What is the meaning of "your footprints were not seen" in Psalm 77:19?

Question: Psalm 77:19
Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.
Your footprints were not seen. What's meaningful significance here?
Comment: We know and perceive God's benevolences on us, however He still retains things that are unknown to us, or sometimes we not understanding the greater plan of God are surprised by what happens through His permission; therefore, even if we can see and perceive certain actions of God, still He remains inscrutable for our limited capacities of understanding, for "His ways are inscrutable" (Ecclesiastes 8:10-12); metaphorically saying, thus, His "footprints are not seen".
Answer: The psalmist speaks of how God led Moses, Aaron and Israel to safety by parting the waters that had them trapped as the Egyptian forces advanced upon them.  God led them to safety but God himself was not seen.
No footprint on the exposed bed of the sea showed them the way forward.  The Israelites had to step out in faith, trusing in God.
As verse 20 concludes:

You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

This reminds me of something I read many years ago.  I don't know who wrote it or if it is copyright protected or not; and I hope it's ok for me to post it here.  It's called "Footprints in the Sand":

One night I dreamed a dream as I was walking along the beach with my Lord. Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life. For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me, I looked back at the footprints in the sand. I noticed that at many times along the path of my life, especially at the very lowest and saddest times, there was only one set of footprints. This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.

"Lord, you said once I decided to follow you you would walk with me all the way. But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life there was only one set of footprints. I don't understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me."

He whispered, "My precious child, I love you and will never leave you never, ever, during your trials and testings. When you saw only one set of footprints, It was then that I carried you."
Answer: In Ps 77, Asaph expresses the inscrutable aspects of YHWH God such as:

God is creator (V11)
God is holy (13)
God is great (V11, 12)
God is omnipotent(V14)
God is redeemer (V15)
God controls nature including water (V16), Clouds (V17), and the earth (V18)
God leads His people (V19, 20)

However, the central point is that uttered by Jesus in John 4:24, "God is Spirit" and as such He is invisible (John 1:18, 6:46, 1 John 4:12, Heb 11:3, 27, Col 1:15, 1 Tim 1:17, Rom 1:20, etc).  Therefore, when God led the Israelites through the sea, He left no foot prints - they were led by God's presence via the pillar of cloud or fire (Ex 13:21, 22, 14:24, Deut 1:33, Neh 9:15, 19, 14:14, Ps 78:14, etc)
Thus, Ps 77:19 is an indirect reminder of these facts.  Benson reaches the same conclusion:

Psalm 77:19. Thy way is in the sea, &c. — Or rather, was, at that
time; thou didst walk and lead thy people in untrodden paths; and thy
footsteps — Or, though thy footsteps were not seen — God walked before
his people through the sea, though he left no footsteps of himself
behind him. Thus "the dispensations and ways of God, like the passage
through the Red sea, are all full of mercy to his people; but they are
also, like that, often unusual, marvellous, inscrutable; and we can no
more trace his footsteps than we could have done those of Israel,
after the waters had returned to their place again. Let us resolve,
therefore, to trust in him at all times; and let us think that we hear
Moses saying to us, as he did to the Israelites, when seemingly
reduced to the last extremity, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the
salvation of Jehovah." — Horne.

The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary adds another insight:

waters … , footsteps—may refer to His actual leading the people through the sea, though also expressing the mysteries of providence.

Barnes agrees:

And thy footsteps are not known - The word rendered "footsteps" means
properly the print made by the "heel," and the print made by the foot.
The idea here is, that there are no traces in regard to many of the
dealings of God, which appear most incomprehensible to us, and which
trouble us most, as there can be no footprints left in the waters. We
should not venture, therefore, to sit in judgment on the doings of
God, or presume that we can understand them.


Is there any open source ransomware?

Question: I'm working on malware analysis at my university and I'm trying to develop ransomware. I'm planning to publish the source code after it's finished. Is there any open source ransomware sample so I can take a look?
Comment: You prooobably could get an ransomware .exe and try to decompile it. But I doubt this could be successful. You should do a software planning about what you need to do. Remember that most of this software is created in taking control of all the system.
Comment: Sometimes the source code gets leaked by someone who paid for it ([example #1](http://blog.shadowserver.org/2014/06/08/gameover-zeus-cryptolocker/), [example #2](https://threatpost.com/carberp-source-code-leaked/101070/)).
Comment: @OskarSkog Not true. MS-DOS has recently been made open source, but you have no rights to use it for anything.
Comment: Uhm, leaked source code does not qualify as open source.  Open source gives your rights to use the source too.
Answer: There is an open source ransomware called Hidden Tear. The code encrypts files with the following extensions: ".txt", ".doc", ".docx", ".xls", ".xlsx", ".ppt", ".pptx", ".odt", ".jpg", ".png", ".csv", ".sql", ".mdb", ".sln", ".php", ".asp", ".aspx", ".html", ".xml", ".psd" by default with AES 256 bit encryption.
It is open source so it could be easily customized to not only look for additional files but also the way encryption is done.
Comment: See https://securelist.com/blog/research/73565/hidden-tear-and-its-spin-offs/ . It was created 'to "teach" security researchers how ransomware works'. It encrypted only files in a certain directory ("test"), but could trivially be modified for actual malware use: Useful for criminals who lacked the skills to write ransomware themselves. As such, its being open source benefited these unskilled ransomware developers (whatever the intention), not the victim (who might be considered the "end-user", depending on your point-of-view).
Comment: The developers of this do appear to have done what the OP was proposing to do. In both cases, I wonder whether the developers didn't foresee or didn't care about the fact that they were providing a free product to be used for a criminal purpose. It does seem an odd thing to do: To give one's time altruistically to facilitate criminals in defrauding people.
Answer: I doubt you'll find ransomware source code floating around in the general public. I'd guess there is code out there somewhere but I wouldn't risk visiting shady sites on the "Darknet" (I really hate that term).
(Un)fortunately, ransomware is not very complex. For a university project, simply encrypting and replacing files in ~/Documents is probably good enough. The trick is making the decryption key only obtainable through you.
Encryption:

Generate Symmetric Key K
Encrypt all files in ~/Documents with K
Send K to Server
Erase all traces of K

Decryption:

Obtain K from server.
Decrypt files with K

I know that notorious ransomware use Asymmetric Encryption, but it actually isn't necessary at all. For example, improperly implemented RSA by CryptoDefense actually made it easier to write automated decryption tools, because they didn't realize that a Windows Crypto API keeps local copies of generated RSA Private Keys.  Putting blind faith in a crypto system won't make it secure. What's important is that the decryption key is not recoverable on the system. Whether or not this is done by zero'ing memory or encrypting K with an RSA Public Key really does not matter.
Comment: *"darknet (I really hate that term)"* I've sort-of come to terms with it after seeing Wikipedia has an article both on *darknet* and *deep web*, and the definitions are surprisingly reasonable. The media might still use it for any digital network that's unknown to them (if you setup a bunch of ssh tunnels and have 100 people sharing unix tips, they'll call it a deep web or darknet because they don't know how to access it), but at least it's a well-defined and reasonable term. More or less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_web
Comment: @Luc yeah, in the last year or two the word has become ubiquitous, so it's fine.
Comment: See [hft's answer](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/158367/2755) for a method to use asymmetric cryptography for ransomware without ever having the private key in the victim's machine.
Answer: No. There is not and I am quite sure there will never be: imagine nuclear weapons are available to buy in the shop.
The spirit of the Open Source community is luckily investing positive efforts to develop tools that protect users ranging from anti viruses such as ClamAV to web vulnerability scanners such as Grabber, passing by tools that are rather intended to assess users' systems such as those you can find in Kali Linux used for pentesting (of course, you can always use the knife to kill someone instead).
But it is true that there are some open source nefarious tools such as ZombieBrowserPack which is a plugin can be  manipulated remotely to steal authentication credentials and even bypass two-factor authentication mechanisms such as the ones implemented by Yahoo and Google, or simply hijack your Facebook account and much more. However, this must not lead to misunderstanding: this plugin is developed by Zoltan Balazs as a POC for academic purposes as similar other tools in the same context: virus code is present freely on Internet but it is intended for academic purposes and it can not harm because any malware which code is released its life is ended as anti-virus companies conceive a protection against it.
Answer: "The Zoo" is a good source of malware for research, including some ransomware. This, for example, is ransomware:
Modern ransomware does not typically use just a symmetric key or operate via the mode described in some of the other answers. A method of operation more closely related to "real world" ransomware looks like this:

Generate a unique asymmetric key pair on the ransomware server
Send the public key to the victim machine for use with ransomware client (already lying in wait on victim machine)
For each file in list of files to encrypt:
... generate random symmetric key (e.g., AES key)
... encrypt file with random symmetric key
... encrypt symmetric key with asymmetric public key
... replace file with symmetric-encrypted file concatenated with public-key-encrypted symmetric key

In this manner, each encrypted file has its own symmetric key encrypted with the unique public-key. Thus the only possibility of recovery is by purchasing the private key, which only exists on the ransomware server.
Answer: You can visit this link:
You will be able to understand how the ransomware works in encrypting and decrypting files. It's written in C and Python too. Good luck!

Is there any open source ransomware?


Server 2012 - migrate roaming profiles to user profile disks

Question: I have a Windows Server 2012 based environment wich includes a small RDS farm (1 broker 3 session hosts). They did not not have "user profile disks" enabled when set up. I'm currently evaluating the possibilities to change this. One thing not clear for me is: How can I migrate the existing "classic" roaming profiles (about 200) to userprofiles disks? I did find a lot of information on how to set UPD's up in a new environment but no information on how to migrate. Can someone give me a pointer on this maybe?
Thanks in advance, dura
Answer: Set the PD up and copy the profiles over to the new disk:
<code>robocopy /MIR /R:1 /W:1 /B /SEC /COPYALL /MT:64 /XJ <source> <destination>
</code>
Comment: But I would have to do this manually for each user? - Logon user so his Disk gets created -> log off user -> copy profile to UPD -> next user?
Comment: If done via GPO not - the Logon will move the profile ("move to news location ..."). If done via copy, you'd have to. If you use one destination for alle your profiles, you can copy all at once.


