Help solving the issue of how the existence of a giant uninhabited continent change the history of my world?

Question: I'm writing a story (not sure if it's speculative fiction or low fantasy or sci-fi) that is set in a fairly realistic world except that there is a parallel dimension which humans colonized in what would be the real world's equivalent of the classical era. Portals between the worlds are naturally occurring, opening up at predictable intervals every 2 decades or so and remaining open for about half a year. With the advent of electricity, opening smaller man-made portals became possible, as well as allowing interdimensional communication. The problem is I also have an equivalent of the Americas, which I combined into a single continent a little larger than Africa. The actual story is set in this world's equivalent of the 1930s-1940s but the parallel dimension wasn't colonized until after the Americas would become populated, leaving their parallel universe counterpart completely uninhabited. The main focus of the story is actually geopolitical with a great war similar to WW2 and elements of the cold war taking a center stage, but I just realized that the existence of a whole continent that is completely uninhabited would probably have drastic effects on colonization and all of history and I am trying to figure out how to address this without absolutely destroying the rest of my worldbuilding or being forced to scrap most of what I have so far.
Comment: Your question is a bit ambiguous: are you asking for *reasons* the continent would be uninhabited, or *consequences* of it being uninhabited, or a solution to some specific *downside* of it being uninhabited? You are certainly right that it would have effects on history, but so would interdimensional travel; what is the specific problem that you think would force you to scrap your existing world-building?
Comment: I'm also confused by your timeline (or parallel timelines?): "the parallel dimension wasn't colonized until after the Americas would become populated" doesn't seem to match with "a parallel dimension which humans colonized in what would be the real world's equivalent of the classical era", but maybe I'm just misunderstanding the different events you're talking about?
Comment: In the real world, the Americas were not populated until humans crossed the Bering Land Bridge about 16,000 years ago, similarly, the natives of my America analogue would have crossed over to the continent far before the first humans entered the parallel dimension, meaning that the parallels version of this continent would actually be completely unpopulated by the time that explorers show up.
Comment: So your problem is that there are no portals in the Americas, so the only way to reach them is from the alternate Old World? Firstly, why not just put some portals there, and let the Aztecs or Apache or Inuit or whoever discover them? Secondly, why is that any more likely to change the course of history than the existence of an entire parallel world to exploit and flight over, and the strategic importance of controlling the portals, which would completely change the map of civilization? In short, what is your actual question?
Answer: In short:
Too many downsides, not enough upsides and then add in a pinch of No one bothered to record it
What do I mean by that:
Well, there are many places on earth that are sparsely populated by humans - Deserts, Antarctica etc. The lack of resources and little in the way of benefits could adequately explain this situation.
Colonization is a costly process and those who partook in it were expecting to gain something:

People/Slaves for workers/exploitation. If there are barely any people there, then this rules that out.
Strategic/tactical considerations. Otherwise unimportant areas can be critical if they provide some tactical benefit - Gibraltar for example to the British or the Pacific Islands (and Cargo Cults) for the US in WW2 - On the inverse - New Zealand has literally zero in the way of Strategic benefit, which is why it's often forgotten about.
Resources - To quote Al Murray 'If there's nothing in the way of Hot and Spicy food or olympic quality athletes, there's no point going' - So make your continent at least on an initial inspection to be devoid of anything useful (bonus points here for your story if it is rich in something which later on has significant usefulness)
Arable Land and tasty wildlife - You could put this as similar to Resources - but the ability to easily grow crops or hunt game is slightly different - this is perhaps the biggest inhibitor to further exploration, there's only so much food and water you can carry with you - a reasonable 'limit' is 10 days worth of food for walking exploration. In the short-term this will provide a significant disincentive to push further but in the grander scheme of things it will limit further exploration and finally
Lack of navigable waterways. Thomas Sowell discusses this in regards to Africa as to why African civilizations didn't 'succeed' in the way that other civilizations did (European, Chinese, Japanese etc.) and he points to the lack of rivers where goods can be ferried in bulk as one of the factors as this limits trade and slows down the transfer of materials.

Finally - If you all of those are met (and I think it can be reasonable to do so, with the right settings) - you could have a continent that is largely left alone - add in that people who did 'discover' it found nothing of interest sufficient to warrant further exploration would solve your issue.
Answer: Just make the new American continent really, really deadly. It can't be colonized by rogue individuals, everything is poisonous. The creatures, the soil, the insects. And vice versa, they cannot survive in the "Normal" World.
IN fact, that is why the Europeans in the Alternate world haven't colonized it, explorers do not return from this continent.
In the Americas, isolated, evolution resulted in an "arms race" for poisons; instead of muscles, fangs and claws, they developed toxins, immunity, then stronger toxins to overcome immunity. Animals there do not consume by eating, like a few creatures on earth they dissolvetheir prey with acids, and swallow the "soup".
People can't survive there, the only way to colonize it is a massive effort to protect themselves from the toxic life there, build shelters to keep out everything, fry the soil to sterilize it, and all the insects, creatures and plants in it, and then start from scratch with "Normal" world plants and animals. And strong water purifiers. All that would take decades to build a self-sustaining colony.
It's just not worth the trouble, either for the Europeans already there, or the Americans in the Normal world, unless there is a very compelling reason to leave the Normal America and go to the Alternate America.
Answer: In the historical 1930s and 1940s, most of the land on Earth was either a sovereign nation or claimed as a colony by a sovereign nation. Yet much of it was very thinly settled. WWII came to some of these thinly settled parts of the world ...

Allied and Axis weather stations in the Arctic, and even airbases.
The war in the desert.
Anchorages and airbases in the Pacific.

So reasonably your fictional continent could play a similar role. Without population and industry, there is no military need to occupy all of it, but many sides will want to occupy strategic bits and pieces with airfields, ports, and the like. And if one side uses a location, the other side may try to prevent that use.

Having said that, I don't see a "forgotten continent" on a world with 1930s technology. There may not be recon sats and GPS, but ships and aircraft are advanced enough to produce rough maps, and then people will go there unless there is a substantial effort to prevent that.
You might get away with a population density similar to Australia a century ago, but there might still be enough for trappers from one side to notice and report the radio station being installed by the other side -- weeks or months later, as the letter finds the way to a friendly coast.
Comment: I think what OP is saying is that his main world is 1930s, and the undiscovered new world is in the parallel world that can only be reached via portals.
Comment: @Len, the question went "The actual story is set in this world's equivalent of the 1930s-1940s ..." so it seems to me his new world has the war.


What has been the first time that someone visited more than one galaxy beyond their own?

Question: This Q&A site already has several questions regarding traveling to other galaxies than in the main setting.
What has been the first work where somebody has visited at least two galaxies beyond their own in the same plot?
Comment: @PEW Both the *Skylark* series and the *Lensman* series covered multiple galaxies.  Given how late it was learned that "galaxy" wasn't a singular object comprising the entire universe (they were originally called "island universes"), this can't go back before about the 1930s, so Doc Smith and *Skylark* might well be the first.
Comment: In Poul Anderson's Tao Zero the protagonists 'outlive' the universe and travel to the next universe after a new big bang. Not strictly galaxy hopping but they do end up in a new universe and a new galaxy. EE Smith's Skylark series covers a lot of territory also but it's been a while since I read them but there are definitely multiple galaxies involved.
Comment: Rick and Morty ;)
Comment: @PEW, In Tau Zero, they deliberately fly through multiple galaxies.
Comment: @Jetpack, I remember, but that was not their original intention but things 'snowballed'.
Comment: And how about _three!_
Answer: 1934: "The Living Galaxy", a short story by Laurence Manning, first published in Wonder Stories, September 1934, available at the Internet Archive.
The story is framed as a history lesson for children in the distant future:

Close your eyes and picture to yourself a classroom of children about six years of age. You are one of these children. You have a book open in front of you and, as you read it, a lecturer says the words of it out loud, so that the subject matter is impressed through ear as well as eye. The date is very far in the future — more than 500,000,000 years, and the sun, Earth, Mars, Venus, and other ancient things have long since died and become as forgotten
and legendary as the Garden of Eden. You, at the age of six, have played with
strange toys — toys that would puzzle a skilled engineer today. You look forward to a whole century of study, research, sport, amusement, and philosophy. This first century is your childhood and it will end when you go to the great hospital to be operated upon and made bodily young once more. After that you are grown up and set about doing your work in the world — in whatever world you please, as a matter of fact, for there are billions of planets to choose from. You expect to live in this way forever, except for
the risk of accidents. There is no hurry about learning or doing anything — but at six you are curious and ill-informed and this is the very first time you have been given any insight into the history of the human race, its habitations and its physical limits.

The instructor tells how a planetoid was converted to a starship and sent on a mission to investigate and deal with a threat far off in space:

Just at the time when the human race was engrossed in possibilities of new exploration in distant galaxies and universes, with thousands of huge rocket-
ships under construction, astronomers reported in alarm a violent "shift to the red" in one area of the sky. As all of you have had toy spectroscopes, you know what this means. Over an area ten degrees of arc across, the star background seemed to be flying apart at terrific speed — hundreds of times faster than anything ever observed. As the centuries passed, it was seen that a void was being created where once stars had been. A great black empty area thrust its way down toward the First Universe which then contained
all the human race. It was like a vast cone, point down, and in it there appeared to be nothing — absolutely nothing. Beyond it the blank space extended to infinity and not even the most powerful telescopes showed any trace of distant stars.
As the years passed, it was seen that the cone's point would at its present rate touch the First Universe in a few more millions of years. Yet what action could be taken? Most scientists were resigned to the rôle of mere observers. Not so Bzonn!
He gathered together a dozen scientists — twelve men and women whose names
are now unknown. They settled upon an uninhabited planetoid circling a small sun — a tiny planet not quite one hundred miles in diameter — and busied themselves in secret preparations. Atomic motors of huge size were constructed and the entire core of the planet scooped out and its stone transformed into metal. From the center, great rocket tubes flared out to
the surface — fifty miles away — and the entire planet was in a few centuries made into a rocket ship. A mile below the surface they made themselves living quarters and were ready to start. The voyage they planned was, in those days, incredible. So much fuel would be needed that only a ship of planetary dimensions could have contained it and it would have been absurd to construct such a vehicle. The whole planet was set under motion by earth-shaking blasts from the great rocket chamber and the voyage commenced. Its purpose was no less than to explore the edge of space and investigate the force that was driving the stars apart. Consider this at a time when the longest flight had
been less than a thousand years! After the fashion of those days of naming
everything, the planet-ship was named the Humanity

