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3x15t4 | how come even though many of us use our handwriting extensively everyday, but it never changes or gets any "better"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3x15t4/eli5_how_come_even_though_many_of_us_use_our/ | {
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"Possibly because we don't try to improve. \"Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect\"\n\nIf you don't make an effort to improve, you won't"
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durtgx | why is tip-toeing quiter than normal walking? | Less energy dispersed to the ground? less energy released as sound? Less grinding noise as you place foot down and lift foot away?
I ask because i run by tip toeing and my family and friends say its scary because as a fat guy its scary seeing a big man like me run moderately fast but quieter than most runners. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/durtgx/eli5why_is_tiptoeing_quiter_than_normal_walking/ | {
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"It is easier to catch your weight when your tiptoes hit first. Try to stomp on the ground with force, first with your front foot first and then with the heel. This way the sound fo your foot hitting the ground is less noticeable.\n\nAlso scraping over the ground is reduced",
"I don’t exactly have a good answer for the question, but I think a lot of runners run on their tip toes. From what I’ve heard that’s how most mammals run, and humans are odd for landing heel-first when they run. I have also heard that it can reduce impact to joints, but I don’t have a source, sorry.",
"When you land on the ball of your foot, the ankle acts as a shock absorber. Most people walk and many run landing heel first. When you do that the ankle cant do that and the force contacting the ground is much greater thus louder. Look at barefoot runners. They all land on the ball, because landing on the heel when running is painful without shoes to act as a shock absorber."
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60xe1s | how is lastpass secure and not the weakest link to all my passwords? | Especially when you consider that many non-corporate PCs are probably not as secure themselves and the users and their setups don't always follow best practices for security, connecting to WiFi without a VPN, correctly securing their home router, etc. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/60xe1s/eli5_how_is_lastpass_secure_and_not_the_weakest/ | {
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"It's both.\n\nLastPass, and password vaults like it, are the weakest link to all your passwords in that if anyone gets the password to the vault, they have access to every password stored therein (or at least, all passwords stored up until you next change your vault-password, and afterwards they only get to keep any if they had the good sense to store an old copy of the vault. This is plenty bad enough to be a concern).\n\nOn the other hand, without that password they'd need an absurdly powerful computer to get into the vault. Given that (after a cursory bit of research) LastPass uses 256-bit AES, even the governments of major world powers don't have the kind of processing power necessary - *as long as* the master-password isn't something easily guessable. And they *won't* have that kind of power for many years yet. AES is a *good scheme*.\n\nSince the vault is encrypted locally, rather than server-side, you only need to worry about the security of the computers on which you access it, not the networks to which they are connected. Any attempt to man-in-the-middle attack the vault directly is going to give you nonsense rather than your passwords, so you have two things to concern yourself with. \n\n Fake software is one - either a fake LastPass plugin that captures the password in plaintext or, for the web interface, a fake CA certificate that allows MITM-ing the page and inserting code to retain and forward the master password.\n\nThe other is keylogging, which is one reason they provide methods for 2-factor authentication and an on-screen keyboard that bypasses the OS's usual text-entry methods.\n\nIn general, the people who use such vaults (and I include self-hosted or network-feature-free ones like the KeePass family, by the way) have concluded that the security gains of having no duplicate passwords outweigh the single point of failure introduced by storing them in a password-vault, at least given how relatively difficult it is to get the password for said vault, which is to say at least as difficult as getting any other unique password and probably more so.",
"Your LastPass vault is encrypted, and it only ever gets decrypted locally, on your own machine. This means that someone breaking into LastPass's database isn't a concern, and nor is someone intercepting your network traffic. So your home router, insecure Wi-Fi, etc are not worries. Your only worry is your local machine.\n\nThen the natural question is: regardless of encryption, isn't locking all my passwords behind *one* password stupid? If anyone gets that one password, they get all of them.\n\nAnd that's true. But it tends to be better than the alternatives. Most people today have dozens of accounts on things accumulated over the years. They can't *possibly* memorise separate strong passwords for every one of them. The usual solution is to just use the same password (or 2 or 3 passwords) for everything.\n\nBut that's *really bad*. If one site you use gets exploited, and the attacker can get your password there, they will automatically try your username/email and password combo on every other big site out there. Which means that hacking that amateur-made videogame forum you signed up for as a teenager gets them access to your PayPal account today.\n\nThe idea behind tools like LastPass and KeePass is that you use a unique very strong password for every service, and write it down, but only within an encrypted vault protected by a strong password. That vault is a single point of failure, but if you use it properly, it's much safer and reliable than re-using passwords.\n\nIf you're wary, then I recommend using a 'mental salt' alongside LastPass. This is some bit of text that is part of all your passwords, but which you never write down. So you set your PayPal password to \"f a 88f jv a9229 audreyhorne\", your bank password to \"$$ 209 mz z9 w audreyhorne\", and your email password to \"p----zk k2 1k1kkvvvv audreyhorne\", but you leave off \"audreyhorne\" when you save those things to LastPass. You never write that down anywhere, and just memorise it. This way, you still get a strong unique password for every service, but you don't have to memorise them all, *and* someone can get access to your LastPass vault without getting access to any actual accounts. It's like a password on top of your passwords.",
"Password leaks online are a big deal because lots of people use the same passwords on multiple sites, and because it gives criminals statistics over which passwords are the most common, allowing them to build better tools to quickly crack other systems later.\n\nA password manager is safer because it gives each of your online accounts a unique and very strong password, so that even if someone hacks one of the sites you're on, they won't also get the password for a different site you're on.\n\nHumans are (generally, you could be an exception of course) very limited in how many different and how complex passwords they can remember in their heads. If you want to have complex passwords, you most likely won't be able to remember a unique complex password for each online service you use. If you use simpler passwords that you can remember many of, the passwords you use will be more easily guessable/crackable.\n\nYour password manager's password is never transmitted over the internet, so no one can find it by hacking any website you're on. The password manager also just requires you to remember a single password, so all your password-remembering capacity can be spent on making one password that is very strong. You can have a strong, difficult to guess, difficult to crack password that you still won't have to write down in order to remember. With the password only being stored in your head, figuring it out can be *very* difficult.\n\nIf a hacker has the ability to detect the password you use for your password manager (for example by having installed a keyboard logger on your system), the hacker is most likely also capable of detecting every password you would type in manually without a manager as well."
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8vg1fo | how are nude shots in film and television (specifically western, and more specifically cable and broadcast) accomplished? | I was always under the impression there was some sort of suit, but I think I may be wrong. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8vg1fo/eli5_how_are_nude_shots_in_film_and_television/ | {
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"It can depend on the director and the actors in the scene. For example, some actors and actresses have a no nudity clause in their contracts. In that case, it's usually a body double for closeups. In some cases, it's the actor or actresses own body, fully exposed. In other cases it's entirely CGI, and in yet others it's combined with prosthetics or pubic hair wigs, cock socks (don't mean to be crude, I believe that's just what they're called), and so on.\n\nCable and broadcast have specific limits of what can and can't be shown or what eating it would acquire, so camera angles and cutting scenes is usually important.",
"For the most part, it's actually the actor in the nude. Of course the actors consent to this, but especially in movies and certain television, it's real nudity. Some actors/directors may not want certain parts of the nude body to appear in shot, so you'll often see clever set design, camera choreography, or actor movements that show everything BUT the part in question.\n\nMaybe in some mediums, they might use prosthetics or CG, but I can't think of any examples.",
"If it is just a nude scene the actors usually are naked. Occasionally they will use a body double, but if you see someone naked on TV, they are probably naked.\n\nSex scenes are a little different. To avoid actual genital to gential contact, some sort of covering is often used, a device kind of like a sock.\n\nWhether it can be shown on TV is a different matter. In the US, there are three classes of questionable content:\n\n* Obscenity - Includes portrayals of sex a typical person would find offensive and that no redeeming social value. Obscene materials are not protected by the 1st Amendment,\n* Indecency - Includes most nudity and portrayals of sex that do not meet that standard of obscenity.\n* Profanity - Covered bad language.\n\nNo station, cable or otherwise, can broadcast obscenity. Broadcast TV cannot show indecency or profanity between 6 am and 10 pm, cable has no restrictions. However, both tend to refrain out of fear of upsetting sponsors.\n\n\n\n"
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29hk7m | following the supreme court's decision, how can a corporation have a religion? | Aren't there laws or regulations that prevent corporations in the US from having the same "rights" as a person?
Isn't this decision against the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity laws?
DISCLAIMER: I am not american. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29hk7m/eli5_following_the_supreme_courts_decision_how/ | {
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"There's no law or precedent that states whether a corporation can or cannot have a religion. Nothing establishes that right, and nothing specifically denies it.\n\nThe Supreme Court decided, as is their right, to interpret the situation such that a very specific type of corporation, defined as closely-held (where most of the corporation is owned by a very small group of five or fewer individuals) could not be separated from the religious views of those owners.",
"This decision affects \"closely held for-profit businesses -- those with at least 50% of stock held by five or fewer people, such as family-owned businesses -- in which the owners have clear religious beliefs.\"\n\nVery few large corporations fit those criteria. That is really all I can contribute to this, as I am not a lawyer.",
"i'm seeing some sort of new religion in the near future to which most .01%-ers will adhere. if scientology is recognized as a \"Real religion™\", what's to stop them from declaring they believe in the holy No Taxes, Fuck the poor - doctrine . \n\nit will be their Supreme Court given right to follow their \"closely held beliefs\", right ?"
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4cld56 | what makes our stomach realize it needs to evacuate the contents inside? how does it know that theres something that doesn't belong in there? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cld56/eli5_what_makes_our_stomach_realize_it_needs_to/ | {
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"There is a specific center in the brain that is sensitive to toxins in the blood and can stimulate vomiting to empty the stomach.\n\nSee < _URL_0_;",
"[This link](_URL_0_) may help.",
"Signals are transmitted to the chemo-receptor trigger zone (CTZ) located in the medula oblongata (A core part of the brain that is in almost every vertebrate.)\n\nThe signals are received and translated. If the brain determines that something is wrong (e.g. poison) then it will produce \"emetic\" signals (vomit inducing signals). These lead to the coordinated respiratory, gastrointestinal and abdominal muscle expulsive actions of vomiting - Nausea, Retching & amp; Vomiting.\n\n[Source](_URL_0_)"
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3rtoqo | how are tank tracks planned out? | I am planning to build a tracked robot, and I don't know how they find out what size the tracks must be and how many to fit the sprockets just tight enough.
I don't want to do a lot of guessing and material wasteing. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3rtoqo/eli5_how_are_tank_tracks_planned_out/ | {
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"Make it adjustable. The excavators I work with have a grease fitting that tightens the tracks. Not sure how it all works, but maybe you could add in some sort of threaded assembly between the sprockets to take out the slack, or loosen things in order to change the tracks. "
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asxyhk | how do hospitals and other similar emergency services know who your next of kin is if you are brought in unconscious or dead? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/asxyhk/eli5_how_do_hospitals_and_other_similar_emergency/ | {
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"Well they will try and identify you based on ID you may have, finderprint records etc, but if they're unsuccessful (which doesn happen regularly) you are just listed as a John/Jane Doe and sometimes never claimed",
"That's a good question. I wonder the same. My sister recently passed away and the coroner contacted my other sister. How would they know to contact her and how did they get the number??? ",
"If you’re conscious, or have ID, a name and date of birth will normally show you up on the system at the hospital. Most people carry ID of some form or a phone (finger print ID on phones is great for this!).\n\nI once went to a cardiac arrest for a youngish guy on a bike. He had no ID, his phone was locked but he had a message on the home screen from “bike bitch” about meeting in “the woods” we were in quite a wooded area so there was no guessing which woods, but he had quite a nice mountain bike, with some modifications, so I posted on a national mountain bike forum that if anyone was expecting to meet up with a guy in this town on this day fitting this description, they needed to ring the hospital. Fortunately this worked and they were able to ID him.",
"I work in a Trauma ICU and I’ve had managers find patients via Facebook and contact family that way. ",
"ALWAYS Set up **emergency contacts** on your phone people, and if you hade older parents or grandparents, set it up for them, so that way they can call you immideatly without research if something happens.",
"I always type out on a little piece of paper and tape to the back of my license with a couple of emergency contact numbers. Also, the emergency contacts on the iPhone is great. If you end up getting locked out of your phone, like getting disabled due to some fluke (happened to me while on vacation), you can still make calls to the people on your emergency contact lists. "
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6ge7cp | how are humans the only species to have a higher consciousness? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ge7cp/eli5_how_are_humans_the_only_species_to_have_a/ | {
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"I think it's because of how complex our brain is. The human brain is actually big and it has a lot of sulci and gyri (those folds and crevices that makes the brain wrinkly) which increases the surface area of the brain, devoting more space for meaningful processing. Also, the human brain has the capacity to form many meaningful connections between neurons, and can prune and kind of clean itself to how you are using it. The formed connections between learned concepts and ideas that we have encountered makes it easier for us to understand everything around us. As a species we are blessed to learn quickly and associate a massive amount of information easily. An example would be language. We are able to append meaning to different sounds, symbols, and gestures and actually remember these meanings. Just by that, we connected visual and auditory stimuli and even elaborated on them by attaching the context on how they were used.\n\nBut ultimately it's not really about the size of the brain, but more on how efficient and optimized are the neural connections in your brain. \n\n",
"You are assuming a lot of things about consciousness . First by saying \"higher\" you assume that it's not binary. Secondly you assume that other animals isn't as conscious as you, even though I'm pretty sure a cat is more \"present\" than you, and I think a cat have a larger understanding of the \"now\" than people do. So to answer your question you have to define consciousness, and then you realize that the only way to define it is by using it . ",
"We don't know this with any certainty whatsoever.\n\nIn terms of 'higher consciousness' we could be at the bottom of the ladder, with ..."
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k92tj | us support for israel and others hate towards them | It's always confused me. ELI5 or dumb it down for me | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/k92tj/eli5_us_support_for_israel_and_others_hate/ | {
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"The super short summary:\n\nIsrael is a strong ally smack dab in a region that isn't super friendly to the US. This is beneficial to the US as we currently have a lot going on in the Middle East.\n\nThe problems/controversies stem from multiple issues, but here's some of the more prominent ones:\n\n* Jews vs. Muslims. Israel is the only non-Muslim nation in the surrounding area. There is a lot of history -- old and newer regarding conflicts between the two groups. \n\n* Israel doesn't take shit from no one. They are known to strike back fast and hard with their military when random RPGs land in their territory (or any other hostile actions). There's some controversy with this one because people argue it's too much force, while some argue that the clear intent to retaliate discourages hostile actions in the first place.\n\n* Israel gets lots and lots and lots of money and weapons from the US. They are a tiny, tiny country. Without US aid/backing, they probably wouldn't fare so well due to having so many bordering \"enemies.\" Because of the aid, there's grumblings that we are basically propping them up and that we could use the money better elsewhere, etc. \n\n* Israel doesn't really recognize the sovereignty of Palestine. This one is probably the most public issue. While this deserves it's own ELI5, the most current issue is that Israel is expanding construction on what has traditionally been considered Palestine's territory (note: they see it as their own). In this case, Israel is seen as basically a bully because they kind of just do whatever they want -- but they have the military to back them up. ",
"The super short summary:\n\nIsrael is a strong ally smack dab in a region that isn't super friendly to the US. This is beneficial to the US as we currently have a lot going on in the Middle East.\n\nThe problems/controversies stem from multiple issues, but here's some of the more prominent ones:\n\n* Jews vs. Muslims. Israel is the only non-Muslim nation in the surrounding area. There is a lot of history -- old and newer regarding conflicts between the two groups. \n\n* Israel doesn't take shit from no one. They are known to strike back fast and hard with their military when random RPGs land in their territory (or any other hostile actions). There's some controversy with this one because people argue it's too much force, while some argue that the clear intent to retaliate discourages hostile actions in the first place.\n\n* Israel gets lots and lots and lots of money and weapons from the US. They are a tiny, tiny country. Without US aid/backing, they probably wouldn't fare so well due to having so many bordering \"enemies.\" Because of the aid, there's grumblings that we are basically propping them up and that we could use the money better elsewhere, etc. \n\n* Israel doesn't really recognize the sovereignty of Palestine. This one is probably the most public issue. While this deserves it's own ELI5, the most current issue is that Israel is expanding construction on what has traditionally been considered Palestine's territory (note: they see it as their own). In this case, Israel is seen as basically a bully because they kind of just do whatever they want -- but they have the military to back them up. "
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pe73j | if someone goes to the hospital due to overdose on illegal drugs, suicide attempt, or alcohol poisoning (underage) are they usually charged? | I've heard different people at different times say yes and no to this question and i just want a straight answer :)
I know all of them probably won't have the same answer | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/pe73j/if_someone_goes_to_the_hospital_due_to_overdose/ | {
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"Depends on the country. In the US it depends on the individual hospital. ",
"I don't know the answer to your question but I know that many hospitals by law must have a social worker talk to all patients, especially in the ER. A few months ago I got hit by a car. I was fine but I decided to go to the ER and make sure everything was OK. The social worker came to me and asked me a bunch of stupid questions (she said hospital policy but I didn't have to answer) about whether I've done drugs, was molested, etc.."
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1n8sq7 | what makes steamos any better than windows? (how can it help games perform better?) | Not sure if this is the correct subreddit. But I was just wondering, with the new release of SteamOS, quite simply: Why should I change? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n8sq7/eli5_what_makes_steamos_any_better_than_windows/ | {
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"I not sure if you should change into we get more facts. If its a completely functioning os and can install software like regular distros that i say its pretty good.\n\nIf its like Xbox and PS3 i say No go, unless you dual boot\n\n\nI will most likely dual boot it.",
"Well a lot is still not known about SteamOS, but as far as gaming quality goes SteamOS should be able to focus completely on gaming and ignore a lot of overhead Windows has. From my understanding it isn't a replacement for windows, instead it focuses high performance gaming.",
" > Why should I change?\n\nYou shouldn't if you don't feel a need to.\n\nHere's my take on why Valve is going the SteamOS route, and also what possible benefits you may have.\n\n* Microsoft may start making Windows more closed and restrictive. They've already launched their own equivalent \"App store\" for Windows desktop. That potential restrictiveness is a threat to Valve's business model with Steam.\n\n* They want more games to run on Linux because they are launching their own console that uses a linux based operating system.\n\n* This opens up more marketshare as now Linux users can buy games on steam (albeit a very small market share).\n\n > How can it help games perform better?\n\nThis is more of a technical answer. Your operating system is what controls a program's use of your computer. So when you open up a video game on Steam for Windows, it talks directly with Windows to acquire resources. Windows then decides how much resources your video game receives.\n\nThe thing is, Windows is a generic all purpose operating system. It's designed to allow a user to run multiple applications at the same time, as well as a wide variety of different applications that have different uses. An analogy would be to compare it to a mini-van: it has plenty of space, can get you around, and is all-purpose enough to go grocery shopping, take the family camping, or transport furniture around town.\n\nNow, video games are a very specific type of application that have very specific needs. And if you run an operating system that is custom tailored to those needs, you will get better performance. So Valve building SteamOS allows them to do this. Valve doesn't want a MiniVan, it wants an F-1 race car: a car that is designed specifically to do one thing, and one thing really well.\n\nSo I won't be surprised if one day SteamOS will allow games to run with superior performance instead of on Windows. ",
"I started making breakfast sandwiches. I have always loved them but thought they were a pain in the ass and a mess to clean up, till I figured out a way that uses less dishes and only takes about ten minutes. I make patties out of the bob Evans sausage in a tube and put them on the grill on high. After that's on I put an egg for every sandwhich in a buttered pan. I then start toasting English muffins. Bu the time the English muffins are done, the eggs are about done, and the sausage is done a minute or two later. Throw some cheese on there and that shit is good. Has totally changed my morning since I started doing it. May not be the best thing for you, but itactually feels like a real breakfast and uses a total of one pan and two forks. ",
"People are also forgetting SteamOS will be free and Windows is expensive."
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df7075 | whilst drinking, why does most of the flavour only come in after you stop drinking and swallow? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/df7075/eli5_whilst_drinking_why_does_most_of_the_flavour/ | {
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"Because most of any taste is supplemented by your smell senses also\n\nWhen you swallow you breath the smell back out and it adds to the flavour so to speak.\n\nRed wine is best drank that way",
"Because you cant breathe and drink at the same time. Your sense of smell is responsible for a lot of the taste. Think about how when you are sick and your nose is all stuffed up, it's hard to taste anything. Same concept.",
"Taste refers to receptors on your tongue, which has receptors for saltiness, sweetness, bitterness, sourness, and savoriness. Flavor is detected in the nose. So if you drink a soda, you'll notice the sweetness of the sugar and the sourness of the phosphoric acid right away, but the rest of the sensory experience happens in the nose once you breathe.",
"I believe I've heard that taste 70 or 80% comes from our sense of smell. Try biting into an onion with your nose shut - you'll be surprised. Try it with different foods.",
"I have noticed that almost all of the flavor experienced at any point is done so through the exhaling process. Pay attention to this next time you drink or eat something and you will notice significantly more flavors on your exhales than inhales.",
"This is also why warm ice cream tastes better than cold ice cream. The warmer temperature allows the molecules to escape to your nose better.",
"... It does? Is that the normal thing to happen?",
"It’s actually a patch to fix an exploit where people were drinking, getting full benefit of the flavor and then spitting the liquid back for reuse.",
"Follow up question: why are we so compelled to swallow food we have chewed? If so much of the pleasure of eating comes from the flavor, why can’t we simply chew food and spit it out after the flavor is gone?",
"What a lot of folks are saying is mostly true, it does have to do with how a lot of flavor gets processed by your sense of smell - there's just a little bit more logistics involved. A lot of that smell when you're eating or drinking something comes through from where the back of your throat meets your nose. I've heard this called the retro olfactory sense, but doing a bit of quick searching, Wikipedia calls it \"Retronasal smell.\""
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g3tz5b | what caused the yellow color on electronic stuffs (computers. game consoles) from the 80's and 90's? | I bought old electronic stuffs for nostalgia, especially video game consoles and computers. However, i noticed that they usually have those kind of yellow color that are not part of the original ones
Here is an example image of a yellowed SNES:
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
What really caused this? And is it possible to restore the original color back with tools? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g3tz5b/eli5_what_caused_the_yellow_color_on_electronic/ | {
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"Can't tell you why, but it's UV/Sun damage to the plastic. As for fixing it, search RetroBrite. The 8-Bit Guy has some good videos on making and using it.",
"A Flame retardant additive is what causes the plastic to yellow. It’s mixed with the plastic when the parts are molded.\n\nUsually you’ll find these yellow color consoles say in direct sunlight. The UV light reacts with the flame retardant chemical over time. \n\nAlso: [How to restore a yellow Super Nintendo the easy way](_URL_0_)",
"UV and heat can degrade components of the plastic, and the new degraded bits have this brown coloring\n\nIt is often though that the culprit is a certain bromine based fire retardant, but I’ve also heard it sometimes happened in plastics that don’t have it\n\nYou can sort of bring it back doing what’s called “retrobriting” which consists of using UV light again and hydrogen peroxide. This essentially turns the plastics back to being white, although that has been linked to making the plastic more brittle"
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9xkmq4 | how exactly does apple pay work? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9xkmq4/eli5_how_exactly_does_apple_pay_work/ | {
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"Add your credit card a or debit card in Apple pay settings, it gets approved by your credit/debit card provider, then you can use your iPhone to purchase anything where Apple pay is accepted, here in Australia it's pretty much everywhere. iPhones 6 and above I think, have an RFID chip which is needed for Apple pay as you just 'tap and go' by placing your iPhone very close to the register/keypad with RFID. \n\nedit: NFC not RFID apologies.",
"When the contactless terminal is expecting payment, it sends out radio waves. Contactless payment chips in your phone or payment card listen out for signals from this and activate when they detect them. They have a brief secure chat (again via radio waves) telling each other who they are - the chip in payment card tells the terminal which card it is, and the payment is then authorised (or not) in the same way as any other payment.\n\nWith a phone (android/google pay works similarly) you can turn the payment chip on and off which you can't with a card - ie you need to unlock the phone to use it. This is why the payment limit is higher with a phone than with a normal contactless card payment.",
"When you pay with a modern chip card, the terminal will read the 16 digit primary account number (PAN) on the card, which is stored in the chip. \n\nDuring this kind of transaction, the payment is verified at the terminal either manually via a signature or more likely via entering a 4 digit PIN number, the terminal will check the PIN is correct compared to the data on the card chip, and if it matches the payment is sent to be authorised or rejected by the bank and if you have enough funds it goes through. \n\nPart of the modern chip card standard (EMV) includes the ability to make contactless transactions. If you hold your card near a compatible reader, it will send the PAN information via a technology called NFC (near-field communication), this sends the same data as you would if you inserted the card. There is usually a limit for this kind of transaction, this may be a maximum amount, or require a pin after a few contactless transactions for security reasons. \n\nWith Apple Pay things are similar, except it doesn’t sent your actual PAN, and you don’t need a PIN. Instead this uses something called tokenisation, where rather than sending your real data, it generates a unique single use number specific to that device and transaction. \n\nWith Apple Pay when you register each card on the device, this creates a link to your card issuer and generates a new number called a device account number (DAN) which is unique to the phone or watch you added the card to and stored securely on the device, the bank also gets a decryption token they can use to securely check that your information matches. Note: This number is not the same as the number visible on the card. \n\nWhen an Apple Pay transaction happens the device verifies your identity via Touch or Face ID, and sends your DAN, the card expiry date, and a unique transaction number (dynamic card verification value) just for that payment. The dynamic number which is unique to each transaction serves a similar but more secure purpose as the PIN and 3 digit CVV code on the back of a credit card to prove the transaction is being made by the card holder, or in this case device holder.\n\nAll this information substitutes for your real PAN number, and is checked in real-time by a token service provider at the bank of the store you’re buying from. \n\nThis bank then sends the information on to Visa, Mastercard or AMEX etc. where they will decrypt the information using a key they received which was created when you registered the card on your device, they use this key in order to get your actual card number, then the transaction request is then sent to your actual bank/card issuer to approve/reject the payment. \n\nAssuming you have the funds, it goes through and you get to marvel at the fact this all happens in in under 3 seconds. \n\nEdit: spelling",
"I apologize if this has already been mentioned, but another detail about Apple Pay is you do not need a data connection. For example, American in U.K. The best way to use the London Underground is with Apple Pay, even if you have your phone in airplane mode. You will get the best rates and no need to buy tickets at the kiosks."
