Alien race that dies if they sneeze, what would it look like?

Question: For a short story I'm writing for no reason whatsoever, I have a planet full of human looking aliens. Only thing different between humans and these aliens is that the aliens die if they sneeze. What changes do I need to make for this to be possible? Would it have an outward appearance, or do I just change the organs around?
Comment: Can people elaborate on the reason for the downvotes on this question, to help the OP make it better?
Comment: I wasn't one of the close voters, but I can express why I would have voted to close: any question that asks, "what would they look like?" is (always!) opinion-based or story-based, both of which are reasons to close. I could have also VTC'd for "needs clarification" because "what would they look like" is not the same as "what changes do I need to make?" I believe this question could be reopened if better asked. Something like, "starting with human physiology, what physiological change would result in a sub-species that would die if they sneezed?"
Comment: @JBH Oh, I see. That makes sense.
Comment: Murdered by black pepper.
Answer: Their sneeze reflex
If they die when they sneeze, for the most part those with a sneeze reflex would die young and not reproduce. The surviving aliens will no longer have a sneeze reflex. It's a little too much of a hole to fill in a species design.
Comment: I think one thing missing in this answer is biologically, why a sneeze would kill the alien.
Comment: @Enthus3d obviously they sneeze so hard their lungs come out their nose.
Comment: I wonder why this was so strongly upvoted? It brings up a great point about the evolutionary consequences of beings that die when they sneeze, but doesn't actually answer the question.
Comment: @Separatrix I don't understand. The reason they die when they sneeze is because they've lost their sneezing reflex? Maybe what we need is a clarification from the OP, because what I read from that is, "what physiology would explain the fact that when my alien sneezes, they die?" E.G., their sinus walls are so thin that if they did sneeze, it would damage their brains or their diaphragm is so weak that the muscle contraction causes a heart attack.
Comment: @user253751 ouch, what a way to go... maybe we now have a reason Egyptian mummification needed to scoop the organs out.
Comment: @JBH some form of confirmation bias I think. I voted for it initially as well, before realizing it is missing an actual answer. I find we sometimes vote for things that support our own opinions as an instinct, especially so if it seems to be the obvious answer. Possibly part of the reason fastest gun in the west has always been an SE issue as well.
Comment: @JBH, two things, first this site has always had a soft spot for answers that point out the bleeding obvious flaws, second I did answer the question `What changes do I need to make for this to be possible?` for it to be possible they must lose their sneeze reflex, it's that or go extinct, everyone else is carefully working round this problem.
Comment: @JBH, they die when they sneeze so they lose their sneeze reflex within a very small number of generations. Frame Challenge. It's a hole you can drive a truck through. The sneeze reflex is supposed to be beneficial, if it's lethal, it'll go.
Comment: Ah! Frame challenge. Sorry. I've been a bit slow lately. Sorry.
Answer: Not impossible
It can be that sneezing has been phased out, for whatever reason. Somehow they just don't sneeze anymore under their current circumstances. After many generations, the reflex might still be in place, like nipples on a man. Besides being there, in rare cases they are able to give off a liquid, suggesting that reflexes, despite being useless, can be maintained for a long period. The reflex might still be activated under rare circumstances.
After so many generations, they might've developed the folowing:

A sneeze is incredibly powerful. The bones of the ribcage or the ligaments might've weakened over time due to the more protected lifestyle. The bones could shatter or the ligaments torn from the ribcage, rendering them impossible to breathe. It isn't instant and with assistance from bystanders they might live until they can get a breathing machine. This also has heavy implications for their lifestyle for generations, as many sports could also break or injure them gravely. So they probably don't do these.
Due to the foreign nature of the sneeze, they might try to keep it inside. The pressure of a sneeze is quite inpressive. This pressure could damage the skin and flesh between the brain and the mouth/nose, putting them at risk of infection or just the pressure on the brain is too much, crushing vital parts. The brain can actually survive quite a lot, see whiplash and concussions. If you're doing death by sneezing anyway it could start an epileptic episode that kills them. Or maybe all pressure escapes through a small patch of skin where a loose bone lays beyond, pushing it straight through the brain.
The reflex of a sneeze might leak into other reflexes after all this time. The "bleeding" of feelings and such mostly happen in the brain. As as example, amputee persons might feel an itch in their amputated limb, yet scratching some place on the body can solve this. Reflexes might "bleed" into other nerves as well, as they are controlled mostly in the spine. The relex bleeding into the nervous vagus can cramp the heart, making it unanimously contract with dangerous results.
After all this time it'll have an hormonal response that will eventually kill the alien.

Each of these is is very implausible, but you van give it a shot.
Answer: Death penalty
The aliens went through a pandemic at some point in their history. Lacking the science to understand it, they instead enshrined in their religions that people who sneeze are sinners who must be killed on sight.
To make it more complicated for the aliens who sneeze, their anatomy is such that sneezing blows open a flap of skin on their noses. It either takes too long to regenerate, or it does not regenerate at all. Plastic surgery won't close it perfectly either.

Frail lungs
Maybe they just got canary lungs, which collapse if they sneeze because that puts a lot of pressure inside.
Answer: A Sneeze is the Alien's Banshee Cry

From Wikipedia:

A sneeze, or sternutation, is a semi-autonomous, convulsive expulsion
of air from the lungs through the nose and mouth, usually caused by
foreign particles irritating the nasal mucosa.

The function of sneezing is to expel mucus containing foreign particles or irritants and cleanse the nasal cavity.

Sneezing typically occurs when foreign particles or sufficient external stimulants pass through the nasal hairs to reach the nasal mucosa. This triggers the release of histamines, which irritate the nerve cells in the nose, resulting in signals being sent to the brain to initiate the sneeze

In summary, sneezes serve the role of expelling foreign particles or signalling the presence of external stimulants.
The first thing to prevent is the autosomal reflex, which is the reflex to sneeze when light sources change rapidly. This is present in roughly 18-35% of humans, but is preventable by, say, this gene having not been passed on to the modern era of aliens.
Now, to deal with the mucus immune system

Mucus is our body's equivalent to fly paper, it lines the nose trapping the dirt and germs stopping them from damaging the lungs. But it does better than just sticking to them – mucus is loaded with protective proteins that kill and disable germs, like bacteria and viruses.

One way to prevent sneezes is thus, if their protective proteins and immune system in general were much stronger relative to the bacteria and diseases, killing off most of the germs and presences in their mucus. Over time, their sneeze reflex will greatly weaken.
Dealing with the allergies, similarly, most allergies do not trouble them enough to activate enough histamines to trigger a sneeze.
As to how a sneeze would kill the alien, a sneeze would be an indicator that so many germs have filled the nasal mucus that it has already spread throughout the body, and not even the strong immune system of the alien can save them any longer.
A sneeze would thus be a signal the alien gives shortly before death to a powerful disease, either helping to warn other aliens off, or prompt swift treatment through medicine.
If left untreated after sneezing, the alien will quickly succumb and die to the disease.
Appearances and Abilities
The appearance of the alien wouldn't be much too different from us on the surface, but the stronger/more developed immunity system in almost all aliens means that they will fare much better in space exploration on foreign inhabited planets, and they can quickly detect and react to fatal diseases by hearing each other's sneezes.
Their society would also heavily support universal mask wearing in pandemics to prevent sneezes from spreading deadly diseases.
Another canonical answer could be stronger immune system, but a weak lung structure, which is punctured by the sheer change in air pressure from the sneeze... but isn't a banshee cry, heralding bacterial death, a more interesting prospect?
Answer: Reverse the Cause and Effect Relationship
IE: They don't die because they sneeze, they sneeze because they died.
Instead of being always open like in humans, the default position of the alien nasal cavity is closed off by a sphincter that is actively opened by muscle contraction to allow air in and out of the nose. A good way to justify this is if you aliens are able to breathe through their skin, and only use their noses to take in additional Oxygen during times of physical duress.  In this cases keeping the nose sphincter closed is a good way to prevent infections which also explains why normal sneezing is not a typical thing for them.
However, when they die (or perhaps get fatally ill) gasses start to build up in their body and gather in the nasal cavity.  Once the pressure reaches a certain point, it forces its way out through the nasal sphincter in an activity similar to a sneeze.


What is the meaning of Tri-sapta in Atharva-veda?

Question: The very first line of Atharva Veda says , "ye trisaptaah pariyanti ...". The meaning of Trisapta here seems somewhat confusing. In the Acharya Vedanta Tirth translation it is called to be the three gunas (satta, rajas, tamas) and seven padarthas (prithvi, jal, tej, vaayu, aakaash,  tanmaatraa, ahamkaara). However, the Sankhya philosophy says that the five tanmaatraas are distinct. Moreover, the other translations do not favor this one, they talk about a much vaster meaning - all the possible permutations of 7 and 3. Can anyone please clear me the real meaning? Moreover, is it somehow related to the corresponding devata Vachaspati? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Comment: Hope that my answer covered atleast some part which you are expecting.My answer is more scriptural based than philosophical one.And I haven't tried to conclude myself either and left the decision on scholars.If you think that it isn't covering what you exactly required.Pls. let me know about what is your opinion and feel free about it. I will surely try to improve it.
Comment: @Awe Kumar Jha Where can one read your comment about fractal encryption in vedic lieterature?
Answer:
As the above clip from the Sanskrit scholar William D. Whitney shows, the meaning of "triSapta = 3x7 (Monnier-Williams)" seems not to be a well-defined term.
I consider plausible Whitney's conjecture to take "triSapta" as an indefinite numeral. The verse is a prayer to Vacaspati, the god of speech, and opens the whole work. The prayer is followed by a series of hymns. Therefore I do not expect that the verses allude to technical terms from the Indian philosophical schools.
Comment: I have pointed the same thing, the uncertainty of meaning , in my question too , in that case, you seem to give just a reference to justify the question itself. Anyway, I appreciate that.
Answer: The first Sukta of Atharva-Veda is Medha Janan Sukta , Rishi of which is Atharva and Devata is Vachaspati.  This is a prayer to Vāchaspati for divine illumination and help.

