Can't edit or flag a locked post

Question: I can't edit my answer to https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/4341/142 to add attribution or fix the rotted links, and I can't flag the question for this problem, either; there is no Flag link, only a Share link.  So I'm posting here.  Can you unlock the post?
Comment: It isn't just your answer; the entire question is locked for the reasons stated.
Comment: @DaveTweed But I should be able to 1. Edit my answer to fix things that have been broken over time.  2. Flag the question for moderator attention no matter what state it is in.
Comment: That would be a feature-request for the SE developers, then. Try [Meta.SE](http://meta.stackexchange.com/). But the question is locked precisely *because* we moderators don't want to have to keep dealing with it.
Comment: *"But I should be able to ..."* No, you shouldn't. That's the point of locking the question.
Comment: @OlinLathrop Yes, you should be able to.  Things change, and the lock may become inappropriate over time, or the outside world can change in a way that requires the questions or answers to change.
Answer: Reasons you should be able to flag a locked question:

It may have been locked by mistake and you want to argue that it should be re-opened.
The site's rules could have been discussed and changed so that the lock is no longer appropriate
The site's rules could have been discussed and changed so that the locked question should now be completely deleted.
The question/answer could contain links that have since been redirected to spam or inappropriate content.

Reasons you should be able to edit a locked question:

The question/answer could contain links that have since rotted or been hijacked and need to be updated.
The answers contain external images/content without attribution and it needs to be added.

There are probably other reasons, too.
A question is locked because:

it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site

This means that the question is still intended to be viewed by site visitors.  (Otherwise it would have been deleted.)
For instance, a question on SO of "What's your favorite text editor" would have been fine in the first iteration of the site, but later decided to be inappropriate because it's too opinion based.  The question is locked, because the content is still valuable to visitors, but not the kind of question that should be asked in the future.  But the links to the text editors rot as the internet changes, so it should be possible to edit them to correct the links.
Comment: Actually, 1 & 2 should be discussed on Meta. 3 is wrong, the point of a historical lock is that it was okay before the rule change. It should not be deleted. ***4 is the only real reason to flag it***. Your second edit reason is also bad.
Comment: You would "flag it" by using the contact us link at the bottom of the page. It's such a rare situation that it doesn't merit changing the way locked questions act.
Comment: And even then, preferably you would want to edit the post to remove the need for outside links, knowing that it's been locked.
Answer: Can't edit or flag a locked post
Exactly.  That's what "locked" means.  The messsage in the box that indicates the question is locked says in part "This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed.".  This is really quite clear.
Put another way, you're not supposed to be able to edit anything.  This is a dead question that was only left around for historical significance, again, just like the message says.  It really shouldn't be here in the first place.  We certainly don't want people editing it and bumping it to the top of active list.

Can't edit or flag a locked post


CKEditor custom configuration (implemented using WYSIWYG module)

Question: How can I set some custom configurations for the CKeditor module? I want to set spell check SCAYT on by default, and a few other things like that. Ideally, I would like to create my own custom config file somewhere sensible that won't be overwritten.
Answer: Look at hook_wysiwyg_settings_alter

Act on editor profile settings.
This hook is invoked from wysiwyg_get_editor_config() after the
  JavaScript settings have been generated for an editor profile and
  before the settings are added to the page. The settings may be
  customized or enhanced; typically with options that cannot be
  controlled through Wysiwyg module's administrative UI currently.
Modules implementing this hook to enforce settings that can also be
  controlled through the UI should also implement
  hook_form_wysiwyg_profile_form_alter() to adjust or at least indicate
  on the editor profile configuration form that certain/affected
  settings cannot be changed.

Additionally this blog post by Fuse Interactive: WYSIWYG MODULE + CKEDITOR: TAMING THE BEAST goes into great depths on how to make use of this hook. From the blog post ...
<code>/**
 * Implements hook_wysiwyg_editor_settings_alter()
 */
function ckeditor_custom_wysiwyg_editor_settings_alter(&$settings, $context) {

  // The $context variable contains information about the wysiwyg profile we're using
  // In this case we just need to check that the editor being used is ckeditor

  if ($context['profile']->editor == 'ckeditor') {

    // The $settings variable contains all the config options ckeditor uses.
    // The array keys correspond directly with any setting that can be applied
    // to CKEditor - as outlined in the CKEditor docs:
    // http://docs.cksource.com/ckeditor_api/symbols/CKEDITOR.config.html
    // Another way to override configuration is to use your own configuration javascript
    // file. In this case, we're going to add our own configuration file that will
    // Hold our stylesSet customizations...
    $settings['customConfig'] = base_path() . drupal_get_path('module', 'ckeditor_custom') .
                                '/ckeditor_custom_config.js';

    // We are also going to specify a custom body id and class
    $settings['bodyId'] = 'ckeditor_custom_id';
    $settings['bodyClass'] = 'ckeditor_custom_class';

    // To see what's in $settings and $context, install the devel module
    // And run the variables through the dpm() function.
  }
}
</code>
Answer: Here is the code inspired by @tenken
<code>/**
 * Implements hook_wysiwyg_editor_settings_alter()
 *
 * @see http://docs.cksource.com/CKEditor_3.x/Howto/Enabling_SCAYT
 */
function modulename_wysiwyg_editor_settings_alter(&$settings, $context) {
  // The $context variable contains information about the wysiwyg profile we're using
  // In this case we just need to check that the editor being used is ckeditor
  if ($context['profile']->editor == 'ckeditor') {
    // Make Scayt enabled by default.
    $settings['scayt_autoStartup'] = 'true';
  }
}
</code>


Which technologies are used in Expression engine

Question: Expression Engine is based on codeignitor framework and codeignitor is developed using core PHP but I want to know which technologies are used by expression engine like it uses angular js,ember js etc. ?
Comment: @jrothafer - Sounds like a perfectly suitable question for the ExpressionEngine Exchange - it leads to a factual non-opinion based answer, just because it's not related to code or usage...? See this link: http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic
Comment: This isn't an appropriate question for an exchange, and you've actually mostly answered your own question, minus the jQuery. Visit https://ellislab.com/expressionengine for more information, and reference http://expressionengine.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask for future questions to this exchange.
Comment: @PeterLewis Compadre; after reviewing this exchange's help topics, I've realized I mistakenly considered this question as inappropriate. I thought documentation reference answers were frowned upon (this question **is** easily answered by EllisLab documentation). Thank you for calling me out on it, and I'll be more considerate and more inviting to this exchange from now on. (**P.S.** This is not sarcasm! Sorry for being/sounding like a jerk!)
Answer: ExpressionEngine is a purely PHP Content Management System (CMS) framework. As you mentioned, it is currently based off of the CodeIgniter MVC framework.
As for technologies that are required to employ ExpressionEngine ...
<code>-Linux or similar operating system; one capable of serving a PHP agent
-Database functionality, specifically MySQL with a MyISAM modern table engine
 -- EE 2.9+ I've been able to run in production with INNODB table engines...
-Apache 2.x
 -- Many (engineers, host partners, etc..) have been able to run EE on nginx..
</code>
EE depends on jQuery, a JavaScript library for front-end display. However, even the newest version (EE 2.10.1) runs on a pretty out-of-date jQuery version. There is an EE 3.0.0-beta out... but I don't know it's technologies. I've played with it and I know it has dropped CodeIgniter as it's core framework.
For frameworks like Angular etc...
EE is agnostic to those type of frameworks. EE doesn't default to using any of them. You can incorporate Angular, Ember, etc.. if you want! EE is a framework, which allows you to place other frameworks on top of it. It's your choice! It's your world.
Comment: No problem! I think I was in a bad mood when @PeterLweis called me out, but I'm still gad to help. Angular and other JS frameworks are more `server <==> client` oriented, where as  EE is a back-end CMS... it's up to you (or the client) to pick how to exchange data from EE to the browser.
Comment: Just to support this answer, EE is indeed agnostic. We've used EE successfully as a "headless" CMS - managing the data and pushing it to an AngularJs front end.


Login password not good enough

Question: I tried to setup a login password using lower & upper case letters of the form User followed by numbers (where User is my User name and the password is thus composed of at least 8 characters). I've also tried initials with numbers. I keep on getting not good enough. I haven't been able to find a definitive set of rules for the login password. Could anyone point me to a definitive set of rules for login passwords?
Comment: You can check how secure is your password with [this calculator](https://howsecureismypassword.net/) :)
Answer: If you have no real interest in security you can avoid having to enter your password by having the system login automatically.
If you however do want a secure password (which would be sensible in most cases) the following guidelines are recommended.
Strong Passwords

Applications, and libraries exist for your Ubuntu system to assist in generating, or enforcing strong passwords. A strong password is defined as any password which meets the following criteria:

    At least fifteen (15) characters in length.
    Does not contain your user name, real name, organization name, family member's names or names of your pets.
    Does not contain your birth date.
    Does not contain a complete dictionary word.
    Is significantly different from your previous password.

    Should contain three (3) of the following character types.
        Lowercase Alphabetical (a, b, c, etc.)
        Uppercase Alphabetical (A, B, C, etc.)
        Numerics (0, 1, 2, etc.)
        Special Characters (@, %, !, etc.)

