Terminology

What is GPS and How Does It Help You Navigate to Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 16:18:00 +0000

Everybody uses GPS yet most have no idea how the technology works. Developed for the first time by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1973 and initially used solely for military purposes, GPS is now a common piece of technology that even any elementary school child can use it to find an imaginary Pokémon. Just like TV and Internet when they became common and affordable, the sophistication of GPS now faces the dreadful fate of underestimation by its very users. As long as people can watch Ancient Aliens, there is no need to understand how TV works; if the guy from the TV show said that extraterrestrial beings invented terrestrial TV, he lied.

Approved for civilian use in 1980s, GPS navigation system soon became a preferable feature in cars and handheld devices such as smartphones. It is also widely used in other industries such as agriculture, sports, recreation, fitness, fleet tracking, geofencing, clock synchronization, and more. There is also a good chance that some wives also use GPS to track their husbands’ whereabouts, so the technology apparently is popular among married people as well; whether it helps to improve or ruin relationships is entirely another matter.

When you're lost, use your phone to do a Google search for "how to use a compass and read map"

Since the first time GPS began operational in the 1970s, relatively little has changed with how the basic principle works. There are 3 major elements in Global Positioning System:

Space Segment: the satellites that orbit the Earth. A network of 24 to 32 satellites orbits the Earth at an altitude of approximately 12,600 miles (20,200 km). Every single one of these satellites carries a super-accurate atomic clock (accurate to one-billionth of a second) that synchronizes to each other in every few nanoseconds. They constantly emit microwave signals to be received by all GPS-enabled devices on Earth, including your smartphone when you don’t use it underwater.

Ground Segment: also commonly referred to as Control Segment, it is composed of a Master Control Station (MSC), an Alternate Master Control Station (AMSC), 4 dedicated ground antennas, and 6 dedicated monitor stations. This segment is responsible for making sure that all satellites are orbiting in the right paths and properly updated. The U.S. Air Force monitoring stations located at Hawaii, Kwajalein Atoll, Ascension Island, Diego Garcia, Colorado Springs, Colorado and Cape Canaveral also help track the flight paths of the satellites. Control segment work collectively to monitor data transmission and perform analysis to make sure everything is accurate and efficient.

User Segment: all GPS-enabled devices make up the entire user segment of the operation. In simple words, user segment includes all receivers that consists of antenna (tuned to signals and frequencies emitted by space segment), stable clock, and processors. There are millions of devices on Earth receiving signals from satellites at any given time. These devices may include vehicle navigation systems, watches, fitness trackers, outdoor-activity gears, smartphones, dog collars, wildlife trackers, and smart-home utilities.

The next day when you navigate to work using GPS, please remember that the technology can only serve you well thanks to the collaborative functions of millions of components and the hard works of thousands of operators, not witchcraft as you previously thought. They must solve ridiculously complex and difficult math equations before deciding whether you should turn left or right; people who hate math do not deserve to use GPS.

How It Works

For a GPS-enabled device – such as a fitness tracker - to work, it must be visible to at least four satellites in the space segment. Each of them sends information about where the satellite is and what time it sends the signals. As the fitness tracker receives the signals, it processes the data and calculates its distance from those four satellites. This process is known as trilateration. The basic formula is as follows:

D = vt

D: distance between receiver and satellite

v: signal speed (constant at 300,000,000 m/s)

t: time required by the signal to travel from satellite to receiver

The fitness tracker uses and solves the same equation for remaining 3 visible satellites. A receiver actually uses only distance calculations from the first 3 satellites, while the fourth one is mainly used to confirm if the calculation is accurate. Ground segment also makes sure that the flight paths of satellites allow at least 6 of them to be always in the line of sight of from almost any place on Earth.

Einstein’s theory of relativity dictates that time runs slower in a place where the gravitational force is greater and therefore the clocks in those satellites are a little bit faster than those in the receivers. Although the difference is probably a mere fraction of a second, incorrect calculation (either under or over compensation) can miss the exact location by miles away. Receivers and transmitters counteract with each other to take the difference into account. You may not think much about it when you navigate to work, but a tiny mistake in the process can guide you to a public toilet located somewhere out of town instead of your workplace. Albert Einstein, who has been dead for quite a while now, was so smart that even now he can still help you find your way home from busy cities or even wilderness. It does not mean that his ghost lingers in everybody’s car, but his discoveries and ideas are fundamental in GPS technology.

In general all GPS devices and satellites for public use are optimized so they work as effectively as possible and make most precise calculation. However, consumer-grade devices will not likely perform with pinpoint accuracy because there are restrictions of GPS on civilian use. Only the government has the most precise encrypted code GPS to determine actual ground location of receiver with nearly zero margin or miscalculation.

What Is Geofencing and How Does It Work?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Jan 2018 15:59:00 +0000

If you break down the terminology, you get Geo which refers to Geographical and Fencing which means boundary or perimeter. Putting those two words together as a single term give you geographical perimeter; a phrase that sounds like something the military will use when they want to keep the enemies away. One thing that’s missing from that literal interpretation is the word virtual, because it forgets to mention that it exists only in virtual world thanks to GPS and cellular or Internet network, just like online dating.

Let us consider an analogy to deal with that issue.

"A friend of yours is curiously listening to your story about your girlfriend. You tell that particular friend a description of her beauty, brilliance, devotion, veneration - or simply perfection. Your friend believes the story and asks you to take her for dinner in a double-date; that way they will meet face to face and know each other better. While your description of the girlfriend is unmistakable, you forget to mention one thing: virtual. The difference between girlfriend and virtual girlfriend is beyond measure. The former actually exists, while the other is basically a combination of pixels, Internet connection, graphics card, and more importantly your unbound imagination."

The geographical perimeter in geofencing does not actually exist; while the geographical area is real, the fencing is just a virtual set of boundaries created by using location-based service (for example GPS) and location-aware devices such as smartphone or any stand-alone GPS-enabled transmitter and receiver. The boundary is set around real-world geographical area and its radius is possibly configured to reach several hundred meters or more, although smaller distance generally means better reliability. Geofencing depends almost entirely on network coverage or Internet connection to work, so it is almost exactly similar to the virtual girlfriend mentioned earlier. In Geofencing case, however, the coverage is used for accessing/processing GPS signals and triggering an alert anytime the boundary is breached rather than bringing up pretty faces on your laptop screen.

How It Works

Virtual boundary must be set around a central location by an administrator of the Geofencing system. In most cases, the system is integrated to digital maps for easier configuration purpose. The administrator can be anybody, because the technology is commercially available for public use. A mother who wants to know whether her child is inside a school building can be an administrator; prison warden can set geofencing to know if all prisoners are in the yard digging ditches; business owners may also configure geofencing to annoyingly send advertising email to people inside the virtual perimeter; a cowboy is probably interested in doing the same thing to see if all the cows are inside the ranch, and so on.

Watchtower is an early form of Geofencing. Radius is as far as the eyes can see and it is always active except when the guard is asleep. Trespassing triggers flying arrows instead of alarm.

Remember that the system can only work if the objects being monitored also carry GPS-enabled or RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) devices. When the virtual boundary is breached (both in and out), the system sends alerts to the administrator’s control panel. The administrator, depending on the sophistication of the system in use, has the options to specify various settings including but not limited to exclusion, automated response, and radius.

Common Applications of Geofencing

As previously discussed, Geofencing is available for civilian use. The cost to require the necessary hardware and system is not particularly expensive either. Some ready-made system is available as subscription-based service, so users have access as long as they pay for the fee on regular basis. Some of the most common Geofencing applications are as follows:

Security: a geofencing system can be configured to trigger alert only when an unauthorized device enters the virtual perimeter or when authorized device exits the same boundary. The system can be applied not only to devices used/carried by people but also GPS-equipped vehicles or motion objects.

Home Automation: based on the location of your GPS-enabled smartphone, geofencing system can trigger a sequence of automated actions anytime the device enters the perimeter for examples turning on the thermostat, switching on the lamps or TV, and unlocking the door. It is a good example of IFTTT (If This, Then That) concept. Assuming you carry your phone all the time, this is somewhat a convenient idea of how technology makes you lazy.

Marketing: business owners can use geofencing technology to create a perimeter surrounding their offices or business locations to send advertising campaign to anybody within that perimeter. When the virtual boundary is breached-in, the system typically triggers automated push-email or text message sent to the person entering the geofencing radius.

Crowd Engagement: in certain cases that involve outdoor events, geofencing is useful to inform attendants about specific issues regarding the event. For example, concert attendants can receive information on their phones about the venue, crowd size, rest rooms locations, and scheduling as long as they stay within the perimeter set by organizer.

Telematics: companies can set virtual perimeter around work site to monitor workers.

When used for marketing or crowd engagement, geofencing does seem a little bit invasive. System administrators or senders do not actually need recipients’ permissions to send messages that may contain advertisements of some sort. Turning-off GPS or Location Service in the phone can help, but it is not a practical option when people really need to keep the function active for personal purposes. It is a different thing when geofencing is used in work environment and for work-related purposes where there is an agreement between employers and employees to use Geofencing service as part of the jobs.

What is Passive Income and Why Do You Want It?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 07:53:00 +0000

When people hear or talk about something called passive income, here is what they think: everybody loves receiving income and hates doing the work that earns it. The best kind of work in the world is one that requires you to do nothing at all, yet you get paid a handsome amount of money for that. There is no deadline for doing such work; you can do anything you like and consider that a job done.

The money in piggy-bank is the worst example of passive income - it is not even an income

By definition, passive income means a stream of revenue received on regular basis and generated from minimum amount of works on the recipient’s part to maintain the cash flow. Passive income does exist in real world; one of the most common is the revenue from property rentals. At least in the United States, dividends and interest from certificate of deposits are usually referred to as portfolio income.

The difference between passive income and portfolio income is a bit vague, so it is probably necessary to use some IRS words to explain:

In general, passive income refers to the stream of revenue gained from commercial ventures or for-profit entities in which the recipient is not directly involved in the business undertakings of any sort. Rental property income is still considered passive income by IRS even when the recipient materially participates or is directly involved in the rental activities; revenue from rental activities does not count as passive income if the recipient is real estate professional. In this case, passive income is the portion or revenue earned mainly for the use of the property. For example, if the amounts paid (or to be paid) by renters are also used for other types of services such as massage or foods, this particular portion is not considered passive income.

On the other hand, portfolio income only includes four major sources including interest, dividends, annuities, and royalties. Income from any of those sources must not be from the ordinary course of a trade. Portfolio income also includes the gain or loss from disposition of a property. Another notable source is self-charged interest; however, the revenue can be treated as passive income if the loan proceeds are used for passive activities.

Besides rental property, another form of passive income is the revenue gained from investment as long as the investor is not directly involved in the business conduct or operation supported by that particular investment. For example, you make an investment of $10 into a newspaper stand with the agreement stating that the owner of the newspaper stand will pay you back a percentage of earnings. Assuming you manage to stay away from the business operation (by not purchasing the newspapers, not sending lunch, not offering a ride home, and so on), your revenue is considered passive income.

Passive Income Taken Way Out of Context

All around the Internet people are talking about passive income as if it is the money you can earn on regular basis without doing too much work. While it can be correct to some extent, that description requires a good length of very specific explanation regarding the kind of work it refers. Having an online store and actually managing the sales does not generate passive income because you actually have to work. Having an affiliate marketing network and earning commission from every sale still does not make the revenue passive income. Running an advertising-oriented websites and making money from those also cannot qualify the revenue as passive income. In reality what you really want simply is: income. It does not matter if it is active, passive, or portfolio kind.

What is Torque and How Is It Different from Horsepower?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 16 Jan 2018 07:49:00 +0000

Let us now talk about Torque, the single terminology that separates engineers and physicists from the rest of the human race. Some people have heard about it, others read about it, and the vast majority of people simply don’t care about it. To be fair, torque is not actually that important to the point where you have to actually choose between knowing what it is and dying. Spending money on books about torque and time to read them all will not give any considerable change to your life either. It is just like knowing that the Earth is round, rotating on an imaginary axis, and orbiting the solar system center mass; will knowing those facts change your life? It probably will not.

The principal of torque can be seen in various objects or activities in everyday situations such as opening a bottle cap, hinged doors, playing seesaws, wrenches, as well as bolts and nuts. Despite the common applications, it is highly unlikely that you are aware of it. No one counts how many pound-feet of torque are necessary to open a lemonade bottle or the basement doors. It also does not help that your plumber never explained to you about the torque he generated while he was in the toilet – to loosen the rusty bolt and nut form the drain pipe, of course.

Torque is most prominently used in automobile and associated with cars or vehicles in general, measured in either Nm (Newton meter) or lb-ft (pound feet). Among the common examples, the single biggest chance that torque is mentioned during a conversation between two people during lunch break is when they talk about cars. By the time one of them mentions it, they realize that they cannot afford the cars they talked about and so they go back to work. While torque is not as popular as horsepower or turbocharger and supercharger, it actually is one thing that makes them all work. You can think of horsepower as lamps, turbocharger as TV, and supercharger as a computer, but torque is the electricity puts them to function.

While all average car enthusiasts realize that torque and horsepower play major roles in determining performance, many (if not most) of them do not exactly how those things work. Some probably have good ideas in their heads, but they don’t know how to tell it properly; in other words, they just pretend to understand.

Torque

Simplest definition of torque is engine rotational force, which gives no comprehensible meaning to the average mind. Remember that any car starts the acceleration and reaches whatever top speed allowed by road signs from zero. Your car does not start at 60 miles per hour or any speed for that matter; it starts from zero, and this is what torque is for. The initial energy that moves your car forward originates from the engine combustion chamber; fuels and oxygen are delivered to the chamber where they collide and explode. Forces generated from the explosion move a group of pistons connected to the crankshaft. The rotating crankshaft is where torque develops. Once the crankshaft rotates, the energy is forwarded to multiple components including flywheel and transmission before it actually reaches the wheels.

If you look hard enough there is torque somewhere in there, maybe

Vehicle specification sheet often lists the maximum torque at certain engine revolution speed or RPM, for example your car has 250 pound feet of torque at between 2,000rpm and 5,000rpm. Besides the obvious possibility of poor performance, the stated number also indicates peak torque it can generate. In general, a car is more responsive when it can produce higher torque at lower rev range.

Remember that torque number simply tells you how much rotating force is at work inside the engine. Higher rotating force generally means faster acceleration, but it depends on how much the car weighs as well. You can also say that torque is the force required to move the entire car. Imagine a plumber’s wrench that clamps to a rusty toilet pipe; assuming the wrench is about 1.5 feet long and he needs to apply 100 pounds of torque to start loosening the pipe, the total amount of torque he generates is 150 pound-feet (100 pounds x 1.5 feet). Double the torque and the plumber probably will twist the rusty pipe as if it is nothing and burst some damp ugliness all of a sudden into the air. Apply that analogy to a car, and you get the idea of how torque works.

Horsepower

Another way to put it, torque is the potential energy of a car used for rotating the wheels – and potential is what it’s all about. Torque is the base number of work for moving the car, whereas horsepower is the rate at which the car is doing the work. Our understanding of horsepower is a little bit ancient. James Watt and Mathew Boulton standardized horsepower as the amount of power required to perform 33,000 foot-pounds (not to be confused with pound feet) of work in one minute in 1783.

