Is there a way to block an elected President from entering office?

Question: Given the recent results on the national election at the US, I have seen several protests here at Berkeley and the Oakland area. I am wondering whether there exists any legal option to prevent him from becoming president? I am asking this, because if there is no such option, I have troubles seeing what is the final objective of these riots and marches against Trump.
Comment: Technically, faithless electors could stop him becoming president.
Comment: At this point, it isn't clear what you are asking. Are you asking what legal options exist to prevent a President-Elect from becoming President? Or are you asking about the causes or motivations of these kinds of protests?
Comment: I guess both. I would assume the protesters go out to the streets to prevent Trump from becoming president, somehow. If they cannot avoid Trump from becoming president, then what other causes or motivations could they have?
Comment: Even if they can't change who becomes president, a large and loud opposition to him can still have an effect, perhaps gaining other politicians to their side (esp. the ones in the houses), giving the populace a movement to get behind, making it more difficult for him to operate and implement the changes they are opposed to.
Comment: I am not a Trump supporter, but he won the election in accordance with the rules. Objecting to his actions & policies as a president are fair game, but looking for means to block the president elect is tantamount to subverting the democratic process.
Comment: @indigochild I doo not see it as unclear even a little bit. "I am wondering whether there exists any legal option to prevent him from becoming president?" that is the question and "I am asking this, because if there is no such option, I have troubles seeing what is the final objective of these riots and marches against Trump." that is why it is being asked "I have seen several protests here at Berkeley and the Oakland area." that is what triggered everything in the first place.
Comment: @copper.hat You may wish to consult [FactCheck.ORG](http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-electoral-college/) before you allege that expecting the Electors to fulfil their sworn duty to the Constitution somehow "subverts the democratic process". The US is a republic because the authors of our Constitution feared the very scenario we now find ourselves in. **In Hamilton's words, they created a republic not a direct democracy to ensure *"that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications."***
Comment: @copper.hat If the Constitution had wanted us to have a popular election for the President, it would have specified that. It deliberately specified something else: election by the States' Electors, or failing that, by the two houses of Congress. If Electors weren't supposed to think, then we would not have them—we would directly elect the President by popular vote. We don't do that under our current Constitution, but we could always change it to surrender to the tyranny of the majority if we thought that a good idea. It's not "subverting the will of the people" to follow the Constitution.
Comment: @tchrist: I really don't follow what point you are arguing. The people have voted and now we wait for the Electors to vote. That is the way it works. Trying to influence the Electors after the popular vote is a subversion. I am not implying that the Electors should not fulfill their duty. I am saying that we should respect the vote as it stands and let the Electors do their job.
Comment: According to my Constitutional law professor, the VP is actually elected. The ticket is selected together on the ballot, but is actually two votes.
Comment: That's in the normal election, @SensiiMiller. If the presidency is vacated _afterwards_, the _new_ president selects the _new_ VP. See the 25th amendment.
Comment: @tchrist: Having disgruntled factions dictate a result contrary to the popular election would constitute a subversion in my mind. Attempting to influence the Electors certainly does not smack of a representative democracy. Dragging feet rather than getting on board leaves the country in a persistent metastable state. Instead of niggling, we should pay more attention to The Simpsons.
Comment: Not to mention that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, not only would the electoral college be following the Constitution to prevent an "man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualification" from entering office, it would also be supporting the will of the majority of voters.
Comment: See this link, part of this has been answered http://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/12750/what-are-donald-trumps-legal-options-if-he-loses-the-presidential-election/12751#12751
Comment: @KDog yes there is. we have not yet elected him and until we do he is not president. This is part of the representative process. nobodys vote does anything to elect the president directly and the people that we do elect can change their minds and cast a ballot for someone else.
Comment: Let's assume the electoral college votes according to the dictates of the states they represent. Now, let's say the electorate votes Trump in, but somehow, America prevented Trump from being president...We show he did not meet the qualifications for birth citizenry, or age...then what happens is, Pence is elected Vice-president, and with the vacancy of the presidency, he immediately becomes president, then the new VP is selected. I do not remember the succession of VP.
Comment: The new president picks the new VP, @SensiiMiller, subject to Congress's approval.
Comment: Suppose there was a way to prevent someone who, by all accounts, won the election, from entering office. There may be even short-term advantage to doing this. But the lasting damage to the republic will be devastating. Changing the rules after the game is over can only destroy public trust in the political system. Given that trust is already somewhat low, it could open the doors to the fall of the republic.
Comment: Title should be fixed to something like *"What is the purpose of people protesting, given an elected President can't be blocked from entering office?"*
Comment: You could try locking his door.
Answer: As of today (November 9th), the United States have not yet elected a president. They have elected an electoral college, which will elect a president on December 19th.
Theoretically the electors could still change their mind and elect someone completely different. It is not unheard of that individual "faithless electors" vote different than mandated by the result in their state for whatever reason. In 21 states this is completely legal, and in many others the repercussions are minor. However you should not bet on this. Never in the history of the United States did enough electors do this to make someone else president than they should have. In 1836, 23 faithless electors for Virginia were almost successful  when it came to electing the vice president. But that was the closest faithless electors ever came to changing an election outcome.
Another reason to protest against Trump now is to undermine his authority as president to convince Congress and Senate members to support him less in the upcoming years. A president can't do much without backing from Congress and the Senate. When a president suggests acts which are amazingly unpopular, party loyality might not be enough to prevent them from blocking them. So sending the message "We hate the president and when you let him do what he wants we will hate you too!" could have an influence.
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/48305/discussion-on-answer-by-philipp-is-there-a-way-to-block-a-president-elect-from-e).
Answer: There's no good, legal way to stop Trump from becoming President. There is, however, a terrible but still legal way:
Quoting https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/provisions.html (which itself is quoting the Constitution):

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof
  may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of
  Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in
  the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an
  Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed
  an Elector.

(emphasis added).
In other words, a state legislature does not appear to have an obligation to appoint electors based on the popular plurality vote, and this presumably applies even if an election has already been held.
According to https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/key-dates.html the states have until December 13th to resolve any disputes re whom to appoint as electors, and the electors ultimately vote 6 days later, on December 19th.
There are 6 states where Trump won, but only obtained a plurality of the vote, not a majority:

Florida (29 electoral votes): Clinton lost by 128,503 votes, and there were 293,802 votes for third party candidates. If 43.74% of them had voted for Clinton, Clinton would've won.
Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes): Clinton lost by 68,012 votes, and there were 212,508 votes for third party candidates. If 32.00% of them had voted for Clinton, Clinton would've won.
Michigan (16 electoral votes): Clinton lost by 17,386 votes, and there were 241,125 votes for third party candidates. If 7.21% of them had voted for Clinton, Clinton would've won.
Arizona (11 electoral votes): Clinton lost by 81,607 votes, and there were 94,917 votes for third party candidates. If 85.98% of them had voted for Clinton, Clinton would've won.
Wisconsin (10 electoral votes): Clinton lost by 26,889 votes, and there were 152,773 votes for third party candidates. If 17.60% of them had voted for Clinton, Clinton would've won.
Utah (6 electoral votes): Clinton lost by 125,851 votes, and there were 192,096 votes for third party candidates. If 65.51% of them had voted for Clinton, Clinton would've won.

Trump currently has 305 presumptive electoral votes, and Clinton has 233. If you could convince the state legislatures totaling exactly 36 electoral votes to exercise their option to appoint electors for Clinton, regardless of the plurality vote, Clinton and Trump would both have 269 electoral votes, which would force the election to the House of Representatives, with each state receiving one vote. Since Trump won 24 states by majority (not just plurality), he would only need 2 of his plurality states to still win the election.
If you could convince the state legislatures totaling more than 36 electoral votes to appoint Clinton electors, Clinton would win the election.
Convincing the Michigan legislature that at least 7.21% of the third party voters would've voted for Clinton if they knew that Trump would win otherwise, and that Clinton "should've won" might make it possible for them to flip their electors, giving Clinton 16 more electoral votes.
It's a tougher sell in Pennsylvania (32.00% of third party voters) but still maybe possible, giving Clinton another 20 elector votes, bringing us to the exactly 36 scenario above.
You'd then just have to convince one other state legislature (Wisconsin being most likely), and Clinton wins.
You could also try convincing these 3 states (or any of the others that voted Trump) that Clinton supporters were so confident that Clinton was going to win that they failed to vote, and that the "fairest" thing to do would be to hold another election, if they're not willing to flip votes outright.
Another possibility I'd considered is passing a Constitutional amendment (calling for another election or banning Trump outright), but that would ultimately require 38 state legislatures to agree, and, since Trump won 24 states by a majority, and even allowing for Clinton supporters who failed to vote, this is unlikely.
If someone's serious about doing this, the big push now would be to get Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin voters to push their legislatures to at least consider appointing electors contrary to election results. A major factor would be third party voters saying something like "if I'd known, I'd have voted Clinton" or something.
Note: see https://github.com/barrycarter/bcapps/blob/master/ELECTION/README for how I made these calculations, sources, and possible errors.
EDIT: (to answer some comments)

https://www.multistate.com/state-resources/legislative-session-deadlines shows that most states have long since ended their legislative sessions, but, in a remarkable coincidence, Pennsylvania and Michigan's legislative sessions are both still open. In Wisconsin, there would have to be a special session called.
The letter above is an example of "persuasive writing", and is intended to emphasize one point of view and to make speculative claims in favor of the author's position. It is not intended as an unbiased analysis. Most people write legislators with persuasive letters intended to support their position. I wrote the above in the tone of someone who desperately wants to avoid a Trump Presidency.
Even in the unbiased sense, I'm not claiming all third-party votes are really votes for Clinton. I'm stating (still speculatively) that: if third party voters were given a chance to vote again, knowing that the Trump/Clinton decision hinges on their choice, a sufficient minority (32% in Pennsylvania, smaller in Michigan and Wisconsin) would change their vote to prevent Trump from becoming President. I believe some (not all, and not even necessarily a majority) of third party voters believed that Clinton had the election locked up, and didn't realize their vote would effectively elect Trump. So, I'm not claiming third party voters all want Clinton, or even that a minority want Clinton. I'm saying that, given a choice between Clinton and Trump, and knowing their choice would actually decide the election, a minority would choose Clinton as the lesser evil.
My entire suggestion should not be taken too seriously. Although I'd love to see it happen (just because I enjoy chaos), it would annoy Trump voters AND annoy people who believe that America is (or should be) a democracy, although Clinton's popular vote victory may mitigate the latter. Even if Clinton wins via my suggestion, the repercussions might outweigh the gain, even for Clinton supporters.

