What are the most reliable source for information about North Korea politcal and social system?

Question: I think that both internal and external sources wouldn't be fair about the data in two opposite ways, either improving or destroying the image of the country.
What could be a trustable source of information, if there is any?
Comment: What do you mean "trustable"? Usually you tend to believe information that are more inclined to your political view. Also, you usually "trust" news outlets that are again promoting your political ideologies. But, if your purpose from "trustable" is truly **neutral**, I think you should pack your bags and go to DPRK to see it with your own eyes... One other thing is: when there is no news outlet in the developed countries regardless of their political views (right or left or whatever) that have a positive view of DPRK, I think you should truly trust that something is wrong with North Korea.
Comment: I tend to read news from multiple political alignments about the same subject. Note the differences and similarities. The agreed upon details are usually the facts. Everything else is spin. Regarding North Korea specifically, I usually go with defectors. They are biased, but its far more detailed than anything DPRK or other media usually say.
Answer: A problem with giving the DPRK a "fair" assessment is that such an assessment would be based on value judgements, and the DPRK does not share the same system of values as most of the rest of the world. You are right that many sources are biased by their historical opposition against the DPRK, or consist of recent defectors who thought they had good reasons to defect.

Look what the United Nations Human Rights Council had to say. Of course the UN is highly politicized, but it is also often deadlocked by competing interests.
You might consult NGOs which regularly criticize western governments as well, and see what they have to say about North Korea (AI, HRW). Of course this criticism is still based on certain western value sets, which western governments fail to live up to, and which the DPRK outright rejects.
If you are prepared to trust the translations, read the 10 Principles .
A possibility might be to look at Chinese sources about the DPRK. China was an ally of North Korea, and like North Korea it has a Communist-Party-based government (each with their own development from that baseline). My problem, I only get those in translation.
Answer: I think that one of the best places to look for information about the North Korean political and social system is to defectors. Tens of thousands of defectors live outside of North Korea, especially in South Korea and China. It is also a good idea to gain an understanding of their unique communist system. In other communist countries, we do not see the level of diefication we see of the Kim family in North Korea. The Kim family has used the sickle and hammer more as an icon of the family than for the party.


Why are there only 2 white wires in my celling outlet box for me to install celling fan and light?

Question: I am replacing the celling fan/light in my kitchen and when I removed the old one I didn't pay attention as I was unhooking the wires, but when I went to install the new one realized that the only 2 wires I have comming out of my celling are 2 white wires... Now what am I suoposed to hook my black/blue , and my green ground wires to ?
Comment: Just a moment and I will run in and take picture
Comment: Can you post a picture of the white wires? It would be very unusual (and likely not code-compliant) to have two single white wires running to switch and/or panel. But you might have a 2-wire white **cord** which would also not be code-compliant but would be a different type of problem. Do you see only loose wires or do you see an actual junction box?
Comment: I'm sorry I went back and took hanging bracket down and when I did so i realized that there are black wires up in the box that are wire nutted together but they were not used in the old celling fan/light only the 2 white wires were used.....so how do i install this new calling fan that has black, blue, white, and green wires ??  ANY AND ALL suggestions are GREATLY APPRECIATED
Comment: Those definitely look like "real wires" and not a cord stuck inside a junction box. So I don't have an answer. One of the pros will likely come along and hopefully figure it out.
Comment: Do you have a voltage-detector or multimeter you can use?
Comment: Yes I do have a voltage detector
Answer: Stop.   Your box is not rated for a fan.
You cannot simply put a fan on that junction box. The vibration will tear it out of the ceiling.
You may be able to resolve it by mounting a purely physical fan mount right next to it, which is fan rated, and using this junction box only to bring electrical (not carry its weight).
Once that's resolved...
Light + fan on one switch
You don't have enough wires to control fan and light separately.  You must join the black and blue wires to each other, and connect them to a point to be determined.
Take ground to the screw in the back left of the junction box.
You have two cables coming into the box with a black and white in each.  One of the cables is the supply power, and black is hot and white is neutral. The other cable is a switch loop, and it is wired with black as always-hot and white as switched-hot.
Pause here and identify which cable is which.  Code requires the switch loop use the white wire for always-hot, it must be marked with tape or paint (on both ends) to designate that it is not a neutral.
Get a non-contact voltage tester and unhook all 4 wires (non-grounds) and turn the power on. One of the 4 wires will be hot, it will be a black, and that cable is supply.  The other cable is switch loop.  Mark the white, and join it to the supply black and push it into the back of the box.   Now the remaining wires will be white and black, and those colors will be valid.
From there it is straightforward; lamp black+blue to black, and lamp white to white.
All singing, all dancing on the wires you have
For this you need smart switch tech, and a module that sits up in the fan rose.  The module connects separately to fan blue and black, power, switch loop, etc.  Then either a companion (matching) smart switch is installed in the switch box, or the switch is wired to control light only and a remote is used for the fan.  The instructions will say how to wire it.
Comment: If you don't figure out which is what, there's a 50% chance you'll have live threads on the light sockets. Color is arbitrary; what a conductor does, is not.
Comment: 2 remaining fixture wires and hook then to the whites ?? Are you taking take the black to one white and the blue to the other ??
Comment: @Zapped Whoops, forgot about that.  Black+blue must go to the same place because you don't have enough wires to separately control fan and light.
Comment: Harper your answer is correct .But he can not add a fan to that box at all. Check it out.
Comment: @RobertMoody good catch, somehow *we all* missed that...
Comment: Add it to your answer.
Answer: That is a switch loop one of the whites are hot. Take a meter check voltage to ground on each white wire to find hot. Re,id wire black. Not enough wires to make both run separate . If you have pull chains on fan , splice black ,blue together. Both will run on switch and can use pull chains to make separate. You can not mount a fan in that box. That is a metal box old worked in on straps to boot. Will rip out of ceiling in time . Need a  old work fan rated box and they make one with arms that crank into frame work.


In Pokemon Go, which items should be let go off or used first?

Question: My Items storage is often full with Potion, Super Potion, and Revive, and I cannot get more Poke Ball even when I am near a PokeStop.  Which items should I throw away or use first, if I don't want to keep upgrading my storage and haven't gone to the Gym much, so I can get more Poke Ball?
Answer: If you're not using gyms at all you won't need Revives and Potions. You can safely throw them away. You only need Revives when losing battles at enemy gyms. Potions are needed for both, enemy and friendly gyms. So if you don't fight you won't lose a single hit point.
My advice would still be to keep a certain amount just in case you want to fight at a gym or just find an empty spot in a friendly gym.
I throw anything above 10 Revives away and keep only the best Potions. The 20 hp standard Potion can go down the drain, if you have a few better ones. I usually keep 20-30 Potions and get rid of the rest. This way you have a lot of space for Pokéballs without buying extra space.
Answer: I usually keep all the balls, all the potions(I'd rather use a super and a small for 70hp than 2 super potions and so on), 15 revives max(though I could probably go well with 5 or so).
I should probably mention that until lvl 13, I kept having to throw away revives or razz berries, and don't regret any of them.
I did however throw about 50 pokeballs at around lvl 12-13 which was not a good idea. Also, I fight a lot so that's why I keep even the small potions.
Answer: The items you keep depend on how you play. Someone who hangs out at a park and constantly contests a gym is going to want every revive they can get. On the other hand, someone less interested in gyms won't have a need for revives or even potions.
If you're out of item space and have lots of potions/revives, take 20 minutes and duke it out at a gym to thin out your supply. You'll get a decent chunk of xp, and if you manage to take over the gym, you can claim a defense bonus for stardust and pokecoins.


Change mouse pointer in iTerm2 (or disable mouse pointer)

Question: In iTerm2 (fullscreen mode) my pointer is permanently a "text select" pointer. It bothers me, so I would either like to change it (to the regular arrow-type pointer) or disable it when in my fullscreen iTerm2 instance. Is this possible? I'm on OSX 10.7.
Answer: It's quite old, but...
Open finder (or mc or anything else) then go to /Applications/Iterm.app (press right mouse and choose "Show package content" if in Finder) Content/Resource/
IBarCursor.tiff and IBarCursorXMR.tiff are the cursor images. You can replace or delete them.
Comment: Note that depending on the user's version of OS X/macOS and the way the application is designed and published, modifying the contents of the .app package may render it unable to run as it will no longer be a signed bundle.
Comment: Not the case. Replace safely.
Comment: If I'm not mistaken, the authentication for apps is something stored in PRAM or NVRAM and only checked the first time it's opened. I only say that because resetting those seems to trigger all of those warnings again.
Answer: The behavior is inconsistent between window mode and full screen mode, but this is not something that is configurable. You would probably have to submit a feature request to get this changed.
Comment: Yeah, I figured this wouldn't be possible using iTerm configs. Alternatively, is there a way I can just disable the pointer when in iTerm?


Noise from water pipes, bad PRV?

Question: For the last month or so I have had an issue with a loud pulsating sound coming from the water pipes. I'm not sure that it is water hammer, it happens when I flush the toilets mainly. I've tried adjusting the PRV up and down with no success. What does seem to stop it is if I partially close the manual shut off located just before the PRV. This seems to make it stop. If I let the water free flow it does it again. Any thoughts? I attempted to change the PRV but it seems seized and wouldn't loosen at all, so if that is the culprit, I guess a plumber will have to be called.
Comment: Hello, and welcome to Home Improvement. I assume "PRV" is a "pressure relief valve"; would you add a picture of it? And, you should probably [take our tour](//diy.stackexchange.com/tour) so you'll know how best to participate here.
Answer: It may not be the PRV itself, but rather the length of the spur going to the PRV might be just right for resonance with frequencies generated by flow.
What kind of shut-off valve is before the PRV? Is it a ball valve or another type?
EDIT I have a utility sink in the garage on which I had a plumber do the rough-in and I installed the sink, faucet, and connected the ubiquitous braided ss flexible supply lines. At low to medium flow the hot squeals loudly. The cold is fine. I have a minimal tankless water heater. I have not been able to study this and figure out anything.
Comment: It's a Matco, lever ball valve. So update, if I flush both toilets, while faucets are running full blast, the sound dissipates and quits. Also the washer was running fill cycle too. Don't know if that helps?
Comment: All this other flow would lower the pressure and change the pattern of turbulent flow.

