What do I do when nobody answers my e-mails anymore, and nobody answers my questions online?

Question: I have sent many e-mails to companies and asked numerous questions on here, which just go unanswered. No reply whatsoever. They are not rude, unreasonable, or in any way mal-intentioned.
I've noticed this in recent years, that even websites that "welcome feedback" and seem to encourage you to contact them just won't respond. They waste my time by making me sit here and write them carefully worded and polite e-mails with questions, which they then just ignore.
I don't get it.
And this website (and others) are the same. Forums. Any place online. I ask questions, make suggestions, report bugs, etc. No response. It's as if I were offline in a padded cell and just imagined having sent the messages.
This has been happening so frequently and consistently now, for so long, that I'm seriously wondering what the point is even trying anymore.
What could possibly explain this total shift in helpfulness? I understand if somebody doesn't want questions or even feedback, but then why the hell do they put up a big form or e-mail address and claim to "welcome your thoughts" and wording like that, when they clear don't?
Why have support forums where nobody looks/cares? Why run mailing lists where nobody responds even after months or years? Some bugs are literally 20 years old by now and still aren't even assigned!
I feel like I'm going crazy. There are so many unanswered questions and unresolved problems in my "computer world" that I find myself utterly crippled, and all these program, websites, services, APIs, etc. might as well be run by robots in terms of being able to communicate with them.
I truly don't understand it. How did this situation come to be?
Comment: This question doesn't follow the format expected for this site. I happen to work with companies that are very response when it comes to user input - especially on their surveys.
Answer: Problem
There are two problems I often see with emails as well as questions:

Too much content
Content not formatted in a manner that makes the important parts stand out

Most people just scan incoming messages and posts. If there is too much text, it's easy for the reader to miss the main points and it's possible they won't even realize what questions you are trying to get answers to. Also, if the question is not apparent right in the beginning of the post, it's likely they will also give up trying to understand your question, and just move on.
Solution
The goal is direct the user to the content you want them to for sure see.

Make the question you want to ask apparent right away. By the end of your second paragraph, the questions you really want answers to should be clear. You can then add additional background information after if you think more context would be helpful.
Use bullet points to break content into more digestable pieces.
If you are asking multiple questions, it's easy for the reader to miss one of the questions. Use numbered bullets to make each question stand out, and to also give the reader an easy way to reference each question when answering.
Use bold and italic formatting strategically.

Example
I'll use your current question as an example:

You question contains 9 paragraphs. It's not very likely any reader will pay full attention to 9 full paragraphs.
Your actual question is buried in paragraph number 6.
The question at the end, which does stand out, does not actually fully state what you want to ask, so it's not possible to just jump to that part and figure out what answer you are looking for.
You bolded the word assigned, so that draws my attention, but that word isn't important for getting the answers you want, so it's attracting the wrong attention.


Trying to deploy Web Server Application

Question: Starting of Tomcat failed, the server port 8080 is already in use.
Can you tell me how to close the port?
Thanks
Answer: You need to shutdown the application which is using this port. Maybe another instance of Tomcat is already running. You can verify this by just going to http://localhost:8080 in a webbrowser. If this is true, you'll need to shutdown it first before starting it. Or if your intent is to have two Tomcats simultaneous running, you'll need to give one of both a different port in the HTTP connector in server.xml.
Answer: Are you running JBoss or some other webserver? If so try shutting it down to free port 8080.
To shutdown these ports, stop the services that are using them.
You can also run the following in command line to determine the process using port 8080.
netstat -o

Trying to deploy Web Server Application


How to indicate selected item in table?

Question: I have a table of related items. Let's call them orders. Users can select an item from the table and full details will be displayed in a separate section below the table. I move the currently selected item to the top of the table (the items in the table have no natural logical order), but this is insufficient for users to determine which item's details are being displayed. How can I indicate the currently selected item if I'm already using formatting like bold text in my table?
Answer: Highlighting the entire row should be a good indicator.

download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
Changing the background color (of the row) also helps.

download bmml source
Answer: Following up on rk.'s answer, which I think is a good solution given the background you've provided, I would also like to suggest that you don't move a selected item around in the table. Try rk.'s solution out, but stick to highlighting the row, don't move the item. This will most likely be quite confusing and disorientating to the user, and could also be vert frustrating if the item is moved in a scrollable table and the table suddenly scrolls to the top on a user clicking an item.

How to indicate selected item in table?


What is the difference between /etc/profile and .bashrc

Question: As the title suggests I am asking about the main differences between .bashrc and /etc/profile. What I know is that .bashrc is a shell script that runs on login(I guess). And I know /etc/profile runs on ssh login or terminal login I also guess. Could someone please steer me in the right direction here?
Answer: I think this answer sums it up nicely:
From man bash:
Invocation
[...]

When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a
non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and
executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.
After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login,
and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from
the first one that exists and is readable. The --noprofile option may
be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

[...]

When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash
reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc, if that file exists. This
may be inhibited by using the --norc option. The --rcfile file option
will force bash to read and execute commands from file instead of
~/.bashrc.
Answer: /etc/profile is global for all users.
~/.bashrc is per user login where you can set up your favorite environment.
Comment: This is not very clear. Could you please expand on everything?
Comment: Ah. Thank you very much. But I would like a little bit more information than this. Perhaps, when each one is run.
Answer: The difference is more clear when you know when these two files are executed which is  dependent on the type of login being performed. In Linux you can have two types of login shells, Interactive Shells and Non-Interactive Shells. An Interactive shell is used where a user can interact with the shell, i.e. your typical bash prompt. Whereas a non-Interactive shell is used when a user cannot interact with the shell, i.e. a bash scripts execution.
The difference is simple, the /etc/profile is executed only for interactive shells and the /etc/bashrc is executed for both interactive and non-interactive shells.
SUMMARY:
etcprofile: Used for default settings for all users when starting a login
shell.
etcbashrc:  Used to define defaults for all users when starting a subshell.
~/.profile: Specific settings for one user applied when starting a login shell.
~/.bashrc:  Specific settings for one user applied when starting a subshell.


How to find the user who deleted the file?

Question: Some user on my server just deleted a  file, I want to find out who did it. Going through everyone's history is not feasible and command cannot be as simple as rm -rf file.
Is it possible to know who made the last changes to a folder? I am on linux.
Comment: hi ,It may depend on Your file system.
I guess if You're lucky the superuser in question may have the **rm/del ** command in their **.*_history file?** Otherwise I guess it would be very hard
Comment: I think the commands like rm, mkdir should keep this data in file's node in file system.
Comment: you could try this alternative way http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-audit-files-to-see-who-made-changes-to-a-file.html
Answer: In General,its hard to find out whom deleted the files,whom modified the files without knowing about the 'logging system' or pre-configured events
Try to find out who logged at the time when the directory was deleted.

check the OS syslog (/var/adm/syslog/syslog.log for hp-ux, /var/log/messages for linux)
Try the last commando to get a list of who logged on when
Check the command histories of the sidadm, root user, use the history command, or the h alias
Check if there are scripts running, which regularly delete files

Also You can take a look at your users's .bash_history, assuming they use bash:
Execute the below commands in terminal:
cd /home

find `ls`/.bash_history -exec /usr/bin/grep "deleted-filename" {} /dev/null \;

it's a file that only root can delete then look at root's .bash_history, but then you have to find out who was logged as root or su'ed to root. For this the command last root|more could help you
As the trans directory might be NFS mounted to other servers, you might need to do the checks there too.
Also for future use ,install any open source SIEM solutions like alienvault,etc which could help you to maintain and log the events.
Answer: Step 1: enable process accounting.
Step 2: enable fascist logging of tty
add/enable pam_tty_audit.so in your pam system-auth
Step 3: search user activity using ausearch


What can i do to get my cloned WhatsApp to show messages with names from my contacts (address book) in a Huawei 40P lite smart phone?

Question: I transferred my phone contacts from my old Samsung phone into a new Huawei 40P lite. The phone doesnt come with pre-installed WhatsApp. I then cloned WhatsApp from the old Samsung phone. The address book is showng pretty well but the names in my contacts havent synched with the WhatsApp. What should i do to activatte the address book (contacts) so that the WhatsApp messages should be showing the names of the people in my contacts list.
Answer: Try these steps?
https://drfone.wondershare.com/whatsapp/whatsapp-not-showing-contact-names.html

Turn on your contact permissions
Refresh WhatsApp Contact List
Reset WhatsApp Sync


Servlet Filter as Security Proxy for Web Services

Question: Good time.
Suppose there are 8 web-services in the one application. 5 of them require authorization (a client must to provide a JSESSIONID cookie and a corresponding session must not be invalidated), other 3 can be called without the jsessionid cookie. My naive solution is to write a servlet filter which intercepts requests and retrieve their pathInfos (all the services have the same url structure: /service/serviceSuffix). There is a enum which contains the serviceSuffix of each web service that requires authorization. When the request is retrieved the pathInfo is collected; if this pathInfo is contained in the enum and there is the corresponding valid session the request is sent ahead to the filter chain. Otherwise, an error is sent back to a client. After a while I've realized that it is needed to add the possibility to retrieve the wsdl and xsds for the concrete service. So that, two more check were added.
<code>public class SecurityFilter implements Filter {

public static final String WSDL = "wsdl";
public static final String XSD = "xsd=";

/**
 * Wittingly left empty
 */
public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {}

public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {        HttpServletRequest servletRequest = (HttpServletRequest) request;
    HttpServletResponse servletResponse = (HttpServletResponse)response;
    String pathInfo = servletRequest.getPathInfo();
    String queryString = servletRequest.getQueryString();

    if (pathInfo != null && SecureWebServices.contains(pathInfo)) {
        if (queryString != null && (queryString.equals(WSDL) || queryString.startsWith(XSD))) {
            // wsdl or xsd is requested
            chain.doFilter(request, response);

        } else {
            // a web service's method is called
            HttpSession requestSession = servletRequest.getSession(false);
            if (requestSession != null) { // the session is valid
                chain.doFilter(request, response);
            } else {
                servletResponse.sendError(HttpServletResponse.SC_UNAUTHORIZED);
                return;
            }
        }
    } else {
        chain.doFilter(request, response);
    }
}

/**
 * Wittingly left empty
 */
public void destroy() {}

}
</code>
It seems that it is not very secure, because if the request's pathInfo is not in the enum, this request is passed on (just in case of some unexpected system calls).
Could you, please, suggest what to do, how to increase the security level. I want to build a configurable system (that is why I have the enum. It is possible just to add a path there to secure the web service and it is not required to duplicate the security code in the each web service). How to increase
Answer: Maybe I do not understand but.
jsessionid has nothink to do with security. you simply just get it.
Next I am not sure if you want authentication or authorization. The code as provided will not provide you with security features.
I suppose you are interested in authentication anyway. Security logic can be provided with standard web container features. Just send in authentication data in the header of request and you are done. web container can be configured to secure only selected resources (urls)


What is the origin of the phrase "needle in a hay stack"?