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260ejg | why is corporal punishment only appropriate for kids and not adults? | In many countries, physically punishing students with a belt or cane used to be standard practice from teachers. Parents are legally allowed to spank their children on the bum to an extent in places like Canada.
In America, I've heard of high school students being sent to the principal's office to be whipped with a belt and similar punishment may still happen in other parts of the world. But no matter what culture, I haven't heard of corporal punishments used on adults in university or older parents spanking their adult children because they disagree on their views. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/260ejg/eli5why_is_corporal_punishment_only_appropriate/ | {
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"Well, I completely cut off corporal punishment about the age of five - mostly because that is when a person can be reasoned with. You can't logic a 2 year old to not touch a hot stove - sometimes they have to touch to understand hot, but if you prefer to avoid burns, slapping their fingers works to explain \"hot\" = pain. Likewise, a swat on the butt when you find them in the street emphasizes they cannot play in the street.\n\nOnce a kid gets big enough to logic, you should be able to do away with any kind of physical punishment. I know this isn't exactly the way society views it - but that is my reasoning.",
"Because by the time that the child is an adult, they have matured, and become set in their ways, and physical punishment is not as much of an option.\n\nNot to mention a large part of a parent or teacher disciplining their child in such a manner is showing that there is always a stronger force enforcing the rules. Which is easy to show a 3-9 year old, when you are a 25+ year old in their prime.\n\nIt becomes a bit harder when the child is now in their prime 15+ and you the \"authority\" are 40+, it's not so much showing that there is always a stronger force, as showing that the force can often be overpowered.\n\nThrow in that adults are often all on a level playing field, and it's just a social stigma.\n\nThere are certain cases where physical punishment is used.\n\n * Gangs - Gangs often have no problem beating members that step out of line\n\n * Prison - Not so much the guards beating the prisoners when they step out of line, as the guards showing that they are the stronger force when necessary, such as if a prisoner attacks them, or a fight breaks out\n\n * Military - Again, not so much of a drill sergeant beating a new recruit, but forcing him to do pushups, run for an extended period, or forcing him to do physically taxing work\n\nThose are all cases where one adult physically punishes another, but as you can see, all three are on the fringe of social acceptability.",
"It is NOT appropriate for kids.",
"It's never appropriate to hit kids even if some people might think so. It has been proven to be detrimental to the child's development which is why countries in the developed world generally have banned it. \n"
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2a0gzx | the difference between the old and new testament? | I've never read either, but have both. Just curious what the difference is? Thanks in advance | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2a0gzx/eli5_the_difference_between_the_old_and_new/ | {
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"The Old Testament is based heavily on The Torah, the Jewish holy book. Judaism and Christianity differ on whether the messiah has come or not. The New Testament is the story of Jesus and his apostles. ",
"The old testament is a primarily Jewish collection of documents, detailing the history of the Jewish people and their respective mythologies, laws, and military conquests. Many sections are extremely old, and it is highly valued for its insight into ancient near-eastern religion and culture.\n\nThe new testament, however, is a much newer product of individuals in the first century AD, after the death of Jesus. They are primarily letters written by followers of Jesus Christ and his disciples, to churches and communities that they set up as the traveled the region spreading the news of this very young religion (Christianity). These letters are almost entirely focused on the message of Jesus, converting people into this new religion, and explaining how adherents should act in accordance with the philosophies of Jesus.",
"If I were to read one, which would you suggest in your personal opinions?"
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5vaetz | why isn't nagarno-karobagh annexed by armenia? | Why does the Nagarno-Karabagh region decide to stay an autonomous republic? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5vaetz/eli5_why_isnt_nagarnokarobagh_annexed_by_armenia/ | {
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"Mainly, the idea of annexation hasn't even been entertained because the conflict with Azerbaijan hasn't yet been resolved, and if Armenia was to annex Karabakh, then Azerbaijan begins saying stuff like Armenia is being oppresser and illegal occupied and stuff. This would also basically be Armenia saying fuck you to peace negotiations, and kinda putting a deadlock on the negotiations, as it attempts to solidify the status of Karabakh completely removing concessions or anything from the table. The main thing Karabakh Armenians wanted was independence from Azerbaijan, and they've gotten that, so for now they are perfectly happy and proud of being their own little country. \n \n It also plays into a major part of Armenia's policy regarding the conflict: deniability. While it is obvious that the Armenian Army deployed all over Karabakh, and that Armenia provides tons of support to the separatists, they deny this for the sakes of politics, and Karabakh being independent and having its own separate (wink wink) army, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army, they are able to deny responsibility. Otherwise, Azerbaijan would be able to more successfully claims like \"Armenia is oppressive nation being aggressor against Azerbaijan and occupying Azerbaijani lands\". It's also why Armenia doesn't even recognize the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, to show that it doesn't support the separatists, and sorta supports Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, in that Armenia is willing to work with Azerbaijan and for example concede territories in exchange for ending the conflict. \n \n Furthermore, this theoretically gives Karabakh Armenians more of a say in their own future, rather than having Armenia's government just decide everything. If the Armenian government wants to do something with the negotiations, like concede some territory to Azerbaijan, then the Karabakh government could disagree and refuse to give it. Of course, the Karabakh government can't really disagree much since they are heavily dependent on Armenia, but nonetheless they get some degree of freedom in making decision. \n \n Now if the conflict is finally resolved, with Azerbaijan finally conceding the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic being independent (which would probably happen in a deal where the buffer territories were handed over to Azerbaijan), then annexation becomes an option. In that case, there will probably be a referendum where Armenians in Karabakh can choose whether they would like to stay independent or join Armenia ( most likely as an autonomous region), and as the Armenian there are pretty split about it, the vote would probably be pretty close. \n \nTL;DR: Gives Armenia deniability in being responsible for \"occupying\" Azerbaijani territory and supporting separatists. It's the same reason why Armenia doesn't recognize the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It's essential for allowing negotiations with Azerbaijan to occur. \n \n \nSorry about the massive response, idk how it ended up so long. Ask if anything is unclear to you."
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bk6l45 | how does your body know how thirsty you are and how much water you need to drink to quench your thirst? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bk6l45/eli5_how_does_your_body_know_how_thirsty_you_are/ | {
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"I’m not an expert on this but I do know that your body gets it wrong pretty often. You are dehydrated before you are thirsty and sometimes your body mistakes thirstiness for hunger, as in you are actually dehydrated but you feel hungry.",
"Thirst and quenching your thirst aren't factors in hydration. Thirst is merely a sensation you get after you are dehydrated to encourage you to drink.\n\nYour body measures your \"hydration” status by receptors in your brain. It comes down to how much water is in your blood (basically speaking). To be more accurate it is also measuring the salt in your blood because the amount of salt in your blood is a reflection of how much water will be in there.",
"Other explanations are super succinct but to satisfy any super curious eli5 subscribers here’s an extended version.\n\nIt comes down to blood pressure, really. Its hydration levels and salt content.\nFor hydration levels, you have receptors that can detect how much your blood vessels are stretched (called baroreceptors). They sit around a few different blood vessels (carotid artery, aorta and one in your kidneys) and can detect dilation. When your blood pressure is low (low dilation caused by excretion of water by sweat etc) it’s harder for your heart to pump blood in your body so they send information to your brain to stimulate your thirst reflex. Bing bang boom, you drink water, which goes into your blood stream and increases blood pressure.\n\nAnother instance is when you eat something salty or do heaps of exercise and loose A LOT of water and drastically increase salt concentration (or other methods, like just not drinking water). This comes back to blood pressure again. You also often swell up (noticeable around your knuckles) because the salt is spread out in all the cells around your body, the water comes out of your capillaries (very stretchy and hold most of your blood) and go into your cells to help balance out the concentration. Your body (kidneys to be specific) can sense the change in blood volume. Your kidneys (incredibly efficient organs, and frankly mind blowing piece of machinery) then hold onto more water (by becoming less permeable to water and not allowing it to be excreted via urine, which is caused by the release of a hormone called antidiuretic hormone (thanks u/dietus for reminding me) (ADH, also known as vasopressin and also acts on your blood vessels causing them to constrict and raise blood pressure). The same process as before happens: blood pressure drops due to decrease in volume from water exiting your blood stream, and your body seeks to correct it. Really, water and salt concentrations are essentially yin and yang- one affects the other.\n\nI don’t know much around the neurological response i.e. thirst centre in the brain but that’s how the physical mechanism works. The signal is carried from the stretch detecting receptor (baroreceptor) via the vagus nerve to the brain. Brain interprets the signal then tells your mouth to feel dry/that thirst feel you get. \n\nThanks u/dietus, the brain has receptors that can detect salt content (osmoreceptors), and will send out signals to stimulate thirst.\n\nHow much you feel you need to drink comes down to your blood pressure. Hella low = hella thirsty. Other things that can affect thirst levels are stress and diabetes so if you’re thirsty all the time you should consult a doctor.\n\nSource: human biology major. (Edit one: forgot it was ELI5, explained baroreceptor, arteries. Edit two: add note about thirst signals and brain response,. Edit three: thanks r/dietus, also added ADH and osmoreceptors. Edit four (sorry, aiming for accuracy here): corrected kidney’s role from salt detection via water concentrations to more accurate blood volume detection, thanks u/optrode!",
"How is it easy to drink three beers in an hour but drinking two cups of water is a challenge?",
"The biggest player in this game is the kidneys. Not only can they sense when your blood is too concentrated, they also sense when your blood volume is low. This triggers a lot of responses that result in you getting thirsty (and peeing less). When you drink enough water those responses get shut off. Your body doesn’t actually do any calculations to decide how much you need to drink. It just keeps telling you to drink until you’re hydrated.",
" & #x200B;\n\n1. There are cells in your brain (anterior hypothalamus): If there is too much salt in your blood, the water is sucked out of the cells (an effect called osmolarity, in short, water seeks to level concentrations of solutes between two containers). The shrinkage of the cells signals the brain that the body is thirsty \n2. If you are triggered by sight, sound, or even a dry feeling in your mouth, you are also influenced to be thirsty\n3. Volume loss, having too little blood in your body (maybe you were sweating), will also tell your brain by means of receptors that measure exactly that level against a set point, to drink water. \n\nIt's as complicated as you want to make it, A five year old would need to know no more than that, a medical student would need to know all involved chemicals, ion channels, and feedback loops.",
"I saw a TV show before about people surviving, probably called Against All Odds or some shit. A guy was adrift at sea in a life raft. Had a basic survival kit that comes with the raft. One of the tools was a basic fishing line. Guy was adrift for a long time, can't remember exactly. He was catching fish daily and eating pretty well considering his situation.\n\nProblem was that after a few days of eating salty fish he was getting extremely dehydrated. Couldn't do much about it so continued eating the fish hoping it would sustain him. Then he said every fish he caught he was looking at the eyeballs and couldn't figure out why they were so attractive. Then he ate one, said it tasted delicious, then he was obsessed with eating the eyeballs. Turns out the eyes contain fresh water (or less salty than sea water anyway). Amazing that without him having any conscious knowledge of that, his brain directed him to eat the eyes for the water. We think we control our bodies but really our body just lets us live there and do basic maintenance for free rent.",
"My body specifically tells me I am thirsty around 80% of the time.\n\nAnd the amount it wants me to drink is: **All of the availible liquid**",
"Source: Medical student,\n\nFrom my rudimentary understanding of basic science and physiology. Thirst has a lot to do with a hormone called ADH ( anti-diuretic hormone) which responds to changes in osmolality. \" When **osmolality** increases, it triggers your body to make **antidiuretic hormone**(**ADH**). Your kidneys then keep more water inside your body and your urine becomes more concentrated. When **osmolality** decreases, your body doesn't make as much **ADH**. \" ....One of the most important concepts to understand with water is that your blood is mostly water so changes in your **blood pressure** also affect a system of regulation called the Renin-Angitensin-Aldosterone system which is a hormonal system responsible for regulating how much \"salt\" and water (because water always follow Na+ in physiology)....... So in short it's a complex system of hormonal responses to \"pressure\" changes in your blood vessels AND osmolality changes which trigger thirst. How do we know this? Well there is several syndromes associated with ADH that I won't go into that show how deficits/excess of the hormone ADH affect our thirst/urination.",
"We don't understand this too well, but there are aspects of it that we do know. I'll try to explain them. \n\nThere are cells in our hypothalamus** that detect the osmolality*** of our blood. The most important aspect for osmolality is salt. So when these cells detect too much salt in the blood, like after a nice taco bell binge, they release something called ADH****, which makes us hold more water, thus diluting the salt back to a normal amount. ADH, combined with a bunch of other stuff, makes us thirsty. It is also what makes diabetic patients with high sugar more thirsty - lots of sugar = lots of dissolved stuff in the blood = want to dilute it = thirsty. \n\nHope that was simple enough. \n\n** Little almond sized thing in the brain that regulates lots of hormonal and endocrine functions in our body\n\n*** Basically, how much dissolvable stuff there is in our blood (salt, potassium, sugar). We all have this stuff in our blood, and it is well regulated because cells best function with these things in certain ranges \n\n**** Anti-diuretic hormone; anti - without; diuresis - peeing; so anti-diuretic hormone prevents us from peeing, which increases how much water we hold and also affects our thirst in conjunction with other signals from the hypothalamus",
"I live in a constant dehydrated state. I've never drank enough and I'm constantly told off for it (I'm 29...). I just don't drink if I'm not thirsty and I cba to go to the toilet all the time. I have maybe 2 cups of tea a day and a 500ml bottle of squash.",
"The answer is your body is actually pretty bad at telling you. It will however give less of the water it does have to less important parts of the body (this is why skin gets less flexible during some stages of dehydration) and minimize the amount that leaves the body through urine (to a certain degree, because there is a limit to the concentration our kidneys can achieve). One other thing you can feel during dehydration is headaches, because your brain is not getting enough water. The problem is that if you don't know the signs, you do not necessarily associate the above with thirst. The rough water requirement my doctor gave me is 1 oz of water for 2 pound of body weight. You will survive with less, but it's not great for you in the long term."
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4o05mp | traditionally what about reading is good for the mind? when people say "reading is good for you" are they talking about the act of reading and processing words or is it the information that one receives from the book? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4o05mp/eli5_traditionally_what_about_reading_is_good_for/ | {
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"Both. Exposure to ideas in books gives new horizons and new avenues of thought. But the mechanical action of reading may also help with personal development.",
"I would imagine it's both. Reading fiction can introduce you to new vocabulary (context, or looking words up), styles of writing... Nonfiction can also introduce you to new vocabulary, information, etc. I would postulate that ANY reading is good for the mind because requires you to take in information.",
"Reading forces you to entertain the notion that you are another person and you learn to think and feel from their perspective in their world. You may find yourself thinking about the themes and the deeper meaning of a story you've read unconsciously. The mechanical act of reading and processing information may help but empathy and deeper thinking are why reading is good for the mind.",
"Reading is an amazing way to learn. The obvious ways, like reading a textbook to remember facts, and subconscious ways like when you read a novel and pick up on social norms, culture, and distinct perspectives.\n\nBefore written language, we had to depend on oral traditions and experiences for knowledge. The downside to that is that human memory is actually pretty awful. When you think back on something that happened long ago, you aren't usually recalling that moment. Instead, you remember what you were thinking the last time you recalled that moment. Each time there is potential for changes for \"what happened\".\n\nThere was a study done, I'll try to find, where researchers asked participants about an event from their past. Something like do you remember when you were 7 years old and you went on that hot air balloon ride? People overwhelmingly reported remembering the event even though it never happened. \"Truth\" long after something happens is practically invented by our own desires, biases, and emotions.\n\nBy reading, discussing what we read, and re-reading what we've read, we're able to utilize a consistent source of information. Written language provides an objective, universal way to pass on and share knowledge and experiences. Other than fire and agriculture, I can't think of a more important tool in the development of modern society.\n\nThe ability to read heightens your potential. You become able to think critically, develop and share complex ideas, and base your understanding of the world past what you see directly or hear from the few people in this world (out of billions) who you actually talk to.\n\nUnlike TV, reading lets you \"think the thoughts\" in a way, of another human being. Every single person who lives or has ever lived, gained some knowledge that you do not posses. Reading and writing is by far the best way I can think of to keep that knowledge from vanishing into thin air the second a person dies.\n\nTL:DR- reading lets you learn things you have no way to otherwise, + a lot of my own romanticism.\n\nEDIT: Found the [study](_URL_0_). \"A picture is worth a thousand lies: Using false photographs to create false childhood memories\"\n",
"When you read you have to think think think. \n \nIt's exactly like exercising your critical thinking muscle. You're learning hard facts, empathizing with characters, analyzing interactions, and my favorite: becoming a better writer. If you spend a lot of time reading and trying to understand good writing you become a better writer yourself. You don't even have to consciously think about writing. You just naturally pick it up. There must be more ways it's beneficial that I'm not thinking of... \n \nSo yeah it's both and more. It's like a full workout routine for your mind. Well, perhaps you need different tools to work more mathematic muscles. \n \nI believe every STEM focused individual should also be well read, and develop a love for both (some) hard literature and basically any form of creative writing. Even creative non-fiction is great. ",
"Technically it's both. We've found that the act of reading does 'things' in your brain and has a lot of positive effects such as improved memory. Depending on the subject matter, it may also improve your ability to think critically, empathize, and see matters from different perspectives. Never mind the information you might learn from a book. \n\nHowever, the fact that it literally is good for your brain is not what most people mean. They mean reading 'the good stuff' or 'classics' because it has things in them that they view being of value, even if the 'classic' may actually be trash. This is why people say 'reading The Daily Mail will rot your brain!' That being said, anything you read is technically good for you, but if you don't read a lot of different things you won't get any smarter. ",
"One of the benefits of reading might be the training of our minds of deep and prolonged focus, which is a rare quality in the fast paced age of internet entertainment. This calm focus is also the essential ingredient of mindfulness. \n\nThis issue is discussed at length in a book Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains (Nicholas Carr). ",
"I noticed with my children that the act of reading also helped them to practice being still and quiet, and to focus on one thing. It is akin to meditation I suppose. Video games make them physically still but there is something about about reading that calms them and their behavior improves. Plus all the other benefits mentioned here of course.",
"\n Tl;dr: Reading allows geniuses to 'model' great thinking.\n\nAfter many years of teaching reading and writing to High Schoolers, I really believe that a person's mind copies thought patterns and modes of thinking from reading in ways we may not currently understand. Writing is a direct connection between the pure thought process of the author and the reader. \n",
"Reading has been proven to increase the size of our working memory. Think of it as RAM for your brain, this is what directly benefits from the act of reading.",
"ELI5: Traditionally what about reading is good for the mind? When people say \"Reading is good for you\" are they talking about the ACT of reading and processing words OR is it the information that one receives from the book?”\nDon’t know about traditionally, but isn’t it essentially a workout for the mind? Such that reading to infants of any age possibly prompts the creation of neural networks, as their brain attempts to make sense of and categorise that mysterious stimulus. Whist in adults it might help to maintain existing links, that might otherwise atrophy without the regular attention needed to reinforce them. \n",
"Basically, reading forces you to focus on abstract concepts and imagine them in your mind. This goes for any sort of text, be it a novel or technical writing. As there is less additional information conveyed than in richer media such as spoken word, radio, or video, reading plain text creates a richer, more immersive experience. Reading from paper has the added benefit that it will provide less distractions than, say, a tablet that is connected to the Internet.\n\nThe act of reading and processing words you mention is an exercise for the mind and in mindfulness. Research has shown that people who exercise their minds by reading are less prone to some forms of dementia (see: _URL_0_).\n\nSame as with muscles or any other asset: use it or lose it.",
"Written language provides an objective, universal way to otherwise, + a lot of different things you have no way to take in information.",
"In this day and age I'd also add, to all the good opinions already provided, that being able to sit down and without distraction apply yourself to a work with extended concentration and interest is no mean feat and a valuable skill. Also makes you good at Jeopardy.",
"It depends what you consider reading to be. As a primary school teacher who teaches kids in a language not their mother tongue, I have found that what people believe reading to be is different. As a teacher I consider reading to be interpretation, inference, making connections, 'reading is thinking'. Whereas many parents believe reading is decoding symbols to produce the correct sound. \n\nThinking about what you're reading, allowing yourself to learn from it, laugh at it, connect to it. That's good for you. It can open you up to a lot of things you may otherwise not be able to experience, especially for those without the means to travel. It's the reason why many of us re-read the books we had as children and notice SO many new things. It's higher order thinking which good teachers should be trying to promote. \n\nDecoding and processing.. Well it's good but it stops being fun by about 9 when its all on its own. Many of my students find reading boring because they know all the sounds and words but have no idea what they really mean together, or what the author is on about. \n\nTldr: Processing is the first step. Both are good depending on the stage of development. Look up higher order thinking and blooms taxonomy for more.",
"What you describe as 'the act itself' requires concentration and some cognitive ability, and, yes, those are things that seem to get better with practice, and that people view as worth improving. \n\nBut I would describe the second part quite differently. [Your brain is not a computer](_URL_0_) that stores content or gets faster at processing raw data. It's probably more accurate to say that it experiences the world, and makes associations. \n\nOther answers have pointed out that reading is an exceptionally effective way to get immersive experiences, that it's an activity that helps with empathy and conversation, and that it's a way to practice thinking-about-thinking and reflection (metacognition). I think all those are true. \n\nBut my core ELI5 answer would be that reading is an other-human-enriched experience. It can be good for you in the way that interacting with a helpful friend or teacher or parent might be good for you (but see Caveat 1). Many writers work hard to produce something worth someone else's time and attention, and reading is a way to partake of that benefit. \n\n\n(Caveat 1: In the same way that interacting with some humans can be toxic, some stuff is really not worth reading, which is why I can't easily say, 'Reading is good for you.') \n(Edit: Re-phrased the first paragraph.) ",
"I think it is less about exercising your vocabulary, and more about the imagination it requires. When you read literature, you have to synthesize images, internalize others thoughts, and empathize with their emotions. \n\nWhen you read, you become a participant in **creating content**, rather than a passive observer! ",
"When I had a stroke it was forcing myself to read that helped my mind recover. At first I kept having to read the same page over and over again as I would forget what I had just read. Sometimes I would get stuck on a words meaning as I forgot that too for awhile. Then the meaning would come back and I would reconize the word like I never forgot it. Eventually I could read normal after months of trying but I was slow at reading. More time passed and I am back to normal reading speed.\n\nBesides the obvious advantage of learning something new from reading, the fact that my reading helped repair my damaged brain, I would say there is a huge advantage to reading words. The mind forces the brain into finding new paths of connections when the mind is concentrating.\n\nBut it doesn't help my spelling very much as that takes lionger to fix. :)",
"This may get a bit insider baseball, but when you read, you're actually piecing together a puzzle in your mind. \n\nWords are just signs that we use to point to objects. When I say \"tree\", Allan may think of a maple tree whereas Karen may think of a birch tree. If I say \"maple tree\", Allan may think of one in the blossom of spring and Karen's may be brown-hazed and deadened in a cold autumn. \n\nSo, when you're reading, it's like your mind is running through a puzzle game where you are matching signs with the objects to which they points. This is complicated by the fact that these signs build on each other and interact in interesting ways. Thus, at least in English, I could say \"The red, fuzzy, over-sized sweater\" where you have this thing that's red but you don't know what the thing is; you have something that's red and fuzzy, okay, that could be a lot of things - we still don't know what it is; and it's over-sized, okay, now we're thinking it's probably an item of clothing because we've introduced an adjective which is inherently compared to a model but it could very well be Clifford the big, red dog. Then, finally, the noun comes - \"sweater\" - and our questions about what it is are quenched.\n\nBut think of how quickly your mind works through all of that. Of course, this happens in everyday speaking as well, but the written word is, at least supposed to be, more deliberate than that. \n\nIt should constantly cause you to re-evaluate the relationship between words, how they work together to form images, how they, like magnets, attract and repulse each other. \n\nWriters worth reading (yes, this is a pretentious jab at the James Pattersons, Dan Browns, Jodi Picoults, and Dean Koontzs of the writing world), someone, say, like Virginia Woolf or Vladimir Nabokov will consistently combine words that are just thrillingly beautiful. \n\nWhen Woolf writes:\n\n > The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where golden letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands.\n\nMy god, it's just thrilling! \n\nRead it three or four times, let it glide over you like the coming tide. It's just beautiful writing. \n\nAnd the words work well together in a number of ways. Read it aloud. Listen for the hard \"k\"-sound in \"cool cathedral caves\" and how it smooths to the dark void of a \"b\"-sound in \"bones bleach and burn\" to ease us into the end of the sentence.\n\nSo, not only are the images interesting and unique, the very sounds themselves are doing new things!\n\nWhen William Gass - perhaps the greatest living writer of sentences (ease off McCarthy fans, I love him too, but Gass takes the title) says, in his novel *Middle C*:\n\n > In Eden, no snake had been needed. The Fall could be performed a cappella.\n\nhe provides us not only with an interesting thought (that humans are naturally evil and will tend entropically toward disorder) but an interesting way of saying it. \n\nThe first sentence is rather plain. There's nothing wrong with it. In fact, the straight info it communicates is only repeated in the second sentence. It almost leaves the second sentence obsolete! But where the first sentence delivers the information, the second delivers the emotive punch. \n\n\"The Fall could be performed a cappella.\" \n\nStart with \"The Fall.\" Most people know what this is, Adam, Eve, and the snake with the apple, so Gass doesn't feel the pedantic need to explain. \n\nThen \"could be performed.\" Performance! That's interesting. So, we have \"The Fall\" capitalized as though it were the title of some play (or the Albert Camus novel). And notice that it isn't \"could have been performed\" like we might say, no, it's \"could be performed.\" The temporality, if you will, has been alterred; not only could this have happened back then, but the nature of \"could be\" means it could happen today! This wasn't, Gass is saying, a condition only possible for Adam and Eve, but for us today if given the chance. \n\nThen \"a capella.\" This is the pulling of the string to tighten the knot. This causes us to re-think our relationship with the word \"performed\" completely. To \"Fall\" is an action, a physical action, so when we attach that to \"performed\", our minds go to a play or a film, yes? Something tactile and tangible that we see. But \"a capella\" shifts it. Now we're in the region of music, as though the battle between good and evil is a reprise in some grand symphony, so much larger than us we can't see the edges of its caverns. \n\n____________\n\nAgain, you won't get that level of depth out of *The DaVinci Code* (Yes, I've read *TDC* and enjoyed it as the shitty popcorn read it was supposed to be). It takes time and work to understand what is being said (and, if we want to get meta, what's being said about *how* it's being said). \n\nBut it's so rewarding. \n\nAnd really good for your brain."