Noise from water pipes, bad PRV?


In Objective-C, how do I test the object type?

Question: I need to test whether the object is of type NSString or UIImageView. How can I accomplish this? Is there some type of "isoftype" method?
Comment: Yes there is: `[object isKindOfClass:[ClassName class]]`
Comment: See: [In Objective-C what is the equivelant of the java "instanceof" keyword?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/536396/in-objective-c-what-is-the-equivelant-of-the-java-instanceof-keyword)
Answer: If your object is myObject, and you want to test to see if it is an NSString, the code would be:
[myObject isKindOfClass:[NSString class]]

Likewise, if you wanted to test myObject for a UIImageView:
[myObject isKindOfClass:[UIImageView class]]

Comment: Note that there is also a isMemberOfClass: method that will check for class "exactness." Be careful with it though, as many Apple objects are actually Core Foundation types in disguise. (Eg. an NSString is more often an NSCFString, and isMemberOfClass: will return false for this comparison.)
Comment: Note this method is very slow!
Comment: Is that right knowing that NSString is a class cluster? (like NSNumber)
Comment: but this answer isnt in the form of a test, like with kiwi or something
Answer: You would probably use
- (BOOL)isKindOfClass:(Class)aClass

This is a method of NSObject.
For more info check the NSObject documentation.
This is how you use this.
BOOL test = [self isKindOfClass:[SomeClass class]];

You might also try doing somthing like this
for(id element in myArray)
{
    NSLog(@"=======================================");
    NSLog(@"Is of type: %@", [element className]);
    NSLog(@"Is of type NSString?: %@", ([[element className] isMemberOfClass:[NSString class]])? @"Yes" : @"No");
    NSLog(@"Is a kind of NSString: %@", ([[element classForCoder] isSubclassOfClass:[NSString class]])? @"Yes" : @"No");
}

Comment: For a quick check this: `NSLog(@"Is of type: %@", [element class]);`  will work in iOS 7
Comment: -1: Don't use `className`, it may or may not work on OS X, but it's not in iOS and it's not meant to be used for this. Also, those `NSLog`s don't do what I think you meant them to--they are checking the class name (always a string) and the coder class, strangely, instead of the class of the actual element.
Comment: @PortlandRunner : This is exactly what I was looking for.  IDK if there is a ticket that addresses that exact thing better, but if not, you should create one.  If you do, I let me know and I will upvote the answer there, as this snippet was clutch for me. Thanks again.
Answer: When you want to differ between a superClass and the inheritedClass you can use:
if([myTestClass class] == [myInheritedClass class]){
   NSLog(@"I'm the inheritedClass);
}
if([myTestClass class] == [mySuperClass class]){
   NSLog(@"I'm the superClass);
}

Using - (BOOL)isKindOfClass:(Class)aClass in this case would result in TRUE both times because the inheritedClass is also a kind of the superClass.
Comment: `isMemberOfClass:` will return `NO` when dealing with subclasses.
Answer: Running a simple test, I thought I'd document what works and what doesn't.  Often I see people checking to see if the object's class is a member of the other class or is equal to the other class.
For the line below, we have some poorly formed data that can be an NSArray, an NSDictionary or (null).
NSArray *hits = [[[myXML objectForKey: @"Answer"] objectForKey: @"hits"] objectForKey: @"Hit"];

These are the tests that were performed:
NSLog(@"%@", [hits class]);

if ([hits isMemberOfClass:[NSMutableArray class]]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [hits class]);
}

if ([hits isMemberOfClass:[NSMutableDictionary class]]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [hits class]);
}

if ([hits isMemberOfClass:[NSArray class]]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [hits class]);
}

if ([hits isMemberOfClass:[NSDictionary class]]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [hits class]);
}

if ([hits isKindOfClass:[NSMutableDictionary class]]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [hits class]);
}

if ([hits isKindOfClass:[NSDictionary class]]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [hits class]);
}

if ([hits isKindOfClass:[NSArray class]]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [hits class]);
}

if ([hits isKindOfClass:[NSMutableArray class]]) {
    NSLog(@"%@", [hits class]);
}

isKindOfClass worked rather well while isMemberOfClass didn't.
Comment: I see you shared code for tests. But where are the printed result?
Comment: The idea is for you to copy my code and see the results for what you need.
Answer: You can make use of the following code incase you want to check the types of primitive data types.
// Returns 0 if the object type is equal to double
strcmp([myNumber objCType], @encode(double))

Answer: Simple, [yourobject  class] it will return the class name of yourobject.
Comment: Actually it will return a `Class` object. However, the `description` of this object will be the class name as a string, so you can therefore still log it to the console.


How to do this function in Excel?

Question: I'm not an advanced excel user but I have a query about it. I have a set of values in cells column B and there are random empty cells between one value in column B to the next value in a cell in column B. What I'd like to do is for every value present in a cell in column B say B1, I'd like to merge H2 and H3, two two further cells in column H into a cell G1 and delete the contents of H2 and H3. How can I use a formula to do this? P.S, I need to do this for about 50 pages in an excel document. Thanks.
Comment: Essentially a duplicate of [How can I execute this function using VBA in Excel?](http://superuser.com/q/972200/150988) (whose author was clearer and tried something).
Comment: OK, something strange is going on.  What are the odds that two people, both new members for 2 days, will ask almost identical oddball questions an hour apart?  Both questions are apparently trying to solve the same problem.  Is this some kind of contest?  Homework?  It will be easier for people to help if they understand the problem this seeks to solve.
Comment: Can you clarify how the empty cells in B figure in?  Are they always single empty cells or can you have several in a row?  What's the relationship between the cells you want from col H and the cell you identify in col B?  Is it always H2 & H3, or the next two H cells following the B cell (or more than two if there are multiple empty cells in B)?  How do the G cells relate to the B cells (always the one G cell on the same row)?  Are the G cells initially empty or are you adding H content to what's already there?  (cont'd)
Comment: Does "merging" the H cells mean concatenating the contents, adding their numerical values, or something else?  Will all H values end up in col G or just ones related to specific B cells (are you talking about deleting the column or just selected cells)?  This would be easier to understand with a screenshot (post a link to it at an image sharing site like imgur.com).  Is it necessary to actually delete the H cells or can you just hide them?  Deletion will require a VBA solution, hiding could be done with conditional formatting)?
Answer: use a formula in col G along the lines of
<code>=IF(LEN(B1)>0,H2&H3,"")
</code>
then, after checking the values in G are correct, copy the Column and paste values; then delete col H

How to do this function in Excel?


The objects I've merged/joined are showing (at least in sculpt mode) in different colors. How do I make them monochrome?

Question: I've been struggling for while now with how to disable the "color-coding" of new objects. Ideally they'd all be white. Now I've gone ahead and joined the head and two spheres hoping they'd act as one ordinary object, but it appears as seen in the image. ("Sphere 003" is the merged group, btw.)I've tried to dabble with Viewport shading, but it only seems to dictate the way light interacts with the object, or it functions as a filter of sorts, but the base colors stay the same)-Hard to sculpt like this, please help a blender-noob out :-/
Comment: Sorry, I just re-read your question and saw you are in sculpt mode - I edited my answer to reflect that.
Comment: if this is Face Sets as suggested by LeoNas, you can also go into the header menu > Face Sets > Init Face Sets > By Loose Parts
Answer: Just go to Viewport Overlays and uncheck Face Sets.
You can see it in this picture below:
Answer: In your Viewport Shading options change the Color setting from Random (this is why you get a new color for every new object) to Material (displays object's material - default is "dental clay" grey):


How to properly secure a $_GET in PHP?

Question: I found an SQLi in a buddies work site. He reported it to his superiors and they allowed me to run additional tests and also patch the site. After reviewing the site, The vulnerable code was a $_GET. I simply added intval() to check the variable if it was an integer. I reran sqlmap, w3af, and a few other scanners. The holes seemed to have been patched. Was this the proper patch? If not, how do I properly secure a $_GET in PHP?
Comment: See also: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60174/best-way-to-prevent-sql-injection-in-php
Answer: It doesn't matter if its $_GET, $_POST, $_REQUEST, $_FILE  or even $_SERVER.  Its all user input and a there for a potential source of an attack.  What matters is how the user input is being used.   In the case of SQL Injection,  casting it to an int,  such as intval() works well.    However,  you should be using parameterized queries with a library like sqli, adodb, or pdo.
But sql injection is just one issue on the owasp top 10 and just one issue out of the thousands of vulnerability types tracked by the CWE system.  There is no magic wand to stop every vulnerability.
Comment: +1 for skipping random filtering methods and going straight for the real solution: parameterized queries.
Comment: Parameterized queries are one way to thwart a compromise - however SQL queries are only one place where a logic tier might write data (logs, html, other databases, files....). The problem is that bound parameters are specific to databases - and only via specific APIs. I'm not suggesting that all data should be encoded in a transport / storage neutral format - rather that explicit escaping of output appropriate to the destination is a generic solution to injection vulnerabilities. As an architectural approach it provides a consistent pattern to implementing code.
Comment: Parametrized query is not a real solution in all cases, you need to assume that the attacker will eventually gain the remote shell and will be able to execute queries anyway. SQL impersonation is a real solution with parametrized queries.
Comment: @Andrew Smith defense in depth is one thing, but I think you lost me here.  Maybe you should post a question on SQL impersonation as an open debate with security.se.
Comment: @Andrew Smith its not easy to get a shell from sql injection. Under MySQL you can't stack queries,  and you don't have MS-SQL's `xp_cmdshell()`.  MySQL's `into outfile` can lead to a shell in some cases,  but the mysql user account needs `file_priv`.
Comment: @Rook Oh yes, but it's easy to get shell of PHP for example, and then it's easy to run queries, and compromise the data, and PDO doesnt protect the database from this.

How to properly secure a $_GET in PHP?


