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73j5i7 | Why can’t video games make walking/running look realistic? | Video games have seen major innovations in recent years, with incredible graphics, new forms of interaction like VR, and more complicated algorithms. But while playing FIFA 18, I noticed that players running around still have the illusion that their feet are sliding around. It seems that their feet are never actually planted, and the game just coordinates their movements and positions rather than have the player realistically run within out the feet sliding around when they change direction. tl;dr: Why can’t video games like FIFA, 2K, Madden make running look realistic? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"A lot of movement animation is captured live with peoples' actual body movements ([Example]( URL_0 )) and then these are applied to the character's animation when moving in-game. The problem comes because many states/actions can make the player run faster/slower (such as sprinting vs. walking, as well as changing directions in many different angles) and the studio can only capture so many animations to account for that. After that it comes down to using mathematics to calculate where body parts should be, or trying to find the \"most appropriate\" animation for whatever action a player is doing and a lot of the time this isn't perfect, and thus things like running animations are not perfect with the speed that the feet move in, etc.",
"there are generally 2 ways to do this: - Physics simulation: use the momentum of the character to calculate where the legs/feet should go in order to provide the proper change in direction. In real time. - Create a seperate animation for every single possible leg position, body position and movement change that the physical body is capable of doing, as well as create a system that determines the correct animation to play. (Pretty much all games use a severely cut down version of this, as animations take a long time to make) A lot of work for something most people wont care about."
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73jfb9 | Gravity aids us in our digestion. However, in space, how is food digested? Does it float around in your digestive system? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Remember > Gravity ***aids*** us in our digestion. Which means there are other ways to move food down the digestive system. The answer is muscles. Food in your mouth is pushed to the stomach by muscles in the lining of the tube between mouth and your stomach. Then, in your stomach the digested food is pushed again into your intestines. While in the intestines it is pushed all the way to the, well, to the end. As a simple experiment, try drinking water while standing on your head. You will be amazed that you can indeed swallow the water. You could even eat a full meal on your head and you would have no problem getting your food where it belongs. Also your digestive system, when empty, isn't just full of open space where food can float around inside like you see on cartoons. Your stomach shrinks down as food passes from it and can expand as much as 50x in size! But when empty your stomach isn't just a gallon of empty air.",
"It aids us but is not absolutely necessary. We have muscles every step of the way in the digestion process and the tubes tend to only be big enough for the food involved.",
"The muscular contractions in the gastro-intestinal tract are called peristalsis. Post cancer surgery (nephrectomy) I developed ileus, cessation of peristalsis. Part of the treatment was to chew gum for 5 minutes twice a day.",
"To add to what others have said, remember that waste travels upward in the large intestine prior to being excreted. That's a sign that our digestive system isn't *reliant* on gravity, merely *aided* by it."
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73jgog | How do hockey face-offs work? | More specifically, how do referees determine who gets kicked out of the circle. As someone who doesn’t know, it seems kind of random. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There’s something called the “5 second rule,” which forces the player in the face off to be in the right position at the end of that time. This includes skates in a specific position, with stick on the ice. Many players attempt to lift their stick in the air prior to the drop to get a reactionary edge on their opponent. In addition, no part of you can be touching your opponent before the puck drops; this includes initiating stick-on-stick contact. All these are reasons for refs tossing a player out of a face-off.",
"The home team player gets to put their stick down last, gives them a bit of an edge. Most of the time a player gets tossed from the face off circle because they are cheating too obviously and moving too soon before the puck is dropped."
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73jpf1 | How does the US government's emergency disaster response work? Why is it so dependent on the President? | I'm pretty confused by this, and maybe it's because I'm Australian. I do understand that the President has a lot of executive power so he can probably smooth the way, but isn't disaster relief a set process? A Governor asks the Federal Government, and then FEMA or whoever responds. Where does the President really come into it? It just seems between what happened in Katrina and now in Peurto Rico, the public service doesn't seem to have a lot of control over the response. | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It has nothing to do with the President. Never has. The President (if he’s good at his job) delegates the response to people who do this stuff for a living. FEMA personnel, the military, coast guard, etc. The President doesn’t have a magic button to make things appear in another country/state on the doorsteps of those who need it. So, since the current narrative is that Trump is incompetent and hates Latinos, the reality of getting shit to Puerto Rico is now folded into the narrative. The President is a figurehead.",
"The FEMA Director is a direct political appointee of the President. In the case of Katrina, the person he appointed had no experience in disaster relief, and was not qualified for the job. But the President made several public comments about how wonderful the relief process was, when it was in fact NOT going well at all. This made him look out of touch and highlighted the FEMA directors lack of qualification. In Trump's case, he did appoint a fairly well qualified person to lead FEMA, and the response to Texas and Florida has been pretty well done. However, a third disaster in a row has strained their abilities, and the fact that PR is an island inhibits a lot of things that helped Texas and Florida (like volunteers from other states who were able to mobilize to help). However, there are still aspects of the response that are beyond the FEMA director's control, like mobilizing military resources to respond. Only the President can do that.",
"So each state, county and city/town has their own emergency response teams. Police and Fire units handle a majority of the issues during storms. FEMA is not meant to actually do the hard work, rather they are meant to come in before or after a disaster and manage the recovery efforts. FEMA stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency and is mistaken by many people to actually be the guys handling recovery efforts. For major events either National Guard, Reserve, or active military units are called in to handle recovery. You also have a slew of private and public organizations that also provide disaster recovery this includes all of the major NGOs, lineworkers, and volunteer search and rescue units. Most of the messes like Katrina and Puerto Rico happen because locally the government has screwed up and now needs to be bailed out. If you look at how certain states and cities have handled major disasters you can easily see that both mayors were and incompetent buffoons. Please note that I consider most of our presidents to be incompetent, but these mayors are a special kind of stupid. So in summary, from the state level down a majority of disaster recovery is handled. Feds come in and help with organizing and may call up troops."
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73jqjc | Drinking 8 cups of water a day vs only having to drink when you're thirsty | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"8 cups a day is a very old and outdated statistic that people seem to cling to. In reality, you will consume at least that much between all the other food and beverages you ingest in a day. Your body knows when you are thirsty and will let you know. Adam ruins everything actually did a great episode on this topic. URL_0",
"I've seen a good guide to when you need to drink water. In addition to thirst, urine that is VERY yellow indicates that you're not hydrated enough. My own personal observation is that not needing to urinate for more than about two hours might indicate that you need to drink water.",
"You should drink when you are thirsty. That amount will probably be around 8 cups per day. If you aren't thirsty for the eight cups you don't need to choke it down, but if you habitually don't drink enough you might consider adjusting your habits.",
"The eight glasses of water thing turned out to be bullshit that was not based on any kind of science. Same with the \"if you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated\". Both are bullshit. Just drink when you are thirsty. This is how humans have survived for millions of years. Not to mention, one can die from drinking too much water. It's called water intoxication. I'm sure you heard about the woman that died after participating in a radio contest to see who could drink the most water without using the restroom.",
"Don't worry about rules. Base it off your urine colour. Any darker than light yellow \"straw\" and you're not getting enough. The one thing I recommend you remember is that if you don't have enough salts, the water will be useless to your body. Especially when sweating a lot. This is what they put in Gatorade/etc. It's also why you can die from drinking too much water."
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73jsrx | what is an eye boogar? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's dried up mucus mixed with dust and dead cells. The mucus lubricates and protects your eyes, and normally drains through the corner of your eye into your nose, pushed along by blinking, but can collect there in the corner and dry out into a crust, especially when you are asleep (and so not blinking) or if the drainage duct is inflamed or blocked, e.g. by allergies or a cold."
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73jx9z | Why are lots of movies released on the same day? | I've noticed this a lot recently. For instance, on URL_0 , it says there are at least 6 movies releasing on Oct. 6. I've also noticed this every few months. Is there like a specific set of dates movies should release on in the movie industry or something? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Box office worker here. The answer to this is pretty simple. Ticket sales on weekdays are second to none compared to anything from Friday to Sunday. It's way more profitable to have a movie be released on Thursdays or Fridays so that they can make the most money with the initial hype. It's just ideal, and opening weekends are the biggest way a movie's success is gauged. As for why there seems to be a lot on specific days and the releases aren't more spread out, is because specific times of the year are big hotspots for ticket sales. For example, the movie IT was the highest selling movie in any September ever. This is majorly due to the fact that not many big producers would have their movie be released in September. The most popular times of the year are most of summer and anytime near Christmas."
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73jxx4 | How quickly do you lose fat when you burn Calories? If you were at a Calorie deficit, and then you burned 350 Calories from fat alone through exercise, would you instantly be 1/10th pound lighter afterward? Or is it a slower process? | Assume a pound of fat is 3500 Calories, and ignore muscle gain/loss, water weight gain/loss, etc. My question pertains to your body ONLY drawing on fat for energy. I understand that the way the body draws upon energy sources is more complicated than that, but I'm asking this more as a theoretical question. I know a similar question was asked a few months ago, but I want to know how **quickly** the fat theoretically loss occurs, not how it occurs. This is my first post here, so I hope it makes sense. Please feel free to ask for clarification. EDIT: by 1/10th pound lighter, I mean, would you have instantly gotten rid of 1/10th of a pound of fat? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's a slower process. My understanding is that in the process of converting fat (generally glycogen) into usable energy (ATP), a complex series of chemical reactions that I used to know back in high school occur breaking down a complex polysaccharide into far easier to use sugar, water and CO2, which ultimately is how \"fat\" leaves your body. [You exhale it as CO2.]( URL_0 ) That process takes time as your body converts fat into usable energy, and part of the process is waste production, which gets collected in your blood stream and goes to the appropriate organs for processing and then excretion. Glycogen doesn't immediately get turned into ATP at a 1:1 clean ratio without any waste product.",
"This is a conjectural question and I have a conjectural answer based on my background in Biochemistry, my current training as a PhD student in Metabolic Engineering, and my personal interest in exercise science. We know that weight can fluctuate by a few percent on a daily basis, but that consistent weight loss on a calorie-restricted diet takes at least one week to see. In fact, many people (myself included) who aim to lose weight generally don't see much of a change for the first 2-6 weeks. This is not because they aren't losing fat, but because they are retaining some water as their fat cells begin to shrink. Fat is stored in adipocytes in big globules which shrink when fat is mobilized. Cells \"don't know\" when they will have to fill those globules up again, so they pack water in in the interim to keep the space. Many human metabolic regulatory mechanisms are thought to have evolved through feast-famine cycles, and this is one of them. All that to say that you probably start burning up fat in less than the time it takes you to see measurable weight loss. That puts our time scale at a week or less. Now, as you mentioned, there are a lot of different energy sources we can draw on during exercise. Quick energy is generally preferred, though this depends on the duration and intensity of the exercise. If you're on a calorie-restricted diet, though, your body would prefer to use fat a little bit more than usual. So it wouldn't be impossible to begin burning up fat molecules right away during exercise! However, you don't actually burn many calories from a single cardio session. I have to run for about an hour to burn 500 calories, personally. Only a percentage of that comes from fat, and fat is calorie-dense, so it wouldn't translate to a lot of mass lost. If I ran for an hour and used 60% of the calories I burned from fat, I'd have lost just 33 g. Not a lot! This is the reason why cardio is an awful way to lose weight on its own, by the way. So the lower limit to our time scale is minutes. But, at that time scale, we don't expect significant changes to measured weight. Knowing what I know about the dynamics of metabolic regulation (the subject of my thesis, actually), my guess is that when you restrict calories you start losing small amounts of fat immediately, but that the proportion of calories used from fat takes a few days, or even a week, to reach a maximum value. Even at that maximal rate of fat use, it might be hard to measure changes on any time scale shorter than a day because of the energy density of fat. So, if you're well into a sustainable calorie-restricted diet, controlling salt intake and exercise very carefully, you might be able to measure the weight of fat you've lost in a day. *Might* is the operative word here. There are physiological signs of fat use, and metabolic studies use these to measure fat loss on short time scales. It's not ELI5 material, but you might consider looking at studies in which participants live in controlled environments in which everything about their metabolism - even their CO2 outputs - is carefully measured. These may be able to give you a more precise answer."
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73kmwj | Why do we laugh? | What makes us laugh? And why do some people find one thing funny while others don't? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, how laughing comes about is; when a baby is first born, it know how to cry. That's pretty much it. It's verbal expression is limited to forcing air out of its lungs. It does this when it's in pain or discomfort, or just not happy. Usually quite loudly. A laugh is when a baby is startled or surprised, but not in an actual scary way. If it thinks you uncovering your eyes and saying \"Boo!\" is fun, it knows to do something, but crying isn't quite right, so it staggers or stutters it's cry...laughing. No, as to what makes specific people laugh, that's dependant on the individual, but most humor I'd actually pretty dark. Most comedy is tragedy separated by distance or time.",
"I've read that due to observations in monkey troops, scientists believe we may laugh to inform others \"something isn't right/i've found a mistake\". This alerts the tribal group and your body rewards you for helping the survival of the species,much in the same way as making babies or seeing a loved one satisfied through your actions releases endorphines/seratonin. Sometimes this is expressed more directly, as people will laugh when nervous or while sad. Think about it. Things that are correct/proper and known to be are not funny. Where as ironic situations, self deprecating statements or even flubbed words can be hillarious. You may laugh when somone smashes their nuts on a pole skating, you may laugh when someone randomly comments \"Hitler did nothing wrong\". You may laugh when you find out your wife has been sleeping with your brother. None of these are good, warm, fun things. But they are funny. Kids even say \"my stomach feels funny\" to indicate pain."
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73kp5y | How do market makers avoid going broke or getting liquidated of their positions if the market price moves up or down too fast for an extremely long period of time? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"That's accounted for with the spread. For a regularly traded stock and thus unlikely to move rapidly the spread will be small. For a smaller more rarely traded stock it will be much higher."
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73kyec | What is an atom ? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The word \"atom\" comes from the roots for \"un-cut\" but it's really more like \"uncuttable\" because an atom is the smallest possible quantity that a chunk of an element can be divided into and still *be* that element. If you start with a gram of gold you can cut it in half over and over again and what you get is just a bunch of smaller and smaller pieces of gold, but there is a limit. When you get down to a single atom of gold splitting that will yield things that are no longer gold at all. You'll get an assortment of subatomic particles and some smaller than gold atoms that are completely different elements. So, what is an element? An atom consists of a nucleus that has a net positive charge surrounded by a cloud of electrons with a net charge that is negative such that the whole atom has no charge. The study of the behavior of the electron cloud is the science of Chemistry. The electron cloud determines the many different ways that the atom can enter into chemical reactions with other atoms. The study of the nature of the nucleus comes under the science of Physics. Getting back to gold, there must be something about a gold atom that makes it a different element from, let's say, lead. Gold is heavy, shiny yellow, and precious, it never corrodes. Lead is also a very heavy metal, it starts out shiny like silver but quickly tarnishes to a dull gray. The differences between the two elements, and in fact the differences between all of the elements, are in the structure of their nuclei. The nucleus is made of two different particles, protons which are positively charged and neutrons that have no charge. The ways in which neutrons keep the positively charged protons from all repelling one another and flying apart is way beyond an ELI5 response, so back to the protons. Gold has 79 protons in its nucleus, lead has 82. Every element has a unique number of positively charged protons in its nucleus of its atoms and so will have a unique number of negatively charged electrons in its electron cloud thus each element will have its own unique ways of entering into reactions with other atoms of other elements."
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73kzde | What makes it that liquid "adheres down the side of a glass" sometimes? | Full disclosure that this is absolutely 100% based off [this post]( URL_0 ) from r/mildlyinfuriating. This happens every morning with my frigging coffee pot. What makes water (or any liquid for that matter) do this? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Surface tension. Basically, the water molecules want to stay together due to intermolecular forces that attract them to each other. Due to the shape of the glass and based off of the speed at which you pour the glass, the water molecules will want to roll down the side of the cup instead of dropping straight to the ground"
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73l53b | How do our bodies treat artificial sweeteners? | Do our bodies release insulin when they're consumed, and do our bodies, essentially, treat them as though they're sugar? What are some of the positives and negatives to eating artificial and/or zero calorie sweeteners (aside from glucose spikes and extra calories)? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It depends on the sweetener. Sorbitol and malitol are both alcohol based sweeteners and the body breaks them down into carbohydrate and receives calories from them. Because it takes time to break down and digest them, they are used in confections and candy for diabetics as they don't rapidly increase blood sugar. Saccharin is a low/no calorie sweetener that contains no carbohydrate. It tricks the tongue into tasting sweet but basically has no calories so while it may break down in digestion, it is simply passed and not used as energy. Sweeteners like sucralose (splenda) technically have calories and could provide energy except that their shape is backwards. It's close enough to trigger our taste receptor, but we can't metabolise it. Sucralose is a [chiral molecule]( URL_0 ). It has the same elements and molecular bonds as sucrose, but is arranged in a backwards mirror image and our bodies can't make use of it. So like the saccharin it gets passed."