Question: What is the origin of the phrase "needle in a hay stack"? Initially I thought it was a game once played but I haven't found any mention of it outside of it's idiomatic use.
Comment: @user92816: The hard-to-find origin is hidden in a haystack somewhere.
Comment: I vaguely remember hearing that a needle was a long tool used in haymaking. Very difficult finding origin.
Comment: Time to protect the question, nine answers (three deleted) with no upvotes, of which eight were posted by users with 1 rep.
Comment: this is a new aspect to me: a game once played ... why not? Because I don't believe that Thomas More when he usd this phrase as first really created it.
Comment: Needles have been in use for 1000s of years, and were essential tools. It's likely the phrase is ancient.
Answer: The idiom in full is: "like looking for a needle in a haystack"
it is based on the idea that it is very hard to find a sewing needle in a haystack (a tall pile of dry grass). It means when something is extremely difficult (or impossible) to find.
The first example of this idea in print was in the works of St. Thomas More in 1532:

"To seek out one line in his bookes would be to go look (for) a needle
  in a meadow."

Source: Data Hiding: Exposing Concealed Data in Multimedia, Operating Systems, Mobile Devices and Network Protocols; Michael T. Raggo, Chet Hosmer
Comment: This is what the OED has as the earliest citation in English, too.
Comment: I am sure this phrase is much older. It could be even have been used some thousand years ago since men have been drying grass for the animals in the winter.
Comment: @AlbrechtHügli the expression could certainly be much older than 1532 but it is the FIRST recorded instance that we find in print. Note that the term "meadow" is used and not "haystack", it's the idea of looking for something tiny in a vast stretch of territory that is being conveyed.
Comment: Thank you for the hint "meadow"! Have you looked up the roman or greek history? In the german language SE a user suggests the needle could have been ennemy spy hiding in the fields.
Answer: Not only is a needle in a haystack nearly impossible to find (without a magnet), but more importantly it is very dangerous for the animals consuming the hay.  It is a problem with a dire consequence if the solution is not found.  We're talking about having to burn the haystack or let a horse swallow a needle. I think this is closer to the meaning of the phrase.
Comment: Do you have any evidence to support your claim that potential danger is any part, let alone the "more important" part, of the common meaning of this phrase?
Comment: I have asked this question a month ago in another SE. Yesterday I have posted an answer as I found a hint that the danger of hurting yourself when searching a small sharp object in a haystock is an important aspect in this phrase!
Answer: This expression is also found in Portuguese: "procurar uma agulha num palheiro". The fact that it is found in German, Italian and Portuguese as well as English would lead one to suspect that it is very old, indeed. It would be interesting to research other Indo-european languages such as Persian and Urdu to see if that expression is found there.
Answer: It appears that the origin of the phrase goes back to the 1600s. It was first recorded to be used in Don Quixote de la Mancha written from 1605-1615, which was written by Miguel de Cervantes.
I'm quite sure it wasn't a game but was implied something that was almost impossible to achieve even back in those days.
Here's the reference: http://www.businessballs.com/clichesorigins.htm
Comment: -1 The article you give as a reference is incorrect on several accounts. Most importantly, it misreads its own source (Bartlett's) as saying  that the idiom is from a translation from *Don Quixote*. But Bartlett's expressly says that the work it references is *The Spiritual Don Quixote* written in 1772 by Graves. The usage is from *that* work, not any work of Cervantes.
Answer: I found "'tis seeking a needle in a bottle of hay" in the book, The Armourer's Prentices, by Charlotte Mary Yonge, Chapter III, Published
October 1883-August 1884, serialized in The English Illustrated Magazine.
1884, published by Macmillan.
I found this at http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/arpn10h.htm
Sarah Meisner
Texas
Answer: When hay was stored in stacks by the farmers many years ago! it was easy for the hay to over heat and spoil, if not dried properly before being stacked. The farmer would use long steel bars, which were called needles, at spaced out intervals along the stack and left there, the farmer could then check, at regular times by pulling the needles out,  if the hay was over heating. The problem was was that if the needles position were not marked before being inserted, then it was very difficult to find the needles. I believe that is where the saying originates
Comment: I am suspicious of your answer.  Hay is still stored in stacks.  Hay is not dried before being stacked; proper stacking allows the air to circulate through the stack.  Wet hay generates a lot of heat when it spoils.  Steel bars would do nothing but conduct the heat through the stack.   Steel bars would be easy to find.  The origins of the phrase predate steel bars.  I could be convinced by evidence that this answer isn't misleading.  Please provide some.
Comment: Welcome to ELU alan. Thank you for this answer, it sounds highly plausible. If you could find and quote any evidence for it it would be even better.
Comment: If you observe the other answers you will see that the expression is far older than would be any steel bars.  But in response to @deadrat, it is true that in some climates the hay is not immediately stacked but is hung up to dry first.  In Norway there are sort of "clotheslines" running through the hayfields to facilitate this.
Comment: Hello, thank you for your welcome, i'm afraid i don't have any quotes or evidence to back up my explanation of the meaning. Kim
Comment: Thanks for your welcome, when grass is cut it's very important that it's dried properly before it can be stacked as hay, any moisture in it will make it over heat and spoil, hay is compacted when stored, air won't circulate around it. The rods (needles) were inserted into the stack and left there, periodically the farmer would pull them out, check the heat, then push them back in. As a lad i remember seeing them being used
Comment: Does a needle implie that it is of metal? It could even be of wood as the first needles were made by bones.
Answer: The expression is the same in German and in Italian: cercare un ago in pagliaio  http://de.bab.la/woerterbuch/italienisch-deutsch/ago
Perhaps it was already used in Latin.
Answer: Needle in a haystack's origin is Arabic. Part of an ancient Arabic proverb.
In doing research into the Arabic language and ancient history, I was surprised to find that many of our modern (last couple of centuries) sayings have their origins in old Arabic proverbs.
Possibly making their way into English and European languages during the Crusades.
Ancient:relating to a remote period, to a time early in history.
Comment: Date? Original proverb? Source? Reference?
Comment: "Ancient" is too generic a term, please edit your answer, add the *original*  Arabic proverb  with its translation. History of the sewing needle: http://www.sewingmantra.com/index.php/needles/history-of-sewing-needles/ Thanks.
Comment: https://simple.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arabic_proverbs but there is no date, it could be the updated Arabic translation of the modern-day expression
Comment: إبرة في كومة قش


Will diatomaceous earth hurt the earthworms in my garden

Question: I have an organic garden, and use diatomaceous earth to discourage slugs from eating my plants. Lately I have worried that the diatomaceous earth might hurt the earthworms in my soil. Does diatomaceous earth have any detrimental effect on earthworms?
Answer: It appears that earthworms will not be harmed by it. "Diatomaceous Earth will not harm warm-blooded animals or earthworms
Earthworm farmers use it to treat their worm beds for parasites, fungus gnat larva etc. Earth worms are structurally different from insects in that they can actually digest particles of DE. The particles are then eliminated in their castings."
http://www.ghorganics.com/DiatomaceousEarth.html
Klendathu
Answer: I'd add that the diatomaceous earth must be food grade for use in areas where there are worms - I couldn't find out why, except that pool grade diatomaceous earth will kill them.
Comment: Crystalline silica in the pool kind, which comes from salt water sources, is probably harder to digest than the amorphous silica in food grade diatomaceous earth, which comes from fresh water sources. I could be wrong about that being the reason. You can change amorphous silica into crystalline silica by heating it enough. Also, the pool kind is cancerous to humans, while the food grade kind is GRAS (generally regarded as safe). I imagine worms can get cancer.
Comment: I seriously doubt that pool grade DE is cancerous. I had pool for 15 years, and it had a DE filter. You add the DE to the filter by pouring into the skimmer, in other words, right into the water stream. I don't think that DE would be used in pool filters if it was cancerous. The only mentions that I've seen suggesting that pool grade DE is cancerous have been from people selling food grade DE.
Answer: DE harms insects because it gets between pieces of their carapace and cuts them up and dries them out.
Worms are not insects and although a pile of dry DE might be rather excruciating to them, it won't harm them in the soil.
Answer: DE, or Diatomaceous Earth, is made up of diatoms. Microscopic water critters. There are salt water and fresh water diatoms. It is not poisonous. Therefore critters will walk right through it as if it were dirt. That's how it kills them as mentioned above the razor sharp edges of these really tiny diatoms work their way into insect critters. I have used it numerous times over the years. in the past I have recommended it to kill bedbugs which it does for the same reason it kills any other bugs. And bed bugs are very suspicious of anything that might even closely resemble poison. Therefore do not use pool grade diatomaceous earth because it contains other chemicals in it. it is not pure diatomaceous earth. Beer is strained through fresh water diatomaceous earth. Bakery items contain it as a leavening agent. You would never do anything like that with pool grade diatomaceous earth. The worst thing that I can find and have found over the years is the dust it creates when you put it down. I use a small sifter, put it down close to the floor around the edges of your room. That's where most insects run. Think thin dust it's not a pile. Wear a mask to scatter. Breathing in LARGE amounts of dust can cause silicosis; think factory workers. Outdoors use a pillow case filed with DE tie it closed and drag it around the yard. It will kill out a lot of walking insects. Oh yeah. I dust the dogs and cats with it.


Can a White Person sue for Discrimination after being Fired for using the N-Word?

