Who proposed the motion that gave Gaius Julius Caesar the title Augustus?

Question: In 27 BC, the Senate gave Gaius Julius Caesar the title Augustus. I am assuming that as the senate gave him that title, the motion must have been proposed by someone at the senate floor. Do we know, reliably, who proposed that motion? Do we know how many people opposed it and supported it and how many (if any) senators abstained from voting?
Comment: I believe the wikipedia page you provided is a bit confusing. I had always thought he was given the title in 27 BC. The wikipedia confirms this and later makes the claim that on January 27th BC he was given the title Augustus. It appears to me to be an error in that likely the editor meant to say in January, 27 BC which would line up with what is the beginning of his reign as Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (16 January 27 BC – 19 August AD 14).
Comment: I am going to continue working on my answer. It is still incomplete at this time and hasn't come together as expected.
Comment: The title, "Augustus", was never given to Julius Caesar...such a motion was never proposed.  However, the title of "Augustus", was given to Rome's actual First Emperor, Octavian around the year 27/26 BC/BCE-(who, incidentally, was Julius Caesar's nephew).
Answer: Octavian who would later become Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus:
My answer really focuses on the why as much as the who, because the reality may have been that in many ways he gave himself the title.
Octavian returned from Egypt with a wealth of treasure and a serious wealth of power. He was respected by his legions, of which he was commander of all sixty of them. Upon his return his fellow Romans believed they had seen the end of war and strife, and they hailed him as the Prince of Peace and benefactor of mankind. Octavian understood the importance of  ensuring the people of Rome that he was benevolent. He certainly did not want to meet a similar demise to that of his great-uncle Gaius Julius Caesar (adopted father). So began a massive effort in religious renewal. Octavian restored 82 temples in one year alone. Also, there were grand new buildings like the Theatre of Apollo, and the Horologium. Octavian's right hand man Agrippa, too, embarked on several major building projects. Among these were the Pantheon, later rebuilt by Hadrian. Agrippa also repaired the city's water system and added two new aquaeducts, the Aqua Julia and the Aqua Virgo (Octavian famously quoted "I found rome of clay; I leave it to you of Marble") Rome was happy and Octavian had marble and possibly more importantly religion. Religion could be manipulated to suit the ambitions of Octavian and those he had given power to. Before we get to "those he had given power to" lets finish the topic of religion. Octavian recognized his prominence and equally recognized that without some shrewd decision making he had nowhere to go but down in regards to said prominence. His efforts to renew religious vigor throughout Rome would grant him a buffer during bad times and though one could assume that during good times he wouldn't receive the glory; they would be mostly wrong. Back to "those he had given power". The first form of "given" power would be the priesthood. Restoring temples meant restoring priests, of which Octavian had both subtle and secure power over. The second form and most noticeable to those with nobility was the purge and restoration of the senate. In 27 BC Octavian is famous for transferring power back to the Senate, but what really happened? The following two snippets do a great job of explaining this.

Why was Augustus so successful in creating the Roman Empire?
...
The fact of the matter was: the main body of the senate owed
  their careers to Augustus, and there was nothing that could be done
  about it  – as Tacitus would want us to believe, Augustus' grip on the
  senate was too strong. For instance, when Octavian returned to Rome
  after the civil wars had been extinguished, his censorial powers made
  it possible for him to purge the Senate of any potential resistance in
  his regime. The reason for such a rash act was due to the number of
  senators appointed by Octavian's rival triumvir; the presence of
  senators that did not side with him during the Actium campaigns was
  also an adequate reason for an assessment. Thus in 29 BC, Octavian
  removed 190 potential threats to his administration ...
Why was Augustus so successful in creating the Roman Empire?
(www.unrv.com)

Octavian becomes Augustus Caesar
...
In 27 BCE, Octavian began his seventh term as consul. He renounced his
  consulship and declared that he was surrendering all powers to the
  Senate and other bodies, including control of the army. It was a bogus
  withdrawal from power. As Octavian expected, the Senate, packed with
  his supporters, responded by returning much of his power, claiming
  that it was doing so for the sake of unity and relief from
  factionalism and civil strife.
...
In keeping with his great prestige,the Senate gave him a title that had the ring of his
  being divinely chosen: Augustus Caesar. And the Senate made it law that he be included in
  the prayers of Rome's priests. In appearance, the republic had been
  restored, but in fact ultimate power still lay with Octavian --
  Augustus Caesar. ...
The ROMAN REPUBLIC'S CIVIL WARS and FALL (7 of 7)
Octavian becomes Augustus Caesar (www.fsmitha.com)

So in 29 BC two years prior to his "benevolent" action of giving up the power he ensured that he indeed would not really be giving up anything, well at least not in terms of power (He "had" religion and he had the Senate). It should also be noted that 29 BC was not the only time he reduced the number of Senators.
If you absolutely had to break this down into one person other than Octavian himself who would have been responsible for the title of Augustus being handed out, I would suggest that person was Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. Agrippa was "his right hand man" but possibly even more important he was Octavian's highest military aid, closest consul, son in law, and soon after their return to Rome, a member of the Senate. That being said, Agrippa was just one of about 800 members in the senate at that time.
Comment: But someone must have put the motion to the floor, right? It must have been someone's idea (perhaps even Octavian's) but consuls or tribunes couldn't put a motion to the floor (unless I am mistaken) --in which case the question then becomes whom did he persuade?
Comment: This answers so much more than I asked for and that I didn't know that I feel obliged to accept this as an answer immediately. However, courtesy dictates that I give other users at least 1 day to post their comments/answers.
Comment: @MonsterTruck Giving more time is always smart. You never know if someone may provide a different perspective. :–) As for the answer, I found it to be a little different than I originally thought. :-P
Answer: According to Cassius Dio:

... the name Augustus was conferred on him by the Senate and the people.
  At the time when they wished to give him some title of special
  eminence, and some people were proposing one title and some another
  and pressing for its adoption, Octavian had set his heart strongly on
  being named Romulus. But when he understood that this aroused
  suspicions that he desired the kingship, he abandoned his efforts to
  obtain it and adopted the title of Augustus...

What I would interpret from this is that while a number of people may have made suggestions on Octavian's new title, he was the one who really decided upon it and the Senate vote would have been pretty much a formality.
Cassius Dio does not record how the Senate voted on the matter, although it would be odd for there to have been any voices of dissent when they were not present on the more significant matter of granting him his powers. There is also no record of who suggested the name in the first place or who put the motion up in the Senate. I would consider Agrippa to be an unlikely candidate for the latter given that Octavian would not have lacked sycophants who could have done so instead and having his closest ally make the proposal would not have been in keeping with his habit of making honours look as though they were voluntarily bestowed by a grateful Senate rather than actively sought.


Why are my Yukon golds wilting?

Question: I'm brand new to gardening. I've got a raised bed filled with composted garden clippings and soil. I just grew a bunch of radishes and lettuce is the soil and it did very well. After removing it all and tiling the soil, I planted some Yukon golds, red skin potatoes, cantaloupe and a small pepper plant all purchased from a local nursery. I used some topical fertilizer (5-5-5) and watered heavily after planting. I let it sit for three days. The Yukon golds and the pepper plant is wilted. The melon and red skin plants are looking just fine. I watered them last evening and still they are wilted this morning. Any thoughts ? Trying to take a photo small enough to upload.
By the way, I'm in Utah.
Comment: What kind of drainage have you got going?  How much fertilizer did you use for this amount of soil?  Is this garden soil in a raised bed with dimensional lumber all the way around but without a bottom?  Is there any rock at the bottom of the soil between the surface of the garden soil?  What kind of compost precisely? How cold is it getting there at night?  Were these plants starts that were used to being outside, acclimated? It looks like way too much water but need to know more.
Comment: Thank you so much for the response! The drainage has seemed to be sufficient but I haven't placed any special lines or rock bottom to drain the water. I used the recommended amount of fertilizer from the bag but don't recall the exact quantity. Yes it is a 4x4 cedar raised box without a bottom. No rock at the bottom I just lightly tilled the normal soil that our yard grass was growing on before setting the box. The contents of the compost is actually mostly unknown to me as it was made from the previous home owners who used it for vegetables gardens. Lows are around 65-70.
Comment: Also they were not acclimated at all. I just purchased them from the local greenhouse and put them outside immediately
Answer: Plants grown in a greenhouse have a thinner epidermis than plants in the real sunlight. This could easily be 'sunburn'.  In fact, this really looks like sunburn.
Go get some Row Cloth.  It is white fabric also called 'floating' row cloth.  Cover your plants with this stuff.  They might be able to recover.  Actually you should start to see new growth, the old stuff will just keep dying.  Using this you should be able to...acclimate them.  Let them recover for a few days and then start taking it off; let the plant be in the sun for half an hour, three days in a row; then an hour for a few days, then 2 hours and then 4 hours.
Cover your plants if it gets down into the 40 degree F at night.  This cloth can help extend your season.  Next year get seed potatoes from The Potato Garden in Colorado.  You won't be able to grow potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant in that soil for 2 years.  You can get big plastic pots and use potting soil in the pots to expand your garden.
You want certified seed potatoes and I absolutely love this little company that you live quite close to...
Try the row cloth and take a picture in a few days to send us, okay?  If you are new to this you will love reading other question/answers on this site.  Please ask more questions of your own.  I sure hope this is what is wrong.  It is worrisome to use compost you didn't make.
Comment: Thanks you so much! I was suspecting too much sun because this morning they all looked fantastic but this afternoon they began to wilt again. I just covered them after reading your answer. I will update you! Thanks!

Why are my Yukon golds wilting?


How do convolutional neural networks learn from images of different translations and conditions?

