, and how does it make nuclear weapons so much more devastating than conventional ones? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4l24o1/eli5what_is_the_significance_of_splitting_an_atom/ | {
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"When you \"split\" an atom, what you're doing is making the big, heavy atom into two lighter ones. \nThe curious thing is that the two lighter ones combined weigh less than the original. \nWhere did the mass go? \nIt went into E=mc^2 \n\nNow, keep in mind that c is a *huge* number. It's the speed of light. Which is really fast. \n\nEven a little tiny mass converted directly into energy yields a tremendous amount of energy. \n\nIn \"conventional\" explosives, you put some energy into making the molecules that decompose when they explode, and you're not getting anywhere near the speed of light in those equations. ",
"A nuclear reaction converts some amount of matter into energy. And it turns out that it takes an immense amount of energy to make even a little bit of matter. \n\nThe amount of energy \"bound up\" in a gram of matter is basically equivalent to the amount of energy released in an explosion of 21,000 tons of TNT.\n\nConventional explosions (like TNT) rely on energy stored in chemical bonds between atoms. These bonds can only hold relatively tiny amounts of energy. ",
"Just want to point out that you're asking a question that has a flip side to it. Splitting an atom is called nuclear fission. Combining atoms is called nuclear fusion.\n\nFusion bombs are much more powerful than fission bombs, and indeed require a fission reaction to achieve the temperatures required to set off the fusion reaction (which is, by the way, the reason we don't have fusion power plants, and also the reason \"cold fusion\" is a sort of holy grail of physics).\n\nThe simplest type of fusion reaction combines two hydrogen atoms into one helium atom.\n\nI'm not a physicist, so I can't explain why that's so much more powerful than fusion, but I thought it was worth mentioning."
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1slbze | how do solid state devices store information | I Understand how HDDs work along with CD's, DVD's, and Floppy disks, but how do things like flash drives and SSDs store memory? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1slbze/eli5how_do_solid_state_devices_store_information/ | {
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"[This](_URL_0_) pretty much explains it."
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1pjcwb | if george washington warned us about the power of parties, how was he imagining the government to work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pjcwb/eli5if_george_washington_warned_us_about_the/ | {
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"A multiple party system is fine. The more groups there are, the more they have to work together as a team to meet the majority set in the rules and pass a law. Thus, the things that get passed are generally what the majority approves of.\n\nA two party system leads to black-or-white, zero sum thinking. If my team didn't win, then we lost. All ideas are boiled down to three options: agree with group A, with group B, or just don't participate because you don't agree with either. That leads to us vs. them mentalities, or voter apathy.\n\nWashington's famous quote about this starts: \"The alternate domination of one faction over another\". He's really saying when two parties trade off, alternating running a country, this is a Bad Thing. ",
"He was imagining that the opposing parties would end up becoming close-minded, ignorant and constantly at each other's throats. He imagined it would lead to children being indoctrinated by their parents into political views tied with race and religion, e.g.\n\n > \"if you're a good Christian surely you will vote Republican! Those other guys are baby killers!\"\n\nor\n\n > \"Vote for Democrats, they're the side that supports minorities! You're not a racist/homophobe are you?\"\n\nIn other words, George Washington was psychic and saw the bullshit start right before his eyes.",
"Let's not pretend that any founding father alive in the 1700s could have any possible idea what politics are like today with professional corporate lobbyists, mass media campaigns for elections, etc. They didn't have some magic 8 ball, they didn't somehow incredibly predict every possible future event the country's government could possibly face. They did a pretty good job throwing together a form of government with some checks and balances that was pretty robust under very difficult circumstances (pending war with Britain). Let's not pretend like it was fucking magical, and worship it like a deity. It was created by men, it's not infallible and although it's pretty darn good, if we need to tweak it to adapt to the challenges and political gridlock this country is now facing, then by all means let's do so.",
"A lot of the posts in this thread make good points, but they don't really address what George Washington thought, which was your question.\n\nIf you want more historically accurate responses, I'd recommend posting this question in /r/AskHistorians.",
"Washington was a very great man but not infallible.\n\nIf he and the other Founding Fathers hated political parties as much as a modern fashionably cynical people really believe they did they would have written that hate into the constitution.\n\nIt's difficult to run something so large and with so many responsibilities as a government without people starting and joining formal organizations related to the process. Washington didn't understand that, and back then many people didn't because American democracy was so new and different, and now it's popular for people to say they don't like political parties despite voting for one of the parties about 90% of the time.\n\nSource: polisci/history major and political activist.",
"Probably unpopular to say, but... Considering that George Washington ran unopposed for both of his elections, maybe he's not the best guy to ask how to run a Democracy? It's easy to say \"no parties\" when there's nobody running against you. North Korea has closer-fought elections than George Washington did, for crying out loud.",
"He imagined intellectual people to be elected to office",
"He believed each candidate would self-finance, they would run on their personal record, and they'd vote their conscious on every issue. Coalitions were likely to form over topics (trade, slavery, banking, etc) but they wouldn't require the trade protectionists people to also be pro-slavery. \n\nIt was naive, though. This was shown almost immediately following his address. ",
"Honest answer - Ignorantly. These guys weren't fortune tellers that could predict the future. They did the best that they could for their time. They often got as much right as they got wrong. ",
"Unless he imagined a democracy in which we governed by rotating committees and/or townhall votes, with a very decentralized government, he was just wrong about this. ",
"It's worth remembering that at that time communication across long distances was much more difficult, and the population was far smaller. This meant that you were likely to know much more about the local candidates than about a national party. In that environment, it's feasible to say voters should be making their choice based on sending a reasonable man who can represent his community, rather than basing the choice on affiliation with a distant party. \n\nThese days, with national media being the typical source of political information, party identification is often the most salient piece of information a voter has about their local candidates. Most voters will have heard much more from people like Obama, Boehner, Romney, etc. than from the local representatives they're choosing between. In that environment parties are a good way of informing the voters which set of beliefs a candidate identifies with. Of course, this would be more effective in a multiparty system with a parliament, but it's still better than picking with no idea who your candidates are.",
"Well, that's the thing: they imagined the government to work EXACTLY how it is now--Shutdown included!\n\nGoing back to Madison's \"Federalist 10,\" you can do one of two things with political parties (aka Factions): remove their causes or control their effects. American Democracy, by way of the Constitution, chose to control the effects.\n\nHow? Through checks and balances and the separation of powers.\n\nThe idea was all these political parties or interest groups (factions) would all fight. More conflict, less compromise. Intuitively, you might think that, \"well, this is a democracy, the majority has to win.\" This is not what the Framers had in mind. In fact, the idea was to slow down the process and force discussion to prevent a tyranny of the majority. And if you think your party or faction is going to win that fight, you're gonna need to make it through these different branches of government.\n\nIf the U.S. was designed to have a single representative, lawmaking body (a unicameral legislature), then one can assume that a 50%+1 majority could dominate policymaking. And assume the Framers did:\n\nThe created a bicameral, two-level legislative branch--the House of Representatives and the Senate. \n\nI'll save the talk about checks and balances for later and focus on the Framers' intentions, since Washington was ostensibly part of this club...\n\nWhen the Constitution was drafted, Senators were not directly elected. The states decided who would occupy that chamber. Oh, and let's not forget that today, even the President isn't truly directly elected...states make their own rules regarding their allotment of electoral votes, but that's another story. And finally, a reminder that the Supreme Court is staffed by, that's right, unelected Judges. \n\nWhat does this mean? It means that on paper, in 1787, only ONE of the Four branches of Government (House/Senate/President/Supreme Court) was elected DIRECTLY by the people. \n\nSo its 1788, and you want to pass a law that reflects your Faction's interests. Good luck. It needs to make it through not only the House of Reps, where you would start this process, but then through the Senate. Have fun with that. Those guys are the the elder statesmen, and they care about their own states. And the President? \n\nTL;DR The U.S. government is purposefully slow and inefficient because the Framers did not trust the average person to make laws.",
"How he imagined government to work is irrelevant, because the government he helped to found was not designed to scale up to what we have today. \n\nIn his time it took days or weeks for messages, goods or people to get from one town to another. Messages now are instantaneous, goods can get anywhere in the continental U.S. within a day or two. In his time, and for decades after, it took months to travel cross-country, and the people you started the journey with may not the same ones you ended with (due to deaths and births along the way). Today one can travel 3000 miles in a single day. \n\nThe system of government he envisioned and helped create, was designed around participation by white male landowning slave-owning citizens, for whom politics was not their fulltime profession, who did not have the support of a staff of fulltime career political advisors, all to represent and govern tens of thousands of people.\n\nRegardless of any theoretical flexibility to modify and update the system of government, that system, created in that time, does not scale to a nation of 400 million+ people spread across what we now have as the United States. \n\nAsking about George Washington's intent around political parties is possibly an interesting bit of historical background, better answered by an historian (as noted [here](_URL_0_)). If that's the purpose of your question, sorry for my tangent here. But if the purpose of your question is \"how can we get our current political party system back to how The Founders intended it to be\", the answer is \"that's likely not a relevant question to ask in the first place, as it's apples and oranges, on a par with asking a person from the 18th century how they washed their clothes and then using that information to design a better laundromat for downtown Chicago\".",