Question: After the landmark Bostock v. Clayton County ruling, I am asking for a friend if he has an action against an employer who fired him for using the N-word on 3 occasions as well as uttering "my melamine-enhanced homie over here". The employee was visibly white, and neither party disputes that black employees regularly use such language and face no disciplinary action as a result.
From Bostock: "An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex," Gorsuch wrote. "Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids."
It is obvious that he was fired for actions it would not have questioned (and has not) in members of a different race. Is this not exactly what Title VII forbids?
Comment: "Melamine" enhanced?  Melamine is a plastic; melamine coated MDF is a common shelving material.  Did you mean "melanin"?
Comment: "Melamine"? I would've fired your "friend" for being not-overbright.
Answer: Bostock is irrelevant. Your friend can sue under Burlington v. News Corp.
Burlington answered this exact question ten years ago, using exactly the same, well-established logic used in Bostock.
Burlington involved a news anchor (Burlington) who was fired after using the N-word descriptively in a staff meeting. He sued under Title VII. He argued he was being discriminated against on racial grounds, since several Black employees had used the word at work without consequence.
The case was tried before a jury in Federal district court. Burlington lost after the jury decided the facts did not support his claim. However, the judge made clear that the actions he alleged would violate Title VII:

Historically, African Americans' use of the word has been ironic, satirical, or even affectionate. Too often, however, the word has been used by whites as a tool to belittle, oppress, or dehumanize African Americans. When viewed in its historical context, one can see how people in general, and African Americans in particular, might react differently when a white person uses the word than if an African American uses it.

Nevertheless, we are unable to conclude that this is a justifiable reason for permitting the Station to draw race-based distinctions between employees. It is no answer to say that we are interpreting Title VII in accord with prevailing social norms. Title VII was enacted to counter social norms that supported widespread discrimination against African Americans. To conclude that the Station may act in accordance with the social norm that it is permissible for African Americans to use the word but not whites would require a determination that this is a "good" race-based social norm that justifies a departure from the text of Title VII. Neither the text of Title VII, the legislative history, nor the caselaw permits such a departure from Title VII's command that employers refrain from "discriminat[ing] against any individual...because of such individual's race."

Added: Why Bostock is Irrelevant for Your Friend's Case:
As you say, if we substitute the word "race" for "sex" in those sentences from Bostock, it seems obvious your friend would have a case under Title VII. This is true, but not because of Bostock. Bostock changed who could claim sex discrimination under Title VII, but nothing else. In particular, it did not change the test used to prove discrimination under Title VII. The sentences you quoted, use the well-established "but for" test.
Here's Gorsuch's explanation of how the "but for" test works:

In the language of law, Title VII's "because of" test incorporates the "simple" and "traditional" standard of but-for causation. That form of causation is established whenever a particular outcome would not have happened "but for" the purported cause. In other words, a but-for test directs us to change one thing at a time and see if the outcome changes. If it does, we have found a but-for cause.

The Bottom Line: Bostock is illustrative, but not dispositive, of your friend's claim.
Comment: Although I question the binding nature of dicta in a district court ruling in another state, this answer provided a compelling contribution to the discourse. Also, judges are, by nature, smart. So this must be the correct legal understanding.
Comment: @Oliver Plenty of smart judges have come to various different conclusions on how to interpret the same law  I wouldn't assume other judges would necessarily see that this must be the correct legal understanding.
Comment: Something that does not lead to, explain or justify the ruling is dicta. The holding, the outcome of the case and the logic for it, can set precedent. In this case the judge is explaining the logic he might use in a completely different case that is not before him - dicta. As you say, this does not bear on the facts of the case at hand.
Comment: @Oliver Good point! District Court decisions only bind lower specialty courts (bankruptcy, etc) in their district. However, they do still provide precedent. I'm not sure I would say this is dicta, which in law usually refers to judicial "editorializing," comments on legal issues that do not bear directly on the case at hand.
Comment: @RossRidge Excellent point! As you say: *There is almost always more than one way for a judge to skin the legal cat.* Just ask the three justices who dissented in *Bostock*. In this case, I think the underlying law is so well settled that it'd be hard for another judge to interpret it differently. Indeed, that's my point about *Bostock*: *The wording that caught Oliver's attention is not new law,* so his friend doesn't need *Bostock* to claim discrimination.
Answer: No
I don't see a case under Bostok there. The N-word is not associated with sex or sexuality. Bostok can't help you unless it's a sexuality case. In this case, we have a firing because someone was a white Bigot. He used the N-word, which is an insult, just as "my melamine-enhanced homie over here" shows the same sentiment towards people of color. The word might have got a split meaning, depending on what you look like, but it is a word nobody should use anmore.
On the face, the reason for the firing thus is not the sexuality, making Bostok inapplicable, but it is his speech and demeanor, which his boss deemed to be unbecoming of his job and of which he seems to have warned about several times as you tell:

who fired him for using the N-word on 3 occasions as well as uttering "my melamine-enhanced homie over here".

So I assume he was told not to use the word and he still used it. That is not title VII discrimination on the face of discrimination based on sex and he had his writeups - the next escalation is firing.
We don't know if the other employees told the boss about his conduct but not rat out the other employees - which would shield him from discrimination of race because he doesn't need to discipline about conduct he doesn't know. If he does know, there might be a case under Burlington v New Corp as Just a Guy explains, but said case might also not exist because the employer might point out that he insulted his coworkers and harmed the work environment and has been deemed abusive of his coworkers. That would not be a Title VII violation.
by the way...
Your friend better should check his vocabularies: many years have passed since Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were written and the N-Word was even in the least socially acceptable! Dictionaries remark since more than 150 years that it is a derogatory term, and before it was well known to be a derogatory word since the first known mention in a surviving text of 1574. In fact...

The word was first included in a Merriam-Webster dictionary in 1864, at which time it was defined as a synonym of Negro, with a note indicating that it was used "in derision or depreciation."
Comment: You may be missing a nuance here. Currently it's okay for black people to use the N word, but not for white people. That can be interpreted as "discriminatory" since the same action is acceptable for one race but not for another.
Comment: @Trish You can read it that way, but that's not what he said. PS Your wording is a needless distraction from your main point, which I take to be that it would be ok under Title VII to fire *everyone* (or *anyone*) who uses the N-Word as an insult. You could even have a policy that agreed with you, and treated *every* (*any*) use of the N-Word as an insult, so that *everyone,* Black or White, who used the N-Word would get fired.
Comment: @Justaguy pretty much... I'd fire anyone for using the N-word outside of the context of quoting a historical text for being unbecoming of their position, *even* if they are a person of color.
Comment: @Hilmar actually I deem the word ok for **nobody**, no matter your own skin color.
Comment: @Justaguy *who fired him for using the N-word on 3 occasions as well as uttering "my melamine-enhanced homie over here".* - I read that as written up for the behavior.
Answer: The fact that "black employees regularly use such language and face no disciplinary action as a result" is evidence of race-based employment discrimination. If you insert "race" where Bostock v. Clayton County has "sex", you would get the result that consideration of race is forbidden. The sections of the anti-discrimination law cited there include "race" in the list. Bostock has more discussion of the word"sex" since it was also necessary to arrive at a connection between "sex" and "sexual orientation": that is unnecessary in the case of sex. See especially the rationale regarding "because of" which, again, applies to race discrimination. The employer does not take the state that the slur is a universally-forbidden word on the job, it is forbidden only if used by members of certain races.
However, to get anywhere with this suit, the plaintiff would have to establish that the employer knowingly tolerated such behavior from black employees. If other employees got away with it behind the bosses back and he was the first to get caught, then there is no proof of discrimination.
Answer: Of course that friend can sue, but is very unlikely to succeed.
He hasn't been fired for using the n-word, but for using abusive language against someone because of their race. I expect a black employee would also be fired if they used abusive language against a white person, or an Asian person, or a Native American, because of their race.
The fact that black people use the same word towards other black people without being abusive (and a white person being called n****r would be more confused than insulted), doesn't matter, because it is not the word that he was fired for, but abusive language.
So unless there is a policy that only white people are fired for using abusive language, there is no discrimination.
Comment: "_for using abusive language against someone because of their race_" what makes you think his use of the N-word was "abusive language against" as opposed to say "ironic, satirical, or even affectionate"? Have you seen/heard the context? Do you know more details than the OP gives us?
Comment: Greendrake, it's a word that's impossible to use in a "satirical or ironic" meaning, and we were told that "affectionate" use wouldn't have led to firing. So that is frankly a rubbish argument.
Comment: When were we told that "affectionate" use wouldn't have led to firing? All we were told was that the same language used by blacks wouldn't have led to firing.


Disconnect QGIS from database without closing the whole program

Question: I'm making PostGIS queries to a GIS database from python and I'm using QGIS to visually check the results of my queries, but every time I want to run a new query I have to close QGIS because it keeps its database connection open. Do you have any idea how to force QGIS to disconnect from the database without closing it every time?
Answer: If you are using psycopg2 then you can close the connection to Postgres like so con.close()
Answer: a thread from last year on osgeo mentions 'if you are using the PostGIS Manager you have the option to refresh...'. However, PostGIS Manager has been superseded by DB Manager.
I don't have a PostGIS database to test, but DB Manager allows refresh of sqlite databases.
Still could be a bit of a pain if you have to open DB Manager, select the db, and hit F5 each time a new query is created.
Answer: Which version of QGIS are you running? I used to encounter this all the time, but haven't since switching to QGIS 2.4. I suspect it's been fixed.
One workaround which I used to use was that instead of closing QGIS you can use pgAdmin to just temporarily terminate the open blocking connection from QGIS. Go to Tools -> Server Status, select the connection from the "activity" list, and select Action -> Terminate Backend. Generally this used to work OK, as QGIS would just create a new connection when required.


What preprocessing is required when using Landsat for LULC?