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73l5cq | Why do some websites prevent me from putting a number at the start of my username? | I've noticed a handful of websites I sign up for don't let me start my username with a number. Does it have something to do with attack prevention? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Many programming languages and systems require certain types of identifiers to start with a letter, and programmers often blindly copy these conventions even though there is no technical need for that. Since in a well designed database your username will always be treated as data and quoted as such in queries, there is no technical reason for them not to allow numbers. An exception is if the username is supposed to be used in an e-mail address - I think e-mail addresses *might* have a \"letter first\" requirement but I'd have to check the RFC. For Unix usernames, the reason behind the restrictions was that you can easily distinguish a number (e.g. a numerical user ID) from a username by looking at the first character. This is relevant because they are command that accept both the name and the ID in the same place. This does not apply to modern web applications.",
"Old Unix systems required a letter for the first character. People shy away to avoid breaking legacy code."
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73lesz | aside from absentee ballots, why is voting on an election in the US limited to one day? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The Constitution specifically states a singular \"day\". Article 2, Section 1, Clause 4: > The Congress may determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States. We can't have an election week unless we amend the constitution. Edit: states have autonomy over their own election practices, so a state election could be whenever and for whatever period, at least theoretically.",
"In my state, in my city, we have early voting at selected spots long before election day. Those polls are open long hours. I think this lasts for weeks.",
"I would guess its to make it more equal. Until recently there wasn't the technology to tally quickly, so if everyone voted at the same time they could not be swayed to turn out or stay home depending on who is ahead. Notice how the staggered nature of the primaries affects the choosing of the candidates. Eventually many in the late states assume their vote is worthless, and don't participate."
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73lgga | How did we "solve" the Y2K problem? Was our solution completely thorough? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We didn't \"solve it\" as much as \"address it\" one piece of software at a time, by whatever organization owned/operated the affected system. Critical systems were mostly likely prioritized, and I'm sure a lot of systems were just left broken, to be dealt with as needed. (That's what my company did.) The Big Scary Y2K stuff that people were worried about had at least some potential to happen, but, thankfully, nothing dramatic happened. To some degree, being scared about it led people to deal with it, which can look like The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It is kind of the definition of a thankless job.",
"I worked on Y2K. Hell, anyone in IT at the time worked on Y2K. In reality, it was a lot of work to find and fix any programs that used a date in a 6 digit format (MMDDYY) and change it to an 8 digit format (MMDDYYYY). One issue was that software is not always well documented and lots of code doesn't get touched after it's initially written. That made it hard to find all the dates in millions and millions of lines of code. Another issue was that there were many companies using legacy software, i.e. software that had been purchased/created 20 years previous and no one had looked at it or touched it in a long time. Most of the time, companies just replaced that software with something newer and supported, but there were companies who would not replace the software because it was so customized to their exact needs. Those companies hired programmers to review every line of code and find any dates. Y2K also resulted in better programming discipline. Instead of embedding constants (dates) into code, more and more shops insisted on using variables declared at the top of the program and then assigning values to those variables as the first step of the program, which made the code easy to maintain. In my case, I worked for a subsidiary of GE Capital. My boss made the entire IT department work on New Year's Eve in case we'd missed anything in our software. We didn't. He was a dick.",
"There was never really a problem. It was all sensationalistic journalism combined with a few people 'in the know' not really knowing. anything, almost everyone in IT at the time knew it was not going to be an issue The 'next' Y2k will be in about 20 years, but that will be another non issue to those who know",
"We solved it by giving us more room to write the date and the solution was not complete. There are many different ways to write down the date. In the early day of computing space to write things down was expensive so lazy programmers and those who didn't expect their creations to still be around in 2000 simply just wrote down the last 2 digits of the year. Humans have used this space saving format informally for quite some time. Like you sometimes say that something happened in '74 or in the '80s and it is assumed that it is clear from context that you meant **19**74 and the **19**80s. With humans one could expect, that when they got a date like '00 that they would understand from context that this now meant 2000 rather 1900. Computer weren't smart enough to make that guess. They were programmed to assume that the first two digits were always 19 and they went with that. At some point people realized that the programs written in decades past were still around and that computers that used this method would still be around by the years 2000 and that this might cause them to act as if they were a hundred years in the past and cause all sorts of bugs. The media liked to paint pictures of airplanes falling out of the sky but professionals were concerned with much more mundane issues. A world wide effort to find and fix the problem in systems that had it was undertaken. For the most part this was a huge success. The general public which had been promised Armageddon by the media was quite miffed that the problem had been fixed without causing he fall of human civilization and declared that the warnings must have been wrong rather than that engineers had worked hard to see that it didn't come to pass. So the Y2K problem was mostly averted. Here and there some systems that had been overlooked created some funny error messages but nothing big happened. However keeping accurate date/time records in computers is a very, very complicated issues (mostly because the way we tell time as humans is much, much less regular than the average person thinks) and there are a number of problems similar to the Y2K problem that will become an issue at some point. UNIX based system tell time by counting how many seconds have passed since the beginning of January 1st 1970 UTC (called the unix epoch) and then they take this number of seconds and use a complicated system involving looking up timezone and adding anything from leap days to the occasional leap second to figure out what time and date that is in the local time. Currently we are at 1506870661 seconds since the Unix Epoch. The space the computers store that number of seconds in has room for up to 2147483647 seconds, this corresponds to a date in mid January 2038. When that time is reached computers will try to add another second to that number, not have enough room and end up creating a date with -2147483648 which is as far in the past of 1970 as 1938 is in its future. This will obviously result in problems for anyone trying to make use of these dates. Already some computersystems that work with stuff more than 20 years in the future, may encounter the problem. Everyone hopes that all the old system that still use this way of telling time will no longer be in use 20 years from now or will have been upgraded with patches. *fun fact*: Don't try to set you phone a electronic toy to any date before 1970 or after 2037 to avoid risking breaking it. Nobody expect these things to last that long so they are not currently able to handle such dates. There are a number of similar problem from many different systems that handle dates and almost all of them will at some point run out of space to write down the date. Almost nobody who was involved in fixing the y2k mess by switching from 2-disgts for the year to 4-digits for the year, seemed to care about what would happened on December 31st 9999 when we would end up needing 5 digits for the year if we make it that long and keep using their fix until then. We are mostly just pushing down the problem for future generations of humanity to fix if they manage to survive that long.",
"I remember that as we approached the Year 2000, there was a programme on TV about it. A presenter stood in front of a huge map of the world and was going to report on all the huge issues occurring as they happened. She kept having to go say, \"Nothing to report so far...\"",
"If you want to learn about the next Y2K-ish problem it's called the End of Unix Time. This video by Computerphil really sums it up in an easy to understand way. URL_0",
"An old friend said his dad was part of this and was working none stop on servers changing the software before the clock on the servers hit the next year. He said his dad had to work non stop to change a bunch of them because they all needed updated before the new year or a bunch of medical records would be ruined. His dad also liked to take acid so who knows what really happened Edit: Grammer",
"As far as the solution being completely thorough, probably not. A common way to store dates/times is to store the number of seconds since January 1st, 1970. Well, eventually that number will get too big for the storage chosen at the time. For example, we may have an issue in 2038 - see URL_0 . Luckily that's far off enough than none of us programmers will have to deal with it, which is the same thing people said about the year 2000 in the 70s. :)",
"The proper way to view that problem (and similar problems in future) is as technical debt - many organizations had taken a shortcut in many pieces of software that would work for dates up to 2000, and so when that came closer, that debt had to be paid one way or another if they want these systems to function correctly. It's worth noting that many of them would function almost correctly anyways, with just cosmetic problems - e.g. showing a 1900 in some places where you can just instruct the employees looking at it to treat it as year 2000 if you don't want to bother updating the software. Nothing much happened on the actual 1st january 2000 because a lot happened before that - pretty much everybody who had accumulated such debt and considered those systems important spent a bunch of time and effort to correct their stuff. There's no single solution, because there's no single problem but a class of very many similar shortcuts/design flaws/intentional tradeoffs. I wouldn't be surprised if there'd be some systems still in operation where they simply replaced all occurrences of a hardcoded \"19\"+two-digit year with a hardcoded \"20\"+two-digit year; so that they'd have to repeat the change in year 2100 if that system still is alive at the time."
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73lk34 | The hawker/street vendor system in popular tourist areas | I'm living in Italy for a semester, and I've noticed some weird things about the street vendors and hawkers that sell the selfie sticks, useless goo balls, etc. I may be making up a conspiracy theory, but it seems like a sort of pyramid scheme that these guys are trapped in. 1. They all have the same merchandise, from city to city, and they're quick to adapt to the weather (selfie sticks turn into umbrellas and ponchos as soon as a drop of water starts) 2. They all know each other and chat for a bit before going their separate ways 3. This applies to the trinket shops and newspaper stands, and maybe even the fake leather purse shops. Can you 'move up the ranks' and go from selfie stick vendor to high end fake leather vendor? Basically, I'm wondering how money is distributed around the individual hawkers. No one ever buys the useless goo balls, how is it viable for them to stand out there all day and throw them on the ground? Are they all connected under a massive warehouse and a top-level administration, or are they their own individual business that buy a few things of merchandise at a time to resell? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They are likely all buying the same products from China which is not uncommon because everyone sells the same thing. Browse alibaba for a specific product like \"umbrella\" and you will likely find the exact umbrella they sell. They also probably know each other because they stand there all day next to each other and chit chat when theres no customers.",
"They are single individuals that try to sell stuff. They often don't sell much, but they do sell something. The stuff is bought cheaper from stores located in the city that buy them directly from factories in China or Italy. They talk to each other cause they are mostly from Bangladesh, work in the same area and buy the same stuff from the same shop. Source: native italian, I sell some of the stuff to them."
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73m5l2 | Can an ''unhealthy'' body be restored? | Hi! I'm a 23 year old student. In recent years I've lived quite unhealthy. I've drank alcohol almost every day, ate fastfood every few days, didn't do a lot of exercise and gained weight (176 lbs to 220 lbs) Now I'm motivated to eat healthy, lose fat by doing cardio and build muscle by working out, drinking lots of water etc. But.. isn't the damage on my body & organs already done (by living like that for years)? Will this change of lifestyle ''restore'' the lack of vitamins and e.g. abuse of alcohol on my liver or will it just prevent things from getting worse? I apologize for my horrible explanation. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The awesome thing about the human body is its remarkable capacity for healing. 23 is plenty young. Get to the healthy living and chances are good that you'll be fine.",
"Im 31. smoked for 15 years, put on 20 kg from junk food and not exercising. Drunk like a fish from 18 to 22 i did give up drinking at 22 for health issues tho. But have smoked weed for 15 years. Last year i got married and desided i needed to clean up my body so i started vaping to quit smoking and now im smoke free for 16 months. Iv started doing bodyweight training at home and have stopped eating the extra crap and eating healthier. 6 weeks ago i dropped my daily calories from 2400 to 1800 and have lost 9 kg. Ive not only noticed a massive difference in my job and my energy levels. Im no long short of breath half away through the day. I have noticed my gut is flatter (not abs yet) i can do my training a butt load easier and go longer. So in short yes you can fix the damage done. I dont know how true it is but ive heard the human body replaces every cell in the body every 7 years. beleaving this gave me the motivation to start so i dont care if it not true, maybe it can give you hope to chance sooner than i.",
"Different answers for different sorts of \"unhealthy\" > alcohol You might have run your liver ragged, but livers can regenerate themselves. Even if you cut half of it out. As the body's poison filter, it has a lot of experience with being abused. If you've been an alcoholic for years, then... there's more scar tissue in the liver than there is normal liver and it fails. Don't do that. If you do, then you'd need surgery to transplant in a new liver, which as far as organs go, are pretty ok with jumping bodies. > ate fastfood every few days Eh, there's a bunch of junk in there whose main function is to kill all the bacteria that shortens shelf-life rather than providing nutrients to you. It's not really even that bad, but there's some evidence that it'll make you fat.... > didn't do a lot of exercise Yes, this can be corrected. Work out and you can build muscle. For extreme cases, like those astronauts who suffered muscle dystrophy, they need pretty intense physical therapy so they can build up enough muscle mass to walk again. If you \"didn't do a lot of exercise\", then you're... what? A little less muscular than ideal? Big deal. > and gained weight (176 lbs to 220 lbs) That's a little bit of a bigger deal. Let me stress that weight gain is more about eating too many calories than lack of exercise burning it off. 176 to 220? When you're 23? Well you're not in highschool anymore. Your body changes. And it's actually an un-pegged value, we'd also need your height for that to really mean anything. You're likely fat ([That is, if you're under 6'6\"]( URL_0 )), and that carries some health issues, but it's really not all that bad. And it's completely recoverable. Eat less, exercise more, eat healthier. If you're under 6', then you're obese and yes, you should lose some weight. Losing weight as opposed to not being fat in the first place can result in excess skin, which catches some people by surprise. That can be corrected with surgery, but it ain't cheap. Some people have tight skin and don't notice when they lose weight. There's a lot of stuff about metabolism and how hungry you get with losing weight, but I'm not sure how that really works. EDIT: Oh man, and I started this whole thing to say that if you cripple or lose or limb then [they're working on that]( URL_1 ).",
"Many complications that come from poor diet, drinking alcohol, lack of exercise develop over extended periods of time. For instance, plaque buildup that could cause heart attacks or strokes do not develop over night. Lifestyle changes are absolutely the best way to prevent these long term complications from happening. You are at a perfect age where starting healthy habits now will really pay off in the long run!",
"I used to work out with a guy in his 60s who was fit & toned. When he would see very out of shape people new in the gym, he would walk over & encourage them. One day he showed me the paper he was pulling out of his pocket to show them--a photo of himself at 400 pounds! Think of your body now as your greatest project, your masterpiece. It will amaze you & skyrocket your sense of self. And the more you exercise, the more your body craves healthful eating & living, so it becomes a waterfall of successes. Don't let \"backsliding\" get you down--just pick up again like when you were a toddler & tripped but kept going. You got this already by wanting it. Make it happen--it's the only body you get & it's never too late!"
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73m6la | Why do newly released blockbuster films only circulate on the internet when they have been released on DVD? | I find it strange that when a film is released to cinemas worldwide, it never leaves their systems. It doesn't get hacked. Angry employees don't leak them. It is tightly contained within the bounds of where the filmmakers want them and quite literally does not leave that spot until they want it to --and I'm not quite sure how they achieve this. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"First of all, cinemas don't get their movies on DVDs (or Bluray for that matter). They used to get movies on movie reels back in the days of analog film. These days cinemas receive a Digital Cinema Package, or [DCP]( URL_0 ), which is basically a computer hard drive in a special enclosure which contains the movie. So, as long as a movie is still only in theaters, versions of it in the wild on optical media should be few and far between. A proverbial handful of 'screeners' is likely in the hands of journalists and critics around the world though, in the form of DVDs usually, for reviewing purposes. Security on these is really, really strict. They are usually unique for each person that receives one and contains secret watermarks and other security features. As for the previously mentioned DCP's: the format the movies are in on these devices is very unusual, consisting of hundreds of thousands of individual files (as mentioned in the linked article). Besides that, it probably has additional security to prevent copying, if it can be done at all. So, in a nutshell, that's why we have to wait until the retail release for good quality releases of movies.",
"Sometimes they are, but it's rare. Before DVD release pirates have to rely on cams, which are of questionable quality. Also, it's not really worth the time and effort to steal one of the theaters copies. Getting caught is too easy.",
"These days, movies are all sent digitally to movie theaters. The data is strongly encrypted in such a way that it can only be played back on a specific projector. the enclosures are tamper-proof and log every time the film is played. Even if somebody were to steal one, it'd be nearly impossible to get the movie off of it. Beyond that, movie pirates don't want to commit actual felonies by breaking into a theater and stealing one in order to get movies. Piracy is only copyright infringement, a civil issue, something you can't go to jail for.",
"One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that studios started watermarking the videos they send out, so if it gets leaked they know which copy it was."
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73m9i6 | When I take a picture of something at regular 1x zoom, why does the picture always look really zoomed-out in relation to what I see with my eyes. | For instance, if I were to take a picture of what is right in front of me, it would look smaller and further away than when I look directly at it from the same spot. Why is that? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The 1x/2x/10x/etc measurement is in reference to the camera's lens, not the human eye. So when a lens is at 1x zoom, that simply means that that particular lens is fully zoomed out. The lenses in cell phone cameras (as well as consumer grade \"point and shoot\" cameras) have a fairly wide \"field of view\" (how far it can see side-to-side and up-and-down), which gives the appearance of things being really small at 1x zoom, since it's capable of seeing a wider image than the naked eye can."
