Should we avoid writing fiction about historical events without extensive research?

Question: I was thinking about writing about the Holocaust, but I am not sure if it's a good idea since I am not sure if people would feel offended if I exaggerate certain events or facts even if it makes the tragedy look more horrible. How can I go about setting my story in the midst of this event without causing too much offense (and assuming I don't want to do a lot of research first)?  Are the considerations the same for other historical events?
Comment: As a reader of historical fiction, the lack of research doesn't offend me, but it does make me think the writer has very little respect for their chosen period / event. Worse, very little respect for the people who lived the event.
Comment: Why don't you want to do research on it if the topic is sufficiently interesting for you to write about it?
Comment: As an aside, I don't think you can *exaggerate* the Holocaust. Have you seen *Schindler's list*? It was *toned down*.
Comment: Personally I think this varies enormously by what the event is/was. If you aren't completely accurate when writing about a merchant ship trading between America and India in the 1800s, sticklers for detail with a particular interest in the period might grumble but no-one will really care. If you get things wrong about the Holocaust... wow. Don't do that. Don't even think about writing about that if you're not prepared to do the research and make sure you get it right.
Comment: To Clarify on @Galastel's comments, the Nazi Officer and villain in Schindler's List is a real historical figure (as is Schindler, who was a Nazi party member).  Critics of the film felt he was over-top, but he was massively toned down.  I did look for real life things he did, and gave up early on when I discovered that he was fired from running a concentration camp for being too cruel to the prisoners.  I don't know the details, but when the Nazis say "His behavior makes the concentration camps look bad" you know you have a high threshold for exaggeration.
Comment: People will feel offended. It's up to you to decide how to manage that and your reaction to it.
Comment: I see two questions here: "How much research should be done?" and "How to describe events to avoid offending the reader?"
Comment: @Ryan_L not familiar with the source, but it sounds like something that would be *technically* problematic, not something the Nazis *wouldn't* do. What they did is empty trains into the extermination camps, and send everyone to the gas chambers at once. Then the bodies were cremated. They were also looking into ways to automate the slaughter further, to make it "more efficient".
Comment: Asking "should I do X?" is an opinion-based question (see the "primarily opinion-based" close reason.  I edited to ask how to approach writing in this period instead of just asking whether you should.  Please keep this in mind for your other questions.  Thanks.
Comment: [Research is overrated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k9_N4k5IQI)
Comment: You really should not touch this with a 2 miles pole.
Comment: Do the research. A good point to start from:
https://www.yadvashem.org/
Comment: @Ryan_L You are cherry picking one odd book by Eugene Aroneanu and holding that as an example of all books. The reality is—from what I can see—the book documents first person eyewitness accounts without critical analysis. The most likely. Since Eugene Aroneanu provided documentation for the Nuremberg trials, these book documents not facts, as much as eyewitness recollections made by people who suffered from acute PTSD. The point being the book does not claim to be fact but rather accounts provided by eyewitnesses during a time when attempts to understand what happened were new. 1/2
Comment: @Ryan_L Meaning in the context of providing documentation for a legal case, eyewitness testimony must be gathered in all forms; the more testimony the better. And then once corroborating evidence can be found, that testimony gets bolstered. Which all means these are just words of eyewitnesses and perhaps in trauma and translation the description of what happened was lost or misinterpreted. But the idea that—in the context of a fiction story as this question states—that finding one bit of "truthy" evidence doesn't make fabricating facts in fiction is somehow validated. 2/2
Comment: You may want to better distinguish between doing the writing, and publishing it for others (and which others) to see.
Comment: @Galastel It IS possible to exaggerate the Holocaust, and it has been done before.  To be clear, I'm not denying the genocide happened, but some specifics have been lied about.  There are Holocaust memoirs describing trains that led directly to the furnaces, which automatically cremated living victims en masse.  Plainly ridiculous.

Don't exaggerate the Holocaust, because your lies will make the actual horrible things the Nazis did less believable.
Comment: @Ryan_L That wouldn't be Treblinka you're talking about, would it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treblinka_extermination_camp and other similar extermination camps? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp They are very very real.
Comment: @Galastel No that's not what I'm talking about.  I know they cremated bodies at the death camps.  I am referring to a system mentioned in "Inside the Concentration Camps" by Eugene Aroneanu.  It's a collection of stories told by Holocaust survivors.  In it, one of the survivors describes a system where a traincar loaded with living people would roll down a hill, at the bottom of which was a furnace.  When the car reached the bottom the door to the furnace would open automatically and the people would be tossed in by the impact.  This is objectively absurd.
Comment: I'm not trying to deny the Holocaust happened.  All I am saying is that you don't need to make up horrible things the Nazis did, they were plenty horrible as it is.  Further, actual deniers do use this and other falsehoods to convince people it's all fake.  I have seen them do this.  I agree that it is possible that this was a mistranslation of some kind, but I can't go based on what they may have meant to say, only what is actually written.
Answer: Research is vital if you want your story to succeed emotionally
Imagine that you're writing a story about a horse race.  Your protagonist's horse is in second place, just barely behind their arch-nemesis.  Right as they approach the finish line, the protagonist's horse gathers itself for a mighty leap and propels itself into the air over the other horse to claim victory.
This is a very dramatic and exciting moment - or it could be, if it weren't for the fact that it is completely impossible.  Horse races don't involve leaping.  This scene will fall completely flat for any reader who recognizes its impossibility.  The readers most likely to know about how horse races work are people who care about horse races.  These are also the readers who are most likely to be emotionally invested in a story about horse racing.
EDIT:  For another example of a scene being cheapened by its lack of realism, I give you: NCIS: Two idiots, one keyboard
Poorly researched inaccuracies alienate the readers who are the most emotionally invested in your story.
That's not a good thing.
The more emotionally attached people are to an event, the more important it is to portray that event correctly.
The more recent an event is, the more attached people will be to it.
The more important an event is, the more attached people will be to it.
The Holocaust is both in living memory (if only barely), and HUGELY important.  You don't want to screw it up, and you will if you don't research it.

Research will make your story better
Even if you weren't worried about alienating your readers you should research anyways, because the details you will learn will enhance your story.
Learning about the way people lived, how they acted, and how they survived will inspire countless details that will allow you to move your story in new and interesting ways.  Truth is stranger than fiction in many dramatic and exciting ways, but you can't take advantage of that unless you have researched those details.

Finally,
You will never be perfect
While watching Spiderman: Homecoming, I was briefly thrown out of the story because I happen to know that there are only two different schools who have won the Academic Decathlon in the past 8 years, and neither of them is anywhere close to New York.  Peter Parker's school winning AcaDeca had to be fictional because the school doesn't exist, and it still briefly threw me out of the story.  No matter what you do, you will not be able to perfectly recreate the events you are describing.  That's okay.  But you still need to get close enough that readers familiar with the subject aren't constantly being distracted by your inaccuracies.  A blip here or there is fine.
Comment: See, here's an example of where I didn't do my research, and it distracted a reader from the point I was trying to make.  :)
Comment: "Horse races don't involve leaping." just because of the question, - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hunt_racing (although of course not over fellow competitors :) )
Comment: Or for a more modern take on the horse race, there's the Magic Downshift.  "We need to go faster!  Let's shift into a lower gear and press the accelerator harder!"  As every competent driver knows, shifting to a lower gear when you're already going as fast as you can will at best just slow you down, and at worst will seriously damage your engine.
Comment: @Graham - I've never seen downshift used like that. When cruising on low RPM downshift is very beneficial if you want to go into high rev range quickly and overtake someone. If there are depictions of people downshifting when already in high revs, yeah, that's just idiotic.
Comment: @Davor Exactly.  I can only imagine the trope exists because most cars in the US are automatics, so most people have no idea how gears actually work, but there are *way* too many examples in film.  Or if it's not the Magic Downshift, it's the Magic Extra Gear - and if you're racing and you had an extra gear available and the engine is screaming at you, why didn't you change up already?  Being a Brit, we all drive manual (stick) so it's an automatic throw-popcorn-at-the-screen moment.
Comment: @Graham In a way that's just taking advantage of ignorance.  I've drove stick in North America for 15 years and even just the driver **looking down to shift** makes me thing they're idiots.  The stick is spring loaded in a way that I can tell exactly what gear to shift to and from.  I never had to look down **while driving**.  I look when I first get in a new car to check where the reverse gear is.
Comment: As an added bonus to the third point, in your research you will find people, places, and events that you can write about, instead of having to develop fictional people, places, and events.
Comment: @Graham from personal experience: I'm driving up a hill, going as fast as I can (pedal fully pressed down) but my engine has not enough power (running too low RPM), so I shift into a lower gear = higher RPM and I can accelerate.
Comment: *"Horse races don't involve leaping."* They do when they're [steeplechases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steeplechase_(horse_racing)), and gaining ground in the air -- during a leap -- is a key aspect of steeplechasing. ;-)
Comment: @Falco Yes, if that was it.  But sadly that's not how films do it.
Comment: It certainly works on a bicycle -- a slightly lower gear might let you do slightly faster. On a good bike there are many gears and fine/slight difference between each gear -- a higher pedal cadence (RPM) lets you put more power (i.e. Watts, energy per second) in for a fixed amount of force (torque). To increase the power you can increase the torque or the RPM. I'm pretty sure too (i.e. based on experience of driving rented cars in North America in the 80s and 90s) that when driving an automatic at some speeds (not the top speed), flooring the accelerator would cause a downshift automatically.
Answer: Some events are far-off historical events. The most you risk if you write about them without doing the proper research is making a fool of yourself.
Other events are still within living memory. Some of your readers might have lived the event. @SaraCosta says in the comment that not doing research is a sign that "the writer has very little respect for their chosen period / event". Well, there would be living people whom you'd be disrespecting.
One particular way in which you could show disrespect is believing yourself to be exaggerating an event, when in fact you're falling drastically short. I always have a nervous twitch watching Casablanca, when they talk of Laszlo having escaped the Concentration Camps. I think of a concentration camp, I see this (warning graphic):

