Are the articles at Ro 9:6,8 ultimately anaphoric to 9:5/1:4? If not, what are the grammatical reasons they are not?

Question: Are the articles at Ro 9:6,8 ultimately anaphoric to 9:5/1:4? If not, what are the grammatical reasons they are not?
Comment: This is one of the most imaginative questions to remove the divinity of Christ I have seen.  It is also the most stretched.
Comment: @NigelJ - well stated!!
Comment: Personally, I incline to think that the current word order of the aforementioned verse is due to a simple [scribal error](http://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/33257).
Answer: The Anaphoric Article
Here is one definition of an anaphoric reference:

Anaphoric reference means that a word in a text refers back to other ideas in the text for its meaning. It can be compared with cataphoric reference, which means a word refers to ideas later in the text.

A simple example would be a pronoun which refers back to a previous noun. Anaphoric reference by use of the article is common in New Testament Greek:

The anaphoric article is the article denoting previous reference. (It derives its name from the Greek verb ἀναφέρειν, "to bring back, to bring up.") The first mention of the substantive is usually anarthrous because it is merely being introduced. But subsequent mentions of it use the article, for the article is now pointing back to the substantive previously mentioned. The anaphoric article has, by its nature, then a pointing force to it reminding the reader of who or what was mentioned previously. It is the most common use of the article and the easiest usage to identify.1

However common, there are several reasons against the use in 9:5 being anaphoric to 1:7:

Distance to first mention and confusion as to the first mention
Change of subject in Chapter 9
The historical content of the text

Reasons Against the Anaphoric Article
The first argument against the anaphoric use is simply the distance back to the first mention. The examples in the grammars offer "local" examples. That is, a few verses at most separate the two substantives. In the case of θεός, the word is used 90 times before 9:5 and it is unrealistic to think the reader would fix the meaning back to something said in 1:7.  (This is especially so if the letter was to be read aloud to a group.)
In the unlikely event Paul was referring back to the first use, there is a question as to which use was "first." The OP suggests it would be θεοῦ πατρὸς which is driven by the predetermined conviction θεός is θεοῦ πατρὸς. (In other words, it is belief not an anaphoric article which determined the meaning.) Yet θεοῦ πατρὸς is the second use in 1:7 and ignores the use in 1:4, υἱοῦ θεοῦ, the correct "first use." In which case the anaphoric reference is to the Son of God, who is the Christ, which is the plain reading of text in question:

1 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit — 2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 9) [ESV]

The second reason the use is unlikely to be anaphoric is the change in subject. After spending the first eight chapters explaining salvation and ending chapter eight on a triumphant note; the letter shifts to a completely different and tragic subject: God's chosen people have rejected the gospel. A radically different subject argues against either the writer or their reader relying on a much earlier reference to determine the meaning. To the contrary, such a radical change in subject is almost like starting a new letter and reorients the reader to the immediate text.
Finally, it is obvious Paul is pointing the reader back, not to the opening of the letter, but to the history of the Jewish people. He recites all the reasons why the people should have welcomed the Gospel and he ends with the most important: Christ.
Here is the literal text:

ὧν οἱ πατέρες καὶ ἐξ ὧν ὁ Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας ἀμήν

Historically speaking, ὁ ὢν is the Name Moses was given for the people:

And God said to Moyses, "I am The One Who Is." And he said, "Thus shall you say to the sons of Israel, 'The One Who Is has sent me to you.'" (LXX-Exodus 3:14)
καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεὸς πρὸς Μωυσῆν ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν καὶ εἶπεν οὕτως ἐρεῗς τοῗς υἱοῗς Ισραηλ ὁ ὢν ἀπέσταλκέν με πρὸς ὑμᾶς

Paul has given the clearest expression of the identity of Christ possible:

To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, The One Who Is God over all, blessed forever. Amen

Not only is the meaning obvious, that is consistent with the historical meaning: ὁ ὢν is the God who brought the people out of Egypt. In other words, in Paul's mind Christ is the culmination of Israel's history.

Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament, Zondervan, 1996, p. 217-218
Comment: The historical context is critical+1. Isaiah 50:1 and Jer 3:8 says God gave the northern ten tribes a certificate of divorce. If that God was not Jesus then Romans 7 which explains a woman is bound until her husband dies, means the northern ten tribes and their descendants who intermarried with all the nations CANNOT receive salvation because the husband (God) had to die to release them v2. Jesus did die and resurrected but if He isn't the first husband then anyone with bloodlines to the northern ten tribes cannot enter into new covenant with God as they'll COMMIT spiritual adultery. Jer3:1
Comment: Thank you for this answer, I now understand better why people call it the "anaphoric article". Do you know why they don't just call it the definite article, when that's the more common term and definiteness is the name of the concept for a referent being identifiable?
Comment: Wallace unhelpfully distinguishes his *identifying* function from his *definitizing* function, but never gives examples of the latter.
Comment: If that's the case, then it sounds like what he calls identifying is what linguists call definiteness.


Do reusable hemp filters filter out cafestol?

Question: Do reusable hemp filters filter out cafestol oils which raise bad cholesterol levels? I know paper filters do and that is what we use now. We are concerned with cholesterol.
Answer: Dried and cured hemp will absorb liquids, so they do filter some oil. The material isn't as porous as paper though, so it won't absorb as much as paper. Consider it in between metal and paper in this regard. Also, the absorption properties of hemp will degrade with saturation. This is true for paper filters too, but since hemp are reusable, remember to wash them with soap that removes oil (like Dawn) regularly. More often when brewing dark roasts and extra often with extra oily dark roasts.
Answer: No
At least not in general. The pores in hemp filters are not as fine as in paper filters and will let through some oils. While undoubtedly it reduces the amount of oils a lot, it is not as good in filtering coffee as paper filters.
However, evidence that unfiltered coffee raises cholesterol levels significantly is questionable at best. Filtering it with hemp will certainly help, filtering it with paper filters will help even more.


Where did the idiom "anally retentive" originate?

Question: Here's another phrase I hear in US TVs and Films, but take for granted... What's the etymology of the idiom "anally retentive", and how did it become synonymous with being pedantic?
Answer: Etymonline states:

Anal-retentive first attested 1957, in psychological jargon.

According to Wikipedia, which does a much more thorough job of explaining than I will, the term comes from the psychological work of Dr. Sigmund Freud.  Freud postulated that the anal stage of development, or that regarding toilet training, could have a profound effect on the later personality of a child.
The term anal-retentive refers to the retention, in later life, of such behaviors associated with the anal stage.  These behaviors include:

"orderliness, stubbornness, a compulsion for control".

The term to describe those people who reject these characteristics is anal-expulsive.
Comment: Indeed the science is now considered goofy, but as you know, the term is in wide use to describe these behaviors.  Just not in polite or formal company :)
Comment: Wikipedia also states that this isn't taken very seriously these days, and was also partially about lack of indoor plumbing.
Comment: i was under the impression that the object of the retention was shit,
not the (behaviours associated with the) anal stage
Comment: @Toothrot, that was my impression too. It has certainly muddied the water.
Answer: Per Wikipedia.

In the psychology of Freud, the anal stage is said to follow the oral stage of infant or early-childhood development. This is a time when an infant's attention moves from oral stimulation to anal stimulation (usually the bowels but occasionally the bladder), usually synchronous with learning to control his or her excretory functions, a time of toilet training. Freud theorized that children who experience conflicts during this period of time may develop "anal" personality traits, namely those associated with a child's efforts at excretory control: orderliness, stubbornness, a compulsion for control.[2]
Although "anal rententive" survives in common usage, the concept is not taken very seriously by psychoanalysts today. Chicago psychoanalyst Robert Galatzer-Levy speaks of how this theory of Freud is mostly a product of its time when indoor plumbing was new and less numerous per household, and families were large, causing "much more control of defecation than was necessary in a world of chamber pots and outhouses."[3]
If these qualities continue into later life, the person is said to be "anal-retentive". Conversely, those who reject anal-retentive characteristics are said to have "anal-expulsive" personality types.
Although Freud's theories on early childhood have been influential on the psychological community, research suggests that the overall pattern of parental attitudes has a much more concrete effect on how an infant will grow up. There is no conclusive research linking anal stage conflicts with "anal" personality types.
Comment: Great quote : Does "anal-retentive" have a hyphen?  ~Alison Bechdel, 1990 Dykes to Watch Out For calendar.
Comment: Someone who is anally retentive suffers from a personality disorder, and may show symptoms including pedantry. Someone who is pedantic may have no disorder per se, but merely a desire for a stricter adherence to linguistic rules than those around them. The key to the term pedantic is that it is inherently subjective, according to the tolerance of the audience.
Comment: I suspect the connection is that "anal-retentive" behaviours are typically associated with hygiene concerns, not purely in the sense of physical dirt, but in the sense that poor control over any activity can lead to widespread sullying and disruption, or later multiplication of labour. Adults are typically the least tolerant about the spreading of faeces, much more so than urine or edible food residues, so it represents one of the strongest earliest examples where children are consistently expected to show self-control and forethought.
Answer: "Anal retentive" was in print significantly earlier than what is stated in the accepted answer.
For example, as translated into English in 1938 and published in Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 7:69-95, but originally from 1935, the article The Drive to Amass Wealth states:

It may be that the anal retentive pleasure is always secondary and is
  always mixed with a fear of experiencing the pleasure in excreting; at any rate the retentive pleasure does come to exist, at least secondarily, and analytic experience concerning anal retentive pleasure leaves no doubt but that it is the erogenous source of the desire for possession for possession's sake and the source of all irrational behavior concerning money.