Path to Secession
It takes 38 state legislatures to pass a Constitutional amendment (75%
of 50 is 37.5, but we round up to 38 since we need "at least three
quarters"). Since Trump won by a majority (not just a plurality) in 24
states, and even allowing for low voter turnout, it's unlikely one
could convince 38 state legislatures to pass a secession amendment on
the "I hate Trump" basis.
However, one might be able to convince the legislatures to give states
an easier path to secession with the following arguments:

During Obama's Presidency, people in several states (including
those that have now voted for Trump) signed petitions for secession:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_state_petitions_for_secession
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/secession-petitions/
Even though Trump-voting states wouldn't want to secede during Trump's
Presidency, they may find it useful to have a path to secession the
next time someone they don't like is elected.

If "Democratic" states secede (in particular, California), it will
strengthen the Republican Party in (what remains of) the United
States. For Trump-voting states, this could be the difference
between whether Trump is elected to a second term or not. Long term,
it will give all future Republican candidates a much better chance
of winning.
Some Southern states still believe the secession during the Civil
War (War Between the States) should have been legal, and that
President Lincoln acted illegally. Although the Supreme Court
ultimately ruled in Lincoln's favor
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White), many Southerners
felt at the time (and perhaps still do) that states should have a
legal right to secede from the Union if they so choose.

Current Status
Rep. Bill LaVoy (District 17) of the State of Michigan House of Representative informs me that Michigan has made two attempts to pass legislation to appoint electors based on the popular national vote, not on plurality state vote. His email to me:

Good morning, Barry,
Thank you for emailing me regarding you views about the recent
  election. You are not alone in your frustration. Many of my
  constituents have contacted my office as well. Most are asking for a
  move away from the Electoral College and toward a National Popular
  Vote. According to the National Popular Vote advocacy group, the
  Michigan House of Representatives passed the National Popular Vote
  bill (HB 6610) in 2008. Unfortunately it failed to pass the Senate and
  was therefore never enacted. Currently, the same bill was introduced
  in the Senate (SB 0088) in February of 2015 and is awaiting a vote in
  the Committee on Elections and Government Reform. The bill will have
  to pass out of committee in the Senate before they can take a vote on
  it, then pass through a similar process in the House of
  Representatives. I understand your concerns and hope that this
  information will help to address them.
I will keep your advocacy in mind and I hope you continue advocating
  for legislation you feel strongly about. Having input from residents
  in the district is very important to me and I appreciate you taking
  the time to reach out to me.
Thanks, Bill