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czlnjv | - how are some plants/trees able to live in some extreme cold conditions. do they have a special makeup for these types of conditions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/czlnjv/eli5_how_are_some_plantstrees_able_to_live_in/ | {
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"If you go up to the Canadian/Siberian north you'll find that there are no deciduous hardwoods, the entire vast expanse of the tiaga forest is made up of just a few species of softwood conifers specialized to survive long freezing winters.\n\nThey have very tall, narrow shapes to avoid snow buildup and wind exposure during Arctic blizzards. They also have much higher dissolved salt content in the sap to resist freezing - they're running antifreeze. They're all evergreens, ready to make the most of the short growing season from the second the snow melts until well after the first frost.\n\nThe bushes and ground cover plants usually grow back from underground and don't bother trying to save anything up top from the winter conditions."
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1lbq6e | why does the obama administration seem so eager to get into a conflict with syria? | I'm from Canada and I can't understand why the United States would want to go into Syria witout security council and U.N approval? Do the citizens want to go? It seems like another mess of a war. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1lbq6e/why_does_the_obama_administration_seem_so_eager/ | {
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"Do you have any examples that show the administration is eager to get into a war?"
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3tn7lq | what happens if an astronaut were to fly away from a station | What happens if an astronaut somehow were to accidentally detach from the station while having an EVA. What happens? If he just flies away he will dies, Will he have a slow and painful death or do they have some way to kill the astronaut without pain so he doesn't have to experience such a scary thing. Or do they deploy another shuttle or something to get him back to the station? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3tn7lq/eli5_what_happens_if_an_astronaut_were_to_fly/ | {
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"If he were to float away, his teammates would try to save him, but if they couldn't do this he would just continue floating away. He float until he runs out of oxygen, then he would suffocate. ",
"I think it's important to point out that it would be pretty difficult for an astronaut to end up \"flying away\" from a space station at any more than walking speed. Your muscles aren't any stronger in space than they are on earth after all.\n\nIf it were on a space shuttle mission what would likely happen is that the shuttle would change direction a little bit and move close enough for the astronaut to either rescue herself or be rescued by one of her buddies.\n\nThe ISS is not as capable of moving around the shuttle was, and it might not always be possible to quickly fire up one of the attached space craft in order to rescue a stranded astronaut. Because of this NASA developed the [SAFER system](_URL_0_). SAFER is basically a \"jet pack\" that would allow them to return to the station if they found themselves floating away after having become detached.\n\nWhen Buzz Aldrin was asked what would he would have done if an equipment malfunction had caused him to become stranded on the moon, his response was something like \"keep trying to fix it until we ran out of air and died.\" I imagine most astronauts would do the same thing if faced with an emergency like this. If an astronaut did want to commit suicide, they could probably figure out a way to put a hole in their suit pretty easily. Exposure to vacuum would do some gnarly stuff to their body but they'd be unconscious essentially instantly & it would probably be a basically painless death.",
"Suffocation would be slow in the suit. it wouldn't be a sudden lack of air like drowning it would be breathing recycled air with too much CO2 and not enough oxygen. you'd be getting plenty of air but would still feel like you can't breathe (if that makes sense)\n\nYou'd have a growing sense of panic mixed with drowsiness as your blood oxygen level goes down slowly and your blood CO2 level rises quickly and would simply fall unconscious slowly but peacefully."
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5pqm3l | is there a definitive number of colours that humans can see? | I don't know anything | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pqm3l/eli5_is_there_a_definitive_number_of_colours_that/ | {
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"No, but there is a limit to how close two colors can be before they look the same. It varies between individuals and with context. \n\nIn digital imaging, 24 bits per pixel (8 bits for each of red, green, and blue) is usually enough to prevent adjacent colors which vary by a single bit from appearing to be different. That means that somewhere around 2^24 or 16.7 million colors is close to the limit of distinct colors people can see. "
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794jec | why are airline rewards/miles systems so wildly complicated? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/794jec/eli5_why_are_airline_rewardsmiles_systems_so/ | {
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"Their goal is to manipulate you as much as possible, at the least possible cash cost to themselves.\n\nIdeally they want to make rewards that you think are valuable but rarely use."
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fpz2ii | why do so many big companies seem to be on the brink of bankruptcy, even though they are run by billionaires? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fpz2ii/eli5_why_do_so_many_big_companies_seem_to_be_on/ | {
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"Running a business costs money. If you aren’t making money cause of a lockdown, you go out of business. Most companies only have enough in the bank to float a few months of no income.",
"First, they're only billionaires because the stocks they hold are worth a billion dollars. Should they admit the company is failing and try to sell all their shares, the value plummets and they're quickly not so rich anymore. Their wealth is very closely tied to the ups and downs of the company.\n\nMore generally, consumers want to pay as little as possible and suppliers want to charge as much as possible. That leaves most businesses operating on fairly thin \"margins\" - it costs them $95 to make $100.\n\nIf you suddenly make $0 but already agreed to pay the $95, shit can hit the fan very quickly.",
"Because billionaires don't stay billionaires if they pour their money into a company that's failing. The company can and will go insolvent and declare bankruptcy, no matter that the person who runs it is a billionaire. His personal wealth is not totally tied up in the company, so he won't risk his personal wealth for a failing company.",
"Liquidity. Companies' and billionaires' net worth is largely tied to the value of things they own, be that shares in the company, or physical property, or even trademarks like brand names. So, while the sum total of what they own might be in the billions of dollars, they'd have to sell something to actually get \"liquid\" cash on hand. \n\nAdd into that that (companies especially) are often heavily \"leveraged\" where they've borrowed money against the value of the things they have (just like using the house as collateral for your mortgage, or home equity loan), so that they can launch big projects and pay them off over time. Which all works fine as long as the business is bringing in enough cash in the short term to make the loan (and payroll) payments, but can become a much larger problem if that cashflow is interrupted. \n\nThe government is doing what it can in terms of low, or sometimes even no, interest loans. These are helpful as the cashflow interruption is a temporary thing, and not due to a change in the market. But even with all of that, companies can only take on so much additional debt.",
"Because they have little to no emergency savings, most of the companies solvency goes to reinvestment for future profit or paying the upper echelons of employees. It's rare to see a company prepared for something like this with even a couple months of savings set aside. \n\nAnd if you're wondering why billionaires aren't taking money out of their own pockets to pump up their companies and take care of their employees? It's because they have no incentive or interest in doing so. They know that governments will have to do the bare minimum to keep their citizens alive at this time, even if it's a huge struggle for (everyone else) after. And if the company goes out of buisness, your average billionaire can live for about 2 or 3 centuries on their current hoard of wealth.\n\nCharity doesn't Make you rich. Appropriate shows of it will keep people from complaining to loudly about you, but don't be fooled, most rich people give to charity for the same reason they buy fancy cars and big houses. It's a display of wealth and power, meant to show their supposed intellectual and moral superiority.",
"The cash flow of the company doesn't depend on the net worth of the people running it. The executives' net worth, however, can be very tied to the value of the company if most of their wealth is due to owning stock or stock options. \n \nEven if they were still cash rich, the CEO of a company is under no obligation to use their personal funds to help the company in troubled times. They might decide to do so, but few executives have the vast amount of cash needed to keep a large corporation going for long. \n \nThey simply don't keep their wealth in the form of piles of cash lying around. Most of it will be invested, and a lot of investments have plummeted in value recently. They could sell off investments at a loss and donate them to the corporation, but why should they? They don't own the company, they just work there. \n \nA *well managed* company will retain a cash reserve so that they can get through hard times. Not many will have enough cash reserves to get through a major disaster that virtually stops all of their income for an extended period of time.",
"cash flow.\n\nlet's say materials are $10000 monthly. you pay $10000 in other expenses monthly such as buildings paying yourself and utilities\n\nyou make 21,000 monthly. so your net profit is 1,000. yay. \n\nthen suddenly your monthly income is $5000 instead of 21,000.\n\nyou are losing $16,000 a month now.\n\nquickly you are running out of money. an entire year of profit is gone in 1 month.\n\n you can't not take the supplies. you have contracts. you don't want to fire people, it takes time to train new people and this is only temporary.\n\nobviously it's more complicated then that. but the gist is companies are designed to take X income as minimum and many are making significantly less now.",
"Declaring corporate bankruptcy is sometimes easier then fixing the companies books. It allows you to get all the debt in order fast to move back in the right direction.",
"You have had good answers here thus far. But to help you to kinda understand with better terms.\n\nImagine that your wealth is everything you own,, and make in a year. That sounds a fair but doesn't it. Ok. How much cash do you have in your wallet at this moment? I'm willing to bet that not much.\n\nWell that is how rich people and companies are. They don't actually have cash. They have things they can turn in to cash and loans if need be. \n\nImagine that you won a really big and expensive house. Ok. Now pay your taxes on it. It gonne be hard since you probably don't have the kind of income and savings to pay it, but you have more than enough wealth to pay it... if you sold that wealth. This way you can be wealthy and poor, at the same time.",
"Most corporations don't maintain any significant liquidity (cash in the bank) so they have no rainy day savings so to speak.\n\nMost Corporations are heavily leveraged, meaning they borrow lots of money to stay in operation and grow. When you talk about corporate buyouts, these are rarely are in cash. Companies borrow heavily to buy out other companies, and use the profits of that acquires company to pay the loans.\n\nLiquidity in the bank also doesn't benefit the shareholders. Shareholders see loose money in an account as profits they can't get. They would rather take the money out of the company and into their own pockets, or re-invest it to grow the business.\n\nSimple fact is most corporations are run paycheck to paycheck and have no savings for this kind of economic shut down. This kind of 'act of god' situation doesn't even play into their equations.\n\nUnfortunately most companies these days are run in a way to maximize quarterly earnings and EBITDA scores rather than thinking about the long term goals and risks. Executives are hired by and answerable to the shareholders (of which they are members), and generally speaking all the shareholders care about is how much money they are making. The bonus structures in executive contracts are written in such a way as to only encourage this kind of behavior.\n\nIf meeting your quarterly target means laying off 1000 staff so you don't have to pay their paychecks they'll do it. All that matters to them is their bonuses and profits. How is the company going to continue to operate without those 1000 staff? That's a problem for next month.\n\nThis leads to a corporate culture that only cares about numbers rather than their workforce.",
"Essentially: cashflow\n\nCashflow is literally flow of cash (physically or digitally).\n\nWhen you buy an airline ticket, your money flows to that company. \nThe airline pays its employees. \nWhat is left is for the company (profit, or margins), to either reinvest, or pay off debts or both. \nIn some industries, margins are low, almost close to cost. So there is not much cash left to pay off debts or reinvest.\n\nAs soon as no one is flying anymore, no cash flow is coming in, yet employees need to be paid, and possibly, debts too. \n\nCompanies can do this until reserves run empty. Layoffs will follow and debt cannot be paid, so there is your bankruptcy. \n\nOwners of these companies, while billionaires, won't pump their own (private) money into those companies to save them.",
"In a word: liquidity. \n\nCompanies don't often have very much liquid cash to just dump into paying the bills (think payroll, literally the lights, logistics, etc..) indefinitely without generating revenue--just like regular people. And billionaires also seldom have that much cash, it's tied up in their assets. Company stock, other investments, etc.. If your company stock value plummets, you're \"billions\" vanish in an instant. \n\nIf you suddenly pull out consumer spending from any company, they won't be able to continue for very long. \n\nAnother way to think about it is if someone owns a house valued at 500,000 they may be \"worth\" 500,000 because of owning it but you can't exactly just cash out on that money.",
"Because of the [hostile takeover](_URL_0_). Back in the late 1970's and early 1980's, a small group of stock market traders, innovated a new way to make a ton of money. Borrow money at a high rate of interest (referred to as a junk bond), use that money to buy up a controlling share of a wealthy company whose stock was somewhat undervalued, then liquidate the cash and assets of the company to pay back the junk bonds, and pocked the difference. This predatory stock trading tactic is legal to this day, and makes holding large amounts of cash and assets very risky for a publicly traded company. If you're the CEO of such a company, and you don't want to have a new board take over and fire you, you have a strong incentive to carefully load the company up with debt, and use any cash in hand to inflate the price of your stock (on which your own compensation is based).",
"The answers you're getting about cash-flow are the correct answer. But an additional piece of the answer is that even though billionaires run the company, the actual value of the company (and its yearly revenue, etc.) are way more than the net worth of the people running it. Even if the owner could magically turn all of their net worth into cash in a second without it shrinking, that wouldn't be enough money to run the company for all that long. \n\nTaking Walmart as an example: [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) (see page 30 for the numbers I'm using)\n\nWalmart's net sales in 2019 was $510B. The cost of labor (\"Operating, selling, general and administrative expenses\") was 21% of that, or $107B. So, paying everyone who works at Walmart for 1 year without selling anything would cost the owner $107 billion dollars. According to Forbes, the total net worth of the Walton family in 2016 was $130B, so they \"could\" do it (again, if they could somehow access that money), but it would exhaust 80% of their wealth. If you assume that liquidating their wealth reduced it by 50% (probably a massive underestimate of how much value it would lose), they would run out of money in 7 months.",
"So two things...\n\n1. most, if not all, companies have enough cash on hand to weather a complete stop in production or sales, especially for an extended period of time. We're talking billions in lost revenue, and even if you have billions on hand that disappears quickly when you're at a complete standstill.\n2. many publicly traded companies generate a significant amount of cash, but they have to spend it to be seen as growing. If a company has a ton in cash reserves investors might see them as stagnating. Two outliers would be Apple and Berkshire Hathaway, but those aren't the norm. A side comment would be depending on the size of the company, sometimes when you have a lot of cash on hand and your stock price is relatively low, you may be ripe for a hostile takeover simply so that company can break the company apart to sell the parts and keep the cash. Some companies liquidate their cash on hand to make them seem less vulnerable for a hostile takeover.",
"Rather than maintain an operating cushion of funds sufficient to weather a downturn they are operating with very little margin for error. \n\nGenerally this increases share value. Share holders don’t like to see lots of cash sitting around doing nothing. \n\nAnd as a CEO often gets most of their compensation via allocation of shares it’s in their self interest to keep the share prices as high as possible.",
"Couple points on this, not entirely covered by others:\n\n1) depends on what you really mean by \"run by billionaires\": The CEO, the guy running the buisness is not necessarily the owner nor even majority share holder. While part of a CEO's package will generally include a ton of shares in the company, that CEO could have just been hired to run the company by the actual owner, or more likely, a board of trustees. If you are meaning \"run by billionaires\" as in owned by/ majority share holders are billionaires, see my next point.\n\n2) others have spoken about liquidity and market values but didn't quite connect the easy point: fairly often the billionaires that run the company already have that money tied to the company. Someone mentioned Jeff Bezzos in another post (the stock prices would become worthless before he could even sell half of 95%, reducing his net worth significantly); well, at the same time if most of his stock holdings (net worth) are specifically tied to Amazon, and amazon goes bankrupt, all of those stocks are likewise now worthless. Even the thought/rumor/news that amazon is going to be going bankrupt(or in danger of doing so), will have a devaluation of the stocks as they start getting panic-sold; leaving less net worth for Bezzos to try and sell some of his stocks to try and pull amazon out of the threat of bankruptcy(capitol injection).\n\nSo the TL;DR: most of the billions are stocks in the company in danger of going bankrupt, the billionaire cannot just pay off the company because the stocks would lose value faster than they could be sold.",
"A company's assets and the owner are legally separate entities. This makes it a little bit complicated. Many of the richest people could liquidate more of their assets and/or take salary decreases to help fund their workers' paychecks, but they don't want to. \n\nHistorically nobody has held them accountable for this kind of action, so during hard times they dump employees instead of stocks, save the company some money in payroll, and wait for the market to recover. Then their stock value rises back up and they start to hire more workers. \n\nThis also saves them money, because workers laid off during a recession tend to, you know, suffer financially, and they get desperate what with all the bills they have to pay just to keep from starving and becoming homeless. So when they finally get a chance to take a job again, they don't have the luxury of demanding stronger pay, and they accept whatever lowball offer because, you know, they haven't had a job in months at this point.\n\nFinally, less nefariously, it is because our economy and businesses are set up in this sort of cyclic subscription dynamic. So you know how you have an internet bill every month? If you added up a Cox internet bill (we'll go conservative with $50 per month) over 40 years that's $24,000. The economy is like that. We expect to pay a small amount every so many weeks, and businesses rely on that money to come in every so many weeks. As soon as something big stops all that, suddenly businesses stop seeing that money come in. They fire people to save money, but then the economy is worse because more people have no job and can't pay their bills, so then more companies lose that money.\n\nSo it just sort of feeds itself that way. Vicious cycle.",
"I question the validity of the question. Which companies that are run by billionaires are on the brink of bankruptcy? I’d be surprised if you can name 5. Off the top of my head, I can’t even think of one, though I haven’t thought very hard.",
"Companies don't usually keep a lot of cash on hand because cash loses value. Instead, they distribute the cash back to shareholders through dividends or buybacks, so that the cash can be reinvested to make more cash.\n\nBecause of this, when faced with shocks, companies don't usually have a lot of buffer, because they don't have a lot of cash on hand.\n\nInstead, they rely on access to credit from banks and markets to cover any emergency needs. If banks stops lending money, and if the credit market freezes up, companies have real possibility of going bankrupt because they don't have cash to pay their employees and suppliers.",
"A company's #1 priority is to make money. A company's #2 priority is to make even more money. You don't make more money by saving money in a piggy bank. You make more money by spending more money. Simple enough for you?",
"People seem to be under the assumption that businesses have piles of money a la scrooge McDuck. Most don't. If they are run well, we expect and hope they will invest profits back into the business. So, first reason is businesses don't have tons of cash lying around. Many are operating on borrowed or lent capital.\n\nThink of it this way... Many people are operating month to month. The same holds true for businesses. \n\nImportant to remember that businesses and individuals are separate entities. When dealing with corporations, llcs, etc, ownership is more complicated than one guy or CEO with money. \n\nNo one goes into business to provide jobs; they go into business to make money. If the revenue dries up, but the expenses keep coming, many businesses have no choice, but to close shop.\n\nEdited for spelling and rushed words.",
"What all companies need is money in their pocket. With that money they pay their employees, suppliers, loans, offices and so forth.\n\nWhen you run a company, you want to keep enough money in pocket to make things go around, but you also want to keep some extra, just in case anything unexpected happens. \n\nWhy not keep a lot of extra money? Because money in your pocket doesn’t do anything good by itself. \n\nIt doesn’t make you build or sell things faster, so it is better to put that money to good use. Typically that means hiring people, building factories, stocking up on inventory and so forth. \n\nSo while a company and then its owners may be worth billions, the company doesn’t have a billion dollars in cash.\n\nIn these times, many companies went from being able to sell a lot to almost no sales overnight. This means that they are getting no new money, but they still have to pay their bills and loans, and then their cash runs out quickly.\n\nWhen a company runs out of cash, they go bankrupt. This happens even if their things, such as factories, offices and inventory could be worth a lot. \n\nSo, you could have a company that is going bankrupt, but still worth a billion dollar by counting the things it own.",
"Because businesses aren't expected to keep capital or other emergency funding. Those that do would be less competitive against businesses who reinvest at a high rate. See bailing out banks and the expectation placed on then afterwards.\n\nWe live in an economic/political situation where the business is able to have effectively no fall back option and rely largely on taxpayers for when emergencies occur.",
"I have a long running hypothesis that the rise of the MBA has been murdering businesses. Companies run by spreadsheet, quarter to quarter, growth over profit, and profit over stability. \nAmazon is building the infrastructure that Sears and JC Penny's INVENTED. As a loss leader.. but still. They were killed by spreadsheet managers that would not react to changes, turned assets into quick cash, then tanked their market. Toys R Us was murdered by equity management that bought shares to make private (taking cut in form of fees) and walking away leaving crippling debt to the company. Many of these companies expanded and bought back shares for the spreadsheet. A hiccup in income and the whole thing crashes.\nLook at the Airlines and their buybacks after the last bailout and recovery. The spreadsheet is why these companies are one bad month from collapse.",
"Because of intentional financial decisions: it is generally considered poor practice for a company to have any significant liquid cash / war-chest.\n\nWhy? Well, fundamentally a successful company takes money and turns it into more money. Therefore if a company has spare cash on hand the financial markets say that they should be using that spare cash to fund operations and expansion (because the company makes more profit from operations/expansion than it would get from interest if that cash was sitting in a bank account).\n\nThe obvious challenge is \"won't a company with no cash reserves run out of money?\". The answer is yes, they will. But if everything is fundamentally healthy in both the company and the financial markets they can get a quick loan to cover the shortfall (basically a payday loan for companies). Economists and investors have generally decided that it is more profitable for a company to operate like this than have cash reserves.\n\nHowever, if the company becomes unhealthy or the market is stressed, then loans become unavailable and companies are revealed to be financially fragile and fail. To a certain mindset, it is a great failing of the current system that we engineer companies and the market to be fragile and set ourselves up for cascading failures in times of economic stress.",
"Without going too in-depth, not that I don’t want to. Most large companies/corporations (especially) the ones that go public, put their stocks up and then they go buy back a LARGE majority of their own companies stock. When things go south without carefully navigating the “FREE” markets, they take a double, no a quadruple hit. \n\nThere is a major difference between MONEY and CURRENCY. These fiat currencies have failed time and time and time again, as long as there are organizations like the FED printing an infinite amount of currency. Causing more mass divergence of the currency price from the base price of Gold and Silver (actual Money). \nThese billionaires end up with a wealth of currency which in actuality doesn’t have any purchasing power and they will go running to the government for bail outs. \n\nA government cannot continue to print their way out of shit storms because the world will eventually wake up to see that this monetary financial system is a sham. A system based on I.O.U.s \n\nNow for the first time since the early 1920/30 (if I’m correct on the date), we have a pandemic equal in strength and tens times more devastating than that of the Spanish flu pandemics. \n\nHistory will repeat itself every time because we live in a world we’re our financial system is manipulated 100% (so much for Free markets). For the best part of 10 years we have been in a bull market but at the same time in a bubble of overbought EVERYTHING. New records across every international board, sounds good right? WRONG! History will always repeat itself, 2008 was just a speed bump to the main event.\n\nSome will not agree with my view which is fine but one thing we should agree on is that the value of Gold And Silver has been tested since the beginning of time and always come out on top. There will be plenty new millionaires in the digital (crypto) and physical (gold and silver) sector. Anything by a bank is your worst nightmare, please if you don’t believe me just do research for yourself. \n\nPeople lie but numbers don’t! \n\nBillionaires/Trillionaires or whatever one thing stands, ask yourself this.... \n\n—If you take a chopping board and cutting a onion, I mean finely chop it up. At then end is there more onion or is there just more pieces of that one onion?—",
"The scene from the office where Oscar explains how to make sure they get money from mommy and daddy next year is pretty much exactly how this works, considering how many companies just did stock buybacks and now are expecting bailout money from the government.\n\nThe Scene:\n\n_URL_0_",
"\n Almost all companies no matter how large or how small operate with the basic premise of how to grow and capture market share---as quickly as possible. So they *usually* are spending as fast as they are receiving revenue. That spending can go to r/d, marketing, adding new employees, expanding their infrastructure, just 100 different ways. They are already COMMITTED to most of this. They can't just say, \"hey guys, you know that $1000-$1,000,000 million I owe you from the work you did for me last month(or all of the inventory they ordered 8-12-16 weeks ago)...yeah, i'm not paying you for any of it. \n\n So they may have enormous(based on a percentage of revenue) bills piling up. Bills that would have been paid with revenue since say March 15th. That revenue is reduced 90%(?) and it also looks like it will say reduced by 30-50% for the next few months?\n\n The tipping point comes fast.",
"They carry heavy debt loads, as this allows the shareholders the benifit of leverage. A company that has 100% equity and 0% debt will create $1 of value for each $1 of profit. A company with 10% equity and 90% debt will still earn the same $1 of profit, but because the shareholders invested 1/10th the amount, they are now earning a much higher ROI.\n\nThis, plus the fact that interest payments receive better tax treatment means that a company will have a high debt load, and bankruptcy is thus a higher risk",
"The top answers are all wrong. Well, not wrong, but missing the real reason...\n\nLarge modern corporations seem to go from healthy one minute to on-the-brink-of-bankruptcy the next for one main reason: leverage. Most large companies are massively leveraged.\n\nTo explain: If you have $1,000 and invest it in building your own company, let's say you can make $100 each year. That's a 10% return on your investment. Pretty good, right?\n\nWell, what happens if, instead, you borrow $99,000 (at 3%) and invest your $1,000 in your company? You now make $10,000 a year - but pay $2,970 in interest. So, you end up earning $7,030. Instead of 10% on your investment, you've now made 703%! Therefore, in good times, it's extremely beneficial to leverage your company. You make far more money by doing it that way.\n\nSo... Large corporation leverage themselves to the max, in order to maximize their returns. You can make your business much bigger ***and*** lower the amount you have to invest personally, and all it takes is leverage.\n\nThe only problem is... During crises, your income drops precipitously - and, all of a sudden, you aren't able to make your interest payments! Almost immediately, you go into default (and often your interest rates rise because of it). This sets off a vicious cycle that catapults you into bankruptcy.\n\nThis is why large corporations seem so precarious. They're highly leveraged, and as a result, they can't survive large, sudden drops in revenue.",
"I'm a super popular and loved candy store. I promise you a thousand lollipops if you do something. You do it, and I give you 10 now, saying I'll give you 990 later. It was front-page news that I gave you a thousand lollipops! \n \nTheoretically, you have a thousand lollipops. Everyone knows that the store \"gave\" you a thousand lollipops. They don't know that you don't actually HAVE a thousand - They just assume you do. You're now lollipop-rich! \n \nWith your great reputation, you start spending. A promise of 40 lollipops to jump to the front of the line. A promise of 130 lollipops to someone else to carry your bags for a month. You're super-rich, and showing it! \n \nBut something happens to me, and for some reason I have to close my doors. I cannot give you the rest of the lollipops. You're now in massive debt from spending all the lollipops you don't actually have. But no-one really knows about that since the focus is on the super-rich person buying stuff with their piles of lollipops! \n \nSo - You make a deal with another store, and something similar happens. Due to your previous lollipop infamy, this store gives you 1,000 lollipops now, with the promise of another 10,000 down the line (You're lollipop rich - They trust you!) \n \nMore Technical: A billionaire doesn't actually have a billion dollars in the bank. They have stock options worth a billion dollars, and the bank knows that, so the bank allows them to spend however much they want even if they don't actually have any money, since it trusts that it'll be covered with the interest when they decide to sell off their stock."