They visit many galaxies and establish colonies along the way:

It must not be thought that the opportunity for charting the galaxies was neglected. A small mountain of photographs was prepared during the four million years. Progress was made in every phase of art and science. It is regrettable that the colonization idea was not thought of until a million years had elapsed. This consisted of breeding a hundred humans and thoroughly educating them, stopping the Humanity in her course, entering a galaxy and finding a planet, and then leaving the hundred colonists on it to multiply and explore their new universe. This was done, Bzonn reports, more than one
hundred and seventy times in the last three million years of the voyage.
Answer: Short Answer:
I don't know.
Long Answer:
Part One: Skylark Series.
E.E. Smith's second skylark novel, Skylark Three, was serialized in Amazing Stories August, September, and October 1930.
In it the protagonists discover that the Fenachrone species is plotting to conquer the entire galaxy and exterminate all other intelligent beings, so they commit genocide against the Fenachrone first.  Discovering that one Fenachrone ship left the galaxy to seek refuge in some distant galaxy, they pursue them across vast distances of space in the Skylark III.
If I remember correctly, the ships attack each other at distances of hundreds of millions of light years, so they should have traveled billions of light years during the pursuit and they must have passed galaxy after galaxy after galaxy, before the Fenachrone ship was finally destroyed.
In the sequel, Skylark of Valeron, originally serialised in Astounding Stories August 1934 to February, 1935, the protagonists are exploring intergalactic space while they are still far from their own galaxy when they are attacked.  When it becomes clear that the Skylark III will eventually be destroyed, they get in the much smaller Skylark II, brought along as a lifeboat, and send it into another dimension.
The protagonists eventually returns to their original dimension an unknown distance from where it left. Entering a new galaxy and a new solar system, they find the human natives of the planet Valeron being attacked by alien chlorine breathers. and help defeat the "Chlorans". Then they build a Death Star sized spaceship, the Skylark of Valeron, to contain the gigantic astronomical instruments they need to find their own galaxy from gazillions of light years away.
So by 1934-35 the Skylark  series involved exploring our own galaxy, a small part of another dimension with different physical laws, and also in our dimension the very distant galaxy where the planet Valeron was.  But I don't know if that counts for the purpose of the question.
Part Two: Lensman Series.
In Gray Lensman, first serialized in Astounding Science Fiction from October 1939 to January, 1930, the Lensmen respresent the government that rules most of our galaxy.  Gray Lensman Kimball Kinnison deduces that the forces of Boskone are invaders from another galaxy, which must be the one known as Lundmark's Nebula (probably not, repeat not, the same as the galaxy known as Wolf-Lundmark Melotte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf%E2%80%93Lundmark%E2%80%93Melotte[1]).
Kinneson later leads an expedition to Lundmark's Nebula or the Second Galaxy to search for the headquarters of Boskone.
So our Milky Way Galaxy and the Second Galaxy are the settings of various parts of Gray Lensman.  Since it is believed by the characters that those two galaxies are the only two galaxies to have billions of solar systems with planets in all the universe, there is very little motive for any characters to visit other galaxies during the Lensman novels.  In the prequel novel First Lensman (1950) one of the protagonists hopes to someday visit The Large Magellanic Cloud to see S Doradus close up, and that is the closest to a visit to a third galaxy in the Lensman series that I remember.
Part Three: Interstellar Patrol Series.
Edmund "World Wrecker" Hamilton's Interstellar Patrol series novel Outside the Universe first appeared in Weird Tales July to October 1929.  In it the Interstellar Patrol defends our galaxy against invaders from another galaxy, who of course needed to explore a second galaxy outside their own, namely our Milky Way Galaxy, in order to invade it.  But I don't remember if those aliens explored and invaded any other galaxies, or if any other galaxies were explored or visited by beings from our galaxy.
Part Four:  How Old is the Concept of Other Galaxies?
Zeiss Icon wrote:

Both the Skylark series and the Lensman series covered multiple galaxies. Given how late it was learned that "galaxy" wasn't a singular object comprising the entire universe (they were originally called "island universes"), this can't go back before about the 1930s, so Doc Smith and Skylark might well be the first.

Actually I am not sure that three or more galaxies (counting two external ones) were explored in either the Skylark or Lensman series during the 1930s. And the concept of "island universes" or other galaxies was known long before their existence was proved in the early 1920s.
William Hope Hodgson's novel The House on the Borderland (1908) begins with the discovery of the diary of an 18th century man in the ruins of an old house.  Most of the novel consists of the 18th century man's diary records of his strange experiences there.  And almost the only detail I remember is the 18th century man speculating whether some nebulae could be external galaxies.
And for years I thought that obviously it was possible for a writer in 1908 to think that maybe some of the nebulae were external galaxies, because Hodgson mentioned that idea.  But I wondered whether any 18th century man like the one in the novel could have wondered whether some nebulae could be external galaxies.  And eventually I learned there were speculations about that as early as the 18th century.

In 1734, philosopher Emanuel Swedenborg in his Principia speculated that there may be galaxies outside our own that are formed into galactic clusters that are minuscule parts of the universe which extends far beyond what we can see. These views "are remarkably close to the present-day views of the cosmos."[39] In 1745, Pierre Louis Maupertuis conjectured that some nebula-like objects are collections of stars with unique properties, including a glow exceeding the light its stars produce on their own, and repeated Johannes Hevelius's view that the bright spots are massive and flattened due to their rotation.[40] In 1750, Thomas Wright speculated (correctly) that the Milky Way is a flattened disk of stars, and that some of the nebulae visible in the night sky might be separate Milky Ways.[31][41]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy#Distinction_from_other_nebulae[1]
So a late 18th century man could have learned of the concept that some nebulae might be other galaxies, or might have thought of it himself.
So theoretically someone could have written fiction about exploring two or more external galaxies as early as 1750.
Part Five: Inconclusive Conclusion.
Thus it is possible that stories involving the exploration of not just one external galaxy but two or more external galaxies, could have been published in a pulp science fiction magazine sometime before "The Living Galaxy" by Laurence Manning in 1934, mentioned in the answer by user14111. User14111 obviously has far more expertise than me in early science fiction stories, but I don't know if that story is the actual first one about exploring multiple galaxies.
The first pulp science fiction was Amazing Stories founded, in 1926.  And science fiction stories were also published in Weird Tales, founded in 1923, and in general interest magazines and as novels both before and after 1926.


Send Data from a Raspberry Pi to a Webservice with a Python Script?

Question: I have a Webservice wich is reachable over a URL and I have a Raspberry with different sensors wich measures the temperature and co2.Now I want to write a Python script to send this values to the Webserver.
Comment: Welcome! Please read https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask and maybe https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/issues/53/ (PDF is for free).
Answer: Take a look at python-requests API. It's readily available as a dpkg package on raspberry pi's repos. http://docs.python-requests.org/en/master/
Answer: Assuming your web service is expecting a GET request with data passed as query string parameters, you would do something like this:
import requests
payload = {'sensor': 'temp1', 'temperature': 32}
response = requests.get('https://server.example.com/webservice/endpoint', params=payload)

Similar with a POST request to an endpoint expecting JSON encoded data:
response = requests.post('https://server.example.com/webservice/endpoint2', json=payload)

Tell us more about the webservice and I will edit the answer accordingly.


Automated Eth deposits onto L2 (e.g. Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon/Matic etc.)

Question: I would like to build a bridge between L1 and L2 that will send Eth from the smart contract on L1 to the smart contract on L2 automatically. So one will be able to deposit Eth on a smart-contract placed on the Ethereum blockchain. This contract should also have a function that, when called, will automatically send all the deposited Eth to the L1-L2 bridge/gateway, and from there it will go to the smart contract located on L2. Can anyone tell me how to do this? All L2 projects have their websites where you can use the Ethereum-L2 bridge/gateway and manually move the funds, but I haven't found anywhere instructions on how to do this by calling a smart-contract function.
Answer: You need to be more specific as "native" bridges are chain-related, but you can use more general solution like Synapse or Anyswap, perhaps easier if you plan to deploy on multiple chains.
As for the official bridges :

Arbitrum: you'll find the erc20 bridge smart contracts/tutorial here : https://developer.offchainlabs.com/docs/bridging_assets
Optimism: see here, iirc, you need to first submit your token as a PR https://optimismpbc.medium.com/arbitrary-token-bridging-d552f6bef694
Polygon: They should release their bridge to third party soon, as they are currently working with whitelisted projects


close fails on database connections (managed connection cleanup fails) in websphere 7 but not in websphere 6.1

Question: I have a simple method (used in a web application through servlets) that gets a connection from a JNDI name and issues a select statement (get connection, issue select, return result, close the connection etc. in finally). Due to other methods in the application the connection is set as autocommit=false. This method works normally in websphere 6.1 as well as in glassfish and weblogic. However, in websphere 7, it receives cleanup failed error when I close the connection because, it says, the connection is still in a transaction. Because I was not updating anything I did not commit or rollback the connection in this method (which can be wrong). If I add commit before closing the connection, it works. My question is why it works in websphere 6.1 (and other containers) and why not in websphere 7 ? What can be the cause of this difference ?
Answer: Please look at the Administrative Console, server settings, and the transaction service settings. The default settings differ in 7.x and 6.x.


Jetty TLS 1.0 and Client TLS 1.2

Question: A SOAP web service is running on jetty and it supports TLS 1.0 only. A standalone client was upgraded to use TLS 1.2 only. Now the client is not able to communicate with the server. Is it possible to change Jetty's configuration to support TLS 1.2 without changing code on the SOAP web service? How do I go about configuring this?
Comment: Are you sure that something *inside the web service* is configured so that `it supports TLS 1.0 only`? Usually web service frameworks do not control such lower level details, they happily live in their own level.
Answer: TLS 1.2 will require Java 8 at a minimum.
On the Jetty server side, you'll also want to be careful about which ciphers you include/exclude on the SslContextFactory to not exclude the ciphers that TLS 1.2 require.