Question: Can anyone help me regarding the what kind of image pre-processing techniques should be used for the landsat images downloaded from http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/ to create land-use land-cover (LULC) map?
Comment: sure , I just wanted to know what sort of correction and what steps should be followed to create landuse and cover map from Landsat images.
Comment: What Landsat sensor are you working with?
Comment: Actually i am doing from year 1999-2016. So, it depends on the year. Let me know about L7 ETM+ slc-off at the moment. @Aaron
Answer: Atmospheric correction is required for all time series studies, as indicated in your comments. Dark object (aka Dark Body) subtraction is a common method to accomplish this as long as a suitable dark object, such as a water body, exists in the scenes.
Resources:

Dark Object Subtraction
Classification and Change Detection Using Landsat TM Data: When and
How to Correct Atmospheric Effects?
Comment: In the video I see how the haziness disappeared when DOS performed.The bottom-line of the paper is `Simple dark object subtraction, with or without the Rayleigh atmosphere correction, or relative atmospheric correction are recommended for classification and change detection applications`.
Answer: @Mr. Che and @Aaron have given great answers regarding two different things to do, but i would like to point out that there is actually a quick and easy way to use the landsat data without dealing with implementing the fmask algorithm or doing the atmospheric correction yourself: by using the surface reflectance data processed based on Landsat data. They are available for download at EarthExplorer as well. These data have been processed so that there is no need for you to do either georegistration or atmospheric correction any more (most of the time). Plus together with the surface reflectance data they also provide various cloud masks, including fmask-based ones, so you don't need to implement the algorithms yourself.
I'd also like to answer your question by saying that there is no universal way to preprocess data for land cover and land use mapping. You always have to decide what is necessary and what is not based on your specific needs and the data you have access to. But surface reflectance data is usually a good starting point.
Comment: Yes that is correct however you still can look at the land cover as a reference to see if there are changes to it.
Comment: @PROBERT absolutely
Comment: Thanks @TonyC that means i can just layer stack, do some focal analysis, subset the area of interest and do classification if i m not wrong.
Comment: @TonyC I think `L8 OLI/TIRS` data from earth-explorer is not atmospherically corrected. at least for some scene of Bangladesh so far!
Answer:
P.s how to remove cloud for landsat 7 images?

You can try to use automate standalone algorithm Fmask described here.
Comment: Thanks but is there any way we can do with erdas imagine or arcgis?
Comment: @Udaya_advent I recommend you to follow instructions described in Fmask site, this algorithm is very complicated to reproduce it. Besides it gives very good results in clouds and shadows masking.


Can key hardening compensate lack of entropy?

Question: In the context of an offline brute-force attack on encrypted data at rest (say, a password-protected AES encrypted file), is a password with 64 bits of entropy and 65536 rounds of key hardening just as strong as a password with 80 bits of "true" entropy (and no key hardening)?  I guess what I really want to know is, can I get away with using a shorter password if I know that key hardening is applied?
Comment: How are you defining a "round" of key hardening?  i.e. Does a "round" take the same computational resources (especially time) as encrypting as single 128-bit block with AES?
Answer: Yes. That's the entire idea of key stretching, you can get away with a password that offers less strength against attacks. You add more operations to a brute force/dictionary attack to protect the keys. The disadvantage is that you need to do the same number of operations during key derivation.
Passwords commonly don't have 64 bits or 80 bits of entropy though. Say that the alphabet is 64 characters (6 bits) then you'd need a fully random password of 11 characters. For 80 bits you'd already need 14 characters. Those are easy to generate of course, but it may be tricky to remember them. And if you have to revert to a password manager, you might as well use a password that requires a few more keystrokes.
Note that shorter doesn't necessarily mean less strength. A password of 12 zero digits is not very strong. And although the idea behind "correct horse battery staple" is great, the strength of the passphrase is of course not the same as 28 fully random characters.

J.D. indicates that, indeed, different operations are performed for a single round. The amount of operations however will stay the same, so the increase should be in the same ball park. You could possibly assign a weight to each round of AES vs each round of the key strengthening routine to get a better estimate about the increase of strength.
Comment: @J.D. That's not what I'm mentioning. That kind of attack should not be possible if a salt is being used. I didn't mention salts, but for a good PBKDF (password based key derivation function) a salt is one of the required inputs.
Comment: Or rather, the number of rounds of AES that is required to verify that the guess is correct. The further you dive into the details, the more complex things become, as always.
Comment: Usually I'd guess one round of AES is enough for verification though, as the attacker can choose which round is attacked, and usually the attacker learns enough to have  pretty good indication and decrypt a few blocks more (which won't have much influence on the total amount of brute force AES decryptions required).
Comment: One of the complicating details Maarten mentions is that very often attackers can precompute the key hardening portion of the attack, and may even be able to amortize the cost of that precomputation across many different attacks (i.e. if the attacker is breaking many different keys that all used the same key stretching method).  So should we weight the resource requirements of the precomputation phase differently than the online phase of the attack?
Comment: That's a good point, Maarten - if the key stretching uses an unpredictable and large enough salt then precomputation is not viable.  In that case disregard my above comment.


How to find Neural Network ZOOs?

Question: I have heard about the term Neural Network ZOOs, which are supposed to be repositories where there are a lot of pre-trained neural network models for many different applications, but I'm struggling to find them. Does anybody have some links for these kinds of repositories, especially for keras models?
Answer: One "neural network zoo" is a collection of architecture visualizations from the Asimov Institute.
Pre-trained Kera networks can be found in Keras Applications.

How to find Neural Network ZOOs?


How to build a RPM for all version of Centos 7.X?

Question: The developer provided the source with the spec file. Is it possible to build a RPM that works across all CentOS 7.x builds and is that a good idea?
Answer: From a package developer's perspective CentOS == Red Hat Enterprise Linux (without licensed / copyrighted Red Hat content & logo's and without the enterprise support tiers)
So you can use the extensive Red Hat documentation (a nice overview here)

Compatibility Within A Major Release
  One of the core goals of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux family of products is to provide a stable, consistent runtime environment for thirdparty applications. To support this goal, Red Hat seeks to preserve application binary compatibility, configuration file compatibility, and data file compatibility for all package updates issued within a major release. For example, a package update from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2, or a package update that fixes an identified security vulnerability, should not break the functionality of deployed applications as long as they adhere to standard Application Binary Interfaces (ABIs).
source

If the package developer followed the instructions in the Developer Guide and application compatibiliteit guide   then it should be possible to build a single binary RPM package that works on all patch / minor release levels of a major CentOS / RHEL release.
And that is certainly a good idea.
Answer: Unless the package depends another library update or something that was introduced in a point release, a single build for all of CentOS 7 will suffice.
You can see examples of this in the updates repositories. Many packages will use a %dist tag that is el7, but you can also see some that are tagged el7_4.
See: http://vault.centos.org/7.4.1708/updates/x86_64/Packages/
You can use conditionals in your spec file to set certain dependencies based on the value of the %dist tag. This is generally done to handle dependency differences between major releases, but you could adapt it to point release.
%if "%{dist}" == "el7"
Require: package-versionA
%end
%if "%{dist}" == "el7_4"
Require: package-versionB
%end

Note: This is untested pseudo-code. You may need to make modifications, but it should be close.
You would then need to ensure your build environment provided the correct dist tag value to the build process. There's a number of ways this can be done and we would need to know more about your build environment.
Comment: I did the rpmbuild on a 7.6 host. When I install the rpm on a 7.3 host, it complains that it requires Requires: libsz.so.2()(64bit). If I do the rpmbuild on the 7.3 host that does not have libsz, then the rpm works on both 7.3 and 7.6. Any ideas?
Comment: Looking at the package that provides libsz, I think this has less to do with 7.3 vs. 7.6 and more to do with a missing library on one system. The configure script is probably disabling whatever optional component needs that library when it is not found. Since the application was built without libsz, the RPM does not require it. (RPM tries to populate your packages dependencies with auto-requires.)
Comment: Also, the package is provided by the EPEL repository. Make sure you have that repository on the 7.3 system where it fails to install.
Comment: Yeah I'm puzzled on what is providing libsz.so. I try running whatprovides but nothing come up. I'm wondering if it is part of the base install. For now, I'll build it on a 7.3 host. Thanks!
Comment: The package is [libaec-devel from EPEL](http://fedora-epel.mirror.lstn.net/7/x86_64/Packages/l/libaec-devel-1.0.4-1.el7.x86_64.rpm). If you don't have EPEL configured, you won't find it with whatprovides. Before you consider that a solution, you should ask the developers if it is a requirement.
Answer: All Centos 7.x are juste minor upgrades, so I don't think you need to make the difference in your rpms. All centos packages are suffixed with el7, not with el7.6 or similar so I think you can do that safely (we are doing it for at least two years already).
Comment: There are a number of packages suffixed for 7.6, but you are looking for **el7_6**. See: http://vault.centos.org/7.6.1810/updates/x86_64/Packages/


How to abort the installation of a deb package if the disk space is not enough

Question: I'm developing a jailbroken program for iPhone. When the disk space is not enough, the installation will still continue, thus part of files were copied, while the other files were not, this makes the disk dirty.
I've written disk space check code at preinst and prerm scripts which are control files of deb package. When disk space is not enough, the control scripts will exit with nonzero code. But the problem is, when we are upgrading a package, if the disk space is not enough, the dpkg will still remove the old files even the prerm script exit with nonzero status, thus upgrading becomes removal which is not my expect result.
Answer: I don't know much about Cydia specifically, but if it works exactly like dpkg, then this should be solveable. See the activity diagram for package upgrades at http://people.debian.org/~srivasta/MaintainerScripts.html#sec-3.4.3 .
That shows a few different paths that could be taken in the course of running prerms and preinsts which lead the system back to a clean, old-version-still-installed state. For example, if the new-preinst fails, then the new-postrm will be run with "abort-upgrade" as the parameter. If that succeeds, then the old-postinst is also run with "abort-upgrade". And if that succeeds, you're back to a clean, installed state.


In Uniform Circular Motion, why does the normal accelaration not change the magnitude of velocity?