The current bill appears to be more of a compact between states than individual action by the State of Michigan, however: http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2015-2016/billintroduced/Senate/htm/2015-SIB-0088.htm
Comment: Maybe, maybe not. You could throw in something about how Hillary actually won the national popular vote and how the electoral college system is seriously broken. You could even imply that if Gore (the popular vote winner in 2000) had been elected, it could've prevented the Bush Presidency and 9/11. Of course, as with all persuasive writing, you're free to speculate in your own favor :) And, technically, the United States is a republic, and the electoral college isn't representative (low population states are favored).
Comment: Your letter makes the baseless assumption that 3rd party votes were protest votes instead of votes of conscience. That perpetuates the falsehood that all votes belong to the two largest parties and that a vote for any other party is somehow misplaced. While some 3rd party votes are undoubtedly in protest, many are not. Many people hold views not adequately represented by the two largest parties and would not have voted for them regardless of the outcome. They already voted for a candidate that they knew would lose, why would who won change that?
Comment: A lot of this analysis is based upon a mis-reading.  "_in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct_" in practice means that _there is a state law_.  [Pennsylvania state law](http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/US/PDF/1937/0/0320..PDF#page=173), for example, _does not_ make presidential electors directly selected by its legislature.
Comment: Of course, there's also the horrid implications of what electors going against the plurality vote would entail for representative democracy =/
Comment: "for Hillary Clinton, and not for Donald Trump" I voted 3rd party and if someone tried to claim that my non-vote for Trump was a vote for Clinton, I'd be pretty pissed at the misrepresentation. Voting should be about who you want in office, not about who you want to keep out.
Comment: In Michigan, the electors have already been chosen, at the Republican state party convention in August.  If Clinton had won the state, the electors would have been Democrats chosen by that party's convention, likewise for other parties.  If a write-in candidate such as McMullin had won, the electors would have been as specified as part of the write-in registration process.  At least for Michigan, your letter should be a plea not to the legislators, but a personal plea to the electors themselves.
Comment: Hasn't Secretary Clinton already conceded defeat?  You'd have to convince another Democrat to take up the cudgels.  Perhaps Senator Sanders would be interested.
Comment: @anoe Ahh the wikipedia article on electoral college https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_(United_States)#History has a pretty good explanation actually. The original idea was that common people didn't know enough to vote for the president so each district would vote for a competent elector that would then be free to vote as they wished. This changed in the late 1800's.
Comment: @barrycarter that may not be strictly true in all 50 states. The state legislature has defined how the electors are chosen by establishing the short-form universal suffrage election. The legislature could in theory change that and specify a new way to appoint the electors (even on a one off), but only through the means specified in their respective state laws, so for instance if a legislature isn't currently in session until after the Electors meet, they can't do anything without an emergency session (which often state constitutions do allow the governor to convene)
Comment: " if third party voters were given a chance to vote again, knowing that the Trump/Clinton decision hinges on their choice" I don't think you can say that in general either. Plenty of people voted for Trump over 3rd parties because they disapproved of Clinton. It's hardly logical to assume that all 3rd party voters would instead go the opposite way and choose Clinton over Trump if they had to
Comment: @Anixx What are you talking about? The convention is long-over; the party can't revoke his nomination. Nominations mean nothing for the actual ballots/electoral process.
Comment: @AnoE: What's horrible about it is changing the law after the election.
Comment: @JdeBP (and others) My point was that the legislature can change how they choose electors any time until December 13th. They can undo their previous choices and even repeal laws that force them to choose electors in a certain way. The key is that they can choose electors AFTER the election, so they are not bound by current laws or choices, provided they act by December 13th.
Comment: @barrycarter but plenty of people who otherwise voted Republican may have voted Johnson as well as some libertarians may have objected to big gov't Democrat plans. It really would be a wild-card and would effectively amount to increasing the chaos rather than resolving anything
Comment: What about abother possibility: convince Republican party to revoke Trump before the convention?
Comment: @barrycarter they can vote for enybody, yes? And they are Republican electors, not Trump's electors? So they have to vote for what Republican party boss says... Am I wrong?
Comment: @DavidWallace "Hasn't Secretary Clinton already conceded defeat?" The concession doesn't have any legal effect. If she's elected, she's elected -- unless she also further refuses to take the oath of office. It just means she isn't going to call for recounts and similar.
Comment: I doubt this is actually legal; I'm almost sure the Supreme Court wouldn't allow a state to change its law for selecting electors *after* the electors have already been chosen.
Comment: @tchrist you mean it was created presidential republic rather than parliamentary republic? Sorry your US-centric use of terms is confusing.
Comment: So if this is "horrible", do you mean to say that de-coupling the two elections (first for the electors and then in December for the president) was wrong, in the first place?
Comment: @AnoE I think I saw speculation somewhere that this system (electors choosing to vote instead of just a tally) was originally devised to pretty much protect against a similar threat. Many of the elite/wealthy wanted a check on who the masses choose and they assumed the electors would mostly be them so they had an extra safeguard if they believed the "rabble" chose wrong.
Comment: @eques You may be right,and it would be interesting to take a poll of third-party voters to find out. In my letter,I intentionally fail to point out that, even if SOME third party voters flip to Clinton, others might flip to Trump, so Clinton could still lose. I used to chastise people on quora.com all the time for doing things like that. My defense is that I'm intending to persuade, not to give an unbiased scientific analysis. Having said that, I believe Johnson voters would shun Trump because of his anti-privacy policies,and Stein voters would shun Trump because of his anti-environmentalism.
Comment: @erfink they are allowed to do this all the time in fact there are many cases of them breaking usually not in large numbers but they are still there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector has some info on it.
Comment: @Anixx I originally thought you were suggesting time travel, which may still be more feasible than my plan, but what you're apparently suggesting is to have Republican party leaders talk to the "Republican" electors that have already been chosen in each state (assuming the legislature doesn't intervene) and convince them to vote against Trump? I don't see it happening... although, if word gets out they're trying this, the legislature may intervene just to stop it.
Comment: @Anixx I don't know, but I'd love for someone (not me) to do more research. When Trump won the Republican nomination, I believe the Republican electors in each state pledged to vote for him. In some cases, the pledge is even legally binding. Whether or not they'd be willing to break their pledge, even if asked by Republican party bosses, is questionable, especially since they'd face tremendous backlash.
Comment: Well, you might be right, but the Constitution explicitly gives the legislatures this power and doesn't say anything about when they can invoke it. The December 16th deadline isn't in the Constitution, but it could be considered "rule of law". Presumably, deciding who the electors are constitutes a "conflict", so the legislature has the authority to resolve it.
Comment: @Anixx No, an elector does not "have" to vote "as the party boss" directs them to vote. If they did, they would by definition not be electors [*sensu stricto*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sensu_stricto), just a mindless mechanical cog without free will or due deliberation. That's part and parcel of why [the United States was created a federal republic ɴᴏᴛ a parliamentary democracy](http://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-reason-for-the-electoral-college/).
Comment: @barrycarter Please note that politics.SE is a Q&A site and not a platform for advertising political campaigns.
Comment: @Philipp Understood. Can I make a minor mention of the site (not emboldened and not at the top of the answer), since it contains a stronger version of my sample letter, and will contain instructions on how to contact state legislators and the responses I've received from state legislators? Or no mention at all permitted?
Comment: @barrycarter I don't see what that would add to the usefulness of the answer.
Comment: @Philipp Well, if we interpret the question as "how can we block...", it provides protestors a detailed peaceful path to take instead of "rioting" or at least protesting without hope.
Comment: There is now an online petition with 4 million+ subscribers in change.com: https://www.change.org/p/electoral-college-electors-electoral-college-make-hillary-clinton-president-on-december-19?recruiter=627835418&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=share_email_responsive
Comment: I've also created one with the slightly different goal of contacting legislators not electors: https://www.change.org/p/state-legislatures-petition-state-legislators-to-appoint-non-trump-electors?recruiter=637095005&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=share_twitter_responsive
Answer: Not really. Although his message is pretty clear he has been quite careful not to directly say anything which would give a compelling moral mandate to block his presidency in the spirit or wording of the US constitution. Even if some loophole was found using it would be politically very dangerous.
Equally marches and protests against his presidency don't really carry any weight as he has a clear democratic mandate at the moment. While you might debate the fairness of the electoral system he did achieve a transparent win by the rules as they are. There are known precedents for effective civil disobedience withing the democratic process against specific policies but that is for the future.
I say this not as a Trump supporter (which I am most certainly not) but just to outline the cold hard facts.
Having said that, peaceful protests may be useful in demonstrating the strength of public opinion and can moderate decision making.
It is also worth considering that the Republican majority in Congress may not be as pro-Trump as the pure red vs blue numbers might indicate. If nothing else a republican congress will historically tend to be a brake on borrowing and spending which might hamper some of his more fantastical policy aims.
Indeed the great moral battle of the next 4 years may not be so much good versus evil as cynical self interest vs evil, and at least the cold dark hand of the military industrial complex has some grounding in reality and is well organised ;)
Comment: Actually, he doesn't have a "clear democratic mandate", since Clinton won the popular vote. A clear electoral mandate maybe, but that's not the same thing.
Comment: @JonathanReez People are saying that because he doesn't have a "clear democratic mandate".  A "clear democratic mandate" is a term reserved for elected officials that clearly have the support of the electorate.  Saying he doesn't have a mandate doesn't mean that his win is not legitimate.  For better or worse, that's how US presidential elections work.  He won fair and square and people need to get used to that.  But to say that he has a mandate from the people of the nation is clearly wrong.  He couldn't even get the most votes.
Comment: @JonathanReez Whether "he still managed just fine" is surely up for debate.  Some have called his presidency "[a disaster](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/06/trump-former-president-george-w-bush-was-disaster.html)."  Regardless, that's really here nor there as to whether he had a mandate.  If losing the popular vote is considered a "democratic mandate" then that term is meaningless.
Comment: @JonathanReez The other thing to consider is that in states where there is no real contest, voter turnout tends to be lower for the obvious reason that it has no impact on the electoral college.  If you were to get a turnout in NY and CA commiserate with the turnout in the contest states, it's likely the number total votes for Clinton would have been higher.  In other words, the popular vote is likely under-representing the number of people who were not in favor of Trump and despite that, he still got less votes total.
Comment: @MattBrennan I'll call your "that guy" and raise you a pedant ;) I actually didn't state that Trump is president.  I simply questioned who had made such a claim in the thread.  And until your comment, no one had actually written anything like that.
Comment: @barrycarter Bush's situation was even force because of the recount issue in Florida and he still managed just fine
Comment: @JimmyJames every single "winner-takes-all" system is vulnerable to a mismatch between the number of votes cast and the number of seats received. Claiming that Trump is not a president because he lost by 100k votes is ridiculous. Likewise Clinton herself failed to get 50% of the vote, if we're being pedantic.
Comment: @JonathanReez Who claimed "Trump is not a president"?
Comment: @JimmyJames people in this thread are claiming that Trump doesn't have a "clear democratic mandate". I believe this accusation is ridiculous.
Comment: @JonathanReez 'every single "winner-takes-all" system is vulnerable to a mismatch between the number of votes cast and the number of seats received'.  True but the primary driver in this situation is that the electoral votes are allocated disproportionally to states with smaller populations.
Comment: @JimmyJames just for the sake of being 'that guy', I'l argue semantics.  technically he is not President yet, rather just President-Elect.
Comment: @JimmyJames "He couldn't even get the most votes." Yes, but Hillary didn't exactly get that much more either. It's not like the popular vote was closer to 40/60 compared to an Electoral vote 60/40.
Comment: @eques I don't understand how that is relevant.  No one is arguing that Hillary Clinton has a mandate.  There's no requirement that election end with a 'clear mandate' for the winner's agenda.  Most elections don't.
Comment: @JimmyJames My point was the election was so close; it's hardly like the other side had a "democratic mandate" that was undermined by the Electoral College
Comment: @eques Agreed. What does that have to do with the topic at hand?
Comment: @barrycarter HRC hasn't won the popular vote yet. There are still votes to count.
Answer: You could overthrow the current democratic political process and the institutions that support/defend it and replace it with an authoritarian system where by a head of state more to your liking could be appointed.
This could then be made retroactively legal.
Comment: That is kindof what the republicans may have just done. It is also why there are protests. Representation here has been very lopsided towards states, and more generally counties, with little population.
Comment: they have the ability to keep themselves in power for a very long time since they have all 3 branches of government. Anything any of them says could conceivably become law. They will be able to pick one supreme court justice which will give us a lopsided court once again and potentially another. This could be the end of America as a free nation.
Comment: @CcDd: Are you willing to agree to an 8 member Supreme Court? If no, than no complaints about lopsided.
Comment: I feel like the people who voted up on this are on some sort of list now.
Comment: Isn't this a bit like saying "you can kill him and have the new president pardon you?"


Can oozie control jobs outside of Hadoop?

Question: From documentation, it isn't very clear whether oozie can schedule and control jobs outside of Hadoop? Can someone shed some light on this? If not, is there any open source based workflow engine which can do that?
Answer: Try consider using chronos (from airbnb) advanced version of cron with a UI, built on top of mesos. airbnb.github.com/chronos/
Cheers.
Answer: I believe no. Because Oozie itself does not have a resource management policy, all it does is submitting jobs to Hadoop's job tracker at the right time. Besides, for each Oozie workflow, there will be one launcher job which is responsible for submitting the real jobs in the workflow to Hadoop. The launcher job is itself a Hadoop job. So, I think for the versions earlier than Oozie 3.2, the answer should be no.
Answer: You might consider trying azkaban by linked in. It was specifically built for hadoop. But unix commands can be specified in the job file of azkaban. So you may develop a workflow for any application(s) that can be run using command line.
Answer: I've been working on a new workflow engine called Soop. https://github.com/radixCSgeek/soop it is very lightweight and simple to setup and run using a cron-like syntax. It can run any Java POJO as well as running shell processes, so you can kick off a bash script or whatever.


monerod.exe Inbound malicious attacks

Question: I just installed Monero GUI Wallet for the first time and during the sync, I am getting a LOT of inbound malicious attacks.  Malwarebytes is blocking them but why am I getting them?  How is it that people from all over the world suddenly know my IP address so they can try to attack my computer?  And how can I stop the attack?
Answer:
I am getting a LOT of inbound malicious attacks

What makes you think they are "malicious attacks"?
When you run the Monero daemon it connects to the network and syncs with other nodes (which means inbound and outbound traffic from other peoples computers).

Malwarebytes is blocking them but why am I getting them?

An excerpt from the main downloads page:
Antivirus
Be aware that some antiviruses and firewalls may flag the Monero executables and archives as malware. More info in the FAQ.
And from it's linked FAQ:
Why is my antivirus/firewall flagging the Monero software i just downloaded as malware?
After you have downloaded the Monero software (GUI and CLI alike), your antivirus or firewall may flag the executables as malware. Some antiviruses only warn you about the possible menace, others go as far as silently removing your downloaded wallet / daemon. This likely happens because of the integrated miner, which is used for mining and for block verification. Some antiviruses may erroneously consider the miner as dangerous software and act to remove it.

monerod.exe Inbound malicious attacks


Low Level Books on Conjectures/Famous Problems

Question: I am currently an undergraduate math/CS major with coursework done in Linear Algebra, Vector Calculus (that covered a significant amount of Real 1 material), Discrete Math, and about to take courses in Algebra and Real Analysis 1. I was wondering if there are any books about famous problems (Riemann, Goldbach, Collatz, etc) and progress thus far that are accessible to me. If possible, I would prefer them to have more emphasis on the math rather than the history. As an example, I enjoyed reading Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh but was disappointed in how it glossed over most of the math. If there are any suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.
Comment: Keith Devlin's "The millennium problems" is nice and also John Derbyshire's "Prime obsession".
Comment: Have you considered "Journey Through Genius" :http://www.msc.uky.edu/sohum/ma330/files/william-dunham-journey-through-genius-the-great-theorems-of-mathematics-penguin-non-classics1991014014739x.pdf   ?
Answer: Jeff Lagarias edited a book of papers about the Collatz problem. Some of the papers should be quite accessible to you.
Answer: The Goldbach Conjecture by Yuan Wang.
From the book's description:

A detailed description of a most important unsolved mathematical problem - the Goldbach conjecture. Raised in 1742 in a letter from Goldbach to Euler, this conjecture attracted the attention of many mathematical geniuses. Several great achievements were made, but only until the 1920s. This work gives an exposition of these results and their impact on mathematics, in particular, number theory. It also presents (partly or wholly) selections from important literature, so that readers can get a full picture of the conjecture.