Why do the Z-fighters hide their power?

Question: Throughout the Dragon Ball series, the Z-fighters (Goku, Gohan, Krillin, etc) all hide their power. They try to hide their strength from normal individuals and their victories are hidden only for Mr. Satan to claim them. If they show their power it may encourage a form of support from humans like in the Buu saga and there may be other impacts such as the reduction of criminal activities. If the  Z-fighters reveal their power it can be extremely helpful for the Earth as a whole. Why do they hide their power and not show the world what they can do?
Answer: Well, there are several reasons for the same:For instance, displaying their powers would result in them getting a lot of attention from the media and people, which is something they particularly would want to avoid. We see Bulma mention this to Vegeta before the Martial Arts tournament in the Buu Saga.The planet as a whole has accepted Mr. Satan as their most powerful elite warrior of the planet, if not the Universe. The People already believe Mr. Satan's true power is comparable to that of the Z fighters if not beyond. Having support from the planet doesn't really make a difference. The only time it sort of mattered was when Goku used the Spirit Bomb against Kid Buu, which Mr. Satan helped power up indirectly.Human beings are more of a liability than support. The Z fighters have a sense of justice and care more about solving the problem and saving the lives of people rather than getting rewarded or acknowledged for the same. If a bunch of journalists and media begin to intervene or come watch the Z fighters fight, it is very likely they would get killed or the antagonist could use them as leverage against the Z fighters.As far as crime is concerned, the Z fighters clearly don't have the time to stop petty theft and crime all over the planet. That said, Krillin is a police officer and uses his strength to an advantage against criminals and he is acknowledged very highly by his colleagues. When Gohan was a student, he spent his time-fighting petty crime as Saiyaman. It is also implied that Videl probably helped him as Saiyagirl after the Buu Saga. Adding to this, even Mr. Satan is several times stronger than an average human and he doesn't get involved in this situation. Even Videl, Chi Chi, and several fighters whose powers are nowhere in comparison to the Z fighters, are still strong enough to beat up petty robbers if they choose to. Hence in summary, the only true benefit which the Z-fighters could possibly gain by exposing their power is probably attention from the media, monetary gain and probably expose Mr.Satan. Even if they did reveal their power, it seems very unlikely that people would believe that they are stronger than Mr. Satan. Also, Mr. Satan could also be considered a part of the Z fighters in a way, considering the fact that he's Gohan's father in law. Also, he's somewhat repaying his debt to them in the form of financial assistance at times, or small other ways in which he can help. The Z-Fighters strength is too significant to deal with petty crime and that is the job of the law enforcement and even them revealing their power, wouldn't really make any difference.In conclusion, apart from the monetary benefit and publicity, there is nothing else to be gained from displaying their power to the world.
Answer: If the Z fighters reveal their power it will result in needy people asking for favours and may impact their lives. Media will constantly be on their backs and they will also ruin the lives of Mr Satan. The Z fighters don't have time for hero figures or justice they fight to protect and others like Goku "to get stronger". If the Z fighters reveal their power it will have a serious impact on their daily lives, on the live of Mr Satan as a whole and time for training would get taken up by their new heroic roles or if they do not waste their time presenting themselves as a hero their reputation will be destroyed. Keeping to themselves and letting Mr Satan appear as the hero seems the best choice for them.

Why do the Z-fighters hide their power?


What to add to a repeating security checklist?

Question: I work in a smallish company (100-200 computers and a handful of servers) and I am trying to come up with a checklist of things to check at a regular basis, such as weekly, monthly, etc.  We use Windows servers and Lotus notes.  I currently have: check logs, check for users in AD and Notes that no longer work here, check admin rights and check for holes in the firewall.  I have basic security knowledge so where else should I look to clean up security holes as well as check for signs of an unnoticed attack?
Comment: What exactly are you looking for? Vulnerabilities? Signs of intrusion?
Comment: Mostly vulnerabilities, how to clean up a system, as well as typical things that get lost in the cracks such as missing users that should be removed.  I doubt we would be attacked but for my own knowledge I was wondering about the signs of intrusion.
Comment: You should be aware that attack prevention and forensics are two very different fields, that require very different precautions, regular activities and perhaps third-party services (think of penetration tests and audits)
Comment: I understand, I am more interested in attack prevention and system cleanup and then if someone could also give some input as to some basic forensics type checks that would be handy.  This is a small company I work for so I don't need to go crazy locking it down.
Answer: CERT's Windows Intruder Detection checklist is a good start.

This document outlines suggested steps for determining whether your Windows system has been compromised. System administrators can use this information to look for several types of break-ins. We also encourage you to review all sections of this document and modify your systems to address potential weaknesses.

It points out in particular that logs, while possibly useful, are not reliable for detecting intrusion.

Proactive auditing and monitoring are essential steps in intrusion detection. It is ineffective to audit altered data or compromised systems -- their logs are unreliable. Establish a baseline for what you consider normal activity for your environment so you can determine unusual events and respond appropriately. See section C16 of this document for more information on audit settings and events useful to detect successful attacks or attacks in progress.

At a broad level, their checklist is

A Word on Rootkits
Examine Log Files
Check for Odd User Accounts and Groups
Check All Groups for Unexpected User Membership
Look for Unauthorized User Rights
Check for Unauthorized Applications Starting Automatically
Check Your System Binaries for Alterations
Check Your Network Configurations for Unauthorized Entries
Check for Unauthorized Shares
Check for Any Jobs Scheduled to Run
Check for Unauthorized Processes
Look Throughout the System for Unusual or Hidden Files
Check for Altered Permissions on Files or Registry Keys
Check for Changes in User or Computer Policies
Ensure the System has not been Joined to a Different Domain
Audit for Intrusion Detection
Answer:
checklist of things to check at a regular basis, such as weekly, monthly,

Check your backups! This is an often overlooked task, but backups are critical to your integrity and availability. The best way to recover from some compromises is to restore from backup. Use your backups to perform restores on actual computers.   Less frequently use the backups to restore to the actual machines being backed-up.  If you have offsite backups, test those periodically as well. The frequency of each backup test depends on your resources and your needs for recovery.

check logs

Don't forget to check logs for your printers, coppiers, and other network attached devices. If you use key cards for physical access, check those logs as well.

check for users in AD and Notes that no longer work here

Its good to check, but you should also have a procedure that when a user no longer needs access (contract completed, no longer employed, etc) HR or the responsible department notifies you immediatly. The check should involve a comparison and synchronization with the HR database.

check admin rights

Also audit all changes made by users with administrative rights.

check for holes in the firewall.

Also do traffic analysis and compare to a baseline.

clean up security holes

Good practice to prevent exploitation of security vulnerabiltes is to stay up to date on the products you use.
SANS has a great blog http://www.sans.org/windows-security/
US-CERT http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/alldocs.html
Microsoft Security Intelligence Report http://www.microsoft.com/security/sir/default.aspx
Microsoft Windows Server Security Forum http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserversecurity/threads
Lotus Security Handbook http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247017.html

check for signs of an unnoticed attack?

A simple approach is to measure your system (computers, network, and devices) in a clean (secure) state. Do simple traffic monitoring and usage statistics, and then periodically and automatically measure the current system and compare to your baseline. A more proactive approach is to use Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and or Intrusion Prevention System (IPS).
Comment: Thanks for the list.  We check our backups every week since we back up to tape and swap them every week and have to go into our backup program so we can see they were successful.  I don't believe we check the tapes though to make sure they were set up correct.  As for the removing users, we do have a setup to get the names of people who quit or are fired, but people tend to fall through the cracks so I am setting us up to regularly check for those people.


How to simulate a blacklight effect?

Question: Is there any way to simulate blacklight (ultraviolet) effect in Blender?
Don"t just light scene with violet colors, but make uv reactive color material or maybe fake blacklight effect?
Some colors change its hue/saturation and become emission like.
Any thoughts?
Comment: According to this https://docs.blender.org/manual/fr/2.79/render/cycles/nodes/types/converter/wavelength.html, Blender stops before non visible rays. So, probably have to fake it.
Comment: I did play around with something similar by using render layers and the Material Override to render the scene a second time, but with materials that would emulate a second set of RGB - which could be deemed Infrared, UV and "ultragreen", which could then be combined with the "visible" render using the compositor. It was unfinished and very cumbersome but did kind of work. Since standard Blender only works with 3 color channels, this was the only way I could come up with of handling additional channels.
Answer: That can be faked with Eevee thanks to the Shader to RGB node. Though probably the proposed setting has some limitations.

The idea is to have a bright light prerendered onto a pure white Diffuse Shader.
If we convert it to RGB then to BW, we can test if it is brighter than a threshold.
From that, we can combine UV reactive part and 'normal' material parts with a mix shader.
If the threshold and lamp intensity are appropriately tuned, other (reasonable) lights won't change the effect.

Note: the fingerprint color here is due to the light color which can be changed.
Note2: could also test if the prerendered diffuse shader has some specific color output in order to avoid the setting be based only on light intensity.
Answer: Here is another approach which works in both Eevee and Cycles:
Use the distance between a light object and the fluorescent surface in order to determine how much the emission should happen. This distance should be used as the factor of a Mix Shader node, combining a regular material shader with an Emission shader.
This causes the surface far away from the black light not to emit any (fluorescent) light.
The screenshot below shows the distance computation, using Objecttexture coordinates of the blacklight (bottom left).

The blacklight's power can be used as a driver to modulate the emission, using Math nodes can drive the emission power depending on the light's power.
Further details and a full demo and open source shader node group: https://github.com/alcove-design/blender-shader-fluo (CC BY).
This animation also shows the blacklight in action.