Note:

Foot-pound (ft/lb): the traditional English unit of work indicating the amount of work possibly done by one pound of force for one foot distance.

Pound-feet (lb-ft): the traditional English unit of torque that indicates the tendency or potential energy of a force to generate rotation.

James Watt used an actual brewery horse to measure that. Now whether or not the fact that the horse was working in a brewery played a role in the number is anybody’s guess. Maybe a winery horse was more relaxed and therefore it generated less power, for example. Centuries later we still use the same equation to measure the horsepower of supercars.

Use one more wrench and it is just going to be a waste of torque

If torque starts a car movement from a point of standstill, horsepower is what keeps it moving to maintain speed. You want torque to get the car start moving quickly such as in the start line of a race or more realistically in a parking lot because you don’t want to rev-up the engine only to move the car as far as 15 feet. On the other hand when the vehicle is going, you want low torque and more horsepower. Of course it is not that simple because you also have to calculate downforce, too. Lack of downforce and more torque leads to excessive wheel-spin which does not always translate to how fast the car is going. Sure the wheel is rotating unbelievably fast, but the wheels have to grab and stick to the road and generate traction for movement, so it helps if you are slightly overweight.

What are Inflation and Deflation?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 15:57:00 +0000

The scope of economy, as both scientific study and everyday conversation, is overwhelmingly broad to the point where people actually think they know more about the origin of universe than the origin of their debts. Even those who appear on TV in nice suits and shiny shoes can rarely agree on what exactly is happening to the current economic situation; either those people only pretend to look smart or the economy is indeed too difficult to understand. Fortunately in many cases of day-to-day economy discussions at a neighbor’s porch or in an in-law’s car you don’t actually have to understand everything there is to know about it. You only need to recognize some of the most common issues such as inflation and deflation; they are the stars of almost all economic shows, just like Tom and Jerry from the Tom and Jerry Show. Even when you have no idea what it is, you are almost certainly considered a fan as soon as you mention those two characters.

Inflation

Let us start with definitions because they hardly explain anything about everything. Inflation is often defined as an economic condition when prices rise. It sounds very simple, but not convincing enough. Sometimes it takes just a bit more complicated explanation to get your attention, and this is precisely what we’re trying to accomplish here. In a smarter language, inflation is an economic situation resulted from a steady increase in prices of goods and services over a certain period, usually a year. It is also safe to say that inflation measures how much more you have to pay now for a gallon of gasoline compared to last year, and that’s assuming you have a car.

Nobody actually is responsible for measuring inflation, so there is no one to blame if the calculation is wrong. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is tasked with compiling price indexes as indicators for inflation among other purposes. Main price indexes are:

CPI (Consumer Price Index): the measure of price increases from consumers’ perspectives. To measure inflation, BLS has to track price records of all goods and services including the volatile commodities such as food and energy. The bureau publishes CPI monthly, because weekly-report means too much work for the employees.

PPI (Producer Price Index): the measure of price changes of goods and services from local producers’ and sellers’ perspectives. Data is also released on monthly basis.

From the two price indexes, CPI is more widely used by the government, businesses, and banks to help determine the exact rate of inflation, probably because it is less confusing. CPI measures the purchase prices of commodities including imported goods charged to end-consumers. On the other hand, PPI also calculates raw materials purchased by companies to manufacture their end-products.

Core Inflation

Economists, whoever they are, do not use inflation rate based on CPI to accurately calculate trend of price increase annually. Instead, they will use something called Core Inflation and here is why: CPI includes the changes in prices of volatile goods such as food and energy. Prices of those commodities are unbearably unstable during any given year because there are just too many factors in play. Prices of energy goods are affected by the fluctuation of oil supply and the increasing demands for electric cars or bicycles; of course if you sell your car to buy a fancy bicycle, fuel price does not affect you anyway. Foods are also volatile commodities affected by weather conditions, overall crop quality, cost of agricultural labor, and collective willingness to go on a diet. Price changes of all commodities excluding food and energy give more accurate review of the trend.

The general rule is that the more absurd the price index chart looks, the more people are convinced

It is worth mentioning that the increasing price of energy goods may affect other commodities too. For example, price increase in oil indirectly affects the price of oil-dependent goods such as automobiles and paraffin-based candles.

Why It Happens

There are two main reasons why inflation happens: Demand-Pull Inflation and Cost-Push Inflation. The former is closely related to the increasing demand of commodities, while the latter is mostly affected by the decreasing supply of goods and services; both lead to price increase. The most basic economic principle is the Law of Supply and Demand. It dictates that there should be a balance between those two factors to keep prices of commodities in check. In other words, the law makes everything within reasonable price level so you can purchase a diet coke without emptying your wallet, unless you have no wallet or it is empty already.

Demand-Pull Inflation happens if the demand for commodities increases to a level where the sellers feel like they have some sort of control over price. Notice that there is no shortage in supply, yet the price goes up anyway because sellers have the luxury to ask for more money without the worry of not making any sale. In an ideal world the increasing demand does not directly lead to price mark-up; however, some sellers and manufacturers are greedy and they take advantage of consumers’ craving as soon as the opportunity is there. Take smartphones for example; people do not really need new smartphones, but they flock to the stores anyway when phone makers release fresh products every week. Although the new products have exactly the same features as the older ones, a lot of folks buy the things regardless. Demand-Pull inflation may happen because:

Burst of economic growth indicated by the increasing wage. People have more money to spend and they buy things they don’t need such as new smartphones.

Expectation of inflation which encourages people to buy more things now before the price goes up in the future. Such thing happened before to chocolate bars when Willy Wonka announced the Golden Tickets.

Over-expansion of nation’s money supply through the lowering of interest rates or printing more money. People think they’re rich because they have more money in their pockets, so the demand increases. However dollar value becomes very low relative to foreign currencies and even domestic commodities. If previously a pile of money can buy a car, now it can only buy half a car.

Asset inflation such as when the housing market burst in 2005. Investors thought there were not enough assets to go around, and this drove the demand up.

In fact, asset bubble in 2005 caused subprime mortgage crisis in 2007. When finally homebuilders could no longer meet investors’ needs, housing prices went down. The problem was that investors borrowed money from banks to purchase the properties, and so the price of the assets became almost worthless to repay the debts. Eventually, this led to global financial crisis in 2008, the greatest global recession since the Great Depression.

Cost-Push Inflation is related to the shortage of supply. Prices for goods and services increase because manufacturers cannot produce enough commodities to meet the demands. There is no mistake on consumers’ part because even when the demand remains at the same level, prices still increase simply because the commodities are only available in low number. It can happen because:

Higher tax on products often leaves suppliers with no choice but to distribute the burden of tax to end consumers. In other words, buyers need to pay more for commodities to cover the tax.

Increased production cost from labor, raw material, or both. Manufacturers have to increase prices of their products to maintain healthy profit margin in response to higher operational cost.

Natural disasters that affect production facilities will also reduce supply of commodities and increase prices. Over-exploitation and depletion of natural resources also contribute to higher prices for those particular resources or goods and services dependent to the depleted resources.

When prices of stuffs go up, it is called inflation. It becomes a problem when the price increase keeps on going and your employer does not seem to care about increasing your salary as well. Inflation basically makes the money you have worth less than it was before, regardless of why or how it happens.

How the Government Handles Inflation

Federal Reserve is responsible for controlling inflation and deflation while avoiding recession at the same time. There are several methods to help stop inflation, and it all depends on what started the economic problem in the first place. When demand increase because people have more money than they should, Federal Reserve can also increase interest rate to discourage people from borrowing money and spend it. High interest rate also helps to reduce money supply (less money in circulation). Another method is to raise reserve requirement or the amount of money that banks are required to keep in reserve at the end of the day. This means banks shall not release money or approve loans more than the Federal Reserve allows. Reducing bond prices also encourage people to invest and save money at the same time; the end goal is to keep money out of circulation so level of demands is in check.

Deflation

The opposite of inflation is deflation, obviously. Deflation is defined as the gradual decrease in prices of goods and services, which directly also suggests the increase in value of money. Judging by the definition alone, deflation sounds like good news because it means you can buy more private jets and bottles of wine with the same amount of money which previously (before the deflation) could only afford a bicycle and a glass of water.

Deflation is also measured through CPI and spotted when inflation falls below 0% or commonly referred to as negative inflation rate. It is more difficult to measure because the decrease in prices does not happen for all items during the same period; when prices decrease anyway, it does not always mean a bad thing either. You could argue that price increase also happens more or less in the same way, but you’d be wrong again as usual.

An increase in prices almost always suggests weakened purchasing power simply because money can afford fewer things than it used to. On the other hand, a decrease in price may actually mean improvement in manufacturing industry for examples better work efficiency, more production capacity, and higher market competition. For example in technology sector, the price of Internet service has gone down to considerable amount compared to several decades ago. According to Statistic Brain, the cost of a hard drive with 26MB data storage capacity in 1980 was around $5,000; now you can purchase one with more than 500GB capacity for $50 or even less if you choose a crappy kind. Simply put, taking your date to a movie was actually much cheaper than downloading a cat video, or any video for that matter, in the ‘80s. No wonder people preferred going outside to browsing the Internet in the old days. This particular type of price deflation happens thanks to innovation and healthier market competition which eventually lead to better living standard. There is nothing to complain here.

Causes of Deflation

Real deflation occurs after long-term decrease in demand. People are reluctant to purchase goods and services and therefore sellers must reduce prices just to stay in business and actually earn money before the breads reach the expiry date. Drop in demand may occur thanks to:

Increased exports, especially from countries with lower standards of living. This means the exporters can afford to keep prices low because wages in those countries are low as well. Domestic commodities must compete with exported goods by reducing prices.

Low prices due to exports indirectly encourage people to postpone spending. They wait until sellers drop prices even further (they usually do) before making more purchases, hence low demand.

While postponing the spending, consumers put their money in the bank. The amount of hard currency in circulation falls; when money is scarce, it becomes overvalued.

Low demand can happen when government and domestic private companies cut wages; one possible culprit is the abundance of exported goods. Manufacturers must drop prices on their products, so it is necessary to reduce expenditures to maintain profit margin; workers are not uncommon victims of the adverse circumstance.

Employers can keep wages low because of over-population. Workforce is willing to accept lower wages as they know that their employers can easily find new workers in case the existing employees refuse to accept low salary. Workforce saves the money instead of spending it.

In the event those things happen in long-term, deflation hits a vicious spiral where one bad thing leads to another. Decreased demand forces manufacturers to lower prices; companies often anticipate the potential loss of revenue by cutting wages or downsizing operation (laying-off employees); low wages and more unemployment can only worsen the already reduced demand; constant cost-cutting potentially brings companies to end productions altogether; jobs are scarce so the unemployed remain unemployed. With less money, you cut back on demanding things, but unfortunately your kids don’t. It is never a good sign when your kids are crying over toys you cannot afford. And when you try to explain what deflation is, they cry harder.

Either the kid has just heard you explained about deflation or is taking a nap in the street

Dropping the prices is only a good thing when it is caused by lower production cost. When raw materials become more affordable or new innovation allows for better productivity, there is no need for companies to cut wages or have massive layoff to keep the business profitable. In such period, the deflation is benign, or in fact good for the economy.

How Deflation is Stopped

Once again, the Federal Reserve is responsible for taking actions to stop the vicious spiral. This is a prominent example of why people are reluctant to be responsible for anything; when things go wrong, the first question you hear will be, “Who is responsible for this mess?” and the next thing you see is everybody pretending to be busy sharpening their pencils.

While the government or Federal Reserve can claim that they are not directly responsible for the troubles, they are assigned by the people to prevent bad things from happening in the first place. It is customary to blame the government, so go ahead and do it the next time deflation is here.

There are several popular methods to handle deflation such as by lowering interest rates, lowering taxes, or increasing government spending; all of those are designed to bring demand back to its glory. People love low interest rates because they can borrow money from banks and repay it later with just a little bit more amount than they received earlier. It also means people have affordable capital to start businesses which open new job opportunities. When combined with lower income taxes, workers actually have more money in their pockets so they can spend more on things they don’t need such as gym membership, extended warranties, and books. Government can also spend more money on new projects such as infrastructure or defense equipment. Building a wall comes to mind, which theoretically creates more jobs and it does not even increase government spending because a certain foreign country will pay for it.

Turbocharger vs. Supercharger

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 15:49:00 +0000

When you are browsing the Internet for cars you plan to buy in the future or after you save money for a few more decades, you’ll come across two common automotive terminologies: turbocharger and supercharger, unless you plan to purchase an electric car in which case what you read will only be charger. Just by the names alone, it is easy tell that a car with either supercharger or turbocharger is going to be a lot faster than the same exact model without the additional component. Even in everyday conversation which has nothing to do with automotive engineering, the words turbo and super indicate something superior. Superhero is more fictional than just hero, superman is an alien, supercars are more expensive than cars, and even Super Mario sounds a lot better than Mario. The same thing applies to turbo with turbojet, turbofan, turbo-generator, and so on.

Cars, beside for the purpose of taking people from point A to B, are also excellent for showing-off. This is one of the main reasons that car manufacturers want to produce something faster than ever before and sell it to people who can also afford personal drivers. They can also brag about the fact that their cars are supercharged, turbocharged, or maybe both even when they don’t know exactly how the components work; the not-so rich ones should be content as long as their small slow green electric vehicles are simply charged.

Some cars are turbocharged or supercharged, or both; that one is just charged

To understand what turbocharger and supercharger are, let us first take a peek into how combustion engine works. There are pistons inside an engine; they move back and forth to create vacuum, and therefore introduce air (oxygen) into enclosed chambers along with fuel. A mixture of oxygen and fuel creates a highly combustible formula. Movements of the pistons constantly compress the mixture to make the combustion more intense. Fortunately the ratio between air and fuel is quite constant, so an engine that sucks more air can also burn more fuel. Stepping on the throttle pedal deeper only increases the supply of fuel but not air, except when the car is equipped with a turbocharger, supercharger, or both.

Even a typical combustion engine without those components is already fast enough for most people. In real world circumstances and city roads, you don’t actually need any turbocharger or supercharger to get a speeding ticket or arrive on time at a costume party. However, having a ridiculous amount of power at your disposal at any given moment is almost as exciting as actually using it. Everybody loves redundancy – or more precisely things they never use – and it is exactly the same thing with an abundance of horsepower in a car.

Forced Induction System

Both turbocharger and supercharger are forced-induction systems. They compress air and force it to enter the engine. By compressing air before it actually mixes with fuel, the engine does not need to make larger space for more incoming oxygen. Typical forced-induction system can deliver 50% more air. A small engine with either turbocharger or supercharger can match or even surpass the power level of its normal counterpart. It also means more power without sacrificing fuel efficiency. Although those components have the same purpose, they deliver the extra air and power through different methods.

A turbocharger works thanks to the expanding gas inside the engine’s exhaust. It has two turbines: one is connected into the exhaust, and another into the air intake port. As the engine develops power, the exhaust spins one turbine. When this turbine spins, another follows suit and increases engine air intake. Such mechanism gives double advantages. First, there is no direct mechanical load to the engine. Turbocharger is powered solely by the still-expanding gas in the exhaust; it does not require or consume power from the engine at all. Second, it improves efficiency since the power that spins its turbines is basically residue to be wasted as heat through the tailpipe anyway. Turbocharger transforms an otherwise unused heat into more power.

