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61g1ab | If flash drives are so cheap and fast why aren't they a good replacement for a SSD? | So I've been wondering this for a while now, basically there are loads of benefits to flash drives to a solid state drive that i can think of off the top of my head, they're small and compact, portable, and most of all, very cheap compared to the counterpart. So why instead of using a SSD for you computer to store things like games and so on don't we use these helpful little sticks? Am i missing something and is there more to this than what i understand?? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"...numbers. just because it's subjectively fast doesn't mean it's actually fast. high end USB drives will have read/write speeds of somewhere in the 100MB/s range. your average SSD has read/write speeds in the 500MB/s range. high end SSD drives have read/write speeds of 5+GB/s.",
"A typical SSD connects directly to your computer's internals via a protocol called SATA. SATA is fast. SATA is also simple: you plug a storage device (and only a storage device, such as a hard drive, SSD, or DVD drive) into a short cable to your computer's motherboard. A flash drive connects via USB. USB is slow. It is also flexible: the USB protocol knows how to handle flash drives, keyboards and mice, wi-fi adapters, charging cables, and myriad other devices. And it is convenient: you can plug and unplug devices at will, chain cables reasonable distances, split a single port using a hub. But these features come at a substantial performance cost. When you use a typical internal SSD, you're using a specialized system designed and optimized for fast access to drives. When you use a flash drive, you're using a generalized system that can conveniently accommodate all sorts of devices. The former will almost always be faster.",
"The simple answer is Flash drives are nowhere near as fast as SSDs are. Because of the protocol they use, they tend to have truly terrible random io performance as well which is the biggest factor to your computer \"feeling\" quick."
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61gi1y | How do stoplights work? Are they timed and based on pressure? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Many intersections are controlled by a combination of timers and inductive sensors in the road. Each phase is generally set to have a maximum time, but the phase may be ended early or skipped entirely if there is no vehicle waiting at or moving past the sensor."
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61hwfp | Why is it, that with bad (mobile) Internet reception, advertisements are often displayed perfectly while normal content seems to have "trouble"? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The page is hosted on a server somewhere and the adds are drawing information from a different server. If the server hosting the webpage is slower than the ad host, then the adds can load before the page content. This effect can be removed by manually changing load order for the page, placing advertisements at the bottom of the load order, to ensure that your content shows up first. There are some online advertising companies that gather information when their ads are displayed and they can really slow down a site. These adservices require that they load first, and they bog down the site with the data collection making the rest of the load order take forever. Try something like adblock and see if it clears up the loading problems. As a final option, it could always be malware."
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61hyek | Why is it so difficult for some people to remember how to do simple "computer things" even though they've been shown it dozens of times? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They have rationalised the process as 'too difficult' already and so don't make a true effort to learn it. 2c",
"Listen to a song in English 3-4 times. Read the lyrics and sing along. Easy right? You will probably remember most of the lyrics after a few times through the song. Now try the same thing with a German or Korea song. Even if you listen to the sing 25 times, you'll still struggle. Computers are like languages. If you don't understand computers, everything you learn is really complicated and easily forgotten. If you understand computers, not only can you easily remember how to do things, but you can probably do things you have not previously done on a computer. When you teach someone how to do something on a computer, remember to them it's completely foreign and it's like trying to learn a phrase in an unknown language.",
"Chances are, they have no other knowledge about the field. If you're familiar with computers, operating systems, browsers, tabs, search engines, email and whatnot, it's simple to expand upon that existing knowledge. In contrast, if you don't know anything substantial about the systems in place, it's hard to remember fragmented tricks which don't have a place in a bigger picture."
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61jn6b | Why does sound quality drop when the volume is too high? What causes it to sometimes sound 'grainy'? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A [typical speaker]( URL_0 ) is a cone of paper that's attached to a magnetic system, with the magnetic force moving the paper up and down, according to the frequency of the music or sounds that are played. To make louder sounds, the speaker cone has to vibrate more vigorously, and as explained above, at some point the physical constraints in the speaker prevent the cone from accurately moving with the music, resulting in distortion."
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61jrih | Why isn't there technology to mimic voices? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Actually we do. URL_0 The reason its so complicated is because we have so many dialects, accents, and speaking mannerisms. The program itself needs (I believe) a minute of speech from the subject before mimicing the speech.",
"Hoverboards are easy; you counter the force of gravity by pushing a predictable amount of air down with a predictable speed. Simulating faces or voices, with complete photo- and audio- realism, however, is difficult, because our brains pay special attention to faces and voices, and can detect even the smallest defect. You should look up [Uncanny Valley]( URL_0 ); as simulations become closer and closer to the real thing, there's a point where they suddenly get creepy, because the simulations are good enough to look or sound real, but there's something wrong about the movement or the tone, and our brains detect it immediately. There's no such issue with gravity: you need more lift, you just put in more power. You need finer control, you just need finer control over the power and angle of the propellers."
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61kiud | How does an upstairs/downstairs light switch work? | We have a light upstairs that can be turned off upstairs and turned on downstairs... and the versa. What I don't get is how does the downstairs cut off the upstairs switch? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The switches are connected with two wires - one wire connects the \"up\" position in both switches, and the other wire connects the \"down\" position. When the two switches are in the same position, electricity can travel through the wire that connects them. When the switches are in a different position, the circuit is broken. [The diagrams here]( URL_0 ) demonstrate this.",
"In logical terms, it forms an XAND Gate, which stands for Exclusive AND. If both the switches (upstairs and downstairs) are ON or OFF, the light upstairs will turn on. However, if they are different (one if OFF and one is ON) the light will be off."
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61kt1p | Why is the default windows disk letter C: ? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"C is normally the default internal HDD allocated letter because in the beginning of time A was used for a floppy disk unit and B was also used for removable storage, sometimes a tape drive or similar. Edit: in the 2 minutes of googling I had to do following this comment it looks as though A and B are actually 'reserved' for removable media drives as some kind of 'standard' originating from MS-DOS. The whole issue has been carefully planned it seems: URL_0",
"Old computer didn't have local storage, and they loaded everything from the floppy drives into their memory. The first and 'main' drive was a floppy drive, so it was labeled A. Later on, as things got more complicated, computers started to have a second floppy drive, which was labeled B. Then came hard drives and got the label C. Now it's stuck like that.",
"The explanations are correct except that the original IBM PC was designed to support 2 floppy disks right from the very start. So A: and B: were always in use for floppy disks."
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61nah4 | Why do batteries always face different directions in items like TV remotes? | I understand that batteries have positive and negative terminals, but what is the advantage of facing 2 batteries in opposite directions? Thank you in advance. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A standard battery gives off around 1.5V. This is too low to run most electric circuits. A common lower voltage is 3V. To get double the voltage you can connect the batteries in serial with the positive terminal on one hooked up to the negative terminal on the other. The voltage across the two other terminals should now be the combined voltage of the two batteries, so 3V. If the batteries were facing the same way you would then have to run a wire from one terminal along the batteries to connect to the other terminal on the other battery. You would also have to run a second wire along the batteries to get the two final terminals to the circuit board. This is a lot of extra wires. However if you put the batteries in different directions you can have a small spring between the terminals on the far end end hook the terminals on the near end to the circuit board.",
"This way you need less wire to connect the batteries with eachother. By setting them in opposite directions, the - of the first battery is directly next to the + of the other one, so you only need a small piece of metal to connect them with eachother."
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61nis1 | Where do the noises in electric motors come from? | In a brushless motor, to my understanding, nothing makes contact with the coils and nothing should be making noise like in a brushed motor. But noises still come from brushless motors. What causes these noises? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The motor is still turning an axle regardless of whether it's brushless or not. This movement is going to lead to sound either directly with the axle and whatever it's attached to moving air, or indirectly by the vibration of the parts touching the axle."
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61o3tu | Why some people think that 'the web is dying'? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Web was created in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee as a means for individuals and organizations to publish documents online that could refer directly to _other_ documents via a \"link.\" 15-20 years ago (i.e., circa 1995 to 2003), a significant portion of the Web consisted of sites, pages, and content generated and maintained by individuals. The technologies were simple enough that you didn't need to be a programmer to publish HTML pages to the web. However, the vast majority of this was _static_ content or only interactive in a very rudimentary way (e.g. old-style discussion boards). Around 2003-2004, the nature of the Web started to shift dramatically through the introduction and standardization of new technologies that together came to be known by the informal term \"Web 2.0.\" What these technologies allowed was the development of interactions inside Web pages that could replicate many of the activities that previously were only possible on desktop computers. This resulted in a boom in development on the Web for several years. The Web began to shift from a framework for individuals and organizations to publish information to a platform for application development. However, the technologies of Web 2.0 are complex -- it's out of the reach of non-technical people to develop. The complexity of the technology meant it was less open to tinkering with by the average person. So this saw a shift in the Web from an environment that empowered individuals to publish worldwide to an environment that is dominated by commercial platforms, where, instead of being publishers themselves, individuals are just users beholden to the terms of use of those platforms.The sort of logical end point of that development is something like a Chromebook, where the entire interface of the device is the web browser itself. However, not long after, another major development hit -- modern touch-interface smartphones, starting with the iPhone in 2007. And just as application development had begun to shift away from desktop computers to web-based interfaces four or five years earlier, now application development began to shift away from web-based interfaces and toward mobile applications. Interestingly, the back-end _protocols_ of the web, particularly HTTP over TCP/IP, continue to be a major part of mobile application development, but the interface shifted from open technologies (HTML, Javascript) rendered through browsers (of which there are many open options as well) to primarily proprietary platforms (Apple's iOS and Google's tightly-controlled flavor of Android). So that's the history of the web in the last 20 years. When people say \"the web is dead (or dying)\" they're talking about two things: 1. The shift away from an open publishing platform that was primarily driven by individuals and toward an application development platform that is dominated by large corporations (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. 2. The shift away from HTML and web browsers as a primary interface, and the shift toward proprietary mobile interfaces. EDIT: some changes for grammar and clarity."
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61om8g | how do YouTube creators who make adult content continue to profit and maintain their channels? | I've seen around that the new YouTube age restriction feature demonetises videos. How do channels such as h3h3, who aren't sponsored, make money? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you're not being sponsored you may not make much money, I believe h3h3 does have various forms of sponsorship and/or companies paying for things. Its unlikely they will discuss details publicly, as such you may not know what the deal is behind the scenes. Some Youtube channels make money just by video views and monetization that comes with them... the amount of people making any reasonable sum of money this way is very tiny. Along with them doing real life appearance and other forms to make money outside of Youtube, while the Youtube channel is just their marketing platform for them to make money outside of Youtube (think: Come see the Youtube sensation grumpy cat! 5pm at the market in place in [insert town here], one day only!)"
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61p0m3 | How did cops determine speed before the radar gun? | I got pulled over a few days ago, and I was wondering how cops determined speed before the radar gun was invented. Thanks in advance for an explanation. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cop here, it's called Pace Clocking. Essentially what I do is follow behind a car and match my speed with them so I they are not pulling away or going closer to me. Once that is done I, I go a couple of blocks to see if they stay consistent at that speed. If they are over the limit I pull them over. Our vehicles at my department are calibrated twice a year to maintain consistency and must maintain a +/- 2 mph on the calibration. Hope this helps. *Edit* I do this because I haven't gone to radar school yet and I also don't enjoy doing traffic unless it's for the purposes of something bigger, i.e. drugs or warrants.",
"> Speed limits were originally enforced by manually timing or \"clocking\" vehicles travelling through \"speed traps\" defined between two fixed landmarks along a roadway that were a known distance apart; the vehicle's average speed was then determined by dividing the distance travelled by the time taken to travel it. Setting up a speed trap that could provide legally satisfactory evidence was usually time consuming and error prone, as it relied on its human operators.",
"Basic physics. Speed = Distance / Time They'll watch you pass a mark on the road or guard rail. Time how long it takes you to get to another mark. Divide, and that's your speed. The same way radar works. You just do it in your head. They'll casually ballpark it. If it takes 3 seconds at legal speed and you do it in 3-ish. It's fine. If you cover it before they get the word \"one\" said in their head..... red & blues go on and you get ticketed. To automate the process they just use [VASCAR]( URL_0 ) I probably should have led with that lol",
"Cop here, radar has become extremely useful for traffic control. It's even evolved into using laser which is more accurate and can even tell me at what feet you are away from me when I clock you. I use laser over radar, but before that I had to pace vehicles. That just meant I'd drive behind them, compare my speed with theirs to a fixed point (like a sign or building, whatever) then I'd pull them. It's also important to note, that a cop can only do that if the cop has their speedometer checked every 6 months and certified. I generally do not pace people anymore just because laser and radar have made life a lot easier when it comes to getting an exact speed, and I can stay stationary while doing so."
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61r0s5 | Why can't we upgrade our smartphones like we do on personal computers? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Smartphones are very small. They are built with components that have to fit very tightly together, otherwise there either won't be room inside the case, or the components might interfere with each other, or the heat dispersal won't be effective and the phone will overheat. The same problem applies to laptops too, which usually only let you replace a few components such as the RAM and peripherals. The concept of a [modular smartphone]( URL_0 ) is in development, but so far there have been very few practical implementations."
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61rovb | How do telephones work? | It has always baffled me how a telephone can transmit sound. It's something I just wrap my head around. How does the phone break the sound into transmittable data to then be reconstituted on the other end? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"**Old, wire-based phones** Sound is just ordered vibration. When you speak, your vocal cords shake the air, and that air shakes the ear drum of the person you talk to. That person's brain turns that shaking into meaning. A phone has a microphone, which is kind of line an ear drum. It contains a surface that turns those air vibrations into an electric impulse. One you have an electric impulse, you can carry that anywhere a wire will reach. On the other end, the vibrations are still in the same order they were picked up in, so they shake a speaker which shakes air which shakes the ear drum of who you talk to. **Cellular or other wireless phones** Remember that signal that goes down the wire? Phones just use radio waves to send it. Once it gets to the other side, it's turned back into a wire impulse, which shakes a speaker, which shakes an ear drum.",
"The vibrations from the sound of your voice vibrate components in the part of the phone you speak into. This generates electrical pulses which are transmitted through the wires to the destination. At the destination phone, the electrical pulses vibrate components in the ear-piece, creating the same sound that you put into it. Think about a record player. Sound creates vibrations which creates grooves on a record. Then those grooves on a record create vibrations which creates sound."
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61ryvn | Why do we want or need a "real" AI? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, we're gonna hit a wall with what we can achieve alone. Humans someday will reach a pinnacle of technology - tech becomes increasingly more and more complex as time goes on, so it is logical to infer that eventually we won't be able to make anything new alone. Look at anything modern, like smartphones. There are teams of people who build pieces of it - they are fantastically complex machines made out of complex machines. As we continue to advance things are likely to get more and more complicated, so if and when we do hit a point where we can't invent anything new, sufficiently advanced machines might be able to do it for us. Just one reason. A 'real' AI would truly be awesome, the possibilities for such a construct are endless."
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61shfs | Why do schools still insist on standardized tests even though all the teachers and students find them to be dumb? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pretty simple. Because they are easy to grade and organize students based on a score. There are much better ways to gauge learning, but they require a lot more time and effort than filling in bubbles and running them through a machine.",
"So yes there are better (but more difficult and costly) ways to measure success in school, but if you are trying to come up with a way to measure success and the people complaining about them are already rating 'low' on that scale are they really the people that should be designing how successful they show up on a scale?",
"You want state funding? You get scores the state funding committee can easily rate. It's not about educating the children, it's programming them to give up the biggest part of their day for something they \"have\" to do."
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61tcci | Why is Google giving up on Google Fiber? | Is because the bureaucratic red tape/push back from the other major cable companies (Time Warner/Comcast/etc.) and the FCC? Or did they just not see it being a realistic profitable goal? (The ISP competition in America is a joke) | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"from what google have said, the point of google fibre was to prompt competition... to make the existing providers \"pick up their game\", provide faster, cheaper, more relyable connections. what actually happened was that the oligopoly that controls americas isp's just banded together, and forced through laws essentially preventing competition... and rather than invest time, money and resources in fighting a loosing battle, they've decided to allow the existing providers to reap what they've sown. (basically they've had laws passed that mean that they dont need to allow access to the \"last mile\" of copper wires to any other provider, and that other networks, in order to enter a city, have to be above a certain subsriber base (which you cant get to, with out a presence. this even extends to actual municiple networks, which certain cities have had to install to work around the fact that existing providers couldnt fulfill the needs of the cities. what's happening right now is that the networks are finding that they can now not expand to new customers, because of the laws they had passed, and cant improve their existing infrastructure with out the income they'd get from expanding it.",
"Google never intended on becoming an ISP, they invest heavily in R & D people often misinterpret as a true initiative because it's Google. Years ago they were putting entire server farms in shipping containers, learned a lot, and ended their research project. Now there are people trying to build and sell shipping container server farms because Google did it once so it must be a good idea. Same thing with their research in automated cars - they're not going to start making self-driving cars to compete with Lyft and Uber. Their work is there to learn, spur and assist innovation, maybe collect some IP, and that's it. They picked up on Google Fiber because they wanted to see what would happen if a community were given such resources, how would they utilize it?",
"Google has a habit of starting things, getting bored, then killing it off, many times without any replacement. But we got 32 different Google messaging platforms now!"
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61tu4u | Does data have mass? | If I have a backup tape, and fill it to capacity (say 6.25 TB in this case) does it weigh any more than it did when it was empty? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes and no. No electronic storage medium will have an appreciable change in mass when \"full\" or \"empty.\" Magnetic storage media (HDDs and tapes) work by flipping magnetic domains on the media which does not change their mass at all. Other types of memory (RAM and SSDs) work by storing electrons in capacitors or floating gate transitors and because electrons *do* have a very small amount of mass writing one of these devices with all 1's would increase the mass ever so slightly. Now if you were to ask a physicist, particularly one who believes the holographic principle, then information absolutely has mass. If you were able to cram enough information into a small enough area you could reach an information density high enough to create a black hole.",
"[**EDIT: CyberJerryJurgensen and MatheM_ are correct. Not all data has mass, but some does.] It absolutely does! It will weigh more, but almost infinitesimally more. There is a great Vsauce video on this very topic: URL_0",
"You can think of data as a verbal language. A word does not have weight, it is an idea that is transmitted from one person to another via sound waves. It can also be transmitted through writing on a piece of papaer with, lets say, a pen. In both cases of using sound and paper as the medium, we can detect the word being presented by noticing a change in the matter around us. But that does not change the fact that the original word is an idea to begin in the first place. Now, if you want to get really nitpicky you could argue that a word cannot be created without the use of mass. Even as a thought, the word is transmitted through the brain via electrical and chemical pathways. But in the end all you've really done is say that there is potential in everything that has mass to carry data, not that the mass itself has been increased or decreased; the mass has been shifted. So tl;dr To answer your question fully, the only reason a hard drive would weigh more is if something were added to the hard drive in order to represent the data. Otherwise, the mass in your hard drive is simply being shifted around to represent your fluffy cat pictures."
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61ur5w | Hard drive data recovery. | I know downloadable applications exist and MAYBE some have somewhat worked for me in the past but why are there companies charging $3000 to recover some files from a hard drive? Is it just a scam or are they doing something beyond my knowledge? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Data recovery software only works on data that is still (technically) on the physical disk. Let me explain: Data on physical medium is stored as 1s and 0s, you may already know this. So there's different sectors filled with sequences of 1s and 0s. In order to actually use storage medium, in computing we use file-systems to represent these sequences in different structures (files, folders, permissions etc.). File-systems are plenty - from FAT, FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, FATX, ReFS, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS, ZFS etc. Windows uses NTFS by default these days. Apple's macOS uses HFS+, iPhones also use HFS+ (and since today they were swapped to APFS), Android uses a mixture of filesystems, but mostly ext4 for the important parts. Anyway, these filesystems decide how to store and access the sequences of 1s and 0s and how they are presented, and they are usually pretty documented. They do this by having an area of the disk (or more areas) that is used to store a table that describes the physical location of the file contents. Let's say you have a file called Picture.JPG that is 1MB in size. Newer HDDs these days use a \"sector size\" of 4 KB. So Picture.JPG in this case it will use up 256 physical sectors on the disk. The filesystem stores the address of all these sectors in the table I mentioned earlier. So it will say something like: Picture.JPG is stored in sectors 100 to 200, then the rest of it is in sectors 5000 to 5156 (a file won't always be allocated continuously on the disk, but that's another matter: fragmentin and defragmenting a filesystem). When you delete a file, or otherwise destroy the data on a physical storage medium (be it hard disk, usb drive etc.), the 1s and 0s sequences that make up a file don't get removed from the disk, mostly because that's an expensive operation in terms of performance. Instead, the information about the file's location is REMOVED from the table of the filesystem I mentioned earlier. This is also why usually it's very fast to delete 1 x 1GB file instead of 1000 x 1MB files. Now, because most file types have to respect some standard \"format\" in order to be valid, the data recovery software usually scans the whole physical disk for patterns of specific file/file types. For example, it can guess that a sector of the disk that has the contents of ````\" < FF > < D8 > JFIF\"```` is most likely a JPG file and then it looks for specific markers of the file format. This is the case of a lot of file formats, for example most PDF files start with ````\"%PDF\"``` etc. The data recovery software also knows how a specific filesystem stores the data of file names and locations etc., so it looks for those patterns too. This is rather an easy operation to do, AS LONG AS THE HARD DISK IS STILL FUNCTIONING and the DATA HAS NOT BEEN REWRITTEN. Now if you deleted File1.JPG, and somehow you wrote to the disk File2.jpg and File3.jpg, and because the closest available free disk space was where File1.JPG used to reside, then the contents of File2.jpg and File3.jpg will overwrite the data-structures that used to belong to File1.JPG. This is why data recovery software tells you to not recover the data back to the same disk, so you don't overwrite the very own structures you are trying to recover. Again, this is a rather easy operation to do, as long as the disk is perfectly functional and only the data from it has been made inaccessible because of a filesystem error or deletion. Specialized data-recovery companies usually have very expensive hardware that can read the contents of a disk even if the disk is not recognized by your PC anymore. They can also recover broken PCBs, they can transplant the physical platters (the spinning thingies where your data is stored) to other HDDs in order to retrieve the data. This takes an incredible amount of time and a very clean room to do so. Even a speck of dust on the platter will make the data recovery very hard! A simple issue, from my own experience, can take a lot of time to fix if you haven't got this specialized hardware.",
"Hard drives encode information using magnets to put little dots of information on your hard drive. And it stores two key pieces of information. The file itself, and an index of where to find the file. This is important because the file might have to be broken up and saved across multiple locations. When you press delete, instead of trying to erase the entire file, which can be a long and complicated process, they simply erase the index file. This makes the file location available for overwriting. An undelete program looks for the actual file data that doesn't have an associated index file. If you haven't had a chance to add new information to the drive, there is a chance of recovery. NSA standards for compete deletion of computer data call for deleting and overwriting the data on the hard drive 7 times to remove as much of the file as possible."