"Basically, as others have stated, Washington and the other Founders initially saw America as being a republic ran by unaffiliated individuals who would run and campaign using their own wealth. It is important to note that for Federal positions at this time, only members of the House of Representatives were directly elected by voters of their state, Senators were selected by state officials and the president was selected purely by the electors of the electoral college. \n\nFor a deeper explanation on the Founder's views of factions, one should look at Madison's Federalist No. 10 (_URL_0_). In short, they viewed factions as being potentially destabilizing and destructive to America, due in part to the structure of how America was being established (it should be noted that the Federalist papers were written when we were still debating having The Constitution). Madison argued that in a republic, majority factions could cause problems, hence why the Federalists wanted a larger government with more members, they saw it as a way for keeping checks on the larger power or faction. \n\nThe most important thing to take away is though that the Founders saw factions not in the way we see political parties today, but more in terms of regional and state blocs. Around this time, we were still using the Articles of Confederation, which had a very weak central government. At the same times the states were quite strong and basically ran as their own independent nations. The main concern was that one region or state would gain so much power and influence as to utterly dominate the others. Their main belief in the check on factions was that as America grew larger, more states would balance each other out (again because only the HOR was directly elected).\n\nPolitical parties as we know them are the result of the vote being expanded to more and more people, and is reflective of the organization needed to create a broader organization to elect people of a similar view.\n\nOne final note to think about is that Madison, Washington and the others argued against factions, yet saw the rise of what could be considered the first two political parties in America, the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. These groups were arguing over weather the constitution should be ratified or not. \n\nTL;DR: Washington and others saw the expansion of more states in America as the way to check factions since \"parties\" at this time more were focused on regional or state blocs. They didn't see parties as we see them since America at the time was run entirely by a wealthy elite and the only voters were a wealthy elite. Parties as we see them now a-days are modern constructs that emerged as a result of the expansion of the vote. ",
"The problem wasn't necessarily parties, but factionalism. Read Federalist 10.",
"Maybe he saw this happening:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Just read the Constitution, that's it. People vote for an individual who represents the voter's interest in the government. What part of that requires parties? \n\nSee the difference? Presently we have parties telling the \"representatives\" how to \"represent\" the voters, the voters are almost always voting for a party, not a person. \n\nWashington, et al, believed that the representatives would actually give two fucks about their constituents; with parties, the representatives just obey the parties irrespective of what voters say. Presently we see single digit approval ratings of Congress but they stay in power, I bet, because people will continue to vote for parties instead of people. \n\nThe system is completely broken and the Constitution is in abeyance. ",
"What if we voted for a person not because of any affiliation they have to any organization but because of the things that they have done for their community and the ideas they have about how to further help the community. Parties are supposed to be an easy way to tell, but will always degenerate into what we see today. \n\nCampaigns are rarely about ideas and what will happen if they win but rather attacks about what the other person might intend to do. \n\nIf people voted for people based on their ideas then we might ahve a better country. Hold people accountable to the ideas they express after they are elected. Or else you are useless as a citizen . ",
"Politics was never meant to me a full-time career. ",
"That we'd vote for people on the issues and their policies and not blindly on parties like herded sheep?",
"The top comment is false. Washington (though Hamilton wrote the speech) was interested in something closer to the system he started his term with, no openly declared parties. Grouping together for issues is a part of the political process, Washington wasn't naive, he just didn't want standing party mechanisms which he saw as malicious. \n\nHe hoped that a system of notables (local elites) from around the country would be elected and speak for the local interest. Even though proto-parties where being formed then, they were not very powerful or pervasive. Most issues still came down to the conscience of the elected official. Plus, compared to now, the money and pervasive power in being a Congressman really wasn't there back then, so they had much less reason to not vote their conscience.",
"Damn, /r/theoryofreddit would have a field day with this one. Top voted comment doesn't answer anything.\n\nThe real answer about how political parties were imagined to work, starts in Federalist #51:\n\n > Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? \n\nHere Madison explains that factions and political parties are so powerful, that the only thing that way to stop them is to fight fire with fire (ambition vs ambition). While many founders were very aware of all the issues with special interest groups and political parties, ultimately they decided that the most effective way to deal with this inevitable encroachment was not to write down a bunch of rules on a piece of paper, but to design a system where factions, political parties, and other concentrations of ambition can only be limited by an opposing party/faction/ambition.\n\nWashington acknowledges this and even tacitly agrees! (From his [Farewell Address](_URL_0_))\n\n > There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party.\n\nBut his point is that we don't need to worry too much about this though, because this tribalistic team mentality thing is really in our human nature.\n\n > From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose.\n\n**TL:DR Basically, he is saying \"Guys, we all agree we need political parties, but political parties can get out of control and get super petty. So in order to prevent that, we all just need to watch ourselves**\n\nOr, a more poetic form:\n\n > And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, **it demands a uniform vigilance** to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.\n\nBasically what he is imagining is a pre Gingrich era, where political parties aren't the uber-tribalistic, hyper-partisan \"my team vs your team\" things that they are now.\n\nIf you don't know how Speaker Gingrich changed Washington ([Starter Here](_URL_1_)), the gist is that he centralized power in the Speaker's office, forced Members to spend less time getting to know each other in Washington, and revved up the idea that the sole purpose of the political party is to defeat the other guy (rather than, you know, serve the country).\n\nUltimately this leads to an environment where political leaders are saying their biggest single agenda item isn't any particular policy that helps people, but \"defeating President Obama.\"\n\nSo Washington accepts tribalism and he accepts partisanship, he just warns us not to take the path of \"uber\" and \"hyper\" that we're on right now.",
"Several people replied to my comment on how to maybe fix our system. Ill do some explaining.\n\nSo there are a couple of cool options that we have but Ill highlight, what I think, in my opinion are the strongest 2. \n\n1. One of the biggest problems that our fucking campaigns have is the amount of money that goes into them. And more importantly the money that goes into the Big 2 (Dem and Reps). There's no goddamn way Ralph Nader will ever be president but because there is just not enough money in the Green Party to campaign against the Big 2, regardless of how smart the guy is. Now people are probably going to comment on this about super-pacs and shit and how they are ruining our system. Thats just categorically false. The root of the monetary issue, is that it facilitates a political environment where 2 parties dominate. Why specifically 2? Because most issues in politics are binary. SO HOW DO WE SPREAD THE MONEY AROUND. A great idea is to just inflate the fuck out of the system with political credits. These would be credits that have a dollar value, but can only be spent on political campaigns. These would be the only funding campaigns had. Each person regardless of social, political, economic etc. standing would have X amount of dollars to spend on Y amount of candidates. So if Nader is running now and people actually like him, they can donate all of their political credit to him so hell have enough money to run a successful campaign. There are kinks? How the fuck would we fund this? How much credit do we give everyone? Is it ethical to have like some sort of bastardized democracy that is EXPLICITLY based off of money? Meh you can think about it. \n\n2. We already talked about how the root issue is a bi-partisan system. One thing that contributes to this are the primaries. Many of which you can only vote either democrat or republican, and you can only vote for one person. AND its a FIRST PAST THE POST SYSTEM, meaning the person with the most votes wins outright...so if 49 people vote one way and 51 the other, 49% of the constituency is left out to dry. What the fuck. Representative democracy my ass. So how do you fix this. One way is to have your votes elastically attached to your favorite candidates by rank. So you could vote for candidates A,B,C all the way to Z, in that order. This would mean if A loses then B gets your vote, is B loses then C gets your vote. So you have a system with far greater representation of the reality, where in the current system its more like: You vote for A, A loses, So Z wins...and now youre fucked. \n\nFeel free to comment/question/correct. \nEDITS: My grammar sucks. \nSource: National Constitution Team Champion",
"He believed in a system where the representative served the will of the people that elected him instead of doing what the \"party\" wanted. ",
"The fact that he was wary of the power of parties doesn't mean that he felt they had to be completely excluded, only that they shouldn't grow too large, powerful, or exclusive. There needs to be room for more parties, and \"what party are you with\" should matter less.\n\nIt's worth noting that, in Washington's day, politics was an as-needed thing; it was carried out largely by individuals who had other responsibilities, and who didn't make their living at it. Career politicians started happening at a point that is, roughly speaking, midway between Washington's time and ours (closer to his, but not by more than a decade or two) (**Edit:** I was grossly off, there; it's more like two thirds of the way back from our time to Washington's, but still well outside of his lifetime).\n\n\"Boss\" Tweed was an early career politician. He's the one you see represented in Gangs of New York, the bearded head of Tammany Hall.",
"Along with James Madison and the rest of the framers, they designed the government to be run by Congress and their representative lawmaking powers. Madison planned on the representatives of both houses actually representing their constituents ideas and voices rather than the current \"me me me\" model of congress.",
"I reckon he though men with common sense and a common goal could work together without bickering like children.\n\nBoy was he wrong.",
"I doubt any of you will see this because I am so late to the game but James Madison wrote about this in the Federalist Papers. Even though he and Washington thought political parties were bad they knew it was unstoppable. However they also said that there would be enough views to balance things out. This idea is called pluralism. ",
"Here's the thing... HE DID NOT HAVE AN ANSWER.\n\nThe founding fathers are great men. We should respect and revere them, but never think they were anything more than humans with flaws like all of us. \n\nThat's the reason it's make a \"more perfect union.\" \n\nIf they had all the answers, it would have said make a \"perfect union.\"",
"I find this entire thread to be absolutely amazing. However I may have missed this somewhere in my reading and it is a bit off topic. No one has really addressed the fact that the government was not actually meant to be what it is. Each State is an independent Country within the Union. To be governed by it's own laws and not by the Federal Government. The Federal Government was supposed to organize the nation so we would have a unified front to present to the rest of the world. Standardizing trade, currency, military, etc. Not to dictate unfair laws and withhold funding. The beauty of the system was that each State was a representation of the people in it. Two parties for the entire Union falsely assumes that the majority and minorities have the same goals in each state. ",
"I don't think he imagined 350 million people - getting rid of the idea of town square and everyone actually coming together. Just I guess, prolly wrong :)",
"This guy has a ton of political videos.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nWith our political structure, we're always going to have a two party system. It's statistics.",
"Washington wasn't exactly a skilled politician or a key designer of the constitution. He was a reluctant political leader who was a shoe-in after his success as a *general*. \n\nLook to Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson, Franklin, etc. and also French revolutionary minds of the time for the actual political theory behind our government's initial founding.",
"he only warned us about one or two parties having too much power - that is all"
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emaso4 | how do products like static guard work to reduce static cling? | I'm sitting her in my sweatshirt that has decided to be an electrical generator today and thinking, i wish I had some of that stuff that makes static charge go away.