Key disadvantage is something called turbo-lag. Since turbocharger requires wasted energy, you need to produce more of it to get more intense air intake. In other words, you need higher RPM for the action to happen. At low RPM, the amount of backpressure in the exhaust offsets the advantage of air intake increase.

On the other hand, a supercharger is driven by the engine. It is connected to the engine with a belt, gear, chain, shaft, and anything else except supernatural powers. A supercharger spins its turbines because it gets power from the engine as well. However, the increased air intake gives much more power boost than the energy required to spin the turbines. This means a supercharger kicks-in even at low RPM. It does introduce mechanical load to the engine, but there is turbo-lag issue.

To eliminate the disadvantages, some cars are both supercharged and turbocharged at the same time, hence twin-charger. At low RPM, supercharger does the job to deliver more air into the engine, but the task is soon taken over by turbocharger as the engine develops enough RPM to offset the backpressure in the exhaust. Also immediately the supercharger is decoupled and bypassed to eliminate mechanical load. Some examples of cars that come with twin-charger from factory are Volvo T6 and T8 models lineup, Volkswagen 1.4 TSI, Nissan Super Turbo, Lancia Delta S4, and Zenvo ST1.

There is also another variant called electric turbocharger, which takes advantage of both wasted energy in the exhaust and electric compressor developed by Audi. As the name says, it is basically a typical turbocharger but with the addition of energy recovery system to help spin the turbines.

More Air is Better

The real mechanism of turbocharger and supercharger are pretty complicated, but the point is that they deliver more air into fuel combustion chambers. Increased volume of oxygen in the chambers allows the engine to burn an increased amount of fuel and turns it into more horsepower. Think of these chargers as superheroes suits that transform Bruce Wayne into Batman or Tony Stark into Iron Man. Well, Batman does not actually fit to the description because the man behind the bat-suit is already combat-ready anyway; Iron Man does fit nicely, though.

What is Trophy Hunting?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 02 Jan 2018 08:14:00 +0000

The world is full of controversial stuffs. Without them, your life would be quiet, slow, and pretty much boring; even more boring than it already is. Controversies bring disagreement, and believe it or not, people disagree almost all the time on almost everything. One of the biggest most talked-about on-going controversies of them all is trophy hunting – you are allowed to disagree on this too but let us just agree to disagree.

In the event you experience some sort of revelation and actually come out of the house to meet other people, there is a tiny possibility that you get into a debate with a stranger about trophy hunting. Before that happens, it is best to make yourself familiar with the topic. Because during a debate you don’t want to just stand there, listen to others’ arguments, and be humiliated through the entire conversation.

The debate on trophy hunting mostly occurs between, generally speaking, conservationists and hunters. You would assume that conservationists are against trophy hunting, and hunters are the proponents; in real world, however, the case is not really that simple. Hunters are indeed craving for more trophies, but maybe they hunt for the sake of wildlife conservation and this is where things become a bit complicated.

Trophy hunting, in simple words, is a hunting activity of carefully selected animal living in conservation zone such as national park, nature reserve, or protected area. The animals are most frequently endangered species for examples lions, rhinoceros, elephants, bears, and pumas. In trophy hunting, the trophy is the animal itself or its body part; it can be the head, skin, antlers, trunks, tusks, and so on. Before hunters can load up some guns and begin the not-so adventurous undertaking, they must acquire a license-to-kill-animal from the official government and management of the protected area in which they hunt.

Acquiring the license is not as simple as signing some papers and submitting ID cards, because there is a big fee involved here. According to USA Today, the fee could go up to more than $60,000 for an exotic animal hunt. Of course the fee also depends on the species – you may not have to pay a dime to kill a bee, an ant, or a catfish for example.

Trophy Hunting fee is so expensive the hunter can only afford bow and arrow

While the hunters do their business mainly for pleasure, the money earned from them is (or supposed to be) used for conservation efforts. It can be used for breeding program, animal rescue, purchasing tracker devices to monitor animals’ movements in the wild, making fences, habitat restoration, and basically for protecting endangered species. Conservation efforts sure can afford a lot of things with tens of thousands of dollar but that is not always the case according to Fortune, because the money is often diverted to some other purposes.

Hunting area management chooses which specific animal to hunt in an area. Hunters are prohibited from killing any other animal roaming in the same place. There is almost 100% chance of killing the animal, however, the management is responsible to make everything look like all-natural. In some respects, it is hard to call the activity “hunting” when you pay for the trophies beforehand. No matter how natural it may seem, everything is designed so that the animal falls into a trap and becomes easy to kill.

It is almost like Deer Hunter game, except this happens in real world and involves real animals as well as real deadly weapons. Also in the game, you get fake trophies which look like a piece tournament cup to give you a sense of accomplishment. Another thing is that you don’t actually have to spend money on Deer Hunter and the game poses no threat to endangered species; you choose a weapon, shoot some deer or other animals, brag about it in the class, and everybody pretends to care. Trophy Hunting, on the other hand, kills a living organism.

Canned Hunting

Trophy hunting is seriously bad, but canned hunting is even worse. Canned hunting started by separating cubs (usually lions) from their mothers. The cubs are fed by humans and kept in cages only for hunters to kill in the future. Even worse, the fee doesn't go for conservation effort.

It is almost like fishing in your neighbor’s pool of goldfish, so there is nearly zero chance of failure even if you are seriously bad at it. Trophy hunting also has a guaranteed success, but at least the money is theoretically used for conservation efforts.

Legal yet Controversial

There are many countries where trophy hunting is considered legal including but not limited to Canada, South Africa, Namibia, Mexico, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Tanzania, Argentina, Zambia, and Botswana. Two main reasons behind the legal status are as follows:

It brings economic development to local people. This can be true for some countries, but Canada does not seem belong to the group.

Large amount of money from hunters are used for conservation efforts in various forms. Well-managed trophy hunting generates economic incentives for protection of endangered species. The money earned can be used for scientific research regarding wildlife sustainability and improvement in overall protection such as defense against poaching.

Moral issue is another thing to consider. Of course everyone has every reason to choose any particular hobby, but trophy hunting is not exactly the kind of leisure activity that all elementary school teachers suggest, and for good reasons. We have to admit that it is hard to feel sympathetic for a cockroaches and bed bugs, but endangered lions (or rhinos, elephants, jaguars, bears, pumas, and so on) are not for your pleasures to kill even when you have a luggage full of money at your disposal.

The most common defense that trophy hunting proponents use is that their money actually helps conservation efforts. If they kill one lion, the money benefits much more lions and a lot of other animals. Let us not forget that the people who manage nature reserves and national parks indeed allow for the activity as long as the hunters comply with the laws and regulations. When properly regulated and supervised, trophy hunting does work quite well to support the efforts to bring back animals population, according to a publication by CNN.

All animal conservation efforts have one ultimate goal: protection for animals well-bring and their habitats so wildlife thrive alongside humans. Now if those trophy hunters really do care about conservation, why don’t they just give that money and skip the hunting part in its entirety? The trophies they get are more likely for showing-off; there is no other good use of the trophies other than that. If they need some adventurous activities, there are definitely some perfect alternatives: being a conservationist and actually working for animal conservation.

What is Hydro Jet?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 26 Dec 2017 13:56:00 +0000

Everybody has a plumbing issue every once in a while. But because it almost always has something to do with toilet and indicates the lacks of fundamental flushing-down skills, you rarely hear about your neighbors’ plumbing problems and reluctant to tell your own stories. When you notice a bad odor coming out of the toilet or that stuffs just refuse to go down the kitchen sink - or the other way around - you turn into the greatest personal assistance in the modern world: the Internet. In case of plumbing issue, however, this is where bad things tend to get worse. The plumbing problem in question is most likely sewer line clogging; as useful as the Internet can be in other aspects of life, it won’t help get rid of the clogging, a Hydro Jet machine will.

The recommended pose for a plumber when waiting the Hydro Jet to arrive

While it is tempting to try all the tricks and demonstrations provided by the Internet, a Do-It-Yourself mentality has questionable reputation when it comes to a clog in the drain pipe. There are two main reasons for this:

Periodic maintenance of plumbing connection is just too cumbersome and unhygienic for pretty people like you, so it is either ignoring the task completely or having the job done by professional; the former is an obvious choice.

The lack of timely checks allows small problem to develop into much larger one. Small clogging in the bathroom due to accumulation of toilet paper, which can be actually sorted out quite easily, grows into a total blockage inside the drain pipe. This problem grows more quickly if you visit the toilet often. Of course you can help delay the clogging issue if you avoid using toilet paper completely, but this is not a proper method to get rid of the blockage – it is not recommended, using your in-law’s toilet is more acceptable in fact.

One of the most common tools used by professional plumber is a hydro jet machine. By professional, it refers to the kind of plumber that you have to contact by phone to tell your problems. In some cases, you may have to send inquiry by email and wait for several minutes to get an automated reply. If you can call the plumber by shouting out loud, chances are the plumber does not have the proper equipment to get the job done; the most sophisticated tools your neighbor possibly brings are spanner and hammer.

Components of Hydro Jet

A Hydro Jet is a modified version of power washer, so it is basically the same thing you use to wash your car and garage floor. Both even share more or less the same components as follows:

Water Inlet: it is hose that connects the machine to a water supply. The water needs to be clean to prevent damages to the machinery, so the hose is also attached with a filter. A Hydro Jet is designed to get rid of clogging, and it would be shameful if the machine itself is clogged due to debris from the water supply.

Motor: because the name is Hydro Jet machine, there needs to be a motor inside. If it does not have a motor, you might as well call it a broken hydro jet. Smaller models are often powered by electricity, while larger more powerful models run on more conventional fuel such as gasoline.

Water Pump: the most important part of the machine is water pump. Basic principle of mechanism is similar to that of hand-operated or manual groundwater pump. Main difference is that the pump in a hydro jet is operated by gas engine or electric motor at high speed. As a result, the machine can take 20 gallons of water or more. Without the motor, you will need a strong hand, a lot of horses, or Hulk to make the machine works.

Heavy-duty hose: a hydro jet machine can deliver water at more than 5,000 psi. Your garden hose doesn’t have the power to handle that much of power. Recommended safety margin is that the hose must be three times as powerful, so 5,000 psi requires a hose than can handle 15,000 psi.

Specialized Nozzle: at the end of the heavy-duty hose, there is a specialized nozzle designed to deliver water in specific directions such as forward, forward and backward, all directions, and more. There are many different types of nozzles, so plumbers have something to play with on the job.

The water released through the nozzle is powerful enough to scrape some skin off your body. Larger machines can take more water and deliver higher pressure, but you will not need such machine to get rid of a blockage in your sewer line; you may need one to put off fire in a forest.

The biggest advantage of using hydro jet machine to remove clogging is that no one needs to be in close proximity to the toilet or the drain pipe. It is therefore more hygienic, comfortable, and relaxing. Second biggest benefit is that the pressure from water can clean an entire stretch of the pipe rather than just the clogging. It gets rid of the blockage and prevents the pipe from getting clogged again in the near future. Also, there is no need to use detergent or any form of chemicals, which can potentially corrode metal pipe or melt plastic one.

What is Pseudoscience?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 18:19:00 +0000

You should be able to tell what pseudoscience is by examining the two words that make up the term; pseudo means false and science means knowledge, hence false knowledge. Simply put, pseudoscience is a collection of thoughts or beliefs regarded by its proponents as factual and scientific despite the absence of evidences gathered and observed through proper scientific methods. Real scientists refer to that as bad science, junk science, or bogus science. And now that you know what it is, you should be able to differentiate between pseudoscience and actual science. If only it’s that simple.

Knowing what pseudoscience means unfortunately is not enough to prevent yourself from being exposed to it and manipulated by it. While there have not been many serious threats to life and humanity posed by any form of pseudoscience, people in the scientific community - the real one – are always eager to put an end to countless fake theories out there disguised under the name of actual science. It is like a blatant and stubborn copyright infringement case where the lawyer uses some other pseudoscience junks as closing argument. The problem is that even after the court of law finds the defendant guilty, some of the juries post that very same defensive argument to their Facebook accounts, just below their latest selfies.

Here are some of the most preposterous examples of pseudoscience thoughts:

Moon landing is fake based on the fact that the proponent could never get a job at NASA
Earth is flat because some people almost fell off the edge of the planet in their dreams last night
Astrology is accurate, according to the seller of a discounted plasma ball
Your handwriting tells everything about you, so there is no need to go to psychology school
Polygraph test is never wrong; that’s why detectives carry the equipment all the time
Aliens built ancient civilizations, humans get no credits whatsoever except to Mulder and Scully

One of the key characteristics of pseudoscience, other than its utter jealousy and contradictory nature to actual science, is that every belief cannot conform to appropriate elements of scientific methods including characterization, hypothesis, predictions, experiments/observations, analysis, and confirmation – science is full of big words, sometimes it hurts the brain indeed.

Characterization: the activity which involves asking questions and gathering resources that can possibly answer the questions.
Hypothesis: make a guess or two, but please keep it as educated as possible. You can call it “prediction” so it sounds more attractive to your crush in class.
Experiments: a test for the hypothesis and figure out whether or not the theory is plausible. Real scientists perform multiple experiments and use different variables. Of course they also make notes because many scientists are old and can easily forget things.
Analysis: data gathered from the experiments act as evidences. Scientists are also very good at drawing conclusions and charts based on factual data.
Publish: write a letter to inform your colleagues about your hypothesis, experiments, and analysis. Attach your notes and clean up the desk afterwards.
More test: let other scientists retest the experiment and see if they come up with different results.

Pseudoscience shall fall as soon as it gets to the experiment part. Many of its proponents may claim that they have done proper experiments and collect evidences, but the notes will only include results they want to see in the first place. The analysis is therefore inevitably incomplete and inaccurate. As a matter of fact, they often fail right from the start because their resources cannot be verified in objective manner.

That Unicorn is pseudoscience; the real one costs only $1

For example a mother believed that her son was the most beautiful boy in the neighborhood and wanted to conduct some sort of observation for that. Since real science failed to confirm her claim, she turned to the fake version of science. So she selectively collected many photos of young boys whose faces only their own mothers could love and made the comparisons. She then burned all evidences to make fire and published a newspaper article suggesting that his boy was indeed the prettiest one in the neighborhood in 1926. There is no way to replicate the observation because all the test subjects are dead now; more importantly, the observation fails miserably when faced to every objective scrutiny.

Let us try a friendlier example in which you claim that you have an invisible lover who lives in an imaginary tree-house in your backyard. You invite all fortune-tellers and ghost-busters on Facebook to the backyard to witness a magical wedding ceremony. No matter how often you tell the story and regardless of how many books you have published about that belief, it is simply impossible for scientific method to be applied to test the claim. Polygraph test can probably conclude that you’re lying all along, but science still demands dependable evidences to make conclusion – this is why the result of polygraph test cannot be used as evidence in court. In this case, science cannot conclusively say whether the invisible lover is true or plain hoax. The point is that pseudoscience is either a failure when objectively scrutinized or monumentally ridiculous for scientific inquiry.