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5boyy6 | what was alan turing attempting to show/prove with his turing test? | Was he attempting to show that computers couldn't think in the practical sense? or that with time they could eventually be indistinguishable from humans?
If you also have sources to cite for further reading that would be great. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5boyy6/eli5_what_was_alan_turing_attempting_to_showprove/ | {
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"The test was originally nothing more than an intellectual exercise in an argument against objections to propositions that \"machines can think.\" In other words, people argued machines cannot be made to think, and Turing countered their arguments. It wasn't that he asserted that they can be made to think, he didn't even make a case that there's no reason they can't be made to think, just that their arguments were too weak to conclude computers can't be made to think.\n\nSo that leaves the question open: can computers be made to think? There are those who say yes - but they're wishy-washy philosophical babble. There are those who say no - but their arguments need evaluation to determine if they're strong enough to actually draw conclusion.\n\nThe test itself is under debate as to what it's actually trying to prove. So an actual Turing Test by name alone doesn't tell you anything, you still have to determine how the implementer interpreted what the test means to prove. Is it trying to impersonate a human or is it trying to fool an evaluator?",
"Well, Turing was a pretty good writer, so I'd actually recommend reading his original 1950 paper [Computing machinery and intelligence](_URL_0_) where he proposes what's today known as the Turing test.\n\nTuring was contemplating the question \"Can machines think?\" The point of the test itself wasn't really to prove it either way, he was trying to replace the question with something you could actually experimentally test. He certainly did believe computers would eventually pass the Turing test and that we would come to accept them as \"thinking\". "
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"http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html"
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1rl6n4 | are we more related genetically to one of our parents or a 50-50 mix? | Say if someone resembles their dad, are they made up of more of his genes than the mother? Also, is resemblance a good indicator of closeness in genetics or could internal biology like organs, blood types, brain development/behaviour be completely contradictory? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rl6n4/eli5_are_we_more_related_genetically_to_one_of/ | {
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"It's always a 50/50 mix. You get one copy of each chromosome from your mother, and another copy of each chromosome from your father.",
"you get exactly half your chromosomes from one parent and exactly half from your other. however some traits are more dominant than others so you might resemble one parent more than the other in looks but it doesnt mean you have more genes from that parent",
"It is a 50-50 mix when you count the amount of genetic material. (Technically there will be some mutations, that aren't present in any of the parents, but that's a minute amount.)\n\nThere are several mechanisms that decide on how the genes are expressed. \nA trait may be that of one parent, while the gene of the other parent is supressed, or it could be a mix of both traits. \nA trait might even be missing in one parent (for example how to make antigenes in you blood since you're blood-type 0) then the trait of the other parent is expressed (if there is one)."
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7gexqi | how does a catalytic converter reduce emissions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7gexqi/eli5_how_does_a_catalytic_converter_reduce/ | {
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"It reduces the amount of incomplete combustion results from leaving the engine. A catalyst works by decreasing the activation energy of a certain reaction, in this case the decomposition/combustion of fuel into CO2 and water.\n\nIts usually a metal block (what it is made of depends on the catalyst) with a lot of pores. The exhaust passes through the pores, and any unreacted fuel, CO, or NO, gets reacted with oxygen on the catalyst to break it down into the desired products.\n\nWithout the catalytic converter cars put our a lot more soot and harmful gases than otherwise. So its more so about changing the emissions than strictly reducing them (it often reduces the ones that are measured though)"
]
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||
3cyg94 | why does spinning a bullet make the bullet more accurate? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cyg94/eli5_why_does_spinning_a_bullet_make_the_bullet/ | {
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"Adding rifling to a gun causes the bullet to spin. Forcing the bullet to spin clockwise or anti-clockwise prevents it from tumbling head over and then your projectile loses accuracy. Basically if you force it to spin one way it won't lose control for a longer period of time and maintain accuracy",
"A spinning bullet has angular momentum. When a thing has momentum, it resists changes to its momentum. By spinning the bullet along its \"long axis\" it resists changes that might cause it spin along its \"short axis\" thus keeping its nose pointing forward. On top of this, the spin causes gyroscopic precession - that is, a spinning object is resistant to changes in its orientation, again, keeping the nose forward. Since bullets are not perfect, imperfections can cause areas of higher drag that may cause it to flip, increasing its overall drag/lowering its aerodynamics.\n\nIgnore the downvote. It's a fun question that's more complex than it seems on the surface. This explanation is only a surface scraping, but gives the overall idea.",
"Picture a spinning top. It stays upright for the same reason that a spinning bullet goes straight. If you look at a spinning top, the whole thing isn't moving in the same direction. The North edge is moving East, the East edge is moving South, and so forth.\n\nThe trick here is that an object that's moving wants to keep moving in the same direction until something stops it. If you throw a ball, it keeps going until it hits something, or gravity finally pulls it to the ground.\n\nThe top or the bullet is basically moving in several directions at once, in a circle. While one part is moving left, the opposite side is moving right.\n\nRemember what I said about an object wanting to continue moving in the same direction? Well, these objects are doing just that. Because it's already moving in a circular motion, maybe clockwise, it's going to resist attempts to move it against that direction, like falling down.",
"Without being spun, a projectile will start to tumble [like this](_URL_2_).\n\nSpinning it keeps it [from tumbling](_URL_1_) in the way a spinning top doesn't fall over.\n\nThis doesn't apply to [fin stabilized projectiles](_URL_0_)."
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49ajms | why do sharp pains occur on the sides of our bodies if you drink water right before cardio exercise? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/49ajms/eli5_why_do_sharp_pains_occur_on_the_sides_of_our/ | {
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"Every time you eat or drink your body directs blood to your stomach to help you digest food and transport fluids. Our muscles need all the help it can get to keep you stable and powerful especially during intense exercise. This causes cramps, as you're basically forcing your body to focus on two things at once. It could also have to do with your running form or pushing yourself to hard."
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2ux4sg | how lazy people can ask easy, totally goog-able questions on this subreddit and actually get answers when it's original intention was to explain complicated things to the average person? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ux4sg/eli5_how_lazy_people_can_ask_easy_totally/ | {
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"I like to think sometimes it's because people don't think to use google and want an easier answer than what Wikipedia provides. \n\nThat and Karma Farming. ",
"I'd rather people ask the question here than on Google and hope they get a credible source. At least we're fairly level-headed here and aren't trying to steer people in the wrong direction. So many questions in this subreddit come from flawed premises, and for the most part, it's discussed in a nice adult fashion that educates the OP.\n\nIf you're not interested in responding to what you deem are easily answered questions, you don't have to.",
"Maybe in addition to wanting an answer they might like to discuss the topic?\n\nOr should this just be Yahoo answers?"
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1x89mo | what is it about ivory that makes it so valuable? | To the extent that plenty of elephants get poached for it, couldn't find a reasonable answer in previous questions | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1x89mo/eli5what_is_it_about_ivory_that_makes_it_so/ | {
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"Elephants are the biggest, most powerful land animals. When a hunter killed one of these mighty beasts, he probably desired something to prove it. He took the tusks of the elephant. Over time people corresponded elephant tusk with power, then with luxury, then with money. Now ivory is illegal (atleast to get it from a live elephant). So the only way to get it is to buy an extremely valuable antique or having it handed down in your family. So having something made out of ivory boils down to 3 things: wealth, power, and heritage."
]
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a70rxo | most of the time, regardless of what we drink and what color it is, our urine is yellow (or some shade of yellow). does this mean our body is using the dyes and additives? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a70rxo/eli5_most_of_the_time_regardless_of_what_we_drink/ | {
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"It means that our body breaks down dyes and additives, and that usually our liquid waste contains [a byproduct](_URL_0_) that is yellow.",
"No, the yellow colour comes from urobilin, which can be eventually produced from any food source. Anything you eat can become Urobilin. Urobilin is a natural byproduct when heme is broken down by the spleen.\n\nHeme is the compound that lets your red blood cells bind oxygen, and is produced by glycine, an amino acid, and succinyl-CoA, a standard metabolic compound which is created when metabolising sugars, fats and proteins.\n\nIn other words, the Colour is naturally produced in your body from literally any food source you eat, since the body is able to produce glycine, and any food being metabolized will create succinyl-CoA.",
"A [search](_URL_0_) can be useful…"
]
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1g8poe | that startling feeling when you're trying to sleep | Sometimes when I'm trying to fall asleep, I get a startling feeling that scares the shit out of me. It's almost as if I'm missing a step on a staircase. Or like my eyes are closed but I start dozing off. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g8poe/eli5_that_startling_feeling_when_youre_trying_to/ | {
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"text": [
"The reptilian brain is a part of the brain where many basic instincts reside. When we fall, the reptilian brain makes you extend your arms and legs in the hopes that you will be able to catch something to break your fall.\n\nNow, when we fall asleep, all muscles relax in the body. Sometimes the reptilian brain intreprets this to mean that you are in a free fall since relaxed muscles feel like you arn't pushing against anything. This \"bug\" in the system makes the reptilian brain \"save\" you from free falling by extending your limbs in that abrupt way that we all know."
]
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94f8sh | how do we obtain insulin for diabetics? could this be replicated on a small scale, say if you wanted to live off grid. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/94f8sh/eli5_how_do_we_obtain_insulin_for_diabetics_could/ | {
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"It's generally produced from genetically engineer bacteria that produce the insulin as a byproduct of their metabolic processes. It is then extracted, refined and purified to a pharmaceutical grade. I can't imagine any sort of \"off the grid\" way to make it at all. ",
"Extracting insulin from its biological sources is a tricky piece of chemistry. You could, in principle, have a home laboratory where you processed pigs' pancreases, or cultured bacteria, but it would take a lot of equipment and know-how. Besides, you'd be dependent on manufactured lab supplies, which you'd have to buy from someone back in civilization– at that point, why not just buy insulin from your medical-supplies dealer in the first place?"
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8k7x12 | why is baseball seemingly the only sport totally obsessed with spitting, chewing, and doing generally strange things with their mouths? | Every single game I've watched every player is constantly chewing or spitting and hacking up something. Why is this so common in Baseball? And not other sports that are similar, like football/soccer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8k7x12/eli5_why_is_baseball_seemingly_the_only_sport/ | {
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"Football/soccer, basketball, hockey, etc. has players who are constantly moving, running, doing athlete things. So unless you're sitting on the bench, it's not a good idea to have something in your mouth.\n\nIn baseball, athletes have a lot of downtime on the bench waiting for their turn to bat or to return to the field, or standing in the field waiting to react quickly to something. So there's much more opportunity to chew on gum, sunflower seeds, whatever.",
"It's the nature of the game. It's very slow. Imagine an outfielder standing the grass, waiting for the ball to be hit to him, and it never does.\n\nChewing and spitting wouldn't be possible in a sport like basketball or hockey, because you can't have the floor/ice littered with trash. But a couple of sunflower seeds in a field of grass will probably go unnoticed.\n\nIt's not possible in football because of the heavy contact. You don't want to be chewing on something when someone tackles you, because you could end up choking. Football players usually wear mouthguards.\n\nIn soccer, you could probably get away with chewing and spitting on the grass, but that sport has a different problem of the ball always being live. In fact, the clock doesn't even stop in that game. The ball could be kicked to you at any minute so you need to be attentive.\n\nIn baseball, the hitter can't hit the ball unless the pitcher has pitched it. So if the pitcher is holding onto the ball, you've got time to kill.\n\n"
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2h8r9w | can someone explain to me the difference between finding the derivative of a function, and finding the tangent line? | I recently just started calculus and we are finding the derivative of functions, which is pretty easy. Then, he showed us how to find the tangent line at a point. Can someone explain to me what the difference is and what they really are? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2h8r9w/eli5_can_someone_explain_to_me_the_difference/ | {
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"A derivative of a function is a constant evaluation of the rate of change of that function.\n\nThe tangent line is the rate of change of that function at *one particular point*.\n\nIf you evaluate the tangent lines at all possible points of the function, you get the derivative.\n\nAnother way to say it is, if you get the derivative of a function, and you plug in a particular value for *y*, you get the tangent line at that point.",
"They are very closely related things. The difference is that the tangent line is a full equation for the line, while the derivative is just a single number (i.e. the slope of the tangent line) at each point (which means that the derivative is, in and of itself, a function that you could graph).\n\nSo, for example, if I have f(x) = x^3 then the derivative is f'(x) = 3\\*x^(2) (power rule). The derivative at x = 1 is f'(1)=3. The tangent line at x = 1 is y = 3\\*x - 2. Notice how the slope of the tangent line is equal to the value of the derivative, but the derivative at that point is just a number while the tangent line uses the full y = mx + b equation for a line."
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5idsjw | starwars. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5idsjw/eli5_starwars/ | {
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"Episode 1: Politics leads the trade federation to embargo the planet of Naboo, forcing Naboo's queen to plead for mercy from the political body - the Republic Senate. One her way, her ship is damaged and they have to land on a desert planet. To repair the ship, her people bet on a race and win. Part of winning meant that one of the drivers, a young boy named Anakin Skywalker, gets to go with her to see the Republic Senate. One of the queen's friends, Qui-Gon Jinn, thinks Anakin is a force user. The force is magic, but only some people can use it. The Republic senate is on a planet called Coruscant. While the queen pleads with the senate to end the embargo, Anakin is beign tested by other force users, called Jedi. He displays a comprehensive grasp of the force. Qui-Gon says he will teach the boy how to use it, but this is strange because the boy is too old. Anyway, Qui-Gon says he will do it. The queen has to go back to Naboo because the embargo people have invaded and begun killing her people. She takes a couple of Jedi, Anakin and R2D2 with her. The queen pleads with the Gungans - a race of aquatic creatures - to help her take back her planet. They agree. A land battle, space battle, and jedi battle later, they've won. But Qui-Gon is dead, and his student Obi-Wan takes the boy Anakin as his own student. \n\n\nPart 2: Next /u/"
]
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9xws67 | why does a coin stay upright when rolling? | When a coin is rolled, it generally does not topple until it slows down, at which point it topples almost immediately. What force keeps the coin upright as it rolls? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9xws67/eli5_why_does_a_coin_stay_upright_when_rolling/ | {
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"Same reason why you dont fall off bikes when you go fast, momentum keeps it up straight, when it slows down it will become more unstable "
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af3cgi | why does 5ghz wi-fi penetrate less than 2.4ghz? | Not sure if penetrate is the right word. Basically high frequency electromagnetic waves penetrate more than low frequencies. You can see this with how x-ray machines work ( high frequency x-rays travel through flesh that visible light bounces of). But on the other hand 5ghz wifi has more problems with obstructions than 2.4ghz.
So which is it? Does higher or lower frequency penetrate more? Or is there some lowest penetrating frequency? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/af3cgi/eli5_why_does_5ghz_wifi_penetrate_less_than_24ghz/ | {
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"There are two different factors at play here.\n\n Both are very important and could easily be compared to am\\fm radio. It's about wavelength. In the case of 2.4 vs 5 gig Hz it's more than twice the wavelength difference.\n\nHow does wavelength impact the way the energy travels?\n\n1 the lower the wavelength the farther the energy will travel (so 2.4 gig is better there)\n2 the higher the wavelength the less interruptions it will encounter as it moves thru objects (walls Windows doors clouds etc) (so 5 gig is \"slightly\" better there)\n\nThe biggest improvement is the increase in bandwidth by it is offset by slightly shorter range. \n\nBut both are up in the gig spectrum meaning they are not going to travel very very far unless you have a really powerful amplifier connected to your wireless router. (Which would be very dangerous for other reasons)",
"Hi.\nYour question is *« why do 5ghz wifi penetrate less than 2.4ghz? »*.\n\nWe cannot answer this question without wondering about the material it should penetrate. In a perfect void, an electromagnetic waves (let's say photons) goes as far as it wants to.\n\nWith visible light (\"one frequency range\"), for example, walls are not penetrated but glass is: it's not only a property of the wave, but also a property of the material it goes through.\n\nSo when you say *« high frequency waves penetrate more than low frequencies »*, that's false in general: it depends on what is penetrated (glass, wall, human flesh). \n\nSo why do 5GHz has more problem with obstructions than 2.4GHz ? Well, it's just 5GHz waves interact more with a specific set of materials that happen to be the one we construct our houses with:\n\n[This document](_URL_1_), for example, gives the following chart of the coefficient of \"penetration\": _URL_2_\n\nWhy is it the case?\n\nIt's because of [**Skin Effect**](_URL_0_): it's the effect that tells how deep electromagnetic waves can penetrate one material. It decreases with increasing frequency."
]
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"http://www.motorolasolutions.com/web/Business/_Documents/static%20files/Interference_TB_0809.pdf?pLibItem=1",
"https://imgur.com/a/j7NFqUS"
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ahzpxe | how does doxing work and what are the steps to protect yourself? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ahzpxe/eli5_how_does_doxing_work_and_what_are_the_steps/ | {
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"I’ve had to track people down based on scant information before. You can find a surprisingly large amount of information on Google with just a couple of personal details.\n\nThe best steps to protect yourself are to avoid posting any personal information anywhere online, and avoid associating semi-anonymous accounts with anything that has your personal identity attached to it. Remember that anything you post anywhere is likely to be accessible forever, so if you share one seemingly innocuous personal detail now and then years later share something else, you might as well have shared both of them together at the same time as far as anyone who is seriously trying to track you down is concerned.",
"Well I can tell just from reading your comments, that you're:\n\n* Male\n* Have facial hair\n* A fairly recent graduate who has been job searching in the last 6-12 months\n* You trained and work in insurance, hopefully now as an actuary (congrats if so ;) I can also see you worked hard for that)\n\nThese details can all be used to narrow down a number of possible people as you, and that's just a quick skim through your history.\n\nAnyone who really wants to find you will go much farther back and look for any connections off to you on other sites. Reddit is pretty anonymous, but we all let slip these details as we go around.\n\nIt's not easy to prevent being doxed but you can limit the chances by not reusing usernames around social media sites, and by leaving out personal details on otherwise anonymous sites. Someone can build up a much more complete picture if they can tie multiple online profiles together.",
"Doxing is easy. Say i wanted to dox you for whatever reason. I know from your post history that you are recently employed or want to be employed as an actuary, you're a male with a beard. If i were serious I would send you a job offer, asking where you reside. I now have you down to male in city XXXXX and probably some more details. If i get your name i could probably get you down to like 100 or less possible people out of a city of a million++. \n\n\n\nAn example, i live in sweden (post history will tell you that) it's not a huge place, now you have narrowed me down from 7 billion people to a whopping 9million. Not sure what else is in my post history, but if i gave you say my first name that 7 million is down to 50-60k. If i give you an age we're down to 2k. City narrows it down to < 100. See where this is going just by knowing my name, age and city of residence?\n\n\nIf you want and need to protect yourself, ensure you keep any and all personal details secret! Even then, know that while you protect yourself, others dont. I've got friends who think they are nameless online, they are not. I know more about them than they know just based on background voices and slipups on discord.",
"Truth is against a professional doxxer there is very little you can do. Even if you posted nothing, it’s possible to find information from a relative who doesn’t have the same habits of protecting data. \n\nSome suggestions to mitigate. \n\n-\tkeep FB private and limit sharing information. \n-\tLinkedIn make sure you mention nothing about yourself elsewhere that is listed there. \n-\tDon’t share similarity in usernames, gamer tags, etc. \n-\tUse one time email accounts to register for stuff. \n-\tUsername / gamertags , give them common words. Don’t use birthday as numbers. \n-\tdon’t engage with subreddits that ask questions. Like /r/AskReddit \n-\toccasionally delete accounts if you believe they may be used to trace you. "
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blbwxq | besides the potential for retaliatory tariffs, what are the other (good and bad) effects of tariffs? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/blbwxq/eli5_besides_the_potential_for_retaliatory/ | {
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"So the primary impact is increased prices of the good the tariff is applied to, and thus reduced trade. \n\nThis has 2 further effects, it makes consumers/importers poorer, because goods are more expensive, and it makes it easier for domestic producers (or any producer not subject to the tariff) to compete with the now more expensive import.\n\nGenerally speaking the gain for domestic industry does not outweigh the loss for importers as a whole (including those who import for business purchases). So soy tariffs hurt those who eat soy, and farmers who use it as feed, and companies who process it into other foodstuffs, but help those who grow soy. Countries that pursue autarky (zero trade) tend to be a lot poorer than free traders. \n\nSo, in terms of positives:\n\nIt can help create an enviroment to set up new industries (to be weaned off later) \n\nIt can help secure strategically important industries (try fighting a war without domestic steel or muntions, or resisting an embargo without domestic food and electricity). This is basically the only reason to pursue autarky, and is reflected by those nations who did, including Nazi Germany and North Korea.\n\nIt can act as a useful bribe to politically important demographics (e.g. farmers).\n\nIt protects against market manipulation. If China produces steel at a loss, sells it so cheap that everyone else's mills can't compete and shut down, then they can boost the price and get very rich. \n\nIt can improve the trade balance (by reducing imports and making yourself poorer). \n\n\nIn terms of negatives:\n\nHugely economically inefficent, it makes everyone poorer.\n\nEncourages inefficent industry, by reducing competition. \n\nIt reduces domestic access to foregin resources. \n\n\nAs historic examples, I would point to the corn laws (UK) as an example of tariffs hurting people, as food protection drove up food prices and also contributed to the Irish potato famine (as well as driving labour away from more productive industries into farms)."
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21q44e | why do reddit upvotes change so often? more in text. | If there is a post with around 60 upvotes, and you spam F5, I notice that upvotes and downvotes are constantly changing (literally every refresh). Has anyone got an explanation for this, or is it just really indecisive people? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21q44e/eli5why_do_reddit_upvotes_change_so_often_more_in/ | {
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"An algorithm works to change the absolute numbers all the time, leaving only the net number the same. WHy? I think they think it stops vote spamming."