Unique MAC address in L3 switch

Question: Dell 6224 is L3 switch: Does L3 switch have unique MAC address for different port?
Comment: Did any answer help you? if so, you should accept the answer so that the question doesn't keep popping up forever, looking for an answer. Alternatively, you could provide and accept your own answer.
Answer: Honestly, it's unthinkable for an Ethernet port not to have an individual MAC address. For a lot of reasons... LAN communication, port-channel, etc. But let's doubt it, in the world of machines everything is possible! You could check that, you have a bunch of show commands there:
show interfaces detail {ethernet interface | port-channel port-channel-number}, where
<code>• interface — A valid Ethernet port.
• port-channel-number — A valid port-channel trunk index.
</code>
Even show bridge address-table [vlan vlan ] [ethernet interface | port-channel port-channel-number ] could help.
In the end, the output of the show tech-support command combines the output of a lot of other  commands. Of course, it's verbose and you have to scroll it, but you need that MAC! :)

Unique MAC address in L3 switch


How can I step through the Prism code?

Question: I am writing a WPF application with Prism and I was wondering it is possible to step through the source code?
Comment: It is open source: [link](http://compositewpf.codeplex.com/SourceControl/list/changesets)
Answer: If I'm not wrong, you can do that with PDB files (put them at same level of your dll in directory structure). Also you can easily get sources of prism so you can eventually make it a project referenced to yours so you can easily break in source code.
Answer: Your solution is referencing Prism DLL:s. Go to folder where DLL:are. Take one of .pdb files and open it with notepad. You will find paths like 'c:\prj\PrismNew\Prism4\WorkingDir\PrismLibraryBuild\PrismLibrary\Desktop\Prism.Interactivity\InteractionRequest\InteractionRequestTrigger.cs'. Download Prism source code, and put it on your computer to folder that matches path found on .pdb. I know this it a hack but it works.

How can I step through the Prism code?


InDesign: Is there a way to ask InDesign not to remove a space behind a selected text when deleting the text?

Question: When I select a text and delete it, InDesign also automatically deletes a space behind the text as well. Is there a way to change this behaviour?
Answer: No, it has been like that for a long time. They probably had this idea to avoid leaving double spaces in stories when sections are edited out.
Comment: Ah OK. Thank you for your answer. I thought there's a checkbox buried somewhere. I'll just get used to this behaviour then!
Answer: What's more annoying is when ID doesn't remove trailing spaces before a linefeed and the space is used to calculate centering, throwing things off.
I don't think there's a fix for what you're asking.
InDesign appears to remove spaces if a glyph follows them.... but leaves spaces if no glyph, or a linefeed, follows them.
I have filed Adobe bug reports regarding this issue... but that was many, many, years ago and the behavior hasn't changed.
Comment: I didn't notice this behaviour before and wow, this is odd indeed. I couldn't think of any purpose that leaving that trailing space intact could serve.


Why don't we use non-constant learning rates for gradient decent for things other then neural networks?

Question: Deep learning literature is full of clever tricks with using non-constant learning rates in gradient descent. Things like exponential decay, RMSprop, Adagrad etc. are easy to implement and are available in every deep learning package, yet they seem to be nonexistent outside of neural networks. Is there any reason for this? If it is that people simply don't care, is there a reason why don't we have to care outside of neural networks?
Comment: I think line search or trust region method are "non-constant" learning rates.
Comment: There are lots of non-constant gradient methods that were developed independently of NNs.  Barzilai-Borwein GD and Nesterov GD are two prominent examples.
Comment: @Tim I can't say. When I need to do local search outside of NNs, I have the luxury of using second-order methods. But I was excited to learn about faster GD methods for the occasion that I might have a cute trick in my back pocket.
Comment: It is worth noting that (to my surprise) I have come across cases that GBMs do not use constant learning rates, somewhat to the surprise of people. A particular example has been the implementation of DART on LightGBM. While the original papers do not use a increasingly smaller LR the actual implementation does by default.
Comment: @Sycorax but are they actually used on daily basis outside of NNs?
Answer: Disclaimer: I don't have so much experience with optimization outside of neural networks, so my answer will be clearly biased, but there are several things that play role:

(Deep) neural networks have a lot of parameters. This has several implications:
Firstly, it kind-of rules out higher order methods simply because computing Hessian and higher derivatives becomes infeasible. In other domains, this may be a valid approach better than any tweaks to SGD.
Secondly, although SGD is wonderful, it tends to be impractically slow. These improved SGD variants mainly enable faster training, while potentially losing some of the nice properties of SGD. In other domains, the SGD training time may not be the bottleneck, so improvements gained by speeding it up may be simply negligible.
Training (deep) neural networks is non-convex optimization and I am not aware of significant convex relaxation results in the field. Unlike other fields, neural networks are not focused on provably globally optimal solutions, which leads to investing more efforts into improving the properties of loss surface and its traversal during the optimization.
In other fields, employing convex relaxation and obtaining globally optimal solutions may be in the center of the interest instead of the optimization algorithm, because once the problem is defined as a convex problem, the choice of the optimization algorithm cannot improve the quality of the solution.

I suppose this answer does not cover all possible aspects and I am myself curious about other opinions.
Comment: That is oversimplifying my message. 1) some problems can use higher order methods, no need for adaptive SGD. 2) some problems cannot benefit from SGD improvement due to Amdahl's law. 3) some problems may offer convex solutions and the main difficulty is in posing them as convex. None of these says other problems are much simpler than deep learning, rather explains why improving SGD is not in the center of their attention.
Comment: @JanKukacka I know, I was looking for clarification since your answer was indirect
Comment: So you are basically saying that other problems are much simpler, so don't need the tricks and vanilla SGD is enough for them?
Comment: A possible point 4: if you took some other method and made it complex enough (high dimensional, nonlinear, nonconvex) to benefit from sophisticated gradient descent methods, it would probably be called a neural network.


Series following a lone adventurer named Grey Wolf

Question: I'm hoping someone can help with this because it's driving me crazy.  I read several books in a fantasy series back in the early '90's, and I've been trying to track them down.  The series followed a lone adventurer named Grey Wolf (?), and I think they were tied into D&D somehow.  At least I remember getting them in the D&D section at the used bookstore.  I'm looking for the name of the  series and the author, any help is much appreciated.
Comment: Greywolf is also the name of the bounty hunter in the Baldur's Gate video game, and is the name of a barbarian tribe of lycanthropes in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting (Which also had several related books/series).
Answer: Is it possible you're thinking of the World of Greyhawk setting? Gary Gygax wrote several novels in the late 80's set in his Greyhawk campaign setting
Answer: The Lone Wolf Series by Joe Deaver, illustrated by Gary Chalk.
You can also find (nearly) the whole series online now at Project Aon. They've transferred most of the series, as well as the spin off books following the adventures of Grey Star the wizard and other series by the author such as his post-apocalyptic adventure Freeway Warrior, to HTML and made them freely available. Enjoy!
Answer: You might be thinking of The Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski. The first one was published in 1992 and the main character Geralt of Rivia is also called the White Wolf.
It has no tie-ins to D&D though.
Answer: Could it be "The Grey King," part of the "The Dark is Rising" Series by Susan Cooper? I've been trying to place it for years because I was looking for "Grey Wolf" due to the wolf on the cover of one of the books in the series.
Comment: What makes you think this might be the correct answer? Just the wolf on the cover image?


Gradient estimate of convex functions

Question: Consider a special type of convex function $g(\cdot):\mathbb{R}^d \to \mathbb{R}_+\cup\{+\infty\}$ such that $g(x)=+\infty$ as $|x|\to \infty$. Then $g$ is differentiable almost everywhere within its domain. Now consider the quantity
$$\frac{\nabla g(x)}{(g(x))^{1+\delta}},$$
where $\delta>0$. Can we get some estimate of type
$$||\nabla g(x)||_2\leq c_g(1+|x|)^{-\gamma} ((g(x))^{1+\delta}$$
for some $\gamma>0$ and all $|x|>R$, where $c_g$ may depend on some 'local' information of $g$ but not asymptotically as $x \to \infty$, and $R$ is independent of $g$? Or is there a counterexample?
Comment: You can find a counterexample for $d=1$ among functions which are linear on each interval $[n,n+1]$.
Comment: $g$ is piecewise linear (not piecewise constant).
Comment: @AntonPetrunin For piecewise function the left hand side is always $0$, where is the contradiction?
Answer: Let me explain first what Anton wrote: we construct piecewise linear function $f$ by on
$[0,n]$ by induction in $n$. Suppose that it is already constructed on $[0,n]$. Define
the right derivative $D^+f(n)$ so that your inequality is violated. Then extend $f$
linearly on $[n,n+1]$. Then smoothen, if you need a smooth function.
However, inequality $f'\leq f^{1+\epsilon}$ holds on ``most'' of the positive ray: the set where it is violated has finite measure. Indeed, assuming that $f$ is increasing,
let $E$ be the set where $f'>f^{1+\epsilon}$, and $a>0$ is the left-most point of $E$. Then
$$|E|\leq\int_E\frac{f'}{f^{1+\epsilon}}dx=\int_{f(E)}\frac{dw}{w^{1+\epsilon}}<\int_{f(a)}\frac{dw}{w^{1+\epsilon}}<\infty.$$
I do not know what is the appropriate extension of this argument to higher dimensions, but
certainly some statements of this sort can be made.

Gradient estimate of convex functions


What is the weird wiring on these old light switches?

Question: Bedroom light switch, two of them but only on works to turn on the lights. There is a socket below it, and it gets it's power wires from this light switch box. The socket below has green and blue wires. There is no consistent color.
Comment: What part of the world is this in?
Comment: Those strands sticking out the side are a little terrifying, especially since that looks like an ungrounded metal box...
Comment: JUST A GUESS. since the yellow jumper wire is between two green wires i would think that the green is constant power and the red are the common wires. I do not see the blue wire making any connection in the box, just passes through. Disclaimer: i am not an electrician-er, i just play one one the internet. Please seek professional advice.
Comment: Can you provide us a photo that shows where the wires exit the back of the box?
Comment: @Hari Ganti I think the strands are insulation not wires. I would guess this is in the U.K.? But I have seen all green wiring in 1950's school buildings. But the lugs don't look like U.L. types I have ever used in the U.S.
Comment: @EdBeal I hope you're right!
Answer: Without putting a meter on it. Yellow wire is a jumper to share power. The feed into the switch looks like one of the green wires but I cannot tell u which one is coming in and which one would be going out. Each of the reds look like your switched legs that are going to two separate lighting situations.
Answer: Switches looks like BTicino Magic, green looks like a common (passing trough), reds like 'controlled' loads.


how can i get the value of a wordpress post's 'excerpt' for use in a plug in?