The world is full of people who pretend to be smart enough and think that everybody else is stupid. Combine that with the unfortunate fact that they have access to the Internet, pseudoscience is currently in its golden age. Chances are you encounter pretty intense pseudoscience on day-to-day basis for examples miraculous substance that stops aging, but strangely looks like water because it is; getting rich methods Warren Buffet doesn’t want you to know, or maybe just doesn’t care; supplements made of all-natural ingredients such as cow urine; horseshoe that brings good luck except for the horse; and so on.

As strange as it may sound, humans are mostly irrational in the sense that they judge something merely based on their own train of thoughts or how their mothers raised them. Scientific method was put in place to help people see things from more objective point of view and avoid personal bias about everything. Real science is testable and objectively happy when proven wrong by empirical evidences. On the other hand, pseudoscience hates falsification to death.

What is Malware?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 Dec 2017 17:16:00 +0000

A lot of people use many different security programs in their computers to avoid the attacks of viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware, adware, and ransomware. They downloaded various applications to prevent others from stealing or destroying personal data like warning emails from employers, online banking information, login credentials to adult websites and online stores, and more importantly selfies with life-sized dolls. A person who is extremely careful about such threats probably uses multiple layers of security protections on a computer. As a result, the entire computer resources are barely enough to even run a light word-processing program; the operating system crashes all the time and the computer is never turned on again – that is safe. In reality, what the person really need is just one good anti-malware. The main reason is that all those bad things that can stealthily attack the computer are just malware but with different names.

When you intentionally overheard people talking about computer virus, they were referring to one specific type of malware. The term “virus” is more popularly used by the public for several reasons: partly because it sounds more dangerous, partly because it is easier to spell, but mostly because they don’t know what malware is.

Malware is the short name for Malicious Software and it has the power to do plenty of nasty things to your computer. Since you have very close connection with your computer – probably too close, in fact – malware attacks can also bring bad effects to your health, financial, relationship, or simply life. While the maliciousness is more often targeted at computers, malware is also increasingly popular among mobile devices as well.

Understanding Malware

When you understand others, it is easier to deal with them or just avoid bumping into them on the sidewalks; same principle is applicable to malware. As the name suggest, malware is a type of software written with the sole intentions to do malicious things to its host. It does its purpose through various methods for examples altering computer functions, gathering data, deleting useful information, spying user’s computer activity, and providing remote access – all without the user’s permission. It is an abuse done by software to host computer.

Your computer can get infected from different sources both online and offline. Certain websites, files, or emails can possibly and unknowingly contain malware. When you access or download them, the malware is transferred to the computer and so it begins the actions.

Malware usually spreads to Internet users via drive-by download. This is the kind of download that happens automatically without actions on your part. As soon as you visit or access malware-infected websites or emails, the download is triggered in an instant – this is why malware is often planted to most-frequently visited websites or services such as insurance, food & beverage, and entertainment. Of course, the “entertainment” part also includes low-budget movies about intimate relationship – the budget is so low to the point where the characters wear no clothes and most movies are quite short to minimize the use of hard drive; they don’t even bother writing more than two pages of script. For many people, such peculiar form of entertainment is an offer they cannot refuse.

Do not leave an infected laptop unattended. Doctor's order.

Another common means of malware infection is advertisement. Malware can be hidden under the disguise of pop-up advertisements. Ideally any pop-up has something to offer to users, but at least it gives users the option to decline, like a “yes” or “no” question. When the intention of the ads is to spread malware, it does not give you any chance to reject the offer. No matter what you do or which answer you click, the advertisement sends the malware. All the malware needs is the click. If you see any suspicious pop-up advertisement, the best thing to do is close the Internet browser because cutting off the electricity is just too cumbersome.

Offline infection can happen when you connect infected-hardware to your computer such as flash drive, external hard drive, CD, or DVD, especially when the Autoplay option is turned-on. Physical keyboard and mouse do not contain malware because it has no files that provide the malware a place to hide.

Types of Malware

As discussed earlier, there are some different popular types of malware as follows:

Virus: malware that contains harmful code with the ability to destroy or alter critical computer system files. It can also self-replicate inside the host to spread and worsen the damage. A virus can render the computer useless or at least consume large portion of computer resources.

Spyware: just like in many TV shows, except Game of Thrones of course, spyware tracks your computer activities. It gathers data from your computer including system files and sends the data to whoever controls the spyware.

Trojan: typically disguised as a perfectly-safe executable program, Trojan can be programmed to take over computer resources and steal personal information. One of the most dangerous and malicious examples of Trojan software is the one disguised as webcam application. When activated, the Trojan can activate webcam without turning on any indicator such as blinking light; the person who sends the Trojan to your computer can spy on you through the webcam. Don’t use your massager anywhere around a webcam.

Worms: malware that acts like a worm. It eats (destroys) computer files and data stored on hard drive. Computer worms do not excrete feces, so your computer is still clean.

Adware: the most benign form of malware. An adware, when not used as a disguise for the delivery service of other types of malware, is not dangerous. Its only purpose is to track your Internet activity and figure out which websites you visit the most. An adware will follow you anywhere and display advertisements, mostly in an annoying way.

Ransomware: the malware that restricts your access to your own computer. It kidnaps your access to computer and asks for money in exchange. The only computers in the world invulnerable to ransomware are Liam Neeson’s and his daughter’s.

Until late 1990s when the World Wide Web was becoming a more serious thing, most malware were merely pranks; they were the practical jokes that computer programmers did in their spare time. The vast majority of people who wrote malware back then were teenagers (the smart ones for sure); they did that just because they could and for the fun of it.

Over time and as the Internet grows, more people realize that malware can be really annoying and destructive so many of them use their talents in writing malicious programs for professional purposes of stealing and making money. Not every hacker is bad; a lot of hackers actually help others (such as tech companies and governments) to find vulnerabilities to their computer/network systems and give solutions.

Considering the fact that you cannot live, work, and find dates without computer and Internet, using a reliable professional anti-malware program on your computer and mobile devices in addition to the built-in firewall is always good investment. Most people say that free anti-malware programs are often not good enough, because maybe it is true. Even if you use free anti-malware, make sure it is made by reputable companies.

What is OCD?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Dec 2017 18:05:00 +0000

It is quite disturbing that people often use the term OCD in a way that it sounds like something common or mild and as if the condition is nothing serious. Anytime people say “in case you have OCD” or that they have a little bit of OCD, I don’t think it is appropriate. Those people are punishable by a big kick in the mouth, repeatedly. There is no such thing as a little bit of OCD and there is no need, under joking circumstances, to say something presuming any chance that you live with the condition. You are not a doctor; even if you are, you must be a very bad one. Doctors don’t make jokes about their patients.

Feeling the urge to wash a fork before and after meal is hardly a sign of OCD

OCD, which stands for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, is a type of mental illness that can affect people of all ages. There are two major components of the condition: Obsession and Compulsion - in that particular order. A person with OCD cannot help but display certain compulsive behaviors anytime the individual is faced with unwanted yet inevitable intrusive distressing anxious feelings or thoughts. Unwanted obsession (which causes the distress) comes first, and the compulsion follows as a form of counter-measure to relive the anxiety.

People can be obsessed with many things such as cars, toys, neighbors, Game of Thrones, or maybe porn stars. As a result, they also probably have excessive worries, doubts, fears, or superstitions every now and then. The vast majority can control these thoughts and feelings in a way that they avoid doing compulsive behaviors to reduce the obsessions. People trigger largely unnoticeable responses for example if you come across your neighbor-slash-crush, you can pretend to look the other way or type something on your phone; when Internet is down and you can’t stream the latest movies featuring your favorite stars, you can wait for few hours and stop by your neighbor instead. The point is you have the option to give any kind of hopefully appropriate response that makes logical sense.

OCD patients have their own overweening fears and concerns. The big difference is that they cannot control the worries; in fact, the worries are in control of their lives. When these worries come across their minds, they try to handle their situations by doing some compulsive behaviors that may not make any sense at all. In many cases the worries are simply triggered by something very common for examples untidy desk, improper alphabetization of stuffs, disposal of unused items, being in a crowd, or asymmetrical layout of something. In their minds, such occurrences are chaotic and may result in serious (even life-threatening) consequences.

Possible Causes of OCD

People with OCD are often portrayed in popular media as those who constantly need to wash hands, clean everything, tidy up even a slightest mess, or have rituals to start every morning. In real life situation it is not the rituals that matter, but the conditions that make the patients do the rituals. While OCD is not yet fully understood, there are several theories concerning what may cause it to happen:

Genetics: there is possible genetic component related to OCD – no specific genes have been identified.
Environment: changes in environment or infections may trigger OCD. This may include stressful or traumatic life events which lead to emotional distress. Experiences of traumatic events increase the risk of triggering a cycle intrusive anxious thoughts. Again, more research is needed to confirm this theory.
Biology: changes in brain functions may cause OCD. It is also possible that OCD is related to other mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders.

What has been understood is that an instance of OCD happens because the patient’s brain incorrectly processes certain information. Any kind of obsession, worries, and fears must be dealt with immediately or they never stop. In other words, the brain gets caught in a cycle of intrusive thoughts. Keep in mind that people with OCD understand that their brains’ warning systems do not work correctly; they understand the anxiety is not real but they don’t have the capacity to get away from the intimidating thoughts. During an OCD episode, the patient is tortured with a seemingly endless anxiety and desperately trying to stop it.

Obsessions and Compulsion

As mentioned earlier, many people have some sorts of obsessions and perhaps compulsive behaviors as well but it does not necessarily mean everyone has OCD. Only when obsession and compulsion are inseparable train of thoughts and become extreme to the point where they disrupt life or daily activities, then they need to be treated from medical perspectives.

The term “obsession” is indeed often used in everyday casual conversation. There is no law to prevent you from using or writing it. As a matter of fact, the ability to spell obsession properly is a reliably sign of average IQ. What you need to understand is how to differentiate the context between obsession as a disorder and as a pleasantly normal thing.

In an OCD case, obsession does not have any pleasurable component. People with OCD do not want to get caught in obsession with anything. For OCD patients, obsession is time-consuming, exhausting their energy, and extremely interfering with their lives. Once again, the patients mostly realize that their obsessions are not real but they cannot get rid of the uncomfortable feelings.

Compulsion follows obsession. Similarly the compulsion part is repetitive and done to at least neutralize the obsession. OCD patients develop many different compulsive behaviors for examples trying to count number to infinity, repeating the same phrases for long period, washing their hands excessively, and relentless tapping, and so on. In any case, those compulsive behaviors are not pleasant for OCD patients but they have to do it as temporary relief. One of the common suggestions to avoid doing the rituals is to keep the obsession going. For some patients this is just impossible or simply too disturbing if the obsession is in the form of continuous negative thoughts.

In non OCD case, obsession is more likely used to describe a somehow excessive fondness of something. You may be obsessed with a song, a woman, a man, a cartoon character, James Bond, The Walking Dead, a phone, and so on. Even with that many obsessions, however, you can still do your daily activities without triggering a massive mental and physical breakdown. If you keep listening to a song from your shiny new phone during class activity, you can’t say you have an OCD when the teacher asks you to get out. You don’t have an OCD; you are just not the best student. Claiming to have an OCD as an excuse makes you a bad person. You don’t develop disruptive compulsive behavior when you get bored with the song the next day or when a bigger shinier phone which looks exactly the same and does exactly the same things becomes available next week. And assuming you cry every time a new phone is released, the crying is not a compulsive behavior, it is just something else.

Treatments

Therapy and medications are the most common treatments for OCD patients. Therapy may include physical activities to help get rid of the obsession excessiveness for examples undisruptive relaxation techniques and regular exercise; medications may include SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) drugs such as Zoloft and Prozac. Education to help patients understand more about their conditions may also help.

What is Net Worth?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 15:35:00 +0000

For far too often you learn that someone else is richer and more attractive than you. Journalists tend to use something called net worth to determine how wealthy a person actually is, but no one actually cares enough to see if the claim is true. This is why you can also claim that you have high number of net worth – any number will do, really; it can be a million, three millions, 10 millions, and so on. To make it even more convincing, say some odd numbers like US$12,345,678.99 and everyone will believe it. Now that you understand how to fake it, let us learn about what net worth is.

These sheep have high Net Worth, but if only they can shave on their own

In short, net worth is the total amount of money you have. It is the sum of money based on the values of all assets you have subtracted by existing liabilities or debts. This is merely a concept because, in reality, you are not stupid enough to cash your entire assets and pay all your debts at once – but who knows, maybe you are. Assuming you still have money after all debts are paid, you have a positive net worth regardless of how small it is. On the other hand, you have negative net worth if you still have remaining debts even after you pay it with all your money – therefore, your total wealth should start with a negative sign (-). For many fresh graduates, negative wealth is not at all uncommon.

While net worth is a key measure to determine how much someone or a business entity is worth, it is not practical in most cases. Some people save their money on education accounts, retirement accounts, or other types of accounts which have withdrawal restrictions, either in period or amount. It may not be practical to measure how rich or poor someone is, but net worth is a good indicator of finance progress. For example, if your net worth was $5,000 yesterday and the number says $5,001 just now, it means there is an improvement in your financial situation; in other words, your finance is in healthy condition.

Business’ Net Worth

Total current value of a company is also measured in net worth. Instead of re-calculating all the company’s assets and debts, however, accountant and bookkeepers will use the existing balance sheet compiled by someone else smarter than them, because it is quicker and easier. A balance sheet is a report of assets, liabilities, and equity that a company has in its current state. In business context, there are two types of net worth:

Tangible, which includes all physical assets and liabilities (both short term and long term)
Intangible, which also calculates the values of all things that are too complex to quantity for examples patents, customers list, and reputation or goodwill

Balance sheet is easier to use because it only tells the value of a company in its current state. It lists all tangible assets such as building, lands, unsold products, printers, pencil sharpeners, plumbing augers, and everything else you can find in the warehouse. Another thing in the balance sheet is liability or debt. The difference between the values of assets and total debts is the net worth.

When accountants have some spare time, they can calculate the market value of a company. The process is almost exactly the same as measuring net worth, but it must also include intangible assets in the equation. Intangible assets, as the name suggests, have abstract nature so it is difficult to determine their actual value in money. Even accountants may need to hire valuation expert or just make wild guess; the only difference is that the latter is much more affordable.

When the company wants to lend money from financial institutions such as a bank, it must compile and provide balance sheet report for the bank to scrutinize. In case the bank deems the company’s financial condition to be healthy, credit application is more easily approved. Most (if not all) banks try to stay away from making valuation of intangible assets because bankers are apparently too busy straightening their neckties. Banks want readily-quantifiable assets as collateral. This is why banks will not approve your credit application just because you have a million-dollar imagination.

Individual’s Net Worth

The net worth of an individual is simply the total amount of money a person has after he/she subtracts all the debts from assets. At a glance the calculation of an individual’s net worth seems simpler than that of a business’ or company’s but it not always correct. People are neither assets nor intangible assets, and this makes the calculation appears easier. You must remember that tangible assets can be anything from house, cars, stocks, socks, wristwatches, saving account balances, a napkin signed by David Lee Roth, politician’s pee-tape, and all other possessions with considerable values. Debts may include mortgages, student loans, unpaid parking tickets, etc. Put in mind that some assets can depreciate and increase in value over time, so the exact price that you paid when you bought an item should not apply. For example you paid $20 for the biggest organic apple last week but haven’t had a chance to eat it; now you are selling it online and no one is buying because the apple is rotten. Thankfully the value of your house has increased so the depreciation of organic apple is well offset.

