Can you use a USB Wireless mouse with an iPad through the lightning to USB adapter?

Question: just wondering, on my iPad Pro 9.7 running iPadOS 13.5, could I connect a usb wireless mouse using the lightning to USB adapter? And will the mouse provide the same functionality as a bluetooth mouse would?
Comment: I'm confused. Are you trying to connect your wireless mouse using a cable?
Comment: No, I'm using a USB mouse receiver as seen in this website.https://www.comeausoftware.com/2015/01/replacing-wireless-mouse-keyboard-receiver/
Answer: Yes, it should definitely be possible - and it should work with the same functionality as a Bluetooth mouse.
The Logitech unifying receiver presents itself to the operating system essentially the same way a cabled mouse does. Therefore iOS works for that receiver without extra "drivers" or anything like that.
I have personally used a Logitech wireless mouse with an iPad before, but I can't say if it is the same exact model of mouse, you have. You might experience that extra buttons for example have no function or similar, but the basics of pointing and clicking should work.
Answer: Possibly.
According to Apple, if you're on iPadOS 13 or higher it could be possible but devices can differ so the manufacturer would know best.

With the appropriate cable or adapters, you can connect various third-party mouse devices with iPad using USB and USB-based receivers. Refer to the device manufacturer's instructions.

I recommend you contact the device manufacturer and ask them.


How to defrost frozen pizza dough quickly?

Question: Obviously, best practice for defrosting it to leave the pizza dough on the counter or in the fridge overnight, then let it rise before cooking it. However, I've got company coming tonight, and I forgot to defrost the dough last night. (It's supermarket frozen whole-wheat dough.)
How can I help the dough along? I've read that you can microwave the dough on a low setting to defrost it, but I'm a little uncertain about doing that.
Edit: I'm concerned that using heat to defrost the dough might cook it somewhat, which I don't want.
Related question: Defrosting pizza dough correctly?
Answer: If you dough is a disc shape:
When I worked as a pizza cook at a popular fast food pizza place, we would put our dough still frozen into what we called a proofer. It was basically a heated cabinet around 130 F. It would defrost and have it's final rise in there. After that we would stretch to make the pizza. You could probably replicate this by putting your dough into a covered pan in the oven without preheating on "low" or "warm". You would also want to put a bowl of boiling water in there to add steam. Just make sure it doesn't burn or get up to temperature. You may want water or oil in there with it so it doesn't dry out.
If you dough is in a ball:
I do this for other frozen foods, but haven't tried it on dough before.  Put it in a sealed plastic bag and leave it in warm water. I like to leave it with a constant stream of warm water flowing over the object so the water stays warm. The heat should defrost it and the plastic should keep it dry.
Comment: @samack: That's not really applicable to dough. Dough can be left at room temperature for a long time, it just ferments.
Comment: You should never defrost with warm water it can promote bacteria growth. Defrosting with cold water works perfectly fine. Here is a good reference http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Big_Thaw/
Comment: very true, I would think bacteria growth would be the ideal situation.
Answer: If you have a cast iron griddle or large cast iron pan, you set the frozen dough on it to greatly speed the defrosting process.
Comment: I do this for steaks sometimes.. like a radiator or cooling fins.
Answer: I have used the following method with success:  Put ball of dough in a sealed ziploc bag (with all the air squished out) and submerge it in warm water.  Every now and then, check on it and try to squash the dough out so that the frozen middle is more exposed to the warm water.  It's not as instant as a microwave defrost, but it was still relatively quick and never seemed to have a detrimental effect on the dough.
Comment: In fact, if you do this with running water--even running water--it will be even more effective due to convection being very powerful at heat transfer.
Comment: I wonder if anyone has had success with sous vide defrosting of pizza dough balls?
Answer: If you're willing to leave it on a counter overnight, you could also leave it in a warm place on a large surface that will conduct heat (eg, a metal sheet pan).
If you can add a fan, to force air below the pan, so the ambient air temp will warm the pan, thus warming the pizza, it'll defrost a little bit faster.
The other alternative is to increase surface area -- if you have something that you can cut in half safely, do that, and place the cut side down on the sheet pan to increase contact area.
(I freeze mine in lots of smaller balls, so I can defrost it more quickly by breaking them apart; once it's thawed, I can roll it back into a larger ball)
Answer: I did a combo of microwaving for 10 seconds at a time and then putting it in warm water.  I had two frozen crusts and it worked perfectly with one and not so well with the other.  I think the one that worked better soaked longer in the water.  If this happens to me again I will probably just go with the soaking (and the soaking works much faster than you'd think.
Comment: Would you describe "much faster" in terms of seconds (or minutes)?
Answer: I did this one time as well. Life happens! I took the ball and put it in a floured bowl (please flour the bowl!) The I turned my stove on and placed the bowl on the stove for 1/2 an hour in the bowl with a damp towel on top. Worked like a charm!
Comment: Why flouring the bowl? I usually use a little olive oil so it won;t stick, but I never flour it.
Answer: I am doing it right now using the defrost setting. My microwave has a selection for 0.1 lbs. For a large pizzas worth of dough, I used 0.2 twice, with about 5-10 minutes rest in between, then 0.1 again, & then I covered it with a damp hot towel. (I soaked it in hot tap water then wrung it out.) total time has been less than a half hour & its doubled in size already.         P.S.- I had it in a plastic bowl with olive oil in it, about a quarter cup.
Answer: I just did this moments ago. Leave the dough in a sealed plastic bag and hit for 10 second intervals on the defrost setting on your microwave. Depending on how frozen it is, it will take a few hits.
Answer: I soften my ice cream using the defrost button in the microwave -- 7 to 10 seconds is more than enough. I don't see why it shouldn't work for pizza dough.
Comment: Because pizza dough isn't ice cream, and contains yeast.
Comment: Most people have normal microwave ovens that defrost very unevenly, and tend to ruin food. Yes there are some that work fine on defrost, but in my experience most do not!
Comment: @Neil_Fein What's yeast got to do with it?


Changing the name of BM70 BLE module without Microchip's evaluation board

Question: I am trying to customize the name of my BM70 BLE module. I am not using the BM70 PICTail evaluation board. Instead I am using the MSP430F4799 microcontroller to communicate with the module and to configure the P2_0 pin and other necessary hardware pins. I tried with the UI configuration tool and manual pattern test tool to change the name of the BM70 module with the COM port where the UART of the MSP430 is connected but it did not work. Now my question is there any way to access command set protocol of BM70 module without using the PICTail evaluation board?
Comment: If you have still problems with the BM70 module try to switch to RN4870. It's the same module with a different firmware. The RN4870 could really easy communicate with AT commands.
Answer: Of course you can use your MSP 430. Please have a look at the BM70 user guide. There are some hardware connections required to interface the module (see page 63). You had to use the default baudrate to connect the module the first time.
Answer: you can do that in the same way as BM71 module. You can read about the whole process in my blog at bijan.binaee.com/index.php/2018/08/03/bm71-no-uart-response/
ps: I wish I could post this as a comment but I don't have required reputation at this community (If you are a moderator I appreciate if you delete this answer and make it as a comment if possible)


When should I use "cause" and "causes"?

Question: I dont understand when to use the "cause" and the "causes". what is the difference? I am writing this book review, and really need some help with this. The sentence im struggling with is "In both situations there is a lack of resources which CAUSE people to die...".
Answer:

In both situations there is a lack of resources which cause people to die.

Strictly speaking, the above sentence means that there aren't enough resources, and the resources, were they available, would cause people to die. So it's those resources that are causing deaths, and there aren't enough of those resources, which is a good thing.
However, it would be a little strange to describe something as a resource and as a cause of death at the same time, so I don't think this is what you want.

In both situations there is a lack of resources which causes people to die.

This sentence should be read as follows: there's a lack of some resources, and it is this lack that's causing deaths. In effect, without those resources people die; the resources help avoid death. Unfortunately, there's a lack of those resources.
This sentence makes sense, and is what you probably want to write.

However, it's not inconceivable that someone mistakenly uses the first sentence to mean the same thing as the second sentence because there's a plural noun (resources) that's closer to the verb (CAUSE), and people sometimes forget that they started with a lack [...], which means the whole thing (a lack of resources) should be treated as a singular, i.e. followed by a singular verb. This alternative reading of the first sentence is sanctioned by the strangeness of its literal reading.
In my opinion, it's also likely that people won't even notice the mistake.
Answer: Cause is plural and causes is singular. For example:

This piece of candy causes tooth decay. (singular)
Cigarettes cause cancer. (plural)

I don't think your issue is with cause.
I think your sentence isn't specific enough and it's difficult to determine the point. I would reword it to be more specific about what you mean. For example:

In both situations, it is the lack of resources that causes people to die.

When should I use "cause" and "causes"?


Comparing two CVS revisions in Eclipse

Question: It finally started to annoy me enough to ask this question: how do I do a basic diff between two revisions of a file in CVS? Usually I want to compare the latest revision and some random old one. I'm using the Eclipse CVS plugin. When I use "compare with->Another branch or version..." from the selected file's (latest revision from HEAD or another branch) context menu, I get a list of branches, tags and dates but not revisions. Usually I have just created a date which I know is far enough in the past so I can compare the needed revisions but I thought that there must be a better way.
Answer: The answer is to show the file's history using context menu->Team->Show history, then choose two revisions and context menu for the selection->compare with each other.
Answer: There seems to be two main ways:
context menu->Team->Show history
which shows a linear history and you can select and compare between them, however it can be very bloated and hard to read when your project has lots of branches / tags. Personally i have found it less useful than:
context menu->Team->Show Commit history
Which seems to show the history of what has been committed to the specific branch/tag you are on. You can do it per file or per folder. The output is very similar but i find it clearer. You can click on a commit date and it will show you all the files (that you are interested in) that were committed on that date.
If you double click the file, it will then bring up another menu so that you can compare it with another file in the commit history
EDIT
(i find if you double click the "other" file, it doesn't do anything, you need to click "OK" in the dialogue, which seems silly to me. This might be effected by the fact I have the beyond compare 3 plug in, im not sure if it behaves the same without it)
EDIT
There is also a little button in the top right of the commit history window that allows you to switch to history view (but i always find it easy to read than the normal history view if i do it this way round)
Both should show you the comment added when committed and you should try and read about the differences between the but personally I haven't and its only form personal experience that i prefer commit history.
I apologize for not giving formal descriptions of each, this is purely from my personal experience of using them, i have not actually researched them both yet myself...

