Can I use 20 feet 2x4 studs to add a ceiling in the garage?

Question: I have a garage that is 22 feet by 18 feet. It does not have a ceiling but it has a roof and everything. One side is the wall that it shared with the house. And the other side is the outside wall. I intend to screw in a 22 feet 2x4 stud to the side walls. Then use 18 feet long 2x4 studs across resting them on top of the 22 feet long studs on the walls. I will then screw them in. I add the 18 feet studs every 16 inches all the way to the end. Finally I like to add drywall to the bottom of the 18 feet studs to have a drywall ceiling. Is this okay and safe. Thanks
Comment: Are you asking if this is structurally sound, or are you asking if it meets your local building codes?  I don't know where you live, so I can't answer that.  I also don't know what kinds of stresses your garage will have to deal with, so I'm not so certain about the other question, either.
Answer: 2x4's at 16" o.c. spanning 18' will not work. They'll sag under their own weight, much less adding a layer of gypsum board.
The Code requires a minimum live load of 10 lbs. per square foot for limited storage (maximum clear space between new floor joists and roof joists of 42") and 20 lbs. for uninhabitable storage space. (See IRC Table R301.5.)
If you want to use 2x4's, I'd add a mid-span support, like a 2x4 extending from the 2x4's up to the roof joists. If the roof joists don't align with the 2x4's below, you can add a 2x4 strongback the length of the garage. This will give you an allowable live load of about 24 lbs. per square foot and a dead load of about 4 lbs. per square foot, (joists at 16" o.c. and gypsum board on bottom),depending on the species and grade.
If you don't want to use a mid-span brace, you could use 2x8's at 24" o.c.
(BTW, your drawing shows 16" BETWEEN joists and it should be ON CENTER. Oh, and the first joist from the wall should be 16" o.c. From face of wall to its center.)
Comment: Thank you for the feedback. Another question is that if it is OK to screw in Drywall to the roof rafters. In the Garage looking up, you can see the 2x4s that are about 12 to 14 inches apart. Can I screw in some Drywall to hide the 2X4s. I live in California. Thanks
Comment: @Bobby  Yes you can add drywall on the bottom of the roof joists. If you have insulation between those joists, you will want to make sure you have 1" of air space between the top of the insulation and the bottom of the roof deck. Also, you will need to add a vapor barrier on the bottom of the roof joists, because it sounds like the garage can get hot and may have moisture that you need to keep out of that enclosed space. Make sure you have attic vents too.
Comment: You'll need to use 5/8 sheetrock, too, due to the fire code. And the sheetrock must be taped and mudded, at a minimum, even if it is not finished. Again fire code.


Medieval (15th and 16th century) records in Spain

Question: In recent meanderings through my family history, we have found a link to medieval (15th and 16th century) Spain (Pamplona region to be precise) - so, is it possible to access records (births, deaths and marriages) from that region, from that time?
Answer: Pamplona is in the region of Navarra and so you will need to search for records from this region. Family Search has quite a lot from this time period and is regularly adding more.
Spanish records, in my experience, are normally very good with more information than you find in some other countries. You also need to be aware of naming conventions, the child of a marriage will take the mothers maiden name as their second surname so if Fred Smith and Emma Jones have a child it would be called Jane Smith Jones or Jane Jones Smith. Jones in the childs' case is not her middle name it is her second surname. This helps in tracking the maternal line back through the generations (this naming is common to male and female descendants).
Comment: Be careful! you have used portugues namings and not spanish. Portugues will be Jane Jones Smith or Mike Jones Smith (in former times, Mike Smith Jones), in Spain will normally be Jane Smith Jones and Mike Smith Jones.
Comment: @TrebiaProject. Are you (or Colin) able to provide an authoritative reference for the name order that you cite?
Comment: @PolyGeo talking about Spain until sXIX that practice (1st paternal name, 2nd maternal name) was not regularized by law and it was a good practice. Only statistical information can be provided. Since 2011 (law 20/2011 raplacing 1957 law) there has been a regulation not providing specific preference to paternal line in the order.


Oiled vs Oil-less turbos

Question: So the question I have is are there any major benefits to the oil-less turbo technology that exists today? What makes a turbo like this better from a traditional oiled turbo? (Not specific to any car however)
Comment: I would assume oil-less bearings have less rolling resistance, so faster spin up times.
Answer: Oil-less turbo's are a idea. COMP Turbos inc. i believe are the only company producing them.
So Oil-Less turbo Benefits!

Don't have to run an oil pressurized line to lubricate the turbos bearing.
Don't have to worry about exhaust heating that line.
Don't have to put inline oil filter and or replace.
Don't have to worry about angle placement of the turbo.
Don't have to run return oil line.

You can run COMP's oil-less turbos anywhere they fit: Rear, Top, Side, Under, Over and in at any angle you'd like!
Only draw back is you have routine greasing with COMP's special grease.
It's really a no brainier! good luck.
Comment: I'm going to have to downvote this because it's an advertisement. Remove the vendor-specific references and I'll reconsider.

Oiled vs Oil-less turbos


How do I write a sockproxy in Perl?

Question: You may have seen my other question related to piping a Perl script designed to connect to a webpage through Tor. I've decided that this was too much of a hassle and I now need a short tutorial on how to build a proxy in a Perl script that will allow me to connect to hidden services and  (later) download files from the server.
Answer: You need IO::Socket::Socks module. It can be used as SOCKS5 client, point it to running tor as socks server. Usually runs on ports 9050 or 9150.
Comment: Thank you- I'm busy right now but will be sure to test this later!
Comment: I followed CPAN's instructions to the letter on making a proxy using this module. Perl returned messages pertaining to errors in the module's code.
Answer: LWP::UserAgent can it, if LWP::Protocol::socks and Tor are installed. LWP::Protocol::socks is available as liblwp-protocol-socks-perl software package at least in the repositories of Debian and Ubuntu; when LWP::Protocol::socks is already installed, you can forget its name and just call LWP::UserAgent.
I had a similar question a week ago, and I written the script testtor.perl:
<code>#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use LWP::UserAgent;

my $url;
if ($ARGV[0]) {
 $url = $ARGV[0];
}
else {
 exit;
}

my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent(agent => 'perl');
$ua -> proxy([qw(http https)] => 'socks://127.0.0.1:9050');
my $response = $ua -> get($url);
my $page = $response -> decoded_content;
print "$page\n";
</code>
It is not a CGI script; so, it does not print HTTP headers. It is for calling it from another script or terminal. E.g., the line in terminal
<code>./testtor.perl https://www.iplocation.net/find-ip-address | lynx -stdin
</code>
will open in Lynx a page with an IP address of some Tor exit relay. And
<code>./testtor.perl http://podger42hd4zi2oc.onion/ | lynx -stdin
</code>
works, too.
Comment: Thank you! Your code didn't originally work, but I made some modifications and it now works :) Now I need to pick a hidden service to try it with....
Comment: Is there a way to find specific files on the server, not just the mainpage?
Comment: @NoName, what line in my script was not working at your computer? Have you installed LWP::Protocol::socks and Tor? About your question, have you tried _locate_?
Comment: @NoName, I am sorry to say it, but it looks like you have read my answer inattentively. The script, as I written it, needs one command line argument (when a Perl programme is called with arguments, they all are available as the `@ARGV` array; e.g., if you called `/path/to/script foo bar` then $ARGV[0] = 'foo' and $ARGV[1] = 'bar'). If you call `./testtor.perl https://check.torproject.org/ | lynx -stdin` (just using my script in its original form), you will see "Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor" etc.
Comment: I apologize for that. I'm new to code, and I suppose I don't have enough insight yet to arbitrarily criticize code errors. To clarify, the original intent of the question was not to use the browser, but simply use CLI to fetch pages. We may have misunderstood each other :)

How do I write a sockproxy in Perl?


Popularity of meek in china

Question: Why pluggable transport meek is so popular in China ? Why not other pluggable transports like obs4, fte ?
Comment: Thanks for contributing an answer to Tor Stack Exchange! Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research! But avoid … Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.
Comment: Meek is the only bridge that works reliably in China as they've mostly blocked other bridges like Obfs4, FTP, etc.
Comment: That answer has already been given.
Answer: China government bloked all the other brige like obfs4,fte,but meek just use aws and azure.many china company use these cloud too,if CCP blocked aws and azure,it will bring many problem to make lots of China company can not privide some service for Chinese.So China Government not blocked aws and azure,they want to block tor,but they cant distinguish between these company who use aws or azure and meek bridge
Comment: Why can't they just do as Google did in April month 2018, now we cant access any blocked services using Google as front domain server ?
Comment: @torBhakt Google Cloud CDN and AWS have blocked the domain fronting. Now only Azure and Cloudfare support domain fronting.

Popularity of meek in china


What is this plant (cut foliage)?

Question: Last valentines day I got a bunch of flowers, and I threw everything away as they died, but this kind of foliage, stayed alive and well for about 10 months (a few of the branches still look ok almost a year later). That alone is curious, but the leaves have a strange thing on the bottom of the leaves. I am not sure if it is a plantlet or a flower, or what it is! On the one that is still alive, it looks more like a plantlet, but they don't come off easily and this one that was more dried out looks more like a staminate flower, or (maybe) a pollen cone. I would like to know something about the plant.
Answer: So far as I'm aware, this type of foliage is from one of the Ruscus varieties - not sure what variety this one might be though, because the flowers and berries (if it produces berries) appear in the centre of the 'leaves' (which are actually cladodes rather than true leaves), but more usually on the upper side rather than underneath, see image below
http://www.plantsystematics.org/imgs/robbin/r/Ruscaceae_Ruscus_microglossus_15691.html
There are about 8 varieties of Ruscus and its often commonly known as Butcher's Broom, very popular with florists. Its a relatively small, hardy shrub which prefers damp soil and does well in shady conditions.
UPDATE:
Got it, its Ruscus colchicus, which does produce its flowers in the middle of the underside of the 'leaf', see here http://www.botanic.cam.ac.uk/Botanic/Plant.aspx?p=27&ix=10&pid=0&prcid=0&ppid=0
Comment: does look correct...
Comment: yeah I think spot on... good sleuthin'
Comment: I love the Ruscus. It is a gender very similar to Asparagus (and BTW both of them doesn't have leaves, but cladodes) In my region, people traditionally eat the shots of wild Ruscus (NOTE: I'm not sure if all Ruscus are edible). The "leaves" (cladodes) are in reality stems (like in Cactus), so flowers growth from stem (as it should be), not from leaves.