Question: I'm embedding some important info into all my posts excerpts, and I'd like to use that string in a plug in i'm writing. I'm pretty new to php and wordpress so this may be obvious but I'm a bit stuck and would appreciate any help.
Comment: provide code you tried
Answer: You need to make object and make it in global variable like
global $obj;

and you can use this object in plugin
Answer: Add filter
function new_excerpt_more( ) {
return 'Custom String';
 }
add_filter( 'excerpt_more', 'new_excerpt_more' );

works with
<?php the_excerpt(); ?>


Do air compressor quick disconnects seal on both sides?

Question: I realize the air pressure quick disconnects are self-sealing, but do they seal on both the male and female end ? or is it only one way?
Comment: Would you want your disconnected nailer to have one last shot available from the compressed air trapped in the 50 foot hose?
Answer: No.  Only the female end self seals.  The male stays open, at least on my cheapo version.
Answer: Pressurize it, take it loose and find out (TL;DR: No. ;)
Pro-tip: Kink the hose like you do with garden hoses, and let the air out slowly (pointed away from yourself) when you disconnect a male end. Don't let it 'fire-hose' itself and flail all about, which can damage it or you. However, unlike garden hoses, NEVER put your finger over the end to try and stop the flow of air.
Comment: Neat, [they](http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200320235_200320235) do make these. "Reduces the risk of possible injury or damage due to accidental air line disconnect. Uses double click to engage properly. First click locks coupler and plug; second click engages air pressure. When disconnecting, first click will relieve air pressure; second click allows coupler and plug to be safely disengaged."
Comment: I'd never risk damaging a hose by kinking it. If you want a soft release, get a safety coupler like the Milton ("Milton S-99705 1/4" FNPT M Style Safety Coupler") or even a Husky from home cheapo.


Relation between EM frequency/Intensity and voltage/current in a Circuit

Question: Let's say I have a circuit connected to an antenna which listens for a certain frequency range. The antenna would generate an electric current. For an electromagnetic wave we have two main properties- Frequency (or wavelength) and Intensity.
I would like to know what property of EM corresponds to power (electricity). What I mean by this is that does frequency corresponds to voltage (i.e. higher frequency would generate higher voltage) and intensity corresponds to current(i.e. higher intensity would generate higher current), Or the other way around?
The same question for generating EM waves- More voltage would produce higher frequency and more current would produce more intense EM waves or the other way around?
Or am I thinking about it in a wrong way? I guess a different way to ask it would be -in a circuit for detecting EM waves, How would I measure the frequency and how would I measure intensity of that wave? Or while generating EM waves, how would I control the frequency and how would I control the intensity of the wave?
Comment: I think your mixing apples and oranges here. All action is current driven. All potential is based on voltage, but without current you have no 'action', or work being done, even as EM.
Comment: This is an extremely broad question, however the way you are thinking about frequency generation is not correct. Higher voltage does not correspond to higher frequency. RF/MW frequencies are generated using resonant structures, i.e., crystals or cavities, or at "lower" RF frequencies, L-C resonators. The voltage and current generated in an RF circuit depend on the system impedance, which for low enough frequencies is frequency independent, so for a given power level the amplitudes of the voltage/current waves can be determined based on the impedance.
Answer: In an EM wave, there are actually 3 characteristics (actually there's even more, but they aren't as important here): frequency, electric field strength and magnetic field strength. The "electric" and "magnetic" components of the wave is why it's called an EM ("electromagnetic") wave. the E component can be thought of as related to voltage in a transmission line, and the M component related to the current flowing in that transmission line. The E and M components are related by the characteristic impedence of the medium through which they are travelling. (Interestingly, even a vacuum has a characteristic impedence for RF/MW.) Like electricity flowing in a wire, the power in the wave is proportional to the product of the electric and magnetic field strengths.
So, to get back to your question, in an RF wave, frequency does not correspond to voltage, in general. And both the voltage (electric field) and current (magnetic field) have corresponding intensities.
Just to confuse things and (almost) completely change the topic, there is a fundamental physical relationship known as Planck's equation, and is expressed by the equation E = hν. Here, "ν" is the Greek letter "nu" (not the English "vee", even though in this website's font it looks the same), and represents frequency. "h" is known as Planck's constant, and E is energy. So here it seems like the energy is proportional to frequency. But this relation only holds on an atomic scale for a single "photon" of energy, which is a much, much smaller quanta of energy than anything we measure in electric circuits or communications. So although Planck's equation might look like it's related to your question, and may even be the origin of your "frequency corresponds to voltage" statement, the scale of Planck's phenomenon is far too small for consideration in normal RF and MW applications.


How can I determine the home base of a German-flagged aircraft?

Question: Is there any way (lookup on website, database etc. or other means) how to determine the home base of an aircraft, specifically for an aircraft registered in Germany.
Answer: As far as I know, there is no official registration of the main operating base of aircraft in Germany.
What you could do is use FlightRadar24.com or similar aircraft tracking website and investigate the history of flights to determine the airport it is most frequently operating at.


Should I use epochs > 1 when training data is unlimited?

Question: If I have virtually endless training data (it's synthesized) is there still purpose in having epochs? I.e. training on the same samples multiple times?
Answer: If the data is unlimited, how would you have an epoch to begin with? For example, if you are analyzing tweets, you could never finish an epoch will all the tweets, since there will be an endless supply of new tweets. A much better approach will be to do some online or streaming learning.
Would it make sense to create a subset by ignoring new incoming tweets or data in general?
That really depends on your problem. For example if you have a datastream of tweets, or any other where new data is being produced in real time, you would miss out any trends or patterns that emerged after you sampled from the stream. Are those missed patterns relevant to your problem? They may or may not be.
Answer: No, no purpose other than saving data. A fresh sample is always better than a used one.
The only situation I can think of in which having epochs would make sense would be if the synthesis process would be really time consuming per example.


Is it possible to understand the Gyroscope Effect Intuitively?

Question: A stationary wheel, with its axis tied only at one end, falls down, but a rotating wheel, with its axis tied only at one end, doesn't fall down. The explanation given everywhere is by the understanding of Torque and Angular Momentum, which is totally mathematical.
Is there a way to understand this effect of Gyroscope, Intuitively? Kindly guide.
To see the gyroscope effect, you may following below link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty9QSiVC2g0
Comment: Possible duplicates: https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/9805/2451 , https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/271/2451 and links therein.
Answer: The reason is because the wheel is spinning (hear me out). You have to keep in mind that the particles on the wheel have some velocity, and when a force is applied it changes that velocity, but this doesn't mean the velocity becomes aligned with this force.
The effect of gravity and the support of the wheel is that the top of the wheel will be pushed to go one way (say right) and the bottom will be pushed to go another way (say left). However, the top of the wheel has a velocity (say into the page), and so the rightward force on the top will make the wheel rotate. The same can be said at the bottom of the wheel. If it helps, just think of a single particle of the wheel and imagine pushing on it at the top of the wheel.
This video by Michael Stevens at VSauce does a good job at explaining this
https://youtu.be/XHGKIzCcVa0
However keep in mind that these explanations really only work for gyroscopes spinning quickly enough for this effect to take place. If the wheel is spinning too slowly it will fall over.
Comment: The youtube link that you give is to a video by Matthias Wandel. Mattias is a great guy, but there is a problem with his attempt at explanation. As we know, when a gyroscope is spinning *slowly* the gyroscopic effect is negligable; it might just as well not spin at all, it just keels over. According to the picture presented by Matthias the gyroscopic effect should occur *equally strong* at *any velocity of spinning*. That includes almost not spinning at all. But we know that is not what actually happens. This attempt at explanation is fundamentally flawed, and can't be repaired.
Comment: @Cleonis I am assuming the OP is asking about when the gyroscope is spinning fast enough so that this is not a problem. The main video I have linked to is a VSauce video done by Michael Stevens. I have not watched the video by Mattias Wandel, so I cannot say anything about it. Any issues you have with Mattias's video shouldn't be an issue with my answer. Of course the best explanations involve torque and angular momentum, but it seems like the OP wanted a different type of explanation. I will make a note in my answer though.
Comment: Oops! Yes you linked to a video by Michael Stevens. The version by Michael Stevens was inspired by the Matthias Wandel explanation, and in the description section Michael recommends the Matthias Wandel video. The thing is: the fact that the reasoning is invalid for slow spin rates means that it is also invalid for fast spin rates. An explanation is correct if and only if it covers the complete range of possible spin rates in one comprehensive picture
Comment: @Cleonis I still think it is a useful explanation. We don't throw out classical mechanics just because it actually turns out to be incorrect, especially when things are really small or moving very fast. Classical mechanics is still a useful way to think of the world in certain regimes. I think this explanation is still useful for faster spinning gyroscopes, even thought it might fail for slowly spinning ones.
Answer: Let's say you try to turn a spinning flywheel ("gyroscope") 180 degrees by holding its axis while a friend closes his eyes. You don't tell him what you are doing and the wheel looks the same on both sides.  If you ask him what you did after he opens his eyes, he might say you stopped the wheel and then started it in the reverse direction, because now it's going in the opposite direction, as far as he can tell.  The energy lost due to stopping the flywheel and then restarting it in the opposite direction is equal to the energy required to turn it 180 degrees (I think...someone please check me on that).  Things that are in motion want to stay in motion. Falling downward is turning it 90 degrees. According to the above reasoning, that would be like expecting it to change it's speed on its own, in violation of Newton's 1st law.
The above assumes conservation of energy and newton's first law are intuitive.  There's another way to view it, if you feel an ice skater pushing her arms out to slow down is intuitively obvious:  if it were to start falling down, the top and bottom would get further from the center without slowing up.
Answer: Yes, there is a way to understand the gyroscopic effect intuitively.
In an answer here on stackexchange that I wrote in 2012 I presented a discussion of gyroscopic precession, (the explanation is illustrated with two pictures.)
This dicussion does not invoke mathematical concepts. Also, the concept of angular momentum vector is not invoked.
The discussion in that answer is an abbreviated version of a discussion that is on my own website.
Answer: I will explain it with much more intuitive vectors like force and velocity.
First of all, this seems very unintuitive at first.
instead of falling down, it keeps spinning.
But, if we consider the forces and velocities, this becomes very very intuitive. It is the same reason why a satellite in orbit does not fall down.
For example, consider the motion of moon around the earth.
The force of gravity is pulling the moon down.
But, instead of falling directly to the ground, it revolves around the earth.
Why?
Because the resultant velocity is the vector sum of the initial velocity and the Force acting on itm
As shown in the figure below.