Comparing two CVS revisions in Eclipse


Types of predicate and existence

Question: Is there a term for properties that cannot be predicated of existing things. Or one for properties that can?
Answer: See The Epistemology of Modality. We can sey that the first one are (logical or metaphysical) impossible properties, while the second one are possible.
Comment: ah! Interesting idea.
Comment: hi again... so a property that can only be predicated of things that don't exist is metaphysically impossible?
Comment: @user3293056 - of course, is only a sugegstion. May we say that the property of *being faster than light* is phyiscally impossible, while the property of *being higher than itself* is logically impossible. Does it make sense ?
Comment: Note though, that there's an important debate about whether properties are sparse or abundant. (Roughly, abundant property theorists say every true subject/predicate sentence has a property in virtue of which it is true. "Socrates is bald" is true because the object Socrates has the property `baldness`) If you take a sparse property view, on the other hand, you wouldn't want to say that there were things like impossible properties, I think. Perhaps somebody who knows more can correct me though.

Types of predicate and existence


How do I install Opera for Linux in Ubuntu?

Question: I have downloaded Opera for Linux 64-bit version, but when I try to install via Ubuntu Software Center it tells me it is the wrong architecture. What can I do?
Comment: Are you trying to install it on a 64bit Ubuntu install - click top-right cog -> About this computer and see OS Type?
Comment: What I have to do when installing opera is use the "show other versions" link on the download page and select the correct version from there (I select i386) This is because it automatically selects the x86_64x versions, and it doesn't work for my system.
Comment: Official instructions for Debian-based distributions: http://deb.opera.com/manual.html
Answer: I'd recommend installing Opera using the Opera repository.  That way it will install the version that is needed and run the updates automatically.
To add the Opera repository, run the following in the terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free"
wget -O - https://deb.opera.com/archive.key | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install opera-stable

(if you prefer beta releases, use deb https://deb.opera.com/opera-beta/ stable non-free in the first line above).
For more details see the guide on manual setup of the Opera apt repository.
Comment: Would it make sense to use https instead of http when getting the key? `wget -O - https://...` Just a bit of paranoia.
Answer: To install Opera, just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:
For 32bit
wget snapshot.opera.com/unix/dancingelephant_12.13-1725/opera_12.13.1725_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i opera*.deb

For 64bit
wget snapshot.opera.com/unix/dancingelephant_12.13-1725/opera_12.13.1725_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i opera*.deb

Source:LinuxG
Answer: There is a generic Opera repository available at http://deb.opera.com (with full description of how to add it). The Canonical repository for Opera no longer works
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free

The line above will make sure you get all final public releases. By default the sources repository is also added (which does not exist for Opera) so remove that. Add the following line if you want to get the newer alpha and beta releases instead.
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera-beta/ stable non-free

It is advisable that you add the Opera GPG key.
wget -qO - http://deb.opera.com/archive.key | sudo apt-key add -

(If you get "The following packages cannot be authenticated" warnings, you'll also need this:)
sudo apt-get install debian-archive-keyring

Install via the shell
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install opera


How to see value of NFT / ERC 721 token on etherscan?

Question: For instance here https://etherscan.io/token/0x06012c8cf97bead5deae237070f9587f8e7a266d?a=1  is token 1 of CryptoKitties and there are some transfers, but ether value is always set to 0 ether and I guess people paid something for this. So I guess I can see that value somewhere else. The question is where can I see this?
Answer: It depends on what function is called. If you open the link you can see four transactions. Click any one of the transaction hashes, select click to see more and there you will see the function that was called. This transaction 1 consists of a bid function where obviously a certain user would have placed a bid on the token during the sales auction as is evident from the "From" parameter. The other 3 transactions do not require transfer of ether.


Does external linking with internal link and redirect benefit the target website?

Question: Suppose that website A inserts a link to website B. But it doesn't do it directly. It uses an internal link that redirect to website B. Considering SEO, does this link benefit website B? And what kind of redirect (301, 302 or 303) affects this behavior?
Comment: Are you talking about an app the redirects one link to another using à database?
Comment: @closetnoc That's one way do it. But it could be passing a parameter via url and use that. For example, http://WebsiteA.com/redirect?url=http://WebsiteB.com.
Comment: Along the same lines... Are you doing a 301? If so, then yes, it should work.
Comment: @closetnoc Thanks. What about 303 redirects?
Comment: Not sure. Sorry. Cheers!!
Comment: While I cannot say for sure, upon reflection, I cannot see why not.
Answer: Yes, it's benefits to target website, there are already bunch of website using like that.
www.mywebsite.com/redirect/www.someothersite.com

If you insert above link on your website(www.mywebsite.com) and it's redirect to www.someothersite.com then Google will also follow(unless it's not blocked under robots.txt) that redirection just like our browser do, because they use similar kind of webkit to render such a webpages.
Now affliate websites also do that, for example, www.example.com/recommended/some-affliate-webpage/ but they block that recommended directory on their website via robots.txt, so the pagerank will not transfer to that affliate webpage. I don't know why you're asking this question, but if you have some kind of website like that and you don't want to transfer pagerank(Because of link spam) without using nofollow attribution then robots.txt is also better option.
There is also another example of webmasterworld forum. If you check that website then you will know they're not using nofollow attribution, but whenever any user insert the link it converts into internal links and then do redirection, like this https://www.webmasterworld.com/r.cgi?f=30&d=4843612&url=https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-link-no-data-available-23677.html But their cgi directory is blocked under robots.txt so the Pagerank and other link matrics value will not going passed on seroundtable.com website.
Regarding 30X, it all passes pagerank.
Comment: Thanks. Actually website B is mine. I wanted to make sure that my website that is linked in website A with redirect, benefits. Referencing your link it seems that google doesn't care about redirects.
Comment: If website B is yours then I will check website A robots.txt to know weather they are blocking that directory or not /or using nofollow link or not. If they block it then you will not get any benefits, otherwise yes.


What contracts have to be in writing?

Question: I know that land sale contracts, for example, have to be in writing in most jurisdictions. What other kinds of contracts legally have to be in writing to be enforceable? (US jurisdictions preferred but any jurisdiction acceptable).
Comment: General info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_frauds
Answer: In most U.S. jurisdiction, contracts only need to be in writing if they're within what we call the "Statute of Frauds." The Statute of Frauds was an actual statute in England but has not -- as far as I know -- ever been enacted in any state here. Nonetheless, its rules have carried over in the common law.
The Statute of Frauds covers:

Contracts of the sale of goods at a cost of $500 or more;
Contracts where marriage is part of the exchange (prenuptial agreements);
Contracts that are impossible to fulfill within a year of execution;
Contracts for the transfer of an interest in real property;
Contracts by an estate's executor agreeing to personally pay a debt owed by the estate; and
Suretyships (contracts to guarantee another person's payment of a debt);

There are a some caveats people should be aware of before trying to run off and renege on an oral contract, though:

Even in these types of transactions, it's not always precisely correct to say that the contract has to be in writing. Instead, there may only need to be something in writing that proves the existence of the contract, made either before or after the contract was formed. So if I agree to buy your house over the phone, and then you send me an e-mail reminding me to pay up, that e-mail may be enough to satisfy the Statute of Frauds.
Despite the general rule that these contracts must be in writing to be enforceable, there are exceptions. The point of the rule is to avoid problems determining whether a contract exists or not, so courts may still enforce the agreement under certain circumstances that are highly suggestive of a non-written contract having been reached. There are two primary examples:

"Promissory estoppel": If one of the parties has taken actions to their own detriment that you wouldn't expect them to take if they hadn't already reached a contract, the court may enforce the oral contract. Imagine, for instance, someone who bought a house on a handshake and then sold their own house, or someone who quits their job after being offered a two-year employment contract.
"Part performance": If one of the parties starts to actually make good on the agreement in a way that a court would not expect in the absence of an agreement, the court may enforce the contract. Imagine someone moving into a house despite the lack of a written contract to buy it, or an auto dealer delivering a car without a signed contract.

Even if an agreement needs to be in writing, hiding/losing/destroying every written copy doesn't nullify the contract. See here for more.

What contracts have to be in writing?


Are all commuting functions "the same"?

Question: Let $f,g,h$ be "nice" functions and $h(H(x))=H(h(x))=x$. Let $F(x)=H(f(h(x)))$ and $G(x)=H(g(h(x)))$. Obviously $f(g(x))=g(f(x)) \Leftrightarrow F(G(x))=G(F(x))$.
Example: $f(x)=ax, g(x)=bx$ and $F(x)=a+x,G(x)=b+x$ are related by a log transformation.
Question: Can all commuting functions $f,g$ be transformed to $F(x)=a+x,G(x)=b+x$ with some $h$? You may restrict "nice" as you like (monotonous? differentiable? complex domain?) if a proof demands it. (It's probably not hard to come up with an un-nice counterexample.)
Comment: I wouldn't say this answers your question, but a positive result along these lines is the theorem that a family of commuting diagonalizable matrices is simultaneously diagonalizable: if such matrices commute then they are simultaneously similar to some matrices which obviously commute.
Answer: Let me rephrase your question: is every pair of commuting functions simultaneously conjugate to
a pair shifts?
(Your conditions, literally understood imply that your $h$ is a bijective map.)
The answer is evidently no.
In your example, $ax$ and $bx$ are restricted to the positive ray.
If you consider the "same" functions on the whole real line, they are already
not conjugate to shifts. Because they have a fixed point while the shifts do not.
One can replace conjugacy by semiconjugacy, requiring in your notation $h(F)=f(h)$,
and $h(G)=g(h)$ (without the requirement that $h$ is invertible) but even in this case, not every pair of commuting functions is
semiconjugate to an affine pair.
Commuting rational functions are almost completely classified in the paper of J. F. Ritt,
TAMS 1923, and another proof of the same result can be found in my paper MR1027462.
Only for polynomials (and some subclasses of rational functions, like Blaschke products)
the problem of description of all commuting pairs is completely solved.
There is an enormous literature about this and other classes of commuting functions
and maps. Under some additonal conditions, like having a common fixed point,
commuting pairs are frequently (not always) semiconjugate to pairs of linear maps.