What is this plant (cut foliage)?


What are the differences between sensing, perception and learning

Question: I see people are using a lot the terms sensing, perception, and learning together in the context of artificial intelligence. It seems to me perception is a more board term that may include sensing and learning. What are their definitions and how do they interact with each other? Any paper references are highly appreciated.
Comment: i could be wrong about this ... perhaps something like an intelligent thermostat in learn mode `sense room temperature, perceive that the temperature is dropping, learn that the human will activate the furnace if the temperature drops some more` .... sense - read raw data ... perceive - make sense of data ... learn - determine what is the required action based on perception
Comment: My baby robot ***sensed*** something hot nearby; he ***perceived*** that something was bad, but not very sure; so he used his finger to verify; his finger was burnt: he ***learned** that next time he should not use his robot finger to verify, perhaps use a thermometer instead.
Answer: Sense and perceive, in robotics, are synonyms. There is no practical technological step between sensing and perception.
If we take a robot for example, or in intelligent thermostat, the sensor signal is fed to the controller (or agent if we consider reinforcement learning), actions come out of controller (or agent). There is no in-between step practically which would constitute a difference between sensing and perception.
One could argue, that there is a difference between the sensor signal and the robots internal representation of state. If we consider SLAM algorithms or sensor fusion also in this case there is "no extra" step which one could call perception, differentiated from sensing.
Learning is a procedure, which uses data to create models. It is very loosely linked to sensing. Sensing can be used to gather data for learning and sensed data can be passed though a machine learning model to achieve a certain goal (e.g. classifying that signal or identifying an object if the signal is a camera).
The comments to the question are suggesting that perception would be somehow information derived from sensing...That is just signal processing, has been called that for years, the goal of signal processing is not to "create perception" but to process signals and derive other/better information from it.


make a object see through to reference image behind

Question: I was working on a subway from a tutorial and when I try to go into wireframe mode the image disappears anyway for me to fix this?
Answer: You probably want to be using X-Ray mode instead of Wireframe. You can do this by hitting Alt+Z to toggle it on/off or by hitting the circled button in the image below.

Ironically, it's right next to the Wireframe viewport option :)
Answer: You might not need to use wireframe. There is a "Show whole scene transparent" you can enable. And also activate the included addon "Import Images as Planes"
Comment: I tried that but that will also make it disappear, also in order to make the image aligned to the geometry I used spy than imported it, so now that I think about it I think that may be a problem with fspy do you know any way to make an image plane with that same alignment?
Answer: I'm a Blender n00b, and I don't recognize the tutorial you're using, which renderer you're using, or how the background gets displayed.
I got a background to show persistently in Cycles by enabling "World Background" in the properties of the viewport, then modifying the World tab of any object. I added a Diffuse BSDF shader, made the Color attribute an Image Texture, and set the Vector attribute to Generated with Window selected.
There could probably be some skewing if your window viewport doesn't match the aspect ratio of your picture, but as you can see from this screenshot, the background is still visible when the viewport is set to wireframe mode.


Is brake working with clutch in ford econovan 1989?

Question: Lately I have started losing my brakes in that they won't ease on, the pedal goes almost all the way to the floor then at the last little bit the brakes engage fully and pretty much make the tires lock up. I noticed a small leak from the clutch master cylinder above the clutch pedal and am in the process of putting a new kit in for that. Is the brake and clutch working off the same unit?
Comment: Not sure about this specific vehicle, but cars with hydraulic clutches will often share a fluid reservoir for both clutch and brakes, but the master cylinders are obviously separate.
Comment: Probably worth bleeding the brake system. Might be alot of air in the lines.
Comment: got a 89 econovan the oil reservoir is for clutch and brake. a hose goes to the clutch master cylinder. Changed the clutch master cylinder and it was a pain!!!!
Answer: Generally the systems are separate. The brake system should only need to be bled if the system has been opened or a leak has allowed the level to drop to the point that it is pumping air. If bleeding aleviates the symptoms you need to find the point at which the air is entering the system. You should be aware that the master cylinder can fail without a visible leak present. The fluid just leaks around the piston instead of being pushed out. If the master cylinder has run dry you must bleed the master cylinder prior to bleeding the brake lines. The clutch slave/master is bled using the same technique as  brake lines.
Comment: I am only a hobbyist but we must work on different cars.  In may experience the brakes and clutch draw from the same fluid reservoir. I do agree that if that hasn't gone dry you could bleed them independently.  But I would not want to mix new fluid with old so I always bleed them together.


How can we best market our proposals to non-technical people?

Question: How can we explain the benefits of a SE 2.0 site to people who have never heard of StackOverflow, and only use forums (if that)? For instance, when I posted on a Blender forum about a proposal, the response was, "we already have a Forum".
Comment: A little off topic but this is why I don't like the rep counting towards commitment percentage: not all Q&A subjects are for technical people into the Trilogy.
Comment: "we already have a Forum" IMO that's a good point, why replace an existing community where people can already get answers?
Comment: If there's already a forum with the network effect, why would people abandon it just for a better format?
Comment: @Simon, I don't think it *should* replace the existing forums. For instance, the Unity game engine has a set of forums *and* UnityAnswers.com, which have no problems co-existing. They are fundamentally different formats. I'm just wondering how best to explain that.
Answer: I would give Simon Brown's comment a +1 if I could. If I put myself into the shoes of, say, the owner of a blender forum, that's exactly what I would think. I wouldn't want two online communities (a forum and a SE site) - that could lead to quite a bit of user confusion. And the hurdles of transferring my existing community onto another platform - even if the other platform was fantastic - is significant. I would need to see actual business & community value to compensate for the effort.
To market this to non-technical people, I think we have to look at the two core audiences of SE sites:

Community administrators - the people who will be setting up and operating the SE-powered sites
Community members - the end-users who will be interacting on SE-powered sites

Below, I'll give my opinions & suggestions on addressing each of these core audiences. Many pardons for a lengthy post here.

Community Administrators
Let's look at community admins first. What are their needs? In varying levels, they may be:

To increase user retention on their sites
To add SEO benefits to their sites
To monetize their traffic
To provide a place for engaging discussions of a particular topic in which they are passionate

Next, let's look at their concerns in adding another community platform:

May result in confusion and frustrated users, and possible loss of traffic
May not provide any additional value to the community

While both are different systems with slightly different use cases, the core user benefit is the same and will likely be viewed as the same by the end users. Even I see them as being very similar, and I regularly use both SE-powered sites & forums.

May be difficult & costly to set up, especially if they need to hire a developer
May not be as monetizable

I personally love how few ads there are on SE-powered sites. But many forum operators won't, especially if they're trying to monetize their traffic.

Now, let's look at their concerns in replacing their forum with another community platform:

May be difficult & costly to set up, especially if they need to hire a developer
May not be as monetizable
May be difficult & costly (or impossible) to migrate all current content onto the new platform

I don't think this is possible, but I could be wrong.

May be difficult & costly (or impossible) to migrate all current users onto the new platform

I don't think this is possible, but I could be wrong.

Those are quite some hurdles. All is not lost though. Some of the benefits I see in SE over a traditional forum like phpBB are:

Better UI, resulting in a more enjoyable experience and user retention
Better discovery features, resulting in more content being seen and more activity occurring in the community
Better quality controls in terms of the advanced reputation system

I'm sure some of you can think of other benefits too. These bullet points can be used as part of the marketing message towards explaining why SE is better than a forum. They could fall under an umbrella message of:

"This is community 2.0. This is the next generation of online forums. SE will bubble quality content to the top and hide bad content, raising the overall quality of your community. It will also provide incentives using game mechanics (e.g. points, badges, etc) to increase user engagement & retention. Etc etc"

That's just an example of how SE could be positioned. Then it should be followed up with details on how SE could be installed with minimal fuss & expense. At this point, I would say the best way to market a product is to build a great product. I already think SE is a great product, but some features to make installation & migration super-easy may be necessary for further adoption, such as:

A way to migrate user accounts (username, profile, reputation, password, etc) from a forum like phpBB to SE
A way to migrate forum content to SE
An option to keep the existing URLs of the forum, or a way to automatically build 301 redirects of the old URLs to the new ones within SE
Perhaps some instructions on how to set up a beta SE site in addition to the current forum would be nice. This would give their end-users a way to play with the new forum, get used to the idea, then make the transfer.

Community Members
Whew. That was long. Okay, let's look at community members now. What are their needs? In varying levels, they may be:

To seek answers and get information on specific topics
To feel a sense of belonging to a community of peers
To become a recognized expert on a particular topic (ego gratification)
To be able to interact easily with other members

Their concerns in migrating to another community platform might be:

Learning to use a new UI and system
Keeping their current reputation on the new system

I may be biased, but I think SE would address their needs better than traditional forum systems can. Learning a new UI would be the biggest hurdle, but giving them a beta site to play with could alleviate those pains. Migrating their accounts & content over would satisfy their other concerns.
Obviously, I think aiming for the community administrators is the more effective way to increase the adoption of SE. It's perhaps possible to market SE so well that non-technical communities could be clamoring, "Adopt SE now! Adopt SE now! Adopt SE now!" But it might be more cost-effective to market to community admins first.
My $0.02. I hope this helps.
Comment: Sounds great, except for the *Migrating their accounts & content* part, which SE isn't going to do.
Comment: I hear ya. Being a Q&A platform and not a forum, I can see why. I imagine it would be pretty tricky to implement too.
Answer: Point out the main benefits of the SE software.

The best answers rise to the top of the page.
Answers can be edited so they remain relevant.

We programmers were already familiar with existing forums that didn't have these features.  Remember how frustrating it was to search and find only outdated information, or have to sift through a thread to (maybe) find the answer you're looking for?   In my mind these are the main problems that SO fixes.
Answer: A good slogan can go a long way.
What about this:

S-Ex. It can be better.

(I'll delete if flagged, since 9% of SE visitors are minors!)