Source: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/StrongPasswords
Edit: If you want to enforce strong passwords or relax password requirements all this is configurable by editing /etc/security/pwquality.conf The file is heavily commented and pretty self-explanatory. Details on the respective options can be found on the man page
Comment: I found that it will accept a 10 character password, of the form word@acronym
Comment: @JohnRose Well, I suppose should and must are sometimes 2 different things. Personally, I recommend strong passwords (and never using the same one for different things)
Comment: It's irritating that Canonical have decided on rules for login passwords. IMO it's none of their business what strength of passwords I want to use. It would be Ok for warnings about passwords being weak.
Comment: @JohnRose It's not a Canonical thing. You'll run into default security settings on any Linux distro. You can change anything you don't like though (whether ill advised or not) See my edited answer.
Answer: From https://help.ubuntu.com/lts/serverguide/user-management.html:

By default, Ubuntu requires a minimum password length of 6 characters,
  as well as some basic entropy checks

So it should be fine. If you have access to /etc/pam.d/common-password you could comment a word TEMPORARY and use it til you get your account properly set up. (If you don't I recommend a live cd)

Login password not good enough


Scholarship case - Accepting more than one university offer

Question: I have applied for the said foundation as well as the Chevening Scholarship to pursue my Master's degree (Postgraduate).
Recently, I received two universities offers.
At the beginning and as a Syrian student, I did not know that accepting an offer may affect accepting other offers. So I accepted a university with an average ranking.
Now that I have received an offer from a better university, can I accept other universities' offers? Knowing that I need to accept at least two universities offers, because the universities that I applied for in the first scholarship differ from the other one. And each university is giving me 4 weeks to accept the offer, if I did not accept the offer I will not be able to provide my offers to the scholarship committee after 4 month if they picked me. Many thanks. I would really appreciate a prompt answer for this dilemma.
Answer: You didn't realize that saying to one university "yes, I accept to study full time at your university" meant that you couldn't accept the same thing at another university? Even as a student of another country, you should have understood this.
For the matter of needing to accept 2 different universities for 2 different scholarships: you can't. Either you need both scholarships to agree to both pay for the same university, or you need to make do with 1 scholarship.
Comment: sorry, I did not mean to be rude in my question. The only thing that I am afraid of being rejected from the scholarships in which I accepted its university offer. consequently, If I won the other one, I will loss it's universities' offers. Thank you for your courteous, timely response.
Comment: @samardati The answer to that question depends upon the specifics of the scholarships and is considered off-topic here.


Do tomato-based sauces change/enhance flavour when left in the fridge?

Question: I cooked some green beans in a tomato-based sauce then ate some and left the rest in the fridge 3 days ago. I tasted it today, and it was better than I remember: is this a known phenomenon or am I not remembering right?
Answer: Most sauces, tomato based or not, will improve in flavour after being left overnight. This is also true of stews and casseroles. The received wisdom is that it gives the flavours a chance to 'marry' and blend, though I'm not sure of the science behind it.
Comment: Minor nitpick: "...will **absorb/accumulate/strengthen**(1) in flavor...". I've ended up with way too strong flavors in the past, with a large range of ingredients, to call everything an improvement. @(1) Not a native speaker, and not sure how to correctly phrase what I want to say, hope you'll get the drift.
Comment: @canardgras: Try minced/sliced/squeezed garlic next time, you'll be amazed overnight :) Not bad necessarily, but not what you intended. Cinnamon is powerful too, even when applied directly but actually most herbs/spices are, especially when you **really** give them time to soak in.
Comment: I would back @WillemvanRumpt that it does not always improve, I would say most sauces tend to deepen in flavor when given time.  If dried spices or large items such as chunks of garlic rather than a fine mince this may be more pronounced.  It is both the melding of flavors, and with some items more of the essence being released.  Some items with their essence more in their volatile oils on the other hand might suffer in comparison.
Comment: @WillemvanRumpt I have also had this happen, but only with dishes/sauces with whole spices in - especially cinnamon
Comment: @WillemvanRumpt As someone who likes garlic, that sounds fine to me.
Comment: @JAB: I eat garlic like candy, no problem there. Doesn't imply everything containing garlic should first and foremost taste like garlic ;)
Answer: Cells are complex. Each one is a unit which needs to keep itself alive and achieve homeostasis with its environment (big picture: tomato vs. world, small picture: tomato vs. other cells). To this end they need an assortment of proteins and other compounds.
Some nutrients are in a plant due to the nature of the the organ the tissue it is a part of: the tubers contain cells with organelles which contain carbohydrates due to their function as an energy store, while fruiting bodies often contain chemicals (and the enzymes which form the metabolic pathway to create them) which act on the behavior of the animals eating them. A good example would be the tobacco plant and nicotine, which is a pesticide; more mundane examples are herbs.
When you cut the fruiting body of a plant you lyse some of the cells where you have cut. Pureeing the fruiting body lyses many more, and the vacuoles in the cell which store digestive enzymes (for breaking down unneeded cellular structures - tomatoes aren't carnivorous) occasionally break and begin acting upon whatever is around them. This is why cut apples brown and why cut fruit and prepared herbs lose their flavor.
But why does it taste better? The most likely explanation is that this allows the digestive enzymes to break down the contents of the sauce, some of which are indigestible. This makes the sauce more nutritious and easier to digest and your tongue notices.
For reference see this patent which mentions the use of pectinase to prepare a tomato sauce. Pectin binds cells together and is an indigestible fiber. The process would convert some of the pectin in the prepared tomatoes into digestible carbohydrates.
Answer: It is a well known phenomenon.  Many sauces, stews, casseroles, etc. improve as flavours develop over time due to chemistry.  Breads also can improve if left to proof slowly before baking.
Answer: I do most of the cooking in our house, and I'd have to say it's true. When I'm making a jumbalaya, spaghetti sauce or goulash, all of which have tomato-based sauce, my wife always comments that leftovers the next day taste better than the night I made it. The same for my pulled pork, where I use a tomato and BBQ based sauce. I can't notice the difference myself, chiefly because I eat like a pig, but I trust my wife's judgement.
I'm not sure of the mechanism involved, whether it's some kind of "marrying" or settling process one of the other contributors posited, or whether it's simple placebo or expectation... but it works.
Answer: It's not just about tomatoes. This is a well-known phenomenon.
I used to be a professional chef, and the recipes for the soups in one particular restaurant I worked in called for resting overnight.
One night, a particular soup ran out. A server took an order for it anyway even though he had been told it was 86'd (gone), because he knew there had been a pot of it cooking in the prep kitchen just before opening time.
Imagine the drama when he was told that he'd have to go tell his diner "Sorry" because the soup wouldn't be done till tomorrow.


Can I replace a ceiling light fixture with a higher wattage one?

Question: I am planning to order replacement ceiling fixtures for my 2 foyer lights. i want to make sure they will work first.  measurement wise, the dimensions seem to fit the space well.  the ones in there now are standard, came  with the new house.  in the current "mushroom" light fixture, there are two 60 Watt light bulbs.  My new fixture says it will take 100W light bulbs, 3 of them.  Does this matter that after I change out the fixture, i will utilize essentially 300W where there now are 120Watt total?
Comment: If in doubt, a ~15W LED bulb will produce as much light as a 100W incandescent bulb - and will last 40 times as long.
Comment: I agree that LED bulbs (or compact fluorescents, which aren't quite as efficient) are the simplest way to keep the new fixture's power draw below 120 watts and thus avoid concerns about overloading the circuit. Not to mention that they'll save you more money on electricity than they cost you in more expensive bulbs.
Answer: Yes it could matter your best course of action would be to determine all loads connected to that circuit and potential loads to see if the circuit will be likely to handle the additional load. Connected loads will most likely be other lights. You can either identify them and add the wattage or better turn them all on and check the amperage that breaker with a clamp on ammeter then add any general use outlets on that circuit at 180 watts each. A 15 amp circuit should not have more than 12 amps (1440 watts) continuous load a 20 amp circuit no more than 16 amps (1920 watts)
Answer: In most cases, this would pose no problem.
Lighting circuits in most homes are 15 amp lines.  That means the line can theoretically handle about 1800 watts at one time without tripping the circuit breaker or posing a hazard. That equals 18 100 watt lights at the same time. Or one 1200 watt vacuum cleaner and 6 100 watt bulbs. At the same time. Wattage should be limited to slightly lower levels if the use is continuous.
If you have very few breakers (more fixtures and outlets on fewer circuits) you might have a problem. On most homes built (or rewired) in the last forty years, it probably is not an issue.
Comment: Continuous usage is defined as 3 hours or more.
Answer: If this is a modern home, then there is no issue.  If you have turn of the century wiring, then that is another story.


Can I reduce capacity of a water heater?

Question: I recently purchased a large fixer upper with a 135 gallon AO smith gas water heater built in 2001.  Only two people are living in the house so we need a fraction of that amount.
Do water heaters always store their full capacity or is there some way to limit what they store or reduce their cost other than turning the temperature down?
Answer: A larger tank does not cost more energy. The only thing that costs energy is when the water cools - and that depends only on the surface area, not the amount of water in the tank. (Mathematically volume increases by the 3rd power, but surface area only by the 2nd power.)
So to save energy add extra insulation around the tank. Reducing the amount of water in the tank will do nothing since it won't save all that much surface area (and potentially none at all).
(Yes, it takes more energy to heat the water in the first place, but after that it doesn't matter - and you already heated it.)
Comment: @HenryJackson You are correct from the theoretical point of view. I was speaking strictly from the practical point of view. And also letting him know that a smaller tank doesn't help all that much - they usually make them just as tall, but narrower and the surface area is very similar, so it hardly makes a difference.
Comment: Note: Check with the manufacturer before adding insulation. Some have objections.  My own solution, when I replaced my old water heater, was a highly-insulated tank heated indirectly from my high-efficiently heating boiler, sized for the house's theoretical occupancy despite having having the place to myself most of the time.
Comment: You're partly wrong: larger tanks have larger surface area and therefore radiate more heat and cost more to operate. (You are correct that if you could put bricks in the tank or something to reduce the amount of water stored, that would not affect the heat loss since the surface area is the same.)
Answer: Water tanks store the water under pressure, just like the rest of the piping in your house, so there's no way to keep it partially full. Turning down the temperature would be a great way to save money if it's higher than the recommended 120º.
If you can't or won't turn it down, you might just consider replacing the tank. 13 years is getting up there for a hot water heater... you might only have a few more years left in it. Plus a new one is likely to be more efficient, regardless of size.
Comment: Actually, the amortized cost of a new unit after a 13 year old water heater springs a leak that damages the house is pretty neat to see in action. You have the repair costs and cost of a new heater to pay for. Pretty easy to justify the new heater by the damage you averted, just ask my neighbor who had his bedroom, garage below and living room destroyed. Lots of theoretical on the answers to this question that just doesn't add up, including false economies.
Comment: -1 as your answer is mainly about turning the temperature down, when the OP specifically restricted that as an answer.
Comment: @virtualxtc: Fair enough. I still think it's a good suggestion, since there's no way to do what the OP asked.
Comment: Also, I'm not saying you are wrong, but I'm not convinced that the amortized cost of a new unit can be justified by the difference in operational costs.  You might to add some analysis of how savings would justify an early purchase.
Answer: Actually, the math seems to contradict parts of the top-voted, accepted answer.
Assume that you decide to cut the volume of the water tank in half, by reducing, in proportion, the dimensions of the actual internal tank, while leaving the shape the same, and leaving the thickness of the insulation the same.
This would require each linear dimension to be reduces to 79.4% of the original value (cube root of 0.5).
This in turn means that the any area of the tank would decrease to 63.0% of the original volume (79.4% squared).  So, theoretically, this reduced tank would have heat conduction losses reduced to the same 63.0% of original.
This said, there is no real-world way to achieve this reduced size without replacing the tank.  As others have pointed out, reducing the water temperature and adding insulation are both cost-effective ways to reduce stand-by costs
Comment: I think that you and Ariel are using different assumptions about how one would reduce the volume of the tank. Perhaps Ariel was considering the 'brick-in-the-toilet-tank' displacement approach, rather than the 'build-a-smaller-tank' approach. Neither is right or wrong.
Comment: @mac so,if you substitute a displacing balloon for a brick, than this answer would would be better, would it not?
Comment: My answer was about what someone could actually do. Not about theoretically making a smaller tank - if you wanted to do that, you could just buy a new one.
Answer: Turns out, the surprising answer is you can reduce the thermal energy stored in a fixed size tank water heater.
At rest, water in a tank stratifies or even 'stacks', an effect well known to solar installers.  Hot water floats up top and cold water sinks.
A typical older water heater has just one temperature sensor low down in the tank.  Move that sensor higher on the tank, and it won't react to cold water at the bottom of the tank.  The top of the tank will have hot water, the bottom cold water, pretty much like you wanted.