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3o9a9o | why does moving our mouth or sticking out our tongue make a difficult task seem easier? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3o9a9o/eli5why_does_moving_our_mouth_or_sticking_out_our/ | {
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"It has to do with the development of fine motor skills, and language. Essentially they coevolved. Fine motor skills in hands enabled tool use at the same time it allowed for complex gestural communication. \nComplex vocal communication relies on fine motor control of tongue and lips. So the same area of the brain is involved in both. (Also why people gesture with their hands when they talk)\n \n\nThe author of this book talks about it. \n_URL_0_",
"I don't have an explanation but I wanted to add that I see many pianists doing this. During the most technically challenging passages sometimes I notice my mouth will move almost involuntarily. I remember once after playing a piece a family member asked if I \"knew the words\" as well. In music it is possible it could also be something similar to singing along or keeping rhythm, however, and it somehow is manifested in the mouth since the hands are busy.",
"I do this while playing games, Battlefield 4 on Xboneone, for example. I move my mouth and lift my arms arkwardly in the air or to the right/left. It really looks stupid. I do this every time i have to aim at an enemy, while following his movements and shooting at him. \nThis is way too complicated for my brain. I switched to PC and i do very well. I think i can't handle controllers.",
"As my dad would say when I wasn't doing something right. \"you're not holding your mouth the right way\". ",
"My feeling on why it helps *me* is that it's the opposite of clenching your teeth when you want to do something strength-related. For heavy work, I clench my teeth (this is true to the point that if I don't, I feel I'm not exerting as much strength); and if I want to do fine work, I absentmindedly end up sticking out my tongue, which makes clenching my teeth not only impossible but also \"unthinkable\": the exact opposite signal.",
"Some people think better if they are doing something physical like pacing, walking, moving, tapping their fingers, sucking their teeth, etc. Some people just work better when they don't sit still which I wish some teachers would realize with children. ",
"I figured I was just a dork with Tourette's (actual Tourette's, I'm not being offensive). I remember my aunt remarked when she saw me do it that my grandpa used to do that same. And since I'm 90% certain he also had Tourette's, I always thought it was related to that.",
"When you think, your brain sends impulses to your tongue that follow these words as if you're saying them aloud. By biting your tongue or sticking it out, those impulses are muted and reduce the chatter and unnecessary activity in your head . It's your body's way of freeing up RAM.",
"yeah my man just watch jordan. he stuck out his tongue and look at what he done did my ni99a.",
"when you stick out your tongue it makes more room in your head for your brain. with more space to work in your brain can work more efficiently ",
"The last time something like this was posted:\n\nSticking your tongue out or biting your lip while concentrating is not really that weird. Michael Jordan was famous for his tongue sticking out while going up for a dunk. It is an example of what’s called motor overflow or motor disinhibition. It happens sometimes when our brains are working really hard at something. Normally, the brain keeps the brakes on the parts of the body it doesn’t want to move. However, when we concentrate really hard on a tough task, sometimes the brain lifts the brakes on other parts of the body (most often the face, lips, tongue, etc.) making them move without our control. As we get older our brains get better at controlling the brakes (inhibition) and the motor overflow goes away most of the time, but some people still have this happen when they are grown ups. There are studies that show it is more common in people with ADHD.\n\n\nCredit to /u/buddystyle3"
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1m8tq0 | what is the relation, differences and similarities amongst confucianism, taoism, and buddhism? | There is a lot of literature about this, but no explanation that is as simple, complete and insightful as a good ELI5, and even most of it requires you to know already quite a lot about oriental philosophy.
Thanks! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1m8tq0/eli5_what_is_the_relation_differences_and/ | {
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"Nobody's going to do your world religion assignment for you, dude.",
"**[Taoism](_URL_14_)** - Tao can be translated as 'the way' or 'the path' or 'the principle'. This idea can be found in other Chinese philosophies and religions. In Taoism it represents the source and the driving force behind everything that exists. It is beyond description: *The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao*. The symbol most often used is the [Taijitu](_URL_0_) (Yin/Yang symbol) which represents the inescapable unity/duality of physical existence and manifestation. It can be thought of as the light and dark sides of a mountain; they arise together and are not in opposition. It began around 2500 years ago with the philosopher [Lao Tzu](_URL_4_) who is thought to have written the most important Taoist text, the [Tao Te Ching](_URL_8_). It essentially indicates the value of being natural and not to struggle with existence, emptying the mind and ego so that [non-doing](_URL_12_) can arise.\n\n**[Confucianism](_URL_9_)** - A collection of recommendations of conduct developed by the Chinese philosopher [Confucius](_URL_13_) who is considered a contemporary of Lao Tzu. It is considered a Humanist philosophy focusing on virtue, etiquette, loyalty, relationships, familial respect, and a solid understanding of the truth-of-things-as-they-are. A founding document considered to have been a basis for Confucianism is the very ancient [I Ching](_URL_7_) (book of changes). That book is based on the concept of Yin/Yang organized into [Trigrams](_URL_1_) that represent manifestations of change.\n\n**[Buddhism](_URL_10_)** - Started about 2500 years ago in India with an underlying worldview foundation of Hindu philosophy including reincarnation and karma. The word Buddha means *Awake* and applied to the founder Siddhartha Gautama when he is considered to have attained Enlightenment. He began as a sheltered prince who encountered the horrors of suffering ([Four Sights](_URL_11_): Aging, Sickness, Death, Ascetic) for the first time on chariot ride(s) as an adult. This shock filled him with [Saṃvega](_URL_5_) and drove him to his quest to overcome them. He ended with what he called 'the middle path' between indulgence of being stuck in the world and its delights/horrors, and the extreme asceticism of the forest yogis who shunned the world. He developed The [Four Noble Truths](_URL_2_) that outlined the condition of being in the world and how to best reduce the [duḥkha](_URL_3_) that arises. Buddhism spread to and in China spawning several schools including Chán (translation of [Dhyāna/Jhāna](_URL_6_)) Buddhism which in the 13th Century was carried to Japan and germinated into Zen Buddhism.",
"1. One thing you have to understand about Chinese people is that in their culture, it is A-OK to believe in all of those at once. Unlike, say, Christianity or Islam where you have to pick one and only one religion, in China it's totally cool to have as many as you want. Nothing in the texts of these says that you can't also believe in another. Basically the Chinese say, \"Be Confucian in your community, Taoist with your family, and Buddhist with yourself.\"\n\n2. None of these are really religions in the definition that we are used to. Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism all started as philosophical texts. \n\nConfucius' writing, all of which is second-hand, is primarily about how to be an ideal person and how society organizes itself around great people. Really not too dissimilar from Nietzsche. Mencius, his #1 follow-up writer, mostly talks about the nature of Man and how to be a good person. \n\nTaoism is based on the writings of Laozi, who pretty much talked about how society should be organized in a loose agrarian setting. Some real Thomas Jefferson stuff here, folks. His main follower, Zhuangzi, writes about the nature of reality and relativism and how we artificially categorize things and experiences. \n\nBuddhism is the most religious of the lot, but pretty much started out as a self-help or \"how to live your life\" movement in following the examples of The Buddha and subsequent Buddhas and Boddhistattvas. \n\nWhat all of these are missing is the idea of \"faith\" that is inherent many religions. \"Faith\" means to believe in something without having physical or logical reason to do so. That's not an insult to religious people, it's the way it works. A Christian is supposed to believe that Jesus is the Son of God without having met him and without needing to \"prove\" that somehow through logic. Confucianism, Taoism, and even Buddhism are different in that they are, while not necessarily immediately recognizable as such to a post-Enlightenment Western Thinker, essentially logical arguments that you are not supposed to take on faith, but supposed to think about logically. So I think to call them religions is misleading. \n\nHowever, there are absolutely metaphysical ideas tied in with these philosophies. These all come from Chinese folk religion, superstitions, and old ideas about how the universe was organized (eg elements, yin and yang, etc.) Those ideas are actually not too dissimilar from Western ideas from the Classical and Medieval ages about things like elements, humors, and so on. They can be understood religiously or philosophically, take your pick. That's your similarity and relation right there -- all these philosophies have been mixed with and built upon older native traditions of China. \n\nAs for ideas about enlightenment, they originally came from Hindu religions (it's not really correct to call Hinduism just one religion) and entered China via Buddhism. The other religious stuff you may have heard about, like the Celestial Bureaucracy, Jade Emperor, ghosts, etc. is all native Chinese belief and not really related to any of these philosophies."
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_ching#Trigrams",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_noble_truths",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laozi",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83vega",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhy%C4%81na_in_Buddhism",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_ching",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Te_Ching",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucianism",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_sights",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism"
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a82gfw | when you have an important task to accomplish, why does the brain come up with a litany of other unimportant tasks to accomplish, and prioritize them above the truly important task? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a82gfw/eli5when_you_have_an_important_task_to_accomplish/ | {
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"Probably because the task is not really inherently important to you, only to society. The simple truth is, responsibilities aside, most of use would rather just sit around in our underwear all day watching TV/ playing games and eating junk food.",
"Because anxiety/stress from those activities causes you to focus on less stringent tasks which when accomplished releases chemicals that make you happy",
"Your brain is wired for immediate gratification.. I'm sure this is a primal instinct or something, but basically your brain goes into panic \"I need to get this done right now its so important\" mode but because we're wired for instant gratification it's gonna go for the path of least resistance. ",
"Procrastination comes from the anxiety and discomfort of the \"important\" task and finding ways to more immediately resolve that discomfort by accomplishing smaller tasks.\n\nWhen we complete tasks, our brain releases dopamine that results in feelings of pleasure that can alleviate stress and anxiety. Evolutionarily speaking, the body is conditioned to find ways to alleviate stress and anxiety, so it will lead us towards things that will be more immediately rewarding (i.e. accomplishing small tasks, stress eating). It is less immediately rewarding to spend 5 hours working on a research paper than spend 10 minutes cleaning your room, or doing the dishes and getting the little bump of pleasure from completing those small tasks. ",
"It's called avoidance. \n\nVery common topic in psychology: avoiding difficult situations through escaping patterns. As we get used to escaping one way, we become more inclined to keep doing it. Usually because the difficult situations compound and snowball into bigger, more serious issues",
"Not exactly an ELI5 explanation, but Tim Urban did a great job on his blog [Wait But Why](_URL_0_) explaining that.",
"This blog will explain it better than anyone here. \n\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_0_)",
"We avoid important tasks that make us anxious in order not to have to feel that anxiety. When we do things that temporarily reduce our anxiety (like other tasks) we feel relief and this reinforces the procrastination behavior (by negative reinforcement) in the future"
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7bkyz5 | how is someones competency to stand trial determined? i read about a case where a psychiatrist from both sides deemed someone incompetent but the court overruled them. what do they know that the psychiatrists don't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7bkyz5/eli5_how_is_someones_competency_to_stand_trial/ | {
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"There's a difference between legal and medical definitions of competency. Unfortunately, legal precedence probably has a lot more weight than medical opinions, especially in terms of mental health "
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55l65f | why did people on colombia voted for or against a peace treaty with guerrillas? isn't peace the logical answer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/55l65f/eli5_why_did_people_on_colombia_voted_for_or/ | {
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"To put it simply: The FARC are looking for forgiveness for their sins. The Colombian people are not ready to forgive so easily. Peace Treaties like this guarantee certain securities for the FARC that the Colombian people believe are too soft. ",
"They did not vote against peace. They voted against the terms that conditioned that peace. Millions of colombians were facing the possibility of absolving all the crimes and allowing political involvement of the people that kidnapped, murdered, and scarred them and/or their families, like 50+ years of nationwide terrorism never happened. I happened to live in Bogotá in the early 2000s; everyone, from cleaning men to senators, could be kidnapped. The FARC forces explicitly *forbid* the population from voting at the 2002 presidential elections, they burned voting booths and bombed the shit out of voting centres, that's how fucked up it got. Plus it did not help the Yes for Peace cause at all that the main spokesperson against it was Alvaro Uribe, the former reelected Colombian president that confronted the FARC in their prime and had his father shot to death by their militants when he was a child."
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2s6gwr | why and how can i hear my vinyl records when the volume is turned all the way down? | As in, the record is still spinning, but the volume is at the minimum. Does the needle literally create a sound that is projected? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2s6gwr/eli5_why_and_how_can_i_hear_my_vinyl_records_when/ | {
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" > Does the needle literally create a sound that is projected?\n\nYep! The needle vibrating inside the grooves in the record is what creates the sound. The rest of the electronics are just there to amplify the sound of the vibrating needle.\n\nIn fact, in very old Victrola-style phonographs, the large horn you see is nothing more than a non-electronic bullhorn type megaphone that makes it easier to hear the needle vibrating.",
"Yes and no. The needle vibrating in the groove makes an audible sound, as /u/AnteChronos said. That's how the original phonographs worked. The big horn on the phonograph made this weak sound more easily audible. \n \nBut in a modern turntable, the vibrations of the needle also cause not just an audio response, but the motion of the needle's vibrations are also translated directly into an electronic signal. This is the signal that gets amplified and sent on to your speakers. *That* signal isn't actually audible until the point where the speakers turn it into sound. "
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ne6sd | can someone explain, in simple english and preferably with examples, who are "the markets" that the media so easily toss around? | Who are these people? I mean, physical, named human beings. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ne6sd/can_someone_explain_in_simple_english_and/ | {
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"In economic terms a market is just a place where goods and services are bought and sold.\n\nWith trading; i.e. NYSE, stocks, bonds, and futures are traded. A stock is part ownership of a company. A bond is a guaranteed loan. A future is a promise to buy a product; a guess that prices will go up.\n\nMarkets can be anything: craigslist, prostitutes, farmer's market, etc.",
"In economic terms a market is just a place where goods and services are bought and sold.\n\nWith trading; i.e. NYSE, stocks, bonds, and futures are traded. A stock is part ownership of a company. A bond is a guaranteed loan. A future is a promise to buy a product; a guess that prices will go up.\n\nMarkets can be anything: craigslist, prostitutes, farmer's market, etc."
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3im9eq | why has china done more in 2 weeks to identify and charge those responsible for the tianjin explosion than the us has in 2 years for the west texas chemical explosion? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3im9eq/eli5_why_has_china_done_more_in_2_weeks_to/ | {
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"Authoritarian governments can be completely lax on safety in the name of economic growth, but then if an issue occurs, they can also crack down immediately to save public face. Also they probably know who got bribed because...they allowed the person to get bribed. Still doesnt stop thousands of people dying a year in accidents.\n\nIn the US there is more due process of law and things are generally a lot slower. Its definitely a safer place to work though, so good luck with your title implying that the US is somehow worse for workers than china",
"It should be noted that the Chinese response is entirely couched in avoiding embarrassment to the CCP. It is not a sign of strength when a government issues a media blackout surrounding an explosion in a major city, censors social media posts about it, classifies all information regarding the company involved, and then only days and weeks later reveal that the company used \"connections\" to obtain a permit it (obviously) should not have had. After this, instead of saying anything about reform or how such \"connections\" existed, an executive at the firm is arrested.\n\nIf you think the heavy handed, controlling, and fearful response from the Chinese government is a model to look to, I'd advise you to [ask some people in Tianjin](_URL_0_) what they think.",
"Having due process in your legal system significantly slows things down. This is a good thing not a bad one.",
"What happened in West, Texas was not actually illegal, in the criminal law and regulatory law sense.\n\nThey should have been inspected more often. There should have been more regulations about the storage of the chemicals. They should have been required to post bond or carry liability insurance. \n\nThese kinds of protections are heavily opposed by the Republican party.",
" > \"to identify and charge those responsible\"\n\nBecause we can have much more confidence in the first four words than we can have in the last two.",
"Why is the title phrased in such an accusatory manner?",
"Just gonna throw this out there,not 100% sure if it's true. on 4 Chan there were photos of explosive materials and hints to watch the news in the coming days about the area. the poster alluded to planning on killing themselves in the blast. If you're familiar with the Chinese government you also wouldn't think it too far fetched for the government to be riding scape goats rather then doing any actual investigation that turns up those actually responsible. "
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6bu8rg | what is the military doing during peacetime? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6bu8rg/eli5_what_is_the_military_doing_during_peacetime/ | {
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"Training, reequipping, repairing, patrolling, exercises, civil defence, emergency operations and other similar activities the precise nature of which varies from country to country depending upon where they are and what conflicts they have been involved with recently and what threats they face.",
"Training, fixing broken vehicles, fixing broken airplanes, maintenance for stuff, cooking food, healing the troops that are hurt. ",
"If you are speaking of the US Military - \n\nAlot of R:MJMurcotts answers are correct - but he missed one of the biggest ones:\n\nSTRATEGIC DETERRENCE\nsimply defined - presence.\nJust the fact that US Military exists would do nothing to scare away our adversaries from attacking, or allow us to wield the big fist to stop the big bully countries from beating up on smaller less powerful countries, etc.\n\nBut because our ships, Subs, soldiers and marines and aircraft are constantly on patrol, with an awesome array of firepower on station within a few hours from nearly any destination, nearly world wide - it provides a constant reminder to foreign countries that they have to follow UN resolutions or the UN will send in the US (and their allies) to kick your ass. \n\nAn easy comparison would be - why does the bar pay 2 bouncers to stand around and watch people drink, when there's almost never a fight in this bar? If you go to Joe's bar down the street, there's fights all the time and they don't even have a bouncer!\nThe answer is in the question. If the Military was not constantly on patrol demonstrating the ability to quickly \"reach out and touch someone\" then there would be alot more skirmishes/battles and wars fought world wide. But the U.N. was developed to try to squash alot of those, and needs military forces worldwide to jump in and support that cause."
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axctjf | what is the difference between practicing extended fasts and having an eating disorder? | I follow r/fasting and it seems like a lot of weight loss photos are posted. If weight loss is the purpose, what makes fasting different than starving oneself from anorexia? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/axctjf/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_practicing/ | {
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"So the DSM-V criteria (the standard reference for mental health disorders in the medical/research world) for anorexia nervosa are:\n\n* Persistent restriction of energy intake leading to significantly low body weight (in context of what is minimally expected for age, sex, developmental trajectory, and physical health) .\n* Either an intense fear of gaining weight or of becoming fat, or persistent behaviour that interferes with weight gain (even though significantly low weight).\n* Disturbance in the way one's body weight or shape is experienced, undue influence of body shape and weight on self-evaluation, or persistent lack of recognition of the seriousness of the current low body weight. \n\nIt's not just the act of restricting eating that makes someone be qualified as anorexic (or else all Muslims would be anorexic for a month every year)--it's that *combined with* a severely distorted mental picture of your own body and unhealthy obsessions with being fat and losing weight.\n\nIt's very possible--and IMHO, quite likely--that a lot of people posting on that subreddit would qualify for an eating disorder if they were being evaluated by a psychologist, but restricting your food intake to lose weight isn't *by itself* going to mean you have an eating disorder."
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den0wy | - how do companies use tax havens to avoid paying taxes but still get their money back to their home country for personal use? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/den0wy/eli5_how_do_companies_use_tax_havens_to_avoid/ | {
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"Normally if they try to repatriate the money then they are likely to be charged tax, but it depends, to avoid this they can take out a loan with the offshore money acting as collateral. There are more complicated things they can do about splitting company into different divisions and having the division in the tax haven being the most profitable part and therefore since the tax has been \"paid\" then repatriating it is tax free.",
"Complex strings of shell corporations, in strategic locations that have authority to write checks and reassociate assets. In the end it doesnt matter who writes the check, foreign or domestic, the money is usable anywhere. But moving money from one location to another can benefit from currency exchange rates and lower taxes",
"Most countries want people to transfer money into the country. B/c that money will likely be used to pay producers inside the country, or invested into creating jobs inside the country. \n\nSo if you can prove that money is coming from outside the country, it will be tax free. All the tax havens and offshore setups are using legal loopholes to make it look like money is coming from outside, while in reality it was earned inside the country.",
"Set up companies in three different countries. Let's call the company Important Inc (I really hope that Important Inc, if there is one, is not offended that I came up with that name for my example) and set up some subsidiaries.\n\nFirst of all, you need a company that develops your products.\n\nImportant Engineering. That's where all the amazing stuff happens.\n\nAnd then you need to manufacture shit. So you set up a company for that.\n\nImportant Manufacturing Asia. (notice how I assumed that they manufacture their stuff in Asia? Lots of companies do.)\n\nAnd then you want to sell your stuff. So you set up sales companies in your home country, the country where you manufacture and in a third unrelated country.\n\nImportant Sales. Important Sales Asia and Important Sales Unrelated.\n\nThose three companies, their sole job is to sell the product. I.e, they import, market, sell and handle customer returns. And make no money. All the money is sent home to Important Engineering. So that they can make up new, fancy shit that can be manufactured and sold by the sales companies.\n\nSo. Now we have a cash flow. The Sales companies constantly give money to Engineering, who pays Manufacturing.\n\nAnd whatever money is left, stays in Manufacturing.\n\nManufacturing is the company who gets to pay corporate taxes.\n\nBut...as the operations grow, the engineering plant grows and grows and grows. Engineering realises that they need engineers in Asia too. Working closer to Manufacturing. They set up Engineering Asia.\n\nAnd customers in more countries start to get curious about the products, so after a while they also have Sales Europe, Sales Africa and maybe one specific in a country in Europe who tries to change everything about how taxes, customs fees and whatnot work, because they don't want to risk the entire operations just because of them.\n\nAnd. Maybe you need a service center or two who helps customers with the reassembling when their extremely well-designed spatula breaks. And voila, now you have Important Service, with subsidiaries in a lot of different countries. Including a few where there are no sales companies.\n\nAfter a while, it becomes a huge wheel that rotates by itself. And where cash flows back and forth constantly.\n\nAnd, once the cash flow is worth the effort, Important Inc will start to look at their company structure with the very interesting question: *\"where is it most convenient to pay taxes?\"* Convenient doesn't necessarily mean *cheapest*, but it often does. Since, you know, the whole idea with the company is to make money, and taxes kind of works against the whole idea of the company if it's boiled down like that.\n\nAll they have to do, literally, is to set up so that Engineering are not really creating a product any more. In fact, once you have jolted down on paper that your new company Important Finance, that happens to be placed in a tax haven, is the company that actually produces the product by *ordering* Engineering to develop something that Manufacturing can build so that Sales can sell it, it's all legal to make the new cash flow end up in Finance instead.\n\nAnd that, in short, is how they do it. Once the earnings become large enough that it's worth the trouble, large corporations tend to move the company that makes the actual money someplace else.\n\nSo, how do you get the money home of you own the company?\n\nEasy-peasy. Start a company where you live. Important Management.\n\nImportant Management's sole purpose is to \"provide skilled corporate leadership to Important Inc.\" In other words, Management employs you as CEO. Full time paid, with a pretty awesome salary. And charges Important Finances for the cost of doing that.\n\nThe trick is, pretty much, to only land home the income that needs to go home for the expenses at home. The rest never comes home in the first place.\n\nAnd...at that point, the company is a beast that starts to accumulate money overseas. Money that the company may or may not have use for in terms of future product development. But the whole idea is that since the owner doesn't need it *now* they can choose to let the money stay there, for taxation at a later time. Gambling some with the idea that the money may not be taxed as high once they are withdrawn.\n\nBut...it's not totally unthinkable that the owner will, once retirement comes around, consider moving to the tax haven country where Finances has its headquarters. Because...maybe personal income taxes are pretty low and neat there too?"
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3uqykh | how does almond milk curdle? | I was at my cousin's house, and she was cleaning her fridge, and there was a carton of almond milk from September (so obviously way past the expiration date). She poured it out and it was super chunky, just like actual milk. How does it curdle if it's not real milk? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uqykh/eli5how_does_almond_milk_curdle/ | {
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"It curdles like regular milk because it has fat, protein and sugar similar to regular milk. Bacteria in the almond milk eat the sugar and excrete acid. This acid causes the protein chains to shrivel up and form tight webs that trap fat globules and squeeze out the water. These lumps of fat globules trapped by protein webs are the curds.\n\nThis is essentially how tofu is made, but with soy milk instead of almond milk, and it's how many non-dairy cheeses are made. ",
"Almond milk, just like cow milk, contains a significant amount of protein. Biologically speaking, proteins are large complex molecules that perform tasks at the cellular (or smaller) level. If you consume something with a lot of protein, that means it has a high amount of these molecules when compared to other foods.\n\nSo imagine a tornado of junk. Loads and loads of protein. Big molecules swirling in a liquid. Fortunately, at the right pH, the proteins are nicely folded and remain soluble in water. This is milk (any \"milk\") before curdling.\n\nBacteria (and fungi) are freaking everywhere. They will grow in anything that has the right conditions. I suspect they grow more slowly in almond milk because it has fewer carbohydrates (e.g. lactose - almond milk contains other carbohydrates, not lactose). When most bacteria grow they emit waste (lactic acid) that lowers the pH of their surroundings.\n\nWhen the pH lowers, the big protein molecules start to misfold. They have ends sticking out and exposed oil-soluble surfaces. They start colliding in the tornado of junk, and soon you have a tight junk-ball. This is a curdle of milk. And no I doubt its really edible at that point. Your stomach enzymes probably can't do much to those tight junk-balls."
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1osj9y | how do telemarketers, survey collectors, automated advertisers get my phone number ? | I'm bombarded daily with annoying calls from the aforementioned functions, despite telling them not to ever call back. How do they get my number?