Are all commuting functions "the same"?


Utility Application infoButton Stays on Top

Question: I used a utility application template to create my application, but I am using a UIImagePicker to pick some photos. The little infoButton, the i with a circle around it, shows up when the picker is displayed. If the infoButton was not in another class then I could call infoButton.hidden = YES; and it would hide it. Any ideas how to solve this problem?
Thanks,
-Pat
Comment: Can you post a screenshot?  There are certainly ways around this, but I'm confused by what you are seeing.
Answer: I took a look at the utility application template, the view controller with a gray background and an info button is MainViewController, and the instance is also the "mainViewController" property of the application delegate.
It seems that you have already created an IBOutlet to the infoButton, so, you can access the button by calling [UIApplication sharedApplication].delegate.mainViewController.infoButton .


(Java Minecraft 1.13) How to test for if a beacon is activated?

Question: I would like to use execute as @e[type=item,nbt={Item:{id:"minecraft:nether_star", Count:1b}}] at @s if block ~ ~-1 ~ minecraft:beacon run... but only if the beacon is activated. Is there a way to do this without checking every block of the underlying structure to make sure it is complete? Basically, what is the id/nbt of a Beacon which can be used to test for if it is activated?
Comment: Do you mean "active" as in "shining light" or as in "providing selected status effect"?
Comment: @FabianRöling As in shining light.
Comment: I just answered for both cases now, that's more helpful for future readers and it's almost the same anyway. I did this all just from memory and the wiki, so please tell me if one of the commands isn't working right.
Answer: For NBT questions the Minecraft wiki page "Chunk format" (archive) always helps. It can tell you that the "Level" tag of a beacon stores the number of layers of the pyramid that are available to it (with the usual small delay), "Primary" stores the first and "Secondary" the second status effect.
So you can do something based on that check like this:
/execute if block ~ ~ ~ beacon{Level:1} run <command>

But that only works for a single value, not all four. You could use execute store with data get to put it into a scoreboard, then you could check for a range, but since you are only interested in "not 0", you can use this:
/execute if block ~ ~ ~ beacon unless block ~ ~ ~ beacon{Level:0} run <command>

This would in theory also select beacons without the Level tag, but that doesn't happen unless it's explicitly removed with commands (or the world gets corrupted or whatever).

If you want to check for the effect instead, you can do something like this:
/execute if block ~ ~ ~ beacon unless block ~ ~ ~ beacon{Primary:{Id:0b}}

The value 0 in a beacon's effect ID means "no effect".
Comment: Update in 1.14.0: The "Level" tag is broken currently, so you would have to check every block and every possible variant.


Wireshark Troubles

Question: I'm only able to watch my own data through a network and nothing else. I have no clue what to do anymore after trying a lot of different things. Im running Ubuntu 13.04 on VMWare.
Comment: In a VM you cannot access all settings of your real computer's hardware. So you cannot put your network card into monitoring mode. If you want to capture all the data flowing through the network I suggest you use a tool like ettercap for a man in the middle attack.
Answer: Perhaps, allowing promiscuous mode of the virtual LAN adapater and not using NAT (also in the VM settings) could help.
Comment: http://gyazo.com/247686620c6bc213a7c3c2bd916c4704 Could this be affecting it? I am kind of confused about the promiscuous mode thing. On wireshark in the interface options, I do have Capture all in promiscuous mode checked in the box. When I try to run things on Ubuntu, it usually tells me I don't have permission and giving myself permissions usually doesn't work.

Wireshark Troubles


I am creating a gif in photoshop and have a lot of PS files to put in, but these files are in separate layers, can I change this?

Question: To preface I know how to use the animation timeline. I have 200 PS images that I want imported, but they have multiple layers, so for each image I will need to group the layers, this seems tedious. Is there a way for them to come in automatically grouped or merged into one layer.
Comment: [So what you want is basically this](http://i.stack.imgur.com/cKEfu.jpg), but with 200 documents instead of 5? Your title and your description is a bit confusing to me.
Comment: Yeah, sorry it was confusing, but that is it.
Answer: Jeff.
Personally, I use two methods for solving this issue.
The first one - go to the layer window and select all layers by pressing SHIFT button. After that you press CTRL+G. This command groups all selected layers into a folder that you can import into another document.The big plus for this technique is that you can edit everything after that.The problem is that the file may become too big and your computer may become slower.
The second technique - Simply drag and drop all your files into one file. They will be placed like Smart objects and all of them will be on different layers. You can also edit each one of them by pressing right click on a layer and pressing "Edit Contents".
Hope you find this helpful. If you have questions, feel free to write :))
Cheers


How do i configure huawei usb modem

Question: i plan to purchase a Huawei E162e usb modem in Ghana when 11.04 is released. My question does it work out of box like in windows or do i need to go the ubuntu way! (tweak). Thanks in advance
Answer: I can't say for your model and/or place, but I have tested these Modems 3G Huawei which are listed in the Telcel Mexican Broadband ISP and everyone is working right out of the box. There is simply a procedure that should be done in order to use it as modem, because of the dongle installs initially as a CD-ROM Drive, which shifts to Modem mode when ejecting.
New link: http://www.internet.telcel.com/computadoras.html#tab2
Former link: http://www.bat.telcel.com/equipos_tarjetas.html
A screenshot of the modems is placed here for your convenience.
Good luck!
Comment: The link 404's. Is there an updated link, or is it unimportant?
Comment: The link is now updated, nevertheless the equipment on the new link has changed. Let's keep the old equipment screenshot in order to illustrate the answer based on the needs of the age. Thank you.

How do i configure huawei usb modem


Texture with simple brushes/traditional media

Question: I know that for creating texture on their paintings many digital artists use texture overlays or fancy custom brushes. But how to achieve similar effects using only simple brushes? Are there some techniques? How can this be achieved using traditional media, like acrylic or oil paints?
Comment: Might be worth adding some examples of textures that you'd like to emulate.
Answer: You can get paint gels that are made to be mixed in to various types of paint to thicken it, add texture, make it more suitable for 3D structuring and / or add matt, gloss etc.
Here's a few from http://www.eckersleys.com.au/ (no affiliation or recommendation, just the first search result)

Or, the DIY / low budget approach is to just either:

Mix textured things like sand and/or wood glue in with the paint (don't use your best brushes!)
Mix the texture (e.g. sand) with something like wood glue, apply it, then paint with something thin (e.g. spray, airbrush, ink, watered down acyrlic - consider a white base coat first, or mixing white in with the texture)
Comment: Great advice, will try it out. But also I had in mind texture in a different meaning - like making cloth look like cloth, and nut just bent matte plastic? How to paint the texture of wood, so that everyone can easily recognise the material the item is made of? Also - how can I achieve this digitally, but without using weird, custom made brushes or texture overlays?


Moving Sprite With Physics Frame

Question: Normally, a physics frame in pink (see image below) gives the body for detecting hit signal. It usually either falls down or lifts up depending on the gravity orientation. The question is: Is it possible to move or manipulate sprite through X and Y coordinate without needing to use the gravity code from a physics engine like bodyeditor-loader-sources.jar (e.g. ballBody.setGravityScale(100.1f);) so that I can move simply either by dragging, change the value initially, or moving it by D-pad?
Answer: I used DynamicBody for my missiles, set their gravity scale to 0f, and I could move them freely the way I wanted to.
You might want to refer to Box2d documentation, chapter 7.1. You can set their flag isSensor to true, if you want them to report collisions instead of respond to them according to physics laws.
But from now on, you should use your physical body location as sprite location (remember, that Box2d uses meters as dimension unit, so you need to convert it to units your using internally for your objects; otherwise you will get different result for physics-representation and graphical-representation).
Comment: I accept your answer for one reason: you shared me with this manual. Now, I might probably gonna use this as instruction manual.
Answer: A simple way to move the body on the X, Y axises  is using impulses or forces.
You could manipulate the impulses with the gdx input processor.
Example :
  If (Gdx.input.isKeyPressed(Keys.LEFT)) {
            //move the body to the left
             Body.applyLinearImpulse(new Vector2(-1 , 0), body.getPositon());
}

Note that in the vector I put -1 so the ball will recieve multiple impulses and it's width wil decrease by 1.
P.S: If you insert a positive value, the body will move right
Comment: It is. However, if gravity applied, it might jump instead.

Moving Sprite With Physics Frame


Is the length of a sprint fixed or can it be changeable whenever the team want to?

Question: I recently started learning scrum, I've learned that a sprint has a limited period that can be between 1 to 6 weeks and during which the team build an increment, My question is: If for example, a team works with a sprint of 2 weeks, but during a certain sprint they choose to make it 3 weeks, is that possible or the length must always be fixed?
Comment: What "delay" are you talking about? I think there's a second question implied here, and recommend that you open a separate but related question to address that specific part of your team's issue with adequate details and context.
Comment: By delay, I mean the sprint length
Comment: So by "delay" you mean the delay in the feedback loops provided by Backlog Refinement and the Sprint Review, or possibly the "delay" in releasing a potentially-shippable Increment. You should probably splice that into your question since it wouldn't fundamentally *change* the question, but would certainly help clarify it for readers and people trying to answer your question.

On PMSE, we try to make questions and answers helpful for future readers, and not just the person currently asking the question. This sort of definitional stuff is very helpful for those future visitors!
Answer: Scrum Events and Time Boxes Should be Predictable

If for example, a team works with a sprint of 2 weeks, but during a certain sprint they choose to make it 3 weeks, is that possible or the delay must always be fixed?

While the Sprint length can be changed by consensus within the Scrum Team to optimize it as part of the inspect-and-adapt process, the Sprint length should not be variable. This is because the Scrum framework optimizes for predictability, and frequent changes to time boxes and Scrum events would make the overall cadence less predictable.

Important Note: A good cadence is predictable. From a pragmatic agile perspective, this generally means "routine" or "fixed" rather than "immutable."

