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cjb491 | what does WinZip do? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Files are basically made of jumbles of numbers that your computer interprets as what you see on the screen. Files can be 'compressed' to make them smaller by rearranging the numbers to be more compact (smaller file size), but this renders the file unusable. WinZip puts the numbers back to their uncompressed form so you can use the files again.",
"Imagine the following: Your phone number is '555 888 1888'. Notice there's a pattern appearing multiple times: 888. Now substitute it with a number not already present, let's say 9. The result is 555 9 19, 4 digits shorter than the original. (let's forget that we need to store the 9=888 association somewhere, it just works out for bigger data). But you cannot dial it in compressed form: you have to do the substitution in reverse, that is, unzip it. Also, can you suggest an even better algorithm for this example?"
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cjczkg | How does a software input into a computer physically change a transistor | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Engineer here, this isn't 100% the entire story, but it's ELI5. Software input doesn't change the shape, state, or move or do anything physical to a transistor. A transistor is just another component whose shape and material will manipulate the flow of electricity in a specific and predictable way, just like any other component such as a resistor, inductor, or capacitor. What makes transistors so special is that they have three pins, where varying the power applied to one input can vary the amount of power that gets through from the other input. These transistors can be arranged into units called logic gates, of which the most commonly used for commercial applications is the NAND gate. The way the NAND gate works is that it is always on (1) unless both inputs are on (1), in which case the gate turns off (0). By some clever methods, these NAND gates can be arranged to form any other logic gate. These logic gates can then be arranged into something even larger, like an Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU). Which takes inputs of high (1) and low (0) power on each individual wire and can do basic math like addition and subtraction and other things by assuming that the arrangement of these wires means a number. When someone writes software, they're writing a series of mathematical and logical operations that get put into a queue of sorts where they get fed into this big lump of logic gates in order.",
"Input is made on a wire by turning a voltage on and off. (We call on 1 and we call off 0.) Transistors respond directly to voltage."
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cjdhb8 | Intel Optane memory | If a computer spec sheet says it has 16GB of Intel Optane memory and 4GB of SDRAM, is it like 20GB of total SD RAM? What are the real world results of comparing say this type of spec to a computer with 8gb or 12gb of SDRAM. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Optane Memory is not RAM. Think of it as sorta booster for your Hard drive and ram interaction. But absolutely not RAM and you don't add them together. Optane memory is sorta more like a really fast SSD that works with your HDD to increase speed. These lots of misleading ads on this claiming more memory and counting it as RAM (marketing!), but its all just nonsense. It is not a substitute for ram, its more of an addon to it. 4GB of RAM is actually pretty budget build for a pc right now, thats an odd spec to have 4GB Ram and an optane memory. I'm guessing this has a traditional HDD, so in that case, the optane memory is really meant to speed up the HDD turning it into a hybrid SSD/HDD drive and give sexy specs, but be on a budget price, as SSDs and more RAM are going to be significantly more expensive than the HDD/Optane combo. In the past, budget builds, since SSDs were really expensive, often contained Hybrid HDDs (a HDD which contains a small SSD as well) or you would get a seperate small SSD for the OS, and a HDD for data. As SSDs have decreased in price immensely though, this is falling out of favor except in more budget builds. However even in good builds there is room for an optane memory, but thats not what its use is here in your build"
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cjfa7m | That scene in Iron Man 2 when Tony Stark 'creates a new element'. Is something like that possible, and how? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes and not. See an element is determine by the number of proton in the nucleus and you can't have fraction of a proton. So if you have 1 proton you are hyrodgen, if you have 2 you are helium, etc, etc. We know all elements between 1 and 118 protons, from Hyrogen to Oganesson which was first synthesized in 2002 in Russia. So yes in theory we can synthesized new element, even if it would be doubfull that a genius in a homelab would be able to do that. & #x200B; Why I say no, is that in Iron Man 2 he made a stable new element and that is basically impossible. The reason is that any element that have more than 84 protons is unstable no matter what, it will decay and the more proton it have (past 84 protons) generally speaking it will be more unstable. So for exemple radon have isotopes that have an half life of between a couple of hours to almost 4 days and radon have 86 protons. Oganesson which have 118 protons have isotopes with half life of 0.69 and 181 millisecond. Any new element would probably be close to that decay rate or even faster. So nobody gonna discover a new adamantium super strong material that we can use to build stuff. These new elements are mostly for scientific research and not really usefull for industrial technology.",
"Yes. How? - Combine existing elements to make something like plutonium. It's a \"new element\" in the sense that the atoms coming out are different elements than the ones you put in, and it's not an element we can find in nature. But it's not a new scientific discovery. Scientists have known about plutonium for quite a while. - Find an element slightly heavier than the ones we know about. It'll probably be super unstable and break apart quickly -- you'd be lucky if it lasts a couple seconds. So good luck upgrading your Iron Man suit or doing other crazy superhero stuff with it. But you'll get a lot of credit for the scientific achievement! - Find an element on an [island of stability]( URL_0 ). Based on physics and patterns in the existing elements, some scientists suspect there might be (somewhat) stable elements way heavier than the ones we know, with specific predictable recipes that are impossible to make with the tech (and atoms) we have. Tony Stark might invent some kind of new tech that lets him build these elements. - Build an atom out of antimatter. Yes, antimatter is real. Yes, we know how to create antimatter particles. Yes, you can take anti-electrons and anti-protons, and build anti-atoms out of them. No, most of the antimatter elements haven't been built yet, because it's super difficult to work with antimatter with today's technology."
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cjgdyz | Why do emergency room doctors sometimes do treatments that are effective but outdated like Myringotomy for ear infections or breaking a bone to heal a bone cyst? Wouldn't they want to do the best thing available during emergencies? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It can usually be attributed to several things. Emergency room doctors needs to be experts in many fields of medicine. So staying up to date one the latest developments in every field can be very hard. They also do not have the comfort of being able to read up on a subject as they need to quickly administer the treatment. But even if they know about a treatment they may be more comfortable doing a treatment they have performed before and are more comfortable with. As a rule of thumb the first responders are there to keep you alive until the ambulance arrives, the ambulance just needs to keep you alive to you get to the emergency room and the emergency room doctor is there to keep you alive until you can see a general practitioner. So as long as they can do anything, even if outdated, so that you will make your next doctors appointment they have done their job.",
"Because.... Because they're effective. There's no reason to stop using a treatment if it's effective.",
"The best thing available normally takes time, and specialized equipment or training. This is the exact opposite of what you want in an emergency situation. In such a situation time is one of the most valuable resources and so you go with what is effective over what is trendy/up to date."
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cjjua0 | Commercial passenger jet throttle range of speeds | Commercial passenger jets are capable of flying hundreds of miles per hour with enormous thrust. Yet they are also capable of creeping along airport tarmacs at miniscule speeds. How are the engine controls in the cockpit able to allow for that wide a range of speeds while still allowing fine thrust control? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The throttle's move almost 120˚, and their arm is about 10\" (25.4 cm) long. That gives quite a long throw distance. They are fully motorized, and things like the autopilot are capable of very small movements.",
"The large throttle arm gives them a fair amount of granularity to set the thrust to what they need, and this is combined with not all speeds being possible at all altitudes. At 2000 feet up with landing flaps down the plane won't be able to hit 500 mph even at full throttle because there is just too much drag. Likewise, when cruising at 35,000 feet the plane isn't going to slow down to 200 mph because it'll stall and fall out of the sky. The flaps and slats make a much larger portion of the throttle range useful at low altitudes, while the spinning mass in the engines keeps the thrust from changing too quickly, and the large mass of the plane keeps the speed from changing too quickly so they have time to dial in the speed that they want on their throttle."
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cjnn8j | How do Japanese internet users use so many different characters to make custom emoticons and why did no one else do the same? | How did Japanese internet users know the right symbols to use out of the thousands of Unicode symbols to make a particular face? Emoticons such as ლ( ◕ 益 ◕ ) ლ ԅ༼ ･ 〜 ･ ༽╯(⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄) use symbols from relatively obscure languages and typesets from all over the Unicode catalog that are sometimes otherwise almost never used. When and how did this start? Did Japanese people simply peruse through the entire Unicode looking for the symbols to make a face they already came up with in their heads? Do they have to memorize ALT+ codes to be able to type them? It seems so easy and everyday for them, so why did it never really catch on in other countries besides the ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) "Lenny" face? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It started on [2channel]( URL_0 ). The culture and large audience of this text-only site led its denizens to go looking for characters to make pictures from, first [the Shift JIS character set]( URL_1 ), but then later the whole Unicode character set. Just like on Reddit, text that looks like a picture stands out and brings in praise, and the community want to one-up it or continue with pictures to make a story. Western bulletin boards, message boards, USENET had already been doing the same since the 1980s with ASCII art and ANSI art. 4chan copied what they saw on 2ch and brought their ideas to English-speaking sites. However, their Japanese origin might make them seem niche or undesirable (e.g. for weebs only) I suspect most people who repeat these little faces store them in a text file so they can copy-and-paste them on demand."
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cjr1r8 | Why is the download of a software update 100 MB, but does it need 1 GB of free space to complete the installation? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Imagine you buy a new TV. You bring it home, you're gonna replace your old TV. Maybe the new TV is the exact same size as the old TV, so it doesn't take up any more space. But obviously it takes space just to switch them out. You're gonna make a mess, there's gonna be boxes, you have to move the old TV out of the way, etc. So after you're done and you clean up, it doesn't take a lot of space. But you need a certain amount of space just to move stuff around, and your computer is asking for the same thing.",
"So you download the update (100MB). Then, it gets decompressed to a scratch directory (500MB). The old versions of those files get backed up in case something goes wrong (400 MB) Then it gets copied to the final destination (new files 100 MB larger than the old files). At that point, you're at 1.1GB total. Then the backups get deleted bringing you down to 200MB (100 for the installer, 100 for the larger updated files).",
"Think about it like an inflatable boat. While deflated (compressed) it takes up very little space and is easy to move around, but you can't really use it for its purpuse. But when you inflate it (decompress) you can use it as intended.",
"It might be highly compressed, and decompression takes up space, then it has to install which takes up more space. At the end the decompressed contents are deleted. So you end up needing 2x the file size + the download to install something."
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cjsemp | Why do streaming apps like Netflix for different products eventually "shut down"? | It's been announced that the Amazon Prime Video app for the Wii U will no longer work after a certain date, and today was announced that pretty soon the Youtube app for the 3DS will no longer work. My question is, why do companies do this? Couldn't they just leave the app and let people use it and just say they won't be offering technical support for that app anymore? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The short version is that making them continue to work costs money, so they could leave them alone rather than disable them, but they'd basically immediately stop working anyway. All of these apps have complex interactions with the servers that provide them with their content and other functions, so they either need to be regularly updated to ensure that they can continue talking to the servers or the servers that serve those apps have to be prevented from making any changes to the communication protocols in use. In some cases, there are also licensing concerns (eg, Amazon may have to pay their content providers extra if their content can be streamed to the Wii U) or specific infrastructure concerns (eg, Nintendo may require that Amazon use Nintendo-specific infrastructure to deliver content to the Wii U). All of that costs money, and at a certain point the company stops being able to justify the expense and so stops paying for it. When that happens, the app won't be able to function properly anymore, so they disable the apps rather than leaving them there but totally broken.",
"I would imagine it costs companies server space and bandwidth to continue supplying an app, even if they have no intention of supporting it further. And while the company may no longer support or work on an app, it doesn't mean that others aren't going to continue accessing it. Part of supporting an app includes keeping it both secure and functional for users. So an unmaintained app can quickly become a liability for the company that supplies it. And even if it's not a security issue, if the app isn't updates and stops working well with whatever platform it's on, it's a bad impression left with users that may or may not be savvy enough to understand the situation. Additionally, in cases like your situation, a business may no longer want to supply access to another company on their platform, or they may no longer be able to. It may be contractual, legal, or just cultural issues that cause a company to cut ties with another. It's like when cable providers stop providing certain channels during negotiations with the networks. The consumer loses access to apps/channels because the 2 companies involved are in a dispute of some sort. Edit: typos"
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cjybh4 | how do touchscreens detect skin and rubber, but nothing else? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Capacitive touch screens do not detect rubber, it detects conductive things. Styluses are made from a special conductive rubber or plastic that conducts electricity like your fingers do."
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ck1ju4 | How is looking up a hash table O(1), but looking up something in a normal array still O(n)? What's the difference between a hash table and a list of hashes? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Accessing an array is O(1). Perhaps you mean searching for something in an array. If the array is ordered then searching is O(log(n)). For an unordered array the search is O(n). Hashing means taking the search key and processing it in some consistent way to produce a single number which you can then use as the array index, i.e., the storage location in the array. If the keys are words then a simple hash would be to add the ASCII values of all the letters in the word so you'd find the entry for the word \"A\" in array slot 65. No searching is required, so the time to find an element doesn't depend on the size of the array (though it does depend on the size of the key). Obviously there are problems with the above simple hashing scheme. The words \"ab\" and \"ba\" would be stored in the same slot. The array would need to be very long to have space for long words. Read up more on [hash tables]( URL_0 ) to find out how these and other issues are handled.",
"If you're searching for something in an array, you have to first look at the first item in the array, then the second item, and so on until you actually find the item. Assuming the item you're looking for is equally likely to be in any position in the array, you will on average have to check n/2 positions in the array to find it, which is O(n). If you're looking something up in a hash table, you give the object to a hash algorithm and get back an index. Then you just look in that one index for the item. You don't need to search through the entire table because the object's identity corresponds directly (via the hash function) to the position in the table where it is located, unlike with a list where the item could be anywhere."
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ck1seo | How can a phone/laptop that has a less than 1080p display play 1080p videos on youtube? | i have an iphone 8. i found out that it has a 750p display (kinda pathetic compared to the 1440p galaxy phones that i used previously). so when watching youtube, the iphone 8 can at best play 720p videos right? but there's actually a 1080p option as well. what the fuck is that option? just a bullshit 1080p fake option? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It can download the video but when it comes to seeing it the limitations are set physically by the screen itself.",
"The video is scaled down by the software to the resolution it is shown on the screen just like lower resolution video is scaled up. The option in Youtube is for different streams they provide with the video. The amount of data in is higher in the 1080p stream then the 720p stream and the result is that is can look a bit sharper. The drawback is more data is used that is relevant on metered cellular connection and the phone use more energy to decode the video. Perhaps you even get a 4K option on some video like you can get on a computer. I get both 1080p, 1440p and 2160p (4k) on a 1366x786 laptop and 1440p look a bit better but require a lot more data and in 4k the old laptop is to slow to decode it so I get a lot of skipped frames.. So a full screen video on you phone will always be at 750p scaled up or down from the stream that Youtube deliver to the phone. Upscale video often look bury and not that good but downscale can look better. Just change the option and check if you see any difference."