Missing URL in password reset email

Question: From the wp admin login page I click to reset my password (not on the theme, on wp). I get the email but it contains no url to click. Plugins are disabled. What shoud I do?
Comment: then what does it sends?
Comment: I't sends an email about somebody asked for a new password and I have to verify by clickin to the following link. But there's no link, just a blank line.
Comment: I have the exact same issue for years: how come this haven't been fixed by WordPress already? Is it that not widespread?
Comment: This bug is still exists in WordPress. I have no idea why not fixed.
Answer: The problem is the < and > which surround the reset URL in wp-login.php.  You can remove them using retrieve_password_message in your theme functions.php file like below:
add_filter("retrieve_password_message", "mapp_custom_password_reset", 99, 4);

function mapp_custom_password_reset($message, $key, $user_login, $user_data )    {

    $message = "Someone has requested a password reset for the following account:

" . sprintf(__('%s'), $user_data->user_email) . "

If this was a mistake, just ignore this email and nothing will happen.

To reset your password, visit the following address:

" . network_site_url("wp-login.php?action=rp&key=$key&login=" . rawurlencode($user_login), 'login') . "\r\n";

    return $message;

}

Comment: The 99 is the priority and the 4 is the number of arguments that will be passed to the callback function - https://developer.wordpress.org/plugins/hooks/actions/#additional-parameters
Comment: what is  99 & 4 in below line can any one explain me ?
 add_filter("retrieve_password_message", "mapp_custom_password_reset", 99, 4);  above answer is working for me but i dont know about last 2 parameters.
Comment: what is  99 & 4 in below line can any one explain me ?
 add_filter("retrieve_password_message", "mapp_custom_password_reset", 99, 4);  above answer is working for me but i dont know about last 2 parameters. and how can i get them to pass in filter ?
Comment: Why are the greater than and less than characters causing an issue? I've never seen this happen before...
Answer: If you only want to remove the angle brackets WordPress added but let the rest of the generated message unchanged, add the following to the functions.php of your WordPress theme (eg. wp-content/themes/some_awesome_theme/functions.php).
/**
 * Removes angle brackets (characters < and >) arounds URLs in a given string
 *
 * @param string $string    The string to remove potential angle brackets from
 *
 * @return string    $string where any angle brackets surrounding an URL have been removed.
 */
function remove_angle_brackets_around_url($string)
{
    return preg_replace('/<(' . preg_quote(network_site_url(), '/') . '[^>]*)>/', '\1', $string);
}

// Apply the remove_angle_brackets_around_url() function on the "retrieve password" message:
add_filter('retrieve_password_message', 'remove_angle_brackets_around_url', 99, 1);

Answer: Check out the wp-login.php on GitHub.
The default blocks looks like:
// Redefining user_login ensures we return the right case in the email.
$user_login = $user_data->user_login;
$user_email = $user_data->user_email;
$key = get_password_reset_key( $user_data );
if ( is_wp_error( $key ) ) {
    return $key;
}
$message = __('Someone has requested a password reset for the following account:') . "\r\n\r\n";
$message .= network_home_url( '/' ) . "\r\n\r\n";
$message .= sprintf(__('Username: %s'), $user_login) . "\r\n\r\n";
$message .= __('If this was a mistake, just ignore this email and nothing will happen.') . "\r\n\r\n";
$message .= __('To reset your password, visit the following address:') . "\r\n\r\n";
$message .= '<' . network_site_url("wp-login.php?action=rp&key=$key&login=" . rawurlencode($user_login), 'login') . ">\r\n";

You should be able to filter the password reset message with 'retrieve_password_message' and change it to what you need.
$message = apply_filters( 'retrieve_password_message', $message, $key, $user_login, $user_data );

Answer: I had this problem and wanted to share how I solved it here.
I opened the email and to the right where you would see the time stamp of when you got the email, there will be three dots.
Click on that and then click "show original"
From there you will see the code for the email. Look for the part of the email where it says you should click on the link.
Copy the link that is within the < > marks. Paste it into your browser and voila, you will be able to reset.
Answer: I had this problem and did similar to Travis...

right click on the email message
select view source
copy the link you see below the words 'To reset your password, visit the following address:'
paste it into your domain box and hey presto.

hope this helps too :)

Missing URL in password reset email


Does liquid temperature matter when making bread in a bread maker?

Question: Let me start by saying this is my first attempt at using a bread maker. I just wanted to know if the temperature of the liquid used in the bread recipe matters? Cold vs room temp or warm?
Comment: I agree with the top two answers below, but it's particularly worth noting that if the temperature is too hot, the yeast will die.  I used to follow one recipe, using a precision thermometer to get the water temp to exactly the recommended value, but got terrible results — until I realized that my flour was also hot (because I grind it myself), so I needed slightly cooler water.  Just ten degrees cooler, and the recipe works great.
Answer: With a bread maker, it's important to follow the recipe closely, at least until you've got a reliable result , when you can start experimenting.
Mine, for example, expects "tepid" water for most programs, which the book defines as 20-25°C. The super rapid program requires 46-51°C. Cooler and there won't be time for the yeast to get going, much hotter and the yeast will be killed before it starts to work.  This also means the super-rapid program can't be used with a delayed start, as the water would cool.
As a very general rule, slower programs will be more forgiving on temperature if you don't have a suitable thermometer and don't trust your estimation.
You can get a very good idea of the temperature of the water if you mix boiling with room temperature, in known proportions, taking a weighted average. For example that super rapid program could use 2 parts room temperature to one part boiling, mixed before it reaches the yeast. If room temp is 20°C and you mix it with actually boiling water, the resulting temperature will be (2×20+1×100)/3 = 140/3 = 47°C. Ths is at the bottom of the acceptable range for my super rapid program, so I use a little over 1/3 boiling (handily it wants 260ml, so 90ml boiling made up with cold is good).
Comment: @chrylis-onstrike- you don't need a reference, just try it for yourself. It works because 1 degree C == 1K. So, you're just adding a constant and (for the example above), `(2(20+k)+(100+k)/3 == 47+k`. So the constant can just be left off.
Comment: It doesn't assume a zero-based scale, but it does assume that the heat capacity does not depend on the temperature (amount of energy needed for 1C or 1K). This isn't quite true for water in this range, but probably close enough for the purpose. (Search "isobaric heat capacity water" and you'll get graphs)
Comment: @chrylis-onstrike-, seumasmac and Mark are right.  My take is that the loss of accuracy due to changing heat capacity is smaller than the error in measuring the volumes of water (should we take into account thermal expansion?) and in the temperature of the water (neither 20 nor 100 C is going to be perfectly true).  Given that the manual gives a 5C range for both normal and super-rapid programs, this approximate method will be close enough
Comment: Can you provide a reference for your mixing approach? In general, that tactic requires a temperature scale based at absolute zero (K), which Celsius isn't.
Comment: ... to be super accurate you would also take into account the temperature of the bread-maker pan.  Is it kept in a cold cupboard until just before use?
Answer: Temperature matters a lot, even with a breadmaker. Breadmaking is all about gluten development and feeding the yeast so they produce alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The water temperature will have a direct impact on how quickly the fungi propagate. In traditional breadmaking, ambient room temperature and oven temperature are also important.
Knowing what kind of bread you are making would be helpful in providing more specific advice. It's a wonderful thing to do and there are some great, really easy recipes that make delicious bread. Hopefully you'll next venture out to more traditional breadmaking which can be very easy with no-knead recipes and french oven recipes (such as Ken Forkish's).
Comment: How significant are room and oven temperature to this question about using a bread maker?
Comment: The question is specifically about using a bread maker, a machine into which you dump the bread ingredients, select a cycle setting, and walk away, letting it do all the work, not about bread making in general.
Comment: Temperature still matters with a breadmaker. I was trying to answer more generally but could have probably been more clear to this specific case.
Answer: Beside the effect on yeast growth speed mentioned in other answers, the temperature of the water also has a direct effect on gluten formation. Using the same ratio of water to flour, you will get much stiffer gluten with colder water. Of course, you cannot make use of this effect in a bread maker, since you cannot influence the other variables (especially the rising time) to compensate for a changed water temperature. So do as Chris H suggested and use the water temperature that is prescribed in your user manual - both too hot and too cold will give you unexpected (and probably undesirable) results.


HLS.js player dropping frames at discontinuities in HLS stream

Question: I have a need to play small pieces (1 or 2 seconds) of video in various orders via HLS. Think a highlights reel from a sporting match.
Several HLS players struggle with playing a stream with discontinuities between every TS segment, but HLS.js based players appear to cope OK. The one things that does happen is sometimes, but not always, a frame is dropped following a discontinuity. It seems to happen about 70% of the time that the player drop either frame 0 or frame 1 (i.e. the 1st or 2nd frame in the TS segment).
I have experimented with different TS segment lengths, different videos, different frame rates and bit rates. The problem seems pretty consistent.
To reproduce what I'm seeing (on windows 10), create a test video at 25 FPS with FFMPEG:
ffmpeg -f lavfi -i testsrc=duration=60:size=1960x1080:rate=25 -vf "drawtext=fontsize=30:fontcolor=White:fontfile='c\:\\Windows\\Fonts\\arial.ttf':text='Frame\: %{eif\:mod(n,25)\:d}':x=2:y=2:box=1: boxcolor=0x00000000@1" -b:v 1m atestsrc.mpg

Then slice the video into 1 second long TS segments:
ffmpeg -i atestsrc.mpg -force_key_frames "expr:gte(t,n_forced*1)" -strict -2 -c:a aac -c:v libx264 -f segment -segment_list_type m3u8 -segment_list_size 0 -segment_time 1.0 -segment_time_delta 0 -segment_list atest.m3u8 seg%02d.ts

The resulting output plays back just fine, until I add the #EXT-X-DISCONTINUITY tags...
The Problem:
It looks like HLS.js based video players drop frames when playing back the m3u8 with #EXT-X-DISCONTINUITY tags - example stream here.
Firstly, you can see that it plays back a 60 second video in 58 seconds. The same symptom occurs in several different HLS.js based players, such as this one.
If you play it back at 0.1 times speed you can see that it is not rendering some frames, often frame 1:

This difference in playback speed is causing me all kinds of grief in seeking to specific places in the video. Any ideas on how to address this would be much appreciated!
Answer: Looks like this might be a bug in HLS.js:
https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js/issues/2873
Hopefully this is rectified in a subsequent version.
UPDATE:
This hls.js bug has been fixed in release 0.14.1:
https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js/releases/tag/v0.14.1


Is there any automated translation between Ido and Esperanto?