See also the 1936 article Specific Determinants in Feminine Development:

...Oro-urethral women are not only impatient of delay in getting what they want, they are markedly impatient of delay in action, and it is the women in whom this urethral quick emission (often aided  by oral vomiting tendencies) is not adequately neutralized by anal retentive trends who fail to conceive and tend to miscarry after conception...

Even earlier (1925), there is The Psycho-Analysis of Sexual Habits by Sandor Ferenczi in The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis Vol. 6,  page 372 which says:

I found that the ultimate cause of the tendencies to urethral evacuation and to anal retention is anxiety about pain in the case of emptying the bladder, anxiety over the tension caused by a full bladder, and in the case of emptying the bowel, anxiety about


How to block an app from accessing the internet?

Question: How can I block an app from accessing the internet completely?
Answer: You mention in your comment to @LouisGR that you're just trying to block WhatsApp for a while, while also using other apps. That's easy enough.
Disable the app from running in the background. As long as WhatsApp isn't in the foreground, it won't run at all and therefore can't access data. To do this, go to Settings, search for "Background apps", and turn off the toggle for WhatsApp. Make sure to turn this back on later, though, if you want the app to be able to receive message or call notifications while not running in the foreground.
Answer: There is no way to get a firewall 'by apps' in Windows Phone.
The only one dirty solution : pause LTE & WiFi but that's all.
Comment: I just want to block Whatsapp for a specific period. I don't want to turn Wi-Fi and mobile internet because I still use other online apps my the device. Don't suggest uninstalling the desired app ☺
Answer: As there is no firewall to control app access to the Internet. I have also tried to find any option natively in Windows Mobile but I have found none.
The only solution I can think of is to activate power saving mode. Choosing this option will curb all background activities for most apps even accessing the internet. The second step, never touch or open the app you don't want to access the web. The only downside for it that I have to sync the other apps I use manually.


Apps say "bad password" for good password

Question: I tried logging into Amazon for the first time on both my Android devices (S7 & Tab2) using the password that works on Windows and got a "bad password message". I even tried changing my password and, no joy. This happened last week. Suddenly, yesterday Yahoo mail started returning a bad password error, even though I can still sign in on Windows. Again even tried changing my password. The mail program was working fine until about noon yesterday. Has anyone else run into this? Nothing has been changed on either device, except using an Orange SIM in the phone for about a month, normally AT&T, mail worked during and after the change back to AT&T.
Comment: I think the problem doesn't come  from those apps but probably from you. You may have mistyped the password. Many apps now let you toggle the password visibility to avoid mistakes.
Comment: And your keyboard may be defaulting to first letter capitalisation, whereas your password isn't
Comment: When I create a password, I enter it into a password protected document. I copied and pasted the password to log into the Windows versions, then did the same in the Android version of the Apps and got the "bad password" message, so no keyboard issue. As a note, I run my own cloud server that only allows access to devices with MAC addresses I own, so the passwords are pretty safe. But THANKS for the suggestion. Further note, I found an "interesting" answer, see below.
Answer: I found an "interesting" solution to the problem. When I create a password, I enter it into a password protected document. I have been copying and pasting the passwords, so there is no issue of entering different passwords between the Android and Windows logins or mistyping them. As an experiment, I used the "Forgot Password" function in the Android apps. Then I pasted the exact same passwords I've been using and "changed" the passwords in the Android apps. Now I can log in using the same passwords and don't get the "Bad Password" error in the Android apps, and can still log in the Windows version. This worked for both apps that were having the issues. Go figure. Still haven't figured out why, especially why the mail app that had been working suddenly stopped.


How can I remove the noise from an EEG signal?

Question: I am working on a project that takes signals from the brain, preprocesses them, and then makes the machine learn about what human is thinking about. I am struck on preprocessing the signal (incoming from the EEG). I am having a problem when I attempt to remove noise. I used SVM but to no avail. I need some other suggestions from experts who have worked on a project similar to this. What can I do to preprocess the signal?
Comment: Hi and welcome to this community! Can you be more specific regarding the EEC signal? Which noise are you exactly trying to remove? What problem are you having? You used an SVM (support vector machine) to do what? Can you clarify this? Just edit your question to add these details and clarifications.
Comment: This seems like you might be better off asking it on a neuroscience stack, or maybe DataScience.SE. De-noising EEG data is (AFAIK) an active area of research, and it really needs a lot of domain knowledge that is unrelated to AI. I suspect nobody here has the expertise to answer this.
Comment: This sounds more like a signal processing question than an ML question since you're looking at doing signal processing as preprocessing.  Have you tried that stack?
Answer: This might be more of a signal-processing question, rather than a artificial intelligence question, but I will try my best to be of help.
Do you know what the noise you are trying to remove is? How it behaves/where it stems from?
Or, do you know how your output signal should look, post processing?
If you know these things and you are familiar with MATLAB or any other matrix multiplication software, they come with great prebuilt toolboxes for traditional approaches to remove noise from signals.
If you are not exactly sure what patterns you are looking for, I suggest perhaps looking into Autoencoders to discover the hidden patterns. Though it is important to note that the origin of the noise may greatly effect its abilities.
If you plan on using such a technique it is important that you have a sufficiently large dataset of the signals available.
Without the clarifications to these questions, along with @nbro's questions, it is hard to be more specific.
Answer: If the noise is confined to a particular spectral band, Fourier transform followed by filtering, followed by an inverse Fourier transform will work.  If it is multiplicative noise, filtering the Fourier transform of the logarithm of the signal might work.
Really, the nature of the noise determines what's possible and the best way to remove it.
Answer: by svm do you possibly mean singular value decomposition (svd a known noise reduction technique) if this is true then i would say the next method i would try would be wavelet transform for noise reduction and if neither of these techniques are working on there own it is not uncommon to use them together as is done here.
Answer: There is a commonly used method, that is also used in machine learning: Independent Component Analysis. (ICA). This is commonly used to find specific noises in the data, however, you need to have some EEG knowledge to do this because automatic rejection is not completely solved at this time. Software like EEGLab is available (as a standalone and Matlab toolbox)
Now to do this in real-time it is also not impossible after you collect initial data for a while and don't have too many channels. You can isolate relatively constant noises with ICA, like heart-beating, other temporal noises can be rejected globally (on all channels) because EEG normally does not exceed certain levels.
Useful documentation is EEGLabs artifacts Wikipedia page:
https://sccn.ucsd.edu/wiki/Chapter_01:_Rejecting_Artifacts


What is meant by "shock load" in gears?

Question: What is meant by shock load in gears?
What are steady, light, medium and heavy shock loads?
Answer: a shock load on gearing is imposed when the gear train is forced to start or stop turning very suddenly, or when a heavy load is suddenly applied to a set of rotating gears. A good example of this is when the driver of a car with a manual transmission slams or "bangs" the gear changes without skilled use of the clutch, causing the car to suddenly lurch. This imposes high stresses on the gear teeth for over short timescales. Gears subjected to shock loads may fail due to metal fatigue of the gear teeth rather than wearout of the contact faces on the teeth themselves.
Answer: In gear design for different machinery there is a  combination of loads that causes damage and excessive wear and the equation for that load:
F*   =   Ka Kv Km Ft
Ka is application factor inherent in connecting to moving parts.
Kv is dynamic factor caused by imbalance and deficiency in gears.
Km is load distribution factor on gear.
Ft is service design load.
The part your question refers to is application factor.
These factors combine with the other above mentioned are used to define the shock load and service need.

Source: http://www-mdp.eng.cam.ac.uk/web/library/enginfo/textbooks_dvd_only/DAN/gears/failure/failure.html

What is meant by "shock load" in gears?


how to export files from illustrator to dwg

Question: I´m a graphic designer who normally works with printing. I now have to convert an Illustrator CS5.1 file into dwg. When I do that the document size changes completely and most of the drawing is outside the format - I try to alter the document size afterwards, but than I have to save it in illustrator again and then the problem rises again when I export it to dwg.
Answer: DWG isn't a solid thing, it has been changed when new AutoCAD versions have appeared. Your Illustrator knows only few of existing DWG versions. As far as I know, Illustrator CS5.1 doesn't know newer DWG versions than 2004. It was the native format for AutoCAD versions which appeared in 2004...2006.
Do not expect right colors nor stroke widths when you open the exported DWG. Illustrator's layer structure can vanish as well as all effects.
When you export as DWG 2004 in Illustrator you should define how many inches or millimeters one DWG unit is going to present. When you open the DWG in another program you should define again how many inches or millimeters one DWG unit presents. I guess you have skipped one or both of those definitions.
Of course you can define in exporting also 1 DWG unit = xxxx pixels, picas or points, but I guess that's useless, because in common CAD software you must say how many inches or millimeters mean 1 unit. Try for example 1 unit = 1 millimeter in exporting and opening the DWG.


Hanging a large bowl on a stone backsplash

Question: I'm desperately seeking an answer to how I can hang a beautiful decorative shallow bowl between my stovetop and my range hood.  The bowl is about about 15 inches across and 3 or so inches deep.  It is absolutely perfect for the spot, but I can't figure out how to anchor it properly.
Comment: What are the bowl and backsplash made of? Are you aiming to mount it permanently or in a fashion where it is removable? Do you want it inset in the wall or mounted over the surface? Do you have an example of similar look that you'd like to imitate? Pictures would be very helpful too.
Comment: What do you want it to look like?  Also probably will need a pic to see what you are talking about.
Comment: depending on the type of stone diamond drill bits could be used to make mounting holes. the finer the stone the slower you will need to cut to keep it from cracking.
Answer: I would find a hanger you like along the lines of this one that's deep enough for your bowl:

Then I'd hang it from a screw placed inside or behind your range hood. I'm assuming that it's a sheet metal hood with a hollow underside.
If the bowl is too high, use a decorative chain or rope to connect the top of the hanger with the screw at the desired height.