How to simulate a blacklight effect?


HDD not recognized by MacBook

Question: My MacBook Pro 9,2 suddenly cannot boot anymore (I see a question mark). I started it in recovery mode and disk utility does not seem to see any HDD plugged in. I removed the HDD and I placed it inside a USB adapter, and it seems to be properly recognized by another Linux machine. Then I tried to boot the mac recovery system and the HDD is properly recognized from the same USB case.
Then I tried to install a SSD unit inside the macbook: recovery system can recognize the SSD properly.
Any idea why the macbook seems to suddenly be unable to detect a regular old original HDD when installed with the SATA connector while still being able to detect SATA SSD and to detect anything plugged via USB?
I also tried to reset NVRAM and PRAM, nothing changed.
Comment: SATA cable would be prime suspect. Intermittent.
Comment: hence 'intermittent'...
Comment: But SSD seems to properly work on the same cable.
Comment: I would expect it to fail at least once then on the SSD... I'll try more times to see if it was a coincidence.
Comment: Trying more times confirmed the problem was not only on one device. I read that it is not rare for that cable to break. I therefore replaced the SATA flat and it seems to work properly now. Would you provide yours as an answer so that I can accept it?
Answer: A brief answer - more educated guess than absolute certainty...
The prime suspect would be a failing SATA cable - starting to go intermittent [which of course makes diagnosis harder] - but cheap enough to just replace & see.
It is a relatively common issue.

HDD not recognized by MacBook


Going from a VWP to being an overstay and now applying for a B2 visa with the intent of switching it to a student visa

Question: 4 years ago i entered the US under the VWP and ended up overstaying by an extra 30 days. On my second visit I was almost denied entry but they told me the next time I want to visit I'll need to apply for a B2 visa. My question is: the next time I apply for a B2 visa and get it, can I change it to a student visa once I arrive?
Answer: Yes, you can. Here's Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey instructions on doing so. I am sure your F-1 "provider" will have similar.
Edit: Here's USCIS of the same. It lists the categories that are not eligible for a change and B1/B2 is not among them and says you need to file a Form I-539.


Overwriting file vs fetching from db

Question: Can i write over a module js file in Magento 2?

What are the cons doing it?
Are there any build in functions that allows me to write to a modules file (I know php allows it).

The problem - I have data in database that I want to use in autocomplete field. The idea is that when the data gets updated in databases then Magento 2 overwrites the file where the array of the file is stored?
Are there any cons when the array contains about 100+ variables?
What would demand more resource, fetching data from db with ajax or storing it in a js file?
Answer: I would keep the data in the Database and use a Block Cache to cache the inline javascript data as part of the page HTML.
Then when a user updates the database model (save, delete, etc), you just invalidate that cache... and the next page load for the frontend will regenerate the HTML with the new DB info.

Overwriting file vs fetching from db


How to correctly drive a normal node with lamp rotation?

Question: I'm trying to use drivers to allow a lamp rotation to dictate the direction of my normal node. The problem seems to be that the sun can rotate from 0-360 degrees, but the driver has a limit of 0-90 degrees, so the rotations do not match up. Is there any way around this? Thanks!
Answer: This is a bit tricky, since the value range of the normal vector is (-1, 1). But you appears to control it by object rotation, which circle range is from 0° to 360°. It doesn't make any sense to add drivers between them.
You can use Mapping node to control the Normal vector output, driven by the object rotation (in degrees or radians). However, Blender internally uses Radians instead of Degrees, that's why you'll see the driver value shows in both radian and degree system.
So, you need to do some radian calculation for the driver expression. In this case, on the newly added Normal node (with the "control ball"  UNTOUCHED), you need to add/subtract a half circle for it, which equals pi.

Example file:
Comment: The file has been deleted. Could you please re-upload? Also the formula here is very small and I cannot read it.
Comment: @PierreSchiller It actually lost... I just re-made it for you.
Comment: Thank you so much. So now it's downloadable again? Also, If I rotate the empty, the normal shading on the ball will change. But what if I turn the ball away from the empty? Will it detect the change from its current position to the empty's position?
Comment: I didn't add the visual axis mesh, which was intended for better visualization only, but you can still reference the widget. The drivers just control by the rotation, regarless the distance or position. But I think you can do that with driver in a different setting.
Comment: Oh man, it broke. The file is not working on current Blender 2.79b (daily dev).


Freehub has started slipping, what can I do?

Question: I've just gone through the london winter and both my bikes now have a slipping freehub. Admittedly my mountain bikes' freehub is quite old and probably worn out, but I'm wondering if they are seized up inside and I can apply some lubrication to stop it from slipping? Anyone got any good advice?
Answer: It can happen that the pawls get sticky and cleaning helps. Here's a couple of guides:
http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/freehub-service
http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/article/workshop-how-to-overhaul-your-freehub-23757/
Cold also makes it worse, but this covers much worse temperatures that the UK:
http://www.icebike.org/Equipment/freehub.htm
(And while it's true that "flushing with solvent has not been a reliable substitute for full disassembly", if the freewheel isn't engaging at all, just drenching it with WD-40 can work as a short term fix until you get round to a proper job.)
Comment: Agreed. Just to add to the list of possible workarounds, after flushing it with WD-40 I would "remove" it flushing with some volatile solvent (kerosene is my favorite), to remove dirt and rusty substances, then slowly embalm its inside with high-viscosity oil (gearbox oil is my favorite, it's like appropriate for this application "by definition"), which is thick enough to work as a freewheel lubricant, and at the same time fluid enough to go inside the freewheel by gravity and capilarity.
Answer: Hello Everyone Please pass this on.
I had a free hub I thought was slipping.
It's not the freehub.
It's steel.
It's not the chain, it's new.
Theres no way the front drive is slipping, the chain is wrapped around.
SO
I put a mark on my freehub spline position.
Quess what??
The Rear Wheel Drive spline is Pressed IN, and it slips.
So before you spend money... take apart the assembly, remove the freewheel, mark the spline position to the wheel.
Go slip it.
Teardown look at the marks. If they moved..you need a new wheel.
OR
Here's a trick.
It's aluminum.
Where the two are pressed together, drill right on the interference diameter and hammer a brad into the interface, 2 places.
The washer on the free hub will keep it from coming out.
This applies to NEXAVE FH C500 on TREK3900.
I got the bike because they couldng fix the slip.
Crazy, everyone's replacing the Wrong PART!
Please share!!!!!
Comment: Do you have a picture of the operation you suggest?  The visual would make your idea easier to understand, and everything's better with pictures.
Comment: I don't understand at all
Comment: It would be a very cheap hub in order for the cassete body mount to be stripped on the hub and a brad or other type of pin would shear off under pedaling forces
Answer: If it's sticky pawls, often the syptom will be freewheeling while attempting to pedal forward immediately after coasting. Check for tight chainlinks and excessive cog wear if it skips under load. If it is the cassette body and it's been skipping for awhile, you may well have damaged the pawls and ratchet to the point where the cassette body requires replacement. This is a job of moderate difficulty.
First, though, get the chain completely slack and rotate each link to check for smoothness. If you installed a new chain recently, but not the cassette, that's likely the source of your skipping.


Lacoste shirt during the prayer

Question: Is it allowed to wear the following Lacoste shirt during the prayer? please give proper reference
Answer: Bismillah Hir Rahmaan Nir Raheem
As Salaamu 3laykum,
I hope you and your family are doing well. There is a difference of opinion. Some scholars say your prayer will valid but you will sin for wearing a shirt with an animate creation. Others say it is not valid you praying in a shirt like that (Source: https://islamqa.info/en/answers/83154/ruling-on-praying-in-a-garment-on-which-there-is-a-picture-of-an-animal-or-a-person)
I would err on the side of caution and not wear it. I am assuming you have other shirts that you can wear. Furthermore, the shirt itself should be thrown away as it has a animate picture on it.

Have a Nice Day!

Note #1: If you downvote my answer, please be courteous and say why you downvoted in a comment below.
Note #2: This is my own personal answer that I have derived from what I have researched.

Lacoste shirt during the prayer


Legendary Bear: Died during fight, can't find him anymore

Question: I just got killed by the bear in the early hunt mission. I respawned and went to look for the bear, but it wasn't there. I searched the whole are with hunting skills, but didn't find it. Any idea, how I can find him again?
Answer: Same thing happened to me, what I did was ride a decent bit away and set up camp. Slept until the next morning then rode back up towards the icon. When I did that a notification popped up in the top-left part of my screen saying I was in the a legendary animal's territory. Seems like if that notification doesn't pop up it won't spawn the bear so make sure it does before you spend any more time looking for it. Took me awhile to figure that out, hope it helps.
Comment: I think that when I died during this and went back, I did get a notification telling me that it wouldn't be back for a while.
Answer: Press up on the d-pad. Select the task you wish to replay from there.


Can OCR software read stencil markings on a box?

Question: I work for the US Army and want to develop a device that will scan the stencil markings on a box. Then with software OCR the data captured on the scan. My engineers took a box with stencil markings and scanned it with an office scanner. They tried to use Adobe Acrobat but it didn't recognize the lettering since stencil markngs have gaps within each letter.
Answer: You can definitely do this with the Matrox Imaging Library (aka MIL). It allows you to scan in and save the character set (in your case, the stencil font), then you identify which shapes correspond to which letters (so, in effect you tell it once what this particular alphabet will look like). This character map can then be used to identify the string in any image you scan afterwards. I worked for Matrox as an intern over the summer and I know their software can handle all kinds of skews and rotations, so if a commercial solution is acceptable for you, I can vouch for this one.
Good luck!


How do I change default program to open video files (12.04)?