Question: Some time ago, the Distributed Language Translation project used Esperanto as an intermediate language. The project leveraged the regularity of Esperanto, to translate from one language to another by first automatically translating the source language into Esperanto and then the Esperanto into the target language. That raises the question of (bidirectional, because why not?) automatic translation between Esperanto and Ido. Given that the two languages are about as close as it's possible for two distinct languages to be, does anything like this exist? If not, are there any extensible automatic translation platforms which would make adding this language pair straightforward?
Answer: Probably not, as Ido has just a few thousand users.
I'm aware about the DLT-project, as our local group translated a book for it.
A few years later the BBC-worldservice told me there was a similar project using Aymara as in-between language
Answer: Proposal for a new Project (should there be none)
That indeed should be a doable project, and the smaller community of Ido would certainly benefit from it. And Esperanto can use more translated text too (I am esperantist).
I hope translation in both directions is considered (possibly with different quality at first).
Unfortunately I would personally favor a project in Java - yes programming languages have their own competition. For TM, NLP and so on. A nicely documented & declarative system would be nice.
Comment: Meanwhile I have some working code, a **JavaFX application**. 1. It is nice. 2. It was created piecewise, intermittently - not well designed, but readable. 3. Grammatical analysis would be my next step, as without that the translation is insufficient.
Comment: The results are that indeed a grammatical transform is needed. The used grammar library was too circumstantial. Momentarily I do nothing.


Why were all but one answer deleted on this question?

Question: @rumtscho deleted all but one answer on this question: Is there some "trick" to be able to eat jalapenos without getting an "upset stomach"?
Why?  None of the other answers look like spam, or are completely off-topic.  Was this an error?
Answer: We have always stayed away from medical advice and answers that are offering a diagnosis or home remedies fall flatly into the "off topic, medical advice" category.
The question per se is borderline and can be interpreted differently. Some physiological effects can be influenced by cooking and preparation methods (e.g. beans and gas), and questions like that are within our scope. Up to now, we have kept the jalapeño question in that vein, waiting for answers that mitigate the problem with kitchen methods.
However, answers that offer medical advice, diagnosis or rely on supplements are answers in the off topic realm and therefore get removed. If the incoming answers keep going in a medical direction, we must conclude that the question is perceived as asking for medical advice and reassess whether we can keep it open.
Comment: Given that three of the answers were related to health problems, then, I'd argue that's the case.  Otherwise, by hiding all but one of the answers, you're de facto supporting a diagnosis that there IS NOT a health problem, and isn't that just as problematic?
Comment: No, it's not implying anything. We simply stay away from _any_ kind of diagnosis or assumption. I would be fine with a comment recommending that the OP talks to their GP. Anything beyond that is not our area of expertise
Comment: Posted, given that I really think the OP is describing a medical problem that could get worse if they continue to mess around.
Answer: Don't know if this should be a comment, as I don't come to meta often, but I just saw this question again after however long, and... I don't really get why my answer was deleted. I suggested trying other varieties of peppers, stated I have an allergy, and offered a relatively low-risk way to figure out whether or not a given food would provoke the same response.
I had all of 2 votes, so I'm not particularly invested anyway, but I don't understand how making a recommendation based on my experience counts as making a diagnosis or offering medical advice.
Some of the comments I left? I get it. But the answer, especially scrubbed of any subtext added by the comments doesn't offer a diagnosis. I just say I have a food allergy... So how do I interpret this deletion? I was making a diagnosis by having an allergy myself? I was giving medical advice by suggesting direct substitution of an offensive food? Or was it recommending caution because I don't know what caused the initial reaction...?
I mean, if I had said op's most likely allergic and needs to carry an epi pen, THAT would have been medical advice. But as is I'm still  just kind of confused, because I don't know how I broke the rules here.


Short story where a main computer can tell if someone is even thinking of committing a crime

Question: I remember reading a sci-fi short story where society was controlled by a computer where any human thought was known by the computer and people were arrested even if they thought about something that was a crime.
Comment: I recall a novel (not a short story) set in Britain in a dystopian future in which the ruling computer has choppers flying around detecting 'hate thoughts' or something like that.  The protagonist is a teenager, and he and his buddies enjoy baiting the choppers, 'switching off' their thoughts as it gets close.  He decides he's having trouble 'switching off' and decides to stop doing that.  He goes on to do a number of seemingly pointless pursuits (including fast motorcycle races) on his way to meeting the 'master programmer' who is responsible for it all..
Comment: Can you remember any other details, such as when did you read the story?  Was it in English or another language? Can you remember how the computer detected people's thoughts?
Comment: possible duplicate of https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/17060/looking-for-a-book-about-a-human-nature-predicting-supercomputer
Comment: Andrew Thompson, the novel you remember is Futuretrack 5 by Robert Westall. https://yakbooks.com/book.php?id=151
Answer: It reminded me one of the Multivac stories from Isaac Asimov.
I made a quick search and it's probably All the Troubles of the World

Multivac, the world's largest supercomputer, is given the responsibility of analyzing the entire sum of data on the planet Earth. It is used to determine solutions to economic, social and political problems, as well as more specific crises as they arise. It receives a precise set of data on every citizen of the world, extrapolating the future actions of humanity based upon personality, history, and desires of every human being; leading to an almost complete cessation of poverty, war and political crisis.
Recently, however, it has been given the new responsibility of producing a list of crimes predicted to be carried out by individuals, ranging from murder to domestic abuse. Analyzing the probability of each crime coming up, Multivac informs law enforcement, who make sure the crimes do not occur. Murder has been largely eradicated and, though it is impossible to stop all crime across the planet, the increased capability of the government has led to a drastic decrease in offences. The success of Multivac has been so great, in fact, that the government is considering expanding its responsibilities beyond even predicting crime; the government hopes to program Multivac to even predict the occurrence of disease among the populace, eventually foreseeing every harmful event on the planet.
Answer: Looks like "Minority Report", except that this is not a super-computer, but pre-cogs. This is quite a thick book by Philip K. Dick, not a short story. And then the Spielberg film with Tom Cruise, of course.
Comment: @JohnRennie minor nitpick: the story is called ___The___ _Minority Report_, unlike the film.
Comment: Sorry? The Minority Report is not a thick book, unless I'm missing something important.
Comment: Minority Report is a short story, but there is also an anthology called Minority Report and this anthology is a thick book. I'd guess Nicolas is thinking of this anthology.
Comment: Conceded :-))))


Group Audience field in Group Content does not show any values other than None

Question: I am a OG newbie and followed examples and created a new content type called "Team" and a new content type called "Item" and associated it as a Group Content Type for "Team".
I created a new "Team" called "Team 1" and when I try to create a new "Item", in the Group Audience field I only see "None" as an option.  When I change the Group Audience field setting in "Item" to "Select List" instead of "OG Reference", I see the "Team 1" as part of the list.
The problem is that this workaround is not sufficient because I want to get the "Create Item" link in the Team's page using Entity Reference Prepopulate module.  However, not having it as "OG Reference" causes issues with using entity reference pre-populate field setting for the Group Audience field (getting an AJAX 500 error when I select entity reference pre-populate checkbox).
Any idea what I am doing wrong?  I am using OG 7.x-2.7, Entity Reference 7.x-1.1 and Entity Reference Prepopulate 7.x-1.5
Answer: Making sure the Group is published solved the issue for me.


Getting back into PvE

Question: I just had a break from WoW when the PvP season ended and I came back this week. I want to get back into raiding but my lvl 90 Ele Sham has terrible 475 gear. How can I get back into raiding as soon as possible?People say timeless Isle, but without gear the killing of the mobs requires double the effort. Is there no other way of getting my gear up quickly? Without the forming of raids to get old gear?
Comment: http://www.icy-veins.com/elemental-shaman-wow-pve-dps-gear-loot-best-in-slot Just try to get stuff on the list, some are easy to come by by doing dungeons and such.
Comment: I'm not sure what the downvote was for, but it may have been for saying you were told about the timeless isle but the grind for it is huge -- there is so much easy gear there literally just sitting on the ground, the question reads like you want something easier than picking free loot up off of the floor.
Comment: Why did I receive a down vote for a legit question?
Comment: True, but I didn't understand the isle, I was told you have to kill mobs to get your gear. Nobody told me about the chests. :L
Answer: By far the easiest way to push up your current ilvl is to visit the Timeless Isle.
The first thing you should do is collect all the one-time chests. A great guide for this can be found here. In the unlikely event that this guide does cease to exist, what you really need is the map which is included in the guide and a quick Google will find you that. This should net you a fair amount of gear tokens which can be used to create a piece of 496 ilvl gear for your current specialisation.
Secondly, the island should still be very busy. On a moderately populated server, you will still get large groups of players roaming the island looking for rare elites. Killing these also have a chance of dropping the gear tokens that the chests dropped. You can actually trade the tokens between other players who killed the same rare as you, so you might be able to bargain with people if they get the token that you need.
If you see any groups fighting any of the four celestials, tag it for another chance at some loot. If you have extra loot roll tokens, use one on this. Older world bosses are still killed and are still worth killing. You might want to try openraid.eu (or the US equivalent) to find groups for these if they are hard to come by on your server.
There are a few one off quests on the island which will also give you a token or two. Try completing these whilst opening treasure chests and chasing rare elites.
A fairly rare item named Burden of Eternity can drop on the isle. These can be combined with a gear token and this will produce an ilvl 535 "Timeless" piece of gear. You do get one guaranteed Burden of Eternity from one of the chests (Blazing Chest [7] on the map).
Apart from that, if you have other level 90 characters, you can repeat the chest process on them and send these tokens to your main as they are Bind on Account.
It is worth doing a Heroic Scenario a day for a chance at ilvl 516 gear, including weapons.
You will need 496 ilvl to queue up for Siege of Orgrimmar LFR.
Hopefully that starts you on your way back to PVE! Enjoy!
Comment: I recently did the first wing of Siege of Orgrimmar in LFR without having finished Throne of the Thunder King. All I needed was to get to 496 ilvl.
Comment: It works the same way as heirlooms. Currently that means one server only, although you can go cross faction.
Comment: I stand corrected. That must only apply per raid (e.g. you can't do the final wing of SoO without first doing the 1st, 2nd and 3rd in that order). I'll edit my answer, thanks.
Comment: Brilliant post thanks! One question, I noticed that the chests are BOA does that mean that I can send it between servers or just one server? Does it work the same way as heirlooms?
Answer: I've recently geared up my Balance Druid from scratch (new level 90) to ilvl 510 in less than 3 days. I'll list the complete steps below in case it's useful to someone. You can jump to step 4 since you're already at ilvl 475:

Do scenario 'Arena of Annihilation' for the first time and get ilvl 450 weapon. (10-15 minutes)
Do random scenario and 5-man dungeons, each 1-2 times per day, to get ilvl 463 armors and collect Justice Points/Valor Points to weekly limit. (4-6 hours total)
If you have crafting profession for your class, you can craft the ilvl 476 PvP armors to fill those slots that you didn't get any 463 armors. If you don't, you can buy them on the AH, they're very cheap now as in patch 5.4.
Go to Timeless Isle, do the basic 'Talk to X' quests and open all chests within your reach along the way, you'll get at least 3-4 timeless ilvl 496 gears and some Timeless Coin. (<1 hour)
Buy a stack of Golden Glider and use them to grab the Blazing Chest which has a guaranteed loot of Burden of Eternity. (10-15 minutes)
Put on the timeless armors and use the Burden of Eternity to upgrade the slot that have the most itemization value to ilvl 535, which is Chest or Leggings. This will effectively raise your combat ability to do the quests on the isle.
Do dailies and random grinding on the Timeless Isle until you get 50 Lesser Charm of Good Fortune. If there are people attacking elite mobs you can hitchhike to get a chance of loot. Now you should have 10k+ timeless coins, go to the cave and gamble with all the coins. You'll get another at least 3-4 timeless gears from this process and if you're lucky you'll get 1-2 Burden of Eternity's. Again, apply the Burdens to the slots with high itemization value. (2-8 hours depending on your class, spec and gear)
Now your ilvl should be over 480. If not, go to the Valor Quartermaster in Niuzao Temple to buy some 489 JP gears. (Note the name is VP vendor but he sells JP gears.)
You can queue for Throne of Thunder LFR to get some ilvl 502 loots, as well as do daily Heroic Scenario run to get some ilvl 516 gears. (4-6 hours total)
Now your ilvl should be over 496. If not, since you're already Friendly with Shado-Pan (thanks to the ToT run), you can buy ilvl 522 VP gears (preferable necklace, then ring or trinket) from the Shado-Pan Quartermaster in Niuzao temple.
If you're still not 496 yet, you can either buy some 496 PvP gears with Honor Point from the Honor Quartermaster on Serpent's Spine, or continue grinding on Timeless Isle.
Once your ilvl hits 496, queue for Siege of Orgrimmar LFR. Don't forget to turn in the Lesser Charm of Good Fortune's for Warforged Seals before you enter the raid. Use Wowhead, Atlasloot or AskMrRobot to find out which boss drops the best loot for you and you may want to use the bonus roll.

Good luck!
Comment: Great post NS.X.! I'd recommend using one Warforged Seal on a Celestial kill.
Answer: Here's a quick cheat sheet for ilevel rewards in 5.4:
<code>ilevel 496 - all slots except mainhand/offhand,
  Timeless Isle short grind (chests/rares),
  1-2 days
ilevel 496 - mainhand,
  Timeless Isle medium grind (20k timeless coins),
  less than a week
ilevel 535 - all slots except mainhand/offhand/trinkets,
  Timeless Isle long grind.  (Burden of Eternity),
  random, but no more than 5 weeks

ilevel 476 - Mogu'shan Vaults LFR
ilevel 483 - HoF and ToES LFR
ilevel 502 - Throne of Thunder LFR
ilevel 528 - Seige of Orgrimmar LFR
ilevel 540 - Seige of Orgrimmar Flex
</code>
All of these items may be upgraded for valor to get +8 item levels.
Also, check the auction house for crafted gear.

Getting back into PvE


Facebook ticker and privacy related specifically to groups?

Question:
Does the ticker show a message to my friends when I join a specific closed group? What about the same for the people who follow me?
If someone is a member of the same closed group, but not a friend of mine, will they see my posts and likes in that group in their ticker?
Answer:
No, unless your friend also has joined that group it will not appear. A closed group isn't the same as a secret group however, it is possible via various methods to determine if you are a member of a closed group.
No, they will not see the likes in the ticker, they will see some of your activity in his/her news feed, since he/she has subscribed to that group. For example, if User X posts something the group, and you comment on that, User Y may or may not see this as an activity in his/her news feed.


Out-of-bag error in Orange

Question: There is some way to see the out-of-bag error in Orange? The widget Test and Score only reports mean squared error, root mean square, mean absolute error, coefficient of determination and root-mean-square deviation.
Answer: Orange3 doesn't calculate the OOB. This must be implemented a separate code. More information about how to calculate the OOB error in scikit-learn.

Out-of-bag error in Orange


Is there a big RSA Data Set

Question: Is there a big dataset containing RSA public $(n,e)$ and private keys $d$ and primes $p,q$ where $n = p.q$ ?
Comment: What do you need that set for? Since you want private keys too, the easiest solution is generating such a set yourself.
Comment: If you meant a list of all *possible* keypairs, [this may help put things into perspective](http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/1013/is-it-feasible-to-build-an-index-of-prime-factors) (by the way, saving $d$ is unnecessary if you already know $p$ and $q$ as it can be efficiently calculated from $e$).
Answer: No.  You can generate such a dataset for yourself by generating lots of RSA keypairs yourself.  Therefore, there's no need for such a dataset (and no reason why anyone would publish one).
Comment: Indeed. There are big datasets containing RSA public $(n,e)$ in actual use, and some of them come with revocation certificates; but that does not give $d$, $p$, $q$. There are a few small datasets of test RSA keys matching the question, except for size of the set. Some sites, including [this one](http://www.hanewin.net/encrypt/rsa/rsa-test.htm), will generate one such key for you (but it should not be trusted for anything other than a test).

Is there a big RSA Data Set


What type of workers were there who built the pyramids in Egypt?

Question: What type of workers were there who participated in building the Pyramids. What were they called and what was their role? Also, what sort of treatment did they get?
Comment: I already know the scribe, mortar maker, miner and stone carrier
Comment: related: [What kind of labor was used to build the Egyptian pyramids?](http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/601/what-kind-of-labor-was-used-to-build-the-egyptian-pyramids)
Answer: Not slaves, or Jews come to think of it. This Discovery Link had some info from archaeology about who built the pyramids.
This pretty much sums it up "the pyramids were built by skilled workers and bureaucrats (who lived there all year long) and farmers (who provided seasonal labour during the inundation when they could not work on their farms)".
Intrestingly enough this pretty in depth BBC link is the first result for "pyramids paid in beer" (read: subsistence rations). It contains a summary of archaeological evidence about both the permanent and much larger temporary (seasonal) workforce.
Comment: Merry Christmas by the way!
Comment: I need more specific info, like the roles everyone had like miners and scribes. Merry Christmas 2 u 2!!!
Answer: There were many types of workers in Ancient Egypt who worked on pyramids. They were not slaves because the farmers got paid, got medical treatment when needed and got decent food and drinks. Probably the most important were the scribes who had to write down the orders and also they were in charge of the organization. Then there were the miners who mined from one of the three different quarries and supplied the pyramids with stone. After that were the mortar makers who made the mortar to stick the stone together on a pyramid. There are also carpenters who were in charge of the wood and logs in which mallets were made and the logs were used to make it easier to move the stone blocks which weighed about 2 tons average. The carpenters were also useful for making the right angle tool, which was used to make sure the blocks were perfectly right angled. The leaders were usually soldiers. The leaders' job was to plan out the pyramid and give orders to the workers. The most common type of worker out of three which were miners, stone carriers and the builders were the carriers. There was usually about ten people to pull the stones from the front and two more to push from behind. It was common for two more workers to spill water in front of the blocks to make the ground slippery in order to make the process go quicker and to waste less energy. When the blocks got to the pyramid, they were made into finer detail. Workers used the right angle tool to make perfect right angles and a level tool to make sure the blocks were correct heights.
Comment: Citation? Source?
Answer: Making a pyramid takes 35 work teams at a time, with 20 people on each team.
Every two minutes a block would need to be delivered in order to proceed with a routine to make sure the pyramid is done on time.
When needed to haul a giant statue of a pharaoh or any statue of some sort, it takes 172 workers.
Workers:
-Underground quarry man: A worker who's underground chipping stone for the pyramid.
-Unskilled laborer: A worker that has to haul big blocks of stone out of the quarry.
-Granite quarry man: workers have stone headed hammers, wooden mallets and copper chisels. Their job is to shape granite or chip it so other workers can haul it to where it needs to be.
-Water carriers: Hauls drinking water or water for mud bricks
-chisel sharpeners: This workers job is important; the chisels are made out of copper so it get dull very easily.
-Bargemen: Bargemen are the workers whom take the granite from Aswan.
-Mason: Considered the "skilled workers" they put on airs because they are full-time workers of the pharaohs, using wooden rods to lever blocks into place.
-Scribe: Writes down everything that happens, they basically keep track of most things.
-Carvers and painters: Goes inside the tomb and enlarges the designs that have been made until they made until they fill a wall. The carvings are most likely painted in traditional colors.
-Doctors: These workers look after the tomb makers.
-Bread makers: Are always woman, 10 loaves is the usual amount of bread eaten a day.
-Beer makers: beer's made by woman, tons of beer is made a day. Workers are entitled to 2 jugs a day. In Egypt even children drink beer.
-Astrologer/priests: They decide when the stars are right, before the pyramid is built for the new pharaoh. People pay priests to
Comment: Citation? Source?
Comment: Miners and underground workers? A quarry was not underground. And if the limestone Stones were made with molds as Davidovitz claims, other disciplines were needed. What is Ari Kat? The answer seems to come more from the imagination.
Comment: "when the stars are right" Please do better than this.


What makes augmented fourths and the diminished fifths so hard to sing/remember?