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61vyt1 | How do the helmet microphones that a helicopter or small plane pilot uses only pick up voice and not the helicopter engine? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The use active noise reduction. There are two microphones, one pointed towards the mouth and one pointed away. One picks up speech + noise and the other just picks up noise. Subtract the 2nd signal from the first and you are just left with the speech. Similar technology is used in telephones, noise cancelling headphones, fetal heart beat monitors, etc.",
"They use a hypercardioid microphone which has a cone that gets audio primarily from one direction, and heavily favoring audio sources nearby vs. further (called falloff). Then, they also use an active noise reduction system where a second microphone does the *opposite*, pointed away from them, that primarily picks up the background noise. Then a tiny computer chip analyzes the background noise and creates a \"counter frequency\" that lessens the background noise in the transmission.."
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61w6k5 | Why do computers take longer to register an incorrect password on login rather than a correct one? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Many computer systems put in a deliberate pause to make it harder for people to guess passwords. If you can only make 10 guesses a minute, instead of 100, it makes it harder to get into the system.",
"I'm going to assume you are talking about something like school workstations or business/office laptops. While true that there is a factor to defending against brute force attacks. These computers also tend to be part of a network where a single server has all the username and password stored. When you login, it will connect to the network and check with this server if your password is valid. Once confirms that it is a match, it stores this password temporarily on your computer. Now you're able to use the computer. So the next time you login with the **correct password**, it doesn't connect to the network, it just quickly checks if it matches the locally stored copy of the password. If it matches, you're good to use the computer. Because the speed it takes to check for a match on the computer is essentially processing speed, it feels almost instant. Now, lets say you type in the **wrong password**, what happens next? Well, it *still* checks with the locally stored copy, except this time, it **doesn't match**. So, since it doesn't match, **one of two things must be true**. 1. Your password is truly wrong. 2. Your password is actually correct, but the temporary copy stored on the computer is not up to date since the last time it connected. So it connects to the network server and checks. This extra step is what most people associate with the wrong password taking much longer, and especially exaggerated when the quality of the connection is slow.",
"They don't. They take longer on purpose in order to avoid people trying lots of passwords fast (bruteforce attack) to guess the correct one.",
"It's an intentional delay, to make it take longer for an evildoer to guess the password."
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61w7do | How are the photos "shot on iPhone 7" not pixelated and blurry when enlarged to billboard size? | There are several billboards in San Francisco with beautiful photos taken on an iPhone 7. The 7 only has a 12MP camera. So how do the photos still look so clear when they are enlarged to billboard size? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You'd be surprised at the resolution most billboards are printed at. When you are standing 20 feet away or more the DPI requirements go *way* down. Those big 48 foot wide billboards? Often less then 10 pixels per inch which means a 10MP image is all you need (though due to the way many are printed you don't have the same clear 'pixels', it's more like how things are in a newspaper comic with little dots)."
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61wbm1 | How do heart rate monitors measure calories burned during activities? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"guesstimation basically. Heart rate correlates somewhat with level of physical activity which in turn correlates with calories burned. If you throw in some other tools like accelerometers, they can get a better idea of what you're doing (running looks different from biking looks different from swimming, looks different from walking, looks different from stair climbing) and be a little more accurate."
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61wx6z | difference between single and triple phase power? Also, what determines what kind of power is being ran to a location, is it some kind of transformer on the powerlines that leads to the house? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I'm going to be assuming a basic knowledge of AC power for this: So in single phase AC your active wire is cycling from +240V to -240V and back at 50Hz (Depends where you live). This means that the circuit will be at 0V (turned off) for an instant 100 times per second. In 3 phase AC, 2 more active wires are introduced. These are the same (240V, 50Hz), but they are out of phase with each other by 120^o . So when one reaches it's peak, the other 2 will be part way. Similarly when one reaches 0V (off), the other 2 will still be on. see [reference image]( URL_1 AC/AC_10.html#02181.png) This means that you can run AC motors allot smoother by wiring the inductors physically at 120^o intervals around the motor's spinning magnet [like so]( URL_0 ) (This is a basic 3 phase motor, I'll leave the more complex ones out). In addition This allows for for the motor to be self starting, and direction controlled. Both extremely useful in industrial situations. Generally, single phase goes to homes and 3 phase goes to factories, for running AC motors in machinery. I'm still just a student, so forgive any minor errors. Here's my uni's proscribed textbook (free ebook) for further depth: URL_1 Reccomended section: [Polyphase motor design]( URL_1 AC/AC_10.html#xtocid35103)"
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61x0gg | Why do most websites default to creating an account instead of a return user login? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They would rather a site newbie not have to search to find the \"sign up\" page but rather a returning, and more experienced site user navigate to find the login page.",
"Maybe easier for new users. Helps guide them to what the website wants most, new users. I am not sure about this but I have seen similar things on in house enterprise apps."
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61ximj | How do people who learned coding and programming think differently from people who have never done it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think the biggest lesson in thinking differently comes from debugging. It really humbles you. A common scenario is going over the same piece of code that is creating a bug, but being absolutely certain that everything you wrote is correct. *There is no bug in my code. The computer is messed up somehow* is a thought I have over and over again even though I know it's crazy. Then after staring for ages, you have this epiphany feeling when you realize where the problem was. When it's not a typo, it's usually due to a subtle assumption you made about how a function works that wasn't true, but totally changed everything. Nowadays when I'm SURE I'm right about something, but someone disagrees with me (a moral or political opinion, for example), I'm very suspicious of that feeling of certainty. Instead, just as when I code, I learned to view my understanding of topics as provisional (especially when there are a lot of moving parts) and aware of the fact that there might be *unknown unknowns* - problems in my reasoning that I didn't think to check, maybe didn't even realize could exist.",
"I believe it comes down to three major differences: * **Unambiguous Clarity** - Programming is very similar to the arts, like music is used to express what we hear, paintings are used to express what we see, programming is used to express behavior. Programmers are forced to produce lines that express instructions that cannot be interpreted any other way. This helps in other thinking because it ensures precise language and programmers tend to focus on detail others wouldn't (which you can say is either good or bad, but different definitely). * **Abstraction** - In programming you are constantly using this concept of abstraction, or the ability to figure out the \"overall pattern\" from a few concrete examples. The ELI5 example of abstraction is if you show someone how to tie a shoe, they now can use the knot to tie any two strings together, they have abstracted the idea of the knot to apply in other situations. Programmers do this all the time with the creation of functions, things to help them do their job more efficiently. This skill allows programmers to think about the world differently, and usually they can pull from their past experiences in other disciplines to help them in entirely unrelated areas. * **Confidence to overcome difficult tasks** - This is the trait I look for the most when finding who is teachable at work. Most people draw a line in the sand when it comes to technology that they are willing to learn and what they think is too challenging for themselves. For some people, it's as soon as you talk about math, for the general population the line is as soon as you look at something called \"code,\" for some programmers, it becomes what people call \"back-end code,\" etc. What I think separates most programmers from the general population is the willingness to cross that line of what you feel comfortable with, and get deeper and deeper into technology. A lot of people quit at the moment when technology becomes challenging. Back when I went to college at a respected school for programming (about 10 years ago), the first year drop out rate for Computer Science was over 50%. That's half of the people who considered themselves programmers decided it wasn't for them because they couldn't overcome the first hurdles. But for those that have stuck with it, this is what I find the most common among us, we all have some internal drive to constantly push ourselves out of the realm of problems we've solved before to new problems that might be difficult, but we have the confidence to know we can solve the problems. Edit: Thank you kind stranger for my first reddit gold! It makes me happy that what I wrote resonates with a lot of you!",
"The main difference is in problem solving; I believe coding is more deconstructionist than any other profession. Coding forces two things on you; organising an action into its basic individual movements, and writing them down with excruciating precision. That gives you the view that a lot of dynamics can be explained in chains of understandable parts. But the main part of time spent coding is actually not writing the code. That is maybe a third of it. The main part is debugging; trying to understand how what you wrote works with its environment and where that goes wrong. It is extremely detail-oriented. When the car of a programmer breaks, he will never stop at 'the engine doesn't run well', figuratively speaking. He will persist until he had found out which spark plug has a bent lead.",
"The main thing is break down problems and do things step by step. When people ask me how to program I ask them to explain to me how to make a cup of tea. They start with put tea bag in cup. Boil water. Pour water in cup. Add milk and sugar (the filthy animals). I ask them to break it down more. This is where some people get confused. Take tea bag out of box. Take cup out of cupboard. Place Tea bag in cup. Fill kettle with water. Boil water. Pour water into cup. Wait. Get milk from fridge. Pour milk into cup. Get sugar. Get tea spoon. Put tea spoon of sugar into cup. Still cup with tea spoon. Now things get interesting. I ask them to describe it in more detail again. Eventually they cant think of anything but I'll ask them to describe what muscles they use, to press the button on the kettle, to turn the tap on after placing the kettle under it etc etc. At this stage you can also describe differences with programming languages. Assembly code describes each muscle, each exact location of the objects. C/C++ describes the draws and objects to get and where to place them, Java less items, Python even less etc etc. Some people say things like boil water while putting tea bag in cup. This is a great analogy to multithreading. However its best to describe the process in the most singular way. Sure you can boil the water while putting a tea bag in the cup but you don't know exactly when it has boiled. So you need to insert waiting times etc. I firmly believe anyone can learn to program but then I look at how some people make tea. If they haven't made that process even remotely efficient after 30 years I doubt their code would be much good either. Still, its just thinking every step through.",
"- Honey, go to the store to buy a pencil, if there are eggs, bring a dozen - Honey, why did you bring 12 pencils? People who learned coding and programming have a practical mind that drove them to learn coding and programming, and they might think different from people with an artistic mind, that drives them to sculpting. But not because of the coding/sculpting itself.",
"I think we programmers have a mindset of \"everything is possible, some things are just a bit harder\". So, for example, when I sort my laundry, I think \"Hmm, wouldn't it be nice with a machine where you didn't have to sort the laundry?\". Then I dive into a long train of thoughts, such as \"How to make the machine sort it...\", \"Could the process be changed so that you don't need to separate different kinds of laundry...\", \"What about disposable clothes...\" and so on. Often, I drop the subject as too much work for too little gain, but the point is that I do go through that process. My question is not \"Can it be done?\", it's \"Assuming it can be done, how could it be done?\".",
"A lot of people here are overrating coding. It helps you think in a more analytical/logical way, and it hones your problem solving skills, in varying degrees, but it isn't a godly skill or that unique. Other professions can also help you with that, such as the ones involving complex math skills, for example, can have the same effect helping you think more structurally. Sometimes it does help you with things outside programming, sometimes it doesn't, its very personal how it affects a programmer life outside coding and in varying degrees - what worked for someone might not have the same effect to you. It doesn't make you better than other people, in the same way being good at anything else, like painting, driving, public speech also doesn't make you superior, it's a skill that you develop. I probably didn't answer, but it's just a warning to take with a pinch of salt what people are saying here.",
"If you practiced a particular skill for long enough he way you think will adapt. For example someone who codes a lot as a hobby or an occupation will most likely develop a more logical way of thinking, as that's what they need to do when programming.",
"One of my Computer Science teachers in college always told us that good software developers were the laziest people in the world. It makes sense because our job is to make things automatic, so having to perform the same basic action more than a few times instantly makes me think \"Could I write a piece of code that would do that for me ?\" This sometimes leads me to spend an hour writing a program to do a boring task that would have taken half an hour to do manually BUT if I ever need to do it again, I won't have to.",
"I'd say that programmers think in much more detail than an average person. While an average person will give general instructions knowing that the other person will infer all the details from context and experience (e.g. a person already knows how to walk, so you wouldn't have to give instructions on how to walk to him), a programmer will break each task into smaller tasks, which get broken down into even smaller tasks and then into fundamental instructions: math, logic, or data transfer (sending info to devices). For example: an average person doesn't have to think about how we see objects, but a programmer will have to think about it. A programmer might think that we notice different objects when they are separated by an edge, which is just a rapid change in color. So, to detect objects, you just have to detect the edges by seeing where the color changes rapidly.",
"You assume that they think differently, however, there are many, *many* skills, trades, and professions in which symbolic logic of some sort is required. From transcribing music to electrical engineering, from pure mathematical proofs to designing management structures, if you have a talent for abstract linear thinking, you don't need coding to get into it. Coders who do it all day in my experience can develop really great analytical thinking BUT! those who only do so with a narrow or highly abstract data sets are no better at using their skills on outside problems, than anybody else. This is because most of the problems we face in life require self reflection plus ethical reasoning plus creativity plus analysis. Tl;dr they are better at coding and programming but not at anything else.",
"There's probably no one, true answer to that. You won't find a structural difference in the brains of people who can code and those who don't. It's just a very formal way to think about a problem. I utterly failed programming classes. There was never an explanation how what I basically just copied off a sheet made any sense within itself, and how it would be translated and worked over in the machine. I was stuck until, well, Minecraft, and logic gates. From there I took a short, very superficial detour through machine languages, and finally learned to babble python at the level of a toddler. It finally made some sense. I don't need it for anything, was just irked by not being able to learn something. The linear process sure is something different than the wildly divergent and convergent thought patterns of everyday life. But even in that strict structure, there is a lot of room for variation and creativity.",
"Humans rely heavily on something called heuristics. Basically, if you solved a problem before using a set of actions, then using those set of actions again on a similar problem would probably work. It's not precise, but it's quick. For hunter-gatherer animals, thinking quick is the difference between life and death. Computers do not use heuristics. They use algorithms. Algorithms are slower than heuristics, they are more specific in scope than heuristics, and they always give you the right solution (so long as the parameters given are accurate). So, coming up with an algorithm (a solution that works every time, and encompasses all reasonable use cases) is much harder than coming up with a heuristic. The advantage, however, is that you only have to solve the problem once. Once it's solved, the computer can execute it fast and repeatedly. In computer science, we have a saying: \"You either do a task one time, or many times.\" This means that if you're going to do something more than once, then you build it in such a way that it can be re-used an indefinite number of times. A computer scientist has to think like a computer. Basically, we have to break every action, no matter how simple, into its basic atomic parts. Then, when we code it, we have to test it extensively from different angles. Can it handle these special exception cases? What if the user does something so stupid we can't even fathom it? Most programmers today use frameworks, which are basically libraries of code that allow us to not have to reinvent the wheel. Such as using AJAX to dynamically populate a table of data. It's something that can actually be quite exhausting to do in code if you're just using straight JavaScript, but using a framework like VueJS lets you do it with just a few commands. Problem with that approach, however, is that the programmer still needs to know what is happening \"under the hood,\" or else fall prey to unintended bugs. So, basically, what a few other people said: a good computer scientist is required to deconstruct even the simplest task in order to tell the computer how to do things. We have to think consistently logically, and that effects how we think outside of our coding, as well. The jury is definitely out on whether people are just born with the types of brains needed to think like a computer scientist or if it is learned (or how it is learned).",
"There are some good answers here about thinking logically, debugging, and problem solving. I agree with all of these, but had another component to add. Programmers are much better about thinking abstractly. Although programming at a lower level is a series of instructions, one of the most important things programmers do is organize and structure that code into abstract models that describe a problem, it's data, and it's actions in such a way that it makes it easier to reason about it's complexity.",
"I've been programming for the better part of 30 years and I manage a bunch of software developers. Let me give you a rundown. 1. The world exists in shades of grey and you're probably used to thinking about it that way. It's wrong to steal but ok to steal to feed your starving child; that sort of thing (I have heavy conversations with my 5 year olds). But computers don't think natively in shades of grey; they think in black and white, true and false, zero and one. Developers tend to think this way too and they tend to have a heightened awareness for decisions, problems, and processes that demand the ability to think in terms more complex than that... because those problems are HARD. 2. Because computers don't handle things other than true and false well, developers spend a lot of time thinking about edge cases. Feeding your starving child is an edge case to \"it's wrong to steal.\" Edge cases are really just the places where simple rules break down and because developers spend so much time dealing with them in code that they start to see them in day-to-day life too. Developers will often seem negative, pouncing on the problems with any given idea or suggestion rather than focusing on the benefits. This isn't because they're pessimistic; they're just trying to work out if the idea needs further work. 3. Software developers tend to abstract things -- that means they think about what they do in simple, general terms rather than worrying about exactly how they do it. This is because software development is about building logical units and linking them together into more complex logical units. If all the edge cases of some small problem -- say, finding the square root of a value -- are handled inside of something that solves that problem then I don't need to worry about handling those edge cases if I use that thing in my solution which also needs to get square roots. The use of the square-root-finder then becomes \"what problems does this solve and what problems does it leave for me to solve?\" Everything else can be ignored. 4. Software developers tend to like iteration, or doing things over and over again. It doesn't cost much/anything to send out a new version of a program and so software developers usually assume that anything that's not perfect can always be fixed/improved later. So even if the first version of something is crappy and hard to use, the next will be better, and the next after that. This crosses over into day-to-day life too. Developers tend to enjoy crafts and hobbies that offer opportunities for continuous improvement, refinement, and perfection. 5. Software developers aren't afraid to fail. Because the process of improvement involves trying things that don't work and then fixing them, developers tend to feel comfortable taking risks that they can walk back later. A broken thing is an opportunity to improve and, because developers think in black and white, a broken thing generally can't get any **more** broken. It is a puzzle to be solved, taken apart into abstract components, each examined, edge cases identified, and put back together looking for that critical flaw, always assuming that the immutable laws of logic hold true with unerring mathematical precision. Which is why developers don't tend to like people very much... people are none of those things.",
"They don't. Coders aren't some special group. Coding is just creativity and logic. Both, which are found in countless jobs. Coders just know the syntax and how the languages are linked/built.",
"Computers do what you tell them, they're quite stupid. If it doesn't do what you wanted, you didn't tell it to do the right thing. Programming is like learning a foreign language, but theres much less room for error. You can screw up Spanish and still get your point across. Programming errors might work out, but usually don't. So you have to really analyze your code and imagine what would happen if you run it. Did you remember to close the loop? Is your grammar correct? What will the output be? You have to think like the machine does, one line at a time, looking carefully at what the line contains and is telling the machine to do.",
"We don't. It's only a circlejerk. Well, you get a better feel of how computers work, which is something. The mental \"improvement\" is nothing more than what you get from understanding high school algebra. Hither come the downvotes.",
"The biggest difference between programmers and non-programmers is that programmers think in \"systems\". And by that, I mean a programmer instinctively tries to break down everything they see around them into the data objects, constraints and the processes that would be required in order to implement it in code. An example: I go in to McDonalds. I might think to myself, \"what system would I require to manage the orders being sent to the cooks so that orders don't get missed, and that everything comes out on time\". Then you start checking things off in your head, trying to understand how all a system like this might work; * Data objects: there has to be a table of available products. * Constraint: if it's a fixed product structure, anything a customer can order has to fit within the confines of that structure. The system can't take an order for \"only cook half the burger patty\" or something. * Data objects: Orders are a list of products * Process: Orders are not considered complete until payment is confirmed * Data objects: Once confirmed, orders enter a queue * Process: The queue pushes orders out to the correct stations for production. * Side thought: how do you optimise the burger coming out at the same time as the chips? * Process: the system probably has to alert staff when orders have been too long in the queue * Process: staff have to be able to mark an order as complete * Process: once complete, someone needs to be notified the order is ready to be handed to the customer So on and so on and so on. As a programmer, you often find yourself idly breaking down what is happening around you into systems, and pondering how you'd implement them. I am lead to believe, however, that this isn't considered normal behaviour by regular sane people :)"
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61xlkk | Elon Musk's venture, Neuralink. How and why? | It seems so interesting but I don't have enough knowledge in neuroscience or AI to figure out what this could help with in practical applications. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First, I'd say don't think about practical applications now, think about what the world might be like in 20 or 50 years, and what the practical applications will be like *then*. With the [inevitable march of technological progress]( URL_1 ) eventually almost everything a human can do that's 'productive' is going to be automated. Our machines will do these jobs faster and better than we can, and for a lot of people who have spent their entire lives thinking of their job as a key part of their identity, that can be very scary. So, there's two ways we can approach this: * The \"jobs are important\" way - Humans interacting with technology through things like typing or talking is incredibly slow, if we want to be able to \"compete\" with AI we're going to have to be able to interact a lot faster than that. If we can there's even a chance that human intelligence and machine intelligence will compliment each other and we can work together. * The \"jobs aren't important\" way - Think of yourself not as your body, and not even as your brain (which uses a lot of capacity just to move your body around and keep it alive), [but as your conscious mind]( URL_0 ). The world that we've evolved in and built for ourselves is great for the bodies we have, but we're also building entirely digital worlds where our biological bodies don't really fit in, but our conscious selves might fit right in. We just need to make that connection be our \"true selves\" and this new world we're building without letting all the slow messy bits of our body get in the way.",
"**How?** * Musk talks about there being 2 layers to the human mind at the moment, the [limbic system]( URL_0 ) (dealing with emotions, spatial awareness, regulating bodily functions etc), and the [prefrontal cortex]( URL_2 ) (dealing with abstract thoughts and decision making). * He suggests a 3rd layer, plugged directly into your cortical neurons, to allow faster information transfer between your thoughts and the technology you use. * This doesn't necessarily require major brain surgery with your skull being sawed open. Musk suggests that, since neurons require a lot of blood flow, they are all connected to blood vessels which are in turn branching out from the blood vessels running through your neck. So in principle, a small procedure entering the jugular could open a highway to all your cortical neurons. There's not much detail beyond this in terms of how the link would actually be implemented. **Why?** * Musk says we already have access to a huge amount of information and abilities via the internet, but we're limited on bandwidth, especially our output speed. * We can take in text/images/video with our eyes relatively quickly, but our ability to output data is severely limited to the speed at which we can type or click using our fingers. * A 3rd technological layer above the cortex which can communicate directly with a computer would allow us to greatly increase the connection speed between our thoughts and technology. * Musk says this will greatly improve humans' ability to think and communicate, and allow us to keep up better with AI in the future. Without such a neural interface, we will inevitably become so inferior to AI that we'll be basically a \"pet\". [Here]( URL_1 )'s a brief section of an interview where he talks about all these points.",
"imagine how smart you could be if you never forgot anything you ever read, or could have the internet, in your head. imagine direct interfaces with combat systems. no more complicated cockpits, allowing for better control over aircraft in combat. no more terrorists taking over planes, as only the captains can engage neuralink. cars. surgery in hospitals. ranged neuralink for performing tasks at home with an interfaced robot while you are at work. the possibility's are endless.",
"how, who knows. why? because its worth it. with a neural lace people could in theory become smarter and smarter people can solve more complex problems like global warming, healthcare/science issues, space exploration etc etc . also solves the problem of what happens to us once the AI gets here, instead of conquering us, or going to war we just assimilate.assimilate.assimilate.assimilate.assimilate"
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622zoe | How are meteorologists able to forecast the weather 15+ days in advance? How often are those forecasts accurate? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A few models will show weather out a few weeks. Some models are for determining seasonal outlooks on monthly basis. Most Meteorologist use models as guidance to their skills, and all will tell you there are drop offs in model guidance at days 3 and 5. Most Mets will not talk about anything beyond day 5. Anyone who says he saw someone on TV saying there will be a snow storm in 2 weeks should find another station. -A Meteorologist"
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623wwo | Why did older video games use checkpoints or locations to have to save your game instead of an options menu button like is most common now? | more like why technically, was it limited by the systems or etc... | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I did some reading on this and it seems that the method of saving really depends on the developer, and less about technology. Not to say there were technological constraints, of course. Games use to be cartridge based, so saves had to be as predetermined points because all of the information was on the cartridge itself, done with either direct savepoints and sometimes with passwords. When games converted to disc, the save information was stored on memory cards in earlier consoles because CD-ROMs are Read Only Memory and can not personally store the save. But now all console saves are done on hard drives, and some games like *Destiny* and *Tom Clancy's The Division* require to be always connected to the internet and use the cloud to store information. But it really depends on the developer, but almost all games have gone the way of autosaving so the player isn't too far behind after dying.",
"Im guessing memory and hardware had a lot to do with it. You crossed the checkpoint in super Mario Bros, and died before the end, you would respawn halfway a thru the llevel as a little Mario. A very simple if-then, compared to storing power ups and exact location on the level map. As games got more complex, they could add more nuances and info, like health bar, weapons and ammo as you crossed the checkpoint, but you'd still start out at the predesignated place, with the bad guys in the same position as they always were. (I'm thinking specifucally about Timesplitters 2 on GameCube). Compare that to how much info is on a quicksave now, your position, health bar, weapons, pickups, items, exact location on a 3d map, enemies position, health, weapons and exact location. That's a lot more info to save on a limited flash memory based game where all memory cards are small capacity, external and expensive. I remember a season of madden took up like 30 \"blocks\" of my 16 block memory card, while Timesplitters took up 1 or 2, so i had to go buy a larger capacity one to play madden on season mode. Devs used these limitations as an element of the gameplay. In timesplitters, if you wanted to have a any shot beating one of the last levels, you needed to get the checkpoint with damn near full health. Otherwise, you'd need to start the level over. Resident Evil made you collect ink ribbons and find a typewriter to save your progress, and dying would bring you back to your save previous save point. I don't know how big these flash memory cards actually were, but at that time i thought a 256mb memory stick was pretty damn good. Consoles with large hard drives and installed games have opened up more quicksave options with a lot more info, since storage is no longer at a premium.",
"In older systems it was more common because it helped optimize the game on the very limited resources it had to run on. Saving without pre-defined save points requires the game to understand more information about where you are in the game world at any given time, how to save that information, and how to put you back there when the game is turned on again. Knowing this information requires more CPU processing and more data in RAM, a fairly insignificant amount by today's standards but when you're operating on something like the PS1's 33 MHz CPU and 2MB RAM and trying to optimize the game to look better than your competitors on the same hardware, you'll try to throw away as much unnecessary information as possible."