 (source)

Only, of course, when Casablanca was filmed, they didn't know yet. At least, the film-makers didn't.
The issue with believing yourself to be exaggerating an event, when in fact you're falling drastically short, the way you're being disrespectful, is you're underestimating the magnitude of the event. You're underestimating how big it was, how horrifying, how inescapable. You're telling people that their experience is not as big as they know it to have been. That can strike deep.
Also, if an event is still within living memory, it isn't too hard to do the research. You can find accounts and testimonies - written, or on youtube. Because research is easy, it follows that you didn't bother to do the research - you thought it "not worthy of your time", "not sufficiently important". That is how people would see it, and this too they would find offensive.
Comment: @MarkRogers OP asked about the Holocaust.
Comment: @henning I think the picture exactly underscores Galastel's and Liquid's point. *That's what actually happened.* This IS what "living memory" is remembering. Anyone who is not willing to grapple with the reality of that very graphic photo is not prepared to write about the Holocaust. We as a culture have not assigned that significant word, with a capital H, to that horrific series of acts arbitrarily. If the OP wants to write about it, the OP must do the research to be respectful of the terrible suffering which happened.
Comment: TVTropes has a category called "Harsher In Hindsight" for things in narrative that have taken on a much darker tone because of events that occurred after the work was published.  There is no starker example than Lazlo's remark to Major Strasser, "Even Nazis cannot kill that fast."  Yes, Victor, yes, they can.
Comment: we aren't talking about a random historical time period or just "war" in general. This was a specific, significant, targeted attack carried out over years against certain people. By all means set a story there if you want, but yes, you *must do the research.* The Holocaust is not a subject to take lightly. If you can't cope with that photo, set the story in a different time and place. That photo is what people in concentration camps faced. If that repels you, @repomonster, you can't get around your feelings by ignoring the reality of it. *That* is what is disrespectful.
Comment: I agree with the points raised in this answer, especially the last paragraph. But I think gory pictures don't capture the significance of the Holocaust. OP may write a shocking, gory horror-story "about" the Holocaust that's still full of clichés and half-truths. In some way, this would be even *more* offensive than writing a toned-down, even a very sober story, if that story added some meaningful insight to our thinking about the Holocaust. You don't use the Holocaust for effect or as a prop.
Comment: "I always have a nervous twitch watching Casablanca, when they talk of Laszlo having escaped the Concentration Camps" As unbelievable as it seems, people did escape. [196 people](http://auschwitz.org/en/history/resistance/escapes-and-reports) escaped from Auschwitz alone. Perhaps most remarkably, a Polish agent, [Witold Pilecki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki) *deliberately* got himself captured and sent to Auschwitz with the intention of gathering intelligence on the camp and then escaping with it. He succeeded.
Comment: While I don't mind seeing crazy images, I think it is a little off the beaten path to use images of atrocities to answer a question on writing about historical events.
Comment: There were many concentration/internment camps throughout Europe, from which the Nazis occasionally released prisoners and/or from which prisoners occasionally escaped. The image shown is from an "extermination camp," which started to operate in 1941. (wiki states accurately: "The Nazis distinguished between extermination and concentration camps, although the terms extermination camp (Vernichtungslager) and death camp (Todeslager) were interchangeable") Casablanca was shot in early 1942, based on an earlier play. So definitely not fair to blame Casablanca for "lack of extensive research."
Answer: In general, avoid writing about things you don't know
You are right to have misgivings about writing on a topic you haven't researched. There are a lot of risks involved in doing this. You risk offending people by accident, you risk misrepresenting real people in your work and you risk being called a lazy writer for not doing your research.
Know your topic
With most topics it is nearly impossible to write about it well if you don't know what you are talking about. To write a good story set in London you need to know what London is like. Either you have lived there and know if from experience, or you do extensive research on the culture, layout, transport, architecture  and climate. To not do this would open yourself up to poor reviews where readers correct all your mistakes. The same rules apply to historical settings.
Avoid giving details that may be wrong
If you feel that this is the only setting in which your story could work, then you should do the research. If you don't want to then avoid detailing the setting anymore than necessary. It is possible to write a story with a backdrop of a historical setting without giving details of it.
Many stories use the World Wars as a backdrop for the story. The Chronicles of Narnia is set during World War II but doesn't go into detail about the war itself. (Not that I'm suggesting C.S. Lewis didn't do his research) You can do a similar thing if you focus your story on a smaller scale, focus on the characters and the narrative rather than the setting.
Add a disclaimer

This work of fiction is for entertainment purposes only. Any misrepresentation of actual events is unintentional.

This won't stop people being offended, but may prevent the backlash.

I've given some advice on how to get away with writing without research, but my real message is: Do the research. Your writing will be better for it and you might learn a few things along the way that you would like to include.
Comment: Do note that *The Chronicles of Narnia* were published 1950-56; not much research into WWII would have been needed by any adult then living in England, as CSL was. Also the inital draft dates to 1939, which may have something to do with the lack of WWII detail, but mostly WWII is a bit of background not significant to the story.
Comment: linksassin - "To write a good story set in London you need to know what London is like." Nothing annoys a London-born reader more than to read a (usually) American novel which has clearly been written by someone with a London street atlas open. A London complete with blocks, sidewalks, and cops who blow whistles at jaywalkers.
Comment: @Arthur If you work as a plumber for a decade, and then later write a book where one character's background is that they are a plumber, that doesn't make your earlier career mere "research".  It's "first-hand experience", which is *superior* to research for setting the tone.
Comment: You can hear Big Ben everywhere, and nothing exists outside London, except a few castles.
Comment: @DavidSiegel Clearly he had done a lot of research ten years prior. He might not have known then that is was research, but he did do it.
Comment: @DavidSiegel That was my point, it was just an example of one such work. I'm aware that he wouldn't have needed to research it.
Comment: And I suspect this also applies _just_ as strongly to things that are still _less_ charged than the Holocaust. The fact is, somebody's gonna pick a nit if something's off, _no matter what it is_. The other very important question is: to what extent can research by someone who is not a historical professional be sufficient for writing about that event? You wouldn't want an amateur practicing medicine, and it _seems_ almost as though the same kind of calculations _want_ to nudgle their way into here.
Comment: @The_Sympathizer that is a good question, but not the one asked here. I would actually like to see that asked.
Answer: Just don't.
You have a good ten thousand years of (semi) recorded history to choose from, in what is now hundreds of countries and multiple continents.  There are many places and times you can pick that most people would know nothing about and you can get away with making stuff up.
Don't pick an event that has deep meaning for a very large number of people and is studied and commemorated by a good subset of them.  If you're lucky, the worst that will happen is that people will think you're disrespectful.
Remember, a fair number of people out there believe the Holocaust never happened (or was a fraction of what it was in reality) and so they make up stories to downplay it.  It doesn't matter if you think you're going to make it seem worse, the fact is that you'll be making up stories (and I don't mean ordinary fiction) and calling them history, and that's not okay.
Also, if you don't do the research, how do you know if your version is "worse?"  Chances are, as other answers have pointed out, that you can't fathom the horrors of the actual Holocaust.  I doubt anyone can without having lived it or learned about it from people who have.
As for other historical events, it depends.  For events without a lot of attached emotion, if you get some things wrong, most people won't notice and some people will and will laugh at you.  If you can live with that, then go for it.
Every author will mess up here and there and nearly every author will also make choices they know are wrong.  I just posted a question where I am using a song written in a language that didn't even come into existence until a good 400 years after my setting.
But that's very different from deciding to be ignorant.  Why would you want to use a large important event so recent that living people were actually there, as a...backdrop? tragic setting? life lesson?  I can't even fathom what makes you think this is a good idea.
Comment: @ashleylee Not sure how to react to that.  On several levels.  But okay.
Comment: I usually don't agree with Cyn..   But yes, what he said.      Even if you were my worst enemy, I would still urge you to leave this story idea alone.   Nothing good will come of it.
Answer: If you don't want to do the research --and I sympathize with that --then you are not writing ABOUT a historical event, you are writing INSPIRED by a historical event.  In that case, you and your readers would be best served by you presenting your story consistent with what it really is.  So don't write about the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, write about "The Troubles" in fascist Ruritania.  That way you're making no promises of historical accuracy, and can freely imagine your own scenario, taking as much or as little inspiration from history as you want.
If you are writing about history, even if fictionalized, then you'll want to make all the details that aren't specific to your actual story and narrative as accurate as you can.  The stakes and the scrutiny are greatly raised in the case of something like the Holocaust, still on the edges of living memory, affecting millions of people, horrible at a grand scale, and inextricably tied to politics, race, religion, and any number of other hot-button issues.  Not doing your due diligence here would quite rightly expose you to charges of cheap exploitation of a terrible tragedy.
As a side note, as someone who personally does NOT enjoy the research, I've learned it really is not avoidable.  Even when writing fantasy, you need to make the world seem real, and that requires work, whether that is creative world-building, real-world research, or a combination of the two.
Comment: I'd avoid calling it "The Troubles" unless I meant [*The* Troubles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Troubles).  Conflating The Troubles with The Holocaust would be... problematic.
Answer: If you want to write HISTORICAL fiction. The history is a prerequisite. I absolutely agree with all of the comments about causing offense and being just respectful (especially given the magnitude and the cultural/ Historical/ emotional significance of the Holocaust). Additionally, from a purely writing perspective, you need to truly understand a place and time period to be able to bring emotional reality to it. You need to assume that many of your readers will actually know something about the topic. Ask yourself what your intended audience is. Are you really hoping to be read by people dumb enough not to notice that you don't know what you are talking about??? Probably not.
If you don't want to do the historical research, consider writing an entirely fictitious story that has a metaphorical connection to the historical period of your choice. There are many ways of doing this. I am pretty sure that J.K. Rowling did not start writing Harry Potter thinking "I have a great extended metaphor for Fascism." However, that historical and ideological context certainly provided fuel for her storytelling. Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" employs the more complex approach of intentionally applying this technique in reverse, using the Salem Witch Trials as a metaphor for the McCarthy Hearings. If you do not want to immerse yourself in a real historical time and place, an entirely fictitious one could allow you to tap into whatever you were hoping to get from the historical setting without tying you to the facts.
Otherwise- do your research!
Answer: If you don't want to research the history directly, you may want to look into the historiography -- how the history of something is studied/understood.
Often that is why we supermoderns laugh at older works, because they made assumptions we think are silly, but by working from the common narratives of the time, yep, the "Dark Ages" were generally a bad time, instead of a poorly-documented one (well, few were available about that time for ages.)
Or a well-publicized Winner's Edit view of history ("Manifest Destiny" was taught in my elementary school as the normal way of the world -- now I realize how colonialist it is/was).  Often things such as oral histories were disregarded as not "real" because they weren't the expected "formal" style.
Listening to a few podcasts (especially Tides of History and "Our Fake History"), I've learned how historians now incorporate the findings of archeologists and other non-textual documentation to understand the world.