Question: I've always wondered what makes these particular intervals so difficult.
Comment: There was an awesome youtube video about this, but it's been taken down. [Here](http://youtu.be/gwcCohZ3lpI) is just the audio, in French with no subtitles.
Comment: Because tritones hurt the ears? :-)  (If not yours, more power to you!)
Comment: Funny, that. IMO it's because they stick out so much that they're so easy to remember. Also : blue note, Purple Haze, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and the tasty Lydian mode.
Answer: The augmented 4th / diminished 5th (aka tritone) is the furthest (enharmonic) note away both in terms of circle of fifths and shared harmonics so it is a very "distant" note.
Answer: They may not be as hard to sing if you think in your mind of their resolution. Try to think of the augmented fourth going to the 5th and of the diminished 5th resolving in the 4th, depending on the direction of the next notes.
Comment: Indeed.  If you can sing the songs from 'West Side Story', you can sing a tritone.   It's a common feature of all of them except 'I Feel Pretty'.
Answer: What makes these intervals so difficult to sing is that they are very dissonant. Dissonance is used all the time in music to set-up tension that will later be "released" by a consonant interval. Augmented fourths and diminished fifths (which are also enharmonic tones) are the two most dissonant intervals.
Answer: They aren't hard to sing at all.  Sing the opening of 'Maria' from West Side Story.  Tonic, sharpened 4th, 5th.  (No need to argue over whether it's a #4 or b5 for now.)   Easy, if you know the song.   There's not nearly so much 'hard' in music as merely 'unfamiliar'.   Ask a singer to perform an exercise based on octave jumps.  They might make it sound difficult.  Then ask for the first two notes of 'Over the Rainbow'.  Easy, for the most elementary singer.


Is there a Notification Setting associated with "potential" Duplicates

Question: New to CiviCRM and learning the ropes. I know how to search for duplicates and merge them but wondering if when CiviCRM finds a potential duplicate on its own is there a setting where I can be notified by email or within CiviCRM when I log in to the Dashboard where a "cache" of potential dups is waiting for me to inspect?
Answer: Currently, there no setting that will email or notify you about duplicates in your system. The only way is searching duplicates and merging them as mentioned by you.
Answer: What you could do is create a group or a tag "potential duplicate". You can then use the standard contact reports to create a dashboard with member of this group/contacts who have this tag?


Why would you pay a trading fee for Ripples?

Question: Some exchanges (including BitStamp, JustCoin, Kraken, and many others) charge a nominal 0.5% trading fee for matched orders. However, it is also possible to trade directly on the Ripple network with the same order book by using the Ripple client and setting the issuer to the respective exchange, thus avoiding the fee. Why would anyone pay a trading fee? (Other fees, like deposit/withdrawal transaction fees, make more sense to me.)
Comment: I believe Ripple Gateways can charge a fee on transactions with IOUs they issue. Are you sure the order book you see does not already reflect the exchange's fee?
Comment: It might be the other way around - the order book I see on JustCoin seems to incorporate the exchange fee.
JustCoin site bid/ask: 42904/43799.999
Ripple client JustCoin bid/ask: 43290.47619/43667.56
The spread for the order book on the Ripple client is lower. Note that JustCoin also charges an additional, separate 0.5% fee aside from the order book differences.
Answer: For the same reason you'd choose one exchange over another (in general) even if the other has lower fees. Examples of reasons not related to trading fees for which one might prefer a particular exchange:

Higher volume/liquidity
Better ergonomics
Faster trade execution
Easier deposits/withdrawals (especially when fiat is concerned)
More trading pairs
More reliable
Comment: @lid, you can do that, but for example to trade BTC/Bitstamp:USD/Bitstamp on Ripple has (in the past at least) not had the same spread or volume as trading BTC:USD on Bitstamp itself; thus you end up paying more on Ripple than the 0.5% fee when using Bitstamp's internal exchange (ignoring that Bitstamp gets 0.2% on Ripple). This is the "higher volume/liquidity" reason Tony gave.
Comment: I guess I wasn't clear enough... for these exchanges, you can simply set them as the issuer and the use their order books in the Ripple client, avoiding their trading fee you would incur by using their web interface (or API).
Comment: I see the opposite, at least for the JustCoin order book. JustCoin site BTC/Justcoin:XRP bid/ask: 42904/43799.999 Ripple client bid/ask: 43290.47619/43667.56
Comment: @lid Then there may be arbitrage opportunities, assuming you can execute all four transactions at the quoted prices simultaneously.
Comment: In one case, you're using the exchange's order book with offers placed on the exchange. In the other case, you're using the ledger's distributed exchange which is a completely different order book.


particle grammar, は and が

Question: If I want to say the dog barked, which is more grammatically correct: inu WA naita or inu GA naita? I'm thinking the second one because it's identifying what's barking, but I'm not sure I fully understand the usage of ga.
Answer: We can't explain this vast arguments in a few lines, but here are some rough guidelines.

The dog barked means you've already talked about a dog, so it's "inu WA naita".
However if you want to stress where that sound came from, you'll say inu GA naita, meaning naita no wa inu da = it has been the dog who barked (bad English?)
A dog barked means that you still hadn't talked about a dog till now, so it's "inu GA naita".
you use GA if the verb or the adjective needs it. E.g. ore wa inu ga suki; inu ga mieta!; inu ga kaitai na...
If you make a contrast explicit or implicit between what a cat does and what a dog does, you'll say again "inu wa naita". Other ex. inu wa ita ga, neko wa inakatta (there was a/the dog, but there wasn't a/the cat).
The contrast you create may be implicit, for instance you don't have to talk explicitly about the cat, and it may be a contrast with something you don't know.
An implicit contrast may put some sort of limit (generally to what you know or can say). Usually "wa" will be translate with "at least". E.g. a student took something it wasn't yours, and someone saw it: "Did you see what he took from that desk?" "keshigomu wa nusunda" (he took at least an eraser)
The negative form has an inherent contrastive nature, so you will usually say inu wa nakanakatta. However if you want to put a stress like that in the second point of this list you may say inu ga nakanakatta.
In a dependent clause you'll use GA, no matter what: inu ga naita toki... inu ga naita kara... etc. Exceptios are sentence followed by to (e.g. inu wa naita to omou).
"Dogs bark" or "the dog is man's best friend" or "A dog is a man's best friend" imply the use of the term "dog" as "generalized idea of a dog"; you're not specifically talking about a certain dog, so you will have to use wa again.

Hope it helps.
If someone can suggest other cases I'll add them in the answer. Thanks.
Comment: Thank you for the clear answer, I'm about as new as you get to Japanese. The way I understood your answer, specifically to my example and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that if it's important as to where the sound came from, whether previously mentioned or not, use ga, if it's unimportant, I.e. a dog or dogs in general, or if you already have mentioned the dog being talked about, use wa. I know there's many more uses of wa and ga, but I don't intend to master them in one day, so for now this one example is all I'm really concerned about.

particle grammar, は and が


How to get Profile Ids without SOQL query?

Question: I had the need to retrieve profile ids but i had reached SOQL limit , is there a way to retrieve profile ids without increasing the SOQL count?
Answer: I guess there is no way to retrieve all profiles without using SOQL/SOSL. However you can use Platform Cache to store data and later retrieve it. But still you will need SOQL to retrieve List of profiles and then put it in cache. Sample example would be:
List<Profile> profileList = [SELECT Id,Name FROM Profile LIMIT 100];
Cache.Org.put('light002.partition1.profileList', profileList);
if (Cache.Org.contains('light002.partition1.profileList')) {
    profileList = (List<Profile>)Cache.Org.get('light002.partition1.profileList');
}

Maybe if you could post your code, community would help you to optimize your code.
However, for accessing logged in User profile id you can use following methods:
For Visualforce page use: {!$Profile.Id}. Here is the $Profile link
And for Apex code:UserInfo.getProfileId();
Comment: Thanks rohit , i 'am not sure but after some search found that we could use platform cache but wasn't able to formulate a working solution.
Comment: @RohitC I've updated my answer.
Comment: ok , i tried your approach and it helped in reducing the SOQL count. Thanks.
Comment: Nice! I didn't know about platform cache.
Answer: You can also create a custom setting and store all the profile ids in the key of the custom setting. Since Profiles are not created/deactivated everyday, the custom setting would be easy to manage. You can also write a daily batch to keep the custom setting data in sync with the profile Ids.
Once you have the profile ids in custom setting, you can use CustomSetting_Name__c.getAll() to retrieve all the ids without consuming any SOQL.
Comment: Thanks Rajesh , but i wanted to use it in a test class. So didn't want to write a batch for just a test class.
Answer: Custom settings could be an option but it is not best practice to store the Profile Ids in custom settings as it would cause lots of problems.  For example, if you have more than one environments,  the profile Ids will be different.
Thus we can go back to the question how/why the limit is reached.  There are multiple ways to avoid hitting limit such as bulktify the code, using @future etc


Import FBX with multiple meshes into UDK

Question: I used this script to generate a few buildings that I was hoping to import into UDK. Each building is made of about 1000 separate objects. When I export a building as FBX and import the file into UDK it breaks it up into its individual objects again, so I was wondering how I would avoid this. Whether there was a tool to combine all of the objects into one mesh automatically before exporting or if I could prevent UDK from breaking them upon import.
Comment: Why are you not using ProcBuilding? http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/UE3:ProcBuilding_%28UDK%29
Comment: possible duplicate of [Importing FBX with multiple meshes in UDK](http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/18732/importing-fbx-with-multiple-meshes-in-udk)
Answer: One way would be to have one building in your scene visible (hide everything else)
Then convert one of the pieces into an editable poly - then click the box next to add, and pick all the pieces in the box. This will make one editable poly.
I would recommend removing the xform and placing the pivot to the base of the building to help with importing.
BUT this method will not remove the inner poly's of all the buildings, for that you would need to edit all the objects individually and stitch them together. I think it would be quicker to build them from scratch, but use the buildings you generated as reference.
The inner poly's will vastly increase the total polycount of each building and will generally be a waste of memory. So it would be better to optimize in the long run.
Answer: Actually, UDK now has a "Combine Meshes" setting on the import settings, check that and you're probably ok.. I lose some materials once in a while, but then again, my UDK has shown some unheard-of problems, so it's probably just me.
Another choice would be to combine them within the 3D editing program before exporting.


what is a quarter wave decay response after Ziegler–Nichols tuning?

