Is there a way to give a player a score if they are holding a certain item

Question: I have been making a special snowball that when you throw it, it will deal damage to mobs.  It does this with an /effect @e[r=1] command but in survival, it will kill the player. I want to give a score to the player holding the snowball. Currently, I use a testfor command to test if the player would have the snowball which means when he or she throws it there is an entity data command which gives the snowball a tag which a execute command executes an effect tag. Does anyone know how to do this?
Comment: Possible duplicate of [Is it possible to mark or modify a player with a specific item in their inventory](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/191594/is-it-possible-to-mark-or-modify-a-player-with-a-specific-item-in-their-inventor)
Comment: I answered your question but you might want to look at [this answer](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/318351/186522), [this answer](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/319206/186522), and [this answer](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/a/317722/186522) as they deal in targeting projectiles.  They may help you achieve your goal.
Answer: This is a good place to use scoreboard tags as opposed to a scoreboard objective.  This will allow you to tag any player holding a snowball and use that tag to target them in a command without having to setup an objective to track a score.

Use 2 command blocks in a chain. The first command block removes the tag from all players.  The second command block tags any player holding a snowball.  These command blocks have to remain loaded.  I recommend putting them in the spawn chunk.  I recommend silencing command block output to prevent chat spam for op's. Use command:
/gamerule commandBlockOutput false

The first command block is RepeatUnconditionalAlways Active with command:
scoreboard players tag @a remove Holding

The second command block is ChainUnconditionalAlways Active with command:
scoreboard players tag @a add Holding {SelectedItem:{id:"minecraft:snowball"}}

Now you can use this tag within the target selector to exclude the players who are currently holding a snowball.  In your case possibly:
/effect @e[r=1,tag=!Holding]

If you still want to give a player a score instead of a tag, it would be the same solution as above except the commands would be:
scoreboard players set @a Holding 0

And:
scoreboard players set @a Holding 1 {SelectedItem:{id:"minecraft:snowball"}}

Also to note, if the snowball is custom named or special in some other way, you can probably use parts of the data tag portion of your current testfor command in the data tag of the 2nd command block command.


VirtualBox running Ubuntu is slow (Mac OS X host)

Question: My MacBook Pro is generally a fast machine (3.06 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 8GB of RAM, 7200RPM hard drive) but VirtualBox 3.2.6 running Ubuntu 10.04 is just too slow compared to VMWare. What can I fiddle with to improve this? Within Ubuntu, I use Eclipse mostly but even booting and GNOME desktop accessories are slow...
Comment: Chealion, for a number of reasons including: different key mappings, no desire to install all required software off of MacPorts (e.g. Fuse to use sshfs and file:/// based SVN, some Java libraries with native invocations, etc.) keeping productivity/development systems separate, etc..
Comment: Why not run Eclipse on OS X itself?
Comment: http://blog.jdpfu.com/2012/09/14/solution-for-slow-ubuntu-in-virtualbox
Comment: I've noticed on my Linux Mint desktops that if you create a 64bit VM and run a 32bit Linux (Mint or Debian in my case) in it that it will be terribly slow.  Like take 3 hours to install just a base system in Debian (no X, no desktop, just basic system utilities).
Comment: One can also diminish the screen resolution of the Macbook(System Preference/Display/Scaled), it seems to have an effect on the rendering time and the CPU load.
Answer: The performance will become normal if you disable VTx and set it to use only one core of CPU.
See the thread at http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39368
Comment: The bug reported on that thread has been fixed: http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/8474.

But I still have problems with virtualization on VBox.
Comment: Is this still true in 2018?
Answer: This is an observation: I use the end 2016 Macbook pro (15 inch), and run Virtualbox on it. As guest system, I have Win 7 and Linux Mint. Both show poor performance, which seems to be related to the graphics.
My observation: If I use an external screen (27 inch, resolution 2560 x 1440). The VBox guests are as smooth as you would expect.
Even moving the VBox window from the Macbook screen to the external screen and back shows that on the external screen, it is fast immediately, on the built-in screen it is slow -- even for non fullscreen mode.
Comment: That is exactly my problem as well. The performance is fine with the external display. Have you solved the problem?
Answer: This is more of a work-around than an answer.  I was in the same boat, the Oracle-branded version 3.2.6 was bringing my Ubuntu VM to a crawl.  So I just deleted 3.2.6 and installed version 3.1.8 and everything was fine.  If you're just running Ubuntu I don't think there's much of a difference between 3.1 and 3.2.
Answer: Switching from Gnome to Unity (and installing VirtualBox Guest Additions) made a huge difference for me on Ubuntu 17.10, VirtualBox 5.2.8, OS X 10.13.3 High Sierra. Source: https://askubuntu.com/a/1017107/148598
Comment: Did you try Gnome + Guest Additions? Any other tweaks or things to take note of? VT-x settings?
Comment: @jocull sorry, can't recall
Answer: Just throwing this up here as it may help others significantly.
I had Ubuntu VMs (guests) that i created on a Linux host install of Virtualbox, they ran fine on the Linux machine and were very slow once I moved them to my top of the line MacBook air  2012 (2ghz, 8gb ram) .  I found i could make them extremely fast by increasing the cpu count (in the vm's settings) from 1 to 2. It made approximately a factor of 10 difference (a suite of phpunit tests went from 5 minutes to about 30 seconds). I'm not sure if the slowness had anything to do with the migration from Linux to OSX 10.8.2 or if the slowness would have been there even with guests that were created on an OSX install.
Answer: This seems to still be a problem in a Macbook pro 2018, Ubuntu runs really slow, however, the only option that I had to turn on was the 3D Acceleration and that did the trick, now the VM is really fast. Hope this helps.
Comment: Same for me on a MacBook Pro 2018. Going to `VM > Settings > Display > Enable 3D Acceleration` helped. The UI is a bit blurry but that's ok for me


Buying 100 kilobitcoins

Question: This is a hypothetical question. Assuming that the price of bitcoin is $8,250 (as of current writing) and I had 25 billion dollars at my disposal, what would happen to the price of bitcoin if I successfully bought 100,000 bitcoins? Would I have enough money? If so, how much would it cost? I am curious about this because of the digital scarcity aspect of doing so.
Answer: While I agree with chytrik I would want to suggest a concrete method of approaching this.
Have a look at the combined order book https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/books/USD you can see that you currently would move the price by 10 % if you baught roughly 10k BTC. Usually after such moves people get alerted and are willing to sell at higher prices so you could wait a little until the order book fills and repeat the process.
Assuming there are always 10k fresh floating BTC available with leads to a 10% price increase. (With regular trading many of the btc on the order books are going to free float afterwards so that assumption is pretty strong) you would have 10 = 100000/10000 price increases of 10 % each resulting at a price of 8250*1.1^10 = 21398 per btc.
You would have to pay roughly 1.4 bn usd which is 8250*10000*(1.1^1+1.1^2+....+1.1^10)
Obviously this is just a simple model build on strong assumptions. Also you would try to buy that much btc otc because you would not want to move the price but obviously you would have to convince holders to sell
Answer: The answer entirely depends on what the people who already hold Bitcoin are willing to sell it for. Generally, a massive buy would be expected to push the price up, because you would first buy up all the coins at the current spot price, and then the coins just above that price, and then just above that price, etc.  How high it goes would just depend on the 'depth of the orderbook'(how many bitcoins people have put up for sale at whatever prices).
If there happen to be 100,000 bitcoins up for sale at the current spot price, then perhaps you could make the buy without pushing the price up at all. That seems less likely, but it is possible. At $8250 per bitcoin, that would amount to $825,000,000 USD. So we should expect it would cost you at least this amount, unless you can find someone willing to sell at less than the market rate (they might be stupid to do so, but it is possible).

Buying 100 kilobitcoins


Can you choose how to sacrifice a creature if you are forced to?

Question: If an opponent, or anything else, makes me sacrifice a creature, and I have a Blood Host or something similar, can I choose to sacrifice the creature with the Blood Host?
Answer: As a general rule - No.
In response to your opponent forcing a sacrifice, you can trigger your Blood Host's ability to the top of the stack.  This will then sacrifice your creature for the Blood Host, and then any other abilities remaining on the stack will resolve.  If this is the only creature that you have on the table, then the original sacrifice effect will be unresolved, exactly as if you were unable to sacrifice at the time the spell was cast.
If you have multiple other creatures on the field (As would be the case with your Blood Host being on the battlefield to begin with), you would have to chose another sacrifice for the initial effect.
Comment: If you have no other creatures the original sacrifice effect doesn't go unresolved, it resolves and does as much as it can (in this case nothing)
Comment: Sacrifice doesn't target. The original effect causing you to sacrifice will still happen, and force you to sacrifice *another* creature, perhaps that Blood Host. (The only way this works is if you sacrificed your only creature, but the original effect still doesn't have an illegal target, it just resolves and doesn't do anything.)
Comment: @Jefromi Sacrifice isn't an ability or spell, so yes, strictly speaking it doesn't target. However, things which cause a player to sacrifice creatures can absolutely target (http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?text=+[target]+[creature%27s]+[controller]+[sacrifices]+[it]) in which case preemptively sacrificing the creature as part of a cost would be a reasonable reaction.
Comment: @AverageUnknown Things like that are far and away the exception, so my point definitely stands.
Comment: @Jefromi Agreed, just clarifying.


Tips to test product in the production environment?