ये त्रिषप्ता : परियन्ति विश्वा रूपाणि बिभ्रता : | वाचस्पतिर्बला
  तेषां तन्वो अद्य दधातु मे ||1||
The thrice-seven that go about , bearing all forms - Let the Lord of
  speech assign to me today their powers [their] selves (tanu).

Your main question is about the meaning of the word Tri-Sapta and details about  devata vachaspati.
William Dwight Whitney who   translated Atharva-Veda samhita  with a critical and exegetical commentary  . Revised and brought nearer to completion and edited by Charles Rockwell Lanman says that.

Tri-Saptas is plainly used as designation of an indefinite number ,=
  'dozens' or 'scores'  supposing shruti to signify one's acquired
  sacred knowledge , portion of shruti.
First he conjectures that it may mean ' three or seven ' ; as the
  three worlds , the three gunas  three highest gods  ; or sevan seers ,
  the seven planets , the seven troops od Maruts , the seven worlds ,
  the seven meters or the like. Secondarily , it may mean ' three sevens
  ' as seven suns (for which is quoted TA. i.7.1) and seven priests and
  seven Adityas (TA. i.13.3 ; RV. ix.114.3) , or seven rivers , sevan
  worlds and seven quarters (TB. ii.8.3.) or seven planets ,seven seers
  and seven  marut troops . Thirdly it may signify simply thrice seven
  or twenty-one as twelve months +five seasons +three worlds +one sun
  (TS.vii.3.105) or five Mahabhutas +five breaths + five jnanendriyas
  +five karmendriyas + one antahkarana . At any rate they are the gods ,who are to render aid.

Shripad Damodar Satwalekar in his commentary " Atharvaveda Subodh Bhashya " is mentioning that

The original seven elements in their three forms are everywhere and
  their flow and transformation is giving shape to this universe.

So these are original twenty one elements which are also inside our body , our goal is to maintain harmony of these twenty one elements which are inside to twenty one elements outside to  live a healthy life with sound mind power and this is the core topic of Atharva-Veda.

Author Shree Ram Sharma Acharya is also saying similarly  like William Dwight , he says.

The majority of commentators has concluded the meaning of Tri-Sapta as
  3*7 =21 . But the view of the seer is much more wider than that.
  Tri-Sapta can be explained  according to  permutations maths as 3+7
  =10 , 3*7=21 , seven raise to three 343 ,three raise to 729 etc.  The seer has written the word Tri-Sapta as one so the meaning of it is all
  the possible combinations i.e.(Tri-Sapta). On this basis  the covers
  three worlds ,three gunas , three dimensions , three devas etc. In
  this way there can be infinite permutations and combination are
  possible and only Vachaspati knows them all.

Vachaspati.
The devata of this sukta is Vachaspati various acharyas as well as authors have presented their views about  possible meaning of Vachaspati
Shree Ram Sharma  Acharya in his commentary on first sukta of Atharva-Veda  is explaining the meaning of the term in following way.

According to him Parabrahman covers all this universe all the time in
  his unmanifested form  (Avyakta अव्यक्त). But when he expresses
  himself from unmanifested to manifested , then its appropriate to call
  him "Vachaspati".

Shripad Damodar Satwalekar in his commentary " Atharvaveda Subodh Bhashya " is also explaining this devta he is stating that .

Who is Vachaspati? Vak , Vani , Vaktrutva ,upadesh , Vyakhyan are
  related words. The person who is a excellent in speech i.e. a very
  good Guru (teacher) who is good  counsellor is Vachaspati

So from the above two passages the Devata Vachaspati is a good Guru or Supreme Brahman in his manifested form.
Comment: @SwiftPuskar Following the Rig Vedic tradition 3×7 is correct meaing as counting there appears mostly in conjugation apart from 1to 10,20,30....100.
Answer: Tri sapta describes the entire Hindu universe. It has two words - tri that is 3 and sapta or 7.
One proposed interpretation is the 3 are the planes of existence - bhur, bhuvah, svah - the 3 worlds. The earth, sky and everything in between.
The 7 are senses. The 5 elemental senses - sight, taste, hearing, touch and smell. The other are Proprioception, sense of knowing the motion of parts of your own body eg being able to clap hands with eyes closed, and balance or internal body senses.
So trisapta is all 7 senses in all 3 planes, which covers the entire universe.
Comment: Hi, please add the reference in your answer which is mandatory on this site.


Copy open files over network

Question: Copy open files over network- I have a situation where I ahve to copy the entire contents of a user's hard disk over the remotely over the local network and silently. I am concerned about open files the user might have. Is there a free software or method that I can use to be able to copy the hard disk of the user?
Comment: Any particular environment?
Answer: If you're talking about Windows clients you might hack around with the script that Tomalack posted here. Be aware that copying open files may give you inconsistent copies unless the application holding the file open is able to quiesce its IO and put it's files into a consistent state on demand... say, when VSS tells it that a snapshot is being initiated.
Edit: There's some more background on using VSS to create mountable volumes here:  http://blogs.msdn.com/adioltean/archive/2006/09/18/761515.aspx. Good luck finding the DOSDEV.EXE referenced in the post, though.

Copy open files over network


Can't put screw back in toggle switch

Question: I removed this screw from toggle switch and can't put back in. It just won't go back in. Is it possible to put it back or I was not supposed to take it out completely?
Comment: Theoretically, since this is wired using the "backstabs", the screw on the side isn't necessary at all. **HOWEVER**, the "backstab" is prone to failure, and it's highly recommended that they be avoided. Follow the advice in the answers below to replace (or, possibly, reinsert the screw) and use the screw to hold the wire in place instead of the backstab.
Answer: It was supposed to be captive. The safest thing is to replace the switch. They are typically $ 1 - $ 3, depending on quality and where you buy them.
If the new switch has "back stab" connections, as it appears your existing switch has, don't use them. Use the screws.
Comment: I think "don't use back stabs" is probably the single most frequently given piece of advice on this entire site.  Not that that detracts from its validity, just surprising how often it's repeated...
Comment: I'm really liking the clamp style outlets and switches.  They look like back-stabs but aren't.  You don't have to mess with a shepherds hook, which some newbies might have difficulty with. You just stick the straight, stripped wire under the clamp and tighten it down.
Comment: @DarrelHoffman I've noticed that too. I have never used the "back stabs" (opting for the screws instead), but I have removed a fair share of receptacles that were installed using the back stab method and have never seen an issue with that method.
Comment: @ARich backstabs are objectively adequately reliable, or they wouldn't be allowed in the north american market.  They are also objectively quite inferior to a properly done up clamp or screw because they may necessitate shortening wire, and despite their connection being adequate, it still has less surface area and is less secure.  To actually find out if you have a problem with a backstab, you have to very heavily load the socket, and it will probably be fine.  Probably.
Comment: The one problem-requiring-replacement with a backstab I've seen out of the hundreds I've removed was because the wire had not been straightened before being pushed into the backstab.  It made a poor connection and and produced some cosmetic heat damage.  That said, screw and or clamp is far superior, so why risk a backstab just to save 20 seconds, when you'll lose those 20 seconds again if you ever have to remove the wire without damaging it.  One time I intentionally used backstabs, it saved me a marrette and allowed us to make box fill without chipping out a box already poured into concrete.
Answer: I've inadvertently (or vertently) removed those screws many times. With a little force they'll go back in, just like they did at the factory. If you're then able to adequately tighten the screw onto the wire loop, all good. If not, replace the device.
Answer: The screw is given a burr to discourage removing it completely. This can mess up the threads when it is removed. You can recover the threads with a tap and die, but for the cost of a new SPST switch it's probably not worth the risk. That said, often the threads aren't too badly damaged and you can put it back together by filing the tip of the screw and then being careful to screw it in straight.
Answer: Honestly, just replace it. Switches don't last forever and the cost of a new one is negligible. I'd buy one of the nicer "side stab" (Leviton calls these "preferred" and the side stab part "side wiring") where you put the wire under a metal plate and tighten it (i.e. no shepherd's hook). These are less than $2 brand new. And your switch won't look yellowed anymore.

Can't put screw back in toggle switch


What was wrong with becchini?

Question: From the introductory part of The Decameron, in Pampinea's speech that inspires the seven young women initially to decamp to the countryside, she speaks of the atmosphere in their city of Florence at the time of the Black Death:

And if we quit the church, we see dead or sick folk carried about, or we see those, who for their crimes were of late condemned to exile by the outraged majesty of the public laws, but who now, in contempt of those laws, well knowing that their ministers are a prey to death or disease, have returned, and traverse the city in packs, making it hideous with their riotous antics; or else we see the refuse of the people, fostered on our blood, becchini, as they call themselves, who for our torment go prancing about here and there and everywhere, making mock of our miseries in scurrilous songs. Nor hear we aught but: Such and such are dead; or, Such and such are dying; and should hear dolorous wailing on every hand, were there but any to wail.
-- Rigg translation (emphasis mine)

E se di quinci usciamo, o veggiamo corpi morti o infermi trasportarsi da torno, o veggiamo coloro li quali per li loro difetti l'autorità delle publiche leggi già condannò a essilio, quasi quelle schernendo per ciò che sentono gli essecutori di quelle o morti o malati, con dispiacevoli impeti per la terra discorrere, o la feccia della nostra città, del nostro sangue riscaldata, chiamarsi becchini e in istrazio di noi andar cavalcando e discorrendo per tutto, con disoneste canzoni rimproverandoci i nostri danni; né altra cosa alcuna ci udiamo, se non: 'I cotali son morti' e 'Gli altrettali sono per morire'; e se ci fosse chi fargli, per tutto dolorosi pianti udiremmo.
 -- Italian original (I've guessed at the corresponding phrase in bold)

The word becchini (left untranslated presumably for its specific cultural connotations) is the plural of becchino, meaning a gravedigger or cemetery worker. During a time of plague, I'd have thought these people would be some of the most unfortunate and overworked people in the city, to be pitied rather than scorned, but Pampinea refers to them in tones of disgust. Is this a kind of snobbery of a pampered aristocratic girl towards menial workers, or was there some reason to revile the becchini who were presumably doing the thankless and disgusting work of getting rid of dead bodies in a time of plague?
Why are the becchini spoken of in such a negative way?
Answer: There are two reasons why the becchini might have been looked upon negatively.