Jetty TLS 1.0 and Client TLS 1.2


Emulate DESFire card on NFC phone

Question: For my master thesis I'm investigating the possibility to use an NFC enabled phone for opening off-line door locks. These locks currently work with DESFire cards which contains authorisation data. Furthermore, the card is also used to update configurations and obtain maintenance messages to/from the lock. The goal is to update and read this information to/from the lock via an application on the phone that communicates with an external server over the internet ultimately making the exchange of this information more efficient.
Currently, I think the best choice for getting card emulation to work is to use an SD card with NFC and a secure element. This provides two possibilities:
1) A possibility is to implement a custom made java card applet that emulates a DESFire card. Theoretically, this should be feasible as DESFire cards optionally supports APDUs (ISO7816).
2) Some of the NFC SD cards available on the market offer DESFire emulation as a ROM.
I've the following questions:

For option 1 I wonder what will happen if the off-line lock / reader initiates communication using DESFire 'native' commands instead of APDUs. Is it possible to interpret non-APDU commands from java card? If not, it probably means it will not work?
Is it possible to manage the content of an emulated DESFire card in option 2? The NFC SD cards that I saw provides a proprietary API to access the secure element. It allows this by transceiving APDUs. The emulated DESFire, however, is not a java card applet in this case but it is a ROM which may or may not support this communication with APDUs.

I know this question is not strictly related to programming. But I found that there are quite some people on stackoverflow with expertise on NFC related topics. In fact, I found most of my information here.
Thanks
Answer: In order to answer 1 you would need to examine carefully ETSI 102 705 and see if the API lets you process CLT events (lower level protocol exchanges) instead of the contactless chip. I think this is unlikely.
In option 2 there surely is a way to manage the contents, otherwise the proposed desfire emulation would be totally worthless, but this might end up being partly proprietary, or requiring a substantial effort in cryptography, in which case you need to obtain the right keys.
All in all, if I were you, I would do ISO7816 (14443-4) card emulation using javacard, and forget about all the NXP proprietary stuff, which is built to make you buy licenses and associated software solutions.
Comment: Thanks. I didn't phrase my second question correctly. Of course the content of the card can be managed but my question is whether it can be managed from a software application on the phone. What do you mean with 'a substantial effort in cryptography'? When I buy a NFC SD card with DESFire emulation, I assume that the keys of the card are known to me right?

Emulate DESFire card on NFC phone


Are there any D&D publications with settings in Mechanus?

Question: Is there any official published content centred around the plane Mechanus? I'd really want to know much more about the plane and its inhabitants. I feel inspired by the 5e Monster Manual, DM's Guide and Player's Handbook entries.
Answer: The supplement you probably want is "Planes of Law," which describes the lawfully-aligned planes of the Great Wheel in detail. Mechanus is, naturally, one of the planes it covers. You'll probably not find any treatment of the plane more detailed than this; It was released during the heyday of 2e AD&D's Planescape campaign setting, which expanded the planes from being an interesting place to visit into a full-fledged setting for campaigns.
Also... I'm not sure if I should include this or not, since it's not directly about Mechanus, but there is a second edition adventure (or rather, a series of adventures published in a single book) called "The Great Modron March." As the name suggests, it focuses on the Modrons: Those semi-mechanical exemplars of Law that inhabit the plane. It contains a little extra information about Mechanus that you might find useful, including its gate town (Automata), its inhabitants (chiefly the Modrons), its relationship with the rest of the planes (especially those in the Great Wheel), its Great Cycles (The giant clockwork keeps very regular time) and its Powers (assuming Primus the One counts as a power).
Comment: @RaxsSlayer My answer is, indeed, perfect. However, it is considered good practice to hold off on accepting an answer until 24 hours have passed, just in case someone sees that there's an accepted answer and doesn't bother to post an answer of their own that might be better than this one.
Comment: Perfect Answer! This is exactly what I needed.
Comment: That's a good call. I'm still getting used to the nature of this site. I must admit it's very professional and this certainly helps towards getting prompt, sensible answers. So I will definitely take your word for it. Thanks again.


Can you change from a J1 visa to an ESTA by going to Mexico for a few weeks?

Question: I'm a UK National currently on a J1 visa as a student in the US which expires on July 13th (after the grace period) but my flight isn't booked until August 22nd as I want to do some more travelling around the US. Can I go to Mexico for around 10 days and then re-enter the US on an ESTA?
Comment: Welcome to travel.SE.  What's your citizenship?
Comment: I'm a British Student
Answer: As long as you have your ESTA approved you should not have an issue.  As per CBP you're not a subject to the 2 year home rule as long as you're not entering the US for the purpose of work or study.
So if you leave the country and then enter on an approved ESTA you should not have an issue.


Redirect sound from PC to PC

Question: In my home network I have laptop and desktop computers. Speakers are connected to the desktop, but I want to manage music from my laptop.
Is there any other way to redirect sound from laptop to desktop?
Comment: Not an answer, but PulseAudio supports network audio transport. However, there's no Windows driver for it yet.
Comment: ORLY? http://pulseaudio.org/wiki/AboutPulseAudio#SupportedOperatingSystems
Comment: @mhambra: Daemon and tools, yes. Driver, no.
Answer: Get rid of your default player and install Foobar or anything alike with remote-control plugin. It is quite a normal linux practice for lots of nix players like mpc; and now it's web 2.0, home easy networks and windows.
http://forums.naimaudio.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8772903417/m/9862900827
Comment: Yes, that is the sane approach +1.
Comment: Yes, the "I want to package up all the audio out of my machine to transport it to another to actually make noise" is silly when there are music players that can present you with a simple web-page based interface...
Answer: NAS can do that and they claim there is a way to make it run under Windows.
I haven't used it there, but I guess the setup will be hairy. Also, NAS seems pretty much dead after pulseaudio entered the stage.

Redirect sound from PC to PC


How should one describe a future academic appointment

Question: I am currently a grad student, and will have an appointment as an assistant professor in a few months.  For various conferences I am attending, I am to provide my title.  I would prefer to mention my future position, if for no other reason so that people I meet will know where to find me in the future.  Is there a term for a future appointment like "President-elect" or "Chairperson-elect" that can be used?  "Assistant professor-elect" seems strange and "Assistant professor (effective August)" seems clunky.
Answer: I would not worry about the title as much as the new location. Assuming a name badge that looks something like

Strongbad
PhD Student
Crazy Go Nuts University

I would add a hand written line to make it

Strongbad
PhD Student
Crazy Go Nuts University
Krusty's Clown College (starting August)

I would only do this if the contract has been signed and there is no contingency on you finishing your PhD. If you have to finish your PhD to start the assistant professor position, then there is no guarantee you will be starting in August.
Comment: Mentioning especially such IT-heavy institutions will strike an impression that cannot be laughed off. First impression is King.
Answer: Sorry to be a bit of a party pooper, but I don't like either StrongBad's or paul garrett's suggestions. Notwithstanding the fact that you deserve all the respect and congratulations in the world for your new near-future position, and it's very understandable that you want everyone to know about it, I can't help thinking that writing anything other than your current affiliation on your badge or presentation slides risks leaving a rather negative impression of someone who is a bit too over-eager to take credit for things that they have not yet completely accomplished. After all, you are not technically a PhD yet, let alone an assistant professor.
My advice is therefore to tell anyone you feel should know about your new position in private conversation, and wait patiently until the effective date of your new appointment before listing it on any official documents such as your CV or conference badges. This is a special case of my more general philosophy that one should never brag about achievements that one has not yet fully accomplished.
Comment: @DanRomik in which case I would not say anything since the position is not really obtained.
Comment: Yes, I understand the OP's logic, but as it is not standard to do this, it may come across as weird.  In my experience, when people meet graduating PhD students (or finishing postdocs) at conferences, it's common to ask what they'll be doing next.  And people, esp with webpages, are easy to find online anyway, so advertising doesn't seem necessary.
Comment: I would argue that if you have signed a contract then you have accomplished the task. My answer does not mention anything about anticipated events (i.e., completing the PhD). Lots of people start TT positions before finishing their PhD.
Comment: @StrongBad at my university OP would not be allowed to start either a tenure track position or even a postdoc position without proof that he has finished his PhD. This condition is mentioned in the offer letter, so signing the contract does not entirely seal the deal.
Comment: @StrongBad yes, that was precisely my point. I think it is fine to tell people privately about it if one is confident in one's ability to overcome any remaining obstacles (which seems to be the case in OP's situation), but not to advertise it is an official fact.
Answer: The clunky version is nevertheless more explanatory: XXX, PhD YYY Univ (anticipated, June 2016), Assistant Prof., Univ of Whatevs (as of Sept, 2016).


How can I trigger an off-camera flash with a Polaroid SX 70 or a Yashica-Mat?

Question: I am interested in shooting pictures with off camera flash. I have a Polaroid sx 70 and one medium format Yashica mat 124.
I was wondering if is it feasbile to shoot with off camera flash with one of this two cameras.
Is there some kind of hack not too dangerous to obtain off camera flash shots with them?
Thank you in advance
Answer: The Yashica Mats that came up in a quick Google image search appear to have a PC sync port just to the right of the view finder lens.
If yours does, then it's as easy as attaching the flash, setting the shutter speed to X (or slower) and firing away.

The Polaroid has a flashbar slot, which can be converted to pc sync like this. i wouldn't attempt this unless you know what you're up to.
Failing that, a disposable flashbar flash could trigger an optical slave.
Answer: For the Yashica-Mat, there are little adaptors that attach to the cold-shoe on the side of the camera.  They have a hotshoe output and a PC-sync input.  This, plus a short PC-sync cable will allow you to attach a regular flash or wireless flash trigger to the Yashica-Mat.
You might want a backup PC-sync cable because they are notoriously fidgety and easy to break.


Why isn't there a wait for suggested edits approval clicks?