So the velocity is shifted towards the force.
This happens again and again, keeping the moon in orbit.

This happens because the Force acted is  perpendicular to the velocity .
Same effect happens with the wheel.
When the wheel is released, the force of gravity applies a torque on the wheel.
The effect of this torque is like two forces acting on the opposite ends of the wheel, one downwards and one upwards but both
perpendicular to  the radius.

This is what you see if you look from above:

The force is perpendicular to the velocity.
Guess what will be the direction of the resultant velocity?

The resultant velocity is the vector sum of initial velocity and the applied force.
This applies to all the particles in the wheel hence the wheel turns in that direction

This happens again and again making the wheel move in a circle.
Comment: You are using wording that makes it seem as if you don't understand mechanics. I gather that what you *intend* to convey is something like: "When a force is applied the resulting velocity is the vector sum of the added velocity and the already existing velocity." What you actually write is: "The force does not act instantaneously" I surmise that you mean to say: "When a force is applied the mass will not immediately change all of its velocity to the direction along the applied force." So I can kind of reconstruct what it is that you intend to say, but you are making it quite hard.
Comment: Suggest the above answer incorporate @Cleonis comment above since you have an initial velocity and a force that changes the initial velocity.  The force does act instantaneously.
Comment: What about the bottom of the wheel? As @BioPhysicist points out in a following answer, the top and bottom experience forces in opposite directions. Your approach (resolving gravity into components) seems to indicate the force at the top and bottom are in the same direction which is not true.
Comment: @Cleonis You are right. I edited the question accordingly
Comment: @JohnDarby Yeah, my mistake. I have edited it accordingly. Thanks for pointing that out.I was not thinking really when writing this. I was very excited to find out why the wheel precesses because it was a mystery for me for a long time - For such a simple answer.So I wrote this answer very quickly and without further thinking about it.
Comment: @John Darby And about the bottom of the wheel. Yeah, It was not simple as resolving gravity into two components.I edited my answer to correct the mistakes
Comment: You should read http://demoweb.physics.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/Physics6A_Exp7_0.pdf            on the web.  this writeup includes a forces-on-wheel analysis (pages 7 - 9) that  is very good.


When I open a window to air out the room, how does the smell disperse?

Question: Let's say I'm in a room with some kind of noxious stink, possibly of flatulent nature.  The quickest way to right the world that comes to mind is to open a window.  When I open a window, how do the stank particles leave the room?
Comment: Same question without opening a window: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/288747/2451
Answer: Gases diffuse from higher concentration to lower concentration because this process of diffusion increases the gas's entropy.
Every thing in the universe, in general, aims for two things : Minimum energy and maximum entropy.
Entropy is the degree of randomness of a substance. A gas in a container has low entropy because the probability of finding that gas in the universe is less but when the container is opened the gas diffuses into the atmosphere and this diffusion increases the probability of finding that gas in the universe and thus, increasing the entropy.
To move a little more into science, The Gibbs energy change of the system must be -ve in order for the process under observation (say diffusion) to be spontaneous or naturally occurring.
<code>∆G = ∆H - T∆S
</code>
Here, ∆G, ∆H and ∆S are the change in the gibbs energy, enthalpy and entropy of the system respectively.
(enthalpy is the heat content of the system at constant pressure).
Now, when gas diffuse from higher concentration to lower concentration the heat change is negligible but the entropy change is highly +ve (∆S = +ve).
The net result is the decrease in the gibbs energy of the system.
Therefore, Diffusion of a gas from higher concentration to lower concentration is a spontaneous or naturally occurring process.
Answer: They leave slowly because of the air exchange via window, depend upon rate of exchange.
On a lighter note, even if you do not open the window, the smell will seem to disappear in a little bit :)
Answer: That process is called diffusion, the stinky small in the room gradually leaves the room until the stinky smell is evenly distributed. when the air is evenly distributed the room assumes a new state of smell.


What's the difference between NSLocale currentLocale vs autoupdatingCurrentLocale?

Question: What's the difference between NSLocale currentLocale vs autoupdatingCurrentLocale? It's not obvious from reading the documentation.
Answer: When the user changes their system locale settings, the autoupdating one automatically updates to the new locale.
Answer: The currentLocale only retrieve an locale object one time from the current user's settings.  autoupdatingCurrentLocale updates the locale object on the fly so you don't need to validate.  You might think autoupdateingCurrentLocale is the prefer way, it is per Apple documentation; however, since the returned object may be cached, you don't really need to hold on to it indefinitely when using currentLocale, verse autoupdateingCurrentLocale.
If you are using autoupdatingCurrentLocale, note that this API do not cache the locale object, so you will need a way to compute cache upon receipt.  One way is to use notification such as NSCurrentLocaleDidChangeNotification method call.
Comment: Does that mean autoupdating will consume more battery?
Comment: I would say that It consume as much as observing a notification.


Boiling water on gas stove

Question: Does boiling water really heats room faster than just gas stove? I know that is not true, but I need some more detailed explanation.
Comment: It's complicated. True, the bottom line is conservation of energy, but there are other factors. In terms of human comfort, you're mainly interested in heating the air in the room. And the *apparent* air temperature is strongly affected by the air's humidity, not just its temperature. Does the room have lots of glass or metal surfaces where water vapour can easily condense? Etc.
Answer: Boiling water involves breaking the intermolecular hydrogen bonds that hold water in a liquid state. The energy that this takes is called the heat of vaporization, and, importantly, the water's temperature doesn't increase while it's boiling. You're effectively using some of the heat from the gas stove to break bonds, something that doesn't increase the temperature of anything in the room. So boiling water will heat the room more slowly than simply turning on the gas stove.
That said, there is a way in which boiling water might feel like it heats the room faster: it increases the humidity in the room. Increased humidity inhibits evaporation of sweat and makes a room feel hotter even when it isn't. This phenomenon is quantified by the heat index in meteorology.
Answer: This really depends on what is meant by "heat the room".
Both events will deliver the same amount of thermal energy into the room.  But they may be felt by an inhabitant in different ways.
Heating an object (like a pan of water) may well feel warmer.  The object can radiate heat for a period of time and that radiation could be noticed by someone walking around well after the stove had been extinguished.
Without an object on the stove, much of the heated air will rise to the top of the room.  Without circulation, it will do little other than heat the ceiling.  Some of that heat might be radiated back, but the large area of the ceiling means that the increase in temperature of any spot will be small and probably not noticed (unless the stove were on for a very long time).  And then you will also have heat loss through the ceiling which removes the energy from the room entirely.
Comment: Good points.  Another plus for the water delivering more useful heat would be that the increased humidity is a sort of thermal battery.  Once it starts condensing, it will begin heating things, and it should be more likely to condense on cooler surfaces, which would also help distribute heat more evenly compared to just rising heat that can stagnate and then leave through the roof.
Answer:
Does boiling water really heats room faster than just gas stove?

Frankly, I don't think there is a simple answer as it depends on just what the rate of "heating the room" means and the many variables associated with that question.
As you can see from the answers by @BowlOfRed and @probably_someone, some clarification may be needed in your question. For example, are you talking about the rate of heat transfer? How quickly the room "feels" warm? Or is it the rate of increase in the temperature of the air in the room? And if it is the rate of increase in the temperature of the air, where would that temperature be measured relative to the heat source (flame or boiling pot of water)?
I am going to assume by "heat the room" you mean which (gas stove or boiling water on gas stove) raises the temperature of the air in the room fastest and does so evenly (with minimum temperature gradients in the room).
Under this assumption, then as @BowlOfRed pointed out, some of the energy from the gas flame is used to convert the water to a vapor. That energy is called latent heat and is not directly available to increase the room temperature by heat transfer to the air in the room. That fact works against boiling water. On the other hand, boiling the water converts liquid water into energetic gaseous H2O molecules that will mix with the dry air components of, primarily, nitrogen and oxygen raising the temperature of the gaseous mixture. That may work in favor of boiling, but probably not.
The gas flame alone will raise the room air temperature primarily by convective heat transfer, and possibly raise the temperature of objects in the room by thermal radiation. But the convective heat transfer may not raise the room air temperature evenly. Locally the air temperature will rise quickly, but the temperature of the air in the more remote (from the flame) may rise more slowly than the with the boiling water.
So my "answer" is not really an answer. Your question just raises more questions.
As food for thought, I hope this helps.

Boiling water on gas stove


What are these spots that appear after using subsurf modifier?

Question: I added a Subdivision Surface modifier, Creased some edges to 1.00 and some white spots appeared. I've never seen that before. Is something wrong with the UV shading?
Comment: Maybe it's the base mesh representation intersecting with the modified mesh representation. Try grabbing a vertex near there and moving it in and out.
Answer: It simply means that the subsurf is generating mesh outside the bounds of the non-subsurfed mesh. It's not an issue and they will not show as soon as you Tab back to Object Mode.


Why do pilots' seat covers almost uniformly use sheepskin?