Question: I would like to change the default program to open video files to VLC player. Currently I have to right click on a file and choose 'Open with...' option which is not the end of the world but very annoying? Is there a way to configure the default program to open video (or any other file types for that matter) ???
Answer: Go to System Settings > Details(Under System section) > Default Applications > Video . Change it to VLC Media Player.
Comment: On my setup, I had setup as above, but then there are many video file extensions that still don't get VLC as the default, so I had to use the solution suggested by tijybba of "Right-Click" + "Properties". But, have to do it every time a new file extension needs to be associated to VLC. So, it is also possible to associate multiple file extensions to VLC using the method suggested here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/57919/how-to-open-all-video-files-with-vlc which involves editing the mimeapps.list at ~/.local/share/applications.
Answer: Since already it is answered in a convenient way , other Alternate would be as here
Right click the file , select the Properties option and then

it will mention the Current Default Application being used to open it , you can however change it by selecting from listed Recommended Applications options (refer Screenshot ) and select the Set as Default option to open it with the selected desired application. If not mentioned there then , you can further explore the Show other applications menu down there.
Also in Changing Default Video Opening Application this method would be more Helpful, since selecting Vlc as default by the other solution would not always open all the video formats with Vlc , it will try to open them by Other default Installed apps, you will have select the default by following this method One time for formats like ,avi, mp4 , flv ,etc.


But without government, who will take care of the poor?

Question: Without government, who will take care of the poor? One government defines poverty as  $11,888/yr for an individual.
Comment: I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's mostly hypothetical.
Comment: If there's no government, is it really a politics question?
Comment: While governments have been with us longer, its really easy to imagine a government that doesn't subsidize poverty
Comment: @K Dog: Indeed, we don't even have to imagine much, since that was basically true of most governments before the mid-19th century.
Comment: @user1530 Do politics exist within a company office, which is not a government? Why do politics require a government?
Comment: @user1530 If that is the case, then all 195 questions tagged 'political-theory' will be off-topic also. That doesn't seem right.
Answer: Firstly, it is usually argued by libertarians/anarcho-capitalists that laissez faire economics is the most/only effective way to increase capital accumulation, which consequentially increases efficiency and lowers costs, improving living standards for everyone. So, in an anarchist's mind, poverty is at most a problem that will solve itself in time. The typical illustration of this is to compare those living in poverty now with royalty two hundred years ago. Considering most have have cell phones, computers, refrigerators, stoves, and all sorts of other electronic stuff that didn't exist then, one could reasonably conclude modern people in poverty live better than middle age royalty. I don't mean to downplay their struggle. My point is to emphasize that we do live in the real world, with scarcity, and there's no escaping that; we're at least doing better than we were.
Beyond that, on the topic of current poverty, two points:

Private charities are 70% efficient, whereas government is only 30%. So voluntary giving could be a little less than half of the current involuntary charity and still have the same total dollars spent on charity. Article with citations [Apparently this is incorrect. See Avi's comment.]
Most anarchists would argue that the minimum wage creates poverty by pricing low skilled workers out of the labor market. Absent the minimum wage, less people would need to be supported, or at least completely supported, by charity. AEI Forbes
Most Austrians would argue that inflation perpetrates poverty by preventing and devaluing their savings while multiplying investments for those wealthy enough to invest significant amounts. Essentially, this amounts to a wealth transfer from the poor to the wealthy by limiting the poor's consumption while enabling the wealthy to consume more. An illustration of this can be seen in the fact that poor people don't have enough savings to both keep the liquid assets the need in case of emergency and invest in inflation-affected assets. They save enough for emergencies and before they can save enough more to invest, their emergency savings have devalued to the point that the emergency fund is deficient. So they continually keep their money in low interest high liquidity bank accounts trying to keep up with inflation, while the wealthy have enough to invest a significant portion of their savings in highly inflationary but low liquidity assets, multiplying their money with inflation. By ending government, one could end currency monopolies, restoring competition in the currency market and end (or significantly limit) inflation, giving the poor a fair(er) chance to accumulate capital and improve their circumstances. Thus decreasing the need for welfare support.
Comment: The "government is only 30%" efficient thing isn't really correct: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/mar/19/michele-bachmann/michele-bachmann-says-70-percent-food-stamp-fundin/
Comment: I think most of this is blatantly untrue. But it's certainly one common line of argument and in this sense does kind of address the question, +1 from me.
Comment: The minimum wage argument has also been debunked by many as well.
Comment: I meant that to be a softener. As in "it usually argued [by libertarians and anarchists] that". This isn't econ.se, so I didn't think it necessary to get into the economics of it. (Though I suppose the question requires I do so.) A lot of this is based in Austrian economics which argues against empirical methodology in economics, essentially claiming that the best you can hope for meteorology-level accuracy, and thus logic is a philosophical methodology is better. Those studies you claim refute minimum wage arguments are empirical, so, to an Austrian/libertarian, they are useless.
Comment: Lots of things are usually argued. That just happens to be one argument. There's many usual arguments against laissez faire economics as well.
Answer: Aside from arguments trying to rationalize making poor people's life even harder or wish the problem away and pretend it would disappear or does not really matter, there are at least a couple of practical answers:

Charity, organized in various ways, did and still does "take care of the poor" in many places. For all the talk about "welfare" being inefficient and demeaning to the recipients, charity is usually worse in both these respects but historically it has been the main alternative to the modern welfare state.
International organizations like the UN World Food Programme and UNHCR. Again, there are many debates on the economical and social effects of these programmes but they take care of the basic needs of millions of people in places where states can't or won't help them.
Answer: I used to be a libertarian, I'm not anymore, but this is the way I used to think and, I think, the way many liberarians think.
As a former libertarian, I would argue that a very small minority of those on welfare are on welfare because they aren't able to support themselves, considering what they are born with. Some people are born with disabilities that make it completely impossible to make a living, but these people can be paid with government money or by private charities, it doesn't make a big difference.
I think most libertarians deep down think that it's better that people get what they "deserve" if that means we get rid of the inefficient, expensive mess that is the welfare system. They also usually think that the welfare system makes people less involved in their own lives, they get used to someone else making the choices for them. When people are faced with the free marked reality, they will (hopefully) adapt to it and be forced to lead their own lives.
Lower taxes and less regulation would also make it considerably less expensive to live, and it would make it possible to make choices that make sense for a poor person, but not for a rich person.
Today, I would say the most common reason people are poor isn't that capitalism is inherently bad for poor people, but that it's very lucrative to fool people in desperate situations, like with predatory lending, addictive substances like sugar, alcohol, tobaco, drugs, consumption, smart phones etc. You need a stable life to keep these forces in check, and it's very hard to fight them when you're already down economically and psychologically.
Comment: You can wish very hard the problem does not exist and people are poor because they are not really trying. Or, equivalently, blame poor people and find some way to convince yourself you are not responsible in any way for the consequences of your favoured political system, ethically speaking. It's certainly convenient and makes libertarian fantasies easier to believe. But does that really address the question?
Comment: Relaxed: Those are the kind of questions that make me a non-libertarian today. Tyler: I didn't really mean Social Darwinism like "people who behave badly should be poor and so should their children because genes!", more like "it's right that people are poor if they do poor choices in life.", not saying that is any foundation of libertarianism in itself, just that it's a common idea among libertarians.
Comment: I don't think Social Darwinism has to be part of libertarian doctrine. I personally see the problems of the poor as having been caused by the government (minimum wages, taxes on the poor, taxes incurred by employing people, inflation, etc.). Such beliefs usually indicate a failure to familiarize oneself with the underlying philosophical and economic framework of classical liberalism.
Answer: The key question is:  Will there be enough law and order that people feel safe investing in themselves, their families, their businesses, and their communities?  If so, in the long run a minarchist society can generate immense amounts of wealth -- enough that even (relatively) low paying jobs pay a lot by absolute standards.  If not, life will suck for almost everybody, and people will wish for a government to "take care of the poor", even if it taxes away potential prosperity.
Many people will be poor.
Many people have a standard of living that is lower than the original poster's absolute standard.  In Marxist terms, a social class' standard of living is the level of material goods that members of that class insist upon before having, raising, educating, and equipping enough children to replace themselves in the next generation.
In today's world, we see that the working classes of many countries (including Europe, Russia, and most of the United States) have a standard of living that is higher than they can afford -- so they have lower-than-replacement-rate fertility.
Whereas most Sub-Saharan African societies have a standard of living that is lower than their current level of poverty -- so their populations are rising rapidly.  Note that most of these governments cannot afford to give all of their residents the amount of income mentioned in the original post.
The poor can get richer.
A few generations ago, most people in what is now the "developed world" were poor -- even when measured by the original poster's absolute standard.  In Botswana, Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan, there are still people who remember that time.
In poor countries where it is safe -- and necessary -- to save, people tend to save a large fraction of their monetary income.  30 - 40 percent savings rates are common in countries that do not have Social Security systems.  Similarly, lightly taxed, rapidly growing businesses often reinvest 30 - 40 percent of their revenues.  Even in countries like the United States, wages, salaries, payroll taxes, and similar expenses typically amount to only 55 - 70 percent of GDP (depending on which "fringe benefits" are included in the calculation).
In industrializing countries, it is common for investments to have 15 percent annual internal rates of return.  In poor countries where it is safe to invest, the combination of high returns and high reinvestment rates allows per capita income to increase rapidly.
Compound growth is amazing.  A 3 - 8 percent annual improvement compounds to a doubling in 10 - 25 years, and a 10-folding in 35 - 100 years.  This has enabled Botswana and Hong Kong to rise out of poverty, even in the post-1973 world.
Families.
In most societies, families try to take care of their own.  Of course, they are limited by their own resources.  Also, they may need to practice "tough love" by letting a wayward family member suffer the consequences of their choices and/or addictions.
In "developed" countries, the foster care system and the day-care system try to match the care provided by healthy, intact families.  Governments count themselves lucky when these systems come close.
Governments create many poverty problems.

