In Star Trek, does the original die in teleportation?

Question: I am just curious.  If I am teleported is the original me dead and the teleporter just makes another copy of me there[at destination]?
Comment: Answers on [Do the Star Trek Transporters use Energy or Matter?](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/9006/1234) may also help here.
Comment: Philosophy 101: When a copy is completely indistinguishable from the original, what is the difference?
Comment: @Omegacron I'm pretty sure Philosophy 101 will call it the "[Ship of Theseus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus)" problem (or paradox).
Comment: @SachinShekhar: it was deleted as a list question, see [this link](http://meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/668/why-has-this-question-been-deleted).
Comment: For interest and further reading The Minds I (Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C Dennett) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mind%27s_I is a fascinating read and talks about the transporter in the introduction (I seem to recall).
Comment: _Somewhat_ related question: http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/151058/does-teleportation-generally-take-time-or-is-it-instant
Answer: Sorry TangoOversway, but...  Physically: yes, the original is lost.  "Death" is overkill, though.
Based solely on onscreen evidence, it's more accurate to say that the original is recycled.
First:  Matter is not directly transmitted as energy and reconstructed as-is.  Most likely it's simply used as an energy-saving mechanism during 99.999+% of transports.  Evidence:

TNG 1x07, Lonely Among Us.  Data uses a copy of Picard's pattern stored in the pattern buffer, and combines it with Picard's energy signature to create a new (living) body.  Picard only has vague memories of the experience.
TNG 2x07, Unnatural Selection.  Doctor Pulaski is reverted to a younger body through manipulation of the transporter.  Her mind remains unchanged.
TNG 6x07, Rascals.  A transporter accident turns 4 of the crew into children, which causes them to both lose a lot of mass, and further shows that the transporter is actually improvising based on their DNA, not doing a molecule-for-molecule transport of their mass.
TNG 6x24, Second Chances.  Where we meet Thomas Riker.  This episode is a double whammy to a lot of the theory:  The copy of Riker shows that new life can be created, and it also shows that the energy from the second transporter beam created new mass.  It wasn't converted from somewhere else.
TNG 7x23, Emergence.  Further evidence that the transporter system can create life.  In this episode, it's shown to be so exceedingly complicated and lengthy a process that no one has figured out how to do it at will.

Second: Mentioned in TangoOversway's answer:

This still leaves the question open: Is the consciousness or the
  self-aware entity in the reconstructed body the same as before, or was
  the original consciousness destroyed and a new one created. That has
  been answered on-screen in Star Trek: The Next Generation in the
  episode Realm of Fear.
In this episode, Lt. Barclay, who is afraid of using the transporter,
  while being transported from the Enterprise to another ship, sees
  other beings while in transport. We see the entire transport process
  from Barclay's point of view. He does not lose consciousness and is
  aware, during the act of transport, and is able to rescue a crewmember
  of the other ship who was caught in the pattern buffer for an
  unbelievably long time (it was justified with technobabble, of
  course).

Actually, what we saw was Barclay's point of view.  And his consciousness was likely paused for a moment while he was in the pattern buffer in the middle of transport - very similar to Hoshi Sato in ENT 2x10, Vanishing Point.  She experienced no apparent break in consciousness, despite being stuck in the transporter buffer for about 8.3 seconds - her transport up flowed smoothly into the "dream" (during which point she was actually completely suspended for about 6 seconds), there was the "dream", then that flowed smoothly into reallife during the final seconds while she was getting "unstuck".

Third: DS9 4x10, Our Man Bashir, shows that it's possible to store both neural patterns and transporter patterns for extended periods of time, given enough memory.  But this is in the computer's memory - not in a pattern buffer.  Seen in this episode:

Creating life from a template (patterns stored in the holosuite).
Restoring neural patterns from the rest of the computer systems, essentially copying the mind back into the new body, which seems similar to synaptic pattern displacement. 1
Creating new mass from energy, when their bodies were finally restored at the end of the episode (at least, assuming the energy from the pattern buffer wasn't reabsorbed).