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73maoq | Why do cold surfaces sometimes feel like they are wet? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Why do cold surfaces sometimes feel like they are wet? We don't really have \"wetness\" sensors in our skin, we have the ability to detect pressure on a very fine scale which yields a texture sense, and a temperature sensor *of our flesh*. That last bit is important because we infer the temperature of an object touched based on the rate of change in the temperature of our flesh. The higher the difference in temperature the faster the heat transfer, so if the object is very cold our flesh will cool faster than if it was only a little cold. As a result objects with high thermal conductivity such as metals appear to be colder than objects with low thermal conductivity such as wood even if they are actually the same temperature, simply because the metals carry the heat away faster. Water also carries heat away very efficiently and does not really have a texture so the brain can sometimes become confused about what combination of factors is at work on a given object only through touch. Is it cold and smooth or is it wet? With only texture and the rate of heat absorption to work with it isn't clear."
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73mjqk | Why do employees who are exceedingly good at their job get promoted into management? | At every employer I've had, the best employees are offered and promoted to jobs in management (usually without any training provided). I'm in an engineering field, and management (especially people management) requires a different skill set. This leads to two issues - good engineers are lost, and bad management is created. Of course, this isn't universally true (some employees who are promoted into management excel at the role), but it feels to me like these are distinct career fields. Can anyone explain this rationale to me? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's true that management requires a skillset that not everyone has. But at the same time, managing a group of people also (hopefully) requires that you understand the work that they do. Hiring a manager with \"management\" skills but no domain knowledge can be just as bad (or far worse) than promoting a domain expert without good management skills. It's easier to identity a good engineer with decent people skills and promote them than it is to hire an MBA with proven management skills and expect them to learn how to be an engineer.",
"It's a pretty curious model, check out the Peter principle: URL_1 Scott Adams proposed the Dilbert principle, where you promote based on lack of competence: URL_0 Give the easy work to the people who you don't want doing the important stuff: \"Your heart surgeons and your computer programmers—your smart people—aren’t in management.\""
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73ml4b | What's the point of a chiropractor to crack your bones when the pain/ache will eventually come back? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> What's the point of a chiropractor to crack your bones when the pain/ache will eventually come back? Two things: First, chiropractic care is pseudoscience, it is garbage scam artistry which fleeces gullible people of their money. Second, your reasoning makes no sense at all. What is the point of eating if you will just get hungry later? What is the point of having fun now if you will just get sad eventually later? What is the point of soothing pain now when you will hurt later? Temporary benefits are still benefits. Of course using **real** medicine to actually cure the source of the pain would be better, but soothing pain in the short term has benefits.",
"One of the first paragraphs from Wikipedia's thoughts on chiropractors. *The main chiropractic treatment technique involves manual therapy, especially spinal manipulation therapy (SMT), manipulations of other joints and soft tissues. Its foundation is at odds with mainstream medicine, and chiropractic is sustained by pseudoscientificideas such as subluxation and \"innate intelligence\" that are not based on sound science.*"
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73mvni | How can a man be raped by a woman? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The human body will respond to physical stimulation even if you haven't consented and don't want it to happen. Mind over matter only goes so far, so sufficient stimulation will still have a predictable effect. The fact that your body responded in the way it is physiologically meant to respond has nothing to do with whether you gave consent for it to happen. In short: no means no, and what your body does when pushed doesn't mean a damn thing in the face of that.",
"I ordered a paid dominatrix service off the internet years ago. Set up to meet at a fairly nice hotel room where I was waiting. She made me go to the bathroom upon arrival and when I came out she had a mask and full outfit on. Tied me to the bed, gagged me and roughly anally penetrated me. Then I was chloroformed and I assume more penetration. When I woke up all my belongings and wallet were gone",
"Same way a woman can be wet and nonconsenting. The penis responds to physical touch Not even mentioning penetration of the anus, forced to eat a woman out, etc",
"Along with the other responses here, I think you're jumping to a conclusion that raping a man involves his penis. There are plenty of other non-consensual sexual assaults that can happen to a man in a compromising position.",
"> How can a man be 'hard' and be considered a rape? Erections aren't something that you need to want to have, they happen with stimulus. Regardless of how you feel about it."
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73nk79 | How does gravity relate to the atmosphere. | I am currently doing a lab, and found the acceleration due to gravity on the hypothetical planet is 2.23 meters per second squared. Now I have to write something about what I can conclude about the atmosphere of this planet. I know that air particles in the atmosphere are attracted by gravity, but I am not sure what the general picture looks like. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Well, we know that gravity has to hold down an atmosphere, or else it'll be stripped away. We also know that lighter elements (like helium) aren't held down enough in our own atmosphere, so how strong gravity is apparently matters. Is this hypothetical gravity stronger or weaker than ours? Would you expect the atmosphere to be thicker or thinner? How does it compare to other planets without an atmosphere like Mars? Does this gravity seem strong enough to hold down an atmosphere at all?"
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73npmw | Why do all of the actual pictures of Saturn appear to be digitally render and sorta fake? | Edit - Rendered* | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Our brain is used to stuff looking a bit... not right. There's always *some* dust in the air, a little wind that's ever so slightly distorting the image, there never is perfect light, it's always a bit off, and stuff itself is never really perfect, there is always a little bit of asymetry, some irregularities, no perfectly smooth surfaces... Actually perfect images just look weird to us, wich is why perfect CGI, absolutely perfect images or medells, always look kind of fake, and unreal. And that's why saturn looks weird, and everything in space, really. There is no athmosphere, there is absolutlely nothing blocking the light between the lens and then planet, no distortions, no nothing. The planet is perfectly symetrical, the surface (at least from this distance) absolutely even, and, maybe the strongest factor: the thing does not have a shadow. (yes, the image you liked to does include a shadow, but the planet itself does not cast a shadow like we would expect. The whole thing is just too perfect, and that's why our brains just naturally find it odd, same as with computer rendered \"perfect\" images.",
"Can you give any examples, you may be looking at colour corrected or false colour images which will look worse",
"As far as I know, it's a ball of gas with a thick atmosphere. It's trapped by its own gravity and the force is exerted equally. Outside of this atmosphere, there is no atmospheric blur. So you're looking at an opaque but smooth ball of gas, and then the rings are in sharp relief, comparatively, because they don't have an atmosphere to blur them. It's the same reason why pictures of the moon in transit past the earth look so fake. The earth is bright and a bit blurry because there is an atmosphere between the lens and the surface. The moon doesn't have an atmosphere and is much darker than the earth, so it looks like it was photoshopped straight on the picture.",
"Earth has an atmosphere scattering light. If something is in a shadow, there's always some light coming from the blue sky to light it up. That also creates a slight color difference where direct sunlight looks yellow and shadows look blue. Shadows are a little fuzzy because the Sun has a diameter of 0.5° as seen from here. Things look hazy or foggy in the distance. There are all these changes in colors as you approach sunset and then twilight. This is what we're used to, and also what we recognize in pictures of Earth from space. Saturn doesn't have much of this. It's basically an opaque ball. Almost all of what you see is a direct reflection of sunlight or well approximated by that model. If a part of Saturn is blocked by its rings or vice versa, the resulting shadows are 10 times as sharp as we're used to because Saturn's orbit is that much farther from the Sun. They're also very stark (instant black) because there's no atmosphere that's translucent to enough of a depth to smooth much light over them. It so happens that basic CGI lighting models look just like this. The simplest only compute direct light from point lights. If they have shadows, those are very sharp. Saturn does have one nice exception, which is that [its rings scatter light onto its dark side]( URL_0 ). Try [an eclipse]( URL_1 ) for an eerie view that seems unreal because of how good it is. Edit: I should say you can definitely see a bit of atmosphere. It looks bluish much like Earth's. Just still not too obvious at the scales we view it at. The same would actually be true for pictures of Earth from high orbits. The darkness of space by itself plays a large part in creating this kind of lighting."
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73nz2r | Why does it feel more uncomfortable when cold water touches our stomach area but it feels fine when cold water touches our hands? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Our core is the most important part of our body (Besides the brain of course). It's where all your organs are that keep you alive. It needs to maintain homeostasis. In other words a consistant set temperature to ensure your vital organs work properly. Your limbs don't need warmth as much as your core simply becuase they're not as important and don't have anything im them that requires a specific temperature. Also, I am just a guy in college so please don't crucifiy me if I'm a little off but this is the general idea."
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73o233 | If fish "breathe" dissolved oxygen in the water, why do they die once they exit the water? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you breathe oxygen in the air, why do you die once held underwater? Fish can't breathe air. Their gills can't move air past them in enough volume to get the oxygen needed, and they're simply designed to work with water best.",
"Mostly because their gills, like our lungs, have to be moist to work. Unlike our lungs, fish gills don't have a mechanism that keeps them moist. Another poster mentioned that they can't move oxygen past the gills fast enough, but this is not the case. While it's true that a fish couldn't gulp down air to breath, air moves so easily that the fish flopping around would be sufficient. But the real problem is that they dry out.",
"Some fish can come onto the land and have different organs adapted to breath air. Betta fish and Goldfish both breath air from the surface because they have a Labyrinth organ. Their gills need water to carry the dissolved oxygen to them though, it's not the same as mammals breathing air. Mostly fish dry up on land and that kills them for sure."
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73o3ot | Why is it that when we eat something too much we start to dislike it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"We have an innate desire of a healthy, varied diet with lots of different nutrients, vitamins, etc., to keep our bodies supplied with all the items required by our metabolism. Short term, this means that when you eat a whole lot of a single meal in a short amount of time, say a lot of candy, your body is giving a response that it's had enough of that nurtrient, and is likely reaching unhealthy levels where it will have to waste resources instead of use it. Long term, it's a bit more psychological. Our desire to try out new recipes, new foods and change from the old ones is, when you have a steady and healthy diet, likely because you have acces to information about new food: such as new recipes, new information about certain nutrients, cooking shows, advertisments, etc. I'd argue that the desire to experience a new and exciting flavour eventually causes a mental link to dislike the food you're used to. Extremly long term, the bud tastes on your tongue, like all other cells in your body, die off and are replaced with new cells. This means that roughly every few years you develop a slightly altered taste that can alter your preferences. Spicy food also scars your tasting buds that can also alter your taste!",
"Law of diminishing returns. Every consecutive bite or piece of candy you eat yields some form of utility (happiness) however at the margin, that first piece of candy is better than the second and the third so on and so fourth until eventually the twelfth piece of candy has you feeling like a fat piece of shit. At least that's what economics tries to tell me."
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73ockd | How does toothpaste actually whiten our teeth? Does it even do that or is it just marketing? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"If you look at the fine print of most of the whitening toothpaste, they say they \"whiten\" by removing stains which you would think is what toothpaste should do by default. Edit: To further clarify, most toothpaste that claim they whiten your teeth just add a stain-removal agent like baking soda to bring out the natural color of your teeth, not bleach them to actually be white."
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73om3q | How can junk food have so much salt in it, but not taste extremely salty? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The sodium in salt binds with other elements in ither ingredients and creates new properties, including different flavors."
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73or0s | how do car dealerships make money when they claim the markup on new cars is only a few hundred dollars? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They can make money three ways when they are selling you a new car, the dealer markup, and any hidden incentives from the factory. The second way is what they offer you for your trade in. The third way is through financing of the vehicle. They secretly get kickbacks from certain finance companies depending on what rate they offer you. Say, hypothetically, you qualify for a 3% rate, but the finance manager will offer you a loan for 4%, so then the dealership gets a kickback of $500, and if he gets you on the hook for 5%, the dealership gets a kickback of $1000. So the salesperson will usually chat you up and try to pull details about what you want out of the deal, they find out what your \"hot buttons\" are, and lets say you demand to get $5000 for your trade, when it's only worth $4000, well then they can jack up your interest rate by two percent and make that back up. Or, lets say you demand a certain interest rate, so they agree to that, but the amount of money they will give you on your trade-in just went down. Since usually people only have one hot button, it's easy for them to find out what that is and then structure that accordingly. So it's all a big shell game. You ask for something, they concede, but make it up elsewhere.",
"I actually sell cars so here's the breakdown: If you're buying a brand new car, there is a good chance they really ARENT making any money, or maybe only a couple hundred bucks. Dealerships have an invoice cost of their vehicle, which you can typically get a new car at or below that invoice cost. Most place also have about 4% of the cars cost as marketing incentives and otherbullshit from the manufacturer, but it has nothing to do with dealership markup. So if you're buying a new car at or below invoice, there is a very good chance no one is making any sizable income off of that (for instance, I will typically make only $50-75 flat fee for selling the car). But then you might ask, how does a dealership make money? Well, if you're buying the car at that dealership, then you're likely going to service it there, too. It costs pennies to the dollar to actually perform service on the car, so they'll make more than the money they lost on that one new car in the multiple service visits they'll have to the dealership. But that's not all: 3-6 years down the road, now you'll trade that car in. So the preowned manager will typically give you a trade in value way under what the car will sell for after being fixed up on retail. So now one preowned car could have $5000 profit on the cost of the car alone, making up for a few of those new cars. You might think this is unfair, but sorry, any preowned manager worth his weight isn't going to put any sizable discount on his car, because it's actually keeping the lights on at the dealership. Just the rules of the game unfortunately. The unfortunate part is that unlike any other business, people don't feel a dealership is entitled to make a profit. But like, people still have to get paid and lights still have to be kept on. So it is what it is.",
"I work for a heavy truck manufacturer (we are talking semi trucks) and the process is similar in the truck world. Our truck dealerships actually make very little money on the sale of the truck. We, as the manufacturer, usually have promotions running that gives the dealership and sales people incentives to really push whatever model(s) we are interested in pushing. We give it back in the form of rebates, gift cards, funds for the dealership to use on marketing, and a variety of other incentives. The real money maker for a dealership is parts and service. We sell genuine parts that came on at the factory for upwards of 60-100% margin. The dealership then turns around and marks it up to the end users (you and I) for the same amount. Yes, those wiper blades that cost you over $20 we as the OEM sold to the dealership for $4-8 bucks. Parts and service from a dealership border on price gouging but they can get away from it. However, I truly believe if you have the money it’s worth it in so many ways to have your vehicle serviced at the actual dealership that represents your car brand. We give them TONS of training how to properly service your vehicles, plus, we ship them actual tools to fix your specific car that most repair companies can’t get. Don’t worry - dealerships take in the money hand over fist and it’s truly due to the parts and service departments.",
"There is an episode of This American Life that explains it really well: URL_0 They say that the real money is made of incentives from the manufacturer to sell the cars - they just need to move a set number of cars, it really doesn't matter how much they sell them for. And then they get big payouts from the manufacturer. And that's the money they want - not some tiny profit from marking up the car.",
"On people who don’t do their homework on the car they want to buy vs. the car they can afford Do your homework on the car you are wanting to buy so you know fair market value. Get pre qualified through your local Credit Union or bank you bank at so you know what you can afford.",
"Kickbacks for selling a certain volume, the service department, higher end vehicles with more markup, the pre-owned department, kickbacks from finance companies, warranties and dealer packages",
"My buddy owns a dealership, there's one more way, they get quarterly bonuses from the auto manufacturer based on total number of cars sold and leased. I think they get more for leases. And they get more for certain vehicles.",
"Several ways to make money: * Lie. Have a higher markup than they claim. * Extras. Hopefully, you'll buy the extras package, which is a bunch of cheap stuff at a high price. * Trade in. Usually, you trade in your old car, and they give you peanut money for it. If you can, sell it yourself instead. * Future service. There's a lot of money in servicing a new car, because there is seldom anything wrong with it.",
"OK. So it all comes down to how you define \"profit\" for a car dealership. First, and most obvious there's the amount that they paid the manufacturer for the car vs what they sold it to you. That's the \"only a few hundred markups\" that you see. Uncounted in that is that manufacturers often give rebates. So if you sell car X the manufacturer might kick an extra few hundred your way. This is partly how the manufacturer influences what cars are pushed when. So for example, if the new Accord is coming out next month, Honda might incentivize selling the old Accords off by giving a rebate on them for a few months. This gives the manufacturer more control over what salespeople push than simply adjusting the original cost of a car. Next are targets. Often a dealership will get a bonus if they hit certain targets for sales. So if they have a 100 vehicle target, but only sell 99 they get nothing but if they sell 101 they get $1,000 for every vehicle. These numbers are made up but show the point. The dealership stands to make significantly more profit if they hit these targets than if they miss them. Next is financing. Dealers get kickbacks from financing companies. If a dealer sets up a loan with company X, they might get a few hundred bucks for doing so. Many manufacturers also have financing companies, for example, \"Ford Motor Credit Company LLC\" is the bank owned by Ford Motor Company. This bank contributes a significant amount to Ford's overall bottom line. So the incentives from the credit company are also present. Next, and perhaps most important is service. The assumption is that a new vehicle comes with a warranty. Most people get their warranty service at the same dealership they bought from. The dealer's service department charges the manufacturer for those services. So if you go in and get something done under warranty, your local Ford dealer invoices Ford Motor Company for that service. Even though you are not paying the dealer, the dealer's service department is still making money on that service. Now, the rates negotiated by the manufacturer are much lower than you or I would pay, but there's a significant amount of service work done through those dealers that this back-end revenue is part of the assumed profit when they sell a new car. Then there's the remainder of the dealer's service work. Because they sell new cars, people assume that they are the best equipped and trained to service all cars of that brand. So collision repairs, or out of warranty repairs are all gravy for the dealership and those exist because of the new car sales side of the business. Lastly, there are used cars. People often trade in a car when they buy a new one. The dealership flips that car to another buyer, at a profit, or they sell it at auction (often at a profit). So the dealer makes its profit in many ways. There's the straight margin, the manufacturer incentives, and bonuses, there's the trade in, the financing and the future service. All of those are sources of profit that flow from selling that 1 new car."