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6242nb | What does https everywhere do? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The s in Https means secure, that means its encrypted before it goes over the network so that some one listening over the networks can not read it. when ever a password, credit card number, or any other private information you would not want someone to read should only be typed into a website with https",
"HTTP is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the protocol used to send web pages and their associated content (images and such). (HTTP is used in other contexts too, but that's irrelevant right now.) HTTPS is the Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol. Specifically, it uses a related technology called Transport Layer Security (TLS, earlier versions of which were called the Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL) to encrypt the conversation between your web browser and the web server. Assuming things are set up correctly, the encryption used means that no one other than your browser and the server can see the contents of the conversation, and also that you can be sure of the identity of the server (it's really your bank, for example, and not someone pretending to be your bank). There are plenty of ways for that to not be the case, but that's the goal. For many years, if you didn't specify a protocol (if you just typed \" URL_0 \" instead of \"http:// URL_0 \"), browsers would default to using plain old HTTP. The simple version of the explanation is that, with HTTPS Everywhere, the browser will try HTTPS first, only then trying HTTP. The browser extension also will attempt to rewrite pages that try to send you to plain old HTTP-served pages to send you to the HTTPS-served version instead."
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6243qz | Why do connection speed sites like Ookla always have higher speeds than actual download speeds? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Check the units. Speedtests give you speeds in megaBITS per second (Mb/s) Downloads are often measured in megaBYTES per second (MB/s) Notice the capitalisation of B. There is a factor of 8 difference between the two. 1 MB = 8 Mb.",
"* Many of the speed test sites are owned by the ISPs and prioritize max bandwidth for those tests so you get unrealistic results. * Real world bandwidth is end to end. You could have a gigabit connection and you're still only going to be able to download it as fast as the server is able to deliver it to you."
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625brh | Let's say I bought this big bulk of data from my local ISP under S.J.Res.34. What exactly am I looking at? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Political affiliations, shopping trends, personal kinks, how many people google stupid shit out of laziness, and all the blackmail you could potentially want over another person. In reality, sponsored content is going to get harder to distinguish from real news articles"
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625n4j | How do popular YouTubers make money? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most people are going to tell you that they make their money through ads, and for some people that is where all their money comes from. But for properly run channels, ad revenue normally only accounts for about 10% of the total revenue (this is obviously a very broad generalization, but it's what I've seen consistently). As far as ads go, content creators get paid based on something called CPM, aka cost per mille, aka cost per thousand. Their CPM is how much they make for every 1,000 monetised views. If someone is watching with adblock on, their view isn't monetisable. If the video is deemed not advertising friendly, then none of the views will be monetised. The CPM is bassed off of how much advertisers are willing to pay to show an ad on that video, so if you're video is on how to choose the best car insurance, insurance agencies are willing to pay a lot to have their ad on the video, so the CPM will be much higher than if your video is about cheap meals to cook. The CPM is also effected by where your traffic is coming from. If your videos are popular in T1 countries (rich, developed countries who speak English, like the US, Canada, Australia, UK) then your CPM will be much higher than if the traffic is all coming from India and Bangladesh. CPM can vary so much that there really is no limit to how high or low it can go, but the average CPM will be around the $1 - $2.50 mark. Unfortunately CPM is on the decline, and we have been seeing a steady drop in CPM over the last few years. Smart creators diversify their income streams with things like Patreon, affiliate marketing, sponsorship's, product placement, and selling physical or digital goods (like clothes, or books). To a smart creator, these things can make up 90%+ of their revenue, and if they aren't utilizing them, they are leaving money on the table. Gone are the days where you could just put a video up and make decent money. I've seen people with 60,000 subscribers making $200,000+ a year from their social media, or people with 1,000,000+ subscribers making less than $80,000 a year. If you're smart and business savvy, you can make a lot of money from a small audience. But if you neglect the business side and just want to be a creator, then chances are you'll struggle to make money. As a small case study, let's look at Geek and Sundry's twitch, which has had most of it's success thanks to a live stream of D & D called Critical Role. In about 2 years they have grown to 35,000 paying subscribers, each of these subscribers pay $5 a month, which means they are bringing in over $2,000,000 a year just in subscription fees. That's before the 2 sponsorships they have, and before all the youtube ad revenue, and before all the merchandising. I've got 10 years experience with online marketing, mostly social media, and am planning on launching a big YT channel within the next 4 months, so feel free to ask any questions.",
"Youtuber here. 160,000 subscribers and 15.9 million total views. Also affiliated with YouTuber \"DemolitionRanch\" who has 2.9M subscribers at the moment. Ad revenue is near $180 for every 100,000 views you get. At some points in the year, like December, you get much more money-per-view because of something called CPM. CPM is basically the number that is decided by the amount of advertisers trying to buy ad space on youtube. In months like December, where every advertiser is running hundreds of ads, i get somewhere around 4X revenue during that period, no matter my views. I also like to work with companies to do brand deals / sponsorships. They'll pay you to put sponsored content in your video. Usually you're approached by about 10 companies a week (through email) to see if you're interested in being sponsored by them, so there's a HUGE market there. Amazon associates is a very easy way to basically make passive income as well. I put all of my computer's specifications/parts in my descriptions of my videos with amazon links to those specific parts. Amazon pays me a percentage of any purchase made after the user clicked on those links. So if a person wanted to buy the camera I use, they could go to amazon through my custom URL and purchase it, and because i brought them to amazon, i get a small cut of it.",
"I'm a small educational YouTuber, so I can't promise that this covers all the bases, but I can give you an idea of how we make money. There are really four or five revenue streams, and the composition differs depending on the creator. 1. YouTube pre-roll, mid-roll, and text ads. These are the ads that you typically think of when you think of YouTube ads. The ones you can skip. Unless you get millions of views, this is not going to be a major source of revenue. The CPM (cost per one thousand views) is just too low usually. It ranges from $1-4 dollars per thousand views, and is way more beneficial to YouTube than to YouTubers. 2. Baked-in ads. Did one of your favorite creators recommend SquareSpace or Audible to you? They got paid for that. Depending on your viewership and engagement, an ad spot like this can range from several thousand dollars to several hundred. This is often a major revenue stream for people. 3. Patreon. It is a service where fans pledge a monthly donation for benefits or merchandise. Depending on the creator this can be almost all of their revenue (some turn off ads as a Patreon goal) or literally none of it (they don't have a Patreon). Some creators get upwards of $20,000 dollars a month off of Patreon (TeamFourStar makes $11,000 a month, CGPGrey makes $18,000 per video) but most successful YouTubers get between $500 - $2000 a month 4. Online store merchandise. Just like it sounds, people buying shirts, mugs, etc. This is way too variable of a revenue stream for me to summarize. 5. Only very specific types of YouTubers who are well-respected and famous get this, but events and guest appearance fees. Some YouTubers host shows, tours, and conferences (Nerdcon, Vidcon, RTX, etc.). For example, Michael from vsauce is touring with Adam Savage from myth busters. Ticket sales and merch at these events can be a great source of revenue. There might be other minor money makers, but these are the big five at least. Being a YouTuber is hard, but some of the really top tier guys are multi-millionaires from it. It all depends on how smart of a businessperson you are, and how engaged your audience is (and how large it is). I hope this gave you an overview of the revenue sources available to YouTubers. There are sites that estimate how much YouTubers make, but it is all guesswork usually. Edit: another source of revenue that I would wrap into #1 is YouTube Red. Based on how many Red viewers you have, you get paid. It is weird, complicated, and difficult to ELI5. YouTube also handpicks some creators to make YouTube Red Originals, and they pay for parts of production and I assume pay those creators fairly handsomely. Edit 2: Grey just made $18,000 dollars as I was discussing his income. Edit 3: Amazon Affiliate links also make some YouTubers money as /u/lionheart2189 mentioned below. It is usually not that significant unless you review products on your channel. I don't, and don't chat with any YouTubers who do, so I didn't think of it right away. Linus Media is an example of a company that makes a large part of their revenue through this method. (LinusTechTips, Techquickie, etc.) Edit 4: shameless self promotion URL_0",
"I get about $1000 to $1500 per month, just off adds. I'm a musician, so not only do I get paid for music videos I uploaded, I also get paid when anybody else uses my song in their videos. YouTube has a bit of code that listens to all the videos, and when it hears my music, it associates that video with me, and gives me a share of the revenue.",
"There are quite a few good answers in here regarding ad revenue but they're somewhat difficult to follow in my opinion. For the sake of making things easier to understand, let's say we have a monetized video that currently has precisely 100,000 views. *** ## Step 1. CPM To start, a company is running an advertisement campaign and they are paying $6.00 for their advertisement to be shown 1,000 times, and another company is paying $5.67, and another is paying $6.13. The average of this is called \"CPM.\" CPM stands for Cost Per Mille, \"Mille\" meaning thousand. CPM generally means how much you are paid for showing people's advertisements 1,000 times.(Note: This changes *all* the time, because advertisers will pay more for their ads to be shown first. Take November or December for example, where ad rates are their highest.) Right this instant, for my channel, [CPM seems to be $6.09.]( URL_0 ) This is pretty normal. ## Step 2. Monetized Views Now let's get back to the video with 100,000 views. Just because the video has been seen 100,000 times doesn't mean an advertisement has been shown 100,000 times. People have adblock, or sometimes it just doesn't show an ad. When an advertisement is shown, it is considered a \"monetized view\" in the analytics page of your channel. Generally, monetized views are about a third of the amount of video views. My channel, for having [45,129,607 views,]( URL_1 ) has had [15,100,731]( URL_2 ) monetized views. With this same ratio, a video with 100,000 views might have around 33,000 monetized views. ## Step 3. Combining the Two At this point is where we combine CPM and monetized views. With the CPM (cost per thousand monetized views) currently at $6.09, and a video with 33,000 *monetized* views, that means the video has earned $200.97. BUT, YouTube has to take their share, of course, so they take their half, and you're left with **$100.48 earned from a video with 100,000 views.** **This is also incredibly specific and can be different for other people. Different genres have different advertisements, ad rates are different every month, etc. but you get the general idea.* * Source: YouTuber with over 250k subs and 45M views. Edit: formatting",
"I am the dad that posted the viral video, David After Dentist, in 2009. We also make money through Adsense. However, we also do licensing deals with different companies around the world. Some are brands and some are clips shows mostly in Europe and Australia. Another new revenue stream is through DRM (Digital Rights Management) This was put in place to combat the blatant piracy of Intellectual Property on Youtube. This system allows us to take down stolen videos or choose to leave them up and monetize them. We have don't both. It amazes me that we are still making some money 8 years later. We hope to be able to continue and help pay for college for both David and his brother. The revenue has been used to pay for private school for both boys. BTW, David is 16 years old and a sophomore in high school.",
"There are many ways that YouTubers make money. This is mostly through ads, which is how Google/YouTube make their money, and they give some to the YouTuber. Once you reach a certain level then companies (called partners I believe) will start contacting you to be apart of their network, like the Machinima Network, and then they can help build your channel and you get a piece of the money, the partners make theirs and then YouTube gets theirs as well. These partners can also help you hook up with larger YouTubers for collabs which helps push traffic as well. They also do brand deals where if you create content for video games then video game companies will ask you to do some work for money and a copy of the game or they will give you a copy of the game and a bunch of keys to you so you can spread the word. There is a belief that you get money from likes, subscribers, and views. I do not think that is the case anymore (it was a few years ago). I'm sure there is some info I'm missing and perhaps my stuff is out of date but from what I've heard from creators this is mostly how it goes. The amount of money you can make from YouTube can be a substantial amount, upwards of millions if you're popular. Pewdiepie (the most popular on YouTube) for example, and according to a GameSpot article, made $7.5 million in 2014. Where as the YouTube network of channels called Yogscast, has about $10.75 million in revenue last year, but also has several channels associated with it and they have 68 people who work there. Long story short: Ads are what make the Internet world go round.",
"I don't have a lot of subscribers (around 7,500), but have a total of [11.5M+ video views]( URL_0 ). From those views, I've made around $12,000 to $15,000 in total. There are two ways I make money: 1. Ads. Everybody claims they make 1-2$/1000 views. This isn't accurate for most people. The average is 0.80$/1000 views. 2. Licensing. This is when companies license a video you created. They will usually pay a lump sum of 100-250$ USD for video rights. Other ways: 3. Product Placement. Simple enough. A company will pay a YouTuber to show a product in their video. Ex: Pepsi could pay PewDiePie $20K to drink a Pepsi in his video. 4. Merchandise Store. If you're large enough that you have dedicated fans, these fans will buy your merch.",
"If you don't get partnerships/sponsorships, you make next to nothing. I've made about $1-$2 per 1,000 views on my most popular videos. That may sound like a lot for a video with 5M+ views, but how long does that $5,000 worth of views to happen? Unless you're turning out videos every week that get huge view counts every time (which doesn't happen), sponsorships/donations(patreon) are almost always necessary to make a livable wage. Source: I make ~$250/mo from a few huge videos I made. Nerves videos get me $5 if I'm lucky.",
"Around $1,000 per 1M views. Paid Endorsements. Affiliate offers. Renting their pixel traffic.",
"Most other people have covered the actual question but I just want to add somethings about the steps to get there. I write for a lot of channels, mainly fact lists. Some are the biggest around and others are just starting out. From what I've seen there are three main routes to making a living. 1) Have a niche audience. Just make sure that the niche you choose is gaming. Or perhaps children. Or gaming children. Or gay, Ming children - they are ancient, rare and highly prized. 2) Pure Creativity. Youtube lets you make shows that would never make it on TV. Likewise, most middling TV shows would die a cold and lonely death if they were exclusively youtube. For me the best examples of this are: -Don't Hug Me I'm Scared - You Suck At Cooking - Internet Comment Etiquette With Eric - exurb1a They will likely survive through Patreon. I really care about these shows so I absolutely want to help them make more content (Don't Hug me is done and dusted sadly. But the wit and the brilliant editing is what makes these work. This shit is very hard to do. 3) Facts. We love facts, they are the fuel that our inane bullshit lives on. Sometimes this is really high level like Numberphile or TomScott. But mostly it's not; it's the lowest common denominator stuff like The Richest. It's addictive, it's cheap to make and they can churn it out every day. So, to finish on something vaguely like a conclusion. If you're really creative then just run wild and free. But if you want to have a go yourself, make list style top 10 videos as cheaply and as often as you can. You need a big slice of luck. If you see a new one get big, it's probably owned by one of the other big channels - they pour money into promoting their new channels. The new channels are often exactly the same as their old channels.",
"I am a YouTuber from Germany. There are several revenue streams: - Google Adsense: YouTube pays 55% of all of the revenue that your channel creates with the preroll ads in front of your videos etc. (unless you have adblock ;(( This usually amounts to about 1€/$1 per 1000 Views but can be higher if you make longer videos (above 10min you can put a lot more ads in) - or if you have content that is easy for specific advertisers to target (like a Gaming, Beauty or Film channel), its also higher in December, because brands advertise more for Christmas. - Brand Deals: \"Influencer Marketing\" is very popular. Brands will pay big money to sponsor individual videos, series or entire channels. People like Casey Neistat are also actual testimonials for brands like Samsung, like Jonny Depp is for some watch or perfume brand. In Germany we are talking up to 80€/$80 per 1000 views for a single brand integration for one video. As far as I know, big US-channels can earn a lot more than that. - Merchandise/Books/Products/Music/Movies/Events - Many YouTubers sell their own T-Shirts or have products that fit their content (your own make-up line as a beauty channel i.e.). Many YouTubers nowadays also try to release songs or sell straight to DVD movies like Grace Helbig, or sell tickets to a standup show etc, work with Netflix or YouTube Red on exclusive Pay-Per-View shows etc. - Crowdfunding: A lot of more creative channels use platforms like Patreon to fund their videos through audience donations. - Livestreaming: This is a combination of ad revenue through platforms like Twitch and viewer donations/subscribtions. I would say these are the most common ones - nowadays many YouTubers have their own companies, providing services for brands or media companies, producing YouTube commercials etc. Many YouTubers als get paid to speak at company events about social media or even straight up advice companies about their brands YouTube channels.",
"It helps if you're born rich so you have expendable free time, confidence, and income for equipment.",
"ALSO in addition to regular ads: sIn influencer marketing often people get free product and, if they're big enough, with enough solid engagement, they get paid as well. This usually ranges from as low as a dollar to $7/1,000 followers. Another valuation is also estimating an average number of views on a next video, and they pitch back to companies that sponsor them (often these are done so subtly and organically you have no idea that they are even a sponsorship) higher numbers than the companies pitch, so they negotiate. A nice, round number that works for most pages that get solid engagement is around half a cent per view. Ex. Someone with an estimated 20k views on a video will get offered $100, and then the YouTuber and the company initiate a dialogue to see if they can find a place of agreement.",
"I give you Hank Green (a youtuber) who explains this exact topic nicely. URL_0",
"At the PR firm I work for, we pay \"influencers\" (sometimes YouTube celebs, sometimes bloggers) lots of money for having certain products or services featured. The caveat is that these influencers should then disclose that they are being sponsored or paid for that content.",
"The biggest ones get a huge chunk of it from youtube/google's ado service. They negotiate their own separate deals with youtube. Depending on what their channel is about, they get money from other sponsors. For example game reviewers get paid or given free shit to review certain games, or technology like phones, video cards, etc... You can make millions if you have a big following. You can also make $100k a year with a medium sized following as well. There's a HUGE pie out there with almost limitless potential for people to get a slice of.",
"All about the sponsors. Also YouTube has weird rules about releasing how much they make but you can get a general idea from Google search.",
"I have 100 million + views on YouTube. 350k subs. Advertising revenue is based off of CPM which means per 1000 views. It depends on your content but it's generally abut 2$ per 1k views. Don't forget that many gamers are part of a multi channel network which take up to 40% for small channels. Huge rip off tbh. The MCNs do very little. They do help with some automatic YouTube copyright issues and that's why I use one. Also for a variety of free music to use in my videos. So after YouTube takes 45%. Your MCN takes a cut and you pay your taxes (because the IRS needs their cut). You're actually left with much less than you think. Edit - Also to add something else that I haven't really seen anyone mention. I think youtube's algorithms give more money for new subscribers watching your content. When I see large jumps in subscribers, I don't see that many more views, but I do seem to get a boost in CPM that day. Another thing that many people may not know is that youtube has some really extensive analytics that help you keep track of how well your channel is doing and how much money each individual video makes. It can track ages, genders, location and more, and even tells ME on my analytics page. I sometimes make sponsored videos which I NEED to call out at the beginning of my video. Those usually pay pretty well, at least more than the average money I would make per video. Some are based off of downloads with tracking links, and often pay pretty well per download. Expecting some whales(high spending users) to download the game and pay a bunch of money to win that game. I only make sponsored content of games I actually enjoy, or I'm at least honest about things I don't like about the game during the video, but I can assume many other youtubers don't really care and make tons of sponsored content lying about it. A multi channel network(MCN) is a company that you \"partner\" with, which takes all of your revenue from youtube, and pays you a cut of it. They take anywhere from 0-50%. An MCN is fairly worthless for most youtubers, but with gamers it can help because of so many random youtube copyright issues.",
"How much does youtube take when someone donates during a live stream? It kinda blows my mind when I see people throw $50+ during a stream. smh.",
"What I want to know is, who actually buys YouTuber merch??",
"YouTuber here, 23+ Million views and almost 130,000 subscribers. Most (if not all) of my YouTube Revenue is generated through ad monetization and CPM. I've had multiple \"partnerships\" offered to me throughout the years, actually probably over 40+. It's interesting to see how many other individuals run their accounts on make their own revenue. I've considered getting into patreon a bit more seriously, YouTube only does so much after a certain point and it's always advisable not to place all of our \"eggs in one basket\".",
"Theres a game journalist called Jim Stirling and he doesn't run any ads (apart from copyright claims forcing him to). He mainly uses patreon, URL_0 . You can see he makes $11k a month from donators. This is an alternative to cpm ads.",
"Finally one I know! youtubers make money from multiple traffics but the biggest is ad revenue as stated numerous times by others, another way they make money is from sponsorship, back a few years ago audible was the big one along with g fuel, ubisoft also does pretty big sponsorships. another way is through merchandising but recently some youtubers have made money from youtube red (~~scare pewdiepie~~ and paranormal action squad) other channels, more art based make money from patreon which is a way to support your favorite channels for large companies; predominately rooster teeth they make money from doing their own sponsorships by using their site which precedes youtube, they also make money by doing [commericals for companies]( URL_0 ) hope this kinda helped",
"$1/1000views through ads (mostly by mobile users cause no adblock) Sponsors and/or Affiliate links like Loot Crate and Audible Merchandising shirts, posters, mugs, etc Patreon (mostly for animators cause of how long each video takes to make)",
"They make money through adds, usually about $3 per 1,000 views. A lot of youtubers hate ab block The guys with millions of subs are definitely making seven figures. Other youtubers with mid six figure subscribers will make that same amount in money. However, you have to own all the content in the video. If you video a wall but have music in the background that's not yours, you can't make money off it EDIT: They can also make money through endorsement deals like athletes due",
"I once thought about really becoming a youtuber. If you have no career you can technically do youtube & twitch 24/7 for a living just making $2000 a month with a good enough following. You have to be really dedicated and living cheap though until you become popular. The only way I could ever see myself living a life like this is if I wanted to become a professional gamer or never grew tired of gaming. I would also try to find sponsors and partners, probably sure way to get your followers to support you without directly giving you money.",
"i still dont get why youtubers need to be in a network?",
"Why do Youtubers make a 2nd channel if they're going to get less views? Like I like To Make Stuff or What's inside?",
"I'm curious, do adult themed videos do well? Or will youtube not monetize them? I'm talking along the lines of a blog regarding sex stuff such as webcamming, sex toy reviews, sex education type videos, and other similar topics."