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ck265w | What are neural networks? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Think of neurons as groups of people in different rooms of a building. Each person is very good at one thing and only one thing. For example, people in the first room can only smell stuff. And each one can only tell you the probability of it being a certain thing. So one guy can smell and tell you that he’s 40% certain that it is coffee. Another can tell you that he’s 99% certain that it’s sugar. So you walk in with an unidentified object, and the people in the first room tells you what they think it probably is. Then you walk into the next room, where people can touch and tell you the probability of it being a certain material. In the next room, the folks can lick and tell you the probability of it being the thing they specialize in. But if the guy in the first room who specializes in poisons says this is 99% poison, the guy in the 3rd room (lickers) will pass on tasting it. So each room gives you information that the folks in the next room use along with their own skill to decide how likely the object is whatever they specialize in. As you make your way through more and more rooms, the accumulated probability information allows the people in the last room to make a fairly confident statement as to what the object is. For example: Room 1: “This is red in color (99% certain), orange (45%), green (4%)” Room 2: “This is the size of a finger (95%), the size of a fist (6%), size of a football (0.5%)” Room 3: “Smells edible (88%), smells like plastic (8%), smells like metal (1%)” Room 4: “Based on all the info above and its taste, this is hot pepper (97%), lipstick (2%), a pen (0.2%)”",
"I'm not really liking the other explanations here, so here's a new one. Neuron is a thing that listens to many channels, and then does a rather simple choice of sending or not sending a signal. Or rather, it decides how much of a signal to send. Then multiple other neurons listen to that neuron. Artificial neural network is a mesh of neurons and their connections, simulated in very barebones way. What you basically get is, you send something in to the network, and that something is listened to by some neurons. These neurons then activate to varying degrees, and other neurons listen to those signals, and so on, until some signals you've designated as \"output\" where you are listening to them instead of more neurons. So it's a simple \"stuff goes in, neurons get wild, stuff comes out\". Slightly more accurately, numbers go in, and numbers go out, as we use numbers to tell how strong each activation was. Now, what happens inbetween input and output could be many things. How each individual neuron reacts to the signals they receive can be tweaked. And the cool thing is, we can make this continuous, so that small tweaks result in small change in output. Like, if you make neuron X less sensitive to its input so that every time it gives out a weaker signal(ie. a smaller number) than before, this should only slightly change the output. This means we can train these networks by feeding them data, checking what comes out, and evaluating how good the result was. Then we want to make slight changes so it becomes a little bit better. Then you repeat the process. And the great revolution here was, this process can be automated. We have a mathematical formula that tells you how to tweak the neurons to make it slightly better at the task you specified. So all you need to do is get data and figure out how to evaluate the output. After that, neural network can be automatically adjusted to become better and better at that task you set for it. So in theory it means, you can have computer do things that you yourself don't know how to do, but you are able to give it data to train on, and you are able to give numerical evaluation of its output telling it how well it did.",
"At the most Eli5 level, it's a machine/program designed to be very good at playing hot and cold. A single neuron takes in several numbers that you tell it, multiplies them by weights (other numbers) built into (and changeable by) the neuron, slaps the result with a fancy equation to keep it from being too boring, and spits out the results. But when it starts out, it has no idea what it's doing. The built in weights are usually random to start. So what happens is you feed it some data that follow a pattern. You tell it \"when I give you the numbers 7, 2, and 5, you should tell me 8\". It looks at that and says \"dang, I got 12, that's too high. Maybe I should count the first number, which was 7 this time, less, so I get a smaller number next time\". Then you hand out another the numbers, tell it what it should get, and it adjusts again, and so forth. How much less? Use calculus - not terribly complex calculus, but still calculus. So that's a neuron. It's pretty cool, but it's also somewhat limited. What if, for example, you should count that first number less, but only in some circumstance. What you do is you start chaining neurons together. Do it right, and various (groups of) neurons will get better and better at detecting part of the pattern in your data, and others will figure out what it means when certain subpatterns are or are not found and so forth. If you're interested and either know are are willing to learn a bit of programming, you can make some yourself to play with.",
"The term is used loosely to describe a variety of schemes by which large amounts of data are mathematically manipulated to perform classification. Imagine for a moment there's a large stretch of woods surrounded by various homes and businesses. Now, no one really wants to walk around the entire stretch of woods just to grab a Slushie. So they walk through the woods instead. When they do so, they trample the soil and bend the brush out of the way. As more and more people take their own route through the woods, you'll quickly see 'paths' develop along the most common routes. Those paths are actually a form of information. If you find a path in the woods, it's connecting one thing to another. The existence of that path tells you something about the relationship between its two endpoints (even if that something is nothing more than \"Bill likes Slushies\"). That's basically what happens in a neural network. You have complex mathematical structures that are trained in some fashion to have such 'paths' through them that allow you to feed a large amount of data in the front end and get a classification out the other."
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ck8abk | Telecommunications What options are available for extending the internet coverage to far-flung areas? | The context is getting data from an area not covered or with low internet speed. Building cellular networks / Cabling is not an option. Can I use an array of long range wi-fi extenders to get the job done? Or is there a better and more cost effective way of doing things? This is a project I hope I can use to help the poorer places in my country. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"you could dig a trench and put in a bundle of fibre optic cables into the ground, that would be the best optiin. but since you said it is not an option you would need to use an wireless backhaul. checkout ubiquity. they have a productline called airfibre, which is able to span several km of distance. from then you can use another system to provide wireless coverage to the area. the systems are very easy to use and not too expensive. edit: backhaul: URL_0 edge: URL_1 I have not worked with these products from ubiquiti but i have used the unifi stuff multiple times and it is imho the best wireless solution for an affordable price. edit2: also you should use directional antennas to provide the wireless extension from a cabled place to the destination area. \"normal\" wireless extenders will not do a very good job.",
"> Building cellular networks / Cabling is not an option. Why not? In rural areas that is the cheapest option, the towers can be augmented with something like WiMax if you need higher speeds. WiFi is way too short range. I feel like you think cell phone towers need wires run to them? That's absolutely not the case, most towers just have a power cable run to them, though they have portable ones that are generator powered, and it could easily be solar powered if you don't have power available. The normal way cell phone towers are wired is one central location has internet. On that building they put a tower with a bunch of microwave transmitters, and they use microwave to transmit the internet and phone service to the tower, which retransmits it as a cell phone signal. That tower can also relay the microwave signal from other nearby towers. Microwave transmitters have a range of about 50km and a bandwidth of 10Gbps is pretty reasonable, so it's pretty cheap to put up 1 cell tower in every town (which is maybe $20-50k of equipment stuck on the roof of some building), if it's in the city center you can then pull the internet off the tower to give local residents cheap internet (run fiber off of it). Using this method the only place with real fiber can be that one central building, you could run 1 100Gbps line to it and it could relay all that bandwidth out to a 200km radius over microwave quite easily (that much bandwidth is probably more than you need for a rural area, but you get the idea)."
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ck9wfd | Why are USB drives default to FAT32 and not NTFS? | NTFS (New Technology File System) was created in 1993, and is more modern that FAT32 which was created in 1977. The easiest limitation to see is that FAT32 doesn't support files over 4GB. Why do modern Flash Drives come in FAT32 format instead of NTFS? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Supportability NTFS is only semi-supported in operating systems other than Windows. Linux and BSD have a free and open-source NTFS driver, called NTFS-3G, with both read and write functionality. macOS comes with read-only support for NTFS; its disabled-by-default write support for NTFS is unstable.",
"NTFS caches files (EDIT: This seems disabled by default for removeable drives but can be enabled by the user) for writing instead of writing them instantly like FAT32. This has some benefits but also runs the risk of data corruption if the device is removed before the system finishes writing that cached data. FAT32 doesn't use caching so it's always safe to remove the drive as soon as the system reports the data is copied, most users tend to simply pull USB drives from the computer without telling the computer to \"remove\" the device (which forces the system to write any cached to the drive then notify the user it's safe to remove). Also NTFS is a Windows-specific format (supported by most modern OSs, but not by all legacy systems), FAT32 is older and has wider adoption than NTFS meaning it works on more computers. There's a newer format called exFAT that is supported on modern systems which can support files over 4GB (and has other improvements over FAT32), but it's not supported on legacy systems. So in short: NTFS isn't as well suited for removeable devices as FAT32, and FAT32 is more widely compatible with various systems, so it's the default."
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cka2fy | What is the difference in viewing experience in a theater between 35mm film and digital | Recently with Tarantino’s new movie coming out there’s been talk about how special it is you can see it in 35mm. What is the difference in the theater experience? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a completely different process. Each has unique artifacts that the other simply can't reproduce. It's also a function of the cinematographer, who may or may not choose to use the media's artifacts for artistic reasons. 35mm film can exist with several different aspect ratios, through the use of special projection lenses, but most digital projector owners don't want to have special glass for movies in ultra-widescreen formats, so they might choose to cut the edges off. Depending on the camera, each 35mm film frame is exposed for about 1/30^th of a second. This means 24/30^ths of the time the frame is recording and 6/30^ths of each second is used moving the film forward a frame. Digital cameras can come much closer to 1/24^th of a second exposure for each frame, which can minimize blur edge separation in fast-moving objects. This requires very careful lighting control, and unless it's important the cinematographer is likely to use variable exposure time to shoot with the available light, which increases blur edge separation. Most digital theater projectors are 2K (2048x1080), just a little better than 1080P HDTV (1920x1080). Extra-nice digital theaters are 4K (4096x2160). Basic 35mm film (24mm wide image) is about 3500x1890, 70mm Super PanaVision is about 6900x3000, and 70mm IMAX is 9300x6500. If you look at best-digital vs worst-film, it's about the same, but otherwise film is just a lot more pixels. Film can project more colors over a wider range than digital projectors. Particularly in dark scenes, which for instance explains a lot about why some fans with their flat panel TVs set for \"normal TV\" hated recent Game of Thrones scenes while others with their neighbors with their TVs set for \"cinema mode\" lived it. This should be less of an issue in a professionally run theater, which should calibrate carefully for every movie, but it's another variable in the equation. Tarantino is another variable. He's a film affectionato, having said many times that he'd retire if he couldn't shoot on film and have viewers see projected film. He's the sort of director most likely to put a cinematographer in a situation where the unique properties of film are required to get the shot."
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ckb9ac | how those catfish bots on dating sites work, how are they coded and implemented | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Bot bot = new Bot(’Tiffany’); If(guy) { bot.swipeLeft(); bot.say(’hi there stranger wan som fuq’); If(guy.answer === ’yes plz’) { bot.say(’plis snd credit card detailz’); } } else { bot.swipeRight(); }"
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ckbs96 | How or why does the pole disappear in those awesome gopro videos? All I ever see is the person holding something or a fixed point on the body, but nothing is visible. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One of the comments in your link mentions the insta360 camera rather than a gopro. It edits out it's own handle from the video."
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ckc0dh | Why are online password managers so much safer than writing passwords in a book that’s kept in a safe place? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is an example password that my password manager makes: xmJWI#Nrjmx7oXu%hLmc70mU$\\*zi9U Every place I have a password for has a password like that (or as long and complicated as they will allow) that is unique. I change them all frequently. Are you /really/ going to make, update, remember and consistently use really good passwords in your book?",
"It depends what threat you're defending against If you're worried about someone breaking into your house and stealing your banking information then a physical book is a bad idea and a password manager is better If you're worried about being directly targeted because you're a high value target then a password manager isn't a good idea because it puts all your eggs in one basket If you're worried about systems getting breached and giving up your password so you want to have passwords that are complicated and hard to crack, and unique for each site without being super time consuming then you want a password manager The third threat is far far more likely. You're most likely to be compromised due to password reuse these days",
"Good password managers should be encrypted on the server side, and is only decrypted on *your* computer with your master password. In theory, this means that it is impossible for any employees of the service to access your passwords, nor will a data breach leak them, as long as your master password is strong and remains a secret. Password managers also encourage unique and more complex passwords, which are good security practices in their own rights. There are also offline password managers like KeePass that directly store encrypted passwords on your computer, these are arguably more secure as the attack surface is reduced even further (don't have to trust a third party server at all, and there is less risk of the client that does the decryption being compromised), again, as long as your master password is strong and remains a secret.",
"The two big benefits to password managers are: 1. They allow you to easily use a different password on each website. This password is automatically generated and usually very complex. This means if one website is compromised and the hackers get your password, they cannot use that same password to log into your other accounts. 2. They automatically enter the passwords for you. This makes using long and complex passwords very easy, as you will not have to type them. The manager will automatically put your user name/email and password into the fields. Writing down your passwords is an ineffective way to protect your passwords as they are stored in plaint text and available for anyone to copy down should they have access to it. Password managers encrypt the password file with a master password, so even if someone copies the file, it's useless without the master password. Cloud based password managers can also warn you if they see that one of the websites you're registered on has been compromised. It will advise that you change your password on that website. A piece of paper will not do that, you'll have to watch the news yourself."
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ckcnnv | Why do airplane passengers need to turn off cellphones or electronic devices while a plane takes off/lands? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its nonsense. Its based on old avionics devices that could have radio interference , afyer that it was because \"holy shiit you never know\". but today's technology has changed the game. Did years ago.",
"Take offs and landings are the only real dangerous part of the flight. They want people to be focused, and not distracted if they need to evacuate, or if there is some sort of emergency. Obviously not everyone will be focused, but at least some will.",
"The theory is that these devices could interfere with the planes communication systems, and since the landing and takeoff are the most dangerous things that the plane does, any sort of interference at that critical time would be unacceptable. There is also concern that if a plane did suffer any sort of emergency, you want everything stowed properly so that it would be easier for passengers to evacuate. In reality however, I think it has been demonstrated that these electronic devices don't interfere with anything on a plane at all, so it's mostly just a holdover from those early days of excessive paranoia about cellphones and interference when they first started showing up on commercial airplanes.",
"Pilot here - [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) The regulation specifically states concerns of electronics interfering with radio navigation systems. Many aircraft still utilize radio navigation in conjunction with modern GPS based systems. Newer electronics are shielded enough that they have no affect on the navigation equipment. Many of us even use tablets, smartphones, and laptops in the cockpit as electronic fight bags for backup navigation and flight planning. The regulation is still in place mostly to keep people focused in the event of a low altitude emergency and to keep 300+ people from trying to make calls in such a confined space.",
"When mobile phones were introduced, it was unknown if aircraft electronics would be sensitive to them. As a precaution, it was decided that you should turn them off. However, nowadays it is no longer because of the aircraft electronics, but rather the network on the ground. When you are in the air, the phone signal is unusually strong compared to sources on the ground, because it is one of the few antennas at that location, and there are no obstacles between phone and mast. Furthermore, the ground network tries to predict where the phone is going, in order to connect it to the best possible mast. This used to cause problems, because the location is more difficult to accurately calculate (you need to solve for 3 variables instead of two), and because the source is moving at ~800 kmh, and the system was simply not build for that. However, technology has caught up, and the ban can probably be lifted. But regulations in aviation don't change that quickly.",
"So I actually happen to do IT support for a private jet company. the pilots do actually need all the electronic devices to be turned off or at least in airplane mode so that it doesn't interfere with any of the other cellular network or the internal wireless network that planes often offer. We need to speak to them. We need to help them with their electronic devices. I don't even want to go into the horrors of how bad they are at their electronic devices but hey they're experts at flying and that's all they need to do really."