Question: when we feed the CNN images of cats in different lighting conditions or colors, Is it the job of the conv layers to learn the different representations(lighting conditions and colors) and map them to one final representation(in the last conv layer) or Is it the job of the fully connected layers to receive those different representations(from the last conv layer) and map them to the label "cat"?
And What would be the case if the CNN has no fully connected layers like SqueezeNet?
I am not talking about objects' spatial translation.
Answer: That is learned by the kernels aka filters of the CNN itself. Values of kernels (matrix) are tuned via backpropagation.
You are right on

Is it the job of the fully connected layers to receive those different representations(from the last conv layer) and map them to the label "cat"

Layers earlier in the network output a different representation than what they take as input, it is differed by the max/avg pooling operator which normalized the subtle invariances in multiple images of same images.
Now further downstream layers take on the job of learning a different set of kernel that might learn cat vs dogs based on edges etc and then again do their max/avg pool and pass it down further.
Now when these representations reach fully connected layer, that is where who is who information is retained.
CNN are taken as feature extractors (kernels) while FC takes the job of estimator/classifier.
Sorry, with so many networks I lost track and have not looked much in SqueezeNets.


hawking radiation

Question: My question is regarding Hawking Radiation and its effect on black hole. Now as we know that particle and particle pairs create at every place in space and it is true near black hole horizon. Then why it is like that each time gravity of black hole sucks antimatter particle and its mass decreases .  Is it true to think that on average black hole sucks an equal amount of particle and antimatter particle in some given time and its mass remains constant?
Comment: It may not be obvious that the question I've linked is a duplicate, but the answers to it answer your question as well. In brief, you are confusing *negative energy particle* with *antiparticle*.
Answer: Both matter and antimatter particles increase the black hole mass. The reason why black hole is losing mass is much more complicated and its precise description is rather technical, but in simple terms: the particle that flies away is carrying away some energy. That energy cannot be creared from nothing; it is taken off the black hole itself. Thus the event horizon shrinks a bit.
The in-falling particle with negative energy is just a picturesque way of saying that a positive energy particle is flying away.
The outgoing particles are both matter and antimatter particles.

hawking radiation


Is it unethical to show a letter to someone the sender does not know?

Question: I recently recieved a letter about a personnel problem, I want to show this to a friend who might be able to advise me on response, is this unethical? The sender does not know about me doing this, and it would all be anonymous. I can trust the friend not to be indescreet. I don't want to ask the sender if I can help it, as that will take days.
Comment: What would your answer be if you were the sender?
Comment: If it's a personnel problem, you should discuss it with HR.
Comment: A friend, or a co-worker with you both in the HR department and the letter being related to that company, or a lawyer, or...?
Comment: @Chenmunka I'd check that. May or may not be.
Comment: @Chenmunka As long as you don't publish the letter GDPR doesn't apply. And showing something to a friend isn't publishing
Comment: @Niqql GDPR violations don't require publishing. They don't even require overt actions. An inability to protect data is enough.
Comment: @GregoryCurrie showing a letter to a friend isn't a inability to protect data
Comment: @Niqql Yes, it is. Try reading the regs.
Comment: @GregoryCurrie I have, I cant find anything that states that I can't talk with my friends about a work letter that has been anonymized. Can you send me a link or state the paragraph number?
Comment: @Niqql You claim that a GDPR violation requires publication. Don't shift the goal-posts.
Comment: @GregoryCurrie Sorry, I think you misunderstood. I claimed that showing your friend a anonymized letter isn't a GDPR violation, because you aren't publishing said letter, you're just showing it your friend. For it to be a violation the letter had to be published or contain personal data.
Comment: Instead of showing the letter, can you describe the contents to your friend to get advice? Are you looking for professional advice or suggestions on how you can handle the situation?
Comment: It sometimes feels flabbergasting to me how people can't decide the simplest day to day things without asking the internet first...
@J Username: if you are certain about your friend being discreet and tight-lipped, what's the issue ? Go ahead and talk. Your friend will be much more help than us strangers on the internet. We gotta rely on good people around us instead of the internet.
Answer: If you are the intended recipient of the Email/Letter then the answer is 'Maybe'.
And the Maybe entirely depends on the context.
Now, bearing in mind, since this is about a personnel problem we are definitely in the realms of Confidential information.
Let's give two scenarios:
Showing the email/letter to your mate Gary at the Pub. Whilst it is entirely possible to do this, Afterall Gary is a stand-up bloke who can keep his mouth firmly shut and one could say 'no harm, no foul' - this is absolutely unethical and I would advise against it.
However, Your mate Gary at the Pub is a Lawyer who your company has a business relationship with (maybe on a retainer, may have just engaged previously for work) and you show the email/letter for a legitimate reason such as getting an initial Legal opinion. Those of a particularly nit-picky nature may say that without a contract and an exchange of payment, this is still wrong, but I'm putting that to the side for a moment.
In this scenario, you have a legitimate reason for it from someone who has genuine expertise in a field, this is generally acceptable.
Now - I'm not sure on the Legal aspect per se (I'm not a lawyer) - but Confidential information can only be passed on with authorization, in the case of it being a Personnel issue, the Authorization is from within the Business. If you were discussing it with say a business Mentor who was within the business, then this would probably be fine. But if it was an outside entity, probably not.
I mentioned above about the nitpicking over engaging with an outside party without a contract and payment - the above is where that might come in.
In short - can you do it: probably. Should you do it? Probably not unless the person you wish to share it with has a legitimate reason for being consulted as an expert.
There is another option, however.
Don't show them the letter. Abstract out all the confidential info and then ask for their opinion. You see that all the time here on Workplace SE:
e.g. "I have an employee who keeps doing XYZ, what should I do?" So long as XYZ isn't personally identifiable, then that's fine. Sometimes you'll see questions where people state they can't give more detail as it might cross that line.
This is what I would strongly suggest doing, rather than showing the letter.
Answer: If there is any way you can ask the sender for permission, ask the sender for permission. If that means you have to wait a few days, wait a few days; if it was that critical, they would be pounding on your door rather than (or in addition to) sending a letter, making a phone call, etc.
And frankly, the fact that you've stopped to ask us strongly suggests that you know you shouldn't share it without permission.
The question isn't whether you trust your friend. It's whether the sender trusts your friend. Ask them.
Answer: There is no hard and fast answer to your question and this would very much have to be read in context of the contents of the letter and the relationship of your friend to you and the company. It also would be helpful to know where in the world you are based since confidentiality issues are different in each country or in some cases part of a country.
if you were in the UK and you had received a formal letter from your employer notifying you of some alleged breach of your duties and responsibilities which is then a notification that the company intends to open up a disciplinary process then your employer would have a legal obligation to also include details of the disciplinary process and document your rights to discuss the matter with a union representative if you are a member of a union or a co-worker who agrees to act as your friend and witness during the disciplinary process. That co-worker would need to consent to the generalities of the the disciplinary process and their willingness to help you long before they were just shown the disciplinary letter. The co-worker (and union official) would have to comply with the company's confidentiality and disciplinary processes and consent to acting in confidence and not to disclose contents of any disciplinary letters you have received to other co-workers or your boss. In the UK, it is perfectly legal for you to discuss the contents of a disciplinary letter where you are the one being disciplined for example within the confines of company confidentiality.
In the absence of a union representative or co-worker consenting to helping you in an informal way, you should not show or disclose the contents of such a disciplinary letter where you are one being disciplined, but you DO have the right to get professional advice from a lawyer or mediation service who might charge for their advice or a knowledgeable friend who does not work for your employer but can give you advice on how to respond to such a letter. In UK legal terms, such a friend is referred to as a Mackenzie Friend who in most cases should be trusted to not discuss with others, the minutiae of any documents they see or help you write a response to a letter.
So, if the letter you refer to in your question is a disciplinary letter where you and only you are the target of the disciplinary action, you would be advised to first read your company's documented disciplinary procedure and discuss the generality of the matter with an outside advisory service or a Mackenzie Friend before showing them any actual letters.
However, if the letter/email you have received is one relating to other people you work with, work for or are your subordinates, you have no right to discuss such matters with anyone else other than your boss or HR since it does not immediately and directly affect you and it is not you that is being disciplined for example. You have a duty of confidentiality as probably documented in your Company's Staff Handbook and your Terms and Conditions of Employment.
Generally speaking, if you disclose confidential details of a letter you have become privy to concerning matters other than you being the sole target of disciplinary action, you could be disciplined for disclosing the contents of such a letter to others, in or outside the company.
I would imagine that this approach would hold true in any industrialised country and if you require clarification, even in the matter of your own disciplinary process, you would be advised to notify your HR department of your wish to discuss this letter with an outside advisor or Mackenzie Friend. That way, you are protecting yourself from further action the company might take against you under their confidentiality rules but they would have to consent to you being able to seek external advice since denying that right would be contrary to natural justice.
So, as an example, if you want to show a friend a letter where say, your employers intend to close down a factory on the other side of the country that does not impact on your own employment, you must NOT disclose this information without written approval from the company. if it WAS to affect your employment with the company, then you have a general right to seek external advice from other parties.
I trust this helps you.


Use a JSON file to change param in geo nodes

Question: actually im in the process of creating a atom generator with geo nodes which will be duplicated across the periodic table (like a 3d periodic table) using the loop node.
everything is working fine but i will have to change the params for each one, i found online a json file that contains all the params i need but dont know how to import it and use it in geo nodes
maybe with the help of python i can do that but im not exactly sure how
Answer: You can read json with Python. Find more info here or here or just search the web for "Python json".
You can also change node properties with Python. You need to find your object, then its geometry nodes modifier and then the node in the modifier's node group nodes, then you find the desired input:

You can simply change default_value for the inputs:
bpy.context.object.modifiers["GeometryNodes"].node_group.nodes["Cube"].inputs[0].default_value = (2,2,2)
Comment: Unfortunately, without knowing any context, it is hard to advice more. The way you automate the assignment of data to whatever it needs to be assigned to depends on details not provided, so you will have to figure it out on your own.