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625yqy | the consequences of the removal of FCC's Internet privacy protections, for America and abroad. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Follow-up question: what is the situation in Europe like? I read somewhere that in the EU ISP's already are selling internet usage data of their clients.",
"As far as I have heard this is already done on a limited scale and people seem to misunderstand what they mean by selling your info. Companies will not buy your specific history. They will buy bulk histories in order to gauge tends and target ads. It's still not good, but no company is going to buy just your history and see the weird porn sites you visit (I'm not even sure if they can).",
"One thing most don't mention is this law that is being repealed isn't active now. It was set to go into effect later this year. Repealing it changes nothing active now.",
"Ok, I do netsec & net eng so without going into super specifics let's give this a whirl: > but is it now also possible Google to sell my browsing data It always was, and they do. Google makes it's money by creating user profiles, and selling them to ad agencies, or running ads themselves. That is where their money comes from. The thing is google doesn't have all your browsing data. Google has your search history, any tracking done through their ad services, your email, your location if you use google maps, and basically anything you do on chrome or stock android, especially if you are signed in. Now google themselves uses this information to provide a very good service. Ever wonder why google searches tend to be the best? Well not only are they the biggest, but because of their user profile, they know what you want. Take a member of /r/the_donald and /r/politics. Have those two users both search the word \"impeach\" and they will get two different suggestion lists. While both will likely have \"Impeach Obama\" and \"Impeach Trump\" they will likely be in different order. This is because google is predicting what you want based on previous search history & email keywords (yes google scans your email). Now google provides **excellent** service, but there is a price to pay for it. On the internet if you are not paying for something you can assume you are the product being sold. Unless of course google is your ISP. Then they get everything, because they can see everything. _______________________________________________________________ Onto what *YOU* can do about it. Get yourself a VPN (Virtual private Network). There are many providers, I myself use NORDVPN, but they aren't the most popular due to some customer service issues, and they aren't the most secure if you aren't running on openVPN. The upside is they are relatively cheap, very simple to use, and have a lot of nodes all over the world. But if you are just looking to anonymize your traffic, circumvent region locks, and maybe hide some torrenting I think they're great. On to the technical side, who is a VPN and what does it do? A VPN basically creates an encrypted traffic tunnel & routes all your internet traffic through that. So instead of seeing: * workacct1484 connects to URL_0 * workacct1484 pulls down images from /r/unxpectedjihad * workacct 1484 receives torrent traffic from < nodes > my ISP instead sees: * workacct1484 blarglblarglc'thulhuharblehoggglyfthagn to < Server > * workacct1484 blarglblarglr'lyehharblehoggglywtagn to < Server > * workacct1484 blarglblarglph'ngluiharblehoggglymglw'nafh to < Server > So my ISP has no idea what I am doing on that connection, only that all my traffic is going to that server. So while they *could* sell my browsing data, it would be useless. [Diagram]( URL_3 ) Now you might say to yourself, \"Self, what if the MPAA suspects workacct1484 of torrenting. Can't they sue & subpoena the VPN provider for their logs?\" Yes, they can. Which is why you need a VPN provider that does not keep logs. Many of them don't and what happens is this: * MPAA sues & demands VPN logs * VPN provider says Ok, but we don't have them. We do not keep logs. We cannot give you something we don't have. * MPAA curses Now if you start torrenting too much (like actually releasing the new content as node 0), or start doing more shady things like drug deals, and the FBI needs to get involved, you may be in trouble. Because a VPN can be compromised. How do we get around this? TOR: _____________________________________________________________ TOR the onion browser, a necessary tool in the fight for privacy. What does TOR do? Well TOR encrypts your traffic. At every. single. network hop. What do I mean? Well you don't connect to URL_0 . do a traceroute to even URL_2 & you will see many hops. Each hop TOR re-ecnrypts your traffic. [Diagram]( URL_1 ) This does create a slow connection but a much more secure connection. It is not 100% secure though. If someone controls both the first & last node you use, they can do reasonably well finding out your traffic with some other information. I won't get into the specifics, but suffice to say it is **NOT** easy, but it *CAN* be done. _______________________________________________________________ So if you really want to ensure privacy what do you do? Well first off, stop using chrome. Use an opensource browser like opera or firefox. Second get a VPN. Third use TOR over that VPN. Fourth, start calling your representatives & telling them how you feel, then GET OUT & VOTE. Representatives can see who is registered to vote, if you call or email and bitch, but aren't registered to vote, they do not give a single fuck about your opinion. Finally, realize you lack the money & expertise to stop a truly dedicated attacker with any sufficient backing. ______________________________________________________________ And finally what does this mean for you? For the average person. Nothing. You will not really see an impact from ISPs selling your browsing data to advertisers. Because it's already happening. And it's not just ISPs. It's google, microsoft, apple, amazon, onstar, basically everyone does it. Especially facebook. #GET THE FUCK OFF FACEBOOK IF YOU CARE AT ALL ABOUT YOUR PRIVACY. They are literally public enemy #1 when it comes to privacy. But why should you care? Because these people are often very careless. Not because they choose to be, but because they honestly don't give two flying fucks about your data. And if they get compromised other people may be able to view your data. Maybe your company buys your data & sees you looking for a new job & fires you. Maybe your neighbor buys your history & sees that you frequent /r/clopclop (NSFW) and uses that to blackmail or embarrass you because you called them out at a school PTA meeting. Maybe an identity thief sees you going to < Local Credit Union > .com and now can focus their attack. If you don't think your internet history matters, then post it here. All of it. Oh and everything you cleared. And everything done in \"private\" browsing modes. And because, personally, I just don't think it's right. You should be allowed privacy. You shouldn't be tracked, and monitored, and sold like cattle. You are a person, not a commodity. And because very often people do not have choice in ISPs, you need to actually fight for your rights because the market is not \"free\" and there are no realistic competitive options. If you have any questions feel free to ask.",
"It may also be worth pointing out to OP that Google is not an ISP (unless you have Google Fiber)."
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627tzs | Why does the US model of the Samsung Galaxy S8 have a different processor than the global model? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Qualcomm owns many many patents in the US basically forcing any company to use Qualcomm's modem to connect to wireless signals. Companies are free to use any SoC (System on a Chip) they want, the Galaxy S6 used the global SoC version but used a Qualcomm modem. The big issue is Qualcomm prices things in such a way that the 'deal' a company gets from using Qualcomm's modem and SoC makes it economically stupid to use your own SoC and Qualcomm's modem. Edit* Qualcomm is not competition friendly. There is a big reason why r/fuckqualcomm is a thing."
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628y0c | What is an API? | I'm hearing a lot about APIs lately, Facebook API, Spotify web API, etc. I know the acronym, but what is an API? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"An API is an Application Programming Interface. It is a structured way for one program to offer services to other programs. In the case of website APIs these programs are running on different machines - a program running on Facebook's servers are offering services to a program running on your computer or another web server. As a metaphor think of programs like cooking. At home if you want to make some spaghetti you just take the ingredients out the cupboard, fire up the stove and make it yourself. This is a program doing something on its own with its own resources. But say you want pizza - you don't have the ingredients and your home oven isn't really that suited for making a nice crispy crust. So you go to a pizza place instead. But unlike at home you can't just go into the kitchen and start using their ingredients to make a pizza. They don't want your grubby hands all over their stuff. You have to go to the counter and make an order - there will be a menu listing what pizzas you can order and what toppings or other options you can pick. This is an API. When you have a program running on your computer it can do whatever it wants on your computer. But it can't just go over to Facebook and start digging through their computers - Facebook doesn't want your computer's grubby hands all over its data. So instead Facebook offers an API, a limited menu of commands with various parameters. Your program places an order with this API and Facebook goes to work filling it.",
"Application Programming Interface. Usually you interact through a service like Reddit or Facebook through their website, or their mobile app. When they have an API, this allows you to interact with the service from an app or a program or service that you write yourself. Basically, it lets you have access - with restrictions usually - to the service's data without being constrained by the limitations of the services own interfaces. For example, one thing I wish existed on Reddit would be the ability to search through my own posts based on keywords, or filter by subreddit. Can't do that in most Reddit apps or the website. But I could write my own script/app using the Reddit API to do exactly that. Maybe Ill do that.",
"Imagine you are in a restaurant, you can see the menu, and you know the kitchen is making food, but how do you order it? You use the waiter. The waiter is the API, it takes your request (your order) and takes it to the kitchen (the server) where it is prepared and brought back to you (the meal)."
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628zjv | What happens to the old pavement when a road gets repaved? | I once heard someone say that there is a machine that melts the old pavement and repaves but I'm not entirely sure that's true. Thanks! | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sometimes they just grind it. At my job they replaced the road and gave us the grindings to spread about the yard, and half of my home driveway is ground asphalt",
"The term you are looking for is asphalt recovery. Google has lots of very detailed information but in a nutshell yes there are machines and processes for recovering parts of asphalt roads. There are also asphalt and concrete recycling facilities."
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629jt1 | What information, explicitly, can now be sold by ISPs? It looks like the new law was replacing rules that had not yet gone into affect, so how is this any different than how the internet was 4 years ago? Could our data have been sold then before the rules that were voted on in Oct 2016? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your data has been being sold by Google, your web browser, etc for years. Google makes money by compiling tens of thousands of users browsing trends and data into one big anonymous package (for example: they don't care what michiruwater is looking up, they care what 18-21 year olds are looking up between 3-6PM). Your ISP thinks it's very unfair that Google gets to make money but the ISP does not. Now the ISP can do the same thing that Google does. That's all that happened."
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629vyj | How do they recyle plastic when it is toxic to breathe when burned? | My friend and I couldn't seem to up with how they do it since we all know not to put plastic in the microwave. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're not burned. They're just heated up to their melting point. And it's all done in a chamber with very little oxygen in it to prevent the plastic from catching fire or otherwise chemically changing."
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629wfo | computers today have a CPU and a GPU. They use the GPU to do calculation because they say GPUs are much faster, so why in the hell they don't make CPUs as faster as GPUs and they can still have a GPU and make the whole thing faster as hell? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because GPUs are designed to do *very specific* kinds of calculations more quickly, typically those used for graphics processing. Certain type of algorithms (graphics processing, linear algebra, video encoding etc...) can be easily parallelised on th3 huge number of cores found in a GPU (a single GPU core is slower than a single CPU core! It is just designed to do many calculations all at the same time). Other algorithms however are really hard to parallelise. Those algorithms would perform really *badly* if they were run on the GPU.",
"GPUs are actually much, much *slower* than CPUs. However, they are massively parallelized. So while they can't match the speed at which your CPU performs a simple addition, they can perform hundreds of nearly identical additions simultaneously. For some applications - 3d graphics rendering - problems involving hundreds of simultaneous nearly identical mathematical operations occur all the time. For most applications, they don't.",
"GPUs are *specialized*. They do a bunch of simple calculations all at the same time, but they aren't just overall superior. A CPU is more of a generalist.",
"Your CPU is designed to do big task that need to be figured out fast before they can move on to the next task. Your GPU is a ton of really simple CPUs that cant solve big tasks as fast, but can do a ton of simple small tasks much faster. Your CPU is like an architect of a building. Hes the smart one who plans everything out, and makes sure the building doesnt fall down. Your GPU is the construction workers who might not be the brightest bulbs, but there are more of them and they can do simple things like nail together dry wall a hell of a lot faster than that one architect."
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629zls | What is the difference between the old USB and USB C? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So, there's kind of two parts to this, and I'm not sure if you're specifying type c to exclude usb3, or just conflating the two, so ill explain both a little. USB 3.0 is a USB protocol designed to allow for more advanced features like more options for sourcing/sinking current, offering vendor defined messaging, etc. The specification says it can transfer much more power than usb 2, and also has a bunch of other great features. Its also going to be easy for companies to lock chargers down depending on what's plugged into them. E.g. Apple can force it so only their charger will supply max power - any other would default to standard 2.0 levels. USB Type-C is the physical connector specification, and is pretty great. It can be flipped around, and it doesn't matter which end of the cable you use. Usb type a and b cables can only go one way in one orientation. The cables can also physically support higher current/voltage levels. NOTE - There are a bunch of knockoff type c cables on the market right now with incorrect impedances. This means those cables may not work at all, or they may kind of work but catch fire or whatever, but either way a ~~Microsoft~~ Google employee went into Amazon and left reviews on many of the cables being sold, telling you if they're legit or not. Look for that. Source - Was writing usb 3.0/type-c drivers at a semiconductor for my job. Edit - Not Microsoft, Google. Thanks!",
"1) type c will transfer data faster (assuming 3.1 spec) 2) type c can charge electronics better/faster (assuming 3.1 spec) 3) type c is reversible. Meaning, the old usb, you would try to plug it in, see it doesn't fit, flip it over to try again, see it doesn't fit, flip it back to where it was in the first place to see that it fits and plugs in. (assuming you are sober) Edit: clarified my assumptions"
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62a7ls | Are cellphones susceptible to the same viruses PC and Mac are? | So in the realm of most technologies my knowledge is, sadly, similar to that of a 5 year old. I would have to assume that they are susceptible as they are just primarily smaller computers. As an addition to the original question. Are Androids more prone to them than Apples or is that myth of Apple virus immunity just hog wash? Furthermore, if someone would care to answer this question as well....what exactly is a virus anyhow? How do they work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The exact same viruses? No, not generally. Android, iOS, Windows, and macOS are all very different systems. Each has a unique set of vulnerabilities to exploit. Most of those vulnerabilities, at any point in time, are generally unknown or are a closely guarded secret held for judicious use by attackers - once a vulnerability becomes public, it's usually patched in short order. **(which is why the number one practical thing you can do to secure any system is to update it constantly!)** It's worth noting that \"virus\" is a somewhat overloaded term, especially in popular media. A more general umbrella term is \"malware\", malicious software. Within that, you can have more specific labels, like virus (spreads itself to other machines), spyware (reports sensitive information back to the controller), adware (displays advertisements), scareware (presents dire warnings to the user until spurious software is purchased), ransomware (completely locks down the computer until payment is made), and so on. As for how they work, that depends on the type of malware you have in mind. Broadly, malware typically tricks a user into installing it. Sometimes, the user might not even be aware that they're installing anything at all - saying \"yes\" to the wrong disguised prompt can offer up the keys to the kingdom. Once the program is on the system, it might take extra steps to hide its actions or gain wider access to the computer. Often the aim is total control of the computer, and the app can start exfiltrating information in the background, or encrypting files, or whatever else the attacker wants to do, either in a completely automated fashion or relying on command and control (C & C) messages over the internet. Moving on to the Android vs iOS question, no, not in any very useful sense. In part, I think this stems from the old supposed wisdom that Mac desktops weren't vulnerable to viruses. Well, sure, they were immune to Windows malware. And for a while, there just weren't enough Mac users to provide a sufficiently lucrative target to prompt much malware development. In the modern world, macOS malware absolutely exists. Beyond that, Android and iOS originally had somewhat different approaches to app market security. At first, Apple's App Store used humans to review new and updated apps, while Google's Play Store relied more heavily on automated analysis to prevent malicious software being snuck into their marketplace. These days, both app markets use a combination of both. However, there are also heavily modified variants of Android that use alternate app stores, which aren't necessarily as well protected. Beyond the markets, Google makes it easy for an interested user to \"sideload\" (manually install, like on a desktop) Android apps from outside sources. Apple prohibits it entirely. That's a security vulnerability... if you opt into it. And there's always the relatively remote possibility of someone finding a completely unknown vulnerability in some internet-capable app (usually a web browser) and using that to simply break in, such as by constructing a booby-trapped webpage that downloads a payload to the target device. It's usually just easier to sneak something into an app store, or trick the user into clicking something they shouldn't.",
"Great write ups guys. I thank you for the time you put into them. I have one more question though. Is there tell tail signs of infection on a cellphone or are most quite discreet?"
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62aob5 | Why do some YouTube videos that show episodes of TV shows have unrelated borders in them that take up a third of the screen? | []( URL_0 ) | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are 2 reasons, the first is the uploader is trying to avoid the video being automatically flagged as copyright, Youtube has an automated system that can detect copyrighted content, an easy way to trick this is to either frame the video or to use stabilization (you may see some tv shows that were recorded from cable tv and see the logos dance about because of this). The other reason is because Youtube has a very big problem of fake videos specifically designed to generate ad revenue for the author. These videos come in many forms, the most common is \"product reviews\" where the video is just a bunch of still images with some music and text thrown over it, I'm sure you've seen a few of these. Well another but slightly less common tactic is to take a popular Youtube video or TV show and overlay your own ads into a border.",
"They do it to circumvent the Content ID system on YouTube. Content ID is a system that automatically looks for and flags copyrighted content. Since it does its detection by analyzing the video and audio and comparing it to known registered videos you can circumvent it by modifying the video and audio to a degree where it won't recognize it. Adding a large border is one of the easiest ways of doing so as far as the video is concerned. On videos like this audio also tend to be pitch shifted or warped slightly to make it not recognize the audio as well, but the slight audio modification necessary to circumvent Content ID tend to be a lot less noticable than the huge video borders are."