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ckibiu | What will happen with the land line infrastructure maintenance as the need for wired phones becomes almost non-existent? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There will always be the availability of landlines. Even 100 years from now, if you positively have to have a landline, they'll do that for you. It may be fiber based all the way, but it will still be possible. And yes, as the pool of subscribers drop, it may get more and more expensive, but I guarantee you that it will still be able to get it if you really want it.",
"I've heard, and I'm aware the danger in heresy but this was from an AT & T employee, that there will always be a landline network in the US because the government pays to keep it maintained. The fear is if something were to happen to the satellite network the military would no longer be able to coordinate responses to possible threats in a timely manner. Again, I have no firsthand knowledge of this, but it seems plausible."
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ckm0l2 | Why is Bing so bad? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The algorithm that Google use for research is secret and it's the reason why they are way better than anything",
"Google have all the data. They know who search what and they can personalize the resutls. They have more context. If opensource developer search for riot they will give him results for instant messenger, when journalist search it they will return riot in Hong Kong. Problem is the same will happen when flat earther search for flat earth. The results are biased and thats not always good. If you care about your privacy try duckduckgo, quant etc.",
"As a side note, Bing is not that bad. It is orders of magnitude better than any of the search engines that existed prior to Google. It's just that Google is that good. So if Google is 100, Bing is a 30, and everything prior to Google is a 1. So Bing is a big step up, many, many years too late.",
"Google has an unbeatable head start in terms of a search engine. Lets for a moment assume that Bing and Google had the exact same code for finding websites and indexing those websites. For the past 15 years google has been in the business of search. For all of those years they have been saving information about what people search for and what links they click on. Google uses this information to better order the results the next time someoene searches for those terms. Say you search for \"reddit ELI5\". The first result is URL_1 and the second result is URL_0 . Over time google comes to realize that lots of people who click the first link come back and click on the second. And also lots of people (who know better) go directly to the second link and never return to the search results. So google learns that the first link is not what people actually want when they search for ELI5 reddit. So over the more than 15 years that Google has been collecting this data they have learned A LOT about what people actually want when they search specific terms. They've learned so much in fact that it's become more important than the process of crawling the web looking for links and indexing pages. This data advantage is one that Microsoft can never obtain. Google has the data and is not giving it up. That data makes google's results better. Since google's results are better more people use google rather than Bing. The more people that use google the larger the pile of data grows and the better google's results becomes."
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cknw03 | How does reverse image search work? | I often see people on r/quityourbullshit calling out people and using a reverse image search as evidence. How does this work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The other answers so far have been a bit over simplified so I'll try to go a bit deeper while still making it accessible. It you have an image of a cat you can describe that image in a lot of ways. Let's assume we have a picture of Garfield and we have photoshopped the background to be black for simplicity. Some obvious ways to describe it might be \"orange\" and \"generally curvey\" (as opposed to a picture of gravel which might look \"generally angular\"). You can further describe the image as \"has two half circles (ears) above a round region (head)\" and \"has two long skinny regions (legs) connecting an upper region (body) to a lower region (feet)\". You can get more detailed on each thing like \"the non-black regions are about 90% orange and 10% black\" or \"the half-circles (ears) are 1/10 the size of the full circle (head) below them\" Computers are much less explicit than this since it is all done via an algorithm, but hopefully you can imagine a computer coming up with hundreds or thousands of these generalized image descriptions and associating them with an image. Then when you upload a new image it looks at your image and describes it in this way, then finds images with similar descriptions. In some cases the descriptions will be practically identical: that is how it finds different sizes of the same image. In other cases it will just be close enough: those will be related images. Furthermore we use metadata to associate it with specific words. With our Garfield example: the computer won't find anything in that image to associate it with the word \"Garfield\", but maybe a lot of people upload the image as \"Garfield.jpg\": the algorithm will notice this and start associating the word \"Garfield\" with those descriptions it generated. They also use nearby text on webpages (i.e. captions) to get descriptions.",
"Google use an algorithm to generate a summary of the data in the image (called a hash). Similar images will provide similar hashes, even if they are not exact pixel for pixel. Google can then rank the results based on how similar the hashes are",
"**What the person does:** 1. On your computer, open a web browser, like Chrome or Safari. 2. Go to [Google Images]( URL_0 ). 3. Click Search by image 📷. 4. Click **Upload an image** 📷 **Choose file** or **Browse**. 5. Select a picture from your computer. 6. Click **Open** or **Choose**. That's taken from [here]( URL_1 ), which also has directions for doing this on your phone. ======= **What the computer does:** It looks for a matching pixel string. If you were to take your image and put all the pixels in a single line, so that the image is no longer square, that's how computers 'read' images. Then the computer can look for similar strings. This works just like keyword searching. If your image is a landscape with green hills and a blue sky and white clouds, you will find 'similar' images that just have large chunks of blue/green and smaller chunks of white. Reverse-Image search does not understand the contents of a picture. It does not know there are hills, sky, or clouds. It just sees chunks of color, and patterns in the chunks.",
"Google uses several algorithms to identify similar images. The fastest and cheapest method they run first is to hash your image data down to just 16 bytes checksum. This takes about 50 milliseconds on a normal computer, so it's really fast and cheap. Google collects images from websites all over the world and saved them to their giant databases, and all these images also get hashed to the 16 bytes checksum, so if your image checksum matches that of any images collected by Google. They will know it's the exact same image, and can tell you the web pages they found the images. If no exact image found, Google runs a perceptual hashing (phash algorithm or similar) on your image. This hashing algorithm is similar to the first method but a checksum is computed from the image at multiple scales rather than from image at its original scale. Phash allows Google to find exact images that are scaled up/down with minor modifications, but if the image is radically changed, Phash will fail to find a match. If no match yet, Google will run a histogram search on your image. What it does is reading the colors of the image and count the pixels of same colors. Google will then search for images that have similar color palettes or histogram. So this means Google can return images that contain similar colors to your image. Additionally, as of late, Google is now using AI to match images. Google Vision AI can label objects in your image! They know what's in the image whether it's a cat, a chair, a building, a car or a little baby. They can label thousands of different objects in the image very accurately. They even know if your image contains sexually explicit content to what degree. So Google will return images that match these labels. Don't be surprised if you take photo of your cat sitting on keyboard and search that image on Google and get images of \"cats sitting on keyboard\" with the text already written in the Google search box. If you don't know what an AI is. It's basically an artificial brain that runs on computers. Google trains the artificial brain to be able to tell what objects are in the image very accurately, all thanks to the researchers who create models of Convolutional Neural Network. CNN is the basis of recent leap of computer vision used by company such as Tesla, because it can detect and label objects extremely accurately. Other researchers have since come up with better, faster neural networks such as Faster R-CNN, R-FCN, YOLO and Deeplab Xception.",
"Forgive me if I go beyond ELI5, this is hard to translate. Image recognition based on neural nets works on many layers of basic activities. In the first layer, called a convolution, it scans over the whole image and recognizes a list of very basic things, like whether there is a vertical edge, a horizontal edge, a slightly angled edge, a flat pattern, a bumpy pattern, etc. So where you used to have one grid of data for each pixel of the image, you now have a set of grids, each one describing whether there is one of these patterns around each area of the image. The next layer, called a pooling layer, generally summarizes this into a smaller version, and that allows it to say if there were any in an area generally. After this, there are a bunch of layers that continue to do this. For example, there ends up being a thing that sees this series of edges and circles and etc, and ends up lighting up when it sees an eye. A later layer might light up when it sees a face, or a dog face, or whatever. There's a [nice video with a visualization of this that helps explain it]( URL_0 ). The final out put of all this is a giant categorization where each output says whether the thing exists in the picture, and where. Often for a larger picture it is broken down into a grid, much like [the pictures you might be asked to recognize it a captcha challenge]( URL_1 ). Given that output, you can do several things, including: 1. Look for the presence of the same specific things in the same relative positions 2. Do general tone, color, hue, saturation comparisons 3. Go back a couple layers in the net I described above, and look for the numbers to be similar in the earlier stages, suggesting the similarity. 4. Probably some things I didn't think of. Sufficiently similar, and it can call it a match."
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ckorkr | How does the eye-sight-measuring machine at the glasses shop actually give you the exact number of your eyesight? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Lenses work both ways. The machine is basically getting a camera trained on your retina and then ‘auto-focusing’ until it sees a clear image of your retina. Software then calculates the properties of your lens based on the amount of focusing it required to get that clear picture of your retina.",
"Follow up question. I want to order glasses online, but I'm not sure about my pupillary distance (DP). I tried measuring it myself but I get different numbers each time. Any suggestions... Edit: Thanks everyone for great suggestions. I completely understand that eyeglasses shops don't want to give this info for free because they want to make money too. I had a bad experience at my last optician where they said, \"Oh when you buy your glasses you'll get your real PD\" and did a quick estimate. At the time I didn't realize what it was for and that they should have done it right because I was paying for it.",
"Optometrist here. The manual machine where they go 1 or 2, called a phoropter, uses different plus and minus powered lenses. Essentially if you are an ametrope, meaning light does not focus on the retina, which is like a film in the back of the eye that processes the light, you are going to need a lens in front of your eyes to see clearly. Using different plus and minus lenses, we are able to move the location at which light is being focused, giving you clear vision. The automated machines, called an autorefractor, uses special images on the cornea, the clear part of the eye, to determine the lens that would be needed for the patient to have clear vision. Accuracy can be tough on these automated machines as optometrists do not want to give a patient whatever the machine says, as it can lead to overminus-ing or overplus-ing the patient, which can have negative impact on vision. But generally, we will look at the numbers from the autorefractor and then fine tune it.",
"To bad having karackonos means I can't use those machines. That is spelt wrong, but oh well.",
"I’m 6’5 and have suffered from really bad headaches and vertigo. Every time I would stand up it felt like I was going to pass out. I haven’t worn glasses since I was a kid. I went to the Optometrist got my glasses and haven’t had vertigo since. Definitely worth the time and money.",
"Depending on where you are in the world, the autorefractor can be used as a baseline to find your prescription (is in the UK where I'm employed), or used as the full spectacle prescription (most of Europe). It's pretty accurate to the point where our staff will jump on for a 30 second check if they feel their eyesight has changed rather than go straight to the optometrist. They'll still book a follow up sight test anyways as that's the rules over here, but it's useful to rule out tiredness, dry eye etc",
"To be honest, I don't think any machine is completely accurate. The reason they have varieties of lenses for you to look through is for you to get better vision than you were before. I was premature as a child and one of my eyes developed slower than the other, and I quickly developed vision problems. They have gotten worse over the years; especially since I'm both near and far sided. No matter how many times I get fitted, I still have trouble seeing objects, so in short terms, they try to measure your vision for a fit in which you can see, but it can almost never fully improve your vision."
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ckqtvv | Why does the timer on my washer lie to me? It has said ‘6 minutes left’ for the last 20 minutes. What causes the accuracy (or, more commonly, the lack thereof) in the timer for washers and dryers? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"During the spin cycle some washers have an unbalanced load sensor (i.e. all the clothes has lumped up on one side of the drum). When the machine detects this it stops the spin and the timer to avoid damaging the drum and will rotate back and forth slowly a few times to try to evenly distribute the weight and then spins fast again. However, certain loads can't be evenly distributed (a couple of thick items like jeans or sweaters with other clothes) and so this cycle will repeat, lengthening the complete cycle time. If your load has ever finished, but the clothes are still very wet, this is likely your problem.",
"At leas for dryers most of them have te ability to sense how wet the clothes still are. So they will give you the estimated time to be done and then if they sense the clothes are still damp they will keep going."
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cksjao | How are movies dubbed into a second language while maintaining other background audio? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The background audio and voice audio are separate tracks. They are laid over each other to create the illusion of a single track. For other languages, the native voice track is removed and the second language added over the background track.",
"So when they shoot a scene, they have these boom mics hanging above and aiming down at the actors. This gets the diaglogue really well, but not so good at the background sounds. In fact, most of the background, ambient and incidental sounds (like footsteps, punches, machinery) is recorded seperately by Foley artists and sound designers/editors. Google videos of Foley artists at work, its fascinating. ANyways - the dialogue, the foley/background/ambient sound and the music are all recorded on different tracks. They're only combined or _mixed_ together when the final sound mastering is done, just before its added to the video stream/film. And in digital projection the two are never combined per se, they're synchronized at playback time. So to get a dubbed version, you rerecord the dialogue in a studio and combine it with the original masters of the ambient/foley tracks and music tracks. This is why there are seperate Oscar categories for Mixing, Score (music) and Sound Editing (foley and special effects creation)... you can have really cool sounds but if its not mixed well it will still suck."
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ckxcvg | How does an air conditioning unit work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Compressing a gas makes the gas hotter, and allowing a compressed gas to decompress makes it cooler (this is why air duster spray cans get cold if you turn them upside down and spray), so an A/C just compresses and decompresses a gas. An A/C unit has two opposing components, an evaporator and a condenser, and it passes the refrigerant (a gas) through the two systems in a constant loop. It compresses the refrigerant (freon or another gas) and blows away the created heat (this is why A/C units need an exhaust to the outside) in the condenser, then lets it decompress into a series of metal baffles called an evaporator (which is like a radiator) and a fan blows through the evaporator, cooling the air, and cooling the room. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 ) here's a diagram"
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ckxxb9 | How does color restoration work for black and white films? | Recently saw professionally restored ww2 footage and was wondering how they "restore" color from a camera and film that didn't have the hardware to capture color. I don't know that much about photography so I've always been baffled by this | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are few thing to consider. 1. We know the colour we can see that is the visible light/spectrum which can be primarily define by red, green and blue. Any other colour is a combination of those colour. Hence, you see most thing especially photoshop, keyboard always go by RGB. (red, green and blue). This is a crucial fact in deciphering black and white photo. Look at these [photo]( URL_1 ). Look closely at the red, blue and green filter. FYI, Green filter allow green light through, blue filter allow blue light through etc. Let's compare between blue filter against red and green of the sky. You'll realize that blue filter has a lighter colour (More white) compare to green and red filter. How much lighter(whiter) the picture will be will determine how much of the colour intensity will be. Dying (dye) and combining the [negative]( URL_0 ) will result in a [coloured]( URL_4 ) picture. ELI5 : Back in the days, we only have camera to capture black and white but different colour provides different intensity and thus colour is added back based on the intensity of the photo. Colour photography is the centre of astronomy in the current era. Most photo we take are actually black and white but are coloured based on the intensity of gas emitted certain light wavelength. You can learn more about this from [vox]( URL_2 ). Source : [1]( URL_2 ), [2]( URL_3 )"
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ckzwnl | How does a radix lsd sort work? | To my understanding, it doesn't make any comparisons, but I could be totally wrong. I really tried to look it up and understand this sorting algorithm, but I'm a bit stupid | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It doesn't really do any comparisons, you're right. Think of it this way... You have 10 lists, one for each decimal digit (0-9). For each (integer) element, look at the least significant digit, and place the element in the appropriate list. E.g. 123 would go in list[3], 520 would go in list[0], 607 would go in list[7]. Now, collect them back into a semi-ordered list, one bucket at a time (0- > 9 for ascending order). Now, each element is sorted by it's least significant digit. Now, put them back into those lists **using the current order** but using the second least significant digit, then collect them again. Now, the list is sorted by the second least significant digit, then by the least significant digit. Continue the process until everything is sorted. This can be an extremely useful sort if classification based on parts of each element (e.g. digit) is simple but direct comparison is difficult, or when you have potentially many of these lists (since that approaches a hash function) and few parts of each element."
