What is this "<>" thing above a note

Question: It looks like a crescendo and a decrescendo on one note, but I don't think that's it:
Comment: What instrument?
Comment: Also, title and composer?
Comment: I have this in the clarinet part of an edition of Fantasiestucke by Schumann and in that it is a brief crescendo and decrescendo over a short motive.
Comment: What's the Tempo at this point ?
Answer: "It looks like a crescendo and a decrescendo on one note, but I don't think that's it:"
That's EXACTLY what it is.   Think of it perhaps as a soft-attack accent.   'Lean on' the note.
You'll even occasionally find it written in piano music, where it's essentially meaningless but can be taken as a musical intention.   Composers sometimes do that sort of thing.  And performers sometimes even perform some sort of magic and make us feel we're hearing the effect!
Comment: It seems odd in that case to place it on such a short note, but not knowing the tempo of the piece in question, it's hard to say.  Maybe it's a slow movement and 8th notes are long enough for this nuance to be noticed?
Comment: Yes, I think we can assume the tempo isn't fast!
Answer: Just an informed guess, but my first thought of this unfamiliar notation would be that either the high note should be swelled into and out of, or perhaps the entire phrase of three notes should take that dynamic contour. If it's a very slow tempo, the single-note crescendo/decrescendo is more believable.
Now I can't say I've seen that particular combination of two symbols firsthand, but I have seen the crescendo written like that for a single-note swell. Therefore, both of them together should be roughly what I expect, otherwise that's a misleading symbol. Hopefully this isn't for piano!
Comment: I have actually seen this symbol in a piano score. I think it was Schumann, but I can't remember which piece, it was too long ago, when I was younger. My teacher told me it should be interpreted as an intent: you obviously can't do a crescendo/decrescendo on a single note, but you should feel it as such. LilyPond calls it "espressivo" https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.25/Documentation/notation/articulation-scripts
Answer: This notation is often used e.g. by Brahms, e.g. measure 6 in op. 118/I. I'd take it as a "soft accent". A sort of expressive emphasis.
Answer: Whilst the second looks exactly like an accent sign, it's actually a pair of signs - crescendo and decrescendo. Because it's only involving three notes, the more usual hairpins need to be truncated to fit. Hence a very quick crescendo to the middle note, followed by an equally quick decrescendo through the last note.
Played best on wind instruments, or bowed strings. On wind, the player often points the instrument down, up, down, to exaggerate the effect, which, after all, is extremely fleeting.
Comment: Actually you can see some singers with mics do this: they move the head closer to the mic then back again, but it's more often done the other way with a handheld mic, by getting the mic closer
Comment: ^ with a handheld mic and a healthy imagination :)
Comment: "On wind, the player often points the instrument down, up, down, to exaggerate the effect" - It would be funny to see a singer do this, too.

What is this "<>" thing above a note


Hourly differential backups with append option

Question: With simple recovery mode, a nightly full backup, and hourly differential backups, if the hourly differential backup is set to "append" will the differential file continue to grow day after day after day, or does the nightly full backup cause the very next differential backup file to be truncated so that the append starts anew with a "clean slate"?
Comment: Could you clarify what you mean by "append"? Maybe post the code you're using?
Comment: if your only file which is appended get corrupt, you loose everything. So always use distinct files unless you have a solid reason to justify.
Answer: If you are backing up with NOINIT the backup files will continue to grow if they have the same name and destination.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/statements/backup-transact-sql?view=sql-server-2017

Media Set Options
These options operate on the media set as a whole.
{ NOINIT | INIT } Controls whether the backup operation appends to or overwrites the existing backup sets on the backup media. The default is to append to the most recent backup set on the media (NOINIT).

Personally I always use INIT and a distinct file name (and/or backup the file that is overwritten before it is overwritten)
If you are taking hourly differential backups, you might want to consider changing to full recovery and doing hourly t-log backups.  But I understand this is not always an option.
You don't have a good description of how you are protecting the full and differential backups, but you unless you have a good reason not to, you probably want each diff and full to use INIT and have date/time stamp in the file name.
If you must append your diffs for more than one day, you should probably validate you can restore.  I have not tried it, but I suspect that restoring from appended diff is going to be painful at best.
Note that per this answer you can not use EXPIREDATE (backup expiration date) to keep rolling backups in the same file.


Ensure Quality Transition to New Wordpress Theme

Question: I am using this theme on a blog right now https://www.mhthemes.com/themes/mh/magazine/ and I am trying to change to a more modern theme. What steps should I take to ensure a smooth transition? What themes would be compatible, to ensure I don't lose any widgets? How long could this process potentially take?
Comment: Keep in mind this isn't a discussion forum so you need to write your questions in a way that you can mark an answer as not just the best answer, but **the** canonical answer, that concretely and absolutely answers your question
Answer: Best practice is to copy your live site onto a staging site, where you can apply the new theme and make whatever edits you need to, then copy those settings back over to your live site.
You will "lose" your widgets no matter what theme you switch to. If you are using widgets that are coded in your theme itself, those won't be available to use in any other theme unless you copy them into either a child theme or a custom plugin. Even standard WP Core widgets will "lose" their content - for every theme change, WP assumes you want to start from scratch, so you'll need to set those up over again. This is another reason it's helpful to set up a staging site - you can copy and paste rather than trying to remember what content you had where.
The process depends entirely on how much theme customization has been done, and how much customization you want to do on the new theme, which is a matter of preference and also a matter of your site's unique needs. Theoretically, you could copy everything to a staging site, swap themes, set up widgets and tweak a few things, then copy everything back to production within a few hours. It depends largely on how quickly you're able to copy sites - which often comes down to your host. Some make it super easy while others are more of a manual process. There are plugins that take backups and help you migrate databases which can also speed up the process if you're not using a host with built-in staging/cloning capabilities. And depending on your host's file manager, it may be super quick and easy to copy all the files in your live site folder to a staging site folder, and use phpMyAdmin to download the live database and import it into the staging database.


What level of friendship does Eevee evolve into Umbreon?

Question: I'm playing Soul Silver and I'm trying to get an Umbreon but it's taking forever...any advice?
Comment: Do you want the exact happiness value or ways to increase happiness?
Answer: Short answer: Walk a long time, or feed it lots of tomatoes.
Eevee has a base friendship value of 70. Taking a look at a list of known ways to increase friendship on the same wiki site, you'll observe that the simplest way of doing so is by walking in this generation.
With every 128 steps you walk, the game flips a coin. If you win, every monster in your party gains 1 friendship point. After 150 points, Eevee will have 220 and can evolve when levelling up.
You would need to walk an average of 38400 steps to evolve your Eevee. The exact amount will follow a binomial distribution.

Alternatively, you could use items, but that can become expensive. The cheapest way is using the friendship berries1. To go from 70 to 220 requires you to use 33 of them.
1: These include the Pomeg Berry, Kelpsy Berry, Qualot Berry, Hondew Berry, Grepa Berry, and Tamato Berry (#21 through #26).
Answer: According to many articles on the internet it is recommended that you do the following;

Soothe bell to get happiness up.... Make sure you level at night for umbreon and day for espeon... Best advice is don't let them faint... and be patient. Hair cuts and soothe bells help a lot.

And another source for confirmation:

Getting an Espeon or Umbreon in HG/SS is mostly the same as in G/S/C, except that the time-of-day durations are the same as in D/P/Pt, and the Soothe Bell and EV-lowering berries are yet again available.


Is there any way to select everything that is not currently selected?

Question: I want to be able to select certain vertices, apply a texture, and then select the rest to apply another texture. How can I do this?
Answer: ⎈ Ctrl + I inverts your selection.
Answer: This is one way to add many textures to one object that has several faces:

cycles render
material tab click "use nodes"
texture tab click "new"
click open find texture you wish to use
click material tab look for surface menu
then to the right of color click the little box icon
Color: ______[]<----
choose image texture
an up/down arrow appears
choose the texture
go into edit mode and face select, then enable texture mode
click on the first face and hold shift and highlight each additional area
now press "U" on the keyboard and choose "unwrap"
then go to materials tab and click "assign"
now just add more textures and assign to each face
Comment: This is a nice description of adding a texture and viewing it but doesn't consider the main question **Is there any way to *select* everything that is not currently selected?** which focuses on selecting and inverting a selection.


Prove that if $f$ and $g$ are uniformly continuous on A and are both bounded on A, then $fg$ is uniformly continuous on A.

Question: Let $f$ and $g$ be uniformly continuous on A.  Then given $\epsilon >0$ there exists a $\delta_{1} > 0$ such that if $|x-y| < \delta_{1}, \forall x,y \in A$, then $|f(x)-f(y)| < \frac{\epsilon}{2M}$.  There also exists a $\delta_{2} > 0$ such that if $|x-y| < \delta_{2}, \forall x,y \in A$, then $|g(x)-g(y)| < \frac{\epsilon}{2M}$.  Since $f$ and $g$ are both bounded on a, there exists $M_{1}>0$ such that $|f(x)| \leq M_{1}, \forall x,y \in A$ and there exists $M_{2}>0$ such that $|g(x)| \leq M_{2}, \forall x,y \in A$.  Let $M=\left\{M_{1}, M_{2}\right\}$.  Then $|f(x)| \leq M$ and $|g(x) < M$ for all $x \in A$.  Let $\delta=\left\{\delta_{1}, \delta_{2}\right\}$.  So if $|x-y|<\delta$ then $|f(x)-f(y)| < \frac{\epsilon}{2M}$ and $|g(x)-g(y)| < \frac{\epsilon}{2M}$.  Now consider $|f(x)g(x) - f(y)g(y)| = |f(x)g(x) - g(x)f(y) + g(x)f(y)-f(y)g(y)|$.  Then, $|g(x)||f(x)-f(y)| + |f(y)||g(x)-g(y)| \leq M|f(x)-f(y)|+M|g(x)-g(y)|< M\frac{\epsilon}{2M} + M\frac{\epsilon}{2M} = \epsilon$.  Does this look right to anyone?
Comment: I am a student in analysis like you,but I think your proof is correct, except some minor fix like: $M = \text{max}(M_1,M_2), \delta = \text{min}(\delta_1,\delta_2)$.
Comment: A bit of reordering would be helpful. You are already using $M$ in the second sentence, but it is not defined until later. But the argument you are using is correct.
Answer: And now for something slightly different:
Since $f,g$ are bounded on $A$, their ranges lie in some compact set
$[-B,B]$. Since $[-B,B]^2$ is compact, we see that multiplication $\cdot : [-B,B]^2 \to \mathbb{R}$ is uniformly continuous.
Since $f,g$ are uniformly continuous separately, we see that the map
$p(x) = (f(x),g(x))$ is also uniformly continuous.
Since the composition of uniformly continuous maps is again uniformly continuous (this follows almost immediately from the definition), we see that
$\cdot \circ p$ is uniformly continuous.
Comment: @user251257: Thanks for catching that. A cut and paste laziness.
Answer: The following version of your proof works out the essentials:
For any sort of multiplication one has
$$uv-u_0v_0=v(u-u_0)+u_0(v-v_0)\ .$$
If all quantities appearing here are bounded in absolute value by some constant $M>0$ it follows that
$$|uv-u_0v_0|\leq |v||u-u_0|+|u_0||v-v_0|\leq M\bigl(|u-u_0|+|v-v_0|\bigr)\ .\tag{1}$$
Given an $\epsilon>0$ choose a $\delta>0$ that is sufficient for both $f$ and $g$  and tolerance $\epsilon':={\epsilon\over 2M}$. From $(1)$ it then follows that this $\delta$ is sufficient for $fg$ and tolerance $\epsilon$.