Question: Ziegler–Nichols tuning creates a "quarter wave decay". What does that mean? I cannot find anything online!
Comment: Maybe they are referring to a damping coefficient, $\zeta$, of 1/4 (from $1/(s^2+2\zeta\omega s+\omega^2)$), since I did a quick test tuning a PID with this method for a simple system and noticed that the step response had a similar oscillation and decay structure.
Comment: The phrase you are looking for is "quarter amplitude decay ratio", which somehow became associated with acceptable control performance.
Answer: The response of a system can be seen as a sum of it's stationary response and it's transient response.
The transient response disappears after some time. It has an oscilatory behavior, even if it is just an exponential (see complex Fourier series: every periodic function is a sum of exponentials).
By "quarter wave decay" we mean that, after doing Ziegler-Nichols' tuning, the transient response will (usually) decay four times faster. Thus, it's period is a quarter of the untuned response.
In other words: you increase the frequency of the transient response, also increasing the rate at which it's energy is dissipated. This makes the period of existence of the transient response a quarter of the original one. The downside is that this creates a high overshoot.
Edit:
Ziegler-Nichols aims to reduce the time that it takes to reach the permanent (set point) response, while reducing the overshoot to 1/4 of the untunned response. This is done by adjustments in the proportional gains.
I found this GIF in wikipedia that illustrates well that concept.
Answer: The answer from six years ago is wrong. Almost everything he asserts is, in fact, wrong.
Anyway, a "quarter wave decay" doesn't mean it "decays four times faster".
It means that each oscillation around the steady state has a peak that is 1/4th the size of the last.
Here's a picture of it: https://blog.isa.org/autoquiz-loop-tuning-terminology-change-amplitude


What do you call the land area around a pond?

Question: Usually "shore" and "beach" are used when talking about a large body of water. But what if we talk about a pond? Is the area around it still called a beach/shore?
Comment: I would think that "beach" implies an area of bare sand or rock at the edge of a body of water, regardless of its size.  Generally more common on larger bodies of water since a deep tide is what clears the shore of mud and vegetation, but there are definitely beaches on smaller lakes as well.
Comment: Note that the area around a pond has no typical structure -- may be flat, may be sloped, may be marshy, may be dry, etc.  So, aside from very generic terms such as "shore", terms specific to the individual conditions are apt to be used.
Comment: I wouldn't use those words. I'd talk about the _edge_ of the pond, but I have no particular word for the land around it.
Comment: @ColinFine the wikipedia article on ponds uses the word "shore".
Comment: It would take some research but I suggest that both 'beach' and 'shore' incorporate the idea of waves. Both beaches and shores are not mere lines in the ground but are areas within which tide and wave motion occur. So whether an inland lake or a sea lake or a fjord, all having waves, 'beach' or 'shore' is appropriate. But ponds have ripples, not waves.
Comment: The context, that is the geomorphological situation, can vary. If the pond water borders directly onto vegetation with no exposed soil and the land rises slowly, there is no bank, shore, beach or  anything. I'd call that prosaically the edge of the pond.
Comment: If I was coming to mow the lawn I would have to ask if the ***surround*** was landscaped or hardscaped, so I knew if I needed to bring a small push mower as well.
Answer: Bank

The land alongside or sloping down to a river or lake.

-Oxford Living Dictionary
From Farming Fresh Water Prawns: A Manual...
The banks of the pond (sometimes referred to as embankments or bunds)...

Also:

In geography, the word bank generally refers to the land alongside a body of water. Different structures are referred to as banks in different fields of geography...The shoreline of ponds, swamps, estuaries, reservoirs, or lakes are also of interest in limnology and are sometimes referred to as banks.

Wikipedia
Comment: But not all ponds are surrounded by embankments.
Comment: @HotLicks That's true....but logically speaking the edge of the pond _has_ to be higher than the pond surface to hold the water in: otherwise it would be a marsh or swamp. Anyway, where I grew up, most ponds were man-made to provide water for cattle, and were _always_ banked.
Comment: There are parts of the country where many cow ponds are simply holes scooped in the soil of a pasture.  Especially after the cows get in with their hooves it's hard to say where the pond ends and the "bank" begins.
Comment: @HotLicks Know what you mean...usually a morass of churned mud. Good place to lose your boots.
Comment: @HotLicks - Ah, but all ponds have a *surround*.
Answer: I assume you are talking about a pond which is a natural part of the landscape - not an artificial pond e.g. garden pond.
In Britain I would think the most likely used name for the land area adjacent to such a natural pond to be the bank - the same as a river bank.
I'm very familiar with the Norfolk Broads. They are artificial lakes, which were created from peat-diggings in the medieval period, (admittedly a bit larger than anything which in Britain might be called a pond).  Connected by a network of rivers, they are today an important holiday area for boating, sailing, wildlife study etc.
I would refer to the edge of one of the "broads" as the bank - though the banks are substantially inaccessible due to reed growth. However where the reeds are cleared, mooring staithes have been created. People talk about mooring their boat at the river bank.
Answer: If you want to get technical, the land area around the pond is the littoral (noun) or the littoral (adjective) zone.
Whereas dictionaries define littoral in terms of a lake or sea:
(Collins):

adjective
  1. of or relating to the shore of a sea, lake, or ocean
  2. biology
  inhabiting the shore of a sea or lake or the shallow waters near the shore
littoral fauna
noun
  3. a coastal or shore region

(Merriam-Webster):

littoral adjective (Entry 1 of 2)
  : of, relating to, or situated or growing on or near a shore especially of the sea
  // littoral waters
littoral noun (Entry 2 of 2)
  : a coastal region
especially : the shore zone between high tide and low tide points

However, the usage of littoral in referring to ponds seems to be standard in the pond and bio-aquatic fields.  (emphasis mine in examples below)
From the University of California Museum of Paleontology:

The topmost zone near the shore of a lake or pond is the littoral zone. This zone is the warmest since it is shallow and can absorb more of the Sun's heat. It sustains a fairly diverse community, which can include several species of algae (like diatoms), rooted and floating aquatic plants, grazing snails, clams, insects, crustaceans, fishes, and amphibians. In the case of the insects, such as dragonflies and midges, only the egg and larvae stages are found in this zone. The vegetation and animals living in the littoral zone are food for other creatures such as turtles, snakes, and ducks.

From ponds.org:

Littoral zones are areas that are created on the edge of ponds that are to serve as a growth area for aquatic plants.

From Kasco Marine, a manufacturer of fountains, aerators, and other pond accessories:

The Littoral Zone is the shore area of the lake or pond. The littoral zone consists of the area from the dry land sloping to the open water and can be very narrow or very wide. Typically oligotrophic or young ponds have narrow littoral zones due to their steep sides and eutrophic or old ponds have wide littoral zones due to their gently sloping shoreline and sides. The littoral zone is shallow and gets a lot of nutrients from runoff and non-point source pollution. Therefore, it typically has an abundance of aquatic plant and algae growth. Some other common inhabitants of the littoral zone are cattails, reeds, crawfish, snails, insects, zooplankton, and small fish.
Answer: I live adjacent to a pond in New England (specifically, Spy Pond in Arlington, MA). People around here commonly call the area around it the shore, and the border of the water specifically as the shoreline.
For instance, this article on a town-related website:

Public input sought for Spy Pond shore protection
The Arlington Conservation Commission and its partners wish to mitigate erosion and preserve the public shoreline to improve the ecological structure and function of Spy Pond.
Answer: In English, if I were in a pond and want to get out of the pond, then I may say:

After swimming, I will get on [dry] land.

I put "dry" in brackets, because that is optional.
It is possible to use "shoreline" or "shore" to describe the edge of a pond.
Sometimes, "beach" would be used to describe a small reservoir's land boundary or an ocean's land boundary.


When is a grafted tree Kosher?

Question: I understand that fruit isn't kosher if it is picked in the first 3 years of growth. However, what about grafting trees? If two branches come from trees that each more that 3 years old, but the grafted tree itself isn't 3 years old, is it Kosher? Then, what if one branch is more than 3 years old, but another is less than 3 years old? If a tree has grown for one, and then a branch is taken and grafted to anther tree, does the grower have to wait 3 years, or just 2?
Comment: [grafting is forbidden](http://judaism.stackexchange.com/a/2826/5), btw, although that doesn't mean the fruit is not Kosher.
Answer: See Mishnah Orlah 1:5 Raav Bartenurah where he says that if the branch was detached and then grafted, then we start counting the 3 years from when it was grafted. But if it was grafted in a way that it's still attached to it's original tree, then we don't start counting again.
Basically, once it's detached and replanted (translate grafted) the counting starts over.
Comment: So, if I have a red apple tree that is 5 years old, and I graft a green apple tree branch to said tree, then I could eat the red apples, but not the green apples?

When is a grafted tree Kosher?


How to compile C++ on Elementary OS code editor?

Question: I just installed Elementary OS to program mainly because of its editor simplicity. However I don't know how to transform it into an IDE for C++.
Answer: You can try this: https://quickfever.com/how-to-setup-c-plus-plus-development-environment-in-linux/. Elementary OS is a derivative of Ubuntu so you may have success with this method.
Answer: I think you need to compile via CLI (Terminal), or use an IDE that's integrated with C++. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24109/c-ide-for-linux
Answer: In the Code app's settings, enable the terminal view. After that, you can freely use can compile your C++ code in the terminal using the CLI. The gcc command for the GCC compiler should be available for you to use, out of the box.
If you wanted something that wanted a more extensible solution with plugins that you download to enable more functionality, I think that Sublime Text or Visual Studio Code are better options.
Answer: You may use the "terminal extension" on elementary code also you can run the following command:
gcc -o test testfile.cpp

This can create an executable called test.
Hope this can help.


Does excessive cooing mean early talking?