Edit: Thank you to everyone who contributed! You were all a huge help! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1osj9y/eli5_how_do_telemarketers_survey_collectors/ | {
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"They buy lists of working phone numbers. As a last resort they go through public phone listings (We used paper phone books where I worked once.)",
"There are also databases of your personal information out there. Private companies will gather public information that's available along with private data that they buy. \n\nAn example that I know of: When you call in and order a pizza from, say Pizza Hut. You give them your name, number, and address. Some pizza companies will then sell that information to one of the private companies that aggregate it into databases. \n\nOne such company is LexisNexis. Their website is _URL_0_.\n\nI've actually used that site when I worked on as a tracker for a longitudinal social research project. My job was to find people who we needed to interview, but their contact info was outdated. It was quite creepy to see how much information the site had on everybody.",
"Also, be very careful when entering sweepstakes or give aways. Very often the ones that claim no purchase necessary have fine print. It basically says that by entering the sweepstakes you are giving them permission to contact you in the future about the product. This also gets them around the do not call list as you gave them permission to call that they can present to anyone you complain to. \n\nAlso, make sure you specifically say \"please take me off your list\". ",
"When you give your email to some companies, they sell these emails to telemarketers. Happens pretty often and more often if you pay for porn. Same thing applies to phone numbers, and addresses.",
"Companies you do business with sell your information, including phone number, email address and snail-mail address.\n\nPut yourself on the FTC's \"do not call\" list and you should see the number of calls drop. This doesn't prevent the overseas companies from calling you but it still helps. Some people have even earned a few coins by suing telemarketers for contacting them after their names were put on the list.",
"Sometimes data about you is gathered through a variety of means and aggregated by compilers, who manage and sell that data. Information comes from sources like directory assistance (yellow page data), magazine subscriptions, website registrations, surveys, county property data, retail interest data, etc. So it's possible your number was sold by your phone carrier to a compiler and then was purchased in a list by several telemarketers. Also, and more likely, you signed up for some service or contest that indicated that you have an interest in something (high scale clothing, travel, books, etc.) and you're being targeted by marketers based on that interest.\n\nSometimes the data a company has about you is given to them directly by you, and they simply manage and update that data. If you're their customer they can to call you even if your phone number is on the DNC (Do Not Call) list. Within certain restrictions, if they have an existing business relationship with you, they are free to call you.\n\nOccasionally those companies will sell your data to compilers (phone companies do this frequently) for some extra revenue. Larger companies, like Target, don't sell your data. Because it's most likely to be purchased by a competitor and their data profile on their customers is a huge advantage.\n\nIf you do not wish to be called, register your phone number with the [DNC](_URL_0_). Something like 80% of US land lines are registered on the DNC. Wireless phones do not need to be placed on the DNC as it is currently illegal to telemarket to wireless phones, but it doesn't hurt to put your number on there. It is free to register.\n\nPolitical organizations, surveyors, and non-profits are not restricted from calling phone numbers on the DNC.\n\nCompilers typically flag DNC phones in their lists, but they are still kept on file and are not intended for telemarketing use. It is up to the telemarketer to ensure that the phone numbers they are calling are scrubbed against the DNC before they start calling. Failure to do so can result in very stiff penalties for the marketer.\n\nIn any case, put your phone on the DNC list, allow up to a month for it to begin to be scrubbed from lists, and then you can try to identify who is still calling you. Figure out if you've signed up for something that's made you fair game for telemarketing. The DNC is your best weapon against irritating telemarketers.",
"One way that I discovered a few years back when a company \"contracted by your provider\" called me to do a survey. Some research led me to the SQM Group. When you have an account with one of the companies that contracts their services, you've given that company permission to share your contact details with SQM Group to call you on their behalf.\n\n[Here's SQM Group's client list.](_URL_0_)\n\n[Here's a link to put yourself on their do not call list.](_URL_1_)\n\n[Here's a link to put yourself on their do not email list.](_URL_2_)\n\nOnce, after registering on the do not call I received a call from \"on behalf of [my mobile phone provider]\" which I hung up on and then contacted my mobile provider and had a discussion which led to them also recording on my account not to give out my information to anyone.\n\nI don't receive telemarketer calls from anyone.",
"I work for a public opinion polling firm. And I do sampling for the company I work for. We generally get our numbers from the voter registration office of the area we are polling. Sometimes we send the names out to other companies who do a phone match on the information we have. Since we aren't selling anything, and would rather eat our own faces off than ever sell anything, we aren't covered by the do-not-call lists. Also, we do not keep any information after the survey is over. This includes a respondent telling us not to call them back.\n \nOn another topic, we get hired by your elected representatives to do these surveys. They want to find out how people feel about certain issues, and use this information to decide policy. It may be annoying, but there is really no better way to let your government know how you feel than to answer a survey. Unless you want to start a PAC and make some large donations, that is.",
"I worked for Ipsos and we literally randomly generated phone numbers until something answered the line. "
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di3t0k | osmosis, or how salt draws our moisture from food. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/di3t0k/eli5_osmosis_or_how_salt_draws_our_moisture_from/ | {
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"How much salt is in a solution defines its osmotic value, the higher it is, the more salt is in the solution. If you eat salt, it dissolves either in your mouth or in your stomach, creating a liquid with a certain osmotic value. If that value is higher than the osmotic value in the cells of your body, magic just kinda happens and the water from you cells is drawn out in an attempt to equalize the osmotic values of your body's cells and the solution in your stomach.\n\nHope this helps!",
"Imagine a bunch of people standing around in a large room, and they all have a decently strong need for some personal space. They'll mill about, flowing past one another more or less at random, but no two people want to get any less than maybe an arm's length between one another.\n\nNow imagine a room next door, also full of people, but this room is a massive ball pit! Everyone is swimming in a sea of colored balls, having a blast. The balls come in all sorts of colors and sizes, from little ping pong balls to beach balls. The size of the balls doesn't really matter, all things considered. The people are having so much fun in this ball palooza that they kind of forget their notions of personal space, and even though more of the space has been taken up by balls, the people will generally be less uptight about being so crowded together with the balls to distract them.\n\nAssume the two rooms have about the same number of people in them. Now let's add some doors between the rooms, openly connecting them. What would you expect to happen? Most likely, balls would start gradually pouring out from the ball pit room into the non-ballpit room as people randomly shuffle in and out of the doors, until both rooms eventually had the same amount of balls and people. This would be an example of basic diffusion, where a high concentration of balls flows to a lower concentration.\n\nBut what if we added some bouncers to each door who will only let people through, but not balls? (i.e. a semi-permeable membrane) Well, people feel less needy for personal space in the ball pit, so what you'll find is some people from the no-ball room will decide to move to the ball pit room, even though there are way more people already there. That's your osmosis.\n\nThere's really no good way to intuitively explain exactly *why* molecules of a solvent (people, or water) exert less \"pressure\" on one another with a solute (balls, or salt) around than they do without one -- best you'll be able to do is just throw a bunch of abstract math around. It's an effect described by something known as the virial theorem. [This paper](_URL_0_) attempts to describe it in detail, but it's definitely not ELI5 material."
]
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[],
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"https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0305011"
]
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||
1xiwhc | why is being a meter reader still a job, why can't power companies read that data remotely? | I understand why the meter needs to be read but why can't these major companies automate the process? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1xiwhc/eli5why_is_being_a_meter_reader_still_a_job_why/ | {
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"No incentive to do so.\n\nRemember that most houses were built before today, so they have the old style meters. It would cost billions to replace *all* of the meters to the new automated model. \n\nIf you started putting them on the newly built homes you'd have to run both systems at the same time. You are already paying the guys who read the meter, so you may as well use them.",
"Imagine the amount of retro-fitting required. It would cost billions and take years.",
"I work for a large power company in the US so I can give a bit of insight.\n\nMeter reading is necessary because it's quite costly to set up the infrastructure to read this remotely. We are working on a massive infrastructure overhaul to allow this as well as improve a lot of other things in our network, but it takes tons of money and time to get right. These are normally called \"smart meter\"\n\nEdit - There is also a vocal minority that objects to this sort of monitoring as an invasion of privacy. I don't really see why, but it's out there and it comes up whenever we try to get the government support on large projects like this.",
"One of the reasons to have a physical person check it is to (find people whoe mess with the meter)/(prevent people from messing with the meter).\n\nJust one factoid: in some places mailmen are trained to check the meters.",
"Texas does this already. _URL_0_",
"So I've come to the conclusion that it has to be a case by case basis. In smaller or financially in debt towns it would be cheaper and more effective to have individuals check them, but in larger cities it would be much more effective to have remote checkers. I find it sad that the town I live in is supposed to be a leader in technology, but the city doesn't implement the technology being developed in our backyard.",
"Most remote reading systems are by radio signal. You will always have problems with some radio signals not making it to the poles (where the receiver is) correctly. Hence you need someone to read it.",
"Finn here. Had to google what is meter reader, and it seems like at one point also Finland had people going from door to door to read meters.",
"It's cost and only cost, not looking for cheats or low signals problems. A meter reader can read a meter for about 30 cents per meter. It still cost about 75 cents to install and run a remote reading system. Most areas have a meter reader that does the electric, gas, and water at the same time, even it they are 3 different companies. Eventually the remote system will be cheaper as the technology cost goes down."
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1g7anr | how do game developers create games for consoles that have not been released yet? (i.e. ps4, xb1) | I feel like it would be logical that the console would need to be completed in some form first before any real game development can take place. Is this wrong? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g7anr/eli5_how_do_game_developers_create_games_for/ | {
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"They have an early version of the console that they work on, which is close enough that they can do work on the game. As the release gets closer they get updated versions that are closer to the actual system.",
"They make development consoles or they tell the developers what the hardware will likely be.\n\nThings like processor, graphics processor, and memory type and size are usually decided upon first in console development. Developers can then build a system similar to the future console and program and design based on that.\n\n",
"The ps4 and xbone are both x86 based, meaning they're basically just regular PCs in fancy cases. So, developers can use largely the same tools and techniques that they'd use to develop regular pc games."
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2ot1tv | with instability in the middle east and russia under heavy sanctions, why is the price of oil going down so quickly? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ot1tv/eli5_with_instability_in_the_middle_east_and/ | {
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"The arabs are taking a short term loss to drive the North American frackers out of business. The only reason fracking was ramped up is because it is only profitable when the price reaches these high levels. Drilling has already stopped.",
"The sanctions are actually driving the price of Russia oil down.\n\nTheir currency is tanking, and they really need to income that oil brings. And oil isn't part of the sanctions, at least not yet."
]
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[],
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225ycq | why is cooking on a gas stove so much better than electric? | I've pretty much only cooked on gas stoves so I don't have much comparison. Why do so many people prefer gas stoves?
Edit: I watch too much HGTV | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/225ycq/eli5_why_is_cooking_on_a_gas_stove_so_much_better/ | {
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"It's easier to control the heat.\n\nIf I go from high heat to low heat on a gas range, the change happens instantly.\n\nIf I go from high heat to low heat on an electric range, I have to wait at least a few seconds for the heat to actually change enough to slow down the cooking process.\n\nThe reverse is also true -- hot takes longer to get on an electric range. Gas is instant.",
"The adjustments you make to the heat take effect much quicker. Turning a flame up or down is instantaneous, but with an electric stove they take time to warm up or cool down after you've adjusted it.",
"Some places (like lots of New Zealand) don't have a gas infrastructure, so everything is electric. \n\nInduction is the best of both worlds - instant heat like gas, cost effective if you don't have the infrastructure, and safe (as the stove top itself does not heat up directly). ",
"I'll come right out and say that I have an electric range at home. I don't hate it, however I think that gas is superior in just about every way. It heats more evenly and offers more predictable and precise temperature control, which makes it easier to produce quality food. That being said, it is completely possible to produce quality results with either. Claims that electric is complete garbage and that you simply cannot cook properly with it are exaggerations from inexperienced cooks. If you only know how to fry an egg by turning the knob to a certain setting, pre-heating your favorite pan for a set amount of time, and cooking the egg for a certain number of minutes, you will not be pleased when switching heat sources. That goes for a lot of things in cooking though. There are lots of variables. If I replaced your cast iron skillet with an aluminum one and you followed the same steps, your egg would end up fused to the pan. In that case, what are you inclined to blame? Even though the whole kitchen filled with smoke when you threw your tab of butter in followed by your egg, you blame the pan. Wrong. It's completely possible to fry an egg in both pans, you just did it wrong. I totally understand that not everyone likes to cook and that changing a major variable in the kitchen means relearning a lot of things. The transition from gas to electric is a lot less forgiving than the other way around and probably results in a lot more horror stories which further adds to many people's view that gas is the only way to go."
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2dwhiw | why do apartment complexes raise rent when you decide to renew your lease with them? | It's like they are punishing you for being loyal. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dwhiw/eli5_why_do_apartment_complexes_raise_rent_when/ | {
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"If the property value has increased, presumably the rent they can get will increase too.",
"It's usually the only time they can raise rent - rates are typically set for the term of the lease.\n\nAs for loyalty... corporations don't have feelings, only profits and losses.",
"It's a gamble for them. They want your loyalty, but they understand your loyalty is really only measured by how much the inconvenience of moving is worth to you. So they want/have to raise rent because of whatever reason they want to make up (inflation, market value, added features, whatever), but they also don't want the apartment to be empty while they are looking for someone to rent it while you move out. You don't really want to move, and they really want to raise prices, so those two needs have to negotiate until they find a balance. If you are having this problem you should go negotiate with the manager. If it doesn't work for you just leave.",
"Because they know that moving is expensive, and want to capture some of the value that's created by you not moving. ",
"Rent has to go up eventually, simply due to inflation. During a lease, the rent usually cannot go up. The only time to raise it, then, is when the lease is renewed, or when tenants leave. Typically, a landlord will raise the rent for a loyal tenant by less than if they were finding new tenants, but it is understandable that they will have to raise the rent for loyal tenants eventually.",
"Because they can.",
"This is why houses are nice.\n\nMy landlord lowered rent since he doesn't have to pay for house cleaning due to a new tenant, and since he knows I'm a good tenant and he doesn't want to risk getting a shit tenant.\n\nAn apartment is more of a numbers game and less personable, so for them it doesn't matter who is in there as long as they're paying money. They're already paying the people who clean/repair apartments, so they don't save any money by not having to use them. And if people are willing to pay more money because housing costs have gone up (and they have) then they will get that money whether you're there or not.",
"A lot of evil corporation bullshit responses, ignore them. \n Your rent is (likely) fixed over the course of your lease agreement. The rest of the world is not. Property value and expenses are both increasing, while the power of your fixed dollar amount is decreasing. When your lease expires and the landlord is able to increase rent, they will do so to keep with with values/costs/inflation."
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95q9zs | why can some cars like range rovers or jeeps drive through large bodies of water, but it supposedly only takes a couple inches of water to move an average car? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/95q9zs/eli5_why_can_some_cars_like_range_rovers_or_jeeps/ | {
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"Off road vehicles have a higher air intake, sometimes mounted very high on a [snorkel. ](_URL_0_)\n\nThis allows the car to be deeper in water than a passenger car. A passenger car air intake can be very low, in some cases only a foot or so off the ground.\n\nWhen water gets into the engine, water does not compress very well, so when the piston tries to compress the water which was supposed to be a mixture of fuel and air, the water can bend piston rods, break seals made by gaskets and o rings. \n\nSee also _URL_1_",
"Higher ground clearance\n\nWhen the water is 8\" up, the only things in the water on a Jeep or Range Rover are the wheels and maybe axles\n\nWhen the water is 8\" up on a sedan, that puts it a couple inches above the floor boards and has a significant amount of moving water pushing against the side of the car. The side of your car has *a lot* of surface area, so even 1 psi of pressure from the water turns into thousands of pounds of force trying to slide the car sideways. This, combined with the potential for the car trying to float a bit which will reduce the grip of the wheels, and a normal car caught in moving water can be swept away quite quickly",
"The speed of the water matters. It takes much more than a few inches of water for any car to *float* but if the water is pushing it sideways, that would quickly be a problem. \n\nMany examples of cars being washed away are in flood waters which are unpredictable and sometimes very fast.\n\nThe unpredictability is another reason you might hear it’s dangerous to drive through just a few inches of water. It’s dangerous not only because of the effect of a few inches of water... but because the water might be deeper than the driver thinks it is. "
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22r5du | why are bitcoin prices crashing below $400 now, and why do people think this is the end of bitcoin? | I don't have any involvement in the Bitcoin economy, I'm just really curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22r5du/eli5_why_are_bitcoin_prices_crashing_below_400/ | {
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"Most of the value of bitcoins cimes from people speculating and gambling on a price increase later. \n\nIt's well known that this is the case, so lots of speculators are merely buying bitcoin in the hope they can sell it to some chump speculator before all the speculators leave and the price crashes.",
"For the price of Bitcoin to stabilize it has always been assumed that eventually people would stop hoarding it and use it as a normal currency to buy things, since the price of a currency is determined by its supply and demand. ATM the opposite is happening, the price of the Bitcoin is crashing below $400 because there has been rumor of the regulators in China cracking down on the currency again. In December they declared that Bitcoin was not a currency, then they forbid some firms from dealing with Bitcoin exchanges and now there are rumors of an outright ban on banks dealing with Bitcoin. Which would be a death sentence on Bitcoin in China. What can a bunch of computer nerds do against the powers of the Communist party in China? "
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bpqgli | why can't people create algorithms to allow bots to bypass the "click here to confirm you're not a robot" recaptchas? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bpqgli/eli5_why_cant_people_create_algorithms_to_allow/ | {
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"AI has to recognize images and objects in the images; even if these objects are not complete. AI is not thatfar yet.",
"Basically there are better and better algorithms to handle such a problem.\n\nWhat face/object recognition is similar.\n\nBut, Recaptcha is doing it's most to make it more complex for bots using different parameters to determine whether it's bot.\n\nFor example, mouse speech, response and so on....\n\n\nFunny story is the collision between them, Google has audio recognition as you might know but also Recaptcha. \nThere was a case study that demonstrated cracking the accessibility feature with one of Google's captcha that allowed user to get a call instead of image. Some guy hooked the call to Google speech recognition in order to crack the audio-captcha. \n\nEventually, Google added noise to the audio to prevent audio recognition from working. Same for images.\n\nToday, the new captchas are object recognition, generally the idea of finding objects today relying on something called \"machine learning\".\n\nRecaptcha as always using crowd sourcing to keep improving their engine and protecting from bots at the same time."
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cok0ri | why do cities have steam systems underground? | Based on a show on TV now about an underground steam pipe explosion in NYC some years ago.
Why do these steam systems exist? What is the steam used for? Where does it come from? I’ve always wondered.
Thanks. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cok0ri/eli5_why_do_cities_have_steam_systems_underground/ | {
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"Steam can be used for heating and in some cases also for cleaning. When steam condenses back into water it gives off a lot of heat. So by filling a radiator with steam it will keep the room warm and the condensed water will flow down the steam pipes again. It was a popular way to heat tall buildings. New York have a lot of steam systems and often big systems that supply heat to lots of buildings at once. The reason for this was that New York got electricity early when they had to have power plants in the city itself. As a consequence Manhattan have several electric power plants. These get energy from boiling water under high pressure and needs to condense the steam back into water in order to reuse it. So in addition to power they were able to sell steam to the buildings of the city.",
"Many older (pre-large-scale electricity) buildings were heated by steam. You can see steam heaters as those metal ribbed boxes against the walls with piping leading from them. These heaters have hot steam piped in from a power plant somewhere nearby, and these pipes are the steam systems you're referring to. Sometimes, other utilities can be run through the old steam tunnels as well, such as plumbing or electricity. As a fun fact: The downtown of the city of Chicago *supposedly* used to be very heavily networked with utility tunnels, until some idiot blew a hole between the nearby river and a tunnel, causing the tunnels and many buildings to flood.",
"District heating systems - basically one big boiler to produce steam for a whole load of houses, flats etc, rather than each premises having it's own boiler. Steam is then used for heating (and cooling, cleaning etc sometimes as well)."
]
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776d01 | why are birds always on this one building? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/776d01/eli5_why_are_birds_always_on_this_one_building/ | {
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"text": [
"We are going to need photos or some more description. It is impossible for us to tell without more information."
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6du0z6 | i've spent a lot of time on long, sandy beaches where i've dug deep holes with me my feet. why is it now a popular notion that more stars exist than grains of sand on earth? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6du0z6/eli5_ive_spent_a_lot_of_time_on_long_sandy/ | {
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"text": [
"Because the universe is incredibly incredibly incredibly massive. It is hard to comprehend how massive it is. And within that huge enormous space, there are also many many stars.\n\n[This does an attempt at explaining the math] (_URL_0_)",
"Because it's reasonable. \n\n_URL_0_\n\nEstimate 100-400 billion stars in our galaxy, perhaps 100-500billion galaxies, means between 10 sextillion and 200 sextillion stars. \n\nSay 8000 grains of sand per cubic centimetre, estimate 700 million cubic meters of beach in earth, yields an estimate of 5 sextillion grains of sand. (Maybe as low as 2.5 sextillion or as high as 10.)\n\nEdit: first result from Google. "
]
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"https://www.universetoday.com/106725/are-there-more-grains-of-sand-than-stars/"
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"https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.universetoday.com/106725/are-there-more-grains-of-sand-than-stars/amp/"
]
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||
7udbmp | whats the water situation in cape town? was this expected? will this happen to other cities? should other countries be worried? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7udbmp/eli5_whats_the_water_situation_in_cape_town_was/ | {
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"They have been in a state of drought for years and the city population has not met the restriction goals to ration the water that they do have. As such they have been running out of water faster than they can build facilities to treat waste water or filter salt water. They have a number of plants in production to attempt to meet water needs, but they have encountered delays and will not be operational before they run out of water. Yes this was expected, but it was mostly ignored by the population till it was too late. ",
"Cape Town has been considered a very green city for awhile. They've worked very hard to be very responsible. One thing that led to their water shortage is due to their \"greenness\" there was a lack of urgency in moving forward to find supplemental water supplies. Now, kick in a severe drought AND a 30% population boom over the last decade or so and they are caught with their pants down. Now it's a very serious emergency. Their main water reservoir is at 13% of capacity and the clock is ticking."
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arvcbk | theoretically how hard/possible would it be for someone to buy land from a really poor country and declare independence? | Theoretically how hard would it be to say, a Bill Gates tier billionaire to buy a very small uninhabited portion of a country like Madagascar or equivalent (basically a country so poor they couldn't ignore the offer) and declare independence? Could you draft a contract or something that protects you from the country the land was originally from from basically ignoring your sovereignty or taking the land back? And if the country the land was originally from did nothing, would other countries be able to do anything about it, apart from maybe not recognizing you as a real country? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/arvcbk/eli5_theoretically_how_hardpossible_would_it_be/ | {
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"[Pretty impossible](_URL_0_).\n\nAs it turns out really poor countries are nonetheless pretty opposed to foreigners coming in and taking their territory, even if that territory is a desolate wasteland or open ocean.",
"A \"contract\" would not do anything. What would really matter is two things\n\n1. Other countries recognising you as a sovereign country (because if they dont, you cant trade, cant travel, etc)\n\n2. You having military means of defending yourself from the country you separated from.\n\nEssentially, even if you pay Madagascar to buy an island, they can later come in with an army and say \"we're taking it back, tough luck\". Theoretically you can declare independence with land anywhere- hell, you can declare independence in your small house in USA or something. The problems are (1) the country will come to tell you how wrong you are, so if you can't fight them off, you're done, and (2) other countries might want to keep relations with the bigger country (usa, madagascar, etc) instead of you, so they will not acknowledge you as a sovereign state. \n\nThe only way to become properly sovereign is:\n\n* The country you took land from doesnt mind you being sovereign OR you have the military means of defending your sovereignity\n\n**AND**\n\n* You have something of value that would want other countries to be friends with you vs someone else. "
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o8u29 | the process that goes on in a recording studio | Patchbays? Busses? Racks of keyboards with 12 keys? 16-channel interface? What? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/o8u29/eli5_the_process_that_goes_on_in_a_recording/ | {
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"I really hope this question catches fire.\n\nCross post to /r/wearethemusicmakers ?",
"Ok, so the recording studio is basically centred around two pieces of kit: the mixing desk (mixer, or mixing console) and the tape machine. By tape, I simply mean the device one is recording to. These days, that could just as easily be a computer hard disk as a physical tape.\n\nUnderstanding the recording studio is basically being able to visualise the path that a signal takes, often from a live performance such as a singer, right onto the tape. The signal from a live performance is usually captured by a microphone and then taken into the studio. This is where the first device you mentioned comes in: the patch bay. A patch bay is just a device with loads of different circuits and connectors that allows you to connect other devices together with flexibility and convenience. You plug the devices you're working with into the patch bay, and you can connect them up in any order you like.\n\nNow, this signal might go straight to the mixer, or it might go for processing at another device first. These connections are facilitated by the patch bay. An example is that it might go to a pre-amplifier to prepare the signal for further processing.\n\nAnyway, let's just assume it has gone to the mixing desk. The mixing desk is where the recordist can manipulate the incoming sounds before recording them to tape. This is where your '16 channel interface' is likely to come in. You know how your television has multiple channels? Television channels are just different signals coming into your tv, right? It's just the same on a mixing desk. A 16 channel mixing desk can work with 16 signals at once. For example, if the recordist were recording a drum-kit, they might use a separate microphone for the bass drum, snare drum, hi-hat, floor tom and then 2 overhead mics to capture the high toms and cymbals. This would use 6 of our 16 channels.\n\nWhat features does an average mixing desk have then? Well, firstly it will have a trim/gain at the start of the signal path. This allows the user to boost or cut the signal to make sure it's a good volume to work with for the rest of the time. Too loud, and you'll distort the signal. Too quiet and the signal you're trying to record might be drowned out by the natural 'noise' of the electronics at work.\n\nThen the sound can be equalised. This is just adjusting the tone of the sound. You know on your stereo or television you have bass and treble controls? Exactly the same on the mixer, but usually more precise.\n\nAfter EQing, there are usually options to use the auxiliary busses of the mixer. Busses, you say? A buss is just a point where a bunch of different signals are mixed into one signal. For instance, if we had a singer singing along with a guitar and piano, you probably want the singer to be able to hear themselves as well as the guitar and piano in a pair of headphones. The auxiliary buss can mix the sound of the guitar, piano and vocal together and send them somewhere - in this case back to the singer.\n\nThe next option the recordist gets is 'sends'. Each channel can be sent to another device to apply any extra processes. For instance, we might want our singer to have an echo effect on her voice. We could 'send' the signal to another device in our studio which we add the echo effect.\n\nFinally on the mixer we have faders and panning. Faders control the final volume after all the previous processing we've been doing. Pan pots allow us to choose whether the sound comes out the left speaker, right speaker, or both speakers.\n\nThen there are a bunch more options for busses. You'd have a 'main mix' buss, which is the *final* output of the mixer. Alternatively, you might have some other busses that allow you to group the signals. This is most useful if you're using a mixer in a live setting. Let's say you have a large soul band performing and you're using the mixer to level the sound. You might put the main singer on one buss, the guitars on another buss, the drums on another buss, the horns on a fourth buss and finally the backing vocals on another buss. Now you can control the volume of several microphones at once just by changing the volume of that buss.\n\nRemember that these settings can be different for every channel - that's why there's so many knobs on mixer.\n\nThe signal that goes to the tape could be from any of the individual channels or from any of the busses.\n\nFeel free to ask any questions. Hope that was clear enough."