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62dx4b | What data can ISPs now sell? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There is a lot of misinformation regarding this recent resolution (H. Res 230) passed by Congress. The [FCC rule they repealed]( URL_0 ) was only passed back in October 2016, and wasn't set to take effect until at least October 2017. Basically, nothing has changed. ISP's are allowed to sell all the same information they've been allowed to sell for the past 15ish years.",
"They can't go selling us out yet! There are things you can do! First up - all SSL communications will be secure for the most part. Second - use of IPv6 will be the largest decrease in privacy - don't be quick to embrace IPv6 if you're not randomizing your radio's MAC addresses on each tower/AP change. If the MAC stays the same, then you will be clearly identifiable as you move from one network to the next - so advertisers and other tracking will know you, no matter your current network. 1) Wait for your ISP to publicly state what they're going to sell and how they're going to sell it. 2) Many ISP contracts do have clauses that protect users anonymity - those will have to change. 3) The upcoming changes will not permit ISP's to become a Man-in-the-middle (MITM) for your SSL communications. I know that Comcast has been preventing folks from learning who their customers specifically are for ages - hopefully this will continue - that or everyone who loads utorrent will get a letter from HBO. The largest trove of information that will be collected won't be from direct traffic metrics, but from a combination of the ISP's DHCP and DNS servers - as these can be used to identify every website you access and what you access them with.",
"How does privacy mode play into this? I'm asking for a friend.",
"The same data they could sell since the beginning of the internet. Nothing has changed in regards to what ISPs can do.",
"The same information they are currently selling. Baffles me that people don't actually pay attention to what the story actually is about and it doesn't take more than actually reading an article to understand it. The [policy was put in place in December by the Obama Administration]( URL_0 ) when they were leaving office. It is now likely being repealed so there is no real change. Everything that has been going on for years will be going on. Nothing changes. This wasn't a hot topic in December because it wasn't that big of a deal one way or the other. No one championed it as a huge win for privacy. Big tech companies like Google and Facebook which already capture this data and sell it don't like the competition from ISPs. If ISPs can't sell it then the firms that are gathering the data can charge more for the data. This is simple. Both sides have been trying to take care of their donors. It was why the Obama Administration put the favor of a policy in place before leaving office and is why the Trump administration is supporting the repeal.",
"Is this only for US or does it work like that everywhere now?",
"Everyone keeps saying the same data they could always sell, like that answer 1) Answers the Question or 2) Makes it somehow okay"
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62e4xg | We download antivirus software on our laptops but not our phones, despite using our phones for the same sorta stuff. Is that cos our phones are already more secure? If so, why can't laptops be made as secure too? [Technology] | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are 100% NOT more secure in the sense of being immune to viruses. However a common way for viruses to be put on devices is to trick the user into downloading and installing something on their device. When you go online and see the flashing \"YOU HAVE A VIRUS DOWNLOAD THIS FOR HELP!\" a lot of people will click on that and get a virus if they are on PC. However phones have a setting that's defaulted to only allowing programs to be installed through the Play store or market or whatever the iPhone store is called. So right there you have a large barrier to entry for a virus. Obviously if an virus gets to the store in the form of an app it can easily be put on the phone, but I believe all stores have some sort of basic vetting to prevent more elementary viruses.",
"Phones are not more secure. Celular phone trojans have been around forever. I work in IT. A big problem (or \"challenge\" as the CIOs would say) in IT today is with BYOD (Bring your own device) security. You have a personal smart phone, but you also need access to your scheduling, email and more. How do you ensure these devices are secure without overstepping generally accepted bounds in terms of privacy and ownership? You can't \"track everything\" because it would invade their privacy. You can't \"do nothing\" because it could compromise your corporate security. You can issue them a phone (what companies used to do before everyone already had one), but you can bet your staff will complain and be less effective if they have to carry two phones, and it's costly as well. There really is no clear solution.",
"I would just like to add that most of the content user's are getting on a phone/tablet comes from either an app (downloaded from an app store), or through the web browser. On PCs, users download programs from un-trusted sources, often with toolbars in the installers and other junk.",
"As has been said before smartphones are not more secure. The reason you see less in the way of viruses and malware on them than computers is because the methods of installing software are more restricted. The average person only downloads apps from the phones respective app store. This doesn't mean that you couldn't get a virus from another source like a download link on a page or an email attachment. Both Microsoft and Apple are very restrictive when it comes to what apps can be uploaded to their stores. One thing they check for is known viruses and malware. That doesn't mean they never get through. Google on the other hand does very little to check the apps that are uploaded. This is why there are thousands of apps in the Play store, this is also why there are so many garbage apps, viruses and malware in the store. Source: Used to work in phone app developer support. (Nothing like getting to tell a dev that their app is nothing but spyware and thats why we won't upload it)"
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62eewl | how do game developers determine the level of complexity and fidelity they can get in their engine from a hardware platform? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The hardware is capable of doing a certain amount of calculations per second. The game will require a certain amount of calculations per second, which can be raised or lowered by changing certain aspects of the game (draw distance, texture resolution, model quality, lighting quality, particle effects, etc.) Developers change those aspects until they reach the point where the calculations required is equal to the calculations available, and they have the best trade off between features (ex: draw distance vs. field of view) for the game they're making."
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62hs8a | How is SpaceX's successful reusable rocket landing more significant than the space shuttle program? | I am not questioning the significance of this tremendous achievement; I would just like to understand what makes it an even greater accomplishment and what are the improvements and benefits when compared to the space shuttle, which was also a reusable space transport vehicle. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Space Shuttle got back a small part of the system, plus some solid rocket booster parts that were recovered. The SpaceX solution gets back more than half of the rocket.",
"The space shuttle could barely be called a reusable space vessel. Whenever we would launch the shuttle we would let go of the first and second stage boosters and they would float off into the void of space. If the space shuttle was a car then every time we launched it we would throw away the engine, transmission, and the wheels where falcon 9 just needs more gas. [space shuttle going up]( URL_1 ) [what we got back]( URL_0 )"
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62hz92 | How to fake number apps (such as Phoner, Burner, etc) work? | I always wonder how the apps such as Burner, where you get a fake cell phone number to text and call people with work? How does the app get fake numbers? How can my fake number call and text people? With an app like Phoner, how are they offering this service for free? (Although you can buy more than one number, or buy a number of your choosing). I'm just really wondering how this works! Thanks in advance! :) EDIT: Also, just realized I said "to" instead of "do" in my title... I wish we could edit titles, lol. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The app doesn't use fake numbers, the numbers are real. Their app changes some configuration on your phone so that... When you make a call your phone dials Burner which then forwards your call to the number you dialled. The number you dialled receives the call from your Burner number so they see that on callerID instead of your 'real' number. When a call is received to the Burner number Burner forwards the call to your 'real' number. This is transparent to the caller, they don't know it's a Burner number, and they don't know it's forwarded to another number (your 'real' number). Similar for SMS, it's sent through the Burner app which sends it via your Burner number. SMS received to your Burner number is forwarded to the Burner app on your phone. No idea how they're offering it for free. Phone numbers ranges are cheap to purchase, they must make enough from paid subscibers to cover the cost of the freeloaders."
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62i0lk | Watching COPS and wondering why radios always sound so scratchy/crackly? Is it possible to get it as clear as the sound we get when talking through phones? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nope. Cell phones have a huge amount of infrastructure in order to work. Remember when you've got no bars, first responders wouldn't be OK with that. So, they use radios with bigger antennas and more power and the signal goes directly to their police station. Just today, AT & T got a contract and some dedicated radio spectrum to start to build FirstNet, a cellphone-like system for first responders. Something like $40B in infrastructure to let them have dedicated cellular coverage everywhere that can't get overloaded in an emergency because nobody but first responders can use it. Maybe in a decade, we'll see."
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62i5xg | how does overclocking a computer work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The system oscillator, a little chip that synchronizes the other chips, is set to run at a higher frequency than the standard that the chips are engineered for. To improve yield, most parts operate perfectly well a little above the standard frequency. The overclocker makes their clock a little faster in steps until their computer starts to have random errors. Then they dial the clock back a little and they know that their computer is running as fast as the slowest part can go.",
"The CPU has a clock, that acts as kind of a metronome for the system, keeping all the various operations in sync. A typical clock might drum out a beat at a rate of 2 billion (2 gigahertz or GHz) a second. This clock can be adjusted, but the faster it goes, the more heat the CPU produces and the great the chance of failure. Manufacturers are pretty conservative in their settings, as they want zero chance of CPU failure while processing their customer's mission-critical applications. A general user, particularly gamers, are more tolerant of failures and can reduce failure with more sophisticated cooling systems. Instead of a 100% 2 GHz CPU, you might have a 99.9999% stable 2.3 Ghz CPU. Also, overclocking can void warranties and reduce the life of your CPU."
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62lbb3 | If Microsoft has the most info on Malware/Viruses/Spyware - why is Windows Defender not the best at its job? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"For starters, who says Microsoft has \"the most info on malware/viruses/spyware\"? Though Microsoft is able to collect more information on its products' usage than any other organization, that doesn't mean it is granted some secret knowledge about virus development that other companies don't have. All antivirus companies know the same things about viruses and malware. Secondly, Windows Defender is pretty good. Not great, but pretty good for the average user. It's not the best because Microsoft doesn't put as many resources into developing it as some other companies whose sole focus is malware protection. Windows Defender is almost an afterthought—it's a very nice feature that ships with Windows for free, but it's not Windows's selling point. Its selling point is the operating system as a whole. Compare that to other companies' products whose primary selling point is antivirus software—there's an entirely different focus there. Lastly (and this point is debatable), in reference to you saying Windows Defender \"is not the best\", we don't really have a definition for \"best\". I've used strong, strict third-party antivirus software that has prevented legitimate programs from running because it's suspected they're dangerous. However, I have never had this issue with Windows Defender. Is being overly strict \"better\" even if it raises false alarms? Maybe, but maybe not. However, you can be certain that any review that compares various antivirus softwares' effectiveness will be basing their review almost entirely on *how strict* the software is, not *how reasonable* it is. **tl;dr—**Microsoft does not have \"the most info\" on malware, and Windows Defender is not a bad antivirus software. However, it would likely be improved if it were a bigger selling point for Microsoft."
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62lcu2 | is it possible to make an argument that my browsing history is a unique collection of destinations curated by me and therefore is my intellectual property that I create and own? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yeah, I don't think it would stop anything. I have been pissed off about the recent developments though and as a programmer with time on his hands I was thinking of ways I might contribute to subversion of this bullshit. I think one prong of a multi-pronged solution for the people would be to devalue the data by essentially corrupting it. Developers would create \"pseudo-browsers\" or \"distorters\". You would load these with personally identifiable info that you are looking to devalue. These automated browser processes would then bumble about the web using various scripts and redirects architected to basically trash the economic value of the associated 'profile' by intentionally making requests that make the data look suspect/fake and making it difficult to separate \"real\" user requests from those of their \"browser-history distorter\". IE: NRA: We'd like to buy a list of users who are into guns. ISP: $XXXXX.XX, thanks! NRA: Hey wait, all of these gun lovers seem to be into Hillary Clinton??? And sites about cross-dressing? WTF? These subversive browsers would really only need to accomplish the goal of making all their users' histories appear more or less the same by making their history more puff than real stuff.",
"You just made that argument so of course it can be made. I doubt it would hold up in any court though. You might equally say that the ISP isn't selling your list of websites, but only selling the list of the tasks they completed.",
"You could make that argument, but it would never fly. Your browser history is just a record of what you have done. It is you making a request of the ISP to get certain data and send certain data out. You can't claim that your request of someone else is somehow intellectual property that you created, since you didn't actually create anything."
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62lt23 | How is open source software audited? | I regularly hear the line, "It's open source, so it's safe/more reliable/more trustworthy/etc," but I don't have the time or know-how to verify open source code myself and imagine that the vast number of users out there are like me. We're all trusting that someone out there has the time and know-how to verify open source code and is actually doing so. Case in point: I used LastPass but given the latest news I'm looking for alternatives and have found open source options such as KeepassXC and bitwarden. How can I know there are people out there actually taking the time to verify they don't have bugs/exploits like LastPass and that the open source options are safer? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Unless someone independent has published a security audit of open-source software, you can't be *certain* someone's verified it to be exploit-free. This is true of closed-source software, too, mind, and in *that* case you can't verify the findings of an audit even if there is one and you have the skills. Even if there's a published audit, you have to look at how much the software has changed since it was conducted, and how much you trust the auditors (both in terms of their being non-malicious *and* in terms of their being sufficiently competent). However, many open-source applications have open mailing lists and bug-trackers, on which security flaws are routinely addressed. The presence of a communications channel dedicated to improving the application's security is a pretty strong indicator that there are people looking for flaws in the code. As a case in point, the incredibly popular library and toolkit OpenSSL has independent security audits, but enormous numbers of security flaws (mostly relatively minor, but occasionally very significant - remember Heartbleed?) are found and fixed outside of that process. In this way we can be doubly-sure that people are keeping an eye on it. For smaller projects, the scale is going to be less, but then so is the motivation to find exploits. As long as the process is there, you can be reasonably confident."
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62miit | How do companies push updates to your phone without an actual app update?. | Some of you may have noticed the recent twitter update that no longer counts usernames towards character limit (finally) but this was done without the app updating. How does this work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"the change was on the server end, not on the user end. That is why there wasn't an app update.",
"I am not familiar with the twitter app, but I can imagine one or two scenarios. First, most of that limit was enforced server side, and the change was done on the server. Second, when the app starts up and checks in with the server, the server sends a reply saying \"ignore character limit\"",
"With the app, you make a post that goes over the character limit, it sends it over to Twitter's servers which replies that you can't do that, where your app forwards the reply to your screen. Here, twitter updated their servers to not reject such requests. The app doesn't need to be updated as a result, the character limit is built into the server, not the app."
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62oki0 | why do Android phone manufacturers not force carriers to use the same software like on iOS? | For example with Samsung, each carrier has their own version of the software. Would it not be more efficient to make all carriers have the exact same software and just update that like on iOS? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because the manufacturers have very little power. If Samsung gives the carriers a hard time, they can immediately switch to HTC or another brand that's quite similar. By contrast, if Apple gives the carriers a hard time, there is no very similar substitute they can choose, so they tolerate it."
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62py6m | How were huge circulation daily newspapers like the New York Times prepared/printed/distributed nationwide before computers? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Manufacturing was handled with a machine that assisted with typesetting, which did the work that computer programs do now (I will post video links for some of this below because I can't simply describe it) and webfed offset presses (these are big mechanical printing presses that print on a roll of paper instead of sheets - early presses required separate machines for folding and cutting). Operations, such as delivery and logistics, were tracked and coordinated on the back end with ledgers (people wrote out the plans for the delivery routes). Large groups of people did the manual labor to bundle the folded papers. These would be palletized and trucked to various delivery points. Press URL_0 Typesetting URL_1"
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62q85e | Why do all major virtual assistants have soothing female voices? | Alexa Siri Cortana The battery levels in my headphones | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because of the fact that people respond better to a female voice than a male's in most situations. Could you imagine Mr. T in your headphones? \"Fool! You're batteries bout to die! Change em' Now!\""
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62q8ri | How does code signing work? | and how do developers get their code signed (think for apple or ps vita) and homebrew is unsigned? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is a little tricky, and super cool (math-wise). If you're ready, we start by having to know one important thing about what a program ('code', or 'executable', or 'app') is, and two clever math things. Firstly, a program is a file with a particular format. Your computer's operating system is designed to read in files with that format, and run them. The file is divided into different sections, of which \"the runnable code\" is a really important section. But there's another section: the digital signature. The file is designed so that an executable can have the signature changed, and it's still a runnable file. The first clever math thing is a HASH function. A hash function converts a long sequence of bytes into a number. The clever part of the hash function is that the same bytes always returns the same number, but that different bytes will probably return a different number. Some hash functions are \"weak\": it's easy to make a sequence of bytes that matches a number that you want to match. Other hash functions are \"cryptographically strong\", meaning that you can't. Cryptography researchers get famous if they can \"break\" a cryptographically strong hash function. The second amazingly clever math thing are public/private key encryption functions. If you give one of these functions a string and one of the keys, you get a message that's encrypted. The only way to decrypt the message is with the other key. So I can encrypt a message with a public key, give it to you, and you can decrypt it with the private key. A message you encrypt with the private key can only be decrypted with the public key. Now we have enough pieces to sign the code. The OS maker has a set of keys (private+public). The public key is put into the operating system, and the private key is kept very, very securely. Anyone can look at the public key, but the security of the private key is like the security for the gold at Fort Knox. When the company gets an app submitted to their app store, they do a couple of steps. The first is to HASH the runnable code (so they get the number) and then they ENCRYPT the number with their private key. Then they put that encrypted number into the file. When the computer decides whether to run the code, they first DECRYPT the number (so they get the hash back out). Then they try to hash the runnable code. If the two values match, the computer knows that code hasn't been tampered with AND it's been signed by the company! If the code was tampered with, it would have the wrong hash. And if the hash was tampered with, it wouldn't decrypt with the public key! (There are also ways to prove that the public key on the computer hasn't been tampered with AND that the operating system hasn't been tampered with) Fun cryptography fact: that encryption algorithm with the public and private keys? The mathematicians were really just playing around with some fancy algebra. They didn't realize, at the time, that their fancy algebra would be so useful for encryption!"
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62r062 | How is 720p content displayed on Full HD monitor? | Let say we have 100 x 100 pixel monitor. We play a 70 x 70 movie, how are color pixels distributed? If we play 50x50 movie, 1 color in that content will expand to 4 pixels in 100 x 100 monitor but 70 is an odd number to 100. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The playback device employs a technique called interpolation. This normally happens even when a 50x50 movie is displayed on a 100x100 monitor as well. In the simplest form, when a new pixel needs to be made, the computer(or whatever you use) looks at the surrounding pixels, and generates a pixel that has the average color of the ones around it. This however would look a bit ugly if it just inserted an uneven amount of pixels here and there. It's however no problem to create an algorithm that deals with several pixels. If a computer wants to interpolate a 1x2 \"image\" consisting of a red and a blue pixel up to a 1x3 image, it knows that the first pixel will be 100% red, the second pixel will be 50% red and 50% blue, and the last pixel will be 100% blue. If you have a situation with 3 pixels being interpolated to 4. Let's say red green and blue, the computer calculates that the first will be 100% red, the second pixel will be 50% red and 50% green, the 3rd will be 50% green and 50% blue, the last pixel will be 100% blue. As you can see, the \"pure green\" pixel no longer gets represented as pure green. With this strong color changes and so few pixels, you get a significant degradation in image quality, but this effect is lessened the more pixels an image has, as the computer gets more data points to generate color from. Doing this to a 70x70 going to 100x100 is the same, except instead of going from 3 to 4, you go from 7 to 10, and in two dimensions instead of one. You'll get some percentages that don't add up, but the computer just rounds them off. The inaccuracies from rounding them off won't be noticable to human eyes anyway. This happens even if you have a 2x2 image going to 4x4. You don't just get 4 points of color that now take up 4 pixels. The additional pixels are also interpolated, so you get gradient colors in between the 4 original pixels. It doesn't really matter that you're doing it with an uneven number of pixels, as the computer can handle hundreds of varying intensities of color, and will usually be able to find an appropriate color to fill the nexw pixels with. If one of the original pixels land on the \"border\" of two new pixels, you kinda lose the \"pure\" color of that pixel, and instead get two new pixels that each have part of the original's pixel's color. This is why images that are slightly off-resolution become much fuzzier, especially if they have clean lines with lots of contrast. There are many types of interpolation. Each interpolation algorithm (a fancy word for a complex mathematical function used to calculate things) calculates the values for additional pictures differently, leading to different results. Some methods are better at guessing new pixel colors than others, but may consume more processing power (a big deal if a low-power device needs to perform this operation 24 times (or more) a second). Some algorithms make better results when shrinking images, others may make better results when magnifying them."