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73orgc | Why can we only see so far | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Think of your eyes like telescopes - both eyes have a lens in, just like anything else we use to see at distance like cameras, binoculars, microscopes and telescopes. Now think about how telescopes see so far - they have HUGE and often multiple lenses which magnify the image hundreds of times, and then the image is directed into an eyepiece In comparison, our eyes have tiny lenses which are only really good for seeing clearly up to or below a certain distance, at which point the image becomes blurry and hard to make out. I can't really think of anything else to add, so if anyone else would like to expand on it, go ahead.",
"Believe it or not you're thinking about it all wrong. The human eye is a light detector. It has limits on how faint a light source it can detect (which is why you can see further and considerably more detail during the day then the night), but there's no limit on how far away something can be. If it's bright enough and there's nothing to obscure it, you'll see it's light, even if it's so far away that you can't see it as anything more than a point of light. This is what happens with stars. FYI The furthest object you can see with the unaided naked eye is the andromeda galaxy 2.2 million light years away. That's an incomprehensibly long way away.",
"You can see a very far way. In the night sky (if you go some place without light pollution) you can see the Virgo galaxy (M49) and it's 58,000 light years away. The Earth is curved, so the horizon represents the place where you can't see more distant thing because the Earth is in the way."
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73p55n | Why do we like things we don't have but once we have them they start losing their worth? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Typically, it comes down to your perception of the items value. What can it do for me? You convince yourself that it will benefit you to have it and it will, in some way, make life easier or more enjoyable. Once you have it you realize the item has fewer or less useful functions, it's functions are novel, or it's functions do not work as you believed. Expectation vs reality. I convinced myself I needed a smart watch once. The technology just isn't where it needs to be for a smart watch to be very useful, so I returned it since what I had in my head paled when compared with reality.",
"Not everything falls into this catagory. I have the vehicle i always wanted. I have has it for almost 2 years and i still enjoy every minute behind the wheel."
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73p6uv | Why is Windows 8.1 Considered the 'Worst' Microsoft OS? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's far from the worst, it's just the most recent unpopular one. Windows ME is undeniably the biggest turd ever shat out by Redmond. While Win8 wasn't perfect, a lot of the are just the result of people resisting change.",
"So coming from someone who's used XP, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 and knows their way around technology pretty competently (CSIT major), I'll say this: it feels like Microsoft tried to merge a tablet OS and a desktop OS and got the absolute worst of both worlds. Confusing touch interface for touch devices, and confusing click interface for non-touch devices (e.g. having to swipe your cursor to the top right to access the \"charms\" menu instead of just having a proper start menu). It was just an absolute mess and I feel like they've struck a better balance for 10: don't force people to use the touch interface if they don't want to, but have it there as an option. That said, I've heard much worse about ME, but I never got a chance to use it and will likely never want to.",
"Maybe worst in your lifetime... Let me tell you the legend of Windows Millennium Edition...",
"Because they were born recently and never had to use Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows Me? Windows 8.1 was a significant improvement over 8.",
"The only reason Windows 8.1 would be considered the \"worst\" is because someone had not heard of or used Windows Me. That operating system was terrible. It crashed all the time, nothing worked with it, and it was simply terrible. There were a few features that were incorporated into it that survived into XP, but it mostly sucked.",
"It's not. Windows Me and Vista are more disliked. 8.1 was a way for MS to appeal to the desktop market after 8 was extremely tablet/mobile focused.",
"Have had my MCSE since Win 2000 and have been using Windows since 95. Without getting into technical specifics, first outings are usually the worst form of a Microsoft product. 95 was a better iteration of 3.1. 98 was problematic and hated by most. 98 SE was a refinement. ME was a bad OS at the beginning but was later patched to be “okay.” Windows XP was a refinement of ME and Windows 2000 Pro. A lot of people forget that XP wasn’t well received at the beginning, but stayed around so long that it was patched to be very good. Vista suffered like ME, being the first of the “new wave” of Microsoft OS. Window 7 was the refinement. Windows 8 was the first of another wave and 8.1 made it much better. Windows 10 is actually built on the lessons learned of XP through 8.1.",
"It's not. Windows 8 is significantly worse than Windows 8.1. I have not used ME but based on all reports, it is by far the worst OS ever released. Not worst Microsoft OS, just worst OS at all."
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73p76h | Why do we have morning breath | Why is it that I’m able to brush my teeth in the morning and not have bad breath the rest of the day, but when I brush my teeth before bed, I wake up with horrible breath? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Your mouth is full of bacterias. When you swallow, you wash down bacteria down to your belly. So, when you're sleeping you don't swallow at all, and that makes bacteria really happy because now it can reproduce and do all sort of things in your mouth like pooping. Bacteria poop = Bad breath"
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73podz | So there's a independence referendunn going on in Catalan, and I'm wondering why it is occuring since it was outlawed by the Spanish govermnent. What's the point in voting when their govermnent says it's unlawful? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Since World War I, the international community's approach to handling territorial disputes and the formation of new countries from parts of existing ones has centered on the principle of \"popular sovereignty\", meaning that the people living in a disputed territory or proposed nation-state have the ultimate say on which country they will be a part of, usually expressed through a referendum. If the people of the territory choose to change their status, the referendum provides democratic *legitimacy* to the new government's authority over them. Of course, it takes more than a referendum to create a new country, and international law tends to discourage unilateral secession, especially when the seceding territory is an integral part of a country rather than an overseas colony. So even though the Catalan referendum is illegal under Spanish law, its result strengthens the pro-independence movement's case by (ostensibly) showing that they have the support of the Catalan people and that an independent Catalonian government would have democratic legitimacy."
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73ppqq | How does physics work in calculus? | What exactly does calculus do to physics? Say we have a simple equation like Force=mass*acceleration. The second derivative means acceleration. So if you take the second derivative of Force what would it be and what does it mean? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"You get something called jerk. Its how quickly an acceleration changes. For example, An object that goes from an acceleration of 20m/s/s to 30m/s/s over 2 seconds will have a jerk of 5m/s/s/s.",
"> What exactly does calculus do to physics? A lot. Without a specific example in mind, it's hard to quantify. It's like asking what algebra does. The generic answer is if you want to know how some variable changes as you change other variables, that's calculus. ie, dx/dt is telling you if you change t a little, how does x change. To give one example. Lets say i tell you you have an object under a constant acceleration (like say, a projectile under gravity close to earth). You could integrate twice, and get something like x(t)=x_0+v_0*t+0.5*a*t^2 Given an initial position and initial velocity, you can solve for the position of that object at some time t. You could also do the reverse- if someone gives you the position as a function of time and you want the acceleration, take two derivatives with respect to time. In the generic example i gave above, if you took the derivative of x(t), you'll just get back to a=constant. > So if you take the second derivative of Force what would it be and what does it mean? Just because you *can* take a derivative, doesn't mean it's meaningful. In this case, the second derivative of force (with respect to time) would give you something in terms of \"jounce\". (also called snap) URL_0 It's not really meaningful for the most part. Forces care about accelerations (for the most part). For a lot of functions, they're either polynomials, or infinitely differentiable. To use the constant acceleration example again, the jounce is just 0. But for a function like sin(wt), you can take as many derivatives as you want. But it's just a math exercise. > The second derivative means acceleration. The second derivative of *position* (with respect to time) is acceleration.",
"Acceleration is the second derivative of displacement with respect to time. The second derivative of force with respect to time isn't all that meaningful. I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, to be honest. Can you clarify a little bit?"
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73pq0r | Why does charcoal work so well at absorbing things? I.E. stomach pumping and water filters? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Activated carbon works because of its tiny pores. It basically has an extremely high surface area and is able to pull things out of a system so they are not reabsorbed. More info URL_0"
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73pvtx | If the House always wins, how come most casinos go broke? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Casinos have tremendous fixed costs. They are in A+ locations that require huge loans for land and building. They have to purchase furniture, televisions etc. They also have to purchase gaming tables, electronics, and systems. They also have to pay more labor than most service industries. There is cleaning staff, management, floor staff etc. Casinos are heavily regulated by the government and their winning percentages are recorded. They cannot for example 'tweak' the electronics for higher payouts. Everything is done on percentages and casinos win more than they lose but not by much. People have to feel like they can win. Customer acquisition costs are tremendous because a customer can simply walk out the door if they feel like they are losing. To entice gamblers to stay and reduce customer turnover they provide costly amenities like low priced food and free alcohol. As casisnos age they become less popular. Customers are often attracted to newer, better, larger aspect of casinos. A new casino down the street can easily pull a large percentage of customers from older casinos. Considering that they need to be remodeled frequently and heavily advertised. Often whales define a casinos profits. Those gamblers that can come in and drop large amounts of money at a time. A few whales a month can make or break an operating statement. This is why they comp rooms and roll out the red carpet. They are also seasonal in nature. The ELI5 answer is that they spend more than they bring in.",
"Assuming that most casinos eventually go broke, lets look at a few things. First, its absolutely possible to be making money hand over fist and still go broke. The thing about having a lot of money coming in is that it makes you feel invincible. You can take stupid risks that get you sued or fined into the ground. You can neglect to fire staff that's losing you money day after day by half assing their jobs. You can agree to projects or plans that are too stupid to ever work. On the other hand, its not unusual for the owners of a business, like a casino, to decide its time to wrap things up. Maybe the design and theme of the casino is decades out of date, or the crowds just aren't coming in like they used to. When the time comes, its easy to stop reinvesting money in the casino, and to let it die of old age while the owners plan their next brand new casino. Maybe the new project will even buy the building from the old casino during bankruptcy.",
"The problem isn't that gambling isn't a good business, the problem is that there's a lot of competition. While they only win a small percentage on each bet, they have to build massive, luxurious destination hotels around them and do extravagant things to draw in customers that would otherwise go to other casinos. If you're in somewhere like Las Vegas, even getting a chunk of land on the Strip is ridiculously expensive.",
"Most? I don't know about that, but just because the House wins doesn't mean it's making money. The house making money is just revenue. If that casino, like all businesses is spending too much elsewhere, then it can go bankrupt and go under, aka Trump's casinos. Say a casino took out too much debt and pre-interest profits aren't enough to cover, then it could go broke and into default on its loan. Alternative, its owners could be using it as a slush fund, paying for all sorts of unrelated to casino/hotel operations out of its accounts, leading to insufficient funds to cover expenses. Essentially, if a casino's expenses outpace its gambling revenues, it's on the path to shutting down."
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73q0ap | If the wavelength of light corresponds to its energy, and space expanding lowers the wavelength of light, where does the light's energy go? | Edit: stretches the wavelength, not lowers it. | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Conservation of energy is not always true. Noether's theorem establishes a one-to-one correspondence between symmetries and conservation laws. The symmetry associated with conservation of energy is time-translation symmetry. In any system where this symmetry holds, energy is conserved. And in any system where this symmetry doesn't hold, energy is not conserved. An expanding universe breaks time-translation symmetry, so on cosmological scales where the expansion of space is non-negligible, energy is not conserved. Cosmologist Sean Carroll writes about it [here]( URL_0 )."
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73q0vu | Why does cheese taste better (or seem to taste better), melted or grated than it does normally? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Grated taste better because of more surface area. Makes because this form better distributes the flavors, especially the fats around your mouth due to it's melty texture",
"I'm no cheese-whiz, but I heard somewhere or other that heating food rearranges the proteins in weird and magical ways, changing texture and taste. It had some kind of name like The Daniels effect or whatever. Source: some guy or gal somewhere sometime. It's all pretty vague"
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73q3j7 | The pain from a headache or migraine. Is it 'real' or perceived and what's causing it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Pain is a subjective perception so if you feel it, it is \"real\". If it represents actual harm or damage is another issue. As for why migraines occur it seems to have something to do with dilation of arteries within the cranium. This results in the perception of pain."
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73q4c0 | why is kitty litter dangerous for humans (particularly pregnant women) but does not harm the animals that use it? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I can't speak to the dust (though my understanding is, it's not good to inhale small particles of anything for long periods of time), but the reason pregnant women are told not to scoop litter boxes is because of a disease called Toxoplasmosis. It's basically a parasite that is transmitted through cat feces, and while it doesn't affect healthy adults, it can seriously harm developing fetuses and people with low immunity (such as AIDS patients).",
"Many people are confused about this and spread wrong information. Cat litter and the dust is NOT unsafe. What is unsafe for pregnant women is a parasite (toxoplasmosis) that MIGHT be in the cat's poop. It is only in the poop if the cat has been eating mice infected with it.. and the woman would have to get it on her hands then put her hands in her mouth - so pregnant women CAN clean the litter box but should wear gloves. I note that toxoplasmosis is also in raw meat and 1 in 3 women have been exposed to it already. It is ONLY a risk if the first exposure is at a certain stage of the pregnancy.",
"What is most commonly mentioned is the risk of Toxoplasmosis (from the cat shit directly). Although dust from clay or silica is not super great for your lungs or the cats."
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73qh13 | How can the car industry be so diverse, and still be so successful? | There are countless car companies, and within each company are car types, sometimes upwards of 25 different types, and new ones are made every year. If cars are durable goods that last 15 years, and there are so many on the market, how do car companies make money? How are there so many major (Acura, Lexus, Infiniti, Audi, Mercedes, Ford, Jeep, Buick, Chevy, Honda, Hyundai, Dodge, Nissan, Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Kia (there are so many!!!)) companies that are so successful with so much competition? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The market for cars isn’t that diverse. You have major car brands and then companies that fall under their umbrella. 9 total",
"For the same reason there can be dozens of fast food companies, dozens of soft drink sellers: there is a huge, huge market with lots of different preferences."