Now there is a significant downside: vigorous flow can mix the water in the tank, giving you the average between the hot water on top and the cold water in the bottom.  If you could carefully draw the water off the top there would be no problem, but cheap tanks are going to introduce some turbulence and run the stratification pretty quickly.
And note this works better in electric heaters compared to gas heaters (with an electric you can disable the lower element, and regardless there is less mixing with the heat is on).
Great discussions on these matters can be read in United States Patent #6880493 or
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/all-about-water-heaters
Comment: It sounds like moving the temperature sensor up just causes you to take readings at a slightly warmer part of the temperature gradient, which has the effect of cycling on the heater less frequently... exactly the same effect as turning the temperature down. The amount of mixing doesn't change based on where the sensor is.
Comment: You don't "need" the full capacity of the tank, so heating the upper half is "enough".  It's not the same as less frequent cycling, as each cycle will attempt to heat the entire tank compared to the top half of the tank. It is not a PRACTICAL answer because of the limitations noted, but it is meant in the spirit of learning, and stratification is a REAL effect.
Comment: I think for your strategy to work you'd *have* to move the element up. Otherwise the element will heat the cold water at the bottom and convection will cause it to rise and mix.
Comment: @Henry Some solar tanks do exactly that (move the heating element up) to keep the stratification.  Remember this is an "in theory" not a "do this now" answer, and should be treated as such.


Tire moves when brakes are applied, car slides/jaunts sideways when you accelerate or apply the brakes

Question: My 2011 HHR failed inspection because when the brakes are applied the drivers side tire moves back and forth, front to back movement.  When I purchased it there was an issue that I didn't think was as bad as the tire movement appears to be. When you accelerate, or hit the brakes the care has a slight sideways jaunt or slide if you will. Obviously these two are related. Im just needing a little direction so I can troubleshoot not change parts.
Answer: Seems like a bearing is bad causing too much play. Have a good reviewed mechanic do a diagnosis, doing it yourself will be a hassle.
Comment: Welcome to Motor Vehicle Maintenance & Repair! I see you've posted two answers telling people to "go see a mechanic". For the most part, people don't come here to get told to go to a mechanic, so these types of answers are a waste of space. A real answer will give the OP the information they need, where they can decide for themselves if it is something they can fix or if they'll need to go to a mechanic. Some people just want to know what's going on, so they can understand it before they go to a mechanic. Whichever it is, I hope you can help by providing rich & full answers. We're here to help
Comment: well in all fairness I'm an electrician and the forums/pages I'm on that deal with electrical i have on more than one occasion answered a troubleshooting question with "call a qualified electrician". I'm definitly gonna do that just to get a professional opinion. And seeing as I have some spare time due to the entire globe deciding status quo was so yesterday I'm gonna try and do it myself for no other reason than Epstien didn't commit suicide
Comment: @Damian so you have found the issue, can you tell us what it was...
Answer: You need to check the suspension joints as a failed bush can allow for the movement you describe.
Inspect the tire tread as a failed bush can cause rapid tire wear on the inside or outside edges.
I have just replaced all of the rear suspension on my car as one bush had failed after 15 years - logic being the others were likely to fail soon. Result is a car that has no squeaks, rattles or clonks and handles like new.


Thunderstorm Weather Data

Question: Where can I find the average number of days with thunderstorms for each month for different locations in the United States? Does anyone know or have any links they know where it tells you that
Answer: If by thunderstorms you also mean storm events which produce lightning, you could try the Lightning Products and Services from NOAA.  There are gridded products (geospatial NetCDF) and U.S. county level datasets containing "the number of cloud-to-ground lightning flashes" from 1986 to present.  You might also be interested in NOAA's Storm Events Database, but bear in mind this dataset contains only severe weather events.

Thunderstorm Weather Data


what is the current explanation for the formation of cosmic voids?

Question: Why aren't galaxies distributed evenly in space, but instead form those sponge-like structures, with huge voids between filaments?
Comment: Voids is what is left when you form the rest (the sponge like structure). You form this so-called cosmic web because typically a given over-density is a-symmetric (it would be very unlikely that all over densities be spherically symmetric) hence it will tend to collapse faster along its denser direction. In the process it forms the so-called Zeldovitch pancakes. When the second direction collapses it forms filaments, and finally peaks of the primordial density field. What is left in between are voids. In an expanding universe, underdense regions repel as well so the symmetric process occurs.
Answer: Void formation is due to baryon acoustic oscillations. These can be thought of as fluctuations in the dense matter in the early stages of the universe; they became anisotropies, which can be seen in the cosmic microwave background. The fluctuations grew, until they hit the 150 Mpc scale, which correlates nicely to the sizes of voids in the universe today.
There's an interesting section (4.2) in this paper by Robert Brandenberger, which gives a mathematical treatment of how fluctuations of all kinds grew in the early universe. There is a better version of the explanation in Zeldovich (1972), which in fact puts forth the theory. The number density (if you'll pardon the pun) is lesser in that latter, but the former has a good overview, as it is meant to be a broad summary.
The simple explanation is that tiny fluctuations grew over time to become enormous structures.
Comment: I would disagree with the beginning of this answer: you have voids in simulations which do not model BAO.
Comment: I think the correct Zeldovich citation is [this one](http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/abs/1970A%26A.....5...84Z)
Comment: would it be possible to replicate a cosmic web in a laboratory experiment? I don't mean a computer simulation, I mean an experiment with real particles.
Comment: @mick I kind of doubt it, based on the extreme conditions early on, but I'm not 100% sure.
Comment: @chris I'll see what I can update.
Answer: You might like to watch this short movie from one of the authorities on this subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI12X2zczqI
The movie starts by answering the question "what is the cosmic web and what does it look like?".  Simulations can reproduce such structures, but they do not explain "why" they look the way they do.  The clue lies in the geometric appearance of the structures: The voids resemble the elements of a Voronoi tessellation in which the walls of the Voronoi polyhedra intersect in lines that are identified with the filaments.  We need to understand the dynamics that generated this pattern.
At around 2:30 the movie addresses the issue of why it looks the way it does using a simple ballistic model for the motion of a set of discrete particles that represent a random density field (the Zel'dovich model).  The filaments are there but too fuzzy.  So at ~3:00 it generalizes this so as to achieve greater realism by making the particles sticky.  This is the "adhesion model", which is governed by the Burgers-Hopf equation, which is easily solved by geometric means.  There is no gravity in this - it's ballistics acting on density field generated by a Gaussian Random process with a known covariance function (or power spectrum).
The adhesion model is a remarkable representation of the structure.  It shows how nothing "special" is required to generate the pattern of the cosmic web.  That's the "how".
The "why does the structure look like it does?" is a little more complex: this is the question of emergent geometry which is understood in terms of the technical language of the Lagrangian description of the flow. But the graphics is pretty and quite didactic, so worth a look.  This happens after around 5:30.
The movie compares appearance of the flow simultaneously in both Lagrangian and Eulerian space.  In the Lagrangian picture the particles have fixed coordinates,
A short descriptive article goes with the movie:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.1669v1.pdf
and a short explanatin of the Lagrangiuan view is at
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.5385v1.pdf
This is part of the thesis work of Johan Hidding from the Kapteyn Instutue in Groningen (supevisor Rien van de Weygaert - the father of the cosmic web according to Richard Bond).  A full presentation of the nature of the singularities in terms of Morse Theory is at
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.7134v1.pdf
and there are several other papers pending.
Comment: Hello Jones, welcome to Astronomy! It may be helpful to include a bit more context explaining what is found in the video.
Comment: Done - This is nowadays a well understood problem.  Most of the work on structural environments for galaxy formation is numerical simulation.
Answer: The baryonic acoustic oscillations (BAO) have a present-day scale $\sim 100 h^{-1}$ Mpc.  This has little or nothing to do with the appearance of voids, which appear predominantly on scales of $\sim 20h^{-1}$ Mpc. and below.  The BAO scale is only detected in the galaxy distribution by correlation analysis and does not manifest itself by mere visual inspection, unlike the voids, filaments and clusters that dominate the appearance of the cosmic web.  If anything, the voids scales are determined by the velocity field power spectrum, which is to be expected in light of the way the Zel'dovich approximation works (as explained in the movie I referred to).
I would have added this as a comment to the post except that I have insufficient reputation and so this is the only way I can make the point.  Apologies are offered if they are in order.


