2018 August
-
It is very, very difficult to get software right, unless you paid a lot of money for it (and even then you might not get it right)
Relevant (and timely) XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2030/
2018 May
-
Which comic/issue is this?
2017 November
2017 May
-
It's market pricing, except the market moves very fast. There is no single entity determining what the prices should be. It's a whole bunch of individual buyers deciding "this is the price I'm willing to buy at" and a whole bunch of individual sellers deciding "this is the price I'm willing to sell at". They adjust until they meet at some point.
Think about how it happens in the real world. Let's say you open a lemonade stand, and you want to make a lot of profit, so you sell lemonade at $100 a glass. Everybody who walks by thinks that ridiculous, so even if they're thirsty, they don't buy your lemonade. Then someone else puts up a lemonade stand near you and sells lemonade for $1 a glass and everyone buys from him. Sellers decide how much they want to sell at, and buyers decide how much they want to buy at, but for transactions to actually happen, the buyers and the sellers need to find prices where other people are willing to transact.
Selling stock works the same way. For any stock, there is a current market value, which is (simplified) the price of the stock for the last transaction it was sold.
If I want to sell my shares in that stock, I can choose to:
- sell at market value - since someone recently bought at that price, it's likely that someone will buy my shares at that price too
- Or I can choose to sell at a higher price, and hope that no one else is selling at a lower price (since I would get undercut) and that there's someone willing to buy at that price.
- Or I could choose to sell at a lower price, since I would be more likely to find buyers that way
Buying a stock goes through a similar decision-making process.
How do buyers and sellers determine what price to sell at? Everyone has their own rules. People new to stock trading might just stick to market price all the time. Shares in companies that do well (have more profits, etc) are more desirable (because they can give our dividends), so if people think a company is doing well recently, they might be willing to pay a higher price for those shares. If a company is involved in a scandal, the stock price for that company might go down, since people will view it as less valuable.
There is no magic formula that predicts what stock prices will be (whoever discovers that first will be rich). It's largely a matter of perception and psychology. Sometimes stock prices move mainly because of rumors or speculation.
2014 January
-
Everyone would have to redownload the entire game
2013 December
-
Us Catholics have a Pope; the protestants don't. I'm not sure if the protestant religions even consider us proper Christians (edit: Of course we all believe in Jesus; what I meant by the last sentence was that I've been to places where if you say "Christian church", it refers to a place of worship that is protestant, but not Catholic).
Catholics were around first, until the 1500s when some guy named Martin Luther started a movement that created protestantism. The protestant movement started because some people didn't like the way the Catholic Church handled things and I guess they wanted to get more back to basics (that is, focus more on the Bible rather than all the Catholic traditions) - that last part may be my personal opinion.
The protestants have a common set of 3 fundamental beliefs: that scripture (the Bible) alone is the source of all authority (unlike Catholics that have a Pope and a Church that can decide some stuff), that faith in and of itself is enough for salvation, and the universal priesthood of believers (which means that any Christian can read and interpret and spread the word of God, unlike Catholics which have a dedicated priesthood).
Among protestants they have different denominations - Baptists, Presbyterians, etc. They all observe the same fundamental beliefs mentioned above, but they vary in their practices and on what stuff they focus on.
2013 September
-
Yes, they are linear, as long as they take place in the same continuity. For example, DC currently has 52 ongoing series that all take place in the same continuity, all of these stories are canon. (Although some of them may take place in different universes, like Earth-2; but those stories are still canon since Earth-2 interacts with other universes so continuity exists between them too)
Often a publisher will have a number of books that are "out of continuity", these stories are unrelated to their main continuity and will mostly be stand alone. Current examples for DC are "Batman 66" (it's the Adam West Batman!), "Smallville Season Nine" (which follows the continuity of the TV series)
Because it's possible for different universes to interact (i.e. characters crossing over), even those with separate continuity may interact with the main ones.