And then I'm like, how does that stuff work, anyhow? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/emaso4/eli5_how_do_products_like_static_guard_work_to/ | {
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"When two objects bump against each other, there is a chance that electrons will jump from one object to the other. If the two objects are made from a different material, it is possible that one holds on to its electrons more tightly, so it is more likely to receive electrons in such an event. When your clothes are in a dryer, they are rubbing against each other a lot, making this transfer happen a lot.\n\nStatic guard works by coating all of your clothes in a thin layer of the same stuff. Now that everything has the same stuff on its surface, the electrons are as likely to stick to one as to the other, so nothing generally accumulates a significant enough charge to be noticeable."
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7n2kxs | how come you can have a good or bad sleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7n2kxs/eli5_how_come_you_can_have_a_good_or_bad_sleep/ | {
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"Simplest answer: variance.\n\nBetter answer: there are multiple factors involved. Light sources in the room or before you go to bed mess with melatonin production, which signals your body to sleep. If you wake up in certain parts of your REM cycle, you'll feel groggy instead of rested. Nightmares can make you tense during sleep, which makes some people less rested. Alcohol interferes with sleep quality. And I've heard that sleep you get before midnight is twice as restful as sleep you get after midnight. The effects of stimulants shouldn't be underestimated. The half-life of caffeine is about 6 hours. This means that if you have a cup of coffee at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and go to bed at 8 or 9, half the caffeine from your afternoon coffee is still in your system, interfering with your sleep.\n\nAnd the list goes on...",
"Imagine you are a phone with a rechargeable battery. \nYou use energy throughout the day and every night you need to recharge your battery or else it will be dangerously low the next day or even dead. \n\nFor some people, they have batteries that need only 5-6 hour charge but for the average adult an 8 hour charge will get you through the day.\n\nThe tricky thing with charging your battery though is that the battery doesn’t charge right way when you plug it in. The charging cable has to be inserted for around an hour and a half and stay connected for a full charge. \n\nSometimes you forget to put the charging cable in all the way. It starts to charge but then disconnects itself and you don’t get a full charge.\n\nMost nights the charging cable goes in all the way and the battery is able to reach a full capacity. "
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ty708 | why google+ has so much fewer users than facebook. | From everything I read before it was open to the public, people seemed really happy with it, some claiming it was going to kill Facebook, and many more saying they liked it better than Facebook. But as it stands now, there are very few people who use Google+, and I was just wondering why that is. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ty708/eli5_why_google_has_so_much_fewer_users_than/ | {
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"There's a concept called the \"network effect\". Basically, the more people you have using something, the more useful it becomes. To be dead simple, people use Facebook because their friends are on Facebook. Google+ didn't offer enough of a benefit to get people to move over en masse and without enough people moved over, you won't get people following their friends.",
"The answer to this can be very subjective.\n\nMy personal feeling is that they lost the momentum by keeping it invite-only for so long."
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6qgxo8 | why does dirt on my glasses always show as a perfect circle when my eyes don't focus on them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6qgxo8/eli5_why_does_dirt_on_my_glasses_always_show_as_a/ | {
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"That's an effect you get from point light sources (or shadows) being out of focus, and the shape is down to the shape of your own [pupil](_URL_0_). \n\nPhotographers use that same phenomenon in cameras, to artistic effect, and they call it \"Bokeh\". [As you can see](_URL_1_) in this picture, the camera this was taken on had a non-circular artificial 'pupil', or aperture, as it's called in photography-speak.\n\nThe aperture in the camera would've looked something like [this](_URL_2_) and if your eye's iris was that shape, you'd perceive that shape in out of focus dirt on your glasses. As it is, your pupil is circular, so you see circles. \n\n\n"
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1nxsca | eli 5: why does my iphone get slower each time a new iphone or software update comes out? | So.... Yeah. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1nxsca/eli_5_why_does_my_iphone_get_slower_each_time_a/ | {
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"Because each new update uses more and more power that your phone does not have. They do this A: to advance technology and compete with other companies and B: to make you feel like your phone is slow so you go buy another"
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45yyap | standard shift... why does shifting into second gear before first make going into first gear easier? | Similarly, reverse can be much easier to engage after shifting into fourth from a standstill. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45yyap/eli5_standard_shift_why_does_shifting_into_second/ | {
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"It won't if the gearbox isn't worn. \n\nIn the gearbox is a mechanism called the [synchromesh](_URL_0_). This brings the gears you're going to engage together up to the same speed before allowing them to slide together. \n\nThe synchromesh has things called baulk rings which prevent the gears sliding into place if they're not up to speed. \n\nWhen the synchromesh is worn the gears can't readily get up to speed, and the baulk rings won't retract. You can help things along by shifting into another gear first which sets the whole pack of gear spinning, saving the worn synchromesh from having to work so hard.\n\nThe synchro is often the first part of a box to wear out because many drivers lack the mechanical sympathy to wait for the synchro to do its job and jamming the lever into place regardless. \"Beating the synchro\" knackers boxes.",
"What car is this? It's possible 1st gear is unsynchronized as a cost cutting measure. It's pretty rare to shift into 1st while moving, so a cheap car could get away with it. Reverse is almost never synchronized, since you always change into reverse from a stop, and thus the output shaft of your transmission is not spinning.\n\nSynchronized transmissions, have an intermediary gear that makes up the synchromesh. It's purpose is to aid in accelerating the gear you are shifting into, up to the same shaft speed as the output shaft on your transmission. Since it's synchronized, you don't have to double clutch and perfectly rev-match the engine RPMs every time you shift.\n\nYour difficulty in getting reverse into gear, is that it does not have a synchromesh. You are literately sliding toothed gears into each other, and depending on the angular location of the transmission's output shaft gear, the open spots in the gears may not line up. Since 4th gear is synchronized, it can easily slide in, and set up the shaft to be lined up for reverse gear potentially."