How much did a transatlantic telegram cost in 1914?

Question: How much did it cost to send a transatlantic telegram – if the specifics matter, say from New York to Berlin – in 1914? (Early 1914, before the war disrupted communications.) How much per word, and was there a minimum number of words?
Comment: Expensive, if your name is Arthur Zimmermann.
Comment: All these answers makes me wonder why they were so obsessed with _words_. Surely they still used morse code by then, making each _letter_ more important.
Comment: I have just been googling and kind find nothing specific. We know it was very expensive, even by today's standards without inflation, when the cable was first laid and I wonder if technical improves in the subsequent decades made the price much cheaper. chart here shows a decline in price on domestic rates followed by an increase (no doubt inflation related): https://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-the-u-s-telegraph-industry):https://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-the-u-s-telegraph-industry/
Comment: @pipe but then the number of symbols (dots and dashes) per letter is less for letters that are more common in words: "eats" is 7 symbols, but "zzyx" is 12, and interletter spaces are equal to 3 dots (1 dash) but interword spaces are 7 dots long.  Yes, long words could be used to get your money's worth, but it's actually hard to save many words by using longer ones.
Comment: Alternative *@pipe but then the number of symbols (dots and dashes) per letter reduces for letters that are commoner in words: "eats" is 7 symbols, but "zzyx" is 12, and interletter spaces equate to 3 dots (1 dash) but interword spaces are 7 dots long. Yes, verbiage could be used to get your money's worth, but it's actually hard to save many words by using sesquipedalia.* [this is 5 words/4 characters shorter than the alternative version of this comment, which wasn't phrased like a telegram to start with]
Comment: @pipe Baudot code was invented in 1870, so 'they still used Morse [in 1914]' seems a dangerous assumption.
Comment: @pipe humans good at words.  Humans error correct words well: Words were therefore cheap.  Code, now *code* was single character priced because humans are bad at non-linguistically encoded data.  Memorise P&*(Tip7r.  Memorise Peter and Star Open Tip Seven Rabbits.
Comment: @ChrisH *More common letters less symbols. Stop. Eats seven zzyx twelve. Stop. Interletter space three dots. Stop. Interword space seven. Stop. Sesquipedalia can cheapen but harder. Stop.* WTF are you doing with all these unnecessary prepositions and articles and conjunctions?!
Comment: @user253751 a late decision to take my original comment and turn it into an example
Answer: The first book google hit for "cablegram price" is The Bolsheviks: Twilight of the Romanov Dynasty
by John D. Loscher which contains a discussion of the prices and comparison to today's money. If I understand it correctly, it is one shilling a word and "five letters in conjunction counted as one word". One shilling (1/20 of pound sterling) was $3.11 of "American money" at the time of writing (published 2009). So a fifteen word cablegram from England to America was worth $46.65 in "today's money".
According to this commerce report from 1915 the minimum charge for week-end messages from Australia to USA 12s2d ($2.94) for 19 words. Deferred cablegrams cost 1s2d (28 cents) per word and full-rate messages 2s4d (57 cents) per word. Note that s is a shilling and d is a penny. This citation agree with the rate in the first quote which was for 1914.
A thorough discussion of various pricing options is available in Cable Services by Bill Glover (link by Pieter Geerkens). It will explain what deferred and weekend, as well as other types of telegrams and the associated rates mean. They appeared just before the first world war. For example, the weekend telegram

a minimum of 20 or 25 words paid for and in plain language. This telegram would only be delivered (posted) on the Monday following the
  day it was handed in.

while the deferred telegram

A minimum of five words must be paid for, they must be in plain
  language and in the language of the country of origin or destination
  or of a language specified by the relevant telegraph company.

This link also affirms the rate as 1s0d per word. A reduction to 9d came in 1923 because of competition from wireless.
Further discussion of the evolution of the pricing agreements is available in The cost of a telegram: the evolution of the international regulation of the telegraph regulation of the telegraph by Alan J. Richardson (link also by courtesy of Pieter Geerkens). But I did not find the actual numbers for transatlantic cable messages there.
Comment: So a basic Twitter post could have cost up to about $100 in today's money... (and you could only send it to one address)
Comment: @Falco if they were successfully compressing longer common words and charging on that basis, coded/pre-compressed text wouldn't compress further
Comment: [History of the Atlantic Cable and Undersea Communications](https://atlantic-cable.com/CableCos/Services/index.htm) discusses the evolution of various discount rate schemes. [Cost of a telegram](https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=odettepub) discusses the evolution of the various treaty agreements between nations and colonies that enabled international telegraph communication. Ping me when you've added these links sensibly, and I will return and upvote.
Comment: @PieterGeerkens I made some attempt.
Comment: Do you know where the plain language requirement stems from? I would recon, the telegram companies used their own shorthand, so they could transfer common English words in 2 or 3 letters and could only uphold their prices this way. Or was there some other reason like monitoring of communications ?
Comment: @VladimirF: Good enough. It seemed to make more sense for you to incorporate these links than for me to write up a competing answer.
Comment: @vsz I guess multicast would have been quite common (i.e. you contact one person on the other side of the world, and they would contact others within the same city/country)
Comment: For that matter, what's the definition of "plain language"?  I suspect it's meant to mean real English rather than codes, but what about technical or esoteric language?
Comment: Humans sent and received.  Humans error correct natural languages.  Compressed code is not error corrected for free.  Code messages accrued letter rates.  Thus actual telegraph encoding used dictionary look-ups.
Comment: @ChrisH exactly - if the companies were compressing themselves, they would have problems with sending already compressed messages. This would be a logical reason to require "natural language" so they can always profit by compressing long expensive texts down to a cheap few letters. - But is there any evidence of what was actually transferred over the wire? Were they compressed shorthands, or were they complete sentences ?
Answer: Partial answer.
Source for information would be postal agreements of the Universal Postal Union, where rates and conditions were set for international fees.
Telegrams fees were often based on a combination of local, (possible) transit and end country fees, which changed with time.
The rates are given in gold (French) francs (FF)

1.25 FF = 1 Mark (M) = 1 Shilling = 1.17 Kronen (Austria- Hungry)
20 M  = 1 £ = 20 Schillings = 25 FF (Standard Gold coins)
4.20 M = 1 US$
1 US$ = 5.25 FF

In Germany the minimum was 10 words (or a base fee plus a word fee).
1 word had a maximum of 15 letters.
So finding a postal agreement valid 1914 should give you the needed information to work out a realistic cost.

Sources:

Liste der Wechselkurse (Goldstandard) – Wikipedia
Comment: Would the government-set rates apply to telegrams sent from the US, where telegrams were run by private businesses?  (Western Union, Bell, and others.)
Comment: @jamesqf How this was negotiated and implemented I cannot say: [Records of the Post office Department POD | National Archives](https://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/028.html)
Answer: Partial answer.
Here are the telegram rates from Austria in 1913, found on page 226 of Józef Czech's Krakow Calendar for 1913 (the rates in the 1914 edition are the same), expressed in Austro–Hungarian hellers (1/100 of a krone) for telegrams 3–30 words long and for each subsequent word. The telegram form cost 2 hellers. According to a table on page 223, 1 US dollar was worth 4.96 Austro–Hungarian kronen.
However, there are no trans-Atlantic rates in the table, whose columns read:

local, Principality of Liechtenstein, Austria, Hungary, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Germany
England, Ireland, Algeria, Tunisia
Denmark, Luxembourg
Bulgaria, Monaco, France, Corsica, Italy, Andorra, the Netherlands
Montenegro, Serbia, Romania, Switzerland
Asiatic Turkey, Cyprus
Spain, European Turkey via Bosnia
Corfu via Trieste, Belgium
Malta
Norway
Portugal, Gibraltar
continental Greece, Poros, Euboea, European Russia, Sweden, Caucasus.

[
Comment: This was probably from the [Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Galicia_and_Lodomeria) rather than from Austria itself, though that was part of Austria-Hungary.
Comment: @jcaron I have trouble understanding what you wrote. 1) What did Galicia belong to if not the Austrian part of Austria–Hungary? 2) The postal rates were identical throughout the empire.


How can a US citizen born in US get a copy of their birth certificate from abroad?

Question: How can a US citizen access an official copy of their birth certificate (born pre-computer era) while living outside of the US? Is there an on-line service? Can a proxy living in the US access it?
Answer: Birth certificates are issued by the states, and each state's procedures are different. I believe in most states you can order by mail, but I am not sure if they will mail the certificate to a foreign address; you may have to pay more or provide an appropriately stamped envelope.


How to get wallet seed for account created using geth

Question: I have private net and created 2 accounts using geth...I connected private net to metamask but accounts were not visible...I didn't get any seed while creating accounts using geth...Is the only option is to import account in metamask?
Answer: you can't get it.
You didn't get any seed because the accounts created with geth aren't part of a  Herarchical Deterministic Wallet.
The seed is a 12-word composition called mnemonic, which is derivated via HMA-SHA512, in order to obtein all the accounts of a (HDW).
By creating accounts with geth you'll never be able to get a seed, because the accounts don't come from it.
Anyways, you can import your account into Metamask as said on this post response:

You can now import single/"loose"(as we call) keys into MetaMask if you click the menu in the top right corner. It will drop down with the option "Import account", you can click that and it will take you to a view where it will ask you to import your private key or json file.

Hope it helps.
Answer: How would metamask know about your account? You either create accounts with metamask or import an existing account. If you have created account with geth then you can find the keystore json file named as UTC-- inside keystore of your node. This can be imported in metamask under Import Account.