Why does the comb attract the pieces of papers if they're neutral?

Question: When we rub our hairs with a comb, and then try to attract small pieces of paper, they're attracted by the comb. The pieces of the paper were not electrified before they were attracted. Then they might be neutral. Why does the comb attract the pieces of the paper if they're neutral, and have no influence of a specific charge on them (Pieces of paper).
Answer: This is because the neutrality of polarity can be changed by electric field in this case. When you create - charge in the comb and you expose the pieces of paper to the electric field created by the charge, you will polarise them so that the part closer to the comb will be + and the other will be -.

Here, see the electric field. The same polarities do not like each other:
Comment: Unfortunately, this question is not being asked by the OP.
Comment: This does not answer the most important thing -- why are there more negative charges in the comb in the first place?
Comment: @PricklebushTickletush Search for "triboelectric series".
Comment: This answer is incorrect.
Answer: As none of the answers posted earlier are correct, I am just reproducing what Feynman had explained (The Feynman Lectures in Physics, Vol. 2, Section 10.5):

A surprisingly complicated problem in the theory of dielectrics is the following: Why does a charged object pick up little pieces of dielectric? If you comb your hair on a dry day, the comb readily picks up small scraps of paper. If you thought casually about it, you probably assumed the comb had one charge on it and the paper had the opposite charge on it. But the paper is initially electrically neutral. It hasn't any net charge, but it is attracted anyway. It is true that sometimes the paper will come up to the comb and then fly away, repelled immediately after it touches the comb. The reason is, of course, that when the paper touches the comb, it picks up some negative charges and then the like charges repel. But that doesn't answer the original question. Why did the paper come toward the comb in the first place?

The answer has to do with the polarization of a dielectric when it is placed in an electric field. There are polarization charges of both signs, which are attracted and repelled by the comb. There is a net attraction, however, because the field nearer the comb is stronger than the field farther away—the comb is not an infinite sheet. Its charge is localized. A neutral piece of paper will not be attracted to either plate inside the parallel plates of a capacitor. The variation of the field is an essential part of the attraction mechanism.
Comment: Could you please explain how does this differ from the explanation that I posted? I cannot see the distinctions between your and my answer. If my answer is really incorrect, if you pointed the exact distinctions it would be really helpful.
Answer: Basically, when an electrification takes place, electrons are not created but they are transferred..... in the case of comb attracting tiny tiny bits of papers when rubbed with dry hair is because electrons from the dry hair gets transferred to the comb and now the comb induces a dipole in the bitties of paper and the paper gets attracted...
Answer: Due to the induced dipole they get attracted to the electrified comb i.e, negative charge.
Answer: As the hair have negative charge it get attracted to the positive charge of the comb. When we take comb to the bits of paper then it get induced
Comment: Hi user57145, this is a pretty incomplete answer.  Can you expand this to explain better?
Answer: when we comb our hair our comb get charged and when we bring comb near pieces of paper the charge get induced on paper.[induced means when we bring any charged partical towards neutral thing ,the neutral thing develop opposite charge on them]


GLSL shaders in a program

Question: I obviously don't want the client to be able to view/modify my glsl code. Does this leave me with only one option, and that's to hardcode it in my cpp files?
How do you deal with this issue?
Comment: Hardcoding the shader won't stop people from modifying them.
Comment: It will be much less intuitive than having the shader as a text file in the game folder though
Answer: If someone really wants to edit or see your shader code, that person will find a way... With that out of the way:
There are several options to somewhat prevent curious eyes:

You can save the files with names and extensions different from what usually is done with shaders (for example prog001.dat, shining.prog, etc). That will make some people think it is something better left untouched.
You can save all your shaders in a custom container with some random magic numbers at the beginning so that all of them reside on a single file, you then implement a lookup and on-demand loading functionality.
You can save everything on a zip or rar file, rename it to have a different extension and then open that on your code and do something similar as #2.

There may be other more creative ways to do this, the point is you just need to think outside the box and keep in mind that this is not meant to keep the code completely safe. Look in the files of any AAA game and you will probably find the shader code in plain text somewhere around there.

GLSL shaders in a program


1999 Ford Ranger Exhaust Repair

Question: I have a 1999 Ford Ranger with a 3L 6v flex fuel 2 door extended cab with a 6 ft bed. I need to replace the entire exhaust, however I cannot find a Y-pipe for the catalytic converter. All the parts are stock, and not a single parts site has a Y-pipe for it. Where can I find this part, or is it the wrong name for this part.
Answer: I think what you are looking for is actually the catalytic converters. If you take a look at the DAVICO MANUFACTURING Part # 59261 you'll see the cats are incorporated into the Y-pipe and gets you what you need. They call it an Exact-Fit Catalytic Converter. I'm sure there are other brands out there as well.
Answer: Those 2 small things your calling catalytic converters are actually resonators the cat is after the connection just before the downstream O2 sensor. Why would there ever be 3 cat's on any vehicle?
Comment: If in your answer you're referring to the image in my answer, I'm afraid to say you're wrong. The image is of the cats, which are incorporated into the Y-Pipe.  You can look up the part number and tell I'm spot on.

1999 Ford Ranger Exhaust Repair


Am I rushing to get into a PhD program, and should do a Masters first?

Question: I am a Physics senior, and will be graduating with a BS in May 2018. Couple weeks back when I really got into the application process, I realized that I don't stand any chance of getting into a good physics PhD program.
I have a good GPA in my major and average GRE scores but my application falls short when it comes to research experience. I tried to get involved in research at my undergrad institution, but none of the faculty members were doing research. I only have one summer research experience (at a renowned institute in Germany) but the work was mainly computational and doesn't directly relate to the research programs that I am applying for. For my senior project, I did a little bit of research in physics, but the results were not exciting at all (basically just imaging some quantum dots and finding the size distribution).
It was when I was writing my personal statement that I realized that my application will not be competitive at all. Should I still apply to PhD programs at less-selective schools? I am personally inclined to do a Masters first, not only to get some research experience, but to also figure out which field of physics excites me the most. The only thing that worries me is that most Masters are not funded (although I have found a few in Europe that have scholarships). I really want to do my PhD from a good program and I feel that I am just not ready for it.
I am losing hope and any career advice at this point will be highly appreciated.
Comment: In which country do you plan to do a PhD? Because in some countries (like Germany) you must complete a Masters program first.
Comment: Is there a reason you can't do both? Why not apply to some PhD programs and also some Masters programs?
Comment: You might be interested in this question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/464/what-are-the-advantages-and-disadvantages-to-completing-a-masters-program-before
Comment: The Master is a good starting point to understand how to study, write and read. During the undergraduate course we think we learn how to do those things, but the requirements for performing research are a little harder than that learned during the undergraduate. Some people even give up on the PhD during the Master.
Comment: @DarrenOng I am applying to both PhD and Masters programs. I have some "dream" schools from where I would like to get my PhD but don't find my current application competitive enough to get me into those programs. Also, if I get into my "safety" PhD programs, should I still opt for Masters so that I will have another chance to apply to the "dream" programs?
Comment: Speaking as someone with an interview at a top university, It definitely is difficult to apply for a PhD right out of your undergraduate. But there are some things to consider: some big schools may have a lot of PhD student openings, some professors might be delighted to know that a student is interested in their specific field and has some hypotheses to test, and some top universities may not be experts at what you are interested in. Often-times research that I find useful isn't published in pay-to-read journals.
Comment: You could also apply for a PhD at a less renowned school where you do exceptional research, stop at a masters, and transfer. Some people even go to a graduate school, transfer their medical related courses to medical school, and then start ahead as a medical student.
Answer: I am a PhD in the US and in my field Master's is completely useless, basically, a waste of time. You will still need to take classes in PhD, do TAship and many other things that are basically mandatory distractions and a Master's do not waive any of them.
I would recommend skipping Master's and go with a slightly less demanding university/group for a PhD. In a Master's degree you more often than not don't get a chance to do research. However, Master's also sets the bar higher, so simply doing any research in Master's won't substantially increase your chances of getting into PhD. You can still consider a Master's degree if you can find a research program, not a taught one.
In addition to the previous point, a high-ranked university does not increase your chances of being a successful PhD. PhD is more about your qualities and habits than the rank of your university. What a high-ranked university does, though, is imposing additional stress and competition, often putting you in a situation where you struggle to even be average.
Answer: My understanding is that only exceptional people can start with a PhD at a highly-ranked university right after the BSc. If you are that good, you would have probably known that by now. So, "good" grades are not sufficient. "Average" scores are a no-go. For normal people like me, and, probably, you, my advice would be to do MSc first. As @Roland said, it is sometimes even a formal requirement.
Comment: "*only exceptional people can start with a PhD right after the BSc*" This depends on the country, and for example this is not true in the U.S. Indeed, I was accepted into two physics Ph.D. programs with only a math undergraduate degree and a few physics courses (all upper level and beginning graduate, however), along with a rather low overall GPA (well under 3.0), although these were not highly ranked universities.
Comment: @Hexal This is still wrong. Universities in the UK do not require a Master's degree before starting a PhD. Even the "highly ranked" ones.
Comment: @DaveLRenfro I guess I should have stated "for highly-ranked univ...". Improved.
Comment: @Hexal I am finishing my undergraduate degree from US. Here it is more common for students to apply directly for PhD programs. Although my current profile is not competitive enough to get me into my "dream" programs, I am applying to some "safety" PhD programs in addition to the Masters programs. If I get into my "safety" PhD programs, should I still opt for the Masters so that I will have another chance (at the end of my Masters) to apply to the "dream" PhD programs?