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73qlca | When deleting data off hard drives to cover your tracks, why do we often see the drives physically destroyed? | I'm talking about in movies and TV shows, like Mr. Robot, when trying to delete evidence or something on a hard drive/usb drive, often simply deleting it isn't enough. I am aware that simply 'deleting' something doesn't necessarily remove it, (it just sets that chunk of data as available to be written over) and forensic data recovery can find it, so I am asking more specifically how can you recover data that has been properly deleted. Like written over, formatted, and wiped clean. Is physically destroying the drives just to be 100000% sure or is there an actual chance that if found the data could be recovered? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Think of a hard drive like a notebook. Imagine writing important stuff on that notebook really hard. If you do a simple delete, you're just erasing the cover that says what's in it. Someone can still open it and read what you wrote. You can also overwrite it, which would be like tearing off that top sheet and writing over the dents in the notebook with other data. Even AFTER doing that, someone could still maybe figure out what was written before (just like rubbing it with the side of a pencil). It's messy and you might not be able to make it all out, but maybe enough to be dangerous. Clearly, the more times you repeat writing over that page, the harder that is. Plus it takes forever to cover every inch of that paper. Your solution then? Light the damn thing on fire. Or crush it, break it, physically damage it (it should be noted that just like taping a shredded notebook back together, it is possible to retrieve data from broken drives in some cases, but it's very time consuming, very difficult and because data is written in bits spread all over the drive and not in neat rows as in a notebook, even harder still.",
"Modern forensic technology can recover data even if it was overwritten, even several times. Because if you overwrite a track of data on the medium it does not \"reset\" the original contents to zero. Or, as a simplified example: if a \"1\" is stored as a +1.0 strong impulse, and a \"0\" as a -1.0 strong one, then overwriting an existing \"0\" with a \"1\" might actually give you a +0.9, while overwriting an old \"1\" with a new \"1\" might give you a +1.1. Both read as ~+1 and return as a \"1\", and maybe even the drives electronics does not see them as anything but a +1. Now if you take a high-end specialized measurement device, you might read those patterns with a lot more decimal digits: +1.1 -0.9 -1.1 +0.9 - The harddisks normal electronics would have read \"1001\", but a forensic system might read this as \"1001\" written over a \"1100\". And the more digits they can get (and they have a lot of time to thoroughly analyze each track!), the more \"Generations\" can be recovered. And if they are really determined to read that disk, even denting and shredding does not do the job. It is possible to read the magnetization of each fragment, and puzzle the original contents back together, at least to some extend. Therefor, if you want to get rid of the information you have to heat the drive beyond the Curie point. And that needs some proper equipment.",
"You are getting a lot of either miss-informed, out-dated or just plain wrong answers that go into way too much detail and speculation. Since this is an ELI5 question, I'll do my best to answer: 1. Because it is the fastest, and the safest way to ensure that the data is impossible to retrieve. * 2. Because it is included in some 3-letter agencies' guide to properly dispose of a hard-drive. This should conclude the question part. Now, to address some of the nuances and misconceptions in this thread. * There is a lot of speculation about the possibility of data retrieval after a full HDD \"wipe\". First, we must discuss what could be considered a wipe. a) delete files or quick-format the drive from the operating system b) write 0's on every available memory location. c) write a multiple of patterns on every available memory location, X amount of times (where X is different based on what 3-letter agency guide-book you follow) Now, for a) it is known, demonstrated and widely accepted that this will NOT guarantee the deletion of data. Depending on a multitude of factors, such as operating system, partition type, etc. data CAN be retrieved after this operation. There are a lot of tools that can perform data retrieval in these scenarios, some of them free to use and available for download. b) should be seen, for all intents and purposes as SAFE. There are a lot of old tales, myths and misconceptions about how one can infer the data previously written at a location, and all that mumbo-jumbo. While I will concede that *maybe* this could have been the case decades ago, in a *laboratory environment* with *perfect conditions*, that is very much not the case in any real-world scenario. There is no currently available commercial vendor that will even attempt to recover a 0-filled modern high-density HDD. There are no academic papers published that even hint of this being possible (in fact there are some that have published very much against such claims). It is a myth, it will not happen in real-life, move on. c) is a sort of b) on steroids. If b) could be considered safe, then this will be obviously safer. Alas, the problem with both b) and c) is that it takes a lot of time to completely over-write a HDD, so it stands to reason that a faster method would be preferred when dealing with a lot of hosts. *** Note 1: The above comment does not relate to some edge cases of HDDs that use an on-board firmware (a controller) that deals with bad sector reallocation. There are cases where some sectors could be marked as bad, transparent to the OS, and those sectors might be skipped when over-writing the HDD during a wipe. *** Note 2: The above comment only refers to magnetic HDDs. The subject of data forensics on SSDs is even more convoluted and controversial. Research presented at a recent DefCon conference stated that forensics retrieval of data from SSDs depends widely on a series of factors, such as controller type, OS used (and TRIM support active/not) and so on. Look for it if you are interested.",
"Problem with overwriting 5-6 times which is commercially enough takes time. It could take hours to do that level of writing for an entire drive. Physically destroying the drive takes seconds to minutes and is basically impossible to recover if it's completely destroyed.",
"The ELI5 explanation is that the first part of the hard drive has a list of all the files that are stored on the drive. Many methods of deleting files simply removes the name of the file from the list, but does not actually damage the file itself. So, if someone went in with software, and pulled the data from that address, they could still recover the file. This gets more complex very quickly, with alternate ways to delete files, and technical ways to reverse those deletions, depending on what kind of technology the hard drive uses. But the ELI5 is that - in many cases - \"deleting\" a file from your drive actually just removes its name from the file list, and marks that space as empty, so another file can be written there. It does not delete the actual data, or erase it, or overwrite it in any way. That generally takes special software.",
"Erasing the disk takes **hours**. Punching a hole in the disk is seconds. For disks that are written off, you pick the fast method.",
"Some NSA guidelines for hard drives include c) Disintegration: Disintegrate into particles that are nominally 2 millimeter edge length in size. It is highly recommended to disintegrate hard disk drive storage devices in bulk lots with other storage devices. URL_0",
"The short version: It's quick, snappy, and easy for the typical viewer to understand. You didn't just delete something, you've outright destroyed it. It's a great visual cue to say \"you're not getting what you wanted\". The slightly longer version: It's often a better way to make data more difficult to recover, and requires little effort on your part. As you pointed out, deleting something doesn't make it inaccessible - even after several wipes, if you spend enough time, you can reconstruct almost *anything*. But if a drive has been physically damaged, it becomes far more difficult to read the data to begin with. Not impossible, but definitely far more time-consuming and costly. There are data recovery services that can, under the right conditions, recover data from even fire-damaged drives. So long as the platter is more or less in one piece, there's a chance that with enough time, you can try to reconstruct it. But these services aren't cheap by any means, and are basically out of reach of all but government agencies or large corporations that *need* whatever data is on those drives.",
"It all depends on exactly how sensitive your data is. If only a short text could be enough to cause problems, you really should physically destroy it. If it's more a matter of the totality of the data, then software methods are sufficient. Either way, I find it simpler to just take the drive, but it into my drill press and drill a few 20 mm holes straight through it. No one will ever recover any information from it after that, not matter what. Easier, faster and safer.",
"Because just deleting them may not be good enough. Unusually when you delete a file of your computer, you don't actually delete it. The process is more like striking out an entry in an index in a book but laving the pages the entry pointed to where they are. The data is still there, just no as easily accessible. There are programs that can find and restore files which have been deleted that way. so when you really want to delete something you don't just tell the computer to delete the file, you make it overwrite the actual data with something else. That is usually sufficient. However the way a harddrive works on paper can be quite different than the way it works in practice and it turns out that instead of having just 1s and 0s there are really a number of different stetes and that for example a one overwritten by a zero will look differently than a zero overwritten by zero. Somebody using specialized technology to look at the physical disks might be able to tell the difference. The solution to that is usually to overwrite the entire disk several time with different patterns to make such an attempt to read what was written too hard. That should be enough. Physically destroying the drive at this point does not really bring any extra benefits, but sometimes people are just paranoid and the tiny risk that somebody might still find something on them is still seen as too much. On the other hand there is the problem that wiping drives like that is something that takes time and resources and that it might be cheaper to simply physically shred drives instead of wiping them not in addition to wiping them. There is also the aspect the physically destroying a drive is a very visual thing. It is something you can show to clients and bosses and the public to show them how much you care about security, it provides a much better PR opportunity than simply showing them how you boot DBAN via PXE and let it run for a few hours.",
"To add to all the other explanations, you do not need to wipe a drive multiple times to securely erase it. I’m on mobile so it’s hard to get sources but there has been lots of evidence that more wipes did not erase information any more securely than just a single pass with zeros. To be fair, there has been a study involving some magnet reading machine that tried to read back the data after being wiped seven times, but it was a research case and it never went commercial because of the cost, and also because it wasn’t very credible. (Never mentioned if the data read back was intact or even if it was able to be read back.) Movies often use gross oversimplification, because it’s easier to explain to the non-technical people and it’s faster to move along in the plot."
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73qv0g | How does the Atkins Diet work? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Protein takes a long time to digest and can make you feel full for a long time. Carbs are sort of the opposite, they stretch your stomach if you eat a lot of them and they digest quickly leaving you feeling hungry. Low carb diets are statistically the best for losing weight consistently and often the recommended diets from dietitians however the speed difference wasn't any higher than a low fat diet, it was just more consistent. [Harvard studies]( URL_1 ) [compiled studies]( URL_0 ) The original idea of the Atkins diet was to have you eat more proteins and less carbs to feel full on less calories. The secondary goal of the new Atkins diet was a high fat versions of it which was meant to put you into ketosis. This had become almost a fad diet as of late, you can learn a lot more on the keto subreddit. Many people are very successful on it.",
"Every diet works in the same way; expend more calories than you consume. With so many people wanting to lose weight, product and marketing people espouse the singularly unique benefits of the latest new diet to sell their book, supplement, blender etc. The Atkins diet, as described by the person above, was once the latest thing, a fad, and it ultimately professed that by not consuming the readiest source of energy (carbohydrates), your body would always be in fat burning mode as it converted stored energy (fat) to glucose, that in turn can fuel your body. Many people achieved great results and swear by it. Many struggled with it The reality is that every type of diet works so long as you consume less energy than you expend. The 'best' diet is the one you personally find it easiest to stick with, as consistency is what drives results."
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73qywf | How did my new HP printer connected itself to my wifi network without me giving it its name and password? | My new HP printer (deskjet 3630) connected itself to my Wifi network. I just installed the HP software on my computer, it searched for printers and found the 3630 and connected it to my computer. I never had to specify which SSID to use or the password. The 3630 has its own SSID, so I can understand how the software found the printer, but I don't get how it connected to the right network. Did the software found the SSID AND the password to it on my computer? I can see the 3630 has a DHCP lease on my wifi router. Thanks in advance for any explanation. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The printer uses something called [HP Auto Wireless Connect]( URL_0 ). When you install the software on your computer, it obtains your current wireless configuration from Windows and sends it to the printer via its own wireless network. (This may temporarily disconnect you from your own network).",
"Many wireless routers support something called WPS, or wireless pushbutton setup. Newer printers are actively looking for devices to connect to for either computers or mobile devices. If your printer software is installed on a computer with wireless access it can trigger this setup mode which then engages the \"credential-less\" setup."
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73qzxl | when you cancel a download where does the data already downloaded go ? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The space allocated for the entire program, it just becomes unmarked and available for rewriting."
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73rr4z | Why do we need IP address to be connected to internet? Don't we have MAC address already? | I know my question is pretty basic, but what I don't get is **why do we need both addresses to locate a single computer?** In real world, we always have one address, right? So c**ouldn't internet be possible using only MAC address?** MAC addresses are already too many, so there would be no problem like IP address deletion. So, **why do we need another separate addressing system in addition to MAC address? or to be precise, where do MAC address fall short of?** Thanks. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The MAC address is just an identifier for your computer (well, your network device, to be exact), but it can't be used to locate it. If I take my computer and fly halfway around the world, I'll still have the same MAC address but I'll be in an entirely different location, so how would packets know where to find me? IP addresses however are dynamic and structured. They are assigned by whatever network I am currently connected to and determine where I am, so that routers will know where to deliver packets that are addressed to my specific IP address. For example if my IP address starts with '9' then the routers will know to deliver the packets to IBM's routers (who own the 9.0.0.0 IP block). IBM's routers will look into the rest of the IP address and decide how to route the packet internally. For an analogy, a MAC address is like your name, while an IP address is your home address.",
"There are (at least) two problems with MAC addresses: First, they're not always unique. Second, they're not routable. IP addresses are structured hierarchically, so that if I'm a router on the internet, when data to a given IP passes through me I don't need to know that specific IP address. I can look at the first part of the address to determine roughly where in the world it should be sent. If it has this prefix, it goes to Germany, but that prefix and it goes to Brazil. (It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basic principle). I don't need to hold a table of all 4 billion IP addresses and remember for each and every one where in the world it is. They're grouped together so all addresses in *this* range go to this ISP in that country. Once the packet reaches that ISP, they know which of their customers it should be sent to. So each router only needs to hold a relatively small amount of routing information, in order to be able to route *any* packet to *any* IP. MAC addresses have no such structure. Any given MAC address could appear anywhere on the planet at any time. So to route data based on MAC addresses, every single router on the internet would need to know the location of every single MAC address on the internet, in order to know where to send packets destined for any particular MAC address.",
"MAC addresses aren't used for every networking protocol. In particular, PPP doesn't use MAC addresses or, in general, any other identifier for nodes. The Internet is explicitly designed to be a bridge between different kinds of networks and technologies, so it can't rely on the details of any lower-level networking protocol."
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73s33l | Why are most cigarettes white with an orange butt? What/Who set this standard and why? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"It's just a design choice which makes it easier to recognize where the filter part is, especially when you're drunk or when it's dark. Or when it's dark and you're drunk on top of that. Some brands are all white, others use some fancy colors or whatever, but making the tobacco part white is cheap (no need for coloring the paper) and making the filter part orange is idiot proof insurance (mostly).",
"The orange is supposed to look like cork. URL_0 The cork was kind of like a disposable version of a cigarette holder, which helped people who didn't want to be mushing up the end, pulling wet tobacco out of their mouths, or getting it all mixed up with their greasy lipstick. Filters came a couple decades later, and fulfilled some of the same purposes, and better paper manufacturing techniques fulfilled some of the others. The tradition just stuck - particularly because the cork tips were a 'premium' thing and people liked the connotation"
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73s6ph | 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting is not an 'act of terrorism' according to the Police. Can someone explain why killing 50+ innocent people isn't considered terrorism? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"> Terrorism, in its broadest sense, describes the use of intentionally indiscriminate violence **as a means to create terror, or fear, to achieve a political, religious or ideological aim**. This is the main point. We don't know what his goal was yet.",
"I think they mean that at this point they haven't found political or religious motivation for the act. The motivation will probably become clear after the police go through his hotel room in detail.",
"No, you just said why it doesn't fall into the group. There was no agenda the shooter was trying to push, he was just killing for the sake of it. He's not trying to cause terror, but simply deaths."
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73sdv6 | My microwave has little holes that allow me to see the food as it cooks. How are those little holes sufficient to block microwaves? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The holes are small enough to let light through but not big enough for microwaves (which have a longer wavelength) to traverse.",
"The holes on your microwave are ~1mm in diameter. An s-band microwave is 75-150mm in diameter. Because the wave of a microwave is larger than the diameter of the hole it is unable to exit through the hole and instead needs to try to exit through the material. Because that material blocks the microwave it's safe to stand near one. Specifically a 1cm wave can be reliably blocked by a 5mm hole. You can see through the holes because visible light is between 390 and 700 nanometers, which is ~2000 times smaller than the holes.",
"Because they are smaller than microwaves. Its really that simple, big enough for light to go through, but not microwaves."
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73sr6g | Why are mass shootings more common in the U.S. than any other country? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Part of it (at least in comparison to Europe) is due to the sheer size of the population; broadly speaking we'll have more of any given thing than smaller nations, including mass shootings. The overwhelming majority of gun crimes, though, are gang and drug related, but these kind of get swept under the rug as this kind of violence is almost always intra-racial (so, Hispanics v. Hispanic or Black v. Black shootings). Part of the other problem is in how they're reported; a lot of media organizations (which is the source of a lot of this data, particularly overseas) have different definitions of what constitutes a mass shooting. And of course we have guns."
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73srkh | Why does it feel so much better when another person massages your head as opposed to when you use your own hand to massage your head? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"This is based on my own experience, not scientifically-proved. But as someone who loves massaging very much, when massaged by others, I cannot predict which part of my organ (like head, feet) is going to be massaged and I feel really pleased. I guess this can also answer why you cannot tickle yourself, as your brain has already expected your own act.",
"I know that the brain supresses Feelings like tickling from your own hair and body, because if you touch yourself it is kinda irrelevant. The same probably applies to massages as well. And of course, you have to make an effort to massage yourself, which dampens the soothing effect."
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73sti6 | Why do some applications hide, often rudimentary, settings behind an 'Advanced' section. | Google Chrome does this for example. | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"So technologically-inept people (e.g. your grandma) won't accidentally mess with them and then call you in a panic: \"I've deleted the internet!\"",
"One key element of effective interface design is restricting the number of immediately visible options to only those elements most likely to be used by a novice. If you've only got 5 options to choose from, it's normally pretty easy to tell which you should use. Similarly, it's pretty easy to figure out what all 5 of those options do (and whether you need a different option than is available) in short order. In contrast, when you've got hundreds of options to choose from, you don't even know where to start and you can very easily get frustrated."
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73sv7k | Why do TV series' from cable/streaming services like HBO, Netflix or Hulu seem to be so much higher quality than network TV? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because of advertisers. Since on subscription services most of their revenue comes straight from the consumer they are willing to create more diverse content. So they might not have as many viewers but they're getting more money from less viewers. On network TV the advertisers want to be seen by as many people as possible so the producers are forced to put on shows that appeal to the most audience, your lowest common denominator. Also advertisers don't want their products associated to shows that may be offensive to someone. Same thing is happening on YouTube, advertisers are getting more restrictive on what they want their products being associated with so any thought provoking video will be demonetized. And all its left is rich kid vlogs, makeup tutorials, tech reviewers, click bait, top ten anything's, and grown ass men screaming into a microphone while playing a child's videogame.",
"They are not of higher quality than network TV, but it have two advantage that network tv doesn't have. 1) Streaming services are on demand so people can watch what they like. A network tv don't try to put bad show on, they try to put show that most people will like, but people have different taste. So you may like the show that air on Tuesday and dislike the show on Monday, but your friend like the show on Monday. The show on Monday isn't a bad show, it is just not of your taste. So if you look at the total schedule of a network TV you may like only 2 show, but that doesn't mean that only 2 shows are good. Additionally, sometime a show is really just bad, but they didn't know that before it air and people started to talk about how bad the show is. So the network finish the season and don't renew it or can even cancel the show mid season if it's really bad. With streaming services again, you only watch show you like. But look at all the shows on netflix. What percentage of all the shows do you like? Personally, there is a lot of stuff that I don't like on netflix, but every time I want to watch something, I watch something I like. 2) Network TV have a limited amount of time on the air. They can only air one show per time slot. So they have a limited amount of show they can have. There is no such limit on streaming so they can pick up a LOT of shows if they want. Additionally, a network tv need to fill 24h a day (for most), so they won't want to spend too much money on show that air at 2am or 1pm on Monday when very few people are watching. Again, streaming doesn't have that problem, they can make or pay for show that target the big audience because that audience can watch the show when they want."