1This is why I think "death" is too strong a term.  Almost all of these instances show that the same mind is recreated without fault (so even if it is a completely new copy, it's hard to say that the nebulous concept of a "mind" (rather than "brain") died, but was rather in stasis).  Plus, transferring the mind through transferring neural patterns doesn't seem too far removed from the Vulcan way of transferring their Katra to another so that their "spirit" may live on.
Comment: And yet, as I've pointed out before, at least one of those was addressed in the tech guide (_Lonely Among Us_) and you're basing everything else on supposition.
Comment: @TangoOversway The excerpts from the technical guide I've seen posted so far not only provide no explanation for the other 4 TNG episodes and the DS9 episode referenced here, but if it was taken as gospel then those episodes couldn't have happened.  Is there an explanation buried in there that you've yet to post/shall I post a question about it?
Comment: There were different reasons for each of them.  For instance, in _Unnatural Selection_ they used a filter, which focused on her DNA, but not on other molecules.  In other words they augmented the technology.  The writers (and I know Ron Moore was careful about this) added a line or two of technobabble when necessary to "excuse" any "wibbly-wobbly" stuff they came up with.
Comment: Despite that this is an awesome answer...I think we only can answer this question if science figures out what defines "mind" (in a biological sense) and why we are who we are and how we are aware of ourselves.
Comment: Philosphically speaking, under the theory of continuity of consciousness, it sounds like your answer suggests that the transporter does kill people and creates an identical copy. That's nice for the copy, but the original is still dead.
Answer: This is from the Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual, Fourth Season Edition. This is one of the Writers' Guides. In other words, it tells the writers what they can and cannot do on screen.  (And yes, this is a bit long, but I'm including source material and explaining my reasoning.)
(This information is also from past answers, so for more related details, see this answer and this one as well.)
On page 28, under The Transporter - Once and for All:

... The stream of molecules read by the pads is sent to the Pattern Buffer, a large cylindrical tank surrounded by superconducting electromagnetic coils.  It is here that the object to be transported is stored momentarily before actual beaming away from the ship (or even within the ship).  It is the Pattern Buffer and its associated subsystems that have been improved the most in the last half-century.  While the actual molecules of an object are held in a spinning magnetic suspension (eight minutes before degradation), the construction sequence of the object can be read, recorded in computer memory (in some cases), and reproduced.  There are limits to the complexity of the object, however, and this is where the potential "miracle" machine still eludes.
  The Transporter cannot produce working duplicate copies of living tissue or organ systems.
  The reason for this is that routine transport involves handling the incredibly vast amount of information required to "disassemble" and "reassemble" a human being or other life form.  To transport something, the system must scan, process, and transmit this pattern information.  This is analogous to a television, which serves as a conduit to the vast amount of visual information in a normal television transmission.

And then, from the same section, on page 29:

From the Pattern Buffer, the molecular stream and the coded instructions pass through a number of subsystems before reaching the emitter.  These include the Subspace, Doppler, and Heisenberg Compensators.  Each works to insure that the matter stream is being transmitted or received is in the correct phase, frequency, and so on. (sic)