What did Jesus mean by "pure in heart" in Matthew 5:8?

Question: Matthew 5:8 (KJV):

8 Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God

What did Jesus have in mind when he said "pure in heart"? What qualifies as being "pure in heart"?
Answer: Pure
The root word is καθαρός (katharos), meaning:

clean, pure, unstained, either literally or ceremonially or
spiritually; guiltless, innocent, upright...unmixed (see here)

The heart - the thinking organ
To the ancient Jews, the heart was the thinking organ.
Claude Tresmontant observed in his commentary on Deut. 6:

When we translate literally the Hebrew be-kol lebabeka as 'with all
you heart,' we evidently cannot be faulted too badly. After all the
Hebrew leb does mean 'heart.' Nevertheless because the 'heart' was
considered by the ancient Hebrews to be the organ of the intelligence
and not of affectivity, we fail to render the true meaning of the
sentence when we translate leb literally. To love with all one's heart
for us it to love with very great emotion and affection; understanding
this command in that fashion, we are unlikely to realize that we were
really commanded in this passage to love God with all our mind or
intelligence. (The Hebrew Christ p. 190)

What you see is what you get
In the Jewish culture in which Jesus taught & Matthew wrote, "pure in heart" would call to mind (no pun intended) sincerity in thoughts or intentions--these things are not contaminated with sin or mixed with ulterior motive.
To use a modern expression, a person who is pure in heart is not two-faced; they are the same person in public as they are when they think nobody is watching.
Answer: The correlate of καθαροὶ Matthews 5:8 in Shem Tob's Hebrew Gospel of Matthew is "זַכֵּי" (Ezra 2:9; Nehemiah 3:20,  7:14)

**Nestle (privately) suggests that this might be abbreviated from זכריה. Zekharia "Yahweh remembers"
From זָכַךְ (H2141) Outline of Biblical Usage: to be pure, be bright, be clean, be bright, clean (Qal) to be bright, be shining; to be clean, be pure; (Hiphil) to cleanse, make cleanse, make clean
That the Jews who sought external and internal purification would be justified.
The words καθαρός "clean" and καρδία "the heart" appear in Gen. 20:5-6; Ps. 23:4; 50:12; Prov. 20:9; Job 11:13; 33:3; Matt. 5:8; 1 Tim. 1:5; 2 Tim. 2:22; Heb. 10:22; 1 Pet. 1:22 LXX
The Hebrew correlate of the Gen. 20:5-6 is בְּתָם־לְבָבִ֛י  which also appears in 1 Ki. 9:4; Ps. 78:72; 101:2 HEBREW.

So he fed them according to the integrity of his heart; and guided them by the skilfulness of his hands. (Ps. 78:72 KJV)

David cared for them with pure motives; he led them with skill. (Ps. 78:72 NET)

will behave myself wisely in a perfect way. O when wilt thou come unto me? I will walk within my house with a perfect heart. KJV  Psalm 101:2

I will walk in the way of integrity. When will you come to me? I will conduct my business with integrity in the midst of my palace. NET  Psalm 101:2

The term "תָם" "perfect" also appears in chapter 5 of Matthew ( Mattews 5:48; 19:21 ), playing on words in a specific semantic domain.
The terms בַּר and לֵבָב for  καθαρός "clean" and καρδία "the heart" in Ps. 24:4; 73:1, and the interesting thing is that adjective בַּר  has the meanings of: 1) pure, clean, 2) son, 3) grain, corn, 4) as open field.
The terms בַּר and לֵבָב were translated by "εὐθέσι τῇ καρδίᾳ"  in Ps. 72:1 LXX Ps 73:1 Hebrew, which also appears in 2 Ki. 10:15; Ps. 7:11; 10:2; 18:9; 31:11; 35:11; 36:14; 63:11; 93:15; 96:11; 124:4 being translated by upright in heart (Ps. 36:10 KJV) and morally upright! (Ps. 36:10 NET).
The term  בַּר is also found in Matthews 13:25 of the Shem Tob's Hebrew Gospel of Matthew and it is very interesting to know that in Hebrew, the term for wheat seed is equivalent to the term clean and purity:

But while everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and sowed darnel among the wheat and went away. NET free Matthews 13:25

The term בַּר is even more significant in John 12:24, where it is also interpreted as "son" or "pure" referring both to the Sacrifice of Isaac by Abram and in the form of grain the Egyptian roots.

I tell you the solemn truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it produces much grain NET free  John 12:24
Answer: The operative word, pure, in Matt 5:8 has come directly into English as catharsis - a purifying and purging.  According to BDAG, καθαρός has the following meanings:

pertaining to being clean and free from adulterating matter, clean, pure, eg, Matt 23:26, 27:59, Rev 15:6, etc.
pertaining to being cultically/ceremonially pure, ritually pure, eg, Rev 14:20, Tit 1:15ac.
pertaining to being free from moral guilt, pure, free from sin, eg, (a) of persons: Tit 1:15b, John 13:10, 11, 15:3, Matt 5:8, Acts 18:6, 20:26, etc
pertaining to being pure ritually and morally, pure, eg, Luke 11:48.

Thus, by this lexicon, being "pure in heart" is to be morally pure and free from sin.  This is an attribute that we are encouraged to gain in imitating Christ:

• Be pure as He is pure.  1 John 3:3. [albeit using a different word in Greek]

Ellicott suggests this:

(Matt 5:8) Pure in heart.—Here, as with the poor in spirit, the noun
determines the region in which the purity is to be found--the "heart"
as representing desires and affections, as the "spirit" represents the
will and higher personality. The purity so described is not that which
was the ideal of the Pharisee, outward and ceremonial, nor, again, was
it limited, as the common language of Christians too often limits it,
to the absence of one special form of sensual sin; but it excluded
every element of baseness—the impurity of hate or greed of gain, no
less than that of lust. Not without cause, however, has the evil of
the latter sin so overshadowed the others that it has almost
monopolised the name. No single form of evil spreads its taint more
deeply than that which "lets in contagion to the inward parts."

Meyer is more succinct:

Matthew 5:8. Οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ] denotes the moral blamelessness of
the inner life, the centre of which is the heart.

Barnes adds something else:

Blessed are the pure in heart - That is, whose minds, motives, and
principles are pure; who seek not only to have the external actions
correct, but who desire to be holy in heart, and who are so. Man looks
on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.
Answer: It is an absolute expression that rings to the very essence of all humans and does not teach, but just awakens that, which is present in all humans as a Platonic "innate idea" or Kantian "transcendental a priori", for of course everybody understands what purity of heart is without any formal education.
If you say "I love you" to a girl in order to have her body, how can you have a pure heart, for you have doubly tarnished it: by a lie and by a lust. Or, if you plagiarize your paper, how can you have a pure heart, for you have tarnished it by a stealth. Or if you say the Lord's Prayer and do not mean really to forgive those who trespass against you, how can you have a pure heart when you have sallied it by lying to its very Creator. Does not Lord Himself in Matthew 15:18-19 clearly name those contaminations that defile heart and are to be avoided and cleansed?
Pure heart is God's throne and dwelling place, eternal dwelling place, for that matter, but He can only knock there (Rev. 3:20), opening is on our free will and free love; but when He is in, He is not for a time being, but for eternity (John 8:35) and He can tolerate no dirty spot in His temple, which is our heart (1 Corinthians 3:16), until He blots it out altogether (Ephesians 5:27).


since which version does linux kernel support multi touch screen?

Question: I'm having a Linux 2.6.37 kernel on hand and I'd like to know if it support multi-touch screen.
If so, I'd like to know since which version does Linux starts to support multi-touch and to what extend, also which multi-touch protocol does the kernel support.
I tried to find the information on the internet but cannot obtain a satisfying conclusion.
Answer: From 2.6.30, acording this unofficial announcement: http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/6029/, however it is not only kernel problem, it has very much to do with xorg interfaces. The problem in depth and modules needed are covered in Xorg and kernel module for multitouch researcher site: http://lii-enac.fr/en/architecture/linux-input/index.html#drivers .
These drivers are old and information might be outdated for a present day kernels and xorg versions. However from your question it looks like you are keen on using old kernel, so this might be for you.


"Available from" plus date meaning?

Question: I am considering applying for a job, which is a one-year post. Contract duration in the Job announcement reads "available from September 2019 for 12 months". Does it mean that the candidate is expected to start exactly in September or at some point since September?
Comment: Depends on the context. You don't say *what* is available from September. If (as seems likely) it says something like "the candidate must be available from September" then I would take that to mean they want you to start work in September. If, on the other hand, it says, "The contract is available from September" then it might mean that you could start anytime after that (within the next 12 months).
Comment: Thanks for your response. Sorry for the insufficient info I have given. In its entirety it reads: "Contract Duration: Available from September 2019 for 12 Months "
Answer: You should assume the vacancy begins at the beginning of September 2019. It is possible,
but unlikely, that they mean the vacancy has another specific start date within September. If the latter were the case, they would have normally stated it.
Speaking as an employer, I am in most cases willing to wait a little time for the right candidate. Therefore, if the best candidate says, for example, "I am only available from 19 October," as an employer I will in most cases agree to wait until then. It will depend on how strong the candidate is in comparison to the others.
In practice the best approach is to go to the interview, and see how it goes. If you are successful, gently open up discussion afterwards regarding potential starting dates. You might be surprised how flexible they are.