Question:
According to pythagorean theorem V2 should be greater then V1.But why doesn't it happen?
Comment: What do you get if you calculate $|\vec{v}_2|-|\vec{v}_1|$?
Comment: Who do you want to mean?
Answer: It's because the acceleration vector is constantly changing direction so that it is always perpendicular to the velocity vector. Your diagram shows some constant acceleration over some distance/time, but it's key to recognize that that slice of time must be infinitesimally small, since acceleration is not constant. The diagram isn't a great representation of what's happening, since there is no length of time over which you can analyze the instantaneous acceleration as a constant acceleration, since the acceleration vector is changing direction at all times. Averaged over a short period of time, the average acceleration vector will bend slightly left in your diagram, and will not be perfectly perpendicular to the velocity vector. With this proper time-averaged acceleration vector, the velocity vector keeps the same magnitude but changes direction.
Answer: You have a side labeled $a.dt\vec j$ with finite length, but $dt$ is infinitesimally small, so the length of that side is also infinitesimally small. This diagram is engaging in a common practice of representing an infinitesimal with a finite quantity. The idea is that this diagram represents the an approximation for a finite value, and we can then use the diagram as aide in evaluating what happens when we take the limit as it goes to zero. So it would be a bit more consistent with standard practice to use $\Delta t$ rather that $dt$.
When engaging in this practice, it's important to keep in mind that we need to do that "take the limit" part, and what survives that depends on the order of each term. $a \cdot \Delta t\vec j$ is first order in terms of $\Delta t$. Remember that the acceleration is the limit as $\Delta t$ goes to zero of $\Delta v/\Delta t$, so when we take a term that is first order in terms of $\Delta t$ (as $\Delta v$ is), and divide it by $\Delta t$, we end up with something zero order in terms of $\Delta t$, i.e., a finite value. That is, we cancel out all the $\Delta t$, so when we take the limit as $\Delta t$ goes to zero, it goes to a finite value.
Now consider the amount by which $v_2$ is greater than $v_1$. I'll set $A = v_2, B = a \cdot \Delta t\vec j, C = v_2$ to make the notation easier. We have $C = \sqrt{A^2+B^2}$, or $C = A\sqrt{1+ \left(\frac B A\right)^2 }$. Using the Taylor series for sqrt, $C = A\left(1+\frac {B^2} {2A^2 }-\frac {B^4} {8A^4 }...\right)$. So the change in the magnitude of the velocity is $C-A = \left(\frac {B^2} {2A^2 }-\frac {B^4} {8A^4 }...\right)$. All of these terms have at least two powers of $\Delta t$, so when we take the limit as $\Delta t$ goes to zero, we get zero (even if we divide by $\Delta t$ to get the rate of this change with respect to t).
Another way of putting it is that the magnitude of the velocity is the square root of the dot product of the velocity with itself: $|v| = \sqrt {v \cdot v}$. If we take the derivative of $v \cdot v$, the product rule gives us $2 v' \cdot v$. The term $v'$ represents the acceleration, and if the acceleration is perpendicular to the velocity, then $v' \cdot v=0$.
Remember that the direction of the acceleration is constantly changing. This diagram presents the acceleration as acting over some time, but given any $\vec a$, the length of time over which the acceleration is exactly equal to $\vec a$ is zero. If you were actually to have the acceleration stay at some fixed value (in terms of both magnitude and direction) over some non-zero time, then the magnitude of the velocity would indeed change.
Answer: In the case of uniform circular motion there is no tangential acceleration. In other words, in your diagram $a=0$, and therefore $\Delta v=0$ or $\overrightarrow v_{2}-\overrightarrow v_{1}=0$.
The only acceleration is the centripetal acceleration towards the center of the circular motion of radius $r$ and is
$$a_{cent}=\frac{v^2}{r}$$
Hope this helps.
Comment: The diagram shows acceleration orthogonal to velocity, so it is centripetal, not tangential.
Comment: It doesnt help.
Comment: I'm not speaking about tangential change.The question was about change.
Comment: @AbdullahAlZami OK, then your question is about a change  in what?
Comment: I think you've misread the diagram - the black dot (somewhat confusingly) is not the center of rotation. The acceleration vector is pointing toward the center, so the diagram does not show tangential acceleration. I don't follow your point about the acceleration and change in velocity being zero - the centripetal acceleration is not zero, and the direction of the velocity vector does change.
Comment: @NuclearHoagie You are correct. I thought the black dot was the center of rotation. I now need to rethink this. Thanks.
Comment: @NuclearHoagie So let me get this straight. $a$ is the constant centripetal acceleration (or uniform circular motion) and points radially  toward the center of the circular motion. The tail of the acceleration vector is the  location of the particle. The vector labeled $a.dtj$ is the y-component of the velocity of the particle at the instant shown. The black dot is an arbitrary point in the x-y coordinate system.$\overrightarrow v_1$ and $\overrightarrow v_2$ is the velocity of the particle with respect to the arbitrary point at time $t$ and $t+dt$. Is that correct?
Comment: Yes.You are right.


Get a file system handle to a bluetooth mapped folder

Question: Is there any way to get code level access to a bluetooth mapped drive?  The simple use case is I have a bluetooth folder in Explorer that looks something like:
"My Bluetooth Places\Entire Bluetooth Neighborhood\DEV1\OBEX File Transfer\E:\"
which maps to a device root, and I want to be able to read/write to the file system by treating it as a standard directory.
Is this possible?
Answer: This is not possible.  The way to achieve this is to open a Bluetooth serial connection to the device in question, and traverse its file system using the OBEX File Transfer profile.
Answer: Yes, it is.
What you see in the explorer is the string representation of PIDL — a list of identifiers.
You should study COM as technology, then Shell extensions.
For what you see in the Explorer, is a virtual 'file' system. The bluetooth software extends it.
Here is a door: IShellFolder interface. Note, that it is not the best place to start learning.


What exactly was the FBI suspicious of Alex about?

Question: I never understood why they wanted to hold him on suspicion. It seemed rather vague. He only predicted that something would happen and it came true. There was no crime clearly on Alex's part. So what exactly did they suspect him of doing?
Now he did predict something bad would happen, which did happen. So I understand the FBI finding that odd. So were they treating him as a person of interest? Cause it really wasn't clear as to what they wanted to do with Alex.
Answer: They are interested specifically because he did correctly predict what was going to happen. Generally law enforcement does not give much credence to people who claim to predict the future, but they're also aware that some criminals create crimes so that they can solve them. The classic case are firefighters who are found to have set fires so that they could show up to be the hero, but it's not out of the question that someone might claim to have "visions" about a disaster that they set up so that they could "prove" their powers, and get the fame of helping to prevent future disasters.
I'm requesting a copy of the novelization from my local library in case it has more information, but the Final Destination wiki article on Agent Schreck (and a very similar text on Agent Weine's entry) states that:

At first, they thought that Alex was a suicide terrorist for knowing the plane explosion before it happens. Their suspicion to him grows when the survivors began to die one by one.
Comment: Honestly, that's a standard law enforcement technique. Same as how if you get pulled over, the officer doesn't start with "I saw you going 37 MPH in a 25 MPH zone", but rather ask you, "Do you know why I pulled you over?" They know that people will volunteer incriminating information a good bit of the time if you simply ask them what they're guilty of, and they're legally allowed to do just that.
Comment: The first sentence I get. I can understand Alex being a person of interest (because obviously Alex predicting something bad would happen doesn't really mean he's the man who did it - and even then I'm wonder what exactly did they think he did), but it's like they weren't clear on what they wanted to do with Alex.
Comment: In itself that's not a crime, and that's not evidence someone did something; clearly Alex was not acting suspicious whatsoever, he didn't have bombs; he was with his friends the whole time, and everyone of their testimonies afterwards clears Alex of wrongdoing
Comment: I mean they were with him the whole time getting all pumped up for a trip to Paris. Clearly Alex did no wrong, and Alex is instantly cleared. What could they have on him. Even Weine acknowledges this in the movie
Comment: They don't really "have anything on him". They're just suspicious, and part of their job is pursuing suspicious leads. Doesn't help that he keeps showing up at scenes where people ahve just been killed...
Comment: It just the movie was kinda vague. I got the impression that they were going for a person of interest and Alex would be perfect no doubt. But they were rather vague about it
Comment: Hence why I said they treated him as a person of interest. And I understood why they were feeling it was unusual. It just was kinda vague, that's all. I did like that component because Alex was the only one who came close to be treated as a criminal in the franchise. It gave the first movie a darkness the others didn't have! Alex implied as a murderer.


List of people who lose a child in תנ"ך

Question: Full list of people, based on pshat who lost a child in תנ"ך?
Comment: I take it you're not counting Yaakov, who thought he lost a child?
Comment: Mesushelach and maybe others in that geneology
Comment: @DonielF he definitely did lose a child. No one could find Yosef for decades!
Answer:
Adam and Eve (Genesis 4:25):* their son Cain killed their other son Abel
Terah (Genesis 11:28): his son Haran died in his lifetime
Judah (Genesis 38:7,10):* his sons Er and Onan died after marrying Tamar
Pharaoh and all the Egyptians (Exodus 12:30):1 lost their firstborn in the tenth plague
Aaron (Leviticus 10:2):* his sons Nadab and Abihu died when bringing a fire offering
Zur (Numbers 25:15):3 his daughter Cozbi was killed while he was killed at a later time (31:8)
Mother of Sisera (Judges 5:28): described as being alive after Sisera died
Jephthah (Judges 11:39):1 he fulfilled his vow to sacrifice his daughter, apparently killing her
Eli (1 Samuel 4:11):* his sons Hofni and Phinehas died in battle with Philistines
Mother of Agag (1 Samuel 15:33): described as being bereaved when Agag died
Saul (1 Samuel 31:2): his sons died shortly before him in the war against the Philistines
David (2 Samuel 12:18, 13:32, 18:15):* he lost an unnamed child, Amnon, and Absalom
A prostitute (1 Kings 3:19): two prostitutes had two sons, and one of them died
Jeroboam (1 Kings 14:17):2 his son Abijah died of a sickness
Hiel of Bethel (1 Kings 16:34):1 lost his sons by building Jericho
Mesha (2 Kings 3:27): sacrificed his son
An unnamed woman (2 Kings 6:28): ate her son and wanted to eat her neighbor's son
Athaliah (2 Kings 11:1): her son was killed in battle
Ahaz (2 Kings 16:3): put his sons through fire (assuming this means he killed them)
Manasseh (2 Kings 21:6): also put his sons through fire (same caveat)
Zedekiah (2 Kings 25:7):1 his sons were slaughtered before his eyes
Job (Job 1:19):* all of his sons and daughters died
Naomi (Ruth 1:5): her two sons died in Moab
Ephraim (1 Chronicles 7:22): mourned over his children

* mentioned by the OP Josh Silverblatt
1 noted by Double AA
2 noted by Gary
3 noted by DonielF
Comment: I'm revoking ownership. Add whatever you want @Yez DonielF
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/91693/discussion-on-answer-by-b-a-list-of-people-who-lose-a-child-in-).