Question: While browsing this answer I noticed the sheepskin cover and recalled that I couldn't remember a cockpit that didn't have them. It's not entirely surprising that they're used, but I am surprised that they seem to be always used. Are they indeed ubiquitous? Are there any competing alternatives? Do modern airliners use them as much as GA/military/sport aircraft?
Comment: Look at the images in that answer again. The three images that show sheepskin on seats are from bizjets. Different models of the same bizjet, actually. There is an image from some GA plane further down and it does _not_ have sheepskin on the seats. It looks like leather, but given the low resolution I can't tell if from textile for certain.
Answer: They aren't "almost uniformly sheepskin", but they are absolutely uniformly flame-resistant (or self-extinguishing) as required for aircraft certification.
Sheepskin (and other natural wool fabrics) are both flame resistant and self-extinguishing (which is why industrial fire blankets are often made of wool), and sheepskin tends to wear well, so it's a good choice for the two seats that will absolutely always be occupied when an aircraft is being operated.
In terms of comfort, sheepskin covers also breathe well (so the pilots aren't sweating profusely while operating the aircraft - one of the reasons they're popular accessories for cars).
Other popular fabric choices are natural leather, flame-resistant synthetic leather (vinyl), and various other textiles which pass the FAA "burn test" requirements (test procedures are described in Part 23 Appendix F for light aircraft, Part 25 appendix F for transport category aircraft).
Comment: I like to think that whole being self extinguishing is not just coincidental evolution and that spontaneous sheep combustion was actually a thing.


Mouse nest debris

Question: Back in November I started my car using command start . I heard a loud voomp sound and thought that maybe a poor cat was stuck under hood as I was on a farm where there are many cats . Thankfully there was none. I drove home 20 km then went out that evening . I drove another 60 km .  The next morning  I was going to get coffee at a local store . I started up the street and my car wouldn't do more then 40 km . I turned around and phoned a friend who suggested it may need gas line anti freeze . I put a bottle of that in my tank and let it idle for about forty five minutes.  I then went to take it out again , same thing . He then suggested to look at air filter as it may be clogged . I took off the cover lifted out the filter and there was a mouse in it under filter . Still alive . I went to get camera and took pictures of food under filter and a picture of all the debris in the air intake which goes to turbo. MPI then towed to a remediation shop. They cleaned and said debris got sucked into engine possibly damaging turbo maybe more . They sublet it to Ford who found it skipped two timing teeth.  The Ford shop said there is no way this could be from rodent debris.  First shop says its highly possible and its basic mechanics and this could very well happen .
MPI says its not from debris and first shop was wrong . My mechanic with over thirty years experience says same as first shop. MPI states that its common at my mileage 221000 km and that is why .  My mechanic informed them that they have changed timing belts on cars at 150000 km and others at 500000 km it depends on how customer takes care of vehicle.  My mechanic let them know I do regular oil changes and its a result of the debris .  Its a 2013 Ford escape with eco boost.
Can anyone please help me?
Comment: Just to address your comment to jwh20.  The valve timing isn't something that you would have warning signs about.  The timing should never change unless something goes drastically wrong, like when the belt snaps or jumps due to a fault or wear.
Comment: It's not clear to me what you are asking.
Comment: I'm asking can the debris from the nest damage my turbo resulting in damage to timing ? I had no issues with car timing   no signs that it was going . Check engine light wasn't on . The car started with command start . If timing had problems that would not have worked . Sorry I'm no mechanic.
Comment: Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.
Answer: For the belt to slip, there would need to be a large increase in load on the valves stopping them opening.  I could see how debris could become stuck behind a valve and stop the valve closing properly, but this on its own would not cause the timing belt to slip.
If a valve got stuck open enough for the piston to hit it, bending the valve stem, then maybe the timing belt could jump next time the cam tried to open the valve, but there would be obvious damage to the valve and piston.
If enough debris got inside a cylinder and was then crushed between the the piston and the cylinder head, it could cause some serious damage to the piston, con rod and crank shaft, but probably not affect the timing belt.
If the turbo was damaged, then a broken turbo blade may have added to the issue, since it is likely harder than the nest debris, so is more likely to cause damage inside the cylinder, or jam a valve.
Since we don't know what damage has been caused, it is difficult to diagnose.
I would really need to know -

Is the belt damaged, or did it really just jump a couple of teeth?
Is there valve damage?
Is there piston damage?
Is the turbo damaged?

If there is no damage to anything, then a new belt could be fitted and you will be fine.
If there is valve and piston damage, then the engine could possibly be scrap.
It is hard to say whether the jumped belt is the cause of the issue or a symptom.  If the belt hadn't been replaced according to the service schedule, then maybe it is to blame, but I would have expected to see some kind of damage to the belt.
Maybe the timing belt tensioner has failed or become loose, causing allowing the belt to jump.
Others may think of something I have missed, so wait for more answers.
Comment: Is thereva way to check what you mentioned without tearing engine apart ? All I know is Ford removed timing belt cover
Comment: The engine would need dismantling to look for internal damage.  It wouldn't be difficult to replace the belt and check if the engine turns over correctly.  A compression test would show if there is any valve damage.
Comment: What are you trying to do?  Are you wanting to get the car fixed, or make an insurance claim?
Comment: Well my car had no issues . No check engine light , no rattling., no loss of power . I mentioned above that I heard a voomp sound when I used command start . Worked perfectly fine till next morning.  A month previous I had ball joints , tie rods etc done to car . Mechanic had to drive it to another town 40 km away twice . He mentioned nothing about engine but found a few issues with struts and rear control arms . Its under a claim for insurance but they said no way debris did this .  My mechanic said it is . I change oil when needed and replace filter every six months   yes its a claim
Comment: Yes it is a claim I'm fighting but I'm no mechanic.  Thanks for your replies by the way . Appreciate very much
Comment: @Rc1 - If the timing belt has never been changed since you've owned the car, it could very well be it has skipped teeth. Even with regular maintenance, a timing belt should be changed every 100kkm (on most ... some out to 160kkm). If it has never been changed in 221kkm, having it slip teeth is something which is completely within reason.  The mouse being in there is probably completely coincidental and would have had nothing to do with the timing.

Mouse nest debris


Ubuntu 12.10 does not boot on Dell D600

Question: I have an old Dell Latitude D600 using USB boot Ubuntu 12.10.  When booting, it said that I have the wrong kernal for my CPU.  Very odd, Ubuntu 11.10 was working just fine.  I tried the 12.10 on another PC (newer Dell), and it works.  Not sure what is going on here.
Answer: Please see the first answer here. It explains the problem and offers 3 different solutions!
The error message means that your CPU does not support PAE extensions - that is a technique which allows a 32bit CPU to address more than 4GB of memory address space.
By default, 12.04 and later versions of Ubuntu expects a CPU with this capability.

Ubuntu 12.10 does not boot on Dell D600


How to compare topics generated from topic modeling from different datasets?

Question: I have two datasets of a similar theme. Let's assume Dataset A and Dataset B. Using the top2vec model (https://github.com/ddangelov/Top2Vec) (https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.09470) on each dataset, I came up with a certain number of topics. Now, I want to compare both datasets' topics.
How can I do this? Clustering or any other method will work as far as I can compare the generate topics computationally.
Comment: By comparing do you mean obtaining a single similarity score between the two clustering results? Or something more detailed, like finding the similarity between a topic in dataset 1 and a topic in dataset 2?
Comment: @Erwan Thank you for your interest. Actually, if possible both premises will be very good. If I understand your suggestion correctly (correct me if I wrongly understood) 1) your first suggestion - the similarity score between two clustering results - will provide a broad understanding. 2) your second suggestion - will help in a detailed study. So I think both methods will be a good addition.
Answer: I'm not aware of any standard options to do that, but I could suggest a couple directions. Note that in both ideas it's possible to compare topics individually or globally.
Applying evaluation measures on the instances
In this idea you would apply the model obtained from dataset A on all the instances of dataset B (and of course you can do the converse as well). This would give you a prediction of topic for every instance in B (typically using the max probability topic for the instance) from both model A and model B.
Then you would need a method to match the topics between A and B, i.e. convert topics from A to B. This can be done using the number of instances they have in common, I know that there is some literature and several methods which have been used in supervised evaluation measures for word sense induction, I would guess that there are similar things for topic modeling (not sure). Once the matching is done, various evaluation measures can be used to compare the topics. The idea is to consider the topics obtained from A as the predictions to be compared against the gold-standard topics from B. Note that most measures are symmetrical, so it doesn't matter which one is considered the prediction or the gold.
Comparing words probabilities
I'm not familiar with top2vec but usually it's possible to obtain the top words for every topic together with their associated probability. Assuming this is possible here, the idea would be to compare either:

The top N words for every pair of topics (every topic from A against every topic from B). This can be done very simply by counting the number of words in common between the two top N words: the more the topics are similar, the more they have words in common in their top N.
the whole probability distribution of the words for every pair of topics, using a distance measure such as KL divergence (there are other options). This value will represent how closely related two topics are.