"Available from" plus date meaning?


Orange edges in object mode

Question: i'm having a problem where some edges are shown orange while in object mode and won't go away.
Comment: Check if there isn't another object in the same place which was selected in Object mode.
Comment: Checked, i'm only working with one object.
Comment: it like if those edges were not counted as edges when exported, because sketchfab reinterpretates them.
Comment: I bet you accidentally duplicated those edges (Shift D) while you were working with the mesh in Edit Mode. Check your geometry.
Comment: I think i found the error, those were floating edges, not attached to any face, just a string in the air between two vertex, i'm just deleting them and replacing them using the knife tool (k). i think it will work now :D
Answer: In Blender the selected/active object are outlined in edit mode by varous  coloured lines which by default are highlite only on the meshes's boundaries, aka the edges who are shared by less than two faces

Notice that this behaviour make clearly visible those objects who behave like paths or profiles, who have edges not connecting any faces and fall in the category explained above.

In your case you probably have both cases in the same mesh, overlayed.

If you want to get rid of the edges not connecting any faces, you can take advantage of the Delete Loose tool:

Orange edges in object mode


Why don't we look at $R^2$ when fitting an autoregressive model?

Question: $R^2$ measures explained variance.  In an autoregressive model like AR(k), we are carrying out a linear regression, and as such we would have an $R^2$ and an adjusted $R^2$. Why are they not used in practice?
Answer: IMHO, using the R2 is irrelevant since it would just push you to use a larger regression order $k$ which would generally give you a smaller R2. The idea of fitting an AR (or any GLP) is to reproduce the underlying process with a model that is as simple as possible (since the idea is also to extract meaning out of the different coefficients)
This is why people generally look at information criterion such as the BIC or the AIC that englobe a penalty for the number of parameters in the model with a goodness of fit based on the likelihood of the fitted parameters (and hence of the model).
Now I guess you could consider the adjusted R2 but it would be somehow less general which I guess is the reason the AIC, BIC and other similar IC are popular.
Comment: I don't think this is entirely fair. Of course, when you measure performance on the same data as which you've fitted, there is a bias towards more and more complicated gives better results. However, also with auto-regression it makes a lot of sense to test on a separate set. Secondly, I would imagine that in most practical cases, you have to make a prediction at least $dt$ time ahead, enlarging ones look-back window will probably create better results, but not necessarily on the test set and they will likely have an elbow somewhere.


Clocks Running Fast and lights flickering after new heat pump installed

Question: My old heat pump packed in and a hew one was installed last week.
Ever since i've noticed the oven clock is running fast, gaining up to an hour a day and lights have a constant flicker.
We had moved out for a couple of weeks before the heat pump was replaced so can't be sure the issue predated the new heat pump.
Ive seen other threads saying that electrical frequency could be to blame for digital clock and lights, often related to mains electricity.
Could the heat pump be causing this change in frequency!
Comment: Unlikely.  Have you tried disconnecting the heat pump to see if the clock returns to normal?
Answer: The heat pump is unable to "change the frequency" of mains power since that is tightly and accurately controlled by the power utility.
What is likely going on here, assuming you identify that this problem occurs only when the heat pump is operating, is that noise is being introduced into your home's power and that is tricking the oven clock to display the wrong time.
It's quite possible that there is some installation issue with the heat pump and due to that it being very "noisy" electrically and causing this issue.  Or it could be that the oven clock is just overly sensitive.  Either way, a power line noise suppressor, which an electrician can install for you, may be able to help.  Generally the closer to the noise source one of these can be installed, the more effective they are.
Comment: agreed, and the noise could be coming from PWM currents for the heat pump motor. A poor ground, neutral or line for the pump could be contributing to excessive ingress. Many older digital clocks synchronize on the line AC frequency, and such inteference or noise could be adding cycles susceptible to the the clock, advancing time. The benefit is you could now often find yourself with time to spare.


Enable ReadyBoost on a second internal HDD?

Question: I have two SATA HDDs in my desktop PC (one for daily activity, one for storage and backup). I can finely use ReadyBoost with pendrives, but I wonder, Is there a way I could use my underutilized second HDD to participate in the cacheing mechanism (same concept as having two CPU cores crunch things in parallel: have two HDDs fetch data in parallel)? Clearly speaking: I want to enable ReadyBoost on my separate D: drive.
Comment: Your question is not entirely clear. Do you want to use a HDD as readyboot, or employ a technique similar to readyboost to you HDDs to improve their performance?
Comment: I want to use my second HDD for ReadyBoost. Unfortunately, it is NTFS (I can repartition it to have a FAT32 part) and the properties page doesn't list readyboost tab. I read somewhere I could force any? drive to be readyboost in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDMgmt\ but I don't know which one of the subkeys are for my disks
Answer: ReadyBoost is designed to take advantage of the almost non-existant latency of most flash drives to get small amounts of data into memory quickly. A modern hard drive will still easily out transfer most usb flash drives (50-100MB/s vs. 10-20MB/s) after just a few hundred milliseconds on average.
There really isn't a good way to enable your suggested scenario, or a performance reason to consider it. You would be better off using your second hard drive in a RAID1 configuration (some controllers support parallel reading), or possibly offloading programs/data that won't have to contend for I/O with the boot drive. You would be amazed at the near constant amount of small I/O that happens on the boot drive.
Comment: Is there a built in performance counter to measure the effectiveness of a ReadyBoosted system btw? I once moved my swap file to my second HDD on WinXP - could not feel any improvement but basically lost the ability to send crash dumps to MS. Bottom line: I'm looking for simple software methods and would decide to keep it on my experience.
Comment: my concern would be the latency involved with seeking the data. That is the advantage w/ thumb drives. they are solid state, seek is ~0
Answer: im almost certain that a hdd is much to slow to be used with ready boost for any real gain
edit: after reading you post again it seems like you are referring to load balancing across the disks (RAID). RAID 0 distributes (stripes) data across 2 disk to improve performance. But if one fails everything is lost. RAID5 does this plus protects against the loss of data given 1 disk failure
Comment: Almost, but I don't know RAID in detail, I guess there is a way to join the two drives in an interleaved way with RAID? But yes, use the ReadyBoost concept for 'load balancing' for the SuperFetch and stuff.
Comment: I'd like to avoid RAID as I would need a complete system rebuild. Isn't RAID 0 a simple mirror - e.g. I would loose half of my total capacity for this small improvement? Even though HDDs are cheap nowadays, I'd rather ask windows to dispatch between my HDDs.
Comment: thats RAID1 that u are thinking of. it does full mirroring. The link my original post is to the wiki article which explains it all. I really think if you are going for a performance boot raid is going to be the way to go.
Answer: I think that the memory card reader interface is not as fast as the SATA interface. I thought that the USB2.0 data transfer rate is 400mbps where as the SATA3 transfer rate is 600mbps. In burst, i get transfer rates up to 68mb per second SATA to SATA where as I get only 20mb per second tops from the memory card.
If you are trying to impliment ready boost, make sure you are using a USB3.0 interface card reader (must be USB3.0 on both motherboard and card reader) AND your memory card must be a high speed one too.
Answer: Some misconceptions to clarify:

3rd Gen SATA is 6000Mbps.
Yes, most HDDs out-transfer USB2.0, however, only in sequential r/w. the kind of perfomance ReadyBoost was developed for is based on random r/w, which all flash drives easily trounce magnetic drives. This is a function of random access time.
You can't enable ReadyBoost on an internal hard drive, because it's a hard drive. There's no benefit. If the extra hard drive happens to be faster than your system hard drive, you should just install Windows on the faster drive.
Otherwise just instruct Windows to create a large page file on that drive.
Answer: Windows has no way to enable ReadyBoost for second hard drives when the OS drive already is a low-latency SSD.
But a few alternative things:
SysMain (nee SuperFetch)
Windows SysMain service (formerly known as SuperFetch) will proactively load files from your hard disk that it knows you will use, and cache them in unused RAM. For example, on my desktop with 50 GB of RAM, Windows is actually only using 25 GB. Rather than the other 25 GB going to waste, Windows will actually use it as a disk cache. And if Windows then actually does need more memory, it can instantly throw away some of those cache pages, because the data is already on disk.
Intel RST
Intel chipsets have a feature where you can use an SSD as a cache for a spinning rust HDD. You have to have the motherboard that has the feature, that exposes it, and lets you enable it. And you're then at the mercy of the Intel chipset and software.
PrimoCache
There's a 3rd party application that you can use to cache an HDD onto an SSD. PrimoCache lets you use an empty volume as a cache for a disk.


flipping the UART rx/tx pins on an arduino

Question: I managed to flip the rx/tx lines on a project I'm working on. My GPS RX is going to my ATMega's RX, which is clearly wrong. Since the pin map lists the rx2 and tx2 lines as pins D16 and D17, I'm hoping I can work around this for the time being by using SoftwareSerial over those pins and flipping them virtually. This doesn't seem to be working. Is there something I need to do to disable the native UART? Can this work in principle?
Comment: This is about an Arduino mega, so would you change the title of the question to include "Mega"? I assume the GPS is connected to pin D16 and D17. It might help if you included your simplest test program as an example in your question. I'd expect software-serial to work over any pair of digital pins, and sort out driving the pins correctly, but I haven't checked that is the case.  I can just about imagine it isn't expecting to run over a hardware UART, but it is quite a mature piece of software, so I am surprised. Have you put an LED on Rx and Tx (or used an oscilloscope) to check for activity?
Comment: Is possible to patch your arduino shield, or extend with extra set of `Arduino Stackable Header` and swap just the RX/TX pins? ... You're not the first -- in 20+ years, the most common error I've seen on UART/RS232 serial applications is mistakenly connecting TX to TX and RX to RX, but actually each TX output should drive the other device's RX input. Usually it's correct to connect similarly named pins together (GND, VCC, A[0..], D[0..]), and the serial port application is an exception to that rule.
Answer: Cut the traces with a razor knife and use a wiring pencil to solder in a crossed connection to fix the wiring problem.
Comment: +1 for mentioning _wiring pencil_, a tool I have never heard of.
Answer: There is no pin change interrupt available on PH1, hence you cannot use SoftwareSerial. You will need to resort to a polled software UART instead.
Comment: I believe in the softserial library there is a flag to use either polling or pc change or polling. (Not at desk to verify.)


Which TV series was the first to feature a human-looking android in a recurring role?