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cl26ed | How did the space bar on a keyboard come to exist as such a long key? Why haven't newer designs made it any smaller? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You need to be able to hit it with both thumbs. Plus significant changes in keyboard design are not very likely to happen as a lot of people spend countless hours to learn this layout efficiently.",
"Place your hands on the '[start position]( URL_0 )' to type blind. Both thumbs now touch the space bar on each side, good chance the space bar is just wide enough to fit both thumbs. And that is the second part of the answer: The space bar in fact IS smaller than on earlier keyboard designs. Just look for photos of old typing machines / 80's keyboards / new keyboards and you can see the space bar is now much smaller than a couple of decades ago. It just can't get any smaller, it would be a really uncomfortable position for your thumbs. Only option would be two separate space bars with some keys in between. But those keys would be out of a comfortable reach."
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cl32ch | what is IP exactly? And why would it be bad if internet strangers got hold of mine and what could they subsequently do with it? | Edit: IP as in internet Protocol, should have clarified. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"An IP address is just what it sounds like-- an address. Every machine that is a component of a larger network gets assigned a unique IP address much like houses get assigned unique street addresses. If someone got ahold of your IP address, they could tell where your computer resides. Consequently, they could try to \"pay you a visit.\" If your network (in the same analogy, your house) doesn't have a strong enough protection, they could succeed and break in. Once inside your network (house), they could cause havoc in a number of ways."
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clcw25 | How are camera crews able to capture clips of dangerous animals in the wild? | I'm currently watching 'Hostile Planet' and I'm amazed at how they get such high quality footage of animals in the wild. Like in episode three, there is a segment that shows a Jaguar hunting down an anaconda and I'm curious how they get such good videos. There is no way they're on the ground and capturing these clips right? I think that'd be too dangerous. Also in [this footage]( URL_0 ) how are they able to capture this clip of them following an anaconda underwater? Wouldn't a drone scare of the animals? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They're using extremely long-range camera lenses. They're generally not near the animals they're filming, and spend a long time just waiting to get their shots",
"If you catch the Blue Planet kind of documentaries, they often have shots of the filmography during the credits. I recall there a good making of about NatGeo filmmaking. They sit in bluffs far away with incredible lenses waiting for actions. They are in nature, and do run into danger. For some, there are set-ups, like mouse burrows and bird nests, where there are cameras set in advance, or even special excavations.",
"Quite often they shoot in reserves, and they know areas with a lot of activity. That being said, during the credits in some of the Blue Earth docs they show crews just miserable in the rain and elements for 24 hours trying to nail a single shot. It’s definitely slow work with many days that are chalked up as a loss."
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clfn0b | why at some places my cell phone has full phone signal available, but no or very low network connectivity? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Having slow connection on 4G is like driving slowly on the highway. If there's too many people using that tower that you're connected to, it's going to be slower.",
"The cell site you’re connected too is over subscribed, think music festival or similar. Many many times the capacity of the cell tower is trying to connect simultaneously and so the cell tower does the best it can by dividing its capacity out to each subscriber.",
"Telephone signals require much less transmission quality than say 4G internet. When your connection is too bad for 4G it might still be plenty for just good old calling. If what you mean is that you have all the bars but still bad internet, that could be because your network is overloaded. Maybe too many poeple are attempting to use your network using the same tower.",
"There could be a lot of things going on depending on your provider and network. Sprint for example uses a 3rd party hardware management team to implement generic fairness algorithms that kick in around when a tower is around 80% capacity. On their website they use the metaphor of adding a traffic light to mitigate the flow of traffic. Those with the lowest priority have to wait in line for connection even though they have a perfect connection with the tower. URL_0",
"Voice and data have different travel paths onto the network. Normally if you strong signal, the tower you're on can be overloaded. Also, the website you're going to could also be slow. Use a speed tester app on your phone to check bandwidth speeds",
"* Cell sites have a limited bandwidth to handle the data traffic of all the customers connected to it. * If you have a strong signal level but very slow data speeds, it's likely because there are *many many* people connected to the same cell site. * This happens often in crowded places especially those that don't have extra cell sites built in. * For example, Harvard commencement happens every year in Cambridge, MA: * There are some 35,000 to 40,000 people all in Harvard yard for two days. * For an undisclosed major US mobile carrier, there is only 1 cell site nearby and it absolutely cannot handle that number of users at the same time. * The cell site is *very* close by so all the users from that carrier will see very good signal strength. * But their texts, mobile data, and even calls, might be super slow or delayed etc because the site is overwhelmed with the number of connections."
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clinn5 | How is paper made from wood? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Paper Engineer here: The type of wood is selected based on the quality of paper that is being produced. Hardwoods are generally selected for newspaper grades, and is pumped using a more mechanical process. The majority of paper that we use is made from softwood pulps though. The wood is chopped into chips of a specific size that allows for the cooking liquor (a highly basic or acidic mixture) to evenly penetrate the wood. From there, the pulp/chemical mixture is cooked under elevated pressures and temperatures, breaking down lignin and liberating more fibers. More chemical treatments are applied depending on the quality of the paper, the desired water penetration, etc. before it makes its way to the paper machine. From here, the pulp is discharged from a series of jets leaving the “headbox” onto the forming wire. Next, water is drained as the wire moves the pulp along, consolidating the fibers into a wet web. The sheet eventually becomes strong enough to be lifted from the wire by the pickup roll, after which it is pressed and sent through a series of steam driers before winding onto a giant reel at the end."
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clkwvw | Why are there no video formats that support transparency, like images do (PNG)? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I guess because it isnt really used. No one really overlays video onto a background where transparency is required. Png is designed so that you don't get messy borders on websites. What's the use case for video?"
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clmu70 | Why do voices from same radio hosts sound so different on FM vs. AM radio? | CBC radio is broadcasted on AM and FM in Canada. When flipping between the two, I notice a pretty significant difference in sound and pitch. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"FM radio is much higher quality audio than AM. There’s a reason music and higher quality programming transitions to FM, it’s simply a way better quality to listen to.",
"AM is pretty simple, has a lower carrier frequency, and a small bandwidth which lets you make an AM radio out of pretty much anything. The low frequency of AM lets it travel a long way but the low bandwidth per station means that you get questionable voice quality. FM is a lot more complicated and we shove a lot more data into that signal, it has a bandwidth several times larger than AM. The higher frequencies of FM don't travel as far but they do let you easily send more data, which results in a signal closer to the original(aka clearer voices and good quality music) Something modern like XM satellite radio runs a bit under 2.4 GHz and has a very large bandwidth. It just beams a compressed datastream to the receiver which decompresses it and gets you pretty good audio quality."
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clmyxa | How come you can call emergency services when you have no signal but not anybody else? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because when you call the emergency services, the phone can use any carrier service. So say you are on O2, and you have no signal, you can’t call anyone. But there might be Talktalk coverage. Calling 999/911 ect allows you to use any service provider’s network regardless of which provider you pay for.",
"I'm assuming you mean a cell phone. You may be confusing loss of signal with loss of service which is understandable because they're usually conflated in the phone's interface. If a phone has a connection to a cell but service isn't authorized, it may show no signal. It's still connected to the tower and, in may places, the law requires that calls to emergency services be connected regardless of service status.",
"From Google Answer: Emergency calls can bemade on any mobile phone network, not just your own. If you are somewhere where your network doesn't have reception but another does, you get Emergency Calls Only. If no networks have any signal, you'll be told there is no reception and you can't even make 999 calls."
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cls5g3 | How do land photographers take such amazing photos of nebulae and planets? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Deep sky astrophotography is one of the most challenging (and expensive) forms of amateur photography there is. To photograph a nebula or galaxy, you actually don't need a very large telescope... a little 3\" apochromatic refractor attached to a regular dslr will do. But what you *do* need is to be able to keep the camera and scope trained on the object very accurately for a number of long exposures. This is challenging because the Earth is rotating so objects in the sky actually move out if view very quickly if the telescope can't move to follow them. To do this you need a good tracking mount - a German equatorial mount usually, and that's where the real expense comes in since accurate and stable mounts can cost between $1500 on the low end to tens of thousands in the high end. On top of that, most astrophotographers also use a guidedscope, which is a smaller second scope attached to the larger one whose sole purpose is to make sure everything is staying aligned by making micro adjustments to the mount. Finally, when you've been out in the dark all night taking hundreds (or thousands) of exposures, you come home and use software like deep sky stacker to compile everything into one brighter, clearer image, which you can then enhance with Photoshop in a number of ways - reducing noise, saturating certain colors, increasing contrast etc."
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clv3o1 | How Balancing on bicycle or any two wheeler works? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are 3 major things that work towards keeping a bike upright. They all work to steer the bike so that the wheels remain underneath it. The first, and most important, is that a bike has a rider, who works to keep the bike upright. They steer so the bike's wheels remain underneath it. The rider actively works to keep the bike balanced. The second is something called 'trail'. If you draw a line through the steering pivot down to the ground, that line hits the ground in front of where the tyre hits the ground. You can see the effect of this if you take a bike, hold it by the seat, and tilt the bike over. The front wheel will 'flop' inwards. If the bike was moving, this would steer the bike into the lean, which would tend to push the bike back upright. The third is gyroscopic effects. Not that the effect prevents the bike from leaning like a gyroscopes wheel does - the wheels are nowhere near fast or heavy enough to do that - but tilting the front wheel over tends to make it steer into the lean, adding to the effect of 'trail'. It is the combination of all of these things that make a bike stable. A bike without a rider is still stable because of the other two, and a rider can keep a bike stable even if it does not have 'trail' and/or the gyroscope effect is cancelled. You can even make a bike stable without all three - the common way is to add a counterweight out in front of the front wheel, so its weight causes the front wheel to steer into the lean, steering the wheels back underneath the bike. Edit: Another poster reminded me of [this Minute Physics episode]( URL_0 ), which reminded me of a fourth effect - that the weight of the handlebars and the forward rake of the front wheel forks, puts the weight of the front wheel assembly ahead of the pivot point. This also helps steer the bike into the lean."
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clvwdq | When and how did gold teeth become used in dental work? Arent there more practical things that could be used? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Gold is unreactive. The last thing you want is your tooth to rust or dissolve. Gold is so unreactive it doesn't even have a flavour. It's also valuable so can be seen as a display of wealth. There are more practical things, and they're generally what your dentist will use today. Silver amalgams, plastic, ceramic or special types of glass are used today for fillings and dentures.",
"Gold dental restorations are the (pun intended) gold standard. There are wonderful advancements happening all the time in dental materials but the old adage is still true: If it's ugly, it will last (gold, silver amalgam) If its pretty, it will need to be replaced someday. There isn't another material with the same biocompatibility of dental gold alloy: non-reactivity, similar coefficients of wear, expansion, etc. as natural tooth. There is no true replacement for natural enamel. No such thing as good as new. It therefore makes sense to remove as little tooth material as possible: make an inlay or onlay instead of a full crown. Gold is the very best material for partial coverage restorations and partial coverage restorations are the epitome of dental bioengineering. Disclosure: I am along with most everyone else in my family, in the in the dental field. Note: with all my dental family members, time and money are not considerations when getting dental work. We can get whatever we want, whenever we like. All of us choose partial gold restorations for our molars.",
"Currently gold is (mainly) only used because it's expensive and showy, but back when dentistry was emerging, gold was readily available, non toxic, soft enough to shape easily, but tough enough to chew with, it's also very rust resistant and I'm sure that the fact that it's non ferrous is good too. [Wikipedia]( URL_0 ) > Gold wire was used in dentistry in ancient times, and for filling cavities in the 19th century. The material is suitable for dentistry because it is malleable, nearly immune to corrosion, and hard enough to form a biting surface that can be used for years. Gold was used before silver became available and has continued to be used for specialized purposes.",
"I am in my late 50's, when I was in college I went to a dental college and they gave me a gold crown on a molar. A dental student's graduation requirement, I think dentists had stop using gold by then. Over the years I was embarrassed by it, looked like I was from the old country. Since then I have had an expensive crown or two more and a few invisible fillings. I have had a few problems/replacements with these, but the gold crown has been problem free.",
"Before advancements in dental materials, gold was used because of its accessibility and biocompatibility. Also, it being a soft dental alloy, it was not harmful to opposing dentition. There are other materials available now days that are less expensive and more aesthetic. Full Gold Crowns have been replaced by Zirconia Crowns. Yet, there are still situations where a full metal crown is applicable. When your dentist removes tooth structure to make room for a crown, there are specific thickness's needed to make room for different types of restorations. For example, a Porcelain Fused to Metal crown. The doctors know they need to make room for .3-.5mm for metal, .2mm for opaque ceramic to block out the grey metal, and .5-1mm of porcelain. But sometimes there just isn't enough enamel or dentin to make enough room. So a gold crown being only one material with a minimum thickness of .5mm will suffice. Or, a harder metal made of nickel or chrome cobalt at .3mm thickness. The different types of restorations available all have manufacture specified recommended thicknesses. And the doctor needs to follow these guidelines or the restoration may fail.",
"Except for color and cost gold is the perfect material for dental use. A) gold doesn’t rust or degrade in a wet environment with varying PH of materials passimg through(the mouth), few materials can remain perfect in such a place for decades. B) gold does not taste to the patient so it does not effect enjoyment of eating (try sucking on a penny) C) gold can be cast with very fine tolerances at a lowish temperature and will hold its shape even when it is quite thin. This means one does not have to cut away much tooth to prepare a crown. D) gold is ductile, meaning it deforms under pressure so it doesn’t wear opposing teeth. E) gold isn’t rare, it has been used by humans for thousands of years and finding craftsman who could use the material was not a problem",
"It was a common thing among sailors over the last couple hundred years or so to have a gold tooth. If they died away away from home, their gold tooth could pay for a burial. As opposed to being thrown overboard the deceased would be buried at the next port.",
"Gold is still one of the best, if not the best, restorative option for inlays, onlays, and crowns. It's very biocompatible (won't irritate your mouth or corrode much at all), requires less extensive preparation (saves more of your original tooth), and lasts just as long if not longer than newer materials. Porcelain, zirconia, and PFM (porcelain fused to metal) crowns are all harder than your natural tooth structure, so in time will wear the opposing teeth more than natural especially if you routinely clench or grind your teeth. PFM alleviates that somewhat because the metal under the porcelain absorbs some of the force, but gold is still better at this since it's very slightly softer than enamel. Ceramics are also more brittle and prone to fracture than gold, so it's more likely you'll eventually have to replace the crown. Really the only advantage to ceramic crowns is they're tooth colored and look better. Personally if I needed a crown I would probably go with gold. Source: I'm a dental student studying for my restorative dental materials final."