70-300 AF-P lens for portrait

Question: I am planning to buy AF-P DX NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-6.3G ED lens for Nikon D3400. Can we take a good portrait from this lens, can we blur the background?
Comment: Possible duplicate of [How can I get dramatic shallow DOF with a kit lens?](http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/5493/how-can-i-get-dramatic-shallow-dof-with-a-kit-lens)
Comment: I'm unclear on your wording. Are you asking _in general_ if this lens is good for portraits, or _specifically_ if it is good for a particular style of portrait with a highly-blurred background?
Comment: Actually i ordered online D3400 with dual kit lens one with 18-55mm & other 70-300mm. So i'm asking if i can take portrait with blurring background or not with 70-300 mm lens.
Comment: Maybe you should have asked this question *before* ordering? :-)
Comment: Yes i should have. But this is my first dslr camera so i didn't get much idea about the lenses. @PhilipKendall
Comment: Does the above answer your question? It's mainly focused on the wider 18-55mm kit lenses, but should generally apply.
Answer: Okay,
"Blurring" the background involves playing with the depth of field. Although I personally do not "favour" 70-300 for portraits, you can obviously "blur" the backgrounds using a aperture range of 4.5-6.3.
Good portrait not only means having great, expensive lenses in your kit. Sometimes, they do mean composing the portrait neatly and beautifully. I have seen people taking commendable portraits using a kit 18-55 lens.
I personally favour prime lenses for portraits. They pictorial quality the produce is awesome. For a good start, 35mm or 50mm primes in the budget ranges would be sufficient.
Answer: Yes.
Such a lens is not perfect for portrait applications, but will do the job in most cases. It will certainly be a cost-effective option. You can find some exmaple images with blurred background in this review: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/70-300mm-vr-afp.htm.
In fact, the blurring effect can be achieved with almost any telephoto lens. To increase background blurring, you should shoot from further away at longer focal length and make sure that the background is far away from the model.
There are a few cases where this lens will be limited in its usefulness:
1) If you want to shoot not just portraits but also upper body or full body photos. In this case a focal length of 70mm (for APS-C format) may be too long and you may want to go down to 55mm.
2) If you want to take pictures in dim light, for example inside and without flash. In this case you might want a higher-aperture lens. Those are, however, often much more expensive and much heavier.
Comment: To increase background blurring you should shoot with your subject as close as possible and the background as far away as possible. Putting your subject further away increases the depth of field and decreases the relative distance between your subject and the background. For more, please see [this answer](http://photo.stackexchange.com/a/87870/15871).
Comment: Michael, what you are saying is not wrong, but assumes pictures are taken at the same focal length, while I assumed that the size of the object should stay the same. In this case, the effect from longer local length is stronger, so that the background will be more blurred in a portrait taken from further away.
Answer: yes it can work for head shots and for upper body but for full body and group shots it is impractical to stand so far away from subject.

70-300 AF-P lens for portrait


Do "wise" and "wissen" share the same root?

Question: A cursory search shows that the English adjective "wise" and the German verb "wissen" descend from the same root: the PIE *weyd- ("to see, to know"). I found this by using Etymonline to search the English word, and Wiktionary to search the German word. I trust the former, but not necessarily the latter. Could you kind folks confirm that this common ancestry is true? And if so, how did the phonetic changes come about?
Comment: There is also Dutch "wis" (surely, only used in the expression "wis en waarachtig" nowadays) and "wiskunde" (mathematics) which I believe are the same root, but I have no sources. To know in Dutch is "weten".
Comment: There is also Greek oîda, "to know", and eîdon, "I saw", that I bet come from *weyd. No idea about Latin cognates though.
Comment: @MickG *videō* "to perceive", ancestor of English "visible" etc. The Greek cognates also used to have a /w/ but it disappeared from most dialects. (Mycenaean evidence shows it was there though.)
Comment: @MickG Slater's *Lexicon to Pindar* ( http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0072%3Aentry%3Doi)%3Dda ) cites a few instances with digamma, and LSJ mentions the digamma being there though without many citations for that form.
Comment: Russian vid "sight", vidit "sees", vedayet "knows" are also cognates.
Comment: @Draconis Is there any evidence of Aeolic preserving the digamma?
Answer: These words are indeed cognate! They both stem from the PIE root *weyd-, meaning "to know" or "to perceive", along with less obvious cognates like "guide", "vision", and "eidolon".
In Proto-Indo-European, the vowels *e, *o, and *[nothing] tended to alternate, a pattern called "ablaut". You can see traces of this still in the "strong verbs" which change their vowels to indicate tense, like drive/drove or freeze/froze. So the "zero-grade" form of *weyd- was *wyd-, also written *wid-.
In Proto-Germanic, *wyd- gave rise to a verb *witaną; the *d became *t through Grimm's Law.
In Old High German, the *t then lenited into a z, giving OHG wizzen; z then developed into s, giving Modern German wissen. (Somewhere along the line <w> became pronounced as /v/, though the spelling remained.)
In English, the *t remained, but the inflectional endings slowly dropped off, giving Old English witan, and Modern English wit. The verb died out but the noun survived. (An inflected form of this, with a mutated vowel, was generalized to give the poetic verb wot "know".)
One of the participles of *weyd- was *weyd-tos, which became *weyd-stos and then *wī-saz in Proto-Germanic. Again in English the endings dropped off, giving Old English wīs, which was respelled wise in Modern English. The pronunciation of the vowel changed in the Great Vowel Shift and the /s/ lenited to give the modern /wajz/.
Comment: Let me know if you want the etymologies for the other cognates I mentioned; reconstructed proto-languages are a particular interest of mine.
Comment: Thanks. Your answer is quite thorough and answers all my questions. Much appreciated!
Answer: Yes, en wise and de wissen share a root, but not as recently as Levenstein distance would suggest.
de weise is more directly cognate with en wise, whereas de wissen is directly cognate with en wit, which until recently was also a verb.
Yes, not coincidentally, wise and wit also share a root, but it split before the ancestor of English and German split.
The confusion is that t changed to something like s or tz in many words in the ancestor of High German and related languages, but not in other Germanic language families.
Answer: The 'i' being pronounced differently in English is because of the 'great vowel shift' (look it up). As for the w being pronounced differently, its because the w was originally pronounced as the English w in all Germanic languages, but in several of them (including German), it changed into a v sound.
Also, the final 'e' in English 'wise' was originally pronounced. This caused the 's' to be pronounced as a 'z' sound, which is a common thing to happen to consonants that appear in between vowels. This obviously didn't happen in German though. Funny enough, the 's' in German is more often than not pronounced as a 'z'. Its only pronounced as an 's' when it appears at the end of a syllable or word, or its doubled (as in wissen).
As for what the word they are descended from meant, I don't know. But its obvious that these two are related. Wissen means 'to know (a fact)' while 'wise' means something like 'to be knowledgeable'. Not only are their meanings related, but they also obviously resemble each other. German is one of English's closest surviving relatives (though not the closest, English's closest relatives would actually be the Frisian languages).


Was Rami Malek singing or lipsyncing?

Question: In Bohemian Rhapsody Rami Malek played Freddie Mercury from Queen. In the scenes where his character was singing, was the actor really singing with his voice, or only lipsyncing to recordings of Freddie Mercury?
Comment: It's worth noting that in almost all movies with singing, the actors are _always_ lip syncing, or at least, audio from the studio is dubbed in afterward. This is due to how movies are produced, although there is the occasional example where they use the actual audio from the actors' performances (e.g., the 2012 version of _Les Miserables_).
Comment: @ApologizeandreinstateMonica I am aware that movies in Hollywood usually record all dialog, not just singing later int the studio and dub it over whatever was recorded on the set.
Comment: I'm unclear what you mean by "not just singing it later". My point was that the song has already been recorded in the studio by the time they go to film. Then, the actor really does sing while he acts (sometimes they lip sync, but usually they actually sing), but he sings along to the pre-recorded track. Then the pre-recorded track is used in the actual film. This isn't always the case, though, like in the example of _Les Miserables_.
Comment: @FireSaraChipps I mean that in Hollywood it is not just singing that is later changed in the final audio for the movie, dialog is usually also recorder again in studio
Comment: I'm aware of that.
Answer: It's a combination of Rami Malek's voice, that of Freddie Mercury, and of Marc Martel:

Even though Malek was singing, he still needed to lip-sync to Mercury's recordings, so they could overdub his voice where necessary.
Here's an article about the process.

Was Rami Malek singing or lipsyncing?


Cassette compatability regarding Shimano 9 speed

Question: I have a Ultegra CS6700 9 speed rear deraileur that came on my bike.  Originally the gearing was 12-25, which I changed to 12-27.  I was wanting to know of that deraileur would work without a problem switching to a HG50 cassette.  The reason for doing so is because it offers a 9 speed 11-32 gearing.  I was wanting to get the bigger granny gear so I could more easily go up big hills.  Would this new cassette work with just swapping the cassette and adjusting the deraileur to accomodate the bigger gear (also changing the chain to have more length) with the older Ultegra deraileur or would it not shift because of the differences?
Answer: The published max large cog for both RD-6700-SS and RD-6700-GS is 30. They can sometimes work acceptably with 32, but they're not designed to and it's hit or miss. The variance is because dropout design is not universal. Putting in a longer b-tension screw or running it in reverse can help. You can also get something like a Wolftooth Roadlink.
Total capacity is 34t for SS and 40t for GS.
Comment: Cheaper than Roadlink is for 9 speed, you can go with a mountain derailleur.
Comment: @Batman : Only if the cable pull is identical on mountain and road derailleur.
Comment: Maybe it might be helped by the fact that I switched the front from 53/39 to 50/34 or is the limitation solely in the rear deraileur?
Comment: That has to do with total capacity, and that change will only push against the capacity number, not help, as you're going from 14t difference to 16. It doesn't affect large cog clearance.


Is "XBox Live Vision Camera" the same as "Kinect"?