In the event you have negative net worth, you must file for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy to eliminate most of (if not all) of the debts but your properties will be sold to pay the creditors. Some of your liabilities may not be discharged at all for examples taxes. Just because you filed for bankruptcy, it does not mean you don’t have to pay taxes anymore. Bankruptcy has long-term financial and legal consequences, so it is recommended that you hire an expensive attorney who costs a lot of money. U.S. Courts allow you to file bankruptcy without attorney – which costs you almost nothing except for the taxi - but since you are prone to making mistakes and misunderstandings of the law, hire an attorney who receives payment over time or just don’t go bankrupt.

What is Net Neutrality?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 16 Dec 2017 16:10:00 +0000

The Internet - whether you consider it a place, a tool, a virtual world, a loyal friend with benefits, or anything else that comes to your mind – is a repository of human knowledge concerning all things that matter and those that are literally useless. It is almost like the biggest imaginable library to which everyone contribute; the only difference it has with a real library is that you actually visit the Internet.

Without a doubt the Internet means something to everyone and everything; Net Neutrality makes sure of it. Journalism finds it easier to report news in real time anytime; entertainment industry has another medium to provide multimedia contents in addition to television; businesses can communicate and complete transactions more quickly; the society has dependable platform to organize events, campaigns, or discussions; divorced people can look for new dates instantly; and you can watch videos of cats or people with no clothes on almost all day every day.

In 2015, the government or more specifically the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) set a regulation under which all ISPs (Internet Service Providers) were explicitly required to treat Internet contents equally. There should not be discrimination against any specific content regardless of market competitions. For example if you want to watch Batman & Robin on Netflix, the rules of Net Neutrality dictate that neither your ISP nor specific server through which the movie is streamed can block the content or even just slightly reduce the streaming quality even if they hate the idea that George Clooney is Batman – who does anyway? It was known as Common Carrier rule under Title II of the Communications Act. Some even refer to Net Neutrality as the first amendment of the Internet.

That well-established common carrier rule, however, has now ended because the FCC successfully repealed it on December 14, 2017 despite protests from major industry leaders such as Google, Amazon, Netflix, Reddit, Mozilla, and Twitter as well as millions of individuals who posted protesting comments on FCC website. Despite their differences and competitions, tech companies reacted together on the same side for the benefits of consumers. It was (and still is) as if The Avengers call the Justice League to protest Hollywood.

If an ISP does not like you, this is what your selfie will look like

In short, net Neutrality makes sure that if you pay for Internet subscription, you get all contents available without any negative interference from your ISP. Think of ISP as the people who own the pipeline in your plumbing system; whether or not you also use water that they provide (and therefore you pay the bill to them), you can take shower as often as you want and as many hours as you think necessary without having to pay more for the delivery service. You’re renting the pipeline, and that’s about it. Even if you use it to distribute milk and honey to your home, there is no need for extra fee.

Under the updated rule (or the return to the outdated version), ISPs do not have to slow down internet speed and block specific contents, at least in theory. The problem is that there is no regulation that prevents them from doing so. They have the freedom to discriminate contents, and this is where things can get real ugly.

When ISPs have the legal option to block contents, it means they are allowed to analyze and potentially manipulate the data which go through their servers or networks. For example if service providers do not like an image of Sponge Bob you want to download, they can charge more money for it or give you the option to get a poster of Krabby Patty instead.

Op-ed reports or educational contents can get blocked if the readers are subscribed to ISPs that have different opinions. Another option is to buy newspapers.

Some groups of people (especially minorities) who rely on the Internet to organize social campaigns will “technically” at the mercy of ISPs permissions to manage activities or promote ideas. Having to buy newspapers is bad, but maybe you can still order it online if that makes sense.

Competitive Market Does Not Guarantee Net Neutrality

In an ideal world competition in the market should prevent ISPs from negating Internet traffic or data delivery, but you don’t live in such a world. There are two reasons:

Most Americans do not have access to a handful legitimate high-speed ISPs. In fact, you are lucky if you have more than two broadband subscription options. When one provider wants you to pay more for the contents that you usually watch alone at night with the lights off, perhaps you can switch to another provider as a cheaper alternative. If both providers have the same policies, however, there is no option but to upgrade subscription tier and only when the provider offers it.

You will notice when certain contents are blocked, but Internet speed manipulation is trickier to detect. For example when you open two websites at the same time but one of them takes quite longer to download, the first thing that crosses your mind is that the server is down, under maintenance, overheating, or simply on fire. No one will be immediately suspicious if an ISP manipulates the speed.

Remember that even free public Wi-Fi is run and provided by ISPs. When you access Facebook at a coffee shop, it does not mean that the coffee shop also owns the entire Internet infrastructure that delivers footage of your friend’s dreamy but fake vacation to your laptop. The coffee shop pays an ISP for the service. It would make no financial sense for the shop especially if you spend hours there but buy only half a cup of coffee.

Home Wi-Fi or WLAN infrastructure should not be affected to some extent. Accessing contents stored on a NAS (network-attached storage) is almost like using no Internet at all. The contents are already there on a hard-drive that you own, so ISP cannot block them. The lack of Net Neutrality can affect the connection only when you download data through the Internet.

Many big tech companies believe that the battle for free Internet is not over. The repeal of Common Carrier rule on Dec 14, 2017 was only the beginning of longer legal process. You can join the protests and fight for the rights to watch more videos containing explicit scenes too, as long as your ISP does not block your opinions.

What Is Depth of Field?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 16 Dec 2017 15:32:00 +0000

The world of photography is more than just going to exotic places and pressing the shutter button. If that’s the case, any girl with her mother’s latest smartphone would brag about being a photographer. Using the most expensive camera setup in the world also does not guarantee that your pictures will look good on Instagram and Facebook. In reality there is a big difference between “just another photo” and “well-captured photo” because more often than not the latter is taken by someone who has better knowledge about how camera works than the girl. One of the most important terminologies to understand is Depth of Field. And if you think that Depth of Field literally means how deep the field is, well then you are wrong.

In photography, depth of field is a zone within which an object in a photo appears in focus. There are only two Depth of Field zones:

Shallow: a small portion of the photo appears in focus
Deep: almost everything in the photo looks sharp

Capturing a photograph with shallow depth of field should produce something called bokeh effect – it is not a misspelled as you may think, the name really is bokeh. It is most often used in portraits and wildlife photography, but you can try it for selfies and food photography too.

Achieving Depth of Field for Bokeh Effect

In contrast to what you believe, a camera (or more specifically a lens) can only focus at one “point” only. Just because your camera says it has “multiple focus points” feature, it does not mean the camera can actually focus on many different points in a single frame. This is either technically impossible or the technology is just not there yet. In the event you figure out how a lens can make this possible, the patent office will be happy to welcome you. However, a camera can indeed focus at multiple objects as long as they are at roughly the same distance from it so the objects are within acceptable depth of field.

For example during a scuba diving activity with a buddy, you want to have an underwater bokeh photograph as something to show-off on the Internet. Because you think it is a brilliant idea to include an Orca in the frame, your friend must wait a little bit longer for the Orca, which currently is swimming right behind you at speed, to come a little bit closer. That way, your buddy can get the focus right; otherwise, the Orca may look blurry and no one back home has evidence of how your life ended. Since the wide-open jaws of the Killer Whale is pretty close to your head, both objects can look sharp while everything else behind appears blurry.

Sometimes the line between Depth of Field and blurriness is well, blurry

Some cameras have built-in “bokeh effect” feature, which means you don’t have to adjust the aperture and distance to the object to get the shallow depth of field. In most (if not all) cases, all these automatic adjustments are done digitally by the camera software – yes, a camera also has a software that you can update. The problem is that digital adjustments can look quite foolish among photographers, so unfortunately you will still have to learn about some camera settings and read user manual, or you can just lie about it.

Aperture is an opening or hole through which light travels to the image sensor. Larger aperture means the sensor receives more light, and smaller aperture brings is less light. Aperture in your camera is calibrated in f/stops and measured in numbers such as 1.4, 2, 2.8, 3.5, 11, 16, and some others. Two things to remember:

Higher f/stop – narrower opening – greater depth of field – sharp background

Smaller f/stop – larger opening – shallower depth of field – blurry background

It may sound contradictory that smaller number corresponds to larger opening, mostly because it is indeed contradictory so the problem is not on you; don’t ask your mother to have your brain examined just yet.

Omitting all the explanations about the witchcrafts that happen inside the camera, you need wide aperture and close focusing distance to achieve greater depth of field and get the bokeh effect. Therefore by adjusting the aperture setting on the camera to the smaller number, you can get the desired blurry background. As you scroll through the numbers, the Shutter Speed will also change accordingly. With large light opening, the shutter does not have to stay open as long to capture the image with the right exposure; this translates to faster shutter speed.

Distance between the object and lens also matters. As a rule of thumb, you want the object to be as close as possible to maintain focus but keep the background slightly far behind it. With wide aperture, the camera should focus almost entirely on the main object without picking up details of the surrounding.

Manual Focus

Of course it is easier to achieve if you also use manual focusing; this way you decide which part of the frame looks the sharpest. Turning the focus ring allows you to at least have a preview of what the end result should be; if your camera or lens does not have this manual option, you are stuck with automatic focus option so you may need to move forward and backward until you find the perfect distance for nice depth of field.

Aperture Mode

Since you are beginner in photography and reluctant to mess around too much with manual setting, there is an easy way to get bokeh effect: Aperture Mode - of course you're beginner in photography; otherwise you won’t be reading this.

A DSLR has something called PASM (Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual) options. For a nice depth of field, turn the camera into Aperture Priority so you can adjust the f/stops. Other functions such as shutter speed will be automatically configured by the camera. Use the lowest possible f/stop number (larger opening) and experience with object distance. In Point-and-Shoot camera where there are no PASM and bokeh effect options, your best chance of getting shallow depth of field is by using the Portrait Mode; it may not be the best and it also takes more walking back and forth, but it is workable and at least you burn some calories.

What was the Industrial Revolution?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 18:05:00 +0000

The biggest talent that humans have is the ability to create tools. We’ve been harnessing that talent to the point where we actually can create tool to make other tools; that was the main idea of Industrial Revolution that started in Britain centuries ago.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, not just in Britain but all across the world, nearly every manufacturing process was done by manual labor. There were no machines, so factories were basically filled people of all ages including children to make shovels, blankets, and pans. At some points in history the term “manufacturing” had not even been invented yet, because the person who coined it for the first time was still probably busy biting his finger nails – he had every reason to do that as nail clipper was not yet a thing back then.

In modern days it is hard to imagine living without assistance from machines or any kind of digital electronic stuffs, especially for millennials. When they hear the term manual labor, all they can think of is typing some words on a keyboard on a screen, not even a real keyboard where they can feel some actual buttons on their massive fingers - it is a hazard to the beauty of finger nails, they may say. This is also one of the main reasons that voice recognition is popular nowadays.

As the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. In Britain during the late 18^th century and beginning of 19^th century, rich people were asking for more things to buy and cherish in addition to their two brown shirts while their poor counterparts wanted less difficult works and new products to sell. There was the need to do something to fulfill the demands from both parties. Imaging living in the period where you had to queue for a week to get a loaf of potato bread, everything was black & white including the rainbow, and maybe you had to dig a ditch anytime you needed to take a dump in the bushes. As it turned out, Industrial Revolution changed the course of human history not only in terms of machinery or manufacturing capabilities but also the civilization as a whole. Without it, you would still have to sew your torn socks every now and then.

Printer looked much better in Industrial Revolution, and you don't have to use computer

Industrial Revolution took place for the first time in Britain from around 1760 to 1840. It was marked not by a single event or invention of a new tool but a series of innovations that revolutionize the manufacturing industry; it was pretty much confined to Britain only too. The rest of the world eventually followed suit but it took quite a while for everyone else to catch up. As a terminology, Industrial Revolution was first used by French writers - whoever they might be - but the one that made it popular was Arnold Toynbee, an English economic historian.

While it technically described Britain’s economic development in general during the time period, Industrial Revolution definition can be scaled down for the inferior minds simply as the gradual yet rapid change from handicraft and agrarian economy to machine-oriented industry. If there had been an invention credited to spark or initiate the modernization process, it would have been Abraham Darby’s coke-fueled furnace used in cast-iron industry. Before you ask, he did not use the soft-drink Coke as a fuel the same way you use it to provide energy for your brain, which usually fails in a miserable way. It is a high carbon version of coal; you can consider it the enriched variant of the combustible sedimentary rock. Other industries also experimented with a lot of other innovations and actually succeeded for examples the mechanized looms in textile industry, steam engine in mining and transportation, power tools in carpentry, threshing machine in agriculture, and Portland cement in engineering.

To make it easier for your tired eyes to read and steaming head to remember, here in bulleted points are some of the technological changes that contributed to the Industrial Revolution:

the use new energy sources such as steam engine, internal-combustion engine, and petroleum so there was no longer the need to hire children as blacksmiths
commercialization of previously (and largely) unused raw materials for examples steel and iron which meant people didn’t have to drink from wooden mugs anymore
development in communication and transportation thanks to new engines and electricity, allowing the Brits to travel on train rather than a chariot and probably sent telegraphs to their horses back home
invention of continuous paper machines although the reading part was intermittent

Britain was more or less starting to understand that science could be useful for industry. Fortunately for them, the revelation came earlier to their societies, which made them an even more dominant force in world economic.

Why Did It Start in Britain

There were a good number of factors to make Britain the forefront of the change. One of the most notable was the fact that Britain had already developed a politically stable society before Industrial Revolution even started. Although many people were in poor conditions, Britain was the leading colonial power. In addition to the abundance of raw materials at home, it colonies could function as sources of more raw materials and markets for the finished goods.

If you could do something really well while nobody else were still far behind, you wouldn’t want to do it for free. In an impossible situation where you were the only person in a town – the kind which you had occupied and built earlier during younger days - who could produce enough supply of lemonade, you would want your neighbors to just grow lemons but purchase the lemonade from you.

Although other countries in Europe were far behind Britain, many of them could grow quite rapidly and catch up once the revolution begun. The United States soon followed suit and also became one of the dominating forces in manufactured goods. After World War II ended, Japan also joined the movement with great success.

Now that Industrial Revolution has gone so far with robots, drones, super computers, and solar panels, traditional handcraft is increasing in popularity albeit in just a small number of industry. Certain handmade products can be much more expensive now due to rarity and of course quality of craftsmanship. Handmade statues, swords, furniture pieces, clothes and a lot of other things are highly sought-after merchandises assuming the quality surpasses their mass-produced counterparts; but still, your origami wouldn’t sell for pennies.

What is a Bitcoin?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 17:37:00 +0000

There are two keywords to understand Bitcoin: digital and currency. Understanding each of those financial terminologies should help even the most ignorant person to understand what it is all about. Bitcoin is real money just like the pennies in your pocket and the dollars in your wallet, assuming you haven’t spent them on a VPN account because you don’t want your employer to know what videos you watch online. On the other hand, Bitcoins do not have any physical form. It is often referred to as cryptocurrency or digital asset secured by cryptography system.