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cm0ghq | Where did all the old glass bottles go? | Back in the day. Milk, colas all were in glass bottles that companies owned. Where did all the glass containers go? Edit: to clarify yes I understand bottles were washed and reused with deposit programs. I’m asking about today. We don’t have milk men, that I’m aware of. I rarely see companies use glass bottles for cola and such. So did we sell them to another country? Did they all just rot in the old warehouses and get hauled to the dump? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Most of the glass bottles at that time were deposit bottles that were returned to the shop for a refund, the bottles were then reused by the manufacturer or if damaged recycled back into new bottle.",
"When glass is 100% recyclable and can be recycled recycled endlessly. Glass is made of sand, soda, Ash and limestone called cullet when glass is recycled it is crushed back to cullet and ready to be remelted.",
"Glass bottles also get crushed for use in sandblasting, and broken glass was used extensively in bottle-dash stucco in the 60s and 70s.",
"There are collectors of old milk bottles and cola bottles. I expect the rest were recycled by the milk and cola companies when they stopped using them."
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cm0saz | The difference between full frame, and APS-C cameras | I’ve been interested in photography for a while; I’m embarrassed I don’t know this fully | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The literal answer is the photo sensors are sized differently. Full frame cameras use a sensor element that is the same size as a historical 35mm film cell would have been. Aps-c sensors are smaller than full frame sensors. The takeaway is you can design lenses specifically for full frame sensors which spread the image out over a larger sensor area, capturing greater detail out of the available photons. Full frame sensors are on the order of 2.5x more surface area, they cost a lot more to make, and tend to be in camera bodies aimed at high end or professional users; these things all drive the price up substantially."
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cm16cz | If autotune is supposed to correct pitch, how come it is easily identifiable, and sounds so unnatural? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's only identifiable and unnatural when the singer deliberately cranks it up to 11. Lots of people are deliberately mis-using it to give themselves a robotic or artificial quality as a special effect. When it is being used normally, you don't notice it.",
"Because one of the principal features that defines a natural speaking voice, often, is that they're **not** perfect. For a great example listen to Freddie Mercury. A lot of his singing is characterized by a fast but more significantly an *uneven* vibrato, or rapid oscillation of the frequency. Autotune would squash all that out of it. Any variation of pitch, any of those little fingerprints that make a voice sound natural get erased, which is what gives autotune its distinctive quality, even if you can still identify a particular singer. Autotune will replicate a particular singer's timbre, which is why it still sounds like them, but the pitch is made weirdly solidly even.",
"Because it doesn't *correct* it, but rather *adjust* every single audio keyframe to its corresponding value over a set range, and you can sense if something needed heavy adjusting to sound levelled.",
"If done correctly, it can actually sound indistinguishable from a professionally trained singer. However, it's popularily used as a voice effect instead and you'll notice that version of it over it's intended use.",
"Bad auto tune combined with bad singers comes off as easily identifiable and untatural. It's kind of like Instagram models. If they're naturally pretty and know what they're doing with filters the end result is usually alot more natural looking, but when you change more or are worse with the software it's pretty easy to spot."
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cm9veu | How lasers block facial recognition in Hong Kong protests? Will normal flashlight work too? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"In daylight condition a flashlight is not that bright compare to refleted sunlight so it is hard to overwhelm the sensor so the face it not visible but a laser is brighter because all light hit a lot smaller area and can overwhelm the sensor. You can even damage the sensor with a laser It the low light condition when a lot less light hit the face and is reflected to the camera a flashlight could work. Test is for yourself with a friend with a flashlight beside there face that that shine it at you. Outdoor in daylight you can still see the face but in low light condition you will only see the flash light. # Do not test it with a laser because it can damage your eyes!!!",
"The technical term is dazzling. By shining a laser light at a camera sensor you can temporarily or permanently disable the camera lenses. Lasers project a concentrated beam that doesn’t loose focus. Flashlights will cause the beam to spread meaning less light actually hits the sensors."
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cma30g | Why are download and upload speeds not the same? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"* Most home internet service is from a wired provider like cable, phone, fiber etc. * Those systems have a fixed amount of bandwidth to transmit and receive data. * They can split that bandwidth between transmitting and receiving any way they'd like. * Most customers download way more than they upload. * So they split it to favor downloading.",
"This usually depends on the system. We get our internet through a cable tv provider. The cable that comes to our house has multiple \"channels\". Most of these are used for tv channels. One is used as our upload channel, which provides 10 megabits. Approximately ten or twelve are used for download, which provides a much faster download speed. The router at the service provider end splits the downloads across the ten channels and the router at it end reassembles them. A similar technology is used in ADSL (providing broadband internet over copper phone wires). ISDN and other technologies provide the same upload and download speeds but they are more expensive."
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cmaptb | How can a single port “understand” which function to perform based on what device was plugged into it? | I just messed up my old iphone earbuds that had a jack. I borrowed my dad’s, which were the latest ones, with the lightning ending. I plugged them into my iphone’s lightning port (which also has a jack) and they functioned properly. How does this work? Thanks in advance! | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The port is nothing more than a specified way to transfer signals. I'm not familiar with lightning ports specifically but I'd assume it has a way to transfer power, and a way to transfer data. Every device that uses a lightning cable follows the same standards that the port has so it knows it gets power and data over specific parts of the cable. So when you plug a device in, every device works effectively the same way. It transfers data over the cable and the computer/phone/whatever that has the port is able to use the data it transfers to identify the device. Once it knows you have (for example) an audio device connected, it knows if it transfers audio signals to the device, the device is capable of using them properly."
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cmctgm | How do game programmers develop a game for console if it’s not playable on PC. Mainly in testing if the code is working, is there a developer console that bridges the gap between pc code and actual consoles? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes, console manufacturers make developer consoles. Usually you can load games over the network, attach debuggers, take screen caps, gather performance data, and such like that. They may actually have more RAM and CPU power than a normal console, in order to support these functions while your game is running. Of course, you usually can't connect to any online services with them because it would allow massive hacking.",
"There is. They get a developer console which is pretty much the final hardware except cosmetics, and an interface to run their software without a need to produce cartridges or disks first.",
"There can be special hardware especially for older consoles often with special card you can interface them with a computer. For consoles today like Xbox and PS4 they are very close to a PC in there design so you have special consoles for development where I suspect the main difference is that the software is different so you can transfer the programs you create on a PC to them over the network and then they send debug information back. You can see a PS4 dev kit [ URL_1 ]( URL_1 ) For Xbox One it just look like a setting on the standard console and windows software to develop stuff. It look like anyone just can register online to do that but to distribute the game microsoft must approve the. [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )Because Windows and the operatin system on a Xbox is variant of the same system I would be suppries if microsoft could not if the like port the special libraries and make it possible to compile and run it in windows. A lot of game porting is just to change a small amount of console specific stuff. The part in a conversion that take more time is to change the interface of the game to one appropriate to a mouse and keyboard instead of just a control pad, unfortunately many game do not change the interface. Almost all software for everyone regardless of what is used today is developed on a PC or a Mac. The developers software can compile the code so it work on another platform and it is called cross compiling. smartphone apps is done the same way code on a computer, compute for Ios or Android and transfer it to the device, that is often done automatically in the compiler. A game console is no different. Sometimes you can test the code in emulated environment on the computer sometime you cant."
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"https://kotaku.com/guy-buys-ps4-dev-kit-full-of-data-from-closed-studio-1789669525"
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cme572 | How do scroll-wheels on mice or similar stuff work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"ew1o61s"
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"text": [
"The mouse wheel is like a bicycle tire with spokes. There are two sensors that shine infrared light through the wheel. Each time the wheel moves, a spoke interrupts the infrared light and the sensors detect movement. Using the two sensors it can tell which direction the wheel turned."
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cmhug0 | Why are there 8 bits in a byte? | Is the number 8 arbitrary? Why aren’t there 10 bits or 12 bits in a byte? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"It's a fairly arbitrary number. It makes sense for it to be a power of two (2,4,8,16) since that makes addressing convenient. However why 8 and not 4 or 16 is pretty arbitrary. At the time the term was coined, it was more ambiguous. It could have been any value processed by a computer. But with the proliferation of 8bit processors throughout the 70s and 80s, the de-facto value of the byte is 8. By the way, a 4-bit sequence is called a nibble, playing on the eating theme.",
"7 bits was all that was needed for early ASCII character sets (prior computers used other, 5-bit, codes). Powers of two lend themselves to efficient uses of resources in electronics, so they added 1 bit to make it 8 bits which could be used for error detection (parity) or for expansion of the ASCII set."
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cmoizm | How can people actually control their prosthetics? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ew3oc2l"
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"text": [
"Usually its myoelectric sensors. They first connect the original arm nerves to other muscles (often its breast muscle in various parts, i.e. each nerve connects to different part of the muscle), then they measure electric potential, which part of muscle had moved, etc. and use that data to move the prosthetic limb."
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cms5m4 | Why is System 32 called that way on computers? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"So for the other responses are contrasting 32-bit applications with 64-bit applications. While related, that's a bit of a red herring. System32 actually dates back to when Windows was making the transition *towards* 32-bit systems, from the old 16-bit systems. See, \"regular\" applications used the System folder, and new fancy shiny 32-bit applications used the System32 folder when they needed features of Windows that wouldn't work in 16-bit mode. Since then, 32 bits became normal, then 64-bit applications were the new shiny, and now 64 bits are just normal and 32-bit applications are more likely than not to be outdated versions that can't be upgraded because of compatibility concerns. The transition process was handled differently in the 64-bit era, and 64-bit system files are in System32. I don't know why. Computers are hard, and sometimes that's just the easiest way to make things work."
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cmsda9 | How do cameras take videos? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Your camera is just a sensor that takes in light. The storage system on your camera is a small computer. When you take a single photo, it takes in all that light for that moment and stores it as a photo (technically just as a string of colors, not even as a photo tbh)... Your viewer app looks at the string and forms it into the photo. For video, it just assumes you didn't want to stop. It keeps sucking in light and storing it until you say stop or you run out of space. The app reads the string of colors and decides that based on the size you wanted (HD or 4K or something), that one color is the end of a picture and the next is the next."
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cmsml0 | Why is it that Amazon Voice Command products react to movies/tv shows with characters named anything close to Alexa or Alexis but never to the Amazon commercials where they are literally commanding her to do something? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Amazon started using an audio frequency in their commercials that Alexa devices will not respond to. I can't remember when, but prior to this it was a major problem for them. The difference isn't noticeable to the human ear. Here is a link to an article with the details: URL_0"
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cmtcln | How do things like phones and car keys deactivate hotel room keys? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Iron atoms can polarize meaning the electrons lean to one side making it more negative with the nucleus making the other side more positive. So each atom is inherently magnetic in some level, but all the atoms are oriented different directions cancelling out their magnetic fielda. But they still exist so iron objects can diarupt other magnetic fields, especially the weak ones on a hotel key card.",
"They don’t. Those hotel keys are crap and work intermittently. Cell phones and car keys are a red herring."
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cmuyip | why does playing a game at higher frames than originally intended (E.g. 60fps instead of 30fps) often cause glitches with the physics? | If you change the game to be 60fps, shouldn’t everything adjust as a result? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"These games run the FPS and the physics engine in the same loop, and make some assumptions about the speed. They don't calculate physics that would have happened since the last calculation, they just calculate another 1/30 of a second of physics. So, by increasing the FPS, you increase the number of physics calculations but not the time its calculated for, resulting in 'faster' physics."
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cmvu1d | How do summarizing bots work ? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"First they look through the article for important keywords. These are words that are more common in the article than they usually are. For example, the word \"man\" is very common, so it's not unusual for it to show up several times in an article. But if the word \"explosion\" shows up several times in an article, that's pretty unusual: we can guess that the word \"explosion\" is probably an important keyword for the article. Then they break up the article into sentences and give each sentence a score based on how many important keywords it has and also where it is in the article (sentences in the first paragraph of an article are more likely to be important). They take the sentences with the highest scores and put them together to form a summary. More intelligent bots also use some form of AI or learning system to get better at summarizing with training. Because of how AI works, there aren't specific rules these bots follow, they just do whatever gives them the best results during training. But usually they use what I previously described as a base model to build on."
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cmxgm7 | - how exactly do blood pressure cuffs work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They listen for the sound of the blood rushing through your arteries as your heart beats. The diastolic reading, or the bottom number, is the pressure in the arteries when the heart rests between beats. The systolic reading, the top number, refers to the amount of pressure in your arteries during the contraction of your heart muscle. They pump the cuff up to over the systolic number and slowly let it out. When the cuff pressure gets to the systolic number, blood starts to flow during the pump stroke, making a sound. As the pressure continues down, at the sound goes away and you just hear the normal thumps, that's the diastolic number."
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cmxyie | How are "lab created stones" made? How is it possible to grow a gem artificially? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"Gems are crystals, so that means atoms, ions, and molecules arranged in a highly ordered structure. You make crystals when you freeze water. You can also make salt crystals by boiling the water out of brine. As you can see, some crystals are rather eager and willing to order themselves, sometimes it's unavoidable. Gemstones typically take a bit more work to generate artificially. Sapphire, ruby, and emerald are all aluminum oxides with different impurities in it. You can create this with just aluminum and a chemical bath, like with a salt or acid. Anodized aluminum - all those aluminum engine dressings and non-stick cookwares, have all had sapphire electrolyzed into the surface layer of the metal. It also increases the hardness of that surface layer. Others still take a lot more work. Different grades of steel aren't just the sum of their parts, it's also how the iron atoms align. Iron will align body-centered or face-centered, where face-centered steel is non-magnetic, even though it's iron! And that's just because of how the atoms aligned in the crystals! The term for this is Austenitic. Steel production is all about making crystals, and as much of the right kind of crystals at that. As the molten iron cools, crystals start to form and grow until the crystal boundaries bump into one another - and that's called grain. Some grades of steel, you can see this with the unaided eye. Speaking of a lot of work, there are some crystals that form at extremely high temperature and pressure. Synthetic diamond usually takes one carbon lattice, like graphite, and under these conditions and with some electrolysis, rearranges them into another, to make synthetic diamond. Other gems may require gas disposition, where a seed is washed in a plasma of ions that embed themselves one layer at a time. Aluminum forms a crystal lattice, but it's not clear. That goes to show all crystals aren't some clear gem. Steel and iron crystals are likewise not transparent. Glass is amorphous, which is exactly the opposite of a crystal - there is no structure. Aluminum can be made amorphous, like glass, but it's really hard to do that on Earth. We get something approaching amorphous aluminum, a product called ALON, which is aluminum oxide that is baked under hydraulic pressure until the molecules bond. We use it to make the best optics in the world, and bullet proof cockpit covers. If we could make aluminum glass, and spin it, we could make fiber optics with such clarity we could run trans-pacific cables without having to boost the signal to get it across the ocean. What's stopping us is what's called gravitational shear, that as the aluminum cools, gravity drags the molecules down, which encourages crystal growth. If we could make aluminum in space, or maybe if the moons gravity is low enough, we could do it there, avoid the sheer, and make aluminum optics and other products in abundance. Imagine submarines made of glass that could trivially withstand the crushing depths of Challenger Deep. Other gems aren't crystals at all, but minerals. Jade is a form of asbestos, which is fine to wear and handle, it's the dust from cutting and polishing that's especially dangerous. What makes asbestos so dangerous is the molecules are so small and so strong, they can pierce right through your cell walls and actually cut through DNA. That's what makes it a carcinogen, especially for your lungs. Baking soda is also a very hard, jagged little molecule that, while no asbestos, people like throwing it in their laundry - while fine on the occasion, it damages the fibers, so too much washing with baking soda will wear out your clothes. You can bake baking soda in the oven to make sodium carbonate (aka soda ash aka washing soda), but it has the same problem - use it, but don't celebrate it. I realize a fair amount of that may not have anything to do with your question. Enjoy!",
"By recreating the proper environment of heat, pressure, moisture, and elements you can make gems \"grow\". In theory you could make a diamond at home if you could get a vessel to the right temperature and pressure just by having a lump of natural charcoal in it."