How do I downgrade my version of python from 3.7.5 to 3.6.5 on ubuntu

Question: So currently, I have ubuntu 19. And it comes by default with python 3.7.5. I need to downgrade to 3.6.5.
EDIT:
I am using virtualenv
Comment: Can this work? https://askubuntu.com/a/138327
Comment: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/410579/change-the-python3-default-version-in-ubuntu
Comment: @ycao "sudo apt-get install python=3.6.5" this gave an error: "E: Version '3.6.5' for 'python' was not found"
Comment: Are you not using virtual environments??
Comment: @AMC Yes. How is it different?
Comment: @unathletic_coder How is what different? What are you using for the environments?
Comment: @AMC Python 3.7.5
Comment: @unathletic_coder No I meant which tool/piece of software are you using **to manage the virtual environments**.
Comment: @AMC Do you mean virtualenv ?
Comment: Changing the system python could have bad consequences. Try Pyenv instead

https://stackoverflow.com/a/58586197/1643061
Comment: @unathletic_coder Sure, virtualenv is one option. Is that what you're using?
Comment: @AMC yes. that is what I am using
Comment: Here is the possible solution [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52584907/how-to-downgrade-python-from-3-7-to-3-6]
Comment: @a4arshad but I am using virtualenv.
Comment: @unathletic_coder Honestly the best answer I have is use Conda lol
Comment: Does this answer your question? [Use different Python version with virtualenv](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1534210/use-different-python-version-with-virtualenv)
Answer: The following talks about upgrade from 3.6.7 to 3.7.0 but you can use the same process for downgrade. You should not change the system python unless you really know what you're doing
First Install Pyenv
Installlation Instructions are here
Look at Pyenv Options
$ pyenv
pyenv 1.2.14
Usage: pyenv <command> [<args>]

Some useful pyenv commands are:
   commands    List all available pyenv commands
   activate    Activate virtual environment
   commands    List all available pyenv commands
   deactivate   Deactivate virtual environment
   doctor      Verify pyenv installation and deevlopment tools to build pythons.
   exec        Run an executable with the selected Python version
   global      Set or show the global Python version
   help        Display help for a command
   hooks       List hook scripts for a given pyenv command
   init        Configure the shell environment for pyenv
   install     Install a Python version using python-build
   local       Set or show the local application-specific Python version
   prefix      Display prefix for a Python version
   rehash      Rehash pyenv shims (run this after installing executables)
   root        Display the root directory where versions and shims are kept
   shell       Set or show the shell-specific Python version
   shims       List existing pyenv shims
   uninstall   Uninstall a specific Python version
   --version   Display the version of pyenv
   version     Show the current Python version and its origin
   version-file   Detect the file that sets the current pyenv version
   version-name   Show the current Python version
   version-origin   Explain how the current Python version is set
   versions    List all Python versions available to pyenv
   virtualenv   Create a Python virtualenv using the pyenv-virtualenv plugin
   virtualenv-delete   Uninstall a specific Python virtualenv
   virtualenv-init   Configure the shell environment for pyenv-virtualenv
   virtualenv-prefix   Display real_prefix for a Python virtualenv version
   virtualenvs   List all Python virtualenvs found in `$PYENV_ROOT/versions/*'.
   whence      List all Python versions that contain the given executable
   which       Display the full path to an executable

See `pyenv help <command>' for information on a specific command.
For full documentation, see: https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv#readme

Look at Python Versions
$ pyenv versions
  system
 * 3.6.7 (set by /home/taarimalta/.pyenv/version)

Install a new Python
$ pyenv install 3.7.0
Installing Python-3.7.0...
WARNING: The Python bz2 extension was not compiled. Missing the bzip2 lib?
WARNING: The Python readline extension was not compiled. Missing the GNU readline lib?
WARNING: The Python sqlite3 extension was not compiled. Missing the SQLite3 lib?
Installed Python-3.7.0 to /home/taarimalta/.pyenv/versions/3.7.0

If you run into an issue with _ctypes install libffi-dev library
Now look at the versions

$ pyenv versions
  system
* 3.6.7 (set by /home/taarimalta/.pyenv/version)
  3.7.0

Select 3.7.0 for local environment
$ pyenv local 3.7.0

See that the version changed
$ pyenv versions
  system
  3.6.7
 * 3.7.0 (set by /home/taarimalta/.python-version)

$ python
Python 3.7.0 (default, Jan  1 2020, 10:52:57)
[GCC 9.2.1 20191008] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Switch to a different folder
cd ../project2
pyenv versions
  system
* 3.6.7 (set by /home/taarimalta/.pyenv/version)
  3.7.0

The python version may be different here depending on which python version you have set locally
Set pyenv version globally
This globally sets a python version for a user
pyenv global 3.7.0

Note that pyenv sets local version by adding a .python-version file
$ pyenv local 3.7.0
$ cat .python-version
3.7.0

Note that pyenv knows the global version by looking at the ~/.pyenv/version file
cat ~/.pyenv/version
3.8.2

Comment: This is very detailed and clear, but it didn't land me in the right place. I'm on Ubuntu 20.4, which has python 3.8.2; I need 3.6 for my work. I was able to use pyenv to install it, and switch using pyenv local, but I'm still getting 3.8.2 when I run python3. Also, I don't see a /usr/bin/python3.6. My "pyenv versions" output looks correct. Any ideas what might be missing?
Comment: If you switch folder, the python version might switch to the default one. So check if you're on the same folder. The python is installed somewhere inside /home/<username/.pyenv. You can see by using `which python3`
Comment: Turns out that I hadn't set up my .bashrc correctly to run "pyenv init -" and "pyenv virtualenv-init -". Once I got that set up, I was good.
export PATH="/home/vagrant/.pyenv/bin:$PATH"
eval "$(pyenv init -)"
eval "$(pyenv virtualenv-init -)"
Answer: Alternatively, you can easily create a virtual environment.
Suppose you have python 3.8 (or higher) installed on the system, but for a specific task, you need python 3.7 (or lower). The best idea is to Create a virtual environment with python 3.7(or any 3.x, change the commands below according to your desired version. Below is an implementation of a virtual environment with python 3.7)
Steps: (Checked August 2022)

Install python 3.7 and it's virtual environment packages.
sudo apt-get install python3.7-dev python3.7-venv

Find out where your python 3.7 is located by this command:
which python3.7 (Should be something like /usr/bin/python3.7, if not found, then install python 3.7 manually)

Create Virtual Environment in the Home directory.
cd
mkdir virtual_env
/usr/bin/python3.7 -m venv ~/virtual_env/venv_with_python3.7
source ~/virtual_env/venv_with_python3.7/bin/activate

python --version (Should be python 3.7 now)

Done. Python 3.7 can be used in this virtual environment. Type which python, and you'll see you have created python 3.7 in a virtual environment, rather than in the system globally.
Run deactivate when you need to deactivate.
Answer: Install it from the pre-compiled Ubuntu deb package repos.
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install software-properties-common

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:deadsnakes/ppa

When prompted, pres ENTER to continue.
sudo apt install python3.6

Answer: You can also use virtualenv to use different Python environments.
If you type python and tab twice or so, you might see a number of Python versions available.  I say this because when I type
python3.6 -V

I have
Python 3.6.9

available.  My alias for python is 3.7.5
When you type python you are probably referring to an alias defined in .bashrc
Comment: It does not answer the question at all
Comment: This answer is not relevant to the question.


maximum weighted matching with weights being sets

Question: Given a set $S$ and a bipartite graph $G$, each edge $v\in E(G)$ covers a subset $S_v$ of $S$. My problem is to find a matching maximizing the number of covered elements, i.e., denote $V$ the set of edges in the matching, we seeks to maximize $|\bigcup_{v\in V} S_v|$.
Answer: Your problem is NP-complete as we can translate instances of set-covering problems to your problem:
Let $S$ be a family of sets, its members be subsets of $\{1,2,...,n\}$. The set-covering problem is:

Does there exists $m$ members of $S$ whose union is $\{1,2,...,n\}$?

To translate the instance to your problem, construct a bipartite graph with vertices $\{1,2,...,m\} \cup S$ and edges the elements of $\{1,2,...,m\}\times S$. Assign the set $s$ to the edge $(k,s)$, where $k$ is a number and $s$ is a member of $S$. Thus any matching corresponds to $m$ members of $S$, and maximum number of covered elements can be achieved if and only if there exists $m$ members of $S$ with union $\{1,2,...,n\}$.
As the set-covering problem is NP-complete, your problem is also NP-complete.
Comment: Thank you. It seems logical to me that the problem is NP-complete. Any clue on designing approximation algorithm?
Comment: Using linear programming may be possible, by combining the LP formulations of bipartite maximum weight matching and set covering.
Comment: does edmonds-blossom or karp algorithm help here?
Comment: Thank you. edmonds-blossom or karp algorithm cannot be directly applied here as the construction of augmenting path is by nature different.
Just wonder whether a related formulation is tractable or not: now I am interested in deciding whether there exists a matching of $G$ that covers all the elements of $S$.


How did Saint Anthony come to be the patron Saint of finding lost objects?

Question: I'm not sure how many traditions see him this way but I know it is the case for Roman Catholics, especially Irish ones.
Answer: How did Saint Anthony come to be the patron Saint of finding lost objects?
St. Anthony of Padua one day found the Psalter of someone. This lead others to invoke him as the Patron Saint of finding Lost Objects, after his death. It is that simple.

Why is Anthony known as the patron saint of lost things?

According to tradition, someone's lost psalter was found following a prayer of St. Anthony. For this reason, he is known as the patron saint of lost things.
Comment: Did Saint Anthony find the psalter, or did the person find it after asking for him to pray to God on their behalf?


Declare War Screen, what do the check box border colors represent?

Question: On the Declare War screen there are the two check box lists, Enemy Allies and Call Allies. I know what selecting the check boxes do, but what do the two possible colors represent? Sometimes the check boxes have a gold border, sometimes they are silver-blue border.
Answer: The checkbox indicates if an enemy should be co-belligerent. This means, they should be considered to have a military alliance and able to call their own allies in the war.
The box is grayed out when the co-belligerence is forced. For instance, attacking a vassal will always have their lord enter the war as an ally. Else, if it is not grayed out, you can chose the status yourself.
In general, if you chose not to have an enemy to be co-belligerent, then this enemy will not be able to call in their own allies, and taking provinces from them will cost twice the diplomatic power. The converse applies as well. Exception: In the case of forced co-belligerence, they are not able to call in their own allies.
Comment: So if a Enemy Allies box is grayed out, but unchecked, I assume the ally cannot join?
Comment: The checkbox is not about whether or not they will join, but whether or not they will be a co-belligerent, so I would assume this means that they can join but cannot be made a co-belligerent.
Comment: I guess what I am getting at is I was hoping that would tell me if a target's ally would join or not. Thanks
Comment: @mxmissile There should be a green checkmark or red X just right of said box for this purpose. If you mouse hover over it, it will tell you  something like "...is likely to (not) join".
Answer: Gold means you have the option of clicking it. This allows you to take their provinces for normal cost but allows them to call their allies as well. (Subject nations of any party will always enter no matter what)
Silver with a checked box means they are automatically called and co-billigerized. Such as the HRE Emperor defending Free cities or a vassal/PU member
Silver with an unchecked box means you most likely have a truce with them and can't pick them as a co-belligerent since you can't declare war on them but they can still answer defensive calls and have to pay the penalty if you take stuff from them.
A red X means they won't answer the call due to some reason (which can be seen by mousing over it). A green check means they will and why.
For allies you can offer them stuff to help you on offensive wars. These either cost favors, which are accrued from long-term relationships and answering each others calls, or giving them stuff in peace deals.
If the Icon is a red X but has a hand icon, it means that you don't have enough favors but the enemy has something they want and will help if you promise to give them at least some of the land they want in the peace deal, though you have to actually click the icon to switch it over offer-land icon, which will have a green check and you can then click the box, but make sure that you give them gains otherwise you take a massive trust penalty.