Question: I'm looking for the first show that repeatedly placed a human on screen in the role of a mechanical man/woman that looks like a regular person without obvious "I'm a robot" make up. Secret robot access panels like the ones we see on Commander Data are OK.
Comment: A helpful [List of Fictional Robots and Androids](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_robots_and_androids#1960s_and_earlier)
Answer: There was a short-lived comedy (1964-1965, 26 episodes) called My Living Doll.  Starred Robert Cummings and Julie Newmar.  Julie played the character Rhoda Miller, a lifelike android.
From the IMDB page -

Rhoda is an extremely sexy young woman living with womanizing Air Force shrink Bob McDonald. What Bob knows and the rest of the world does not is that Rhoda's real name is AF 709, and she is actually a sophisticated (yet naive) robot. Bob's job is to teach Rhoda how to be a "perfect" woman, and keep her identity secret from the world -- especially lecherous neighbor Peter. When actor Bob Cummings left the series in early 1965, his character was written out of the series, and Peter was given the duty of taking care of Rhoda.
Answer: The only thing that comes to mind is the Get Smart TV show (1965-1970) which had Hymie the Robot:
Hymie the Robot (Richard "Dick" Gautier) is a humanoid robot built by Dr. Ratton to serve KAOS, but in his first mission, Smart manages to turn him to the side of CONTROL.
Hymie has numerous superhuman abilities, such as being physically stronger and faster than any human and being able to swallow poisons and register their name, type, and quantity, though his design does not include superhuman mental processing, most significantly characterized by an overly literal interpretation of commands.
For example, when Smart tells Hymie to "get a hold of yourself," he grasps each arm with the other. Hymie also has emotions and is "programmed for neatness."
Over the next three years, Hymie increasingly discovers his humanity.
Hymie looks completely normal but has a massive amount of wires/circuitry under his shirt.
My favorite Hymie moment was when Max says, "Kill the light" and Hymie shoots the light with a silencer.
Answer: Well Rosie, the maid from The Jetsons first appeared in 1962.
I would say she qualifies as the first mechanical robot regular on a television series, especially as The Jetsons originally aired in PRIMETIME.
Though Andromeda from the UK series A for Andromeda (1961) was a robot, though a biological robot.  She was built in a lab by humans and designed by an alien super-computer.
Comment: Question asked for 'first to have a human portray a human looking robot'.  How does Rosie qualify ?  With that said, A for Andromeda appears to qualify.  Looks like Julie Christie portrayed a human looking robot/android and is earlier than my answer below.  The series is noted in the Wiki link I posted as comment on the question.  Guess I didn't do due diligence when I reviewed the list. :)  Nice job !  +1
Answer: I'm going to guess Future Cop. It first aired in 1976 and featured a police officer being partnered with a human-like experimental android.
Answer: The earliest human-looking android (that were actually referred to as androids)  I've seen on television is from Star Trek: The Original Series, aired on 10/19/1966 S1E7; "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"
Comment: Which android is that? Can you provide a picture?
Comment: while informative in that it cites a show w/ an android, it is not a good answer since the accepted one features a recurring character two years prior to the Star Trek episode, naming semantics aside


Create gradient blurred background

Question: I want to create a blurred gradient background effect similar to the designs below. How can I do this using Inkscape or Photoshop/Illustrator?
Comment: Use the gradient tool. These appear to be simple radial gradients. This is possible in nearly any graphic design software such as, Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity Design, Photoshop, or GIMP.
Answer: Could be a simple gradient in Illustrator. If one wishes more control, then a Gradient Mesh may help.

For Photoshop one just uses the Gradient Tool with subtle foreground/background colors and click-drags.

The key is to use subtle color changes. In these images the difference between the dark (black) and the color is minute, merely reducing the amount of black (or increasing saturation) so more of the color shows.

Create gradient blurred background


Power analysis after placement and routing of ASIC

Question: How can I procure the files stating the details of power consumption of the chip after PNR in SOC Cadence Encounter?
Answer: Unless you have a script or flow to automatically run STA after routing, you need to run the report_timing command. If you're running some type of script, check the log (or the script itself) to see if a timing report has already been generated. It depends on your (or your lab's) environment and scripts.
Answer: You can use the 'report_power' at any stage of the flow to find out the power measurements.


Enabling net.tcp in IIS7

Question: How can I make IIS handle net.tcp connections?
Answer: You need to add net.tcp to the enabled protocols of your site. Go to IIS Manager, right-click on your website, go to 'Manage Web Site' or 'Manage Application', then to 'Advanced Settings...'. There you see 'Enabled Protocols'. It probably says http. Change it to http,net.tcp.
If you want to configure bindings, right-click on your website and go to 'Edit Bindings...'. The default net.tcp binding is 808:*.
If you want to use WCF services hosted by IIS behind net.tcp, you may also want to check whether you have activated the required Windows Features. Go to your Windows Features and check you have activated 'Windows Communication Foundation Non-HTTP Activation' (found under 'Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1').
When you activate this feature, you will get some extra Windows Services. If it still doesn't work, check that the Windows Service named 'Net.Tcp Listener Adapter' is running (it should start automatically but sometimes it doesn't and this is the first place I check when one of my net.tcp services stops working).
Comment: I suppose you are either looking in the wrong place or you do not have sufficient rights to do this (although I've never heard of this) or you may not have enabled the required Windows Features (maybe the 'Enabled Protocols' option is not visible if you haven't enabled 'Windows Communication Foundation Non-HTTP Activation', although that doesn't seem very likely).
Comment: If you do not want any http(s) traffic to IIS, this will work.
Comment: The problem I was having is that Net.Tcp Listener Adapter Service wouldn't finish starting... it would just hang.  Adding, 'Windows Communication Foundation Non-HTTP Activation' fixed this... no idea why, but thanks : )
Comment: what if i remove http from the protocols for the service in IIS and have only net.tcp. will the service be activated?
Comment: I know this is an old answer, but what does it mean if "Enabled Protocols" doesn't show as an option in IIS manager?  I'm using IIS 7.5 in Windows 7.
Answer: This might help someone in the future. I created a powershell script that will come in useful if you need to automate the creation of the bindings.
It will automatically check if the binding exists already and only add it when required.
Actual Script
Import-Module WebAdministration

$websites = Get-ChildItem 'IIS:\Sites'
$site = $websites | Where-object { $_.Name -eq 'Default Web Site' }
$netTcpExists = [bool]($site.bindings.Collection | ? { $_.bindingInformation -eq '808:*' -and $_.protocol -eq 'net.tcp' })

if (!$netTcpExists)
{
    Write-Output "Net TCP binding does not exist. Creating binding now..."
    # Create the binding
    New-ItemProperty 'IIS:\Sites\Default Web Site' -name bindings -Value @{protocol="net.tcp";bindingInformation="808:*"}

    Write-Output "Binding created"
}
else
{
    Write-Output "TCP Binding already exists"
}

Write-Output "Updating enabled protocols..."

Set-ItemProperty 'IIS:\sites\Default Web Site' -name EnabledProtocols -Value "http,net.tcp"

Write-Output "Enabled protocols updated"

Comment: you will have to make sure that the .net features are installed and enabled on the machine...
Comment: Can you include the script in the answer? The host is not accessible for me and the answer is useless without at least the essential parts of the script.
Comment: @Alexei yes I should have included that in my original answer. Hope this helps
Answer: The last step worked for me.

Make sure that these protocols are defined in the "Advanced Settings" of the website

Make sure the features below are installed

The services below should be running

Your application pool should use Integrated pipeline
Close IIS Manager, reset IIS, and open IIS Manager again
Check the listenerAdapters section in the applicationHost.config file ( Located in C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config). If you don't see those listener adapters you want to use in bindings, add them manually

Source: Missing bindings in IIS (net.tcp, net.pipe, net.msmq, msmq.formatname)
Answer: In my case, I had to add the net.tcp protocol not only to the website, but to the application below it (right-click the application, advanced settings, enabled protocols).

Enabling net.tcp in IIS7


What circumstances allow forgoing the "Prime Directive"?

Question: The Federation was always interferring with the cultures and life forms they came across. At what point was it deemed justifiable by Star Fleet Command & The Federation?
Comment: Your name starting with a Pic- and ending with and -ard.
Comment: Starfleet Regulation 1941.22 allows limited violation of the Prime Directive as long as a TV camera is active on the bridge.
Answer: The Prime Directive, which is about non-interference in the affairs of other species, has been bent, circumvented, bungled up and violated outright by Starfleet personnel so many times, that I can't think of any kind of consistent policy or criteria behind it.
However, there is a pattern established from TNG to VOY:

If the civilization is pre-warp, most captains maintain a zero-tolerance policy toward revelation of science, technology or knowledge of outer space
Away teams are allowed to interact with pre-warp societies in disguise
Disguised away teams may influence specific events in a pre-warp society provided that that event has no effects on that society's development
Starfleet personnel are almost never allowed to violate the laws of another society, whether it is pre-warp or not
When the life/lives of crew members are danger, Starfleet captains do have a tendency to try to circumvent the local laws (only if the society is warp-capable).
Sometimes senior officers will turn a blind eye to minor violations by crew members who are either trying to defend themselves or help a local.
If a crew member is in danger from pre-warp society, some Starfleet captains (and senior officers) have been known to use technology (such as transporters and Phasors) under the guise of supernatural phenomena already known to the locals. In this, however, they could be risking court martial
Starfleet sometimes takes covert actions to protect pre-warp civilizations that are at risk of destruction (especially planet-wide destruction)
The Omega Directive rescinds the Prime Directive while it is in operation

All these people have violated the Prime Directive more than once: Kirk, Picard, Riker, Worf, Janeway, Tuvok, B'Elana.
Answer: What we see gotten away with as "not really violations":

Culture is already contaminated by contact with other spacefarers (TOS, TNG)
Members of the Culture have made contact, and world is in distress, but isn't ready for open contact (TNG)
Culture is approaching spacefaring, and is being observed, but members of the observation team/party are discovered (TNG)
Craft has crashed and natives found craft with crew. (Voyager)
Destruction of evidence of Federation civilization. (TOS, TNG, Voyager)
Culture has become stagnant due to subjugation to machinery (TOS)

The Prime Directive is mostly about not contaminating local cultures, not about non-contact with them. The Iotians (TOS: A Piece of the Action) were previously contaminated by the Valiant's crew; Kirk was not violating the prime directive since they were already aware of and ready to interact with spacefarers... his violation was leaving a communicator dirtside.
In one of the TOS movies, an entire civilization is moved... while the natives figure something is up, they don't know it's spacefarers. No violation. In another TOS episode, wholesale alteration of climate is engaged in... at the request of a local... she's then kidnapped, memory wiped, and returned, to prevent altering the civilization.