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cmyxbj | Why is it not more secure to hash password multiple times? | Some long time ago when I started programming I learned that hashing e.g. password multiple times and doing other "clever" stuff doesn't really make it more secure but never really understood why. Let's say I change the order of characters in the password, map it to some table (e.g. 'a' becomes '123') then hash it with let's say sha256, then again the transformations and then again the sha. What is the reason for it not being more secure? Is it because of security by obscurity, e.g. someone could get hold of my "algorithm" and then it's pretty much easy, or is there any other reason? I can't think of anything else. Just a side note before someone tells me to not do it: I don't, I use argon or bcrypt, I'm just curious because I can't think of any other reason than the algorithm leak. Thanks. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The golden standard of password hashing is that there must be: 1) Significant time and effort spent on making a single guess 2) It not be practical for effort spent cracking one password be usable for cracking another 3) (Variant of 2 really) Doing work ahead of time doesn't help you Security by obscurity is not security by itself. It can be a layer, but you must not rely on it. If someone gets hold of your database, they may be able to get your algorithm. Once they have that if your password encryption scheme is garbage it will fall easily. Graphic cards can do millions to BILLIONS of sha-style hashes per second. The Internet is full of known and good password cracking applications. If your scheme doesn't meet these rules then your passwords can be decrypted easily. Now, I would like to point out that hashing a password multiple times IS a good strategy, and can fulfill rule #1. However to be effective the number of iterations needs to be HUGE, like 100,000 scale. pbkdf2 does this and it's considered an accepted best practice. (Rules 2 and 3 can be met with salting)"
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cn2fmy | Why do video game consoles always have slower wifi or wired connections than any other common smart device? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"wired connections are typically gigabit. that hasn't changed in a long time. 10 gigabit exists but no one really uses it in a home environment. for wireless the latest consoles are all on ac. if you're talking about slow download speeds, then that's an issue with the server you're downloading from and not the console. you can only download as fast as the server sends."
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cn4vb0 | Why when my phone shows 5 bars (full service) does it sometimes not work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ew6yngb"
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"text": [
"The same reason you can't hear your friend that's standing right in front of you in a crowded nightclub. When you get 5 bars, you're seeing the signal—but what about the noise? What's keeping you from having real service is the *signal to noise* ratio. Cellphones can \"hear\" their cell tower just fine, but also hear any of the other million+ cellular band devices in the \"bar\" and can't make out what just the one cell tower they care about is saying among all the noise. If the other devices stopped, you'd hear your friend loud and clear. This is why you most frequently get full bars and no service in big cities or at events like concerts or sports games where towers are overpowered by local signals. So while you technically have signal, there's just too much noise. It's the same principle as to how \"one way\" mirrors work, and why you can't see the stars during the day even though they're still there. A second source of noise overpowers the signal."
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cn78tq | What exactly is happening when turning the tuner knob on an analog radio. How does it 'grab' the specific station out of the air? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"* The antenna on your radio is picking all broadcasts in your area at the same time. * The radio works by filtering everything out except the station you want to hear. * Turning the knob changes the resistance on the filter circuit inside your radio. * Changing the ~~resistance~~ capacitance in the circuit changes the center frequency of the filter. * When the ~~resistance~~ capacitance is *just right* the filter works best and the audio is clear.",
"It doesn't. The station is constantly broadcasting but you can't hear it. The knob on the radio dial allows you to filter out the radio frequency being used for the broadcast so that you can hear it."
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cn7sxh | How does a compass on your phone work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A pretty common method is to use magnetoresistance. Some materials change their electrical resistance depending on the direction of the magnetic field they're exposed to. So they put little slivers of those materials on a chip, at specific angles, along with circuitry to put a specific amount of current or voltage through the materials, and measure the how well electricity flows through them. Once they know that, the chip does the math to determine the precise 3D angle the magnetic field is pointing. The phone's CPU asks the chip for the compass data several times a second and averages it out to give you a smooth reading.",
"There is no magnet in the cell phone, there is a chip. The chip has a sensor that alters its resistance proportional to the Earth's magnetic field in a particular direction. Circuitry on the chip detects the magnetic field strength and makes the field and its direction available as digital data. The CPU on the phone pulls this data whenever compass data is required. So when your compass app is running, it asks the chip to convert its reading of the earth's magnetic field into data that it then shares with you, the user.",
"It's a simple magnetic sensor. The sensor responds to Earth magnetic fields same as a normal compass would. Those responses translate to electrical signal that's processed by the phone cpu",
"can you throw off your phone's compass with a magnet? you know... without damaging it?",
"Related question: Why does the compass on my phone not work properly sometimes? Like when I open up google earth, the dot showing the direction I'm facing very often seems to be 180 degrees off from the direction I'm actually facing.",
"A lot of people here get it only partially right. Of course, the compass needs a magnetometer to get the compass heading but that's not all. Phones that have gyroscopes (usually mid-tier to flagship) tend to get much more responsive and more accurate compass reading, because the phone software integrates readings from magnetometer, gyroscopes and even accelerometers to get a much more accurate compass reading. [Kalman filter]( URL_0 ) is commonly used for the integration. That's needed because magnetometer is very slow to update its heading and with high latency, but gyroscopes and accelerometers update hundreds of times per second with extremely low latency, so putting these signals together make the magic happen. Well, I know this because I make apps and games that use these sensors to allow 360-deg gyro rotation, so that users wouldn't need to use their right thumb on touchscreen/joystick to look around. For low-end phones without gyro, users will experience laggy 360-deg rotation and the horizon tilts left/right like on a ship in a storm. That's the inherent issue with any magnetometer. Now we have AR apps and games that integrate even more data from A-GPS and camera to track the phone rotation and position. Most app/game developers don't really integrate these math themselves, because iOS and Android already integrate for them, thanks goodness. Devs would go insane if they had to mess around with Kalman math.",
"Really fucking badly in my experience. My compass on my phone is often 180 degrees out ie the opposite of where it should be.",
"Since there are no such things as stupid questions... Whey would a compass in a phone need magnetism, while it has GPS?"
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cnhklp | How is water desalinated? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A few different ways. 1. Evaporation...get a bunch of saltwater, heat it and capture the evaporate. Let that condense...clean water. 2. Reverse osmosis. Essentially push the salt water through a barrier with a filter media small enough to trap to sodium.",
"First it's strained with a filter to remove any solids. Then pressure forces water against its natural flowing direction through a semipermeable membrane to remove any dissolved minerals, including salt. Then new minerals are added to meet appearance, health, and taste standards.",
"The quick answer.. usually through evaporation (salt gets left behind and steam is collected) or through reverse osmosis, which is essentially just passing the water though many different kinds of filters. One of those systems is what you’ll generally find on board any large sea going vessel anyways, if not both. I’ll let someone who’s not lazy AF reaaaally go into detail for you. Hope that helped a little though."
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cnhlal | Why is there so little law enforcement will do to combat scammers/identity theft when internet or phone traffic is so easy to locate? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Let's say an American police organization traces a scam attempt, and discovers that it is coming from an internet cafe in Nigeria. What then? They don't have jurisdiction in Nigeria. The Nigerian police are under-resourced and their government is systemically corrupt. And even if the Nigerian police DID arrest a scammer, that just means his family goes hungry and they have a new problem to solve. So what are the American police supposed to do about it? The reality is that the internet has created whole new problems that we don't yet know how to solve.",
"It's also extremely expensive and difficult to investigate. Often times the numbers are routed through many different cell towers and what not.",
"Most of it is international activity, and the law enforcement in the jurisdiction of the criminals have little interest or resources to combat it."
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cnimf7 | How are 2D movies converted to 3D? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"& #x200B; A 3D movie is essentially two 2D movies shot from slightly different camera angles, whith each of your eyes seeing one of those movies. To convert a movie, open a frame of the original movie in a photoshop-like program, cut out the foreground objects, and move them a little to the right (the closer they are to the camera, the further you have to move them). Then you probably need to fill out the whitespace you just created by moving these objects. You now hace created one frame of the \"second\" movie. You need to do this for evey one of the \\~150.000 frames that make up a movie. Its a lot of manual work, even with the assistance of proffessional editing software, so this is often outsourced to countires like India."
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cnjks3 | Does freezing yourself (cryogenics) for years actually happen or is it pure science fiction? | Every now and then I come across a post like this: ‘girl with incurable sickness is frozen until remedy gets discovered’. Now I was wondering if stuff like this actually happens or not? I would guess that it would not be possible for adults but would surely like to know how it works. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Cryogenic freezing is a thing that happens. The problem is that we haven't yet found a way to ensure that we're actually able to unfreeze them and have them be alive, because freezing the body carries a whole host of problems with it.",
"We have the freezing part down. It is just the thawing part that doesn't work yet. Freezing and thawing a human body just results in a dead body that can't be reanimated. For this reason we don't do it to living people. It would be homicide to try. There are however a number of businesses that offer to freeze your dead body. The idea is that it won't make things much worse when the person is already dead and the faint hope that at some point in the future they might be able to develop a process to not just unthaw a human body without completely destroying it in the process but also to revive the recently dead. It sees a faint hope, but you can't be 100% certain that it might not actually work some day. Of course many of the business that offer such services are not exactly all that ethical and many see it just as an expensive and eccentric alternative to burial/cremation, with no real hope and plan to bring back the deceased."
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cnmgr4 | How are diesel cars so fuel efficient compared to gas, and if it's so much better, why isn't everything diesel? | Obviously fuel efficiency has been the name of the game for the last 30 years or more, so why even bother with gas? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are some downsides to diesel engines: * Diesel engines are more expensive to manufacture, driving the sticker price of the vehicle up. Since the difference in price between fuels is not significantly different, at least in the US, many consumers aren't willing to take the difference in sticker price up-front. * They tend to require more maintenance, and when said maintenance doesn't occur, it's likely more expensive to fix. * In the US, there's tighter emissions requirements for diesel engines, which dis-incentivizes manufacturers. * Diesel engines have better torque than gas engines, but generally worse horsepower. Americans love speed. * Cold weather is a big deal in much of the US - Diesel requires a higher temperature to ignite, so engines must be warmed in cold weather."
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cnmplp | Why can windows only install one thing at a time? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Its by design to avoid two files manipulating/corrupting other files and data. You can use third party installers to install multiple things at once though.",
"You can install more than one program at a time but it is not recommended. It's like hiring two different contractor companies to do renovations on your house at the same time. The ones breaking down walls to extend the rooms may break some critical walls and supports needed for the other trying to replace all your windows. At the end when both are done, there may be issues that would not have resulted if each company renovated by themselves. This may not be easily detectable and fixed (random crashes and bluescreens) without redoing everything (reinstall or reformatting)."
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cnmvwn | Why is the upload speed significantly lower than the download speed? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some technologies use different bandwidths for upload and download. Most notably Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) which use different frequencies to separate uplink and downlink causing them to have different bandwidths as well. Since most users use downlink more then uplink as they consume more Internet content then they create it makes sense to let the highest bandwidth link be the downlink. There is however some room for abuse by the ISPs. Since most users only look at the download speeds and this is what is advertised the ISP may limit the upload speed to lower then what the technology requires. This may reduce the capacity on their backbone reducing their costs. And if they limit the upload speeds to under about 10% of the download speed the practical download speed will also start getting reduced. This is partially due to the aging network standards used today that were intended for a time when dialup were the way to connect computers together. So if the ISP reduce the upload speed they also notice a reduced download speed further and reducing the costs of their backbone even further. They also notice increased sales of higher bandwidth plans and can still show to lower costs then other competing providers.",
"Most connections are symmetrical. It's mostly just dsl and cable modem that are asymmetrical. Those connections are designed to be asymmetrical because, like everyone else said, most people download more than they upload. But the majority of connections have a channel designed for upload and a seperate channel for download. These connections usually have symmetrical bandwidth. Think dialup, ethernet or fiber connections; those are all symmetrical.",
"Simple supply and demand. The ISPs have limited bandwidth and there is a lot more demand for high download speeds.",
"* The connection between you and your service provider basically uses radio waves (inside the cable) to send data back and forth. * There are a limited number of radio channels that can be used at the same time. * Your service provider can decide how many channels are used for downloading and how many are used for uploading. * Since the vast majority of users will download way more than they upload, the service provider sets up lots of channels for downloading and only a few for uploading. * Since there are lots of channels for downloading, your speed is a lot higher because you can send lots of sets of data *at the same time*. * This, by the way, is why the term **bandwidth** gets used when really the correct term is **throughput**. * Bandwidth describes, more or less, how many channels there are. More channels means more data at the same time. * Throughput just means how much data in a given amount of time. Increasing throughput might mean the same number of channels but making each channel faster. Whereas increasing bandwidth means making more channels available."
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cnq4hn | How does a laser deactivate sensors and cameras in surveillance systems? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"part of it is hollywood movie magic. but theoretically a laser pointed at a camera/sensor can burn out the sensor so that it no longer works, but it's going to be super obvious that something happened if anyone is paying attention.",
"A powerful laser can behave similarly to the sun focused onto a small space. Especially with a camera lens focusing it, the laser light will quickly fry the pixels that it shines on, and if it is hot enough it can even cook the chip that holds the camera light sensors enough to ruin it. This would take a very powerful laser and a very small chip, so it most camera/laser combinations the laser will either do no permanent damage, or it will fry a few pixels and leave most of the image in fine shape.",
"Mostly by overwhelming them. The laser puts such a large amount of photons on the sensor at a time the electrical charges \"bleed over\" into the adjacent pixels. By running the sensor up full electrical saturation the resulting picture is just a mess of red/green (possibly white depending on the color filters used). The point isnt to \"deactivate\" the camera. Only to make the resulting picture useless. If you have an old cell phone and a laser pointer try it for yourself."
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cnqcbv | how audio books are made? | I just finished Stephen King's The Stand audio book on spotify (damm good listen, go check it out if you like). It had a run time of roughly 54 hours. Are these books really read word for word? I can't imagine one narrator doing this all by himself, so are there any tricks like Text to speech or something? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Yes they are read word for word. It can be a long, rough grind to do it all. There's no AI tech nonsense magic. Someone literally reads it into a microphone in a booth.",
"It’ll be recorded over several sessions. The actor will read a chapter, or a section of a chapter at a time, then pause, do anything they need to do to keep themselves healthy like drinking, eating, whatever, and then resume from where they left off. A 54 hour recording might actually take weeks to complete."