Question: Seem that if I try and upvote more than one comment too fast I get the warning about having to wait five seconds, or if I leave a comment I have to wait fifteen seconds between them. Why doesn't the suggested edits queue put a similar wait on clicking through on "approve" clicks? Looks like you can easily just click away (intentionally or accidentally) and rapidly approve suggested edits without any kind of limit.
Comment: I probably won't give up on the suggested edit queue, but I've been tempted. Recently, what a garbage heap of trivial or destructive, rapidly-approved edits.
Answer: There should be already a delay when reviewing suggested edits too fast. In I see the posts I review more than once, one of the developers says:

If many reviews were performed by the same user in a short period of time (as was the case for you), a fraction of them were invalidated. Then, those same tasks were given to you again, since you were no longer considered to have reviewed them.
This is fixed now: if a review would be invalidated, the buttons are instead temporarily disabled on the client, making it much more difficult to submit a review too fast.

There isn't a dialog box that appears when you click on the buttons too quickly, but the buttons are enabled with a delay.
When I review posts, the delay is noticeable. I cannot click any of the buttons too quickly. The delay is less than 5 seconds, and it is probably enough for avoiding I review too much posts (basing on the criteria they used for "too much reviewed posts").
Comment: I understand what you're saying but if there really is a delay (and not just the AJAX delay) then I don't think it's long enough. It's still very easy to blast through and approve edits whereas, for example, if you try and upvote comments too fast you get the orange box with the five second warning.
Comment: With comments it is different. The 5 seconds delay between actions on comments are strictly forced for a different reason, which [Jeff Atwood explained with "rate limiting requires this"](http://meta.stackexchange.com/a/14427/140449).
Answer: I believe there is...?
When I move from one review to the next, the option buttons at the top of the screen are greyed out briefly before I am actually able to click them.
Comment: That's just the delay imposed by the AJAX request. You can still click  like a madman on approve and move onto the next question. No timer imposed wait like with comments.
Comment: @j08691 Ah. My mistake, I suppose. I haven't tried to speed-click through the reviews, myself. :-)


Why two extension fields are isomorphic as vector spaces but not fields?

Question: I understand that $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{2})$ and $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{3})$ are isomorphic as vector spaces but not as fields. However, I do not understand why that is true. What is happening when they are vector spaces so that they are now isomorphic?
Answer: Fields have arithmetic properties which have to be preserved under isomorphism. So for example, if $\mathbb Q(\sqrt{3})$ and $\mathbb Q(\sqrt{2})$ are isomorphic, then since $3$ is a square in the first field it has to be a square also in the second, and you can easily check that this is not possible. On the other hand the $\mathbb Q$-vector space structure "sees" only the $\mathbb Q$-dimension, which is $2$ in both cases and if you know elementary linear algebra this tells you that those two fields are isomorphic as vector spaces .
Answer: Being isomorphic as fields means that you have two different fields whose sum and product tables are essentially the same (you only have different "names").
You can see that every isomorphism of your fields must fix $\mathbb{Q}$, so 3 has to appear in both of the multiplication tables as a square (which is clearly not possible).
On the other hand, when dealing with vector spaces, you just have additive groups and a scalar product. The additive tables of your structures are isomorphic (it would be the same for each $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{d}))$ so you actually have a vector space isomorphism.


My car won't start when i put the key in and turn it. No sound no lights no nothing. Could it be the starter?

Question: When I got to turn the key nothing happens. No lights no clicking no clock no nothing totally dead. It's a new battery. This is the second time it's happened within 6 months. Both times the car sat for 2 days without being driven. My mechanic says there is a short but does not have the equipment to figure it out. Any ideas?
Comment: No dash lights? Then it is not the starter.
Comment: If your mechanic doesn't own a multimeter, it's time to find a new mechanic...
Comment: Welcome to Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair!
Comment: Do you have access to an ammeter?
Comment: If you can test the battery that will tell you of there is a draw problem which is killing the battery. The other possibility would be failed ignition switch, but you basically have to test each possibility until you find the culprit.
Answer: If you have no dash lights or interior lights that means that either your battery is dead or there's a break in the electrical circuit required to power your car.
The test you need to do (or have someone else do) is to check the battery voltage. If it is strong, i.e. above 12.5 volts or even just 12 volts then the battery has enough charge to start the car, the problem is the battery connections or a bad connection in the power distribution. Simply cleaning the battery terminals and posts may fix this problem, otherwise someone needs to work their way through the electrical system to find what's gotten loose.
If the battery is discharged, i.e. the voltage is low, then what it means is that something in the car is using energy even when it is sitting. This is called a parasitic battery drain, and they can be a pain. Now, in a modern car there's always something using a bit of power (clocks, alarms) but these things are very miserly. For the battery to drain in 2 days there's 2 categories of problem:

Something is using power when it shouldn't, for instance a light not turning off. I left my map light on one time and it drained my battery overnight, I've heard of trunk, glove and interior lights staying because of broken switches. It may be worth taking 2 minutes to test these. Cars these days often turn their headlights off themselves, but it's still worth checking you didn't leave your lights on, it's easy to do
A short is draining the power from your battery. Malfunctioning radios, frayed and loose wires can draw power even when completely switched off. Testing for this involves putting a multimeter in-line with your battery and then removing fuses one by one to determine where the power leak is, sounds complicated but is actually easy to do. One thing to remember is that many modern cars pressurize the fuel system when the drivers side door is opened, you need to close the drivers side and leave it for 20 minutes before you start testing
Comment: It could also be the ignition switch if the battery is strong (though I guess that counts as a break in the circuit.)
Comment: Thank you very much. I'll see if that works with cleaning the battery


Why doesn't matter clump together such that it can't be taken apart again?

Question: Given the inverse square law force of gravity shouldn't two particles that are infinitely close to each other be infinitely attracted to one another? For example, suppose the hands of some super deity grabbed hold of two neutrinos and put them infinitely close to one another or suppose that some physicists in a high energy particle physics laboratory shot two neutrinos together at super high speeds. Why should any forces be able to pull the neutrinos apart again after they collide? Why don't we find any tiny super dense lumps of matter around us that are the results of high energy collisions and that we are unable to pull apart?
Comment: Have you heard of black holes?
Answer: There is no established quantum theory of gravity.
Hence, at the microscopic level of particle, we don't know what is going on gravitationally between particle, but it isn't going to be the "inverse square law" we know, just like electromagnetism between two charged particles is, on quantum scales, not just an "inverse square law", but a rich variety of interactions that can be thought of as being mediated by virtual photons, and that gives the inverse square law of electrostatics only in the macroscopic and non-relativistic limit of the simplest of these interactions.
Essentially, particles don't clump together as you imagine because they are, on the smallest scales, not particles at all. They are quantum states that are smeared out over an area like an electron orbital in an atom, and they do not behave as our classical intuition leads us to believe.
In essence, because we don't have a good description of gravity at these scales, and because quantum objects are not little dots of mass in space, your question might as well be countered with: "Why should they?"
Comment: Also, the distance on which gravity would become comparable to the EM force (and strong and weak too) for elementary particles (the Planck scale), is *much* shorter than any reasonable microscopic scale. So other forces will prevent the collapse long before gravity is felt at all. Of course, the uncertainty principle prevents a collapse as soon as the force becomes relevant (that's why atoms are stable).
Comment: @orion: Why would it be the *uncertainty principle* that prevents the collapse of atoms? It is simply the discretization of allowed states and the Pauli exclusion principle that prohibits the electrons from "falling into the nucleus", and instead makes them from nice shells.
Comment: The the "width" of the probability distribution is limited by the fact that the wavefunction must solve the Schrödinger equation (which can roughly be translated into the trade-off between mean square radius and mean square momentum, aka, the uncertainty principle). The Pauli exclusion principle prevents collapse of all electrons into the same lowest orbital, but for a single electron, you don't need the Pauli principle to derive the Bohr radius. That's all because if you squeeze the wavefunction, you increase its energy.
Answer: Ignoring the quantum effects that make such a situation both improbable and overtaken by stronger but shorter acting forces - if we take Newton's gravitational equation with the inverse square law:
$$ F = \frac{G \cdot M_1 \cdot M_2}{R^2} $$
and if, in theory, you get 2 objects to occupy the same exact space - (ignoring quantum and other difficulties there of), The equation only works if, as you bring R to 0, you also bring the size of the masses to zero.    If you actually pass 2 objects into each other, gravity decreases, because part of mass 1 is now on both sides of part of mass 2, cancelling out some of the gravitation.   Newton's equation no longer applies if the objects are partially inside each other.
Another way to think about this is that, if you were able to build a house in the center of the earth - there would be zero gravity, cause the mass of the earth would be equal all around you - essentially tugging on you from all directions equally.   The same principal would apply if 2 objects occupy the same space.  The gravitational attraction between 2 options in the same space would actually go towards zero, not infinity.   The gravitation would be at it's highest point around the time they touch, or shortly after. - that's an interesting question in fact where it would be highest, but it would be either just when they touch or not far past that.
Answer: The paradox you describe is even worse than the effect of gravity alone: Electrostatics works the same, attracting most matter at everyday distances very strongly by comparison. That is obvious for opposite charges, but even neutral matter attracts as electric interaction induces dipoles. Even where you have equal charges, which do repel each other, you do not end up with a stable floating arrangement (the Earnshaw theorem).
The answer is quantum mechanics: Electrons are fermions, which cannot occupy the same place in phase-space (the Pauli exclusion principle). Hence there are electronic states in atoms which, if occupied, will not be available to other electrons, not even partially (except in special mathematically orthogonal arrangements, the other states). Anything else coming close enough for wavefunctions to overlap experiences a repulsive force, which for any significant overlap is rather large. The result, at least if one were to visualize electrons as point-like rather than occupying their entire orbital, is that matter is essentially empty space.
If you are thinking more on astronomical or cosmological scales, your focus on gravity is correct. In that case, you balance inertia from the big bang with gravity (and possibly other forces, e.g. dark energy). For astronomical bodies, gravitational collapse occurs and is only slowed by conservation of angular momentum, which means that a part of the potential energy must first be turned into heat, which creates gas pressure that balances gravity. Then fusion occurs and that heating balances further collapse. Eventually, the same quantum mechanical effect, the Pauli exclusion principle, stabilizes a neutron star (where the electrons and protons have reacted to neutrons), and if that is not enough, you get a black hole. Which is the other answer to your question: Sometimes nothing does succeed in stopping gravitational collapse. I was temped to throw in the word "ultimately," but note that at least small black holes are not forever, because they shrink as they turn their mass into Hawking radiation.
EDIT:
The accepted and vastly more popular answer essentially points out that we do not know what ultimately happens in detail at the core of a black hole because we do not have a model (or theory) for that. That is certainly true: Even if you acknowledge attempts at building better theories (String theories tend to automatically be theories of quantum gravity), they certainly are not at a state where we could confidently predict what unknown fundamental particles with what masses yet await discovery. And as densities rise, just like electrons and protons react to neutrons to allow further compression, eventually one gets to ever more massive/energetic particles eventually beyond what we could currently have experimental knowledge of. But does it matter just how exotic the particles and energy inside of a black hole looks like in detail? As long as you stay on the outside, you will not get to see much useful evidence of its innermost interior anyways (in theory, there is information in Hawking radiation; in practice, that is useless thermodynamic entropy). Hence the question can largely be answered without a theory of quantum gravity, as this answer attempts to do.
Comment: There is a bit of a problem with finding massive bosons that actually last rather than decay very quickly! There are composites though: An even number of fermions effectively add up to behave like a boson (in as much as it is possible to see them only as a unit). These can indeed condense into a single quantum state, a [Bose-Einstein condensate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate).
Comment: Doesn't the Pauli exclusion principle only apply to Fermions? What happens if we repeat the experiment with Bosons? I suppose this could be evidence that photons are massless but what about other types of Bosons that we know to have mass?
Answer: I think it helps to look at why things get stuck at all.
If you have two things that could together get to a lower energy level than they are at now, and they can give that excess energy up to something (like sending photons into deep space) that isn't going to give it back (at least for a long time), then they can get stuck (at least for a while).
So why isn't a simple inverse square force law doing that?
First, if you have a central force law (force between the centers of the bodies), then angular momentum is conserved, so if you don't aim it absolutely perfectly straight one, then it can slingshot around like a planetary orbit rather than getting super close.
Second, it has to be able to give the excess energy away.  If you just have a conservative force, then the potential energy and kinetic energy exchange, which means as you get super close, your kinetic energy gets super large.  And a large kinetic energy means it is hard to get you to not keep going in that general direction.  An extreme case could be an infinite kinetic energy for an instant as you pass through each other, but then you start to move away.  So you got close, but without giving energy away you aren't stuck together, you just pass through each other while going really really fast.
In reality an inverse square law isn't totally accurate at small distances, and the infinite kinetic energy that implied would be a giveaway about that. Quantum effects or relativistic effects can cause deviations from a Newtonian Force Law.
Answer: First of all, infinitesimal small distances are not allowed in the quantum world simply due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle - the Newtonian force law doesn't hold at these distances. Apart from that, new forces arise that repel at short distances, a simple $H_2$ molecule is an example for that. When you manage to collide particles instead, the whole realm of particle reactions opens - they don't behave as simple spheres, but react with each other.
Comment: First, if with "new forces" you refer to Pauli repulsion, that only applies to identical fermions, and so does not answer the question. Second, Heisenberg's principle *does not forbid* infinitesimal distances, it forbids the exact simultaneous measurement of such distances of things with determined momenta. It is correct that the Newtonian force law does not hold, but this is because it emerges from quantum theory only in the classical limit, not because of the HUP.
Comment: Yes, I was referring to that. Thank you for the clarification, that is indeed a crucial difference.