Question: I have a Kinect, and I recently encountered an older XBox Arcade game called Puzzle Arcade, which lists support for the "XBox Live Vision Camera".  I assume this was how camera support was listed before Microsoft unveiled Kinect, but I'm unclear if the two literally mean the same thing.  For my purposes I basically want to know if games which list features that require "XBox Live Vision Camera", can support those features if you have a Kinect camera.
Comment: I can't find anything _official_ on this, though some xbox forum posts, and this support article pretty much seem to indicate that it is not the same, nor will Vision games work with the Kinect instead: http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/kinect/live-vision-camera-and-kinect-sensor
Comment: XBox Live Vision Camera is something entirely different then the Kintect.
Answer: Sadly, no.  The games that support the Xbox Live Vision Camera are not natively supported by Kinect.
In fact, the two don't play nice together at all, according to this Microsoft support article.  The only crossover app appears to be Video Kinect, which can be used with either device.
Comment: How ridiculous of me to assume my camera could be used as a... camera.


How can I control UVs with a rig?

Question: So, I am working on a robot that looks like eve from wal-e. So, now I want to control the eyes like a rig but still want them to look like it is coming out from a screen (which is basically black now cause the screen is turned off ). The eyes are nothing more than just two blue dots. So if only there was a way I could manipulate the UVs to face a object or deform like a object maybe? Here is a 360. So my question is how do I animate the eyes while still having them look like an image mapped on the eyes?
Comment: That's what exactly UV Warp is for: https://www.blender.org/manual/modeling/modifiers/modify/uv_warp.html, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BopkonvbCEE
Answer: This might be helpful. UV Project where an empty can move and control the UV texture. You can either animate the empty directly, or parent it to another bone, or object, or...

p.s. if you press RR with the empty selected you can rotate the texture like an orbit.
Update: In response to extra blink question.
Above the initial shape I added a duplicate which floats just above the surface and repeated the process of adding a UV project - the difference is the second UV had a strip of alpha transparency.

My guess is more layers can be added for extra effect. Here I added some movement to the new UV alpha layer...

...and then added some scaling to origin UV eye texture.
Comment: although this has already helped a lot and thx for that but any idea how would i control things like a blink ?
Comment: thx for the help
Answer: Not exactly sure, how you want to move the eyes.
But from how i understand you dont like to use bones for it to move ?.
Well another option is to do it using shapekeys.
A shapekey can be assigned a value from -1 to 1 where 0 is no effect.
they can even be combinations, and they are often used for facial expressions.
here some more info :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zijo8ly6pyI

How can I control UVs with a rig?


Noisy sky with Nikon d600

Question: I have a question regarding the shot I attached. I tried taking a pic of this landscape, but no matter how I played with the iso, going as low as 400, the sky looks really grainy if zoomed even just a little bit.
Also, the hill feels kinda out of focus even though it was what I was actually focusing on, as the camera wouldn't focus on the sky. What did I do blatantly wrong?
Answer: Blue skies are typically noisy with any camera, and at any ISO. It is due to the RGB filtration of the individual photosites/pixels.
With the common Bayer filter array 50% of the photosites are filtered to a green centric wavelength, and 25% are filtered to blue and red centric wavelengths (each). So when you photograph a blue sky only 25% of the photosites are optimal for recording the scene.
But note that I said "color centric" wavelengths; because there is typically some overlap (varies by camera). So even if the sky was a pure uniform blue, some green and red photosites may still collect enough light to generate a notable response.
What this means is that; a uniform blue sky can be very confusing for the demosaicing algorithm to work with and results in color noise (typically red/magenta IME). This is very similar to recording very dark scenes where random photosites collect enough light to generate a more significant response resulting in random color noise.

Your image does lack sharpness... my best guess is that it is due to camera movement due to working with low ISO's (longer exposure times). It is also likely at least partially due to atmospheric interference over long distances (moisture, haze, heat, etc).
Edit to add: The response curves are for the D300 sensor with the IR filter removed, and show a higher sensitivity in the IR range outside of visible light (above 740) than a standard camera would exhibit.
Comment: Selective noise reduction (if required) would be my suggestion, but start with color noise reduction rather than luminance noise reduction. Exactly how you would go about that depends on the image and editing program being used... lots of tutorials online.
Comment: Thanks a lot!
And thank you for such a detailed explanation. As a beginner I love this kind of info, I'm trying to grow as much as possible. The shutter speed wasn't that low so i didn't consider it as a factor, but I'll try to pay more attention to it too. There definitely was some haze, it's typical of where I live so that's probably a factor too, although not predominant.
Would you recommend some relatively easy retouching option to clean the sky a bit?
Comment: @StevenKersting: +1 for the comment, some information on how to fix this would be a great addition to the answer. Noise reduction happens after demosaicing right? Would it also be possible to prevent it with a different demosaicing algorithm? I think the free program Darktable offers some choices, but I haven't looked in to the differences yet.
Answer: Since you're in digital, there are a lot of things you can do that aren't possible in film without a ton of work. One of the biggest is being able to easily edit photos together. It's only a little more work taking the pics. If the there's too little light or too much or both together, take composite shots.
On this shot, I'd take the image of everything but since it's the bright moon and low light, I'd shoot the moon alone, the sky alone with the moon, and then the ground with no sky. In photoshop, layer the pieces on top of the pic of everything.
Here is your pic with basic general color corrections (explanation of those corrections) and your sky blurred. Make a copy of the entire pic, use smart blur to get rid of the blocks then gaussian blur to make the sky smooth. Then cut out everything with soft edges so it blends and put it over the top of the pic.

Here's the blurred sky layer over a plain green layer

Noisy sky with Nikon d600


Will California become a subduction zone in the distant future

Question: California is one of the few places in the world that lie on a transform fault. My question is why considering the fact that North American Plate is moving westward shouldn't California be a subduction zone like the Entirety of the west coast of the Americas say for Canada. Why is that the North American plate is simply rubbing up against Pacific plate in here as well as Canada.
Comment: short answer because there used to be an EAST pacific plate that much of North America is now sitting on, and California is sitting on a dead/dying spreading center. the west pacific plate is moving AWAY from north America.
Answer: Before the transform process of the San Andreas Fault zone we know today, there was indeed a subduction zone event taking place in this same region near now coastal California during the late Jurassic to late Cretaceous periods.
Today the city of San Francisco physically represents the aftermath of the ancient clash of mighty tectonic titans as the city and surrounding land and oceanic areas consist of and exists on several terranes and melanges which accreted, or formed, during this time, which make up the assemblage known as the Franciscan Complex. These assemblages are an illustrative historical account of events that formed while the mighty Pacific Plate aggressively rammed its way in an easterly direction toward the equally colossal North American Plate. There was a key player who's pretty much laid to rest now and that was the ancient tectonic Farallon Plate in this same region off of California before the - modern day, neverending, gorgeous, and ever-dynamic coastline. This ancient plate now rests somewhere underneath Utah or there about, theoretically. Although and obviously not as robust as either plate forcing it into its "Malachi crunch" (uh oh, now I'm dating my own "...Days"), it was sizable yet, so while it was forced to dive underneath the North American plate for as much as a mass apparently its size can be, until eventually becoming so plugged up and impeding its displacement from the ongoing movement of the Pacific Plate, forcing it to redirect its great energy force elsewhere. This systematic transition of backed up energy marks the birth of the famous, very active San Andreas transform fault! For more on SAF: https://geo.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Geography_(Physical)/Supplemental_Materials%3A_Physical_Geography_(Lenkeit-Meezan)/08%3A_Shaping_the_Lithosphere/8.03%3A_Orogenesis%2C_Faults_and_Earthquakes
Equally fascinating is that the subduction of the Farallon Plate formed the Sierra Mountain Range orogenesis by way of folding and uplift, while tensional stress of the orogeny stretched things out on both Eastern and Western locations of the Sierra's and "simultaneously" formed the Great Valley which California's Central Valley of today was/is vastly part of, as well as the creation of the Great Basin on the far eastern side of the Sierra Nevada Mtn. Range.


If a SSD fails, using z68 caching, data on HDD is lost?

Question: If my SSD fails, the HDD data will be lost? Does it works like RAID 0, when data is stripped between the two drives? Thanks :)
Answer: It depends on the SRT mode. In 'maximized' mode, an SSD failure will make the drive unusable. In 'enhanced' mode, an SSD failure will just result in SRT being disabled. Essentially, 'maximized' mode is a write-back cache with writes waiting only for the SSD to complete. In 'enhanced' mode, writes must hit the hard drive to be considered complete, essentially a write-through cache. Performance will drop in enhanced mode compared to maximized mode.
Answer: If you feel that your SSD is failing and still have access to Windows. I would disable the SSD. Who makes your SSD? If it's Intel then google for the Intel Toolbox or Intel Toolkit. It will show you the health of the SSD and the estimated life remaining.
To answer your question directly, it depends. When setting up the SSD, did you enable Enhanced or Maximized. If you enabled Enhanced then you should be okay to pull the SSD if fails. If Maximized then you're probably screwed if you are unable to boot. I would suggest that you immediately disable acceleration and put it in Enhanced if you must continue to use the SSD SRT.
Right Click and View Image for Larger Size


What causes inflation?

Question: Given the recent increases in the price of many things in the US (lumber, used cars, gasoline, etc…) I have begun thinking about what is going on at a macroeconomic level. My first thought is "it's inflation" but then I can rationalize to myself that a surge in demand following a "reopening" "after" the pandemic leads to a supply shortage and this can drive prices up. Ok, so a supply demand imbalance can lead to rising prices, without inflation. This is something I can understand… but if this doesn't cause inflation, what does? What other mechanism exists that drives inflation if not supply/demand changes?
Answer: A rise in prices is inflation. So, to some extent there has been inflation after the pandemic.  Some key examples are:

Lumber prices have increased as a result of several supply chain disruptions and increased demand, which drives up the price of pallets, and therefore... everything else.
Demand is way up for numerous products as customers are attempting to "make up for" lost leisure time.
Home prices are way, way up.  They represent the single largest purchase for consumers, so this has a fairly strong influence.