Question: My grandson is three months old and is cooing/making noises ALL the time, except when he is crying and sleeping, of course. Does that have any correlation to talking? Meaning, are there statistics that state that he will talk real words early on?
Comment: +1 what an interesting question! My own experience was that my 2nd child made more vocalizations & earlier than my first child (who ended up needing speech therapy bc his speech was delayed) and my 3rd was about even with my 2nd. Both 2 & 3 started using words around the same age. I always attributed it to having an older sibling to mimic. Then, my 4th child was quieter, and spoke later than 2 & 3, almost to the point of concern, but now is an incessant chatterbox. So, now, I'm not so sure it's all sibling exposure like I thought.
Comment: I love this question, but can't find any good sources on the matter.  (Holding out hope that it exists and someone with more relevant experience will find it!)
Answer: No. My daughter cooed a lot but didn't start talking until she was more than 1.5 yr. She could repeat sounds that we were making before that, but she didn't really start using them on her own until 1.5 yr.
Answer: Children are cooing and making other noises for several reasons:
1. They need atention. Some children need more, some less. After finding out that making noises brings parents attention - they migt be interested to "talk" alot.
2. They need to develop their vical instruments - be it mouth, vocal cords, centers in brain or hearing. There is a pocibility that it is hard for child to ajust some of his vocal "instruments" correctly so he/she needs to "talk" alot.
All in all the thing you mentioned - is not bad or good by itself. But you can make it into something good if you will respond to a child. Mimiking his sounds - to let him know that you hear him/her, helping him/her separate some words from sounds he/she makes. (Like dadadada... you say:Dad. Child: dadadada... you: Dad Every sound that at list partly resambles some word - can be used to create word for your child.) If you will use this opportunity to communicate with your child and to help him/her find correct words - your child will start talking earlier.


What is the prior art date of a cancelled yet published PCT?

Question: If I cancel my now published PCT, I understand it will be prior art since it is revealed to the public domain. However, what will be the date that this cancelled published PCT will be considered as prior art? Is it going to be its original filing date or its publication date? I am looking to claim priority over a separate application I filed before the publication of my PCT and after the filing of my PCT. I wonder if this will be possible by cancelling my published PCT.
Answer: The publication date. Documents become prior art the day they are disclosed to the public, which in the case of international applications (PCT) and patent applications is whenever they become public.
The way I understand your second question is that you filed another application (P1), and you want to claim priority from it in yet another application (P2). You can do so as long as you file P2 within the 12-month period starting from the filing date of P1. You can only benefit from the priority of P1 for that matter for which P1 is the first application. So if your PCT disclosed some matter present in P1, then P2 will not validly claim priority from P1 for that matter.
P.S. 'Cancelling' a PCT that is already published does not help you in any way. Let it become abandoned. Perhaps you will change your mind by the 30/31-month period and you will want to enter into some phases, by actively abandoning it you lose that right.


Weird junk accumulating in kitchen faucet aerator?

Question: Our kitchen faucet was replaced about three years ago when we moved in. Every week or two, the flow starts to get noticeably throttled and I remove it for cleaning. What I find inside is a layer of small, dark brown flakes of a non-magnetic material. They seems like a hard wax or plastic. I have not noticed anything similar in the other aerated faucets. What is this, and should I be concerned?
Comment: Burning a material (where the fumes won't be dangerous) is a classic method of identifying materials.
Comment: I'd guess corrosion in one of the pipes leading up to the kitchen sink (hot or cold) or junk that's built up in one. Since it's not anywhere else, it's probably between wherever the line last splits.
Comment: Galvanized pipe somewhere? Looks like the mineral deposits I get coming off of that. You just clean it out once a year or so and everything works as it should.
Comment: @DanielGriscom I burned a few flakes and it smelled like burning plastic. The remainder retained its shape but turned grey.
Answer: That may be the rest of whatever, though I'm doubtful. But, the aerator will restrict flow, so run the faucet without the aerator at full force with the sink plugged for both hot & cold & see if anything noticeable flushes out. If it seems to clear out whatever then just put the aerator back on & see if it ever returns.
If nothing really produces from the unrestricted run, then it's probably a (or more) bad cone washer in your flexible supply lines under the sink. Those lines are only supposed to be very-very lightly wrenched on.
I suspect yours were way over tightened, which severely damaged the cone washers. They would be splayed out into the water stream & slightly eroded with every use of the faucet. If that's the case then it's nothing dangerous & just an avoidable nuisance.
Answer: Those black particles appear to be from an activated carbon filter that is probably failing. Check your house for one of the filter housings to see if one of these filters is present.
If it is activated charcoal particles, it says they are non-toxic and food safe according to the Brita website. Since you are only seeing it on the kitchen faucet, the filter may be located under the sink.
There is a similar question on Brita's FAQ page:
Questions about products and water filtration

There are black particles in my water after filtering - what are
  these?
The black particles are parts of one of BRITA's filter media, the
  activated carbon. The granulated activated carbon is made of coconut
  shells. Like each natural product, coconut shells are subject to
  natural variances regarding product quality. This can lead to abrasion
  of parts of the carbon into your filtered water. To eradicate any
  carbon dust which may be present, preparation of your cartridge is
  crucial.  Please prepare as per your cartridge instructions or see
  "How to prepare your cartridge".  Please be assured that the contents
  of the cartridge are food grade and completely harmless to yourself
  and if accidentally consumed will be harmless to health.  Their
  presence will not affect the performance of the cartridge. If there
  are still dust or particles present after this initial preparation,
  then we would suggest that the cartridge is removed from the system
  and re-prepared by: MAXTRA, Classic & Multifit cartridges: Vigorously
  shaking under water, then re-install and flush through with two litres
  of water. Inline, P 1000 & A 1000 cartridges: Flush a futher two
  litres of water through the cartridge.
Comment: The particles are brown and flat, not black granules like you would find in an activated carbon filter. Also we definitely do not have such a filter.


Transaction verification for bitcoin transaction

Question: What sort of verification is done on a bitcoin transaction?
This is because the transaction has already been hashed by the miner. So how can other nodes in the network say that the transaction is valid when they cannot see the transaction contents?
Comment: This is a quite generic question, and deserves lots of explanation :-) in short, All nodes can see the transactions, and they are verified. The verification is explained here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction, and also you might look into bitcoin.org and the developer section. Maybe after having read a bit, precise the question a bit more?
Answer: A Bitcoin transaction is validated against the consensus rules. This includes that any inputs in the transaction have not already been spent (they are valid utxo's used as the inputs) and several other things.
The contents of transactions can be seen but the transaction outputs cannot be unlocked to be spent without the correct key to sign for the receiving address.
You can have a look on blockchain.info if you are interested and look up transactions, addresses or, blocks.
You can find a very good Bitcoin primer in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx9zgZCMqXE


Specify F_CPU in arduino to use 8MHz clock

Question: I am using a custom made AVR board with Atmege-328p on it and it doesn't have a 16MHz crystal on it. I would like to use the internal 8MHz as clock. I have set the appropriate Fuses but now I am unable to tell the programs that F_CPU is 8000000UL. One way of doing it is to add another variant to the boards. I would like to if there is another way to set F_CPU ?
Answer: No, the boards.txt file is where it is defined and the only place it is (or can be) defined. Making a new board variant is the proper way of adding a new board with new settings.
Comment: Maybe there is already a board in "boards.txt" that is compatible with your board. The bootloader doesn't know if the 8MHz is from a crystal or from the internal oscillator, that means you can even use a bootloader for a 8MHz crystal, and you only have to change the fuse for the internal oscillator. During programming (for example burn the bootloader) with a programmer the ATmega328p requires a clock. Therefor you have to be careful not to set the external crystal (when there is no crystal), because then the programmer doesn't work.


Maximum file upload size in SharePoint 2010

Question: What is the maximum upload file size accepted by SharePoint 2010?
Answer: It is actually 2GB in SP2010 and SP2007, and this is a hard limit. However, each web application by default is set to 50MB. You can go to the General Settings of a Web Application and tweak this setting.
Answer: Each Web Application By default have 50MB for one time attachment to be uploaded. You can modify it from:
Central Admin -> Manage Application -> Select your web application -> General Setting -> Set Max Upload Size
If file size is too large then you should also update executionTimeOut (Increase this time from IIS Setting) value and ConnectionTimeout (Update this time from web application web.config file) value.
Answer: As in 2007 you can specify it.
This article in technet is a quite good read, it talks about digital asset management on SharePoint 2010 and how you should plan things ahead:
Digital asset library topology and architecture (SharePoint Server 2010)
Comment: Great, also http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee428298%28office.14%29.aspx contains a couple of other links.


How far away from the airport is the descent for approach and landing initiated?

Question: I am wondering if there is a rule-of-thumb formula for the speed, altitude and the distance from the airport that the descent for approach to land is initiated? I see airlines do it about 25 to 30 minutes before landing. When, say a King Air, TBM, etc.,...doing 275 Kts at 28,000 feet will start the decent for landing at a sea-level airport, barring unusual weather or traffic conditions?
Comment: My question was marked as duplicate by 5 people...I am interested to know how was I supposed to know if my question was asked before, thus duplicate or not? There is no search box on this site that I can see. If it was duplicate, where are the original ones? Could you supply a link?
Answer: As J. Hougaard said, 3 nautical miles per 1000 feet is the general rule. However, large aircraft that can vary greatly in weight may vary that figure. Also, best to factor in whether tailwinds or headwinds in the descent.
In 747-100/200 freighters in the 1990s, we used the 3 nautical miles per 1000 feet most of the time. However, if we were heavy, i.e. we would be landing right up against the max landing weight, we would use 3.5, and especially if we would be descending in a tailwind. If we were light, in other words no cargo, 2.5 was a good figure to use. And, of course, you didn't have to use exactly 3.5, 3.0 or 2.5. What I often did was figure the 3.0 distance and then just add or subtract 10 miles or so.
In one memorable instance, I used 2.0 and it worked, but just barely. I had heard that if you had an empty aircraft and used a maximum drag procedure it could be done. I only had a chance to try it once going into Hong Kong's old Kai Tak airport on a clear day with no traffic, straight in to rwy 31.
Answer: The widely used rule-of-thumb says that you need 3 nautical miles (NM) to lose 1000 feet of altitude. So an airliner cruising at 36.000 ft will begin its descend around 110 NM before touchdown, whereas a smaller turboprop airplane crusing at say 18.000 ft will begin its descend about 55 NM before touchdown.
The speed used during descend and approach varies greately as it depends on the type of aircraft.