Connecting Launchkey Mk 11 midi controller and Roland Fantom G7 to one set of speakers

Question: The Launchkey is plugged into my laptop with a USB and plays through the laptop speakers. The G7 needs external speakers - I have a separate set of Logitech speakers - Bass and two speakers. I can plug the Logitech speakers into my laptop via the headphone socket, but then I can't play the G7. If I plug the Logitech speakers into the G7 I can only play the Launchkey through my laptop speakers. I want to be able to play both keyboards through the Logitech speakers. Is this possible and if so, do I need an adaptor, and if so, can anyone tell me what type please?
Answer: Attach the speakers to the G7
Attach the Launchkey to your laptop
Run a cable from your laptop to the G7.
From the Fantom G7 manual;
"If your device has a stereo mini-plug output, you can buy a mini-to-phono splitter and use phono-to-1/4" adaptors to connect the left and
right sides to the Fantom-G inputs"
You then need to set your mix of analog to output level. Again, that's covered in the manual.
Answer: When you're playing the Launchkey, it's not actually creating any sounds on its own, but sending MIDI signals to the laptop which acts as a sound source. So you have two sound sources: the laptop and the Fantom.
So you have three options:

An external mixer which will take the input from both the laptop and Fantom and output them to your speakers. If you get a small keyboard amp, most have a simple mixer of at least two channels that would meet your needs fine.

Feed the output of the Fantom into the laptop, use a software mixer on the laptop to allow you to output both the laptop's sound output and your Fantom's sound through your choice of the internal speakers of your laptop or your external Logitech speakers

(I don't know if this is possible.) Some Roland gear has its own built in mixer capabilities. You might be able to connect the audio output of your laptop to an audio input of the Fantom and then have its output go to the external speakers.

Option 1 is the most flexible but 2 is most likely to be the cheapest option, depending on your hardware and software.
Comment: I see @PeteCon is more familiar with the G7 and according to him, option 3 is, in fact, possible.


What is the difference between Gaussian discriminant analysis and logistic regression?

Question: As stated in this course pdf, Gaussian Discriminant Analysis (GDA) can also be expressed in the form of $\frac{1}{1+\exp(-\theta^Tx)}$, where $\theta$ is some appropriate function of $φ$, $\Sigma$, $u_0$, and $u_1$. So why can't logistic regression predict model like them?
Comment: What do you mean by "why can't logistic regression predict model like them"? What does the "them" imply?
Comment: Take a look at this question https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/251069/gaussian-discriminant-analysis-and-sigmoid-function
Answer: GDA makes more specific assumptions about the data set then Logistic Regression and if those assumptions are true then it works better then LR. But on the other hand LR makes more generic assumptions and can be more useful in lot of other places where the probability distribution of the feature set is not Gaussian.


Regain access to Apple ID traded away and 'returned'

Question: I was playing CoM (A game on the App Store that saves progress by Game Center), when this guy comes along and asks for an account trade. I agree because his account is awesome. So I trade, and he eventually gives me my Apple ID back and says that he takes the trade back. I try to log on but it said disabled for security reasons. I then panick because I put in a fake birthday for every thing that requires a birthday. I then make a new Apple ID with the same email and find that everything is gone including apps, progress and most importantly, iCloud.
Comment: BTW, the term for what happened is you were 'socially engineered' or 'phished'. You willingly gave all your data to a scammer.
Comment: What is an "account trade"?
Comment: Something that is most assuredly against the TOS of whatever game he is trying to play. @OP: Giving your Game Center login to another person is one of the worst things you could do, because as you have discovered, it is tied to all of your Apple accounts, as well as containing your app purchase history. There is nothing you can do to restore this information to a _new_ account. The best thing you can do is try to regain access to your old account. However, if you entered fake information for security questions/birthday, that seems to be unlikely to happen.
Answer: If you do not know your security questions to reset your Apple ID, try the following.

If you have 3 different security questions and a rescue email address set up with your Apple ID

Sign in to My Apple ID and select the "Password and Security" tab to send an email to your rescue email that you set up.

If you have only 1 security question that you set up, but don't know your password

Contact apple support and hopefully someone can assist you farther.
Knowledge base related article: http://support.apple.com/HT201363


Gravitational Wave Astronomy

Question: This year the LIGO experiments have found evidence of Gravitational waves. In their experiments two black holes merge and give rise to huge ripples in spacetime. Now after the discovery, every scientific seminar I attended on the subject says that this opened up a new era of Gravitational wave astronomy. My question:   Astronomy is usually referred to the observational study of universe, galaxies and stars. Given the gravitational waves we detect are anyway very feeble, I was wondering how is it possible to infer anything related to the structures of universe from these waves?
Comment: Answered as part of http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/235248/
Answer: The statement that a "new era of Gravitational wave astronomy" has begun is certainly true, since we now can directly detect gravitational waves. This opens up more input on astrophysical events.
One buzzword would be "multi-messenger astronomy": at first we only had optical instruments then later other EM telescopes came along: X-ray, IR, UV,... After that we got neutrino detectors and now we even got detectors to directly detect gravitational waves.
The hope for the future is to investigate astronomical events; black hole or hopefully neutron star mergers, supernovae and more using input from all messengers: gravitational wave signal, neutrino signal and multiple EM signals. This gives a very extensive experimental picture of an event which can be compared to theory. The additional gravitational wave signal may give insight in areas, times and physics of events which where not experimentally accessible before.
Especially neutron star mergers or supernovea multi messenger signals could give massive insight on those events which are still in very active reasearch.
I mean it is true that those signals and their amplitudes are very small. Gravitational waves (meaning their propagation) might not effect our universe very much but the insight they give on the events where they originate from can be huge even if their ampiltude is small. And on those locations where they are emitted they actually have a massive impact: binary pulsars can radiate away massive amounts of rotational energy via gravitational waves, this is how they where first implicitly detected.

Gravitational Wave Astronomy


At what point do conversations become prior art?

Question: Is a conversation between two colleagues or a group in a lab meeting considered prior art?  Neither are in a public forum.  Is there an assumption of confidentiality?
Answer: I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that something has to be publicly disclosed to be considered prior art. Conversations between colleagues within the same business is clearly not prior art. What conversations with other employees does impact is inventorship. If someone contributes an idea that gets reflected in a patent's claims, then they probably should be considered a co-inventor.
Comment: @DukeZhou Conversations with employees of the same business is how many patents are how most inventions happen. Confidentiality is a requirement of every business I've ever worked at.
Comment: @DukeZhou Except for fellow employees, I wouldn't discuss confidential info with anyone unless I had a formal confidentiality agreement in place.
Comment: Everything that "can be expected to be dispersed out of the control of the disclosing person" is prior art in germany (rough translation from Kaßer/Ann patent law (in german) p. 283)
Comment: (I agree with you, that's just an addition.)
Comment: @DonQuiKong Feel free to edit the answer. Try to put it in lay language.
Comment: I was advised by several patent attorneys to be very careful about disclosing even casually in conversation prior to submitting a provisional.  I suspect it's a fuzzy issue at this level, but legal minds need to "think paranoid", and this mental framework is often the basis of good legal advice (considering every potential problem that might arise, no matter how unlikely.)  Your point about inventorship is a good one.
Comment: @EricShain Thanks for the clarification re: employees of the same business.  I suspect it's a different situation for solo inventors, or discussing at conferences with people not in the same organization?
Answer: This is a very interesting topic and a short answer is rather impossible. It's all about how you define the public and its access to prior art.
The EPO (Europe, for the most part of it) considers that "information is generally to be regarded as having been made public if even just one single member of the public is in a position to gain access to it and understand it, and if there is no obligation to maintain secrecy". What happens, though, in practice is that such guidelines driven by the case law is a dynamic set of rules which changes with time. Some examples are clear-cut cases and some are subject to new-created case law.
For practice as per EPO you can read more here: http://www.epo.org/law-practice/legal-texts/html/caselaw/2016/e/clr_i_c_3_3.htm
For the US I am not fully aware of the rules that regulate such issues, but there should be relevant case law there as well (who is "public", the concept of "secrecy"). Mind that in the US there is an exception, a one-year grace period, within which a disclosure made by the inventor or someone who got access to the information by the inventor, is not prejudicial in a patent application's novelty (US experts may correct me here, if I am wrong). This exception does not apply, though, in other jurisdictions, particularly the EPO, so "handle with care".


How many photos can a D5200 take with a fully charged battery?

Question: Can any Nikon D5200 user tell me how many shots I can get on a D5200 with a fully charged battery?
Answer: A D5200 should be able to take about 500 shots per charge according to Nikon:

The D5200's superior energy-saving design allows you to shoot approx.
  500 shots per charge* with the EN-EL14 Rechargeable Li-ion Battery.
*Based on CIPA Standards.

That number comes from an industry standard procedure for testing battery life of still cameras, and it's unlikely that your experience will exactly match the test conditions. Based on Romeo Ninov's comment below, we can modify Nikon's number and say that depending on how you use the camera, you should get 500 ±200 shots per charge.
Comment: @RomeoNinov - Likely why the answer included "should" and "about". The info from Nikon is as good or better than an anecdote.
Comment: @RomeoNinov The number of variables involved makes it impossible to be precise about the number of shots per charge in day to day use. Things like the ambient temperature, whether you keep the back display on after each shot and for how long, use of built-in flash, autofocus, the type of lens, etc. all impact battery life. That's why [the CIPA standard](http://www.cipa.jp/std/documents/e/DC-002_e.pdf) (PDF) carefully specifies the conditions and procedure. I can see how a range would be useful, though, so I'll add that based on your numbers.
Comment: Caleb, this is not very precise. It depend of shooter habits. Depend of usage of LCD display you can get from 300 to 700 shoots. And my personal experience with mode 3 of lens stabilization (canon) give me twice more shoots (compared to mode 1)


How would you create a hole in this face?

Question:
I would want the hole to go through the other side. And additional question: How would you connect the verts on that face if I wouldn't want to put a hole on it? And lastly what modeling process would you recommend: would you create a highly dense object just for the tiny bevels on the edges?
Comment: Hello :). Are you after quad based topology? Do you want to use Subdivision Surface modifier, or Bevel modifier? And what have *you* tried so far? :)
Comment: @Jachym Michal Hi, Thanks for commenting! What do you recommend if I want the model for various works like for a game, for an HD rendered image, or just to be used as a prop for reference for a 2d artwork?
Answer: If you can afford the polygons generated by subdivision-surface modelling, there are a lot of advantages in keeping the initial poly-count as low as possible, and modelling the hole in the flat...