Governments define poverty levels.  Many people are materially and spiritually just as well off as their grandparents were.  The grandparents lived before the government defined a "standard of living", so maybe they did not consider themselves poor!

If the government is not trying to "take care of the poor", the following causes of poverty go away:

A minimum wage of 10 $/hour makes it illegal to earn 8 $/hour.
Governments impose many taxes, both directly and indirectly.
Governments establish standards for goods and services.  Some of these standards are arbitrary, or for the benefit of particular suppliers.  These standards can make important things (like food, housing, or sanitation) too expensive for poor people.
Some governments encourage immigration of other poor people.
Many governments provide (and/or restrict) schooling.  Bad schools can cause poor alumni.
Some governments have policies that break up families.
Some governments have policies that discourage poor people from saving or investing money, or that restrict the rate of return that poor people can earn on their savings.  Many American investments are restricted to millionaires.

On the other hand:

Without government schools, it is likely that fewer children would receive schooling.
Some people are either such poor investors, or have such rotten luck, that a guaranteed investment with a negative real rate of return is better than what they would choose to invest in.
A prosperous country with a minarchist government might have even more immigration.

Many poor people will not be taken care of.
Some societies are much poorer than others.
Some societies have more "social trust" or "social capital" than others.  Some societies have more broken families than others.
Intelligence varies widely.  Within a given ethnic group, it varies along a bell curve.  The average intelligence of some ethnic groups is higher or lower than of others.
Wealth varies widely.  In particular, wealth based on ownership of shares of corporations tends to follow a power law.  This power law is a consequence of compound growth.  If the average annual growth rate (for a 5- or 10- year period) of a group, city, or corporation is sampled from a bell curve, after several iterations there will be a few very large groups, many medium size groups, and lots of small groups.  Unless people deliberately pool their investments, there will be a lot more (relatively) poor people than (relatively) spectacularly rich people.
Sometimes people have bad luck.  Weather, crop cycles, business cycles, injuries, illnesses, and diseases are all unpredictable.  People will take measures to prevent some of them, or mitigate their effects.
Voluntary insurance
Purchasing insurance can be thought of as making a charitable contribution that is guaranteed to be useful to you if you are in a particular situation.  Most of the time, the insurance premium is just as gone as if you had donated to charity.  But when you need it (for a particular reason), the insurance is there.
Many people feel better about accepting insurance settlements than accepting charity, precisely because they paid their "fair share" of the premiums.
Fire insurance, life insurance, and even unemployment insurance started as voluntary forms of insurance when the "developed world" was still "developing".
Today, it is common for poor Indian farmers to purchase better insurance for their children's hearts than is available from any American insurance company.  (The Indian pediatric heart surgeons have amazing economies of scale.)
Charities can try to help
If contributions to charities are voluntary, the amount donated to charities will be much less than is currently collected as taxes by "developed" countries.  On the other hand, the donations will be voluntary, and the donors will have the choice to only donate to groups that appear to be doing good.  More donors would be able to afford to sponsor religious missions, which used to be very common.
Comment: Sources for your claims?
Comment: This site is turning into a Libertarian chat room.


Linux program to look into what you're downloading

Question: Is there a linux program that allows you to look into your current download traffic? Something that can list all the addresses I am currently connected to and downloading from.
Answer: check iftop and nload

iftop does for network usage what top(1) does for CPU usage. It listens to network traffic on a named interface and displays a table of current bandwidth usage by pairs of hosts. Handy for answering the question "why is our ADSL link so slow?".

nload is a console application which monitors network traffic and bandwidth usage in real time. It visualizes the in- and outgoing traffic using two graphs and provides additional info like total amount of transfered data and min/max network usage.

To peek into the data being downloaded/uploaded:
Wireshark

Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network. It is the de facto (and often de jure) standard across many industries and educational institutions.
Comment: thanks, I nload and iftop seem to be what I need (don't want to use wireshark in my use case)
Comment: With top, iftop and nload, information changes rather quickly.  Aside from altering the display update frequency, can you give any tips on how to assimilate this information - especially when you're not in the habit of looking at such things all the time?
Answer: Yes, simply run the following command :
<code>iftop
</code>

iftop does for network usage what top(1) does for CPU usage

See http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/iftop/


Ctrl+F doesn't work in JavaFX WebView

Question: In JavaFX WebView I can view view html pages. Although shortcut to find a word doesn't work there (Ctrl+F).
How can I enable Ctrl+F functionality?
Answer: WebView does not support this functionality.
I raised a feature request for it.  The feature is not scheduled for implementation. You can vote for it if you like.
Answer: You can implement the find functionality yourself.
An example would be to create a new HBox in your FX scene that opens when it detects the CTRL+F event with a TextField for typing into.  After this, you'll need to make it so that every time you type in the TextField it will fire off an event to a method where you implement some Javascript that searches through the DOM of your current page based on what you typed in to find.  You can also make it so that your script highlights the word it found, amongst other find related tasks.

Ctrl+F doesn't work in JavaFX WebView


Run Substrate-node-template with wss and secure rpc

Question: I was running substrate node template with non secure ws connection . After integrating with pallet-evm,pallet-ethereum and other precompiles , I wanted to connect to metamask with secure rpc connection (https) but all i get was http rpc connection and ws connection for interacting with polkadot explorer . So is there a way to connect to polkadot explorer with wss connection and metamask with https rpc connection
Answer: You have to proxy it behind a proxy-ing webserver (for example nginx) since the node itself cannot provide a valid certificate. More info can be found on the polkadot wiki. For nginx you can add the following (in an ssl enabled  virtal host), assuming the node rpc port is 9944:
server {
    (...)
    location / {
    proxy_buffers 16 4k;
    proxy_buffer_size 2k;
    proxy_pass http://localhost:9944;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    }
 }

Comment: Thanks. It helped a lot


Discounts on US Airlines Flights?

Question: I am signed up to get Southwest Airline's discount emails. Once they had 40% off all flights and I do see that they frequently have good discounts, deals, etc. Do other airlines such as United, Virgin, Jetblue, Delta, Alaska, etc have such discounts?
Comment: Just a "Yes" answers your question. Thus rendering it sort of a not suitable one. Any and Every company, airlines included, that runs for profit can and may introduce discounts from time to time. The best place to look is the company's website or sales brochure. If your question was about some particular types of discounts, then I suppose it would be a better fit.
Comment: Are you asking if other airlines offer discounts?  Or do they offer blanket "40% off all flights" type discounts?  And even then the question would be non-constructive for the site because if the airlines did this in past doesn't mean they will offer the same ones in the future
Comment: @Karlson. I was looking for such an answer. See below. FYI, I once bought a ticket from southwest with 40% off in Dec and again in Jan they had a 35% off all flights sale. They seems to have these kind of offer every now and then.
Answer: If you sign up for the JetBlue emails, you should receive discount emails on most Tuesdays (the promotion is usually for one-way fares for $49, mostly for travel in the vicinity of the West Coast). This seems to be a perpetual offering from JetBlue, not a one-time promotion. I am a seasoned traveler (flying at least several times a month), and, to my knowledge, the more conventional airlines (Delta and United among them) do NOT offer such discounts. Virgin tends to have monthly promotions, though I'm not sure you can receive email updates. Check their homepage for these offers. The same goes for Frontier, which offers amazing deals on its website. Finally, while Alaska doesn't seem to advertise its promotions via email, they consistently (again, not occasionally) have remarkably reasonable fares (especially between the West Coast and Hawaii). Happy traveling!
Answer: I've found that FareCompare Alerts do a reasonably good job of tracking all airline deals in one place. You can put in your home airport and set up either instant, daily or weekly emails to notify you when prices drop or when new deals are out. They have the usual price data but there are also real people on their team who (I assume) subscribe to airline newsletters and put those fares in manually.

Discounts on US Airlines Flights?


Local mail not signed, Postfix, DKIM, Mandrill

Question: I am running a Postfix mail server for my client. Mail is relayed through Mandrill. Mandrill requires a valid DKIM signature.
This works all right for relayed mail. That is, mail sent through Roundcube (on the same host) works fine. Mail sent from Icedove (from client's machines) works fine.
But mail sent from the local host is rejected by Mandrill. Reason: "not signed". Sending from local host means here using the mail command, or Postfix itself. The latter is dramatic, mail sent by MAILER-DAEMON is also rejected.
What I know is that the sender's email address is reflecting correctly the domain. Using the wrong domain name also has Mandrill rejecting the mail for the same reason.
So for relayed mail, my sender address is email@example.com. For locally sent mail my address is also firstname.lastname@example.com.
What I understand is that Postfix does not have to DKIM sign the mail which is relayed through Mandrill. Mandrill itself is fetching the DKIM from my DNS server.
Nevertheless, DKIM is set up properly in Postfix. When I send directly (not using Mandrill as relay host) my DKIM is valid. Disabling DKIM completely in Postfix does not make a difference for Mandrill.
I am not running DNS on this host, it is an external DNS. The domain is administered using Virtualmin.
I don't know where to start to look, so I did not include any configuration details yet. If you indicate which information is relevant, I'll post it.
Answer: I think I solved it.
/etc/mailname contained mail.abc.nl. I changed that to abc.nl. Local mail is getting correctly sent now.
Problem is, while configuring the server, I set it to mail.abc.nl. But I can't remember if I did this for a reason.
But so far, this problem I posted is solved.