Question: A lot of experience people says that testing in production is the worst but I observe in testing that a lot of time a few bugs a reproducible only on any one specific environment(like dev, QA, staging, prod...etc) but not in other so what are the tips to test product in production?
Comment: To test in PROD, you need to be [incredibly cool](https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAS8AAAAJDJkMjRhNTFlLTkyYzctNGFkOS05MDJhLTNiOWQwY2EyMjU1Mg.jpg) :-)
Comment: Are you asking about tips to run your regular tests in a prod environment, or are you asking about how to improve the feedback cycle and effectively have customers test for you?
Comment: I think this question has multiple interpretations as currently worded. Based on what you mention about reproducability, are you really talking about "testing in production" as the existing answers seem to interpret it, or did you mean more "when a bug is found in a production system, how do we test the fix safely when we can't reproduce the problem except in that particular system that is already in production?"
Answer: That answer is too big to be covered here, and it is highly dependent on the product itself. For an "average" consumer grade, network connected, software upgradable product some keywords you should probably investigate are-

Testing in production doesn't mean throwing stuff at your users with zero testing, you will need a decent level of tests before you release something.
In order to test in production, you need a feedback channel, user reviews are the worst kind of such a channel since it comes too late. Telemetry is probably what you are looking for.
Telemetry raises legal and privacy concerns, but those can be solved
A/B testing is a way to gradually introducing changes, and be able to revert them if your telemetry indicates there is a problem. You will need feature flags in the code, a framework to remotely manage the experiments (that's a common term used in A/B testing), a way to monitor the results and a little bit of statistical analysis knowledge.
It might be a good idea to move to a CI/CD model (continuous integration, continuous delivery) model since it will allow you a faster release pace.
Consider your deployment process and a way to quickly revert changes

Finally, I must stress again- the same way Agile is not "no planning" testing in production doesn't mean "no testing or testers", it just allows you to test in a real environment, and possibly react faster
Answer: Testing in the production environment isn't testing.  It's deploying a product and relying on your end-users to find problems.  Which may be fine, depending on the product, the end-user assumptions, and so on.  But don't kid yourself that it's testing.  (This is separate from, say beta testing, where you stage releases to end-users who have agreed to take a incomplete product and use it.)
If problems are being found in the production environment, and not in test environments, then the ideal thing to do is analyze the problems that are being found and determine why they weren't found earlier (escape analysis).  Then you can make an informed decision as to what it would take to find problems in dev/test, and if it's worth doing so.


Answer for a closed question; how?

Question: I think the question https://superuser.com/q/1750696/964771 should not be closed. After some investigation I found the solution (cause of the problem). However with the question being closed I cannot add the answer. What to do?
Answer: The deletion was automatic - and I've undeleted it. I have however not reopened it - the comments reflect issues with the question that need to be addressed, and if the changes fix these issues, the question could be reopened via the usual routes. Do ensure you have the question in good working order before you tick on the box that pushes it back into the queue.
Comment: Actually I had edited the text, but people still think it's not OK. What exactly would you consider inappropriate in the current text?
Comment: OK, but the edit is a week ago, actually.
Comment: @U.Windl - You have to give the community more than an hour to reopen your question
Comment: The question seems to have been deleted at the time of writing this comment.
Comment: apparently community and I are at odds about this :D
Comment: Improving the quality of the question might satisfy the community bot :$

Answer for a closed question; how?


Why do you have to bond the neutral and the ground wire in the main panel?

Question: Why do you have to bond the neutral and the ground wire in the main panel?  Not in separat ?I don't know how that works
Comment: @Machavity This smells like an inquiry from the 5-continent 230V territories, and in those panels there aren't necessarily ground  and neutral bars.
Answer: The reason the neutral and ground are separate other than at the main panel is to prevent a parallel ground path.
The power received from the power company (in the US is 240VAC)
This is derived from a step down transformer close to you home. At this point the center tap of the transformer is grounded providing 240 v across the transformer or 120v from each end to the center tap. At the house there is another ground usually a #4 or #6 copper wire coming from local grounding electrodes the grounding electrode(s) or the grounding electrodes system is there to provide a path for ground faults not as a neutral. This also provides a ground reference for the center tapped neutral to prevent the system voltage floating above ground and creating an unsafe condition if the supply from the transformer grounding point fails, it may be several hundred feet away from the home where the service grounding electrode system is very close to the service panel.
So the grounding electrode(s) are there to help clear a fault and provide a true ground reference.
Answer:
Neutral is normal current return (like electronics GND/Vss. Note how your car is not like this!)
Equipment safety ground is exclusively a safety shield

Totally different tasks and purposes that are incompatible - one wire can't be both.
Generally mains wiring is wired very similar to an isolated system -- that is, both the hot(s) and neutral are fully isolated from chassis/building frame/equipment safety ground.
However, isolating means the hot+neutral voltage could float to thousands of volts as compared to earth, and insulation can't handle that.
A single neutral-ground equipotential bond prevents it from floating. One hot wire is bonded to ground, and because it's near ground, it's called Neutral.
However if there are two bonds, then between the two bonds, the ground is simply a parallel neutral, and so it is ineffective as a ground.
Another factor is that if current leaks from hot to safety ground (a ground fault), you want that to flow enough current to trip the breaker.  A nice beefy neutral-ground equipotential bond assures this.


If I run a website with guides on how to commit fraud, can I get in trouble?

Question: If I run a website with guides on how to commit fraud can I get in trouble? If someone is arrested on the website for Grand Theft can I be charged with anything? If not what would I have to do to be charged with a crime?
Comment: What jurisdiction ?
Comment: New Jersey, is where the servers are hosted.
Comment: Your home jurisdiction may be relevant as well, if that is not New Jersey.
Answer: Probably not.
The dissemination of information is not, in general, unlawful, even if that information could be used for illegal purposes. Of course, disseminating information that is someone else's IP, is confidential or is a government secret is unlawful and in some cases criminal.
With particular reference to fraud, its already been done at least once as a book (The Art of the Steal) and a website. The purpose of these is to assist people to protect against fraud rather than to perpetrate it but the information can be used both ways.
It is possible that a case could be made against you for conspiracy but that would require evidence of two way communication between you and the actual perpetrator. Accessory is even less likely and there is no issue with procurement.
Comment: I am referring to a step by step guide on how to steal from a company, I.E Step 1 Go here step 2 put in a serial number step 3 get free items.
Comment: @LongSimple If the serial number is a company secret, and you name the company in your website, I'm fairly sure the company could you try to sue you in civil court


Is end to end encryption over HTTP safe?

Question: If you wrap all your data in an end-to-end encrypted payload is it safe to transmit over HTTP or at worse case self signed HTTPS instead of traditional CA signed SSL?
Comment: Did you verify the public key? End-to-End encryption doesn't rely on HTTPS. It works even there are malicious middle enemies.
Comment: HTTPS is way more than just a data encryption, it provides integrity of transmitted data and authenticity of the server (and optionally of the client). And the most important fact is that it has been reviewed by a lot of very skilled and experienced people so that most problems are known and/or fixed.
Comment: E2E encryption of HTTP can be done safe but it also can be done accidentally or purpose unsafe. It depends on the specific implementation. Similar to HTTPS with self-signed certificates: if properly checked and if strong ciphers are used it will likely be safe, but often self-signed certificates are not checked at all or not checked properly.
Comment: @SteffenUllrich Op doesn't ask E2E encryption `of` HTTP they ask E2E encryption `over` HTTP
Comment: @kelalaka: sorry, typo. That's what I meant. Using its own E2E implementation inside plain HTTP request/response..
Comment: How are you distributing keys to establish e2ee?
Comment: @defalt This is just a theory based question right now. I'm also curious how to send keys securely if not via HTTPS. Especially if the app is communicating over an open adhoc wifi or Bluetooth network.
Comment: You don't have to send keys securely if the recepient and the sender can verify keys in person or by using some other secure channel.
Answer: In one sense yes; after all, TLS is itself end-to-end encryption (at the network level and only between two network peers, not necessarily two messaging peers, but intermediate network peers such as routers, etc. still can't read it) over insecure TCP.
On the other hand, likely no. TLS is a very complicated protocol that takes into account a lot of stuff that many other encrypted communication schemes fail at. Examples include server authentication (making sure you're using the public key of the peer you expect and not some imposter), optional client authentication (same, in the other direction), forward-secret key exchanges (optional; technically non-forward-secret exchanges are still available in TLSv1.2, but they're on the way out), cipher and protocol negotiation (not all peers support all primitives, or all modes of operation, etc.), detailed specification of handling things like padding and compression (to handle various attacks such as padding oracles and compression oracles) and IVs/nonces/key rotation (to avoid vulnerabilities due to things like overusing a single key for AES-GCM), message integrity (to avoid bit flipping attacks and similar), and replay protection. Not all of that will be relevant to all situations, but suffice it to say: getting this stuff right is hard. We're now on the sixth publicly released SSL/TLS standard version (SSL 1.0 was never released, being replaced with 2.0 before going live), and I expect TLSv1.3 will not be the last.
There exist some systems that can achieve comparable levels of security. OpenPGP is a standard for end-to-end encrypted messages (typically emails and their many parts, possibly including attachments, but it can be any kind of data) that has different conventions for authentication of public keys and isn't forward-secret (among other differences, mostly related to being asynchronous rather than synchronous) but can offer similar levels of security otherwise. Signal aims for very similar levels of security, but also has its own methods of key authentication.
What does your system look like? How do you authenticate the recipient and sender, in a way that doesn't risk exposing your key exchange to an attacker? Or do you use pre-shared keys, in which case how trustworthy is their storage and do you have a way to distinguish one node from another? Does it take into account the myriad risks of cryptographic systems in general (which hybrid cryptosystems - as nearly all that use public keys are - have the worst of)? If it's good enough - a question that is difficult even for an expert to answer, and probably totally impossible for a cryptographic layman - then sure, send your E2E-secured message over whatever transport you like. But, that's a high bar.
Answer: TLS itself is not E2EE - this is a myth.
SSL/TLS goals are to provide integrity of communications so the packet received by one endpoint are verifiable unmodified after the sender transmitted them - i.e. TLS provides only an integrity guarantee with the perception of confidentiality - because an 'endpoint' is intended to have the ability to decrypt, and the term endpoint is loosely defined and can include network devices along the way that  do not modify the packets the expected singular 'endpoint' receives ergo network devices and the servers are endpoints that can read the plaintext data as long as the ciphertext each endpoint remains unmodified all TLS endpoints retain the integrity expectation but should never have an expectation of confidentiality.
Don't just take my word for it. In the words of Nate Lawson;
(cryptographer and software engineer who has contributed to the protocols since SSL3.0)