Look for the X/Y Problem
Sprints are generally fixed at 1-4 week intervals, based on various trade-offs between capacity, flexibility, overhead, and the pace of change. However, the length of the Sprint should be considered fixed for the duration of the project barring exceptional circumstances.
In addition, the desire to frequently readjust the Sprint length often indicates underlying process problems. These may include:

Poor Sprint Planning or backlog estimation, couple with an expectation that estimates are a fixed guarantee rather than a best-effort forecast based on empirical experience.
A lack of coherence in Sprint Goals.
Insufficient decomposition of items on the Product or Sprint Backlogs, none of which should ever exceed a single Sprint.
Treating Sprint Backlog items as independent tasks rather than steps towards a unified Increment.
Focusing on doing "all the things" rather than on meeting a singular Sprint Goal.
Failure to treat the Sprint as an ephemeral time box within which work is either done or not-done, as opposed to a milestone, work unit, or fixed-scope deliverable.
A company culture where failure—sometimes even explicitly defined as a lack of perfect accuracy, or an unwillingness to accept change or variance in schedule or scope even in the face of change, unforeseen complexity, or *force majeure—leads to blame, and therefore a desire within the Scrum Team to break the iterative nature of the framework by ignoring time boxes to meet fiat targets.

There are certainly other reasons for people misusing Sprint length, but these are the most common ones in my own experience. During your next Sprint Retrospective, and in the course of your conversations with stakeholders and team members, you should try to identify the actual reason that the team wants to ignore or bypass core agile and Scrum principles. Until you do that, it is extremely likely that you are ultimately applying a bandage that simply covers up a more serious organizational dysfunction.
Comment: Thank you for this explanation
Answer: A Sprint cannot be 6 weeks long. In the Scrum framework as defined in the Scrum Guide, the maximum length for a Sprint is 1 month.
Sprint lengths are generally fixed-length. They don't need to remain the same length forever, but the teams do not typically adjust the length of a Sprint on a one-off basis. The Sprint acts as a heartbeat or cadence for the team for a few different things: a planning horizon (Sprint Planning), synchronizing with and receiving feedback from key stakeholders (Sprint Review), and improving the team's way of working (Sprint Retrospective). The Sprint length strikes a balance between how long the team can be expected to go before synchronizing with key stakeholders and adjusting their plans against the context.
Predictability is one reason you don't want to continually change the length of a Sprint. Both the team and the key stakeholders can take advantage of this predictability. The key stakeholders know when the Sprint Review will be and can make sure they are available for the team then, regardless of their availability in the middle of the Sprint. The team has general predictability in how much work they can accomplish because the available time to work remains constant (barring holidays or vacations), which leads to better plans.
When changing the length of the Sprint, the team needs to think about what the change would mean for their ability to craft an achievable Sprint Goal and a plan for achieving that Sprint Goal, achieve that Sprint Goal over the course of the Sprint, get useful feedback from key stakeholders, and respond to that feedback.
Comment: I am giving this a +1 for the cadence and predictability focus, but genuinely think there's an underlying X/Y the OP hasn't surfaced yet (although see the recent comments [here](https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/34718/is-the-length-of-a-sprint-fixed-or-can-it-be-changeable-whenever-the-team-want-t?noredirect=1#comment43200_34718) and [here](https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/34718/is-the-length-of-a-sprint-fixed-or-can-it-be-changeable-whenever-the-team-want-t?noredirect=1#comment43204_34718)), which I try to address in [my own answer](https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/34720/4271).
Comment: Thank you for the explanation
Answer: A sprint is a timeboxed period in Scrum that has a set length and can be anywhere from one and four weeks, depending on the team's preferences and the project's complexity. In order to maintain predictability and consistency across the project, the sprint length is decided upon during the Sprint Planning session.
It's vital to remember that too many sprint duration changes might be detrimental to the team's efficiency and morale.
Thus, it is generally advised to stick to a constant sprint length and to only make exceptions in extremely unusual circumstances.
Comment: Thank you this is a clear response that I understood well
Answer: Short iterations help to keep delivery risk under control and a regular cycle gives reassurance to customers/stakeholders. Of course it's possible to change the length of a sprint but making exceptions out of just certain sprints is probably not a good sign.
It's a common mistake among inexperienced teams to think that longer sprints will make things easier on themselves, whereas in fact the opposite is usually true. It's much easier to plan and execute shorter sprints than long ones and it's better to make backlog items small enough to fit your iterations. A 5-person team working 2-week sprints does 50 days per sprint, so that's more than two months of work, and if your backlog items are bigger than that then they will probably benefit from being split.
Comment: I agree with most of this, but want to point out that longer Sprints have lower framework overhead but slower feedback loops . Longer loops  in turn may lead to a reduced capacity for rapid change. Sprint length represents a number of trade-offs, and estimation accuracy (while definitely a valid one) is only one of many dimensions involved in length optimization.
Comment: On a side note, teams that have trouble with decomposition don't always benefit from longer Sprints, but will most likely fail miserably with one-week Sprints since all planned backlog items must fit within a single Sprint.
Comment: Thank you for your explanation


How do I send an NPC to a random location in a set area?

Question: I am trying to make a minigame where mobs spawn in random places in a set area, how can I do this with command blocks?
Answer: You can generate Mob Spawner by that commandblock, then you will have random spawning in set area.
However:

That area has to be around the spawner (square), so you need to place it in the middle.
You can enlarge the area around spawner that is eligible for mob spawning, HOWEVER that is costly resource-wise, so it is better to not make it way too big! (spawner has to scan all blocks in range, that can be CPU-expensive when you make it way too big)
You can spawn one mob type per spawner. However you can have advanced commandblock/redstonery to change the spawner.

You can get the command from various command generators, for example this one: https://mcstacker.bimbimma.com/
Here is an example code (for 1.9/1.10) for nearly normal Zombie:
<code>/setblock ~ ~1 ~ minecraft:mob_spawner 0 replace {SpawnData:{id:"Zombie",CustomName:"Dead Eric",CustomNameVisible:1,HandItems:[{id:wooden_sword,Count:1},{}],ActiveEffects:[{Id:5,Amplifier:0,Duration:1999980}]},SpawnCount:4,SpawnRange:10,RequiredPlayerRange:20,Delay:40,MinSpawnDelay:40,MaxSpawnDelay:80,MaxNearbyEntities:8}
</code>
This one will spawn named zombies, you can change everything what you want, number of mobs, range, delay, also you can define coordinates on what the spawner can be placed (default is one block above commandblock) etc.
Enjoy!
Comment: Is there an actually command to spawn them like a spawner does, except only one mob?
Comment: Could you please expand the command so it is visible and better to understand?
Comment: @EricHandley No, there is no such a command, EXCEPT /spreadplayers, but then you would need two commands (one to spawn, second to spread them), however that have also limitations ( biggest one is that it always targets SURFACE).
Comment: @RudolfL.Jelínek Expand? I follow the recognized format with commands.  See http://meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/11524/can-we-please-stop-using-block-quotes-for-formatting-minecraft-commands . It is just random spawner exaple.


error while deploying the contract-error encoding argument

Question: <code>pragma solidity ^0.8.0;

contract Invoice {
    // The PAN of the buyer
    string public buyerPAN;
    // The PAN of the seller
    string public sellerPAN;
    // The amount of the invoice
    uint256 public invoiceAmount;
    // The date of the invoice
    uint256 public invoiceDate;
    // The payment status of the invoice (true if paid, false if not paid)
    bool public paymentStatus;

    // Maps buyer PANs to their invoices
    mapping(string => Invoice[]) public buyerInvoices;

    // Initializes the contract with the given buyer and seller PANs,
    // invoice amount, and invoice date

    constructor(string memory _buyerPAN, string memory _sellerPAN, uint256 _invoiceAmount, uint256 _invoiceDate) {
        buyerPAN = _buyerPAN;
        sellerPAN = _sellerPAN;
        invoiceAmount = _invoiceAmount;
        invoiceDate = _invoiceDate;
        paymentStatus = false;
    }

    // Changes the payment status of the invoice to paid
    function payInvoice() public {
        paymentStatus = true;
    }

    // Adds the current invoice to the list of invoices for the given buyer PAN
    function addToBuyerInvoices(string memory _buyerPAN) public {
        buyerInvoices[_buyerPAN].push(this);
    }

    // Returns the list of invoices for the given buyer PAN
    function getInvoicesForBuyer(string memory _buyerPAN) public view returns (Invoice[] memory) {
        return buyerInvoices[_buyerPAN];
    }
}
</code>
Answer: That means you are not providing the right type of arguments to your constructor when deploying the smart contract.
I just deployed it, making sure I provided a string, a string, an unit and an uint and it worked just fine.
How do you deploy it?


Trying to install dual-boot Parrot OS 3.5 on Sony Vaio UEFI

Question: I'm trying to install Parrot OS 3.5 on a Sony Vaio laptop, as a dual-boot alongside Windows 10. I have no trouble installing from my bootable USB, but Grub doesn't seem to be able to load it. I don't want to run it as a Live Disc, and I don't want to run it in VM, I want to be able to boot directly into it for use as a daily driver OS.
Comment: how did you partition the disk?
Comment: Initially, I reduced the size of the windows partition by half, and left the remaining HD space unformatted. When that didn't work I tried it as NFTS format.

NTFS*
Comment: You may need to turn off secure boot to get this to work (I had to do this to get LM 18 to play nice with UEFI for dual boot Win 10/LM situation): https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/commercialize/manufacture/desktop/disabling-secure-boot
Comment: I disabled Secure Boot immediately, as secure boot refused to allow me to select either OS
Answer: I did a lot of research and testing, what I ended up having to do was use a second bootable USB running Ubuntu, so that I could run rEFInd alongside efibootmgr (the latter is not included in Live versions of Parrot and Debian).
Using rEFInd to force GRUB to be seen by the UEFI and efibootmgr to force UEFI to load rEFInd and Parrot before trying to load Windows, I was able to overcome UEFI's hatred for anything other than Windows.
Side Note: Even after changing UEFI boot order settings this way, it still told me that I was missing a file, \g21dr.mbr
If you come across this error, what I did was I went back and re-wrote the Parrot OS iso to my USB using Rufus, and in a drop down menu, changed the value from "create MBR for BIOS or UEFI" to "create GPT for UEFI" (I don't remember exactly what each option said, but I changed it from the first option to the third.)
My hope was that if I created it without the need for MBR, it would run properly. Having combined all of these methods, I can definitely say I am typing this on Parrot OS 3.5 after having shut down and started up cold several times, and it loading into Parrot immediately.
Problem solved.
Comment: UEFI doesn't love Windows nor does it hate Linux. It is independent. I am having the same version of ParrotOS installed on my machine alongside Windows 10. Those were your problems: 1st is the *third option in Rufus*. It is *mandatory*. 2nd is ParrotOS formatting. It is an *HYBRIDISO* image, or how those things are called, so the storage medium you write this image on needs to be an exact copy of the image or else something (as in your case) will definitely fail. 3rd thing is, once you take care of thing #1 and #2 you have to **make sure to boot the Live DVD of ParrotOS in UEFI mode** or else
Comment: it's no wonder the system complains. What happened in your case is what is technically expected. Actually it had an even friendlier outcome for you, because you shouldn't have been able to load the ParrotOS Live DVD initially in the first place.
Comment: Thanks for your input, it really helped. I specifically mentioned Sony Vaio, as I had no trouble dual-booting on my HP laptop, and doing a search for dual-booting on Sony Vaio specifically showed that this was a huge problem for those devices.
Comment: I'm happy I was helpful!