Why treemacs is showing all home files instead of CWD?

Question: An emacs newbie here, i'm using doom emacs and i tried to use treemacs for navigation purposes  however once i opened a project and toggle treemacs it shows the whole tree of files starting from $HOME, i saw somewhere that
treemacs-display-current-project-exclusively will do the trick but it actually doesn't , is this the expected behavior or am doing something wrong ?
Comment: How is the project defined - is it a git ptoject or by project.el or something else?
Answer: I've not checked myself, but I remember I read it somewhere a long time ago that in treemacs logic:

if you are using it for the first time, i.e., you've never manually added a project, treemacs will display the entire filesystem.
otherwise, treemacs will become a project/workspace based navigation system.

Since you've mentioned that you are an "emacs newbie" , there is a chance that you've never added a project.
To add a project, do M-x treemacs-add-project and see if it behaves as you wish.


how to purge python 3.3 and install python 2.7.4

Question: I'm in complete trouble with my Ubuntu 13.04 distro. Today I wanted to try python 3.3, I compiled it and installed from source. It broke my system,  many packages wait for apt-get remove cmmand. I tried to purge python by issuing "sudo apt-get remove –purge python*" after then I still can  not revert to python 2.7.4.  Most importantly how can I reinstall my system? I feel like hanging in gallow, please help.
Comment: I know 13.04 has python3.3 but mine was using python2.7.4. Upgrading to 3.3 borked my system
Comment: That version of Ubuntu already has Python 3.3, meaning you could have simply installed it via `apt-get`. Anyways, can you show what error messages you get... the ones that convinced you you can't revert to `2.7.4`?
Comment: It was a known bug with python 2.7.4. The error message was "IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/usr/lib/python2.7/sitecustomize.py'"
Here is the filed bug : http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=709157#
Comment: same problem with me
Answer: I fixed uninstallation problem by putting back "sitecustomize.py" It was deleted during upgrading to python3.3 so I could not purge python. I searched for it by "locate sitecustomize.py" luckily I found it in remastersys folder. I copied it into sudo cp /home/remastersys/remastersys/dummysys/etc/python2.7/sitecustomize.py /usr/lib/python2.7/ then ran sudo dpkg -a --configure uninstallation problem fixed. Thank you Tshepang for answer
Edit: Today after system updated  python, I met the IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/usr/lib/python2.7/sitecustomize.py' error again.
I navigated using cd /usr/lib/python2.7/  then executed ls.
to my surprize "sitecustomize.py" was in the list in red. I think it was a symlink and main   file was deleted during update. So I removed symlink and copied main file I found in "/home/remastersys/remastersys/dummysys/etc/python2.7/sitecustomize.py" into " /usr/lib/python2.7/" then ran sudo dpkg --configure -a. Problem fixed.


3 coin flip probability

Question: f you randomly pick two of these coins and flip both, what is the probability
that at most one of them will come up heads?
Answer: First of all, you have an incorrect answer for (1). If you condition on the probability of drawing each respective coin and multiply by the probability of turning up heads, you have
$$ \frac{1}{3}\bigg(\frac{5}{11}+\frac{4}{11}+\frac{3}{11}\bigg) = \frac{4}{11}$$
Then for (2), consider the probability of both coins turning up heads, and each case in which you can draw two coins. Taking the sum of each
$$
1 - P(\text{both chosen turning heads}) \cdot P(\text{picking these two coins})
$$
for each possible combination of two coins will give you your desired result.
Answer: Surely you mean $4/11$ for the first one: the average of the three individual probabilities.
For the second one, consider the first two coins.  What is the probability of at most coming up heads?  It is one minus the probability that both come up heads—i.e., $1-(5/11)(3/11) = 1-15/121 = 106/121$.  Now figure it out for the other two possible pairings.  Finally, take the average of these three results to obtain the desired probability.

3 coin flip probability


How to check for a file in FTP server location and send the same file from FTP location through mail

Question: A text file is being created in FTP Server when an interface runs,
I need to check whether the created have any records,if it has values then i must be sending the same text file through mail using PL/SQL.
Thanks a million in advance :)
Answer: there exists a great ftp packages build by Tim Hall.
http://www.oracle-base.com/dba/scripts.php
-> Miscellaneous -> ftp.pkb and ftp.pks
For the email issue you can use the Oracle package UTL_MAIL.
You need a job which execute the search on the FTP server in order to find the text file.
I like to have loggings, so my prefered way of you task would be:
1) Read the ftp directory nd search for the text file
2) Store the text file name, content and sysdate in a table
3) Delete/rename the file from the ftp server, so you would not load it again
4) Check if the content is not null (from the table)
5) If it is not null send the email
6) Mark the data row in the table, that it was checked
Hope it helps.
brgds,
Birthe


Explicit construction of a initial object in a topos

Question: Let $\mathcal E$ be a topos as in Mac Lane and Moerdijk.
A initial object in $\mathcal E$ can be obtained as the domain of the equalizer of the morphisms $P!,\epsilon P1:P1\to P^31$, where $1$ is a terminal object, $!:P^21\to 1$ is the unique morphism and $\epsilon$ is the counit of the adjunction $P^{op}\dashv P$.
Let $A$ be a object in $\mathcal E$.
How to construct explicity the unique morphism $0\to A$?
Comment: I suppose you are referring to the textbook of Mac Lane and Moerdijk? You should be more explicit about what definition of topos you are taking for the purpose of this question.
Answer: The method used by Mac Lane and Moerdijk (after Paré) is very elegant and efficient, but also rather abstract. Zhen Lin has given a nice response within this abstract framework.
If the method seems too abstract (i.e., hard to visualize or intuit), there are alternatives. One is to develop some internal logic from scratch, defining operators $\Rightarrow$ and $\forall$ on subobject lattices and then defining an internal intersection operator $P P A \to P A$ by writing down a formula for the intersection in terms of logical operators. Then define the initial object as the subobject of $1$ that is classified by the composite
$$1 \stackrel{t_{P 1}}{\to} P P 1 \stackrel{\bigcap}{\to} P 1$$
whose meaning is "take the intersection of the family of all subobjects of $1$". This at least produces the minimal subobject $0$ of $1$. Now let $A$ be any object, and take the pullback of the singleton map $\sigma_A: A \to P A$ along the composite map $0 \to 1 \stackrel{t_A}{\to} P A$. Call the pullback $P$; then the map $P \to 0$ is a pullback of the monic $\sigma_A$, hence itself monic, hence an iso because $0$ is the minimal subobject of $1$ by construction. This means we have a map $0 \cong P \to A$ (where the map $P \to A$ is the other pullback projection).
This point of view can be found in some notes I wrote up, here.
Comment: Hello Todd - :)
Answer: The (co)monadicity result implies that, for all objects $X$ in $\mathcal{E}$, $\epsilon_X : X \to P^2 X$ is the equaliser of $\epsilon_{P^2 X}, P^2 \epsilon_X : P^2 X \to P^4 X$. Thus, to construct a morphism $0 \to X$, it is enough to find a morphism $f : 0 \to P^2 X$ such that $\epsilon_{P^2 X} \circ f = P^2 \epsilon_X \circ f$. Consider $P ! : P 1 \to P^2 X$ and $P^3  ! : P^3 1 \to P^4 X$. By naturality, $P^3_! \circ \epsilon_{P 1} = \epsilon_{P^2 X} \circ P !$, and by functoriality, $P^3 ! \circ P ! = P^2 \epsilon_X \circ P !$. Thus, we may take $f : 0 \to P^2 X$ to be the composite $0 \to P 1 \stackrel{P !}{\to} P^2 X$, and this induces the required morphism $0 \to X$.


Color-slicing transformations that detect green wood sorrel leaves within an RGB cube

Question: Color-slicing transformations that detect green wood sorrel leaves within an RGB cube.
Comment: This post is at risk of being closed because it does not include a question. Please state the question, and explain all relevant details. Include any code you have tried.
Answer: img = Import["https://i.stack.imgur.com/qeQfj.jpg/qeQfj.jpg"];

ImageApply[If[#[[2]] >= Max[#], #, {0, 0, 0}] &, img]

Alternatively, remove red and blue channels if green channel value is the maximum of the three channel values:
ImageApply[If[#[[2]] >= Max[#], #[[2]] {0, 1, 0}, {0, 0, 0}] &, img]

Answer: Not the transformation you are looking for but Mathematica has a ColorsNear function:
img = Import["https://i.stack.imgur.com/qeQfj.jpg/qeQfj.jpg"]
ColorDetect[img, ColorsNear[Darker@Green]]


ASP.Net avoid multiple Style and Script blocks in Custom Control

Question: I'm developing a custom control with it's own style and script block inside the ascx-file.
All works fine, but if I use my control inside my aspx-page more the once, the script and style blocks are also repeated.
How to avoid this?
Answer: As long as those blocks are in the custom control itself, you can do nothing to remove the repetition, you should consider moving them to another place, or adding them via code.
Edit: My answer assumes you're complaining about repetitive links to script/styles files. However, if you're talking about full scripts inside the control, see _rick_schott's answer.
Answer: Script
You can use the ClientScript object to register the script programatically in Page_Load instead of writing it in aspx:
if (!ClientScript.IsClientScriptBlockRegistered("myScript"))
{
    ClientScript.RegisterClientScriptBlock(GetType(), "myScript", "//the javascript code...", true);
}

Styles
For the styles, I don't know if it is any mechanisms to achieve this. Maybe you can use Theme mechanism. I have not used that myself so I don't know how it works...
Answer: The only way I can think of to do this is to split the custom control into sub-controls.
Create a "Body" control as a styleless and scriptless control.  Then, create a "Designer" control that you use to suck in multiple "Body" controls.  Then you can add the "Designer" control to the aspx page once.
If you don't know how many "Body" parts" you need at compile time, add a paramater to the "Designer" control that allows you to dynamically add "Main Parts" from code behind at runtime.
BTW, if you have never used dynamic controls before, have fun!
Answer: Thanks for all answers. I just created a "helper" control which creates my styles and scripts, which I put only once on my aspx page. So I can add multiple instances of my actual control without redundant code.


group same fields in views using custom template

Question: drupal 6 user here. I am sure that this is basic views question but I can not figure answer to it. I have a simple view with 2 fields - node title (field_title) and node author (field_author). I want to print all data separate so that node titles would be printed inside ONE single separate div and node authors would be printed in another div. This can not be achieved using rewrite option as far as I know. Can anybody help me with this? Thank you.
Comment: Have you tried unformatted list  in views?
Comment: @harshal every output I tried gives results like fieldA1 fieldB1, fieldA2 fieldB2 and so on. I need fieldA1 fieldA2 in separate div and fieldB1, fieldB2 in separated div.
Answer:
Go to your view: admin/build/views
Edit your view: admin/build/views/edit/view_name
Look at your fields node title (field_title) and node author (field_author) and click on Node:Title for instance
Once editing the view output of the Node:Title field, check "Rewrite the output of this field"
You should see replacement patterns: [title] == Node: Title

In the Rewrite this field section called "Text:" enter

[title]

Repeat 3,4 and 5 for the Node:Author field.