"Data within the session should not be recoverable by anyone except the endpoints"

This is the reason educated information security researchers and professionals avoid the term "Forward Secrecy" (specially avoid "Perfect" forward secrecy PFS) and prefer the name "Forward Anonymity" which is more helpful and provides no false sense of privacy.
E2EE and HTTP/TLS are 2 very distinct discussions and the only cross over between them is the fact the encrypted data packets are communicated (the transport method) using HTTP. Any transport method can be used for E2EE to be achieved, and some transport methods inherently provide the E2EE capability (though each party must gain assurances of key generation and key control for E2EE to be actually utiled and not just claimed to be E2EE because you use teh protocol; e.g. signal protocol offer E2EE but Signal App doesn't enable users to apply the necessary control so it's claimed to have E2EE but as a user you do not actually gain E2EE. I digress)
For E2EE there is no impact to the data whatever transport method is used, the very nature of E2EE requires your privacy to be ensured when a few factors I explained here are met.
I'll expand on the E2EE specific characteristics further:

Each endpoint generated their own private keys
The initiating endpoint must perform a challenge response mechanism to prove an their identity before public key is provided
The initiating endpoint should encrypt (using the other ends public key) the exchange of their public key, for integrity assurance that only the expected endpoint holding the private key will send you messages to decrypt with your private key
endpoints never share private keys

That is essentially how E2EE assures privacy to the initiating endpoint, there are no privacy guarantees for the receiving endpoint but they did gain identity assurance in advance.
So "Yes" HTTP and E2EE are compatible (safe), as are all transport methods, is the short answer, but it depends how you apply E2EE entirely outside HTTP


Why does RAM (any type) access time decrease so slowly?

Question: This article shows that DDR4 SDRAM has approximately 8x more bandwidth DDR1 SDRAM. But the time from setting the column address to when the data is available has only decreased by 10% (13.5ns).
A quick search shows that the access time of the fastest async. SRAM (18 years old) is 7ns.
Why has SDRAM access time decreased so slowly? Is the reason economic, technological, or fundamental?
Comment: Could another possible reason be that it simply isn't that necessary?
Comment: According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAS_latency) DDR3-2200 has a First Word latency of 6.36 ns, that is how long it takes a signal to propagate around 3ft on FR4, I would say we are pretty close to the physical limits
Comment: For example low access time is necessary to make search a data in the memory more faster.
Comment: I realize that, extra speed is always nice, but coming from a software developer perspective, perhaps compared to all other IO and architecture (including microservices that can literally run on different data centers), RAM speed just isn't that much of a bottleneck anymore. Sometimes 'good enough' is good, or at least doesn't warrant the extra R&D into speeding it up. I would consider adding that as a potential reason in your question too.
Answer: It's because it's easier and cheaper to increase the bandwidth of the DRAM than to decrease the latency. To get the data from an open row of ram, a non trivial amount of work is necessary.
The column address needs to be decoded, the muxes selecting which lines to access need to be driven, and the data needs to move across the chip to the output buffers. This takes a little bit of time, especially given that the SDRAM chips are manufactured on a process tailored to high ram densities and not high logic speeds. To increase the bandwidth say by using DDR(1,2,3 or 4), most of the logic can be either widened or pipelined, and can operate at the same speed as in the previous generation. The only thing that needs to be faster is the I/O driver for the DDR pins.
By contrast, to decrease the latency the entire operation needs to be sped up, which is much harder. Most likely, parts of the ram would need to be made on a process similar to that for high speed CPUs, increasing the cost substantially (the high speed process is more expensive, plus each chip needs to go through 2 different processes).
If you compare CPU caches with RAM and hard disk/SSD, there's an inverse relationship between storage being large, and storage being fast. An L1$ is very fast, but can only hold between 32 and 256kB of data. The reason it is so fast is because it is small:

It can be placed very close to the CPU using it, meaning data has to travel a shorter distance to get to it
The wires on it can be made shorter, again meaning it takes less time for data to travel across it
It doesn't take up much area or many transistors, so making it on a speed optimized process and using a lot of power per bit stored isn't that expensive

As you move up the hierarchy each storage option gets larger in capacity, but also larger in area and farther away from the device using it, meaning the device must get slower.
Comment: Great answer. I just want to emphasise the physical distance factor: at maybe 10cm for the furthest RAM stick, 1/3 to 1/2 of the speed of light as the signal speed, plus some extra length to route & match the PCB tracks, you could easily be at 2ns round trip time. If ~15% of your delay is caused by the unbreakable universal speed limit... you're doing real good in my opinion.
Comment: L1 is also organized uniquely, is directly in the core that uses it, and uses SRAM.
Comment: @forest And also has a pretty strict size limit - make it too large, and there's no way to keep it so fast.
Comment: L1d cache can also be heavily optimized for latency, e.g. fetching tags and data in parallel for all ways in set.  So when a tag match just muxes the data to the output, instead of needing to fetch it from SRAM.  This can also happen in parallel with the TLB lookup on the high bits of the address, if the index bits all come from the offset-within-page part of an address.  (So that's one hard limit on size, like @Luaan mentioned: size / associativity <= page-size for this VIPT = PIPT speed hack to work.  See [VIPT Cache: Connection between TLB & Cache?](//stackoverflow.com/q/46480015))
Answer: C_Elegans provides one part of the answer — it is hard to decrease the overall latency of a memory cycle.
The other part of the answer is that in modern hierarchical memory systems (multiple levels of caching), memory bandwidth has a much stronger influence on overall system performance than memory latency, and so that's where all of the latest development efforts have been focused.
This is true in both general computing, where many processes/threads are running in parallel, as well as embedded systems. For example, in the HD video work that I do, I don't care about latencies on the order of milliseconds, but I do need multiple gigabytes/second of bandwidth.
Comment: And it should definitely be mentioned that software can be designed for the "high" latency pretty easily in most cases, compared to the difficulty and cost of decreasing the latency. Both CPUs and their software are very good at eliminating the effective latency in most cases. In the end, you don't hit the latency limit as often as you might think, unless you have no idea about how the memory architecture and CPU caching/pre-fetching etc. works. The simple approach usually works well enough for most software, especially single-threaded.
Comment: On modern Intel CPUs, memory latency is the limiting factor for *single-core* bandwidth: bandwidth can't exceed max_concurrency / latency, and a single core has limited capacity for off-core requests in flight at once.  A many-core Xeon (with higher uncore latency from more hops on the ring bus) has *worse* single-core bandwidth than a quad-core desktop chip, despite have more DRAM controllers.  [Why is Skylake so much better than Broadwell-E for single-threaded memory throughput?](//stackoverflow.com/q/39260020).  It takes many more threads to saturate memory B/W on a many-core Xeon.
Comment: Overall your main point is correct: most accesses hit in cache for low latency to avoid stalling the out-of-order back-end.  HW prefetch mostly just needs bandwidth to keep up with sequential accesses and have data ready in cache before the core needs it.  DRAM latency is hundreds of core clock cycles, so efficient software has to be tuned to use access patterns that *don't* cache misses by defeating both spatial/temporal locality and HW prefetching.  Especially for loads, because store buffers can decouple store latency from the rest of the out-of-order backend.
Comment: For disk I/O, latencies of milliseconds would matter if we didn't have readahead prefetch to hide it for sequential accesses.  But the higher the latency, the harder it is to hide.  (The better your prefetch algorithms need to be, and the more predictable your access patterns need to be.)  And the more requests / data bytes you need to keep in-flight to get the bandwidth you want.
Answer: I don't have that much insights, but I expect it is a bit of all.
Economic
For the majority of computers/telephones, the speed is more than enough. For faster data storages, SSD has been developed. People can use video/music and other speed intensive tasks in (almost) real time. So there is not so much need for more speed (except for specific applications like weather prediction etc).
Another reason is to process a very high RAM speed, CPUs are needed which are fast. And this comes with a lot of power usage. Since the tendency of using them in battery devices (like mobile phones), prevents the use of very fast RAM (and CPUs), thus makes it also not economically useful to make them.
Technical
By the decreasing size of chips/ICs (nm level now), the speed goes up, but not significantly. It is more often used for increasing the amount of RAM, which is needed harder (also a economic reason).
Fundamental
As an example (both are circuits): the easiest way to get more speed (used by SSD), is to just spread the load over multiple  components, this way the 'processing' speeds adds up too. Compare using 8 USB sticks reading from at the same time and combining the results, instead of reading data from 1 USB stick after each other (takes 8 times as long).
Comment: @MichelKeijzers While they are both circuits, SSDs and SDRAM serve very different use cases, and make use of different techniques for storing data. Additionally, saying that CPUs don't really need faster RAM doesn't make much sense, the entire reason most modern CPUs have 3 levels of caches is because their ram can't be made fast enough to serve the CPU.
Comment: The amount of time to open a page hasn't really decreased that much due to the precharge cycle; the amount of energy required is not significantly different today than it was a decade ago. That dominates the access time in my experience.
Comment: What exactly do SSDs have to do with SDRAM latency?
Comment: You said for **bigger** storage there are SSDs. Did you mean **faster**? It's more expensive to get the same amount of storage in an ssd than an hdd. The main selling point of SSDs is the speed, and perhaps the noise and reliability. For capacity, HDDs are still better
Comment: @C_Elegans they are both circuits, for this 'generic' question I don't think there is so much difference.
Comment: Every search in data array use truly random access not a data stream. Is it so rare task?