Alternative to Dragon NaturallySpeaking?

Question: Is there a Ubuntu alternative for this program?
Comment: Do you care if is FOSS? Should work offline? Only for English usage?
Answer: There is a whole  Article on Wikipedia dedicated to the Problem.
Unfortunately, it seems there's currently no one solution that works well enough, but a massive list of projects that are underway.
You may want to rummage through the list of solutions to see if there's anything that fits your needs.
Platypus:
There's always the possibility to run Dragon Naturally Speaking using WINE. The Platypus Project is creating software to redirect Dragon's output to any Linux / X application, and they are very far along.

You should definitely take a look at this.
Answer: For an updated answer, here is an article from March 2018: Best Free Linux Speech Recognition Tools – Open Source Software.

This article highlights the best open source speech recognition
software for Linux. Note, some of the software is in an early state of
development, and is therefore not ready for widespread adoption.
Before examining our recommendations, Jasper is worthy of a special
mention. It's an excellent open source platform for developing
always-on, voice-controlled applications. You may be wondering why HTK
doesn't appear below. For sure, HTK is a popular speech recognition
toolkit. But HTK is not eligible to feature in the recommended
solutions. Not because it's copyright is owned by Microsoft, but
simply because it's proprietary software.
Let's explore the 6 free speech recognition tools at hand. For each
title we have compiled its own portal page with a full description and
an in-depth analysis of its features.

Open Source Speech Recognition Tools

Mozilla DeepSpeech: TensorFlow implementation of Baidu's DeepSpeech architecture (website/source).
Kaldi: C++ toolkit designed for speech recognition researchers (website/source).
CMUSphinx: Speech recognition system for mobile and server applications (website/source).
deepspeech.pytorch: Implementation of DeepSpeech2 using Baidu Warp-CTC (website/source).
Julius: Two-pass large vocabulary continuous speech recognition engine (website/source).
Simon: Flexible speech recognition software.
Answer: You can install Chromium 11 version from the ppa ppa:chromium-daily/stable (How to add an PPA) and add --enable-speech-input  to the end of the launcher.

Now visit this website and whoo! Speech-to-Text on ubuntu using html5.
I read here that if you speak slowly it will be more accurate.
Answer: freespeech-vr
Is a decent open source speech to text engine. Here the source code (on Google Code)
Note that it takes a bit of configuration, which is less polished than Dragon Naturally Speaking's configuration.
Comment: FreeSpeech appears not to be maintained. It hasn't offered a ppa since Ubuntu 10.
Comment: There is now a [Python 3 port](https://github.com/themanyone/freespeech-vr/tree/python3) of FreeSpeech.
Answer: Dictanote
To expand on Alaukik's answer, there are apps built on top of Chrome speech recognition capabilities.
I personally use Dictanote (it is very similar to Dragon). Here is a link to chrome app.
Answer: Try Mozilla DeepSpeech an opensource tool for automatic transcription. But you will need to train the tool or download Mozilla's pre-trained model. For very clear recordings, the accuracy rate is relatively good. but for my projects, it was still not sufficient, as the recordings had lots of background noises, they were not of good quality, I used Transcribear instead, it's web based editor that allows for automatic transcription, but you will need to be connected online to upload recordings to the Transcribear server.
Answer: If you are Google-tolerant, there's Google Voice typing in Google Docs in Chrome. Open a blank Google doc, do Tools->Voice Typing, click the mic and talk away. In 2020 it seems to be better than the last time I tried it circa 2018, seems about the same error rate as Dragon based on a quick one-paragraph test. Less customization unfortunately, can't teach it custom pronunciations of words it doesn't know. Here's the docs. There is also the "Voice in Voice Typing" Chrome plugin to make speech-to-text available in all web input boxes.


Ryzen 7950X3D Hashrate far below benchmark

Question: I started mining Monero a couple of weeks ago. I hit a dead end in my research and wonder if I am doing something fundamentally wrong.
I am running a rig with a Ryzen 9 7950X3D and 128 GB DDR5 RAM in "normal" settings, no overclocking, no changed Voltage or similar, on a Ubuntu 22.04. By these benchmarks I should be able to reach 25ish KHs: https://xmrig.com/benchmark?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+9+7950X3D+16-Core+Processor.
By iterating through, I think common issues, i.e. huge pages, ports, etc. I got 12.5 KHs with XMR Stak. I switched to XMRig and now I get 18.5KHs, which is a nice boost. But still so far below the top benchmarks, that I think I am missing something.
I am running 32 threads with the auto-generated CPU setting. No manual settings were able to get better results. All threads sit comfortably at 575 to 590 Hs and have been doing so for days.
I am running p2pool-3.6.2-linux-x64 and xmrig-6.20.0.
It is very telling to me, that I first was stuck at pretty much exactly 50% of the benchmark hashrate with XMR Stak and now at 75% with XMRig. I tried reducing the threads to 16, as I only have that many real cores, but that slows it down massively.
So concrete question: Why is XMR Stak so much slower than XMRig and what reason in architecture or setting can it be, that XMR Stak is only managing 50% of benchmark hashrate and XMRig 75% of that?
Answer:
So concrete question: Why is XMR Stak so much slower than XMRig and
what reason in architecture or setting can it be, that XMR Stak is
only managing 50% of benchmark hashrate and XMRig 75% of that?

Don't use XMR-Stak. The miner that has been kept up-to-date and optimized is XMRig.

I am running 32 threads with the auto-generated CPU setting. No manual
settings were able to get better results. All threads sit comfortably
at 575 to 590 Hs and have been doing so for days.
I am running p2pool-3.6.2-linux-x64 and xmrig-6.20.0

You have to also either run as root or manually allocate huge pages, 1gb pages and apply the MSR mods to get the highest hashrate. See https://xmrig.com/docs/miner/randomx-optimization-guide
Also note, the type of RAM, timings, and slots installed to will affect hashrate. To edit timings, this can only be edited in the BIOS (things like enabling XMP).


Windows 7 goes to sleep with wireless keyboard and mouse attached

Question: I installed Windows 7. Now I have the computer going to sleep every 2 minutes or so. It turned out that the wireless keyboard I am using is the problem. How do I fix this? Btw, both the keyboard and mouse from microsoft.
Comment: How did you conclude that the wireless keyboard is the problem? Have you tried increasing the sleep timeout in the power settings?
Comment: @Bobby I removed the keyboard and mouse, the problem went away!
Answer: Try changing your power management settings in the control panel and see if that has any issue. I haven't heard of the keyboard or mouse affecting this, but perhaps by adjusting these settings you might find some changes.
Answer: If it's the keyboard, I would guess the sleep button on the keyboard is stuck. But, to troubleshoot down further, remove the keyboard and see if the computer still falls asleep. If it does, w7pro's answer would be the correct one imho. If it doesn't, the sleep button may be stuck.
Comment: There is sleep button. See my comment above.
Comment: I would try looking either in the driver for the keyboard to see if you can turn the sleep button off, or sometimes there's a setting in your BIOS power management that disables the keyboard's ability to power off your computer. Or alternatively try going into your Power Configuration in windows and under the "When Standby Button is Pressed" choose "Do Nothing".


Matzoon and lactose chemistry

Question: Could you make matzoon from lactose free milk?
Or, are sour bacteria eating it away to unproblematic amount in terms of lactose intolerance?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzoon
Answer: Most lactose free milk does not have the lactose removed, rather it is made by adding the enzyme lactase to milk.  Lactase breaks down the lactose into simple sugars.  Some milk undergoes an ultrafiltration process.  In this case the lactose can be substantially reduced, but never completely eliminated.  I have to assume that it is more difficult to culture ultrafiltrated products, as there would fewer nutrients for the bacteria to thrive on.
There are lots of recipes online for making yogurt from "lactose free" milk.  There are also specific "lactose-free" starter cultures being sold on line as well.
I had never heard of matzoon, but it appears to be a yogurt-like preparation.  I would have to assume it would be possible to produce with "lactose free" milk.

Matzoon and lactose chemistry


What are Lambda productions

Question: I'm taking a computational structures course and we just started going over context free grammars. I was confused when I started seeing lambda productions. What are they? Can't seem to find an answer anywhere.
Answer: $\lambda$ (lambda) is sometimes used to denote the empty string.  Thus, a "lambda production" is a production like $A \to \lambda$, i.e., a production that allows a non-terminal to generate the empty string.
Other sources will use $\epsilon$ (epsilon) to denote the empty string.  They might refer to them as epsilon productions.  They're the same thing.  It's just a difference in notation.
Comment: So if were thinking of this as a binary tree, the lambda productions are the leafs that have no children?
Comment: @user406955 Not quite, since any production resulting in a terminal string (e.g., $A\to b$) is a leaf. $\lambda/\varepsilon$-productions are productions that generate nothing at all.