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cnqr24 | When Windows tries to “check for a solution” after a program crashes, what is it actually doing and why does it never seem to work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It sends a signature of the crash to Microsoft. There are many more bugs than patches. Plus, interactions or bugs in non-Microsoft programs aren't in the database.",
"There's a program compatibility database that Microsoft operates. If a program was designed to run on an older version of Windows, it will change the compatibility settings and attempt to run the program again. These settings are determined by several tests done by other users of the program, and if they work, they're added to the database. I've only had this work once. All other times, it failed to make the program work."
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cnqyvz | Why haven’t Blu-Rays completely replaced DVDs like DVDs completely replaced VHS? | Are they going to? Is there not as much of a gap in quality? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"1. DVDs didn't completely replace VHS. You could still get VHS movies when Bluray came out. 2. There was other competition to Bluray like HD DVD. 3. The time period between DVDs becoming popular and Blurays wasn't that long. People didn't want to replace their DVD players with something new when they still worked just fine. 4. Your average person can't tell the difference in quality, or doesn't have the setup to notice a difference in quality so they never bothered upgrading. Are Blurays going to replace DVDs? Probably not. Streaming or completely digital copies will likely be the replacement rather than physical media.",
"I personally like that DVD's are still very much around. I'm not too picky on quality (as long as it's clear) and sometimes it's nice to be able to pick between the DVD price and the Bluray price. If it's something I really care for, I will get the Bluray.",
"DVDs are still a niche market in the west. However in developing nations, dvds are still pretty prevalent as they are cheap, easily bootlegged, pirated, and DVD players are cheap and all over.",
"Probay because Bly-Ray players can also play regular DVDs, and there is still a market for DVDs which are generally cheaper to make and therefore a budget option for people who might not want to spend as much.",
"Well they will eventually disappear like VHS before them. It took 10 years between the release of DvD and the last movie released in VHS. Blu-ray were release in 2006, but it was not until 2008-2009 that they became the next thing, winning over HD DvD. So you could say that DvD survived about 10 years after the real start of Blu-ray, which is similar to the amount of time the VHS was still alive after the release of DvD. Now of course, the DvD isn't not dead, but who know for how many years this will still be the case. So far, the difference between how long Vhs and DvD stayed relevant after the release of the next technology isn't that different. & #x200B; Here 3 reasons, why DvD stay alive a bit longer than Vhs. 1) You can play your DvD on your blu-ray player as so people might not buy as much blu-ray and keep their old DvD instead, something they couldn't do with vhs. 2) The last movie release in VHS was in 2006, the year that blu-ray was release. With VHS, DvD and now a new technology with blu-ray probably accelerated the death of VHS. We don't have such new technology today that is better than blu-ray on a large scale. 3) The quality of DvD is enough for most people. Of course blu-ray is much better, but the average person might not see that much difference on their small TV or their computers (a lot of people are using computer to consume media these days). It on bigger screen that it start to really show even to the average Joe. The different between VHS and DvD had a bigger impact. The quality was noticeably better, and it had a lot of quality of life feature like the smaller size, the different language and subtitle, you don't need to rewind the film each time you finish it, you can move along the movie like you want with ease. All those quality improve the quality of the media a lot more than blu-ray does today. 4) There is another competitor and that's video on demand and internet. A lot of people are using those two services for most of their movies and tv series now and this leave less place for blu-ray to replace DvD. Some people simply never needed to get a blu-ray since most of their new movie were watch through internet, so they just kep their DvD players."
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cns7v0 | Computer parts and what they do | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is a little complicated just because there’s different parts in different computers, but the basic rundown is: The CPU - This is like the main brain of your computer. All the instructions and most of the thinking is done here. It tells the other parts what to do and is responsible for most of the decision making. Hard drive/SSD - This is the long term memory. Things like files and programs are kept here and pulled out when they’re needed. It works all the time, even if there’s no power, but it takes a bit longer to pull information out of here. RAM - This is the short term memory. Because it takes a relatively long time to pull stuff out of your long term memory, the most important stuff for what you’re doing at the moment is kept in RAM. RAM needs electricity to work though, anything stored in your RAM is lost once you turn off your computer, so it’s not good for long term storage of things like files. But once your computer is opened you can put it in RAM and make changes to it much faster and then just move it back to your long term storage when you’re done. GPU - This is like a secondary brain that’s specialized for specific kinds of processing. It’s got its own RAM and can do a lot of heavy duty work really quickly when it’s needed. And your motherboard - This is like the nervous system of your computer. It moves all the signals back and forth between all the various parts of your computer."
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cny477 | What’s the difference between an album, an EP, an LP, and a mixtape? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"SP (short play), EP (extended play) and LP (long play) describe the length of whatever medium you are playing. Back in the days of records, those had an immediate effect on various parameters, including the size of the disc, the speed at which you set the turntable, and such the quality of the music, with LP's having to make some compromises in fidelity. Nowadays, on CDs or digital distribution, it is just a measure of how much time of music there is. SPs are typically singles. One featured track, and often alternate versions or one or two other songs on there (on records and cassette tapes, those would be on the back, or \"B side\"). LPs are albums. Collections of musics that may (\"concept album\") or may not be stylistically or thematically related. Usually a somewhat comprehensive collection of songs that an artist recorded over a certain timeframe. EPs are somewhere in-between. Stuff that is too long for a single (maybe it still has that one featured track, but more extra tracks than would fit on a B side), but too short for an album.",
"Ah, youth! All of this is pretty good, but you don't mention that, in the days of 78 rpm records, you could buy an album of records by your favorite artist, or genre. This would be, i think, 4 to 6 records, in sleeves, bound like a book, or \"album\". Think photo album for the linguistic reference. Each \"page\" of the album was a sleeve that held a record So, when LPs came out at 33-1/3 rpm, 12\" disc, it became possible to put the contents of an \"album\" onto a single disc, and the name stuck. There was a brief period when it became possible to buy an album with 16-2/3 rpm speed - lotta music on a single disc. Now, the development of plastics figured heavily into this - records used to be made of a hard wax compound that would definitely break if you mishandled or dropped it. You wouldn't want to risk that happening to a record containing 10 or 12 songs. WIth plastics, records became more durable, making more sense of the multi-song discs.",
"Back in the days of records, there were a couple of competing formats. The earliest was a 10 inch disc played at 78rpm. This format could only hold 1 song per side. ____ Edit: see u/seeteethree post, apparently 78s were available as single discs with just 2 songs (an A side and a B side). These were called \"singles\". Alternatively, a collection of 10 or 12 songs might be released on a group of 5 or 6 discs (each with 1 song each side). This group of discs was packaged up in a booklet about the size of a photo album and was known as an \"album\". ____ In the 50s a format war broke out, with a 7 inch disc played at 45rpm on one side (called the SP), and a 12 inch disc played at 33rpm on the other (called the LP). The 45 was more convenient and cheaper but only held 1 song per side, while the LP was large and expensive but could hold about 6 songs per side. Unfortunately, not all players were compatible with both formats. Over time, the manufacturers behind the 45 tried to negate some of the benefit of the LP by figuring out how to compress more music onto their smaller discs. These discs were marketed at EP or extended play. They could hold about 3 songs per side and be played back on a 45 player. Over time, as multiformat players became widespread, it became customary for singles to be published in the SP format, while the LP was used for collections of multiple tracks that were designed to be listened to in sequential order (ie an album). The EP was popular for samplers, demos and mini-albums for bands that couldn't afford to cut a whole LP. Over time, the use of format names to refer to the type of record that the format was typically used for has kinda stuck (at least as far as EP and LP go).",
"Mixtapes are for promotion. They are generally always free unless you buy a physical copy from somewhere. EPs, extended plays, are short bodies of music. EPs don’t have a full albums worth of songs, maybe 5 or 6 max. LPs, long plays, and albums are basically the same thing. They have at least 10 songs and get promoted by the artist and record company."
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cnyp5z | Why do iPhones correct words that are spelled correctly even in correct grammar into other words? Why doesn’t it just correct misspelled words? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It tries to learn your typing habits, find what it thinks you would type, based on previous inputs. So even though what you typed may have correct spelling and grammar, iOS uses your past inputs to determine what you likely meant to type."
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cnzb7w | How do computers/smartphones keep tracking the date and hour even when they're disconnected from any energy source? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a tiny battery called the CMOS battery that keeps track of it even if your PC / phone is turned off. If you remove that battery from your PC and place it again in the motherboard, the time will be reset as well as your BIOS"
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cnzbhw | What exactly has been done or changed in older songs that have been "Remastered"? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Mastering happens after mixing. Once a song is mixed (all the levels of the different parts of the song are set properly relative to each other, instruments are nicely panned, effects on the vocals are set etc), it then gets mastered. Mastering makes the entire audio “bigger”, it sets the right frequencies across the board (bass, mid, treble), it sets the volume properly and generally the song sounds louder and has more space. Mastering is quite difficult to do and is an art unto itself. A song that has been recorded a long time ago, might be picked up again and mastered once more, years later and/or with a more experienced mastering expert to being new life to the recording. If I have 10 albums under my belt, and my 10th album just sounds much better than my first (which might still be wildly popular), it’d be nice for me to get that album mastered again to make it sound more modern, and up to scratch with other modern music as well as my current releases. Remastering happens in film and gaming as well, textures and graphics might be given an overhaul, resolution might be bumped up etc to make older content feel more modern."
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cnzn4v | Where does the deleted files from the computer go. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They stay on the hard drive but are ignored. Eventually another file will overwrite the deleted files."
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co0khv | - How does your phone know when you touch the screen? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There’s a couple different types of touch screens. One screen senses the electric current. Your body conducts electricity, so your phone senses the current and reacts accordingly. It’s why you can’t use another object like your fingernail or a stylus on something like an iPhone. There are some screens where your touch interrupts the flow of electric current. These are typically the screens that allow non-human use such has a stylus.",
"Most older touch screens use what’s called a resistive touch. There’s basically two layers and when you apply pressure to the top layer it causes it to bend and physically make contact with the second layer. The second layer always has electricity flowing through it and so when you push the layers together the top resistive layer changes the resistance in the circuit and causes a voltage drop at the point of contact. Your phone defects that change and converts it to a coordinate. Resistive touch is nice because it’s cheap and works with anything that can touch it, but it’s got two main problems. The first is that it can only pick up one touch at a time, which just isn’t enough for a lot of features like two finger zoom. The second is that you have to physically bend the outer screen, which distorts the picture beneath it. Especially on a smaller screen like a phone, that’s not good because it makes it harder to see what you’re doing. Newer phones use capacitive touch. These have a really tiny mesh of wires that are too small to see and have small currents flowing through them. When you touch a point on the screen you basically create what’s called a capacitor which is two conductive materials (the wire and your finger) spaced out by a non conductive material (the glass). This changes the capacitance in the circuit which creates a measurable voltage change that sensors can detect. Capacitive touch is more complicated to make, but it’s more precise, can recognize multiple touches, doesn’t require physically bending the outer layer, and can work with things like force touch. The downside is it only works with things that are conductive, like your finger or special styluses. There are other kinds of touch screens that measure things like how the light or sound changes when you touch them or even measure the vibration in the device to try and figure out how they were touched, but you don’t really see those in phones and they’re in general not as good."
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co1n9d | - How do Open Source recreations of games stay alive? | Stuff like Open Morrowind, the browser Diablo game, the handful of Doom games, and others more seem like they'd be taken down immediately by the company owning the IP. I mean sure, the maker built everything from scratch and from the ground up, but if it looks, walks, talks, and plays like an already existing and beloved game, how come companies don't take note? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they just don't care about old IPs or the company that held the IP is defunct. Sometimes the company will feel like it's good advertising or an indication that these old IPs are still valuable, and they might try to do something with that information later on down the line like making a mobile game, or remastering a golden oldie. Game Freak, for example, is pretty notorious for using cease and desist orders against romhackers and fan game makers.",
"Reverse engineering a game's engine is not illegal in most of the world. What would be illegal is distributing all of the assets of a game that encompass its protected IP. In Diablo's case, the original shareware version was licensed to anyone who got their hands on it, which is why it can still be shared for free today. The full game requires you to have a commercial copy of the game's MPQ data file (which is really just a fancy zip file).",
"Having looked into two of your examples listed (open MW and Diablo.) they both require the actual games to play the full versions of/play at all. So, by looks, they are basically emulators for a specific game, allowing that game to be played on newer machines more easily. As they don't provide the copyrighted material (At least in the case of Open MW.) and require the games to run fully, theres no reason to shut them down. In fact they could feasibly help sales. Having said that, it could also simply be a case of nothings happened yet. There are lots of fan projects of games that are finished or in the works. Whether they get shut down depends on if the company chooses to do so. For example there is Timesplitters Rewind, which was actively encouraged by it's copyright holders (although if I recall, copyright has since changed hands.) So they havent been shut down yet, likely because the copyright holders don't really care to shut it down, but if say Bethesda decided to create their own re-releases of Morrowind aimed at making it more compatible on current machines, they might have the open source one shut down so it's not competing with their version.",
"Which doom games do you mean? Many of the doom and quakes were released open source. Not the media but the game code."
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co3toy | How do some pirates get their hands on legit Netflix/Spotify/iTunes accounts and sell them for a cheaper price illegally? How does it benefit them? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"One of two ways. Some of these accounts are stolen and then passed on. They invest $0 into the account, so whatever someone pays is profit. The other way that it can work is that pricing for online services are sometimes set regionally; so they'll make an account in a country where the subscription fee is the equivalent of $1/month and then sell it to someone in the US for $5/month when it's usually $10/month in the US.",
"I think you’re confusing some things. Pirates, in the sense of media piracy, don’t deal in stolen accounts - pirates rip and distribute pirated media, eg media that has been freed from usage restrictions. The people who sell stolen accounts benefit by making money off of selling them, obviously.",
"People will download what’s called a “combo list” online, basically a large text document containing millions of emails and passwords. Then they will use a program that tries to login to the desired website (Netflix, Spotify, Hulu, ect) using the accounts in the combolist. As for the benefits, accounts are easy to get, and can be sold quickly and cheaply. Other games like Fortnite and Minecraft where the user can spend money to get in-game items are a lot different, a single account can go for upwards of $500+.",
"They steal an account and shift the risk to you for a smaller profit but get rid of sole ownership of the account. You buy the account cheaper, but second hand not knowing where they came from. This could be not as illicit, like someone gets a bunch of school emails and sells them to groups of X people with academic plan eligibility. On the other hand, it could be a leak or hack of an account that people don’t know happened, or worse are dead or are cybercrime victims. It works most times for purchasers because it’s not very enforceable. But it can be uncomfortable, and even the smallest risk is a risk depending on a buyer’s tolerance—the illegitimate seller is more savvy than you, probably hidden, maybe abroad (usually), and doesn’t care what happens after he splits with your cash."