Some professions benefited financially from the plague. Bergdolt mentions, among others, pharmacists and gravediggers who sold shroud-cloth and other items for the burial of the dead for horrendous prices. Bergdolt cites the Cronaca fiorentina di Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, a 14th-centry chronicle, that discusses this (quoted from Decameron Web):

The gravediggers who carried out these functions were so handsomely paid that many became rich and many died, some already rich and others having earned little, despite the high fees. (…)  The shroud-cloth apparel which used to cost, for a woman, in terms of petticoat, outer garment, cloak and veils, three florins, rose in price to thirty florins, and would have risen to one hundred florins, except that they stopped using shroud-cloth, and whoever was rich was dressed with plain cloth, and those who weren't rich were sewn up in a sheet.

The authorities could engage vagabonds and criminals to carry the dead out of their houses and bury them in mass graves. (They may have been required to wear small bells on their clothes, just like lepers.) (See Bergdolt, page 76.)

In either case, these grave diggers would have been looked upon with contempt.
References:

Bergdolt, Klaus: Die Pest. Geschichte des Schwarzen Todes [The Plague: History of the Black Death] Third edition. C. H Beck, 2017.
Marchionne di Coppo di Stefano Buonaiuti, Decameron Web, Brown University.
Comment: I found another mention of becchini in the text (well, 2 mentions in the same passage): *"Few also there were whose bodies were attended to the church by more than ten or twelve of their neighbours, and those not the honourable and respected citizens; but a sort of corpse-carriers drawn from the baser ranks, who called themselves becchini and performed such offices for hire, would shoulder the bier, and with hurried steps carry it, not to the church of the dead man's choice, but to that which was nearest at hand, with four or six priests in front and a candle or two, or, perhaps, none; [...]*
Comment: *[...] nor did the priests distress themselves with too long and solemn an office, but with the aid of the becchini hastily consigned the corpse to the first tomb which they found untenanted."* This doesn't say anything negative about them, except the dismissive "drawn from the baser ranks", which might support the idea of plain old class snobbery. Does the phrase "making mock of our miseries in scurrilous songs" have any grounding in history?

What was wrong with becchini?


Conglomeration for conglomeration's sake

Question: I know that  category theorists have stretched the ontology of collections into conglomerates, 2-conglomerates, etc. My question is how far have they taken this? Are they interested at all in taking this concept as far as it can go, or is it really just a tool for "normal" maths to them? If no one is interested, why not?
Comment: I am not a category theorist, but I have read and done some category theory and never heard of 2-conglomerates. In fact, ACC is the only book where I have ever heard of conglomerates, and it was safe to ignore this concept forever. Better work with universes, **if necessary**.
Comment: I dream of a fundamentation where one doesn't have to care about these issues, let $\Bbb{Cat}$ be an object of itself..
Comment: Sufficient large cardinal axioms guarantee you can model transfinitely long successions of conglomerations using larger and larger universes.
Comment: One of the things that most interests me is higher category theory (the realm in which I would imagine something like a 2-conglomerate would show up), but I haven't come across this idea before.  I'm still, very much, at the beginnings of my studies into this field, so that could be the reason.  You might want to take up this question over on the n-category cafe blog, or on nLab: if anyone would know about those kinds of things, they would.
Comment: Martin, I'm sure its safe unless you are interested in certain types of esoterica. Or is it that universes are just as powerful ? I am ignorant on this. Guest, would that necessitate deleting the question here?
Comment: Like @MartinBrandenburg, I never heard of 2-conglomerates either. Could you perhaps point out where you read/heard about them?
Comment: Idk where I heard about them. I have spent lots of time on the Internet. Same idea as going from class to conglomerate, but starting at conglomerate and going bigger.
Comment: It seems like its trivially easy to vastly expand this notion, but I can't find ANY information on doing this. This leads me to believe the triviality is illusory.
Comment: I suspect part of the reason no one has much interest in following conglomerates farther is that it involves a lot of mucking about with multi-sorted languages while not-too-strong extra assumptions in ZFC yield pretty much the same thing. If you look at what ACC's theory does, the effect is very much like a Grothendieck universe.
Comment: @Malice, So do large cardinal axioms make classes under the assumption of their negation into sets?
Answer: So this is not a complete answer, but it is an example that I think should make a hierarchy of super-proper classes less interesting.
For any theory $T$ of sets, without proper classes, you can expand it to a theory $T^*$ with proper classes and impredicative class comprehension such that $T^*$ is equiconsistent with with $T$. The proof is due to Hao Wang where historically $T=\mathrm{NF}$ and $T^*=\mathrm{ML}$. If you do this with $T=\mathrm{ZF}$ then $T^*$ is something almost sorta like MK with semisets, which is poorly behaved, so we strengthen $T^*$ with full separation for sets and get, in essence, MK. Now we know MK is roughly equivalent to ZF plus some large cardinal assumptions (which basically give us a Grothendieck universe), so we may as well just use this latter.
The picture I'm trying to draw is this: we can add useless extra layers of classes to an existing theory to no particular benefit, producing $T^*$; or we can strengthen $T^*$ but still have just as much confidence in any strengthening of $T$ that's mutually interpretable with our strengthened $T^*$.
Proof-theoretically, NBG is nice because it's finitely axiomatizable; MK does not share this feature, and I would be very startled if Adamek et al.'s theory did either. Barring this, the only reason I'm aware of to want proper classes and conglomerates is some idea of "naturalness". And while proper classes can (in most treatments) be described solely with $\in$ as those classes that are not $\in$ anything, conglomerates and higher tend to need extra predicates in the language, so it becomes sloppy rather quickly.
Hopefully I've not made any serious errors above; NF/ML are more my area, so I'm largely analogizing using my vague knowledge of ZF relatives. I hope that I am corrected if I have made any serious errors.
Comment: This seems to be the answer, although I will allow the community a little bit of time to examine it (forgive me, I am an undergraduate with "Wikipedia knowledge" of all of this, though I find it fascinating.) before awarding a bounty. Do you know if we can say call * f, and transfinitely compose f?
Comment: The construction I'm familiar with doesn't immediately allow for that, but I'm not very well-versed with the model theory behind Wang's result. (I don't hold any advanced degrees either :p) I imagine there's something equivalent by way of large cardinals (as someone mentions in the comments) but I don't know if Wang's method itself can be easily iterated like that.
Answer: It seems like we can define a power "collection" operator, compose it transfinitely, and apply it to a proper class to expand this notion. Then if we admit class sized ordinals, the fun really takes off! If this attempt fails though, it'd still be useful to document other attempts, if any are out there.


How does DNSSEC work?

Question: How does my OS or browser knows to check for DNSSEC? How does the verification process works? Do I need a key from Comodo/Verisign? Do I need to install something to my hosting? What happens in men in middle attack? I have a man in middle attack case; the Turkish DNS providers show a page for my web site with "this site is blocked". Do all modern browsers support DNSSEC?
Comment: There are a lot of questions here and many answers to them are available online. Can you narrow down your question and include what research you've done?
Comment: @schroeder, https://dnssec-name-and-shame.com/ says that http://nlnetlabs.nl/ uses DNSSEC but I cannot see any advantage of it. I have changed the web site's IP address from my hosts file and when I visit the page again my browser does not notify me that this is a fake site. So, DNSSEC is completely useless to end user.
Comment: Are you certain your Web site hasn't been hacked? Perhaps dns is working but your site is messed up.
Comment: @NeilSmithline, my web site works if I use non-Turkish DNS. And here http://engelliweb.com/url/odtu-lu it says that the www.odtu.lu is blocked by court order.
Comment: This appears to be a classic X/Y problem.
Answer: Answering this questions all at once is somewhat outside the scope of a question and answer site. I will provide you some insight:
DNSSEC secures the DNS data of a server, meaning that when your browser tries to connect a server, it needs to look up it's IP-address. This IP-address is queried via the DNS servers configured in your OS (Google provides some under 126.96.36.199 and 18.104.22.168). Useally your system will use the DNS resolver your ISP (Internet service provider) provides.
Since a domain owner did not instruct your ISP's DNS resolver directly, it will query an authoritative name server for that domain (NS). How do you know for example that your ISP didn't change the IP-address of the website you're trying to access? That's where DNSSEC kicks in!
Every domain (e.g. .com, .net, .org) is inside the DNS root zone. In the root zone are (public) keys provided by the operators of those subzones (e.g. .com). In case of .com it's VeriSign*. In the DNS .com zone are than keys for each individual domain if it supports DNSSEC.
Let's say you have your domain example.com at Namecheap and enabled DNSSEC. The DNS record is first fetched from Namecheap's NS servers, which singned the record. Your browser can check now if the record is valid according to that key and than go one level up in the chain to see if your key for example.com is found in the zone .com. The zone .com is signed by a key found in the DNS root zone, which is maintained by the ICANN.
Different to classic TLS/SSL you don't need a certification authority (CA) like COMODO, since every record is traced back to the DNS root zone. What you need instead is a domain registrar (Namecheap, GoDaddy) that supports DNSSEC and a domain that supports DNSSEC, since not every domain supports (therefor has keys in the root zone) like for example .com does.
Modern browsers don't have DNSSEC checks enabled by default. Hopefully that changes in the future. However this does not mean that DNSSEC provides no security, since your ISP's dns servers will likely check wherever the records it got are valid and if not not resolve the domain name into an IP-address.
*Confusing example since VeriSign is both a classic CA and operates domain zones.
Comment: +You might consider using a VPN.
Comment: I would suggest using trusted DNS servers than (I mentioned the ones from Google, which support DNSSEC). This does not stop them from intercepting and faking the packets though. I don't know if that helps in the case of your country. You can enable pseudo DNSSEC support with addons. https://www.dnssec-validator.cz/

You could also run your own DNS server which will check the records for you, but that means if the lookup fails you cannot access the site. Also your country might as well use DPI to inject things into the traffic without spoofing the IP (Solution: HTTPS).
Comment: To be noted; Well my ISP's DNS servers are hijackers. See this http://dergiweb.com/inc/rDA/N/4_ayda_2600_site_kapatildi_091125173405.jpg Youtube was blocked in Turkey. Currently over 30000 known domains are blocked by ISPs.
Comment: To be noted; Yes, DPI exists because of PHORM (Gezinti). You visit a regular http web site and it redirects to gezinti.com. Ask for your permission to collect data about you (if you say no it ask again a week late until you accept). Then with DPI it collects data. Also when you exceed your quote it can show alert web page in stackoberflow.com. Yes it happens.
Comment: Verisign sold their CA business in 2010 to Symantec, which has been gradually rebranding it -- although they also acquired GeoTrust and Thawte and continue to operate those under the original names. Verisign now does DNS and little else. Whether that's still confusing I do not say.