[author]

You can put anything else in the rewrite field here.

(note: D7 has more options that using the rewrite method)
Comment: This is not what I am interested in. I need to output fieldA results inside ONE div. Not many divs with same class.


Does Porcelain paving appearance fade over time?

Question: I am trying to decide what material to use for paving patio in the UK house back garden. I went into shop and tried to get information. I realized that porcelain is artificial. The patterns on it that make it look like marble or some other thing, are printed on it. This made me wonder, how deep are these patterns? Won't some foot traffic and scrubbing with mops cause the patterns on the porcelain paving to fade away in few years?
Comment: Maybe the British sense of "porcelain" is different than the American sense, but I'd think that porcelain as a patio surface would end up being _very_ slippery in the rain.
Comment: There are many types and textures. Porcelain is much more suited to outdoor use, especially in freezing climates, than ceramic.
Comment: I am getting conflicting information, the seller says that porcelain is not slippery but the fitter who has (his own) supplier of Indian sandstone says not to use porcelain since it will be slippery and use Indian sandstone instead. There is conflict of interest here of course in both of these cases. I went to shop and found that there are throngs of textures on porcelain, I went to 3 shops. Two of them kept basically no natural stones and said that Porcelain is getting popular so we don't stock natural stones for show anymore but do have them on the website.
Answer: You're potentially describing two different products. True porcelain is a single material all the way through, like colored glass and not unlike commercial vinyl tile--wear simply reveals more of the same material.
Then there's glazed porcelain. That has a decorative and/or protective layer on top which, if damaged or worn, shows other color or texture below.
Know which you're considering and you'll know how it'll wear. You may be able to tell just by looking at the edges.
Comment: I did not know there are types of porcelain too. If I goto shop that has less porcelain stock they tell me porcelain is no good. If I goto shop that has a lot of porcelain they tell me porcelain is good and comes in many surface textures. If I speak with the fitters, they prefer to use some stone that they have a supplier for (possibly getting commision?). I am really not sure what to do. The Topps Tiles (UK) said it should be good for more than 10 years, I don't remember he if said 20 years or 25 years but he definitely said something more than 10. Said the pattern will stay for many years.
Answer: If done properly, no. The patterns should be embedded in/under the surface glaze, or be made in that glaze directly.
Go look at the tilework in the London underground for some hard-used 100+ year old (in some stations) tiles.
Not to say that there can't be poorly made porcelain tiles (a paver being a rather large tile, if it's porcelain), but well made ones will be around to get dug up by archeologists.
Comment: The primary thing is there is so much variety that choice becomes impossible. A fitter recommended indian sandstone. But Indian sandstone has this "old" look at not a refined surface. Do we need to use sealant for all natural stones and not for Porcelain?
Comment: What do you mean by glaze?
Comment: Glaze is a layer of glass-like material fused to the surface of the porcelain in the kiln. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_glaze Or, your porcelain may be unglazed.
Comment: What I am trying to find is, is porcelain too slipper for outdoor use (rains a lot in the UK) and if it has a special appearance, will that fade overtime in few years, and do porcelain slabs break or chip easily?
Comment: Went to "Quorn Stone" showroom recently. Really nice shop. Also went to Bishop Tiles. Really nice shop. Both are in Bristol and a long drive from where I live but the visit was worth it. They have better looking stock than Jewson, CTD tiles, Topps tiles, Tile giant that I visited earlier.


Use Siri to fill in input fields on macOS

Question: How can I get Siri to fill in input fields on MacBook Pro?
At the moment I have to copy paste from the Siri dialogue.
Edit____________
I'm not interested in answers relating to normal dictation in the mac, I WANT SIRI!! )
Comment: The dictation function of OS X (macOS) is probably the better tool to accomplish this.
Comment: I find its translation is a bit flaky compared to Siri.
Answer: There are a few things to consider. Siri will only work if you are connected to the internet. Dictation commands (enhanced dictation) works with or without an internet connection.  Siri's capabilities are quite limited. The beauty of enabling and using enhanced dictation commands, is that you can create your own dictation commands. Getting used to the whole process takes a little trial and error. I barely ever use my mouse anymore.  I've created so many new dictation commands that I can virtually use dictation commands for entering passwords into password fields, create and send iMessages, emails, opening and closing applications, etc.
In fact, this entire answer I am posting was done with dictation commands. If you really want to roll your sleeves up and dive in, you can create AppleScripts that can be very complex then the save that as an application and enable that application as a spoken dictation command.
For example, I wrote an AppleScript that takes screenshots of my computer screen if the motion sensor on my built in iSight camera gets triggered.
The screenshots are stored on my desktop and then automatically messaged to me through iMessages. Then once the message has been sent, the snapshot gets deleted from my desktop automatically and stored in my dropbox. Long story short, with dictation commands, all I need to say is "Run Surveillance" which activates the video software with the motion detection, and from there the scripts get triggered.
Here is a quick snippet of the iMessage part of the script.
<code>set exportAs to "Screengrab.png"
set myScreengrab to POSIX file "/Users/Smokestack/Desktop/iSentry_Motion_Detector/Screengrab.png"
do shell script "screencapture -mx -T0 " & quoted form of POSIX path of myScreengrab
tell application "Messages"
    activate
    set targetBuddy to "firstname.lastname@example.com"
    set targetService to id of 1st service whose service type = iMessage
    set textMessage to myScreengrab
    set theBuddy to buddy targetBuddy of service id targetService
    send textMessage to theBuddy
    delay 5
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke "h" using (command down)
    end tell
end tell
tell application "iSentry"
    activate
end tell
tell application "Finder"
    delete myScreengrab
end tell
</code>
Really there is no limit to how much of your computer you can control with dictation commands as long as you are willing to do some research and a whole lot of reading and trial and error.
Comment: Normal dictations is almost useless with my accent, so its not possible to use Siri as an input??
Comment: @SuperUberDuper Maybe elaborate a bit on your accent—there's probably a way to change your dictation language to work with it better. Also, have you tried enhanced dictation?
Answer: To use normal dictation, focus an input field and press fn twice (default shortcut).
For more dictation settings, see System Preferences → Keyboard → Dictation.
Comment: yeah but its less accurate than siri
Answer: You can find a guide here
http://briansbits.com/mac_siri.php
And the current version of a Siri listener script here
http://briansbits.com/starbase/SiriListener2.scpt
You have to modify the script so in writes to your input field.
Comment: I don't want a dodgy script from 2014, this should be native functionality in OSX.
Comment: Then please ask apple and not here. You're at the wrong forum.
Comment: Apple don't have time for questions like this.


List Save Button Directing to Another Page

Question: How can I direct the Save Button in the New Form to another link?
Answer: Set the RedirectUrl property of SaveButton control in your rendering template.
More info
Comment: This will not work with items that have a `DocumentLibrary` basetype. I'm still looking for a workaround to this one.
Comment: can you pls elaborate where will i see the save button control?in my newform.aspx , am not able to see any buttons. but, when my newform opened in UI, it works and gong to allitems.aspx page, am trying to edit the newform.aspx page through SP Designer but am not able to see any buttons.what am i doing wrong?
Comment: please, check the rendering template. http://selingernetwork.com/blog/?p=7


Hall Effect and Magnetoresistors

Question: As per my understanding, When an electric field is applied to a current carrying wire, it exerts Lorentz force on electrons and hence a transverse electric field is generated. Also when we apply magnetic field wire resistance changes called as magnetoresistive effect.
  My Question is aren't both of these effects are same? Or am i making some mistake. Also i found somewhere that magnetoresistive effect is of 2nd order while Hall effect is 1st order.How is this possible if both have same cause.
(Sorry for my poor english)
Comment: Oops, magnetic field supplies Lorentz force q(vxB)  (where the x is the vector cross product.)  Hall effect gives a voltage perpendicular to electron velocity, magnetio-resistance is parallel.  A voltage drop along the device.
Answer: No, the Hall Effect and magnetoresistance are very different effects.
In particular, giant magnetoresistance is a quantum effect that has been widely exploited to implement magnetometors (electronic compasses), disk drive read heads, biosensors, and MRAM.

Hall Effect and Magnetoresistors


PyQt4: Modularizing/Scaling my GUI components?