Decentralized

Bitcoin has no central banking system. In the U.S. and probably all other countries, one of the main requirements to be eligible for financial services is that you need to register with a bank and comply with plenty of complex rules on how you use your own money. A central bank (government-sponsored) has the power to create, distribute, and remove money from circulation. It does not mean that the central bank can choose which people deserve to be rich and which don’t, but it has the authority to regulate how money should be used. Of course you don’t have to ask permission anytime you need to buy a wig or new set of dentures, but there are many other models of transactions where you must comply with the bank’s rules for examples banking hours and international money transfer.

Bitcoin is classified as Decentralized Currency NOT because it has no rules but for the reason that the government or central bank does not have the authority over it. Bitcoin is independently controlled by a network of users that oversees and verifies the currency’s transactions and creations.

Here is an example:

Let us just say you are fortunate enough to purchase a brand new life-sized Lamborghini toy from Italy. For some misunderstood reasons including the fact that the two of you have never heard of PayPal, the seller does not want to sell it in dollars because in Italy the person uses Euro. Thankfully Bitcoin is worldwide currency, so there isn’t any legal consequence for using the currency to complete the transaction. There is no conversion rate, bank fee, and bank delay involved. Banking hours are irrelevant too because you don’t need any teller in uniform to handle the transaction for you. The money is also sent almost instantly to the seller’s wallet.

Bitcoin is not exactly a coin. Even if it is, it would be much smaller

Every Bitcoin transaction still needs to be verified and controlled. With the absence of banking system, there must be another method to make sure that the currency is always in healthy distribution. Millions of computers connected to the Internet work simultaneously to help process Bitcoin transactions all over the world. Even you can contribute to this process as long as you have the necessary computer hardware and software. There are some hardware pieces in the market designed specifically for the sole purpose of handling and verifying Bitcoin transactions. It costs money and electricity to purchase and run the hardware in the first place. The software is thankfully open-source and free to download.

Every computer that helps the transaction-clearing process is rewarded with some Bitcoins. When Bitcoin was first launched in 2009, the reward was 50 Bitcoins per transaction. However, the figure is scheduled to fall by half every four years. It fell to 12.5 in 2016 and will fall again to 6.25 in 2020. This is why the procedure is called mining and the computer who does the job is referred to as miner.

You will think that mining is an unbelievably profitable proposition considering that a single Bitcoin value is currently more than $17,000 (Dec 8, 2017). However, to make it financial sensible you need to purchase a dedicated mining rig and spend more money on insane electricity bill. In 2009, you probably would be able to do a competitive mining with your lame-spec desktop computer, but as every transaction grows more difficult to complete over time, it requires blazing-speed hardware specifications and around 250kWh of electricity - the same amount of electricity enough to power a small home for about 10 days – and that is just for one transaction. Bitcoins used for rewards for mining are new money created out of thin air. Total number of Bitcoins will not exceed 21 million, while around 16 million have already been mined.

Digital Currency

First you must understand that digital transaction is different from digital currency. Digital transaction mostly refers to online method of transferring money from one party to another. Think of an online store where you purchase cleaning solutions for the dentures and spray paint for the wig. Every time you transfer money to the store, you still use dollars and basically ask your bank to complete the transaction. On the other hand, Bitcoin as digital currency does not have any physical form. If you see an image of a gold-colored coin stamped with a capital letter B decorated with two falling strokes at the bottom and top, it does not represent any physical form of Bitcoin. That is just an image somebody created to illustrate the currency.

You can earn Bitcoins by mining or simply buying it from someone else. There are many online services that provide easy method to trade your dollars with Bitcoins. Some services even have escrow feature to give the peace of mind. Many people buy Bitcoins as a form of investment, which really does look dreamy with the current value. This is a digital currency, so there is no physical money associated to it unless you trade it first, by selling it to buyers.

What is Nuclear Power?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 17:31:00 +0000

Following the disasters in Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986), nuclear power has been on the top of environmentalists’ villains list. Also on the list are the absence of cyclist lane, littering, and NASCAR probably. However, the same people who compiled the list in the first place are currently faced with the dilemma that nuclear can in fact be the savior to postpone an already scheduled event where everyone is invited called Destruction of Planet Earth by Greenhouse Gases; environmentalists keep on receiving emails filled with suggestions to change the name of the event, but they refuse to give respond.

Nuclear power produces zero greenhouse gas, making it an excellent pollution-free alternative to the predominant fossil fuels. Based on rough calculation, a pound of uranium – from which nuclear power is generated – can produce the same amount of energy as 1 million gallons of gasoline or 3 million pounds of coal; apparently environmentalists also understand that rough calculation is more preferable than an actual math.

The process of generating electricity always creates byproducts or at least environmental impacts. Even hydropower potentially introduces negative effects to natural habitats by altering flow of river; solar panel also produces toxic chemicals during its construction and at the end of its life. Since nuclear power plant does not create greenhouse gas as byproduct, there must be something else. Unfortunately, this something else is radioactive waste such as iridium-192, cobalt-60, cesium-137, and others things with uninteresting names. Many of them can trigger birth defects and cause cancer. There is also a chance that a person exposed to radioactive waste will transform into mutants, maybe with useless superpowers if they’re lucky enough. Nuclear power is therefore at the same time full of good promises and sinister smiles. It is basically just like Lex Luthor.

A nuclear power facility may stretch to dozens of square miles, but the witchcraft happens on subatomic levels – these are the levels where no one can see or observe without assistance from flying brooms and some pointy hats. Such facility is built for one sole purpose: generating electricity from nuclear fission – a chemical reaction where a single atom splits into two smaller nuclei.

The fuel used in nuclear power plants is enriched uranium oxide comprised of uranium-238 (96% - 97%) and uranium-235 (3% - 4%). The latter is the main fissile (capable of undergoing and sustaining nuclear fission chain reaction) isotope of uranium. Natural uranium contains much less amount U-235 so enrichment is required for more effective energy production. The enrichment process and methods will not be discussed here in details due to health and safety reasons; potential use of many advanced scientific terms can be overly abusive to the brains and may cause serious headache.

While Uranium is the heaviest natural element, it is also one of the easiest to break apart. When free neutron bumps into a U-235 atom, the neutron will get absorbed and render the entire atom unstable. At the tipping point of its unstable state, the atom splits into two smaller atoms. This fission reaction generates more free neutrons which will run into many other U-235 atoms and repeat the process to infinity. Every time an atom splits, a small portion of its original mass becomes heat or energy. Water that separates fuel tubes absorb the heat and turns into steam. Then, the steam drives a turbine which generates electricity. As a result, the self-sustaining energy creation process generates massive amount of electricity to power your light bulbs, computer, microwave, TVs, and those weird-shaped electric massagers.

One of the main purposes of nuclear power is to create gigantic mushroom out of smoke just few miles away from a beach

Of course a nuclear power plant houses a myriad of equipment worth millions of dollars to control the fission reaction. Simply putting uranium rods next to each other will not trigger any kind of energy-production cycle. In case you have the opportunity wander inside a nuclear facility – there is a near zero chance of it happening – you will probably bump into the nuclear reactor which contains the fuel and fission control instruments.

The fuels are comprised of around 150 (if not more) bundles of 12-foot long rods; each bundle has more than 200 individual rods made from pellets of uranium oxide. These rods are immersed in a coolant and contained inside pressure vessel. Fission reactions are controlled by the amount of neutrons used. In addition to uranium rods, a reactor also houses control rods made from neutron-absorbing element for example cadmium.

Due to the nature of the fission where there are always more neutrons than required following every atom-split occurrence - hence chain reaction - the energy-production process can go berserk. Fission also increases in speed over time and leads to uncontrolled reaction if left without some sort of interference. By inserting some control rods into the bundle, large amount of neutrons are absorbed to prevent runaway reaction. To increase the speed of fission reaction again, control rods can be partially or entirely lifted out from fuel rods.

Radioactive waste, as byproduct of nuclear fission, must be treated in the instance it is produced. This is why the reactor is housed in a concrete liner inside a pressure vessel built within a disaster-proof concrete building. Imagine a shiny steel safe where people who don’t trust the bank keep their money; because they also don’t trust the safe either, they put another safe inside it. For some reasons, these people are convinced that even two layers of security measures are not enough, so they buy a bigger safe to house the two smaller ones. Then they purchase a piece of land and build a safe house for the sole purpose of keeping money. Because it is unbelievably safe, they allow some of their richest friends to keep money for a fee. In short, they build their own bank when they don’t trust the bank.

Extra precautionary measures are critical to make sure that the nuclear fission inside the reactor is always in secure safe controlled conditions. Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters gave examples of what can happen if either the facility or human resource operating the facility is incapable. On the other hand, properly harnessed nuclear power accompanied by suitable radioactive waste treatment can potentially release us from the addiction to fossil fuels.

What is the Big Bang Theory?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 14:02:00 +0000

Origin of the universe has been a subject of debate probably since humans realized that they could use symbols as a means of communication. Back in the days when there were no papers, ancient scientists with white coat made of 100% cow leather would draw strange shapes on cave walls during a summit to share their opinions on whether the stars were some sort of a fence at the edge of universe or there could be something else beyond.

The debate continues until today, still with drawings and plethora of equations that only people who at least have masters degrees can read and understand. It is not only subject of science either, as crowds of people with religious and philosophical backgrounds also join the argument fair. And as you probably have expected by now, no one knows the right answer. The closest we can get to the origin of the universe is the Big Bang theory, but that does not explain even a bit about the origin of the universe; the theory can only speak for the expansion of the universe. Of course, the discussion is about the Big Bang Theory science, not the TV show.

The image has nothing to do with Big Bang Theory, bit it looks good

It has been well-established that people can be wrong – in fact, they often are. Misconceptions about the Big Bang theory are just few good examples of that.

Big Bang Theory does not try to explain the origin of the universe, but the development of the universe starting from a dense marble-sized thing into what it is today. The theory makes no attempt to claim that it knows what started the universe, what happened before the Big Bang, and what exists beyond the universe.

Big Bang Theory has never been a concept of explosion, but expansion of the universe. The expansion probably happened faster than speed of light, so it would look like an explosion, but nothing actually exploded. This kind of confusion is partly because of its name. In classic sense, a Big Bang is what you normally expect to hear when someone fires off cannon or other big guns. Unlike with most things when you have to admit that you’re wrong, you can actually blame someone for this confusion. Sir Fred Hoyle was a critic of the theory and he coined the term “Big Bang” as a derogatory comment. However the name stuck and nobody seems to mind about that.

Among many proponents of the Big Bang theory, there are some popular names you should really look up such as Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Edwin Hubble.

Theory – As Seen by Science

From the perspective of science, a theory is simply an attempt to explain a particular phenomenon, event, or aspect of life including the universe. People also easily confuse between theories and laws not because the two are particularly similar but mainly it is just people’s nature to get confused by many things. Unlike a theory, laws are clear descriptive explanations on how the nature will behave under certain circumstances.

Theories are more like hypothesis; scientists try to draw conclusions about a particular subject based on related signs, symptoms, and events. Of course the conclusion must be an educated and informed one. It is like weather forecast, but concerning much bigger scope. Theories can be disproven by the discovery of new evidences; it can also grow stronger if tests and observations support the existing theory. In case miracles happen, but most likely will not, and suddenly you understand the universe better than anyone else, even you are allowed to suggest a new a theory. If you can prove that the Big Bang is wrong by presenting some undeniable contradictory evidences, the theory must be discarded.

Evidences

The Big Bang Theory suggests and explains that the universe started as hot dense small thing and then expanded to form the universe that we know today and it is constantly expanding. The expansion started a long time ago, making it impossible to actually see what actually happened back then; CCTV was not yet invented 14 billion years ago to record footage.

Most of the knowledge we know about the Big Bang came from mathematical models and formulas. One of the undeniable evidences to support the theory is called Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Many scientists believe that CMB is the leftover of radiation in the aftermath of Big Bang. When the universe started its expansion, it underwent rapid inflation and released enormous heat. CMB is the remaining heat of the event.

Edwin Hubble suggested the first observational basis for the expansion of the universe. He noticed that the velocity of stars or galaxies appeared to be approximately proportional to their distance from Earth. In an easier language, the further away stars were from Earth, the faster they moved away from the planet; so he concluded that the universe was expanding.

CMB was discovered in 1964 by two radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. It basically confirmed or at least supported Hubble’s suggestion. CMB are found all over the universe and spread equally in all directions; this means the universe continues to expand until today and probably to infinity. If it stops expanding, CMB should not be around anywhere because it would eventually dissipate at one point. Also, the universe has no center so the expansion happens everywhere all the time in all directions.

CMB also gives clues to understand the composition of universe. Scientists came up with a conclusion that only 5% of the universe is made up of matters such as galaxies, planets, and stars; because they don’t know what the remaining 95% is, they just call it dark energy and dark matter.

There was a default assumption that the universe today looks exactly the same as it was decades ago. While things change quite rapidly and many times unexpectedly here on Earth, people thought that everything stayed the same in the distant skies; again, people were wrong. The universe you have today is different from how it was yesterday, and it will be different the next time you check again.

Big Bang Theory has been popular among scientists for decades. It gained its way to mainstream popularity thanks to a comedy show with the same title premiered on CBS in 2007. While the Big Bang Theory does not explain what happened before the universe started expanding, at least you can say with a tone of certainty that fewer people watched CBS before it aired for the first time.

What are HIV and AIDS?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 17:50:00 +0000

HIV and AIDS are different things, but you can think of them as a two-headed monster that never goes anywhere alone. Many people use both terms interchangeably, but as usual, people are wrong. Both are medical conditions yet different diagnoses. In the past, a diagnosis of either HIV or AIDS was considered death sentence because even the smartest doctor in town could not suggest effective treatments. Thanks to years of painstaking persistent research and the fact that medical laboratories are actually filled with people who know what they’re doing instead of you, people diagnosed with the conditions can now live longer and remain productive.

HIV

It stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus; that is quite a mouthful, so let’s just use the acronym. As the name suggests, HIV is a virus that attacks human immune system. A healthy person is able to impede the progress of a large variety of diseases because there is a properly working immune system inside the body. Immune system works like a computer antivirus program but you don’t need to download and install it first. As soon you were born into this world, the system is improving and getting very good at recognizing all the cells that make up your entire body, including those in your nasal hair. Anytime your body receives uninvited unfamiliar cells such as parasites or unfriendly bacteria and viruses, the system will try to get rid of them.

If you see them lying around, find the instructions in a doctor's office

If attacked by HIV, the immune system is rendered deficient and therefore it cannot function as effectively as it should. There is something with HIV, which no one understands, that allows for resiliency against immune system. As a result, the body cannot completely remove the virus.

Early Symptoms of HIV

The most common early symptoms of HIV infection are flu-like conditions. In fact, about 40% - 90% of people infected by the virus develop the one or more of the following signs such as:

Sore throat
Rash
Fever
Fatigue
Chills
Muscle aches
Mouth ulcers
Swollen lymph nodes
Night sweats

Several things to notice:

Such symptoms may last for 2 to 4 weeks after the infection occurs, yet it is possible that those signs may not appear at all. Please note that early infection includes all instances in the past 6 months (recent) and acute infection (very recent); the latter does not typically develop flu-like symptoms.