How does DNSSEC work?


Visual way/program to show is hosts/servers are up

Question: My company manages a number of sites and if their servers or firewalls go down we need to know, what we'd really like is something that pings the host every few minutes and shows on screen if they are up. I'm considering writing it but there must be something simple out there that does this already, maybe my google-fu isn't good enough.
Answer: There are many products which deliver this, the most well known open source product is probably Nagios.
You can also look at other products on Wikipedia,

network monitoring
system mangement
Answer: If you don't want to do the setup yourself (not to mention the "who watches the watchmen?" problem with self-hosted Nagios etc.), something like Pingdom should do the trick if the servers are accessible over the public internet.


Sacrificing to regenerate from Supreme Verdict

Question: I have Varolz, the Scar-Striped out along with a few minor creatures. My opponent on his turn casts Supreme Verdict. Before the Verdict resolves can I use Varolz's regenerate ability by sacrificing one of my lesser creatures? Will my Troll survive the Verdict?
Comment: Please accept answers to your questions (by checking the mark next to the answer) to provide closure. Or if no answer is acceptable, please state why.
Answer: Sure you can.
With Supreme Verdict on the stack, you respond by activating Varolz's regenerate ability.  This resolves.
Supreme Verdict now resolves, destroying all creatures. Varolz's regeneration shield protects him, and he becomes tapped and survives the Verdict.
Obligatory comp rules citation:

614.8. Regeneration is a destruction-replacement effect. The word "instead" doesn't appear on the card but is implicit in the definition
  of regeneration. "Regenerate [permanent]" means "The next time
  [permanent] would be destroyed this turn, instead remove all damage
  marked on it and tap it. If it's an attacking or blocking creature,
  remove it from combat." Abilities that trigger from damage being dealt
  still trigger even if the permanent regenerates. See rule 701.12.

This is all pretty basic stuff of course.  Perhaps some confusion arises from the fact that Supreme Verdict "can't be countered".  This just means that it counterspells etc won't work on it, not that there is no possible means of escaping the Verdict's destructive effect.
Comment: Not only can you, but it's to your advantage. If instead of using supreme verdict, they used Righteous Fury, he wouldn't gain the life for your troll, and also wouldn't gain that life for the sucker you sac'd either.
Comment: thank you very much for the answers. While I'v been playing magic for about 3 years my circle of friends and I have never used regeneration abilities till very recently. Good stuff to know.


About the name of suggested reveiwer

Question: I am going to submit a short math paper to a journal. During the process of submission I am asked to suggest the Editor \ Reviewers. In this respect, can I write the name of my co-advisor of my Ph.D as a potential reviewer? Need to say, we have a joint paper with my co-advisor.
Comment: How many years (weeks) have passed since your PhD?
Answer: Recent joint papers are one of the first examples of conflict of interest most journals mention, see for example here and here. Being your advisor is also explicitly mentioned as a conflict. I would avoid suggesting this person as a potential reviewer, this will at the very least raise eyebrows unless you have a very convincing reason.
Answer: If this co-advisor is

not involved in the work leading to the current paper
is knowledgable in the area of the paper

then it would be fine to suggest the coadvisor as a reviewer.
For a more senior researcher it is quite common to personally know essentially everyone who is qualified to review their papers and to have co-published with a lot of them. Most of their papers will be reviewed by people they know.

About the name of suggested reveiwer


Are Primitive recursive functions (with bounded $\mu$ operator) equivalent to other known computational model?

Question: There is a famous equivalence between types of grammars and automatons. However when discussing recursive functions, we only consider equivalence of General Recursive functions with Turing machines. However primitive recursive functions are considered separately and I don't know any equivalence of that computational model with any other. I was wondering whether primitive recursive functions are equivalent to any other known computational model. I was thinking about Turing Machine with bounded tape size (linearly bounded), since primitive recursive functions have bounded $\mu$ operator. However I couldn't find any result that would say that, so is there any known computational model equivalent to primitive recursive functions?
Comment: It is not equivalent to linearly bounded automata (LBA) nor Turing machine. LBA is in $\textsf{PSPACE}$ while primitive recursive is in $\textsf{EXPSPACE}$ while Turing machine is in $\textsf{RE}$. We know $\textsf{PSPACE} \subset \textsf{EXPSPACE} \subset \textsf{Ack} \subset \textsf{RE} \subset \textsf{R} \subset \textsf{ALL}$ (complexity zoo).
Comment: See [here](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/684858/proof-theoretic-characterization-of-the-primitive-recursive-functions) for a proof-theoretic characterization.
Comment: thanks Kenneth for editing the post, also for stating the fact that LBA isn't equivalent to primitive recursive functions. also for providing hierarchy for complexity classes.
Answer: LOOP is a simple programming language which exactly captures primitive recursive functions.
Primitive recursive functions also have other characterizations. For example, they are the functions which are provably total in $\rm I\Sigma_1$ (a fragment of Peano arithmetic), and they are the functions computable by a Turing machine whose running time is in the Grzegorczyk hierarchy.
Comment: thank you for providing 3 different perspectives. I've also checked proof-theoretic  aspect as well, LOOP programming language is very interesting as well. proof theory perspective, programming language perspective and computation model perspective (TM with specific running time) all equivalent to PR.


How come the product $V\times\{0\}$ is measurable with $V$ non measurable?

Question: Take a non Lebesgue measurable set $V\subset\mathbb{R}$ (say the Vitali set). The Lebesgue outer measure $\mu\big[V\times\{0\}\subset\mathbb{R}^2\big]=0$ and that directly implies that $V\times\{0\}$ is measurable. How is this possible?
Answer: Any set of the form $V\times\{0\}$ has zero outer measure (it is contained in the line, which famously has zero (outer) measure).
Any set of zero outer measure is measurable.
Perhaps one could say that the one-dimensional weirdness of $V$ is irrelevant, because it is so small in the product set $V\times\{0\}$.
It is important to maintain the distinction between measures and outer measures in order to make all this sensible.
Every set has an outer measure.
The concept of measure is restricted to measurable sets.
The outer measure is more flexible, so it is best to argue with it.
Comment: That is the basic idea; if you restrict an outer measure to the collection of sets that are measurable (as in they satisfy the Caratheodory criterion), you obtain a measure.
Comment: @StanislasHildebrandt Ok, then the terminology shouldn't feel too alien. Now you don't know at first whether what you are dealing with is measurable, so it's best to start with the outer measure.
Comment: So for any non measurable set $V\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ $V\times\{0\}$ has "volume"/measure zero right?
Comment: @StanislasHildebrandt Yes! It is very useful to make a distinction between a measure and an outer measure in cases like this. Are you familiar with both?
Comment: I mean we only defined outer measure in class and now we call it just "measure" if what is being measured is measurable
Answer: Lebesgue measure is a complete measure. In particular since
$$
V\times{0}\subset\mathbb{R^2}\times\{0\}
$$
where $\mathbb{R}^2\times \{0\}$ is measurable (it is closed) and moreover $m(\mathbb{R}^2\times\{0\})=0$, it follows that $V\times \{0\}$ is measurable.
In fact when constructing Lebesgue measure using the Caratheodory- Hahn Extension theorem, we extend a premeasure $\mu$ defined on the algebra of finite disjoint unions of rectangles, $\mathcal{A}$, uniquely to a measure $m$ defined on the borel sigma algebra $\mathcal {B}=\sigma(\mathcal{A})$. But in fact the theorem extends this measure to an algebra bigger than $\mathcal{B}$, call it $\mathcal{L}$, those sets that are measurable with respect to Caratheodory's criterion. So we have the inclusions
$$
\mathcal{A}\subset\mathcal{B}\subset\mathcal{L}
$$
It can be shown that $\mathcal{L}=\{B\cup N\mid B\in\mathcal{B}, N\subset E, m(E)=0\quad\text{for some E$\in\mathcal{B}$}\}$.


How to achieve a shadowed shape behind a semi opaque surface?

Question: Imagine a white paper, a shape behind it, and behind the shape a source of light, like a candle. I want to achieve the shadow effect you perceive looking at the white paper. How to do this in photoshop?
Comment: Hi Untore, welcome to GD! Like Boblet said, what have you tried? Could you post some images or examples to show us where you are having difficulty.
Comment: I thnk what s/he is refering to is shadow puppetry.
Answer: If I'm right in assuming what you're looking for is a similar effect of shadow puppetry, then you can achieve this in Photoshop using multiple layers:
I started with a blank colored background

I added a subtle vignette with a radial gradient

I thenj added my silhouette

I added another on top, enlarged it and gave it a gausian blur and reduced the opacity (You can move this one around to change where the light source is)

Finally, I changed the colors of the blured image to better mimic a shadow


Windows 7 RDP not working for a specific server

Question: I am having trouble connecting to a Remote Server from my Windows 7 machine. Whenever I try to connect, I get the error saying:
This computer cant't connect to the remote computer.
Try connecting again. If the problem continues, contact the owner of the remote computer or your network administrator.
Here are all the things I've done:

I can connect to another server in the same subnet with the same credentials.
From the server from step 1, I can RDP to the server in question successfully with the same credentials.
I can connect to multiple other servers in the network.
Other people can successfully RDP into the server that I am having trouble connecting to.
I have made sure that I am not hitting the simultaneous connections limit.
I have verified the RD Session Host Configurations are consistent across both the servers I can connect to and the one that I cannot.