About the pid of the process

Question: I've a somewhat silly question, if i have a series of processes that are created ... these are not necessarily some sort of inheritance, the pid of the processes have to be numbers continuous  or random pids ?
Comment: in linux,
had no idea that they also depended on the operating system..
Answer: This is determined by the Operating System.
In general, they are usually sequentially assigned by the OS.  However, this behavior is not something to base decisions upon, since most operating system specifications state that the process ID allocation is not deterministic (ie: it could be random, and could change in a future version, etc).
Answer: On Linux, pids are generally allocated sequentially on a system-wide basis, but they will wrap around periodically, and there may be 'gaps' caused by other unrelated processes. In an extreme case, you might have a 'gap' wide enough to cause this wrap-around. So don't assume any particular ordering - instead explicitly keep track of your parent or child process' PIDs.
Comment: I'm doing a program in C using semaphore that simulates the creation and release process, then I don't know whether to assign a PID random process or whether each assigning consecutive numbers from a value, I want the simulation to be as similar as possible to the clearance processes in linux
Comment: If you're making a simulation, the best approach from the fuzzing viewpoint would be to have multiple methods (random, sequential, almost-sequential) and try whatever you're testing with each.
Answer: Here's how to test what your system does:
<code>for i in $(seq 20); do ps; done | grep ps
</code>
The PIDs of the "ps" commands are consecutive processes, or as close to consecutive as any other caller could reasonably expect to be able to spawn.
My cygwin terminal on Windows allocates them randomly-ish, my web host allocates them sequentially (with occasional gaps which presumably are for processes run by other users or servers).
Some consider sequential PID allocation to be a slight possible security concern, since it may leak information between users of a multi-user system.
Comment: A better approach would be

    for i in `seq 20`; do sh -c 'echo $$'; done

Grepping for 'ps' in 'ps's output may get some noise in the result (eg, other users running ps at the same time...)
Comment: Sure, I was just thinking about a quick developer test from the command line. If you wrote a script or something that relied on the output it's a different matter.
Answer: On AIX, you will often see bigger (e.g. 7-digit) PIDs and they are not necessarily allocated semi-sequentially (though I seemed to be cycling in increments of 2 when I tested; there was another user on the machine, so it may not mean much).
Fresh login on an AIX 5.3 machine:
<code>$ ps
     PID    TTY  TIME CMD
 1060910 pts/27  0:00 -ksh
 1155224 pts/27  0:00 ps
$
</code>
Answer: Depends on your platform, but you shouldn't be dependent on any specific order to your pid's.
On Windows, pid's are usually allocated in increasing numbers, but as processes exit the pid's can be recycled and you will see cases where a newer process has a lower pid than an older process.  Also, pid's come out of the same namespace as tid's, so you won't see pid's increasing by 4 as you launch new processes.
Answer: From your perspective they will be random.  The system manages those numbers and assigns them as processes are created.  A quick look at the PID's currently on my system shows that they are all divisible by 4...
Comment: I'm doing a program in C using semaphore that simulates the creation and release process, then I don't know whether to assign a PID random process or whether each assigning consecutive numbers from a value, I want the simulation to be as similar as possible to the clearance processes in linux
Answer: If you're creating those childs you'll know the pid, the pid depends on the OS scheduler, you don't care about this stuff.

About the pid of the process


Frequency formula in Excel 2010

Question: I am just trying to figure a way to get the frequency of occurrence of a number within a large array, not the freq of the number in the array belonging to a range.
Eg, how many times does the number 38 appear in the array below.
6   14  29  30  45
    19      38  49

3   15  29  33  41
6   17      35  44
    19      38  47

Is there a formula I can use? I have the numbers in separate columns which I am not able to paste here; they also have blank cells in between - should they be in contiguous cells?  My array is large and has to do with a number of weekly payments.
Going by what I read on frequency formula tips on the blog I am a rudimentary user of excel. Appreciate your help.
Answer: To count the number of "38" in your array:
If you have the numbers in cells A1:A10, the formula is =COUNTIF(A1:A10,38)
It should not matter if you have blanks in between as long as they are, in fact, blank.

Frequency formula in Excel 2010


What is this soil digging insect?

Question: It is in Texas(Month: May). Are these flying ants?termites? or Cicada Killers?
Answer: Certainly not cicada killers--those have yellow stripes on them, are considerably larger, and also have a very different shape of abdomen. Here's a good pic of one of those: https://bugguide.net/node/view/1721236/bgimage.
They certainly look to have a hymenopteran "waist" so that means they aren't termites, they are some kind of winged ant. Possibly carpenter ants due to the large size (for ants) and the reddish-brown color (like this one https://bugguide.net/node/view/1056576/bgimage).

What is this soil digging insect?


Deterministic Encryption on Contact.Name field Used in Where Clause causing Issue

Question: I applied a Deterministic case insensitive encryption on contact.name field, And whenever I use it in a WHERE clause of SOQL query, it throws me an Field 'Name' can not be filtered in a query call. I though if you apply Deterministic Encryption to a field you can use it in SOQL Where clause? Need help for this one.
Comment: I wonder if the issue relates to the fact that Contact.Name is a compound field generated from the (Title,) FirstName, (MiddleName) and LastName values? Could you apply encryption on these fields instead?
Comment: I'd try [synchronizing data](https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=security_pe_mass_encryption.htm&type=5) (or re-synchronizing if you've done it before) and see if that helps. If the encryption is truly deterministic, it sounds like a bug.
Comment: The weird thing is documentation uses Contact. Name for examples in their soql query for deterministic encryption haha.
Comment: I'd contact support - the field is clearly set up to support all three flavors of encryption
Answer: This is expected behavior. When you encrypt contact name we're actually encrypting first name and last name separately. See the linked help article which explains the considerations for deterministic encryption, as it has a section dedicated to this and provides a workaround.
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=security_pe_deterministic_considerations.htm&type=5
Comment: Yeah , I miss understood this part of Name vs First Name and Last name. thanks a lot


Etymology of the suffix -ino

Question: I don't speak Italian, but if I'm not mistaken, -ino is both a diminutive (e.g. ragazzo 'boy' – ragazzino 'little boy') and a suffix that creates nationality names (e. g. tunisino means 'Tunisian'). Is there a way to check if there is an etymological link between these two meanings of the suffix? Like, if they share an origin, or if there is a connection between them semantically? Mainly what interests me is if they are the same morpheme with 2 meanings (i.e. a case of polysemy) or two different morphemes that just happen to have the same form (i.e. a case of homonymy). It would really give me a peace of mind if I knew the answer :) If, by any chance you could provide any sources/dictionaries/anything that would help me with this question (otherwise even a simple answer will do, in case you happen to know the answer), I'd be eternally grateful. My browsings on google haven't helped at all.
Answer: According to this study, they both come from Latin -īnus:

Data from Romance languages (§ 4.1), from Greek (§ 4.2), and from
Slavonic languages (§ 4.3) give evidence in favor of this second hypothesis: the shift in meaning of It. -ino (in tavolino "small table"), Gr. -άκι (in λαθάκι "a pardonable error"), Blg. -ec/-íca (in brátec "little brother" / zeníca "little woman"), etc. towards the current diminutive value took its first steps in the designation of the genealogical relation between father and son and between the adult and the young.