When to use HttpMessageHandler vs ActionFilter?

Question: It seems that these two have a similar purpose. It would be great to see some examples when to use one over the other, pros and cons, as well as point out what are the key differences.
Comment: Better question might be when to use HttpMessageHandler vs a *global* ActionFilter. That seems a bit more hazy.
Comment: http://forums.asp.net/t/1804456.aspx
Answer:
The major difference between their two is their focus.  Message
  Handlers are applied to all HTTP requests. They perform the function
  of an HTTP intermediary.  Filters apply only to requests that are
  dispatched to the particular controller/action where the filter is
  applied.
You should use MessageHandlers when you want the behaviour to be
  applied to the vast majority of requests.  Filters should be used when
  they are only applicable to certain resources.
Comment: filters can also be applied to all HTTP requests, if they're added as global filters.
Comment: Filters can be applied globally and MessageHandlers can be applied per route. So I don't think this answer is particularity satisfying.
Comment: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kiranchalla/archive/2012/05/05/asp-net-mvc4-web-api-stack-diagram.aspx
Comment: I think one downside of using Filter is that the ParameterBinding will happen before the OnActionExecuting, so if you want to manipulate the data before delivering it to the action you'll have to create some new MediaTypeFormatters.
Answer: A big difference between handlers and action filters is the stage at which they are executed. Action filters are executed after controller dispatch and model binding has occurred, so you have the ability to interact with the controller instance that is handling the request, as well as having direct access to the typed model objects that are passed to the action method. I've used this approach to perform advanced logging of request/response values - because I could get at the controller, I was able to log additional information about how the request was handled.
Message handlers are executed earlier in the process, and operate much closer to the raw request/response values than filters (contrast the HttpRequestMessage/HttpResponseMessage objects used in handlers with the much-richer HttpActionContext and HttpActionExecutedContext objects available within filters). This makes them potentially more efficient for some activities, for example, if you're trying to determine whether you need to terminate the request early. If you know the request should be rejected, a handler will allow you to do this before the WebApi infrastructure has gone to the effort of instantiating the controller, performing model binding etc.
Another difference is that handlers are chained, and that you have more control over how the chain is executed. Although filters are called in sequence, setting the response in one filter will effectively end the request, preventing the next filter in the list from being executed. For example, if you have a first filter that returns a bad request if your model is null, and a second filter to log the request, your second filter would not be executed once the bad request is generated by the first filter. With a handler, it would still be possible (although not necessarily advisable!) to call the inner handler and allow the handler chain to operate normally.


What size sub panel can I put if Im using #3 THHN wire for 160' run?

Question: I have a detached garage about 55' from the back of my house and my main panel is in my basement. So Im planning to run about 160' #3 THHN wire in conduit (About 90' inside the basement and 70' outside through a trench to the garage). I want to put a sub panel in the garage and also install a Tesla Wall connector from that sub panel. The Tesla wall connector needs a 60A circuit. Can I put a 100A sub panel in the garage with this configuration? From what I have read, code says #3 THHN can carry 110A so it should be safe to use a 100A breaker in the main panel and the sub panel? Also, what size ground wire can I use for this? Is #6 THHN enough? Im doing this using a licensed electrician but he didnt seem really confident about his answers so wanted a second opinion.
Answer: First, I would like you to consider using aluminum wiring instead of copper. The cost difference is staggering and there's no measurable disadvantage to using aluminum if it's installed properly.
If you're dead set on copper, #3 THHN is fine. You'll need 1-1/4 SCH 80 PVC for areas exposed to damage. In particular, this is generally where the conduit exits the building (usually via an LB conduit body) and to the point where it is below the required burial depth, which is 18" in this case. So your preformed elbow will need to be SCH 80 as well. The lateral run to the garage can be SCH 40, which will save you some money. But you can certainly run the whole thing in SCH 80.
As for your equipment ground conductor (EGC), you'll need a #8 copper wire or #6 aluminum wire for a 100 amp feeder.
If you decide the savings is worth it, and you decide to go aluminum, you'll need #1 AWG XHHW wire for the hots and neutral. You can by code stuff 3 x #1 and 1 x #6 XHHW wires into 1-1/4 SCH 80 PVC, but you'll be at about 37% wire fill, which is really close to the NEC maximum of 40%. To aid in making the pull easier, it may be advantageous to up your conduit size to 1-1/2. You'll still be saving a ton of money.
Another thing to consider is that #1 XHHW may not be readily available at your local big box store, so you may have to resort to your local electrical supply house, most of whom have counter sales departments.
Now, as for your EV charger, some manufacturers recommend copper wiring, and you can certainly use copper wiring from your sub panel to the EV plug. The reality is, we electricians use aluminum wire for feeders and services pretty much exclusively now days because copper is just too prohibitively expensive. Chances are the service wires coming from your meter to your main panel are aluminum and the wires that the power company ran from the transformer to your meter are definitely aluminum.
Lastly, I'd like to add a few more pointers to assure you make a safe, code compliant installation.

The grounds and neutrals in your sub panel need to remain separate. You may have noticed that in your main panel, both the white neutral wires and bare copper wires (assuming your house is wired with Romex) are terminated on the neutral bar. They may not be, but usually are. So you'll need to purchase a separate ground bar to install in your sub panel as most do not come with one. I actually like to put one on each side for convenience, just like the neutral bars are.

Every panel comes with a main bonding jumper, in the form of either a green screw or copper strap. You will not install this and simply discard it. The neutral to ground bond should only occur in the main panel or disconnect.

You're going to need an additional ground rod for your sub panel because it's a detached garage. So, you'll need to get a length of #6 bare copper wire to run from the ground bar in your sub panel to the ground rod outside. This is the one place where you have to use copper wire, as you cannot direct bury aluminum wire. Technically you only need #8 but if you use #8 you have to protect it in conduit. If you use #6 you can just run it bare. Although some people like to use an LB and short length of PVC on the outside for aesthetic purposes.
Answer: Think again about wire
First, seriously consider aluminum feeder.  Some people are afraid of aluminum because of stuff they heard on the Internet: that was about small branch circuits (lighting, receptacles) and really, it was the copper connectors on receptacles and sockets not playing well with aluminum wire.  As such, the lugs on subpanels are aluminum, since it plays well with both.
You're talking about $1500 in copper wire, what we're advising would be more like $400.  If you wanted to spend that $1100 improving safety, we have a laundry list of good choices that will make a real difference.
100A requires 1 AWG aluminum.
Second, rethink 100A.  If 90A will do, you may find #2 aluminum is more readily available and better priced. It's a commodity because it's used on 100A services, which have a favorable derate due to powering an entire residence.  This is a feeder.
Breaker spaces are more important
Since it is an outbuilding, you will need a disconnect switch of some kind and it can be inside the garage. Far and away the cheapest way to get a disconnect switch is simply select a panel that has a main breaker.  You're not even using the breaker as a breaker, it's only there to be a switch.  But that's fine.
At that point, any subpanel size will do.  225A subpanel off a 100A feed breaker, that is fine.
So since that doesn't matter, what rises to the top is number of breaker spaces.  Last thing you want to do is chintz out on the number of breaker spaces, only a few years later to want to add another circuit, only you can't because you're out of spaces. Then you have an awkward and expensive refitting to do as you must replace this sub with a bigger one.  Much easier to decisively solve that problem today with a wildly oversized panel. Spaces are cheap. 24 space is not excessive.
The tactic of using tandem/twin breakers to get 2 circuits in 1 space is fading fast, since most breakers these days need to be GFCI or AFCI.

Can I put a 100A sub panel in the garage with this configuration? From what I have read, code says #3 THHN can carry 110A so it should be safe ..

Not sure where you got that, Table 310.15(B)(16) gives 100A @ 75C thermal, or 115A @ 90C thermal.
If you want to use the 90C thermal column, you need to pigtail both ends of the wire to a larger wire that is rated for your ampacity at 75C.  Using a Polaris or other connector that is rated at 90C.
Comment: Not only that, in order to use 90degC ratings, the pigtail needs to be in a *separate box* from the breaker
Comment: We do it all the time with industrial feeders. The reason for being separated from the termination point is that the conductors actually serve as a heat sink for the terminals.

What size sub panel can I put if Im using #3 THHN wire for 160’ run?


Is copying /bin from bootable usb safe?

Question: 30 mins ago I was trying to add a symbolic link in opt of a dir named bin, when I realized something wasn't right I deleted it, but then I had problems. I turned off the pc and when I restarted it I couldn't boot into ubuntu. Turns out that instead of deleting that bin symbolic link I deleted /bin. I booted from a live usb and I copied it's /bin into my broken installation. Now it works but when I turn the pc on I see three or four white text lines and it takes some seconds more then usual. While writing this Ubuntu also told me about an internal error of gnome-terminal. What do I do? Can I consider this fixed or should I reinstall?
Answer: A fresh install would be a clean solution to this problem.
If that is a lot of work, another idea is to use VirtualBox or Qemu/kvm to do a fresh install in a Virtual Machine, and then install the same applications that have been used on your current install. After you have that, you could make a copy of /bin from the VM, and copy that across.
Comment: In the end I simply went with the option to reinstall the system but keep my files.

Is copying /bin from bootable usb safe?


What are "legendary" items in League of Legends?