Ancient Western Christianity & Indian Christians

Question: India is well outside the bounds of Roman influence, but there is evidence of Christianity in India very early. After the faith reached India, how much contact was there with Christianity in the Mediterranean world for the first 6 or 7 centuries?
Comment: Check out a book called "By Foot To China" Free online, http://www.aina.org/books/bftc/bftc.htm I would suggest the kindle version to be easier to read than one very long web page.

Also check out a book called "The Lost History of Christianity" by Philip Jenkins.

There was a great movement of Christianity until about the 11th century. The church in India called Mar Thoma traces it's roots to the disciple of Jesus, Thomas, and is still there today.
Comment: Rome was only one of five ancient Church Sees.  The most ancient Indian Church is Orthodox, not Roman Catholic - although non-Chalcedonian.
Comment: guest37, what were the other ancient Church Sees?
Comment: @MattZabojnik thats great! I actually had that second title on a list of books I wanted to read. In the meantime, I'll look at the first you suggested.
Answer: The Christian's in the West did have some loose connection with those Christians in the far east due to the trade that went on with the Silk and Spice trail.   The Christians of Far Asia and The Roman empire however were mostly separated due to the political divide between Rome and the Parthian empire, and of course the vast distances that existed at a time before modern communication inventions were developed.   (I will point out an Illustration of this, the Christians of the Syriac, "Church of the East" that lived in Iraq and further East accepted the first two Ecumenical Counsels that formed the early Nicene Creed but did so 40 years after the fact, and due to the distance and traveling difficulties was not able to send delegates to both those counsels!)
Early Church historians like Eusebius, report the account that the apostle Thomas brought the gospel to India (around AD 52 according to Wikipedia) to The Malabar coast, saint Thomas was said to have been martyred by a Hindu, who stabbed him in a cave with a spear.  Besides the Thomas tradition, Christians of the East Syriac (Nestorian) tradition also gradually moved into the area as well sometime after the Fourth Century.  But needless to say, there has been a small Christian presence in India since the time of the writing of the New Testament, and for some centuries it was quite significant in numbers and social status (Christians in medieval India had a caste rank that was right below that of the Brahmin, the top caste of India).
If you are interested in this Topic, I recommend, "East of the Euphrates", by TV Philip a member of the Mar Thoma Church of India.    See the amazon link here
https://www.amazon.com/East-Euphrates-Early-Christianity-Asia/product-reviews/8172144415
(PS - I was once a member of the a Church of the East group, that had missionary ties to India.)


redirect mobile request to different url

Question: Im trying to redirect the mobile request to different url on my website say abcd.com on the basis of HTTP_USER_AGENT in apache 2.2
I have written the following script in http.conf file in apache conf folder,
<IfModule mod_rewrite.so>
    RewriteEngine On

    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "android|blackberry|googlebot-mobile|iemobile|ipad|iphone|ipod|opera mobile|palmos|webos" [NC]

    RewriteRule ^$ https://abcd.com/userMaster/rl_login [L,R=302]
</IfModule>

pls suggest if im doing anything wrong
Thanks
Praveen
Answer: I suggest you skip trying to do it via your http.conf file and rather do it with an .htaccess file located in the websites root folder.
To achieve this, simply create a text file on your local computer, add the following code:
RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} "alcatel|amoi|android|avantgo|blackberry|benq|cell|cricket|docomo|elaine|htc|iemobile|iphone|ipad|ipaq|ipod|j2me|java|midp|mini|mmp|mobi|motorola|nec-|nokia|palm|panasonic|philips|phone|playbook|sagem|sharp|sie-|silk|smartphone|sony|symbian|t-mobile|telus|up\.browser|up\.link|vodafone|wap|webos|wireless|xda|xoom|zte" [NC]

RewriteRule ^$ https://abcd.com/userMaster/rl_login [L,R=302]

And save it as a .htaccess file. Then, log into your server with your FTP-client and upload that .htaccess file to the root directory of the website.
If you are able to upload files using FTP, then you must be able to add a .htaccess file to the server.


Voting system to elect multiple winners from a large field of candidates

Question: I have a large number of candidates (65) for an award which will be granted to a handful of winners (6). There will be a relatively small number of voters (9). We are looking for a voting method which can fairly select 6 winners from this large field? We are open to multiple rounds of voting. How many votes should be allowed in the first round to begin to whittle the pool but also not feel too restrictive? Of potential relevance; this is for a Non-profit organization.
Comment: Can the 9 of you meet (in person or online) and form a consensus, or could you explain why this is not likely to be possible.
Comment: Do the candidates also get to vote (for themselves)?
Comment: and how many voters?
Comment: You should understand [Arrow's Impossibility Theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem). You can also search on this SE for other questions about it. See also https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/34638/mechanics-of-a-second-brexit-referendum/34721#34721
Comment: There seems to be only a minor connection between this question and politics. Is there maybe another StackExchange more suitable?
Answer: You could use some variant of score voting. In score voting systems, each voter gives a personal score to each option. The scores of all voters for each option are summed up (some variants discard the best and worst vote for each option in order to reduce the power of outliers). The options with the highest total scores are elected. This system works quite well if the voters are honest and rate every option objectively. However, if a voter wants to maximize their influence, then they would always vote either 0 or maximum score. And if everyone follows that strategy, it turns into approval voting.
Another option would be to use a Ranked voting system where the voters list all the options sorted from best to worst. Ranked systems like Instant Runoff or Single Transferable Vote do not work so well when you have more options than voters, but what usually works quite well in this situation is Borda Count. In this system you assign a point value to each rank. Then you sum up the points of every elector for each option. Or in other words: Score voting, but you must award every possible score exactly once.
If all these systems sound too complicated and you want a system which is simple and easy to understand, then you can use Cumulative Voting. In cumulative voting, each voter has multiple votes. They can distribute their votes to different options in any way they like. The options with the most votes win. Although when you have a situation like this with many options and few voters, you might want to put a limit on how many votes a single voter can give to one option. Otherwise a single voter can almost guarantee the election of an option nobody else wants by pooling all their votes on it. Or in other words: Score voting, but the total amount of points you award must not exceed X.
However, no matter which counting system you choose, make sure that all voters are aware of how you are going to count before you start voting. Otherwise you might get accused of retroactively picking the counting method which makes your preference win.
Answer: I'd say to use Approval voting in the first round to whittle down the candidates to a smaller set of most-approved (maybe 12, if there are 6 winners?), then use Score voting in the final round after evaluating each finalist carefully.
This is an award, so you want to choose the 6 candidates who are the best overall, right?
 Cardinal/rated systems are perfect for this.  (You wouldn't want a proportional representation system, for instance.)
You also wouldn't want a ranked-choice system, where you have to rank all 65 candidates relative to each other.  This would be very difficult and time-consuming for each voter to do, and many of those relative rankings would be meaningless.  Psychology studies have shown that ratings produce better results than rankings anyway:

Many value researchers have assumed that rankings of values are more valid than ratings of values because rankings force participants to differentiate more incisively between similarly regarded values ... Results indicated that ratings tended to evidence greater validity than rankings within moderate and low-differentiating participants. In addition, the validity of ratings was greater than rankings overall.

Rating every candidate on a 0-10 scale could also be somewhat time-consuming, though, which is why I suggest using Approval in the first round.  You just Approve or Disapprove of each candidate, and the most-approved candidates move on to a more detailed runoff.
You could also use Combined Approval in the first round for a little more accuracy but not too much more complication (everyone votes Approve, Disapprove, or Neutral on each candidate).
The more complicated rated systems like STAR, Majority Judgment, etc are meant to discourage strategic exaggeration of votes.  If the voters are not voting for themselves, and aren't heavily invested in who wins, this kind of strategy shouldn't be a problem, so Score voting should work fine.

How many votes should be allowed in the first round to begin to whittle the pool but also not feel too restrictive?

Anything that limits the number of votes one can give out will lead to spoiler effects, vote-splitting, etc.  The best voting systems allow you to evaluate each candidate independently of each other, so these problems don't exist.