before I go deeper, a key point: I'm assuming we ARE dealing with Facts = Facts: no denying it happened, no minimizing 6 million Jews, and about 10 million other victims.

So for the Holocaust example - how is it taught in Germany, where (to my in-researched recollection) Nazi imagery is forbidden?  How is it taught in countries in Africa, who have had their own genocides, but perhaps little contact with most European history?  Was it understood differently?
I was profoundly influenced by the book Guns, Germs, and Steel , in which the fact that Europe/Asia is mostly an east-west spreading land-mass, while Africa and the Americas are mostly north-south spreading -- so the commonalities of terrain influenced how abilities and information were shared, creating feedback loops.... What sort of feedback loops influenced the every day European Citizen?
Many more Theories of History are available as lenses to use for research.  You don't need to research for fiction the same way you do for a History Test, but using these various ways of thinking about research can help give you insights into how you view your world and the world you're focused on, and thus can inspire some characters/scenarios for your book.
These theories influence a lot of subgenres:  time-travel to kill Hitler? Great Man Theory.  Alt-history where the Third Reich expands only so far, and America ignores it? Perhaps it would implode in a societal collapse as it destroyed some of its greatest strengths.  Writing about the daily life at start of the Reich -- how did they get from originating universities to this? History of Mentalities.  Perhaps it's an outgrowth of the Information Revolution which started earlier than many think...
Yes, these links are all Wikipedia -- that's because they're great starting points before deciding how to go deeper.  But great fiction isn't just plot and details, but thinking about how the characters think, and how the society thinks, and whether those are in synch or opposition.  So research isn't just a chore, or something done to appease nitpickers, but ways of understanding conflict and character in very deep ways. (This is also why fiction-reading leads to great empathy -- a good writer can help you understand why someone would make decisions that might seem impossible.)
Good luck!  This book sounds hard, but it could be great!
Answer: I'm annoyed when an author gets the streets wrong in a city I know (Commonwealth Avenue is not in Cambridge) or elementary physics wrong (16 feet per second per second isn't the same as 16 feet per second.)
Real examples, but I've forgotten the titles of the novels.
Mischaracterizing the holocaust would be much more than annoying.
Answer: Any writer who doesn't want school children to point out errors in his work should do the necessary historical research.
Isaac Asimov once wrote an introduction to a book by L. Sprague de Camp describing de Camp's research for his historical works.  But sometimes de Camp's  research failed him.
The protagonist of Lest Darkness Fall (1939) is transported to Rome in the 530s.  He asks for directions from the Pantheon to the Forum and and is told to turn left where he should turn right.  He arrives at the Forum anyway and sees that columns have been removed from the pagan temples.  As far as I can tell from my historical reading most or all of the Forum temples still had their columns for centuries afterward.  There is another scene where the standards of the Roman army are described as having the inscription "S.P.Q.R.", which many people believe they did, even though there is no evidence that they ever did, let alone in the 530s.
The Lindsay Davis novel The Silver Pigs (1989) has Roman "detective" Marcus Didius Falco investigate a conspiracy in AD 70.  There is a scene set at a imperial function in Nero's Golden House, but it is my impression that Vespasian never used the Golden House, in order to appear humble.  One scene is set in the vestibule with the colossal statue of Nero.  The vestibule is described as a room with a roof, but archaeologists usually think the vestibule was a open air courtyard or even a recess in the palace facade.
P.C. Wren's Beau Geste (1924) gives a rather accurate impression of life in the French Foreign Legion, but has a number of historical inaccuracies.  One scene establishes the date as after the death of Queen Victoria on 22 January 1901.  In another scene characters reach Agades before the official first European visitors, the French mission of 1906, putting the fictional date sometime in 1901-1906.  The French actually annexed Agades in 1900.
But Heinrich Barth reached Agades in October 1850.

Today a memorial tablet honours him as the first European to have ever entered the city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Barth1
One of the problems with locating the fictional Fort Zinderneuf is that it is said to have been established in the Air country, years before the French reached Agades.  But Agades was the capital of Air for centuries. So Fort Zinderneuf has to be somewhere in the Air country far enough from Agades that the French would build a fort there years before they annexed Agades, among other requirements.
Another historical inaccuracy is the Geste brothers participating in an expedition and battle against Tauregs with an entire French brigade, which was far larger than any French expedition into the Sahara.
The sequel, Beau Sabreur (1926), happens at an inconsistent date.  German agents plot to drive the French out of the Sahara, and mention Wilhelm II's visit to Jerusalem when a great breach was made in the city wall for him to enter.  But actually the breach being made in the city walls is an urban legend.
So the date of Beau Sabreur should be between Wilhelm II's visit to Jerusalem in 1898 and the final German defeat in WWI in 1918.  But an American women visiting the Sahara has romantic notions about desert sheiks from movies she has seen, and as far as I know the first romantic movies about desert sheiks were The Sheik (1921) and The Son of the Sheik (1926).
But Beau Sabreur clearly ends just a few years after Beau Geste, and thus probably before 1910.  So it has a very inconsistent date.
On the other hand, as far as I can tell one doesn't have to do any historical research at all, or can totally ignore your historical research, if you write for movies and TV.  At least that often seems the case when watching movies and TV shows when I know anything at all about the historical periods.
For example, I haven't seen Hostiles (2017) but it is said to be a good movie.  But this synopsis seems to be historically implausible.

In 1892, after nearly two decades of fighting the Cheyenne, the Apache, and the Comanche natives, the United States Cavalry Captain and war hero, Joseph Blocker, is ordered to escort the ailing Cheyenne chief, Yellow Hawk--his most despised enemy--to his ancestral home in Montana's Valley of the Bears. Nauseated with a baleful anger, Joseph's unwelcome final assignment in the feral American landscape is further complicated, when the widowed settler, Rosalie Quaid, is taken in by the band of soldiers, as aggressive packs of marauding Comanches who are still on the warpath, are thirsty for blood. In a territory crawling with hostiles, can the seasoned Captain do his duty one last time?
  Written by Nick Riganas