4e Essentials and mounted combat

Question: I'm creating a fighter for a 4e D&D Essentials game. I'd like to model him after a European medieval knight, but a knight is less than complete without a good horse. What are the rules for a knight under 4e Essentials? I have the Red Box and I couldn't find anything in there, unless I overlooked it. If we don't have published rules/attack bonuses yet for Essentials, does one of the PHBs contain the mounted combat rules?
Comment: I got the Hero's of the fallen lands and it has a small section on mounts and combat, although no stat's are provided. I'll find the page numbers later as I don't have the book with me.
Answer: The Rules Compendium page 252 has the rules for Mounted Combat. But has no mount stats. For that a D&DI subscription or the Adventurer's Vault  or one of the Monster type books is necessary.
Answer: Also Page 199 in the PHB,
Short story is once you have the feat (named appropiately enough Mounted Combat) and you ride a creature you gain access to any special mount abilties it confers on its rider. The Monster Manuals have the details for those special powers (contained under the appropiate monster heading).
You are also allowed to use some skills in place of your mounts skills (athletics, acrobatics, endurance, stealth).

4e Essentials and mounted combat


Why were Anabaptists called Anabaptists?

Question: Anabaptism, according to the OED, means "a second baptism, re-baptism", but the answer to this question says that Anabaptists only baptize once. Why were Anabaptists called Anabaptists, then?
Answer: Anabaptists do not consider themselves to be 'rebaptizers'. Their view is that baptism is only valid if it is done as a result of a personal faith and particularly they consider that baptisms of people too young to understand what is happening are invalid. Their members are required to be baptized as adults (or at least to be 'of an an age of understanding').
The start of the Anabaptist movement was at a time when virtually everyone would have been baptized as an infant. Anabaptists would require members to be baptized 'again' (as an adult), not because they believe two baptisms are required but because they believe the first (as an infant) was invalid. Similar situations happen fairly frequently today.
The name 'anabaptist' (rebaptizers) was applied to the group by detractors, who would have considered infant baptism valid and seen the Anabaptists as baptizing 'a second time'. Members of the groups came to accept the name, and use it to this day.
See: http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-28/1525-anabaptist-movement-begins.html
Comment: Ah, so they didn't think infant baptism was valid.
Comment: @geremia They apparently do not adhere to the Nicene "we believe in one baptism for the forgiveness of sins" in the same way that Nicene churches do.
Comment: @KorvinStarmast Not the case. Although they don't specifically adhere to the Nicene creed, they absolutely do believe in one baptism and one baptism only. They are far from the only denomination that takes this approach.
Comment: @DJClayworth Hmm, thanks for the response, I'll chew on that for a bit.


Connecting two TP-Link TL-WA701ND wirelessly

Question: Having two access points  TP-Link TL-WA701ND, I would like to connect each one through wireless, not by an Ethernet cable. Could somebody point me out some link or guide on how to do it, please? I'm searching but can't find information.
Comment: I believe the answer in that case was "no", perhaps a better solution will be found this time.
Answer: I am unfamiliar with your hardware, but if I understood your question correctly, then these seem to be similar cases:
Connecting multiple access points?
Connect router with access point by wifi?
Can I connect my d-link to another access point?


how do i start an msi from an msi

Question: I am building an install file that needs at the end to install 2 other msi files at the end of the install. What is the best way to do this.  I would prefer to make the additional installs optional but most of the users will require them on the computer for the application to be used properly.
Comment: What deployment framework are you using?  Visual studio?  InstallShield?  WiX?
Answer: Generally this is referred to as a CustomAction in most installers.  In my experience, additional MSI's must be chained together at the end of the installation using CustomActions, as it is not allowed to run more than one MSI installer at a time.
Answer: -Prior to MSI v4.5, it is not possible to have more than one .msi installer in the InstallExecute sequence at the same time.  This pretty much precludes what you're trying to do.
-Beginning with MSI v4.5, Microsoft introduced the concept of "multi-package transactions", also called "chaining".  More here:
Windows Installer blog
white paper
Unfortunately, the only OS with MSI v4.5 or later native is Windows 7.  So, while MSI 4.5 will allow you to kick off multiple .msi files, you'll need to somehow bootstrap with the MSI 4.5 redistributable -- it requires a reboot in Windows Vista. :(
Your best bet is probably a stand-alone Setup.exe bootstrapper.  You'll have to write something to show some dialog, allow the user to select what he wants to install, and then kick off the installs sequentially.
Answer: Another option would be to use the completely free Inno Setup to package all three MSIs and have it run them one after the other. That way you get one single Setup.exe file that really installs your application running the three MSIs in a specified order.
If you search for "Inno Setup" here on SO, you may find answers to related questions regarding Inno Setup.

how do i start an msi from an msi


how to solve apt-get dist-upgrade

Question: root@kali:~# apt-get dist-upgrade

 Reading package lists... Done

 Building dependency tree

 Reading state information... Done

 Calculating upgrade... Error!

 Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have

 requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable

 distribution that some required packages have not yet been created

 or been moved out of Incoming.

 The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:

 libc6-dev : Breaks: libgcc-8-dev (< 8.4.0-2~) but 8.2.0-14 is to be installed

E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by
held packages.

Comment: Try apt-get uodate first to get the packages before doing the upgrade.
Comment: @John you mean `sudo apt-get update`, but that probably wont resolve this issue
Comment: In Root may not need Sudo. But in my regular user name, I use sudo apt-get update. Depends on user name on my machine.
Comment: i already used sudo apt-get update and didn't solve anything
Comment: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/592657/full-upgrade-to-debian-testing-fails-due-to-libc6-dev-breaks-libgcc-8-dev
Answer: This is an apparent bug with the gcc-10 packages in Debian: they renamed a package and removed the transitional packages before the release of Bullseye. The following packages were renamed (to match stated convention/debian policy more closely, I think):

libgcc1 -> libgcc-s1
lib64gcc1 -> lib64gcc-s1 (on 32 bit architectures only)
lib32gcc1 -> lib32gcc-s1 (on 64 bit architectures only)
libx32gcc1 -> libx32gcc-s1 (on x86_64 only)
a few others on less common arches

The newly-renamed packages have a Provides: libgcc1 (etc.) property, but it
appears that apt is preferring a real (old) libgcc1 package over a virtual
package that is only "provide"d by the newer package, since it's trying to not
break your system. I am not familiar with the details of the internals of
dependency resolution and installation order, but that's how I understand the
problem anyway.
The way to really solve the problem, at least until a fix in the distro, is to provide "real" (but empty "transitional") packages named using the old name, that depend on the package's new name. I have done this over at https://salsa.debian.org/rpavlik/gcc-10-compat (including a repo to add with the packages). There's more details about the problem, and instructions to use my workaround, over there.
Since I know link-only answers are frowned upon, here's approximately what my workaround effectively does:
You can use the equivs package to make your own empty packages. (You may need to do this on a different system or undo your repo changes, to be able to install equivs!) Once equivs is installed, you'll want to do something like this for each of the package renames:
# create equivs control file named libgcc1
equivs-control libgcc1.control

# edit equivs control file: you will need to set:
# - "Package" name to the old name
# - "Version" to something larger than the old version: 10.1.0-1 works
# - "Depends" to the new name
nano libgcc1.control

# Build a package - add `--arch i386` to make a 32-bit build
equivs-build libgcc1.control

You will then need to put this into an apt repo: do not just install it directly because these will replace the essential, real libgcc, which will keep you from running apt! Making a repo is beyond the scope here, check another question or just use the repo I already made.
Once these new "transitional" libgcc1 etc. are available in an apt repo and you update your sources to choose bullseye, apt will be able to dist-upgrade/full-upgrade correctly, and you can remove the transitional packages after the upgrade is done.
Answer: This is problem with your repository.
Login as a root user and update your repository.
Open terminal and run
gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Replace the old repository with the new repository, save and run
apt-get update
apt-get install -f
apt autoremove
apt clean

how to solve apt-get dist-upgrade


VMXNET3 nic loses the ability to update ARP table after N hours

Question: I have a fedora 18 VM that stops updating the arp table on eth1 after running for a number of hours to days. There are other VMs on the same hypervisor that can access all of the same networks without issue. A tcpdump of the offending NIC shows only ARP broadcasts but no responses. None of the other VMs on the vDS see the ARP broadcasts from the offending NIC.
The only way I can currently solve the problem is to reboot the VM and then everything works for a while. I've tried changing the port on the vDS and even flipping the network configurations after I lose eth1's ARP table, but the ARP problem follows eth1 but I can access the machines that were originally on eth1.
If I statically add the arp entries for machines on the same subnet I have no problems with connectivity. The Hypervisor is an HP BL49X series with flex-10 network modules. Has anyone seen anything like this before?
Answer: Some versions of vmware tools are buggy and drop some packets. This is why I switched to openvm-tools, after hunting such a problem and scratching my head for the better part of an hour.


What's considered a good log loss?