Question: What are legendary weapons in lol?
Comment: When are legendary weapons even mentioned? I have never even heard of them, and I have been playing for ever.
Answer: From the LoL wiki: "A legendary item (or high tier item) is an item that is crafted from at least one advanced item and a recipe. It may or may not contain basic items."
Basically the best way to think about a Legendary item is they are recipes inside recipes. For example: Shurelya's Revererie requires Kindle Gem among other things. The Kindle Gem also has a recipe which requires a Ruby Crystal. So essentially the Kindle Gem has a recipe then Shurelya's Revererie also has a recipe so that makes it a legendary item.
Answer: They are the items or weapons that you usually build last and are composed of other lower tier weapons. They are usually priced as the more expensive weapons and can be considered items that dictate the game. Bloodthister, A life Steal and + Attack Damage item, is a legendary item/weapon. These weapons usually have better effects/grouped effects from the items its made from.
Comment: A Bloodthirster is NOT a legendary item. (Neither is Infinity Edge or Black Cleaver.) It is built from basic items, BF Sword and Vamp Scepter. Look at Emerica's answer above.
Answer: Legendary items are the ones that are the last tier, and usually cost the most.


Algebraic dynamics in finite fields

Question: What is known about combinatorial structure of the rational maps of degree 2 over finite fields? From some general reasons I think it was studied. For being more specific, consider the field $\mathbb{F}_{2^n}$ and the map $x\rightarrow f(x)=x+1/x$. We may consider such a map as oriented graph with outdegrees 1 (except outdegree 0 for $x=0$) and indegrees usually 0 or 2 (except again $x=0$ with indegree 0). Each weak connected component contains exactly 1 cycle (except connected component of 0, which is a tree.) What is known about number of cycles of different lengths? About trees growing from these cycles?
Comment: Rather than treating 0 specially, you should treat $f(x)$ as a map on $\mathbb P^1(\mathbb F_{2^n})$. Then every point has one outgoing arrow, and points have either 0 or 2 incoming arrows provided you count them with multiplicity.
Comment: You could look at some of the work by Franco Vivaldi. I believe this is related to your question.
Comment: These come up in the Pollard rho method of integer factorization (although the emphasis is on the fields of $p$ elements, for large prime $p$).
Comment: I think it is natural to count degrees in such a way that some of indegrees equals sum of ourdegrees. If we do so, outdegree of 1 should be equal to indegree of 0.
Answer: There is a growing body of literature on dynamics of rational maps over finite fields. The following paper would seem to be relevant.

Ugolini, S., Graphs associated with the map $x\mapsto x+x^{-1}$ in finite fields of characteristic two, Theory and applications of finite fields, Contemp. Math. 579, 197-204, Amer. Math. Soc., 2012.

Here are a few more to get you started.

Alberto de Faria, Joao and Hutz, Benjamin, Combinatorics of cycle lengths on Wehler K3 Surfaces over finite fields, New Zealand J. Math. 45 (2015), 19-31.
Alden Gassert, T., Chebyshev action on finite fields, Discrete Math. 315 (2014), 83–94.
Bach, Eric and Bridy, Andrew, On the number of distinct functional graphs of affine-linear transformations over finite fields, Linear Algebra Appl. 439 (2013), 1312-1320.
Burnette, Charles and Schmutz, Eric, Periods of Iterated Rational Functions over a Finite Field, 2015, arXiv:1508.04193.
Flynn, Ryan and Garton, Derek, Graph components and dynamics over finite fields, Int. J. Number Theory 10 (2014), 779-792.
Roberts, John A. G. and Vivaldi, Franco, Signature of time-reversal symmetry in polynomial automorphisms over finite fields, Nonlinearity 18 (2005), 2171-2192.
Roberts, John A. G. and Vivaldi, Franco, A combinatorial model for reversible rational maps over finite fields, Nonlinearity 22 (2009), 1965--1982.

And you can try searching for the phrase "finite field" in the arithmetic dynamics bibliography that I've compiled at http://www.math.brown.edu/~jhs/ArithDyn.bib

Algebraic dynamics in finite fields


What's the max speed a man-made satellite can travel in space before its circuitry stopped working?

Question: Assume it could withstand extreme temperatures in either direction. I'm mainly curious what would happen to its circuits as it approached the speed of light.
Comment: Make the circuits light based , not electron based, photons work fine at the speed of light
Comment: Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/23576/2451
Answer: There is another speed limit, though
The problem with ultra-high speeds could be the doppler beamed and boosted cosmic microwave background (CMB), which may well fry your circuitry.
I don't know enough about radiation shielding to give you an exact number where problems would begin. This limit would still apply even should the spacecraft be moving through an incredibly sparse medium.
Let's assume that the problems for the spacecraft would begin once it is illuminated by hard X-rays. For the CMB to be boosted to X-ray frequencies requires a redshift $z \sim 10^{7}$ ($z \sim 2\gamma$ here), making the CMB a blackbody at $3\times10^{7}$ K. The necessary speed is given by
$$z^2 = \frac{c+v}{c-v}$$
A quick calculation gives $v \simeq 0.99999999999998c$ (or $\gamma \simeq 5 \times 10^{6}$).
At this speed the specific intensity of the CMB in the direction of motion is also boosted by a factor of $z^3$ to reach $3.7\times10^{-18} \times 10^{21} = 3700$ W m$^{-2}$ sr$^{-1}$ Hz$^{-1}$. This is 11 orders of magnitude brighter than the surface of the Sun, but the radiation will be in the form of a narrow X-ray spot on the sky of diameter $\sim 2/(1-v^2/c^2)^{-1/2} = 2\times10^{-5}$ degrees in diameter.
In fact, if you think about it, if you were to direct your spacecraft directly towards a star at relativistic speeds, then you would encounter a very similar problem. However, because the radiation field of the star is already in the visible band, the problems would occur at redshifts of $\sim 10^{4}$ and therefore at speeds of $\sim 0.99999998c$.
A recent paper by Yurstever & Wilkinson (2015) approaches this problem in a very similar way. They argue that inelastic X-ray scattering (and therefore heating of the spaceship) can be alleviated in some way but that pair production on nuclei in the hull of a ship will unavoidably take place when photon energies of around $10kT > 1 MeV$ are reached, or $T \sim 10^{9}$K, which leads to $\gamma \sim 2\times 10^{8}$.
These authors also conclude though that interstellar dust is the main problem  "a single grain of cosmic dust with a mass of $10^{-14}$g at $\gamma=10^8$ has the impact energy of close-to 24kg of TNT". This equates to a typical interstellar grain sizes of 0.1 micron, with typical densities of a few g/cm$^3$. However, interstellar dust grains have been collected of 20 micron size ($10^{-7}$g), which gives an impact energy like a tonne of TNT (4.2 GJ) when $\gamma=500$.
Comment: Nice, but I would have said something like 1 - 2e-14 or 1 - 2e-7, rather than string a bunch of 9s and make me count them :)
Comment: @KevinKostlan The only way the X-rays can heat is if they are absorbed or inelastically scattered. The calculations (and my answer) specifically say that X-ray scattering (i.e. the Compton effect) is ignored - the idea that being that if you can build a spaceship to go at $>0.9999c$, then you will have figured out a way to disperse heat. But you cannot disperse momentum.
Comment: I forgot about the CMB and wouldn't have thought of starlight. However there are "only" $10^9$ CMB photons per baryon in this part of the universe, so the interstellar medium does become a problem first.
Comment: The energy absorbed at the point the CMB becomes x-rays makes the surface of the sun look chilly, it would overheat much sooner.
Comment: @KevinKostlan That is exactly what the last paragraph of my answer , and the paper it refers to, addresses. They argue that X-rays are likely not a problem and that only when pair production kicks in does the heating become unavoidable.
Comment: @RobJeffries: They don't discuss heat loads. Sure you can shield the xrays, but the heat load is still there.
Answer: The relativistic determining factor would be acceleration, not speed. According to the axioms of relativity, an object moving at constant speed cannot be distinguished from an object at rest in another inertial frame; at high constant speed the satellite will still think it's at rest.
The practical limit on speed would be determined by the density of the interstellar medium; move fast enough and the "upwind" side of the spacecraft would start to intercept a lot of matter and get hot.
Comment: Not just hot... micron-sized dust particles, which are ubiquitous in the interplanetary and interstellar medium, would ablate the entire spacecraft away...
Answer: Potentials do not have retarded time effects. If electron is removed from the sun its effect on the potential on esrth is immediate . So the electronics will be likely tip top. The limit of speed nowadays in space is set by the rocket gas engines that they use. Basically they use the chemical bonds energy to accelerate and push gas outside.


Fighting a Zero Suit Samus CPU in Brawl

Question: For those unfamiliar with the game, to select Zero Suit Samus you have to choose (normal) Samus as your character, and then hold down certain buttons when someone presses start. (For example, with the Gamecube controller, holding down the L and R shoulder buttons works.) Now that's all well and good, but what am I supposed to do if I want to fight a CPU Zero Suit Samus? Is there an easy way to force a CPU to be Zero suit samus, or will I have to seek out a human opponent to practice that particular matchup?
Comment: I know of a way, but it involves jailbreaking your wii and a homebrew mod to SSBB. Not sure if that's what you're looking for. Hopefully, there's an easier, less legally gray method.
Comment: Nope, I'm hoping for a non-modded solution here.
Comment: Maybe if you could somehow take advantage of the AI learning and teach Zero Suit Samus to do the Up/Down/Up taunt sequence, but I don't think that'll work.
Comment: I'm assuming here that you play with items off, since otherwise it would be a simple matter to make a CPU pick up a smash ball.
Comment: Yeah, I play with items off.
Answer: Selecting a CPU ZSS uses the same method as a human one: Hold down specific buttons while pressing Start on the character selection screen. The key is that you need to use whatever controller is attached to the CPU player's slot.
So, with CPU Samus as P2, use the P2 controller to hold down the specific button, and you should see ZSS's head on the stage selection screen.
Answer: You could try using Training Mode and the Up/Down/Up taunt sequence to do it.

Start training mode, selecting Samus as your opponent.

Set CPU to control.

Pick up player two's controller and very quickly perform an up taunt, down taunt, and up taunt. This will cause Samus to lose her suit. (If this is difficult, slow down time to do it)
Edit: Or you can just spawn a smash ball and use it (I can't believe I didn't think of this).