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4qdqhb | why is it bad to appropriate other peoples' cultures? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4qdqhb/eli5_why_is_it_bad_to_appropriate_other_peoples/ | {
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"There are two camps on this.\n\nThe traditional camp, prior to the term being so overused in pop culture and \"news\" that it's become diluted and lost its meaning, referred to the practice of taking something from a different culture, particularly a smaller one that is not the dominant culture, then commodifying it, removing its context, and making money off of it without permission of that culture.\n\nFor example, say you're a member of a small Native American tribe, and for as long as anyone in your tribe can remember, you've been given a special necklace after completing some rite of passage.\n\nCultural appropriation of this would be an outsider seeing that necklace, thinking it looks cool, recreating them, selling them, and not crediting or paying the villagers. The idea here is that the tribe originally designed it for a different purpose, and now somebody else is profiting off it. By appropriating it for your own uses, you're both disrespecting their culture *and* possibly denying them payment for using their intellectual property. I find this one to be a legitimate concern, similar to copyright infringement, by exploiting a group that may not have access to the same legal protections.\n\nThe other, more popular camp, which is what's pretty much ruined the term's chance of being taken seriously anymore, is, \"My group of people does this. Nobody outside of my group can do this, even if they're not making money off of it, because it's ours.\" The idea being that some cultural things are best left in the smaller culture, where they can be appreciated by those who created them, and that the dominant culture taking them and spreading them dilutes their cultural significance and reasserts the mainstream's subjugation of the minority culture. At least, that's what I understand it to be.",
"Cultural appropriation has some problematic issues. One of the biggest issues is it tends to be a pretty shallow understanding of culture, tending not to be interested in why and how foreign things the way they are instead just picking them up as wallpaper to look different, and when its stops being novel its forgotten without any understanding really having been gained.\n\n There are also issues where appropriation tends to just overlook the diversity. Little heed being paid to the differences between the many cultural groups that compose say \"asia\" or \"native americans\", or any other broad label. And little care as to how they're used. Things people identify with strongly can be sort of casually thrown around in a way that at times deprives people of the ability to associate meaningfully with them, and to derive dignity from them. That includes spiritual beliefs and traditions, but also includes the lesser things of being able to form an identity of what it means to belong to a culture. For example Maori facial tattoos which are generally held to have a considerable degree of importance and meaning, and which can provide a sense of identity and dignity to many Maori people. When such things are thrown around on character designs, and painted on for photo-shoots without understanding it actively diminishes a culture. \n\nThere are also issues that go on where you have things like traditionally black hairstyles like cornrows and dreadlocks which are very pragmatic hair choices given the texture of black hair, but which have been discriminated against and looked down upon, people get fired for wearing them. White people wearing them as something different or on whim, or cause they think they look cool, or whatever isn't purely wrong perhaps, but it speaks to a serious issue of privilege, saying in a way you cant have that but we can. Its important to remember that in cases where you have an issue of a distinction in privilege throwing open the doors and saying lets everyone take whatever they want from any culture tends to favor the culture that has power.\n\nCultural blending is great and an important factor in how culture changes and advances, but if there's no respect and real meaningful insight going on then its not really blending. Its just a fad of design, a shallow imitation. This article talks about orientalism the sort of generically distant and purely foreign mystique of Asia. The same sorts of things that cause crazy and exaggerated stories of weird things in china that show up all the time. When you take pieces of culture for the purpose of seeming exotic and other, you are not really doing blending, you're drawing a deeper though perhaps invented distinction. If you present something as being foreign and different you're not normalizing it.\n\nIts not really about saying this thing can only belong to these people, its about saying if you want to make use of another culture, then respect it and understand it. If something looks cool enough for you to want to use, then its cool enough for you to want to understand and be true to. The problem with cultural appropriation first and foremost comes down to displaying a lack of respect, and thinking something looks cool isn't really respecting a culture. ",
"Not necessarily my view here but my understanding is some people are frustrated because they are often either stereotypes of a culture or they are only benefiting positively from it. \n\nA native American headdress comes to mind. It's easy to wear today as a non-native but you never faced the hardships or discrimination of actually being a part of that culture. "
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34yqmz | how do reflex sights work? | Like the one pictured [here](_URL_0_). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34yqmz/eli5_how_do_reflex_sights_work/ | {
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"Reflexes work by reflecting light off of a curve lens. In relation to the shooters view point the reflected light would always provide and accurate area of target. Basically, if you are looking at the sight from an angle, as long you can still see your target in the sight, the curved nature of the lens would still allow you to line up the target. "
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j2ocz | could someone explain the bush tax cuts to me li5? | I know that it was a large tax cut across the board but how much to each tax bracket? Are there any other aspects of it that I should know about? What are the general criticisms of it it and why (e.g. why do people complain that it favors the rich if it was a tax cut for every income level?).
Each time I try to look it up, all the conclusions that people draw from the data contradict each other. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j2ocz/could_someone_explain_the_bush_tax_cuts_to_me_li5/ | {
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"There were two major tax cuts- 2001 and 2003. The 2001 tax cuts were highlighted by the following: a new 10% tax bracket, the shrinking of the top tax bracket from 39.6 to 35%, and the other higher brackets reduced by 3 percentage points each. It also raised the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000 and gradually eliminated the marriage penalty for taxpayers in the 10 and 15% brackets. \n\nThe 2003 legislation reduced capital gains from 10% and 20% to 5% and 15%, and sped up the timeline for phase in of the 2001 changes. It also introduced the concept of \"qualified dividends\"- dividends received from qualified stock holdings became taxable at capital gains rates instead of ordinary income rates. \n\nThe benefit to higher income tax payers can be seen both in terms of percentage of tax paid and actual dollars paid. With the higher brackets all shrinking, the percentage of total income that higher income taxpayers pay in is less. And just by virtue of the level of income, the absolute dollar value of savings is much higher. \n\nPerhaps the bigger change was with regard to capital gains. The transfer of dividend income from progressively increasing ordinary income to flat capital gains rates markedly benefited higher income individuals more, who have more income to invest in dividend yielding stocks. \n\nIn a progressive tax structure, the more you make, the higher the percentage you pay. However, with capital gains the taxes are flat. If you sell $1,000,000 of stock, you still only pay 15% on the gains. \n\nThe tax cuts were designed to sunset in 2010, capping the cost at $1.35 trillion in tax cuts, and keeping the budget \"balanced\" under PAYGO rules. This basically means that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts were unsustainable on a \"permanent\" basis. Any move to make them permanent now (past their current 2012 expiration), would require offsetting cuts in spending. "
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d9w6ez | how do babies know to make eye contact? | I'm a new father to my first baby, and I've noticed she makes (or atleast seems to make) a lot of eye contact. Why and how is this so? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/d9w6ez/eli5_how_do_babies_know_to_make_eye_contact/ | {
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"One of first thing baby learns is recognising face amongst other patterns. Two eyes, mouth, nose. That's why there is so many saints on toasts or in the wall stains. It's one of first things we learn.",
"Parents are vital for the survival of a newborn, plain evolutionary behaviour. The face is the most prominent feature of you, to her. Your mouth makes familiar sounds, and your eyes are probably the most interesting thing in your face, so to speak. Enjoy this time.",
"I've also heard that newborns are near sighted so pretty much everything past the caretakers face is a blur."
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5mw3sv | why all the companies are now investing in the united states; for example, fiat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mw3sv/eli5_why_all_the_companies_are_now_investing_in/ | {
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"Trump proposed that if companies leave the US he will create a strong border tax. If companies start investing in the US it means they will not have to pay this Tax or maybe they will be exempt from it. Hence why ford just backed out of Mexico and a 1.something billion dollar plant. \n\n\nBorder tax and how it would work as explained to a 5 year old. \n\nFord makes a car in US, car sells for 30,000\nFord moves to Mexico, Car is now TAXED and now has to sell for 40,000. (they need to make up for the tax they where just charged, so to off settle it they need to increase the cars sales price) well who's going to by a ford when they can buy a car that is = in performance and 10,000 cheaper cause its here in the US. \n\nBy keeping companies in the US it would keep Jobs here as well as people would continue to keep buying vehicles.\n\n\nBut Tax and locations are not what will kill the car industry, it will be automation. \n"
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7y11zg | why do certain characters cause computers to crash | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7y11zg/eli5_why_do_certain_characters_cause_computers_to/ | {
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"Question isn't clear. Can you elaborate?",
"Most likely cause is not enough input validation from the programmer.\n\nIf there are input fields where characters can be entered, the program handles the input in a specific way, an unexpected value can cause exceptions or other strange behaviour. A programmer should check the input before processing it.\n\nExamples:\n\n* Switching from a left-to-right character set to right-to-left character set mid-line caused WhatsApp to crash on iOS iirc.\n\n* newline-characters in input fields where a simple textstring is expected\n\n* numbers larger than the variable that has to store it (e.g. entering \"300\" where a byte (0-255) can be stored.\n\n* Escape-characters, which prematurely mark the end of the input, everything else followed might get interpreted as code: _URL_0_\n\nIn most cases, only the program itself crashes, not the whole system."
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clk19s | how do apps that pay users earn money for themselves? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/clk19s/eli5_how_do_apps_that_pay_users_earn_money_for/ | {
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"I believe they sell the info to market research companies. What, where, and quantity of people’s purchases are valuable."
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2g7q0i | what led game designers away from mac as a viable platform for their content? | I do love the five games I can play on Steam, but REALLY. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2g7q0i/eli5_what_led_game_designers_away_from_mac_as_a/ | {
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"The most likely reason is market share. If you have a set amount of resources, do you design for the 95% or the 5%.",
"Numbers. There have always been many, many more PCs than Macs.",
"The amount of code refactoring required to switch from PC to mac or linux is quite sizable. Windows own the vast majority of the PC market and a larger majority of the gamer market.",
"I think the market share answer people are giving is only half the answer. DirectX is a graphics/sound/etc. library Microsoft developed for Windows, and were able to optimize better than OpenGL. Game developers chose to use DirectX for the better performance, at the expense of portability. It wasn't that hard of a decision in the 90s when 95% of people had Windows PCs. If developers used OpenGL, which is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux, porting to those other OSes would have been a lot easier. \n\nIt's also worth noting that Apple didn't place much importance on optimizing the performance of their graphics drivers until recently, however I'm not sure if that's a contributing factor towards game developers moving away from Apple, or if it's the other way around and Apple adopted that attitude because gaming wasn't much of a thing on Macs.",
"There are a dell of lot more PCs than macs out there.",
"Well, aside from its small market share, for the longest time, all but the most expensive of Macintosh computers had thorougly \"meh\" graphics cards(most of which are Intel integrated, but there's some Nvidia in the higher tiers). They might have had more powerful CPUs and more RAM than the average PCs of the time, but most games require graphical power too.\n\nAlso, unless you were using a cross-platform language like Java, you'd have to port the game.",
"At some point in the late 80s, software developers realized that there was not only more money to be made developing for PC-compatibles (due to licensing fees), but that they retained more control over their software (due to licensing restrictions on the mac platforms). This caused a large shift for game developers primarily because mac games had very strict restrictions on the type of content that could be presented. This shift helped to spur the development of gaming software support on PC operating systems such as Windows.\nOpenGL and DirectX were developed around the same time in the mid-90s. Strong marketing from Microsoft to encourage the use of DirectX for game development helped solidify the status of Windows as a pro-gaming operating system.\n\nGames developed in Direct X do not work on operating systems other than Windows.",
"Because Microsoft allowed everyone to develop for them where as Apple only had a select few.",
"Mac didn't have a meaningful share of the consumer market for many years. The market they had was people with significant income who could afford not only the baseline price, but who could also afford a machine every couple of years. This meant that the average mac owner before about 2001 was older and outside of the best demographic for videogames. As for development, Macs were simply much more annoying both to develop on and for, being much more idiosyncratic and restrictive. Combined with the high cost of machines on a per-seat basis, it didn't make business sense.\n\nA small exception is that Adobe was frequently allied with Apple against Microsoft. This meant that asset-creators as well as marketers often favored Macs as work machines. However, even Mac-based studios were generally producing games for PC.\n\nThings changed when iOS 2.0 was released and the brand-new App Store made developing on OSX a requirement for anyone hoping to scale in a mobile market. But by then, PC's had dominated the computer gaming market for over a decade.\n\n6 years later things have changed considerably. Many more titles are available for mac and pc (and also for linux), and that portion I believe will only continue to grow.\n\ntl,dr : Mac had a late start, a small share, and never really courted developers. that's changing.",
"Th answer down below from IT_Chef I think is the most accurate. When the macs were using PowerPC they had a brief renaissance because the xbox was going to be using powerpc, but then the mac graphics drivers were not very good, and the gaming industry moved on a kept improving with new tech advancements and they were all x86 and windows based with a majority market share that was rapidly growing.\nDown the road you can add high price and such but i think the architecture and timing really hurt mac gaming.",
"Old guy here (and an old Mac guy from back in the day, if not so much any more):\n\nOne mostly-forgotten factor is that once John Sculley took over, Apple threatened to pull their ads (and thus a big chunk of the revenue) from the weeklies like MacWeek and MacWorld if they didn't cut down their coverage on games and charge game companies extra for ads. Why would they do that? Because Mac had acquired a bit of a reputation for having all the best games, and people inside PC-centric companies who were asking for Macs were getting accused of only wanting them for games.\n\nIn the meantime, though, over on the other side of the fence, IBM and Microsoft had learned that productivity software mostly didn't need much hardware, so people who had PCs weren't buying new PCs, which was also holding down new OS sales. But 3D games use hardware that goes obsolete every couple of years. So Microsoft embraced game developers just at the point in time where Apple was shitting all over them, creating the DirectX suite of UIs and drivers.",
"A number of things:\n\n * Mac was not a viable gaming platform (in fact, an obsolete and dying platform) from 1995 to 2000. After the year 2000 so reboot to OS X they had negligible market share and nobody cared for them; little middleware supported it, etc. Then, in 2006, Apple had to make another reboot on top of OS X, this time changing the CPU architecture from IBM to Intel x86. This made all OS X software from pre-2006 non-functional, once again proving the instability of Mac as a platform. This made Mac porting a high-cost and high-risk project that few wantet\n * Obviously the above didn't help Apple with gaining market share. Eventually, with a lot of funding coming in from Microsoft (~30% stakeholder of Apple Inc.) they did gain some in the premium segment, but it's still small enough for the porting not to be economically viable (see below), even accounting for possibly less piracy on Mac, etc.\n * Around 2006, when Mac as a platform has finally sort-of stabilized, Microsoft managed to get most games to use Windows-specific DirectX over OpenGL, and the story of how they did it is pretty sad ([see here](_URL_0_) for more info on OpenGL decline). DirectX basically locks you in to Windows and makes porting an existing game to OpenGL an incredibly complicated and expensive process, that's (given Apple's market share) is simply not economically viable (even accounting for possibly less piracy on Mac, etc.)\n * Apple has consistently terrible GPU drivers. They are slow, buggy, and support only an outdated version of OpenGL. (This is partly because on Windows and Linux every vendor makes their own driver, but for Mac Apple is responsible for drivers for all 3 vendors, and driver development is not their main focus). This also drives Mac development time and price up. But even more importantly, since you most likely can't make a Mac game look as good as Windows equivalent, why bother? Gamers will install Windows anyway - if you can afford a Mac, you can afford a Windows copy too. ([see here for more details on drivers](_URL_1_))\n\nI can add that with the recent swing to OpenGL and Linux, as well as the fairly stable Mac platform as of late, the barrier for entry to Mac game porting has lowered. We might see more games come to Mac in the future, unless the graphics API craze makes it not economically viable once again.",
"The people stating that DirectX is a big part of the PC vs. Mac game availability disparity are mostly incorrect, but I understand why they believe this. They probably didn't live through the early years of computer games like us older gamers.\n\n\nAnyone else remember playing the original Doom shareware when it was first released? I did. It came on a single 1.44M floppy disk, and you got the first three levels for \"free\". If you liked it, you could send off to iD Software to buy the entire game (yes, by snail mail). Those days, there was very few \"Windows games\", other than Solitaire or Minesweeper. The Windows GUI just put too much of an overhead on available memory. In order to play most true \"PC Games\", you had to shut down Windows, which left you at the DOS prompt, where you needed to navigate to the directory or floppy disk that contained your game via the command line, then launch it, again, via the command line. If the game was particularly large, you often had to create special boot disks that contained a customized Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files, to allocate higher memory for the game, then reboot the computer with that disk in the drive. You could edit the Autoexec.bat file yourself to automatically launch the game after booting was finished, since DOS had a built-in text editor. Until DOS 6.xx's \"multi boot options\" were introduced, this was how you played games on a PC.... find the boot disk you needed for a particular game, shut down Windows to the DOS prompt, and reboot the machine with the correct boot disk inserted in the drive. You now had \"high memory\" address space available to the game. This was anything in your system above 640K. And not to mention, at the time, the the sound card drivers, video card drivers, joystick drivers, etc, didn't work in the game unless you booted cleanly via a DOS boot disk, loading those specific drivers. \n\n\nNow, contrast this with the available Mac's at the time. Memory space was still as tight as the PC side, yet you had an OS that essentially had NO base level command line OS running under it, like DOS. The GUI actually WAS the OS, and launching a game that required a lot of RAM (for the time) was pretty much out of the question on early Mac's, unless you had a ten thousand dollar machine. So, that is at least one cause of the disparity... the Mac OS was a performance bottleneck you just couldn't bypass. And for some of the better games of the day, you simply had to bypass the GUI to play them, or buy a stupidly expensive Mac. \n\n\nDon't get me wrong, at the time, Mac had 'some' games available, but usually they were simple point-and-click adventures. The games I remember playing on PC's at the time stretched even a PC's relatively open and upgradeable architecture to its limits... like Falcon 3.0, X-wing vs. Tie Fighter, Doom/Heritic/Hexen, etc. This leads us to another reason there were so few Mac games, from my point of view at the time... Mac's could not be upgraded with more RAM or addition of things like a math co-processor (which I had to do for my 386sx machine to run Falcon 3.0). Sure, if you were an uber-geek and knew how to solder and source the parts, you could figure out how to upgrade your Mac, eventually... but for the average consumer, Mac's were marketed and sold as a box you didn't ever need to open and fiddle around with. Apple tightly controlled all aspects of their hardware to the point there were really not many upgrades or peripheral to play around with. The PC's had add-on sound cards, joystick cards, better graphics cards, more RAM, faster processors, bigger hard drives, and a whole host of plug-in peripherals like awesome joysticks, foot pedals, racing wheels, etc. When I first got a joystick to play X-wing with, it was like a quantum leap in gaming. Mac had, if I remember correctly, one joystick available and it was a simple thin metal stick poking out of a white cube base, with a single button on the base. My first joystick looked like it was just ripped out of an F-16 fighter jet. If you were a gamer at that time, there was really no question about what platform you should buy.... Mac's were simply too expensive, with no upgrade options, and very few peripherals to play with. \n\n\nAnd lets not forget that Apple also tightly controlled the software they \"allowed\" to run on their machine as well. You simply could not just start hammering away at a game in your garage or basement and make it work on a Mac, then sell it openly. You had to go through Apple's ridiculous and expensive process to become an Apple developer. This really locked a lot of developers out of the Mac market. If you wanted that magical Apple logo for the front of your game box to let everyone know the software was \"approved\" by Apple, you had to jump through a lot of expensive hoops.\n\n\nSo, in my opinion, Apple locked themselves out of a very lucrative market early on, by making a machine that was very expensive, couldn't be upgraded cheaply/easily, had very few aftermarket peripherals, and was marketed towards a non-technical consumer base. Then they actively discouraged game developers. The net effect was a tiny, tiny market share that very few game developers wanted to invest time and money in. This was long, LONG before Microsoft attempted to run games with its Windows GUI running in the background.... and long before they even thought up the DirectX API for hardware interface.\n\n\nSo, in the early days, market share became the biggest, most overwhelming factor.DirectX just never factored into it until much much later.",
"There was a push by Apple in the late 90s to get more games onto the Mac platform. Apple invited a few Game Developers to ask opinions on how to make the Mac a better environment to develop games on.\n\nOne of those Developers that was invited was the legendary John Carmack of id Software, the makers of the popular Quake series. At the time, id Software were developing Quake 3 Arena (Q3A), a much anticipated game that gamers couldn't wait to play.\n\nJohn Carmack decided to have a go at developing Q3A and developed the game simultaneously on the Mac and PC. What surprised the PC crowd, actually stunned, was that id Software was going to release Q3A on the Mac before the PC release. This had a lot of PC gamers crying foul as Quake was always a PC game first. And that's exactly what id Software did. I remember demoing Q3A at E3 on an iMac before being able to play it on a PC. \n\nAt the time, I was interested to see what John Carmack's impression of developing on the Mac was and I distinctly remember that one of his comments was OS9 sucked and he suggested to Apple to scrap it and develop a new OS. Apple had already realized what junk OS9 was and was already developing OS X before John Carmack had mentioned dumping OS9 but John went ahead and developed Q3A for OS9 because he wanted to see the difference between it and Windows.\n\nJohn didn't really have many nice things to say about the IBM PowerPC CPU used in all Macs and he found OS9 to be really limited on what it could do.\n\nI found this diary that John Carmack had online that details part of his dealings with the PowerPC Mac and OS9:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIf you scroll down on the web page, you'll see what John Carmack had to say.\n\nBut I remember at the time, after Q3A was released on the Mac, that was it. There wasn't any more mention of the big push Apple had made to get games developed for the Mac, even after OS X was released.\n\nWith my knowledge of Macs from that era, I'm going to assume that the Mac didn't have the power for games that the PC crowd had at thei fingertips.\n\nThe GPUs that Apple were using at the time were using technology that was antiquated compared to what you could get on a PC. And it didn't help that Apple was the only one that would release any new drivers and wouldn't let the GPU maker to release on their own like they could on the PC.\n\nAlso, as much as Apple tried to tout the PowerPC G3 CPU with its RISC based architecture as the end all be all for CPU design, Intel users knew better and so did the Game Developers.\n\nSo although Apple had a shiny new OS with OS X, it was hampered by the slow GPU and PowerPC G3 CPU which wasn't a problem for PCs.\n\nApple eventually had to dump the PowerPC architecture because IBM couldn't get it past 3Ghz although there were a few other reasons:\n\n_URL_1_\n\nBut by this time, it was too late. The Game Developers had given up on the Mac way before Apple switched to Intel CPUs and Apple seemed to have refocused on Macs being used for design software.\n\nIf you look at the current Mac desktop, it's quite obvious that it is meant to be used as a Workstation with it's Intel Xeon CPUs and Workstation AMD FirePro GPUs. These two factors along with the high price doesn't make it feasible to develop Games on such a platform.\n\nAs far as the Macbooks go, the only suitable Macbook to play games on is their highest end Macbook which sports an Nvidia 750 GPU and even then the 750 isn't Nvidia's fastest GPU so again, it isn't feasible for Game Developers to design games for the Mac."
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"http://floodyberry.com/carmack/johnc_plan_1999.html",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple's_transition_to_Intel_processors#Reasons"
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618pg5 | why did india stop 86% of their currency out of circulation?? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/618pg5/eli5_why_did_india_stop_86_of_their_currency_out/ | {
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"Counterfeiting is a small part of it, but the bigger part was an attempt to crack down on India's massive 'black money' problem.\n\n'Black money' is what a westerner might call money that's been paid 'under the table'. Whether it's income earned from bribes or a business massively under reporting their cash sales (which make up most sales in India) it's all money that has been accumulated without paying taxes and frequently connected to something at least partially illegal.\n\n(for the rest of this post I'm going to use cash values that are relatable to Americans and other westerners simply to make it easy to follow)\n\nIn the west say that a business asks you to do a job for them and they discreetly pay you in cash (they never declare the wages on a W4 form). If it's a small amount of money, like $100 for you to move some boxes for them, the money won't be any trouble for you to deal with, you just buy some beer with it at the store and are done. But if they start paying you a healthy wage, like thousands of dollars per month, then you might start having problems. Namely you can't put that money into the bank without the IRS eventually asking questions about where all this money is coming from and charging you with tax fraud.\n\nIn India this is black money, the undeclared money that Indians can't deposit into the bank without drawing attention. Before the demonetisation (withdrawal of the two higher denomonation bills) many Indians didn't have large bank accounts, they had huge stacks of black money cash hidden in their homes. The problem was big in part because India's already extensive level of corruption (bribery, under the table deals, unreported cash sales) meant that even 'honest' people would often end up with a stack of bills they couldn't report. \n\nAs an example say you are selling your condo in India. You've got some offers but every single one of them carries the condition that most of the transaction occur in cash and that on the official form the sale be reported as just 1/3 of the actual value - this means the buyer only pays 1/3 the tax but it also means that 2/3 of the money they give you is going to be black money. In the west you could ignore this offer or report them to the police, but in India you're the odd one out and the police are going to side with whoever pays them a bribe.\n\nSo now even many 'honest' people in India have a stack of $40,000 dollars (remember that I'm adjusting this to American norms) while the more commonly corrupt have stacks of $200,000 or more. The demonetisation forced everyone to deposit their big value bank notes because they would become worthless in a week. At the same time they also put in a deposit limit - if you tried to deposit a large amount of cash it would trigger a fraud alert and you'd end up not only having that money taxed at the the full rate but also fined for failing to pay taxes in the first place. So when you tried depositing that stack of $40,000 you might lose $20,000 or more of it.\n\nSo in summary India's government wanted to do a fast 'reset' on the underground cash economy while also getting back large amounts of unreported tax revenue. However this was done *very very* quickly and since as I mentioned even 'honest' people have at least some black money it affected everyone, creating complete chaos as people struggled to get their stacks of cash into the bank."