... working with geometry something like the above.

Inset region
Slide some edges about to make a vaguely circular region of the inset
Shipped add-on, Loop Tools > Circle
Inset again, and delete the hole
Cut in half, maybe make a cut or two to get rid of the poles created by the insets, and slide verts for better flow.

Now you're all set up to modify on the stack:

Mirror in X and Y
Solidify outwards
Bevel by angle, to hold the..
..Subdivision Surface.

The result is a handle with only 25-odd faces to look after, making it easy to adjust. You can change the size of the holes, the depth and curvature of the handle, and of its rounded ends.. all sorts, with simple selections and moves.
Personally, I would even model this way for low-poly; applying the modifiers, and knocking out loops where that does not damage the curvatures too much.
Comment: Thank you so much for your insight! Can ask multiple questions?: How would you make the final model? I know about the subdivision workflow with its easy editing. Now what is the best polycount and topology would you recommend, because you can model this in any way, but the final model is all that matters anyway. How many subdivisions, and number of bevels would you recommend for the high poly model, if i was gonna bake the details to the final low poly one. And additionally how would you model this if you were gonna use it just for a rendered image. Thank You for the help!
Comment: @Ypil Assuming no e.g. game constraints, I would make the final model exactly as shown. 2 Levels of subdiv usually 'disappears' segmentation of curves, at this kind of density. Even for High poly,  minimum loops to capture the curvature, hold straight segments. while being lazy (not being _too_ fanatical about removing every possible loop) 3. The bevels here are holding loops for the subdiv, so 2 segments, profile 1.. reduce profile to soften  the appearance. For baking? If you want to sculpt detail into the surface, as high as you like. But for something like this, boilerplate normal maps?
Comment: Oh well thank you for your insight!
Answer: The easiest way is to use a boolean modifier with a cylinder as shown in the screenshot.
Comment: Thanks for the help!


OpenLayers : Draw shape from external geojson file

Question: I am trying to draw a shape (airplane) from external geojson file. Said shape uses data from 2 object structures inside the geojson file. I can load both shapes separately, but I can't append/join them together.
Answer: You have to merge your polygons before displaying them. The accepted answer in this question explains how to achieve that in detail.
Comment: that's an OL2 solution not an OL3, Is it working for OL3 too ?
Answer: for OL3 it's a bit complicated since you'll have to read both features from both sources and do an union to them then you load them to a vector layer,
the union itself is made with turf you can download it from here:
<code> var feature1,feature2;
 var union=turf.union(feature1,feature2);

 var formatGeoJSON= new ol.format.GeoJSON();
 var yourResult=formatGeoJSON.readFeature(union);
</code>
Now you can load it in a vector layer to your map


Can I block a specific user?

Question: A certain user is being a general pain, and aside from me reporting the user (which I have done) how else can I prevent them from contacting me?
Comment: @Ana - Outside of a few exceptions all my comments directed toward the user, I felt were required, to either provide feedback or to understand the rational behind a submisson they made.
Comment: Where and how are they contacting you?
Comment: @Ana via comments
Comment: @Ana - I am that user in question.  Tom is taking offense to the fact I have provided feedback to the answers he has submitted which also have appeared in the low-quality review.  When I raised concerns about the quality of a answer to a question he made, he started to claim I was making personal attacks ( I forget the exact words ), I believe he thinks reviewing his submissions out of spite ( I have read his previous submissions ) and only one of my comments were a result of my manual review.
Answer: The system currently does not allow you to block a user. When you see a rude or offensive comment, please flag it as such. If there is repeated offensive behavior by a certain user, we will check it out.

In the particular example, you flagged the following comment as rude:

This doesn't explain how to solve the problem. This just indicates you had a entirely different problem, and you gave up, and installed Windows 10.

I don't see how it is rude though. Granted, it is very direct.
But remind you that your answer was downvoted four times—so there's more than one person who thinks that it is not helpful. The user was just giving you a reason for the downvotes. I have the feeling that in this case, it looks more like trying to shoot the messenger.
You responded:

I find your response insulting. […] Find something decent to say next time. If you can criticise my answers, then provide a better answer. […]

And that's basically setting the stage for a comment thread where people actually insult each other—as we see so often on Super User.
But the other user did not give into that and explained what they meant. I've read the thread a few times now, and none of the other user's comments are in any way personally insulting. They just explain a potential downvote.
In the future I'd advise you to walk away from comments (and flag them) if you believe you're personally attacked. Let the rest be handled by the moderation team.

Can I block a specific user?


What's the difference between a Sun Type 6 and Type 7 keyboard?

Question: I'm thinking of connecting a Sun keyboard to a PC (preferably via USB). Doing research I found that the most recent keyboards appear to be the Type 6 and Type 7 keyboards.  What is the difference between them?
Comment: [Questions for anyone who has used Sun Type 7 keyboards](http://superuser.com/q/181109)
Comment: @DavidPostill I also read that question before asking. It says *nothing* about Type 6/7 differences.
Answer: I have both. From a layout perspective, they are exactly the same.
(I have both a Type 6 US layout, and a Type 7 US layout, I put them side by side to compose this reply and not make any mistakes).
From a design/construction, there are subtle differences, first of all the Sun Type 6 is GREY, the type 7 is all WHITE.
Second the Type 6 lower side (near your hands) ends with a curve. The Type 7 ends abruptly (more square, if you prefer).
And perhaps the most noticeable of all, the Type 7 sports a "Sun-Oracle" logo exactly in the middle (above F8) while the Type 6 had the traditional Sun Microsystems logo at the top-right corner.
The icing on the cake for the Type 7 is its internal USB hub, with two USB female ports at the top, which the Type 6 lacked.
Comment: The Sun keyboards are available in two basic layouts for a particular language, the UNIX layout and the PC Layout. In bahamat's photos below, the top photo of the Sun Type 6 has the PC layout and, below, the Sun Type 7 has the UNIX layout. @aissacf is correct; the Type 6 and 7 keyboards with the UNIX layout are exactly the same and the Type 6 and 7 keyboards with the PC layout are also exactly the same. If requested, I can take photos of the keyboard I'm using at this very moment, a Sun Type 7 PC layout.
Comment: "From a layout perspective, they are exactly the same."  Not according to the pictures posted by bahamat, which show different locations for backspace and backslash...  The type 7 has an Esc key to the left of the number one, with the tilde/backtick key being moved to the upper-right.
Answer: Here's a photo of the Sun Type 6:

Here's a photo of the Sun Type 7 (this one is mine):


How do I make it so each shape is colored a different color/shade?

Question: I am attempting to use a pattern image, however, I wish for each shape to have a different color, without it having the same color every time it is repeated. I turned the image into a mask, and fed it into the mix RGB. What could be the next step?
Answer: You cannot apply a colour to each shape because Blender has no concept of what "Shape" means in your context. If the shapes were of a set size and offset from each other, you would be able to make a mathematically accurate base layer of colour and mix that into the material matching the locations of the shapes.
But try the following and see if it gets you further in the direction you wanted to go.
Create a UV for your mesh (Unwrap) and pipe the colour from the Image Texture into a ColorRamp node that can isolate the two colours (you already did this) and gives us the mask.

Now create a new Texture. Here I use a quick and dirty Noise Texture but you could use almost any Texture to give you a base colour layer. You could also create an image for this purpose (*).

This can now be Mixed in with the Mask as the Factor.

And finally we Mix the initial texture back into the final result.

The result is imperfect, but you can tweak the Texture to try and better match the locations of the shapes.
(*) This not as silly as it sounds. You could create an image with a very low resolution e.g. 8x8 pixels and use that grid of coloured pixels as the backing colour layer.
And as always with Blender you could use Python to code a solution with shape detection, but I cannot help with that.
Comment: Impressive! Alternatively, could I have Blender apply a different shade of color to the texture every time it is repeated? What I precisely wish to achieve is a pattern of shapes where each shape is a different shade of Red, and I wish for the shades to be colored slightly different so no two shapes are colored exactly the same. I could make it so that the texture is black and white, with shapes colored different shades of Grey, and apply a color to them in Blender, but I wish for every texture repetition, the shade applied is randomized/changed.
Comment: You can use a Black and White or Red-Pink collection of of colour stops in the ColorRamp in the example rather than my high contrast Blue, Cyan, Green, Pink, Yellow. I used the Constant blend type in the ColorRamp also to create a strong contrast. By changing the blend type and playing with the Mapping X,Y,Z and scaling you should be able to get a close approximation to what you want.The question is how exact do you need the final result. You may be better off duplicating the image for the repeat and hand colouring the image in GIMP or equivalent.
Comment: Now that I think of it, I will, Indeed, be better off creating a larger image of the pattern, with the randomized colors. Thank you so much!


Manually Performing Calculations in a Continuous Time Markov Chain

Question: As a learning exercise, I am trying to learn how to fit and simulate from Continuous Time Markov Chains.
Suppose I have a Stochastic Process that can assume 3 States: S1, S2 or S3. Lets say I have observe this process making 100 state transitions and I record the time that each transition was made at. I simulated this data using the R programming language:
# Define the possible states
states <- c("S1", "S2", "S3")

# Initialize the sequence of state transitions with the first state
transitions <- "S1"

# Loop to generate 99 more state transitions
for (i in 2:100) {
  # Get the current state
  current_state <- transitions[i-1]

  # Generate a new state that is different from the current state
  new_state <- current_state
  while (new_state == current_state) {
    new_state <- sample(states, 1)
  }

  # Add the new state to the sequence of state transitions
  transitions <- c(transitions, new_state)
}

# Set the rate parameter of the exponential distribution
lambda <- 0.5

# Simulate 100 observations from the exponential distribution
times <- rexp(100, rate = lambda)

# final data: note that special emphasis was placed to ensure that no two consecutive state transitions occur as this can not happen within a Continuous Time Markov Chain
my_data = data.frame(id = 1:100, transitions, times)

As I understand, there are 4 Steps required in fitting a Continuous Time Markov Chain:

Step 1: First we need to calculate the probabilities within the Embedded Discrete Time Markov Chain. This contains the probabilities of transitioning from "state i to state j" and can be calculated as the number of times the process went from 'state i to state j' divided by the number of total exits out of 'state i', represented as $$p_{ij} = \frac{n_{ij}}{n_i}$$