Question: I'm trying to better understand log loss and how it works but one thing I can't seem to find is putting the log loss number into some sort of context. If my model has a log loss of 0.5, is that good? What's considered a good and bad score? How do these thresholds change?
Comment: This thread is relevant here: https://stats.stackexchange.com/q/414349/121522
Answer: Like any metric, a good metric is the one better that the "dumb", by-chance guess, if you would have to guess with no information on the observations. This is called the intercept-only model in statistics.
This "dumb"-guess depends on 2 factors :

the number of classes
the balance of classes : their prevalence in the observed dataset

In the case of the LogLoss metric, one usual "well-known" metric is to say that 0.693 is the non-informative value. This figure is obtained by predicting p = 0.5 for any class of a binary problem. This is valid only for balanced binary problems. Because when prevalence of one class is of 10%, then you will predict p =0.1 for that class, always. This will be your baseline of dumb, by-chance prediction, because predicting 0.5 will be dumber.
I. Impact of the number of classes N on the dumb-logloss:
In the balanced case (every class has the same prevalence), when you predict p =  prevalence = 1 / N for every observation, the equation becomes simply :
Logloss = -log(1 / N)
log being Ln, neperian logarithm for those who use that convention.
In the binary case, N = 2 : Logloss = - log(1/2) = 0.693
So the dumb-Loglosses are the following :

II. Impact of the prevalence of classes on the dumb-Logloss:
a. Binary classification case
In this case, we predict always p(i) = prevalence(i), and we obtain the following table :

So, when classes are very unbalanced (prevalence <2%), a logloss of 0.1 can actually be very bad ! Such as an accuracy of 98% would be bad in that case. So maybe Logloss would not be the best metric to use

b. Three-class case
"Dumb"-logloss depending on prevalence - three-class case :

We can see here the values of balanced binary and three-class cases (0.69 and 1.1).
CONCLUSION
A logloss of 0.69 may be good in a multiclass problem, and very bad in a binary biased case.
Depending of your case, you would better compute yourself the baseline of the problem, to check the meaning of your prediction.
In the biased cases, I understand that logloss has the same problem as the accuracy and other loss functions : it provides only a global measurement of your performance. So you would better complement your understanding with metrics focused on the minority classes (recall and precision), or maybe not use logloss at all.
Comment: Better than my answer, +1
Comment: (+1) Welcome to CV! You can use math typesetting in your post. More information: https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5020/mathjax-basic-tutorial-and-quick-reference
Comment: Great Answer Federico! Maybe I would just mention that in the binary unbalanced case p(i) = percentage of the positive class
Answer: The logloss is simply $L(p_i)=-\log(p_i)$ where $p$ is simply the probability attributed to the real class.
So $L(p)=0$ is good, we attributed the probability $1$ to the right class, while $L(p)=+\infty$ is bad, because we attributed the probability $0$ to the actual class.
So, answering your question, $L(p)=0.5$ means, on average, you attributed to the right class the probability $p\approx0.61$ across samples.
Now, deciding if this is good enough is actually application-dependent, and so it's up to the argument.
Answer: So this is actually more complicated than Firebugs response and it all depends on the inherent variation of the process you are trying to predict.
When I say variation what I mean is 'if an event was to repeat under the exact same conditions, known and unknown, what's the probability that the same outcome will occur again'.
A perfect predictor would have a loss, for probability P:
Loss = P ln P + (1-P) ln (1-P)
If you are trying to predict something where, at its worse, some events will be predicted with an outcome of 50/50, then by integrating and taking the average the average loss would be: L=0.5
If what you are trying to predict is a tad more repeatable the loss of a perfect model is lower. So for example, say with sufficient information a perfect model was able to predict an outcome of an event where across all possible events the worst it could say is 'this event will happen with 90% probability' then the average loss would be L=0.18.
There is also a difference if the distribution of probabilities is not uniform.
So in answer to your question the answer is 'it depends on the nature of what you are trying to predict'
Comment: I don't disagree with your worse case. I am merely saying that a 'good result' depends on the system.   0.4 may indicate a good result for some systems (like the latter example) or a bad one (for the former).
Comment: It's well known a $L\approx 0.693$ is the non-informative binary logarithmic loss (_i.e._ random guessing). I don't really follow your calculations, are you assuming an uniform distribution for $p$ or something like that?
Comment: Imagine you have a system, where you know all the possible information about its current state. Imagine that system has some internal level of randomness so that, given all the parameters about its state, an outcome can be different. Say for example in this system it can range from 0-10%. A perfect model (ie one where its performance is only limited by the inherent variation) would get $L\approx 0.18$. For comparison a system which varies from 0-100% would get at its best $L\approx 0.5$.
Answer: I'd say the standard statistics answer is to compare to the intercept only model. (this handles the unbalanced classes mentioned in other answers)
cf mcFadden's pseudo r^2.
https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/other/mult-pkg/faq/general/faq-what-are-pseudo-r-squareds/
Now the problem is what the maximum value is.  fundamentally the problem is that probability of an event is undefined outside a model for the events.  the way I would suggest is that you take your test data and aggregate it to a certain level, to get a probability estimate. then calculate the logloss of this estimate.
eg you are predicting click through rate based on (web_site, ad_id, consumer_id), then you aggregate clicks, impressions to eg web_site level and calculate the ctr on the test set for each web site.  then calculate log_loss on your test data_set using these test click through rates as predictions.  This is then the optimal logloss on your test set for a model only using website ids.
The problem is we can make this loss as small as we like by just adding more features until each record is uniquely identified.
Answer: As others have pointed out, the - log of the loss = (probability of correct classification). So, for example, losses of -log(.9), -log(.8), -log(.7), -log(.6), and -log(.5), or .11, .22, .36, .51, and .69 corresponding to probabilities of correct classification of 90%, 80%, 70%, 60%, 50%. Thinking evaluatively, a random classifier will, on average, make correct predictions in a balanced classification problem 1/n_classes % of the time, so the loss of a random classifier would be -log(1/n_classes). However, by log laws, this is equal to log((1/n_classes)^-1) = log(n_classes). For n_classes on [2,10], random classifiers should produces losses [log(2), log(10)], or (0.69, 1.10, 1.39, 1.61, 1.79, 1.95, 2.08, 2.20, 2.30) respectively if you're looking for some concrete numerical benchmarks.
For unbalanced classification refer to Fed Zee's answer, and for determining the significance of a better-than-random log loss look at significance testing with binomial distributions.

What's considered a good log loss?


Can my advisor's advisor be a reviewer for a paper written by me along with my advisor

Question: Can my advisor's advisor (he is a very well known person in the field) be a reviewer for a paper written by me along with my advisor (I mean the authors are me and my advisor). The work is extending/generalizing a work of my advisor's advisor. I mean whether conflict of interest will allow this. Thanks in advance. Any help/suggestions will be useful.
Answer: Conflicts of interest have to be determined individually for each author of each work product (paper, proposal, book, etc.). If a person has a conflict for any author, she should not act as a reviewer.
In the case you cite, your advisor's advisor cannot act as a reviewer for your advisor, and thus cannot serve as a reviewer. If your advisor is not a coauthor, then your advisor's advisor could act as a reviewer, but I would likely err on the side of caution and not nominate him as a reviewer.
Answer: Have a look at the submission instructions, you may also link them here. It depends on the conference/journal/publisher/... how they define a conflict of interest. Most likely, this will not work out and is a typical case of CoI if they have collaborated very little time ago.
Comment: @RIchardWilliams From what I see, usually recent co-authors and advisor/student are considered in conflict. On the other hand, you and your advisor's advisor are not automatically in conflict.
Comment: Thanks. Yes, they frequently collaborate. Also, suppose if I write single author paper in the future can he be reviewer ?
Comment: It depends. This should be OK in many cases, however, have a look at the submission instructions.


Please help me find the brand of bike on the pictures

Question: Saw him in the movie "Greta", but I can't recognise what brand it is(
Comment: \*shrug\* It's a bike. Single-speed/fixie flip-flop hub. It's probably had the stickers taken off. Unlikely that any ID will be possible without a clear photo of the whole bike.
Comment: Your other options are to make contact with the movie company, or publicity company for the film, and get some information there.  Some companies go out of their way to make trivia available for IMDB etc.
Answer: The frame looks very much like a generic Chinese singer speed frame. They are sold by countless brands.
I have a very similar bike which was sold as Leader, I think (I bought used). I replaced the rubbish brakes and finishing kit.

The sticker with the brand on the down tube is above the clear coat and peels off. It's quite flimsy. That indicates that the brands are an afterthought by the local distributors.
However, I suspect the bike in the original question was not made for the European market. There are no braze ons for the rear brake cable. It is attached with pipe- or p-clamps. Three finishing kit is probably custom added for the film.
Comment: Interesting. To me it looks like brakes are both black, and the silver part is barrel adjuster and cable. As already commented on other answer, he reason for full length cable housing is that when you remove rear brake and the clamps, the result looks cleaner than unused cable stops. I don't know what you mean by "board" or "brace ons", perhaps turning off autocorrect would help.
Comment: Any sources for "not made for the European market"?
Comment: It is a conjecture. I've change the answer. Largest market in EU require two independent brakes. Flip-flop hub doesn't provide rear brake with free wheel. The film bike has rear brake jury rigged. No brace ons, silver caliper rear instead of black front.
Comment: @ojs autocomplete isn't to blame for I mistyped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braze-on
However, I do indeed often write from mobile devices. And I do often don't catch when autocomplete does match the wrong word. In both cases sorry.
Comment: I cannot follow you with your argument @ojs. Of course it would look cleaner when there were no awful clamps. But with proper brake cable routing there wouldn't be a need to remove it in the first place to make it look clean. There's hardly anything that looks more like a botched DIY than p-clamps. On the other hand, I do not need to overstretch and assumption. If it bothers you edit out. If it interests you share your findings. :-)
Answer: answer  no idea.
However we can tell its a road bike, that has dual pivot caliper rim brakes front and rear.
It also has a flip-flop hub on the rear wheel because we can see a cog on the left hand side of the bike.   There are no shifters visible, so we can safely assume its a fixed gear and single speed bike with a chain-drive transmission.
The wheels both show spoke reflectors, which suggest its a newish bike and the plastic has not embrittled and snapped with UV light.  They have Presta valves visible on the front wheel, and are slightly aero wheels, not old-school box section rims.
Up top there's a bullhorn handlebar, which is trendy with the fixie crowd.  It does not look like a flop-and-chop drop bar because of the slight angle up instead of a curve up.
The frame has externally routed cables.  Whats  somewhat unusual is that the rear brake cable is held on with two visible clamping bands (probably 3 in reality)   This is not common on recent frames who would normally use two braze-on cable stops and leave the inner wire exposed.
Generally - the frame could be anything from 1990 to current.  I'd guess its not 1980s frame because they normally had much longer head tubes.
The front fork has a general design that is more recent, so it could be an aluminium or carbon fibre fork from 2000 onward.  It is definitely a threadless steerer and threadless stem.

IMDB confirms that

The film is set in New York, but was actually filmed in Ireland.