List of people who lose a child in תנ"ך


Which requires more energy: walking 1 km or cycling 1 km at the same speed?

Question: I feel more tired walking 1 km than cycling 1 km at the same speed. However when cycling I am moving the extra weight of the cycle along!
Comment: But you get to roll with no action required by you - that is hard to do walking. And you are sitting on a seat, not having to walk and keep yourself upright.
Comment: This question should be closed immediately, and I voted to close it.  Asking "how efficient is a bike" is like asking "how long is a piece of string".  You literally might as well ask: "Are Engines powerful?!"  **It's that vague.**  **This is a physics site, for goodness sake.**  Any question about pushbikes instantly and wholly concerns the road surface; pushbikes-roads are a system. Silly stuff.
Comment: Another answer mentioned it, but I want to highlight it: yes, you have to get the mass of the bike up to speed, but only once, or a few times, in 1km. After that it doesn't matter, you only have to combat air resistance and friction.
Comment: Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/280200/2451
Comment: I can't answer due to rep/protected question, so here's what I got from this [Casio walking calculator](http://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1350891527) and [Casio cycling calculator](http://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1350958587). A 25 year old male @ 180cm/80kg burns 19kCal cycling @ 8.9km/h for 6.74 min (~1km), and burns 81kCal walking (jogging) @ 8.0km/h for 7.5 min (~1km). Thus said male burns over 4x as many calories jogging as he does biking!
Comment: @JoeBlow yeah, there isn't any sensible way to generalize this problem. The road out in front of my apartment is under construction and has huge holes that could swallow a man whole! I also saw a bike yesterday chained up to a post that had no wheels, how are you supposed to calculate work?!
Comment: I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it asks for a trivial numerical calculation and does not prompt answers to provide any physical insight. The question could probably be rewritten to be a good one for this site with only minor additions (nevertheless of the type that would have to come from the original asker).
Comment: "...cycling is calculated to be the most efficient self-powered means of transportation."  says https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance    So every other form of Human Powered transport is less efficient.
Comment: Plot a graph of the location of your centre of mass for the two trips.  The cycling graph will be a completely flat line while the walking graph will bounce along a series of a thousand-or-so little arcs.  Therefore the rising and falling action of walking means you are actually moving your mass further to cover the same distance.  Also, look up "mechanical advantage", this is improved when cycling.
Answer: This is one of those cases where the physics definition of "work done" does not match your experience.
If you move an object that is subject to gravity along a horizontal surface, physics tells us the only work done is the work done to accelerate the object, and overcome the force of friction.
Biologically, "walking" is a complex action that involves many muscles contracting and stretching. But muscles are not a reversible system (unlike a spring) - work done contracting is not returned when they stretch again (incidentally this is why some animals like kangaroos have highly elastic tendons... this greatly improves the efficiency of their jumping). So if you do a deep squat, returning to the same position, you will have expended (chemical) energy, even though you "did no net work" in the physics sense. Walking involves continuous (small) changes in the height of your center of mass, and so a lot of "shallow squats". Even if you could walk smoothly without bouncing your center of mass up and down, your legs will bend and stretch as you absorb the shocks of the road (your leg has to be straight when it is placed in front of you, and bend when it is directly underneath you - or you have to move your center of gravity).
When you look at cycling, you don't have to carry your entire weight on your legs - the only work you need to do is work required to overcome the small rolling friction (at walking speed) and air drag (if you go a little faster). Also, your center of mass stays at a constant height, so there is no energy lost in "bouncing" so much.
If you look at calories burned, this is confirmed. Riding a fast mile on a bicycle you will burn about 50 kcal, and much less if you go more slowly; running a mile will burn about 130 kcal (depending on how heavy you are - this is for 170 pound runner).
UPDATE
In Umberger et al, "A model of human muscle energy expenditure", Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering, 2003 Vol. 6 (2), pp. 99–111 the authors give a detailed model of energy expenditure of different muscles, showing clearly that load, not just extension, play a big role. And obviously when you carry your entire weight, you are carrying more of the load. They include the following diagram showing what muscles are loaded during what part of the walking cycle:

It occurred to me that the earliest "bicycle" that I am aware of was the velocipede, a contraption that allowed one to "walk" while part of the body weight was carried by the "bike". This immediately reduced the effort required for locomotion and provides further evidence for the above.
Image from that article:
Comment: Why are you going at length describing "shallow squats" and "shocks of the road", when the main problem with energy expenditure in humans is not with height changes or similar outer work, but with the fact that skeletal muscles actually WORK BY PULSING at 10-100 Hz, with each of the pulses irreversibly consuming chemical energy. The muscles consume energy without (visible outer) movement too, as anyone staying in an inconvenient position or doing static exercise would testify, so it's not like if you'd try to move without changing your height it would be easier, probably the contrary.
Comment: @nightingale indeed holding a muscle under tension requires expenditure of energy - which is one reason why any motion returning to its origin requires energy expenditure. My point was that walking requires muscles to be under tension - more so than standing or cycling. So I thought it was worth explaining the many ways muscles were under greater tension during walking.
Comment: There must be a way to describe this process thermodynamically, although that's perhaps beyond the scope of the question (since it's tagged [tag:newtonian-mechanics]).
Comment: @Floris Thankyou for the quick answer.
Answer: Since you can travel the distance faster on a bicycle for the same amount or less of physical tiredness within the time, it's clear that the bicycle uses less energy.
Comment: Downhill would require no energy at all on a bicycle.
Comment: Wouldn't the angle of the plain be a big factor?  I mean ride down a hill or up one.  Big difference.
Comment: **"the same amount or less of physical tiredness within the time"**.  Totally wrong.  Try riding a "mountain" bike through a one mile field, and then simply walk over a one-mile field.  You may be thinking of riding on extremely well engineer "super-bike" - AND on a platonic, billiard-table surface, perhaps made from steel for the entire length.
Comment: @JoeBlow please try reading the thing you're responding to before commenting.
Comment: @Suzu Thankyou. what you said (travelling farther with same amount of energy on bike...) does makes sense, but science has this uncanny way of upsetting our logical assumptions sometimes :)
Answer: I run, have been jogging and running most of my 70 years of age.Have ran many marathons and will run again in Los Angeles marathon on March 2017.
As I keep track of my own efficiency and pace over the years I am a good candidate to have personal information on this.
Running is not conserving energy like a spring or a machine made up of joints and levers that would look like a humanoid robot.
Efficiency plays a great role; age and endurance do as well. Experienced runners take advantage of the stride and bounce over the landing foot as much as possible, but even that is not going to return much of work you used to land the foot. Every movement is consuming energy and creating heat and undesired toxins in your body. Muscles which seem not contributing to your locomotion are working hard to keep your head up and your torso erect!
My time on marathon was 3:45 hrs:mins now I am happy with 5:50.
Because my muscles and joints are not as efficient as before. While I burn more energy for the same track.
When you ride a bicycle you are taking advantage of efficiency of the machine. The more efficient the machine the less energy you burn.
As a good contrast if you ride a bicycle downhill you don't use energy but if you run downhill you still burn energy and can also hurt your joints!
Comment: I run quite a bit, we must run on radically different tracks, Kam.  Try a 10km run through an ordinary forest, on typical trails, maybe up and down a small valley.  Totally trivial for you or even me.  Now try that on a bike.  the world's most elite bikers couldn't even complete the course.
Comment: I run for fun on golf courses sometimes, as a rolling hills course.  last week on Ojai course alarmed security guys gave chase, some on electrical carts, but I outran them!
Comment: a pushbike would have just fallen over in those conditions. bikes (like TGVs) exist only as a system with the prepared surface. this QA is totally non-founded
Comment: @kamran Thankyou. as we get older cycling seems to be less demanding on our joints than walking or jogging  :)


Eating Meat that Wasn't Killed According To Kashrut

Question: Is it halachically permitted for one to eat pure meat, i.e. turkey, lamb, etc. even though it wasn't killed in a kosher manner (Kashrut)? For example, store bought turkey breast.
Comment: Could you please explain the question? Why would that be okay, if you already know that it isn't "kosher"? Are you wondering, Is the kosher process the right thing to do, but after the animal is dead is the result the same either way?
Comment: Related: https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/89967/kashering-non-kosher-meat-minimizing-a-transgression
Answer: No it is not permitted.
Mishneh Torah (Maimonides), Laws of Forbidden Foods, 4:1

הָאוֹכֵל כְּזַיִת מִבְּשַׂר בְּהֵמָה שֶׁמֵּתָה אוֹ חַיָּה שֶׁמֵּתָה אוֹ עוֹף שֶׁמֵּת לוֹקֶה שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (דברים יד כא) "לֹא תֹאכְלוּ כָל נְבֵלָה". וְכָל שֶׁלֹּא נִשְׁחֲטָה כָּרָאוּי הֲרֵי זוֹ מֵתָה.
A person who partakes of an olive-sized portion of a domesticated animal, wild beast, or fowl which dies is liable for lashes, as [Deuteronomy 14:21] states: "Do not partake of any nevelah." All animals that were not slaughtered in the appropriate manner are considered as if they died.
(Translation by Eliyahu Touger)
Answer: The laws of Kashrut (for Jews) require that the animal be killed specifically by kosher slaughter. This applies to both mammals and birds.
A kosher species killed any other way – or one that died on its own – is called a neveilah and is prohibited.
https://www.sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.14.21?lang=bi&aliyot=0
לֹ֣א תֹאכְל֣וּ כׇל־נְ֠בֵלָ֠ה לַגֵּ֨ר אֲשֶׁר־בִּשְׁעָרֶ֜יךָ תִּתְּנֶ֣נָּה וַאֲכָלָ֗הּ א֤וֹ מָכֹר֙ לְנׇכְרִ֔י
Don't eat any unslaughtered animal; gift it to your local visitor and they can eat it, or sell it to the foreigner.
There are many people who think kosher is just about the species, but how it was killed matters too.
The theoretical punishment for eating, say, rabbit meat is the same as eating turkey that was killed by anything other than kosher slaughter. (I know the comments here will get into some very theoretical nitty-gritty distinctions, but ...)