 >>the easiest way to get more speed (used by SSD), is to just spread the load over multiple components <<

Looks very reasonable.
So can we say that true progress of RAM have stoped more than 20 years ago?
Comment: Very good question! If DDR-4 is fast enough why does CPU use so many caches?
Comment: @C_Elegans That's true indeed. So in the end it's more a economic reason. Very fast RAM is expensive, and people don't buy computer with (only) very fast RAM, if people would need (want to spend money to) it, the sellers of computers would put more fast RAM inside a computer.
Comment: Also fast ram is low density and the larger it gets the harder to make it fast.  That is why even with SRAM, CPUs have multiple stages of cache.  The L3 cache is much larger than L1 but slower even though they are both SRAM.
Comment: @user198712 Yes, thanks (I updated the answer).
Comment: @Arseniy: *If DDR-4 is fast enough why does CPU use so many caches?*  **Because DRAM is nowhere near fast enough**.  A full cache miss takes hundreds of core clock cycles, far too long for out-of-order execution to hide even with a huge ROB.  Even *with* caching + HW prefetching, modern CPUs with wide SIMD vectors and many cores need ever more computational intensity (ALU work per load/store) to saturate their ALUs instead of bottlenecking on memory.  e.g. do more while it's in registers.  L1d cache B/W usually scales with ALU width, but that means you need to cache-block your code carefully.


Why is it so expensive to produce cameras for non visible light?

Question: Typical consumer cameras can capture wavelength of 390-700 nm 400-1050 nm. But why is it so difficult and expensive to produce cameras for infrared, ultraviolet, hard x-rays, etc.? The only thing which differs them are the wavelength and the energy eV.
Comment: BTW, ordinary digital cameras are sensitive a little way into the infrared. Try pointing your phone's camera at the transmitter end of a TV remote, and you'll see a distinctive pink or purple color. Sometimes a camera will see this same color in sunlight reflected off a shiny surface, but the human eye doesn't see it.
Comment: They lose too many of them in the dark.  (Actually, the optics are one reason.  Glass or clear plastic makes good lenses in the visible spectrum, but, eg, ordinary glass & plastc is opaque to IR, and in the far IR region the best optic material is crystalline NaCl, but NaCl has the unfortunate habit of dissolving in humid air.)
Comment: It looks like there are several converted cameras sold as 'ghost hunter' cameras in the $300-$400 range. When you take it all into consideration, they actually seem reasonable. Considering the cameras need to be the type that allow for the mods to be done in the first place (~$200). That's still well below the cost of any 'professional' camera (>$1000 for the body alone).
Comment: Check out the NASA page for [*Swift*'s Burst Alert Telescope (BAT)](http://swift.gsfc.nasa.gov/about_swift/bat_desc.html) and look how strange telescope designs get when you want to detect very high energy photons (15-150 keV, hard X- or gamma rays depending on who you ask).
Comment: @HotLicks Incorrect. Until 2007 Kodak made and sold [high-speed infra-red](http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f13/f13.pdf) (HIR) for 35mm that was usable using standard lens and filters (glass or plastic), it was sensitive from less than 700nm to 900nm. Ilford, Efke, Rollei also make/made IR film for photographic use in regular film cameras.
Answer: It comes down to market size. Where is the demand for such cameras and do the number of sales justify the production set up costs? You can get an infra red conversion to standard type DSLR cameras (eg Do It Yourself Digital Infrared Camera Modification Tutorials) and you can convert the camera to a 'full spectrum' type which takes in some ultra violet. (see Full-spectrum photography). For smaller wavelengths you'll need different sensors. These, by their specialist nature and low volume production, tend to be very expensive.
Comment: To add to this, consider the price of similar sensors with and without a Bayer filter.  Sensors without a Bayer filter are much more expensive, despite the fact that adding a Bayer filter is an extra manufacturing step.  Likewise, camera lenses without the standard coating that blocks UV are much more expensive.  It's all about the market size.
Comment: Where is the demand? I guess about 50% of camera buyers would buy one with even a slight x-ray capability. I mean there's no need to see through thick walls. I guess good imaging through ladieswear with no extra cost would make it best seller.
Comment: @user287001 you would also need an x-ray source for that, which would have more than just invasion-of-privacy issues
Answer: First of all: standard CCD sensors are sensitive to wavelength far beyond 700nm.  As much as I know Si-sensors are even more sensitive for near-IR light than for visible light.
Of course it changes for much larger wavelengths: One condition for light being detectable is that photons have enough energy to create a hole-electron-pair. This energy threshold is the band-gap of the particular semiconductor material (e.g. for Si: ~1.1 eV). Since photon energy is inversely proportional to wavelength ( E = h * c / lambda) there is a maximum wavelength that can be detected with a given semiconductor material (e.g. for Si: ~1100 nm).
For cameras the lens is also relevant: Most types of glass are less transparent to UV light.  Lenses optimized for UV transparency are very expensive (although a cheap alternative could be plastic lenses).
Answer: Both your existing answers are valid, but may be taken in combination: Simple Si sensors are good for visible and NIR and are common and therefore cheap.  Modifications to the imaging system are required in many cases as the IR is normally blocked because it's undesirable. See for example Canon's EOS 20Da.
Silicon sensors are fairly easily adapted to UV use by means of a phosphor coating (I wanted to try a homebrew version of this on a webcam I'd modded with a B+W CCD but never got the chance). Even X-rays use is possible with a scintillator (which is normally fibre-optic-coupled).
To go beyond ~1µm further into the IR requires other semiconductors - which are expensive.  InGaAs is a popular choice, but is ridiculously expensive as you say - but that's not surprising as you need dedicated production facilities.  InGaAs and other NIR cameras are also regarded as military technology for the purposes of US export regs (which are also imposed on many NATO countries in effect); this adds cost to the camera manufacturer in terms of compliance.
Cameras which have any sensitivity at all to thermal radiation, or which are made from narrow bandgap semiconductors, will need significant cooling to remove thermal noise that could be greater than the image you're trying to measure.  That often means a Dewar of liquid nitrogen (material cost + operating cost).  There are newer technologies (even uncooled) coming on the market - in particular for thermal imaging, but the resolution is much less than for Si CCD or CMOS sensors.
Comment: Your information is a little dated. Bolometer-type thermal imagers with VGA resolutions (640x480 and up) are becoming more and more available, and the prices are dropping. They can be cooled or uncooled, with the coolers being either Peltier devices or small motor-driven refrigerators.
Comment: @DaveTweed updated, thanks.  I hadn't seen any over about 160x120; as my experience here is mostly Si and InGaAs, it's not surprising I was a little behind the times.
Answer: For both visible and bolometer type, the reason they are cheap is because they can leverage the economies of scale in the silicon business.
As soon as you get out into wavelengths (i.e. energies) that need other technologies (InGaAs as mentioned, InSb) you're talking 2" and 3" wafers at best, nothing like the pizza sized silicon wafers used to make chips today.   Also, the transistors still have to be made of silicon, so you need a connection from each photodetector on the photo-sensitive chip to each detection circuit for that pixel on a silicon chip.   If you have a megapixel imaging array, you have a million connections to make.
But wait, it gets worse.  If you are depending on the photoelectric effect, say for mid-wave IR at 3-5 µm, you have to cool the camera so that you are seeing something more than the heat being generated by the camera itself!   Imagine a visible camera with a brightly glowing lens and housing -- that's the world a thermal camera lives in.   Cooling adds a lot of expense, and usually noise as well, since the most power-efficient coolers are refrigerator type.  Peltiers can't take you down to liquid nitrogen.
Oh, and BTW, glass is not transparent to wavelengths past about 2 µm, so you need a different lens material than what the last five centuries of optics has been working on.
At the other end of the spectrum, X-ray is a pain because it's hard to deflect X-rays.   They like to go right through.    Big imaging arrays for medical X-rays work because there is no lens, but take a look at the mirrors on something like Chandra space telescope - the "lens" is a series of glancing angle mirrors arranged in cones.
Answer: Visible light is a wide-band while specialized cameras are a narrow-band sometimes with a variations as thin as 3 nanometer in lambda deviation. Such nanocomposites are indeed harder to produce and demand appropiate band filtering which furthers the whole costs of the technology itself,


Using teams and styles in Worms for PS3

Question: Worms for PS3 allows you to create customised teams and game styles. How do you actually use them in a game though?
Comment: Is this Worms classic or Worms Armageddon?
Comment: @wonea - neither, as far as I can tell. The game title in the PS3 menu and the main screen of the game both just say "WORMS".
Comment: There currently only two worms games (excluding the golf game) for the PS3 (Worms & Worms 2 Armaggedon), likely to be one of the two?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_downloadable_PlayStation_3_games
Comment: @wonea - Yep, it's just [Worms](http://au.ps3.ign.com/articles/968/968463p1.html).
Answer: The customized team should be selectable when you create a game and pick teams. The style should be selectable when you create a game as well. The game type has to match the game style you created however.
Could you clarify what you mean by "see them in game"?
Comment: You hit it dead on Enigma. By see in game, I think he means by using his custom team in the game. I can't recall if you can only use custom teams in only custom matches, or if you can use them in the campaign as well.
Comment: I seem to recall (from a while ago) that it may be restricted to custom matches only where it would be a standard team vs team game. Some campaign levels are special in that perhaps only one worm is used so a team selection isn't possible. I may be getting that confused with one of the many other flavors of worms.
Comment: That's what I recall too, being just custom matches. I haven't played it since it first came out on Xbox Live (probably 5 years ago).
Comment: I've played nearly every variation since the original for 98. The old worms 2 allowed for some nice advanced weapons customizations like supping up a bazooka to have max impact force flinging worms everywhere with their little high-pitched screams. Funny stuff.