Step 2: Next, we need to calculate the "lambda_i" - this is the "rate of leaving state i". The formula for "lambda_i" is based on the Maximum Likelihood Estimate of the "Rate Parameter" in an Exponential Distribution. This is equal to the number of transitions out of "state i" divided by the total time spent in "state i" prior to exiting: $$\lambda_i = \frac{n_i}{t_i}$$

Step 3: Next, we need to calculate the entries of the "Rate Matrix" (Q_ij). These entries represent the rates of transitioning between two states "i" and "j". This can be considered as the "rate of leaving "state i" multiplied by the probability of transitioning from "state i to state j".  We can write this as follows:

$$Q_{ij} = \begin{cases} \lambda_i p_{ij}, & \text{if } i \neq j \ \sum_{k\neq i} Q_{ik}, & \text{if } i = j \end{cases}$$

Step 4: Finally, we can calculate the "time dependent probabilities of transitioning from state i to state j" :

$$ p_{ij}(t) = e^{Qt} $$
The above expression is said to be approximated using Numerical Methods such as Taylor Expansions or Pade Approximants.
For the above data - I tried to write a computer program to first fit a Continuous Time Markov Chain to this data, and then to simulate trajectories of this Continuous Time Markov Chain at different time periods:
# Step 1

# Define the possible states
states <- c("S1", "S2", "S3")

# Initialize the count matrix
count_matrix <- matrix(0, nrow = length(states), ncol = length(states), dimnames = list(states, states))

# Loop through the state transitions and update the count matrix
for (i in 2:100) {
  # Get the current and previous states
  current_state <- transitions[i]
  prev_state <- transitions[i-1]

  # Increment the count for the transition from prev_state to current_state
  count_matrix[prev_state, current_state] <- count_matrix[prev_state, current_state] + 1
}

# Calculate the total number of exits from each state
exit_counts <- colSums(count_matrix)

# Calculate the transition probabilities
transition_probs <- count_matrix / exit_counts

# STEP 2

# Calculate lambda_1
lambda_1 <- sum(my_data$times[my_data$transitions == "S1"]) / nrow(my_data[my_data$transitions == "S1", ])

# Calculate lambda_2
lambda_2 <- sum(my_data$times[my_data$transitions == "S2"]) / nrow(my_data[my_data$transitions == "S2", ])

# Calculate lambda_3
lambda_3 <- sum(my_data$times[my_data$transitions == "S3"]) / nrow(my_data[my_data$transitions == "S3", ])

# STEP 3

# Define the rate matrix
rate_matrix <- matrix(0, nrow = length(states), ncol = length(states), dimnames = list(states, states))

# Define the lambda vector
lambda <- c(lambda_1, lambda_2, lambda_3)

# Calculate the rate matrix
for (i in 1:length(states)) {
    for (j in 1:length(states)) {
        if (i != j) {
            rate_matrix[i, j] <- lambda[i] * transition_probs[i, j]
        }
    }
    rate_matrix[i, i] <- -sum(rate_matrix[i, ])
}

Now, I would like to try and simulate trajectories from the Continuous Time Markov Chain at different times (e.g. suppose I start at State 1 with probability = 1):
 library(Matrix)
 library(expm)

    p0 <- c(1, 0, 0)
    t <- 5.4
    P_t <- expm(rate_matrix * t)
    p_t <- p0 %*% P_t

We can also observe the long term probabilities of being in any state over a period of time:
library(ggplot2)

# define the time range
t_range <- seq(0, 100, length.out=1000)

# compute the state probabilities at each time point
p_t <- t(sapply(t_range, function(t) p0 %*% expm(rate_matrix * t)))

# create a data frame for the plot
df <- data.frame(t = t_range, p1 = p_t[,1], p2 = p_t[,2], p3 = p_t[,3])

# plot the state probabilities over time
ggplot(df, aes(x = t)) +
  geom_line(aes(y = p1, color = "State 1")) +
  geom_line(aes(y = p2, color = "State 2")) +
  geom_line(aes(y = p3, color = "State 3")) +
  labs(x = "Time", y = "State Probability", color = "State")

My Question: Have I understood and done this correctly?
Thanks!
Note: Stationary Distribution Calculations for the Continuous Time Markov Chain
As I understand, the Stationary Distribution of a Markov Process can be considered to be a "magical distribution" such that if this "magical distribution" happens to be the initial distribution of the Markov Process, then the transition dynamics of the Markov Process will reach an equilibrium (i.e. stabilize).
In a Discrete Time Markov Process, the Stationary Distribution can be written as follows: $$\pi P = \pi$$
In a Continuous Time Markov Process, the Stationary Distribution has a similar implications:
   # Calculate the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the rate matrix
        eig <- eigen(rate_matrix)

        # Extract the eigenvector corresponding to the eigenvalue of zero
        pi <- eig$vectors[, which.min(abs(eig$values))]

        # Normalize the eigenvector to obtain the stationary distribution
        pi <- pi / sum(pi)

Comment: Your code $\texttt{while (new_state == current_state) new_state <- sample(states, 1)}$ selects the new state as one of the other states with equal probability, so clearly the stationary distribution of both the embedded and continuous time Markov chains in question would simply be uniform over the state space...
Comment: @ Math1000: thank you for pointing this out ... I will try to fix this
Answer: A few comments on the simulation script:

Currently you don't allow for alternative dynamics (alternative rate matrices Q).
You shouldn't hardcode variables if you plan on playing around with them later. If you do, you're making it more difficult to change them by hardcoding them in several places.
Don't grow a vector. Preallocate it. Growing a vector is very slow. You're destroying and re-creating a vector many times. Creating a vector once and accessing its indexes is much faster.
It is easier to label your states with numeric variables because the labels will also serve as indexes you can subset things by.
Maybe add some code to verify Q is a proper rate matrix.

Try something like this:
# variables you change a lot go at the top
numJumps <- 100
numStates <- 3
Q <- matrix(data = c(-2, 1, 1,
                     1,-2, 1,
                     1, 1,-2),
            byrow = TRUE,
            nrow = numStates, ncol = numStates)

states <- 1:numStates
trajectory <- vector(mode = "numeric", length = numJumps)
jumpDurations <- vector(mode = "numeric", length = numJumps)

trajectory[1] <- 1
jumpDurations[1] <- 0
for (i in 2:numJumps) {

  # Get the current state's row
  currentState <- trajectory[i-1]
  positiveColumns <- Q[currentState,] > 0

  # simulate waiting times
  expRvs <- rexp(n = numStates - 1, rate = Q[currentState, positiveColumns])

  # store the jump time
  jumpDurations[i] <- min(expRvs)

  # based on that amount of time, simulate a new state
  transitionMat <- Matrix::expm( jumpDurations[i] * Q )
  trajectory[i] <- sample(x = states, size = 1, prob = transitionMat[currentState,])

}

plot(cumsum(jumpDurations), trajectory, type = "s")

Regarding the estimation, I recommend writing down the log-likelihood function and stating which algorithm you plan on using before you start writing any code. I'm vaguely aware that there are many techniques to perform maximum likelihood estimation, and it will be easier to discuss if you TeX things up first.
Comment: @ Taylor: Thank you so much for your answer! I will start to study the code you provided. Overall, would you say that my approach is "mostly" correct? Thank you so much!
Comment: Yes for the one rate matrix but tjay while loop part seemed like a strange way to do tjay


Centralized logs for tomcat logs

Question: We have 20 centos server and on each server we have 5 tomcats running.
All time developer comes for logs so we are planning to keep all tomcat logs one URL so that Developer comes to that URL and check tomcat logs from there
is there any way to check all server tomcat logs means catalina.out log from server or on URL
Comment: Just use syslog-ng or rsyslog with a remote destination.
Comment: Are any of the services clustered, i.e. would you need to merge some of the log files on the fly?
Comment: no,
we just have tomcat logs that can access and can be downloadable to developers
Answer: Log management is messy enough without random little scripts copying things around, maybe getting all the data in a timely manner or maybe not.
Really if you want to have centralized logging, you should have centralized logging and not little kludges hidden around for someone to forget about and then have to support after someone has quit.  Do it right the first time.
Back when I would set up centralized logging in the good old days, I would use syslog-ng because it was so configurable, it would write to multiple directories/queues, set hostnames, timesync, and other goodness.
https://www.balabit.com/network-security/syslog-ng
Looks like it even has corporate and multiplatform support now.  Neat.  The opensource freeware version should be fine for your uses.
Comment: Is syslog-ng provide GUI for logs??
and how developer will access that logs
Answer: You can do un script that make a simple scp on all of your servers.
Something like this:
#From server where you want to store the logs:
scp user@serverWithLogsToRetrieve:/path/to/logs/logName.log /local/path/to/log/logName.log

I assume your logs have date and time in their name, so you can make sure to retrieve only the logs you need, and not all.
You can also rename the retrieved log with the original server name so you can differentiate them easily. You can store them in different directories etc.
This script can be scheduled with a simple crontab.
To have it available on a website, you must have a web server (e.g. Apache), and put the logs into your site. Either directly into a directory and the browser will make the tree, or you can create a website if you want something more user friendly (logs stored by date, search tool etc).
Comment: I don't think using `scp` to copy a local log is a good solution for centralized logging.
Comment: He wants to gather some files from other servers to another one. why `scp` is such a bad idea? A script that runs every night, for instance, would do the work.

Centralized logs for tomcat logs


Can I threaten adjacent squares with a rifle by using it as an improvised weapon?

Question: Can someone with a rifle treat it as an improvised weapon via rifle butt to threaten squares around him and provide flanking?
Answer: You definitly can threaten spaces when using a rifle (or a stick, or a Vesk thighbone, etc.) as a club.
The caviat I would place on it (at my table) is that you would not threaten during a round in which you used the rifle for a ranged attack unless you stated such and use a Swift or Move Action (see Change Grips) to reposition the item for use as a melee weapon. I would then require an additional Swift or Move action to use for a ranged attack again. If not used for ranged attack the next round, positioning for club use would be presumed.
I would not let someone both fire and threaten unless it was a specifically stated and deliberate thing.
Comment: You should put more emphasis on the **Change Grip** action, which works differently in Starfinder (swift action) than it did in Pathfinder (free action), and is what allows swaping from a ranged weapon (which does not allow AoO) to an improvised club (which allows AoO).
Answer: Yes, you can threaten with an improvised weapon such as a rifle butt, but you may need to change your grip on the weapon to do so
As the rules on Reach and Threatened Squares state:

If you are wielding a melee weapon or are otherwise capable of making a melee attack (e.g., if you have your own natural weapons), you threaten all squares into which you can make a melee attack, even when it is not your turn (the exception is unarmed strikes—if you're making unarmed strikes, you don't threaten other squares).