Eating Meat that Wasn’t Killed According To Kashrut


How to port forward minecraft PE Server on android

Question: I have set up a minecraft bedrock edition server on my android phone by setting up nukkit in an ubuntu for ARM being emulated in termux terminal emulator for android and it runs pretty well and I can connect to it from my own device. But now I want to port forward it so that it is accessible from anywhere in the world, but guides online say that you need your router ip...blah,blah,blah but I dont have a router, I am using the 4g network provided by jio. How can I get my server running online?
Answer: Use the ifconfig command baked into basically every android version. You can access it by installing a terminal emulator.
However, you might not be able to access the Server running on your Device due to your provider blocking incoming connections to all mobile devices for "security reasons", or at least that is what my provider told me when I was trying to host a http web server on my android device.
Comment: Can you explain it about how to use ifconfig
Answer: On 4G network you don't get a public IP (mostly) from your MNO. So your phone won't be accessible from internet. Related: How to connect to Android through SSH over 3G/4G public IP?.
However if your device is accessible from internet, you don't need to do port forwarding. It's required only when you are behind NAT (router), but you are directly connected to internet. In case you create hotspot on Android and run server on some connected host, then you can forward port this way: How to port-forward internet using android Hotspot?


Reduction homomorphism between Polynomials

Question: Let $R$ be a ring with an arbitrary ideal $I$. We consider the canonical coefficient reducing homomorphism between polonomial rings $\phi: R[X] \to (R/I)[X]$ defined by $\sum c_i X^i \to \sum \bar{c_i} X^i$ where $\bar{c_i}:= c_i mod I$ in canonical way. I want to know why $ I R[X] =ker(\phi) $. Obviously we have $ I R[X] \subset ker(\phi) $ (ideal property) but the other inclusion isn't clear to me.
Comment: It might be worthwhile to clarify that $I R[X]$ is the ideal of $R[X]$ generated by $I$ - not $\{ xy : x \in I, y \in R[X] \}$ where the latter is not necessarily closed under addition.
Answer: Anything in the kernel is
$$f=a_0+a_1X+a_2X^2+\cdots+a_nX^n$$
where $n\in\Bbb N$ and $a_0,\ldots,a_n\in I$. Each $a_j X^j\in I R[X]$
and $f$ is a finite sum of these monomials.
Answer: Another point of view is this:
 start from the short exact sequence:
$$0\longrightarrow I\longrightarrow R\longrightarrow R/I\longrightarrow 0,$$
 which you can tensor by the free $R$-module $R[X]$ to obtain the short exact sequence:
$$0\longrightarrow I\otimes_R R[X]\longrightarrow R[X]\longrightarrow R/I[X]\longrightarrow 0, $$
and observing the image of $I\otimes_R R[X]\longrightarrow R[X]$ is the ideal  $IR[X]$.


Is Deep Learning the repeated application of Linear Regression?

Question: Is Deep Learning the repeated application of Linear Regression?
Answer: There's no point to fit a linear regression model (such as OLS) with neural network because it's really designed for non-linear models. But if you want to do that, you'll just need to set linear activation units.
Answer: A neural network can be reduced to a linear regression model only if we use linear activation functions (i.e. $\sigma(x) = x$), and only if we do not use any  neural network specific techniques such as convolution, residuals, etc., as shown below:
$\text{neural network}(x) = \sigma_n(W_{n} \sigma_{n-1}(W_{n-1}\dots\sigma_1(W_1 x + b_1) + \dots + b_{n-1}) + b_n) \\
= W_n (W_{n-1} \dots (W_1 x + b_1) + \dots + b_{n-1}) + b_n \\
= \left( W_n W_{n-1} \dots W_1 \right) x + \left( W_n W_{n-1} \dots W_2 \right) b_1 + \left( W_n W_{n-1} \dots W_3 \right) b_2 + \dots + W_n b_{n-1} + b_n \\
= W_z x + b_z$
where $W_z = \displaystyle \prod_i W_i$ is a weight matrix and $b_z$ is some vector constant.
This follows the linear regression model form $y = Wx + b$, where $W$ is the weight matrix and $b$ is the vector constant. As a result, you can analytically solve for $W_z$ and $b_z$ using linear regression techniques, and no longer need gradient descent.
Note that for this to work well as a linear regression, you need to check for the OLS data assumptions, such as making sure the regressors have no collinearity, the residuals have no heteroskedasticity, there's no auto-regression, and that the errors are roughly normally distributed (more info). Deep neural networks with non-linear activation functions do not require these assumptions since they are universal approximators, although checking for some conditions may help make the task easier to predict (more info*).
*Note - this link talks specifically about time series data with neural network, but the same concept applies to any task in general.
The neural network specific techniques, such as ReLu, convolutions, residuals, etc., is what allows the network to learn non-linear relationships, and therefore make neural networks something more than just repeated applications of linear regression.
Comment: Maybe the penultimate step of your demonstration is not fully clear, so it may be useful to provide a concrete example. Let's say that you have $2$ inputs $x_1$ and $x_2$ in the vector $x = [x_1, x_2]$, then you have 2 hidden layers of $2-3$ units each, and then, say, an output layer with 1 unit. You could then try to show if the NN really collapses to linear regression. Maybe you can find a simpler example that shows that, if you want.
Comment: @nbro I tried writing a draft with the example like $x = [x_1, x_2]$, but it became too verbose while not bringing much clarity. I just edited my post to try to make things more clear. If its still unclear, can you explain further exactly where and why?
Answer: Generally speaking, you can say this:

there is a relationship between neural network learning (I'm assuming a "vanilla" ANN here, no CNN's or RNN's or anything) and linear/logistic regression.
But they're not the same thing.  Just related.  You could maybe consider them "cousins" to use a real-life analogy.

The big obvious difference is this:  standard linear regression is, well, linear, that is, it's based on a straight line. So it can only separate points on a plane which can be separated by a straight line drawn on that plane.  An ANN however, is non-linear and can fit all sorts of crazy looking curves.  The reason why this is true has to do with a combination of the "activation" functions that are used, as well as the layering effect of your hidden layers.
To be fair, if you extend linear regression to be polynomial regression, you can fit more complicated curves, but that has its own downsides.  And while they are also related, linear regression and polynomial regression aren't - strictly speaking - the same thing (although they may both be special cases of the same general technique).
All of that may be over-simplifying a bit.  If you really want a good explanation of both linear/logistic regression and ANN's and some explanation of how they relate and differ, I recommend Andrew Ng's ML courses on Coursera.  Both the original one and the new DeepLearning.ai ones.
Comment: You should probably note that NNs could just have linear activation functions, and, in that case, NNs can "collapse" to a linear regression model, though typically this is almost never done when using NNs.


Plugin to autosave render every minute

Question: Sometimes a render can take several hours. Is there a plugin that will take what I've rendered so far and save it to disk every minute or so? If not, how would I go about making one?
Comment: Maybe have a look at zeffi's tile render, which was designed to render images for poster printing into tiles, which could be stitched together later.. something similar on a smaller scale could help perhaps.
Comment: But I need to save what's rendered so far during the render.
Comment: Then of course functionality of script should be enlargened. I saw this very question on BA and it didn't get any attention. Hard to say if such add-on exists.
Comment: The thing is saving a partially rendered image doesn't help as you will start rendering from the beginning if it fails half way through. If you are rendering an animation then start rendering each frame to disk and make the video when it is finished. Breaking the image into smaller tiles that get stitched together later would be what you want as each piece will then take less time and only the one active at time of failure will need to be redone.
Comment: If it's bad enough I can use render borders. But what if it crashes during compositing? Then it would be really useful.
Answer: I am not sure if this can be done from within blender while it's rendering. It would require rendering the screenshot while rendering the scene. Something like this could easily be done with a shell script outside of blender.
OSX example:
while true;
    do screencapture ~/Desktop/img$(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S").jpg
    sleep 10
done

This would take a screenshot every 10 seconds, so needs some adjustments.
And then just cancel with 'Ctrl-C'.
If you only want the script to run for a specific period you could do something like:
end=$((SECONDS+360))

while [ $SECONDS -lt $end ];
    do screencapture ~/Desktop/img$(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M-%S").jpg
    sleep 10
done

This will automatically stop taking screenshots in 6 minutes.
I think Windows looks like this:
:loop
 For /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set mydate=%%c-%%a-%%b)
 For /f "tokens=1-2 delims=/:" %%a in ('time /t') do (set mytime=%%a%%b)
 import -window root screen%mydate%-%mytime%.jpg
 timeout /t 10
 goto loop

Plugin to autosave render every minute


How can I get Emacs style key bindings in Visual Studio?

Question: How can I get Emacs style key bindings in Visual Studio?   Is it available in Settings? Do I need a Plug-in?
Answer: You can try the Emacs keyboard scheme (Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard)
Comment: Now VS2010 does with an add-in: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2010/09/01/emacs-emulation-extension-now-available.aspx
Comment: Seems like VS 2010 no longer supports Emacs key bindings:  http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/465750/emacs-keyboard-mapping-scheme-not-working-in-visual-studio-2010-beta-1
Comment: Note that you need Visual Studio 2005 and later for that.
Comment: It's available in the C# 2008 Express edition, at least as of 1 Mar 2010.
Comment: This works as of VS2019.
Answer: Xkeymacs does a really good job of this.
It is possible to configure this tool for every application running on your desktop.
Comment: I used Xkeymacs for a few weeks, but found I was having weird problems with the keyboard commands being trapped. I stopped using Xkeymacs and the issues went away... It was great, while it lasted...
Comment: Thanks for this suggestion. I was having the problem of my CTRL+v et al. being captured like @MichaelPaulukonis was. I fixed it by going into the Xkeymacs properties and setting the "default" to "Disable XKeymacs" and only enabling it for the applications I wanted (like visual studio, notepad, SAS, etc.). Additionally, if you just want copy-paste to work, you can uncheck the C-v keybinding and it will then pass that command through to the underlying app, which executes a paste.
Answer: For VS2019 it is an extension written by the community.
(Installing the extension)

Open Visual Studio 2019
Click Extensions -> Manage Extensions
Select "Online" in the left-side panel.
In the search box, enter "emacs"
As of March 2020, "Emacs Emulation 2" seems to be the thing.  Select it and click "Download"
Close the window and close all open copies of Visual Studio.  VSIX Installer will install the plug-in with your permission.