What are Lambda productions


What level of compliance does a chart with patterns have in WCAG 2.1?

Question: The following is an example of a chart using patterns. When a chart uses patterns (instead of plain colors) to separate sections, in which category of WCAG levels does it fall – A, AA or AAA?
Comment: Hi, few questions as there isn't enough information at the moment. Is it an image or is it made of elements? If it isn't an image, what is the markup / code used to generate it?  The only thing I can say for certain is that the light green probably fails contrast level of 3:1 and at its current size the font size is too small. You need to include a fiddle if this is not an image.
Comment: This is just an example of as chart. I'm interested to know in general, when a chart uses patterns instead of plain colors to separate sections in which category of WCAG levels does it fall A, AA or AAA?
Comment: Patterns themselves would not make a chart fail, if anything it would improve accessibility as you now have a way of distinguishing areas that isn't just by colour. The colour choices are important as is font size. However that is about 10% of accessibility so not sure how else to guide other than look at those items.
Answer: Talking purely about patterns to differentiate areas of a chart and nothing else:-
Patterns (perhaps a little less fussy than the ones shown) actually enhance accessibility.
The reason for this is people with colour blindness have a way of differentiating between each area. This is especially important for people with Achromatopsia (complete colour blindness).
In fact if you don't use a pattern you may fail Success Criterion 1.4.1 Use of Color as colour would be the only way of differentiating a section (that is assuming you don't have labels or use a key at the side of the table).
The example given is OK without patterns.
With that being said, you are labelling each section of the graph so as long as there is at least a 3:1 contrast ratio between each section (which can be achieved by ensuring the section border is at a 3:1 contrast ratio with the contents of the section on either side in order to pass 1.4.3 contrast minimum) then you would pass 1.4.1 as it states:

Color is not used as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element. (Level A)

and your labels make your graph conform to that.
Other things that we can't ascertain but you need to consider
The only thing with the example given is the size of the font looks too small.
Also if this is an image and not created from interactive elements you need to ensure the information is available in an alternative format.
As alt text (assuming this is web based) is not appropriate for providing that much information you would be better hiding the image from screen readers by making the alt attribute empty (so alt="" not alt) and then including the information in a table or similar. If you want more help with this throw a question up on stackoverflow.com as that is more about technical implementation.
Also consider adding the percentages for each section just as a general UX observation.


Security / Protecting code in JavaScript

Question: With all the recent hype about JavaScript and HTML5 replacing Flash, I wanted to know - How would it be possible to protect client-side js code? Of course, it is possible to obfuscate it, but that would only make it a little harder. Also, for games which submit high scores to the server, wouldn't it be incredibly easy to modify those scores before they are sent to the server? I know even Flash files can be decompiled, but they can be obfuscated and flash decompilation is not as easy as modifying data in JS - could be done easily using a plugin such as Firebug. I'd like to know everyone's views on this.
Answer: Javascript, being parsed on the client, is never 100% safe. There will always be ways to find out what it does. A few days ago I've even seen a tool which unpacks packed javascript so the only thing you can really do is using "ugly" variable names (or actually, make a javascript packer transform your "good" variable names into short/ugly/nonsense ones)
To protect game results, you have to move some of the game logic to the server so the client cannot send arbitrary results.
Summarizing it: Don't put secrets in javascript code and don't trust anything coming from the client - no matter if it's from a form or generated/submitted via javascript.
Comment: Those sites will most likely stay with flash or add sanity check to the server-side.
For example (depending on the game of course) you could ensure there's enough time between the game start and end. And obviously only sensible scores should be accepted - i.e. rejecting unnaturally high scores.

Besides that: someone who wants to cheat on such a site to get more money/rewards WILL sniff. It might be even easier if there's no sanity check currently because of a developer relying on data from flash being trustworthy than with more readable code whose response isn't simply accepted as valid.
Comment: Flash is almost as insecure as javascript. There are good actionscript decompilers out there and even if that wouldn't be possible, you could still sniff the request sent to the server.

Besides that, lots of flash games are just for fun, not for rewards etc. so it doesn't matter at all if people cheat there or not.
Comment: Thanks. Even if I do move some of the game logic, the algorithm to generate data to be sent to the server is still very open. Also, wouldn't this be a big factor in the adoption of HTML5 especially with regard to games? Why/How are people predicting that flash is on it's way out?
Comment: Sorry for asking this repeatedly, but wouldn't this be a huge factor for HTML5 adoption? Also, sniffing out the request isn't as easy as viewing the source. Plus, There are flash game portals where getting high scores could fetch you money, so cheating would matter there.
Answer: You say that for game that sends high scores to the server it would be too easy to modify javascript and forge request?
Except for case, when you use some cryptography on the client, it is the easiest way to forge such request not even analysing the script but sending false request itself. Everything you send between server and browser can be easily viewed on computer, analysed and changed.


What should the chemist who synthesized a drug expect regarding coauthorship of papers on clinical trials?

Question: An industrial chemist conceptualized, first synthesized, characterized and patented a novel drug. They then transferred the synthetic technology (at the 3kg scale) to a CRO for preparation under cGMP conditions, substantially helped in drafting the "clinical trial investigator brochure", and provided advise throughout the trial. Should they be granted coauthorship of the paper reporting the trial?
Answer: To me, the key point in this is the fact that the person participated in formulating the experimental protocol for the trial (assuming that's what "Clinical trial investigator brochure" means).  Everything before this has presumably already been reported in other papers, which means citations, not authorship (if it somehow hasn't, then authorship is warranted).  Significant participation in the design of an experiment, however, is generally sufficient to warrant authorship, and I see no reason it would be otherwise in the case as presented.
Answer: The ICMJE guidelines says that authors must meet four requirements:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Without knowing your field, it sounds like you think you satisfy the first requirement. It doesn't sound like you meet the final three. While I disagree with the guidelines and think hat everyone who meets the first requirement should be given the option to meet the other three, the guidelines do not require that.
This sounds like a situation where you should talk to the lead investigator. Ideally the conversation should have happened early on, but now is better than never.
Comment: I disagree with this assessment: my understanding is that these guidelines are primarily intended to prevent inappropriate "gift authorship" (e.g., to senior PIs for political purposes or to help get a paper accepted).  If you've done #1, then there is no reason the other authors can't easily include you in the rest unless you opt out.
Comment: @jakebeal "The following recommendations are intended to ensure that contributors who have made substantive intellectual contributions to a paper are given credit as authors" it sounds to me like the guidelines are to make sure those deserving authorship get it and not to prevent gift authorship. As I said, I agree with your reasoning that if you meet the first criteria, you really should be given the option to meet the rest and the lead author should have to explain why individuals who meet the first criteria did not meet the rest.


Debug registers (DRx) keep getting trampled when using with SetThreadContext

Question: I'm trying to set hardware breakpoints from code by using Get/SetThreadContext and modifying DR0..3, DR7, but it only works if I do it repeatedly. Most of the time when I use Get after having used Set before, I see the values completely trampled (sometimes to 0s, sometimes to bogus numbers which are clearly not even addresses). Get's return value is always 1. Sometimes it sticks for a while and the breakpoint hits. What could cause is and is there a way to track it? I tried setting a code breakpoint in SetThreadContext in ntdll, but it's only being called from my code. It happens with and without VS attached. I must add it's a game engine project, so it might be that some 3rd party lib does that.
The config is Ryzen 3900, Windows 10 20H2, Windows SDK 10.0.14393, VS 2017
Answer: ok turns out it was a rookie mistake - i didn't set ContextFlags to CONTEXT_DEBUG_REGISTERS before calling GetThreadContext
Comment: Thanks for adding the resolution!
Answer: This sounds like some anti-debugging measure and is probably done by a kernel driver so you won't catch it with user-mode breakpoints. Check the driver list before and after installing the game, that should show the culprit.
Comment: i mean it's my own project, i'm not attaching to something (i probably chose a wrong hub for the question, but when googling this one seemed to be the closest). since then i actually replicated it in a very stripped down application with no 3rd parties, and it still does exactly the same thing.


Models -> [Example Models] -> Contour lines from points: on MAC

Question: I'm running QGIS2.6 on a Mac and can't seem to locate the "Contour Lines from Points" Example Model. SAGA is installed.
Answer: You can try to check if the model file is in your MAC. I use Windows so please forgive my ignorance when it comes to MAC but the file might be located in something like:
<code>Macintosh HD / Users / YOU / .qgis2/ python / plugins / processing / modeler / models /
</code>
The model itself is called contours.model. If it does exist then you can use the Add model from file function in QGIS to import the model.
EDIT:
A similar post here mentioned the model missing. Fortunately, @HDunn kindly uploaded the file onto Dropbox. I have included his link which you can download the model file.
Hope this helps!