Question: I'm designing a (hopefully) simple GUI application using PyQt4 that I'm trying to make scalable. In brief, the user inputs some basic information and sends it into one of n queues (implementing waiting lists). Each of these n queues (QTableviews) are identical and each have controls to pop, delete from and rearrange its queue. These, along with some labels etc. form a 'module'. Currently my application is hardcoded to 4 queue modules, so there's elements named btn_table1_pop, btn_table2_pop...etc; four copies of every single module widget. This is obviously not very good UI design if you always assume your clients have four people that need waiting lists! I'd like to be able to easily modify this program so 8 people could use it, or 3 people could use it without a chunk of useless screen-estate!
The really naive solution to programming my application is duplicating the code for each module, but this is really messy, unmaintainable, and bounds my application to always four queues. A better thought would be to write functions for each button that sets an index and calls a function that implements the common logic, but I'm still hardcoded to 4, because the branch logic and the calling functions still have to take into account the names of the elements. If there was a way to 'vectorize' the names of the elements so that I could for example write
<code>    btn_table[index]_pop.setEnabled(False)
</code>
...I could eliminate this branch logic and really condense my code. But I'm way too new at Python/PyQt to know if this is 1) even possible? or 2) how to even go about it/if this is even the way to go?
Thanks again, SO.
Answer: In case anyone is interested I was able to get it working with dummybutton = getattr(self,'btn_table{}'.format(i)) and calling the button's methods on dummybutton.


Smith Normal Form and classification of factor groups according to the theorem of finitely generated abelian groups

Question: With reference to this question, it was mentioned in the comments that these problems could be solved using the Smith Normal Form. However, I am unable to extract an exact method from the Wikipedia article alone, and further searching yields few general examples. I am asking for an example where the algorithm is used to classify a factor group.
Answer: Below I explain how Smith Normal Form relates to the fundamental theorem and how it can be used to classify a given finitely generated module over a PID in terms of a presentation. It has been awhile since I've actually computed a SNF, so I can't show you an example of that without basically relearning how its done (I'll leave that for someone else); rather, I just utilize the existence of SNF and could (for instance) have a computer find one in order to classify a module.
If you don't know what the words "module" and "PID" mean, then I am speaking in slightly too much generality for a given reader $-$ there is a simple fix for this: simply read "module" as "abelian group" and assume the PID (a type of ring) $R$ is the usual set of integers $R=\Bbb Z$.

Let $R$ be a PID and suppose we have a finitely-generated $R$-module $M$ given by
$$M=\left\langle m_1,\dots,m_n\left| \begin{array}{c} a_{11}m_1+\cdots+a_{1n}m_n=0 \\
 \vdots \\
 a_{k1}m_1+\cdots+a_{kn}m_n=0 \end{array}\right.\right\rangle.$$
There is the "universal" $R$-module homomorphism $R^n\to M$, $(r_1,\dots,r_n)\mapsto r_1m_1+\cdots+r_nm_n$, and since this is onto, by the first isomorphism theorem for modules we have the isomorphism
$$M\cong R^n/\langle (a_{11},\dots,a_{1n}),\dots,(a_{k1},\dots,a_{kn})\rangle. $$
The denominator above is precisely the image of the matrix transformation $R^n\to R^n$ given by
$$A=\begin{pmatrix}a_{11} & \cdots & a_{k1} & \cdots \\
 \vdots & \ddots & \vdots & \vdots \\
 a_{1n} & \cdots & a_{kn} & \cdots \end{pmatrix}.$$
The right-hand columns are zeroed out in order to make the matrix square. The SNF of $A$ looks like
$$A=SBT, \qquad B=\begin{pmatrix}b_1 & 0 & 0 & 0 & \cdots \\
0 & \ddots & 0 & 0 & \cdots \\
0 & \cdots & b_\ell & 0 & \cdots \\
0 & \cdots & 0 & 0 & \cdots \\
\vdots & \vdots & \vdots & \vdots & \ddots \end{pmatrix}, \qquad S,T\in{\rm GL}_n(R).$$
The diagonal entries of $B$ are $b_1,\dots,b_\ell$ (where $\ell\le n$), $b_1\mid\dots\mid b_\ell$, and all else zeroed out. Therefore,
$$M\cong\frac{R^n}{AR^n} = \frac{SR^n}{SBTR^n}\cong\frac{R^n}{BTR^n}=\frac{R^n}{BR^n}\cong\frac{R}{b_1R}\times\cdots\times\frac{R}{b_\ell R}\times \underbrace{\frac{R}{0}\times\cdots\times\frac{R}{0}}_{n-\ell}.$$
Thus is established the fundamental theorem of finitely-generated modules over principal ideal domains: all such modules are a finite direct sum of quotients of the scalar ring. Indeed, given the presentation of a module, one computes the SNF of the matrix of coefficients of the relations on the generators, and then reads off from the SNF's diagonals the denominators of these aforementioned quotients.
Comment: We will work with PID's in a couple of weeks, and I believe this answer will be fruitful for me in the future.
Answer: OK, here is an example. Find the structure of the group
$${\mathbb Z}^3/\langle (6,6,4),\,(6,12,8) \rangle.$$
Write down the matrix:
$$\left( \begin{array}{rrr} 6&6&4\\6&12&8 \end{array}\right)$$
There are many different ways to reduce this to SNF. Here is one way (hoping I haven't miscalculated):
<code>Subtract Column 3 from Column 2
Interchange Columns 1 and 2
Subtract 2 times Row 1 from Row 2
Subtract 3 times Column 1 from Column 2
Subtract 2 times Column 1 from Column 3
Negate Row 2
</code>
giving SNF:
$$\left( \begin{array}{rrr} 2&0&0\\0&6&0 \end{array}\right)$$
It is important to remember that the number of cyclic factors should be equal to the number of generators of the original group (although, in general, some of these factors could have order $1$ and hence be trivial). So if there are fewer subgroup generators than group generators, we have to adjoin copies of ${\mathbb Z}$. So, in this example, the group is isomorphic to
$${\mathbb Z}_2 \oplus {\mathbb Z}_6 \oplus {\mathbb Z}$$
Comment: Thank you, although with this task, I can't do much but to take your word for it. Working with, for example, $(\mathbb{Z} \times \mathbb{Z})/\langle (2, 2) \rangle$ we have the matrix $(2\:\:\:2)$ and we reduce that to $(2\:\:\:0)$ to get $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}$?
Comment: Yes, that's right $(2\ 2) \to (2\ 0)$ giving ${\mathbb Z}_2 \times {\mathbb Z}$. I know I haven't explained the thoery, but sea turtles has done this in a more general context. In fact row operations on the matrix represent changes to the generating set of the subgroup, whereas column operations are changes to the generating set of ${\mathbb Z}^n$. Neither of these changes affects the isomorphism type of the quotient group, which is why the process works.


Construction of a point with resprect to a triangle

Question: For a given  triangle $ABC$, how to construct a point $P$ such that $PA \colon PB \colon PC = 1 \colon 2 \colon4$?
Answer: Here is a solution:
Orient the triangle such that AC lies on the x-axis and B lies on the y-axis. Then, we have that $A = (-a,0), B = (0,b), C = (0,c)$. Draw circles around each of these points with a radius $r$, $2r$ and $4r$.
If these circles are to meet at a point $(x, y)$, then we have the following simultaneous equations:
$$(x+a)^2 + y^2 = r^2$$
$$x^2 + (y-b)^2 = (2r)^2$$
$$ (x-c)^2 + y^2 = (4r)^2$$
There are three equations and three variables. You can now solve it to obtain, $x$ and $y$ (and $r$ too which will be helpful if you want to physically construct it with a compass).
Answer: Given points A and B, the locus of points P such that PA:PB = 1:2 (P is twice as far from B as it is from A) is a circle, and similarly for locus PA:PC = 1:4. So draw the two circles, and P is at an intersection of the circles. Note that you may get 0, 1, or 2 possible points for P. In the diagram below I show a situation giving 2 points $P_1$ and $P_2$.

Here is an overview of the construction:
1) Construct point $H$ on $\overline {AB}$ such that $AH = \frac{1}{3}AB$.
2) Construct point $J$ on ray $\overrightarrow {BA} $ (not on $\overline {AB}$) such that $AJ = AB$.
3) Construct the circle that has $\overline {HJ}$ as a diameter.
4) Construct point $U$ on $\overline {AC}$ such that $AU = \frac{1}{5}AC$.
5) Construct point $W$ on ray $\overrightarrow {CA} $  (not on $\overline {AC}$) such that $AW = \frac{1}{3}AC$.
6) Construct the circle that has $\overline {UW}$ as a diameter.
7) Mark point $P$ at an intersection of the circles.
ADDED:
I just realized that it would be easier to construct the 1:2 circle between A and B and the 1:2 circle between B and C. Oh, well, what I showed above also works.
ADDED LATER:
I just had to add a diagram of the better construction using two 1:2 circles. In the diagram below, $AH = \frac13AB$, $AI=AB$, $BQ=\frac13BC$, $BM=BC$, and $\overline {HI}$ and $\overline {MQ}$ are diameters of circles $p$ and $u$ respectively.


Using a expander for noise reduction, Yes or No

Question: When I found out that I had gone through a 20 min short dialogue editing using an expander instead of a gate, I immediately went back and switched it all to gate and went back through the project.  Upon going back through, I am confronted with this fact:  the gate is being far less effective of shaving off the thin layer of noise that I was looking for.  The Dialogue was recorded very well.
Anybody use expanders for this?  Maybe I should go back and switch to expander again.
Answer: Gates are usually too "harsh" for dialog work - the shutting off of room tone below the threshold is very noticeable. If you have it, try something like the C4 or the WaveArts Multidynamics to do multiband expansion (both have  noise reduction presets that are a good starting point). These are even more effective at removing noise without harming the signal than broadband expansion. Lots of mixers (myself included) use that as a first go to when we need NR, saving things like the Izotope for more surgical requirements. Basically things like the Cedar DNS (and before it the Dolby 43/430) are very specialized multiband expanders.
Comment: That makes sense, I was getting nowhere with the gate
Answer: multiband expander ftw.