(Turning on EMACS)

Open Visual Studio
Use the menu Tools -> Customize.  Click the "Keyboard" button at the bottom.
In the box at the top there will be an EMACS scheme that wasn't there before.  Pick it.  Click OK.
Close and reopen any code/text editing windows.

Press Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-F..  It feels like a warm blanket on a cold day.
Comment: Now if I could only do the same in Microsoft Word...
Comment: Here's a direct link to the extension: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=JustinClareburtMSFT.EmacsEmulation2.
Comment: YAAAS!!! Oh, man, why didn't I see this back in 2010s…
Answer: With Settings:
Try the Emacs keyboard scheme on Environment options.
Plugins:
I have only seen this one: VisEmacs, it will integrate Emacs as the default text editor for Visual Studio.
Answer: After posting that Emacs keybindings/emulation would no longer be available in Visual Studio 2010, Emacs Emulation is now available as a free extension for VS 2010.
Answer: I use VisEmacs because the emacs keyboard scheme isn't quite as nice as emacs itself.
Comment: Does VisEmacs work with VS2010?  It doesn't look like it's been updated in 4 years...
Answer: Unfortunately, the Emacs emulation extension for VS 2010 is not officially supported for VS 2012.
However, a workaround is possible if follow the steps outlined in this answer for an SO question on getting Emacs key-bindings in VS2012
Answer: I used the Emacs keyboard scheme for a few days, but it quickly drove me crazy -- I couldn't rebind keys they way I was used to in Emacs (or couldn't find how to rebind quickly).
I should try XKeyMacs....
Answer: If you're using Visual Studio Express 2008 and want the Emacs key bindings then you need to install the Visual C++ edition of VSE 2008.  Initially I only installed the C# edition and there were no custom key bindings in Tools->Options->Environment->Keyboard.  Once I installed the C++ edition the Emacs key bindings became available in both products.
Answer: A quick Live search for "visual studio emacs" gave this page.  I'm not sure how thorough it is though (having never used emacs myself).
Comment: Please provide answers that involve personal experience with the suggested solution.
Comment: Link has expired.


How to make dynamically created Divs with meteor and then store & recall them based on ID from the database

Question: Below I have a basic template that has a numerical input form. When you type a number in the form and click Add a list of Divs get created. The Divs are created with a class of "synth" and an id of "synth" + a number. The numbers go in succession based on a counter.
I want to not only store this information in the database but do so in a manner that (eventually) when a user logs in they will have access to their list of Divs as a "saved state" from their previous log in.
I am not even sure if I am going about this in an appropriate manner. I am simply sticking the createSynth() function in the Collection insert for lists. I have a feeling to do this "correctly" I should have two events that work in parallel - one sending to the lists Collection and the other to the dom/Template. These two blocks would then exchange data (some how) which in conjunction create the illusion of a "saved state".
Below is the code I have thus far.
HTML

  <title></title>

  {{> start}}

<template name="start">
  <input id ="amount" type ="number" />
  <input id ="submit" type="button" value="Add" />

</template>

Javascript
var lists = new Meteor.Collection("Lists");
var counter = 0;
counterSynth = 0;

if (Meteor.isClient) {

'use strict';
  Template.start.events({
    'mousedown #submit' : function () {
       var amount = document.getElementById("amount").value;

       for(i=0;i<amount;i++)  {
       lists.insert({SoundCircle:createSynth()});  // I am inserting the entire function call, is this the right path?

       }

        function createSynth() {
          var synth = document.createElement("div");
          synth.className  = "synth";
          synth.id = "synth" + (counterSynth++);
          applicationArea.appendChild(synth);

        };

    },

  });

}

if (Meteor.isServer) {
  Meteor.startup(function () {
    // code to run on server at startup
  });
}

Comment: I wish I could improve my answer a bit could you give a bit more detail on what each of these synth div boxes has?
Comment: They are just div's styled with CSS making them orange blocks(I didn't include the CSS above). They don't actually have anything inside of them.
Answer: You have to use a slightly different approach to this, basically just insert your stuff into the collection, and use handlebars to get it out. I'm not entirely sure what you were doing but you should get a good idea with the below
Server js
synths = new Meteor.Collection('synths');   //This will store our synths

Client js:
synths = new Meteor.Collection('synths');   //This will store our synths

Template.start.events({
'mousedown #submit' : function () {
   var amount = document.getElementById("amount").value;

   for(i=0;i<amount;i++)  {
       lists.insert({class:"synth", id:counterSynth});
   }
},

});

Template.start.synth = function() {
  return synths.find();  //This gives data to the html below
}

HTML:
{{#each synth}}

        Synth stuff here

{{/each}

Comment: I put your html code inside the  and I get an error. Excuse my inexperience with meteor. I'm learning the entire stack as I go. I just want to be able to click a button that creates divs which are transmitted to the client but also stored on the server, then if the user closes the browser they can still retrive those divs FROM the database that were previously stored by clicking another button which also transmits them back to the client. That's the ultimate short-term goal for learning purposes. Just basic input and output with a basic UI.
Answer: It's probably best to dynamically recreate the DIVs every time you need them on the client, so the DIV is not stored on the server. If you really want to hard code/store the DIV on the server you would need to simply save the HTML as a string, to a Meteor collection.


Replacing original 1950s exterior door with new prehung: threshold question

Question: I'm about to replace the original 1950s era back door on my house with a pre-hung. I'm planning this as a DIY job and have watch plenty of videos, but one thing that hasn't been well addressed is what to do with the original threshold.  I have added a couple of pictures.   I imagine i have to rip it (the green piece) out, as it is sloped, and then replace with a level piece and put my new door frame on top of that.  Am I on the right track?  Any further advice specific to the threshold aspect of this job?  Thank you.
Answer: Most if not all doors available today are sold at a 6' 8" standard height. There are several widths to choose from. The new pre-hung replacement door should have a slanted sill attached to it's jambs. So, when you are ready to remove the old door: remove old door from entry (remove the pins or unscrew the hinges),  remove exterior trim from top and sides. (This will expose the edge of the doors jamb). The easiest way to remove the jamb is with a saber-saw and cut the fasteners securing the side and head pieces from wall (check for electric runs and water lines). The jamb will tilt out in one piece if cut all the nails. You now have a hole in your wall, but technically is labeled a "rough opening". Take measurements side to side and from the bottom of the header to the sub-floor and decide on the door size.
Answer: Your new prehung door should come with a threshold. So, if the heights work out right, you'll remove the old threshold and drop everything new into place.
However, if you have to do surgery on your door, height-wise, it might be better to cut off the new threshold, cut the bottoms of the jambs, and cut the bottom of the door.
If you post back with the height of the existing opening ("rough opening", measured from subfloor to bottom of header which is revealed when you pull off the interior trim) and the height of the new door, we might be able to offer more advice.
Comment: Thank you all for your quick help and the education on the sill versus the threshold.  I really found the diagram very helpful and it addressed exactly the part of the job that I needed help with.  It also prompted me to buy a table saw (any excuse)! The wife will be thrilled, but hopefully she'll like the new door. Cheers.
Answer: You will find when you remove the old jamb that the green sill is attached to the jamb. The natural wood part is the threshold, that will pop off in a few seconds, it is only held in place with a few nails. Of all the old door jambs I have pulled, the jamb is long enough to attach to the ends of the sill. That is what is helping keep it stable. There is a possible chance that it still may be stable if you take a multimaster to sever the jamb from the sill, but I would not hold my breath. You could use a reciprocating saw for this, but it may scratch up other things you don't want damaged. Because you have the issue of the sloped sill, I would not keep it in place.
Whenever I address an old jamb such as this, I remove it all, threshold too. The trim should be pulled anyway on both sides. Once that is done the shims holding the jamb should be evident. This is also where the nails are that hold the jamb. Cut them all with a reciprocating saw, or just hack out the jamb anyway you can. You can almost use reckless abandon for this part, but don't go too crazy.
If you didn't go too crazy the green sill should be salvageable if you choose to save a few bucks. Whichever way you choose, either a new sill or reuse the existing, the sill will need a level place created on it for the new threshold to set. This is why I remove it. A table saw is needed for this or perhaps a band saw will suffice. The important thing is, that when the flat, level spot is made, it is 3/4" below the finished floor. You will need the extra room by doing this so you do not need to cut the header. This also keeps the new threshold from getting too high, they are normally 1 3/4" tall. Setting it in the floor 3/4" will leave the bottom of the door off the floor 1" so area rugs or cocoa mats will not be dragged by the door. If you are lucky the finish floor goes under the threshold a bit so it can be cut to a clean line almost flush with the finish wall, NOT the base. This is where the new threshold will meet this cut. OR if there is a gap there at the place where the old floor meets the new sill, a small shoe can be added, but I try not to do this, just my preference.
Back at the cut of the sill. The slope of the sill and the cut needed to make a level spot will most likely take a cut wider than a table saw can handle, but I also have an electric planer to finish and fine tune the flat spot. A band saw would do the cut in one pass.
I have a nasty sketch below to illustrate what I have done in the past.

Then again, this what I get into, you may not find this small detail that critical, and it may work for you simply putting it in flat all the way through. The important thing is, lower it enough to get it under the header, also so it isn't so tall, but high enough so it does open over a throw rug, carpet or cocoa mat.
Comment: Nice details with the diagrams. What'd you use?
Comment: @ojait, Thanks. I use Paint, the drawing program that comes with MS Windows. It is a basic no frills program, but it gets it done. Trimble Sketchup does a great job too.
Comment: @Jack- did it take long to create the diagrams?
Comment: @ojait, about 15-30 minutes