Within 6 months after infection takes place, an HIV test may fail to recognize the existence of the virus at all. However, people who have the virus are highly infectious during these times. Put in mind that just because you have any of the aforementioned symptoms, it does not mean you have HIV; there is a very good chance that either the sweating or chilling you had last night was because some mice ruined the air conditioner.

HIV can only be transmitted through activities that involve direct contacts with certain body fluids from a person who has the virus. More specifically, the fluids are:

Blood
Semen
Pre-seminal fluid
Rectal fluids
Vaginal fluids
Breast milk

One of those fluids must also come in contact with another person’s damaged tissue or mucous membrane or be injected directly into the bloodstream for transmission to occur. This is the main reason that new sterile needle or syringe is mandatory for any medical (such as administering drugs and taking blood samples) and non-medical (for example getting a tattoo) purposes. Mosquitoes do not transmit HIV.

Clinical Latency Stage

First of all, apologize for the alien phrase, but there does not seem to be an easier alternative. Following the early stage of infection, the virus changes its characteristic from extremely aggressive to unbearably lazy; this condition is called Clinical Latency Stage or simply chronic HIV infection. The virus remains active inside the body but it reproduces at very uninteresting level of intensity. This is a trick so that the virus arouses no curiosity or attention. At this stage, an infected person may not develop any symptom at all; even if there are symptoms, they are only mild. Clinical Latency Stage may last for a decade or even longer.

There is no HIV cure, but infected people who take medications called antiretroviral therapy or ART as suggested by doctors can keep the virus in check, which means they can live healthy normal lives despite the virus in their bodies. Since the virus remains active, however, they can still pass the infection to others.

AIDS

HIV is the virus, and AIDS is the condition it may cause. HIV-infected people who do not take ART medications will eventually develop a condition called acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS); this is the final stage of HIV infection.

The virus attacks immune system, and then reproduces at very low rate inside human body. Without proper medication, there will be continuous uncontrolled damages to the immune system. As the damage reaches critical point, immune system is rendered useless. In other words, the body is highly susceptible to a great number of infections and certain types of cancers including but not limited to:

Tuberculosis: infectious disease that mainly affects the lungs.
Cryptococcal meningitis: inflammation of the spinal cord as well as the membranes and fluids surrounding the brain.
Kaposi's sarcoma: a type of cancer that develops from blood vessel or cells that line lymph; very common in HIV-infected people.
Kidney disease: a condition that potentially leads to kidney failure without treatment.
Wasting syndrome: rapid loss of body weight often accompanied by chronic weakness, fever, and diarrhea.

Again, apologize for the strange medical terms.

HIV without AIDS

Many HIV-infected people can live for many years without even developing AIDS. An HIV infection, especially with proper treatment and medication, does not make AIDS a certain thing. While the treatment including ART may help prevent AIDS from developing, it is not a cure for HIV so the infection persists.

Once AIDS develops, there can be various symptoms such as:

Pneumonia
Extreme tiredness
Recurring fever
Diarrhea that last for more than a week
Rapid weight loss
Sore of genital, mouth, and anus
Blotches (they can be red, pink, purple, or blue) inside the mouth, eyelids, nose, under the skin, or on the skin
Depression
Memory loss
Neurologic disorders
Prolonged swelling of lymph glands in neck, armpits, and groin

The only way to make sure whether or not someone has HIV/AIDS is by having a medical examination or test. Every symptom is related to other types of diseases or medical conditions and possibly not caused by HIV infection at all. AIDS is a condition in which the immune system has been damaged, and therefore many of the symptoms, infections, sickness, and medical disorders are the results of weakened immune system.

Difference between AIDS and Autoimmune Disease

By definitions alone, the two conditions may sound similar because both are related to immune system. However, they are very different. Autoimmune disease is the inability of immune system to distinguish between cells that make up your body and those that attack your body. In this condition, the immune system basically regards all cells as malignant, and therefore it tries to kill every cell. On the other hand, AIDS is a condition where the immune system is unable to fight of infections. Immune system still recognizes damaging cells, but it is unable to defend the body.

What is Alternative Energy?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 03 Dec 2017 16:17:00 +0000

There has been a debate among scientists, environmentalists, pedestrians, and vegetarians as to what alternative energy actually refers to; of course when they debate, it sounds more like a pleasant discussion filled with boring terms and cups of organic carrots juice rather than real arguments sprinkled with interesting lexicons. On one hand, alternative energy is defined as any form of energy which when generated or consumed does not increase carbon dioxide footprints; it may include hydroelectric and nuclear power plants. On the other, the term is more commonly used to describe non-traditional sources of energy such as wind, solar, and biomass.

Regardless of which definition you support, it is basically the better version of currently the most popular forms of energy production and causes of pollution: combustion engine powered by fossil fuels. Any source of energy that neither involves the depletion of natural resources nor causes harmful environmental effects is considered a good alternative. Meeting the two requirements is a tall order. For example, nuclear facilities do not produce carbon dioxide, but the steam from uranium reaction releases toxic radioactive waste; also, nuclear requires uranium which is not renewable. However, uranium is regarded as one of non-traditional sources of energy.

Lightning is also a form of alternative energy, which can light up your surroundings for about half a second

In a rather confusing conclusion, alternative energy is the kind of things that will eventually come to replace fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas as the mainstream forms of energy productions in the foreseeable future, unless climate change goes considerably worse and ends the world as we know it next year. Here are some other definitions of alternative energy described by people who think they are smarter than you.

Smart People	Their Definitions	Important Notes
U.S. EPA	the forms of energy generated by utilizing nontraditional sources	for example Samsung batteries before they explode
Collins English Dictionary	a form of energy derived from natural sources	natural gas, as the name says, is natural
IPCC	whatever the acronym stands for, it defines the term as energy derived from anything but fossil fuels	like perhaps a horse
Random House Dictionary	energy than can supplement or replace traditional fossil fuels	however, it includes uranium as if the element was discovered last week
Princeton WordNet	energy derived from sources that neither deplete natural resources nor harm the environment	now even a horse cannot meet the requirements

Thankfully most people do not really care about the definitions as they are more interested in the implementations and whether or not their loans will be approved so they can at least consider purchasing alternative energy to power their homes, of course after the routine heavy splurge of spending on Christmas. If there is money left at all, they have the options to acquire one of the following forms:

Hydroelectricity: powerful flow of water, like a waterfall, is channeled through an expensive apparatus to spin turbines which then generates electricity. If water guns are as powerful as the manufacturers say, you can probably use them too.

Solar Power: either photovoltaic cells or solar-thermal is installed on your roof to harvest sunlight and convert it into electricity. Please also consider anti-theft devices and subscription to Weather Channel.

Nuclear Power: uranium or other radioactive elements heat water to produce steam which spins turbine to generate electric power. The description has been dumbed-down for the intellectually undemanding.

Wind Power: blowing wind spins turbines to generate electricity. If people stop visiting beaches, there can be more wind-turbines in the future.

Biomass: energy produced from organic matter or renewable resources. When you burn woods to bake pizza, you are using biomass but you have to plant more trees when the party is over.

Geothermal: steam produced by geological activities in Earth’s crust is channeled through pipes towards power turbines to generate electricity. Do not call plumbers to do the job.

Tidal Power: daily changes of tides (the movement of water in the events) can move turbines to produce electricity. Again, it may reduce the area you can wander around a shore.

Alternative energy is relatively still in its infancy. The good thing is that there has been rapid increase in awareness among people that the old-fashioned fossil fuels will not last forever. Developments and improvements in energy efficiency always go with the attempts to reduce negative environmental impacts. The end goals are not only to search for both alternative and renewable energy forms but also those with easy practical applications without requiring massive money investments on the consumers’ part.

What was the Great Depression?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 03 Dec 2017 16:05:00 +0000

History of the United States was not all filled with sunny days and romanticisms – the Great Depression during the early 20^th century was one of worst afflictions when those concepts were practically nonexistent. It was time of financial disasters when everybody had debts they could not pay, factories ceased productions, farmers burned their crops for fuel instead of selling them, and banks were closed with empty vaults; all happened while the governments did not seem to care.

Just like a good movie, the state of financial misfortune started with a nice blissful dreamy depiction of life, followed by hardships, and ended with some smiley optimistic faces; because the producer expected to make a sequel, however, another scene of calamitous event was included somewhere between the end credits.

As soon as World War I ended, the U.S. economy was having good times throughout the 1920s marked with the increase of purchasing power on consumers’ part, and supported by inventions of new products as well as expansion in production capacity. Enormous scale of products were manufactured and sold throughout North America, partly thanks to the implementation of Prohibition so Americans (well, most of them) were sober and sane enough to save money to buy a lot of stuffs other than anything that came out of breweries. This prosperous period was known as the Roaring Twenties; the term came to the surface because apparently everyone was screaming loudly during these times when they had money in their wallets and a shiny pocket watch in their jacket, but any snobby classic car enthusiast would beg to differ.

What Caused the Great Depression?

As it turned out, some speculative Americans could not resist the temptations of recklessness and greed despite the reduced consumptions of alcoholic beverages, so it must have been something else, like meatloaf for example. At the New York Stock Exchange in Wall Street, instances of poorly educated decision in buying stocks happened far too common. People of all professions including lawyers, farmers, yoga instructors, and ghost hunters used their savings to purchase stocks. They were under the presumptions that the stock prices would continue to grow up, so it was all fine to make investments even if they had to borrow money from the banks to do that. Even many banks were happy to give loans because people would invest the money into profitable healthy stock market. As a result, the stock market was skyrocketing for nearly a decade long before it eventually ran out of fuel and went dead-stick in August 1929.

Most Americans did not realize that productions had already been in a decline by then, while unemployment rate had gone the other direction. Agricultural sector was also struggling due to drought yet food prices were falling thanks to over production in factories. Some banks also had made huge loans to foreign countries under false expectations that those countries would build their economy and eventually be able to repay their debts from World War I – this was probably the finest example that you did not actually have to be smart to work in a bank. When European nations decided to default on their loans, a lot of nasty things happened: banks went bust, depositors withdrew their money, and the country’s banking system was mostly shut down. Stocks being sold and bought were all overpriced.

Nervous yet savvy investors who were aware of the trend began selling overpriced stocks in October 24th 1929; in fact, nearly 13 million shares were traded in the day known as Black Thursday. Some wealthy investors tried to slow down the decent of stock prices by buying large chunks of shares but it was to no avail. Only five days later, or the Black Tuesday, another 16 million shares were traded, rendering huge volume of stocks basically worthless. Those who bought the stocks in margin were wiped out. People who borrowed money to buy stocks could not repay their debts. Businesses slowed down and factories reduced production capacities – these rendered people jobless, homeless, and hopeless. Many employees sold their all their properties to pay a portion of debts, while farmers could not sell crops because factories had a good amount of them unprocessed.

During Great Depression, it was common to see people use their jackets as beds and helmets as hats

There was something even more bewildering. Roaring Twenties was the time when the nation’s wealth nearly doubled, but good housing, good education, shiny shoes, and leather trench coats were almost exclusive to relatively a small number of Americans. Others who appeared rich actually borrowed money from banks and could not fulfill their obligations because their employers had to do massive a layoff, hence more poor people.

When Was the Great Depression?

The short answer was, quite a long time. Series of events in Wall Street that led to Great Depression started to happen in 1929. Investors along with thousands of banks who speculated in the stock market would eventually collapse; depositors who still had money in the banks could not do anything to prevent their bankruptcies. When banks closed down, the money went with them. Only this time, there was no money to take but at least they could still carry some empty bags and sold them to an antique store. Herbert Hoover was still President, and he believed that the government should not directly get involved in the market and therefore was not responsible for creating jobs. He was wrong.

In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President, and the United States saw a glimpse of hope. FDR initiated a type of insurance that would protect depositors in case banks went out of business again. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or FDIC was created in 1933; this meant that depositors could still get their money out even when banks failed. It encouraged Americans’ confidence to leave their money in the banks and let the financial system works a way out. Another part of the recovery process from Great Depression was creation of new jobs through government projects such as building new dams and electric power plants. There was also the Social Security Act.

Biggest and most bitter resolution from Great Depression was actually US involvement in World War II. Wartime economy and manufacturing efforts put many people back to work and filled factories with production lines again. Many Americans fought and died during the war, and more of them found employment which indirectly helped the Allied forces to victory.

What is Biodiversity?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 30 Nov 2017 16:09:00 +0000

Among all complicated terminologies environmentalists often use to sound clever, biodiversity is the jewel in the crown. It is like when smokers say, “Do you have a smoke?” or when a priest shouts, “Jesus Christ!” – yes, with an exclamation mark. As complicated as it may sound, biodiversity is basically just a little bit smarter way of saying everything; well, almost everything.

All living organisms in the world are connected to each other both in direct and indirect ways. While they do live and exist in different habitats, every single creature contributes to the formation of larger sustainable ecosystem. Planet Earth is filled with multiple ecosystems which also correlate with each other; because mutual relations have always been undertaken with profound silence and stealth, it can take years to observe how the interactions actually work. Not to mention a group of high-paying scientists, nutritious supplies, and a bunch of equipment worth millions of dollars.

A bed is a good example of biodiversity; it has you, bacteria in your body, dog, flea in its fur, a cup of tea from yesterday, and of course bed bugs.

Non living things yet naturally occurring components of ecosystem, for examples air and water, are inseparable parts of biodiversity. Although they do not display characteristics of life such as growth and metabolism, living organisms will find it hard to sustain their existence in the absence of those components. Both unmanaged and managed ecosystems are parts of biodiversity. No one will blame you for thinking that biodiversity is comprised of only unmanaged ecosystems such as wild jungle, oceans, national parks, and mature preserves. As usual, you are wrong but anybody else unfortunately has to respect your opinion. Managed areas like city parks, croplands, plantations, and even farms also play important roles in maintaining the level of biodiversity all around the world – in fact, they have their own biodiversity, albeit small.

That is how life on Earth works, that is the simplest biodiversity definition possible.

Biodiversity is not evenly distributed on Earth; tropical forests are the richest as they house 90% of all species, but it exists everywhere including oceans and other aquatic ecosystems, deserts, and grasslands. Because humans have already used about 24% of the entire planet’s terrestrial surface for cultivated or managed systems, it becomes crucial that the decision to create every new similar system is backed with educated considerations concerning the sustainability of its unmanaged counterparts.

Biodiversity Loss

People need to understand that their existence also largely depend on plants, animals, water, atmosphere, and the balance between them. In case you don’t know yet, a lot of medications use the chemicals found in many different species of plants and animals which live thanks to good supply of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. You will die without clean water filtered naturally by the soil layers and purified by microorganisms in them. More than 60% of public water supply comes from natural sources such as river streams and lakes. Meat taken from animals and leaves harvested from vegetables are parts of your daily menu; beer is made of mostly vegetables, yeast, and water unless you add food dye.

Those things that you need on daily basis are provided by or at least exist thanks to other living and non-living organisms in nature. Yes you can buy milk and cheese in a grocery store indeed, but it does not mean the store or the factories can make the products out of nothing. Animals that give you their meats and plants that give you fruits also depend on the existence of others species. This is why biodiversity loss is a serious threat ahead of us. Main causes of biodiversity loss are as follows:

Over exploitation: over-fishing and over-hunting have significantly reduced the number of species on Earth. Such decline is not by natural causes, putting risk of extinction to the species and others which depend on them to survive. Of course your salmon comes from fish farm, but the farmer will take millions of smaller fish to feed their commodities.