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62yo5m | How does URL_0 work, and has a petition ever succeeded making a change? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I mean there was a petition to bring GTA V to PC that hit [almost 750.000 people]( URL_0 ), and then it came out roughly a year later. But im fairly certain it was at least already in the talks, maybe even had a few people working on it before that and then after they saw interest they put more resources into it.. It definetly showed Rockstar that there was a market though.",
"There was a petition to get President Barack Obama on Real Time with Bill Maher, and he eventually did go on.",
"For what it's worth we had a very popular petition here in Germany a few months ago. VGWort (essentially the organisation responsible for the copyright of all written stuff, sort of like GEMA for books) and the German universities couldn't come to an agreement regarding the payment of royalties. For years the universities payed VGWort in bulk to distribute material to students, but now they made unreasonable request that would have kept professors from distributing pretty much anything and setting us all back to the pre-digital age. We got emails from the student body telling us to download everything we could while we still had the chance, and we were all scared that we would no longer get the course materials necessary to study properly. Well, pretty much every student in Germany signed the petition and VGWort finally budged, for a while at least. EDIT: corrected WortVG to VGWort",
"I made a petition a while ago on changing the laws for school music lessons, and within a few weeks it had had nearly 10'000 signatures, and had been mentioned by many famous musicians. The council then found the petition and decided to postpone the changing of the law. Edit: Here's the link URL_0",
"It basically just shows that there are numbers of people interested and supporting this or that idea. Much depends upon the idea or the problem itself: you can't just make the country government retire because there are 50 millions virtual signs on a webpage. But you can for example get the city mayor to know about an old house without ramps for wheelchairs and there are disabled people living in who need it. Or hospital refusing supplying ill people with vital preparates. Stuff like that is what I mostly seen being successful here in Russia. It also depends on the insistence, assertiveness and activity of petition starter. Things won't just happen because there are people who signed the petition, you have to make the officials know about it and convince them that there are actual people, not bots signed.",
"Imagine URL_0 petitions as Reddit posts, and each signature is an upvote. The more people support it by signing (upvoting) it, the more visibility it gains, the more attention it commands. Of course the party involved can choose to ignore the posts, but it's a strong indicator of interest. It makes it easier for people involved to gauge what's the public opinion and choose to take or not take action. In the end they're just a suggestion, they have no real power unless people actually take action in real life. But it certainly can change minds when people see how popular certain things are, and choose to take action. The real power comes when each cause, each signature, each post, each upvote translate into real actions in real life.",
"Your question presumes that change happens in a very straightforward, cause - > effect manner. It doesn't. People push and shove and yell and scream and work and sweat and bleed and get discouraged and work some more and watch the world not care and work some more and nothing happens. And then, eventually, something happens. It is a slow and terribly frustrating process, and often change doesn't take place -- and certainly not for a long time. Two steps forward, one step back and all that. But change can and does happen. [East Timor]( URL_0 ) is now free. Case closed. Petitions -- online or off -- are a very small part of that process. Do they work? Who knows? I can tell you from my own personal experience that many Congressional offices merely tally the communications they get for and against a particular position or issue. This may or may not sway the Senator/Rep to vote one way or another, but sustained pressure of various types will often prevent an elected official from endorsing something terribly unpopular or opposing something with overwhelming support.",
"simple. it doesnt. it raises awareness to whatever cause someone feels like starting a petition about and then rapes your email for the rest of eternity",
"You tryin to get some of that szeshwan dipping sauce from McDonald's?",
"We have a similar thing in the UK. It is mostly a waste of time. Parliament will \"debate\" things but nothing ever happens. At least nothing important. I am sure somebody can point to some stupid thing that got signatures but it is mostly a waste of time imho.",
"There was a petition to reduce letting fees by estate agents in the UK. They can be very high and feel extortionate. The petition went to parliament and a change to the laws on estate agents fees was announced 4 months go. Seems fairly successful.",
"[The petition to get Digimon: Cyber Sleuth released in the west was credited as a major factor in that happening, and the developers of the game made a personal thank you video to fans for doing it which allowed them to get the localization green-lit]( URL_0 )",
"If it counts, Finland has sort of a petition system organized by the government. If the petition receives enough signatures the parliament will debate the issue. So far it has resulted in gay marriage becoming legal last month.",
"The idea behind petitions is really, really simple: you get a bunch of people to state formally, in writing, that they would like some aspect of an organization's policy changed. If they get \"enough\" signatures, this can be used as leverage to suggest that not implementing that change would result in a loss of business or an election. Importantly, if the thing you want changed is not in some way responsible to the public at large (say, the manufacturing of industrial machinery, which is bought by factory owners, not consumers) then the petition is meaningless. What would be effective in this circumstance would be the factories using such equipment - of which there are probably far fewer than, say, Taco Bell customers who want a seasonal menu item returned - taking their business elsewhere, which will quickly effect the manufacturers bottom line. But anyway, /u/scartol is right. Petitions are just one, early, fairly weak step in applying social pressure to effect change. Ultimately, every desired alteration of society/business/culture/government is going to have unique requirements to force its passage. During the Obama Administration, and potentially still under Trump, I haven't checked, there was also a similar website for the White House specifically, which had a fixed threshold of signatures that would flag a petition for a response from the WH (importantly, not from Obama, and more likely than not from some extremely junior staffers, because nobody else has time to write a paragraph on why the president can't just make weed legal everywhere or sanction a country because 50000 people think they're evil). Generally speaking, the message was basically of the \"here's why we can't do this\" sort, or occasionally \"we're working on it, but no promises because republicans are probably going to block it\". Any new law would still need to pass congress and be signed by the president as always. The same thing applies to petition systems in parliamentary democracies that other posters have mentioned. As a government procedure, they do little except alert the legislature that people have a problem, and in some cases compels them to (briefly) debate it, but it's in no way an actual mechanism to make law.",
"In South Africa, we're currently on our 4th or 5th petition to have the president removed and still nothing. So I'd say for big changes like that, no, but likely for smaller things URL_0 certainly is useful",
"There was a local incident of a dog biting a person. When it becomes a legal matter the dog is put down. A golden retriever named [Skippy]( URL_0 ) bit his owners grand daughter twice in two months. It became a legal matter for the town an the selectmen voted to put the dog down. After an outpouring of support petition, Facebook page, and donations Skippy was released. The important thing to remember is that the government works for you. Politicians are just weather vanes, they point in whatever direction the wind is telling them to point. When enough ~~people~~ voters organize behind something they have no choice but to round up into the wind. Petitioning does work, it just needs a lot of support.",
"It works as a placebo to make you feel like you've done something while doing nothing but giving your name and IP address to people who may use it against tou in the future"
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6308mj | How does a modern laptop have the same/more horsepower than a much chunkier games console without a built in display/trackpad/keyboard? | Staring at my laptop it's like 0.6 inches thin and has a quad core Intel i7 and a GPU that is roughly equivalent to an RX 460, which has been shown to be faster than an Xbox One/PS4 (Non Pro) in lots of cases. I know other laptops like the Razer Blade are just a bit thicker and have WAY more GPU power and still more CPU power than other consoles, yet they also pack in peripherals and a display. Looking at just the bottom of most laptops, which holds the computer internals, how are they so thin nowadays while consoles look like bricks in comparison? I realize desktop PC's are bigger because they have standard interchangeable parts in a large airflow case but for consoles they're able to be custom manufactured to precise proprietary specifications, so why can't Sony/Microsoft make a super slim console? EDIT: Forgot to mention, laptops have internal power supplies and massive batteries too, so that makes it even more impressive and confusing to me about how they are able to fit so much more stuff in. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Making things smaller costs more money. Consoles are primarily designed to be cost effective. Allowing more space for cooling & components allows them to keep the costs down a bit. They also need to have oversized cooling systems to deal with the poor environments & lack of maintenance they're likely to experience.",
"Consoles have never been designed to utilize the most up to date hardware, and they most assuredly do not have efficient software. The fact that consoles are held to tight specs means they will be surpassed very quickly as new products are made. In general upgrade parts are released every 3-6 months."
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6312cj | Why do smartphones never seem to get viruses but computers do when people use them for pretty much the same stuff these days? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your PC can run any program that's on it at any time. But your Android smartphone can only run programs downloaded from the app store unless you change an option deep in settings, and your iPhone can't run programs from unknown sources at all (unless you jailbreak it) And because viruses are computer programs that need to be ran to do anything, they have a much harder time getting on a smartphone. They have to exploit a security flaw somewhere in the system, which is a whole lot harder than just getting an ignorant PC user to just download and double-click an .exe file containing a virus.",
"A couple of things to consider before reading. I am in no way an expert in this but have a decent amount of knowledge in computers so there is probably some errors in what is written but the general idea of it should be sound. I limited the complexity of a computer system to just an operating system to make things easier to understand when in practice there are way more variables in play. Viruses must be written for the operating system it is attacking. People wish to get as much work out of their virus as possible to so they tend to attack the group with the largest amount of users so windows is always a good start and then they can do some others if they feel they need to. Why set a trap in a place that sees only 50 people a day when another place sees 500? Phones operating systems upgrade much more frequently than personal computers. Because of this the viruses written for phones have a shorter lifespan before they need to be upgraded. Virus writers are more tempted to write for the more permeant platform so they don't have to work as hard. People get new phones more frequently than new computers. An infected system is only useful when it is on. Once your old phone loses power the virus is no longer doing its job and your new phone has to, by chance, be infected again to be useful. Again personal computers are a more stable platform. Programs on personal computers can be downloaded from whatever website offers a download button and these programs can come with viruses. On phones there is the added security of the apps marketplace for whichever type of phone you have. These places are where you can download operating system specific programs for your phone. Although this makes for a tempting hunting ground for a virus writer, the people that run the apps marketplace wish to keep it virus free and attempt to monitor it as best they can. They can also remove apps that are reported to contain viruses to slow down the spread. Apps can be downloaded from sources outside an app marketplace but the ability to install these programs is usually disabled by default on your phone adding a little extra protection. Normal files, that have little or nothing to do with phones like a picture or pdf, downloaded from random websites are less likely to infect your phone since the the virus must be made to target a specific operating system so it would be more efficient just to go for Windows if you were to pick just one. Phones have weaker processing power than a personal computer. A virus takes processing power away from the user when it is doing its assigned functions. After several viruses are collected, this creates the slow down that people notice when they finally figure out they have a virus. Since a phone has less processing power a virus writer must be careful in making something that takes as little processing power away from the user as possible so it is not detected. If the phone slows down too much then the user will get it fixed and the phone will not have the virus anymore taking away the usefulness of the virus. The same can be said about personal computers but the more powerful processing power allows for more viruses leaching of your computer before it becomes noticeable. So because of this there is more uptime for a virus written for a personal computer than a phone making it a better target to attack. Personal computers have been around longer than phones so there has been more time to write viruses for them. Also this gives more time to find security weaknesses in programs to sneak viruses into a system. Tldr. Viruses on personal computers can work longer and be more productive than those on phones."
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6313ee | Why haven't USB ports been updated to allow cords to be pushed in both ways? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You're in for a treat: They have. URL_0 USB-C is entirely reversible, and integrates a lot of other cool stuff, to boot.",
"They have. [USB-C]( URL_0 ) connectors are reversible, so it doesn't matter which way you plug it in. (If that's what you meant by \"pushed in both ways\")."
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631h1g | Why does skipping ahead in an online video make it take so long to load? | What I don't understand is how the video can start playing the moment I load the page, but skipping forward slows it down so much? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A video is serialized (the data is send to your phone/computer across the network in bits). For give the perception of seamless content, they send the portions they expect you to view first (the beginning) first. While you are viewing the video, the rest is being sent to you in the background. The rate of transfer most of the time is faster than the rate of playback so it's likely that when you get to a point in playback, the portion is already transferred to your device. If you jump forward, it's possible that you didn't get that section yet (since they are sending the content in the expected viewing order) so the current load has to be interrupted and resume from the point you want. Depending on your browser, this can also cause other intermittent delays depending on how they handle the old content stream. For example, if they wanted to merge the two sections, then it has to do some background work and still try to fetch the section in between that it doesn't have yet, slowing down the rate that you are getting the section you are actually viewing."
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631jkp | ; Why does playing video games make me feel psychically better? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If unwell-ness or pain is the only signal your brain is receiving, you will end up focusing on it. Gaming or any other mood-lifting activity provides a distraction for your mind so you don't focus so much on the pain. It's similar to types of painkiller that reduce the sensations of pain. You don't notice the pain as your body naturally recovers. In more intense games, your body can get into a fight-or-flight mode where it ignores immediate pain to help you survive (virtually). This is a short term effect and not recommended too often if you are sick as it weakens your body and immune system to be constantly stressed. The \"painkilling\" or \"mood-lifting\" effect of gaming is also how people can get video game addictions. If games (like food, drugs, alcohol, etc.) can block out physical or emotional pain, people can become addicted and spend excessive amounts of time chasing their temporary happiness."
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631l5p | Why is Net Neutrality so heavy on the governments agenda? | Why do they care about sites getting priority? How would ISP's even benefit from giving certain sites priority? Edit: I already asked this in a comment but what I'm trying to get at is why this is so mainstream? Charging people for priority when there are tons of sites that can't afford that seems like it would fall under shady business practice to me. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cable companies stand to make a lot of money if Net Neutrality is removed, so they naturally spend money trying to influence politicians to make it a priority. Government left on it's own probably would not be as interested in the subject. Cable companies (ISPs) don't like services like youtube and Netflix because people choose to not pay for TV cable and simply use youtube and Netflix and choose to decline cable. This is why cable companies have been offering bundle packages for cheaper than internet only because it forces people to buy these older technologies and keep them in the market. If Net Neutrality were removed, cable companies could charge more money for using streaming services like Netflix and cable and further influence people to try to take cable over streaming."
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633gj6 | What computer language is artificial intelligence written in and is it enough? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One computer language is equivalent to another in terms of what they *can* do, but AI has historically been associated with Lisp, Prolog, Java, C, and Python. There's no reason you can't do it in whatever language you want, of course."
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633nsg | How come a restaurant dishwashing machine can cycle in 3 minutes, while at home mine takes several hours? | Like literally 3 hours and the dishes aren't even that dry.. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Home dishwashers are made to stretch the wash cycle out to save money, using less water in short bursts, stuff like that. If your dishwasher is a newer model, it should have several options. One of those should be a quick wash, which you would use if you need the dishes washed in a hurry, more like a restaurant's. Only use that one if you're in a hurry, though. It's better to use the regular one to save energy and money.",
"Commercial dishwashers use very high pressure and large amounts of water for a comparatively small amount of dishes. It costs much more to run and purchase one of those than a residential model.",
"Restaurant models also are more like sanitizers in my experience. You've got someone washing dishes roughly then they get run through the dishwasher as a final measure. It also helps them dry as it's so hot. If the dishwasher (person) doesn't rinse properly you'll get bits of food stuck to the dishes when they comeout of the machine.",
"Finally a post on my inordinate and unwanted expertise and I'm probably too late! Here goes anyway: As a former restaurant dishwasher for about 2.5 years, these machines would be *hugely* inefficient for home use. The home dishwasher is made to be more water and energy efficient, as /u/IllyriaGodKing said, while the industrial sized machines are made to be efficient over many, *many* uses. Firstly, in the case of the one restaurant I worked for, the machine wasn't owned by the restaurant, but leased from the company that made it. This gave us access to their repairmen when things inevitably and frequently went wrong. Paddles sticking in the on position, paddles sticking in the off position, not drawing on any soap, using too much soap, drain clogs, power failures, heat failures, nearly everything that you could imagine to go wrong did at one point. You need access to these professionals or all of their tools and knowledge. Second, these aren't made for you to cook throughout the day, load up all your dishes at once, and be done in three minutes. I want one myself for that reason, because that kitchen spoiled me as far as quick and easy cleanliness. What they're made to do is fill up a large, multiple gallon tank of water in the morning, keep it heated all day, wash many large loads through the day, and empty and clean out at night. This is how they become efficient and affordable for a restaurant; they actually have a quantity of dishes to call for it as a need. At home, we'll waste gallons of water and lots of energy. Finally, all the maintenance that isn't covered by the aforementioned professionals: regular ass cleaning of this giant ass machine. You'll need to do it *a lot*. Solid food waste will get stuck in the drains, the water jets, the gratings below the wash area. The presence of large quantities of water on rust resistant metal will cause lime to build up in great amounts. In my nearly 3 years at this restaurant, we spent many efforts trying to get all that gunk off, and I never once saw it completely lime-free.",
"I own a restaurant and I didn't come across one very big factor in the replies: our detergent is so concentrated that if u spill some on your skin you better rinse it within 15 seconds or so or your skin will get red. It's really strong stuff.",
"I asked this once when I was working as time worker, and another time when I saw a way bigger version for a work canteen with lots of people coming through. The smaller versions: Blast the dishes with high preassuer and lots of heat. Only certain lipsticks dont come off with those. These are used if at \"smaller\" concert halls with \"fine dining\" (champagne, red wine, salmon). They basically are cupboards with high pressure system in it that starts as soon as you close it. These are normaly only used for glasses and small plates, not for cutlery. The bigger ones in canteens, have conveyor belt system, and are nasty deathtraps. They work with several high pressure nozzles, very high temperatures (if I remember right > 100°C ) and also need quit agressive cleaning detergents, and have 3 compartments, cleaning, rinsing, drying. They get everything from the plate, glass, cutlery. They proably would destroy and finer porclain. For why deathtraps: sometimes compartments with dishes in them get stuck, you need to step in and manually correct them. They are high enough to stand upright, but the visibility is quite low from outside towards service. As with the others, closing the hood starts the process. If you don't lock that down, and somebody starts with you inside the world of pain starts. Had this happen once in one of our canteens (before it was \"ours\") after hours, no more customers; closing down. Kitchen helper hops in to fix something, \"assigned dishwasher\" closes the hood, \"kitchen head\" saw the hood closing and rush over to hit the emergency shut of while at the same time calling an ambulance, all withing seconds. That guy almost was cooked alive in a man sized pressure cooker.",
"What others have said, but also that they preheat the water. I had a professional dishwasher for a while (long story) and have worked in a kitchen hospital. Those washers take 45 minutes from you turn them on until they are ready to go, but once full with water and heated, they do each load in a few minutes. Home washers heat the water on the fly, which takes time.",
"One, we have a heat booster which amps up the temperature of the water to just below boiling and keeps it there. Two, we have high pressure sprayers and an incredible reservoir of water. That's about as simple as it gets. The restaurant cycles in just a couple of minutes because the dishwasher people first spray off almost all of the stuck on food with a high pressure sink sprayer. After moving through even higher pressure sprayers in the machine at a temperature that will kill all germs (even if the water does look milky and gunky - gray) that's basically why. However, a restaurant spends a lot of money on this water. Which is why the GM is breathing down our backs if we ever use more water than absolutely necessary. Home dishwashers aren't designed for speed and capacity.",
"Other than the things mentioned by others, the ones we use also reuse the water for washing, and just rinse with fresh water. The one for glasses also has an osmosis system attached. They have reservoirs for the cleaning agents, too, which would probably dry out too much when used in a domestic setting. At the end of the day, the machines pump out the old water, and when they are turned back on, it takes about half an hour until they can be used.",
"Restaurant dish machines are insane. The one at my work runs a load of close to 20 plates or 30ish cups in a minute and twenty seconds. But the excess of water is pretty obvious. Not to mention the chemicals are way more expensive and heavy duty than normal dish soap. But they don't work at all if you don't partially scrub and rinse dishes before they're pushed through. But they get the job done quickly. Source: Have been a dishwasher at same restaurant since I was 15. Pretty interesting first job. You learn a lot about how restaurants work",
"To somewhat TL/DR the other answers: Imagine if you had a commercial dishwashing machine at home. You load your dishes in, put the detergent in, close the doors, and in 90 seconds you have clean dishes. Great, right? Except you don't *need* your dishes clean in 90 seconds, and in fact the energy, water usage and noise make this commercial dishwasher rather inconvenient and inefficient for home use. Instead, your home unit is designed for energy efficiency and convenience, at the cost of speed and noise. You don't mind if your wash cycle takes an hour. You'd rather it be quiet and not be the only thing you'll be able to hear. You'd rather not take up the space for the extra hot water tank to feed the dishwasher. In a bar or restaurant, those needs are reversed. They need their clean dishes right away and don't mind the noise and energy efficiency.",
"A commercial washer (at least the ones I used a lot in the 90's) had a large reservoir of water. This water heated up and you ran the dishes through the machine. You changed the water periodically (IIRC). A home washer has to heat up the water and wash a single batch, then heat up more water and rinse. Heating all this water takes time when you're only doing one batch.",
"Work for a chemical company that makes and sells dishwashers: first, as previously mentioned, the detergent is way more concentrated. Furthermore, commercial machines use detergent, a chlorine based sanitizer, and a rinse aid (which is an additive that stops the water from forming droplets, hence increasing surface area and allowing faster drying). Next, it requires 140 degrees minimum because that is the temp at which grease breaks down. They also have two main washer arms and massive motor that shoots the water to the top and bottom arms causing way more water contact than a home machine that has a low power single arm. Lastly, as opposed to some comments, commercial machines are actually very water efficient. Most machines are between 1-1.5 gallons per load for single rack machines. Moral of the story, home dishwashers are designed to be loaded and ran with safety in mind. They are designed so the detergent is non corrosive and safe for all types of wares. Commercial machines are designed to break down buildup on wares non existent in homes, for wares way more durable than domestic wares, and as efficient as possible because labor is expensive. TL/DR - Domestic machines need to run longer because the results variables are substantially weaker and a commercial machine needs to be way stronger and have efficiency as the key.",
"Residential dishwashers cycles are now longer than 10-15 years ago in an attempt to reduce the noise of the equipment. More gentle less noisy spraying for a longer time.",
"Because it's not a dishwasher, it's a sanitizer? The dishwasher is the underpaid dude or dudette rinsing and scrubbing the plates before racking them up and shoving them in. - Former DMO* *Dish Maintenance Officer",
"Plumbing Engineer here. Those commercial machines are often fed by hotter 140 degree F water. Then they have their own booster heater to heat the water again. They also consume a lot of water and spray it at higher pressures than something residential.",
"> Like literally 3 hours and the dishes aren't even that dry.. It sounds like you have a defective dishwasher and you should replace it. My mediocre Home Cheapo dishwasher does a full cycle in 80 minutes. Dishes are completely dry when I open it.",
"Dishwasher roughly 2 years here. Expensive machine, high pressure water, really hot water, expensive concentrated chemicals, cycle effectively blasts everywhere on dishes if loaded properly, quick clean by dishwasher so machine doesn't actually have to much work-moreso just rinse. Running a single load through one of these is expensive and makes little sense for the average residential home.",
"I've worked on commercial dish machines for over 20 years. Those of us that install and maintain them refer to them as \"dish machines\" not dish washers. The commercial models are dish sanitizers, not dish washers. In the cleaning process there is what we refer to as the building blocks of cleaning. They are **Time, temperature, chemical concentration, and mechanical action.** You need to have all four of these to clean any surface. Think of it as a pie chart. If you remove a portion of one of these, it needs to be replaced with more of another. In a commercial warewashing environment time is the most important commodity, since labor costs account for about 25% of your business cost and we need to minimize that cost. In order to shorten the time we need to add to other sections of that pie in order to clean the dishes or 'wares'. We accomplish this by using several really strong chemicals (chemical concentration) and bigger wash arms and pump motors (mechanical action). There are high temp machines and low temp machines. The difference between the two are that a high temp uses hot water (180-195 degree) water to sanitize the wares in the rinse cycle and the low temp (120-145 degree water) uses a chemical like chlorine or bleach (50 parts per million) to sanitize during the rinse cycle. Either method requires pre-scrapping by the operator to remove the gross soil prior to washing items in the machine, because again it is a dish sanitizer not a dish washer. A 1 minute cycle time will not allow enough time to remove dried on gross soil.****",
"Restaurateur chiming in. Dishwashers in restaurants are more for sanitizing. Most dishes are pretty much clean before they go in. Thus allowing the chemicals and hot water to just sterilize it. Much to that point. If your dishwasher has a quick wash setting, you may want to make sure the dishes are relatively clean first.",
"Own restaurant. The restaurant models are generally faster because they reuse water. There is a boiler that takes a few to get up to temp. It holds water at that temp. Every few hours we drain the machine and flush with fresh water. We blast all food off of the dishes with a pressure hose. That's why we don't need to change frequently. Each cycle takes 2 mins. Home machines use fresh water each time. Why home machines take 1.5 hours I will never understand. Just replaced a 10 year. Old home machine and it only took 45 mins.",
"My dish washing machine cost about $10,000 at my restaurant. It better wash those dishes in a dooking hurry.",
"It's because in commercial settings they aren't dishwashers they are SANITIZERS. The person doing the dishes is supposed to scrape all the food off and put \"clean\" dishes in the sanitizer to rid them of germs. SANITIZING only takes a couple of minutes. Edit: added word",
"Because the pan washer I have at work blasts high heat water at such high pressure, it literally will cook anything on there. It's a gas powered washer with its own exhaust. It runs for 4 minutes, and the does a high heat fresh water blast to sanitize. I don't think you'll want something that costs $30,000-50,000 in your home making that much noise to save a few hours.",
"Former kitchen guy here. Two kinds of commercial dishwashers that I know of. High temp and low temp. THe high temp ones have a big time electricity sucking heat booster and high pressure nozzles that put super hot water on the dishes. There is also a drying agent chemical added to the rinse that helps reduce dry time. This is really why they come out dryer faster. The spray nozzels are also a lot like what you see on a pressure washer or the hose at the self serve car wash, so the water is very high pressure. You also load them on racks made specifically for the machine and type of dish, so everything is optimal conditions. Low temp machines work the same way but dont have the heat booster. These require extra sanitizer chemical added, since there is no extra heat to kill any germs. Typically you have chemical test strips and temperature test strips that you use to ensure that all chemical concentrations and temps are correct. This is usually logged throughout the day. Though Ill say in the mom and pop shop diner i worked in, no such consideration was given, and we did not have a drying agent. The dishes just sat and air dried. You also have dishwasher staff that spray and scrub all dishes before going into the machine. Even with a brand new machine putting a dish in with baked on cheese or something wont make it come out clean. edit: more info"
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636k9g | How exactly do VPN's block internet history/usage from ISP's? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine you live in a City with guard posts all around. When you hit the road (connect to a website), the guards (the ISP) try to see which roads you take each time you leave and watch you come and go to the neighboring cities (websites). They also have binoculars so good they can read your GPS instructions. Now, there's also a tunnel between your home city and another city that is in a country outside the guards' view and jurisdiction (the VPN server). The guards will only see that you left your home at XX:XX and came back at YY:YY through the tunnel. And even if they can read your GPS instructions, they're always the same: *1. Take the tunnel to FarAwayCity*",
"I'll give three examples: (1) unencrypted (2) encrypted (HTTPS) (3) VPN. Unencrypted: your requests are plainly visible for each website you go to. GET URL_0 GET URL_2 /watch=Video Encrypted (HTTPS): they can see what website you go to but not anything other than that. URL_1 [Gibberish follows] URL_2 [Gibberish] VPN: They only see you connecting to one service, the VPN. So they have no idea what websites you are visiting *or* what pages you're viewing; they only see gibberish going between you and whatever VPN you're using. 123.123.123.123 [gibberish, could be Google, Netflix, etc.] 123.123.123.123 [gibberish] Everything gets routed through that one VPN service. Only the VPN will know what sites you're visiting.",
"A VPN funnels all traffic through another computer. If a ISP were to look at connection logs, they would see a bunch of traffic going to/from the vpn server, and nothing else for someone solely connecting through the vpn."