AVR Microcontroller board capacitor recommendations

Question: I am designing SAME70 board with space quite limited, using LFBGA-144 package. According to datasheet it is recommended to place decoupling capacitor nearest to the concerned pin. Due to space limitation I can't use separate capacitor for each line. Is it possible to use one consolidated capacitor for decoupling purpose? The capacitors recommended are MLCCs or tantalum. I'm not going to use tantalum and instead of MLCC I want to try out the new Low ESL NFM series that would reduce the number of these bulk capacitors by approximately 10 and in my case I'll use one instead of using 6. Is it possible that reducing the capacitors per pin affect the performance of my chip if the capacitance of the consolidated capacitor is equal to the sum of the capacitors recommended by the datasheet? I'd like to know beforehand if it would.
Thanks waiting for reply.
Comment: If you can place that one capacitor *as close to each individual gnd/power pair* as recommended... It is not just the capacitance, but (also) the trace impedance!
Comment: `Is it possible that reducing the capacitors per pin affect the performance of my chip` Do you you mean "Is there a risk that if I toggle too many IO pins at the same time the processor will crash?" If so then the answer is yes. The manufacturer guidelines should be considered a minimum requirement.
Comment: Look at the linked "Related" Questions on the right. I am sure your question is answered by them.
Answer: The absolute best approach is (as mentioned in the datasheet for the MCU) to place at least one decoupling cap as close as possible to one power pin. The capacitor should be as stated in the datasheet!
This is a way for the vendors to get insurance if the MCU misbehaves when doing something in some situation while having a particular configuration and while using a specific power source etc.
The further you get from this ideal situation, the more likely the MCU will fail under certain circumstances.
Theoretically, the changes that you suggest do not sound very good to me. For example, six 100nF capacitors is not the same as one 600nF. The reason for this is that the discharge curve is not proportional.
If you ask me if your suggested changes would work for majority of the use cases, then the answer is very likely. As with everything else dealing with the complex subject of electronics, the best thing is to test it out yourself.
Comment: Thanks all for replies. I want to at least decrease the number of capacitors to 3. Sum up 4 capacitors to make one. Have you checked NFM series? I want to see the NFM series capacitors' performance it has better frequency response than MLCC (as stated by Murata). Would it still pose a problem?
Answer: The idea behind using multiple capacitors is to reduce the impedance to the energy storage, the capacitors, as seen by the consuming chip. A capacitor has series resistance and inductance, inherent to the material and the package. By using multiple capacitors in parallel these unintended 'parasitic' resistances and inductances are effectively paralleled, meaning they are lowered. Thus the overall impedance seen by the consuming chip is lowered.
This is something a single "bigger" capacitor cannot provide as the series inductance will be higher. Your microcontroller, if it is small, might work well with a single large capacitor if it is close enough, but you might run into relability issues and electromagnetic compatibility engineering issues down the road if this is a professional product, try to stick to guidelines if possible here.
Answer: The NFM series are feedthru caps more normally used for supply filtering then decoupling.
If you are using a BGA package you probably have a buried power and ground plane so you can tie power and ground pins down to the appropriate plane with a local via per pin then you can somewhat afford to skimp a little (The planes have low inductance), 0402 or similar MLCCs under the package are common, with bulk cap from a 10u or so high K part anything up to an maybe 25mm away (as long as you can make the power plane area big enough).
You mention tants, which classically are low frequency parts which can be placed at some distance from the pins, it is the small ceramics that must be reasonably local to the power pins, and I would bet that that datasheet calls for both types, not one or the other. Personally I dislike tant caps, and would generally use on of the modern high K MLCCs instead (possibly with a 0.5 ohm series resistor to lower the Q), but watch the capacitance/voltage curve with high K parts in small packages....
Generally the approach is to over do the decoupling, but without running an (expensive) PDN model, that is the way to bet, the datasheet recommendations will work at the outer limits of temperature, with pathological applications, and with layout done by a monkey, you can reduce it but will want to do a lot of analysis and testing first.
Comment: According to Murata about NFM: This is the most suitable Low ESL capacitors for noise measurement and power decoupling of highspeed electrical devices.
Comment: The first page of any datasheet is written by the marketing department trolls, it can generally be safely ignored. Jellybean 0402 are just fine for this, feedthru caps are mostly an EMC thing not a decoupling thing.


"Норм чувак" meaning

Question: I had known "чувак," but recently ran into "норм чувак" and was a bit lost, and neither Multitran nor russki-mat.net helped. It sounds to me like some kind of stoner cri-du-coeur. Could someone explain it, especially "норм"?
Answer: Is it a Норм чувак (1) or Норм, чувак (2) (the latter has comma, which means addressing to чувак)?
In a first variant Норм is a short form of нормальный (acceptable, satisfactory, good), the second one is a short form of нормально (it is ok).
So, (1) may be translated as He is good dude in context of mentioning someone. And (2) may be translated as It is ok dude.
BUT! :) When someone chats with you via IM/SMS, then to shorten his/her phrase (or just due to the laziness) comma might be skipped and Норм, чувак may be written as Норм чувак. :) And you can guess this only from the context.
Hope I didn't confuse you. :)
Comment: First meaning never used in regular conversion, unless with `всё` - `Всё норм чувак` or `Да всё норм чувак` in some cases
Comment: @SAH If you with your friend were speaking about the third person, it is **(1)**, if you were speaking about your plans, events in the past, planned shopping and so on - it is **(2)**.
Answer: It's a contraction of нормально ("okay, alright"). The phrase means "it's OK dude".
It's the same phenomenon as "totesing" in English (contracting words so that you get "totes", "sis", "appreesh" etc.)

"Норм чувак" meaning


Change secondary menu id

Question: How can i change the secondary menu id, by default it has the same id like primary menu. My primary menu id is menu-main-navigation and when i print in twig the secondary menu like {{ page.secondary_menu }} it prints with same id.
Answer: No need to change the id, i am printing the region not the block, just change the block from secondary menu region and will print the new block.

Change secondary menu id


How can I tell if my parachute will work?

Question: In a recent (relatively, stopped playing for a while) update of KSP, drag is much more of an issue now. Prior to this update, the staging icon (the orange icon to the left of the screen while in flight) of the parachute would turn red only of the chute was destroyed in-flight for some reason. Now, it turns red if it is unsafe to deploy, OR if it's been destroyed. I had a rough take off, where I thought I was in thin enough air to prevent significant drag, but it turns out I wasn't, and my parachute icon turned red. Shortly after this, I achieved a successful orbit, and my craft is moving quite fast (as normal in orbit), so my parachute icon is still red. Even though I've seen this before on a good parachute (where the iron is red because of my speed), I'm not convinced that the chute is good enough to bring poor Jebidiah back home safely once I de-orbit. I don't have an engineer (nor can I EVA yet) to repack the chute in space if were to test it, so is there any other way I can tell if the chute is still good, and will be deployable later in the Kerbin atmosphere?
Comment: I can, but I'm more interested in learning the mechanics of the game. I haven't been able to find any notes on how the icon coloring works post-patch. I try not to savescum except as a last resort. I can't risk losing Jebidiah permanently -- those orange jumpsuits are too cool looking. :)
Comment: can you save scum?
Answer: The parachute icon will turn red if it is unsafe to deploy. You can also do it by speed but I don't have the exact safe m/s it is to deploy, I think it's around 250 m/s.
Quote from the wiki:

Changes were made to the staging icons in version 1.0.5.
The staging background colour now indicates whether or not it is safe to deploy the parachute, being light grey when safe to deploy or at rest, a yellow-green colour to indicate that deployment may be risky (at around 250 m/s on Kerbin for main parachutes, nearly twice this speed for drogues) and dark red at any higher speed.
The foreground colour (i.e. the colour of the parachute itself) indicates the state of the parachute, starting at white (unstaged/undeployed) and running through cyan (released but insufficient pressure to semi-deploy), yellow (semi-deployed), green (fully deployed) and bright red (destroyed).

Here is the wiki link with more info on parachutes.
Comment: Ah, not sure how I missed that... perhaps I hadn't looked again since after 1.0.5. The red background means its unsafe to deploy, but the red parachute means its destroyed. That definitely answers the question. Thanks!
Answer: Actually it should be as simple as checking whether there's a button 'Disarm Chute' in parachute context menu.

If you can disarm it, then you can (and should) disarm it in-orbit and then arm it after de-orbit burn when you get down to subsonic speeds.
If your chute is armed & deployed (no disarm button) then it will definitely be destroyed by 'aerodynamic forces and heat' during re-entry.


What does the 26/6 mean in a pump rating?

Question: I've been told I need a 25/6 rated circulating pump for the central heating. What doe these numbers mean exactly. I want to know because I discovered my existing pump is rated for a 6m head.
Answer: It has been a few years since I looked at specs on one but the two numbers are identified as Q/H or (m3/h by m).  (m = meters)
To my understanding Q is volume of flow in m³/h (25), so how many cubic meters of liquid can flow in a hour period.
With H is delivery head in m (height) which is the height you can pump a liquid to straight up.
These are the basic description for standard values.  In an exact case to determine what values are needed in a specific application would be based on all the variables such as pipe sizes in the entire system, desired pressures, suction tank/source levels and more.
Comment: thanks - have you any idea why so many are sold as 25/6 but there seems to be no other ratings ( that I can see visible in the ads).
Comment: I would only render a guess that common applications for most part are standardized or have regulation limits.  On a quick look I see a few variations.


Masters in Germany in Engineering

Question: I am new here and am trying to find some answers. I have finished my BEng Hons in Mechanical and PowerPlant Systems from UK. During my studies I had to go through grievance and the depression for 2 years due to the death of my grandparents in consecutive years. This affected me and my grades very badly. I had to undergo counselling at university. I even had applied for Mitigating Circumstances to do my exams. Now, I have applied for Masters in Germany. I have sent 9 applications and got 7 rejected. And am waiting on reply from the 2. I have lost hope and I have not tried to explain why my grades were low. My grade is 3 according to uni-assist which doesn't open doors for admissions. But I want to do masters in germany and already have 1 year work experience. Will be having 2years of work experience when i apply for SS2017. Is there anyway I could compensate for my grade? And will the work experience be of any good? And do they actually consider explanation for bad grades? if so how to do it? Please help.
Answer: Why did you not explain your circumstances? I understand that you want to avoid the topic and do not want to justify your bad grades with something personal. But in your case, especially considering depression, I think that mentioning the reason for your low grades should rather help than damage your case. The key is to be honest, reflect on your past and give them a reason to let you in, e.g. you have overcome your depression and want to start over in your masters.
I don't think work experience matters much to be honest. Engineering in german universities is rather on the theoretical side as far as I can tell.
Comment: I have mentioned it in my motivation letter but only briefly. Please do read. "My grades in my Bachelor's degree studies haven't been up to my expectations. I have been through a couple of personal problems due to which I had to undergo counselling at the university. I fell short of my expectations but I didn't give up. I finished my Bachelor's with the help of my professors and support staff at university. I am now more than determined to prove myself with a good master's degree thereby enhancing my skill set and knowledge." I was not aware if they'd accept it.  I am not sure of the procedure
Comment: lack of space. And could you be kind enough to guide me if there is such process? or do I just have to write an additional letter to explain it? And also do I have to provide any additional documents to support it?
Comment: Actually, your phrasing is pretty good and I believe that this would help. As far as I know the motivation letter should be enough. But keep in mind that if the masters program has a N.C. (numerus clausus) that you didn't achieve, they will probably reject you no matter how good your motivation letter is.
Comment: yeah, i think i have applied for NC programmes. Maybe i should look for ones with open admission. It is just hard to find anything with my current grades. Any suggestions on how to write a good letter of motivation?
Comment: I'm by no means an expert in motivation letters, but maybe these tips help: Keep it short (a page or less). Avoid saying things that are obvious ("I am motivated" -- of course you are! That's why you are writing the letter). Talk about what fascinates you about your subject and why you want to keep going.