Alien species: the introduction of an invasive species to new areas can destroy biodiversity because they will prey on the native species. If you put a school of piranha into Yukon, chances are they will annihilate the salmon. Same thing happens if you put an alligator into a pool of Koi – the reptile eats the fish, not the other way around; also, remember that alligator is the reptile.

Habitat loss: land-uses for residential or agricultural purposes mean the loss of natural habitat for wild animals and plants.

Pollution: plants and animals cannot adapt quick enough to the changing environment due to pollution produced by human activities.

Species richness is one of the measures to identify the level of biodiversity. It has been established that all organisms, regardless of how small they are - such as bacteria and fungi - have roles to maintain steady balance of life on Earth including bed bugs in your bed and the bugs in theirs.

There cannot be an overabundance of specific species while too few of others. The nature has its own way to keep the numbers checked, but humans often interfere and cause serious damage. It is now our responsibility to maintain biodiversity by protecting the rights of other species to not only exist and but also thrive.

What are the Millennials?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 16:54:00 +0000

Starting in the early 20^th century until today, Americans have gone through five distinct known generations:

Greatest Generation (born 1924 or earlier): they experienced the Great Depression and fought in World War II. They were teenagers back then, who probably had little chance to actually enjoy some leisure times but they prevailed with great struggles.

Silent Generation (born 1925-1945): too young to see some actions in World War II but too old to enjoy the Summer of Love, the generation has tendency to conform to rules and actually earned success that way.

Baby Boomers (born 1943-1964): following the victory in World War II, their teenage years were filled with new cars, civil rights movement, protest against Vietnam War, and rock n’ roll.

Generation X (born 1965-1979): the only generation that does not want to be defined in any way, hence the name. Apparently the letter “X” represents something mysterious; who knew.

Millenials (born 1980 – 2000): sometimes it is also referred to as Generation Y, this is the only generation you are allowed to make joke about. If you exclude the 9/11 tragedy and the wars afterwards, life has been quite easy for them. When they are not having their teeth whitened, they must be complaining why they cannot be superheroes; some of them only visit the library for the Internet connection to access the Pirate Bay.

The categorization is based not only on birth years but also significant events during that same period; without the latter factor, you might as well call them very old, too old to use a laptop, boring old people, smarty pants, and smartphone-addicted people – in that particular order. Thankfully each generation is marked with certain social economy conditions or political circumstances in which they have lived through.

You may also notice that Millenial Generation is the only category currently in productive years. The oldest of them are 37 years old and the youngest are still teenagers. Some of them are still in college classes and pretending to be reading something to impress their professors, while others are in the workforce even if they only do something when the boss is around.

If you are one of the millennials, there must have been some circumstances where you hear someone bashing your generation as if there is nothing else more important happening in the world. It is no secret that Gen Y is, more often than not, associated with some characteristics that give them bad reputation. Typical criticisms will revolve around, once again, things with the least of importance; for examples the way people of millennials age never get tired of taking selfies, watching one of the Kardashian’s behind, and whining about the noise from a supercar driven by a Baby Boomer.

Sometimes it is necessary to a selfie to show that you are taking a selfie

Millennials have successfully created presumptive stereotypes as narcissistic, lazy, selfish, shallow, and entitled to everything. Some will argue that it is the millennials themselves who developed the stereotypes, while others are convinced that older generations simply want to make their younger peers look bad. Regardless of who started the unfavorable judgment, millennials seem to respond in the best way possible: mind their own businesses and walk on. You’d also be happy to hear that the criticisms are not entirely correct. Even if they are, the characteristics are most likely enforced upon the generation by political circumstances or social economy conditions of the period.

One of the most prominent events was September 11 catastrophe and the wars that followed. Let us not forget about the disclosure of top-secret NSA documents about the country’s mass surveillance activities on its own citizens, causing a serious distrust in governmental conducts. On the more epic scale, millennials are also upset with the revelations that older generations have brought serious threat to the Earth in the form of global warming; in this case, they basically inherit problems that are so big and too difficult to reverse. Animal extinctions due to habitats degradation also disturb them quite a lot. The combination of all those things added with the fact that Baby Boomers and Generation X actually got to watch Led Zeppelin concerts are troubling the Gen Y.

Of course not every person in millennials age range can be generalized into the stereotype’s characteristics. Some (if not many) of them are even remotely close to the negative reputations attached to the entire generation. If you read the Millennials Report published The Council of Economic Advisers in October 2014, you will find a lot of surprisingly positive assessments of the generation in almost all aspects of life including economy, education, politics, social, health, and environment. Since it has been well-established that reading a long report is too taxing for your brains, here is a brief review with the usual bullet points you all love:

Millennials now represent the largest and most diverse generation in the United States. Many of them are immigrants or children of immigrants.

It is the only generation that has been truly shaped by technology advances, especially computational power. Compared to previous generation, millennials have quicker, easier, faster access to information about almost everything; some of them never pay for reading the news on their smartphones although they do have to walk to a public park for free Internet.

They focus quality of life more than money. It sounds quite like a lie, but it is not. In terms of works, millennials are basically the same as previous generation. Everybody wants to be successful so their children don’t have to work as hard in the future. According to the report, earnings are still less important than creativity for millennials. The generation wants the freedom to be creative more than they crave for promotion.

Gen Y values friends, families, and communities. In other words, millennials want to have creative job with creative schedule so they have more free time for vacation. They also want to be leaders of communities and make positive impression on their kids.

Millennials are the most educated generation in the United States. At least 61% of them have attended college. The decision to pursue higher education was likely caused by the surge of unemployment rate in the aftermath of Great Recession.

Thanks to Affordable Care Act, millennials actually get to see what a health insurance policy looks like.

Women of Generation Y have more labor market.

Millennials stay single for longer period than the previous generations.

Many people of Gen Y are not homeowners or individual renters. In some way, it helps the environment because the unused land can be turned into greenery – one with free Wi-Fi.

Millennials are arguably in their infancies in terms of labor market and political positions. The existing trend that both Baby Boomers and Generation X seem to harshly criticize their younger peers really is quite persistent, and anyone can see that it happens because the previous generations are still in power today.

Political leaders, company owners, professionals, and employers are the territories where millennials must comply with every single consensus created by their older counterparts. No generation has taken as much bashing as Millennials do but it does not change the fact that they will be in the forefront of politics, economics, education, and basically people’s perspectives towards reshaping the environment for decades to come – if only they could stop taking pictures of their lunch.

What is Global Warming?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 16:44:00 +0000

You may think you understand what global warming is from several posts as you wandered through the big blue beautiful world of Facebook no so long ago. But then again, Facebook is almost always an unreliable source of information, so we should assume that your claim is also bogus. Just like most people, you would try to use many scientific terminologies and jargons that you hardly understand yourself to explain about global warming to a bunch of school kids, only to impress their teacher who indeed is quite attractive and apparently still single.

The shortest and simplest yet accurate definition of global warming is the increase of average global temperature to the point where the effects are potentially irreversible, and that’s it; there is no need to use beloved words like anthropogenic, infrared radiation, fluorinated gases, industrial revolution, and many other fun terms of similar kind. As long as the kids only ask for a definition, you are good to go. Unless the children start to ask questions about the little details, which they rarely do, you will not need to keep on reading.

Here are several of the most important global warming facts everybody should understand:

There is no universally accepted definition of how low or high Earth’s average temperature should be, so different organizations and groups all around the world may use different numbers. The 20^th century average global temperature was around 57° Fahrenheit (13.9° Celsius).

What matters the most is the trend of the increase. Regardless of the numbers used, there has been steady trend of increase that has emerged from year to year indicating that Earth is indeed going to be hotter in the coming decades.

Annual temperature increase happens in small number from 0.01°C – 1.45°C, based on a chart by NOAA. It may not sound like much, but it does not seem if the increase will stop anytime soon, unless we do a lot of things to prevent that. Continuous increase will bring negative impacts to the climate and eventually make the Earth less habitable than it is today.

What is Climate Change?

When you talk about weather, you basically refer to everything that the forecaster on TV did not say; for example if the forecaster said it would be a rainy day, there is no need to bring an umbrella. In case a storm or hurricane was also predicted, call the TV station whether or not the forecaster was lying. Weather is related to humidity, temperature, rain, cloudiness, and umbrella. Also, the weather can change in matter of hours and it may not be the same somewhere else. It can be dreary rainy day in your house, but sunny comfortable day in your neighbor’s. Don’t ask to switch house just yet because everything can change within the next 30 minutes.

Climate is pretty much like weather, but in much bigger scale. Unlike weather, climate takes very long time to change; you need a geological time scale to make a note of its occurrence. It is the average weather condition in a place. Assuming everything is normal and people never drove cars or turned on the factory machinery, Earth’s climate would be as it was millions of years ago. Unfortunately that did not happen; human activities especially during the last couple of centuries have generated greenhouse gases of biblical amount. The result is global warming, which leads to un-recommended climate change hardly suitable for picnic, swimming, breathing, and living.

Global warming and climate change are only almost interchangeable. The former focuses only on the increase of temperature, while the latter is more accurate to emphasize pollution of atmosphere which could result in a variety of extreme weather events rather than just the warming problem.

The UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) has a more specific definition. The convention defines it as a change of climate attributed either directly or indirectly to human activities. To be more specific, the activities are limited only to those that contribute to the alteration of global atmospheric composition. So if you’ve spent your entire life being a vegetarian and a cyclist at the same time, you have every right to plead not guilty although the effects of global warming will get to you anyway.

Causes of Global Warming

Global warming occurs because there are just too much greenhouse gases than the atmosphere can handle. Some popular names in the category include carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor. Greenhouse gases are components of the atmosphere that keep the Earth warm enough so you don’t have to wear sweater under jacket all year long. Naturally occurring gas such as ozone even doubles as a shield against harmful UV radiation. The tricky part is that there should be just the right amount of greenhouse gases to trap comfortable level of heat; it should keep the Earth warm but without overheating issues. This is known as the greenhouse effect.

Human activities which involve the burning of fossil fuels are the largest contributors to the increase of pollutants, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2). Some of the most common examples are coal-burning power plants to produce electricity and combustion engine emission. The combination of those releases a mindboggling amount of CO2 into the atmosphere: nearly 4 billion tons every year, and that’s in the US alone. You probably think that driving a Toyota Prius is cool – in literal sense, of course - but you still contribute to global warming anytime you charge the batteries using electricity produced by a coal-based power plant; well, at least a fully-charged Prius is more environment-friendly than a Volvo XC60 T8: turbocharged and supercharged.

Riding the bicycle is much better than taking pictures of it

CO2 is responsible for more than 60% of global warming. Taking the second place is methane (CH4) produced by various sources such as wastewater, garbage, rice crops, and gas from livestock. Land use and deforestation also indirectly increase the amount of greenhouse gas because trees help absorb CO2. There are many major potential effects of global warming, and some are in fact happening right now:

Relatively quick and sudden change of climate. This means living organisms do not have time to adapt to the new environment. In normal circumstances, climate takes millions of years to change.

Flooding, intense storms, prolonged drought, and heat waves happen more often. Sudden change in climate leads to extreme weather events. Regions or countries without adequate financial resources will find it hard to recover.

Animals will go extinct. Wild animals cannot adapt to the changing habitat – due to global warming – quickly enough to survive.

Melting ice at the poles increases heat even further. Polar ice helps deflect heat and reflect sunlight.

Sea levels are rising because the water is warm, and therefore expanding in volume.

The effects of global warming will then affect your life in many ways, but there are things you can do to slow down the increasing temperature. Reducing the release of greenhouse gas is the most effective such as by using clean renewable energy in your home, take a walk instead of a drive, and grow big trees outside obviously.

What is Cloud Computing?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 15:50:00 +0000

When your brother tells you to shut down your laptop because he is cloud computing but you consume all the already low bandwidth to play explanatory videos on YouTube about cooking instant noodle, it does not literally mean that he is going to visit a bunch of cloud and does his work from there. The term cloud is just a metaphor for a method of accessing and storing data over the Internet. Before you read further about cloud computing and feel a severe headache afterwards, it will be easier to grasp the concept by understanding its opposite first, on-premise computing.

Devices that come with internal hard drives or have compatible ports for external ones can be used for on-premise computing. You probably use such device on daily basis such as laptop, smartphone, digital audio player, and desktop computer. The hard drive stores data so you can access them easily without Internet connection for example when you view photos on a smartphone or play movies on your laptop. In both situations, the data (photos and movies) are stored on the devices’ local storage drive – microSD for the smartphone and HDD or SSD for the laptop. The data is quickly and easily accessible from your device only, unless you are connected with other computers on a local area network.

This guy gets the idea of cloud computing monumentally wrong

Assuming your home network connects multiple computers, you can access data originally stored from your brother’s laptop too. This is not recommended if he has a collection of explicit contents that require parental advisory, which he most likely does and you will eventually watch anyway. Connectivity at this level still counts as on-premise computing. Even if you have a dedicated NAS (Network Attached Storage) hardware at home and access data from it, you cannot say that you are cloud computing because that would be a lie.

What Constitutes Cloud Computing?

For your activity to be considered cloud computing, you need to access data over the Internet; data can be files, documents, photos, videos, images, and even programs or applications. The main reason is that that actual hard drive is not hardwired to your device and located on a different network. On the more sophisticated level, a large network consisting of dozens of computers can utilize cloud computing so users can do complex data processing and synchronize in real time.

Difference with Peer-To-Peer (P2P) Connection

With P2P, there is no dedicated server. Any computer connected in the same network can act as the server, but the network has no central storage and it lacks authentication of users. It also means that each user on the network is able to access and share files equally with others.

Cloud computing requires a central dedicated server/storage device accessible only via Internet by at least one user/client. When one user’s system crashes, the others can still access the server without a glitch. Also, the central server has a list of usernames and passwords of every authenticated user. It is possible to set up a system in which certain users have more access than others; this way, your brother can keep his collection away and safe from you and your parents.

Common Examples of Cloud Computing

Although cloud computing sounds quite sophisticated - mostly because it indeed is – even a simpleton like you can use it easily. In fact, you probably have been utilizing it for quite a while. Using emails is one of the most common examples because the actual emails are not stored in your computer but in a dedicated server owned by the provider, unless you are using POP protocol. Since you don’t know what POP protocol is, chances are you are using the cloud computing version. If you watch movies, play games, listen to music, and edit documents via Internet, then it is likely that cloud computing makes those possible. Some of the most popular cloud computing providers are as follows:

Google Drive: it has a complete list cloud computing services you need to edit documents, store data, and see where you are going with an online map. If you have an Android smartphone, and let us just assume you know how to use it properly, chances are you utilize a lot of the services quite often.

Dropbox: is stores data and syncs them across your devices.

Amazon Cloud Drive: it is a storage service for essentially every digital you buy from the store for examples e-books, MP3 files, and images.

There are other more complex uses of cloud computing than sending and receiving emails including but not limited to host blogs or websites, create and deploy apps through microservices, analyze data for bookkeeping purposes, store data as backup for local drive, and stream movies or music.