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5wotm2 | why can the potus be caught blatantly lying, red handed, time after time, without any consequences. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5wotm2/eli5_why_can_the_potus_be_caught_blatantly_lying/ | {
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"Rs have the executive, legislative and soon the supreme court. They can do nearly anything they want for at least 2 years",
"Because (last I checked) **lying isn't a crime**. Well.. lying under oath is, but President Trump is not under oath and the only people who could try him in any case is Congress.\n\n",
"When you hold the people that are covering for him responsible. \n\nThat would be your state's senators and representatives. If they don't hold the president accountable, vote them out of office and elect someone who will.",
"Lying isn't illegal. The only consequences are that people stop trusting him, and won't elect him. \n\nHowever, people who are accustomed to being lied to constantly and eat bullshit for breakfast like religious folks, Fox news viewers, etc. have a shaky view of trust and will apparently elect anyone they are told to.",
"1. There are consequences of his lying, some of them quite severe. However, they are just not criminal/legal.\n\n2. There is no \"moral judge\" that presides over the POTUS. Until he does something illegal such as lying under oath, the only consequence is for the public to reflect upon why they've elected such a person.\n\n3. I know this is cynical and I will get down-voted for this comment but here it goes. Everyone lies, leaders lie, presidents lie. There have been times when lying has had disastrous effects/consequences. WWII is rife with these examples. The current POTUS has greatly damaged relations with multiple groups of people. Whether or not you view this as a severe consequence depends on: A) Whether or not you support his views and B) How resolute are you about A).\n\nI did not vote for Trump and I am not defending him as a person. However, the POTUS is the leader of my country, so I try to challenge our opposing views not because the President deserves it, but our country deserves it even if the President is a dickbag.",
"Congress is about the only branch that can really punish the President in any meaningful way, by either passing legislation to limit his powers, or by impeachment. To pass legislation against him though is going to take 2/3 on Congress to agree because the President will just veto anything that limits his powers. \n\nSimilar for impeachment, it is going to take half of the house of Representatives to vote yes before the Senate will see it. Once the Senate takes it to a vote, it will require 2/3 of the Senators to agree.\n\nBut Congress is controlled by the Republicans, and they aren't going to put any real pressure on Trump until he either negatively effects their political/business/states/personal affairs, or until their constituents put enough pressure on them. \n",
"The Supreme Court has ruled on this and basically said that due to the nature of what constitutes a fact and the burden of proof to prove intent, politicians cannot be held to a scientific standard of \"truth,\" or be punished for things like mistakenly misquoting numbers since studies could disagree or later be proven false \n\n_URL_0_"
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2upzrq | what aol actually does, in 2015? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2upzrq/eli5_what_aol_actually_does_in_2015/ | {
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"Well, according to [Cnet in 2013](_URL_0_), 3 percent of America (that's roughly 2 million people) still uses Dial-up modem... so I imagine, in 2015, that AOL still manages to be an ISP.",
"And you wouldn't believe the amount of people who still use aol email addresses, so this will get aol some ad revenue ",
"I believe for quite some time they've mostly been investors in tech companies and web sites. They own dozens of companies, some of which may sound familiar..MapQuest, _URL_0_, Huffington Post",
"In addition to the old, dwindling internet access business (which still makes them a bunch of money), AOL owns and runs many different brands: Engadget, Huffington Post, Moviefone, AIM, MapQuest, and TechCrunch to name a few. They also have their own ad network.",
"I heard on the joe rogan experience that AOL still have about 1,000,000 people who still pay for the service by the month",
"They're a lot like Yahoo, they produce web content for people to enjoy. They don't really DO much of anything under their own name anymore (other than maintain a disappearing, antique dial-up system that I can't imagine is making them much money anymore) but they own a lot of websites you probably use. Engadget, TUAW (RIP dudes), etc... \n\nJust like Yahoo owns Flickr, for example. Or Google owns pretty much everything else. It's all the same basic business model, start with the search site, and purchase/design supporting products to go along with it. \n\nThe reason you didn't know that is because AOL continues to do everything both badly AND much later than everyone else. They were years late to the web content game because they...I really don't know what they thought was going to happen. I guess someone was banking that broadband internet would just be a fad. So they kept AOL the service provider going, like some kind of horribly slow, buggy ISP version of Weekend at Bernies. Finally, years later, they snapped out of it and went \"Wait, what? Where is everyone?\" and got with the program.\n\nThey only run 1.3% of all web searches, and they've tried to make inferior versions of pretty much every other web service out there. Well, I say they try to \"make\" crappier versions of things, whereas what they really did was WILDLY succeed at BUYING crappier versions of things everyone else had perfected years ago. \n\nRemember the smash-hit social media website Bebo? Of course you don't, no one outside of Ireland (where they briefly actually did pretty good) does. That didn't stop AOL from buying them for 850 million in 2008, only to sheepishly sell it to a hedge fund operator in 2010 for a whopping 10 million dollars. That doesn't include the cost of flying in the world's greatest sad-trombone-sound-making-guy to really call attention to how idiotic that move was. For those of you playing at home, that is a *staggering* ROI of -98.8%. It directly cost the CEO at the time his job, apparently.\n\nLest you think the hedge fund managers scored some kind of killer deal, Bebo then went bankrupt in 2013. I know, I know, how the heck could that have happened, right?! Nothing makes sense for me anymore either, after I learned that. Calculating the overall ROI various Bebo owners have combined for now breaks math as we know it, so later in 2013 someone picked up Bebo's former shell of itself for a song and dance. Who was this? THE FOUNDERS OF THE SITE WHO SOLD IT FOR 850 MILLION TO AOL FIVE YEARS PRIOR. They just restarted it in 2015 and with AOL's luck it will cure cancer.\n\nSo currently, in 2015, AOL spends its days handling a tiny percentage of the world's search traffic, paying some guy named Rusty 10 bucks an hour to watch over the cobweb infested shack that houses AOL's dial up network, and watching \"You've Got Mail\" while it cries cheap tears and drinks Popov, thinking of the good old days.\n\n**edit**: re-reading this just now, I feel like I may have momentarily veered off on a slight tangent. I'm not re-writing it because I used to work for AOL and OH MY GOD they are the just the worst, you have no idea. Hopefully it still answers your question. \n\n**edit 2**: Whoever gilded this post, seriously, that was really really nice of you and it's really appreciated. \n\nI also wanted to make this link a little more visible than it would be if I put it in the comments:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nI see a LOT of people mentioning friends or relatives are keeping AOL service just for the e-mail address. AOL never did a good job at advertising it (go figure!) but there is definitely an easy, straightforward way to cancel the service and keep your @aol.com e-mail. You can even get the E-mail back if you cancelled the service previously but miss having the old address! (Click the section that says \"How do I reactivate a cancelled AOL Account? (web users)\"). Don't worry, you can reactivate it as a free account, you won't have to pay!\n\nDon't get me wrong, some people just want to stick with AOL, and more power to them. But if you know anyone stuck paying money just to keep an e-mail address they love, set them free!",
"They stay in business producing online content for a little add profit in order to still have the structure to collect auto fees. 80% AOL's funding comes from its dialup business. According to consumer reports 75% of that is due to people whom have forgotten they have AOL. They neglected to cancel so they are still automatically deducting from their bank account or credit cards each month. \n\nSo what does AOL do? exploit peoples sloth and forgetfulness in regards to their personal finances.\n",
"Surprisingly enough they still offer dial up service and have 2.3 million dial up customers. In some rural places your only internet options are dial up or satellite internet. Satellite internet can be expensive and there is also a big ping time involved so it doesn't work very well for things like gaming. And if you live in a mountainous area a mountain could block your signal to the satallite. _URL_0_",
"They provide me easily accessible dirty chat rooms to talk about all kinds of disgusting fantasies. AOL4Lyfe. ",
"AOL also owns a number of patents still, not sure if Microsoft leased or purchased them. But there was a deal about two years ago where Microsoft bought a bunch of rights off of AOL.",
"They're still trying to get my dial-up connection from 2001 to work",
"I worked for them up until earlier last year - I spent quite a bit of time watching the sad slow downward spiral of one of the first Internet Greats.\n\nThey still have a bunch of web properties and are desperately trying to leverage their sites and anyone else they can get to use their ad-delivery service. Other than that, as said elsewhere they still have a few million dial-up subscribers. 10 years ago it cost maybe 50 times as much to keep a single subscriber online, today; with all the gear completely owned and the bandwidth of a single dial-up subscriber being a negligible cost they can run dial up for pennies on the dollar of what it cost in 2005. For example in 2005 there were probably 75 people in operations running the AOL client, today there's literally one person.\n\nWhen I started there was around 28,000 employees - after all the layoffs and RIFs there were maybe 4k when I left (I'm frankly surprised I lasted as long as I did)\n\n",
"My company provides modem services for them. They are still alive. It is funny to go to meetings and talk about Managed Modem service in 2015. Weird. ",
"Mostly, in 2015, they fire talented writing staff. ",
"My parents still use that. They think that's where the internet is. Ive... I've tried",
"I have friend that still has a aol email she said that she never changed it because she doe not want to have to keep track of different emails ",
"Provide an email service to people like my Mom that just never moved on. Whenever I'm at my parents house I'll hear the \"You've got mail\" announcement. And like the top commenter said they've also made some shitty investments. ",
"I started laughing my ass off the other day my mom came to me saying she needed to cut some costs. So she tells me she is switching to gmail because she is tired of paying for AOL, I was confused \"you pay for aol?\" I guess she has been paying 40 dollars a month for AOL's crappy browser and email service for 8 years.",
"I still use AOL email. They gave me a good username.. To far in to switch now. ",
"E-mail for old people.\n\nSource: Work a call center. Every time I see an AOL e-mail on somebody's account, I mentally go *fuuuuuuuuuuu...* because I know they are very, very, very non-tech savvy, can't see or hear for shit, and YET they refuse to use their glasses or a hearing aide.",
"I helped a coworker put together a custom PC. While I was installing windows, I was on my laptop downloading software to install later. I had my coworker make a list of all the software they needed. AOL was on that list. I asked him about it thinking maybe he just uses the AIM messenger. Nope. Wife will only use AOL. They have a broadband connection, but the only way she understands the internet is through AOL. I was amazed.",
"I don't know but judging from my parents pc it has something to do with managing multiple tool bars.",
"You'd be surprised at the number of people that just haven't canceled their accounts. One of the folks in my office has been paying 20 bucks a month since 1997. Just canceled in November.",
"I worked near their former HQ in Sterling Virginia. Place is absolutely dead. MAYBE 20% staffing anymore. \n\nLooks sad compared to the equally large Raytheon campus across the street.",
"They sell ads on their home page. My friend's work buys these ads sometimes and they're something like 70k for one slot in the carousel on their front page for a day.",
"While they still do provide dialup and broadband internet services, Aol rebranded themselves many years ago as an online media company. They spent the last several years buying up various websites (like Huffington Post, Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest). Most of their revenue comes from advertising sold on those sites.",
"They've no longer produce free CDs, instead they make beer coasters.",
"Here's my two cents: Stop thinking web portal, start thinking (potential) programmatic player.\n\nAOL has been quietly selling off its non-profitable products for months, and their traditional ad sales team is the latest to go. By releasing its underperforming or obsolete assets (e.g. non-profitable websites), the company is ostensibly freeing up funds to focus on improving its ad tech platform. Users may flock to AOL's premium content sites such as Engadget and Huffington Post, but the company has struggled to monetize those platforms amidst the avalanche of online content from competitors. Developing an ad tech platform to leverage both its demand-side and supply-side platforms could carve out a much-needed competitive edge.\n\nThis view is shared by more than a few analysts, and is echoed by statements from such organizations as Starboard Value LLP, which penned a letter to Yahoo shareholders calling for a merger with AOL. More recent M & A rumors have also included Verizon, citing the fact that gaining access to AOL's ad platform and extensive library of online and video content could be Verizon's greatest opportunity to compete against AT & T, which acquired DirecTV for $48.5 billion in 2014.\n\nIf AOL can expand upon its ad tech offerings, it could be in a good place to capture a solid chunk of the predicted increase in programmatic ad spending. According to TechCrunch, one of AOL's most highly-trafficked sites, 73% of the company's Q3 revenues (about $454.5 million) came from advertising. In terms of pure profit, however, the primary driver remained subscriptions, not advertising. AOL is now making major moves to change this paradigm. To sum it up, take a look at a recent quote from AOL CEO Tim Armstrong: \n\n\"As we look out to 2015, our strategy and decisions will be driven by the following organizing principles...Number one, we’ll focus our capital allocation resource management and management time against scaled assets and platforms. Two, we will organize our asset portfolio around scaled value and scaled growth assets. Three, we’ll simplify everything that can be simplified.\""
]
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"http://www.cnet.com/news/3-percent-of-american-adults-still-cling-to-dial-up-internet/"
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[],
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"About.me"
],
[],
[],
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"http://help.aol.com/help/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&externalId=11605"
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"http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/07/aol-still-makes-most-of-its-money-off-millions-of-dial-up-subscribers/"
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1ym71s | why are there security levels higher than the one the president of the usa has? | There are 21 security clearances above the one the President of the USA has. Why is this, considering he's the most powerful man in the world? Also, who may obtain the higher levels and what kind of jobs do they have? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ym71s/eli5_why_are_there_security_levels_higher_than/ | {
"a_id": [
"cflqxs3"
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"text": [
"Well... Number one, don't believe everything you read or hear. Most likely, this is not entirely accurate information. 21 levels above the President? That seems highly unlikely. So many levels? What would you need that for? Think about it from a practical standpoint. And misinformation is a cornerstone of governmental secrecy.\n\nOn the other hand, it is very likely that many government officials know a lot of very high-security things that the President does not know. The President of the US is a high-profile target. You would not WANT him to know certain things. HE would not want to know certain things. They can't be extracted from him if he does not know them. And he only gets 4 or 8 years, and then he just goes home, and he knows all that stuff? Some things they can't just change when a new President is elected and sworn in.\n\nMost likely, there is quite a bit of Compartmentalized information in the US government. That is to say, there is a lot of seriously top-level information, and no one knows all of it, and they don't want to. Terrorist organization understands this concept, that's why they have \"cells\". How much more so the most powerful nations in the world would want their governments to be compartmented.\n\nAs far as who MIGHT know the most top-level information, probably somebody who nobody has ever heard of. Not some men-in-black guy living in a bunker somewhere, but some seemingly ordinary and mundane guy. Maybe a military officer? Maybe a CIA employee? Maybe a White House staffer? Somebody with years of experience and a mid to high level rank/authority?"