So there's an increased chance its an Irish brand, or at least European.
Comment: To narrow it down, the frame has rear facing dropouts. No road frame has these, because they make wheel removal much more difficult than forward facing ones, especially when there is a derailleur. The brake mounts on the other hand rule out serious track frames. My guess would be one of the ubiquitous readymade fixies of 2010s. The reason for full length cable housing is that when you remove rear brake and the clamps, the result looks cleaner than unused cable stops.
Comment: @ojs good spotting - I missed the dropouts being track-ends so its  a permanent one-speed bike.


Black hole cosmology vs. Big Bang cosmology

Question: The evidence for Big Bang cosmology is an expanding universe. The expansion of the universe is accelerating. Gravity causes acceleration. What evidence is there that proves everything is moving away from us and not us falling away from everything towards a spacetime singularity?
Comment: The universe expands. Space in a black hole contracts, but space in a white hole expands. (A white hole is a time reversed black hole.) So a white hole cosmology is conceptually possible. Specifically, an Oppenheimer Snyder white hole would match all current observations and also explain why the Hubble radius (age) of the observable universe matches the Schwarzschild radius of its baryonuc mass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzschild_radius - Note that the white hole cosmology still includes the Big Bang.
Comment: Aside from the title of your question (which is what motivated my answer), I think the cosmology most resembling its content was described by Wetterich a few years ago, using a hypothesized "cosmon field".
Answer: If everything were accelerating towards a point, then this would impose an anisotropy in the redshift-distance relation of galaxies that depended on which direction they were in.
It is also not the case that the universal expansion has always accelerated. There is good evidence from observing high redshift $(z>1)$ type Ia supernovae that the universal expansion was decelerating up until a few billion years ago and then started to accelerate. This is what you expect if you add a dark energy component to the big bang model.
Finally, the expansion of the universe is only one element that is explained by the big bang model. Any alternative has to explain (at least): an almost isotropic cosmic microwave background; why the oldest objects appear to have particular abundances of helium and deuterium with respect to hydrogen; and how structure in the universe developed in a very particular way.
Comment: Technically, if there were a special point in the universe, and we were near the center, you'd still have isotropy.
Answer:
Bradyglennyeah asked: "What evidence is there that proves everything is moving away from us and not us falling away from everything towards a spacetime
  singularity?"

The observed homogenity and isotropy of the universe, in other words the fact that we see the same recession in every direction, while if everything was falling towards a singularity there would be a preferred direction towards everything was moving.
Comment: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueshift The Andromeda Galaxy is moving toward our own Milky Way galaxy within the Local Group; thus, when observed from Earth, its light is undergoing a blueshift.
Comment: We'd see recession in every direction if the universe was expanding away from a cosmological point near us.  Isotropy is not enough, you need every point to also be the same.
Comment: Also the fact that other galaxies are moving away from _each other_, not just moving away from ours.
Comment: Bad example. Expansion is observed for galaxies much further away than Andromeda. The principle is correct, however.
Comment: Just thought I'd ask I know the answer to my question just wanted to know what others thought. Appreciate the response.
Comment: So a galaxy twice as far as andromeda is moving away twice as fast as andromeda?
Comment: Exactly..that's what the expansion of the universe is like
Comment: Those galaxies are moving away even faster correct?
Answer: "Black hole cosmology", motivated by the similarity between the cosmological horizon and the event horizons of black holes, has been developed since Lee Smolin speculated (in a 1997 Oxford University Press book titled "The Life of the Cosmos") that the cosmos might've developed in a manner similar to biological evolution, with its changes likeliest to occur in regions where black holes were likeliest to form.  Evidence for that possibility remains inconclusive, although much astrophysical evidence has substantiated the real existence of black holes:  Since most stars are in binary pairs, it includes the nearly-circular orbits of stars isolated by the gravitational collapse of their former partner, and also includes the detection of gravitational waves consistent with collisions of black holes.
Smolin didn't elaborate much on whatever mechanisms might be involved, but Nikodem J. Poplawski has, since 2010, formulated a mechanism (described in many papers of his that can be seen for free on Cornell University's Arxiv website) which relies on the Einstein-Cartan Theory of gravity, itself developed in conversations between Einstein and the mathematician Elie Cartan in the late 1920's.  Mathematically, ECT is more complicated than General Relativity, and requires that fermions (matter particles) should have some tiny spatial extent, rather than the "point-like" nature characterizing them in the conventional GR of 1915.
Here's how it works:  When an extremely large rotating star (most stars rotate) has run out of its nuclear fuel, the lack of radiation pressure starts its gravitational collapse, and an event horizon begins propagating outward from the center of its volume.  The horizon eventually separates many virtual particles (including fermions) from the antiparticles that had comprised pairs with them, with the fermions falling inward and the anti-fermions escaping.  All fermions spin, and those in-falling fermions newly-materialized by the gravitational field, 32 orders of magnitude smaller than those which had comprised the star itself, eventually come into contact with the vastly larger stellar fermions, with that contact (the locally big "bang" within the hole) reversing their trajectories and greatly accelerating the velociy of their passage over them:  They are spun outward into a region initially barely inboard of the former location of the star's surface, where they form a new "local universe" whose space will appear almost perfectly flat to its eventual inhabitants.  Its subsequent expansion is more-or-less inertial.
Just as a cosmology based on the Oppenheimer-Snyder black holes would account for the radius/mass relationship mentioned by Safesphere, Poplawski's "torsion-based" inflationary cosmology may have one advantage over the slightly older theory of inflation based on a hypothetical scalar field:  Because the formation of a black hole requires a star of larger mass than the variety of them that, upon exhaustion of their nuclear fuel, would collapse to form a neutron star, the addition of mass to a star nearing the time of gravitational collapse might result, instead, in the formation of a black hole containing a new local universe, which might (given the limited number of types of subatomic particles) itself rather closely resemble a downscaled version of the local universe inhabited by whatever beings would've decided to add that mass to it.  (Poplawski's model might, in other words, allow a more extensive creative power to whatever biological or cybernetic beings might consequently decide to acquire additional mass for their star, as well as reducing the incoherent possibility that any such beings might lack functionality.)
Comment: As it's early to begin editing my post, I'd like to make two relevant remarks as a more temporary "comment":  First, as pointed out on p. 138 in Joel Primack's chapter in the 2017 book "The Philosophy of Cosmology" (published by Cambridge University Press), "our bodies and our planet are made of the rarest form of matter in the universe:  elements forged in stars and stellar explosions", which would tend toward a validation of Poplawski's model; 2nd, it's come to my attention that the possibility of artifice described in my answer's last paragraph is known in recent physics as "backreaction".


SSH Error: Connection timed out : RPi

Question: I am new Raspberry pi user, recently while exploring , I did a remote shutdown of my Rpi with sudo halt command, since then I am not able to connect the Rpi remotely from my windows machine using putty , when ever I try , I get Network Error: Connection timedout error. I guess I have set a Static ip address, as I have not change any configuration to enable DHCP server.
Comment: Do you have set a static ip address on the RasPi or do you use a DHCP server on your network?
Comment: I guess I have set a Static ip address, as i have not change any configuration to enable DHCP server
Comment: Have you unplugged and replugged the pi? It won't boot again until you do so you won't connect because the pi is 'off'
Comment: yes.. I have replugged pi as will rebooted pi several times
Comment: Have you checked whether the IP address has changed??? Running sudo halt isn't going affect anything unless you don't turn it back on :p unless you set a static IP routers can change the IP of a device especially if while the device has been off it's issued it's previous IP to another device. I'd have a look on your router and make sure the IP is correct. Failing that hook it up to a monitor and have a look on the pi to see what network it's connecting to or if any errors are appearing.
Comment: Your question popped up again. Did you solve it?
Answer: You wrote you do not have made any changes to enable using a DHCP server. On Raspbian this is the default setting out of the box. If you do not changed any settings on the network configuration then the RasPi will get an ip address from a DHCP server that is very often presented by the (internet) router. if a DHCP server isn't found the RasPi will use a link-local address that can be addressed with raspberrypi.local.
Seems you have found the ip address from the first boot so you could connect to it. But with a reboot it is possible that the RasPi gets a new ip address. It's now up to you to find the new ip address. Here are many answers about to find ip address. One that may help you I have found at How do I find out the IP address of my Pi?. Have also a look at the comments on that answer.

SSH Error: Connection timed out : RPi


Incandescent bulb for 220V vs 110V and difference of their resistance?

Question: I know that 40Watt,110V incandescent bulb has about 302 ohm resistance of tungsten filament (which is metal and of course have low resistivity) comparing it to 40Watt, 220V bulb which has about 1200 ohm.
My question is ---  how that much big resistance is produced in tungsten filament?  I know about R=resistivity X length/Area but is that enough to get such higher resistance
Comment: The answer is tungsten is a PTC resistor. Nearly all metals are. It has much higher resistance at 3000K than at 300K.
Comment: Your 144Ω are wrong. For 40W@110V, it has to be 302Ω. P = U²/R   →   R = U²/P
Comment: @Janka thanks for correction actually i was studying for wikipidea and it was for 100W@110V
Comment: @Janka but is it possible to generate that much temperature in bulb
Comment: It's glowing yellowish-white, that means the filament is at 3000K. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law
Comment: Almost all of it is produced in the tungsten filament. There may be less than an ohm in the contacts and wire between the filament and effects from these will be negligible
Answer: The different resistances of those incandescent bulbs are made with different length and different diameters of tungsten wires. A very long and thin wire is wound to a filament, sometimes even a double filament. But the values calculated from power and voltage are the resistances in hot condition. The resistance at cold condition is much lower. I have here a bulb with 120 W at 230 V and a resistance at room temperature of 29 Ohm. The resistance in hot condition at 2950 K is 440 Ohm. If we assume a diameter of 0.1 mm for that tungsten filament wire, we can calculate a length of 4.3 m for a resistance of 29 Ohm. I used the specific resistance of tungsten 0.0528  Ω ⋅ mm²/m for that calculation.