Using teams and styles in Worms for PS3


How chemically homogeneous is air?

Question: By this, I mean if I buy compressed dry air from somebody like British Oxygen how much variation in composition might I expect between batches? For example, is Argon evenly distributed globally, by height, by geography etc? Is $\ce{CO2}$ removed? Are contaminants filtered out eg $\ce{NOx}$?
Answer: Oxygen/nitrogen ratios vary seasonally and geographically even at sea level on the order of 200 ppm.  Oxygen concentration has also been slowly decreasing in correlation with carbon dioxide increase.
Try using the MSIS-E-90 Atmosphere Model which allow location, date, time and height input and provides composition output.
Comment: Thanks. I was thinking of the possibility of replacing Argon with air in a calibration experiment, but it now looks like "air" is not as pure as I would like.

How chemically homogeneous is air?


Why does a guest not have to contribute a perutah for other mitzvot?

Question: The halacha (Orah Hayyim 677) is that a guest must contribute a perutah towards the fulfillment of the mitzvah of lighting Chanuka candles. I would like to know why we don't find a similar idea by other mitzvot? For example we don't say that a guest at Sukkot needs to contribute a perutah so that he has partial ownership over the sukkah he is eating in.
Comment: Why would you assume that a person needs to own his sukka? The question you ought to ask is why one need to contribute in the case of Menorah. Once you've answered that, you can decide whether or not it would make sense to require it for other mitzvot.
Answer: The gemara in succah 27b says that one does not have to own the succah to fulfill his obligation as the passuk says

כל האזרח בישראל ישבו בסוכות

With chanuka candles, there must be candle(s) lit for each household. This is the meaning of נר איש וביתו (shabbos 21b). When candles are lit for a household, all who are associated fulfill their obligation. A visitor is not considered to be a part of the household in which he is staying. He is considered a separate household. Therefore, he does not fulfill his obligation as part of the hosting household's lighting. If his wife or someone from his household is lighting, he fulfills his obligation with them. If not, he must light himself. If he can't or doesn't want to, he can fulfill his obligation by partial ownership of the candles being lit by his host. (See mishna berura or aruch hashulchan in OC 677 for most of the above.)
Answer: You are correct about the halacha about a guest contributing a perutah towards the Chanukah candles. And interesting enough there is a דעה in the גמרא (we don't paskin like this דעה) but there is a דעה in מסכת סוכה who says that a person isn't Yotzeh residing in his succah unless he owns it. So contributing to the succah would be like having a חלק of the succah. However since we don't paskin like this דעה we cannot use him as a proof to your question. However the answer I believe is that the guidelines for the mitzvah of נר חנוכה was set up strictly by the rabbis who said that a person has to sell the clothes off his back to be Yotzeh the mitzvah! Chazal doesn't say that about נר שבת or נר יום טוב. So if you have to go to that extent then surely you must have a חלק in the candles by contributing a perutah
Comment: `the guidelines for the mitzvah of נר חנוכה was set up strictly by the rabbis who said that a person has to sell the clothes off his back to be Yotzeh the mitzvah`... `So if you have to go to that extent then surely you must have a חלק in the candles by contributing a perutah` Why does one follow from the other?
Answer: The halachah is that everyone, man or woman, must light a menorah. If you're a member of the household then you're included in the person lighting, if you're not, you can contribute a peruta to be included. By suka, the halachah is that you must live in a Sukah, not own a Sukah. I know you gave Sukah as an example, but that was the only example you gave. What's another example, to 'hear' the shofar?
Just to note, some people, like Lubavitchers, have the minhag for all males to light their own menorah.
Comment: What does minhag have to do with halacha?


Is it possible to win in Don't Starve?

Question: I would like to know if it's possible to win in Don't Starve? Or is it just the matter of how long until you die?
Answer: There is a win condition now; the previous answers are outdated. There is now a story mode campaign, called "Adventure mode", which can be initiated from a normal game by activating Maxwell's Door, which is a large wooden doorlike structure with a hoop on top that is generated in every (new) Sandbox world. Adventure mode has a series of progressively harder levels, but it does appear to have a definite ending sequence.
Comment: It's worth mentioning that beating Adventure Mode puts you back in the sandbox mode, so even when you win, you... lose? Win again? Whichever.
Comment: @Fluttershy I think it is like Minecraft, Skyrim, etc. Once you beat the main story, you get to keep going.
Answer: The game has no defined winning conditions, at least for the moment. The developers have stated many times that they like the game to remain open-ended, with the player himself defining his own goals.
On their roadmap anyway they have planned a Story Mode that will let you discover the secrets of Don't Starve by progressing through increasingly harder worlds. The portals that have been introduced in the last update (at the time of this answer) are a first step towards that goal.
UPDATE: The game now has a winning condition that can be triggered by playing through Adventure Mode.
Answer: The aim is to survive as long as possible.
There is no winning, it's just about surviving. Of course you can set your self challenges like in many open games such as seeing how comfortable you can make your survival etc.
UPDATE: The game can now be won by playing through Adventure Mode.
Answer: Building and activating the Teleportato in Survival mode is also a win, of sorts.  It is the same device as the one you create in Adventure mode, but the outcome is different.
Putting together the crank thing, the metal potato thing, the box thing, and the ring thing with the wooden thing creates a device that allows you to leave the world you're in.
Upon activation, the game tells you that you'll be destroying the world you're currently playing (and it gives you the opportunity to keep playing instead).  And, if you choose to activate it, it gives you the message that "You've escaped!"
At this point, you are brought to the end of game screen where you accrue any owed experience points, and unlock any characters you are now due.  And, you are given the opportunity to change to a new character, and begin a new game maintaining your current inventory, but with a new world map and starting Day 1.
To my mind, this does represent a "win" scenario.
Answer: Yes, there is an end. If you beat Maxwell in Maxwell's door there is a epilogue (spoiler alert):

 If you win you can put the Divining Rod into the Nightmare Lock. Maxwell dies, but ends up in Survival mode alive and Wilson (or the player you are playing) will be trapped in Maxwell's place until another player takes his spot forever.
Comment: Welcome to Arqade.  I've edited your post to fix a few issues.  First, I've hidden the spoiler.  Second, I fixed a number of grammatical and spelling errors and changed the wording to reflect the terminology used within the game.  Please read through it and make certain this represents what you wished it to say.
Answer: To me. Winning is surviving survival mode until you get to the portal (or build your own) and proceeded to the next world. Once you've beaten Maxwell and gotten to the select another character screen it's pretty much telling you that you've beaten the main game. However there are secrets that you may have missed that can be unlocked through starting a new game or continuing after you've gone through all the world's and beaten Maxwell.

Is it possible to win in Don't Starve?


Should I harvest potatoes even if they haven't fully flowered?

Question: I planted some potatoes about 10 - 14 weeks ago. They have tall strong tops. Only a few small buds/flowers appear, then drop off. They have been well watered every day.
Should we start to harvest now? What if no flowers appear?
Answer: Typically you harvest potatoes once the green stuff has at least started to dry up and wilt, for early types at a "greener" stage, later types when the green tops have completely turned yellow and dried.
How long it takes until the potatoes are ready to be harvested depends a lot on the type you planted. Super-early kinds may be ready after as little as 100-110 days and might be dug up when the leaves are still quite green, but these potatoes have to be used immediately. The other end of the scale are the winter storage types that need up to 170 days and are ready in late September or even early October. And there are lots of breeds in between. You need to check for your chosen type. If in doubt, wait until the green has dried out.
The flowers and fruit have little to nothig to do with the formation of the tubers. Your potato plants use the green leaves to gather the energy to form the potatoes. In short, we eat the storage organs of the plants, using the energy originally stored for the next generation of potatoes.
Answer: I am just adding to Stephie's answer.  Yes you mostly certainly can pull out little potatoes also called 'new' potatoes.  Yummmm.
Definitely wait to harvest harvest potatoes after the tops have flowered and will soon start dying.  This happens so quickly with potatoes.  Only problem is you are forbidden (grins) to plant potatoes/tomatoes/eggplant/ or any other plants within the Solanaceae family in the same soil for two years minimum.  That is why I plant these guys in pots, in potting soil to enlarge my garden area.  Starting small...gradually increasing pot size to end at at least a 5 gallon to 10 gallon pot.
Potatoes need an acidic soil...do you know the pH of your soil?  Are you fertilizing?  Adding organic matter?  Did you know that potatoes are easily grown in a vertical format to save room and get larger potatoes?  Did you start with verified seed potatoes?  Potatoes are my absolute favorite 'vegetable' to grow.


Compensation for working more than contract states

Question: The employment contract that I signed specified that I work a maximum of 20 hours a week. For the past two years I've been scheduled more that, around 24-40 hours a week. Does this entitle me to additional compensation, such as overtime?
Comment: You're only asking this after two years? Have you up until now only been paid for 20 hrs/week? Have there been any additional (paid) leave or recuperation time?
Comment: If your contract states that you will be paid for 20 hours of work, at max, why would you work more?  Do you get paid hourly or salary?  It seems like it is on you volunteered your time willingly.
Comment: By "additional", do you mean "more than I the agreed upon amount for working 20 hours", or do you mean "More than the agreed upon hourly rate time multiplied by the number of hours worked"?
Answer:
I've been scheduled more that, around 24-40 hours a week. Does this entitle me to additional compensation, such as overtime?

Yes. Section 1194 of the California Labor Code provides that:

Notwithstanding any agreement to work for a lesser wage, any employee
  receiving less than the legal minimum wage or the legal overtime
  compensation applicable to the employee is entitled to recover in a
  civil action the unpaid balance of the full amount of this minimum
  wage or overtime compensation, including interest thereon, reasonable
  attorney's fees, and costs of suit.