Set CPU to attack and battle normally.
Comment: If I was going to do training mode, it'd be easier just to spawn a smash ball and use Samus's final smash, I can never get the up/down/up taunt sequence to work.
Comment: That never occurred to me that you could spawn items in training mode. Must have slipped my mind.
Answer: Here's another solution using Pity Final Smashes:

Set item frequency to Off, but leave the Smash Ball item on.
Start a timed match with infinite time against a Samus CPU. (Alternately, start a stock match with around ten or more stocks.)
KO Samus a few times without losing a stock yourself. You need at least a five point lead.
At this point, since you are so far ahead, the game will give Samus a Pity Final Smash. Get the CPU to use the final smash and turn into Zero Suit Samus.
Commit suicide a few times so that you no longer have a large lead. This will keep the CPU from getting another Pity Smash.
Continue battling as normal. If you get too far ahead of the CPU, commit suicide a few times. (It might be helpful to turn score display on, so you can see how far ahead you are.)

Fighting a Zero Suit Samus CPU in Brawl


How to export transactions into a CSV file

Question: Is there a simple way to export all transactions related to a specific account/smartcontract to a CSV or some other plain text format?
Comment: Agreed - please ignore.
Comment: Possible duplicate of [Ether Historical Prices](http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/635/ether-historical-prices)
Comment: Two totally different questions in my eyes.
Comment: Different questions in my eyes too.
Answer: Or you can simply use etherscan API and Json to CSV online service.
Use API, ie: https://api.etherscan.io/api?module=account&action=txlist&address=0xde0b295669a9fd93d5f28d9ec85e40f4cb697bae&sort=asc and put it in the URL field of http://www.convertcsv.com/json-to-csv.htm
Et voilà.
Comment: Yep was Unix, thanks!.  Used the formula here to convert to date:  https://www.extendoffice.com/documents/excel/2473-excel-timestamp-to-date.html#a3
Comment: Handy solution, thanks for posting it!  Now however, do you know what the timestamp" format in the JSON is?  Excel just chokes on it both as date, time, and also as datetime.
Comment: @JonathanvanClute it looks to be Unix timestamp. Try to check if this is the right format using http://www.timestamp.fr
Comment: This does not work for smart contracts only for account (it gives you the list of where the address is the one submitting to the chain, not contract interactions.)
Answer: Here is a guide on how to export Ethereum data to csv https://medium.com/@medvedev1088/exporting-and-analyzing-ethereum-blockchain-f5353414a94e
It uses https://github.com/medvedev1088/ethereum-etl which outputs the data into blocks.csv, transactions.csv, erc20_transfers.csv.
blocks.csv
Column                  | Type               |
------------------------|---------------------
block_number            | bigint             |
block_hash              | hex_string         |
block_parent_hash       | hex_string         |
block_nonce             | hex_string         |
block_sha3_uncles       | hex_string         |
block_logs_bloom        | hex_string         |
block_transactions_root | hex_string         |
block_state_root        | hex_string         |
block_miner             | hex_string         |
block_difficulty        | bigint             |
block_total_difficulty  | bigint             |
block_size              | bigint             |
block_extra_data        | hex_string         |
block_gas_limit         | bigint             |
block_gas_used          | bigint             |
block_timestamp         | bigint             |
block_transaction_count | bigint             |

transactions.csv
Column              |    Type     |
--------------------|--------------
tx_hash             | hex_string  |
tx_nonce            | bigint      |
tx_block_hash       | hex_string  |
tx_block_number     | bigint      |
tx_index            | bigint      |
tx_from             | hex_string  |
tx_to               | hex_string  |
tx_value            | bigint      |
tx_gas              | bigint      |
tx_gas_price        | bigint      |
tx_input            | hex_string  |

erc20_transfers.csv
Column              |    Type     |
--------------------|--------------
erc20_token         | hex_string  |
erc20_from          | hex_string  |
erc20_to            | hex_string  |
erc20_value         | bigint      |
erc20_tx_hash       | hex_string  |
erc20_block_number  | bigint      |

Answer: Recently, PeterChauYEG put together a node app / scraper for the DAO address that uses Etehrescan's API and outputs a CSV.

DAO Datascraper site
Github Repo

It will do the same for any address provided if you changed line 8 @ main.js: const address = '0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413'; to the address you would like to generate a CSV from.

If you find it useful, consider supporting the developer w/ a donation: 0x1A416af553Faca53b4be48DCFB6E749C9737455D
Comment: I have found another good resource for The DAO creation monitoring: https://daostats.github.io/tokenvol.html
Comment: both your links are now dead (404)
Answer: QuickBlocks does exactly this. It even picks up incoming internal transactions. Plus it exports to JSON, CSV, TEXT or any other format at the flip of switch. All while remaining 100% decentralized.
Comment: Is QuickBlocks named TrueBlocks now?
Comment: Yes. We changed about a year ago right around the time we got our EF grant.
Answer: There's no built-in way to do this. How difficult it is to do depends on what you mean by "related to a specific account".
Transactions initiated by an external account are easy to look up, as 'from' is one of the fields of the transaction - though there's no API call that returns only transactions initated by a given account you can at least scan transactions looking for ones you care about.
Transactions from an external account to another, or to a contract, are easy to detect, too, since there's also a 'to' field.
Where it gets complicated, however, is for value transfers initiated by a contract. These are often called "internal transactions", though in actual fact they're not transactions at all. There's no direct record of these in Ethereum, except by their side-effects (value transferred and state changes made), so there's no easy way to export them. Blockchain explorers that provide this functionality work by tracing transaction execution in the EVM, recording details about what took place.
However, let me plug my own project, Etherquery. It's a dump of Ethereum blockchain data - blocks, transactions, and transfers - to BigQuery, which permits arbitrary analytic queries, and supports exporting to a number of formats, including CSV. BigQuery is user-pays, but the first terabyte of processing each month is free. If you don't have a Google Cloud project, you'll need to create an empty one in order to access the public tables linked above.
Answer: If you are writing the contract you include events in your contract to track what's happening, and then you can log those events easily to a CSV file.  This will include internal transactions as well, which addresses an issue noted above.
In Solidity, you log with Events.  You can then listen to all events on your contract with web3.js "allEvents" callback.
In the Javascript event allEvents callback, it's extremely easy to log to JSON (it's already an object), and logging to CSV in Javascript means just choosing an appropriate CSV library.
Answer: To export Ethereum data, you may rely on a number of public nodes listed at ethereumnodes.com: some of them are free of charge.
They provide access to JSON RPC API which allows you to export blocks, transactions and other blockchain data in JSON.
Here is a modern approach to export the full history of Ethereum into S3 using the public nodes: "How to Export a Full History of Ethereum Blockchain to S3" (Medium). When exported to S3, you may reformat your data into CSV or more storage-efficient format like Parquet (and GZIP for even greater storage costs!).
As an alternative, you may rely on BigQuery public datasets with Ethereum data. This will free your hands from exporting the data. Using BigQuery datasets is also covered by the article.
Answer: Etherscan now provides this capability built in!
Go to etherscan and list all transactions for your account. Then at the bottom hit the "Download CSV export" button.

On the resulting .CSV file there are two columns one for Txn fee in ETH and one for Txn fee in USD


Microsoft Chart Controls compiles to C# exe but won't run

Question: I'm building an exe file using Microsoft Visual C# and I've installed Microsoft Chart Controls as an add-on. But whenever I try to run the exe on a different computer, it won't even open and it just crashes. I've tried creating the exe using both 2008 and 2010 editions. The problem is that the other computer doesn't have Microsoft Chart Controls installed, because once I install it, the exe runs fine. However I want to be deploying just the exe file to other people who won't necessarily have Microsoft Chart Controls installed. Is there any way around this?
Comment: I don't know how MS Chart Controls work, but there should be some dll file in MS Chart install folder that you could put in your project folder and distribute with your application.
Answer: In Visual studio open up your Solution explorer and expand the references folder. Under this folder you will see the 3rd party DLL references, on any non .net references select them and under the properties set the Copy Local to true. when you setup your deployment make sure that those DLL's are packaged/sent to the target machine. The application is crashing because the remote computer is missing the references it needs to execute your application. It works on your machine because the installer for the 3rd party plugin set up your environment to be able to run this.


Populating Formula field values from Service Cloud to Marketing Cloud

Question: Is there any solution to populate value of  Formula fields ,which are not populating correctly from Service Cloud to Marketing Cloud synchronized  DE?
Answer: The issue with formula fields in the context of Marketing Cloud Connect (MCC) is, that these will not update, unless the record containing the formula field also updates. How MCC works, is that only records which are updated are considered for synchronisation, and the fact that a record referenced by the formula field is updated, is not enough.
You can still use formula fields with MCC, but these should just be referencing other fields on the same record. In this case, MCC will see the record as updated, and fetch it along with an updated formula field.
If you really need to use a formula field referencing other objects, you would need a trigger (on the object referenced by the formula) to update the record containing the formula field.


what is the connection between D-modules and coordinate bundles?

Question: Fix $n$ and a field $k$ of characteristic zero.  Let $G$ be the pro-algebraic group of automorphims of $k[[x_1,...x_n]]$.  Let $G_0$ be the subgroup of automorphisms preserving the closed point  (note that for general $T$, $G_0(T)$ can be a proper subgroup of $G(T)$).  Let $X$ be a regular variety over $k$ and let $P$ be the principal $G$ bundle of formal coordinate systems, naturally a $G$ torsor over $X$.  I hear that there is a connection between $P$ and $D_X$-modules.  what is this connection?
Comment: @Sergiy: you removed a pair of brackets, turning $k[[x_1.\dots.x_n]]$ into $k[x_1, \dots, x_n]$, which is a rather differet thing! You should undo that change.
Answer: Assume X is n-dimensional and regular.  Then there is a functor from G-modules V to DX-modules, given by an associated bundle construction.  Take the trivial (ind-)bundle on P with fiber V, and quotient by the action of G on P and V.  If you replace G with G0 and P with the canonical G0-torsor, the same construction yields an OX-module.  The extra structure of a G-action lets you identify infinitesimally nearby fibers.
Comment: You can formally exponentiate a Harish-Chandra pair.  G_0 is a proalgebraic group, but G is a formal group with a big proalgebraic subgroup.  You can think of it as a group ind-scheme.
Comment: I'm confused.  Shouldn't you need the the action of a Harish-Chandra pair (roughly since k[[x_1,...,x_n]] has derivations that don't integrate)?  Group actions shouldn't be able to glue infinitesimally close points.