I wish you good luck with your applications!

Masters in Germany in Engineering


Ways of cloning a USB key without use of dd?

Question: I am trying to clone a bootable USB key. Obviously dd would to the trick nicely, but since the actual size of the files on my drive is ~15MB I end up waiting for a bunch of minutes while dd copies empty blocks to my 4GB USB key.
Is anyone aware of a solution that does this nicely (e.g., copy all files, clone MBR) without the wait of copying empty blocks?
Answer: dd takes a -count command line that lets you specify how many blocks to copy.
http://linux.die.net/man/1/dd


How to make everything except the text transparent?

Question: How to make everything except the text transparent?
Comment: Here is a link that may give you some ideas regarding how to implement transparency affecting the background, but not the frame borders -- "*how to get transparent window in GNU Emacs on OSX*":  https://stackoverflow.com/a/21949449/2112489
Comment: I don't think this is possible.  You can control the transparency of a frame as a whole, but I don't think you can control the elements of that frame.
Answer: I do not know for sure if the text becomes transparent, but this is what I use and I think works pretty well. However, if your font color is white, and you are reading a pdf with a white background color, even non-transparent text is going to be pretty hard to read.
(setq transparency_level 0)
(defun my:change_transparency ()
  "Toggles transparency of Emacs between 3 settings (none, mild, moderate)."
  (interactive)
  (if (equal transparency_level 0)
      (progn (set-frame-parameter (selected-frame) 'alpha '(75 . 85))
         (setq transparency_level 1))
    (if (equal transparency_level 1)
    (progn (set-frame-parameter (selected-frame) 'alpha '(50 . 85))
           (setq transparency_level 2))
      (if (equal transparency_level 2)
      (progn (set-frame-parameter (selected-frame) 'alpha '(100 . 85))
         (setq transparency_level 0)))
      )))
(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c t") 'my:change_transparency)

If you add the code above to your init.el file or equivalent, you can use C-c t to toggle between transparency levels. If you think the transparency is too low, you can change the number 50 above to 30, for example, and that will make the frame more transparent.
I use this when I am writing things in emacs and need to read some pdf or website. This way I do not need to alt-tab. I think it works pretty well, hope it helps!
Edit 1:
Here is a screenshot of it in action.

Edit 2:
When setting the emacs transparency there are two numbers. The first is the transparency of emacs when it is active, and the second is when it is inactive (like when you alt-tab to another application).
The screenshot below shows an Emacs that is inactive, notice that it is still transparent (not much), and you can see my calendar application open in the background. Emacs is inactive because I changed my focus to the pdf reader.
Comment: The first number is the transparency of the emacs when it is active, that is, when it is the "top most" window. The second number is the transparency when emacs is inactive. For example, if you alt-tab from emacs to another application, say a browser, and the browser window is on one side of the screen, then you would see emacs on the background, and it would be transparent. How transparent? That's the second number.
Comment: As I am not sure if the transparency changes depending on the Emacs built, this is the one I use https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport/releases
Comment: What do the two numbers mean in `'alpha '(75 . 85)`? The examples I have seen always set them to the same number, and it affects the whole Emacs (including the text).
Comment: @HappyFace Emacs is like that because I make it "borderless fullscreen". It is like a fullscreen app, but does not actually move the application to another desktop. I wrote something awhile ago on how to achieve that with Mac (https://www.guilhermesalome.com/posts/making-emacs-look-good.html).
Comment: Is Emacs open on top of a fullscreen app in your screenshot? Or have you hidden the top macOS menubar?


How can I grow ginger in my backyard?

Question: I have never grown ginger and want to try to in my raised beds in my backyard.  I don't have ginger seeds to grow from but can I cut sections of ginger I buy from the store and grow it?  Any other guidelines to how to start growing ginger would be appreciated such as seasons to start "seeding" and harvesting would be appreciated. I am in USDA Hardiness Zone 9b
Comment: I have a few types of ginger in my yard, the rhizomes/roots  root readily making it almost invasive ( in the right climate).
Answer: You should really wait till late winter (in pots if its not warm enough outdoors) or spring time to plant, but assuming it's ginger root you're after, then yes, you can buy it from the grocery store - select pieces which look plump, with as many 'eyes' as you can find. Soak them overnight, then either cut them up, making sure there's an eye in each piece (that's where growth comes from), or plant whole. They like free draining yet moisture retaining, fairly rich soil, and a sheltered spot with dappled sunlight - they wilt in direct sun. They don't like frost, and the warmer your climate, the better your harvest. Improve the soil you're planting into by adding composted materials beforehand. More info here http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-ginger.html

How can I grow ginger in my backyard?


How can I cancel a vote down?

Question: Moments ago I mistakenly voted a question down, I'd like to undo that action but can't find out how. If I press the up vote button the voting count goes up by two units (which makes sense) but what I need is something like cancel vote. Thanks.
Comment: Click the down vote arrow again.
Comment: If I click the down vote again I get the message: "You last voted on this question 1 hour ago. Your vote is now locked in unless this question is edited". Radu explains the reasons below. Thanks to whomever moved the question to Meta, I wasn't aware of its existence.
Comment: click it again.
Answer: You can cancel a downvote or upvote only a few seconds after your vote by clicking the downvote or upvote sign again. If more then a few seconds have been past, you can't cancel your vote, only if that question/answer was edited.
So, if you can't cancel your vote anymore, this is the only possibility: find a way to edit somehow that question/answer. If your edit will be accepted, after you can retreat your vote.
Answer: Just click the downvote sign again and it should remove the downvote. The same works for upvote button.

How can I cancel a vote down?


Should I leave my full time job to finish school quicker?

Question: I currently have a well paying full time job as a web developer, I am also currently going to college part time taking about 6 credits per semester. At this rate it will take me much longer to finish school than if I were to attend school full time.
Should I leave work to finish school quicker? I feel like I am trapped between school and work and I would like to finish school sooner rather than later.
I receive job offers quite frequently so I'm not worried about finding a new job once I graduate. If I do decide to leave work, I plan on taking out a loan for my expenses. Thanks.
Comment: What will your degree be in?  Do you expect to get a significantly better job than what you have with a degree? Lots of successful programmers do not have degrees as work experience often is weighed more heavily for experienced roles.
Comment: What country do you live in?
Comment: My degree will be in Computer Science, as a web developer, my entry level salary (with my experience in NYC) will be around 85K.
Comment: I would check with recruiters and see how much a degree will actually help. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for investing in yourself, but you may find other ways to further your career that don;t involve as much time and money.
Comment: @AndrewPuig - how much do you make now without the degree? How long would it take you to finish the degree if you keep working vs if you stop working?
Comment: tbqh your degree might not be very useful by itself. if you have the skills, you might consider not finishing school. i've worked at plenty of software companies, and not a single one cares about degrees. obviously, this depends on the area and the company (i have no experience in NY). some software companies DO care about this, but i can't imagine there are many.
Comment: How does this relate to personal finance and money?
Comment: As written, there doesn't seem to be much of a personal finance question here.  If you quit your job, how much income will you lose for the period that you are in school?  Will your expenses increase?  Will you have debts?  What will you gain from going to school full time?  If you left school and worked full time, how much income would you gain from the added experience?
Comment: "I would like to finish school sooner rather than later" - why?
Answer: I was working 40 hours and taking 12-15 credit hours per semester while I was in school, so maybe the first step is to see if you can handle an increased load.
Another issue to look at is when your school is scheduled to offer each of the classes needed to graduate. I found that 24 credits worth of classes were available in a single semester that would cut a year off the time to graduation given the class schedule when those classes would be offered again. (Not all classes were offered every semester.) Given that I only had to take 17 weeks away from work, it was an easier decision to load up on classes for a single semester and get another job after that sprint.
The right answer for you might be a combination of those things. Find a place that will let you move to part time or come back after a leave of absence for a heavier semester of school. By continuing to work through school, I was able to graduate with no debt. This allowed me to upgrade my housing situation just the year after I graduated, and I was able to upgrade one of my cars the year after that.
Debt is just fine when used appropriately and with discipline, and especially when there are no other options, but delaying gratification and avoiding debt will generally speed you on your path to the real goal of financial independence.
Answer: Information Technology differs from many other professional industries in that having a college degree matters most for getting your first job, and then becomes less important as you get further into your career. This doesn't mean having the degree isn't worth it- some companies require it, some companies pay more if you have it, most companies prefer it, and it will probably make you a better developer. However, in your case, since you already have a solid job as a Web Developer, the experience you currently have (along with references from your current employer) will matter much more than the degree when applying for future jobs.
I realize that you aren't asking if you should get a degree, but whether it makes financial sense to get your degree sooner. IMHO, since you already have a "well paying job" and could land another one if you wish, there probably isn't much advantage to getting the degree sooner. The exception to this is if you're confident that you could make significantly more once you have completed the degree. For example, if you currently make $15/hr and would jump up to $40/hr when you get the degree, then that would be a pretty good candidate for taking out loans and getting it done ASAP.
Comment: This is a somewhat dangerous statement. A college degree isn't a requirement, and experience counts a lot, true, but the combination has real synergy. You can explain how the job helped you put the theory in perspective, making the classes more relevant.
Comment: @MSalters - Yeah, I could have phrased that better. I just edited it. Thx for pointing it out.
Answer:
If I do decide to leave work, I plan on taking out a loan for my expenses.