The contractual maximum of 20 weekly hours is stricken/superseded every time (1) your employer schedules you in excess of 20 hours in a week and (2) you accept it. Thus, you could pursue the recovery of unpaid wages under two legal theories. One of them is the aforementioned statute, since your implied contract --pertaining to the excess of 20 weekly hours-- constitutes an agreement to work for a lesser wage than the legal minimum wage.
The other theory or claim under which you may proceed is breach of contract. Again, this refers to the implied agreements regarding any unpaid wages in excess of 20 weekly hours. Under this theory you would recover just the full wages (rather than only the minimum wage), whereas the statutory provision entitles you to reasonable attorney's fees.
You might want to get some acquaintance with the California Labor Code, since it describes how to proceed and might also touch on other issues which might be applicable to your situation (and not mentioned in your post).
If your matter is filed in court, there is always a chance that your case might be presided by some sick judge telling you in court that "The state loves insurance companies and it employers [...] and you have to [...] stay out of the way". But contract law and section 1194 of the Labor Code encompass what the law is in regard to your matter.
Edited to add (per A.fm.'s remark)
In case you are being paid for all the hours you work and your concern is only whether/when should your hourly wage be higher than the regular rate, the answer depends on whether your schedule meets any of the conditions listed in Section 510(a):

any work in excess of eight hours in one workday;
any work in excess of 40 hours in any one workweek (you mention having worked around 24-40, which suggests but is not conclusive that the threshold of 40 hours is not exceeded);
the first eight hours worked on the seventh day of work in any one workweek;
any work in excess of 12 hours in one day (entitling to twice the regular rate of pay);
any work in excess of eight hours on any seventh day of a workweek (entitling to twice the regular rate of pay).
Comment: Unfortunately, there is currently no way to determine if this answer is correct. OP did not state his salary or hourly wage, so you do not know whether the extra 4-20 hours per week he worked would lead to him being paying less than the minimum wage. OP did not say he wasn't paid in full for his hours worked - he asked whether being scheduled for more hours than his contract stated would entitle him to "additional compensation, such as overtime?" We would need to know whether he was not paid in full for the extra hours - absent that, he's entitled to no overtime.
Comment: @A.fm. Thanks. I see I was missing the key word "additional" in the OP's question, so I'm editing to add the CA statute that essentially defines overtime. But, unless the contract establishes so, it would be mistaken to purport that any excess over minimum wage pursuant to the signed contract (the one with a "*maximum of 20 hours a week*") is understood to compensate for the wage deficit or non-payment pursuant to the extra schedules.
Comment: Viggers, that is an interesting point. I definitely don't think any wage above minimum wage would be able to compensate for non-payment. However, I'm not sure that a wage above minimum wage would not count toward a wage deficit calculation. Are you suggesting that if he was to be paid $30 an hour for 20 hours max per week (under that contract), but because he worked 30 hours in a given week, it would be considered that he worked 20 hours at $30/hour and 10 hours for $15/hour (min wage)? Or am I misunderstanding your point in your last sentence?
Comment: @A.fm. Yes, that is what I mean. The wage of $30/hour stays the same for the first 20 hours regardless of whether the OP works additional hours. As for the excess over 20 hours, Section 1194 guarantees at least the minimum wage (or 1.5-2 times the regular rate if the OP's extended schedule meet(s) any condition in Section 510). I am not aware of case law deciding an issue resembling this one, but a ruling in the contrary would make no sense and lead to the irony of lowering the OP's average wages precisely when he works the most, thereby contravening the intent (or tendency) of Section 510.


SPUtility.GetPrincipalsInGroup and Claims authentication issue

Question: I have the requirement to enumerate a list of users that are in an Active Directory group that has been granted rights to an SPWeb. If the site collection is using windows auth this is no problem and you can get user list via a simple call to SPUtility.GetPrincipalsInGroup. However when it's using claims this is where this method breaks. My question is, is it possible to utilize the SharePoint API to get user list from an Active Directory group when the site collection is configured with Claims auth?
Answer: Claims authentication combines different authentication methods like basic, active directory etc. This means that the group that has been granted rights to an SPWeb does not necessarily has to be an Active Directory group.
Answer: After a related Stack Overflow answer mentioned the System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement namespace, I tried using it in my SharePoint site that includes Claims Authentication to determine if a username is a member of an Active Directory security group on the domain. It worked.
<code>    public bool UserIsMemberOf(string userNameWithoutDomain, string domainName, string groupName) {
        var result = false;
        SPSecurity.RunWithElevatedPrivileges(() => {
            var context = new PrincipalContext(ContextType.Domain, domainName);
            using (var searcher = new PrincipalSearcher()) {
                searcher.QueryFilter = new GroupPrincipal(context, groupName);
                var group = searcher.FindOne() as GroupPrincipal;
                if (group != null) {
                    result = group.GetMembers().Any(x => string.Equals(userNameWithoutDomain, x.SamAccountName, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase));
                }
            }
        });
        return result;
    }
</code>


How to make wood reverberate less?

Question: I use a "inverted" drawer as a support for my mouse and keyboard, the problem is since it's hollow it reverberates a lot, any thumb on it can be heard from outside my room. What can I do or which material can I use to make it reverberate less?
Answer: If that drawer really fits your needs, you need weight in contact with it to fully stop it vibrating.
Fill a pillowcase with enough dry beans or rice or similar density but space-compliant bits to fill the drawer, sew shut and place the inverted drawer over it. The filler must almost completely fill the drawer. Don't use packing peanuts - they're too light, not dense enough.
Also run foam weather-stripping around the drawer edge in contact with your table-top to dampen transfer of vibrations both ways.
Answer: Sounds like a problem best fixed by getting a proper support rather than patching up a band-aid.  At any rate, a sound absorbing mat (usually used to stop bass enclosures from vibrating) glued full-area to the bottom of the drawer (if the mat isn't self-adhesive, use either prescribed glue or contact glue) should likely do the trick.  It's sort of heavy semi-deformable foam.  Actually not all that unlike mouse mats.

How to make wood reverberate less?


What is the most up to date design template I should use?

Question: I am a web-developer and am starting a new project. First step is designing the site. In the past, I have used 960 grid system but I was wondering if this is still the standard pretty much? Is there something better now that suits the responsive craze?
Answer: Well there is now 978.gs that is better than 960.  That said there is no reason to use 978.gs or 960 but since the OP asked for a web design template other than 960 I provided the solution of 978.gs. You ask for a design template when you should be designing in the browser if you're using Bootstrap. If you use 978.gs you will need to build your own CSS which defeats the purpose of Bootstrap.
If you are going to target responsive I would suggest looking into Bootstrap or Foundation and start learning how to design in the browser.
Google search for designing in the browser.
Also, not to be rude, the 1st step isn't "designing", you are missing a few steps:

Purpose and goals
content strategy
sketch/mockup
wireframe
Comment: I am actually using bootstrap! is 978 more pertinent to responsive?
Comment: 978.gs does not mention being responsive.  Their site is not responsive either.
Comment: I love **Foundation**.
Comment: @Scott is very liberal that way...


PDF Version of Completed Form to Google Drive

Question: Is there a way to automatically have a PDF version of a submitted form saved in Google Drive?
Answer: I'm a developer with Cognito Forms.
You can have a PDF version of the submitted form sent to Google Drive by using Zapier. You will need to be on a paid plan in order for this information to be included and sent over to Zapier.
Comment: Thank you! :). What I can't figure out is how to set up the template or whatever in Zapier.   I get how to connect with Zapier, select the correct form, link it to google drive etc, but I don't know how to basically say "take the PDF print of this form submission and save it in the google drive folder I selected."  Can you advise?


Egg yolk sizes changed over the years?

Question: Have egg yolk sizes changed over the years?   I have an old recipe from the 1950's I believe.  It's called Norwegian Crowns.  It calls for 2 hard boiled egg yolks.  You force them through a sieve and cream them with butter.  Then mix them with sugar and cake flour.  You then put the dough in a cookie press.  The dough never comes out of the press right.  I've been using large eggs.  Should I use smaller or larger eggs?
Comment: What's wrong with the dough?
Comment: It's really sticky.  It doesn't come away from the press right.
Answer: Hello @Dudie and welcome to Seasoned Advice. Regarding the size of egg yolks in certain size eggs, you may find this interesting. Here is the link to the  page .

A change in the feed given to chickens has resulted in healthier eggs but the trend for buying larger eggs has led to there being less yolk to white.
  This is because of the preference for bigger eggs now compared with 30 years ago. The size of the yolk remains the same in a large egg as in a medium one, with larger eggs simply containing more white.

