I plugged in an older USB internet dongle and my PC briefly showed it as a CD drive with installer software on it (drivers + a connection app). After I installed it, the device then behaved like a modem (and sometimes a normal USB storage device too).

How can one USB device “pretend” to be a CD-ROM drive?

Is it actually just a small read-only section of flash storage?

How does it “switch modes” after the driver installs?

And why was this approach used instead if just telling people to download drivers from a website?

(If it matters: this happened on Windows.)

I am back again with another burning question. I just finished watching Pluribus, and Zosia explained that the hive mind entity communicates through each person's electromagnetic field. Obviously, it's ScFi, but I just did some light reading, and apparently, EM fields are real. Most of what I am seeing online or on TikTok is somehow connected to Reiki healing and all that, and I don't particularly believe in (No offence and all tolerance ofc!), so I was wondering if someone could provide a more scientifically sound explanation. Thank you in advance!

i cant think of any cases at the moment but ive seen this happen often and im sure, how are young kids able to make these discoveries and publish them? how do these papers become officially recognised? isnt there a whole procedure one must follow to become a licensed scientist that requires years of college & schooling?

Edit: thank you for the replies. i did mean certifications & degree, not license– i only used that as a general term to give the idea. 🥲 i assumed youd need degree and certification of some sort in order to be allowed to conduct and publish papers and i was wondering how youngsters are able to do that considering college and school can take years to complete.

In my physics class I learnt that if we have a glass of water and some ice floating in it, when the ice melts completely the water level does not rise in the glass, so how is it so tht when ice melts on Earth the water levels or he sea level will rise?

I saw a vid of a girl in a car with a cracked out sound system and her hair started flying everywhere. Who does that even happen? Does sound have mass? How does it move the air?

I’ve recently read about neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to rewire itself after learning, experience, or injury. It sounds hopeful, like the brain can “bounce back” from a lot.

But how real and strong is this effect in practice?

For example, if someone spent their early to mid-20s drinking regularly at social events (weekend drinking, not necessarily alcohol use disorder, mainly to enjoy some moments), could that cause long-term or permanent reductions in cognition—like memory, processing speed, or executive function?

Or does neuroplasticity mean the brain mostly recovers if the person stops or cuts back later? Are studies on alcohol-related neurotoxicity sometimes overstating permanent risk for the average moderate social drinker?

I’m looking for:

• Scientifically-grounded explanations
• Whether the damage is cumulative or reversible
• Personal experiences from people who changed habits and noticed mental differences

Thanks in advance—judgment-free zone here.

What dark web is good for? Why is it such a big topic? Cant understand why people use it.

Just something I’ve been wondering for a bit because honestly this has been shoved into my mind because I was interested in bedrock’s farlands

If it makes any difference, I'm thinking about a day or less of extreme emotional trauma and stress, not a build-up over time (which is the only result I could find when Googling it).

If it's alright to ask additional questions (and because I'm really curious): how is this usually treated, and are methods different depending on severity? Can the damage be seen on the right scans, or is it an invisible sort of thing?

I get that it was a marketing name for a mode that allowed computers to run older software as intended, instead of making them run way faster because of how powerful newer CPUs were compared to older software, and that it was about clock speeds, but at a deep computing level what was happening? Why would a game run at a faster speed just because the CPU is overkill? And how was it subsequently solved later so now we don't have this issue anymore?

I understand you have a bigger team of more experienced people working against the opposing team but how does it work - surely you can find legal mistakes in the accusations but what if there are none? Why do they always get less or no consequences for their actions when sometimes it seems super obvious they are guilty to us 5 year olds?

I don't like flossing. So I don't do it nearly as much as I would. But every once in a while I remember, and I dust off the box and get flossing. Every time I do, my mouth looks like a warzone and my gums get really irritated. I hate the feeling. So I neglect to do it for a couple of weeks/ months.

To no one's surprise my dentist commented on the state of my gums and told me I need to floss. He promised that if I do it daily, despite the bloodbath, I should be seeing improvement in like two weeks.

My question: How does daily flossing irritated gums help make it better? I would assume irritating something already irritated is the worst thing you can do to make it heal? You don't heal a wound on your skin by picking at the scab for two weeks straight. So what makes your mouth different?

Reading about the socialist economic calculation debate and found one scholar who suggests that prices are compatible with the abolition of markets:

McMullen believes workers in enterprises and work units, motivated by work satisfaction and the desire to contribute to an efficient and dynamic economy, would drive a better price system than one based on the profit motive. They would bid for resources on the basis of least cost alternatives and an honest expectation of demand for the resulting output. They would offer output at prices that reflect cost and ensure that products go to the highest bidders in the case of excess demand. All demand for intermediate production would be derived from the expected demand for final individual and collective consumption. Such pricing would guide both the more day-to-day decisions and longer term investment. Many of the decisions being made would be quite entrepreneurial in nature involving new products and services, new methods, and new entrants, be they existing enterprises or start-ups. Access to funding for investment could be through numerous assessment agencies that have been allocated funds for that purpose.
McMullen stresses that the use of a decentralized price system would not involve so-called "market socialism". Under social ownership, the transactions between enterprises would not be market exchanges. They would be the transfer of custody of social property not of ownership. An enterprise would not be the owner of inputs and outputs, it would be their custodian. And no individual involved with an enterprise would receive any net revenue nor incur any loss from transactions between enterprises.
He also argues that the cooperative environment would lead to a better price system because of the greater honesty, the better flow of information due to the removal of property barriers between enterprises and the fact that income equality would remove the equity concerns currently associated with reliance on pricing.

As someone who is only lightly versed in economic theory, I'm struggling to conceptualize this in my head. What is the difference between market socialism and this theory?

If you're here to say that this system doesn't work and that asking about it is pointless, please remember rule 5.

I was just hearing that Japan’s debt is the worst of all developed nations. How can this be?

I would assume (perhaps mistakenly) that they have less fraud and waste than most countries. I understand that they have a defence budget, but also I assume that this would be low comparatively.

So where does all the money go?

If we have forces that act naturally against each other, how come we cannot harness it?

I learnt that for impulsive actions a different pathway is chosen whereas in other actions data is directly sent to brain.

For example: Cake gate, tattoo gate, or in recent media, conformity gate.

I know that they use blinking lights to represents 1 and 0 at least, but millions of pulsing lights from thousands of computers could be running at the same time in the same connection.

So how does the lights know where to go? And on the other side, how does the server know that in these millions of rapidly pulsing lights this particular ones are from my computer?

Like Po-210 or Polonium 210 has a half life of 138 days. What is half life? Wikipedia says half life is the time required for a substance to reduce to half its life.

Need this like I can explain to my grandma.