This makes me say that no, you shouldn't leave work.  Find other part-time work, or try and rearrange your schedule to make more time for school, but don't take on student loans if you don't have to.  Here's my reasons why:

You generally take out more than you need (take extra classes, buy new books instead of used, use borrowed money for school and spend cash on "fun" stuff, etc.)
You don't "feel the pain" of borrowing money until it's too late to change your mind (if you started paying back loans sooner you might decide not to borrow any more, and there's nothing you can do to change it, unlike selling a car or house that you are tired of making payments on)
They are not bankruptable - the only way to get out of them is to die
They are generally amortized over up to 30 years, so you are encouraged to keep them around way too long
When you do get a job after college you are tempted to increase your lifestyle (new cars, house, etc.) instead of paying off student loan debt.
Comment: I generally agree with this answer.  You'd be much better in scaling back on hours at work but maintaining at least enough of the job to bring in the income you need to pay your expenses including school tuition and books.  If you could scale back to 20 hours per week at your job while you increase to 12 hours per semester at school, you'll finish school quickly and without the student loan burden.  You'll need to run the numbers with your school, but at some schools 12+ hours is 'full time' and the tuition cost per semester can be lower than taking 11 hours and paying the hourly rate.
Answer: As you have noticed from people's many questions, there is not enough information in the question to even make a guess. For some people it makes sense to drop out and finish school quickly, for others the reverse is true.  Instead of focusing on my guess, I will outline the things you should think about
Pros of staying at work

No debt and you get an income throughout the time you are in school.  This may or may not be a big deal depending on your projected income increase and tuition/living costs. You mention NYC, which sounds like very high costs to me, and you mention an $85K salary, which does not sound like a ton of money, but I don't know your current salary, so I don't have a baseline.  Consider living in a cheaper location or attending a cheaper school if these are possible.
Your career and experience will advance due to your work experience.  In a field like computer science, work experience can enhance your resume as fast as or faster than a degree.  Are you talking about an undergraduate degree?  If so, maybe the degree is more important.  Masters and above?  Not so clear.
Reduced risk.  Your current career path and education are a "bird in the hand."  By staying the course you don't expose yourself to the possibility of unemployment with student loans staring you down.

Pros of quitting and going to school full time

By not dividing your attention, you may do better at school.  There is a good chance right now you are doing a poor job at both school and work.  You will need to answer this for yourself.
Finish school earlier and start with the higher paying job sooner.  The value of this depends on your jump in salary due to the degree.  Notice that if the job market is good the year you come out, this will work out.  If not, you will be in an unfortunate place.  So there is additional risk here, as well as upside.
When you get a job you will be able to focus on it and do a better job, which will help advance your career.

If you are talking about an undergraduate degree, I'd will venture a guess that your current job isn't that great and your degree will make a big difference. I would quit my job in that case if I were you.  If we are talking about an advanced degree (just my guess) you should probably keep your job.
Right now you work full time and go to school part time.  You have suggested dropping work completely and going to school full time.  I didn't see you consider going to school full time and working part time.  That's what I did and it worked out quite well (and I was able to end up with no debt). Depending on your capacity and the characteristics of your job or potential part-time jobs this could work out well for you.
Answer: Tl;dr
You say

I currently have a well paying full time job

and

I receive job offers quite frequently

So, I fail to understand why you want to go back to school.

Slightly longer explanation:  some countries will  may graduates more than non-grads, doctorates more than grads, but it is not a huge difference, and reduces with time. You must offset against that the cost of obtaining qualifications, both in money and in time.
If it costs $50k to go to college to get a qualification that pays $5k extra, if it worth it, if you expect to be promoted to a higher pay grade, is it worth it?
Bear in mind that, if you stop studying, you will have a lot of free time for side gigs, which very are easy to pick up for web developers, or to start your won company, or even work on your own "next FaceBook" project. I currently work 40 hours & side-gig about 30. When side-gig (which is much more fun) income exceeds income from day job, I will drop my day job).
Also, once you have a degree, high school qualifications cease to be important. And once you have a few years experience in industry, your degree diminishes in importance. If I am recruiting someone with as little as 3 years experience, I don't really care what degree, if any, they have. I want to know what they have done in the real world.
Btw, I think that question might have been equally well, possibly better, asked on https://workplace.stackexchange.com/


Slices and aquisition of fMRI

Question: Is a slice obtained with functional MRI (fMRI) always 3-dimensional, i.e., x-y-z? I thought that a typical fMRI scan's total imaged volume would be 4D, i.e., made up of 3D slices plus time.
Comment: The sub-question 2 has just been answered on Bio.SE (http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/34269/oxygenated-hemoglobin-in-mri - coincidence or what!) and I think it should not be cross-posted here. Could you perhaps elaborate more on subquestion #1 (i.e., remove subquestion 2 and focus on #1?)?
Answer: I will focus on question #1:
Analysis of MRI scans is typically done using voxels (Fig. 1). Voxels have a volume defined by three dimensions (length, width and depth).

Voxel analysis. Source: Philips
The slice thickness plus the 2D in-plane resolution (pixel size) yields the voxel size. The time to scan a slice can be regarded to be negligible. Making a scan consisting of multiple slices takes time. Hence, the time dimension is not directly relevant for voxel size. Practically, voxel size depends mostly on slice size, as well as the capacity of the scanner. More Tesla's makes smaller voxels possible.
Comment: Thank you for the explanation. So a voxel is a 3D pixel and a whole fMRI volume consists of voxels + time which makes it 4D. But does your answer imply that a slice is also 3D because a slice consists of voxels or is it indeed 4D with considering time?
Comment: A slice can be considered to be made at once. Multiple slices takes time. in the end making one slice also takes time, but negligibly so. i have adapted my answer
Comment: I mean the time in a timeseries, i.e. imaging different volumes in sequences. Nevertheless, a slice is in 3D, right?
Comment: Yes, slice is 3D

Slices and aquisition of fMRI


When to leave the 20 point?

Question: I'm relatively new to backgammon, and something I often struggle with is deciding when to leave the 20 point once I've made it. Furthermore, I also sometimes struggle with whether or not to leave the 13 point before or after the 20 point. Are there any rules of thumb which can help guide my decision when it isn't immediately obvious?
Comment: Are you ahead or behind? When you are ahead clear the 20 point first; when behind clear the 13 point first as you must often slow yourself down to setup a back-game.
Comment: That makes sense, and now that you mention it I realize that I have been instinctively doing something similar so I can begin the race while ahead, or prolonging the start of the race while behind. I think your comment is the start to a good answer...
Comment: I assume you are talking about leaving the 20 with one checker. In such case, Try to leave when ahead in race AND when your opponents home board and/or outfield attackers are on decline. You need to grasp the gravity of the situation from all these aspects before you make such drastic decision. "Is my home board going to be weaker on the next roll then it is now", "is my opponent's home board going to be weaker or stronger the next roll", "is my opponent's outfield attacking checkers/points going to be more or less on the next roll" - these are the questions you need to ask yourself.
Comment: @Skytten - actually, by "once I've made it" I meant when I have two checkers on it. But good points for when it's just one.
Answer: The question is more generally about when to leave pieces in your opponents home board.  If those pieces are safe, you can theoretically leave them there until all of your other pieces are in your home board.  The question is, should you?  The advantage of leaving these pieces is threefold.

It forces your opponent to play safe when bringing pieces towards or into their home board, as you have a credible counterattack sitting there.  Without that, they can take a much looser approach to their home board and you can only punish them if they hit one of your pieces.
It prevents them from completely blocking their home board, meaning you can always (theoretically) bear on.
It delays the beginning of the pure race.

The disadvantages are:

Those pieces can be much harder to get to your home board.  This is much more of a consideration if the pieces are sitting on the 24 point rather than the 20 point, as it's very easy for pieces on the 24 point to get stuck.
You can be forced to make a disadvantageous move if those are the only pieces not in your home board.
It delays the beginning of the pure race (this is a downside if you are ahead as it gives your opponent more chances to turn the game around).

In the case where you have already moved both pieces to the 20 point, disadvantage #1 is less of a concern.  Consequently, whether you want to move these pieces as opposed to others mostly boils down to whether you are ahead or behind: move them if you are ahead so that you can start the pure race earlier (which solidifies your lead) and leave them if you are behind to try to disrupt/hit your opponent and gain an advantage.
Necessary caveat: all of this depends on both the rolls you make and the situation on the board.  If you have a roll that lets you safely advance pieces from one of these positions but not the other, this can force your hand.  Additionally, if you can hit a piece in your opponents home or outer board, that should take extremely high strategic priority.

When to leave the 20 point?


Does the themostat have anything with the A/C working then not working

Question: Does the thermostat have anything to do with the A/C working then not working? I was told it did, but it makes no sense to me. When the temperature gauge works, the A/C does, when it does not the A/C does not?
Comment: In terms of function no, but they could be supplied from the same circuit or fuse...
Comment: Welcome to the site ... is there anyway you could clarify your question? As it's written, it's very confusing.
Answer: Well, the thermostat allows the passage of water to the radiator when the water in the motor hits the maximum temperature of the thermostat. Then, let flow the hot water through the radiator and the cold water will flow back to the motor.
When you turn on the A/C, the motor works a little bit harder, that means that the temperature is going to increase, doing the cycle of the thermostat shorter.
EDIT
Does not have to do with the A/C in the way that you explain.


Is Patent US5930362 weak or obvious?