There are no events logged regarding this error on either my local machine or the remote one that I am trying to connect to. This seems to be a very generic error as Google searching has not provided many answers. Does anyone have any idea on what I can try next to get this issue resolved? Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you!
Answer: I had the same behaviour from Win7 64bit clients. Disabling sound and printer had no effect.
Weird.
For further troubleshooting I  disabled all non-microsoft services from start-up.
Success.
I disabled all bluetooth services from starting up and this fixed the problem.
Maybe this helps you too.


What does "Enable AirPlay over WAN" do?

Question: What does AirPlay over WAN do? I have an AirPort Express 802.11n. This was the last generation to hook directly into the outlet.
Answer: I believe it refers to accepting airplay connections from computers connected to the wired ethernet port on the AirPort Express. The port's primary purpose when the AirPortExpress was first released was to connect to a cable or DSL modem. Apple and many other home router makers refer to this as the WAN connection. However, I think it only supports AirPlay when the AirPort Express is being used to bridge wired devices onto a WiFi network.
I base this on my interpretation of this review of the AirPort Express on Small Net Builder:

Since the Music screen is unique to the Express, I grabbed a copy of it. The screenshot below shows that the controls are pretty simple. The Enable AirPlay over WAN feature really works, since that's where the iTunes server I used for a quick test sat. Administration from the WAN worked just fine, too.
Comment: I don't think so. My parents have multiple AExpress routers hooked up with LAN connections and they are able to stream to all the different speaker zones without WLAN connectivity on those routers.
Comment: So you are implying that they don't have the "Enable AirPlay over WAN" option enabled?
Comment: It's been configured that way for a couple years, so no - they wouldn't have had that option.
Answer: If the AirPort Express is being used to extend your network and plugged into another router via the WAN port, you will be able to use AirPlay from devices connected to your other router.
Answer: It allows the use of AirPlay from outside your private network. WAN= Wide Area Network.
Comment: How can this be of any use?

What does "Enable AirPlay over WAN" do?


Parallel programming service on internet

Question: Here is my question:
Is tere any service or technology to run parallel algorythms on more computer without knowing them?
For example: I write a parallel algorythm. My friends install a simple client app, and if they have internet connection, they can help my calculation with their free processor capacity. I would like to see them like an additional core in my CPU.
If there is no technology like that, is there any unsolvable problems with developing one? (I know there must be a lot problems with code trasfering, operation systems, and compatibility)
Comment: Don't you think it's the same as Distributed Computing? You can search about it. For example MPI is a platform which enables you to write distributed applications.
Answer: I believe that you can use BOINC to set up your own volunteer computing project.  But I have no experience of this to report.


If there was a probe orbiting at the edge of Earth's Sphere of influence, how slow would it orbit?

Question: Would it orbit very slowly? It's kinda been stuck in my head lately...
Comment: The sphere of influence is not 'gravity stops after this', but more of a 'gravity of this object is not overly dominant anymore', e.g. for applying the *patched conic approximation*. So, you're not orbiting 'on the edge of gravity', but rather 'very far away'.
Answer: I define sphere of influence as:
$(M_1/M_0)^{2/5} * r$
For this case $M_1$ is mass of the earth, $M_0$ is the mass of the sun, and $r$ is $149597871$ kilometers (distance from sun to earth).
According to my Hohmann spreadsheet, altitude of Sphere of Influence (SOI) is $918149$ kilometers.
Also according to my Hohmann spreadsheet a circular orbit at that altitude would move $.6565$ km/s and orbital period would be $102.4$ days.
But the spreadsheet is based on two body Newtonian mechanics. An actual orbit at that altitude might be distorted by the sun's influence.

Should you want to play with the spreadsheet here's an illustration. Typing the SOI altitude into both periapsis and apoapsis gives a circular orbit at that altitude.
Underlined is the circular orbit speed at periapsis and period in days.
It's assumed the user has already typed Earth into the departure planet cell.
Comment: I'd bracket math expressions with dollar signs. But instead of subscripting subscripts and raising exponents, it would just draw a box around the expression. An anonymous use has Mathjaxed it for me (thank you!). Now it reads the way I want it.
Comment: Thanks. That's odd because your answer is much different than pericynthion's... But you have more science involved, so I think you're more accurate. :)
Comment: @eroettger Pericynthion's numbers are correct. Pericynthion gave orbit speed and period for orbit having 1.5 million kilometer radius. I gave orbit speed and and period for an orbit having 924,000 km radius.
Answer: The Earth's Hill Sphere extends to a radius of approx 1.5 million km.  The velocity of a circular orbit at such a distance is around 500 m/s - which is very slow compared to LEO, but very fast compared to most forms of transportation, so I suppose it depends on your perspective...
Such an orbit has a period of approx 210 days, and is usually unstable.  Lunar and solar perturbations will increase the eccentricity until it (most likely) escapes into a heliocentric orbit.
Comment: I agree with your numbers. I usually treat Hill Sphere and SOI as two different things. Still I up voted the answer because it's informative.


Source for not looking at a kohens hands.

Question: It's commonly known that non Kohanim shouldn't look at a kohens hands during Birchas Kohanim. What is the source for this?
Comment: The well known joke, they say that one gets blind in one eye by looking. So what happens the third time one looks when he has no eyes left
Answer: This idea is brought down in Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 128:23:

בשעה שהכהנים מברכים העם לא יביטו ולא יסיחו דעתם אלא יהיו עיניהם כלפי
מטה כמו שעומד בתפלה והעם יכוונו לברכה ויהיו פניהם כנגד פני הכהנים ולא
יסתכלו בהם: הגה וגם הכהנים לא יסתכלו בידיהם על כן נהגו לשלשל הטלית על
פניהם וידיהם חוץ לטלית ויש מקומות שנהגו שידיהם בפנים מן הטלית שלא
יסתכלו העם בהם (ב"י):  At the time that the kohanim bless the
congregation, they should not glance [around] nor get distracted;
rather, their eyes should face downward in the same way one stands in
prayer. The congregation should be attentive to the blessing, and
their faces should face the kohanim, but they should not stare at
them. [Ram"a: And the kohanim should also not stare at their own
hands; therefore, it is customary for them to wrap their tallis on
their faces and keep their hands outside the tallis. And there are
some places where they have the custom that their hands are kept
within the tallis, so that the congregation does not stare at them
(Bet Yosef).]

See the Mishnah Berurah (89) there who writes that there is no real prohibition to 'see' the Kohanim nowadays, but rather the prohibition is against 'staring' in a manner that distracts the listener. However, in the times of the Bais Hamikdash, it was prohibited to even look at the Kohanim during Birchas Kohanim, since Hashem's Shechinah was 'resting' on their hands at that time.
Comment: It doesn't say not to look at them. It says not to stare at them.
Comment: The Vilna Gaon holds that the kohanim duchen with their hands outside their talis


What are the possible ways to visualise large, entangled states?

Question: What are the prominent visualizations used to depict large, entangled states and in what context are they most commonly applied?
What are their advantages and disadvantages?
Answer: In Verifying Genuine High-Order Entanglement the following graphs represent entangled qudits

In an answer to 'Alternative to Bloch sphere to represent a single qubit' @Rob references Majorana representation, qutrit Hilbert space and NMR implementation of qutrit gates which states

The Majorana representation for spin−$s$ systems has found widespread applications such as determining geometric phase of spins, representing $N$ spinors by $N$ points, geometrical representation of multi-qubit entangled states, statistics of chaotic quantum dynamical systems and characterizing polarized light.

The paper also includes this style of representation for qudits

I recently asked about how to visually represent a qubyte. In the comments of @DaftWullie's answer I proposed an 8-cube (hypercube graph):

An n-cube can be projected inside a regular 2n-gonal polygon by a skew orthogonal projection

This method seems to allow for the complexity of entanglement to be visualized in a scalable fashion.
Comment: These pictures are completely uninformative.  What do they visualize, and how?
Comment: Why on earth did someone downvote? I upvoted to neutralize it.
Comment: I upvoted you. I share your pain
Answer: The ZX-calculus is a graphical language for dealing with linear maps of qubits, and it can in particular represent any state of qubits. Basically, ZX-diagrams are tensor networks, but there is an additional set of rewrite rules that allows you to manipulate them graphically. On the Wikipedia page you can find an example of how to prove that a certain quantum circuit indeed implements a GHZ-state. It has also been used to reason about Measurement-Based Quantum Computing, because it allows you to straightforwardly reason about graph states.
In PyZX (disclaimer: I am a lead developer) we use automated graph rewriting to reason and prove results with ZX-diagrams involving thousands of vertices, and we can visualize circuits and states on dozens of qubits.
Answer: My personal view:
Yes, large entangled states can be visualized using quantum bayesian networks. See

Factorization of Quantum Density Matrices According to Bayesian and Markov Networks, by Robert R. Tucci (obviously I am the author here)
Python tools for analyzing both classical and quantum Bayesian Networks (Disclaimer: artiste-qb.net is my company)

Other people will probably advise using Tensor Networks instead of quantum Bayesian nets. This begs the question: How do Quantum Bayesian Networks and Tensor Networks compare? I have thought about that and gathered my thoughts in this blog post.
First lines of blog post:

A question I am often asked is what is the difference between tensor
  networks and quantum Bayesian networks, and is there any advantage to
  using one over the other.
When dealing with probabilities, I prefer quantum Bayesian networks
  because b nets are a more natural way of expressing probabilities (and
  probability amplitudes) whereas tensor nets can be used to denote many
  physical quantities other than probabilities so they are not tailor
  made for the job as b nets are. Let me explain in more detail for the
  technically inclined.