Waves C4, set preset to "4 band noise reducer"
set threshold just above noise floor
set range a little wider than the preset
set gain to taste
profit!

Izotope alloy also sounds great for this application
Cedar DNS is essentially just a multiband expander.
Any of these can gain you 4-6 db of noise reduction pretty easily and with little negative side effects.
Answer: multiband expansion might be the answer you're looking for..
Answer: +1 to Rene.  I actually did a discussion about the C4 for dialogue noise suppression on my blog with before/after samples that you may find useful: http://www.stavrosound.com/blog/wordpress/2011/07/dialogue-clean-out-the-noise/
The C4 is my day-to-day go-to when I don't have the luxury of working with a CEDAR.  But it's not suitable all that well for sound effects because it gently softens/rounds the sharp transients (of say, debris sounds).
Answer: The best use of gates that I know of is to put them on the toms on a drum kit in a live band situation, to minimize bleed from the other instruments on the stage. I don't think I'd ever use them in dialog editing though.
Answer: I'm finding that through the use of an expander, I can decrease the noise background but at he cost of a little clarity of speach.  The expander may be decreasing the quiet noises that occur in speach like "B" and "F"
Do you think this is because the expander is removing ER or other reflections or is it the other reason?
Comment: if you can use/setup multiband expansion (using something like Waves C4) you'll be able to get a little more precise, which will help maintain intelligibility.


Does TCP Cwnd keep increasing if transfer is limited by Rwnd?

Question: I'm trying to understand what happens to the TCP Congestion Window (Cwnd) if the transfer rate is limited by the Receive Window (Rwnd). I know that the transfer rate is the minimum of Rwnd and Cwnd. I also know that Cwnd increases for each ACK received. Suppose the receive buffer is very small, so Rwnd always stays very low, but all the packets are received and ACKed. Does this mean that Cwnd just keeps increasing forever? Is there some limit to it?
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 can post and accept your own answer.
Answer: It depends to which mechanism you are using, and yes the Cwnd keep increasing till your first packet drop happens, you can read more about slow start and other mechanism in the links below.

Wikipedia: TCP Slow Start

Basic slow-start[edit]
  The algorithm begins in the exponential growth phase initially with a Congestion Window Size (CWND) of 1, 2 or 10[2] segments and increases it by one Segment Size (SS) for each new ACK received. If the receiver sends an ACK for every segment, this behavior effectively doubles the window size each round trip of the network. If the receiver supports delayed ACKs, the rate of increase is lower, but still increases by a minimum of one MSS each round-trip time. This behavior continues until the congestion window size (CWND) reaches the size of the receiver's advertised window or until a loss occurs.

Wikipedia: TCP Congestion Avoidance Algorithm
Comment: Hi, thank you for your answer.   It would help, if you could add quotes from the pages you hyperlinked to support your answer.
Comment: Yes, I read that, but I don't think it's very clear. "This behaviour" presumably means the doubling of Cwnd. OK, so assuming no loss occurs, what happens once Cwnd reaches Rwnd? It doesn't explicitly say. During the congestion avoidance phase does Cwnd still increase by 1 for every RTT, regardless of Rwnd?
Comment: No if there is no loss the CWND is increased  until it reaches the RWND, so the CWND increases by 1 for every RTT till it reaches the limit which is the RWND.
Comment: The whole idea of a CWND is how to reach the maximum transfer limit without creating congestion, so different algorithm behave differently, but it goes for all of them if there is no congestion the windows is increased till its limit which is the advertised by the receiver. Think of it this way, what is the point of sending more packets if the intended recipient can not handle them and has to drop them.


Countable union of measurable sets is measurable?

Question: Is a countable union of measurable sets measurable? If the sum of measures of those measurable sets is finite, then their union is also measurable. But if the sum of measures of measurable sets is infinite, then the measure of their union may or may not be finite. Is their union still measurable?
Answer: Yes, it is. The measurable sets form a $\sigma$-algebra, so are closed under countable unions (and intersections). Having a finite measure is not part of the definition of being measurable; it's the reason why we allow the value $+\infty$ for measures.


"Invalid Form Key. Please refresh the page" on Admin login page. I set the wrong cookie domain in the Admin panel. How to change that in the database?

Question: Magento 1.9.4

I am setting up a new Magento 1.9.4 store but I am setting that up for an existing live store which is currently running Magento 1.9.1.
I made the mistake of entering the other domain into the cookie domain setting in the Admin panel and it won't let me login into the Admin panel. I get the following  Error:
Invalid Form Key. Please refresh the page.

I deleted browser and Magento Cache (via FTP) and tried a different browser. I get the same Error. I need to find the table in the database to change the cookie domain there but I am not sure where to look? I am in phpMyAdmin.
I found core_config_data but I don't see it there.
Comment: Search records for path `web/cookie/cookie_domain`
Answer: I found the web/cookie/cookie_domain row and corrected the domain. Deleted the Cache folder afterwords and it works now.


Dual wielding with a Double Weapon and an Off Hand weapon

Question: Is it possible to dual wield with a double weapon and a off-hand weapon? For example, I'm wanting to use a double-sword in my main hand and, in my off hand, a handaxe.
Comment: You can always treat a similar item thematically as a double-weapon, but as has been indicated elsewhere you certainly can't get the mechanical benefits of one in these circumstance.
Comment: Well thanks for the answers fellas. I guess there goes my dream of being like Sentinel Prime using a cool double sword and a shield. But you guys no longer have to answer my question
Comment: Welcome. If your question was answered, please accept an answer. I added to my answer after seeing the shield comment.
Answer: No.
To use the Double Weapon you have to have it in both of your hands (it's too heavy to wield effectively in one hand). So if you want to attack with the double sword, you have to have both hands on it.
But.
If all you want to do is pull a hand off the double weapon, pull and chuck a hand axe, and then put your hand back on the double weapon, yeah you can totally do that. If you're working with a power like say...Throw and Stab, then yes, you can use this strategy (free to take hand off sword, minor to pull hand axe, standard to throw, free to put hand back on, then stabby. Alternatively you can take the Quick Draw feat to save your action economy.
Seeing your comment about your character concept though, I'd go straight sword and board here. Basically take your longsword, and have it be a longsword mechanically (1d8, +3 prof bonus, enchanted as a longsword etc), but when you describe it in game, when you think about it etc, it's the double sword your thinking of. This is 100% supported and endorsed by the rules, and is the recommended out for issues like this.
Comment: What if i was able to use the double sword as more of a shield. than a weapon.
Comment: I added a bit about what I'd recommend seeing your character concept.
Answer: No, double weapons take both hands. This is not as obvious as it could be in the original version of the Adventurer's Vault, where they were introduced, but Wizards has cleared this up with errata.
There's a new sidebar for Double Weapons (page 2 of the linked errata), which explicitly says:

You must wield a double weapon in two hands to use it.

Waxeagle has a good point about being able to throw a handaxe with your off-hand while still holding the double weapon in your main hand.
To be doubly clear, you can't attack with a double weapon unless you're wielding it in both hands. You can hold a double weapon in one hand while you have something else in the other, like a shield or handaxe, but you can't actually use (attack with) the double weapon unless you are using both hands for wielding it and nothing else.


Interior of the image of a morphism

Question: Let $\phi:X\to Y$ be a morphism between irreducible quasiprojective varieties. If $\phi$ has a dense image in $Y$ can we conclude that its image has an interior? It really feels like it, but I couldn't show it. Maybe there is a counterexample? I guess for specific type of quasi-projective varieties resp. morphisms the image is a constructible set. A dense constructible set must surely have an interior, no?
Comment: @quantum By Chevalley's theorem $\phi(X)$ always contains a non-empty open subset of $\overline{\phi(X)}$ -- therefore if $\phi(X)$ is dense then $\phi(X)$ has non-empty interior.
Comment: You mean interior in the sense of "union of all open subsets of $Y$ which contain the image"? This exists by definition, but I don't know how useful it is.
Comment: No, I want to know (equivalently) that there is a nonempty Zariki open set that is contained in the image. Obviously if the image has an interior, then it is dense but is the reverse also true. I have sufficient example of sets that are dense but have no interior in the Zariski topology, but not one for which it is also an image of a morphism.
Answer: The result you are asking for is essentially equivalent* to Chevalley's theorem on the constructibility of the image of a morphism between Noetherian schemes.
More precisely, one may make the following statement (the name is ad hoc):

Theorem (weak Chevalley's theorem, [GW, Theorem 10.19]): Let $f\colon X\to Y$ be a dominant (i.e. having dense image) finite type morphism of
Noetherian schemes. Then, $f(X)$ contains a dense open subset of $Y$.

Of course, for $X$ and $Y$ irreducible quasi-projective varieties this reduces to your precise question.
You should then rest at ease knowing:
a) your intuition is good to suspect this is true,
b) you couldn't prove it (this is a semi-tricky result).
References:
[GW] Görtz, U. and Wedhorn, T., 2010. Algebraic Geometry I: Schemes. Vieweg+ Teubner.
*I mean that many proofs of Chevalley's theorem prove the claim you're asking about as a lemma, and then deduce Chevalley's therorem fairly easily from this lemma.
Comment: Thank you Alex. It is indeed reassuring if an expert tells me to "rest at ease" giving the reasons you wrote. Yes, now I remember solving Chevalley Theorem in Hartshorne (exercise II.3.19 ).  Thanks for the reference indeed!

Interior of the image of a morphism


How can I get a user_reference type field working that allows me to enter names that don't exist on the site as well as ones that do?