]
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3ajj1i | how does volumizing shampoo actually thicken fine, thin, limp hair? | This seems lick a gimmick to me. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ajj1i/eli5_how_does_volumizing_shampoo_actually_thicken/ | {
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"It doesn't. The sulfides in it actually cause damage to the hair so that it doesn't lay down flat, like warped lumber in a stack. That's why people with curly hair shouldn't use shampoos, because their hair already naturally doesn't lay flat. "
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ctf3w6 | falling of a model rocket | I recently did an experiment and found out that when my rocket model reaches the peak of it's height it turns upside down and falls on the opposite side in which it was launched. Can someone plz explain why? I have a feeling it's something to do with the fins. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ctf3w6/eli5_falling_of_a_model_rocket/ | {
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"Fins and weight. The fins move the center of pressure of the rocket (where the incoming air excerts the biggest force) behind the center of mass (the point of equilibrium, if you will). Like in a dart, this means the draggy and lightweight tail will be more slowed down than the aerodynamic and heavy tip, so the tip \"falls first\""
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c668q7 | during the emergency broadcast systems "this is only a test" that we all hear on our tv's and radios from time to time, is there an actual purpose for those loud, buzzing tones? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c668q7/eli5_during_the_emergency_broadcast_systems_this/ | {
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"Yes, to get your attention. They are distinct and annoying so will be more easily noticed if you weren't already paying attention to the broadcast.",
"I believe those are digitalized codes used to interpret the type of threat. \n\nThe beeps can mean different things in binary and is the same technology used in things like dial-up internet and fax machines.",
"Distinct sounds are easy at getting attention.\n\nAudi used that once in a \"silent\" TV ad that got people's attention because the room was suddenly silent instead of being filled with common ad-loudness or people talking in shows and such.\n\nYou just take people out of their \"autopilot\" and you got their attention",
"They're the message header and an attention tone\n\nThere's a part at the beginning that repeats three times. This is the header and says who the alert is from, what it is for, where it effects, and when it's expected to end. This is deciphered by the computer system to determine if it needs to broadcast the message or do nothing because it doesn't apply to that station (wrong region)\n\nThen there's a long attention tone, specifically to annoy you and make you stop what you're doing to listen",
"The audible tones at the beginning tells what type of message it is to a radio or TV station's ENDEC machine (automatic monitoring system) so it can know what to do with the message that follows. The tones at the back indicate the message is over and tells the ENDEC to let the broadcast station return to normal operation.\n\nThere are many types of Emergency Alerts, so the ENDEC can be programmed to respond differently depending on the type to:\n\n > 1. Interrupt on-air broadcast immediately for urgent life-threatening situations (i.e. tornado warnings, tsunami warnings) or Presidential Alerts\n > 2. Drop in the message to the on-air broadcast at the next break in programming, such as at a commercial break.\n > 3. Log the message into the record, but not rebroadcast it over the air. (This can happen for many reasons.)\n\nThe EAS system functions like a ripple in a pond. The initial message goes out from a warning agency (i.e. National Weather Service, Emergency Management, etc.) to the primary station (known as an LP1) and is then repeated by other stations.\n\nThe primary station put the message out on its broadcast. Other broadcasters, cable cos., or weather radio networks, in the area have an ENDEC listening to the Primary station, and if it hears the right tones ... will repeat the message on its broadcast too.\n\nFor the EAS system to work, lots of daisy-chain systems have to be programmed correctly. Any break in the chain means the message may not be passed along to reach everyone that needs to hear it.\n\n\n*SOURCE: I am a certified emergency manager and had responsibility for a statewide EAS plan and other emergency notification systems.*",
"As other people have said, the \"buzzing\" sounds are digital data. To expand on it a bit, they're the data bursts for \"SAME\" - Specific Area Message Encoding. This contains information about what's going on, where it is happening, and how long the \"warning\" is expected to last. The data bursts are repeated 3 times just to help ensure that at least one burst gets properly decoded.\n\n[_URL_0_](_URL_1_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThen the whole thing is followed an \"attention tone\" of a combination of 853 Hz and 960 Hz tones."
]
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific\\_Area\\_Message\\_Encoding",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_Area_Message_Encoding"
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ebi0nu | why are crunchy foods so enjoyable to eat? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ebi0nu/eli5_why_are_crunchy_foods_so_enjoyable_to_eat/ | {
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"Where are the three comments that are supposedly in here?",
"Humans are **omnivores**, meaning our teeth have multiple purposes biting/tearing/ripping incisors and canines (like carnivores) and chewing molars (like herbivores). Our bodies are meant to perform tasks that are within its abilities (reproducing, physically exercising, emotionally engaging...). Crunchy foods like pretzels, carrots, apples, and celery also give your mouth and jaw a workout that can be energizing and even though crunching a Pringle doesn't require that much energy, in your primal perception its still a task that your teeth and jaws have to perform. For the best analogy, crunching feels good the same way as working out on your biceps. It's not as stressful in the beginning but gives same type of satisfaction."
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qjf1d | cavities and why you need to be numbed to get them filled. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qjf1d/eli5_cavities_and_why_you_need_to_be_numbed_to/ | {
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"Well, I'm not too sure on the specifics, but they drill a hole in your tooth, which would hurt most. You can actually smell it burning(melting?). Then they put some sort of metal in it which then hardens.",
"Yeah, you don't *need* to be, it's just more comfortable. (because cavities often go to the nerves and you just Do.Not.Want. a drill coming anywhere near your nerves.\n\nMy dentist growing up never used novocaine, the first time I had it (in my 20's) it was a revelation. My latest dentist visit was also a revelation, they now use thingy's to keep your mouth open. What a difference between trying to *hold* your mouth open for that long!",
"Cavities are when a small hole or divet form in your teeth. They can result from poor dental care, eating too much sugar, or tooth decay. If left untreated, the structure or the root of the tooth could be permanently damaged. If detected early, they will drill a hole in the decaying part of the tooth, then fill it with a metal or porcelain. This keeps the overall structure of the tooth intact. If more damage is sustained, then you may need a crown. If the damage goes to the root, then you will need a root canal (*shivers*). \n\nThe anesthetic is to make the process almost painless. It is voluntary, but certainly recommended. "
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e29r5p | what is an “indian reserve”, how does it operates and how is life for someone inside? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e29r5p/eli5_what_is_an_indian_reserve_how_does_it/ | {
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"This is better in r/askanamerican."
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3lwv28 | how do the volkswagen ecus detect when they're in an emissions test? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3lwv28/eli5_how_do_the_volkswagen_ecus_detect_when/ | {
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"I DON'T KNOW FOR SURE. But in Massachusetts the emission test is pretty obvious. They rev the engine high for awhile, then slowly build up RPMs according to a graph they look at. You would never do that when actually driving. So software should be able to detect it pretty easy",
"Part of the test is connecting a device to the car to query the cars ECU, and maybe also control the car's engine. The ECU can detect when these devices are connected.",
"The tests are under very strict conditions. These strict conditions are what allow easy \"detection\" of a test event as you know what to expect. In VW'S case; If the car does a series of specific actions in a row it will flag up as a test being run and make adjustments for it. Source: work in automotive. \n\nEdit: To continue on that logic, the tests need changed to cover more situations and the testing activity kept confidential. "
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1p9yde | why does the media never (or very rarely) report suicides? | Is it a pragmatic reason such as it would hurt advertising revenues to report on suicides? Or is there an unspoken commitment between news editors the world over that you just don't talk about that stuff? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1p9yde/eli5_why_does_the_media_never_or_very_rarely/ | {
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"Suicides are kept out of media because it has been shown that suicide rates tend to spike after highly publicized suicides. This is called the [Werther effect.](_URL_0_)\n",
"Like Zebra said, but also, there's not reason to show it.\n\nWith murders and accidents they need to show that\n\n* A) There is a criminal and/or cause of people killing each other\n\n* B) There is an accident and you need to be careful under the circumstances",
"I'm very disappointed that someone deleted the long, thorough comment about the lack of money in reporting suicides (which is why some suicides are reported, I think - they are more glamorous or interesting to the public). Suicides are sad and taboo, and there is definitely a trend of suicides following reporting of them, but I also think that most people would rather tune in to the latest political news or something they can relate to a bit more than something that is, for people outside those near the person who committed suicide, usually very simple."
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5qgww8 | what limits our speed in space? | What would be the speed limit, if we build a huge nuclear reactor on a spaceship and kept accelerating? There's no friction, there's no gravity. Is it possible that if we kept accelerating then we would attain speed comparable to speed of light? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qgww8/eli5what_limits_our_speed_in_space/ | {
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"Scott Manley on YouTube explains it really well. \n\nThe main limit is mass. A small mass is easier to accelerate than a bigger one, as it takes less energy to accelerate. The closer you get to the speed of light the lower your mass has to be to maintain that speed, otherwise the energy required would grow too great too quickly. ",
"The speed of light is the limit but you would never reach that. Outside of external influences ie hitting a planet and friction from space etc you would start to see time slow down for all objects outside of you and they will appear to contract in length but the important part is you would never actually reach the speed of light. It's impossible for anything with mass to achieve this as it would require infinite energy.",
"In theory we could reach near the speed of light. The problem is that we have no idea how to engineer such a spaceship.\n\nThe problem is mass. So far we need to launch mass behind our spaceship to get acceleration and you gonna need a incredible amount of mass to launch behind you if you want to reach such a speed.\n\nBut ya in theory we could maybe or not engineer such an engine.\n\nJust to give you an idea. The fastest man made spaceprobe right now is going at 0.00013C. ",
"The other people have answered why we can't reach the speed of light. \nI can explain what limits our current rockets from going faster. \nTo accelerate in a direction in space you need to throw stuff (also called reaction mass) in the opposite direction. Newton tells us that this will result in an opposite reaction accelerating us forward. \nNow the problem is that space craft only have a very limited amount of stuff to throw out, and once they are out they can't accelerate anymore. \nYou can be more efficient (i.e. more accelaration per kg of reaction mass) by throwing it out faster, but you will still run out.",
"People tend to think about light speed too much. The problem exists already with realistic speeds. Most forms of propulsion are based on the ejection of mass at high speed. Combustion boosters burn stuff that forms gases that escape creating thrust. This impulse gives the rocket/space ship the boost to accelerate. However, this process ends when the speed of the vessel exceeds the speed of the combustion process. \nThis leaves alternatives like laser propulsion where you use the impact of the light to propel you, or you can do repeated slingshot moves to get to higher speeds. Unfortunately you can see where that would lead: light has low impact so the vessel needs to be very light and needs to receive the light (not emit it). \nSlingshot moves at higher speeds require lower orbits due to the centripetal forces involved.\n\nTime for that warp technology to come through!"
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65kvy2 | when you send laundry in at a hotel, how do they keep track of your items amongst all the others they receive? | I never see tracking tags, ID numbers, or anything else that could survive a laundry cycle when I get clothes back. I doubt they wash each batch separately, so how does everything stay organized when you have laundry from dozens of people in the same (sometimes off-site) facility? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/65kvy2/eli5_when_you_send_laundry_in_at_a_hotel_how_do/ | {
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"text": [
"They usually put them in bags and put identification on the bag. It's washed and dried in the bag. "
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7m8oqc | why does our skin have any amount of electrical resistance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7m8oqc/eli5_why_does_our_skin_have_any_amount_of/ | {
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"Because almost every substance in the universe does. It's an *exceptional* case for something to have none -- such a material is called a *superconductor* and is extremely hard to make. Currently every known superconductor only works when quite cold.",
"I kinda assume you mean why the resistance isn't really small, considering we're a bag of salty water? \n\nIf this is what you mean, it's because we're a BAG of salty water, not just salty water. Skin is dry, and doesn't conduct too well, even though what's inside conducts reasonably well. But if you're skin is wet, you tend to conduct much better!"
]
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2st8ag | why is it the older you get the more you become physically attracted to older people too? for example: when you are 20 you probably would only be attracted to only other 20 somethings, when you are 70 you would probably be attracted to ages 20-80ish. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2st8ag/eli5why_is_it_the_older_you_get_the_more_you/ | {
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"It's because you have similar life experiences to them.\n\nAs someone who turned 40 recently and is feeling a little bit old, I look at 20 year old girls and find lots of them physically attractive. I also know that if I tried talking to them (never mind anything sexual, just having a conversation) I'd have very little in common with almost all of them.\n\nApart from intuition/common sense, I know this because I work with lots of people who are around that age, and very rarely meet someone at work who is that young that I'm actually interested in sitting down and talking to. Most of the people I work with are men, but there are a few women, and of the women, a good portion are very good looking. But I've never yet been attracted to one of them, because as soon as I start talking to them (in a work context) their immaturity and lack of life experience starts to become annoying.",
"There's a bunch of reasons. For one, as you get older -- and your hormones level out -- your priorities will change, and you will be more attracted to personalities and maturity than outward appearances. I'm almost 39, and when I was younger I chased after hard bodies and hot faces like any other young guy, but the women I'm attracted to now are smart, friendly, responsible, passionate, career oriented, and they dress nice. I'm sure when I'm 60 I'll be more attracted to women who make good chocolate chip cookies, and likes to quietly watch sunsets while holding hands.\n\nWhen I was young I would meet a woman and picture her naked. Now when I meet a woman I picture us having a nice conversation over a bottle of wine, while listening to some good music. I'm not attracted to someone if I can't imagine that scenario happening, and I can't imagine that happening with most 20 year olds. Outward appearances still matter, but it's more about what a person's appearance says about them.\n\nAnother factor is your taste becomes more refined and sophisticated as you get older. This is true of everything from your taste in food, to art, to entertainment, to your attraction to other people. You're going to seek out more complexity and nuance in life, and quite frankly there's not a whole lot of complexity and nuance to a 20 year old. What you see is what you get. A 40 year old woman may have a few more wrinkles and a few more inches around her waist, but those \"flaws\" add character and complexity. They make her seem more interesting. And, again, a 40 year old woman's personality is more interesting than a 20 year old's.\n\nAll that being said, you will never stop being attracted to hot 20 year olds. I watched something a while back, I think a TED talk, that discussed attraction. The speaker said you will always be attracted to anything you've ever been attracted to. If you've ever been attracted to 20 year old women, you will still be attracted to them when you're 60. You just won't be as interested in them."
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34rdx3 | east/west berlin divide still visible from space due to different lightbulbs | _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34rdx3/eli5_eastwest_berlin_divide_still_visible_from/ | {
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"East Berlin uses sodium vapor lamps for street lighting that look yellowish, West Berlin uses mercury vapor lamps, and those produce blue-ish white light. Both are commonly used for street lighting. Sodium is more efficient, mercury produces a better light spectrum.",
"I'm guessing that the difference is the types of street lights used.\n\nIgnoring rare cases, of fluorescent lamp street lights, and gas lamps. \n\nStreet lights are mercury-vapor & metal-halide, which are the kind used in stadiums, bright white light. Or low-pressure sodium vapor, or high pressure sodium vapor lights. Low-pressure sodium produces a more amber looking light. High pressure sodium lights look more pinkish-orange. \n\nAs far as I know, all four lights require different types of ballasts/starters, so it's not possible to simply change out the bulb, it would need a whole new ballast, and possibly new fixture.\n\nI'd wager because it's expensive to do that, so they just replace the bulbs and ballasts as needed. Eventually I would not be surprised if that changes, and all of the street lights are changed to LED, erasing that visible divide.",
"Follow-up question: how come none of the street light bulbs have burnt out in the last twenty five years?"
]
} | [] | [
"https://twitter.com/SciencePorn/status/594951818616119297"
] | [
[],
[],
[]
] |
|
1q81ta | why do humans have different skin colors? | I mean it can be explained by skin pigmentation evolution, but it doesn't explain the short time frame in which humans migrated from Africa. Further more, the difference in facial structures and features also seem very odd different things to evolve in such a short time frame (considering general evolutionary scales and focus of evolution in case of humans) and in such consistency.
Edit: Grammar and Clarity | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q81ta/eli5_why_do_humans_have_different_skin_colors/ | {
"a_id": [
"cda61pt"
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"score": [
7
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"text": [
"Lighter skin absorbs a lot more UVB light that it needs to produce vitamin D, which is extremely useful in areas where the sun light isn't as strong. It may look like a big change, but it isn't, in fact it's really quite minor. There would have been a huge evolutionary pressure because of deficiencies in vitamin D (although that's not the only factor), which causes problems with calcium absorption for example, and so lighter skinned people in colder climates would have thrived. This is because skin colour is controlled by how much melanin it contains, and melanin absorbs light and therefore UV radiation, which is needed to produce vitamin D (vitamin D3 to be exact).\n\nThings can change very quickly when there's a huge advantage in doing so, we've gone from adult humans being lactose intolerant like other adult animals to most adult humans (in the part of the world that this happened) being able to digest lactose in just 7000 years."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1vluw9 | what exactly is an isp and how does it connect you to the internet? | For example, why couldn't I connect myself to the internet, bypassing an ISP entirely? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vluw9/eli5_what_exactly_is_an_isp_and_how_does_it/ | {
"a_id": [
"cetizaq",
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"score": [
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2,
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"text": [
"Copy from an answer I gave in another subreddit:\n\nThe internet isn't \"one thing\" that you connect to, it's a collection of computer networks that has decided to work together. So, in a sense, ISPs are what the internet is made of.\n\nWhen I send this message from Sweden to reddits servers in the US it first goes to my local ISP but they only deal with, well, fairly local stuff.\n\nMy local ISP hands it over to a large nordic telecommunications company but they don't operate any transatlantic communications cables and can only take it as far as Denmark or perhaps Germany.\n\nSo they in their turn hand it over to [Level 3 Communications](_URL_0_) that has capacity to take it to the US via transatlantic cable.\n\nAnd after a few more jumps through some other networks this message arrives to reddit.\n\nAll these networks have business agreements with eachother and when a new ISP is formed it has to get some agrement with one or more other ISPs. These agreements can be anything from \"I need you as much as you need me so let's just swap traffic back and forth without charging eachother\" to \"You want, you pay for it.\"\n\nAnd the big players aren't interested in dealing with single individuals so we as regular people have to get our internet from companies that will have us as customers.",
"Because to connect to the internet you need to hook up to someone already connected to the internet. \n\nThe ISP makes a deal with the internet backbones, internet exchanges or other large nodes on the internet. These big nodes sell in bulk - like Tbps or something else you'd never be able to reasonably use as a single home user.\n\nThe ISP sets up infrastructure so that they get a wire to your house and connect it up to the big node or nodes they use to get onto the internet.\n\nThey also generally offer DNS service and often email and much more rarely these days but sometimes news servers.\n\nConnecting yourself to the internet without an ISP would require you finding a way to wire yourself up to a node already on the internet and all the required infrastructure for that. (Unless you're connecting to a neighbour via a long ethernet cord you're probably going to need a modem and some long coax cable or something, or perhaps an antenna and someone willing to transmit information to you and recieve from you to connect you.)\n\n",
"Here's a good way to explain it: The internet isn't a point A to point B system. It's a web. (That's where that secondary name \"web\" comes from). It is designed so that even if one device is removed, all others will remain working. The isp is the medium-level device; they are the ones that connect all devices in your area to the full internet. \n\nIf you run windows, there's a good way to visualize this: Press windows key and R together, then type \"`pathping _URL_1_`\". (Without the quotes). That will show you the servers you connect thru to get to reddit.\n\nFor me, it is this:\n\n Tracing route to _URL_1_ [66.171.224.122]\n over a maximum of 30 hops:\n [Removed]\n [Removed]\n [Removed]\n [Removed]\n 4 ae3---_URL_8_ [74.40.1.153]\n 5 ae1---_URL_6_ [74.40.1.222]\n 6 ae0---_URL_6_ [74.40.1.186]\n 7 ae3---_URL_2_ [74.40.1.225]\n 8 ae0---_URL_5_ [74.40.3.150]\n 9 _URL_4_ [198.32.176.13]\n 10 _URL_0_ [69.22.143.165]\n 11 _URL_3_ [69.22.142.126]\n 12 _URL_7_ [69.22.142.22]\n 13 66.171.224.122\n\n(I removed the first few one because they contained some information)\n\nThe ones from 4 to 8 are all servers from my isp, and they are used to transfer data.\n\n---\n\nIn theory you would be able to connect to the internet by yourself, but you can't because you need to get a number. ISP's automatically give you numbers, so it isn't a hastle for you to try and do that."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_3_communications"
],
[],
[
"ae1-70g.cr1.sjc1.us.nlayer.net",
"reddit.com",
"0.cor01.plal.ca.frontiernet.net",
"xe-5-1-0.cr1.lax1.us.nlayer.net",
"paix.99.xe-0-1-0.cr1.pao1.us.nlayer.net",
"0.cbr01.plal.ca.frontiernet.net",
"0.cor02.bvtn.or.frontiernet.net",
"xe-2-0-1.cr1.dfw1.us.nlayer.net",
"0.cor01.sttl.wa.frontiernet.net"
]
] |
|
fh63z7 | whats the functional difference between a thermocouple and thermoelectric generator and when would i want to use one or the other? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fh63z7/eli5_whats_the_functional_difference_between_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"fk94uza"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Are you trying to power something or measure something?\n\nThermocouples are use for measurement.\n\nThermoelectric generators are used to generate power."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
1u7m48 | how do companies like facebook make money without advertising before going public? | I'm watching the social network and I was wondering how fb got to be so valuable. In the film, there was an investor who gave then half a million dollars with the belief that that investment would pay off but from where? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1u7m48/eli5_how_do_companies_like_facebook_make_money/ | {
"a_id": [
"cefagmq"
],
"score": [
2
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"text": [
"Mostly from going public, and selling advertising. Then can also make money from getting a cut of profits from games on the site (like when Farmville tries to sell you things for real-life money), selling 'virtual goods' like paying $1 to send a virtual heart to someone (and I think they were selling real-life stuff for awhile that you could send to people as well), and maybe they also sell data about their customers to marketing companies. But that last one depends a lot on the company I guess.\n\nUntil they really have a viable business model, most of the money comes from investors who expect the company to become worth more to other investors in the future, or become profitable in the future."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
bzygz4 | do fast moving objects fall slower? | I know planes can turn forward motion into upward force, but would a sphere take longer to hit the ground if it was launched straight forward at high speed than it would if it was dropped straight down.
Edit: what about frisbees or throw playing cards? are they actually falling slower because they're moving fast or are they just maintaining maximum air resistance? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bzygz4/eli5_do_fast_moving_objects_fall_slower/ | {
"a_id": [
"eqyfyu8",
"eqyi9t6"
],
"score": [
9,
2
],
"text": [
"No, unless its motion gives it *lift.* A plane gets lift by having wings. A sphere doesn't.",
"In general, no.\n\nIn perfect circumstances, if you fire a cannon and drop a cannon ball from the same height at the same time, the canon balls should hit the ground at the same time. This assumes you are aiming the cannon parallel to the ground and the ground is perfectly flat.\n\nHowever, there are some exceptions. \n\nBecause the earth is a sphere and gravity is determined by how far away we are from the earth, it is possible for your forward motion to take you further away from the planet at the exact same rate as gravity is pulling you to the planet. This is orbital velocity and it depends on your altitude. The international space station, because it is in low earth orbit, must orbit the planet every 92 minutes to keep from falling out of the sky. The moon, because it is much further away, only orbits the planet every 27 days and also never falls out of the sky."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
4jimy2 | why do babies have such different behaviors despite not having fully-developed brains? | I thought of this when my parents were telling me stories about how different my brother and I were as babies. They talked about how we were complete opposites: my brother was constantly energetic and forced my parents awake around seven times each night with his crying. I, on the other hand (I'm the younger sibling), apparently made nearly zero sound on a regular basis and also only cried once or twice during the night.
I'm kind of curious as to why infants can vary so much in behavior. Obviously babies in general can be stereotyped into being wailing bundles of helplessness, but how is it that we start to develop a personality so soon after birth even if we haven't been exposed to that much of the world yet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jimy2/eli5_why_do_babies_have_such_different_behaviors/ | {
"a_id": [
"d36ydjh"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"Doctoral psych student here.\n\nI think it's incredibly important to remember that personality DOES NOT equate to behavior. We have lots of behaviors that are not tied to our personality (mostly automated processes like breathing and what not, but also stimuli response). Infants respond to stimuli and the environment more than anything. \n\nI'm a therapist who currently works with kids and their families and kids are mirrors at any age; they really do soak up what's going on in the environment. If a parent is anxious, it's highly likely the child will be too.\n\nIt's possible that your parents were more comfortable the second time around with you because it was a familiar process to them (probably didn't want to admit that they were frazzled about being first-time parents with your brother). \n\nOf course, we can't say it's solely nurture either, but we have lots of chemicals and neurotransmitters floating around that vary in levels from person to person. Our nervous systems are all unique as well. Maybe your brother was overly sensitive to \"normal\" stimuli like blankets, temperature, light, etc... and he would respond as such.\n\nAll of that said, the study of personality is very limited and more qualitative than quantitative so we don't have \"hard\" evidence of when and how it develops. We have theories and speculations, but personality development is a point of contention in the field of psychology.\n\nTL;DR: Older bro probably had a more \"chaotic\" environment with first-time parents, but could also be sensitive to things you aren't. Unlikely that personality has developed that early.\n\n"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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