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5478478/2
And anyone with a basic knowledge of real life Indian Wars history knows there weren't any hostile Comanches roaming the plains in 1892.
And it seems to me it would have been really easy for the scriptwriter to select a year for the story - 1872, for example - when hostile Comanche warriors were a danger.
The Fantasy Island episode "My Fair Pharaoh/The Power" (10 May 1980) featured a historical character portrayed by an actor four times as old as the character ever lived to be. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0577765/3
And examples of errors in television can be found even in allegedly non fictional TV programs.  For example, the Bone Detectives episode "The Warlord of Bamburgh Castle" (24 March 2008), was about Edwin (killed AD 633), the first Christian king of Northumbria in Britain.  And Edwin probably did have a stronghold at Bamburgh.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1192189/?ref_=ttep_ep124
So filming scenes at Bamburgh Castle was a good idea.  Except that they forgot to mention that the present stone castle there was built centuries after Edwin's time and rebuilt about 1900.
And they said that Edwin's enemies Penda and Cadwallon were his enemies because they were pagans and Edwin converted to Christianity.  Penda, king of Mercia, was a pagan, but members of his family converted to Christianity and Penda had political reasons to be Edwin's enemy.
Cadwallon, king of Gwynedd and probably king of the Britons, was a Christian from a family which had been Christian for centuries and produced a number of British saints, including his own son Cadwallader the Blessed.  Cadwallon attacked Edwin because Edwin had invaded Gwynedd and driven Cadwallon into exile in Ireland.
I wonder what Mr. Evan Vaughn Anwyl of Tywyn thought if he watched that episode.  Why should he care?  Because he is probably the present day heir of Cadwallon, and since a legend claimed that Cadwallon married Penda's sister, possibly also the heir of Penda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwyl_of_Tywyn_family5
The first historical error I ever noticed was when I was in an elementary school which I left when I was eleven. The class watched a sort of television documentary on the Little Bighorn.  It mentioned that Custer sent a detachment under Captain Benteen one way and a detachment under Major Reno another way and rode on with the rest of his men in a third direction.  So far so good.  But then it said that Custer reunited with Benteen and Reno before making his last stand.
And that didn't sound correct to me.  So I checked out a couple of books about Custer and Custer's Last Stand from the school library and the public library and read that Reno and Benteen did not, repeat not, reunite with Custer before Custer's Last Stand, which is why most of their men survived.
Being an introvert, I didn't bother to tell anyone.  But any kid who was more extroverted than I was might have complained to the teacher about that error, which could have resulted in some humiliation for the creators of the documentary.
So any writer of fiction or non fiction who doesn't want to be humiliated by school children pointing out his errors should do the necessary historical, scientific, geographic, etc. research.
Answer: In contrast to other answers, I have to say that research is not necessarily required. This is entirely dependent on your intended readership.
If you're writing a bodice-ripper set in King Arthur's Court, well, research won't help you much and may well get in the way. Your audience probably doesn't know and doesn't care that life in them times was nasty, brutal, and short, and that chivalry was widely admired and just as widely ignored. Inconsequential details like universal fleas and lice will just get in the way of the story. The charming custom of bathing once a year probably won't help with modern readers, either - at least not the sort who read bodice-rippers.
In fact, what you need to do in this case is no research at all on what life was like back then, but rather concentrate on the knowing the preconceptions of your audience.
What you need to do above all else is to learn what the audience will and will not accept. Accuracy is entirely optional. Acceptable verisimilitude is not.
Answer: If you feel unsure about dipping your toes into historical fiction, just write science fiction.
Lots of answers here providing interesting ideas on how historical fiction may—or may not—work, but honestly if you want the freedom to write what you want to write, then you should really switch your category of fiction to science fiction.
Why? Easy… Science fiction is always about the now even when it pretends to be in the past, alternate present or the future. You know, George Orwell finished "1984" in "1948." Meaning while his book was set in a dystopian future, his overall point of view was witnessing what was happening when he wrote the book in 1948.
By adding an opening line of "Once upon a time…" or "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…" you can instantly transport the reader to somewhere else.
Cognitively this is a simple but powerful trick: If you have characters that act like Nazis, do things Nazis do and espouse ideas Nazis embrace… But you never call them Nazis then you can have them do different things without endless criticism from Holocaust scholars who will rip you to shreds for stating or implying something that they—in their mind—can state is false.
Set your story on a planet just like ours, during a period of strife just like World War II and with hatred and horrors just like the Holocaust… But don't have it happen with the Nazis during that Holocaust.
Create your own world and control it for your narrative purposes.
Answer: A number of answers have given the Holocaust as an example of a topic where the First Commandment is "Thou shalt do thine homework."
The reason for this is because for various reasons, the Holocaust is a topic on which {filtered}-loads of revisionist cranks have churned out {filtered}-loads of ridiculously false things.
For this reason, if your historical topic has been the target of propaganda masquerading as research, you should have all of your ducks in a row. If you are not adhering to the majority opinion of the reputable scholars in the field, you had better be writing an alt-history and you need to make this as clear as you can.
In addition, your work may be your readers' first exposure to the matter in question. For this reason you want to present what is agreed on by professional scholarship about it, so that your readers don't "learn" an incorrect version of events. If you set your tale in the days of Julius Caesar and you have a character named Desdemona, don't marry her to Caesar unless you are purposefully writing an alt-history; history does not record him having a wife by that name.


How can I shut down an unlisted php-fpm?

Question: I have two installations of php on my machine.
One came with apache and is a 5.3 version, and I'm trying to use a 5.4 version with nginx.
I'd like to work on project using nginx, but I can't figure out how to turn off apache's pfp-fpm service: it doesn't show up when I use the sudo launchctl list command. However, I can see it in the process list, and it claims its parent process is launchd.
When I open the nginx project main page, and call phpinfo() on it, the php version displayed is 5.3, this is why I think I failed to launch the correct service. What can I try?
Answer: You can just let the apache version alone and set up nginx to proxy to the php-fpm process you want via socket or just another different port. Keep in mind that the default port for php-fpm is 9000 in the case it has the original setup which is using the port and not the socket.


What are the differences in taxes rules for specialty ETFs such as GLD (Gold ETF) and general ETFs?

Question: I am in the 15% tax bracket. In terms of short term  hold and long term hold, I want to know what the differences in taxes rules for specialty ETFs such as GLD (Gold ETF) and general ETFs as are?
Comment: Why do you think there are differences?
Comment: @littleadv - because Congress has declared "nothing shall be easy."
Comment: @JoeTaxpayer is it only for GLD?
Comment: I know it's for the metal ETFs. Offhand, I'd say it might cover non-metal commodities, but not researched that. Remarkable what congress hath wrought. And why the pros cannot keep up.
Answer: Gold ETFs are treated different than stock ETFs, as a collectable. This makes long-term investing in gold ETFs (for one year or longer) subject to a relatively large capital gains tax (maximum rate of 28%, rather than the 20% maximum rate that is applicable to most other long-term capital gains).
Read the Investopedia article The Gold Showdown: ETFs Vs. Futures for more details.


Armor from Strength change?

Question: How much armor do you get from Strength? My level 60 barb is on inferno. With all armor removed and no passives that give additional armor I have 187 strength and 215 armor. If I add items that have just strength on them and no armor (like amulets/rings) my armor goes up by more than the strength on the item.
For example I add an amulet with 99 strength and now I have 286 strength and 328 armor. The strength has given me 113 armor?
It seems like strength is giving about 1.14 points of armor per point...
Comment: What other stats does the item have?  If you're using the Barbarian passive for Vit to Armor, that will also affect it.
Answer: You have the enchantress as your follower, with the +15% armor buff.
Comment: Good catch.  I hadn't even thought of follower buffs.
Answer: Every point of Strength provides one point of Armor.  In the event you are gaining more than this, you are not accounting for something.  Barbarians have Nerves of Steel, which allows Vitality to go towards Armor, too.  Are you sure you are accounting for everything the item provides?
Comment: The item only has strength on it and I removed any passive that give armor
Answer: The Barbarian is the only class which has strength as its primary stats. Each time you get a point of strength, you increase your damage done by 1%. This is a flat relationship – each extra point of strength equals another % of damage dealt. Each point of strength also gives you 1 armor.

Armor from Strength change?


Confidentiality of revised diagrams in a provisional application

Question: If I file a revision to a provisional patent (some diagrams are not detailed enough), would the original diagrams be automatically destroyed / kept secret, or will they still show?
Comment: You can't generally amend a provisional patent application. If you mean you are filing a new, second provisional with better drawings and do not see value in the first provisional you can only refer back to the second provisional in your non-provisional and as a posted answer says the first one should not see the light of day.
Answer: I'm a US practitioner, so what I say goes for the USPTO:
Anything submitted in the file of a published application, even material that's been made obsolete by revision or amendment, is open to the public.
Provisional applications are not published, so if you do nothing and let the provisional application expire, then the drawings will remain confidential.
If you file a non-provisional application that claims priority to the provisional application, to keep the drawings confidential, you must submit a non-publication request in the non-provisional application.
If your unpublished, non-provisional application is allowed, then the only way to keep the drawings confidential is to petition that the drawings be expunged.  See MPEP 724.05.  This is not a common situation, and the Office may deny the request.


Do you have to be good at grammar to get published?

Question: I am not very good at grammar. Is there someone who would go through and correct your grammatical mistakes, even if you are not good at grammar? Who would this person be?
Comment: If your first language is not English, you could write in your own language and get your work translated, and maybe edited at the same time. This is likely going to be expensive, yet might help you complete your book/work/etc faster than writing your work only after improving your grammar.
Comment: I have over the last three years wrote three novels. I am surprised when I revisit one of the novels and wonder how I ever wrote it in the first place. I don't wish to sound conceited, but I am surprised how good they are. I worry constantly about grammatical errors, but to be honest, when I read my own work, I see very little wrong with it. Is there any others out there who see and feel the same?
Comment: I second @Erik's suggestion. From what I've heard, even if you are a good writer, it's really hard to get published. If you are bad at grammar, you're going to come off as a bad writer (no matter how good your ideas are). So, I'd definitely try to get published in your native language first.
Comment: @AlanB. If you have some grammatical or spelling error planted in your brain so that you do not recognize it when you first wrote it, you would have to unlearn that error to recognize it upon re-reading. They're still good, in your opinion, because you cared about using the good grammar you **knew** when you wrote them, and your opinion of what constitutes good grammar has not changed since then.
Answer: The problem is that there are so many people out there trying to get published who ARE good at grammar.  If an editor is looking at your manuscript and at an MS with an equally good story, characterization, writing style, etc., but  with better grammar, the editor is going to chose the story with better grammar.
So before submission, you could try to find an editor to fix the issues for you, but you'd be VERY lucky to find anyone willing to do it for free, and you might find that some of the corrections affect the style of writing you wanted.
It's not impossible to be selected for publication even if a lot of work is needed to make your MS publishable, but everything else about your work will have to be that much better in order to make up for the grammar deficit.
Comment: What is *"MS"*? *"manuscript"*?
Answer: Yes, you should be good at grammar to expect to get published. It's highly unlikely you will get your foot in the door if your manuscript has basic grammatical errors from the outset, because this will detract from your overall story. From a business perspective, poor grammar can also mean it may cost someone more money to publish your book, because it would need a lot more editing compared to someone who has taken the time edit their own work, and fix the grammar as best as possible.
Edit: Forgot to add that, obviously, you yourself could pay someone to edit the work for you, but you definitely need your manuscript at a reasonable standard to expect to get published.
Comment: "Forgot to add that, obviously, you yourself could pay someone to edit the work for you, but you definitely need your manuscript at a reasonable standard to expect to get published." Snort. I've seen plenty of horribly written books that've been published.
Answer: Let me be harsh but direct: I very sincerely doubt that someone who's not good at grammar is a good writer.
Not because grammar is somehow an ineluctable part of good writing -- it isn't -- but because good writing is writing that rings true in the reader's ear, and good grammar is good because it rings true.  Let me give you an (admittedly contrived) example:

Not knowing anyone there, the party was boring.