Question: So essentially I want a text field to operate in a similar fashion to the facebook tagging text field. By default I would be looking up other users on the site. So user reference field is obvious. However if the user isn't found I'd still like to keep the text they entered as they are just entering someone's name.  Obviously I could just go and code this I'm just wondering whether anyone has done or seen this done before?
Comment: Saving a reference and saving a name is two completely different things. You should decide if you want to save any name (with AC) or a reference excluding non existing
Comment: I appreciate it is two separate things. I'm less concerned about the data structure that the code has to deal with right now and more about the functionality before I go and build it
Answer: Autocomplete username looks like it does the auto complete bit for user registration. It's fairly simple. And could probably be adapted for your UI needs. image annotate looks like it does something similar, but without the ajax.
If you end up making it and publishing it, you can always post it here as an answer.


Running multinode parallel Orca calculation without a work load manager (scheduler)

Question: I wonder, if someone has run (runs) parallel Orca calculations on at least two nodes without a work load manager (scheduler)? I am asking because I have several interconnected servers (nodes) I'd like to run Orca on but there is no scheduler and I could not make Orca run on more than one server (node with several CPU-cores) so far.
Comment: +1. Can you tell us what you tried so far? `mpirun` or `mpiexec` didn't work?
Comment: Orca does not have it's own launcher, when you run full_path_to_orca, it reads the input file for the nprocs parameter (which tells it how many cores to be used), and then it calls mpirun. So the orca executable is simply a driver program that calls mpirun -np 8 orca_scf_mpi or other module executables.
Comment: Hi Nike, thanks for your reply. Orca starts calculations with its own launcher, simply FULL_PATH_TO_ORCA input_file, without mpirun or mpiexec.
Answer: Not sure if ORCA can be run using a user-chosen MPI runner but there are a few steps that need to be done in order to run ORCA (or any other MPI program) on a distributed/interconnect cluster (assuming that you are using an Ubuntu server with OpenMPI already installed (check again that the version of your OpenMPI is supported by ORCA). You have root permission or are sudoer).

You need to deal with a hosts file on the master node of your cluster. In this file, you can specify the name of the worker machines you would like to do the calculation, for example:

$ cat /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1       localhost
172.xx.xx.1     worker1
172.xx.xx.2     worker2
172.xx.xx.3     worker3
172.xx.xx.4     worker4

Note that, make sure that each worker's manager file has exactly the same content as the hosts file of the master node.

Setup SSH for it

The next step would be setting up SSH because this is the way that all machines communicate with each other. This can be done simply as you can find elsewhere on the internet with SSH tutorial:
Install openssh-server and generate a new key
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
ssh-keygen -t dsa

Add the newly generated key to each worker, e.g
ssh-copy-id worker1

Then enable a passwordless SSH connection
eval `ssh-agent`
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_dsa

Setup NFS in manager which the worker nodes mount to exchange data (You can skip this step if the NFS is already set up)

On NFS-server
# Install the required package
sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server

cd $HOME/
mkdir scratch

# Edit `/etc/exports` and add the following
/home/YOUR_USER_NAME/scratch *(rw,sync,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check)

exportfs -a

sudo service nfs-kernel-server restart

You can easily find the meaning of each keyword on the internet
On NFS-worker (actually you do almost the same as NFS-server)
# Install required package
sudo apt-get install nfs-common

cd $HOME/
mkdir scratch

sudo mount -t nfs manager:/home/YOUR_USER_NAME/scratch ~/scratch

You can use df -h to check whether the directory is already mounted.

Running an MPI program

mpirun -np 8 --hosts manager,worker1,worker2 FULL_PATH_TO_YOUR_ORCA

You should try running a simple MPI program, e.g. printing Hello world, to make sure the process above works. You can find more details on the internet, like this website: http://selkie.macalester.edu/csinparallel/modules/Patternlets/build/html/MessagePassing/RunningMPI.html.
FWIW, hope this helps
Comment: Hi, many thanks for your response. The point is, Orca has its own (parallel) launcher (one starts a calculation just simply with FULL_PATH_TO_YOUR_ORCA without mpirun or mpiexec), which takes all needed information from the scheduler environment, if I understand it correctly. At least, it works problem-free on clusters with scheduler (SLURM or whatever). One can feed the launcher with a file containing names of the workers (sort of the host file). Well, one also has to take care of the nodes being in the same directory. Maybe something else is needed ...
Comment: @EvGeniy I see your point. Maybe you had better ask in ORCA forum about this.


Is it possible to extend a local bluetooth connection over the internet?

Question: I want to play a game on my phone with a friend who lives in a different city.  The game supports local "ad hoc" play over bluetooth but does not support play over the Internet.  Is there an app that can do this, with or without root?  Or is there a device that my friend and I can purchase that can "extend" a local ad hoc bluetooth network over the internet?  Or is it possible to install an application on both of our computers that will do this?
Answer: I think the answer to your question is "maybe", depending on the exact implementation details, and my solution is rather complicated...
Assuming the app uses a Bluetooth PAN*, which Android recognizes as a network device (i.e., one which would you can bridge against)
You could connect both devices to the same VPN, bridge the PAN and the VPN, effectively putting both devices on the same bluetooth network, then connect the two games.
You and your friend may need a custom kernel to enable bridging support (CONFIG_BRIDGE) (looking at the two devices on my desk, neither of them supports bridging out-of-the box) (Busybox has a brctl applet, but I've never used it on Android)
On the other hand, it may be easier to just write the Dev and ask for internet play. :)
If you do this, let me know how it goes!
*It's probably how I would do it, but there are other ways
Comment: I'd also guess that the added latency that comes from the bridging involved, and the distance being communicated over, would probably kill the game.
Comment: Heh. Possibly. My quick test of pinging a computer from the computer hosting the bridge gives me a 2.00ms average time, while a computer on the other side of the bridge pinging the same computer has 2.13ms . Nothing scientific here, but it seems like the bridge itself isn't a big deal. The Internet latency could be why the Dev hasn't implemented it himself.
Comment: The game actually does support internet play, but that version doesn't run on my phone.


Calculating valuation (DCF vs Gordon)

Question: When calculating a valuation for a business, what are the reasons to use a Discounted Cash Flow model as opposed to the Gordon Model?  Is one model more applicable to certain business situations than others, or is there some advantage of one over the other?
Answer: Both models understand that the value of a company is the sum total of all cashflows in the future, discounted back to the present. They vary in their definition of "cash".
The Gordon Growth model uses dividends as a proxy for cashflow, under the assumption that this is the only true cash received by shareholders. (In theory, counting cash is meaningless if there's no eventual end-game where the accumulated cash is divvied up amongst the owners.)
The Gordon model is best used to value companies that have an established, reliable dividend. The company should be stable, and the payout ratio high. GG will underestimate the value of firms that consistently maintain a low payout ratio, and instead accumulate cash.
There are multiple DCF models. A firm valuation measures all cash available to both equity and debt holders. A traditional equity valuation measures all cash that can be claimed by shareholders. While the latter seems most intuitive and pertinent to a shareholder, the former is very good at showing what a company can do regardless of their choice of capital structure. A small add-on to a firm valuation is the concept of EVA, or economic value add, where the return on capital (all capital -- both debt and equity) is compared to the blended cost of capital.
The DCF model is more flexible (optimistic?) than the Gordon in its approach to cash. The approach can be applied to many types of companies, at every stage in their maturity, even if they don't pay a dividend. A simplistic, or single-stage DCF is similar to the Gordon. The assumption is that the company is fully mature, growing at a rate perhaps just slightly above inflation, forever. For younger companies a multi-stage DCF can be employed, where you forecast fairly confident numbers for the next 3-5 years, then 3-5 years beyond that the forecast is less certain, but assumed to be slowing growth, and a generally maturing, stabilizing company. And then the steady-state stage is tacked on to the end.
You'll want to check out Professor Aswath Damodaran's website: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ . He addresses all this and so much more, and has a big pile of spreadsheets freely downloadable to get you started. I also highly recommend his book "Investment Valuation". It's the bible on the topic.

Calculating valuation (DCF vs Gordon)


Solar powered mini fan

Question: for a school project I have to do something that needs the environment to work, my plans are to make a solar powered mini fan, now my question. How can I make that the fan ( 6v dc motor) keeps working for little while even after I block the solar panel. Do I simply put a capacitor? If yes, how do I know wich capacitor( values) should I get?. Thanks for the help
Comment: What are the parameters of your panel and motor?
Answer: A large capacitor would work, yes. Just get something rated for more than six volts (I'd recommend more than twelve, a wide margin is a good thing to have!) and a large capacitance; the larger, the longer it will continue to run, assuming the panel was able to fully charge the capacitor before it was blocked. If you want it to run for a very long time, you might want to look at electric double-layer capacitors, also known as supercapacitors, which can have very high capacitance.
Answer: Correct - a capacitor would work. But you also need a diode to stop current going back into the solar panel when the solar panel is covered up. Some panels already have this though. Either way, you can add one, like this circuit, as explained here.
I'd start with a 100,000uF capacitor or thereabouts. Just make sure that whatever capacitor you choose has a voltage rating greater than 6v, and that you connect it the right way round or it'll explode on you. (Not hugely dangerous, but certainly messy). 100,000uF = 100mF = 0.1F.
Or use a supercapacitor (aka double layer or EDLC). These have a far higher capacitance, but finding one with a high enough voltage rating could be hard. Instead, you'll need to connect them in series. Say you have five 100F super capacitors in series, where each is rated to 2.7v. The total capacitance will be reduced (to 20F) but voltage rating increased to a total of 2.7x5 = 13.5v. But if you put caps in series for extra voltage like this,  you must add extra leeway, say 50% minimum, since voltage will not be totally evenly spread between them, and some may end up with a voltage higher than others. So I'd use a minimum of 3x 2.7v caps, but 4 to be safe.
Remember that the higher the capacitance, the longer the fan will keep going - but also the longer it will take for the fan to start going, since the capacitor will steal current from the fan, until the charge in the cap has reached enough for a high enough voltage to drive the fan.
Approximate figures: Assume the fan uses about 50mA at 6v. A 1 Farad capacitor drops 1v per second when 1 amp is drawn. So at 50mA,  1 Farad capacitor would last about 20 seconds per volt dropped. So if the fan continues to use 50mA until it goes down to 3v, then  1F capacitor would drive the fan for 60 seconds. Similarly, if your fan draws 100mA, a 10,000 micro Farad capacitor would last 3 seconds.
Say you have 4 x 100F capacitors in series. The capacitance will be 25F. As above, say you motor draws 50mA. It would last about 25 x 3 / 0.05 = 1500s. Or say your fan draws 500mA, it would last 150 seconds.
As for how fast the capacitor takes to charge, let's say you use the setup above with a 10W, 6v solar panel. In full sunlight it will deliver about 10 / 6 = 1.666A. To charge a 25F capacitor bank to 3v, given a supply current if 1.666A, it will take 25 x 3 / 1.666 = 45 seconds. But the closer the power rating (in watts) your motor is to your solar panel, the longer it will take to charge the capacitor, so the longer the delay for the fan to start.
Comment: You say that you would need a diode to prevent back-current. I actually looked up this exact problem and found some sources saying that for low voltage panels, the lost energy due to back current is less than the lost energy due to the diode's voltage drop. The diode wouldn't hurt, though, and back-current probably still has some damaging effects over time on the panel.