Textedit opens every Textedit file

Question: I have a MacBookPro from mid 2009 with OSX 10.11.6 El Capitan, and can't update the OS because of the "old" hardware, and can't access the App Store anymore, anyway; however, it does all I need. That said, one irritating thing that happens is when I invoke Textedit (v1.11) for anything, it opens every Textedit file it can find - is this a feature or a fault? (Note that I did call Apple Help about this a couple of years ago, and the "helper" hadn't even heard of Textedit, and her advice eventually led to having to recover from a backup, done without Apple's "help" - they denied responsibility for bad advice.)
Comment: I would do the following... 1. With **TextEdit** open, save any _document_  that has not been saved that you need to keep. 2. From **Terminal**, run the following _command_: `osascript -e 'tell application "TextEdit" to close windows saving no'` 3. Quit **TextEdit** and then reopen it. Do all the files open again?
Comment: I believe you should be able to access the App Store. Perhaps explain the details of what happens when you try in another question. As for "old" - 12 years is very old for a laptop. It's about 20 in dog years.
Comment: The method suggested by user3439894 has worked - thanks; but I first tried the easier two suggestions by benwiggy in his subsequent answer, and they only closed the one Textedit file that was current, not all of them, but thanks anyway. I did some experimentation, and as benwiggy says in his answer, the Textedit files have to be explicitly closed - not just saved - by either cmdW or the red close button, otherwise they'll be opened on next invocation.
Answer: By default, TextEdit (and other Apple apps) will re-open every document if you quit it without closing them first. My suspicion is that you've just quit the app without closing the documents every time, and this has built up.
You can close all the open documents by holding the Alt/Option key and clicking the red button in the top left corner of any one window. Or just use Option Command W to close every window.
Comment: benwiggy: I'm answering your query about App Store here because of char limits. Although I can browse App Store I can't download anything, in particular updates - 3rd party! When I try to download, I'm asked to signon: my Apple Id is ok, and it doesn't matter what I put for the pwd, when I hit Sign In in the dialogue, the dialogue box resizes, becomes blank except for the spinning (sparse) clock, and after a couple of seconds, the clock disappears from the dialogue and appears in the top row, and that's how the window stays, forever. I've tried pwd change but always return to blank dialogue.
Comment: @jimalton You should really put this as another question.

Textedit opens every Textedit file


How to build a knowledge graph?

Question: I prototyped a tiny search engine with PageRank that worked on my computer. I am interested in building a Knowledge Graph on top of it, and it should return only queried webpages that are within the right context, similarly to how Google found relevant answers to search questions. I saw a lot of publicity around Knowledge Graphs, but not a lot of literature and almost no pseudocode like guideline of building one. Does anyone know good references on how such Knowledge Graphs work internally, so that there will be no need to create models about a KG?
Answer: Knowledge graph is a buzzword. It is a sum of models and technologies put together to achieve a result.
The first stop on your journey starts with Natural language processing, Ontologies and Text mining. It is a wide field of artificial intelligence, go here for a research survey on the field.
Before building your own models, I suggest you try different standard algorithms using dedicated toolboxes such as gensim. You will learn about tf-idf, LDA, document feature vectors, etc.
I am assuming you want to work with text data, if you want to do image search using other images it is different. Same for the audio part.
Building models is only the first step, the most difficult part of Google's knowledge graph is to actually scale to billions of requests each day ...
A good processing pipeline can be built "easily" on top of Apache Spark, "the current-gen Hadoop". It provides a resilient distributed datastore which is mandatory if you want to scale.
If you want to keep your data as a graph, as in graph theory (like pagerank), for live querying, I suggest you use Bulbs which is a framework which is "Like an ORM for graphs, but instead of SQL, you use the graph-traversal language Gremlin to query the database". You can switch the backend from Neo4j to OpenRDF (useful if you do ontologies) for instance.
For graph analytics you can use Spark, GraphX module or GraphLab.
Comment: I know I am two years late... but do you suggest any literature (books/journals etc...) if one wants to get a deep understanding of some of these concepts?
Comment: The literature survey linked in the answer is from 2009... was it really a relevant read in 2015?
Comment: This could be a bit late (5 years later than requested). But in case someone is still looking for literature, following are some good references. [`Knowledge graphs` on kgbook.org](https://kgbook.org/). `Knowledge Graphs Fundamentals, Techniques, and Applications` by Mayank Kejriwal, Craig A. Knoblock and Pedro Szekely. And `The Web of Data` by Aidan Hogan
Answer: I know I'm really late but first to clarify some terminology: Knowledge Graph and Ontology are similar (I'm talking in the Semantic Web paradigm). In the semantic web stack the foundation is RDF which is a language for defining graphs as triples (Subject, Predicate, Object). RDFS is a layer on top of RDF. It defines a meta-model, e.g., predicates such as rdf:type and nodes such as rdfs:Class. Although RDFS provides a meta-model there is no logical foundation for it so there are no reasoners that can validate the model or do further reasoning on it. The layer on top of RDFS is OWL (Web Ontology Language). That has a formal semantics defined by Description Logic which is a decidable subset of First Order Logic. It has more predefined nodes and links such as owl:Class, owl:ObjectProperty, etc. So when people use the term ontology they typically mean an OWL model. When they use the term Knowledge Graph it may refer to an ontology defined in OWL (because OWL is still ultimately an RDF graph) or it may mean just a graph in RDF/RDFS.
I said that because IMO the best way to build a knowledge graph is to define an ontology and then use various semantic web tools to load data (e.g., from spreadsheets) into the ontology. The best tool to start with IMO is the Protege ontology editor from Stanford. It's free and for a free open source tool very reliable and intuitive. And there is a good tutorial for how to use Protege and learn OWL as well as other Semantic Web tools such as SPARQL and SHACL. That tutorial can be found here: New Protege Pizza Tutorial (disclosure: that links to my site, I wrote the tutorial).   If you want to get into the lower levels of the graph you probably want to check out a triplestore. It is a graph database designed for OWL and RDF models. The free version of Franz Inc's AllegroGraph triplestore is easy to use and supports 5M triples. Another good triplestore that is free and open source is part of the Apache Jena framework.

How to build a knowledge graph?


Looking at ideas for an "incorporated" logo for my fictitious company

Question: For school, I have to create a logo for a fictitious company I create. The company name I have been given is "Smash" or "Smash Games". It is supposed to be a gaming company similar to Activision or Electronic Arts. I had a couple ideas, but I cannot seem to properly incorporate them, and I'm not really "proud" of these designs either. I am fairly certain I want to include a fist somewhere in the logo, but this is not completely necessary. I need help brainstorming some clever ideas for my logo before I create it. I would really love your creative minds. I will post my (BAD (I cannot draw/sketch for my life)) sketches below.
Comment: Hi Bert, we don't do project-specific brainstorming here, maybe somewhere like http://deviantart.com might be better? A few general tips though: never be self-conscious about how rough idea sketches are, they're for your own use so they can be as rough as you like! And for making things look like letters - people recognise words as whole units not letter-by-letter so people will already be ready for an `m` shape there: it's not far off working already. Just make sure the three middle fingers are prominent, clear and mostly vertical, like the uprights of an `m`.
Comment: The fist idea is a great one! You mention you want it to resemble an M. Something we *can* help with are [drawing questions](https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/drawing). Why not open a new one with the last image, and a request for ideas on how to improve the M-shape of the fist?  :)
Comment: Ok, I'm sorry about that. I won't do it again.
Comment: No need to apologise! Hope it goes well :)
Answer: Before you start working on the logo, make some notes about your fictitious company.
Who is your target audience? Are you making games for kids? -> colorful, funny
for adults? -> Exactly the opposite
for everyone? -> Neutral design
What games are you making? Sport games? -> dynamic, young
Strategy games? -> sophisticated
What is your company about? High quality, complexity -> professional, luxurious
Easy to play, cheap -> friendly
After that you can start thinking about font, image, etc.
For example a fist stands for aggression, action, riot (see Riot Games). Does that identify your company?
Just think about the identity of your company A LOT before you start the drawing. ;)
Comment: This is actually pretty helpful. I was thinking it would be geared towards adults, with focus on open world story based games. It's meant to be high quality. That is why I chose the fist.
Comment: A fist isn't really what I would link with high quality. But hey, there you go, story-based open-world games for adults! You can also look at other companys that make exactly these games for some inspiration. ;)


Mac osX boot camp issue

Question: i tried installing windows 8.1 on my mac osX and while the boot camp process was on the disk partitioning was in process and my mac suddenly restarted with a bootcamp error. now there is no windows8.1 installed on my mac but my storage shows partitioned please help
Answer:
Go into disk utility.
Select your hard drive or SSD.
Click partition at the top.
Click the '-' button, then click apply.
You might have to restart you computer, but then it shouldn't say that it is partitioned.

Try to install bootcamp again and it should work.

Mac osX boot camp issue


How can i get mobile network status?

Question: First of all I am using android studio 1.5. I want to check GSM/GPRS network coverage? how can i get phone network status?
Answer: First of all you'll need these permissions
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />

then after that where you want to check the Network status you should use this:
boolean isOnline= isNetworkStatusAvialable (getApplicationContext());

this will return if the mobile has Network available or not.
hope this is all you need!

and just to let you know it is already answered on stackoverflow. you
  should really check if the question is there already or not!

Happy coding!
Comment: Thank you Akshay Kulkarni. I'll try this.
Comment: It should work fine as I've been using this method in one of my project and accept the answer to let others know with the similar question that this works! try avoiding duplicate questions. Let me know if there is any trouble

How can i get mobile network status?


Is it possible to reverse the effect of bleach bit to fix my problem about an oversized folder?

Question: Is it possible to reverse the effect of bleach bit?
What happened:

Last week I installed Bleach Bit and ran it for the first time on my newly installed Ubuntu system. I noticed that it was doing its thing and that it was filling up my computer's hard drive and slowing it down. So I left it and went to sleep (I left it over night).
When i checked it in the morning the Bleach Bit window was dark like a not responding window. So I didn't do anything. I left it on and running and went to work.
When I got back from work, it was still dark and not responding. and I had 198 GB free out of a 640 GB hard drive. I don't have a lot of files on the system, only about 90 GB tops would have bee occupied.
I powered off and turned it on again. Now I am just left with the 198 GB.

What I have tried so far:

Run Bleach Bit again but it always freezes and never completes.
Uninstall and reinstall Bleach Bit and ran again.