]
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[]
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|
1pudqa | how do celebrities manage social media accounts with millions of followers? | I am aware that not all celebrities actually manage the official accounts that are titled after them, but unless I am mistaken, some of them actually do own the accounts and post to them daily.
For example, Snoop Dogg(Lion) has 2,300,000 followers on Instagram. He frequently posts pictures of him with friends, selfies, and personal things. The descriptions for the photos are written in what seems like Snoop's type of writing, filled with slang and not always correct grammar. So how does he manage when up to 90,000 people 'like' one of his photos? Does he actually get a notification for each one? I've got an account with less than 200 followers and if 20 people 'like' a photo I get a notification for each one.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1pudqa/eli5_how_do_celebrities_manage_social_media/ | {
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"text": [
"You can turn notifications off. "
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2h07at | why does mega download your file into your local cache and then save it, as opposed to downloading through your browser's download manager? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h07at/eli5_why_does_mega_download_your_file_into_your/ | {
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"It is *probably* because the file stays encrypted on the server. Mega downloads the file onto your computer and at the same time it is decrypting the file so when it is done downloading/decrypting, You can tell the browser where you want it saved. Then the browser simply moves the file.\n\nIf you simply download the file from the server as is with your browser, you would probably have an encrypted file and would otherwise have to decrypt it with the key that goes along with the url of said file.\n\n\nEdit: The file on the server is always encrypted. It is always encrypted/decrypted on the client browser before it is uploaded/downloaded to and from the server. The server never has decrypted files."
]
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[]
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||
30swua | why is the uk parliament being dissolved ahead of the general election? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/30swua/eli5_why_is_the_uk_parliament_being_dissolved/ | {
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"text": [
"It's a formality that signifies that each seat is now vacant and every seat is up for election. The ministers still do their respective jobs until the election results come in, they just have to put themselves forward for re-election."
]
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[]
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||
amc2jf | what, why, and from whence are these super tiny flies that congregate in tiny swarms at face-level? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/amc2jf/eli5_what_why_and_from_whence_are_these_super/ | {
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"Would help to know which country you are in and even which region of the country as the little bugs will vary considerably from place to place including thrips.",
"I believe they're basically gnat orgies. They all come together in big swarms to fertilize each other. Not sure what they're doing for the rest of their time when they're not having a root. Not a gnat expert but last time I asked someone wtf was with all the bug clouds that's what I was told."
]
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uwdtm | if water makes up 70% of our earth and we have things such as water purifiers, why are we running out of drinking water on our planet? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uwdtm/eli5_if_water_makes_up_70_of_our_earth_and_we/ | {
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"Because large scale water purification and desalinization is expensive and inefficient. ",
"We're *not* running out.\n\nThe problem isn't the amount of drinking water, it's the *distribution* of the water.\n\nMost developed countries could probably hydrate their population 50 times over, if they wanted (assuming there's no drought). Whereas, for example, in hot African countries where water is scarce, contains diseases and there is little technology available to purify the water, *then* you get dehydration problems..",
"A slight caveat to the amount of water on earth, only 2.75% of water is **fresh** water.\n\n[Here's a nice visual representation of water on Earth](_URL_0_)\n\nEdit: and like harrisonbeaker said, water desalinization (making salt water into drinking water) takes **a lot** of energy.",
"Water makes up 70% of the earth's surface, but almost all of it (97.5%) is *salt* water, which is basically useless. We can't drink it, we can't use it for agriculture, and we can't use it for industry. We can desalinate water, but that's very, very expensive.\n\nOut of the fresh water that's left (2.5%), most of it is frozen in glaciers and ice caps. Lakes, rivers, ground water, and rainfall make up all that we can practically use. Some places have a lot more of these than others. There are plenty of arid areas where people are using more water than the local environment can replenish (for example, the Colorado River, or the Ogallala Aquifer). \n\n_URL_0_",
"[Water does NOT make up to 70% of our earth!](_URL_0_)",
"You mean that 70% of earth's *surface* is water.\n\nMost of it is salt water and thus must be processed before it can be used, which takes a lot of resources."
]
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792n9k | why has hdr been so common in cameras for so long but is only now beginning to move into mainstream tvs, smartphones and games consoles? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/792n9k/eli5_why_has_hdr_been_so_common_in_cameras_for_so/ | {
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"HDR-photos are typically just composite images of several photos, taken with different exposures.\n\nWhat proper HDR is about, is being able display/capture truely dark and really bright parts of the image, both at the same time. This is what's new, and it's not easy.",
"They're different technologies. The HDR in cameras involves taking two shots at high/low exposure, then merging them to a single photo. The HDR in video displays refers to the ability to show a wide range of brightness."
]
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||
57mukn | if a country has birthright citizenship i.e. all those born there are automatically citizens, couldn't a woman go there on vacation/business/illegally, give birth, then the child would be a citizen giving the parent rights to stay/move there too? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57mukn/eli5_if_a_country_has_birthright_citizenship_ie/ | {
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"Contrary to popular belief, if an illegal immigrant has a kid in the US, they're still at risk for deportation if caught, in which case the child is sent back with them.\n\nAlso, pregnant women sometimes have difficulties getting Visas (particularly tourist Visas) in order to dissuade people from trying in the first place.",
"Yes, the child is a US citizen, but it doesn't nessicarly flow that the parents can stay and get citizenship. It certainly helps but really it just accelerates the paperwork.\n\nAlso, if you're pregnant you could get denied entry if you're entering on a travel visa with the intention of having the child in the US so you can stay forever.",
"They're called Anchor Babies [Wikipedia]( _URL_1_)\n\nThere's a whole industry called Birth Tourism [Wikipedia]( _URL_0_)\n\n[It's an issue in Canada too.]( _URL_2_)\n",
"[Wiki Anchor Babies](_URL_0_)\n\n\"There is a popular misconception.... Current federal law prevents anyone under the age of 21 from being able to petition for their non-citizen parent to be lawfully admitted to the United States .... "
]
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_tourism",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_baby",
"http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/b-c-aware-of-26-baby-houses-as-birth-tourism-from-china-booms"
],
[
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchor_baby"
]
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||
32mrgs | how do professional sports teams turn a profit? | I live in South Florida and I'm currently watching the Marlins game and I'm thinking "How does a team like this stay alive?".
Here are some numbers I'm looking at:
* The [payroll](_URL_0_) for the players alone for 2015 is : $85,531,500
* The [average](_URL_2_) attendance for 2014 was: 20,997
* The [average](_URL_1_) ticket cost at Marlins Park is: $27.02
* Average attendance * Average ticket * 81 home games: $45,954,454.14
So now we have $85,531,500 - $45,954,454.14 = $**39,577,045.86** short to break even on payroll of the roster. Not including team expenses, front office, management, etc.