And when using Improvised Weapons:

If you're using an object that wasn't meant to be used as a weapon, treat it as a club.

Obviously, a rifle is meant to be used as a weapon, but it's not meant to be used as a melee weapon, and so it should count as a club if you want to hit people with it in melee. You might not be "wielding a melee weapon" but you are capable of making a melee attack which is not an unarmed strike, so you meet the criteria for threatening spaces around you.
Your GM might require you to change your grip on a rifle in order to use it in melee instead of as a ranged weapon. Changing grip is a swift action, so in this case you would have to have adjusted your grip by the end of your turn in order to be able to threaten with a melee attack on other creature's turns, and you wouldn't be able to rapidly switch between using it as a ranged weapon and a melee weapon on-and-off your turns since you can only make one swift action.
A rifle butt isn't a particularly dangerous weapon and you suffer the -4 penalty to attack rolls for using an improvised weapon, but that's irrelevant if your goal is just to help flank an enemy - you're there and you could conceivably hurt them with a melee attack, so they have to worry about you.
Comment: This would be in the realm of house rules, since RAW says only melee weapons threaten. In that context, it would be reasonable to assume that you have to choose whether you're wielding the rifle as a gun or a club.
Comment: @KnightPorter The rules - as quoted, in my answer - say that you threaten "If you are wielding a melee weapon **or are otherwise capable of making a melee attack**".
Comment: Ranged weapons not threatening in melee is a pretty core rule. "For example, a human with a power battleglove on one hand can still make ranged attacks with a longarm, but he can't make melee attacks (and thus does not threaten any spaces) while doing so."
Comment: IMO this is a quote out of context. A battleglove cannot be used for melee attacks **when holding an object** (like when holding a longarm to make ranged attacks) and therefore would not threaten adjacent spaces while performing that activity. This is what that quote is referring to
Comment: While the title of this answer is correct, the body does not explain how this is made possible, and assumes that you can use *any* ranged weapon as improvised clubs at any time, which is wrong.
Comment: @ShadowKras I'll reference the change grip action, but is there any source that says you *have* to change your grip on a ranged weapon in order to be able to use it in melee? Intuitively it seems obvious to me that there are many rifle designs which do not require you to change your grip on the weapon at all in order to effectively physically hit someone with it.
Comment: @Carcer Im going primarily based on this community-accepted ruling from [this Pathfinder FAQ](http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9sk0).
Comment: @ShadowKras thanks for the reference. I'll have a ponder on it and may make some further revisions to my answer.


Battery charging time calculation

Question: One of the very useful feature of Android version 5.0 Lollipop is that it shows how much time is left for the charging to be completed. How is the time for the device to get fully charged determined?
Answer:
As per the training document Monitoring the Battery Level and Charging State Determine the Current Battery Level section describes a method, which I presume is implemented in OS and measured periodically (most likely at every 1% change of battery level)

You can find the current battery charge by extracting the current battery level and scale from the battery status intent as shown here:

<code>int level = batteryStatus.getIntExtra(BatteryManager.EXTRA_LEVEL, -1);
int scale = batteryStatus.getIntExtra(BatteryManager.EXTRA_SCALE, -1);

float batteryPct = level / (float)scale;
</code>

Once you know the current level and the time taken to reach that level, I presume time for full charge is stored in ROM (not sure how and where) it is only a matter of extrapolating

Note: This is an educated guess and would welcome inputs
Answer: To put it bluntly? Lets say you were charging from 0% to 100%. It would work out how long it takes to charge a certain amount (like 1%, for instance. In reality, it's a significantly smaller number than that) and then uses maths to work out how long it takes to get to 100% (so how long it took that 1% x 100). In reality, it is constantly doing this math as you are charging, therefore keeping the time accurate.
Many things can affect how long it takes to charge our percentage, though. A charge via USB is slower than via plug, and playing a game or watching funny cat videos on youtube in 1080p is going to really slow the charging speed.
Comment: Can you support your answer with credible sources? One might want to  independently verify your claim.
Comment: @Firelord tbh, I'm basing it off calculations I done myself, since the internet has no real answer (unless you count app ads) it'd also be the logical approach to calculating it, understandably.

Battery charging time calculation


How do companies like WhatsApp and Hike earn money?

Question: How do companies like whatsapp and hike earn money? How actually the Internet we use to to operate them will be actually converted into money??
Comment: For free apps, the answer is usually through ads or that they don't & are burning through funding in hopes of being bought out
Comment: If you find yourself not paying for a good, **you** are the good that is being sold.
Comment: Whatsapp is not free, you have to pay after using it for a year.
Comment: @user250385 WhatsApp was bought out by Facebook.
Comment: Okay ... i never ever saw any ads on whatsapp
Answer: It's all about the data
A lot of modern social apps (and non social apps) do not generate any ad based revenue. They do however collect a lot of data that is valuable to them or other companies. Think about Microsoft buying Skype or Facebook buying Instagram. Having these services allows the purchasing company to have data that they can then use to build other targeted products.
That's not to say that every start up has the same exit strategy (hoping to get bought out). Many startups have one or two founders who tend to get lucrative offers from industry to build similar or more tailored versions of the same product.
Remember that for every startup you see get famous and turn in to a bigger entity, there are several others who had potential but never made it big (and those that invested in them lost out).
Comment: As far as I know, WhatsApp is using end to end encryption so what useful data they could already 'collect' about a person? Maybe the data could include what groups is a person member in but I doubt that this data worth 19 billion $
Comment: @BornToCode Chances are it didn't when this question and answer were written (back in 2014)
Answer: In the case of WhatsApp they probably use revenue from the apple affiliate program, this is how it works:
After you sign up and are accepted you can generate links. When someone clicks on the link a cookie is installed on their iDevice, this cookie attributes all purchaces generated to the owner of the affiliate link for the life of the cookie (24 hours). The owner will then recive a 7% commission on those purchaces.
Answer: Whatsapp Application is either free or a paid application for iOS users, depending on the region. In India they charge $1 at the time of downloading the application. In the US, it's free for the first year, and then a $1 per year subscription (though the initial app download is free).
This is one of their revenue sources which I know of.
Comment: Er, no, it's free for the first year and definitely free at the time of downloading: -1

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997?mt=8
Comment: Its paid for iOS users in India.....

I myself had to purchase the license..
Comment: OK. See my edit, let me know if that captures both our understandings.
Answer: Hike is currently not earning but actually investing it into the app to achieve goals of their long term strategy. Their motive is to make hike #1 messenging app and until that it "WILL REMAIN FREE" but once they achieve that, then like WhatsApp, developers will make hike paid too or atleast you have to pay a small price to use hike. Imagine if hike would have been a paid app or you would have to pay money immediately after yor download hike. Would you have paid the money when you had better alternatives or had no friends on hike?
Whatsapp earns money by charging people who use WhatsApp services.
Answer: Actually; you may find the answer on WhatsApp blog itself
http://blog.whatsapp.com/245/Why-we-dont-sell-ads
Comment: I see why they don't want to give ads, but I also don't see how they make money, based on this answer
Answer: There must be the companies tieup with the internet provider network like Airtel, docomo,idea etc.for which they charge it from the user of that particular social network and some percentage where distributed among them.


What is "beta" for an investment or a portfolio, and how do I use it?

Question: Recently my financial adviser has been talking about my portfolio's "beta".  I have also seen beta listed for some investments (for example: http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog).  What is "beta" and how do I use it?
Comment: [Wikipedia article on Beta](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(finance))
Answer: Beta is an indication of a Stock's risk with respect to the market.  For instance if a stock had a beta of 1 it means it is in tandem with the S&P 500.
If it is more than 1, the stock is volatile.  If it is less than 1, it implies market movement doesn't affect this stock much.
Tech stocks and small cap stocks have high beta, utilities have low beta. (In general, not always).
Hope this helps - I've tried to explain it in very simple terms!
Answer: In addition to individual stocks, your entire portfolio will also have a beta.  It would be equal to the weighted sum of the individual asset betas  So a beta portfolio of 1 would have approximate risk equal to a market index. You would use this to construct a risk level that you were comfortable with, given the expected return of the individual assets.  You are also interested in obtaining a high level of "alpha" which means that your portfolio is earning more than what would be expected, given it's level of risk.
Answer: I don't think either of these answers are accurate.
A beta of 0 means that your stock/portfolio does not change accordingly or with the market, rather it acts independent.
A beta above 0 means the stock follows what the market does. Which means if the market goes up the stock goes up, if the market goes down, the stock goes down. If the stock's beta is more than 1 the stock will go up more if the market goes up, or go down more if the market goes down.
Inversely if the stock is less than 0 the stock will follow the market inversely. So if the market goes up, the stock goes down. If the market goes down, the stock goes up. Again a greater negative beta, the more this relationship will be exaggerated.


Fallen London: Quickest Way to get into Mahogany Hall?

Question: What is the quickest way or cheapest way to get into Mahogany Hall Permanently? I have managed to grind up some of the items required, but I still need 10 of each: Ridiculous Hat, Reprehensible Lizard, and Talkative Rattus Faber. I usually don't like buying from the Bazaar shop, but will if I have to. Is there another better way to get into Mahogany Hall? If not, what are the quickest way to grind the three items? Thanks.
Answer: The only other way to permanently unlock Mahogany Hall is to pay 5 Fate on the opportunity card "The Ways of Mahogany Hall".
The TL;DR is you're just going to have to buy those items from the Bazaar.
It's possible to get Reprehensible Lizards from rare successes on the Investigating... carousel in the Flit, but the chance of a rare success makes it very much not worthwhile unless you're really, REALLY not in a hurry.
Similarly, Ridiculous Hats can be obtained from a rare success while "Gambling for silver" if you're on the Heart's Desire! Ambition and don't have the 77 First City Coins required for it. Again, the chance is extremely low, so the time required to get 10 makes it inadvisable.
Talkative Rattus Faber can't be repeatably acquired anywhere other than buying from Nassos Zoologicals at the Bazaar.
Answer: You can get those bats from stealing walls of paintings for the Topsy King in the Flit! It's 8 bats on success, if I recall.
Under "Agree to Steal Paintings for the Topsy King", do the bit that covers the wall. I've not replicated the results, but my first try allowed me 8 bats.