I only ran Bleach Bit on it because I thought that it would fix the issue (but it didn't). Instead what I have now is over sized folders and I cannot see the files that are occupying this space.
Can someone help me to fix this problem?
Comment: So instead of freeing up disk space, it actually started occupying more?
Answer: Bleach bit creates temporary large files.
Are not deleted if interrupte.
Load the file manager with administrator permissions.(gksu - kdesu - sudo su)
Press Control + H
Find the files and delete them.


Django VMware appliance

Question: Does anyone know of a Django 1.0 + postgresql + apache + mod_python VMware appliance? A "vanilla" Django 1.0 appliance where postgresql can be installed manually would also do.
Comment: Which OS would that be running on?  Not which OS are you using to host VMWare (that could be anything) but what OS will be in the VMWare appliance running Apache?
Answer: Configure and build your appliance at Elastic Server On-Demand.
Answer: Another option I've had moderate success with
TurnKey Linux Django Appliance
Answer: In addition to the other appliances suggested, you may want to take a look at our BitNami Django Stack VMWare Appliance.
It is completely free and we keep it up to date, often within hours of each new Django release. In particular, it includes mod_wsgi since mod_python has not been updated for a while. One other thing that you may want to checkout is the Django Amazon Cloud Image. Together with the Amazon Free Tier you can have your own hosted Django for free (with some limitations in terms of bandwith, etc).
Answer: It might be a little too heavy for your requirements, but all of those items (and a whole lot more) are included in the Python Web Developer Appliance.
Answer: Poulsenj is right the Elastic Server On-Demand (Django Elastic Server Site) is a great place to configure and download a free custom Django VMware image in minutes.
The Elastic Server platform lets you assemble custom servers by choosing components from a library of popular software stacks. Once assembled, these custom application stacks can be configured to a variety of virtualization and cloud-ready formats, downloaded and deployed in real-time.

Django VMware appliance


Internet access through ASA firewall

Question: I am new to ASA firewall. I have ASA 5520 firewall (hardware) I want my clients in my Local network to gain internet access through the firewall. So it should be like this:
ISP to Billion modem to Firewall (hardware) to Switch to client.
Comment: What is your question? I have read the question several times, but I don't find an actual question.
Comment: I want the clients in my network to gain internet access through the firewall.
Comment: OK, that is a statement of your goal, but what is your specific question? You need to edit the question with your question, and include the sanitized ASA configuration, pointing out where you think you have gone wrong.
Answer: though your question is really vague I think you should do source NAT for internet access for your clients (aka MASQUERADE)
imagine your client network 192.168.1.0 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0
you should config this with CLI (supposing you have configured everthing else such as interfaces and security-levels etc) :
<code>object network myclients
 subnet 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0
 nat (inside,outside) dynamic interface
</code>
reference :http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/security/asa/asa83/configuration/guide/config/nat_objects.html

Internet access through ASA firewall


Vuvuzela silencing techniques

Question: Last year's soccer World Cup in South Africa brought about many vuvuzela silencing tools. What are the characteristics of vuvuzela noise that allow it to be silenced? What are some of the common techniques used for silencing vuvuzelas?
Comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuvuzela
Answer: The characteristic that allows the vuvuzela to be isolated in removed is the fact that the sound is constant pitch.  So removing it is a fairly simple exercise in EQ:
1. Identify the base frequency (around 235 Hz) and harmonics (the strongest is the first harmonic around 470 Hz).
2. Add an EQ filter at each of the frequencies of step one with a narrow Q (to minimize impact to sound other than the vuvuzela) and turn the gain way down.
Comment: The vuvuzela's are not precision musical instruments; the hum heard during the world cup was the result of perhaps thousands of vuvuzelas. So it would hard, if not impossible to define the exact inverse phase.  A better approach might be to employ fast Fourier transform to identify and suppress the frequency band that the vuvuzelas tend to fall within. The plugin maker Waves well as several other plugin manufacturers released plugins specifically to suppress the vuvuzela sound during the world cup
Comment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuvuzela#Audio_filtration
Comment: As an alternative to EQing, couldn't a sample of the vuvuzela be played against itself with inverted phase to lower the amount with interference?
Comment: I meant a feed, not a sample.
Answer: It is not likely that you are going to be able to work around this using EQs, while leaving the rest of the sound intact / not weird sounding. The vuvuzela sound is quite broadband, as far as I know. (Never measured it though.)
It is neither likely that many facts are known about the characteristics of the vuvuzela. That means, probably the best way to get around with it, is: get your hands on a few of these annoying things, sample them, do some frequency analysis and see what their characteristics are.
Since the hum is the result of 1000s of vuvuzelas, you might well end up trying to work around it with a noise reduction plugin that can sample noise. I can recommend iZotope RX Denoiser for this purpose, although I don't know in advance what the results are going to be like. I would play around with it for some time though.
Comment: There were plenty of tools created for doing this, and all of them that I saw used EQs.  They worked quite well.  Given that most of the other sound during the world cup was speech, removing the vuvuzelas wasn't an issue.  Removing them from music or something might be, but EQ definitely works for the World Cup audio.
Comment: @Brad, some of the solution include other techniques, such as multiband compressors. Here's an academic example of someone who used fast Fourier transform to remove the vuvuzela noise: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/27912-vuvuzela-sound-denoising-algorithm
Answer: Not wanting to be funny, but WAVES released a preset pack for a processing chain to get rid of vuvuzela for post when the world cup came out. A friend of mine was doing extensive editing on footage for some tv stations and he said it actually works. Might be worth to give it a shot? if you have an iLok you can even get a 15day trial!
Comment: [WAVES vuvuzela preset pack page](http://www.waves.com/content.aspx?id=5798)
Answer: Vuvuzelas share the following common denominators:

same length
mostly plastic (at least at the World Cup)
same foul tonality
fundamental pitch is prominent, with a fairly simple series of harmonics

All of this means some effective DSP can extract and banish the Vuvuzela's characteristic elephant-fart sound given a decent spectral fingerprint.
I was quite impressed by Audionamix (the French workers of acoustic magic) who came up with probably the most impressive operational system -- in 48 hours, apparently -- for minusing the Vuvuzela drone from broadcast audio;  they demonstrated it in operation with some sample audio from German TV and later Canal+ (in France) implemented it into their signal chain for live broadcast. Unlike simple multiband compression and EQ, they repurposed their existing instrument extraction techniques (already available for those looking to upmix 2.0 masters to surround) and customised it just for Vuvuzela extraction.
They still have their minisite online at http://audionamix.com/Vuvuzela/; the statistics make for some interesting reading. Their demonstration video's also available on YouTube if you've not already seen it.

Vuvuzela silencing techniques


Wordpress can't fetch the posts from the database after moving to new server

Question: After moving wordpress to a new server , I used the same domain in the old server , it's display "Nothing Found" in the index page , and even can't get the posts in "The most comments" widget , and even in the Admin panel i can't see it but I can see the posts counter (15,000) post , but i can see the posts in wp-posts table .
Answer: Multiple things could be going wrong here,if you give some more infomation I can give you better answers here are some things to try.

Check the wp-config.php to make sure the correct database settings are being used
If you had permalinks you may want to check for or recheck the .htaccess file
can you login via example.com/wp-login.php?
Comment: I fixed it by set wp_debug to "true" in wp-config.php , and I found that "Event Calender" plugin is making the problem , I deactivated it and everything works fine now , Thanks :)


I left my eggs in the car for almost a day

Question: I bought eggs last night and accidentally left them in the car. It was in the 30s last night, but my husband has the car and the eggs are still in there and the temperature rose to 63. Are they still safe to eat? They are store bought pasture raised. Please help!
Comment: temperature in F or C. For C you might have cooked the eggs.
Answer: They might be okay, but it depends on exactly what temperature they got to, and if there was condensation.  Okay is also relative as everyone has different levels of acceptable risk.
If they get too cold, even after thawing back to refrigerator temperatures they will still be solid.  It makes them difficult to cook with, so you might want to just dispose of them.  (It's possible that hard boiled eggs might be okay, but I've never tried it)
If they didn't freeze, the issue is condensation if you're in the US… moisture on the eggshell can pull any sort of bacteria or similar into the egg.  Eggs with their bloom intact (typically sold unrefrigerated) don't have this problem.
Washed at room temperature are estimated to age about as quickly as a week at refrigeration, assuming they don't have the condensation issues.  If they were in a cardboard (not plastic or styrofoam) container, and they're not showing signs of cracking, and I wasn't cooking for children, elderly people, or anyone with a weakened immune system, I would check an egg, and if they're still liquid, I would probably use them.
However, I would use them immediately, in a dish that cooks the eggs fully.  I would probably take the opportunity to clean out whatever's in the fridge and make a frittata or a quiche.


Xbox 360 does not connect to router

Question: So, I had to stop using my Wired Connection because my Wife wanted to have her PC upstairs tethered.  So, I go into my Xbox 360 S, enter the info, enter the MAC address in my Router.  Everything looks good, until it tries to test the connection.  The password is incorrect.  Both router and Xbox says this, yet I enter the same password on multiple devices without any problem.  I also need to mention my router logs have it denying my Xbox, saying incorrect Security.  So why is this happening, is it Xbox related?
Answer: I found out that while most places including here and everywhere on Xbox site where it tells you how to either connect wireless or finding your password on your router.  Either way Xbox360 does support connecting to a wireless router using WPA2(AES).  However, it is not an accepted algorithm.  It will accept WEP or WPA with TPK.  This is really a hit and miss issue.
Thanks to @Frank for troubleshooting the issue.

Xbox 360 does not connect to router