One can consider bipartite entanglement for the two sides of a partition, of a quantum bayesian network. One can write nice inequalities for such bipartite entanglements. See, for example, Entanglement Polygon Inequality in Qubit Systems,
Xiao-Feng Qian, Miguel A. Alonso, Joseph H. Eberly.
One can also try to define a measure of n-partite entanglement for n>2, where n is the number of nodes of a quantum Bayesian net.
See, for example, Verifying Genuine High-Order Entanglement, Che-Ming Li, Kai Chen, Andreas Reingruber, Yueh-Nan Chen, Jian-Wei Pan.


How can I locate in iPhoto an image selected in the Finder?

Question: This is essentially the reverse of this question: given that I have selected an image in the Finder, is there an applescript or similar tool which will open iPhoto and highlight this file in the library so I can delete/modify/tag/inspect it there?
Answer: Here is a basic automator service that will allow you to select an image in Finder and then start the service to find it in iPhoto. It worked fine on my Snow Leopard machine.
HTH

EDIT:
Changed the code slightly to make it behave better and make it go into Edit mode. Here is the changed code. Open the Automator Service file, and copy/paste it over it. Save it and it should take effect immediately.
<code>on run {input, parameters}
    set fPath to POSIX path of (input as string)

    tell application "iPhoto"
        activate
        select album "PHOTOS"
        set photoList to every photo whose image path is fPath
        select item 1 of photoList

        # Pressing Enter key goes into Edit mode...
        tell application "System Events"
            keystroke return
        end tell
    end tell
    return input
end run
</code>
Comment: When the iphoto library is collapsed the information bar says one picture is selected but it is not visible. Do you know how to extend the script to expand whatever album/event the picture is so it can be seen by the user?
Comment: See my edit. It that better?
Comment: Yes, that works if I replace the english word with the spanish version I have here. The film rolls are still collapsed, but I found out how to quickly open all at http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20021004061050563 so it's not a problem any more.


How did Paul become like the Galatians in Galatian 4:12?

Question: Galatians 4:12 NASB

I beg of you, brethren, become as I am, for I also have become as you are.

In what way did Paul become as the Galatians?
Answer: Paul teaches a similar idea in 1 Cor 9:19-23 -

19 Though I am free of obligation to anyone, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. 20 To the Jews I became
like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one
under the law (though I myself am not under the law), to win those
under the law. 21 To those without the law I became like one
without the law (though I am not outside the law of God but am under
the law of Christ), to win those without the law. 22 To the weak I
became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people
so that by all possible means I might save some.
23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

That is, Paul was in the habit of, as far as Christian morality permitted, of living like those whom he was trying to reach with the gospel of Christ.  In Gal 4:12, and Paul's comment that "I became as you are", Ellicott observes this:

For I am as ye are.—I lay no stress on my pure Jewish descent. I claim no privileges because I was circumcised the eighth day. I do not
count myself holier than you because I belonged to the strictest of
all sects, the Pharisees. I stripped myself of all this, and became a
Gentile among Gentiles.

Meyer is more detailed:

The correct interpretation is: "Become as I, become free from Judaism
as I am, for I also have become as you; for I also, when I abandoned
Judaism, thereby became as a Gentile (Galatians 2:14; Php 3:7 f.), and
placed myself on the same footing with you who were then Gentiles, by
non-subjection to the Mosaic law. Now render to me the reciprocum, to
which love has a claim." So Koppe, Winer, Usteri, Neander, Fritzsche,
de Wette, Hilgenfeld. This interpretation is not only in the highest
degree suitable to the thoughtful delicacy of the apostle—who might
justly (in opposition to Wieseler's objection) represent his former
secession from Judaism as a service rendered to his readers (as
Gentiles), because he had in fact seceded to be a converter of the
Gentiles—but is the only explanation in harmony with the words and the
context.

APPENDIX - Gal 4:12
The Greek of Gal 4:12 is characteristically Pauline with infuriatingly terse grammar.  A literal rendering of the Greek is (my translation):

become as I [am] because I also [became/have become] as you ...

Note the two implied verbs in square brackets - the first [am] is uncontroversial but the second is inserted only on the basis of the implied repetition of the initial verb.  Meyer explains it thus:

Ἐγενόμην must be supplied in the second clause, and to take it from
γίνεσθε is just as allowable as in 1 Corinthians 11:1 (in opposition
to Hofmann).


how to add newsletter subscription during registration?

Question: Here what I want to do. I loaded a checkbox list of taxonomy term on the registration form. Also I have a check box for "subscribe newsletter". so the user can check the his favourit taxonomy and "subscribe newsletter". I want to know how can I alter the submission of register form to gather this data?
Comment: FYI: for newsletter drupal have a good module http://drupal.org/project/simplenews. It provides all these facilities and provides more features for newsletter
Answer: you can achieve this either by using Mailchimp Module
<code>                          OR(by custom coding)
</code>
You can alter your registration form using hook_form_alter. Now in your form you can add add two new elements that is :-

A checkbox saying- Signup to receive alerts.
A text field to capture email address.

Now you can override your form on submission and pass the email captured above to mailchimp function that adds users to email lists via ajax call.
Hope this helps!!!
Comment: tanx . I used the same solution as you offered.


Why is there no reputation change in meta

Question: Why is there no reputation change in Apple.meta.stackexchange.com?
Comment: [Why doesn't Meta Stack Overflow have real reputation?](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/297639/4751173)
Comment: I've removed the feature request tag. If you want to nominate that we should ask for meta reputation, feel free to make that clear and single request with the tag. Lay out what you feel it should do so people can vote on it : - )
Comment: Maybe it could be changed voting wouldn't change reputation but writing an accepted answer and some other things would change reputation
Answer: I wasn't around when the meta on the main trilogy was formed, but meta we down vote things we don't want to see. It's like a caucus or straw vote. If I raise a controversial issue and everyone disagrees - the down votes shouldn't take away from my reputation on the main site and you don't really earn reputation here to participate - you earn reputation on the main site to qualify to ask and answer here.
I'm sure there are some really nice blog posts on Meta Stack Exchange now that that's been split off from the SO meta.


Noise margins logic circuits

Question: The noise margin is the difference between the min input HIGH and min output HIGH.
What is the significance of it?
Lets say the input HIGH voltage is currently 2.8V, a noise spike of -0.5V would still be a logic HIGH?
Comment: Your definition of noise margin is incorrect:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_margin
Answer: With all logic families having finite bandwidth, because of charge stored in the devices and on the metallization on the silicon, your noise margin thinking must consider the product of Time * Voltage. Or if you prefer, Time * Current.
Consider the simple inverter (6 in a package). Those inverters often are THREE cascaded inverters, the first of small input gate area so as to minimally load the incoming signal, then a larger inverter, then a very large inverter to handle 10pF or 100pF load capacitances (read the datasheets).
This inverter has TWO internal nodes, and those act as "filters" to prevent response to extremely narrow pulses.
This is consistent with the Time * Voltage model of noise immunity.
Answer: The noise margin is as you have shown in the diagram. Do be aware that a diagram such as this would be much better to place the output data on the left side and the input data on the right side. This way the data flow is more like how we would envision a schematic where circuit flow should would be from left to right.
The noise margin covers several cases as follows (using your diagram numbers).