Hearing that, the grammarian will shriek "Dangling participle! Dangling participle!" like a car alarm going off.  That's not, by itself, important.
What is important is that the reader, hearing that, will say, "What?  Huh?  'Knowing' ... 'party' ... I doan get it.  I wonder what's on ESPN ..."
The writer who dangles a lot of participles is going to get a lot of his readers watching Sports Center, because reading bad writing is a chore and it's more fun to watch TV.
The grammarian -- even that inner grammarian who complains not only about real mistakes like misplaced modifiers and subject-verb disagreement but also about split infinitives and sentences beginning with conjunctions -- that guy who sits on your shoulder and tries to suck the fun out of writing is really your early-warning system.  When he says this-or-that is ungrammatical, what you should hear is, people may not read it.  And he may be wrong, but he may be right.
Comment: Upvoted a very good answer. One very tiny blip: You accidentally left out "an" before "(admittedly contrived)" in paragraph two. One fun side note: Franz Kafka was notoriously horrible at spelling. Drove his editor nuts fixing all the mistakes, but Kafka was brilliant, and certainly had no trouble with grammar. For consideration: What if his problem had been grammar instead of spelling? Would he have been published? Would he have been as brilliant as he was? Would he have been brilliant but unable to communicate his brilliance?
Comment: Thanks for the catch.  Orthography (spelling) is essentially arbitrary; it's a convention to make it easier to render the language on paper.   Compare it to penmanship. By contrast, vocabulary and grammar together *are* the language.  If you cannot choose the words or you cannot string them together, by definition, you cannot write.
Comment: @JohnM.Landsberg: Hm. An excellent writer born in the 1800s with persistently terrible spelling makes me wonder if he had dyslexia or something similar.
Comment: @C.A.McCann -- it wouldn't shock me if Kafka had a number of organic brain dysfunctions.
Answer: The title of the person you'd be looking for is a copy editor. And you'd have to pay them to beat your manuscript into shape. You could go to a site like elance, but you're going to get what you pay for, TBH.
Comment: This is the same thing I was going to write. Find a good freelance editor. Keep in mind that the lowest-bidder sites will indeed get you an editor worth every cent you pay. Word-of-mouth is the better way to go about this. Ask around in writing groups, ask a publisher or an agent for the name of a good freelance editor.
Answer: I think that grammar is important, but more because you may have trouble expressing yourself in the way you intended without it.  Books are full of characters with poor or unusual grammar, but that should be a conscious choice.  Picasso may have created simple, abstract works - but he had a thorough mastery of craft first.


Blackberry Bold not recognized by laptop when tethered

Question: I have a ThinkPad running XP.  When I use the USB tether to connect a new BlackBerry Bold, the laptop doesn't see it.  Neither Verizon's Access Manager or Blackberry Desktop detects the device.  Other the other end, the Blackberry cannot be charged by the laptop.  The cable itself is fine and allows the Blackberry to be charged via a wall outlet adapter.  I have not being able to get any help from Blackberry or Verizon.
Answer: Try a different USB port.  Sometimes they do not offer enough power through the port.  Same issue if you are running through a hub.
I get this in the car, that the various car chargers I have tried often do not offer enough power.


Supersymmetry in Quantum Mechanics

Question: I was reading Supersymmetry in Quantum Mechanics and got stuck in the various mathematical terminology like "Graded-Lie Algebra", "Super Algebra". Is there any good lecture notes concerning these topics, explaining the basic mathematics needed to understand supersymmetry. I know basic analysis, topology, and first course in group theory, but never encountered ring theory, modules etc.
Answer: I would recommend the book: Introduction to superanalysis - edited by A.A. Kirillov. This book contains collected and edited published and unpublished manuscripts by F.A. Berezin who was one of the founding fathers of the subject.
The book is at an introductory level, designated for newcomers to the field. Although, the matrial was written in the 70s of the last century, I think that it is still suited to most physics applications
Answer: Introduction to Supersymmetry by Harald Muller-Kirsten and Armin Wiedemann has a nice section on Graded Lie Algebra, and many other mathematical aspects of SUSY, with lots of detailed exercises.
Answer: Related question 35532. I suggest you, that you consult these references: wiki, preprint, and book.
Comment: Good refs, but at the risk of sounding petty I do wish people would link to ArXiv abstract pages instead of the PDF, which may be a temp file and/or become out of date if new versions of the paper are released! (ArXiv link fixed ;-) )

Supersymmetry in Quantum Mechanics


How to optimize images in Magento

Question: How to optimize image here? my site loading can be faster.
Comment: Mind being a little bit more precise onto what you really want to achieve, and tell us what you've tried so far.
Comment: I want to optimize lyk this

https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fputstyle.com%2F&tab=desktop

So that score will be high
Comment: Either optimize in place or use a service like [Rapido](https://www.rapido.nu/) (disclosure: I know the people behind the service).
Comment: https://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/176967/magento-product-resized-image-optimization/190283#190283
Answer: Here are 3 approaches to image optimization for magento or any other site for that matter:
1. Command line
You will need command line tools: gifsicle, jpegtran and optipng. Your hosting might probably have it already you just need to check. Once installed use the following bash script to optimize images:
#!/bin/bash
find ./media -iname '*.gif' -exec sh -c 'gifsicle -b -O3 -o "{}.out" "{}"; mv "{}.out" "{}"' \;
find ./media -iname '*.png' -exec optipng -o5 -keep -preserve '{}' \;
find ./media -type f -iname '*jpg' -exec sh -c 'jpegtran -outfile "{}.out" -optimize "{}"; mv "{}.out" "{}"' \;

Run it from magento root folder. It will optimize all your images automatically.
2. Google PageSpeed Module
Google & Co developed this great web server extension Google PageSpeed Module. It might be a little difficult to install and configure but once setup it will optimize your images on the fly. Here is apache packages for you to download and install.
3. Google PageSpeed Insights
This one involves some manual work. Go to Google PageSpeed Insights and run your page through it. Once completed you can download your optimized images (the link will be at the bottom). Repeat this step for your main pages.
Originally published by me as 34 ways to speed up Magento 2 and 1.
For me the command line approach is the best one.
Comment: I used this command: find ./pub/media -type f -iname '*.jpg' -exec sh -c 'jpegtran -outfile "{}.out" -optimize "{}"; mv "{}.out" "{}"' \; in my Magento 2.3.1 and I received the following response: mv: replace './pub/media/catalog/product/k/o/image1.jpg', overriding mode 0644 (rw-r--r--)?. What can I do to make the script respond by itself?
Comment: for magento 2 you have to cd into your pub folder and then run the command.
Answer: I suggest taking a look at this post: https://www.keycdn.com/blog/speed-up-magento/ Just looking at your PageSpeed Insights, besides the images, there are a lot of optimizations you could be making to improve your speed.
There are a couple extensions for Magento which work good for image optimization. And like Mohit said above, you want to get an extension which works around the Magento cache.
Also, I always recommend compressing your images before you upload them to Magento, and size them according to scale so CSS isn't resizing.
Answer: You can take help of Google Page Speed tools and GT Metrix
to get list of images and other resources which can be optimised.
GT Metrix and Google Page speed tools also provide optimised resources to download.
Note: You should not try to optimise product images (and any other images which are being used from magento's cache), otherwise these images will be overridden as soon as you clean magento cache.
Please let me know you have any other problem.
Comment: But i want to optimise all product image bcoz those images are in very high resolution. So how to do it?
Comment: There are some extensions available for it, if you have lot of products and image optimization manually is not possible.
Comment: Is that free extension or premium one.
Comment: @PuspalataPanigrahi, you can directly download optimized images from Google page speed tool. Please see screen capture http://nimb.ws/vFjAW2
Answer: If you're looking for a tool to optimize all your images to reimport them into Magento, I would suggest you check the Batch Process Option of Irfanview (Windows) or XnView (OSX/Linux), both are available for a small fee. I used IrfanView for over ten years before having to switch to OSX recently, it lets you optimize, resize, crop... in batch very easily. it's a great little software. Don't forget to clear the image cache after importing all images.
The optimization of images is surely a concern and has to be done but it's only one thing among a lot of others regarding the performance of a Magento website using Google Page Speed and GT Metrix. So the second problem identified by Google Pagespeed (Reduce the response time of the server) might be more profitable (but more difficult) to resolve.
Answer: Why don't you try ImageKit? If you are looking for improving your page load speed and applying all the recommendations suggested by Google Page Speed Insights, then you should try it. You can integrate your Magento store with ImageKit in 5 minutes. It provides real-time image optimization, resizing, unlimited transformations and automates your image management process.
Google recommends optimizing website images to improve your website SEO ranking and performance. That's why its Page Speed Insights tool suggests you having a faster website on all platforms.
So, check it out.
Answer: An image CDN is a very easy way to optimize your images in Magento without modifying your source images.
One option is ImageEngine, which will pull from where your images are currently hosted and serve them optimized for the end users device.
Here is a guide for implementing a tool like ImageEngine in Magento: https://www.scientiamobile.com/4-steps-to-adding-image-compression-to-magento/
Basically you are configuring your origin in the CDN and replacing your origin in your base media URL with the one provided by ImageEngine.
This enables you to do things like serve WebP and JPEG-2000 for supported devices and automatically fallback to standard image formats for devices that don't support next-gen formats.
Answer: As a starter I would suggest to upload locally optimised images, here are apps for all operating systems that do the job.
In Magento 2 I would suggest to edit the following file to render the images in the size that is suitable, see reference here:
app/code/[Vendor]/[Extension]/etc/view.xml

Do not forget to resize the images and flush the cache (see here):
php bin/magento catalog:images:resize
php bin/magento cache:flush

How to optimize images in Magento


Field Service Lightning - Update record offline

Question: We are working on FSL Salesforce, we need help in below scenario
Field agent uses FSL app on mobile and update the status of Service appointment according to their work. Suppose today he updated the Service appointment status at 12 PM to complete but internet connection is disconnected and he got connection back at 1 pm then that update time populates 1 PM which is incorrect because client pays them on hourly basis.Does anyone have the same issue or any idea how we can do this will be really helpful
Answer: Add a work completed dt  (date and time field)  that is manully set via quick action and predefine to now() . Have workers save their updates then click save in the quick action. The system will be updated with the the date and time the quick action was saved.