Looking at recipes for Norwegian cookies, I think that the recipe you are using is more widely known as Norwegian Butter Cookies. I found several using the same ingredients and they seem to be pretty consistent. The variations I found were mostly in preparation. E.g., one said to cream the butter and egg yolks together while another said to sieve the egg yolks.
The recipes I found for Norwegian Crowns used both cooked egg yolks and raw egg yolks (with the exception of one recipe that was nearly identical to all of the butter cookie recipes except that it called for vanilla).
So, in light of the information, I would offer these suggestions:

Stay with the eggs you are using. If you think you need more, add more. If you think you need less, use less.
You might give a look to other recipes and try a different prep method, e.g. creaming the egg yolks and butter together.
As I saw in several recipes you can use a cookie press or use a drop method. If you use a ball or drop method you can use a fork to press in a criss-cross pattern. See pic below.
Comment: +1. Cookie presses can be notoriously fiddly, so I'd try the ball and drop method first to experiment with good cookie consistency -- and _then_ argue with the cookie press.
Comment: @Erica : I've never had good luck with cookie presses *unless* I was using the recipes that specifically came with it.  I suspect that the different sizes in the holes for the plates requires slightly different consistency batter, and not all cookie presses are created equal.  (I was using other people's presses, and didn't have an opportunity to measure to confirm my suspicions)
Comment: That is really interesting to know. Recipes often ask for large eggs, so I'll continue to buy large for that reason, but I'll stick to smaller eggs from now on to just eat.
Comment: Thanks for the advice.  I'm leaning toward the drop method.  I'll practice and then try the press.
Answer: I have a speculation: there is nothing wrong with your yolk size, there is something wrong with your recipe.
Sometimes people transcribe good recipes and get a small detail wrong, because they don't know what it's there for. Then the recipe is much worse than it started out, but if the person who disseminates it is not too discriminating, it might become known enough to land in a cookbook.
I can imagine no good reason to mix hard boiled yolks with butter. On the other hand, there is a very good reason to do it if the eggs are not hard boiled. If you mix yolks and butter while gently heating over a waterbath, you get a hollandaise sauce, an emulsion which can be used as the base for very rich and fluffy batters. Also, this way the butter mixes with the rest of the ingredients perfectly even if you are not using an electric mixer.
Some recipes take the shortcut of not doing it over a waterbath, but to use a very soft cooked egg, where the yolk has just reached the proper temperature, but is still liquid. It still makes a decent emulsion, although not one a perfectionist would be happy with.
And then there are wrong applications of this technique which prescribe a hard boiled egg. I've tried before to see how it works, and found out that, even with a modern stick blender, it's impossible to make a good emulsion.
I may be wrong here, a dough can fail in many ways. But I can't think of another plausible reason for "creaming" egg yolk with butter. My suggestion is to try another batch, using an emulsification method, and then see if your dough works better.
Another point many people forget with cookie dough: using the correct temperatures is very important! Obviously, in this case you are starting with both eggs and butter at the correct temperature, but the other ingredients should be room temperature too. And if the recipe prescribes cooling periods, you should keep them, not try to skip resting or cooling steps. Else the consistency might be wrong for shaping, and they can bake wrong.
Comment: Thank you for your advice.  I'm going to try one change at a time and see which one works.

Egg yolk sizes changed over the years?


What programming skills does someone in QA need to work effectively in extreme programming projects?

Question: Well, the title really says it all, but to elaborate a bit, can you take a random, typically effective QA department and have them learn to work in an XP environment (with a learning curve to pick up the XP workflow of course) or would they need more programming skills to be effective?  If so, what would they need to know?
Answer: QA Team Conversion to XP?
This question you ask is one on which many traditional testers depend for career survival.
Short answer is maybe.  You are right to identify the work flow as an issue, but the work flow is simple compared with training for programming and development.  Making testers into programmers may be a bridge too far.  There are many other skills that have closer affinity to your testers' current skill set.
I think there is a role for Software Test Engineers, but two new creatures are on the scene, the Test Driven Developer and the Software Development Engineer in Test who will take over a lot of turf that used to belong to the STE.
XP Workflow
Under an XP workflow, unit test is the responsibility of the developer.  Typically the workflow would involve creating the story card, working up a use case diagram and some use cases, then turning those into test cases.  The test cases would drive the development in a methodology called Test Driven Development (TDD).  Every minute the program exists, there is a test case to be implemented first, followed by some code that will initially fail, then after additional work, pass that test.  When all the tests identified from the story cards pass, the product is done.  Or at least the latest increment is done.  Unit tests are created in a language dependent way and are part of the code.  There are many references, but for a quick intro check Wikipedia, then the following web page by Scott Ambler.
http://www.agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html#WhatIsTDD
There is also significant overlap with the system acceptance testing because the test cases come from the story cards and use cases.  ATDD (Acceptance TDD) makes a distinction, but I think it might be kind of arbitrary.
Not everyone takes testing with equal seriousness.  Managers can push developers to not test.  They can push to have testers not test too.  I was dinged pretty hard one year when the developers on my team were about on budget but the testers on the project tested bug fixes and new features several hours a week even though the project plan had them only working two weeks at the end.  It seemed like the right thing to do, and the project was still profitable and customers had a better product because of it.
Developers must test.  It is very wasteful when they don't because testers must run, report, and repeat.  Software quality is no less the responsibility of developers than testers.  This sharing should make the tester's life less frustrating, but it also amps up the demand for a lot of knowledge and skill on everyone.
If developers fail to take testing seriously, the demands on testers may increase because you will get builds daily.  For a while people may be heard to say, "why does it seem like we take one step forward and two steps backward."  The answer will be because you are now using a system where the team has visibility like it never had before and before it was only at the 90% mark that those people knew about the impending disaster.
The Shift of Testing To Developers
My experience is that to accelerate development, it can help to move jobs done by testers into development.  This is true of everything from UI testing of a touch screen clear up through Windows Hardware Quality Lab testing of a very complex items like a Windows driver for WiFi.
Consider pre-PC days when engineers dictated memos and technical information to a secretary to be typed, duplicated, and distributed.  Compare that to a developer using email, an intranet wiki, comments in the bug tracking, source control or code review tools, instant messaging, etc.  We just have too many changes that we need to test and the surrounding communications and knowledge transfer are so daunting that much of our testing is automated for direct implementation by developers with no delegation to test.
Value Adds for Testers
I have worked with some testers who could be system engineers, and some who have crazy good communications skills (almost mind reading/telepathy).  My most effective work with them was when they did a good job explaining unexpected behavior they saw in the system, usually in writing in the bug tracker, although often a demonstration was extremely helpful.
Another important criteria is that the effort of a code hand off was as small as possible.  For a while developers felt some relief when testers could gen their own builds.  Now, we use constant integration servers so developers need only commit source and provided we used TDD right, there are a lot of tests that run themselves and report back.
Global competition is pushing cycle times and rework is getting reworked out of the system.  If tomorrow I hear from a tester about a defect I added today, how will I compete with the guy who didn't make a defect today (or found it himself)?  We are not there yet, but I think the days of cut-and-try programmers are numbered.  I have seen demos from Google developers who may have rehearsed a lot, but they seem to be able to type in a program from beginning to end during a 90 minute lecture, explaining as they type with few or no problems in the change and execute cycle.  Testers add value by shortening the time between work and rework, so early concise reporting about today's build today is a big plus.
New Test Roles
Many organizations are carving out roles for SDET - Software Developer Engineer in Test.  These guys script, code, and code review.  The following link is to a blog for a SDET at Microsoft.
http://aliabdin.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/what-does-an-sdet-do/
He also describes Software Test Engineers (STE) who feed the bugs they find to SDET.  Another thing that struck me about the SDET role is that unlike the traditional software developers, when they have buggy systems they need to know code for the whole system because almost any part could be the source of the problem, so the extensive mental map helps them track it down.
Forming a Vision that Leads to a Successful Transition
I have encountered a similar issue of a project manager not knowing how to fit that role into scrum.  Being scrum master was her transition destination.  It is a well defined role, and there is training for it.  Keep looking and you may find something similar for testing.
There is more information about Agile testing here:
http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileTesting.html#AgileTestingStrategies
and about the independent test team here:
http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileTesting.html#IndependentTestTeam
Scott Ambler's observations about the ratio of developers to testers in Agile vs. traditional approaches will not make your day (15:1 vs. 3:1).  I would suggest understanding and creating a vision for your test team based on skills and tools expertise:

Complete fluency with bug tracker.
Understand developer level source control concepts like commit, branch, tag.
Be able to run reports on code commits and their comments from the source control system.
Learn to deciphering developer speak in commit comments and map then to UI and manual tests not run automatically.
Get a system engineer's understanding of the system, but help clarify rather than make decisions about what is undocumented and ambiguous.
Get on a daily cycle with developers.  This may mean much more frequent and rapid reconfiguration of equipment under test and test tools.
Depending on your environment, developers may be using a much broader tool set than testers.  If your lab has what they use, it is flattering and a more hospitable environment for face time and ad-hoc training from developers.  Examples might include use of Virtual Machine Managers and VMs, remote debug or diagnostics via networks with SSH or remote desktop, the ability to save device state or UI appearance through screen capture or by taking a photo with a camera or smart phone, and logging to network directories or thumb drives.
Preliminary analyses using log data moved into spread sheets and converted to plots.  There is a lot of stuff being written about big data and sometimes the test output from in lab or beta test sites can be big data.
Learn to facilitate customer interface during beta testing.  This may involve retrieving log files by documenting and coaching customers over the phone, or it may be hooked into an automated system that delivers crash dumps directly to the developer (or to you if you have the skill to triage).
Help support quantitative analysis of software and systems level products (as before, but maybe even more).
Look for ways to get developers more aware of how many different testing methods and tools you have at your disposal, and what works well for requesting their work be quality assured, not just at the end of the project, but weekly or daily.
Ask the developers in your organization what vision they have for how testers can help them.  It should go well if you have been watching each others backs thus far.  You should get great ideas together.