Some of the most widely used Romance diminutive suffixes, It. -ino, sp. –ín, port. ‑inho, are the outcome of a single Latin suffix, -īnus, the various semantic readings of which are usually traced back to a vague relational value (cănīnus "pertaining to the dog"; vespertīnus "happening in the evening", Sābātīnus "of Sabate, a town in Etruria", etc.)

This semantic development has happened in Slavic languages as well, with an apparently unrelated suffix -it'ь. Its reflexes form patronyms (Russian Иванович [Ivanovich] "son of Ivan"), demonyms (Russian москвич [moskvich] "resident of Moscow"), diminutives (Serbo-Croatian Божић [Bozhich] "Yuletide", literally "small god") and agent nouns (Macedonian водич [vodich] "guide").

Etymology of the suffix -ino


What should I say when I hear the death of a Muslim?

Question: What should I say when I hear the death of a Muslim? Is there any specific dua/words that Shahaba (R) uttered?
Answer: The prophet PBUH said:

إذا مات الإنسان انقطع عنه عمله إلا من ثلاثة : صدقة جارية . أو علم ينتفع به . أو ولد صالح يدعو له "صحيح مسلم 1613
If a person dies, his deeds are cut except for three: A running Charity (Ex: you helped build a Mosque, charity, etc..) or knowledge being used (Ex: you made a cure to help the sick) or a pious son to make dua for him. Please note that the last doesn't specifically mean an actual son, it can be anyone.
(Sahih Muslim 1613)

Given that, you can make Dua in any way you want or say anything. The prophet said a few Dua himself like (keep in mind that you can say anything you want):

عن أبي عبد الرحمن عوف بن مالك رضي الله عنه قال:(صلى رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلم على جنازة فحفظت من دعائه وهو يقول: اللهم اغفر له وارحمه، وعافه واعف عنه، وأكرم نزله، ووسع مدخله، واغسله بالماء والثلج والبرد، ونقه من الخطايا كما نقيت الثوب الأبيض من الدنس، وأبدله داراً خيراً من داره، وأهلاً خيراً من أهله، وزوجاً خيراً من زوجه، وأدخله الجنة، وأعذه من عذاب القبر ومن عذاب النار ) صحيح مسلم 1912
Reported from father of Abdulrahaman ben awf be malik: The prophet PBUH prayed on a funeral and I remember some sayings of the prophet: Oh Allah have mercy on him, make him well and forgive him, make his decent honorable, make his space vast, wash him with water, ice and snow, and clear him of his sins like cleaning a white shirt from dirt, and give him a house better than his house, a family better than his family, a wife better than his wife and give him paradise and to avoid the torture of the grave and hellfire.
(Sahih Muslim 1912 كتاب الجنائز - باب الدعاء للميت في الصلاة)
Comment: "Please note that the last doesn't specifically mean an actual son, it can be anyone." Which scholars have this opinion. I usually heard it is simply a son.
Answer: Briefly speaking, whenever we hear that for example somebody died, the best dua/words seems to be according to the following words:

For a lady who dies, you say "Allah yirhama (Yarhamha)" (الله یرحمها)
  which in fact means May Allah bless her soul.
And for a man who dies, you say "Allah yirhamou"(Yarhamah) (الله
  یرحمه) which means May Allah bless his soul.
Comment: @Tashanna Chamma, as Dear Servant-Of-Wiser mentioned, your nice answer would be better and more complete if you do with more details. So, whereas it seems a right answer, then I try to add it more details with your permission. / I'll illustrate about "what do they mean" too, as Dear Servant-of-Wiser ask. / Good luck both of you.
Comment: @SEYYED___ALIالسید____علی thats perfectly fine. If anything, i think we need to support our answers. So long as we can keep this up, i reckon slowly we can eliminate the hatred  between sects thats seen amongst muslims :)
Comment: Oh yeah, well done for being such an optimistic and good-intention person. God willing we Muslims should be united against the enemies of the Islam... / Yes, I reckon we should support our nice answers. و من الله توفیق
Comment: Assalam.... ur enthusiasm for answering is appreciated. but plzz learn [how to answer](http://islam.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer), and plz try to explain it a little bit more... and "What do they mean?"
Answer: Extracting from this ayah...

Who, when disaster strikes them, say, "Indeed we belong to Allah , and indeed to Him we will return."(Qur'an 2:156)

our interesting part....
"Indeed we belong to Allah , and indeed to Him we will return."... reciting this part in a language which you understand (say, ur mother tongue) is better.
And of course, along side, we pray for the deceased that Allah may forgive his/her sins and grant mercy on him/her.
May the creator guide us all.
Answer: Inna lilah hi wa inna ilay hir rajioon (from god we come to god we go)
Comment: Welcome to Islam.SE! Please check out a [tour](https://islam.stackexchange.com/tour) of our site to learn more about how this site works. This answer could benefit from provided external sources and [evidence](https://islam.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3337/how-do-i-add-evidence-to-my-answer) to support your answer.
Answer: You should say "انا لله و انا الیه راجعون
inna lelah weh inna ilayhii raajeoun"
For more information about Islam please check my instagram at @abalfazljazini


What happened to Naruto's Six Paths Sage Mode?

Question: In The Last: Naruto the Movie,

 Naruto appears fighting Toneri using Tailed Beast Mode with Sage Mode. What happened to his stronger form (Six Paths Sage Mode)!? Did he lose it?
Answer: There is a theory that Naruto still has the potential to use it but he doesn't, since it needs chakra from all nine Tailed Beasts, which he used up in his battle against Sasuke. The sage said that he was a pseudo-Ten Tails and that the Tailed Beasts could all go into him to speak with each other (this was after he took back his yin and yang seals from Naruto and Sasuke). He may have felt there was no need to, since both halves of the Kyuubi are sealed inside him now.
Comment: Maybe, but i still believe six paths sage mode is stronger than full nine tails mode since its the chakra from all tailed beasts, and from the few videos i saw of the movies it appears that he had some difficult dealing with toneri in nine tails mode... and i know for sure that six paths sage mode doesn't appear in the movie.
Answer: Even If he doesn't have all the tailed beast he still should have half of the sages chakra but he did lose the are in which the sage gave his chakra. The movie didn't really show Naruto going all out from what I've seen.
I don't even know if Naruto still have the truth seeking balls.
Answer: The Six Paths Sage Mode is a heightened state of Sage Mode, which drastically empowers the user's abilities to a far greater extent by combining the Six Paths Sage Chakra and the chakra of all nine Tailed Beasts. Hagaromo takes back his Yang chakra from Naruto, thus taking away the Six Paths Sage Chakra. I think this might have led to Naruto losing the Six Paths Sage Mode. Maybe...
Comment: I see your point of view, but sasuke awakens his rinnegan with six paths chakra too. In the movie he appears with the rinnegan, it doesn't seem fair that sasuke keeps his power-up and naruto loses six paths sage mode. Thanks for the answer
Answer: I believe that he still has access to the Six Paths Sage Mode, due to the fact that he could still enter it during his fight with Sasuke even after the mark on his hand vanished. Plus, even after the battle with Sasuke, it is shown that he was able to dispel the Infinite Tsukiyomi with Sasuke, which requires both the Rinnegan and the power of all Tailed Beasts according to the sage.
Answer: I would think that how Minato sealed part of Kurama, in which it could repllenish its own energy when its low. I'm guessing that the taled beast within Naruto could do the samething. Seeing as Hagoromo said that Naruto would be the meeting place for all the tailed beast.
Naruto should have the potential to use six paths sage mode, seeing as Sasuke still has full access of his rinnegan. He could even turn the eye off completly. I remember reading somewhere that in the Last movie Naruto's chakra was turned into a bomb that destroyed half the moon. That could be why he doesn't use that mode. I did see that Naruto could touch Toneri Ōtsutsuki's truth seeking balls which means he has the other half of Hagoromo's chakra which is the important thing.
Answer: Sage mode is all about natural energy and the moon has no nature, so Naruto can't connect with all the Tailed Beasts. That's why he can't go into the Six Paths Sage Mode. Six Paths Sage Mode is a heightened state of Sage Mode. If Naruto can't use Sage Mode on the moon, he also can't use Six Paths Sage Mode because of the absence of nature. He can't collect any natural energy and he  also can't connect to other Tailed Beasts because they all are still on Earth.


CPU for desktop/server

Question: Which is the difference between a server and a desktop CPU ? Why should I buy a Xeon processor for a server why don't use instead a simple intel quad 4-core CPU for a desktop PC ?
Comment: This is a question for superuser.com. SO is only meant for programming questions.
Comment: 10 years later this is so totally outdated it is not even funny. And with the recent 64 core desktop cpu release from AMD it is actually funny ;)
Answer: What if you want/need a second processor? Xeon (or Opteron obviously) is the only way forward.
Comment: Agree. The only difference is the possibility to use multiple processors in one motherboard.
You could see this especially in AMD processor, desktop and server  are the same thing, only HT links are different.
Answer: This page has some answers: http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-xeon-and-i7/
Comment: I don|t know if this is true anymore. I dont know the details but the new xeons might have superceded the article. They have been touted i7  xeons. That might be wrong though.
Answer: The difference nowadays is maximum cpu density. If you need lots of number crunching in a small space, You need server cpus as only they can be coupled on multi cpo mobos. This means dual socket, 4 socket or more cpus per rack space. Cant do that with consumer cpus. aside from that, if you look at current benchmarks, desktop cpus have catched up so far with server cpus that there is no real processing power advantage justifing the price difference between server hardware and consumer hardware.
Have a look at benchmarks.
With the advent of ever more rugged pc hardware, gigabyte has such a series of components, i dont even know if server hardware will outlive prosumer gear. Also you can get a lot of redundancy for the price difference.
Only if you need very special capabilities, you will have to pick server platforms. For example if you need data integrity, only intel xeon cpus support ecc ram, the core series doesnt, because thats the way intel segments markets in that case. I dont know about amd in that case though.
Tell what You need and we will advise.
Sorry for bad punctuation, i have to work on the wrong codepage at the moment.