I'm sure they pay a ton of taxes (Not really sure of the scam they pulled on Dade County with the stadium) each year so I don't know those numbers. I don't see many players selling jerseys other than Stanton.
This is just one example. I'm watching the Braves vs Marlins tonight as well and Turner Field is empty just one week after the season begins.
Obviously Jeffrey Loria is earning some kind of money from the Marlins since he's been the owner for a long time and doesn't SEEM to be actively selling the team.
I know my numbers is solely based off attendance but I didn't know what else to factor in.
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/32mrgs/eli5_how_do_professional_sports_teams_turn_a/ | {
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"You forget money from licensing, clothes, hats, figurines, etc. Plus advertising at the stadium. Sales of the private booths, Revenue from renting out the stadium to other venues, like concerts. And of course revenue from showing the games on TV. Plus I'm sure I'm missing a few other revenue sources for them.",
"Generically, you are only looking at half of the income they have coming into their coffers.\n\nYou are leaving out:\n\n* Onsite Vendors - People like McDonalds and Chick-fil-a pay the stadium to rent the space to sell their product as well as a percentage of everything that is sold from their stall during operation.\n\n* Off Site Vendors - People who sell merch to retailers across the country\n\n* On site Merch - Merchandise that is sold in the stadiums on gameday. Namely Jerseys, hats, foam fingers, and many other \"essential\" items during the visit to the stadium.\n\nAnd other forms of things that are brining in millions of additional dollars from other sources.",
"Advertising. Professional sports teams get a lot of money from people wanting to advertise around the stadium or on the jerseys of the players. Being a sponsor of a certain team can be a very prestigious thing for companies so they are very willing to pay the big bucks for that. Additionally, lots of sports teams get money out of the sale of memorabilia and the concession stands at the stadium. There is a reason why you pay for much for a stupid hot dog.",
"they have advertisements all over, and merchandise that is basically guaranteed to be bought by literally everyone who supports that team. The demand is so high that they can charge huge amounts for it",
"TV deals and revenue sharing is where most teams get most of their money.",
"ads, TV/radio contract, apparel, endorsements...",
"_URL_0_\n\nThere is also revenue sharing, where smaller market teams are basically getting a cut revenues from the big markets. It's a large reason bad small market teams are able to be profitable with low attendance."
]
} | [] | [
"http://espn.go.com/mlb/team/salaries/_/name/mia/miami-marlins",
"http://www.statista.com/statistics/203469/mlb-average-ticket-price-for-florida-marlins-games/",
"http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance"
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1jihja | why is it legal to drink 1 beer and then drive, but illegal to drink 1 beer while driving? | I understand that you aren't "allowed" to drink beer while driving due to the "open container" law, but what is the reasoning behind this? You'd have just as much alcohol in your system either way. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jihja/eli5_why_is_it_legal_to_drink_1_beer_and_then/ | {
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"I always figured it was because it's not very practical to pull someone over and ask,\"Is that your first beer? Okay good, just checking. Have a nice day.\"\n\nEasiest way to enforce that law is to have a 0 tolerance policy on open containers/drinking & driving.",
"It's actually not illegal in a lot of places. And it's not the same ticket for having an open container. It's a much much lower charge than drunk driving. We always make sure to have a cracked beer when we drive through pats of Mississippi.",
"There is a lot of misinformation in here, and a real answer will depend on what state you live in. Generally speaking it works like this:\n\nIt is not legal to operate a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol content of greater than 0.08 (in most states). If you consume a beverage and it raises your BAC to above 0.08 then it is illegal. The reasoning behind laws which ban consumption while behind the wheel are simply a way to eliminate drunk driving.\n\nAs for searching your car or your car being a public place... there are entire courses dedicated to this but basically it boils down to a few things. \n\n1. Searches with your consent - Consent can be tricky, a simple casual remark can be construed as consent. If I can make a judge believe that you gave consent then you gave consent.\n2. Searches made by \"plain view\" - You got an ounce on the dash? you are getting searched (and arrested).\n3. Searches made from an arrest - You throw your stub out the window? Bam, you're getting arrested for littering, and I'm searching your car.\n4. Searches made from probable cause - If I have probable cause to believe you have committed a crime I can search your car.\n5. Plus a bunch more local, state and edge case type laws depending on where you live.\n\nMoral of the story is, don't drink then drive and don't drink while driving.",
"As i did my driver license i drove behind a traktor (landmachine) and the farmer in front of us drank his beer and ate his Sandwich. No one mentioned it, we just giggled a bit.",
"I was at a party the cops busted once and I had an interesting conversation with the officer. Since almost every one there was underage they pulled out the breathalyzers and started testing everyone. I wanted to lighten the mood so I asked the officer what the highest BAC level he has ever seen was. I can't remember the exact percentage but he told me he has tested people and they have shown results that mean they should be dead with that amount of alcohol in there system. BUT it was because they had JUST finished drinking. Allowing people to drink while driving would make breathalyzer tests less reliable in court because people could say they had just taken a sip right before they got pulled over so they could argue they weren't really drunk. By not allowing people to drink while driving this is a non issue. "
]
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35aaqj | why do dogs (and foxes) like balls so much? | See this: _URL_0_
The fox went for the ball. It isn't domesticated, so it's not been taught.
Thanks in advance. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35aaqj/eli5_why_do_dogs_and_foxes_like_balls_so_much/ | {
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"text": [
"It's part of an old instinct to chase small quick animals. They are naturally attracted to things that are small and move quickly and their natural instinct is to chase them"
]
} | [] | [
"http://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/358jo5/baby_fox_practicing_its_sneak_attack/"
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[]
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65uvqm | please. how do you milk an almond to make almond milk? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65uvqm/eli5_please_how_do_you_milk_an_almond_to_make/ | {
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"With a screw press. Roughly chop, then sqeeze them like olives or peanuts to get the moister out. The remaining paste can be used as a thickening agent.",
"What Druid posted about the press is correct but typically they will also soak the almonds in a watery mixture that when pressed/processed creates a slurry of water and oil and solids. The solids are filtered out.\n\nThe protein content of the almonds remains in the physical paste leaving the liquid mixture as \"milk\"."
]
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9x3btd | how does gps jamming work? like what the russians did during the recent nato exercise. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9x3btd/eli5_how_does_gps_jamming_work_like_what_the/ | {
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"text": [
"The same as normal jamming, they sent out a bunch of signals on the frequency that GPS satellites use to confuse the receivers- like trying to hear a code someone is telling you(The GPS signal) when someone is shouting in your ear(The Russian Jamming.) \n\n01001 01100 01001 01011 00101 10100 10010 00001 01001 01110 10011... \n\n#I LIKE TRAINS, VARIABLE-SPEED CORN MUFFINS, HI GUYS WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT, ARE YOU HAVING A CONVERSATION, AM I INTRUDING? ",
"GPS works on a series of satellites at predictable positions in orbit around the Earth. A GPS receiver basically \"sees\" these GPS satellites, the radio signals they put out, and can figure out its own location based on them.\n\nTo jam a radio signal, you just need to flood the area with other signals at the same frequency, preventing anyone from getting useful information from them.\n\nImagine turning a spotlight on and off to send a message in morse code. Jamming would be like having a hundred other spotlights also flashing randomly at the same time. The real signal is in the mix, but there's no way to tell what is signal and what is noise, so it is all effectively noise.\n\nAnyway, since GPS signals are just radio signals at a specific frequency, you can jam them just like any other radio signal.",
"First how GPS works: GPS satellites in orbit are like special radio stations that continuously send a very long pattern of numbers and their positions relative to the Earth. GPS receivers are radio receivers that know the same pattern. The receiver compares its pattern with the transmitted pattern to know how long ago the GPS satellite sent it. This time delay is converted to a distance and the distances from three or four GPS satellites are used to determine the location of the receiver through a calculation called triangulation.\n\nJamming: Unfortunately, civilian GPS is not securely verifiable so a receiver can't tell the difference between a real and fake transmission on the same frequency. Russia probably transmitted either noise or a shifted version of the pattern to confuse receivers , making the receiver believe satellites were closer or farther than they really are. If the Russian transmission was stronger, which is easy to do since the real transmitters are all the way in space, they could cause GPS receivers to report an incorrect location.\n\n\nEdit: Since you were asking about a military drill specifically, it's likely Russia was just transmitting noise to prevent the real signal from being received. Civilian GPS is even more vulnerable in that an attacker can create fake signals to cause a receiver to believe it's in the wrong place, though it would be hard to do for multiple spread out targets simultaneously.",
"Wait, did this happen? "
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nj984 | what is wireless spectrum scarcity and why is it a problem now? | AT & T cited wireless spectrum scarcity as the reason it wanted to acquire T-mobile. Verizon is also buying smaller companies to secure more wireless spectrum. What puts strains on this spectrum and why is it so scarce right now? Is wireless spectrum the same thing as the frequency bands (like AT & T running on 850 MHz, 1900 MHz, etc.) or is it something different? Why doesn't the government just release more spectrum?