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co77es | - What is difference between 5G & 4G? | This new Samsung note 10+ is suppose to have 5G and cost an Extra $150 in the total price. So I'm trying to see if 5G is really that much of a difference to purchase that phone. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"As [this video]( URL_0 ) elaborately explains, these are “mobile” internet speeds that can be run on a phone or mobile device. Each connection type (3G 4G 5G) has its own speed: •3G is ^tinytiny speed and slow like a very old turtle. •4G is a little fast and can run like a dog or horse. •5G **BREAKS THE SCALE AND IS EXTREMELY OUTRAGEOUSLY FASTFASTFASTFASTFAST** like a cheetah if it’s on a bullet train.",
"True 5g is supposed to be up to like 100 times (up to 100 gigabits per second total) faster than 4g. And lower latency compared to previous generations. Once fully implemented that is."
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coamed | Why can my eyes view colours from two difference sources, but a camera can't? | Imagine in front of you is a forest, with a blue sky above. Through your own eyes, you can see the bright blue sky, but you can also see the green pine trees of the forest. If you view through a camera however, there are two options; a) focus on the sky, and have a photo with a bright blue sky, but a nearly black forest. b) focus on the forest, having a photo with a green forest, but with a washed out white sky. Why are cameras unable to shoot the colours from two different sources? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's not about the colors. It's the difference in brightness that the camera can't handle. When you're setting up a shot, you can only adjust 3 things; the speed of the shutter, how wide it opens, and the third thing is the ISO which I won't get into. Basically you're letting a certain amount of light enter the camera to expose the photo correctly. The same thing happens with your eyes (your pupils dilate or contract to let in the correct amount of light), but your eyes can adjust so rapidly to changing light conditions that it appears seamless. DSLR cameras have filters that you can attach to the front of the lens that are darker glass on the top half and regular, untinted glass on the bottom half so you can take an outdoor shot and have the proper exposure for the whole photo.",
"It’s not that it can’t view the colours, it’s to do with the amount of light. The sky is very bright compared to the trees. If you focus on the sky, the exposure will be set on the camera to allow the correct amount of light in to take a good photo of the sky. But the darker trees will be underexposed. Conversely focus on the trees and the auto exposure on the camera will allow the correct light for the trees but overexpose the bright sky. This can sometimes be corrected post production. Or use can use HDR to combine a number of photos into one through software. The human eye suffers from the same problem but the brain can create its own HDR effect by combining what you see when you focus on the trees and on the sky.",
"Simple answer, they can, you are observing something else. What you are likely noticing is actually something called dynamic range, which has to do with the brightness of whats captured rather than the colour of it. The dynamic range of a camera is the difference between the brightest and darkest thing the camera can capture in the one shot without either one being forced into pure white or pure black. The human eye has a pretty good dynamic range, it can view both a bright and dark environment at once with both remaining in fairly high detail. Cameras not so much, the range they have varies on equipment but near universally the range is much lower than the human eye. The lower dynamic range forces the photographer to 'expose' for one or the other. If you set up the camera to capture the details in a dark environment, [a window leading to the sunlit outside will be overexposed and show up as pure white]( URL_0 ) in the image and vice versa if you exposed for the window, [the dark interior will lose all detail and show as pure black]( URL_1 )."
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cobgra | how can planes tell when they are being targeted by something? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"They have a device called a radar warning receiver that detects incoming radar beams. It can tell the difference between the long wavelength periodic sweeps of a search radar, and the rapid high-frequency pulses of a targeting radar, and the continuous high-power beam of a guidance radar.",
"ELIR5 - When people talk about radar or other kinds of invisible energy it is good to think about it like light that we can’t see. That does’t mean it can’t be seen. Things in your house use basic versions of this same technology. Remotes use a type of light that is just outside what humans can see, but sensors on TVs and even the camera in some phones can see it flashing when you push the volume up. WiFi is like light that shines through most walls like a flashlight through paper. Airplanes can be seen because they are really thick and heavy stuff compared to the air it flys through. Radar and other targeting systems are like very bright flashlights with cameras that look for objects to flash in the light. The planes have something similar that looks for flashlights. It’s easier to see a flashlight looking for you than it is to find something with a flashlight.",
"Also, there’s photoreceptors linked to GPS to help commercial and military pilots who’ve experienced “LASER strikes” on their craft, to track down and arrest assholes hitting their planes with LASER devices. Which is a felony."
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coc2t7 | What does it mean for a database to scale vertically vs horizontally? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"ewhchxx"
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"text": [
"Vertical scaling means adding more power to a machine. Horizontal scaling means adding more machines."
],
"score": [
11
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coe3ay | how does the internet work? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Websites are hosted on remote servers, which have their own specific web internet protocol address, a sequence of numbers separated by periods. Typically formatted as ###.###.###.### (“ipv4”) Your local browser checks with a thing called a DNS server to find the right internet IP address for the website you type in and connects you to that server hosting the website you are trying to visit. That server sends html text/images mixed in with some other programming languages which your browser interprets and builds the text and images you see on your browser, in real time. The standards for web page programming are intended to be simple and universal text documents that a browser can use, in any operating system, to build these web pages you see. There are lots of details in between, maybe this can help facilitate a more specific question."
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cof2m6 | What is the point of afterburn(ing?) | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Injecting and igniting fuel in the exhaust stream burns any remaining oxygen in the exhaust and adds thrust on top of what the gas turbine engine can create on its own. Afterburning virtually turns the exhaust pipe into a supplementary rocket engine. While not very fuel efficient, it’s only used for takeoffs, combat and supersonic flight. Designers may prefer a lighter engine with an afterburner over having to design the aircraft around a bigger, heavier and thirstier engine whose full output is only occasionally needed."
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cojogv | Why does a computer typically have to download an installer for most programs instead of just downloading the program straight from the web? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Installations could be necessary for a couple of reasons. * The software could require uncompressing and/or unpacking files for faster access that were compressed or packed for bandwidth, storage, or logistics reasons. * Specific files could need to be placed in specific existing folders * The software could require registering and providing data to existing installed software (most commonly the existing OS). * It could need to modify existing data on the system as part of its purpose or to optimize its performance * Convenience for the user so that the software's files are in standard locations (ideally) and shortcuts are created to launch it. (This is a big one to ensure ease of use) * There may be some additional environment-specific configurations that need to happen before the software can run."
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com1cf | How do electronics mimic sound perfectly? | I can’t find this answer online—even after a few years. Perhaps you know and can explain well? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The sound is vibrations in the air. These vibrations are measured by sensitive equipment (microphones), converted to \"vibrations\" in electricity, and then recorded to a tape or digital storage medium. This is then read back into \"vibrations\" of electricity, which then run through something like a motor that goes straight instead of spinning (the speaker), and then the center of the speaker vibrates, which pushes the air around it to also vibrate. Through each transition, the vibrations are changed as little as possible, so that their exact shape (and thus the sound) can be replicated."
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copocx | How is Uber losing billions of dollars? They have millions of people driving for them and they take a cut, what expenses do they really have and how can you lose money on a business model like that? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"The reason they're so popular is because they undercut traditional taxi services, but those low rates aren't sustainable. Uber's end-game is and has always been to replace human drivers with autonomous vehicles. That's their path to profitability: phase out drivers and get to keep all the money for themselves.",
"Basically because of the rewards. I just read a report the other day that broke it down. uber was projected to lose 8 billion in 2019. It's already lost 5 in the first quarter. 5 billion is stock compensation because of their disastrous IPO 300 million from driver rewards 3 billion R and D 1.6 billion for admin (including office space and such) 1.2 billion from sales and marketing 864 million from operations and support (the people in the uber buildings) 124 million in depreciation"
],
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cor3dn | Why movies are shot at 24 frames per second rather than a higher frame rate. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"That was the standard back in the day when film was still shot on reels. Higher framerate would require more film, so settled with just enough for fluid movement. Nowadays we use 24 FPS because people prefer it still. Higher framerates results in less motion blur and give the shot a less cinematic feeling. It gives the movie a soap opera like feel, and people just dont like it. This isn't to say we never use higher framerates. Most action movies will briefly move to higher framerate for action intesive scenes in order to get clearer movements. Less motion blur makes it easier to see who is punching who.",
"24 frames per second is *enough* for fluid motion, and it saves on film (for film movies) or data (for computer storage of video files). People have gotten used to the slight flickering of 24 FPS, so people who grew up watching movies often think that 60 FPS or 100+ FPS video looks *wrong*.",
"24 frames is traditional, gives smooth motion and is what people expect from movies. Peter Jackson filmed The Hobbit at 48fps and people hated it. I didn’t hate it, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to seek it out. 24fps in a movie is what we consider life-like. EDIT: I’m not really knowledgeable, but [this article]( URL_0 ) from Gizmodo sounds pretty authoritative.",
"Because movies used to be shot on film and that was one of the compromises they had to make when designing a camera. Film was stored on reels and shooting at a higher frame rate would require you to either shoot shorter scenes or have larger bulkier reels.",
"It was the standard when movies were new to make it as cheap as possible and not look like a slide show. As to why it is still the standard that is because it has become so ingrained into cinema that movie look \"weird\" at high frame rates. One of the hobbit movies was one the first high profile movies to be released in 60fps and everyone thought it looked weird."
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coupdu | Why does Flash Player tell me to only allow it on sites I trust? How could runing something in Flash be harmful to my computer? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ewlbgj8"
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"text": [
"Flash have had a lot of security holes that made it possible for a malicious flash program to access the rest of the computer. So you could use it to install software on your computer that could do in principle anything. There is likely more holes that is not fixed that can still be exploited."
],
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coz97w | who can read my search history | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ewm4tat"
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"text": [
"If you are complete incognito without any browser extensions enabled, your web history can be accesed by your ISP alone (i.e. your internet provider like xfinity in the US). Another thing as your mentioned is if hackers got access to router then they can track what requests/websites you are visiting. Technically google cannot track you if you use incognito but we do not know what happens if you use chrome and what they do under the hood."
],
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cozvdv | What determines the speed at which our phones charge? | Is there a way to make it really fast, say you could charge your phone from 0-100% in 10 minutes? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ewma6f8"
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"text": [
"1) Make the phone with a low capacity battery. Obviously not desirable just for the sake of quicker charging 2) Increase the current flow during charging. Theoretically possible but probably practically infeasible because: a) Expensive charger, bulky cables to carry high current and monitoring circuit on the phones and charger. b) There is a limit to how fast you can charge a chemical battery. You could perhaps use something like a supercapacitor but this is larger (lower energy density - I believe, don't quote me) and more expensive. c) Safety. The faster you charge, the more heat is generated. This means the phone might get very hot (not good for users) Short answer: cost, size, safety, convenience is what limits the charging speed."
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cp1m3v | Why is a SIM card required to connect to the 4G network? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ewmmkbn"
],
"text": [
"The SIM card contains your identification info which allows your service provider to know who you are. Keeping this info on a card instead of on the phone itself allows you to easily switch providers by swapping your SIM card, or switch phones by taking out your SIM card and putting it in another phone. Note that you can connect to any network without a card, but only for making emergency calls."
],
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cp2ry3 | How do passwords work. Specifically passwords to unlock devices such as smartphones or laptops | Just to make it simpler to explain how do iPhones(if this isn’t publicly known then any computing device is fine the iPhone is just an example) know which password is correct and unencrypt your data for access without having what your password is stored to be checked against. If your smart device does have a stored copy of your password for checking how does it keep it hidden from people who would try to gain access to the phone. If this is too complex to be explained easily are their any resources you can point to that do explain it. Thanks in advance! | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"At a high level, typically most services (including a login to a device/computer) take what you type as a password (numbers, letters etc) and run a mathematical transformation on it called a “hash” The advantages of this are 1) you get the same “hash” output value every time for the same input (password) 2) the hash itself cannot easily be reversed, so that you can’t get the plain text password just by stealing (or looking at) it When you type the password, the hash is generated and then compared to the hash stored somewhere on the system. If they match, you gain access. Where this hash is stored depends on the device or operating system (iOS, Mac, Windows , Linux etc)",
"Storing passwords themselves isn't particularly secure, because any good hacker will be able to find it, extract it, and take advantage of it. But this poses a problem, if it isn't secure to store a password in plain text, what can the program use to check if the password you input is correct? The method typically used for this is hashing. A hash is a mathematical algorithm that has two main features. 1. Regardless of what value you input, it always gives an output of the same length. 2. The algorithm is not reversible. You can't perform the equation backwards to turn the hash back into the original password. When you type in your password the algorithm turns it into a hash, and that is compared to what is stored on the device. So what is the upside of doing this? A database of hashes are all the same length, so even if a hacker were to steal them they couldn't determine how long the original password was. Be it 1 character or 100. Hashes themselves aren't useable, if you put the hash value into the application it will get hashed itself and therefore give a completely different value and not work. Hashes can't be reversed, so having the hash doesn't mean you can easily determine what the original password was. Hashes are complex and slow, meaning they need a lot of processing power to run. This is good from a security perspective because it slows hackers down. It's difficult to brute force hashes because you need a lot of CPU power to run hashing algorithms over and over again. But that doesn't mean it's infallible. Hashing algorithms are public knowledge (ie the equations are standardized and easy to get) so what hackers do is create databases of hashes using pre-generated passwords. So they run a,b,c,d, etc and common passwords through the equation to make a database of known hashes... then they compare stolen hashes to the database to get people's passwords. The catch is this requires a lot of effort, but it's becoming more and more common place as an attack as these databases are pre-generated (someone has done the hard work for you already) and are easily found on the internet."
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cp4hvq | How does data storing works? How exactly does a piece of metal and plastic hold all my movies and pictures on it? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ewn8rjp",
"ewn4y8f"
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"text": [
"CD/DVD: there is a spiral track that contains bits that are either shiny or rough. A laser shines on them; the shiny parts reflect back, the rough parts don't. Your player can interpret those as 1's and 0's. Hard disk: similar to the CD, but the bits are tiny magnets that are either pointed north side up or north side down. They are read with another magnet. This method is also used for old fashioned floppy disks and tape drives Flash drive: There are a bunch of small pieces of metal. Some of these pieces are given a small charge, then disconnected, others have no net charge. Solid state drives work in a similar way",
"Depends on what method you use, the farther you go the more complicated it gets. An early method i know how to explain is the phonograph. Basically if you wanted to record a piece of music you would set a disk spinning and have a pin connected to another tube from which the music will be recorded, the vibrations will go from the tube to the pin and the pin would engrave the sounds on the disk which can be read again by another pin."
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cp4jfj | What are the differences between analog and digital filmmaking? What do the mm indicate? | I am really into film so this is a question that was on my mind for quite some time now. To the second question, I often hear things like: "It was shot on 35mm." What exactly does that mean? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"ewn7bi5"
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"text": [
"Saying a film is \"Xmm\" is what's called the film gauge, and it's simply the measurement of the width of the film. That means 35mm film is 35mm wide, 16mm film is 16mm wide...etc. As for the rest of you're question, it's a bit vague. Analog would be filmmaking shot on actual film that's chemically exposed to create images, and digital is what most people are familiar with today; a camera that records images or video on a sensor and stores them as data. Is there something more specific you wanted to know about the differences?"
],
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