However, I get the intuition that economists (myself included) seem to be fairly confident that most of these disruptions in the supply chain will be smoothed out over time and fairly quickly at that. Demand will probably return to normal levels once the population has gotten the year of restrictions "out of their system", which will drop prices again. Take a look at the inflation changes over the history- the current spike, while nonzero, seems modest and on the tail of a substantive deflationary period. An example of more substantive inflation would be around 1972-1975, where the values are strongly positive for a long period of time.

Still, these inflation values never really approach the hyperinflation values that one may learn about in introductory econ of 100% per year - or anything like that.
I had the privilege to see the chairman of the NYC fed here (https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6808924128217747456) and the basic point he was able to communicate is that they are monitoring the situation (they are always monitoring the situation), but more importantly he did not mention that there was cause for concern.  Sometimes, with these officials, it's about what they didn't say.
Comment: US Federal Funds rate in June 2021: 0.08%.  US Federal Funds rate in June 2023: 5.08%.  Perhaps he should have been concerned: inflation (CPIAUCSL) peaked at 9% in June 2022.
Answer: I think you are bit confused about what inflation even is.
On Inflation

Ok, so a supply demand imbalance can lead to rising prices, without inflation. This is something I can understand…

The above sentence does not show correct understanding of inflation.
Inflation by definition is the increase in aggregate price level, and aggregate price level is just aggregation of individual prices. If prices increase all over economy then by definition there is an inflation. You can't have all prices increase without inflation, because definitionally inflation is the aggregate overall change in prices.
Note, it is possible to have prices increase in some markets without inflation, but only if in some other markets prices decrease. For example, if in market for milk prices increase by 10%, but if in market for meat prices drop by 10%, all else being equal inflation would be zero. However, it is not possible to have generally rising prices all over economy without there being inflation as that is what inflation is by definition.
"Surface-Level" Macroeconomics of Inflation
Actually, from surface level macro perspective inflation is caused just by shifts of aggregate supply and aggregate demand.  This is because aggregate price level is given by intersection of aggregate supply and aggregate demand of whole economy, and whenever aggregate supply or aggregate demand shift in some way that increases the aggregate price level you have inflation in the economy.
For example, shift in the aggregate supply to the left (or some authors would say up) would lead to inflation. Or shift in the aggregate demand to the right (or some authors would say up) would lead to inflation  (see the graphs I drew in tikz below, in the graph $P$ is aggregate price level $AD$ aggregate demand, $AS$ aggregate supply, and $Y$ output of the economy).
However, this is just a "surface-level" explanation because, even though aggregate price level level is determined by aggregate demand and aggregate supply, AD and AS are not themselves independent and they are determined by other forces. I will explain this in next section.

"Deeper-Level" Macroeconomics of Inflation
On deeper level, aggregate price level (change of which gives you inflation), is determined by the money market equilibrium (which is one of the building blocks that you can use to construct AS-AD see Woodford Interest & Prices for graduate level treatment or Blanchard et al Macroeconomics for more beginner friendly treatment). The money market equilibrium is given by:
$$M/P = L(Y,i)$$
where $M$ is money supply, $P$ aggregate price level, and $L$ is the liquidity demand that depends on output $Y$, and interest rate $i$. A less accurate (but for a novice more useful) representation would be given by the quantity theory of money representation, where $L$ is just expressed as $Y/V$ (where $V$ depends on interest rate):
$$\frac{M}{P} = \frac{Y}{V} \implies P = \frac{MV}{Y}$$
Linearizing the equilibrium condition above and examining how it changes with respect to time we can arrive at the following relationship (where $\Delta x =dx/x$):
$$ \Delta P  = \Delta M + \Delta V - \Delta Y$$
So inflation $\Delta P>0$ is caused by positive change in money supply, which is controlled by the government via central bank, positive change in velocity of money, that is how much one unit of currency is used in the economy on average (which varies inversely with interest rate) and by negative change in real output, which changes due to all the factors that affect societies ability to produce output (e.g. technology, availability of factors of production etc.).
In addition, the model above is still an oversimplification as in real life people form expectations, and often act on the expectations of things happening rather than things actually happening. Consequently, what matters is also how well inflation expectations are anchored, and what people expect will be happening in the real economy (e.g. see discussion of this in Bems et al (2018). Expectations' Anchoring and Inflation Persistence. International Monetary Fund).
There is also bit more nuance to all of this that you can explore in the literature I listed above, but overall these are main factors determining inflation.
Answer: Inflation is a generalized rise of prices at a determinated market during a specific period of time (usually seasonally adjusted).
Inflation is everytime and everywhere a monetary phenomenon (meaning, it's caused by action of central banks). For example, the most argued situation by heterodox economists is an oil crisis driving prices up, which in my opinion is the best example of a person not understanding basic economics.
If there is an undersupply of oil and the price of energy goes up, the demand for final goods is simply going to fall because of the budget constraint impeding people to escort the upward trajectory of prices. This obviously would case a situation of oversupply, which at the end would be solved either by lower prices followed by diminished returns of the producers or by lower production which in turn would cause lower oil prices, reestablishing the equilibrium point.
This is explored in-depth by the masterbook of prices history (40 Centuries of Prices and Wages Control: How not to Fight Inflation).
Comment: (-1) By me. I thought the Mises Institute advocates a more subtle approach than insulting all non-monetarists. Perhaps I am wrong.

What causes inflation?


How to prevent a vinegar taste when poaching eggs (using vinegared water)

Question: How does one remove the vinegar taste from eggs that are poached in water with vinegar added? Would rinsing the eggs in a sugar solution help?
Comment: Sugar counters the acid taste, but not the smell of vinegar.
Answer: I assume you mean eggs that have been poached in water with vinegar added?
I usually add vinegar to my poaching water when making poached eggs. However, I rarely taste the vinegar. I would suggest

Use less vinegar. I use no more than a tablespoon for a shallow frying pan's worth of water
Use a milder vinegar like white wine vinegar, or even lemon juice
Use really fresh eggs if you can, in which case you don't even need vinegar

Lots of people use a saucepan full of water to poach eggs. I used to, but always with inconsistent results. Usually the egg white would just disintegrate and form a foam.
Now I use a small, shallow frying pan. This means the egg white has less opportunity to disintegrate, and also means I need to use less vinegar to help the white set.
If rather than poaching you mean pickling, there's little you can do to remove the vinegar taste, as the vinegar will have penetrated the egg thoroughly.
Comment: Thanks ElendilTheTall, actually what I did was for each egg, I put one tablespoon. Never thought that I can use lemon juice to replace vinegar. Maybe a lemon egg will taste better?
Comment: Most of the lemon flavour is in the zest, so you shouldn't notice too much of a lemony taste, if any.
Comment: @ElendilTheTall, clearly you've never had a truly ripe lemon. While unquestionably the zest contains a concentrated amount of flavor, the juice of a tree-ripened lemon will have a lovely fresh and fragrant flavor of its own (i.e. while we associate both the juice's flavor and the zest with "lemon", they don't actually taste very similar).


Change Bootstrap input focus blue glow

Question: Does anyone know the how to change Bootstrap's input:focus? The blue glow that shows up when you click on an input field?
Comment: Apparently @mdo is 100% against allowing us to specify the glow color with a LESS variable: https://github.com/twitter/bootstrap/issues/2742
Comment: As I can see the focus selector in multiple places Im not sure were I should change it ?
Answer: In the end I changed the following css entry in bootstrap.css
textarea:focus,
input[type="text"]:focus,
input[type="password"]:focus,
input[type="datetime"]:focus,
input[type="datetime-local"]:focus,
input[type="date"]:focus,
input[type="month"]:focus,
input[type="time"]:focus,
input[type="week"]:focus,
input[type="number"]:focus,
input[type="email"]:focus,
input[type="url"]:focus,
input[type="search"]:focus,
input[type="tel"]:focus,
input[type="color"]:focus,
.uneditable-input:focus {
  border-color: rgba(126, 239, 104, 0.8);
  box-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.075) inset, 0 0 8px rgba(126, 239, 104, 0.6);
  outline: 0 none;
}

Comment: you forgot ```select```
Comment: I have came across with targeting `input[type] {}`
Comment: This is no longer necessary with Bootstrap 3.x.  See my answer for more info.
Comment: @Caumons It is now.  I'd recommend using `@input-border-focus` instead of this answer.
Comment: @HerbertYeo #your_select_id select:focus // working
Comment: @Cricket This variable is not currently available at the Boostrap customizer :(
Comment: Its also worth mentioning that this isn't a feasible solution if you are using Bower since your will lose these changes anytime someone needs to reinstall/change bower_components.
Comment: @Cricket +1 because don't modify mixins if yopu can solve the problem through the variables.less or .sass
Comment: for me help `outline: 0 none !important` for `a,button,tr (focus)`, big thanks
Comment: Add `select` and `textarea`
Comment: What about file type?
Comment: select and text area not working. anyone?
Answer: You can use the .form-control selector to match all inputs. For example to change to red:
.form-control:focus {
  border-color: #FF0000;
  box-shadow: inset 0 1px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.075), 0 0 8px rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.6);
}

Put it in your custom css file and load it after bootstrap.css. It will apply to all inputs including textarea, select etc...
Comment: @lonesword is right, infact you have to change both the border-color and the shadow-color. I've updated the answer
Comment: This is far cleaner than @felix001's solution, and it works
Comment: worked great for me - just added !important to the classes to overwrite bootstrap
Comment: you know what, actually there is no need to type the first sentence of code it could simply be box-shadow: 0 0 8px rgba(255, 0, 0, 0.6); but you must include the border line
Answer:
You can modify the .form-control:focus color without altering the bootstrap style in this way:
Quick fix
.form-control:focus {
        border-color: #28a745;
        box-shadow: 0 0 0 0.2rem rgba(40, 167, 69, 0.25);
    }