Question: Is Patent us5930362 weak because it has only 2 independent claims that specifically reference DH. Could this patent be circumvented by computing something that is not specifically DH but could be transformed into DH in the consumer node - for example, flip every 3rd bit; or split it into two parts. This patent is a demonstration of the sort of general operations that are taught in undergraduate computer science classes. When a general operation is specifically applied to a particular technology field, does it qualify for a patent?
Answer: I would agree that taking the plain meaning of the claim wording, it is DH specific. If calculating DH with a bit somewhere flipped  requires first: a) calculate DH, then b) flip a bit, then I would say you have calculated DH in the process and fulfilled that claim requirement. For the storing step, I imagine most people would think storing a value X as the compliment of X and upon retreival restoring it to X is equal to storing X. If your application does not require DH for interoperability you could use something else. Or just do not precompute a chunk of them.
Regarding the second part of the question, there are many people who would not see applying a known technique to a new application as patentable and many that would.  There is no bright line and like many things in patenting, it depends. It is case by case, examiner by examiner and judge by judge.
Answer: I think here the doctrine of equivalents needs to be kept in mind. Under the doctrine of equivalents, a patent claim can be read to cover not only what is literally specified in the claim proper, but also "reasonable equivalents thereof".
With that in mind, let's consider your proposed workarounds. First, changing the bit pattern in some predictable fashion so the stored bit pattern differs from what was computed, but the computed pattern can later be restored.
In my opinion, this should be considered equivalent. Just for example, most disk drives use some sort of RLL encoding, in which N bits of input actually expand to M bits stored on disk (M>N) with some specified limitations on the bit patterns (basically that you have bit transitions at some minimum interval). As such, the simple process of (for example) storing and retrieving the value 0 on a disk drive involves changing the original bit pattern to some other bit pattern, in which the pattern stored on disk will have at least some bits set. As such, flipping some bits is not substantially different from what we expect to happen in even the most straightforward implementation of the patent precisely as written.
The same basic idea applies to splitting the data up and later combining it. The patent specifies storage in a database. In October 1996 (priority date of the patent) a person of ordinary skill in the art would have understood that storing data in a database could include using such technologies as disk striping or other forms of RAID that split the data up, store pieces on separate disks, and later combine those pieces back into a single stream.
For that matter, using RAID 5, you'd get both effects at once -- given N disks in RAID 5, the original data is split between N-1 disks, and the Nth disk stores the XOR of the other disks. If any one disk fails, the original data can be retrieved from the remaining N-1 disks. Even without a failure, the data would be split up and then put back together during retrieval, and if one of the other disks had failed, the last part of the data is created by XORing the available data together, so the bits produced as output are not (necessarily) the same as what is stored on any disk.
Bottom line: a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention would have recognized both of your proposed workarounds as falling within the scope of the claims. In fact, after rereading what I've written, I'm half-tempted to do some editing to remove reference to the doctrine of equivalents -- the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that both your proposed workarounds would probably qualify as literal infringement. There's probably no need to involve the doctrine of equivalents at all.

Is Patent US5930362 weak or obvious?


How can we apply smoke and sanity testing concepts in real testing?

Question: I want to apply smoke testing and sanity testing to running testing projects. So any one can help me by proper plan using which I can apply real smoke and sanity testing professionally as QA.
Answer: Smoke testing is less about QA than about saving time.  The term comes from the electronics business: you plug your new device into a power outlet and watch whether it starts to smoke.  If it does, there is no point in testing any further.
The analogy for software could be as simple as checking whether the program crashes as soon as you start it.  More typically, a software smoke test involves trying out some essential functions that need to work before you any other testing is possible.
Smoke testing is most valuable when you have a large team consuming a build and a history of poor-quality builds. You don't want a large team trying out a new build if the software is fundamentally broken.  If the team is small, or if builds tend to not have serious regressions in fundamental features, smoke-testing may be a waste of time.
Have said all that, if you need a smoke test, you must already know what kinds of fundamental features need to work, and so it's just a matter of deciding how to test those features.  A smoke test could be as simple as a set of written instructions, or an automated test suite, or both.


Ears as whiskers?

Question: In this question someone suggested that the classic 'elf' ear could evolve for the same use as whiskers. How (un)realistic is this idea. Lets assume that the humanoid species that evolved these ears evolved in jungles. Would long ears be a reasonable tool for whisker use?
Answer: To add to SJuan76 answer, cats are animals that are frequently crawling into holes and tight areas in order to catch rats and the like. The other functionnality of whiskers is to check if the cat's body will be able to pass through a tight space before the entire cat engage.
To make use of that functionnality, human ears would need to be as large as shoulders. But even then, we humans can try to pass through a tight spot and make a step backward if we don't fit, since we don't have a long body behind us to manoeuver. Plus, if we don't fit, we can just turn and side step our way.
So half the usage of whiskers is lost to humans. Seems pretty unrealistic to me. If you combine the tight space navigation with the bad view complement, long whisker-ears seem more usefull to dwarves than elves.
Answer: The main issue with the idea is that, for whiskers to be useful, you need that your sight is not. Given that the eyes give way more information than whiskers, it seems like a great leap backwards.
Whiskers are useful only when visibility is low or impossible (cats, dogs and the like have horrible vision); humans would lose the advantages of superior sight in those situations so they would avoid them (lighting fires at night, for example). And, once the humans can use sight, whiskers become useless.
Additionally, two issues with "ears as whiskers" design:

Ears are way heavier than whiskers. They are also sensitive, and can be infected. Not something you want to use to check if the floor is full of broken glass.
Ears are located in the middle of the head, so it is highly probable that you will "feel" threats with your face before you can tell them with your ears. Note that animal whiskers are placed as forward as possible.
Comment: I certainly wouldn't call at least cats' vision "horrible". Different from that of humans, yes; horrible, no.

Ears as whiskers?


Can you do something with a sandbox before it's refreshed?

Question: We are using an installed package with requires the creation of a catchall organisation, and for the id of that organisation to be added to custom settings. If that's not done then none of the contacts are copied on a partial refresh. Is it possible to create that organisation and change the settings before the refresh runs?
Answer: The sandbox refresh mechanism creates a new org, optionally copies some or all data without running triggers, workflow rules, or processes, then optionally runs a SandboxPostCopy script. If you want to create or update data, this is the interface you would use. I'm not sure exactly what behavior you're seeing versus what you expect, but during the copy process, the SandboxPostCopy interface is the earliest opportunity you have to do anything with your sandbox, which will occur after everything else has happened but before you get to use the sandbox for the first time.
Comment: Thanks, I thought the answer was "no", but I wanted to see if anyone new a workaround.


How to get all historic changes of a state variable in a smart contract?

Question: Blockchains are known to be immutable because all transactions of cryptocurrencies and state (data) changes.  However, looking at ethscan does not provide any information on the output of a smart contract function that results in a state change.  Is there a way to monitor the historic values of a state and if so how to do so?
Comment: I think this post may answer your question: https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/10328/how-to-trace-state-of-transactions-in-ethereum
Answer: There's a third method. You can scan the chain looking for transactions on the contract and querying the state of that variable at each transaction of interest. I'm not saying it's easy--in fact, it's exceptionally difficult given the way the data is stored--but you could do it. I call this idea "off-chain monitoring" of smart contracts.
Comment: Thank you so much for your answer. Does this "off-chain monitoring" method imply that in order to query a state's value after the 10th change transaction, you have to start from the first transaction on till you get to the 10th? In other words, you replay the methods that modified the state value?
Comment: My understanding is that the state of the contract is something that happens after all transactions are executed and is stored in memory of nodes.
Answer: There are two ways you could potentially track how a state vatiable has changed over time:
1- The contract has been developed so that when said variable is modified its previous state is added to an array which contains all previous states.
2- the contract has been developed so when the state variable is modified it fires an Event that logs said transaction.
Here's more info about how to retrieve the logs. How can I view event logs for an ethereum contract?
Both depend on the developer of the contract caring for keeping track of previous values either by storing them or logging it.
Comment: Thank you so much for your answer. However, it seems to me that the contract needs to be designed in a way to keep track of changes. Otherwise, there's no way for someone to, say, spoof my contract's state history that I don't have any logs for.  Is that right?
Comment: What I'm trying to say is that there's no way for someone (not even the developer/owner of the contract) to access the history of a state variable (what values it has had over time) if the developer of the contract didn't code for that (in the form of logs or some kind of internal logic).
Comment: Does this make smart contracts "mutable" since there's no capability to verify the states? Also, given the method invocation history which includes input variables, I could potentially retrieve historical value of each transaction following the stack trace?
Comment: Immutability of a smart contract refers to the fact that you can't modify the contract once deployed. If you didn't code functions that allow modifying a particular state variable, said variable will also become immutable.
Answer: To add to @pabloruiz55 's answer, I wanted to suggest yet another alternative that I think is better than storing an array, as it is O(1) in the number of historical updates: use a backwards linked list of ipfs hashes. Rather than storing the state variable itself on the smart contract, you store it on ipfs and then put it's hash in the smart contract. In addition to storing the content of the state variable on the ipfs file, you also store the hash of the previous ipfs state file in the next ipfs file. That way, you only need to store the hash of the most recent state variable on the smart contract, but you can recursively recover all of the previous states simply by querying that backwards linked list (or hash chain) that is stored off-chain on ipfs. The sequence of states stored off chain is cryptographically guaranteeed to have the same order as the real history of hashes that were pushed to the blockchain.


Purpose of the question tag

Question: Does anyone think the tag of question is appropriate? Is it there for folks to use when they can't think of a category or are too lazy to look for an existing one that matches? I don't know any other SE sites that do this.
Answer: This is a carry over from the social sound design days when half of the site was a third party site that didn't just ask questions.  Presumably idea and possibly critique fall in to the same category, though to an extent we still allow critiques, so idea would be more of a questionable tag.  Either way, I've removed question from all of the questions it was used on and have removed the tag.  I did the same for not-a-question which was in the same boat (and locked the relevant posts as historically significant).