For the logic 0 noise margin any noise spikes that appear coupled directly onto to the signal line of the driver can be up to 0.4V above the guaranteed output low level of the driver output before the receiver parts input gets pushed into the intermediate zone and potentially cause a problem in the receiver.
For the logic 1 noise margin any noise spikes that appear coupled directly onto to the signal line of the driver can be up to 0.4V below the guaranteed output high level of the driver output before the receiver parts input gets pushed into the intermediate zone and potentially cause a problem in the receiver.
For a localized ground noise spike at the receiver that appears as a spike above the ground level as referenced back to the driver the receiver interpretation of the input signal will remain valid as long as such ground level spike does not go above 0.4V.
To a lesser degree for many logic families, a localized VDD noise spike at the receiver that appears as a spike below the VDD level as referenced back to the driver VDD will remain valid as long as the VDD level spike does not go below 0.4V. (I say to a lesser degree because many logic parts high level thresholds are not so sensitive to the positive supply voltage level, especially for bipolar logic families. CMOS parts are a bit more power supply sensitive but at the same time often have greater high level noise margin).
Comment: For the first case, are you referring to an output voltage registered as a logic 0 which has a corresponding voltage at the input?
The voltage spike can be 0.4v above this input voltage value?
Comment: Your wording is very difficult to understand
Comment: @LuckyBlue - I re-read what I wrote. It still makes sense without having to change any words. For the first case the noise spikes can be 0.4V higher than the driver's VOLmax before violating the receiver's VILmin.
Answer: For any logic family, there is no one simple number that defines its noise margin.  Because of this, you usually cannot use a single noise margin number to compare the relative noise immunities of different families without a small pile of conditions and disclaimers.
The general idea is to quantify how much noise added to a theoretically pure signal a device can handle at its input without giving a false output.  There are actually two noise margins, one each for high and low inputs.
The noise margin changes depending on the signal source.  Let's say an input stage needs a minimum of 3.0 V to guarantee a (whatever) output.  If the signal source makes a nominal 4.0 V output, that is a 1.0 V margin.  If it makes a 5.0 V nominal output, that is a 2.0 V margin.
In the 70's, it was pretty safe to assume that a TTL input stage was almost always driven by some other TTL output stage.  Same for CMOS.  In that context, you could use the output stage's specs to define the noise margin for that input.  Today that is nowhere near as sure a bet, so the noise margin must be evaluated within the system parameters, not just the device parameters.
Answer: If Vdd is 2.8V and the temperature and IC threshold tolerance just "happens to be" 50% Vdd {+/-15%} Injecting a -0.5 V spike may or may not cause an output transition. It depends on the source impedance and input actual threshold in that 30% process and temperature margin.
=============================================
Although there are over 30 Logic Families with various supply voltage ranges, speeds, impedance and thresholds, I would like to describe them as 3 common generic logic families, as follows;
TTL power gain (=10) logic with asymmetric current and voltage but symmetrical logic power noise margin.
CMOS Voltage gain logic ( Av=10 min unbuffered at Vdd min at max temp)
ECL, LVPECL, CML  50 Ohm differential current mode logic 10ps rise time, low EMI.  Emitter-Coupled and Current Mode Logic (CML) uses constant current,  GHz logic.
STSCL , "Sub-Threshold Source-Coupled Logic" , or just SCL , new family, faster like Emitter-coupled at low Vt levels.
The logic families are designed for symmetrical noise power margin immunity because noise is random polarity but defined with a spectral noise power.
Static Noise margin is NOT just OUT-IN Voltage margin. It is designed for Noise Power margin.  TTL has a symmetrical input and output threshold of 1.4Vdc (0.8~2.0) where logic "0" was originally based on 2 PN junction drops but the "1" output voltage swing was increased to reduce the current & power consumption but  the current rises near the switching threshold to present a lower impedance to stray noise and thus attenuate it.
CMOS having NMOS and PMOS were designed to match Vt and Ron characteristics but these shift with temperature, so the voltage margin rule might be applied here but it becomes asymmetrical with temperature shift of the input threshold.
You will see some reports showing voltage margin for different families but this is invalid  for radiated noise margin but valid for supply and ground noise spikes.
Why not for radiated noise??
5V CMOS logic is roughly 50~66 Ohms driver Ron and 3.3V 74ALC' CMOS logic is roughly 25 Ohms (Vol/Iol=Ron) by design. ( with 25% tolerance)  So although the voltage margin decreases, the current margin increases. \$V_{margin}^2/R_{on}=P_{margin}\$  Thus the concept that of pure voltage margin depends on where the noise comes from and it's source impedance.
<code>Noise Margin
--              VOH     VIH     Margin  VIL    VOL      Margin
TTL [5volt]     2.4v    2.0v    400mV   0.8v    0.5v    300mV
FCT [5volt]     2.5v    2.0v    500mV   0.8v    0.5v    300mV
BTL [5 volt]    2.1v    1.62v   480mV   1.47v   1.1v    370mV
GTL [5 volt]    1.5v    1.05v   450mV   0.95v   0.55v   400mV
CMOS [5 volt]   4.9v    3.85v   1050mV  1.35v   0.1     1340mV
LVTTL [3volt]   2.4v    2.0v    400mV   0.8v    0.4v    400mV
LVCMOS [3 volt] 2.8v    2.0v    800mV   0.8v    0.2v    600mV
CMOS [2.5v]     2.0v    1.7v    300mV   0.7v    0.4v    300mV
CMOS [1.8v]     1.35v   1.1v    250mV   0.66v   0.45v   210mV
</code>
For crosstalk and radiated noise the impedance is high so it can be modelled by E field [V/m] and capacitance [pF] or E field V/m] and unbalanced CM impedance [Ohms] with respect to ground.
For ground shift noise the voltage but also the impedance is mucher lower.  For TTL decoupling caps of 1 per 10 IC's was recommended, but since CMOS is a switched capacitance, 1 per IC is recommended depending on layout and IC size with 100nF to 300nF per IC to attenuate the switched internal and load capacitance current, Ic=CdV/dt.
Although MOS Ron depends on (Vgs-Vt) but near the midpoint threshold both NMOS and PMOS FETs are conducting, so the driver impedance may be a slightly lower which is the attenuating factor for radiated noise ingress attenuation, but also becomes a source of egress noise if not bypassed.

Noise margins logic circuits


Why are blender simulations jittery on small scale?

Question: It's been common wisdom that, when a rigid body, or cloth simulation gets jittery, it helps to just scale up the entire scene and the simulations start to behave more predictably. And while I have myself experienced that this is good advice, I don't quite understand why. Since the simulations are just calculations, they should behave exactly the same when everything is 10x smaller, with mass, speed, and so on adjusted accordingly. And yet the results differ wildly. Could someone explain why?
Answer: Jitter is often caused by floating point instability. If you're not familiar with floating point and the problems which cause this, I have attempted to write a high level overview which I hope might be helpful. However the standard disclaimers apply; I'm not an expert on physics simulation nor a bullet or blender developer nor an authority in any sense.
Bullet, the physics library blender uses for rigid body simulation, uses floating-point arithmetic. Floating point numbers have the impossible task of representing all real numbers in a fixed number of bits, and so not all numbers are actually representable; arithmetic in floating-point is almost always rounded to a number a little different from the exact correct answer.
This tends to translate to jitter in rigid body simulations when an object is in constant contact with another object. Imagine that the precise position the object should sit so that it exactly collides with a collider (i.e. is neither inside it nor outside) is not representable. When calculating the next position for the object, bullet inevitably calculates a position inside or outside the collider. Lets say its inside; then a collision occurs and the object gets pushed outside, and then gravity (or any number of other forces) pushes the object back again and an oscillation starts. If the velocity of the object starts increasing, the jitter can quickly magnify in a positive feedback loop.
This is of course a simplified version of events, there are countermeasures which bullet employs to avoid this sort of thing and I don't pretend to know half of them (but Split Impulse is one you have control over from blender) but there are also many other ways things can go wrong in any complex simulation with multiple simultaneous interactions.
As to why shrinking things tends to help, that is likely because the standard format for floats (IEEE 745) is clever and manages to offer a higher density of representable numbers near zero; the logic being that larger errors matter less with bigger numbers. As for why making things larger can help; that may have more to do with collision detection being better behaved with a reasonable number of simulation steps for the size and velocities of the objects involved. (even with all the physics properties scaled, properties such as substeps and behavior of things like split impulse may not scale in a perfectly analogous way.. but i'm at the end of my knowledge here)
It would be possible to not use floating point arithmetic, but writing the physics engine would likely be harder especially while achieving comparable performance. The author of the bullet physics library has commented on this possibility and suggests it would be a completely separate engine.
Comment: One thing I should have noted earlier is that it's [a known issue with the rigid body simulation that unapplied object transforms causes misbehavior](https://blender.stackexchange.com/a/7349/599). I've never satisfactorily found an answer for why this matters and it may be a bug, but either way something to keep in mind when testing for instability at different scales (i.e. apply transforms before testing for best results).
Comment: Hey @gandalf3, thanks for the response, however, I find the part about floats not very convincing, here's why: the usual 32-bit floats have 8 exponent bits, which means they can go all the way down to around 10^-37. On the other hand, in a simulation, let say we have a 0.001 kg object with radius of 0.001 m, and the impulses are computed for 120 fps, with 100 sub-steps per frame. Even at this extreme, we get numbers around 10^-10, maybe 10^-13, still very far from the end of the range - so far that that even multiplying the entire deal by another 10^-10 shouldn't make any visible difference.
Comment: To put this another way: multiplying all floats in a calculation by some constant factor mostly just shifts their exponents, it doesn't affect the (relative) precision. What usually does is an add (or similar) operation of numbers with wildly different exponents - but I don't see how this kind of problem could be fixed by scaling things up or down. I like your explanation of the feedback loop, I agree that this is certainly the case, but I feel we didn't get to the bottom of it yet.
Comment: I don't think the issue is that the "range of precision" is somehow exceeded. I suspect its more to do with most numbers throughout the entire range being rounded slightly. Under the wrong conditions, that slight rounding can lead to a positive feedback occurring in the simulation. The reason overall scale would matter is the density of representable numbers; where the density is higher the error should stay lower, enough so that the simulation may be less prone to driving itself out of control.


How to properly clean a rough concrete floor?

Question: I have an old house with an uneven concrete floor that occasionally needs to be cleaned. The basement floods during a hard rain due to some landscaping issues that I'm working on. I've cleaned it with a scrub brush and mop, but that can take quite a while and many passes before it's fully cleaned. I could also use a pressure washer but the spray from it might get other parts of my basement wet. I've looked at some concrete floor cleaning machines but they all seem designed for flat, smooth floors. What's the best way to easily clean the floor?
Answer: Mopping is great. It shouldn't be that dirty subsequent times, so it won't take as long from here out. Sweeping or vacuuming before mopping will help reduce the chance of needing more than one pass.
If you want a less manual mopping, you can get a mopping floor machine, steam floor machine, or a robotic mopper (like a roomba). Or you can get a big yellow rubbermade janitor-level mop and bucket for about $75 that will make mopping a lot quicker.
Adding a floor treatment like epoxy would also help reduce the permeability and increase the smoothness of the floor, which makes sweeping and mopping more effective. You can also just get cheap indoor/outdoor carpet for the flattest parts to cut down on what need scrubbed and mopped.
Comment: Downvoters, care to comment? This answer has several good suggestions.
Answer: You already found it, nobody said it would be easy.
If you have a functioning sump you might be able to use a normal hose rather than a pressure washer to move most of the loosened-by-the-brush dirt out to the sump before a final mopping up. If you don't have a sump, either keep doing what you are doing or look into leveling it. One approach to leveling and easier to clean would be to set tiles in a thick mortar bed (or over a self leveling product, using thinset) that eases most of the bumps.
Another, possibly helpful, approach would be a wet/dry shop vacuum.
Answer: A light acid etch will make cleaning easier 1-2% muriatic and water, prior to epoxy coating a small garage I used to etch the floor every year after we cut up our deer and elk I think I had done that in this garage 10+ years and it did not damage the concrete, if a stronger solution was used the acid could over etch.
It sounds like you don't have drainage so a shop vac will be needed to suck up the excess water. After I finally epoxy coated that floor the next year the mess from cutting up several animals cleaned up with a mild soap and water.
You might consider a floor paint to make the cleanup easier I mentioned paint because it will be 1/3 the cost of epoxy but still seal and make cleanup easier.
Answer: I usually do this with a water vacuum:

It's like a normal vacuum cleaner, except there is no filter bag inside, and it can suck water without damaging the motor. Also quite convenient to clean large quantity of sawdust, demolition dust, mud, sand, etc.
In your case the important features are that

It will suck mud out of an irregular surface like concrete. If some remains, just add more water, go at it with a scrub brush to un-stick the mud off the floor and mix it with the water, and suck it out. It will remove most of the water so it dries quickly afterward. It will also suck sand and small pebbles.

For this to work well you need the "head" of the vacuum (blue arrow) to be specially designed to suck water, a normal attachment for carpets will not work. So make sure to check when you buy it: it should have two rubber scrapers on both sides to create a good vacuum against your irregular floor.