2013 August
-
💬 Reply to 'ELI5: The difference between procedural generation and random generation' on /r/explainlikeimfive:
Procedural generation is a form of random generation; except that when you say procedural generation, you expect that there are more rules than just randomly putting any set of results together.
An example of procedural generation would be map generation in games like Civilization. If it were completely random, you would often see ice areas near the equator or next to desert areas or other such tile placements that make no sense. Instead it's procedural, there's certain rules followed like for each type of terrain, there's a given probability that it will be beside this other type of terrain, and there are other rules and algorithms to ensure things like continents or achipelagos form well.
-
💬 Reply to 'Why do redditors care so much about karma? What's the real value?' on /r/explainlikeimfive:
It's more or less the same reason gamers care about achievements/trophies
2013 July
-
💬 Reply to 'ELI5:Why do we see same sex marriage being accepted globally so much recently?' on /r/explainlikeimfive:
There is nothing quite as powerful as an idea whose time has come
-
This is about those minions isn't it.
-
I like to think that the US government uses reddit to double-check it's ideas. "Hey, is there anything we can do if some country gives him asylum?" "I dunno, let's go ask reddit."
2013 June
-
Self-control isn't easy for everybody.
-
There is one main comics universe (it's often referred to as universe #616), all of the Marvel guys are there, including both Avengers and X-Men and a whole bunch of other people.
There are other universes, each with their own sets or versions of the Marvel characters. Sometimes events happen where the universes intersect or characters cross over from one universe into another.
One of the more prominent alternate universes is the ultimate universe (designated as universe 1610). All the current Marvel series with titles beginning with "Ultimate" such as Ultimate Comics Spider-Man or The Ultimates take place in this universe.
An example of differences between universes: In the Ultimate universe, Peter Parker died some time ago and there is a new kid who has become a new Spider-man.
If you're familiar with the Marvel series of films (Iron Man, Avengers, etc), those films take place in yet another universe called the Marvel Cinematic Universe (I'm not sure if it has a numeric designation.)
Note that there are Marvel character movies produced by studios other than Marvel/Disney; examples are Amazing Spider-man, Fantastic Four and the X-Men series of movies. These do not take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That doesn't mean these characters don't exist in the MCU, it just means the MCU versions of those characters haven't appeared in the movies yet.
-
These are units for different things.
Amps (amperes) are a unit of current which is the rate at which charge flows.
Joules are a unit of work or energy.
Watts are a unit of power which is the rate at which energy is generated or consumed.
-
💬 Reply to a comment by THE_HUMAN_TREE on 'ELI5:The difference between watt, joules, and amps.' on /r/explainlikeimfive:
Ohms are a unit of resistance, which tells limits the amount of current that can be generated by a given voltage in a circuit. This means that given the same amount of voltage, a higher resistance will result in a smaller current.
Let's say you have two devices. You know that device A has twice as much resistance (twice as many ohms) as device B.
If you hook up device A to a five-volt battery, a certain amount of current will flow through (that is, charge will flow through the device at a certain speed).
If you hook up the same battery to device B, since device B has half the resistance of device A, there will be twice as much current flowing through device B compared to device A. (Electrical charge will be moving twice as fast)
2013 May
-
The characters are all owned by Marvel. Marvel is owned by Disney.
Sony doesnt "own" the Spider-man franchise. Sony has an exclusive license from Marvel to use Spider-man in movies; that means only they can produce Spider-man movies. The license is from before Marvel had their own movie studio.
Fox also has a similar license for the X-Men/Fantastic Four.
For any characters where Marvel hasn't given anyone else an exclusive movie license, they can use those characters in their own movies.
2013 March
-
You are almost completely correct. The only minor note I'd like to make is that sometimes cards can change value even when there are no new sets being released. This can happen when someone discovers a particularly strong deck or combination midseason and the demand rises and the card prices change accordingly.
2012 September
-
For the record as part of the free world, I do not consider the USA as my leader