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73t3a7 | How do American Zip Codes work? | Can someone explain to a European how American Zip Codes work? Say 'Settan City' (fictional) is a city on the East Coast of America, higher to the North. Would the Zip Code be something like: SC, followed by some specific numbers? What do the numbers define and what do they reference/correspond to? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Zip codes are very simple. They are just five digit numbers, and they start with low numbers in the northeast, then work their way down and to the west. So a town in Maine would have a zip code starting with a zero, and a town in California would probably have a nine. You can see the zones [in this image]( URL_0 ). Nothing too fancy.",
"You can think of a ZIP code being the identification number of a specific US postal service distribution facility somewhere in the USA. Some ZIP codes cover multiple cities, some cover a section of one city. When addressing a letter in the USA, the standard format is the person's first name, street number and name, city, state, and ZIP code, as in: Paul Revere 19 North Square Boston, MA 02113 What might make it confusing is that this is partly redundant. Zip code 02113, without any other context, refers to a specific section of the city of Boston in the state of Massachusetts, and the post office from which mail carriers serve that section of the city. The address \"19 North Square, Boston MA,\" without any ZIP code, refers to a specific house on a specific street in the city of Boston in the state of Massachusetts. If the ZIP code were omitted, incorrect, or illegible, a combination of computers and human operators will use the rest of the address to determine postal routing; it'll still get there, just slower due to the extra steps involved. Having the original sender put the ZIP code on there means the post office can immediately deliver it to the post office that serves the delivery address, without having to constantly look up cities and states to determine routing information."
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73t5iy | why do people care about the difference between shaken and stirred? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Without getting into personal opinions, which are subjective, there's a difference between shaking and stirring. Shaking agitates the ice in the drink more, which causes it to melt faster. This results in a colder, more diluted drink. It also introduces air into the drink, which can make it frothier or fizzier, especially if there's something in there like dairy or egg. Stirring mixes the ingredients together in a calmer manner, so less ice melts and air isn't introduced. Stirring results in a slightly warmer, but less diluted drink without foam or froth. For most drinks that are just liquor and mixers, you probably want to stir so you don't dilute them (they'll still be pretty cold). For most drinks that involve dairy or egg or are supposed to be light and frothy, you'll want to shake to aerate them. For drinks that you want to be really cold and don't mind if they get diluted some (e.g., a martini for some people), you can also shake.",
"I'll try explain this by using the same drink as an example rather than going in to the reasons why certain drinks are stirred and others are shaken. It's only fitting that I use the Martini Cocktail for the explanation as many will be familiar with the famous line from James Bond, \"shaken, not stirred.\" **Stirred Process** All the wet ingredients (in this case, vermouth and spirit) will be added to a mixing glass before filling it with as much ice as possible. The ingredients are added before the ice to avoid uncontrolled dilution that would occur if it were to be done the other way round. Preferably the ice will be large blocks or cubes as smaller blocks of ice will melt much quicker during the stirring process causing the drink to be over diluted before its reached the desired temperature. The bartender will test the drink for correct temperature and dilution during the stirring process before double/fine straining the drink in to a chilled cocktail glass and adding any garnish. **Stirred Results** Stirring results in a transparent and more viscous Martini as it hasn't been aerated at all. This means it'll feel thicker and almost silky on the tongue. Even though the process takes longer than shaking I would personally choose a stirred Martini as there is more chance of the Bartender making it well. This is due to them having more opportunity to test the drink and control dilution. **Shaken Process** All the wet ingredients are added to a cocktail shaker or Boston glass before adding as much ice as possible (again, to avoid uncontrolled dilution). The same requirements regarding good, large, ice pieces apply. The lid is put on the shaker (or tin to top the Boston glass) and it'll be shaken vigorously until a frost starts to form on the shaker/tin. The drink will then be tested by the bartender before double/fine straining the drink in to a chilled cocktail glass and garnishing. Note that with a shaken Martini, there is not much that can be done to fix the drink after testing if it doesn't taste right. Especially if it's down to over dilution. **Shaken Results** A shaken Martini will be opaque rather than totally transparent due to the shaking process causing aeration. These small bubbles cause the drink to feel less smooth on the tongue. Eventually they will rise to the top and disappear but not before the drink has risen in temperature. Shaking a Martini also causes small fragments of ice to break off in to the drink which amplifies the importance of fine straining it before serving. Many bartenders overlook this so it is something else to take in to consideration regarding the texture/feel of a shaken Martini. **Conclusion** Stirring is the longer of the two processes which gives the bartender more control over dilution and temperature. When this is done correctly it will result in a smooth, silky drink. Shaking is a faster process with less control over dilution and temperature. Shaking aerates the drink resulting in a less silky texture. If both techniques are used correctly there should be very little difference in the flavour profile. *source: bar support, head bartender, restaurant owner, consultant over 15 years.*",
"If you're referring to cocktails-- Shaking a cocktail that has ice causes the ice to fragment and bruises the drink, causing the more bitter flavors to come out. Fragmented ice melts faster, so your drink gets watered down faster as well. You should always stir a drink that has ice in it. Only some drinks without ice should be shaken. The benefit to shaking is more even distribution of the flavors, so you won't have that last swig all gin or all olive juice in a martini, for example."
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73t6np | The discovery of 2017 Nobel Prize winners in Medicine or Physiology | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Every cell in your body alters its activity on a daily cycle. This is called the circadian rhythm, and though it is influenced by light-dark cycles, it more-or-less persists even when an animal is kept in constant light or dark. Therefore, there must be some sort of internal clock that knows about how long a day is. What Hall, Young and Rosbash found was a way that cells keep time. Using fruit flies, they found genes that they named timeless and period. Genes are recipes for proteins, and the proteins made by these genes are called PER and TIM. PER and TIM are made during the night. When enough of them accumulate, they are able to shut down the period and timeless genes from making more PER and TIM. Then, during the day, PER and TIM are gradually destroyed by enzymes in the cell. This allows production of PER and TIM to start again. The whole cycle takes about 24 hrs. There are a number of other proteins involved that provide additional input to set the clock as well as other proteins that are affected by the clock to change the activity of the cells and of the whole organism."
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73tcct | If someone passes out from pain, does that mean they've already experienced the worst pain they could ever experience? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I think fainting is caused more by fear than pain. (I have fainted several times myself.) Whenever you feel pain, there is always some reason to feel fear as well: fear that the pain will get worse, fear that the pain is a symptom of an illness that will kill you, fear that you will need some kind of painful treatment. Once I cut my hand, and although it hurt a little, what really bothered me was the fear that I was going to need stitches to close the wound. I had never had stitches before then. While thinking about getting stitches, I fainted. It turned out I didn't need stitches. I felt pretty silly afterwards. I have felt much worse pain without fainting. Also, a lot of other factors are relevant. Low blood pressure makes you more likely to faint. Being dehydrated makes you more likely to faint.",
"I do not think so. If you are on a stimulant like speed or maybe even caffeine, you may not be able to pass out as easily. There may be an upper threshold of pain a body can experience but I do not think it is tied directly to what makes you pass out. Maybe certain wounds and types of pain makes us pass out easier. I am curious for some informed responses."
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73tn1y | What gives a person their own unique tone or pitch in their voice, and why are men and women voices so vastly different? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"There are actually quite a few factors. The larynx is the primary organ in vocalizing. It's where the vocal chords are located, and different shapes will result in different tones. Men tend to have a larger larynx with longer vocal chords, giving them a deeper voice than women. In addition to the larynx, the shape of the pharynx (the connector between the mouth and larynx), mouth, tongue, and nasal cavity all influence the outgoing sound."
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73tv6l | Why do meal-in-a-box (like Hamburger Helper) recipes require hot water when you are just going to boil all of the ingredients anyway? | I was making dinner the other night and the recipe on the box requested hot water. Milk, another ingredient in the recipe, did not need to be hot or heat up before being added to the mix. All of these ingredients were then put on the oven and heated until boiling. If the mixture was just going to be brought to a boil, why would the starting temp of the water matter? What damage to the meal could using cold water cause? Why wouldn't the milk need to be hot like the water? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Those meal in a box meals contain a mixture of cooked and dehydrated, raw and dehydrated, and dry ingredients. You add water to rehydrate the stuff that needs making back into food, to activate the stuff that's there to stick *that* stuff together. Then you bake it to cook the raw stuff, and activate the binders, leaving behind something that's got something claiming to be texture. Dry TVP has a water content of about 3% or less. You rehydrate it to ~60%, at which point it's technically edible but has the flavor and texture of wet cardboard. You mix in the \"Mexican non union alternative to beef and tomato flavoring\", then bake it down to ~40% water, at which point it has a mouth feel exactly unlike beef Bolognese. Also, adding hot water to the mix should activate the binding agent, either starch or egg protein, before the dry ingredients have had a chance to start absorbing water. Adding cold water will have the exact same ultimate effect, but things will be more mixed, and have an odd texture.",
"Hot water hydrates material better. If any foodstuffs are still dry, they have a good chance of burning"
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73u70z | Why does stimulation of the prostate make the penis hard or ejaculate without directly touching the penis? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dnt77zq"
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"text": [
"The nerves in that area are all connected together. Bump nerves that go to the prostate and since they are connected to the same nerves in the penis the same pathways are activated. Since that is the sexy time pathway sexy time physiological repose is elicited."
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73ufsx | Why do men feel sick when punched or kicked in the testicles? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A good rule of thumb for questions about why the body works in a particular way is to ask, \"How would this trait benefit our caveman ancestors?\" The ape-man who has 'numb nuts' isn't going to be particularly concerned with protecting them, leading him to whack them as he climbs over a rock, or leave them exposed during a fight, or just plain sit on them. Meanwhile, the ape-man with delicate danglers pays extra attention while climbing over that rock, is careful to guard them in a tussle, and positions them carefully when sitting down. Numb-Nuts' accumulation of testicular injuries leads to decreased sperm count, and he has few, if any, offspring. His competitor, however, has no such trouble, and the genes for temperamental testicles are passed down through the generations and come to dominate the gene pool. TL;DR: It's millions of years of evolution screaming \"Those are important, take better care of them!\"",
"Mostly, ridiculous amounts of nerve endings - because what makes you feel good, can also make you feel bad. I should point out that girl parts are also sensitive, but they're usually slightly more protected, so you won't get exactly the same effect from a similar technique applied to a female. You feel testicle trauma inside your belly region because the nerve ending leading away from your testicles are attached to your stomach. In fact, the pain starts in your balls and travels up the perineal and pudendal nerves and the spermatic plexus, which cover not only the groin and abdomen, but also somewhat down towards your anus. There's also precious little padding available - in fact, the dangly bits are much more likely to be squished up towards the pelvic bone, meaning that whatever assault is generated will transfer quite a lot of its energy to the target area. So, to sum up - nerve endings, all sorts of fun nerves connected to all sorts of real estate down below, and little in the way of cushioning."
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73upll | How are adept music players able to just start playing along to anything that someone else plays and have it sound good? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"i’m a drummer so i’m not speaking for guitarists/bassists here. in drums there’s basically three things to improvisation - the time signature, the tempo and confidence (in my experience). the time signature is pretty easy to find out - you only need to listen to one bar to figure it out really. time signature is stuff like 4/4, which means there’s 4 quarter notes in a bar basically. kind of easy if you know how to count time signatures. tempo could be more difficult depending on how much rhythm you have. tempo is literally just how fast or slow you go, at it’s simplest. i’m quite good at keeping time and getting tempo right so i don’t really worry about that but some are worse. if you’re an experienced drummer, you’ll most likely be good at this. confidence is key when playing as a whole. only a drummer can tell when a drummer goes wrong usually, you just gotta have the confidence to carry on and ignore your mishap. often it doesn’t matter what drum you hit, just how you hit it and what time you hit it (although obviously some combinations sound better than others!) another factor would be experience and knowledge of different beats. if you only know one simple rock rhythm then you’re probably not gonna be very good at improvisation cause you’ll be doing the same thing every time. i’ve only been drumming for a year in november and i can improvise very well along with guitar/piano so it’s not as difficult as it seems as long as you put practice into learning the instrument and also practice improvising. you’re never gonna be good the first time but you get better.",
"Experience, mostly. If you know the key something is played in and it's rythem, you can throw just about anything in and sound good."
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73urlm | Why does brushing your teeth or having a mint make citrus taste so sour/bitter? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A frothing agent sodium lauryl sulphate deactivates or de-sensitises your sweet taste receptors. As a result, things that are usually sweet seem bitter as all sweetness is removed."
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73urxg | Can you dilute DNA at a crime scene? Would hydrogen peroxide work? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Nice try person that just committed a crime and looking for tips on how to get away with it"
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73uuvs | Why does drip coffee make me much more jittery than espresso, even when using the same amount of coffee beans for each? | For the exact numbers: Espresso: 18g beans -- > ~2oz Drip: 18g beans -- > ~10oz | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dnta1ta"
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"text": [
"Caffeine is water soluble, in general the more water and the longer it stays in contact with the ground beans the more caffeine is extracted from the beans. BTW, French press has something like 3x the caffeine of regular coffee owing to the long time the beans are left in contact with the water."
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73ux00 | How do radio stations determine who is listening and how many people are tuning in daily? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dntaf3l"
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"text": [
"Similar to TV ratings, they outsource it to a company (Arbitron - now part of Nielsen, which also does TV ratings). They have two ways of tracking ratings - they randomly choose people to fill out diaries, and (or at least they used to) randomly choose people to wear devices all the time that automatically detect what radio station their listening to. I was once chosen to be in the latter group and made quite a bit of money off of it."
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73v1sf | The Napkin Ring Paradox | Mathematics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"A napkin ring is a special shape that is formed by drilling a ~~spherical~~ cylindrical hole through the very centre of a sphere. The interesting thing is that if you derive an equation for the volume of a napkin ring, all the radius terms cancel out and the equation depends only on the height of the solid. This means that a napkin ring with the radius of a golf ball and a centimetre high has the same volume as a napkin ring the radius of the earth but only a centimetre high. Why? Well, the larger the sphere you start with, the thinner you need to make the side walls of the napkin ring to achieve a specific height. The shape of a napkin ring is such that this thinning of the walls reduces the volume of the solid by the exact same amount as the growing radius increases volume. So the volume stays the same.",
"Imagine a ball, a sphere. If you poke a cylinder through the middle of it imagining it cutting material away, it'll leave a shape that's like a napkin ring, that is a ring, with a flat inner side, and a curved outer side. If you poke a thicker cylinder through, the resulting shape you get ends up not as tall, right, because it cuts away more height of the ~~cylinder~~ sphere. And if the cylinder is smaller, the resulting ring will be taller. You have to get that for this to make sense. Beyond that, the 'paradox' states that if you take two spheres of any size. So it can be a golf ball to a bowling ball, a pool ball to the Moon, whatever size you like, two spheres. If you make the cylinder cutout that goes through them such that the resultant shapes are the *same* height (so for the bigger sphere, it'll need a much bigger cylinder), the volume (three dimensional space) taken up by the remaining shapes will be the same."
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73v2gg | What is risk premium for a stock? | How does BETA/CML/SML work? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Beta is a systemic risk measure. It's calculated by comparing the stock's past performance to the overall market's past performance. A stock with Beta=1 goes up and down as much as the market overall. A low Beta stock moves less; it the market goes up 10% and the stock goes 5% it would have a beta of 0.5 . Similarly, a high Beta stock is more volatile than the market. CML and SML are related to the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) methodology."
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73v7he | In cases of mass shootings with one perpetrator, why do witnesses often report seeing multiple attackers? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Gunshots are very loud. That means that they echo in situations where other sounds wouldn't have audible echos. They hear shots from several directions, and tell that to the police, who decide to play it safe and act as though there are multiple attackers.",
"It is not easy to identify who is on what side. People run around, sometimes in the wrong directions. Echos can make it sound like there are gunfire coming from multiple directions. It is hard to get an accurate description of the people you run away from, even if they are not shooting at you. So you often do get reports that indicates multiple attackers in addition to the reports saying a single attacker. The safe bet is to assume there are attackers that you do not know about. This way you do not get another mass shooting just as police say everyone is free to return from their hiding spots."
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73vhxk | Why does saliva sometimes shoot from a person's mouth when they're yawning? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Otherwise called \"gleeping\", or \"gleeking\": what happens when you yawn, your tongue squeezes back and compresses the tissue beneath it. Under your tongue there are little tube-like glands that produce saliva (salivary glands). These are normally filled with saliva, and once compressed by your tongue, they expel the saliva inside them. Since the glands are like little tuves, it squirts the saliva out like a gun.",
"Just want to add that it can be done manually by pressing your tongue on to a certain region on the bottom of your mouth, once you find it you can spray saliva at will. Not really useful, but sometimes fun to do.",
"There is a gland under your tongue, the submandibular gland. When it's filled, and you lift your tongue towards the roof of your mouth it's released."