Or is this some subtle thing where thinking about the algebraic group encapsulates the Lie algebra bit?
Comment: So.... that would be a yes.
Comment: It's sort of a yes for both questions, but you change "algebraic" to "formal" in the second.  You can think of G as G_0 with extra fuzz.


Looking for a basic assessment

Question: I'm looking for an app that after I play a game of chess (or 3) will tell me if I'm a beginner or intermediate. Not looking for an app to teach me or to assess the game move by move. Does anyone know the best chess app (for Android) for this?
Answer: There is no "best app". However the chess.com app should give you a reasonable guesstimate after 5 games. After 24 your rating will be more refined. 3 chess games is generally not enough to (accurately) determine your skill. If you don't like chess.com there are plently of others, such as lichess and chess clock.
Answer: No app will give you a better assessment than what you'd get from asking a random human chess player. There are just too many unknowns:

First, there's no objective definition of a barrier between beginner and intermediate. If an app like the one you ask for existed, it'd just be taking the developer's personal opinion as fact and giving you an answer from there.

There's also the problem that chess engines don't really have a concept of difficulty. It's possible to take a game and calculate by how much it deviates from the perfect-ish play of a computer, but it won't know how likely other humans are to make similar mistakes.

Finally, chess engines are designed to assess individual positions. Any criteria you use to aggregate over an entire game will be arbitrary.

In short, since the answer to your question will always be subjective, you may just as well answer a bunch of us directly for our opinions rather than using a piece of software as an intermediary. Would you mind showing some of your games?
Comment: This doesnt answer the question. Also asking a random human, many dont even play chess.
Comment: @Starshipisgoforlaunch as anyone with even a minimal ability to understand context, I was referring to a random human player. This does indeed answer the question. If someone asks "what's a number bigger than 5 but smaller than 3" and you answer "there's no such number", that's a valid answer
Comment: There is a chess app... i dont get your logic
Comment: @Starshipisgoforlaunch there are chess apps, just not ones like what the question is asking
Comment: Umm.. there are as I have said in my answer

Looking for a basic assessment


How to install java locally - no root - on linux, if possible?

Question: I need java 1.7 and server has only got 1.6. I have no root privileges. I tried to google out something but it seems like nobody was doing it. Can I somehow compile it or get ready binaries so I could put those into my PATH. Could you help? System is Redhat.
Comment: see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html
Comment: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1880260.html
Answer: It is quite easy...
Download the JDK as a tarball from Oracle (a simple google search will yield the link).
Unzip it somewhere in your $HOME (for instance, $HOME/jdk).
Set JAVA_HOME to the path of the root JDK install; then prepend $JAVA_HOME/bin to your PATH.
And off you go.

Here I have a particular setting insofar as I run three different major versions of the JDK: 6, 7, 8. For instance, here is my source file for setting the current shell to use Java 8:
$ cat ~/.jdk/8
export JAVA_HOME=/opt/sunjdk/1.8/current
export PATH="$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH"

And in /opt/sunjdk/1.8 (given that /opt/sunjdk is writable by my user hence I don't need to be root):
$ ls -l /opt/sunjdk/1.8/* -d
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fge fge  11 Oct 30 10:09 /opt/sunjdk/1.8/current -> jdk1.8.0_25
drwxr-xr-x 1 fge fge 274 Mar 18  2014 /opt/sunjdk/1.8/jdk1.8.0_05
drwxr-xr-x 1 fge fge 274 Sep 18 02:44 /opt/sunjdk/1.8/jdk1.8.0_25

(and yes, I was root to begin with so as to grant write permissions for /opt/sunjdk to "my" user; if you have no such liberty, just create another directory in your home)
Comment: You can do the manual installation as well for OpenJDK. I did not find a download on the site itself, but here www.azul.com/downloads/zulu/zulu-linux/ you'll find the newest OpenJDK as .tar.gz.
Answer: Oracle offers JRE and JDK also as *.tar.gz for Linux. I usually had success just downloading such a package, untarring/unzipping it (tar -xzvf jdk-8u25.tar.gz) and then running it, using the absolute path.
Answer: I was able to accomplish this using conda.
Conda is an open-source package-manager by Anaconda, that according to the website:

You do not need administrative or root permissions to install Anaconda if you select a user-writable install location.

You can search the package repo from a browser at anaconda.org or command line, for example here are the results for JDK.
For Linux, you would download this installer.  Here is a command line that will start the installer for convenience:
wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh && bash Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh

Once conda is installed, you can install packages. For example, to install the JetBrains Runtime OpenJDK build:
conda install -c anaconda openjdk

Other builds may be available from other channels in the repository.
The instructions above should give a working install, but the Getting started guide is a good place to get started.  Conda uses the concept of environments to help manage versions and paths in a fairly simple and straightforward manner.
I hope this helps someone.
Comment: Although this is probably not the "right" answer to the question, it helped me greatly as I am indeed working with anaconda :)
Comment: I pulled mine from https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/openjdk
Answer:
export JAVA_HOME=/opt/sunjdk/1.8/current

export PATH="$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH"

For me this option only worked when I changed linux to use bash instead ksh. I don't know if this is some kind of configuration in my company, but when I tried to run via ksh using "set" command instead "export" to define path, It was set correctly with the path of my new Java installation, but when I typed which java the old version was showed. But, when I executed bash, and typed the "export", it worked. So, if someone have the same problem to configure it using set command, try to use bash with export command. I am using Redhat 6.2.


How do zeros outside the unit circle affect the stability of a system?

Question: I'm learning about poles and zeros of transfer functions in my signals class and we have just covered the effects of poles outside the unit circle on the pole-zero plot. Intuitively, it makes sense that a pole outside the circle would cause the system to become unstable. However, I am a bit confused about the effect of a zero outside the unit circle. I was told that zeros do not affect the stability of a system, even if they are found outside the unit circle. Is there a reason why this is true? Mathematically, how would this be different from a pole?
Comment: Do you know the influence of poles and zeros on the behavior of the system response?
Comment: I think I understand the base concepts. A zero will zero out the frequency it is located at while a pole will amplify its location frequency.
Answer: Instability refers to a situation where the output of a system grows without bound over time. This can happen when one or more poles lie outside the unit circle.
As you correctly observed in your question's comment section, zeros will "zero out" the output, so the output can never "grow" no matter where this zero is located.
Zeros inside/outside the unit circle is also an important concept, but they do not affect stability.
Comment: *"This can happen when one or more poles lie outside the unit circle."*: if you need detail on that, happy to give you some, but you said you already understood this.
Comment: No, I understand it now, thank you for your help!


Unsubs tracking extract ListId is different from the ListID return by _ListSubscriber data view

Question: I have a data extract activity which is pulling tracking extracts for unsubs. The ListID return by unsub tracking extract is different from the ListID return by the _ListSubscriber data view. In documentation, listId is the id of the list which is used for sending email. This is strange that the same subscriber has two different listID from tracking data extract for unsub and _listSubscriber data view.
Comment: When sending emails - what Subscription List do you select? The default "All Subscribers" - or do you have your own Subscriber Lists?
Comment: I have publication list configured. I have a publication list 1 and publication list 2 and while sending the email i have used publication list 1. When i extracted the tracking extract for Unsub, the listid i got is of Publication list 1 where as when i queried the _ListSubscriber data view, i got the listId of publication list 2.
Comment: Is there any activity being sent from Publication List 2 - such as triggered/auto-respond emails - or is Publication List 2 configured differently? Can you confirm if the customer record you're looking at has unsubscribed from the correct List/Publication List? Have they unsubscribed from ALL lists?
Comment: The subscribe is part of publication list 2 as well. There might be some send activity from Publication list 2. I am fetching the unsubscribe from yesterday and we haven't used publication list 2 for yesterday send. The weird thing is the subscribe has unsubscribe from the email which has used publication list 1 for sending but in All subscriber, its showing the subscriber has unsubscribed from both the publication list
Comment: Thanks Rashmi, I have enough information to give you an answer.
Answer: From the information you provided in your comments, it sounds like the Subscriber has unsubscribed from all list.
This can occur when they click the "Unsubscribe from List" link at the head of your email in email clients like iOS Mail and Gmail; example here. These links send a technical message to SFMC, resulting in the record becoming unsubscribed from all relevant lists.

You can double check this by viewing the Subscriber Properties in ALL SUBSCRIBERS, and checking if the unsubscribe date for all Lists/Publication Lists is the same.

Also remember that your email customers can open emails from many months ago and click Unsubscribe - we often find unsubscribe requests come in from emails that we sent many months ago.
You also have access to the Publication Subscriber and Unsubscribe Data Views if you need to check the Subscriber's activities across your other lists. These additional views will give you more complete view of what has happened to your subscriber.
Comment: Hi Cameron, thanks for the reply. Its really helpful. Is there any workaround for this. How can we leverage the publication list subscription in this case. As per the above the article, this type of unsubscribe will be treated as Account level unsubscribe and will by-pass all the list level unsubscribe.
Comment: What is your goal? To prevent a subscriber from "unsubscribing from everything" if they click the Unsubscribe link?
Comment: Yes, I just want the subscriber to get unsubscribe from the publication list only. Not from the Account.
Comment: I've never tried to do this - however I'm reviewing the documentation on Unsubscribe events: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=mc_es_unsubscribes.htm&type=5 and https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=mc_es_list_unsubscribe.htm&type=5
Comment: Cameron do you have any idea what could be the possible reason of getting different ListID from Tracking extract and _ListSubscriber data view.
Comment: probably, the subscriber got unsubscribe from all the list at the same time that's why _listSubscriber data view is randomly picking up the list id
Answer: It may not be the case here, but there is a largely unknown feature where if more than one Data Extension is targeted in a single send and a publication list is used, the system will assign each Data Extension their own associated 'List ID'. Even though each data extension may be referencing the exact same publication list, one Data Extension will get the actual publication list ID, and the others are assigned a temporary ID, which Salesforce Support called a 'virtual' publication list id.
As a result you may be seeing the virtual ID in your unsubscribe table, while the _ListSubscribers table maintains the actual ID of the publication list.