How to create a campaign

Question: I've been using CiviCRM for a few days now, and it's become pretty apparent that campaigns are a big part of how the system works. However, I'm unable to figure out how to create a campaign. Can anybody help me out?
Answer: After enabling the Campaign module and adding your Campaign Type, Statuses, and Engagement Index (if relevant), you can add a new campaign from either the Campaign dashboard (using the Add Campaign button) or from the Campaign menu > New Campaign.  From the docs:

How to create a campaign


Canasta- using the top card of a non frozen pile to a canasta meld

Question: OK- so I understand when the pile if NOT frozen you can take the discard pile if you can use the top to make a meld from your hand OR take the top card and add it to a meld on the table. The question is- can you take the top card and also add it to a canasta (meld) that you previously made that also is the table?
Answer: Yes, a Canasta is not diffferent than any normal meld when it comes out adding more cards to it. You can add another card to your Canasta whether that extra card comes from your hand, or if it is the top of the discard pile.
From Bicycle cards:

A completed canasta is squared up with a red card on top to indicate a natural one and a black card on top to indicate a mixed canasta. Additional cards may be added to a canasta to score their point values, but these do not affect the bonus - except that a wild card added to a natural canasta reduces it to a mixed canasta (and a black card replaces the red card that was previously on top).
Comment: There are some variants of Canasta where there is a limit on the number of cards in a meld, if this is the case and the limit is reached, I'm guessing one would not be able to add more. It all depends on which flavour of rules is used.


Could homo erectus have migrated to North America?

Question: I was reading about Virginia McIntyre's claim of finding 200,000 year old artifacts at Hueyatlaco. There's also the Calico early man site with artifacts around 250,000 years old. Is it possible that H. erectus migrated across a land bridge before the last ice age? Skeletons found in Java and China indicate that H. erectus traveled long distances so it seems plausible.
Comment: Are you asking if it's possible in the sense that homo erectus could hypothetically have travelled there (a land bridge was available, they could survive in the climate of Beringia, or they could get there some other way, etc), or in the sense that people have found credible evidence indicating it could have happened? Is this a question about the existing evidence, or the possibility regardless of evidence? (While they travelled far, they seem to have preferred hot places, which makes a journey through the arctic somewhat unlikely, but maybe not impossible.)
Comment: Welcome to History:SE. Could you edit your question to clarify what you've looked into already, complete with links and references, and context if applicable? In particular, please let us know what you find missing or unclear about the Wikipedia entry on the topic, if one exists. This allows those who might want to answer to do so without needing to redo the work you've already done. You might find it helpful to review the site tour and Help Centre and, in particular, How to Ask.
Comment: Hi frugl and welcome to History SE. Aside from Virginia McIntyre, please let us know what sources you have looked at already.
Comment: Edited this to remove the implication of it being a speculative history question.
Answer: Its exceedingly unlikely.
There's no feasible route to the Americas at their level of technology that doesn't go through the Beringa (NE Sibera/Alaska) area. The period in question covers an unusually long interglacial, but there was a colder period in there where the land bridge would probably have been available (around 225,000 years ago)
However, it is super cold up there in the winters even today, and would have been far worse at any time the land bridge was exposed. There's no evidence of that species living any further north in Asia than Korea. In fact, their known population map looks suspiciously like they perhaps might have had some access to crude clothing (or perhaps some evolved way to deal with temperate winters?), but not the ability to make anything that would survive a Siberian climate.

Map of the Arculean culture
Note that by the time in question, HE was probably already well on the decline. After about 300,000 years ago, the only dated sites for that species that have been found are on the tropical island of Java.
Our first evidence of sewing needles doesn't arrive until the Sapiens/Neanderthals/Denisovians line (our direct ancestors), who are also the first hominids shown to be living in Siberia.

One thing you may note is that this means there were no known hominid species on this earth available to be the heroes of our story about walking into the Americas around 200,000 years ago. That's a little suspicious, isn't it?
Well, it turns out that the datings people like to give for human presence at Hueyatlaco and Calico are highly controversial.
In Calico's case, the only thing found were tool-escque rocks. Attempts to statistically measure their likelihood of having been human-made came up ruling that they were probably not.
In Hueyatlaco's case, they are definitely human tools at that site, but we don't really know the date of them with any certainty. There were concerns about cross-contamination from the start, and different techniques have been yielding contradictory results. People have been giving dates ranging from 18,000 BP to 780,000 BP. The smaller dates would still be quite early, but they'd at least be consistent with the ability for Homo sapiens* to have been the migrants.
* - Technically the taxonomy is still a bit up in the air, but since we know they interbred, and many of us even carry their DNA, I'm one of those who prefers to consider Denisovians and Neanderthals to be a Homo sapiens subspecies. "Anatomically modern humans" would be Homo sapiens sapiens
Comment: @Evargalo Later this discovery has turned out to be a fraud (look up "[Shinichi Fujimura](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinichi_Fujimura)").
Comment: Great answer. Ref the map, it seems than Japan should be colored in red too: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg16522280-300-gimme-shelter/


Should one light Shabbat candles if Friday is yom tov?

Question: Today is the second day of Rosh Hashana, and it happens to be Friday. The holiday will end after Shabbat begins. Should we light candles today?
Comment: Hello Nathan Fellman and welcome to Judaism.SE! Thanks for your clear question. It should quickly elicit well-sourced answers now that _shabas_ is over in most of the populated world. I might point out that Rosh Hashana most likely ended _simultaneous with_ the beginning of _shabas_ and not _after_ it.
Comment: @WAF, does starting Shabbat end Rosh Hashana?  I had assumed that for those 18 minutes it was both.
Comment: While the current answers certainly present the more common opinion, there are those who recommend against lighting Shabbat candles on YT (because of Hakhana IINM)
Answer: Yes, we always light Shabbat candles, and at the usual time (non-primary source).  The only time a holiday affects candle-lighting is that on the second day of a two-day holiday, so long as the second day is not also Shabbat, you don't light the second-day candles until dark so as not to encroach the first day.
For Shabbat immediately after a holiday, or for the second day of a holiday, light the candles from a pre-existing flame (such as a pilot flame or long-burning candle lit before the holiday).
Answer: Yes, we should.
But I don't understand how can you ask this question on second day of Rosh Hashana. Using computer is forbidden on yom-tov.
Comment: For many people mitzvah observance develops over time.  I commend the OP for caring about Shabbat enough to ask the question.
Comment: The first part of this answer is unsourced, and the second part would be best expressed, if at all, as a comment on the question.
Comment: Funny... it's like driving your car to synagogue for Saturday prayer.
However I do respect the candle-lighting ceremony itself from the traditional aspect tho.
Comment: My family always drove to the synagogue on Saturday. Specifically, when I got married and my wife and I worked out Shabbat, we decided to light candles and to light them on time.  However, we still drive, use electricity and eat out on Shabbat (and Yom Tov, for that matter).


Is there a way to access a list of all bundles?

Question: Is there a way to iterate through all bundles in a block explorer, or is there a way to get access to a list of all bundles?
Answer: When you are only interested in confirmed bundles, you can start with the latest confirmed milestone and follow trunk/branch transaction pointers (you will need some tree traversal strategy and remember transactions you have already seen), which will eventually end at the genesis hash of the latest snapshot. That way you can see all transactions and build bundles from them (based on same bundle hash). On permanodes (e.g. thetangle.org) you can go on from there, but on other nodes not (history will end at the latest snapshot). There are databases with all transactions available for download as well, which include transactions before the last snapshot.
Answer: TheTangle business might gives you a feature like this. If you want to do it by yourself, you can subscribe to the tangle via the ZMQ API. Since the ZMQ API only provides an API for transactions, you have to combine all transactions by yourself. We have a more complex example with Flink available.


State income taxes

Question: I work for a company based in Georgia but live in Florida and the company told me that they have to start deducting Georgia income tax even if I don't live or work in Georgia. Any way out of this?
Answer: Change the number allowances on the state version of the W-4 to a ridiculously high number like 50.
But technically you would want to withhold because you will have to file a non resident tax return in Georgia.
Looking at the instructions for the Georgia version of the W-4 you will have an opportunity to in the future claim exempt:

Line 8:
a) Check the first box if you qualify to claim exempt from
  withholding. You can claim exempt if you filed a Georgia income tax
  return last year and the amount on Line 4 of Form 500EZ or Line 16 of
  Form 500 was zero, and you expect to file a Georgia tax return this
  year and will not have a tax liability. You can not claim exempt if
  you did not file a Georgia income tax return for the previous tax
  year. Receiving a refund in the previous tax year does not qualify you
  to claim exempt.
Comment: withholding or dependents?
Comment: Technically, he talking "allowances."