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73vifl | How do plants crack rock and concrete? | How can a plant get enough leverage to break a huge rock or a piece of concrete apart? What's happening on the cellular/molecular level? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dntj3py",
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"text": [
"If you think about breaking a rock with a hammer, it's a finite amount energy required all being conveyed at the same time. In the case of a plant, the cells divide on a microscopic level with each division requiring a small amount of energy for the process and expelling a small amount of kinetic energy during mitosis. Once a plant's vine or root starts growing within a crack it not only moves forward into space but also expands as a cylinder along the stalk. Instead of the instant force of a hammer, the plant exerts the same amount of total force over a longer period of time.",
"By getting into inperfections in the rock. They then grow which puts pressure on the rock to start breaking apart. This under the most ideal (for the rock) means that the rock is more vulnerable to other disturbances which could grow any of those imperfections. When the plant grows it increases the pressure which can create cracks which the plant will then grow into."
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73vkb4 | why are eggs lumped in with dairy? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"dntfpmy",
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"text": [
"Both are rich, high-protein, fatty foods. Both are made of \"baby food\", basically. They're also both animal products that aren't meat itself. Dietarily they occupy about the same niche.",
"The Are Stored Together: Because they are commonly refrigerated at the same temperature, at least here in the States. The Are Listed Together in Dietary Tables: Because they have similar properties. As @bazmonkey explained well."
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73vy9w | How does our odor sensation differ in state of weightlessness? | As I understand it, the odor sensation is caused by our receptors in the nose which detects gas molecules (I guess?). So how does it actually work in zero-g? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Gasses still move around in zero-g, and your nose still detects them when they impact said nose. Zero-g does tend to result in congestion due to fluid build up (since your body's fluids aren't being affected by gravity) which I suppose might impact the ability to smell the same way a cold does."
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73vyol | I have just seen a Cambodian food market on a travel program; in this market a stall was skinning and de-heading live frogs. The frogs were then seen, headless, hopping around directionally, continuing with normal full body movement. What is the process that allows this to occur? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I saw this and jumped when the bastard started moving! I thought they still had their hands though.",
"Not all movement starts with the brain, especially in frogs. When the doctor taps your knee with the rubber hammer the doctor is looking for a deep tendon reflex. This is not linked to the brain. There are walking centers in mammals. If they are stimulated the legs will begin walking motions. There is some hope that this could help paralyzed people walk in some fashion."
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73vzag | Why aren’t we accessing Dark Fiber? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"The dark (unused or underused) fibers in question usually run between telecom hubs, such as phone company office locations. The big problem in telecom infrastructure is the \"last mile\" -- connecting thousands of buildings to a local telecom hub is expensive. In fact it can cost more than all the long-distance fibers.",
"A lot of times dark fiber is just a back up route and not intended for traffic unless there is a problem elsewhere."
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73w0dk | Why do you need to pee after sex? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Don't know for certain but I always assumed it was to clean out your urethra, all that thrusting probably jams bacteria up there you know? Can someone who actually knows a thing confirm?"
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73w2ro | Why was there such a debate between Edison's DC and Tesla's AC? | I have seen so many quarrels over the years, and still we use both, but one was there such a debate and why can't we decide on one? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"you seem a bit confused. We do not use direct current for power transmission over distance, which was the focus of the war of the currents. There is too much loss due to resistance, too much risk of fire, and too much risk of electrocution. Edison was heavily invested in DC. Setting up local power generation stations, a necessity for DC transmission, would have been very very expensive....which equals very very profitable for edison. Teslas AC technology allowed for longer distance transmission of power with lower losses and less risk of fire/loss of life....which is why Alternating current won the battle and is what we plug into today.",
"Because they have different strengths and weaknesses. Volt for volt, AC has less power loss than DC over long distance. Amp for amp, the cost of stepping up and down the voltage is much easier. Higher voltage loses less power than low voltage. DC is useful because it drives semiconductors which is the basis of all computing technology. Computers don't run on AC So as long as you are transmitting power over distance, you always have to have both."
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73w7zp | why does our nose get stuffy when we lay down for the night but clear up when we are out and about? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"I believe it's primarily gravity. When you're standing up mucus can slide easily down your throat but when you lie down it can not. You also swallow less in your sleep and that compounds the problem.",
"I think it's a matter of blood flow. When you're laying down, there's more blood pumping in your head and that swells the tissue around your sinuses. Even as I sit here, I can put my head down and within seconds I feel a rush of blood to my head and it becomes harder to breathe through my nose. When I lift my head, the blood rushes out and I can breathe easily again. We primarily breathe through one nostril at a time. It only takes a little bit of stuffiness to notice that the other nostril isn't working."
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73wikc | Why do birds leave a white residue whenever they hit a window? | Birds frequently fly into my backyard windows. I've noticed that when this happens, they leave an oily white residue along with the expected clumps of feathers. What is this residue and why does it seem to make a perfect outline of the bird's body? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"They excrete an oil into their feathers that prevent water sticking to them and weighing them down. When they crash into a window they will leave an imprint just like your hand does if you pressed it against the window.",
"The residue is made up of the oils, dirt, and dust that coats the bird's feathers. When they hit a window, the coating gets smeared onto the glass where the bird makes contact."
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73wmqm | Why does single-serve water typically come in plastic bottles, single-serve soda typically come in aluminum cans, and single-serve beer come in either aluminum cans or glass bottles? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Beer comes in glass bottles or cans because certain wavelengths of light can damage ingredients in the beer and make it taste bad, and plastic doesn't block those wavelengths like aluminum and glass. Aluminum cans could be used for water, but a bit of the aluminum does dissolve into the drink. Sodas typically have enough other flavorants that you don't notice the aluminum taste, but it would make plain water taste unpleasantly metallic. You'll notice that soda often gets stored in plastic bottles as well. Glass is more expensive than either, however, so you see that least often.",
"Before I go on, there are a few little things that make a big difference. Plastic is the cheapest. Glass is the most expensive. Cans are effective and still relatively cheap, and flavor issues aren't much of a concern as there's a small coating of plastic inside the can. Cans and glass bottles can also hold carbonation much more easily, hence why they're more likely to be the choice for beer and pop. Beer: cans and glass bottles don't 'leak' oxygen through the walls, which spoils the beer. Bottles are usually heavily tinted and cans block all light which helps keep it from degrading, as some wavelengths of light break down flavors in the beer and make it taste pretty gross. Pop: Cans, glass, and plastic. almost anything goes because they are sterile already and don't have to worry about the flavors spoiling like beer. Cans are relatively compact and fairly durable, but more expensive than plastic bottles, and glass bottles can help preserve the taste more, since cans have a thin plastic coating on the inside to prevent the aluminum from altering the taste. Glass bottles are the most expensive and most people don't notice or don't care enough to spend twice as much on a bottle of pop. Water: Water, well, water. It doesn't have the flavors to worry about, so the cheapest option is chosen: plastic bottles. By using only one kind of bottle they can also further reduce the cost because the economies of scale are a beautiful thing.",
"The container cost is the majority of the cost of bottled water. Plastic resin as thin as possible is the cheapest container for water. Carbonated soda typically is also sold in a plastic container, albeit thicker to withstand the pressure of carbonation. Some drinks, (Gatorade, Powerade) have fermentable sugars and have to be \"hot-filled\" to kill the bacteria that would allow fermentation to continue in the bottle. Those containers have to be even more substantial to withstand the heat of the product. Beer could potentially be sold in plastic in an enclosed cardboard carton to eliminate light spoilage (they sell clear glass-bottled Corona and Miller Hi-Life) But from a marketing perspective, nobody wants their beer in plastic, so it's glass or aluminum",
"Carbon dioxide diffuses (escapes) through plastic faster than through metal, which is why it is preferred to store carbonated drinks in metal rather than plastic (this extends their shelf life before they go flat). This is not a concern for water, so plastic is chosen because it's cheaper.",
"Water is not photo sensitive nor is it pressurized. Cans are cheaper than glass and easier to recycle but beer (or soda) tastes better in glass. Plastic though is cheapest of them all.",
"Can I ask a follow up question? Does that mean the budweiser water passed out at emergencies tastes metallic?"
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73wohi | How can anyone survive as an 'out of work actor' in New York City or LA when people with full time degree-required jobs can barely afford to live there? | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some “out of work actors” also work as waitstaff, temps, Etc. They just aren’t acting for money.",
"Cost of living goes down by quite a bit if you're sharing an apartment with a couple of people. Or living with family, for that matter. And it's lower if you aren't supporting kids. It also goes down if you're working a job that pays in cash or pays under the table, so that you don't necessarily disclose your full income for tax purposes. And of course, if you're not paying into benefits like health or dental insurance, 401k, etc. Source: live in LA, with plenty of out-of-work actor friends. It can be difficult, it takes some budgeting and some sacrifices and it's certainly not long-term stable, but it's do-able.",
"You can keep your costs pretty low, even in high COL cities, by living in shitty parts of town with a bunch of roommates. From there, just live frugally and work as many hours as you can and you'll probably scrape by. Alternatively, some of them are trust fund babies/saved up to pursue their dreams.",
"By being young and single and living like shit, knowing how great things will be once you hit it big. It is not unlike going to college. You'll typically have a part-time job or two, and spend all of your free time pursuing acting. You will also likely have several roommates. Plus, there are a lot of acting and acting-ish jobs in those cities. They don't pay well and aren't real steady, but if you are young and good looking and work at it, you can be an extra in a Valtrex commercial or demonstrate a new kitchen gadget in grocery stores without too much trouble.",
"There are a few different ways. 1. Rich parents that pay your rent and send you money..(this is the easiest way to make it in Hollywood) super bonus points if your folks are famous. 2. Live like a popper work just enough to make bills like a shitty apartment with 2 or 3 other people. live off of Mr. Noodles and vegetable soup. No life except when you have to go somewhere to schmooze. work at least 2 jobs that will undoubtedly fire you eventually because you won't be available. NY no car. LA shit box. (Extra points if you can live in your car and get a gym membership to shower. ) 3. Get a job in film that gets you access to directors and producers. Work so much that you really see what a tough industry it is and that you should just resign yourself to doing something that you don't really love . but having money is great and then when you accidentally knock up your girlfriend, kids will take it all. Then as your initial dream slips away you try to refocus but it's to late no one wants a 40 year old camera trainee and you couldn't afford to take the party cut anyway. But you know what? Maybe your job isn't so bad and maybe you could help the kids get in if they wanted to.",
"Also, most actors already come from rich families, so they can better afford to be out of work for their entire 20s and not give up.",
"I lived in Barcelona as a bohemian starving-writer type. If you're not living off your parents, it boils down to: a) living with people b) living in a shittier part of town c) having a bit of a safety net built up; this can be either monetary capital or social capital (that is, having people in your immediate vicinity who'll cover your rent if you have a lean month in the understanding you'll pay them back when your next job comes in, or being able to barter skills for things you need) d) realising that just because you're living in the big city, it doesn't mean you can necessarily afford to do all the fun big-city things that the tourists can do e) getting secondary job (or jobs) to cover your costs until your creative job starts to pay off f) doing it in your twenties, when *everyone* seems to be struggling to get by and so you don't feel like you're wasting your life. Honestly, it's not as much fun as the sitcoms make it look -- but at twenty-nine, I'm glad I did it. If I had my time again, I'd probably go back to sleeping on a couch in that shitty apartment... but if I had to do it again from scratch, you wouldn't be able to pay me enough to go back to it."
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73wtp7 | Do fish drink water and if so, how? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Wasn't sure do did a Google search of this. Apparently it depends on what type of fish it is. Fresh water fish don't drink water. The water inside their body contains more salt than the water they live in so they absorb water via osmosis, excess water then needs to be excreted. Salt water fish drink small amounts of water and then have special cells that can remove the excess salt, which is then excreted. Not sure if anybody who knows more can verify this? Edited as I noticed a typo and left a sentence out",
"if some biologist sees this, could you explain why it's not feasable to filter saltwater the same way fish do?"
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73wuk9 | Why can't people who have had cancer in the past donate blood? | Edit: well this blew up overnight. Thanks for the informative answers everyone. My mother kicked breast cancers ass the second time just over a year ago and was told she could not donate blood ever again. It had spread to get lymph nodes so maybe that's why? From the responses I gather that unless it's a cancer of the blood you're allowed to donate after 1-5 years clear. | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Some cancers (like leukemia) go into remission. Other cancers (like melanoma) don’t go into remission; patients are considered “NED” meaning no evidence of disease. Doctors don’t see any cancer but it could, in theory, still be present. Cancers like melanoma can travel through the vascular (blood) system, so cancer patients cannot donate. My son was diagnosed with melanoma when he was 3. It’s super rare in kids, and unlike adult melanomas it’s due to genetics rather than sun exposure. Protect your skin, and see a dermatologist regularly!",
"I had leukemia and I’m unable to donate blood. From what I understand, it is because my blood is more susceptible to getting leukemia again than the average person. So donating my blood would increase that risk for the recipient. Same reason I can’t donate plasma or be an organ donor. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s what I remember doctors telling me. Being unable to donate blood or plasma or register as an organ donor has been a real bummer. Edit: this comment blew up! i’m honored, thank you everyone for your replies!",
"I lost an eye to melanoma. I am now \"cancer free\" but need to be rechecked once a year. (used to be every 3 months) Those little bastard cancer cells can migrate and lay dormant. Then suddenly kapow, they shit their shit. I need to hit the Mayo for the next 15 years. So on the off chance that one of those little cells hitch a ride in the blood bag, no donating for me.",
"Even if there's no detectable cancer ie remission, there might be some stray cancerous cells in such a donor, which could mutate and cause cancer in the recipient after a transfusion. It's unlikely, but statistically possible, so standard practice is to bar cancer survivors from donating blood.",
"Read this article: - [Cancer's Invasion Equation]( URL_0 ) which was covered in this reddit post: - [Cancer's Invasion Equation]( URL_1 ) According to the article, even when a human has a few tumors which are stable there may already be metastatic cancer cells detectable in their blood - i.e. the tumors are shedding that. Yet in many patients these do not cause additional tumors (i.e. there is no rampant metastatis or spread/re-seeding in another place of the cancer cells etc.). This is contrary to the layman understanding of tumors and cancers - where just having **any** cancer cells shedding from the tumor are seen as being potential metastasis agents - i.e. almost like every such cancer cell that is loose in the bloodstream can lodge somewhere and create another tumor. But this article suggests the reality is something different - i.e. actually cancer cells are being shed all the time, and don't necessarily create new tumors. And when they do create tumors, they tend to favor certain organs more. The idea being suggested is that actually humans may have a pretty robust system working **against** cancer all the time - it's just when that fails that you find metastatis taking place. Again I am not an expert to comment on these things - that is just my reading of what the article seems to be suggesting. But this idea that cancer cells are being shed by tumors all the time - is scary. But then the idea that despite that constant barrage, new tumors happen only in certain special conditions - is heartening. Because it suggests cancer cells do not hold all the cards - there are other factors (i.e. the \"soil\" or conditions in the patient's body - which may depend on immune system, as well as organ to organ variation in how welcoming the conditions are for cancer cells to lodge and grow into tumors in that location). This suggests that it may be possible that in cancer patients, and possibly even in non-cancer patients (or undetected cancer humans) there may already be metastatic cancer cells running around in their blood. Except those cancer cells are not taking root elsewhere. This is what the article discusses - the idea of looking at cancer not just from the point of view of the cancer cell, but from point of view of the \"soil\" i.e. what causes already-prolific cancer cells to NOT take root (example being patients with a few stable tumors who are shedding cancer cells, but they are not taking root beyond a few places). If this view of cancer is correct - it could mean blood transfusions from even a presumed non-cancer patient could be dangerous. And it is dangerous for sure when that donation is taken from a known cancer patient - because even though they are cured i.e. their existant cancer cells are not taking root, they might do so in another patient. They give the example of cancer patients who have gone in to remission and seem to be long-term cured - yet when their organ was donated to someone else - that recipient developed aggressive cancer. The idea being that for some reason in the donor the immune system or \"soil\" so to speak had become hostile or conditions were not right for cancer cells to prosper as tumors. But in another patient (i.e. different \"soil\" - using that analogy again) - those same cancer cells may find a more supportive environment for those cancer cells to grow.",
"It's just an unnecessary risk, no matter how small, it's better not to take it. You may think, \"well, it's better than nothing...\". But most of the time, that's not the situation, unless you're doing a direct blood transfusion because there really isn't any other blood available.",
"Just an FYI since most people aren't mentioning this. At least in the USA, most cancers, if \"gone\" and are no longer seeing the doctor for regular medical care only have a 1 year deferral so they can indeed give blood again. Our donors do it all the time. While it's sad to lose them for a year or two (as they battle and beat the cancer), it's always wonderful to have them back once they have recovered and can donate again.",
"I can't donate blood in New Zealand simply because I lived in the UK At the height of the mad cow disease. It's still considered transmissible.",
"At this point in time, science has not determined exactly how malignant cancer spreads from one place to another even within its original host. While there are varying theories on this, no one really knows, making it possible that the blood of someone who has had cancer carries with it the ability to cause cancer in others. What we do know is that cancer is relentless. Cancer cells can be taken from one organism and placed within another and will fully metasaticise within the new organism. The new host does not even need to be members of the same species for a tumor to form. Transmitable cancer is currently one of the biggest threats to the Tasmanian Devil, and is thought to be spread through exchange of bodily fluids while fighting. So, likely the prevention of cancer survivors of donating blood is a safety procaution based on the understanding that cancer in the right conditions may pass between hosts.",
"In the UK you can't donate blood if you have ever received blood as a transfusion. Which kind of says to me \"our blood could be awful, we don't trust it...\"",
"If any cancerous cells get in the blood, they could set up shop in the blood recipient's body, growing into a tumor and killing them. It's pretty unlikely because usually the recipient's immune system will recognize the cells as foreign and kill them just like it would a bacteria or other invading organism, but it could happen if, say, the patient was immunocompromised in some way (as many people who find themselves in the position of needing blood are) or if the donor is too similar to the patient for the immune system to tell the difference. As an interesting aside, there are some cases of cells which originally began as cancers turning into transmissable diseases as well as free living organisms. There's at least one documented case of a human cancer evolving into a common pest which contaminates laboratory settings. So, hbasically a cancer is in many respects only a few evolutionary steps away from being a wild parasite or free living organism.",
"Okay people cancer is NOT contagious. Again, there are no cancers known to be able to jump from one person to another. Your immune system is gonna take down any foreign cancer cells in no time. The reason people with a history of leukemia, lymphoma, liver cancer etc are not able to give blood is because all those cancers affects your blood producing organs, so after cancer your blood is essentially \"not as good\" as normal patients. After you donate , they don't just take that bag of blood and hook it up to someone else. They separate the blood into components like red cells, platelets, plasma etc which are stored and infused separately. I guess they don't want to do all that processing if your blood might not be of good quality. I mean most of these ex cancer patient blood is probably fine, but donations are highly regulated by the red cross monopoly so there are lots of factors where they have decided to just exclude potential donors. Tldr: they don't want your Ford Pinto ex-leukemia blood when there is (usually) plenty of perfectly good Camry blood available from non cancer patients.",
"I was more surprised that they don’t allow people who’ve had tattoo work in the last year. Which terribly ironic considering they’re a huge chunk of the population that doesn’t have an aversion to needles.",
"In Australia at least, once a person has been in sustained remission for over 5 years, they can donate blood again.",
"I am an apheresis Technician for a blood center spread in the south. Most cancers if you've been treated and released from doctors care at least a year ago we will accept you. We have a standard operating procedure to hobby with the small list of cancers we turn away.",
"Nobody who has ever had cancer can be definitively declared cancer-free. At best, cancer is no longer detected in the body. The cancer can still be there, just not at detectable levels. It is why people who have 'beaten cancer' get checked for cancer on an annual basis to see if it has returned.",
"A Cancer is a collection of own cells that continuously divide and grow uncontrollably and chaotically. Normally our cells are \"programmed\" to divide and grow in a controlled manner by lots of different safety mechanisms in their DNA. In a cancer, cells acquire mutations (random changes in DNA that slightly change how cells behave) that stop these safety mechanisms from working, thus causing the cells to grow like crazy. These cells continuously mutate with one purpose: to grow and divide further. Therefore as cancer progresses the cells get better and better at essentially being cancerous. The fear with blood transfusion is that even though you may have been treated for cancer, you may have the odd cell floating around in your blood somewhere. Since this cell has the genetic mutations that make it a \"super grower\", there is a fear that it could get into another person through a blood transfusion and start growing there. Why would the cell be able to grow in another person but not the blood donor? The next person is a different environment, and though the blood donors body may no longer be hospitable to the cancer cell, the theory goes the transfusion recipient might be (especially since people receiving blood transfusions are often quite unwell to start with). There isn't any evidence of this actually happening, but the theoretical risk is judged to outweigh the potential gains of allowing previous cancer patients to donate.",
"Wait. So if you transfuse the blood of a cancer patient to someone healthy, you can give them cancer? Like a virus?"