CPU for desktop/server


How to calculate a module's dist hash

Question: I have Raku installed in ~/.rakudo-star/rakudo-star-2018.04, using LoneStar. When zef installs a module, it gets installed into a subdirectory of the Rakudo directory. In here is a directory named perl6/site/resources, which seem to hold all the installed files. How can I figure out which module is contained in which file, using Raku?
Comment: The sha1s are an implementation detail. Also see https://github.com/ugexe/zef/issues/241#issuecomment-383823558 — "The on-disk layout of the a CompUnit::Repository::Installation is undocumented and may change at any time."
Answer: If you want to get the source of a namespace that would get loaded you can do:
my $module-name = 'Test';

# Get a Distribution object which provides an IO interface to its contents
my $compunit         = $*REPO.resolve(CompUnit::DependencySpecification.new(:short-name{$module-name}));
my $distribution     = $compunit.distribution;
my $handle-from-name = $distribution.content($distribution.meta<provides>{$module-name}.keys[0]).open;
say $handle-from-name.slurp(:close);

# Or if we already know the name-path:
my $handle-from-path = $distribution.content("lib/Test.rakumod").open;
say $handle-from-path.slurp(:close);

Note that $compunit.distribution will only work if resolve returned a CompUnit from a CompUnit::Repository::Installation repository.
rakudo@1812 is the framework to improve this further, allowing individual repositories to be queried ( $*REPO.resolve iterates the linked list of repos to give a result ) and unifying behavior for resolve/candidates/etc between CompUnit::Repository::Installation and CompUnit::Repository::FileSystem.
Comment: Whatever backs a Distribution's content method is an implementation detail -- it might be backed by a file, [socket](https://github.com/ugexe/Perl6-Distribution--Common--Remote/blob/d152ce7ab92794a28856648ba6b177c4130f29ee/t/01-basic.t#L8), data piped from a process, etc. You can technically achieve this *in this specific instance* via `$distribution.content($distribution.meta.keys[0]).path` but you'd be depending on undocumented/unsupported behavior that we may change at any time.
Comment: Also: since you are trying to extract POD you likely do not need the file itself. The source should suffice for this purpose since you can EVAL it or use something like `my $*LINEPOSCACHE; say Perl6::Grammar.parse($source, :actions(Perl6::Actions.new())).ast.dump;`
Comment: Would it be possible to get the absolute path to the file in question, instead of an `IO::Handle`?
Answer: If I remember correctly, you shouldn't. It's zef the one that must take care of it. But if you positively have to, use the SHA1 signatures in the directory with zef locate
zef --sha1 locate 5417D0588AE3C30CF7F84DA87D27D4521713522A

will output (in my system)
===> From Distribution: zef:ver<0.4.4>:auth<github:ugexe>:api<>
lib/Zef/Service/Shell/PowerShell/download.pm6 => /home/jmerelo/.rakudobrew/moar-2018.06/install/share/perl6/site/sources/5417D0588AE3C30CF7F84DA87D27D4521713522A

From your question, it's not too clear if what you want to do is the opposite, that is, find out which SHA1 corresponds to which file; in that case, try and to this:
zef locate bin/lwp-download.pl

which will return
===> From Distribution: LWP::Simple:ver<0.103>:auth<Cosimo Streppone>:api<>
bin/lwp-download.pl => /home/jmerelo/.rakudobrew/moar-2018.06/install/share/perl6/site/resources/059BD7DBF74D1598B0ACDB48574CC351A3AD16BC

Comment: @Tyil if I remember correctly, I also asked somewhere if the commands in the zef CLI could be used from other programs. Since all of them are codified as MAIN functions, it's kind of hard. Answer was: no, you can't, and it's not in the roadmap. So i guess it's either run it as an external program or fork and try to do that...
Comment: I wanted to do the opposite, for a new functionality in `p6man`. I want to be able to run `p6man Some::Module` and make it render the pod of `Some::Module`
Comment: Also, is there no specific part of zef I can `use` to do this from within Perl 6?

How to calculate a module's dist hash


Connect a classic raleigh dynamo hub to a lamp?

Question: How do I connect a classic raleigh dynamo hub to a lamp please?
Comment: Welcome to [bicycles.se] @Jon. I'm surprised that we don't seem to already have this question.
Comment: I added the image above, and based on [this link](http://minisystem.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/ode-to-raleigh-superbe-and-its-dynohub.html) it looks as though you just connect the two wires to the lamp. If you have a one wire lamp, the other wire is your frame so normally I just put the end of one wire under the lamp mount. Pictures of your dynamo and lamp would allow me (or someone else) to answer your specific question.
Comment: Wow! Thanks! The information is spot on. I'm in the process of repainting the bike so it's in bits at the moment. The dynamo hub is exactly the same as the one in the picture you added, but I haven't got a light yet. I'm waiting for an eBay purchase! Thank you very much for your help.
Answer: Modern lights run on 6 volts. The front light is 2.4 watts and the rear is 0.6 for a total generator output of 3.0 watts. The first thing to do would be to see if you have one wire connection or two. If you've only got one then the dynamo is probably built to use the frame of the bicycle as ground. If there are two then one is the hot wire and the other is ground. With older, halogen, bulbs the polarity (which wire on the dynamo you hook to which wire on the light) doesn't matter. Modern LED lights may care, so use a meter to figure out which wire is which – you may also be able to tell by looking carefully. The ground, or negative, wire is usually marked in some fashion. Typical markings are a white stripe or a ridge on the wire.
After sorting out the connections, you need to know the voltage. See if you can find a readable rating on the dynamo, or failing that put a meter on the outputs and spin the wheel – the voltage will probably vary with speed, but it shouldn't be too hard to tell if you're getting something close to 6 volts at normal speeds.
If you have 6 volts then you should be able to hook up a modern light. Just connect the wires (if there are two), paying attention to the polarity. If there is only one wire connect the positive from the light to it and the negative to the frame of the bicycle. If you connect a light and nothing happens, try reversing the wires it may be that you have the polarity backwards.
If the output of the dynamo is more than 6 volts, you have a different problem. Too high a voltage will damage the light. So if the voltage seems too high, start by connecting a light that works and spinning the wheel at a slow speed with a volt meter attached. Watch the meter as you spin the wheel. Sometimes a load on the generator will bring down the output voltage. Again at normal riding speed the dynamo output should be right around 6 volts.
Comment: Modern lights *designed for use with dynamos* run on 6 volts.
Comment: I kind of assumed we were talking about dynamo lights…
Comment: Thank you for your very detailed but understandable answer. The bikes in bits at the moment but I'll be putting your information to good use in the next few weeks. Thanks again. Oh and I'm going to get a period set of lights for the bike so you were on the money. Cheers.
Comment: Me too but it's having seen what people get up to I'd state the assumption up front.
Comment: For what it's worth, [Busch & Müller](http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/b&m-hl.asp) makes some "classic" looking lights. Both ones that they intentionally make to look like older dynamo front lights, and some modern designs like the Cyo that – in my opinion at least – hark back to the look of older lights. They are not inexpensive though.


Which should I put on my bigger machine? Magento Webserver of Magento Database?

Question: I am about to launch a new Magento website and I was interested in your feedback on this issue? Do you think the Magento PHP code is slower or the Magento MySQL operations are slower? Which should I split out into the larger box of my two servers?
Comment: define "bigger"
Answer: Our experience: We only host Magento stores.
It is sadly a very, very common misconception with Magento that you should even use a separate DB server, and worse, that you should use your most powerful server as the DB server.
Unless you are in a clustered configuration with multiple web servers, we never advocate using a separate database server for Magento.
I'm going to back this up with the latest stats from some servers.
I have taken the load average from a small Magento website (4,000 unique visitors per day). You can see for yourself that the separate DB server uses very little CPU and resources in general. In fact, the only thing it does require is a lot of RAM.
MySQL is absolutely not the bottleneck for any Magento installation. But if you must use two servers....
... I am going to provide this recommendation on the basis your site has around 10,000 daily unique visitors. BUT in order for an accurate reply, you should really post:

Your target level of traffic, visits, hits
Your full server specifications

For your webserver

You want as many, and as fast CPUs as possible (the more cores, the greater the concurrency support - the faster the clock speed, the faster the individual page load times)
You need a proportional amount of RAM to CPU, usually 1GB per core is a good guide
I/O is not an issue, so RAID1 7200RPM+ disks will suffice (WD RE4 or WD 3000 HLFS)

For your DB server

You do not need many cores, dual core would be more than enough. But again, higher the clock speed, the faster the individual queries.
You want as much RAM as possible. Magento uses InnoDB and InnoDB craves RAM to run well.
I/O and general IOPS make/break a DB server - so you want a fast disk set-up, but for a 10k visitor store, RAID1 7200RPM+ disks will suffice (WD RE4 or WD 3000 HLFS).

You could also load balance between web traffic between the two servers, but the configuration for this is way beyond the scope of this reply.