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637pei | Why do calculator and keyboard number do not match the layout of the numbers on telephones? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When telephone buttons came to be, there were already 2 de facto standards established: calculators had 7, 8 and 9 on top, and classic rotary phone dials had 1 on top, and 7, 8 and 9 on the bottom. By the end of the 1950s, Bell Labs conducted a study comparing many arrangements (number of rows and columns, sorting of numbers) and the layout with the 1 on top (and the sorting that we now take for granted) was found to lead to less errors by operators. It looks like a simple decision, but there were a lot of factors at stake, including the mapping or sorting of the 3 or 4 letters associated to any of the numbers and symbols. You can read the study here: URL_0 (the list of button arrangements tried out is on pages 999-1000)."
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639cl6 | What happens if I don't click "I accept" on these cookie-prompts on webpages? | Are cookies not being stored until I accept or is it all just a bunch of smoke and mirrors trying to give me the sense of control? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Nothing happens, cookies are stored the moment you load the page. These banners are only there because the eu passed a law that makes it mandatory to inform users if the site is using cookies, which every site does",
"Hmmm - so I can't get my click back ?"
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63a15p | what does all the info with headphones and speakers mean? | Over the years I had many people try and explain these numbers to me, but they always used a lot of technical terms that confused me. It's my understanding that it can help chose decent headphones or portable speakers, but it doesn't make any sense to me. Edit: here's a pic of what I'm meaning. URL_0 | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"These terms are not easy to explain. Each one is a bit complicated and usually needs an ELI5 of its own. Power is the amount of power the little drivers in the headphones can produce. The more power they can produce, the louder the get. Voltage is another term for the intensity of an electrical signal. The way headphones make sound is by running an electrical signal through a coil of wire next to a magnet. When the signal passes through the coil it is either repelled from the magnet or attracted to it depending on if the signal is positive or negative. A small diaphragm is attached to the coil, so that when the coil moves, the diaphragm moves, which moves the air around it which is what sound is (moving air). So the higher the voltage, the farther away the diaphragm moves away from the magnet and the louder the sound. You may notice now that voltage and power are related. Sound intensity is measured in decibels or dB. The sensitivity listed tells you the range between the softest and loudest sound the headphones can make. Most modern music has a narrow range of dB but classical music and older music has a wider range so for some folks a large sensitivity is important. The image won't load anymore but I think another one of the items was impedance. Impedance is a measure of how much something resists allowing electricity through it. Again it's far beyond ELI5 to talk about about what impedance really means, but for the purposes of headphone, it's another thing that factors into how loud it can get. The most important thing to know, however, is that these numbers won't really indicate if the headphones or speakers will sound good or not. You either have to listen to them yourself and see if you like them, or ask others who have. The only number that I would pay attention to for speakers would be the power output."
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63aksm | With the ubiquity of flash drives, why do so many software programs still have the floppy disk as the icon for saving a file? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's an interesting design problem. There are two issues here. 1. Saving a file no longer corresponds to *any* physical device. It could be on a cloud drive, an SD card, a hard drive, an SSD, just about anything. That's hard to draw. 2. The very concept of saving a file is obsolescent. Modern computer systems have enough power and storage that \"save\" is starting to go away as a user interface concept in many programs.",
"\"Save file\" is an abstract concept. Calling a sequence of data on a disk a \"file\" is an abstract concept that doesn't reflect reality either - how many people keep filing cabinets around anymore? Calling a hierarchical portion of the storage system a \"file folder\" is an abstract concept in the same way. Calling the screen of your operating environment a \"desktop\" is a metaphor for an abstraction. Calling the area used by a running program \"window\" is an abstract metaphor. They're all abstract ideas & the metaphors we use to describe them don't need to constantly be updated as the things they refer to become obsolete. People are now growing up thinking of \"files\" and \"folders\" primarily as computing concepts & secondarily as the physical things they refer to. There's nothing to be gained from coming up with a new symbol - being standard & widely understood is far more important than being accurate. ...and as /u/Concise_Pirate says, there's no single icon you could even pick these days. The floppy disk hasn't been accurate for a long time - hard drives became commonplace before GUIs became widespread."
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63b6ur | The "popcorn sensor" on my microwave. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Depends on the microwave. Some are just dumb preset timers. These are why popcorn bags all day to not use the popcorn button. Others use humidity sensors to detect the correct level of humidity (determined by the manufacturer) to figure out when it's about done and start the countdown timer. Finally some microwaves use microphones to listen to the popping and turn it off when the pops per second drops below a certain point."
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63c92f | How do mobile phones actually work? How is it that my voice is teleported to a different place within milliseconds? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"you speak into your phone. the signal processors in the phone convert your analog voice into a digital file. your phone transmits that file over to your cell tower and from there the internet takes over and transmits it to the other persons cell tower, to their phone, their signal processor then does the reverse and translates that digital file into the sound you hear."
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63cbgv | How do ZIP files work? How can you compress a certain amount of information in a smaller amount of memory, and then be able to retrieve it all back in its original form? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine a tool box or a sewing kit, any of those neat little storage devices with cubbies and drawers and little fold-out shelves. How much space do they take up? When the are stored away, they take up very little space. You open them up, and take all the little bibs and bobs out to use, and they take up a more space. And once your really get into your project, and have things spread out all over your workbench, they take up a lot of space. There is really no one right answer to how much space it takes up, because it is really a tradeoff between space and accessibility. Information in a file, like a story, a song, a picture, or a movie, works the same way. It can be very accessible, and take up a lot of space, or take a lot of work to get at, and be packed away tightly. There is really no magic to making it smaller, you are just making the same tradeoff between size and accessibility. When you transform a file into the small but less accessible format, we call that data compression. It works by removing redundancy (sometimes called entropy) from a file, and encoding it in a more efficient form. Text files are normally encoded using something ASCII, where each letter is assigned an 8 digit binary code: A = 01000001 B = 01000010 C = 01000011 etc. With this scheme \"A\", a common letter, takes up the exact same amount of space as \"Z\", a less common letter. Even worse, the word \"the\", takes up three times as much space as Z, even though it is more common as well. Lossless data compression figures out which sequences are most common, and assigns them shorter codes, and leaves longer codes for uncommon ones. It might encode \"A\" as 1101, \"the\" as 01101, and \"Z\" as 1001100111. For every \"A\" it encounters, it saves 4 bits and for every \"the\", 19. The cost is that for every \"Z\", it uses 2 more bits, but overall this is a big win, because there are going to be more A's than Z's. One frequent question is why can't you just compress a file over and over until it is as small as you like? When you stow your tools and fold up your tool box, it becomes optimized for space, there just isn't any more space to remove. Similarly, lossless compression removes redundancy and optimizes how data is encoded so it takes up less space. Once you remove it once, there is nothing left to remove.",
"you find patterns. the more times that pattern appears the higher your compression rate. for example, since all files are just 0's and 1's if i want to compress 0000000000111111111111 i can just say 0^10 + 1^10 which i can say represents 0 ten times followed by 1 ten times. another example 0101010101 i can say 01^5 that's the basics of file compression. learn more here URL_0"
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63edjq | Under the new rules recently passed, what information can be sold and who exactly may purchase it. Is it a giant free for all like people are making it out to be? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Basically, nothing has changed. The bill passed shot down a not yet enacted rule that was going to require ISPs to get your consent before being able to sell metrics information- basically, anything that google or facebook already sells to advertisers, other ISPs already could sell, and will continue to be able to sell, to advertisers so that advertising can be targeted towards you. If you use a VPN or ad blockers, you're probably not going to see much of an effect from this",
"Can potential employers buy your history? Or at least see, for example, what types of jobs you were looking at on Indeed before applying to their company?"
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63eetq | What is a DDos attack and why would anyon want to do it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The what and the why are in the name: Denial of Service. It's an attack which, through various means, makes it difficult or impossible to use a service (usually a network connection) and \"shut down\" a target. The how varies, but the basic concept is that you flood the target with so much \"noise\" that it overwhelms their capacity to communicate. By way of metaphor, lets say that you and I are in a nice two-story house, and you're trying to teach me how to cook biscuits. Every so often a clown rings the doorbell and screams nonsense at us. We can manage this, although it's a bother, but what if... there were hundreds of clowns? Thousands. Millions? How about a hundred thousand clowns, *every second* coming in through the doors, the windows, the chimney, breaking down the wall, sneaking in through the sewerage, etc... Could you communicate with me? Could you stop the clowns? In this case the house is usually a network connection, and the clowns are data packets which for various reasons, take a little time/energy to deal with.",
"basically it's like asking a question. as a person you can only really listen to and answer 1 questions at a time. if we then assume a person with a question will only wait a set amount of time before they get fed up and walk away, let's say 1 minute. then we can start to see where problems arise. image it takes 5 seconds to to listen and answer a yes/no question. this means you can answer 12 people in a minute as a maximum. usually only 1 or 2 people will turn up to ask, so this is not a problem. A ddos is when somebody sends 100 or 1000 people at the same time to ask you a pointless question. becasue of this those 1 or 2 with legitimate questions get lost in the queue and after a minute, they walk away. Similarly a network or server can only manage so many conversations with other computers. so when a ddos sends millions of requests to a single point, they are overloaded and other people requests timeout. The solutions to this are things like having someone vet the questions first. if you know that person is a timewaster, he doesn't get allowed in to ask a question (this would be your firewall). Or you hire additional people to answer questions and try to split the load. (network load balancing)."
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63ejmt | why do you have a data link of 1gbs on your PC but you can not transfer at that speed ? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your transfer speed can never be greater than the slowest part of the connection. If your computer has a 1Gb/s connection to your router, and your router has a 100Mb/s connection to your modem, and your modem has a 50 Mb/s connection to your ISP, then the fastest connection you will get is 50 megabits per second. Yes, your computer can handle something 20 times faster, but it still has to wait on the slower parts of the connection.",
"A few reasons: 1. Marketing: 1GB/s is usually GigaBIT not gigaBYTE, so at least 8x slower than you think. 2. Line speed (how fast it can send individual ones & zeros down the wire) does not equal how fast it can send \"useful\" data: there are many layers of addressing, packetising, signalling, error-checking, etc. wrapped around your data before it gets squirted down the line. IP is really inefficient compared to older point-to-point technologies. Google the OSI 7-layer model for more info. 3. Contention: If your computer and the end server were directly connected by a single cable, with nothing else to do but send data to each other as fast as possible, they'd get close to full bandwidth. With other stuff going on, other devices on the network, routers/switches in the way etc. it slows stuff down.",
"In business and other uses of PCs there can be a 1gpbs connection to the server so having 1gbps makes sense. Also, what Teekno said, you want to minimise bottlenecks so a 1gbps connection would prevent your PC connection being the bottleneck rather than your ISP."
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63erlh | Why won't a printer print out an all black document if it's low on magenta ink? | I've run into this numerous times, I'm try to print out a simple text only document and it won't print it out because my wife used up all the yellow ink. (today it happens to be magenta). My printer is completely topped off with black ink so why won't it just use the black part since that's all it needs? I can understand warning me on a color document but on a plain text print out, really? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You have to appreciate that printing is literally a *racket*. Printers are designed specifically to cost you money. How? * Nearly all retail models from all brands are hard coded in their firmware to print a maximum number of documents before it self terminates. This is called \"Planned Obsolescence\", and ostensibly it is to ensure you get the highest quality prints possible, and the machine will retire itself when it goes through enough duty cycles to no longer provide you that quality. Isn't it nice of the manufacturer to decide that for you? In reality, it's to force you to buy another printer to ensure you are shackled by the latest DRM technologies. * Printers are loaded with \"Digital Rights Management\" software that protects the manufacturers interests. The printer is designed to detect reused, refilled, and off brand print cartridges, and some will even detect off brand paper for those manufacturers selling their own (side note: paper towel dispensers do the same by measuring the amount of drag incurred by the paper through the mechanism - restaurants get dispensers for free provided they buy the paper from a vendor, an off brand to save money ends up getting chopped off short to piss off customers and make the restaurant look bad). Any cartridge considered fraudulent will either be rejected outright or the printer will use *excessive* amounts of ink to waste it - this will lead you to believe off brands are inferior products with less ink or result in shitty prints so you won't buy them anymore. * Manufacturers don't make any money on selling printers, not even commercial office printers. They make money selling ink and toner. Ink is very likely the most expensive liquid you purchase, more per ounce than Chanel No.5 is a common comparison. They make money selling paper. They make money selling service contracts or service certifications to contractors. * They don't care if your printer works or not. They especially don't care that office printers break down all the time. They make bank on service calls. Why would they want to make and sell you a *good* printer? So your printer uses all colors to print black because it can. That's it. Well, it also prints yellow dots for stenography - that printer, on every print, is printing serial numbers, dates, and maybe other information in yellow dots you can't see with a casual glance. Go ahead, print a blank page, pay attention to the ink head. I bet it moved, maybe the paper stopped for a moment. Look closely for the yellow dots. Yellow is chosen because it's hard to notice. If printers were built to last and used only the ink necessary, the manufacturers would make a shit ton *less* money. I have a 30 year old printer I'll never give up and it works as well as the day I got it at as good a quality as I need it for the only thing I print out of it: text. The ink doesn't dry out. The cartridge doesn't clog. Owning your own printer is a money sink. Most people print text, for which the best thing to do is own a toner printer. How often do you print color vs. did you buy it because you wanted the option or because that's just the most common type of printer available on the market? If you need color prints, just use a print shop, you're likely not going to beat their prices when you consider TCO of a printer.",
"One of the big reasons is steganography. To aid in combating forgery pretty much all modern colour printers output some form of \"fingerprint\" into everything that's printed which is hard to detect unless you're looking for it. This can be used by law enforcement to track down people who have been making forgeries. URL_0"
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63ffej | Pornhub and YouPorn have both pledged to use encryption to block ISP's from using your traffic on those sites. How is this effective? | For instance, if I go to URL_0 , how does Pornhub encrypting that video prevent my ISP from knowing that I went there? Couldn't they just look up URL_0 and know what I watched? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you go to a website, your computer first asks your DNS server (likely ran by your ISP) to translate the domain name into an IP address, eg URL_0 to 31.192.120.36. Your computer then connects to the server at that IP address, and asks that computer \"Send me URL_0 /kinkyvideo\". You never asked your ISP for the URL. You asked your DNS server (again, likely ran by your ISP unless you changed it) to translate the domain name to an IP address, then all of the rest of the communication was between you and the pornhub server, your ISP isn't involved past being the carrier of the data. Now, if your connection is not encrypted, anyone between you an the remote server (such as your ISP) can see the contents of your communications. They can see \"oh hey, clevertoucan just requested URL_0 /kinkyvideo'. However, if the connection is encrypted, all that your ISP knows is \"clevertoucan just looked up the address for URL_0 , then there was a stream of encrypted communication between the them.\" They have no knowledge of what is within that communication, including no knowledge of the specific URLs you visited.",
"with full HTTPS encryption, only the domain name is unsecured. the ISP would only know you did a name lookup for URL_0 . it would not know which video you looked at.",
"to add to what people have already added, if you have HTTPS between you and the server the ISP also can't tamper with the message (such as injecting ads into your page) and if you want to block even the destination from your ISP you can use a proxy, basically this is a site that you make a request to and they make the request to the server for you and send back the response...from the ISPs perspective all they see is you talking to a proxy. so long as the proxy isn't ALSO selling your browsing history (this also goes for VPNs)"
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63fgof | How does a computer know how long 1 sec is? | Do they perform a series of calculations that take exactly 1s? Or am i looking at it completely wrong? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Computer Engineer here, Timekeeping on computers (indeed, most electronic devices) is performed using two methods. 1.) A small quartz crystal that, when energised, oscillates at exactly 32,768 hz, is fed through an amplifier and bistable oscillating circuit. This assembly is often embedded within a real-time-clock circuit, which in some products can track the date and time down to the millisecond. 32,768 is exactly 2^15 which is extremely easy to count in logic. One second elapses every 32,768 oscillations. Crystals that oscillate at other frequencies, such as 50Mhz, and 100Mhz are available as well. As long as the oscillating frequency is known and oscillation is reliable, a counting circuit can be constructed around it. 2.) Most operating systems include support for the Network Time Protocol. There are a large number of NTP servers on the internet, computers simply query these to periodically update their system clocks in the event that the RTC wanders a bit; timezone and DST can also be updated if sufficient information is known.",
"ELI5: Computers have an internal watch -- pretty similar to the watch you might have on your wrist (quartz timepiece)! That being said, sometimes the clock may get out of sync so if that's the case, modern computers just check online every once in a while to resynchronize. Fun fact: the old Pokemon games for the GBA (silver and gold) the cartridge itself had an internal battery powering the watch. When the battery died, so too",
"To keep internal time, computers use a crystal oscillator that creates an electromagnetic signal, or a vibration that the computer uses to coordinate processor, memory, bus and motherboard operations. You search your question on Google Nx there it is in big letters lol."
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63gj5k | Why do turn signals always flash at different rates? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Turn signals are controlled by relays which is an electromagnetic switch. What is that click click sound you hear when your signals are on? Well it's not an intentional audio signal it's the relay switching your lights on and off. If the relay is broken then there is only one state the lights can have which is on or off. That's when people have to manually lever their lights up and down to create the effect the relay has which is the control of when the lights turn on based on electric current. The reason they flash at different rates is due to different manufacturing specifications and voltage for the relays.",
"It's a very simple circuit where a capacitor builds up a charge over x time then releases that charge over x time. Like a battery, capacitors don't all hold the exact same charge so their cycles are slightly off. Here is an explain it like I'm 10. URL_1 Here is an ELI5. Imagine the water is electricity and the bucket is your blinker. Imagine there are many buckets that are almost the same size but not exact. URL_0 The water buckets would be filling and emptying slightly differently. That's basically how the circuit works."
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63gjl3 | How can you tell a website or password manager is secure and not just storing your passwords to potentially be used against you? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One can generally rely on the reputation of well known companies to be acting in good faith, but you can never really trust they won't make a mistake that exposes your passwords and other credentials. I use a software based password manager that is open source meaning I can inspect the source code myself to make sure it's not doing anything shady. The password database file is encrypted so I store it on a cloud service and access it with local client apps on my computers and on my phone.",
"Great question, and at the end of the day you're right, you are placing a LOT of trust on that the password manager site is un-shady and on top of their own security game. A few ways to tell **Reputation** - not foolproof, but these companies with a lot of passwords have a lot of business to lose if it ever came to light they were shady. **local encryption** - passwords should ALWAYS be stored encrypted. Better, they should be encrypted / decrypted on your computer before they make the trip up to the cloud. This makes it much harder for the password service to read them even if they wanted to. **auditing** - reputable companies like to link to 3rd parties who have tried to break their security and not been able to do so.",
"I just want to add that most websites don't store your password as it is. They use one-way encryption. One-way encryption works by using a complex algorithm to create a hash / mixture of your password with the algoritm. Making something like \"Password123\" be like \"1jf0n102h12f-a-1251jf-m\". Then they store that strange value in their databases as your password. Then, when you want to access it again, you type \"Password123\" and the server mix it and compares it to the database. The algorithm always create a different value for different words, and the same value for the same word everytime. [You can read more about this algorithm here, it's widely used]( URL_0 ). Also some websites add things to your password before Hashing it (like your own ID or email) to make the password even more secure. That's why sometimes the websites does not know if you have a wrong password or email. EDIT. So if a hacker/bad employer get access to the users database he will only see things like. **Password:** \"012u5012j10mf12051nf0u912512-412\" in all users."
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63gzz1 | How are developers able to make changes to a video game already hard coded? Why can't they? Video games sometimes get minor interface changes but never new worlds/etc? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"All updates are stored on the internal hard River, regardless of whether you bought a digital version or a cd. If your are that cd to another Xbox you'll have to renown load all the updates over again because the content on the cd cannot ever be changed. As for why Devs can't add more content or make certain changes, the answer is they can. Any change you can imagine can be done to the game via downloadable update. It's up to the developers to decide whether those changes are worth making or not. Most changes related to bug fixes are done to keep gamers happy because otherwise sales of the game will stop and they won't get more money. Or worse if the bugs are bad enough they may have to deal with large numbers of people demanding refunds. Content related changes are done to extend the life of the game and sell more copies. Most of this type of content is also sold at an additional price. Many games today do get new levels and worlds via this type of content. Some are even built around this premise like Lego Dimensions, or Disney Infinity. As you can see by both types of updates, it's all done to increase sales and profit and adding more world's or levels or content is limited by how much they can expect to make. The reason why you don't see even more drastic changes than that is because people bought the game expecting a certain experience and so you can't just push out an update that turns your fps game into a real time strategy because fans would be upset and it would cause many legal issues regarding not providing people what they paid for. It's possible to make those drastic changes but it's massively expensive and in the end would result in angry fans and possible legal obligations to people who bought the game at launch who do not want the completely different type of game that it's being updated to."