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73wz7c | Why do backs crack sometimes and other times they don’t | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"When you pull joints apart synovial fluid rushes in to fill the void left behind by gasses. So when your back doesn't crack you just don't have enough buildup between joints."
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73wzio | Why does it always feels like gaming graphics can't get any better? | Technology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Because you can’t imagine what they would look like if they could be better, until you see them being better. Then you can’t imagine them being better than *that* and so on",
"They do make games with perfect graphics. But it's a lot cheaper to use a stylized style. The most impressive game graphics occur in movies and you *can not* tell the difference between a CGI tentacle-waving monster and one made of real things. (pirates of the Caribbean) But that's expensive. Too expensive for a game that needs 100X the objects and animations to cover every situation versus a movie that needs 5-20 second clips here and there. So they either try to make it 'life-like' and fall short due to budget or they go with an entierly different style. Computer games have been able to serve up photorealistic graphics for about 5 years, but no one does it because it costs too much money. -edit- for an example of this watch this Youtube clip then read the spoiler tag, that UFO looks really realistic - URL_0 OK I give up on making a spoiler tag work, here it is -\"And so does everything else, but the entire car, the human, and the scenery are all CGI and not one bit of it is real\"",
"I was thinking about this - until you can look at a game and honestly not know if it's real life or not, they can get better.",
"Omg, I remember when they started advertising for the GameCube I thought it was the biggest scam. I distinctly remember arguing that the graphics couldn't possibly get any better- it was already 3D, what could they improve upon? Lol so dumb.",
"It's silly to think that gaming graphics can't get any better. Up until you're unable to differentiate between a 3d screen, and the real world, there's improvements to be made.",
"I remember seeing the octagon circles in Mario64 for the first time and thinking their circles looked pretty funny, or the tree sprites which looked the same at any angle. Bare in mind that toy Story was released at around the same time, so even in 1996/97 it was obvious that there were differences in games vs movies and that there room to improve. The big thing about Mario64 was the fact that you could control Mario in more than two dimensions, likewise Metal Gear Solid had questionable graphics, but the scale of the story, audio quality and awesome gameplay made up for it.",
"As a non gamer looking at the graphics of the games that my husband plays: why do I always think \"it still looks horrible, they should be able by now to make it as perfect as animated movies\" hahaha, sorry, no answer but different point of view. So maybe it has something to do with being used to it?",
"Say hello to the **Unreal Engine 4**. God I can't wait to see developers utilize that glorious beast. Take a look (music stops after the intro): URL_0 It blows my mind to think of playing video games with these graphics in virtual reality. In 10 years time we will be able to take a realistic trip to Bora Bora while our cars drive us to work.",
"Because those people have limited mindsets and can't figure out ways to improve things. Like before uber, who thought the taxi industry even needed an overhaul. Before amazon, who wanted to buy books online. Etc etc.",
"Let's say that you've got a character that you want to represent. In the old days, it might be a straight up 2 dimensional square on a background. Eventually, graphics evolved to tiny pixelated designs called sprites, like the original [mario]( URL_2 ), who is just many 2D squares on a background. Sprites only got us so far, because then we got to 3D models like in the N64. This is where we get into the idea of a modeling concept called [polycount]( URL_0 ). Essentially, to 3D model something, a computer uses a number of triangles to make shapes. Obviously making something round is very difficult with triangles, so early 3D models had relatively sharp and blocky designs. This is why [Lara Croft]( URL_3 ) in the original tomb raider has triangular tits, and why [fox on the original N64 smashbros]( URL_1 ) looks so blocky compared to the gamecube version which came out only a few years later. The only difference in these 3D model comparisons is poly count and texture quality. To my knowledge, they are both rendered the same way by a computer, the new models are just made up of hundreds of thousands more triangles. That said, once you get to super high polycounts in our current generation of gaming systems, you start to see diminishing returns. At some point, what we see is \"good enough\" and doubling the polycount of something to get even smoother and more exact edges is no longer worth the money spent to produce it. At this point, I think our 3D models really don't have a lot of room to get better, at least not anywhere close to the jump we saw from N64 to GameCube. Xbox 360 to Xbox One has a much less significant gap for example. I think the next big thing for video game graphics won't be textures and models, but optimizing for frame rate so that motion within the game is as smooth as possible."
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"https://i.imgur.com/EenFTgE.png"
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73x54q | Why is natural sugar healthier than added sugar? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Added sugar is *on top of* the existing natural sugars. Too much sugar is unhealthy. Most people get more than a healthy amount of sugar as it is, so adding even more sugar on top of it id obviously unhealthy.",
"It's isn't any better. For the most part, sugar is sugar. However, the 'natural sugar' in an apple isn't all that much compared to the total volume of the apple - especially the fiber (which slows the digestion of the sugar). In contrast, the amount of sugar in a Snickers bar is enormous compared to other nutritional features."
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73x7ny | The importance of error propagation | I'm doing a lab report on this but how is this significant (pun intended)? Sure maybe one of the measurements is really imprecise and that could throw off the final answer but if I wanted to explain it to others so they see why it's important that would be helpful. | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
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"Easiest way to explain this is a visual example. You want to make a 4 legged table that’s 4 feet tall. So you go out and buy a 16’ 2x4. You measure out the first leg with a measuring tape. 4 feet. Cool, now you cut the first leg. Now why would you go through the whole process of measuring, marking, and cutting again? You already have a leg cut out, so just use that right?it’d be much more efficient. Now repeat - use the second leg to measure the third leg, then the third to do the fourth. Okay great you have all four legs. Now attach to the tabletop. Crap, it’s all wobbly and unlevel. What happened??? Well the first leg was 4 feet measured. Then when you cut it you probably shaved a little extra off, so now that super small error has propagated to the next leg. And the next, and so on. The 4th leg is probably almost a full half inch off! Very small errors can accumulate completely unnoticed until you see the final result. This can happen with rounding errors (watch the movie Office Space for a great example), real life measurements, etc. Hope this helps!!"
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73xh9y | what’s the difference between hand soap and dish soap? | for real. if it cleans my filthy hands is it not good enough for the dishes? | Chemistry | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dntvmx1"
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"text": [
"Dish soaps cut through grease/oil, and clean nasty plates. It also leaves your hands devoid of their natural oils, and general feeling like shit. Hand soap is much more gentle, and doesn't lay waste to your hands."
],
"score": [
3
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73xmxq | When you're standing up you have 14.7PSI of atmosphere (weight of the air above you) pressing down on all the surfaces perpendicular to this force; shoulders, top of head. Lay down and you expose much more surface area to this force. How does a scale not reflect this change in surface area? | Physics | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"> When you're standing up you have 14.7PSI of atmosphere (weight of the air above you) pressing down on all the surfaces perpendicular to this force That's not quite right. You have 14.7 psi pressing on *all* surfaces -- the top of your head, the bottom of your feet, your stomach back and sides -- at the same time. It's not a directional \"from the top\" pressure.",
"Air pressure does not press down. It presses in. When you're standing up the top of your head has 14.7 PSI pushing down on it, while the front of your body has 14.7 PSI pushing you back and the back of your body has 14.7 PSI pushing you forward. Some air even gets under your shoes, so you have 14.7 PSI pushing you up (if you prevented air from being under your shoes then you could remove this force; that's what a suction cup attempts to do). When you sum up all of those forces you wind up with essentially zero net force on your body. If you throw a pile of calculus at the problem you come up with the fact that it doesn't matter what shape an object is: if it's facing the same pressure on all surfaces then the net force will be zero. In fact, you can take things a step further and consider what happens if the pressure changes with height. In this case the force on your back nicely cancels with the force on your front, but the force on your head is less than the force pushing up on your feet. If you throw a similarly sized pile of calculus at this problem you come up with Archimedes' principle: the net force is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced."
],
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|
73xp9b | How do people in courtrooms, depositions, parliaments and what not type everything being typed up so quickly? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dnty18a",
"dntxvli"
],
"text": [
"my mum does this for australian state parliament - there's a button for every vowel and a button for most of the important consonants - stenographers create their own shorthand dictionary over time and there's shortcuts for every word they have to use. mum's been at it for about two - three years now and she's at about 150wpm, it takes a long time to get down!",
"stenographers use a [stenotype]( URL_1 ) a shorthand typewriter that uses [22 chording keys]( URL_0 ) to allow very rapid documentation with minimal finger movement. Stenographers type at least 180wpm with some reaching as high as 375wpm thanks to this more efficient system."
],
"score": [
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype#/media/File:Stenkeys.gif",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype"
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|
73xu5s | How come when you're ill it hurts slightly to go to the toilet, like a sort of uncomfortable burning sensation? | Biology | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dnu87s4"
],
"text": [
"Go see a doctor. You might have a urinary tract infection (UTI). You shouldn't have burning or pressure when you urinate."
],
"score": [
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|
73xubc | If men are required to register with Selective Service, why not automatically have men registered when they turn 18? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
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"text": [
"Because this way, you have to sign a document promising to go to war if needed so when they tell you and you say \"no\" they can force you.",
"The US doesn't have a national citizen registry. It's entirely possible for people to exist that the government doesn't know about. Further, you're technically required by law to register for selective service even if you're an undocumented immigrant.",
"The worst thing about this is getting a letter a couple weeks later saying thanks for volunteering...",
"Some places do; at least, I was automatically signed up. I didn't know it was even possible, but I got a letter in the mail saying I was registered without doing anything. There was just an \"aknowledgment of registration\" card you're supposed to sign and keep.",
"Great part of having a physical disability is I'll never be drafted, cons: everything else.",
"Explain to me this as well. Feminists are fighting for women's rights, which I totally support, but should they not also be signing up for the draft?"
],
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73xvmk | [X-Post /r/Argentina] What does it mean for a country to have the amount of debt Argentina has? | The title basically. [Link to the image!]( URL_1 ) [Link to original post]( URL_2 ) [Link to source given in the original post]( URL_0 ) | Economics | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
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"text": [
"The raw amount of debt is meaningless, but the debt-to-GDP ratio is much more important. Argentina's debt is rather high for it's GDP, which is concerning. More important, though, is the fact that Argentina has defaulted on it's debt **seven times**, and as a result no one trusts them not to do it again. Hence, no one invests because they don't want to get screwed."
],
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73xxhd | So air canada just told me to put away my AirPods because they don’t allow Bluetooth headphones of any kind, what is the reason why? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dnu0lnb"
],
"text": [
"Older aircraft may have never been approved for wireless. They may or may not actually be at risk of wireless transmissions causing interference. On Air Canada flights that have on-board wifi, you can use Bluetooth headphones above 10,000 feet. Strangely, wireless mice are banned at all times, even on wifi-equipped aircraft."
],
"score": [
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|
73xy3k | Why does the world population not increase exponentially? Instead it seems as if it tends to stagnate at times. | Theoretically shouldn’t the population increase exponentially? For example , 1 person has 3 kids, The 3 kids have 3 kids, and so on | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dnu0494",
"dnu2zb7"
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"text": [
"The vast majority of growth is in developing countries. Developed countries have much slower, stagnant, or even negative growth.",
".... are you aware that one person cannot have a child alone?"
],
"score": [
8,
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73xy87 | What is terrorism? What are the boundaries of terrorism, and how is it classified? | Other | explainlikeimfive | {
"a_id": [
"dnu2s7i",
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"dnuctpd",
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"\"I'm going to kill people because I'm super mad!\"-Not terrorism. \"I'm going to kill people because I'm super mad they don't like Jesus!\"-Terrorism. See the difference? At the end of the day. The major difference isn't really your motivations, or actions. But, rather what those actions and motivations might inspire or instill in others.",
"In the US, Section 212 of the Immigration Nationality Act defines [\"Terrorist Activities\"]( URL_0 ) as using an explosive device, firearm, or other weapon, kidnapping, highjacking, or assassination, with the intent to endanger the safety of others or cause substantial damage to property.",
"I just read this : 1. Nevada Statute 202.4415, \"Act of Terrorism\" Defined - 1. “Act of terrorism” means any act that involves the use or attempted use of sabotage, coercion or violence which is intended to: (a) Cause great bodily harm or death to the general population; 2. Nevada Statute 202.4439, \"Terrorist\" Defined - “Terrorist” means a person who intentionally commits, causes, aids, furthers or conceals an act of terrorism or attempts to commit, cause, aid, further or conceal an act of terrorism.",
"Terrorism has an underlying agenda, they try to affect people through fear. From **their** perspective it's a *the means justifies the ends*, which the community obviously doesn't agree with! Their main purpose isn't to kill some people because they are bad in some way, their purpose is rather to affect the survivors to give in to their demands because otherwise they might be next. The police has no reason to suspect that the recent mass shootings had any such underlying intentions behind it. People who think it was terrorism got it all wrong, they think terrorism is about the scale, but it's about the purpose. You can perform terror actions without even killing!",
"Terrorism is a subjective notion not clearly defined internationally. In essence, it is any action (violent or not) committed with the intent of instilling mass fear in civilian populations for political gain (pushing an agenda). This is the definition I have always used when writing papers but it is not the accepted one by any stretch. Thing is, there is no accepted definition of terrorism in international law, or recognized by the UN. The reason for this is that some powerful countries do not want their foreign policy and military actions to be labeled as such but try to rally public opinion by pinning the tag on their opponents, and therefore lobby very hard to keep the lines blurred. Russia, Israel and the US are the top players in this field these days."
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