Database server load

Web server load
Answer: Having had to bounce the php memory_limit up to 512MB for certain processes to run, I've watched each Apache process loaded essentially bug out memory wise. You will learn to drop mod_php5 really quickly as turning your Apache web services into php interpreters IS NOT THE BEST USE OF RESOURCES. Under FastCGI you get to run Apache WorkerMPM returning it to serving html which it does best while FastCGI runs the PHP interpreter as a separate process. On top of this you will need some sort of opcode caching. Your primary fastest server optimized for memory and CPU use needs to be your Web/PHP server. Your secondary server optimized for fast disk I/O is where you run MySQL services.
It's common with two server systems to run a quad core system with 12GB+ memory for the web server and a two core system with 8GB+ and a fast disk subsystem for the db server.
Comment: You don't need to drop Apache entirely, put it behind nginx and configure nginx to serve static files directly and proxy to Apache for PHP requests. Agreed that the web server needs more ram and CPU than the db server but the db server needs fast disks as Magento is very heavy on disk writes (most reads will be from RAM if you have enough).
Comment: We ditched it for LiteSpeed. Black Friday was nicely in the green for it. LiteSpeed and lsphp5 are a lot more efficient at handling the php end of things. Combine this with full page caching and a lot of Magento's performance problems go away.
Comment: @FiascoLabs - pretty unlikely. Even Apache/mod_php can match LiteSpeed like-for-like in performance for Magento because it isn't the bottleneck. Then add in licence limitations and costs, it makes LiteSpeed a poor choice.
Answer: I think it's a better idea to put the database on the bigger server, cause if you have a non-trivial site (requiring multiple servers), then you're going to put a lot of load on the database, querying for stuff. And certainly that load is going to be a bigger bottleneck than parsing php files.
Comment: magento makes lots of includes and quite large objects for data storage so rather thinking that mysql is a bottleneck I  would go for web server apache/ngnix/whatever fastest processor and more ram you can get where as mysql is hardly a bottleneck here cause the configuration really counts and fast drives are a must
Comment: +1 for Anton's almost-answer. When running Magento as three tiered hosting the biggest drain is PHP's FastCGI process. @Anton, post that as a real answer and get the recognition you deserve.
Comment: Hi Anton, you seem to be more familiar with the system. Thank you for your insight. I will try that setup.
Answer: I believe it's usually better to put database to bigger and more powerful server.
The reason is that it's much easier to move application to anther server with no downtime. There is much easier and effective to scale-out application itself. Two application servers properly load-balanced gives you almost 2x increase, while with database you'll never get such values and would be forced to play with replication and/or sharding, which is much harder that configuring http load balancer.
So, if you application would grow, use best database server as you could afford now - that would give you more time before you'll have to move/scale-out database, which is harder that moving/scaling out application/http servers.


What is the origin of the phrase "wind your neck in!"?

Question: I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on the origin of the phrase in title.
Comment: @mplungjan The meaning is clear, but the etymology - not that much
Comment: Did you look for this Lily Allen quote? For example http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/03_march/01/pulling_moves_slang.shtml
Comment: Just asking what Ablugh had tried and discarded. Likely no true etymology for this slang expression
Comment: @Vilmar: I'm not sure the *exact* meaning is truly "clear". From what I've seen since looking into this previously unfamiliar expression, arguably it doesn't even *have* a single specific meaning. As to the etymology, I think it's probably a matter of "mixed parentage", the full details of which could never be unravelled (because several of the parents are themselves "interbred" :).
Answer: 1 is the closest to being correct here.
It's an East End London idiom.
It is used when someone is very angry & arguing, & sticking their face right into the person that they are angry with/complaining to. Therefore, telling someone to "wind your neck in son, and calm down", is to literally tell them to move their neck back so their face is not in the space of your face, & this is generally followed by an explanation of why the "aggressor" is upset because of incorrect information.
Comment: Welcome to [ELU.SE] @Chutters. The first sentence makes no sense to me - if it's a comment on another post then remove it and and let your answer stand for itself. Adding references would help give your answer credibility.
Comment: I think that the "1" in Chutters's first sentence is short for "Meaning #1 identified in Fumblefingers's answer." Beyond that, andy256's advice is quite sound: an answer that refers to content from another answer without specifying that other answer or the relevant content within it is needlessly difficult to make sense of and fails as a self-contained answer.
Answer: It's neither common nor a well-established usage, so arguably the exact sense is somewhat subjective. @mplungjan's link gives us...

1: Don't get upset when you've no real reason to be upset

...whereas Urban dictionary has...

2: Given as advice to someone you you'd like to sit down and shut up

...and (thanks to @Josh61's comment below)...

3: Don't look where you're not supposed to (i.e. - "Don't stare", or "Don't rubberneck!").

My guess is that #2 is probably a better definition, since I assume the expression has its roots in stick one's neck out (to take a risk, alluding to putting one's head under the guillotine), coupled with poke one's nose in (show unwelcome interest in someone else's private business) and stick one's oar in (make an unwanted contribution to a private debate).
In short, if someone says "Wind your neck in!" they essentially mean "Pipe down!". Maybe they're annoyed by you whining about being upset, or repeatedly asking stupid questions. But whatever it is you're saying, for whatever reason, the other person doesn't want to hear about it.

EDIT: The earliest written instance I found was this from 1955 - clearly matching Eric Partridge's 1984 definition ("Stop talking!", RAF slang from the late 30s). But you'll have to decide for yourself whether other more recent usages with different senses are "errors", or "new coinages".
Comment: @Josh61: Haha! I quite like Lily Allen's lyrics (she can certainly "turn a good phrase", so to speak). But having not come across this particular usage before, my first thought was **exactly** the meaning in your link - because knowing her style I simply assumed the allusion was to ***don't rubberneck*** (metaphorically stretch your neck for a better view when ogling a breastfeeding mother, or mindlessly staring at an accident scene, for example).
Comment: @Janus: It wasn't actually an *oversight* that I didn't change my "best guess" number. Having discarded the *rubbernecking* allusion after seeing two other definitions that didn't fit with it very well, I simply didn't have the courage of my own convictions (even after Josh61 found support for my reading.) Anyway, I've now found a written instance from long before Lily Allen was born, where it obviously means *"Quit whinging and STFU!"*. My guess is the expression has been "resurrected" with one or more slightly different senses.
Comment: It appears that the expression has different shades of meaning as you suggest. Here on the side of a bus for instance ...:http://childbirtheducation.blogspot.it/2009/02/wind-your-neck-in.html
Comment: Would your guess not now be that it's #3 rather than #2? (I'm guessing you forgot to update the number when editing?)
Answer: A long time ago I was serving a custodial sentence. Anyhow, while the prisoners were locked in their cell they used to talk out of their windows while sticking their neck out. "wind your neck in" was often a phrase of banter. Therefor, I think it is very much possible that the police officers have actually got the saying from the potential prisoners


Source for Raincoat under Chuppah

Question: There is a minhag among some people in recent years to wear a raincoat under the Chuppah. What is the source of this minhag? When did this minhag start? And is there anyone who specifically says not to do it?
Comment: I've heard about wearing a winter coat, since in Europe weddings were outdoors and it was often very cold.
Comment: IshPloniViKohen, adding evidence for such a minhag to the question will improve its value.
Comment: @Ypnypn Have you heard of anyone doing that in warmer contexts?
Comment: DoubleAA Yes; I've seen someone writing about wearing one indoors.
Comment: In Chabad, kallahs also wear a coat under the chuppah, regardless of the season. I'm not sure why.
Comment: The reason for a raincoat, specifically, is that it's a coat that's not warm. No need to roast the Chassan.
Answer: I have seen people wearing a coat over a kittel at an indoor wedding. When I asked, I was told that it is a matter of modesty. The chosson is not claiming an 'exalted' status that might be implied by wearing the kittel. I was not given a source for this.
Comment: Not _bachurim_ for long. `:-)`
Comment: _Nit'e Gavriel_ cites a reason for a _chasan_ to wear his _kapote_ (or _bekeshe_ or whatever) over his _kitl_ as opposed to only his _kitl_. I think it may have been something like this, but don't recall for sure now. But he wasn't writing about a coat.
Comment: @msh210 Since these were 'yeshivish' weddings and they were bocherim, they would not have been wearing a kapote or bekeshe. I would guess that is why they wore raincoats.
Comment: @sabbahillel - In Chabad, the kapote is worn first at the chuppah. In other Hasidic groups, a bekishe is worn even by young children.
Answer: I was told the coats are worn (by both chosson and kallah, in Chabad) to confuse the yetzer hara about the identity of the couple. (I have no idea if this is the real reason.)
Comment: @DannySchoemann Yeah. If we believe the yetzer hara exists, we seem to think he is an idiot
Comment: +1 for the funniest answer I've read this week. https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/10213/501

Source for Raincoat under Chuppah


Google Play Store force closing

Question: I have a Karbonn S5 Titanium. Whenever I try to open the Google Play Store, it gets closed within a second. A notification saying 'your google store has stopped unfortunately' keeps coming every 2 minutes. I can't download any apps or access a few of them. What can be done to set it right ?
Comment: Have you tried to clear cache (and, if that did not help, data) from the playstore app?
Comment: [App X isn't working correctly. How can I fix it?](http://android.stackexchange.com/q/13347)
Answer: Try to uninstall any Play Store updates, and then rerun the app; if all goes well, it will re-update the app, and the force closing should stop. If it still force closes, and you don't have much data on your device, you can try to factory reset the phone. That usually makes my Play Store work fine (although I don't have S5).
Answer: You could try updating to the latest play store. See AndroidPolice. Doing this fixed the same issue for me when I updated my Nexus 7 to android 4.3. It was crashing like yours, I updated (and cleared the cache and data) and the Play Store started working again. You don't need to be rooted, you can simply install it. It's perfectly safe as it is signed by Google.
Answer: If you are rooted and have ClockworkMod recovery, you can try these steps:

Uninstall Google play services.
Boot into recovery and select "wipe data".
Then select "clear cache".
Then select "advanced" and in the sub-menu select "wipe dalivk cache".
Then go back and select reboot.

Now the Play Store will start working.
Comment: And all your apps and data are gone. What you describe here is a manual factory reset.
Answer: In Settings -> Apps -> All, Try clearing cache for Google Play Services, Google Play Store, and Google Services Framework, and restart.
If that doesn't do the trick, try clearing cache and data for all three services. Restart, and start google play. It should ask you to accept the terms and conditions and there you go.
Answer: To fix this issue follow this solutions.
Solution 1. Clear Cache from Google Play Store
Solution 2. Uninstall Updates of Google Play store and then try restarting your android device
Solution 3. Install Latest Google Play Store.
Solution 4. Still if you are unable to solve try doing factory reset.
In my article, I have listed all these solutions in a step by step process with screenshots so if you are unable to understand check out my article on How to Solve Google Play Store Keeps Crashing Issue on Android
Disclosure: I'm the author of the linked article.

Google Play Store force closing