State income taxes


Question About Floating Point System

Question: I have begun reading Numerical Analysis by Walter Gautschi. On page $3$, the author introduces the floating point number system as follows: a floating point number is a number representible as
$$
\begin{equation}
\pm (.b_{-1}b_{-2}...b_{-t})_2 \cdot 2^{\pm(c_{s-1}c_{s-2}...c_0.)_2} \tag {1}
\end{equation}
$$
where $s, t$ are fixed. We denote this number system by $\mathbb{R}(t, s)$.
Then, Walter says that a number $x \in \mathbb{R}(t, s)$ is normalized if $b_{-1}=1$, and that we $"$assume all numbers in $\mathbb{R}(t, s)$ are normalized $"$.
My Question: Consider consider the number
$$x = +(.00100) \cdot 2^{-(111.)}$$
Is this number an element of $\mathbb{R}(5, 3)$? According to the definition, I want to say yes. But when the author says $"$we assume all numbers in $\mathbb{R}(t, s)$ are normalized,$"$ I don't know if he is implicitly redefining $\mathbb{R}(t, s)$ to be numbers of the form $(1)$ with the additional requirement that $b_{-1}=1$. If we try to impose this requirement on $x$, I believe $x$ would come out to
$$x=+(.10000) \cdot 2^{-1001}$$
which shouldn't be part of $\mathbb{R}(5, 3)$
Background
I am a math major taking my first numerical analysis. I do not have any prior experience with computer science or numerical mathematics.
Answer: After reading further, I found the answer. The answer is that the $x$ given in the question is not in $\mathbb{R}(5, 3)$. The way I figured this out is as follows:
On the next page, the author states that
$$\min_{x \in \mathbb{R}(t, s)} |x| = 2^{-2^s}$$
This is consistent with $(.100 \cdots 0) \cdot2^{-(11\cdots 1)}$ being the least positive number in $\mathbb{R}(t, s)$, and not $(.000 \cdots 01) \cdot2^{-(11\cdots 1)}.$

Question About Floating Point System


What's the importance that Marx gives to the Class Struggle for the devolopment of societies?

Question: I've reading The Communist Manifesto and I could understand that all changes in the human history societies have been because the struggle of class.
but what is his argument? I can't understands his reasons.
In this way, how can we explain the transition of feudalism to bourgeoise?
Comment: For Marx, [Cluss struggle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict#Usage) was an historical phenomenon, empirically observed; see [Revolutions of 1848](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848)
Comment: "[Marx's thoughts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx#Economy,_history_and_society) on labour were related to the primacy he gave to the economic relation in determining the society's past, present and future. Accumulation of capital shapes the social system. For Marx, social change was about conflict between opposing interests, driven in the background by economic forces. This became the inspiration for the body of works known as the [conflict theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_theories)."
Comment: But the inspiration for that theory was [Hegel's model](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/history/#HegHis) of dialectic reformulated as [dialectical materialist account of history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism): the change is driven by conflicting opposite forces [*contradictions*].
Answer: Marx gives a double importance to class struggle in the Manifesto: economic and political.
Economic

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on in an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. (K.Marx & F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ed. A.J.P. Taylor, Harmondworth: Penguin, 1967: 79.)

The claim is not made that the history of all hitherto existing societies is only the history of class struggles or that there are only ever two classes. The basic idea is that class struggles are the main motor of history and the principal determinants of social change. All the classes Marx lists are the owners of the forces of production (freeman, patrician, lord, guild-master) or are exploited by the owners of these forces (slave, plebeian, serf, journeyman). In Marx's own day the relevant struggle was, as the first section title makes clear, between bourgeois and proletarian.
Political
The state is used by the dominant class - the owners of the forces of production - to maintain the social order in which oppression and exploitation can take place and safely continue:

The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie (Taylor: 82). 'The common affairs' are those of oppression and exploitation.

Politics will, however, put an end to this state of affairs as the oppressed class becomes collectively conscious of its condition and of its ability, through proletarian revolution, to overthrow its bourgeois, capitalist oppressors. What will follow is the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist transformation of society - and eventually communism in which the state will disappear since there will be no class-versus-class rule for the state to maintain. There will be only one class, the now liberated proletariat or universal class.
Comment 1 - Marx on 'struggle'
As Marx implies in his phrase, 'now hidden, now open', struggle can take a diversity of forms: strikes, work-to-rules, thefts, protests and demonstrations, and finally revolution.
Comment 2 - Marx on 'class'
If class struggle is to fulfil the historical role that Marx assigns to it, he needs to tell us clearly what a class is. He does this in the case of the proletariat from two perspectives - (1) the structural position of individuals in relation to the forces of production and (2) self-recognition as an oppressed group and accompanying partisanship.
Structural position

...the proletariat is that class of laborers who, having been
forcibly separated from the means of production, are condemned to
exchange their now fungible capacity to labor - manual as well as
mental - for a wage. As a general heuristic framework, the notion
of class refers neither to status nor income nor even to the division
of labor, but rather to the structural position individuals assume in
specific production relations. Quite simply ... a
proletarian is one who sells his/her capacity to produce in order to
survive, while a bourgeois is one who appropriates this capacity as
a commodity in order to valorize capital. (Mohandisi: 73.)

Self-recognition as an oppressed group - and partisanship

In this case, a class no longer is, it only becomes, it
is determined not by a position but by a process. The mere fact that
a certain group of individuals are made to perform a common role is
no longer a sufficient condition for their constitution as a class; class
only happens when an agglomeration of separated individuals, all
of whom may or may not assume the same general position within a
given relation of production, comes together to combat another class.
Membership in a class, according to this conception, is determined
by active partisanship, which often implies the adoption of a specific
perspective, in a given struggle. Class, then, signifies here the formation of a politcal subject. ((Mohandisi: 74.)

Though this second perspective receives more attention in The German Ideology than in the
Manifesto, it is clearly implicit in Marx's Manifesto account of the collective consciousness which the proletariat gradually acquires.
Comment 3 - How plausible is Marx's theory of history?
A large topic but a test case has been taken to be that of the French Revolution, which is hard to analyse plausibly in terms of a self-conscious capitalist bourgeoisie rising against the feudal classes. If interested, read Bertel Nygaard (listed below) who handles the issue with finesse, neither wholly for nor wholly against Marx.
References
K. Marx & F. Engels, The Communist Party [Manifesto of the Communist Party], ed. A.J.P. Taylor, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.
Online: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61
S. Mohandesi, 'Class Consciousness or Class Composition?', Science & Society, January 2013, Vol. 77, No. 1, pp. 72-97: 73-4.
Bertel Nygaard, 'The Meanings of "Bourgeois Revolution": Conceptualizing the French Revolution', Science & Society , Apr., 2007, Vol. 71, No. 2 (Apr., 2007), pp. 146-172.
Answer: Marx is complex, richly detailed, and comprehensive, but I'll try to give a short, simple, partial response.
Marx was greatly influenced by Hegel and shares his view of historical development. First, human history progresses. It is not cyclical, random, regressive, or linear. It progresses consciously in self-understanding and materially. Major changes come about not because of random external events, like a meteor whacking the dinosaurs, but because of internal contradictions in the structure of the present society. These shifts may happen visibly in "revolutions," or what we might call, in biological evolution, "punctuated equilibria."
In other words, the present order gives way due to some internal contradiction or opposition of social forces. Unlike Hegel, Marx saw these forces as material, basically the way in which a society materially reproduces itself, its bodies, its culture, its knowledge, its tools, its food, its entire material being. The power supply for all this is, simply put, socialized, interdependent human labor, whether physical or mental. This is the great, creative human capacity to develop its freedom from nature, including human nature.
This requires specializations and hierarchies, etc. Yet in all human societies there are also classes. Many, but two above all. The vast majority who "work" and create and produce and those who "own" the means of production, such as land in feudal society. How and why do they own it? Good question! It is not based on how the society actually reproduces itself, but on the traditions, ideologies, religions, laws, modes of thought, institutions etc., that Marxists call the "superstructure."
The productive classes and the dominant "owning" classes have utterly contradictory, conflicting interests. The more that labor gets the less the "owners" get and vice versa. This is shockingly apparent today is the total disconnect between the stock market's major "shareholders" and unemployment and our current pandemic, for example.
Now, it is important to realize "class" does not mean a certain set of people. Feudal lords may become rich merchants after the English, French, an American "Bourgeoise Revolutions," workers today may become small shareholders, etc. The contradiction is between those who can, if they wish, live solely by owning and those who cannot. Their "class" interests are fundamentally opposed.
Now, to answer your question. Why would this drive the direction of social evolution? Simply put, the minority who "own" have a vested interest in the status quo. As a class, they obviously want those laws, ideas, cultural force, governments, etc. that conserve their present ownership to remain unchanged in any truly fundamental way.
Meanwhile, things change. The productive classes grow more globally populous and, at the margins or even the center, more relatively dispossessed. And they produce new technologies that change human powers, productive forces, and the social equations. The static institutions fortifying the "ownership" class appear increasingly irrational, unstable, and expendable.
Thus the inherited land rights of nobles and clergy made less and less sense as shipping, banking, factories, and other bourgeois forces increased. Today, the perfect example is copyright and patent "ownership" of information, music, bandwidths, airwaves, medicines, etc., that are, in terms of our productive forces, nearly free to reproduce. When companies spend more on lawyers than research, a "class contradiction" is revealed.
Marx understood the many complexities, reversals, and in-betweens of social development. And his analysis centered on his own times in the early steam age. But, like Hegel, he was basically an optimist in believing that "reason" would overcome fundamental contradictions, if sometimes violently. We will find out, I guess.