Full explanation

Find the bootstrapCDN version that you are using. E.g. for me right now is 4.3.1: https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.3.1/css/bootstrap.css
Search for the class you want to modify. E.g. .form-control:focus and copy the parameters that you want to modify into your css. In this case is border-color and box-shadow.
Choose a color for the border-color. In this case I choose to pick up the same green the bootstrap uses for their .btn-success class, by searching for that particular class in the bootstrap.css page mentioned in the step 1.
Convert the color you have picked to RGB and add that to the box-shadow parameter without altering the fourth RGBA parameter (0.25) that bootstrap has for transparency.
Comment: great, its simple and working, and i need green color too :)
Comment: This does not work for file input. Any idea why?
Comment: Not sure why, I haven't used bootstrap in a long time now. What I can suggest is to try find the input class that is being used as a default, try to understand what you need to change by modifying it.
Comment: Worked. ADDITION: if you want to style select elements, you have to add their selectors as well e.g.: `.form-control:focus,
select:focus {
  box-shadow: 0 4px 2px -2px grey;
}`
Answer: If you are using Bootstrap 3.x, you can now change the color with the new @input-border-focus variable.
See the commit for more info and warnings.
In _variables.scss update @input-border-focus.
To modify the size/other parts of this glow modify the mixins/_forms.scss
@mixin form-control-focus($color: $input-border-focus) {
  $color-rgba: rgba(red($color), green($color), blue($color), .6);
  &:focus {
    border-color: $color;
    outline: 0;
    @include box-shadow(inset 0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.075), 0 0 4px $color-rgba);
  }
}

Comment: Do you have an example of how to accomplish or do this? Thanks in advance
Comment: You need to use the Less or [Sass](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap-sass) versions of the Bootstrap stylesheets.  Then, set your custom variable before importing the Bootstrap stylesheets and it will override the Bootstrap defaults.  You'll either need to precompile your stylesheets or use something like [Sprockets](https://github.com/sstephenson/sprockets).
Comment: Nice, but that won't apply to buttons and other links, only input and textarea, apparently. For buttons, you still need to override with `.btn:focus { outline: none; }`, for example.
Comment: You could also make use of the official bootstrap site to make custom changes on the less variables: http://getbootstrap.com/customize/
Comment: This answer does work for those using SASS/SCSS. @input-order-focus is in `_variables.scss`.
Answer: For Bootstrap v4.0.0 beta release you will need the following added to a stylesheet that overrides Bootstrap (either add in after CDN/local link to bootstrap v4.0.0 beta or add !important to the stylings:
.form-control:focus {
  border-color: #6265e4 !important;
  box-shadow: 0 0 5px rgba(98, 101, 228, 1) !important;
}

Replace the border-color and the rgba on the box-shadow with which ever colour style you'd like*.
Answer: In Bootstrap 4, if you compile SASS by yourself, you can change the following variables to control the styling of the focus shadow:
$input-btn-focus-width:       .2rem !default;
$input-btn-focus-color:       rgba($component-active-bg, .25) !default;
$input-btn-focus-box-shadow:  0 0 0 $input-btn-focus-width $input-btn-focus-color !default;

Note: as of Bootstrap 4.1, the $input-btn-focus-color and $input-btn-focus-box-shadow variables are used only for input elements, but not for buttons. The focus shadow for buttons is hardcoded as box-shadow: 0 0 0 $btn-focus-width rgba($border, .5);, so you can only control the shadow width via the $input-btn-focus-width variable.
Answer: Here are the changes if you want Chrome to show the platform default "yellow" outline.
textarea:focus, input[type="text"]:focus, input[type="password"]:focus, input[type="datetime"]:focus, input[type="datetime-local"]:focus, input[type="date"]:focus, input[type="month"]:focus, input[type="time"]:focus, input[type="week"]:focus, input[type="number"]:focus, input[type="email"]:focus, input[type="url"]:focus, input[type="search"]:focus, input[type="tel"]:focus, input[type="color"]:focus, .uneditable-    input:focus {
    border-color: none;
    box-shadow: none;
    -webkit-box-shadow: none;
    outline: -webkit-focus-ring-color auto 5px;
}

Comment: How can I disable the chrome yellow outline?
Comment: Actually, do NOT disable all :focus outlines (as I suggested above). It is horrible for accessibility for keyboard only users. You can disable the platform defaults as above and add in something suitably accessible: `outline: dotted thin black;` (or whatever your testing suggests works)
Answer: To disable the blue glow (but you can modify the code to change color, size, etc), add this to your css:
.search-form input[type="search"] {
    -webkit-box-shadow: none;
    outline: -webkit-focus-ring-color auto 0px;
}

Here's a screencapture showing the effect: before and after:
Comment: This worked for me. But I also had to add border-color since it would leave it blue.
Answer: Simple one
To remove it:
.form-control, .btn {
    box-shadow: none !important;
    outline: none !important;
}

To change it
.form-control, .btn {
    box-shadow: new-value !important;
    outline: new-value !important;
}

Answer: I landed to this thread looking for the way to disable glow altogether. Many answers were overcomplicated for my purpose. For easy solution, I just needed one line of CSS as follows.
input, textarea, button {outline: none; }

Comment: I would think you might need `box-shadow: none;` as well.
Comment: It worked for me, but I had to add `!important` after the `box-shadow` suggested by @silverliebt
Answer: Add an Id to the body tag. In your own Css (not the bootstrap.css) point to the new body ID and set the class or tag you want to override and the new properties.
Now you can update bootstrap anytime without loosing your changes.
html file:

css file:
#bootstrap-overrides input[type="text"]:focus, input[type="password"]:focus, input[type="email"]:focus, input[type="url"]:focus, textarea:focus{
  border-color: red;
  box-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.075) inset, 0 0 8px rgba(126, 239, 104, 0.6);
  outline: 0 none;
}

See also: best way to override bootstrap css
Answer: Actually, in Bootstrap 4.0.0-Beta (as of October 2017) the input element isn't referenced by input[type="text"], all Bootstrap 4 properties for the input element are actually form based.
So it's using the .form-control:focus styles. The appropriate code for the "on focus" highlighting of an input element is the following:
.form-control:focus {
  color: #495057;
  background-color: #fff;
  border-color: #80bdff;
  outline: none;
}

Pretty easy to implement, just change the border-color property.
Comment: I think you also need to add in to this `box-shadow: xpx ypx #80bdff;`
Comment: Or if using scss, just override the $input-focus-border-color variable for bootstrap 4.0.0-Beta
Answer: If you want to remove the shadow completely add the class shadow-none to your input element.
Answer: Building up on @wasinger's reply above, in Bootstrap 4.5 I had to override not only the color variables but also the box-shadow itself.
$input-focus-width: .2rem !default;
$input-focus-color: rgba($YOUR_COLOR, .25) !default;
$input-focus-border-color: rgba($YOUR_COLOR, .5) !default;
$input-focus-box-shadow: 0 0 0 $input-focus-width $input-focus-color !default;

Comment: In Bulma, its also the box-shadow that makes the glow.
Answer: Try this way,It's work for me.
input:focus, textarea:focus{
     box-shadow: none !important;
}

Answer: In Bootstrap 3.3.7 you can change the @input-border-focus value in the Forms section of the customizer:
Answer: For the input border before the focus. You can specify your favorite color you want to use and other css like padding etc

.input {
    padding: 6px 190px 6px 15px;
    outline: #2a65ea auto 105px ;
}

When we focus on input.  You can specify your favorite color outline you wish

.input:focus{
    box-shadow: none;
    border-color: none;
    outline: lightgreen auto 5px ;
}

Answer: This will work 100% use this:
.form-control, .form-control:focus{
   box-shadow: 0 0 0 0 rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);
   border: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);
}

Comment: While this code snippet may be the solution, [including an explanation](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/392712/explaining-entirely-code-based-answers) really helps to improve the quality of your post. Remember that you are answering the question for readers in the future, and those people might not know the reasons for your code suggestion.
Answer: Try this, it's same as bootstrap's input...
input:focus{
  color: #212529;
  background-color: #FFF;
  border-color: #86B7FE;
  outline: 0;
  box-shadow: 0 0 0 .25rem rgba(13, 110, 253, .25);
}

Answer: Why not just use ?
 input:focus{
        outline-color : #7a0ac5;
    }

Answer: I could not resolve this with CSS. It seems like Boostrap is getting the last say even though I have by site.css after bootstrap. In any event, this worked for me.
$(document).ready(function () {
    var elements = document.getElementsByClassName("form-control");

    Array.from(elements).forEach(function () {
        this.addEventListener("click", cbChange, false);
    })

    });

function cbChange(event) {
    var ele = event.target;
    var obj = document.getElementById(ele.id);
    obj.style.borderColor = "lightgrey";
}

Later I found this to work in the css. Obviously with form-controls only
.form-control.focus, .form-control:focus {
    border-color: gainsboro;
}

Here are before and after shots from Chrome Developer tool. Notice the difference in border color between focus on and focus off. On a side note, this does not work for buttons. With buttons. With buttons you have to change outline property to none.
Answer: This should help remove it!

input[type = text] {
  border: none;
}

input[type = text]:focus {
  border: none;
  box-shadow: none;
 }
Comment: Hi, just wanted to say that the code snippet feature is not necessary here, you can use code fences to format the code instead. Have a great day, Bye!
Answer: outline: 0;
box-shadow: none;
css
Comment: Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers [in the help center](/help/how-to-answer).
Answer: My goal was pretty simple - to align the focus glow color with my primary theme color.
For that I needed to override $primary variable before @import "bootstrap/variables" in my SASS and the magic happened. I believe it will work for any other theme colors (alert, danger) as well.

Change Bootstrap input focus blue glow


Being a permanent resident in the Czech Republic, Russian nationality. Do I need a visa to travel to the UK for 1 week (business trip)?

Question: I am Russian, but live for past 15 years in the Czech Republic with a permanent residency card. I have a permanent job in the Czech Republic and now I need to go on a business trip to the UK. Do I need a visa to stay in the UK for a week?
Answer: Yes. Your citizenship, not residency, is what counts.
Do I need a UK visa.
Comment: Follow the given link.
Comment: @ElisUnique More than likely a standard visitor visa. As Neusser says you will need a visa but being a resident in a Schengen country will help your application massively as you have already been approved by a strict visa procedure.  https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa/y/russia/work/six_months_or_less