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63hkxw | How do open world games achieve that feeling of grand scale while being small enough to be playable? | Most open world game maps can generally be traversed edge-to-edge in under an hour. Meanwhile, top runners can finish only a half marathon in that sort of time. Yet the best open world games still *feel* huge - how? Is there some sort of funny perspective trick at play? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"\"You see those mountains in the distance? You can go to them.\" -Skyrim"
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63ke2o | Why is 16:9 the most common aspect ratio? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When they were developing the HDTV standards, they wanted something wider than the 4:3 of the older standard. 16:9 was chosen because it was a reasonable compromise that would allow most films (which came in a wide variety of aspect ratios) to fit on the screen without too much letterboxing (the black bars on top). Once the resolutions for HDTV became standardized, PC displays started using them as well because there was a huge supply of inexpensive LCD displays being made in those resolutions and running at 16:10 wasn't worth the additional cost."
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63klkx | What are Differential GPS (DGPS) and RTK (Real Time Kinematics) and what are their differences to regular GPS? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Regulation GPS detects your location by determining your distance from the known position of gps satellites. Differential GPS also uses stationery reference points with known exact positions and your distance to those as well. As a result it can increase the accuracy of civilian GPS to a few centimeters of error. RTK measures the phase of the GPS signals rather than just it's content and timestamp in order to account for inaccuracies in three civilian GPS signals. It also uses a reference station with a known exact location to make sure phase correction is accurate."
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63kot5 | How does Whatsapp's End-To-End-Encryption work, and how do we know that it really is ecrypted all the way through? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Whatsapp uses a modified form of the signal protocol - URL_0 The signal protocol is open source and has been scrutinized by crypto experts all over the world. It's probably pretty damn tight. You can check it out yourself if you like. URL_1 Could whatsapp have built in a backdoor in the closed source - sure, but why? It would probably destroy the company if that info was leaked. Also worth noting - anytime you use software you trust the programmer/companies that wrote that software. And all companies and people involved in making the hardware that your software runs on! However, governments and malicious parties don't have to break the encryption. They just hack your or your conversations partners phone. Either by fooling you into running code for them or hacking android/iOS or the sim card/gsm etc. If you use whatsapp web it opens even more possibilities for intrusion. Still, at the moment whatsapp is your best choice for a secure communication platform."
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"https://github.com/WhisperSystems"
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63kv0c | why have 'google' and 'photoshop' become verbs, but 'amazon' or 'wikipedia' haven't? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Not sure the reasoning, but I've definitely heard/used \"wiki\" as a verb. \"I'm gonna wiki that to see if it's true\"",
"Both google and photoshop created entire new categories of behavior that needed verbalizing. Amazon is a store and wikipedia is an encyclopedia."
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63lkdk | How can a completely deactivated phone with no wifi connection still call 911? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"911 gets special consideration by the carriers due to FCC regulations. This means a couple of unique things for 911 calls. First, even if the phone does not have a service plan attached to it, it can still call 911. No service/no bill, doesn't matter, your phone is still allowed to make 911 calls. Keep in mind though, that since your no-service phone doesn't have a phone number attached to it, if you get disconnected the 911 operator cannot call you back. Second, no bars doesn't necessarily mean you can't call 911. For most numbers your phone has a minimum threshold of signal required for it to even attempt to make a call. If the signal is less than what would represent 1 bar on the phone's display, the phone won't try a call because it knows that it's likely to fail/cause a bad experience for you. For 911 though that rule does not apply. Your phone could have 1 of 10th of 1 bar worth of signal, and it will still try and call 911.",
"the carrier is like a bouncer at a club. they could let you through, but they wont unless you paid or have a contract and an according sim card. you dont NEED the sim card to make a call or get internet. but in our current system, the carriers stop you from using calls/internet without one. the hardware required to make calls/get internet is already in the phone. the sim card is just the pay card to access that. now the 911 call will just skip all that and directly connect to the services. afaik every carrier has to agree to let 911 calls through from anyone without charging or authentication.",
"A phone with no SIM card can still connect to any compatible network's tower, but the tower will deny any communication. However, 911 calls are privileged: they will be connected through any available compatible tower, without authentication, and may have priority over other traffic on the network.",
"A completely deactivated phone still has the antenna and parts inside it necessary to talk to a cell tower. When the phone talks to the cell tower, it provides its credentials, and the tower authenticates that your phone should be allowed to make calls. This is checked when you try to make a phone call. When you call 911, the tower sees that you are trying to call 911, so it skips the part where you have to authenticate your phone and are just let through to the 911 system. (or, rather, allows the call to happen, but it will still grab what information it can to identify you- which could become relevant they needed to trace you back- say if the call disconnected, or if you were making a prank call)",
"A deactivated phone with no WiFi connection is simply a device that the carrier won't *allow* to make a normal phone call: it can still physically make a phone call, but the carrier restricts it from connecting with their cell towers. 911 calls are special: federal regulation requires that any phone be able to make a 911 call regardless of carriers, plans, anything; as long as it can send a signal to a cell tower in range. The carrier who owns that tower **must** allow a 911 call to go through at all times."
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63mf7b | How can someone use bots to do things repeatedly on a website that would normally be limited to one action per user account, like voting in a poll? | Does the bot create thousands of fake accounts? Circumvent the one-action-per-account limitation? If so, how? I'm looking for a conceptual, ELI5-style explanation, not actual code. Thanks. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Depends on the level of security implemented. If a site limits things to one action per session using php sessions or cookies to track this, it's not hard to clear cookies or reset a php session. If it's once per account, then the bot will attempt to create an account, perform the action, sign out, repeat. If things are limited by ip, the bot can attempt to release/renew their ip from their isp, this may very well not work, in which case the bot will attempt to perform the action through proxies, or the hacker will run a script a single time across many computers over a botnet. There may be other answers, but method for bypassing restrictions depends on implementation of restriction."
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63n92l | Why do 15/20 year old videos look so bad when they looked good even on big TVs back then? | Edit for clarity: I understand that we had nothing better to compare it to, but old videos didn't seem like they had all the noise/artefacts that they do when we see them now. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They only looked good because you never had something better to compare it too. It's like when the PS1 came out, everyone thought it was hightech and super cool, but now compared to the PS4 graphics, they look terrible. The old vhs tapes which were high tech at the time, fail in comparision to blu ray on a 4k tv.",
"The truth is, the world was just blurrier and less well defined back then. We thought it looked great because it's all we had seen. H/T to Calvin and Hobbes: URL_0"
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63n99l | How were the graphics in Donkey Kong Country so much more impressive than the graphics in most other SNES games (like Super Mario World)? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It used pre-rendered graphics. Basically they built the characters and levels in a high resolution in 3D. Then they coverted the 3D animations to 2D. They're just flat pictures of the character, not the actual model. So they were able to capture a lot of subtle detail that would be very difficult to reproduce if they built it straight in 2D. It's closely related to rotoscoping, which can produce very realistic animations because it's traced from actual live action.",
"The sprites and animations in DKC1 were made by taking several 2d'screenshots' of a higher quality 3d model, this was the first game to do this. Other games were generally made by using traditionally drawn and animated sprites that were either plotted into bitmaps pixel by pixel, or scanned in from animation cels ( The first game to do this was aladdin on genesis ) Back in the heyday of games this technique was even more primitive, as you can see from the [original design drawings for pacman]( URL_0 )",
"Ooh! Something I actually know! And about my favourite video game too! So, they firstly went to study apes and monkeys at the local zoo in order to see how they move and how they can make their characters look as realistic as possible. They then created 3D models using computers and used special software to turn these models into sprites they could use for the game. There was a promotional tape that showed off the game and they talked about the development process. I think this is it [here]( URL_0 )"
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63nghl | Ethereum | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"To start, you need to know what a blockchain is. Basically, it is a ledger, a record of transactions. Normally, this function is handled by a central authority, such as a bank. You put money into the back, they write it down. You spend it, they write that down. If you try to spend it twice, they say no. But central authorities provide a single point of failure, and require trust in that authority. This is a weakness in many cases -- especially regarding regulatory uncertainty in many parts of the world. But without a central authority, who will keep you from spending your money 5 times, or even know if you have any to begin with? The answer is a mathematical and computing breakthrough called a blockchain. The first successful one was called \"Bitcoin\". Basically, it replaces the central authority with some complicated math and majority rules and some interesting economics, so that the ledger is public and its state is determined by computers. There are many blockchains, Bitcoin is just the most famous. Bitcoin is suitable as a transfer of value and not much more (and increasingly unsuitable for that). Ethereum took the ideas from the blockchain, and said, what if we attach a computer program to each entry in the ledger? So instead of \"address 123 has 400 coins\", it could have a program that says \"Address 123 has 400 coins, and they will be released 5 coins per week to Address 155 and 175 on alternate weeks.\" This program is now a contract: offline, a couple people agreed to this payment schedule, you write it into code and are guaranteed payment over time because the Ethereum network enforces it. That's just scratching the surface, though. What if you could attach any program or file or contract between any two people, and it is enforced automatically by the network, and nobody could shut it off? Want to gamble but your country doesn't like it? Too bad, they can't stop it. The blockchain cannot be shut down by a central authority. Do you live in a third world country where property rights don't mean much, but you want to get investors in your business? Put your business on the blockchain and they can give you money securely. There are thousands of ideas of what to do with Ethereum, but it is very young and it is likely that its most valuable uses aren't even conceived yet.",
"Ethereum is like a globally shared spreadsheet (blockchain). Every 14 seconds (block time) everyone synchronizes their spreadsheet by adding any new rows (transactions) at the bottom (append-only transaction ledger). You get the spreadsheet kinda like how you can download a movie from Bittorent (decentralized network) and connecting to peers (nodes) hosting the file. No one can cheat or make extra money (Ether / cryptocurrency) out of thin air, because the software (protocol) checks that you only spent money you got from someone else (cryptographic signatures ensure transactions are valid) or that you won it in the lottery (mining reward) every synchronization (block). The interesting thing about Ethereum is that it's not just a spreadsheet like [Lotus 1-2-3]( URL_0 ) (bitcoin), but was built fully featured like Excel with VBA macros (SmartContracts). Why all the fuss? Because it's the first time in human history that any 2 people (2-party) on opposite sides of the world can make a bet with eachother and they don't need a bookie (escrow / bank) to hold the funds (counterparty). They can do it with this spreadsheet alone (trustless / no counterparty risk) by writing a macro to decide who wins the bet and gets the money (the macro [SmartContract] holds the money [Ether]). How's that?",
"*^(copy-paste of a previous post of mine, original post linked)* [*^(here)*]( URL_0 ) It's actually really simple. If she knows about Bitcoin, we explain using Bitcoin. If she doesn't, use a physical object for analogy instead, like an apple. ------ Bitcoin is basically digital money - like cash. We could have a **simple transaction where I send you 1 bitcoin** - now it's yours, and that's it. Just like cash, you now have it, and I don't. Ethereum is basically programmable money. Instead of a simple Bitcoin transaction, we can now add programming logic to it. Our **transaction** would be, say, **I send you 1 ether *IF* the clock turns exactly 9:05PM**. And if the network verifies that the condition is met (it actually is 9:05pm), then the transaction goes through and you'll receive your ether. ----- And you can have any condition, as long as you can program it! How about I send you 1 ether ***IF*** this Reddit thread reaches 25 comments? How about I send you 1 ether ***IF*** Marine Le Pen becomes president of France? Programming logic opens up a massive world of opportunities and that's what makes Ethereum special. This is how I explain Ethereum in person to people and I'm easily able to do so in minutes. Just adjust for your target audience.",
"You have a safe that requires 10 keys to open. You can choose to give all 10 keys to one person (the bank) and hope they play fair with you. Their fee is that they get to play with whatever is kept in the safe while it's in there. Or, you can give the 10 keys to 10 different people (the blockchain) and stipulate they all have to agree when someone puts something in the safe or takes it out. By making sure they all have to agree, nothing can go in or out of the safe without all of them knowing. Their fee is that they split between them a tiny percentage of everything that goes in or out of the safe.",
"Ethereum is a decentralized platform (meaning its hosted on lots of computers scattered all around rather than one server in one location controlled by one entity) that allows users to host applications and smart contracts. Because it's decentralized it can't be shut down or censored by a company or a government or a hacker.",
"Alright, Imma take a shot. For a 5 year old, here we go. People want to do stuff in the business realm like exchange money, have contracts, and know who owns what. With physical money, exchanging it is easy, but you have to have someone issue the money and fight counterfeiters. For contracts, two people signing a paper often isn't enough, and you need to file it with the court and/or sue them in court if they break contract. And some government clerk is in charge of keeping records of who owns what land. All of that depends on \"authority\". Someone in control who governs how these things are handled, what's fair, and keeps people from screwing each other. Ethereum (and blockchain tech in general) is software which uses encryption and distributed computing to remove the need for an authority. With a blockchain you can mathematically prove that someone else did a thing. Like paid you $5, transferred ownership of a house, or agreed to a contract. And it's computationally so difficult to make a forgery that it's impossible. You know, unless there's a software bug or something. Which actually happened to Ethereum. > I think I understand that it is some sort of decentralized internet? And that I can help support it by offering my computer hardware to the service and I get paid for it in a crypto-currency? More like a decentralized computer that people can trust to crunch numbers and do business over. And yes, you can help out and get paid in crypto-currency.",
"A decentralized network is a collection of computers connected together over the internet that run some common program. An example of this would be bittorrent. Bittorrent enable anyone running a bittorrent client to share files directly with each other rather than downloading that file from a single computer. Decentralized applications have the advantage that there is no single computer that can be turned off that would shut down the functionality of the entire thing. In 2008 an anonymous person named Satoshi published a design for a distributed network that could be used to record a ledger. A ledger is a history book in this case a digital one. This network went live in 2009. The main advantage a distributed ledger has is that there is no single point of failure. Just like bittorrent there is no single server you can shut down to disable it. Unlike bittorrent however it is important that a history book is the same for everyone who views it. This is not a problem for bittorrent because you are not adding to the files you share. You share a torrent file which contains the information that describes the files and if you want to make changes you have to create a new torrent file. But with a history book you are always adding to it and the order in which new information is added is important. Another reason to distribute the history book is to prevent tampering. If everyone holds a copy of the history then one person changing the history will not show up in every one elses copy. The way it works is that there are a set of rules that everyone's copy of the software follows when they receive a new message containing data to add to the history book. If information comes in that conflicts with those rules then it is simply ignored. This is not enough though to make sure everyone gets the same copy of history because some people might get messages in a different order to others. For instance If a message is created in Australia and the USA at the same time then someone in Australia might get the message generated in Australia first and a person in the USA might get the message generated there first even though both messages are valid. To solve this problem Satoshi designed bitcoin so that messages are grouped together in blocks and a sort of lottery is run on those blocks. People perform a mathematical function on the data in the block to generate a number and if that number fits a certain condition then the rules of the network say they should accept that block... well they should accept that block if it follows all of the rules and if it is the least likely winner out of all the known winners. The least likely winner being the last block of messages found on the longest chain of blocks. The difficulty of this lottery is adjusted (again by the common set of rules) so that blocks of messages are accepted at a regular rate that allows them to spread through the network before a new block is found to fit the criteria. Since performing the math function requires time and energy the cost of a ticket in this lottery cant be faked. Someone wanting to change history would need more computing power than every one on the network combined. To resolve conflicts when 2 blocks are found at the same time you wait until the next block is found and accept the longest chain. Blocks of messages can only refer to a single previous block so the people playing the lotto are also betting on the previous block also being accepted all the way back to the first one. Now this is where currency comes into it. Those messages that are being recorded are actually financial transactions of a new currency that only exists as messages in this history book. And the way this currency is created is as a reward for the lottery that makes the system work!",
"* Bitcoin 2.0 * Internet 3.0 * Smart contracts * Blockchain with programming built into it * Decentralized applications (dapps) Those are some of the buzz words surrounding Ethereum. Basically, Bitcoin is special because it is decentralized so there are no 3rd parties when you want to send someone bitcoin. Ethereum is kinda like bitcoin but you can program on top of it. So in a way you can decentralize the internet and everything that goes with it: Internet of Things, banking & finance, gambling, eCommerce, media sharing....everything. It's an extremely fascinating project.",
"A project that allows an App Store owned by no company. It also creates money (tokens) controlled by no government. It has attracted thousands of people that like to create stuff through making computer programs, from teenagers in their basement to including some of the biggest companies in the world.",
"Where bitcoin took math principles to create a decentralized, limited-quantity \"coin\"; ethereum offers a flexible programming platform that allows people to create a broader range of tools with the same sort of technology (the blockchain). For example, I could build a program using ethereum that lets people vote on proposals without any sort of centralized organization, just the program (\"contract\") on the ethereum platform.",
"Nowadays the article on wikipedia is really clear and gives you enough pointers on where to keep reading if you want to understand more. Looking at your explanation you're in for some easy money which I guarantee you is the wrong impression. Read wikipedia, ask specific questions and if you're still interested enough people will try to help you understand. Nobody'll spoon-feed you ways to 'free' money.",
"I wrote a Beginner's Guide to Ethereum to help others understand it. Hope that's helpful! URL_0 Ethereum allows for smart contracts which can be described as highly programmable digital money. Imagine automatically sending money from one person to another but only when a certain set of conditions are met. For example an individual wants to purchase a home from another person. Traditionally there are multiple third parties involved in the exchange including lawyers and escrow agents which makes the process unnecessarily slow and expensive. With Ethereum, a piece of code could automatically transfer the home ownership to the buyer and the funds to the seller after a deal is agreed upon without needing a third party to execute on their behalf. With Ethereum you can make these transactions trustless which opens up an entire world of decentralized applications. Decentralization is important because it eliminates single points of failure or control. Decentralized platforms cut out the middlemen which ultimately leads to lower costs for the user."
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63nhpq | Why are Texas Instruments calculators the most widely used and recommended calculators in a school/University setting? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because most people know how to use them. If every student has a different graphing calculator, the teacher and/or students have to figure out how to use each one. If the whole class has identical calculators, the teacher can instruct the whole class keystroke by keystroke. TI invested heavily in educational outreach, and the result is that the only graphic calculator most teachers know how to use is a TI.",
"Part of how this came about is that in the '70s, when handheld calculators were getting common in the US, TI was fairly cheap. Nearly everyone admitted that HP calculators were better, but they could cost 5x what a TI would (or more). Not a problem for an engineer, but major to a high school student. So TI built a lot of market share. The reverse polish thing was a bit of a holy war among nerds at the time. I hated it and was glad that my TI followed algebraic order. Some of my peers considered this to be a moral failing on my part.",
"There are regional variations. In the UK Casio seems to dominate. Whatever the exact brand, it's sometimes the case that a few specific calculator models are approved for use in examinations. For example the University of Cambridge science course approves the Casio fx 115, 570, and 991 models. So while you could use any calculator in your studies, you'd put yourself at a disadvantage if you've always been using one calculator and then have to use a different one for your exams."
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63np43 | How do people get good at flying in wingsuits? Where/how do they practice? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Before learning to wingsuit all those people were already very experienced skydivers and BASE jumpers, so they already have a high level of skill in a sport that requires jumping off something and surviving with a parachute. They also have a trained awareness of how to fall. From what I understand, beginner skydivers have trouble not spinning, and if they start spinning, stopping or pulling your chute can become impossible. So again, before they try out the wingsuit, they are starting with a high level of proficiency at the needed skills. My presumption in regard to when they first try the wingsuit, is that they jump from a helicopter or slow plane from an very high altitude. Apparently, BASE jumpers are often viewed by skydivers similar to how rock climbers see free soloists; very similar looking sport, but totally different level of risk. When jumping from a plane, skydivers or a new wingsuit pilot have over a minute before they hit the ground. That is more than enough time to correct errors, or use a reserve parachute. My guess is that they learn to fly in that environment before testing themselves in those close flybys you see in videos.",
"Most people get lessons from instructions. Places you can get instructions for this is called a Drop Zone. But to learn wingsuiting, you must first learn the basics of skydiving, and most places require you to have some amount of skydiving jumps before they will teach you wingsuiting. Skydiving/wingsuiting is an expensive sport."
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63o0ey | What are the major differences between US Cell Phone Carriers? Why are some able to market at a significantly lower cost for a seemingly similar product? | I'm wondering what the differences between the US Cellular carriers are, such as AT & T, TMobile, Verizon, Sprint, Metro PCS, Boost, Cricket, Simple, etc. I'm sure you've seen the commercials where Sprint is marketing their plans at lower prices with comparable service to Verizon. How can these carriers do this? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"As larger companies get more established, costs per customer go down. If I opened up a brand new mobile service and tried to put towers up all across the country it would cost me billions of dollars, and if I only had a few customers I would have to charge millions or billions per customer. Also, although each US carrier offers a \"seemingly similar\" service, they're not the same. T-Mobile claims they can reach within 1% of the population that Verizon reaches, but T-Mobile has their towers as far apart as possible, so the experience is vastly different. The cost for Verizon is obviously a lot higher since they have more towers, so their service is generally more expensive, but their coverage is typically a lot better too.",
"There are four major carriers Verizon, Att, Tmobile, Sprint and they all have their own equipment and towers. Their coverage, signal quality, and data speeds are similar in some areas but vary greatly in others. Some of the smaller carriers like Boost and Simple arent actually carriers. They are MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) which means that they buy service in bulk from one of the major four and resellt it to customers. The service is often similar but coverage areas may be different, data speeds may be capped, no roaming etc... For example Boost is on Sprint and Simple is on Tmobile."
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63o5z8 | I recently made a purchase off the Amazon app then exited the app. Later I went on to Instagram to post something but noticed on my newsfeed about Amazon deals of exactly what I just purchased. How do ads work like that? | I have one email specifically for Amazon and a different email for social media. How do ads correlate with the apps I use when I have different emails for different things? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"When you access Amazon and look around at different things it keeps records of that on the Amazon servers. It also saves a cookie to your device. These are short files that give identifiable information about your amazon account that when an amazon ad is being generated it can look up and link to your amazon account then personalise adverts to you. The Amazon ad on Instagram doesn't need your Instagram details it just needs to check your device for a cookie. You can turn them off here: URL_1 [And you can get more info on how Amazon use cookies here]( URL_0 )"
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