Purpose of the question tag


How can I ensure that a CD sold by a brokerage is FDIC protected?

Question: I was told by my broker that the amount of money I invest would be spread across multiple banks (which are FDIC insured) so that at each bank the amount would not exceed $250K.
Is this how CDs offered by brokerage houses (that are not themselves FDIC insured) offer protection?
Answer: I would say "yes" to your question.  CD's purchased from a bank on your behalf by your broker will be FDIC insured and safe.  However, be aware that no one is examining the broker except you to ensure that each CD is actually purchased from an FDIC insured bank.  Don't trust them blindly.
See risks mentioned by the FDIC on the subject
Remember, the broker should not originate the CD, so the broker's lack of FDIC protection is irrelevant.  The job of a broker is to buy things on your behalf.  If your broker does that appropriately and sticks with FDIC insured CD's, you will be insured.
Given the risks and gotchas mentioned in the link, buying directly from a bank instead of through your broker still sounds like good advice to me but you can make your own decision based on your level of trust and aversion to inconvenience.
Answer: If you buy a CD through a brokerage, the trade confirmation will indicate whether the CDs is FDIC insured. Unless you have authorized the broker (in writing) to exercise discretion in your account, meaning they can act in your account without contacting you first, they must contact you and discuss the specific investment with you before buying it. If they have misled you and the CD is not actually FDIC insured, you have a right to ask them to reverse the transaction.
Keep in mind that brokerages are also required to insure the assets in your account which they hold on their balance sheets (cash, bonds, stocks, mutual funds, but not commodities). This is provided by SIPC, the equivalent of FDIC in the brokerage world. Most large brokerages also insure you beyond the SIPC minimum. Keep in mind, unlike FDIC, you're not insured against market risk, only against a bankruptcy of the brokerage. Also, SIPC is funded by the securities industry, not by the US Government.
Answer: The broker may be purchasing the CDs through a CDARS participant financial institution.  You can bypass your broker and go to a CDARS participant FI yourself.  CDARS is a network of financial institutions that spread your deposit across multiple FIs, guaranteeing your FDIC coverage.  The advantage is you have a single point of contact - your chosen financial institution.  You do not have to have any contact with the other FIs where your deposit may be spread.
In fact, on your statements or online banking it will appear as if your large CD is all with your chosen FI.  The spreading will happen behind the scenes.  A local participating institution can help explain this program to you.
Answer: This:
I was told by my broker that the amount of money I invest would be spread across multiple banks (which are FDIC insured) so that at each bank the amount would not exceed $250K.
Has nothing to do with this:
Is this how CDs offered by brokerage houses (that are not themselves FDIC insured) offer protection?
If you want a CD, get the CD from a bank itself.


How does Cookie Clicker's stock market work?

Question: Now there's the new stock market mini game.
I don't know what I'm doing. Dollars? We've never had dollars before in Cookie Clicker.
How does it work?
Answer: Value of one dollar
$1 is one second of the highest cps you achieved in the game.
Suppose you have at most had 1,500 cookies per second. $5 would be 7,500 cookies.
Using stonks to make money
The stock market contains a number of variables fluctuating randomly. You could invest in those that have low prices in the hope that the prices increase. You can invest into stocks to increase your cookie count more rapidly than otherwise possible due to the above.
Let's say you are about to increase that 1,500 cps to 3,000 cps, doubling it. You have 200,000 cookies in the cookie jar, and this increase costs you 100,000. Let's say you spend that remaining 100,000 cookies on dollars, earning you $66 (and leaving c1,000 in the jar). You invest your $66. There are 20% brokerage fees, so you end up with $55 of stock.
If you then immediately sell your stock, that $55 is now worth c165,000. You have just made 66,000 cookies in the stock market.
Details of random fluctuation
The details of such can be found on the wiki at https://cookieclicker.fandom.com/wiki/Stock_Market#Market_Behavior.
There are six modes, slow/fast rise/fall, chaotic, and stable. Each randomly lasts between 1 and 1,000 minutes.
The stocks you want to hold for a bit are typically those in slow rise mode. Fast rise is very unstable and tends to last only about 30 minutes, what with every minute having a 3% chance of flipping to fast fall.
After fast rise/fast fall ends normally, chaotic's chance is upped to 70%. Otherwise, the probabilities are:
<code>Stable: 30%
Slow Rise/fall: 20%
Fast Rise/fall: 10%
Chaotic: 10%
</code>
Simple Strategy #1: Penny stocks
Due to this fact, our low index stonks tend to actually have a rather bleak future. Everything is centered around zero overall, so due to this little detail, stock prices tend to go down over time overall. There's a limit though, stocks will never go below $1. Instead, they jump up to around $3.50 (to be exact, half the distance to $5).
So the first advice in general to give when trying to monetize the random fluctuations of stocks is to buy when they are below $5, hold, then sell those same stocks when they move above $5, or significantly over the buy price (penny stock trading).
Simple Strategy 2: The delta-effect
The delta parameter tends to stabilize the index prices of other stocks, so the idea here (for a longer-term strategy) is to sell stocks that are above their natural price, and buy below. This natural price is given by equation (4) below.
This tends to work because over longer timescales the stocks tend towards this natural price, with delta starting out positive with every mode change below it and negative with every mode change above it.
This strategy can become even more effective when incorporating knowledge about the system detailed below. If you're sure that the mode just changed, you can compute the natural delta and essentially know that the change in value for a stock for the next few minutes has to be positive (or negative).
There's also the effect from strategy #1 to consider: the true balanced price will be somewhat lower, because there's a total of only 0.64% time spent in fast-rise and 19.36% in fast-fall mode. The excess 18.72% tends to lower the average price (see details below). The true average value ends up being a very complicated expression, likely not easily given by a closed expression but rather by running a model for the real program due to its complexity.
Trading higher valued stocks
As stocks will tend to briefly depart their meandering around the $1-$5 range with spurts upwards (which can last arbitrarily long), it might be interesting to see how to trade higher valued stocks.
For this we need a series of equations. See:

Higher valued stocks are only worth buying when we know the expected rate of return is positive. That's true for Slow Rise and Fast Rise modes.
In order to figure out whether the stock is in the Slow Rise or Fast Rise mode, we need to look at the behaviour closely and see if there's contradictions with the other modes' equation for a special parameter γ. How to do this?
The stock market is geared such that stocks change every minute by a specific computed value. See equation (1).
With φ being an additional parameter only during Fast Rise/Fast Fall/Chaotic, a value between -3 and 7 in Fast Fall, and -7 and 3 in Fast Rise. It is 0 70% of the time as well. When this happens, Δ is between +/- 0.05 instead of the normal larger range.
In chaotic, this chance is 50%, and the value is between -5 and 5.
For computing delta, see equation (2), With n being the index of the stock. E.g. CRL would have index of 0 (zero).
But, ρ is a hidden random value between -0.1 and +0.1, delta is controlled by the stock's current mode.
Record the current price, then record the price the next minute. Then, we know a quantity I'll note as γ (equation 3), the sum of the three randomized factors influencing the price. Here ρ is the always-present randomness of 0.1, β is the randomness for each of the modes, while φ is an extra randomness that is present on some fraction of the stock ticks for the most volatile 3 modes.
How to use this to determine the current mode? Check what the minimum and maximum values are for each mode. Equations 8 though 16.
Strategy #3: Statistics
Here's where things get a little complicated, and we actually have to deal with real-world financial models, dealing with risk, and whatnot. We would want to buy stocks that are in Fast Rise or Slow Rise mode, but it's complicated to figure out what the mode is or the probability of said mode, and the expected rate-of-return as well (which tends to depend on the time spent in the mode so far), or how long to hold. There's some simple rules to get us started with determining the current mode:
Compute the value of γ. To do this, you would have to assume whether the stock is in a stable or 'other' condition. You also need at least 3 data points (current, last minute, and minute before that). Use Euler's numerical integration method for the derivatives (it's also what happens in game, basically). Note that this doesn't compute the γ for the last tick, but the tick before that.
In some cases, Fast Rise is obvious

Any γ of less than -5.35 must be fast rise
Any γ of less than -3.84, but where the fractional part is below 0.16 or above 0.84 is fast rise or chaotic, with the former being more likely.

The converse holds for Fast Fall
Chaotic can also be instantly spotted:

Any |γ| of more than 1.65 with the fractional part in the ranges 0.15-0.35 or 0.65-0.85 must be chaotic.

Otherwise, you would have to construct a probabilistic model. Given that each state lasts a random amount between 1 and 1,000, there's also a base chance to swap denoted by equation 17.
This large number of states makes things a little difficult to do. We're looking at iterating over a 4K square matrix until convergence as one of the steps, for example. For now, the remainder is an exercise for the reader.
Answer: This doesn't really answer the question but I don't think I really need to answer it since the post by aphid already did that way better than I could ever hope to. I just want to say a quick tip about the stock market. I suggest buying a stock or two right at the beginning of the game, doesn't matter which one as long as you keep the stock till you need some extra cash since the amount of cookies the stock is worth increases as your CPS increases. So if your CPS is only 10 can you buy one stock of sugar for 5 dollars/ 50 cookies and when your CPS Rises let's say to a thousand you can sell that one stock of sugar which is worth 5 dollars for 5,000 cookies. Of course, that's ignoring the overhead cost and the possibility of the Stock's value changing but as long as you buy the cheapest stock you should generally be able to sell the cheap stock you bought at the beginning for a little bit of extra change later.
TL;DR
Buy some stocks at the beginning to sell later
Comment: Hey, welcome to the site! Since this is not an answer to the question, it would be better suited as a comment.It sounds like a useful tip!