Good luck in the transition to XP and in preparing your team to do the same.
Comment: Very good answer! +1
Comment: I hadn't noticed the edit until just a moment ago.  It's quite a good answer now.
Comment: -1 for "My experience is that to accelerate development, it can help to move jobs done by testers into development" this is not even remotely close to [my experience](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/100882/31260 "BTDTGTTS") "I for one have been working in projects with _dev:tester ratio_ varying from 10:1 to 1:2 and all of them went well and fine. The only one that sucked was where there were no testers at all - and it sucked really bad..."
Comment: It should come out in my answer that I appreciate what testers do.  But many testers are on a cut-and-try treadmill because developers say "not my job" WRT testing.  I knew a project where releases concluded with "four-day test".  If it failed, the test and the clock started over.  Some developers pulled integration level testing into their workload, expanding their in-office test configurations from a PC and one device under test with no peripherals (~$5000) to add a second PC plus DUT peripherals (~$12K).  Getting instant results vs. waiting for tester feedback saved everyone time and work.
Comment: Work shifts dramatically as tools improve and global competition drives costs and cycle times.  Using fewer, more productive people is common.  Professionals dictating letters and reports to a secretary for typing are replaced by email and word processing.  The secretarial pool is replaced by a well trained admin who makes decisions, takes initiative.  Similarly, testing became far more professional.  I worked with a tester with a two year degree who refused to read a book about testing.  He exited as the test team grew more professional (average education just short of Masters level).
Answer: For typical test driven development, it's probably not necessary for your QA's to know any programming at all.
But if you're doing behaviour driven development, it would be beneficial for your QA's to know a language like Cucumber.  Especially, if your business analysts are writing story requirements in the Given-When-Then style.
However, it really depends on your 'people', and the tools you're working with.  I would say it's possible for them to be effective with zero programming knowledge, but it certainly wouldn't hurt and may make them more effective.


Road bike handle bar adjustment to one weaker and shorter arm

Question: I have Erbs Palsy causing my left arm to be shorter and weaker than my right arm. Can the handle bars of a road bike be adjusted to accommodate this or is there another resolution I can consider?
Comment: Do you have problems with riding a normal bike?
Comment: It needs to be noted that much of a bike's handling has to do with how the arms "balance" on the handlebar.  With one arm weaker/shorter, you end up with something similar to riding with one hand, from a handling and stability standpoint.  Anything you do will be a compromise -- there is no "perfect" solution.
Comment: @paula - Are you able to give an update on how things have gone over the last 18 months?  What have you tried and what has worked for you ?
Comment: Another consideration is what medical assistance is available.  Some countries can subsidise the costs of assistive solutions, so a custom-made handlebar that has more rise on one side might be exactly what you need.
Answer: For a small difference in reach, it could be a simple as adjusting the position of the hoods on your handlebar such that the left one sits a little higher and further back. It's a change that will often look small, but it adjusts the angle of the lever at the same time, which amplifies the change too.
Answer: I used to regularly see a cyclist with one noticeably thinner and shorter arm. He used a normal road bike and just had his weaker arm on the top of the bars all the time, while using all positions with the right one. He also had an extra brake lever on the right. He seemed to do quite well, even climbed very steep hills, but I've never talked to him.
If the difference isn't too great, you can try simply rotating the stem so that the bars will be slightly askew.
Answer: A solution will very much depend on exactly how much shorter and weaker you right arm is.
If the difference is small, you could adjust the handlebars to be correct for your left arm by bringing them higher and further rearward by fitting a shorter stem with greater rise. This of course compromises the position of your right arm to some degree.
If the difference is too great, I think you would need to look at a custom built handlebar. This could possibly be made by cutting a bar 5-10cm to the left of the the stem clamping area, and adding a block that clamps the two together and moves the left side up and back.
If you are using a road bike drop handlebar, possibly you could adjust the bar position so that you ride with you left hand on the hood position, and right hand on the drop position.
Presumably another concern is having  enough strength in your left hand to operate the front brake and shifter effectively. The majority of braking should be performed with the front brake so a stronger right hand is preferable to a weaker left hand.
If you can't operate the front shifter with your left hand you could of course fit a one-by drivetrain with only a rear derailleur and shifter.
Comment: Since it is a safety matter, I think this work should be done by a qualified bicycle mechanic at a decent bike shop or maybe even better still by a frame builder who knows how to adapt the bike for this particular purpose.
Answer: I also have erbs palsy and I am looking for a better set of handle bars. I'm using a Jamis bike with vee brakes right now but want to upgrade . I will let you know what I find that works. My right arm is the shorter .
Comment: Sorry to hear that - can you use [edit] to add in what you've already tried and how it worked?   Also, do remember to come back and update this answer as you learn more.


Can actual instrument time count as simulated instrument time for the PPL?

Question: Just wondering if actual instrument time can be added with simulated instrument time for the requirements of the Private Pilot minimums (3 hour instrument). I have actual instrument time from when my CFI showed me what it was like to fly in clouds. (USA)
Answer: Provided your CFI and you were flying on a filed and ATC cleared IFR flight plan at the time of the real instrument time was acquired, then yes, you can use that instrument time toward your PPL Aeronautical Experience requirements.  It does not necessarily need to be done under the hood. 61.109(a)(3) just requires the applicant log 3 hours of dual instruction time flying solely on reference to the instruments, whether simulated or real IMC conditions.
The downside here is that unless you did the dual instrument time with a CFII, you cannot use that time toward an instrument rating or advanced pilot or flight instructor certificates per 61.109.
Comment: Just to be clear - the flight instructor must only have an instrument rating (duh), but need not be a CFII. Also, yes, you can get in trouble if not on a flight plan or IFR clearance, but actual can be logged in rare circumstances where fight by sole reference to instruments is necessary... so almost but not quite on this answer.
Comment: No the flight instructor must hold a commercial pilot certificate in the airplane category and class used for instruction here with an instrument rating AND must hold a flight instructor certificate in the airplane category and class used here for instruction along with a separate instrument rating on the flight instructor certificate (CFII) in order for you to log actual IMC time during instruction.
Comment: ever think about how they give flight training in Seattle with the 80% of the days being rainy and overcast? A CFI may conduct any flight training under IFR toward a private certificate or commercial or CFI, but may not train students for an instrument rating or CFII. ALMOST EVERY TRAINING FLIGHT IN THAT PART OF THE COUNTRY INCLUDES AN INSTRUMENT APPROACH.
Comment: It appears as though you are correct, at least for training toward a PPL.  The downside is that if the student wanted to proceed with instrument training toward an instrument rating, they would not be able to use that accrued time toward the rating unless the instructor was a CFII.  Nor could it be used toward CPL or ATPL.  Also in the case of Seattle, most training flights get cancelled there or they simply wait for VFR weather minimums to conduct the flight in, which does happen there, even in winter time.  Very rarely are instrument approaches conducted as part of primary flight training.
Answer: Yes.
The requirements for a private certificate are stated in 14 CFR 61.109(a)(3) as "flight training ... instrument flight".
In 14 CFR 61.1, Instrument training is defined as:
Instrument training means that time in which instrument training is received from an authorized instructor under actual or simulated instrument conditions.


How to bypass Geo blocking on SoundCloud?

Question: Some music in my SoundCloud android app isn't availaible in my country. How do I get around this using Orbot? I tried switching on Apps VPN mode and selecting SoundCloud, (set location as US first, then UK) but that didn't work. My phone isn't rooted.
Comment: It's possible that the soundcloud app itself is snitching on you, or your account information is. In those cases, connecting different locations won't help.
Comment: That's what I thought, although I don't remember giving my location in account details. The location setting in my phone is off, too. But still, I went to their website through Orfox expecting this to be solved (no log in). Didn't work again. I could listen music somewhere else of course, but I'm curious why this isn't working.
Answer: Because tor-exit-nodes are popular by many websites on the web, (as mentioned before) they are blacklisted.
This happened because there are so little volunteers to become the exit nodes that it is a miracle that someone can access the internet without getting blocked (and I mean clear web / clearnet).
A possible solution to your problem with location would be to get a good VPN service with many servers and locations so that you can access SoundCloud without getting blocked by it.
Good luck!!
Comment: Furthermore, it is suggested by the tor project that you use a VPN every time you connect to the internet through tor.
Comment: And in your occasion you could try VPNs with mobile versions
Comment: *"Furthermore, it is suggested by the tor project that you use a VPN every time you connect to the internet through tor."* **--** i very much doubt that! please show us some evidence for this claim. i just have a link which rather suggests the opposite: https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#IsTorLikeAVPN
Answer: Tor exit nodes are often detected by web services, so if you insist on using Tor for this, you'll have to try (New Identity button at top right corner) lots of exit nodes until you find one not in their lists.


Does a person who newly became Indian Citizen need to pay taxes for the asset he transfers to India from his ex-citizenship country?

Question: Between 1992 and 2004 I was working in USA. I had also gained US Citizenship in 2003. In 2004 I returned to India and since then lived in India. I got (back) Indian citizenship in 2014. Now I want to transfer all my assets (which are savings while I was in USA and for which US income tax had been pained when the money was earned) in my US bank accounts to my RFC account in Indian banks. Do I need to pay tax in India for these assets?
Answer: If the person has come back for good, any assets or foreign earnings can be transferred tax free back to India within 7 years.


Does Heidegger treat the word "life"?

Question: I would like to know if there are some references in which heidegger treats the word life.
What does Heidegger say about life, and where?
Comment: Your question is pretty general. Heidegger's idiosyncratic terminology doesn't employ "life" in any significant way, as far as I know, though he may have picked up lebenswelt from Husserl.  Perhaps you could word-search a PDF or online version of SZ. Evidently he discusses biology in 1929-30 lectures, disputing Darwin, teleology, and the whole idea of mechanistic "sciences of life." Perhaps you would do better to search for references to "animals" within the schema of beings.
Comment: Isn't Heidegger's whole book "Being and Time" with its core concept of "Dasein" about human life?
Comment: The question is not for human life, it is for the word life.
Comment: There is *[lebenswelt](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeworld)* (life-world), but this is Husserlian; Heidegger was a student of Husserl, so there may be a connection there.
Answer: Heidegger uses the word Life (Leben) all over the place (it appears at least once in every volume of the GA), as do most of us, but the word itself doesn't appear to have a special place in his terminology. In places he refers to other philosophers' use of the word (Aristotle, Hegel). He looks at some related etymology; e.g., Er-Leben.

Does Heidegger treat the word "life"?