Is there any way to add a spy camera on raspberry pi zero through GPIO?

Question: I have to add the spy camera on my pi zero 1.3 However, I'm just wondering, would it be possible to connect a camera module through GPIO? Pi Zero with a spy camera would be a cool thing :-)
Comment: The actual Pi camera which connects to the CSI port on the zero v1.3 is usable as a spy camera, depending on what you want to conceal it in.  The board is less an an inch square and the hole required for the lens could be as small as a few millimeters.
Comment: Doubtful. You're best off finding a small USB camera. Unless you know the spy camera's circuit, and the protocols it uses, it's a dead end from the word go. But there's a chance it uses I2C or possibly SPI internally, so it's possible. But it would be very hard to do unless you really know what you're doing
Comment: Can I add the two devices on pi zero through GPIO pins, If I wanted to also add the bluetooth 4.0 on gpio pins is that possible? what should be the max power of GPIO on Pi-zero 1.3?
Answer: As some of the commenters  on the question have stated - very unlikely - unless you have a camera that provides a digital signal that uses a signal/protocol system (e.g. SPI.) that is available on (probably a collection of) GPIO pins.
I am not aware of any device that does fall into that category - but I don't know everything!  Mention has been made of the I2C bus (on a couple of the GPIO pins) but I'm not sure that that has the throughput to support any sort of live video streaming.
Traditionally spy cameras produce a Composite-Video-Blanking-Sync (CVBS) analogue signal and you would need an additional - probably USB - dongle to convert that into a signal that the RPi can use.  There are now small camera / USB dongles that effectively combine these together which would help to reduce the size - but this uses the USB interface NOT the GPIO pins that you ask about.  Using the USB port does have the advantage that you are not limited to just one camera but the bandwidth will be shared between the devices - which may or may not be an issue, depending on the resolution v.s. frame rate you are looking for in your video signals.
For lower values for both of these where you are looking more to a sequence of time-lapse images (say one per second from each camera) this actually looks quite a promising way to go even though it wasn't the  original direction of your question.
For the mentioned spy-camera usage the overall size is not too important as it depends on what you hide the unit inside as camouflage (not forgetting how you are to power the thing)!
Be aware that there may be legislative restrictions on the use of both obvious and covert image recording systems in both public and private environments - so check what is allowed where you are before you spend too much on kit... 8-)


L293D to send data to a NeoPixel LED strip?

Question: Does a L293D return the same signal on the output as it gets on the input? Or does it change a pwm signal to a rather constant voltage?
Comment: Why do you want to use PWM?  The LEDs need constant power.  I can't think of a reason to drive the data line through a L293D.
Answer: Is there a particular reason you need to drive a NeoPixel strip with L293D? It is a high voltage/current H-bridge for driving highly inductive loads like a DC motor. Your application instead needs high precision in the time domain, assuming you power the strip with a dedicated DC supply (it can damage your RPi otherwise).
If you are not married to the chip but absolutely have to use an RPi, I'd suggest you grab an arduino (a nano would do just fine if you are pressed for space) and hook it up to your RPi (either as I2C backpack or usb Firmata) and save yourself a whole lot of headache, given that you have access to all the NeoPixel libraries for Arduino and don't need to worry about chip level timing.
Here is a decent how-to guide.
Comment: I have a 12V led strip. The data line needs atleast 8.4V = 0.7*12V. I have a dedicated dc source and I want to step up the data line to the 12V from that source. I have these l293d around here and was wondering if I can use them for that.
Comment: Are these BCM 2835 LEDs?
Comment: It's a WS2811 LED strip with 3 5050 SMDs per pixel
Comment: Does it say in the datasheet you need 8.4V on the data line? The WS2811 has a 74AHCT125 chip which runs on 5V CMOS logic. So to drive it you only need 0-5V on the gate (DIN or data input). Problem is the digital pin of the RPi are 3.3V logic. So you either need a level shifter or as I described, use and Arduino to drive it. Even with a level shifter the WS2811 require a unique timing which is difficult to generate off the SPI clock on the Pi and the light is just going to flicker or have some random color behavior.
Answer: The L293D is effectively a buffer as it passes 3V logic signals to the output which will have a larger voltage swing and can pass significantly more current (up to 1 amp I think) than the few milli-amps that are available on the RPi's GPIO pins directly.  So in this case whilst it will provide the 3.3V to 5.0V logic shift I think you will need you will be paying for the high-power capability (which you do not need IIRC for WS2811 strips) with propagation delays that are likely to hurt the quite tight timing requirements to drive that type of strip with say the RPi_WS281x library.


How can 坚强 be used after 选择 in this term "选择坚强和希望"?

Question: I recently came across this term "选择坚强和希望" and I wonder how 坚强 is used here. In every single dictionary I have searched 坚强 is an adjective, so how can an adjective be used after 选择 (to choose)? And alongside 希望 (hope) as a noun? This term is loosely translated to "to choose strength and hope" in English but because 坚强 is an adjective, I do not get the grammar behind this. If anyone can be kind enough to explain, I thank you in advance.
Comment: 坚强 - strong(adj), staunch(adj), or doughtiness(n).
Answer: It can be used after 选择 because it's a noun.
Words don't necessarily have a fixed designation as nouns or adjectives. This isn't unique to Chinese, other languages have this feature. Maybe it's more pronounced in Chinese because words don't change according to grammatical usage.
I don't think there is anything loose about the translation, it seems pretty accurate to me:
<code>Choose strength and hope.
</code>
Also, here hope is being used as a noun (in both the English translation and the original Chinese), but you could say 我希望见到她 (I hope to see her) and 她给我希望  (She gives me hope). In both languages, the word can be a noun or a verb, and the only indication is its position in the sentence.
Answer: What about 'strong' and 'weak' in English? Are they definitely adjectives?
The strong survive, the weak go under.
强者生存下去,弱者灭亡。
面对死亡,陈琳琼选择了坚强和希望。
Confronting (imminent) death, Chen Linqiong chose strength and hope.
Answer: There are neither strict rules for word types nor for word usages of grammar of the Chinese language. For example, when talking about the apples, you can say, "红的苹果比较甜", or "红的比较甜".
In English, you must use "the", such as "the red are sweeter".
In Chinese, you can say "这个红的比较甜". But "这个" is not necessary.


How to reduce the size of an APK file in Unity?

Question: Is the minimum APK size of an Android app made by Unity 8MB? I am building an empty project, but still getting 8MB. Is there a way to reduce the APK size?
Comment: If this question is about Unity the game engine, you should change the tag from `unity` to `unity3d`. See description about unity tag by hovering mouse over it.
Answer: For reducing APK size:
In Unity 5.6.0f3 I have created a simple "Hello world" program and build an APK file, it consumes 21.2 MB at first but to reduce the size you have to follow these steps:

Unity 5.6.0f3:  Player settings > other settings > optimization > API compatibility
  level
Unity 2018.3.6f1: Player Settings > Other Settings > Configuration > API Compatibility Level

.NET 2.0 Subset.
To avoid memory wastage, Unity also supports the .NET 2.0 Subset API profile. This is very similar to the Mono "MonoTouch" profile, so many limitations of the "MonoTouch" profile also apply to Unity's .NET 2.0 Subset profile.Unity's .NET 2.0 Subset profile.

Unity 5.6.0f3:  Player settings > other settings > device filter > ARMv7
Unity 2018.3.6f1: Player Settings > Other Settings > Configuration > Target Architectures

ARM and x86 are both processor architectures. x86 belongs to Intel while ARM is used by different companies and widely used, so no need to select both architectures.

Unity 5.6.0f3: Player settings > other settings > rendering path > Legacy Vertex

Unity 5.6.0f3: Player settings > other settings > Optimization > Stripping level > Use micro mscorlib

The Lightweight mscorlib version will be used at expense of limited compatibility.
Most games do not use all the functionality of the provided DLLs. With this option, you can strip out unused parts to reduce the size of the built player on Android devices.

After applying all these changes it becomes 10.4 MB.
For reducing IPA size:
In Xcode, there are few flags you need to set,

Build Settings-> Enable Objective-C Exception-Yes
Build Settings-> Enable BitCode-No
Build Settings-> Compress PNG files -No
Comment: Any idea where all these option went in 2018.3?
Comment: Can I build 2 versions of my APK as follows: 1 is for ARM and the other is for x86, and then submit both versions to Google Play Store ?
Answer: In Player settings, Device Filter, Select ARMv7 only
(In latest unity (2018.1), this can be found as Other Settings, Target Architecture)
Also scroll down, set Stripping level to Use Micro mscorlib
These should reduce the size a bit further
Answer: Even though your project doesn't contain any of your code yet, it still contains the Unity libraries and they are a fixed size. 8MB is very small for any Android app, let alone a game. I wouldn't worry about that until later.
Comment: I believe we do need to worry about proper optimization all the time and take the proper steps about it regardless project's stage.
Answer: Unity 2020.3.38f1
A empty project in unity take 6 mb size in ARMv7  and take 12mb size in both ARMv7and ARM 64 during building the apk


Migrate Cakephp1.3 to 2.0

Question: I have developed one heavily loaded project in cakephp 1.3 now my client want it in latest CakePHP version.
I have migrated it using shell script based tutorial provided on below link:
http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/appendices/2-0-migration-guide.html
version get replaced it got migrated in CakePHP 2.0 version but now on running a project i am getting an error
Fatal error: Call to a member function parseAccept() on a non-object in D:\xampp\htdocs\arguenet1\lib\Cake\Controller\Component\RequestHandlerComponent.php on line 134
project is mostly developed with ajax functionality and requesthandler componenet also have been used to check isAjax request or not on component side.
Can anyone help me to solve this error...Thanks in advance.
Answer: The signature for the __construct() method has changed in 2.x. See the API docs here. Try modifying your AppController::__construct() like so:
public function __construct($request = null, $response = null) {
    parent::__construct($request, $response);
    // Your code here.
}

Credit to this Google Groups thread.

Migrate Cakephp1.3 to 2.0