Meaning of numbers in files WHATSAPP VOICE NOTES?

Question:
I want to know how I cand find an especific voice note from de file ''WhatsApp Voice Notes''?
I thought that the numbers of the files means year,  months or something like that but I couldnt find it because I have thousands of voice notes
If I want an especific voice note from 18 February 2015 how will be named?
I have the file on my PC so I can't use my smartphone
Thanks
Answer: Short answer
On your PC ( or mobile ) do a wildcard search for PTT-20150218*.opus to get a list of all voice notes of
18 February 2015
Folder numbering is YYYYWW where YYYY is the year and WW is the week number of year - 201726 is the folder for voice notes created in the current week (at the time of writing )
Long answer
As per  How to get specific whatsApp voice note from your mobile which says

Whatsapp creates folders and names them as week numbers of the year. So folder number 201612 (in the example above) means that what ever voice notes I've sent or received  between 21st March 2016 to 27th March, should be saved in that folder

(Emphasis Supplied)
In this example, week 12 of that year covers 21sr to 27th March
So, you would need to calculate from calendar the week of year your date falls in and see the corresponding folder, which happens to be 201508 (please double check the week number of year - I did it in a hurry )

Edit: I just created few voice notes and the logic given above is correct.

Folder numbering is YYYYWW where YYYY is the year and WW is the week number of year - 201726 ( path /storage/emulated/0/WhatsApp/Media/WhatsApp Voice Notes/201726 )
Within the folder, files are arranged in PTT-YYYYMMDD-WA000X.opus, where X  increases as created
Answer: WhatsApp audio format is like this AUD-YYYYMMDD-WAxxxx.opus/m4a/mp3/aac/amr which are saved in the folder WhatsApp/Media/Whatsapp Audio.
WhatsApp voice format is like this PTT-YYYYMMDD-WAxxxx.opus which are in folder WhatsApp/Media/WhatsApp Voice Notes.
WhatsApp voice notes may have sub folders which created based on voice note receiving week number(Example: 201726(26-weeknumber)).
(Y-year, M-month, D-date, x-numbers )
Comment: Isn't yesterday falling in 26th week of year? I think it is so the logic as per that source appears correct
Comment: yes. I am also confused about this. Because I got a voice note yesterday and the folder like this 201726(yesterday's date).


High availability sql server, secondary replicas can't be connected on the Availability group

Question: I created an availability group (two nodes) , then my secondary replica isn't connected like on the picture. I verified on error logs and i have this error . how can I give permission to my secondary replica ? thank you.
Answer: The AG are using "Database Mirroring" Endpoint to communicate between all nodes.
Your SQL Service account need to have "connect" permission on the endpoint.
You also need to grant "ConnectSQL" to the other node service account (or the Server - AITS\PLSBDATEST2$-  if using local service account).
So to recap, on PLSBDATEST1, you will have a login for PLSBDATEST2$ and you will grant permission to the AG endpoint to it. on PLSBDATEST2, you will have a login for PLSBDATEST1$ with same permission.
That should do the job.
Answer: The account that is listed in the error message is the Active Directory computer account.  If possible, your best solution is to reinstall SQL Server on all nodes and use the same AD account for the SQL Server service.
If you can't do that, create a login on the secondary(s) for AITS\PLSBDATEST2$ and add it to the sysadmin role.


What effects does opening your town's gate have?

Question: When you open the gate in your town to allow your friends to visit, certain game areas are temporarily disabled.  What changes take place?
Answer: While the gate is open:

The Happy Home Showcase is blocked off
The Dream Suite is disabled
Access to the 'Mayor chair' in Town Hall is blocked
Blathers won't accept donations or assess fossils
Saharah and similar NPCs seem to leave or are otherwise unavailable (e.g. Gulliver won't wake up) - note this does not apply to Katrina or probably Redd, who have tents.
Bees, spiders and scorpions will not appear
Favours for villagers, such as deliveries, cannot be performed
Comment: I think Blathers still accepts fossils until guests actually arrive, while many other interactions (the mayor chair) just actually are disabled with or without current visitors.
Comment: Redd, like the other shops, is available to all players.
Answer: Along with what's already been said, you cannot give Shrunk food for emotions. If I'm thinking correctly, you also cannot purchase another exhibit spot in the second floor of the museum.


Error occurred when trying to execute this swap in Uniswap V2

Question: I'm trying to buy AHOUSE/weth and I get the "error occurred when trying to execute this swap" message. I try buying it with usdc, and eth. I try increasing the gas but nothing worked. I looked on etherscan and AHOUSE was on there and I assume that if it is on there then it isn't a scam token.
What can I do to fix this?
Answer: Being on etherscan absolutely doesnt mean the token isnt a scam (actually you can't really not be on etherscan as long as you've deployed your token on mainnet). In that case, the contract code is not verified, which doesnt allow us to check if its a scam or not, but it appears people can indeed sell the token ( https://etherscan.io/token/0xB125CcEb9C6e349217d09B069a8d88DBEAcF06E5#tokenTrade ). Try to increase the slippage maybe


Wiring an outlet off a switch?

Question: I'm trying to wire an outlet off a switch. I want it to stay constant power. How do I do that? I've tried every which way I can think of! Any way I wire it I have low power going to the outlet, the light I have plugged into is dim, and also it seems to be feeding back because the lights the switch operates are still on (very very dim) after switch is turned off! I have attached a picture as best I can show.
Comment: Put down the tools.  Don't touch wires if you don't understand how they work.  Learning while doing is how you end up dead, or killing your family.
Comment: You need to run a second line from the source to the outlet.
Comment: Also consider that many locations treat "lighting" circuits different to "heating" (ie, sockets) so creating an outlet that is on a circuit labelled and designed as lighting could contravene local code requirements.   There's always the risk some future user connects a 2400W heater to this outlet at night when lights are in use and overloads it.
Answer: You don't (with traditional wiring).  It's possible with smart switches.
There's no way to get there from here with traditional wiring.  The switch does not have "hot and neutral", those two wires are "always-hot" and "switched-hot for the lamp".  Yes I know one is white, but that does not make it neutral.
Modern Code requires that white wire have black electrical tape or other markings to make it clear.
As George says, never, ever, ever experiment with electrical.  Obviously you'll stop when you find the first combination that "works".  But there are lots of combinations which "will work, and then kill you".   Learn how (not that hard if you're patient) and do it right.
Now, if you are willing to go to smart switches and smart bulbs or modules, such as Insteon's system, then you CAN do it. You have to rewire everything so that in all locations, black=always-hot and white=neutral.  The smart switch then controls the smart module/bulb wirelessly.  The module sits up in the lamp dome; it's supplied always-hot and neutral and outputs switched-hot to the lamp.
Answer: What you have is commonly called a "switch leg". The switch turns on power to the fixture and turns it off.  You'll need to run an additional cable to your outlet to get it continuous power. Sorry, but you can't get there from here.
Also, and trying not to be rude, but you clearly don't know what you are doing and experimenting is a very bad thing to do when it comes to line voltage electricity.  And, once again, as much I hate to say it, given your post and apparent lack of experience, you might need to call in a pro.  Sorry.
Answer: Sorry, but this is what you need.
This assumes that the upper-right wire is a live line.

If that 12/2 wire has a ground then you could do something illegal but I'm not gonna tell you what...
Comment: LOL at your answer!  Yeah, we don't go there!  I put electrical work in my mind into 3 categories: 1) It works, but it's not safe and not code legal, 2) It's safe and works, but not code legal and 3) It works, it's safe and it's code legal (which all of us here hopefully strive for)  Thanks for your humorous answer!  +
Comment: Hah, I'm glad someone got a kick out of it! =)
Comment: Is running a new wire from the source (light fixture incoming wire) to the switch and having a three point connector bad? One wire for power, one wire to the light, and one wire to the outlet with constant power?
Comment: @Jimenemex, no, that would be fine. This isn't the most common configuration to wire up plugs but it is done in certain cases. Whether it's up to code in your area I can't comment on.
Comment: @Jimenemex Yes, that is certainly an option assuming you do not exceed the allowed fill of the switch box. Every fixture box is a legal junction box so your idea is fine assuming that it's easier than what I presented. Albeit my image is not an end-all-be-all, it's main purpose is to show that a dedicate live wire is needed in OP's situation.

Wiring an outlet off a switch?


Recurrent and transient state definitions

Question: What is the definition of a recurrent and transient state respectively?
I ask this because while reading Markov Chains by J.R. Norris, he says a state $i$ is recurrent if
$P(X_{n}=i, \mbox{ for infinitely many n }| X_{0} = i)=1$,
and a state $i$ is transient if
$P(X_{n}=i,\mbox{ for infinitely many n} | X_{0}=i) = 0$.
I'm more familiar with the definition which states that if $P(X_{n}=i \mbox{ for some } n\geq 1)=1$, then the state $i$ is said to be recurrent, else if this probability is strictly less than 1, then the state $i$ is said to be transient.
Is there a way to prove these definitions are equivalent?
I think my problem stems from not understanding the probability statement:
$P(X_{n}=i \mbox{ for infinitely many n} | X_{0}=i)=1$.
What is this statement actually saying?
Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks.
Answer: These two definitions are equivalent. If the event that $X_n = t$ occurs infinite times almost surely, it occurs at least once almost sure. If it occurs once almost sure, it will occur infinite times. That's because of the property of Markov chain.