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nj984/eli5_what_is_wireless_spectrum_scarcity_and_why/ | {
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"text": [
"[this](_URL_1_) gives you a great explanation, but i'll give you the TLDR\n\nSpectrum is allocated from 3 kHz to 300 GHz. Basically different devices require a certain amount of bandwidth to send signal. When you create 4G (or even faster forms) you need more assigned spectrum. \n\n > What puts strains on this spectrum and why is it so scarce right now? \n\nmore electronic devices that require a radio frequency, any technology really...\n\n > Is wireless spectrum the same thing as the frequency bands (like AT & T running on 850 MHz, 1900 MHz, etc.) \n\nsame thing, just at different ends of the range. Scroll down to the bottom of [this](_URL_0_) \n\n\n > Why doesn't the government just release more spectrum? \n\nits already clogged up, they need to sell/take over more spectrum, but that usually involves pissing somebody else off. \n\nELI5: Think of it like you're in a class, and the teacher asks you to paint a mural, gives you 30cm (1ft) each within the long sheet. Then another 30 kids walk into the classroom halfway through and want to paint too. So the teacher tells you to give them half. You've already started your 30cm masterpiece, why the fuck would you surrender it?",
"[this](_URL_1_) gives you a great explanation, but i'll give you the TLDR\n\nSpectrum is allocated from 3 kHz to 300 GHz. Basically different devices require a certain amount of bandwidth to send signal. When you create 4G (or even faster forms) you need more assigned spectrum. \n\n > What puts strains on this spectrum and why is it so scarce right now? \n\nmore electronic devices that require a radio frequency, any technology really...\n\n > Is wireless spectrum the same thing as the frequency bands (like AT & T running on 850 MHz, 1900 MHz, etc.) \n\nsame thing, just at different ends of the range. Scroll down to the bottom of [this](_URL_0_) \n\n\n > Why doesn't the government just release more spectrum? \n\nits already clogged up, they need to sell/take over more spectrum, but that usually involves pissing somebody else off. \n\nELI5: Think of it like you're in a class, and the teacher asks you to paint a mural, gives you 30cm (1ft) each within the long sheet. Then another 30 kids walk into the classroom halfway through and want to paint too. So the teacher tells you to give them half. You've already started your 30cm masterpiece, why the fuck would you surrender it?"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2003_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_management"
],
[
"http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2003_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.jpg",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_management"
]
] |
|
2c4s5j | why does my back itch if i'm not wearing a shirt, but nothing else on my bare body does? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c4s5j/eli5_why_does_my_back_itch_if_im_not_wearing_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjbxrgd",
"cjc20p0"
],
"score": [
6,
5
],
"text": [
" > Looked it up and didn't really find anything\n\n\nObviously you didn't try WebMD... it's cancer, definitely cancer.",
"Not an expert at all, but I read that some evolutionary psychologists believe that the reason you get itchy for no reason is to encourage grooming (think back when we had fur that needed grooming). You can't reach your back yourself, so it doesn't get groomed. So, your back gets itchy to encourage you to find a way to scratch/groom it, usually by finding someone else to scratch it. Or at least rub against some tree bark."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
5xzxa7 | why can we see faraway light source (e.g. cars, lamps, stars) clearly when it doesn't seem to illuminate my position? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5xzxa7/eli5_why_can_we_see_faraway_light_source_eg_cars/ | {
"a_id": [
"dembx3o"
],
"score": [
3
],
"text": [
"The difference is this: For you to see light, the light has to be strong enough to reach your eye and produce a reaction there. For it to illuminate you, it would have to reach you, scatter off you, reach someone else's eye, and produce a reaction there. During the scattering, the light is spread out more, so it becomes fainter.\n\nLet's look at the case of a laser pointer. Point the laser at the wall, and the scattered light is comfortably visible. Point it at your eye, and you're looking at serious eye damage."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2v15bd | do people who hear for the first time, after something like getting hearing implants, know what the other people are saying? | They may be able to still read the lips of the person who is talking to them, but wouldn't it all really just be meaningless sound if you heard it for the first time? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2v15bd/eli5_do_people_who_hear_for_the_first_time_after/ | {
"a_id": [
"codkub2",
"codqpih"
],
"score": [
7,
7
],
"text": [
"When the senses are developing there is a time called the [critical period](_URL_0_) in which sensory neurons physically become associated with certain parts of the brain, with the result being that different functions can be mapped to distinct regions of the brain. This is called topography. If there isn't any sensory input during this critical period, then the topography will not develop properly, and it may be impossible for it to develop once the critical period has ended. One example is babies born with cataracts. If they don't get them removed right away, then they won't be receiving any visual stimulus during the critical period, and even if they get the cataracts removed in the future, they will still be blind for live. A similar thing happens with people who are born deaf. Hearing implants in someone who has never heard before may give them some auditory function, like they may be able to detect that there is a noise and where it is coming from, but they won't be able understand speech or language, which is a very complex neurological process. Their ability might improve over time, but it will probably never get to the point of a non-hearing impaired person.",
"Most types of deathness of the ear are caused by things like car crashes, or a natural cause which doesn't effect you right at birth.\nThus some people are known to still remember or still recognize words. Don't forget that people who can't hear can still read, thus most, even if you forget, people who can hear afterwards are usually very easy to be retaught. :)"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period#Auditory_Processing"
],
[]
] |
|
xqgio | why do some men's button-up shirts have the last buttonhole horizontal while the rest are vertical? | I was just doing some laundry and noticed that the bottom buttonhole on some of my shirts are horizantally stitched while the rest of the buttonholes are vertically stitched. What's the reason for this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xqgio/eli5_why_do_some_mens_buttonup_shirts_have_the/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5ooybu",
"c5oqe9m",
"c5otqnh"
],
"score": [
89,
5,
5
],
"text": [
"Stress concentration. \n\nButtonholes are weakest along their long dimension. If you pull on that vertical buttonhole, it will want to rip in the corner of the buttonhole. The lowest button is usually the one under the most stress due to trousers, [shirt garters](_URL_0_), and beer bellies, and it doesn't have neighbor buttons on both sides to help share the load. Going horizontal with that button lets the fabric spread the load better.",
"I thought it was so that you could feel where the buttons ended and not fumble around for the next buttonhole that isn't there.",
"I saw butthole. Had to do a retake."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirt_garter"
],
[],
[]
] |
|
41a8tm | how do herbivorous animals that birth only one offspring at a time, maintain higher populations than their predatory counterparts that birth multiples in a litter? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/41a8tm/eli5_how_do_herbivorous_animals_that_birth_only/ | {
"a_id": [
"cz0qpuh"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"because plants are a more common form of food and requires less energy to collect. predators have to compete with eachother to survive and most of the time an entire litter doesn't survive"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
2cpidg | what is actually going on when water "opens up" whiskey? | You read the advice to add a little water to a glass of whiskey to "open up" the taste. I've noticed the difference, but of course I can't be sure that's not just because I was looking for it. But assuming it does make a difference, is anything going on besides simple dilution--any kind of chemical changes? If not, does diluting it by the glass matter, or would it be the same if I added a half-cup of water to the bottle when I opened it? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2cpidg/eli5_what_is_actually_going_on_when_water_opens/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjhq8b0",
"cjhr1aw",
"cjhw94k",
"cjhzkad"
],
"score": [
29,
3,
2,
10
],
"text": [
"It's dilution, pure and simple.\n\nBecause most whiskey has high alcoholic content, there is likely to be some \"burn\" in the taste or smell. By adding some water, you dilute that, which allows some of the more subtle flavor to emerge (because the more aggressive flavors are lessened).\n\nIn theory, you could dilute an entire bottle to the same effect. However, as taste is a purely personal experience, it would be highly impolite.",
"Because our tastebuds can't handle the full impact of what it's sending you, so you tend to miss things in the burn. In order to be able to catch all of the subtleties, you have to dilute it. ",
"purists will tell you the only acceptable water to add is water from the same spring as used the make the whisky.",
"There is another factor beyond simple dilution of the alcohol. The various flavours in whiskey are several organic compounds (ex [whisky lactone](_URL_1_)). Organic compounds tend to be more soluble in ethanol than water, so dilution of the alcohol will force these compounds out of solution and into the air above. Since scent is such a big role in taste it is possible that this is a mechanism by which more scent is found in dilute solutions. This is as far as I know, unconfirmed in whiskeys, but it is certainly the cause of [louche](_URL_0_) in absinthe."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cis-3-methyl-4-octanolide"
]
] |
|
6e6ud9 | why does an orchestra need a chief to perform? what is the man with a stick doing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e6ud9/eli5_why_does_an_orchestra_need_a_chief_to/ | {
"a_id": [
"di80i8e",
"di80k56"
],
"score": [
2,
6
],
"text": [
"The conductor? He's keeping time. Imagine a group of people trying to read a book out loud together. The \"man with a stick\" makes sure everyone is literally, on the same page, by giving cues and in general maintaining a beat for everyone to follow.",
"The conductor (person with the stick) sets the pace for all the different areas of instruments, to keep the whole group playing at the same tempo/timing. He or she also directs each instrument section in how loud or quietly they should play their part.\n\n\nThe conductor of an orchestra is similar to the director for a movie in that they have an idea in their head of how everything should go, and then they coordinate everyone in how to play their part so that it fits together seamlessly. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
96ft3k | why does corn pop and expand into yummy cinema treats? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/96ft3k/eli5_why_does_corn_pop_and_expand_into_yummy/ | {
"a_id": [
"e4049yp",
"e4052km"
],
"score": [
3,
5
],
"text": [
"All grains pop with enough heat... Rice, corn even wheat, ragi etc. I don't know why they pop but they do pop if heated. ",