Solar powered mini fan


Injection of EMI to input pins of op-amp in LTspice

Question: In order to observe variation in output from op-amp due to electromagnetic interference I need to inject EMI signal at the input of  a CMOS op-amp.I am trying to do an LTspice simulation on this. Can a voltage source be used for this? Is there any other way to simulate EMI noise in LTspice?
Comment: *Can a voltage source be used for this?* Sure, or a current source. Does it matter ? Is EMI a voltage or a current ? I think voltage or current is irrelevant. You should think about **how** the EMI will couple to the circuit and how to model that correctly. Is it common-mode or differential ? Via the supply or ground lines ? No, that is not so easy as just adding a voltage or a current source. Realize that your results and conclusions can never be better than how you modeled the system. A bad model will give bad (unreliable) results.
Comment: It is a common mode signal. Basically a sinusoidal signal with zero mean dc voltage
Answer: If you want to simulate a EMI injection in spice, develop a circuit equivalent of what your trying to model. EMI can couple into signals via inductance or capacitance. If its a magnetic field then use inductive coupling, if its an electric field, then use capacitive coupling. Or a combination of both might be needed.
Here is an image from electronic.nu that shows both methods.

Mutual inductance  is between two different wires, loops or coils. A wire on a PCB can pick up EMI, first you need to find the EMI source and model the coupling between the two conductors. There are PCB trace calculators to do this. A harder way is calculating the magnetic field impinging on the trace but this is possible if you know what your source signal is.
A capacitivly coupled surface will also induce noise on a PCB trace. Mutual capacitance between traces on a PCB can be calculated. If its between two plates of metal you can use the capacitor equations.
Then you can plug the values for capacitors and\or inductors (if its mutual inductance you also need the K term to couple the inductors together in lt spice) and model it as a circuit.
I will say this, upper bounding/lower bounding on equations for estimates goes a long way because in a lot of cases when calculating its hard to get an exact answer.
Comment: Thank you so much for the response. Is there are any other simulating software in which inbuilt EMI noise model is present(like white noise in SPICE).
Comment: Most spice packages, you could probably run some time varying circuit sims in simulink and or simscape. CST Studio, Comsol and ansys HFSS are 3d field solvers and can run transient simulations. You really need to get the book Electromagnetic Compatibility Engineering by Henry Ott. If you like the answer upvote and mark answered
Comment: +1 just for the veeeery interesting link. I am struggling to find now all English articles by the same author on EMC...


What's allowed for editing for TV movies?

Question: Movies on TV often state that they have been edited for "content", "to fit this screen", and to "run in the time allotted." Obviously, movie rights are held by the studio, so presumably they are the only ones that can approve modifications to their works (outside of fair use, which reproducing 90%+ of a movie is not). What are the guidelines for what a broadcast version of the movie is acceptable? For example, some stations speed up the end credits by 100% or more, entire scenes are cut, the left and right margins are cut off for 4:3 ratios, etc. Is there an official guideline for what is and is not allowed during "editing for TV broadcast"?
Answer: Movie studios themselves provide the edited versions.  They do the overdubs of foul language, and in some instances provide alternate scenes to ensure the movie still runs close to the original length (rounded to half hours with commercials).
One of the most famous and sought-after examples is TV broadcast versions of Fast Times At Ridgemont High, which used to include 18 new or extended scenes not currently found on any official DVD release.  Amy Heckerling, the Director, has said she hated the scenes so much that she will never release them, and with newer and less restrictive laws for what you can and can't show on Cable TV, the only way you can find those scenes is on a VHS tape someone may have recorded from TBS in the late 80's or early 90's.
Comment: The studio decides the cuts based on what's appropriate for television.  Networks have no say, as far as I know.
Comment: I kind of wasn't expecting this answer, but since it is what it is, does the network get any input to what they want from the edit (e.g. network A might want overdubs, network B might not, or A wants triple-speed credits, but B does not)? Obviously, as you've said, the studio can refuse (excellent example), but just curious on that last detail.


what is best way to start bitcoin exchange @India

Question: we are bunch of Full stack developer whom wants to start bitcoin trading platform @india
- with very low cost
- easy process
- easy to use
- Top most security
- super fast
tech we will use for creating platform
- nodejs
- mondodb
- vuejs
Comment: If you need to ask that question on stack exchange, I don't think you should be running an exchange.
Comment: i did't said we are running exchange , i said we are about to create one ..
Answer: In a nutshell:
If I were setting up an exchange, I would look for a back-end that already exists, with a front-end that I could "white label".
Firstly, I am a developer that works with Bitshares, so my advice can be considered tainted. In my position, I know the code. I do not necessarily know the business. So take everything I say and place it in context.
Secondly, I know very little about the intricacies of laws in India, and I never encourage illegal activity. So make sure you what you do is legal within your jurisdiction.
Now, on with the show...
Bitshares: The Code
Bitshares-core is an open-source (MIT licensed) blockchain project that is based on DPoS (Distributed Proof of Stake).
Bitshares: The Network
Scattered around the world are "Witnesses". They take care of making sure the transactions coming through are legitimate. Think of them as "miners" in the Bitcoin world.
Where you may fit in:
What some have done is provide a "front-end" to the Bitshares blockchain. They provide the customer service, the wallet, the website, etc. Bitshares takes care of the network pieces.
I would strongly consider building it with Bitshares as the back-end. It provides "stablecoins" that allow fiat-like balances to sit there without exposing it to the volatility of crypto currency. It provides a trading platform with some existing trading pairs, and you can create your own. There are open-source front-ends that you can "white label"
Answer: I think Bitcoin transaction is illegal in India, You can not convert Bitcoin to INR.
Check below link,
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/wealth/personal-finance-news/your-bank-will-not-allow-you-to-buy-bitcoins-anymore/articleshow/63627123.cms
RBI, while announcing its first bi-monthly monetary policy for the FY 2018-19, has announced that any entity regulated by them such as banks, wallets etc. shall not deal with or provide services to any individual or business entities for buying or selling of cryptocurrency such as bitcoins. If banks, e-wallets and any other entities regulated by RBI are not allowed to facilitate sale or purchase of cryptocurrencies, obviously individuals will not be able to transfer money from their bank account ..


Does the Xbox One controller have pressure sensitive triggers?

Question: Really want to use this for driving games... cough Forza Horizon 2 cough
Answer: Of course yes, it's their main purpose I think.

A standard Xbox One controller features ten digital buttons, a syncing button, two analog triggers, two analog sticks and a digital D-pad.
Comment: I seem to recall talk of a 'Pro' version of the controller which allowed you to toggle the triggers from analog to digital modes (for twitch shooters). I'm not sure if it was an official Microsoft release or a third-party one, but I thought it worth mentioning.


Multistep Equation with Square Root Confusion

Question: Alright, so I have $4 * \sqrt{3} = \sqrt{x}$
So I squared the entire equation to get
$$16 * 3 = x$$
$$x = 48$$
Is this correct? Or do I only square the $\sqrt{3}$ part on the left side of the equation?
Comment: Looks beautiful.
Answer: If you do something to one side of the equation you have to do it to the other. You are correct to square the entire left hand side.
$$a\sqrt{b} = \sqrt{x}$$
$$ (a\sqrt{b})^2 = (\sqrt{x})^2$$
$$ a^2b = x$$
Answer: You can easily check, of course - what is the square root of $48$? But that is simply retracing your steps through your solution.
But essentially, you were correct - squaring both sides of the equation should give another valid equation, but squaring only one term will generally not.


Cocos2D - Layers' backgrounds turn to white for no reason

Question: For some reason during loading one of the scenes in my game, the background to all scenes becomes white (that is, when using fadein/fadeout it does so to/from a white color. I've searched for the phrases ccc3 and ccc4 to no avail (ie I never changed anything manually). What could this be from? It starts when I load a certain scene and then affects everything.
Answer: I figured it out.
The problem was in LevelHelper, which I had used to load some objects in certain scenes. Apparently it gave the user the option of choosing a background colour, which proceeds to overwrite the black background (default C2D) with the colour you specify as soon as a level created by it is loaded (I used LevelHelper to create certain objects which I custom import into my scene).
So I changed the level backgrounds in LH to black and all was well. Alternately I could have refrained from importing the background colour.
Thanks for the answer.
Answer: Set a breakpoint in the dealloc method of your scenes. Sounds like you're maybe leaking scenes, which might keep the fade scene in memory and then it might just display a white screen. It's a guess but wouldn't be the first time that leaking scenes causes all kinds of weird issues.
Another thing to check is if you're using glClearColor to set the OpenGL background color.