Pulled pork too sweet

Question: I made pulled pork and added too much brown sugar. What can I add to dilute it so it's not so sweet? Tried not adding barbeque sauce, but that didn't help.
Comment: Salt and acids(vinegar) will help.
Comment: Try mustard and red wine vinegar.  Go little at a time because both can be overpowering.
Answer: The sugar flavor is in there whether you like it or not, you can either use the pork as an ingredient in something else where sweetness is an asset (salads, casseroles, etc), or balance the sweetness with other flavors.
To me the way forward is to try and balance the sweetness with acidity and bitterness, and a really good way is to make a barbecue sauce with these qualities. Add no sugar to it so it will counter the sweetness in your meat. I'm thinking a southern style mustard and vinegar sauce will work well as that has bitter and sour qualities. A little bit of unsweetened chocolate or instant coffee adds both richness and bitterness. Or instead of a sauce you could pair the meat up with foods that will balance the sweetness like kale, leafy greens, and spinach.
Comment: Vinegar seems like the most obvious choice for a barbecue sauce; it's already a prominent ingredient in many cases.
Answer: I am assuming the pork is already shredded and the sauce is too sweet but already combined.
Drain the meat, try not to press and squeeze the juice out of the meat.
Steaming the meat is the best way, long enough for the sauce to drip, not to overcook the meat.
3 min in the steam basket inside the 15 psig pressure cooker would do.
If regular steamer, you can go 10 min.
Then, use new sauce, or dilute existing sweet sauce in water with a final starch slurry to thicken back up.

Pulled pork too sweet


Is there a universal (general) definition of gerund, infinitive and participle?

Question: Is there a universal (general) definition of gerund, infinitive and participle applicable to all languages despite the differences between them?
Answer: Not really.
"Participle" can be defined pretty reliably as "an inflected form of a verb that acts as an adjective". But the line between a participle and any other adjective derived from a verb is fairly arbitrary: there's no obvious descriptive reason why -tus adjectives in Latin are "participles" and -τος adjectives in Greek are not. It just comes down to grammatical tradition.
"Gerund" and "infinitive" are even harder. They're both labels for "a form of a verb that acts as a noun". But the decision to call Latin amāndum and English going "gerunds", and Latin amāre and English to go "infinitives", is also fairly arbitrary. You can argue that Latin and English infinitives mark voice and sometimes aspect while gerunds don't, but there are plenty of other languages where infinitives don't mark those things—off the top of my head, Egyptian and Akkadian. Once again, the distinction mostly comes down to grammatical tradition.
Comment: infinitives usually only appear in quite restrictive morphosyntactic environments, unlike deverbal nouns more generally, so they're a little more distinct than participles are from adjectives etc
Comment: And in some cases, even the nominal/adjectival distinction can't really be upheld – the third infinitive in Finnish, for example, is both a noun (_kauppa-ma-an_ 'in order to buy', illative of _kauppa-ma_ 'a buying, the act of buying') and an adjective (_Päivin kauppa-ma[-ssa] talo[-ssa]_ '[in] the house bought by Päivi', where the case ending _-ssa_ on both head noun and infinitive shows the infinitive is adjectival). Some have called the latter use an 'agentive participle', but only for systematicity, precisely because it's adjectival here – it is the same verb form.
Comment: When I was studying Russian at school fifty years ago, what is apparently now called the _[adverbial participle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_grammar#Adverbial_participle)_ was referred to in our textbooks as the _gerund_.
Answer: Universal dependencies is trying to to that and their attempt on defining some non-finite verb forms in a language-independent way can be seen here. It is still very much informed by Indogermanic languages and has a strong language family bias for that reason.


Eclipse Ganymede hacks, hints, tips, tricks, and best practices

Question: I've recently started using Eclipse Ganymede CDT for C development and I couldn't like it more. I'm aware the learning curve could be sort of pronounced, therefore and with your help, my goal is to flatten it as much as possible. I'm looking for the best hacks, hints, tips, tricks, and best practices to really unleash the full power of the IDE.
Answer: Accurate Indexing
With CDT you should be sure to enable the "Full Indexing" option rather than the "Fast Indexing" default.  It's not perceptibly slower on modern hardware and it does a much better job.  In that vein, you should be sure to enable semantic highlighting.  This isn't as important in C/C++ as it is in a language like Scala, but it's still extremely useful.
Streamlined Editing
Get used to using Ctrl+O and Ctrl+Alt+H.  The former pops up an incrementally searchable outline view, while the latter opens the "Call Hierarchy" view and searches on the currently selected function.  This is incredibly useful for tracing execution.
Ctrl+Shift+T (Open Type) isn't exactly an "editing" combo per se, but it is equally important in my workflow.  The C++ Open Type dialog not only allows incremental filtering by type, but also selecting of definition (.h) or declaration (.cpp) and even filtering by element type (typedef, struct, class, etc).
Task Oriented Programming
Mylyn: never leave home without it.  I just can't say enough about this tool.  Every time I'm forced to do without it I find myself having to re-learn how to deal with all of the code noise.  Very, very handy to have.
Stripped Down Views
The default Eclipse workspace layout is extremely inefficient both in space and in usability.  Everyone has their favorite layout, take some time and find yours.  I like to minimize (not necessarily close) everything except for Outline and keep the C/C++ Project Explorer docked in the sidebar configured to precisely hide the Outline when expanded.  In this way I can always keep the editor visible while simultaneously reducing the space used by views irrelevant to the current task.
Answer: CTRL+TAB let you navigate quickly between a source file and it's header file (foo.cpp <--> foo.h).
I like also the local history feature because you can go back and revert your changes in a convenient way.
Answer: ctrl + space is the best tool ever in Eclipse.  It is the auto-complete feature.  It can complete variable names, method declarations, user defined templates, and a ton more.
Go Eclipse.  Tons of my code is generated by ctrl + space.
Answer: If the Java Developer Tools aren't installed the Spellcheck won't work.
The Spellcheck functionality is dependent upon the Java Development Tools being installed. This can be a perplexing issue if you just install the C Development Tools exclusively, because it gives no reason for the Spell Checker not working.


Could hydrazine be used as a scramjet propellant?

Question: Hydrazine is used a monopropellant in Satellite OMS rockets. But interestingly enough, it's highly exothermic decomposition into ammonia, nitrogen, and hydrogen provides heat for an endothermic reaction with additional hydrazine to form hydrogen gas. So a scramjet using hydrazine would have to reactions inside it's combustion chamber: The decomposition of hydrazine and the combustion of the resulting hydrogen gas with air. And unlike hydrogen gas, hydrazine has much higher propellant density. Has this ever been considered by aerospace engineers and even tested?
Comment: [General Electric has a patent on it](https://patents.google.com/patent/US5333445), granted 28 years ago.
Comment: Does it offer more energy density than conventional fuel? If no then why?
Answer: Technically yes, you could use hydrazine in a scramjet.
But there's no reason to do so. The singular purpose of building a scramjet is to get air into the combustion chamber, so that you don't have to use a monopropellant, which all have high cost and poor energy density.
Kerosene or H2 won't burn without air, so you need a scramjet or an oxygen tank to burn them. Hydrazine doesn't, so you can burn it in a rocket, at higher pressure with more efficiency and better aerodynamics.
Advantage: Rocket engines have a thrust:weight ratio of up to 133:1, scramjets about 2:1. So an equivalent rocket is up to 66 times lighter than a scramjet.
GE's patent refers to the use of a small amount of hydrazine in a catalyst-like role, or more accurately to act as a fuel/air mixer.
Comment: What I was actually describing is hybrid engine of sorts: Part rocket engine, part scramjet. Initially the hydrazine would act as a monopropellant from startup to get the vehicle up to a sufficiently high speed. Once it reaches ~mach 5 it would work as a hybrid engine. The idea is that it would produce a lot more thrust than a typical scramjet and have a higher thrust-to-weight ratio. Making it much more efficient and giving it longer range.
Comment: Once you reach such high speeds using a monopropellant would likely be thermally inefficient due to the mass flow of air through the combustion chamber in addition to much lower chamber pressure.
Answer: In addition to it's use as a monopropellant, hydrazine has been used as a fuel in bipropellant combinations, for example in a 30% by weight mix with 57% methanol and 13% water, with concentrated hydrogen peroxide as the oxidiser in the Messerschmitt Me163 rocket propelled interceptor. This suggests that it's use as a fuel in a scramjet engine might be technically possible, although it is chemically unstable and toxic in pure form.


How old is Blender?

Question: When was the first Blender version released? I have been an avid user of blender for a few years but I still have not found out how long it has been around. I not only would like to know when it was released but try to run it. If someone could provide a link that would be great.
Answer: Blender celebrates January 2, 1994 as its birth day, based on the timestamps from the first backup of the codebase. It was first used in production around 1 year later, in Q2 1995.
Refs: tweet from the Blender Foundation and from Ton Roosendal.

During its first years, it wasn't free and open source. It became free thanks to a crowfounding campaign in 2002, when the first version was released to the public.
The complete history is on the History page of the Blender website. There is also an interview made by Blender Guru to Ton Roosendaal, creator of Blender, here, that covers some of the history.
Judging by the source repository on the website the first ever open release is probably Blender 2.26, available here. In the releases repository you can find versions as old as Blender 1.0! I doubt you'll be able to use it though, it's just for IRIX.
[Edit Jan 2020] The code from the earliest backup (definitely not in a releasable state) has been made available too: here.

If you can't get old versions to work, there is somebody on Youtube that in 2014 tried to go back in time, reporting on their experiments: Blender 2.40, Blender 2.27, Blender 1.80. Then they said  «I probably do not want to continue to Blender 1.60, because in this version, I cannot save files.»
Comment: They still work! [Here's proof](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vB7In.png) (those two version because they are ones I had sitting around already).
Comment: I just realised that probably the first time I used blender (2003) it was around version 2.0x. After one year of poor experiments, I abandoned the hobby and didn't use it again until much later, probably 2.6x
Comment: I think if someone has a 32-bit machine they can run Blender 1.60. https://download.blender.org/release/Blender1.60/
Comment: There is something I have been wondering for a while about blender: How many times did the system requirements change and by how much?
Comment: @ToshibaSatellite this is a list you could compile yourself by looking at the Readme files in that folder. I don't think anybody has done such research. However, the definition of "system requirement" is rather fuzzy: some things may be partially supported on limited hardware. Also, some hardware/software combinations might have just never been officially tested.

How old is Blender?