"The hard kernel provides resistance, allowing pressure to build then pop. \n\nThe pressure is caused by the moisture content creating steam.\n\nThe resulting airy foam is the starchy inside of the kernal, which is very briefly exploded then solidifies into an airy mass. \n\nOther grains will puff (see: puffed wheat cereal) but corn's harder outer shell allows for more pressure and a larger release of energy giving a large fluffy popped corn."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
2nhcze | why is piracy and copyright law such a derisive issue on the internet? shouldn't artists be entitled to distribute how they want and charge what they feel is appropriate? | Edit: To clarify, why is piracy considered okay by the internet community at large? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nhcze/eli5_why_is_piracy_and_copyright_law_such_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cmdl3ir",
"cmdle48",
"cmdlikj",
"cmdlkqs"
],
"score": [
2,
3,
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Artists can and do distribute how ever they want. Unless they have a contract with a big studio such as Sony, whose sole purpose is to squeeze every last cent out of them.\n\nThere's a lot of royalty free music out there, it's just not the way to earn money and do business with.",
"It's considered OK because people like their free stuff and they're willing to do mental gymnastics in order to justify their actions. It really is immoral to just download content without compensating the creator.\n\nThere is something of an exception when it's not reasonably possible to buy the content through normal channels, and definitely an exception when you already purchased the content in a different format, and just need a particular format you can't convert to on your own.",
"Once upon a time (like 15 years ago), media companies didn't offer people a way to use music/movies on computers or other devices, and there was a large group of younger, tech-savvy people who really wanted to do so. Since the media producers didn't offer any way to do it legally, consumers turned to illegal ways to create/use/distribute media, and justified it by saying that there was no other way.\n\nMedia companies have come around, and now you can get just about any content in digital format. However, many people who grew up in the \"piracy or nothing\" era feel entitled to \"free\" media, and this attitude has been adopted as a convenient way for other people to not feel bad about pirating content.",
"Piracy isn't ok, but it is a consequence of marketing and pricing. There is no justifying it, but there is some explanation of it.\n\nWith saturation advertising, there's literally almost no direction I can look, right now, where I'm sitting, and not see an advertisement for digital media. The whole point is the advertisers want you to feel that you want this product and you want it *now*, in order to induce a purchase.\n\nAnd they're successful, at large, too successful, actually. The value of media is inflated, music and video isn't actually worth what they're charging, as evidenced by the rampant piracy. The working class hasn't had a pay raise in 22 years and has less buying power now than they did in the 1980s, cost of living increases, and the price of media has always been ~$15 for an album. And you get less today than ever. You used to get a cover, an insert, and art, bundled with the album. Today, you get an mp3 download. It costs fractions of a penny to digitize the final product and distribute it on the internet, you'd think that would drop the price. It costs $0.017 to produce a CD, just as a point of reference, and digital distribution is orders of magnitude cheaper.\n\nSo here you have a market who wants your product and wants it now, and can't or won't afford it. I'm not saying it's ok, but this is the catalyst that allows people to justify it.\n\nThe way the industry works is an artist is contracted to produce content for the publisher, they don't own their own songs, and they're literally lucky if they get any money, at all, from the sale of their media. Artists make money by performing, and even then, they're responsible for the cost of the production, which cuts into their profits.\n\nSo publishers are seen as big, bad, rich, faceless corporations - profiteering gluttons who don't need any more money for something they own but they didn't make, so fuck em', right? The world is such a big place and so many people do buy the album that they won't even notice I stole a copy... Or so the mindset goes.\n\nThere are scenarios where people do pay, when they feel the price is fair and when they feel the profits are distributed to those whom they see entitled."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
f41lzj | why does the engine of this plane rumble? | [_URL_1_](_URL_0_)
& #x200B;
Even the window shakes... | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/f41lzj/eli5_why_does_the_engine_of_this_plane_rumble/ | {
"a_id": [
"fhnhj0w"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"Resonance frequency, basically the structure is receiving a little push in step with how the material normally flexes since each push is perfectly timed it is like pushing someone on a swing at the perfect time when the swing has reached its peak. _URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [
"https://youtu.be/4W9t2Bw_mqE?t=109",
"https://youtu.be/4W9t2Bw\\_mqE?t=109"
] | [
[
"https://youtu.be/l2QVRkF0d2M"
]
] |
|
6snjgy | how do headphones create sound by connecting a metal post into a metal housing and sending information through a wire into speakers? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6snjgy/eli5_how_do_headphones_create_sound_by_connecting/ | {
"a_id": [
"dle31ob",
"dle5gly"
],
"score": [
4,
2
],
"text": [
"They don't send \"information\", they send an analog electrical signal. That signal is run through a coil to produce a magnetic field. A small permanent magnet reacts to the field, moving a small speaker cone back and forth to produce sound waves that your ear can detect.",
"Sound, what our ears \"hear\" is actually vibrations in the air around us. The air moves in waves, compressing and decompressing radiating outward from the source of the noise. So remember, the sound is just another word for compression waves in the air. \n\nTo make sound from a speaker, magnets move a bladder back and forth. Basically, the magnets turn on and off causing the \"cone\" in the speaker to move inward and outward. This movement compresses air and creates sound. It's the same principle in headphones as it is on the biggest speakers at the loudest concerts, it's just a matter of scale. \n\nSo speakers don't really get \"information\" they take an electrical signal and use it to turn the magnet on or off, that's it. The signal tells the speakers to VERY quickly turn the magnet on and off. It does this by supplying power over that tiny wire. So there's really no \"information\" transmitted as much as power is supplied or not, and the speakers turn that into sound. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
||
5qlea5 | why do so many people equate abortion with murder when an unwanted baby is often subject to a lifetime of pain and depression due to their parent's inability to care for the child? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qlea5/eli5_why_do_so_many_people_equate_abortion_with/ | {
"a_id": [
"dd06dgd"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Because apparently a life full of suffering and pain that likely ends tragically, is better than not being alive at all."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
9av5ku | if dust in houses is mostly caused by dead human skin cells then why are old abandoned houses always so dusty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9av5ku/eli5_if_dust_in_houses_is_mostly_caused_by_dead/ | {
"a_id": [
"e4ycm75",
"e4yek0q",
"e4yib2q",
"e4z4s6a"
],
"score": [
31,
81,
3,
2
],
"text": [
"There's no-one there to clean them. Dust, which comes from many sources of which dead skin cells are only one, builds up over time. Most people do at least a little cleaning of their homes.",
"You've been misinformed. Dust is not made up of mainly human skin. It's just that every sample of dust you take inside a home will always contain some human skin.\n\n \n\n\nDust isade of various small particles. Like fibers from clothing or plants, pollen aggregates, etc. And there's always some dust in the air as can be seen when a ray of light shining through a room is observed from the side.\n\nSince dust particles are very light they can ride on air currents but since their density is greater than air they will always settle on surfaces given enough time. Since abandoned houses usually have large undisturbed volumes of air all that dust will slowly settle on surfaces. (As long as it's not wet or there are huge drafts inside, this will cause more general \"dirt\" to accumulate).\n\n \n\n\n \n",
"Dust is always in the air moving around and it settles when undisturbed. The difference between an abandoned house and an occupied one is that, there's no disturbance and dust settles on surfaces so that they're more visible.",
"The majority of dust is actually tiny particles of dirt which tend to find their way inside a house because houses are not airtight. The particles are small enough to become airbourn when there is any amount of wind outside but they are still heavier than the air and will later fall once inside a house."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[],
[]
] |
||
12zccz | why can't i become the president of the united states (i was born in canada)? | Why is it that because I am not a natural born citizen of the United States, I can not become the President (or vice-President), but I can be appointed to the cabinet, or become a senator, or a governor, or even the General of the Army? I doesn't make much sense to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12zccz/why_cant_i_become_the_president_of_the_united/ | {
"a_id": [
"c6zelco",
"c6zeq09"
],
"score": [
3,
3
],
"text": [
"Its the rules\n\n**US Constitution, Article II, Section 1**\n\nNo person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.",
"The founders were nervous that a foreign power would attempt to control the country by getting one of their own elected president. Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers:\n\n > Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?\n\nAlso, if we let, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger become president, and some Austrian rose to become a belligerent European dictator (unrealistic, I know), there'd be concern that he wouldn't necessarily act in the best interests of the United States."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
xtlnz | what does curiosity do besides taking pictures of mars? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/xtlnz/what_does_curiosity_do_besides_taking_pictures_of/ | {
"a_id": [
"c5pg9na",
"c5piis6"
],
"score": [
14,
7
],
"text": [
"It's got a chemical sniffer, a laser, and a drill. All for looking for chemistry of one form or another that might indicate prior life, or the possibility of future life. And when it meets Spirit and Opportunity they can join to become MegaRover™!",
"Some instruments check for chemistry in rocks and sand. Some of it drilled, scooped and analysed, some of it at a distance with the laser.\n\nAnd there's some environmental sensors, like radiation, pressure, wind and particle detectors to see what's Mars' 'air' is really like. Also there's a device that tries to find traces of water.\n\nThis is to check for possible life on Mars, both previously as well as possible humans in later missions. And just to find out about how other planets work, this gives insight in our own planet Earth.\n\nHere's a nice [info](_URL_0_) on all the instruments (a bit techy though)\n\n*Science instruments are state-of-the-art tools for acquiring information about the geology, atmosphere, environmental conditions, and potential biosignatures on Mars.*\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[
"http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/mission/instruments/"
]
] |
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