So the object or living being is disassembled, molecule by molecule, converted to a stream that is temporarily stored in the pattern buffer, then reassembled at the destination.  The stream contains both matter and data used for reassembly.
The body is not destroyed and a new one is not built.  In spite of all the talk about the transporter being a matter/energy scrambler, it is not.  The pattern buffer stores not only information, but every molecule of a person's body, as well as their clothing and whatever they are carrying.
The body is taken apart at the original location and reconstructed at a new one.
While this doesn't answer the question completely, what it does tell us is that this isn't a case of "destroy and clone."
This still leaves the question open: Is the consciousness or the self-aware entity in the reconstructed body the same as before, or was the original consciousness destroyed and a new one created.  That has been answered on-screen in Star Trek: The Next Generation in the episode Realm of Fear.
In this episode, Lt. Barclay, who is afraid of using the transporter, while being transported from the Enterprise to another ship, sees other beings while in transport.  We see the entire transport process from Barclay's point of view.  He does not lose consciousness and is aware, during the act of transport, and is able to rescue a crewmember of the other ship who was caught in the pattern buffer for an unbelievably long time (it was justified with technobabble, of course).
So we see that the body is not destroyed, but just taken apart and reassembled, and we also see, from that one episode, that a person is aware of what is going on during the transport and is even able to think and is fully self-aware during the transport process.  While their molecules are in the pattern buffer and the full state of every particle of their body is stored, they are still thinking and still self-aware during the transport.
If you were transported, then the original you would not be dead.  You would experience the entire process and the same "you" that stepped onto a transport pad would be the one that walked away on another ship or on a planet.
Comment: First, the replicators don't use matter and energy interchange - they work close to the same way.  Second, I am not a writer who worked on Trek or responsible for producing it or creating the tech guides, so I'm not going to take responsibility for deciding if that was too much or not.  It's the rules of the universe that have been given by Word Of God, whether we like them or not.
Comment: Surely this asks the audience to suspend our disbelief a step too far. So we accept in a general sense that such a future exists, complete with mind-boggling technologies that enact the potentially impossible. We accept we can interchange energy and matter (e.g. replicators). But somehow teleportation makes no use of this, instead opting for a complex process that siphons a sort of buffered human soup between two locations, and oh the subject somehow remains conscious? Why not just scan-transport-assemble (a la photocopier) and accept cloning can happen? It keeps the science much more elegant.
Comment: @geotheory - As for why they don't use the same method as the replicator, it's explained in a note at the bottom of p. 109 of the published TNG technical manual that the technology only allows replicator patterns to be stored at "molecular resolution" whereas "quantum resolution" is "necessary to re-create living beings", and p. 103 says that that during transport "molecular imaging scanners derive a realtime quantum-resolution pattern image of the transport subject" (maybe the information is encoded into the 'matter stream' itself, and that's why it can't be stored in the computers?)
Comment: @geotheory - The subject probably does not remain conscious as a "matter stream", only during the process of dematerialization and rematerialization, see [this answer](http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/13552/22250).
Comment: Love debating the feasibility of the virtually impossible :)
Comment: @geotheory: If you want to have a continued discussion like that, I would suggest taking it to chat, or opening up a chat room so you two can discuss it.
Comment: @Tango right you are captain
Answer: In Star Trek, transporters convert a person or object into an energy pattern (a process called dematerialization), then "beam" it to a target, where it is reconverted into matter (rematerialization) (source Wikipedia).
Therefore, the original is not destroyed, only converted into energy (E=MC^2), transported (or stored in safe - TNG:Relics) and restructured on the other side. This is far different from creating a copy and then "killing" the original.
To better understand this difference, a transporter should not be able to create a second copy of someone, as the energy pattern on the "transport banks" were already retransformed into matter. As a proof, a flaw in the transmission may cause transporter accidents (as in the first movie). If the "copy" approach was true, the transporter mechanism should be able to verify if the teleportation succeeded before destroying the original (and retry in the case of a failure), which would literally prevent transporter accidents. QED
It's true that some episodes seem to infringe this rule (e.g. Thomas Riker), but personally I think this is only for the dramatical effect and should not be considered outside the in-universe canons.
Comment: In physics matter, energy or information cannot be lost, only converted (E = mc^2). So following your reasoning nothing can ever be destroyed in RL.
Comment: Please link to your sources.
Comment: @Thorsal Fairly sure there's no law saying _information_ cannot be lost. That happens all the time. It's basic entropy.
Comment: This explanation seems to be a basis for most actions taken by characters on the show 99% of the time.  Like why they would use the transporter as a leisure travel method, not just for emergencies.  Characters escape situations just in the nick of time using the transporter.  To say they really died anyway in the beam, does not seam logical. It is just that more need to 'Suspend their disbelief'.   Or have fear of it like McCoy or Barclay.  There was too many episodes with transporter malfunctions.
Answer: I've had this question in the back of my head for years, and just decided to google it. Seems to me most people answering here are guilty of some wishful thinking, as if they do not wish the star trek universe to be spoiled by inconvenient truths. However, to me the transporter is purely this: total annihilation of the human body (equaling death), transfer to energy, and re-assembly of the body (including all firing neurons). The fact that the (new) body is reassembled from the energy that has been created by destroying the former body, is purely incidental. Don't let the the fact that the new body is being built from the energy of the old fool you, this means nothing for any 'continuation' arguments. Any source of energy could be used. To the outside observer no death or such has occured. Nor does the universe 'care'. As a person, though, I would refuse to use the transporter because the cleanness of the whole operation doesn't hide for me the ugly truth that after the transformation into energy, death has occured, and death is final. I just couldn't or wouldn't take the risk. The question almost seems unanswerable though, for I keep arguing against my own reasoning, yet every time the whole reasoning loops, and I end up with death again.
Comment: @James: _You_ are not alive again. Someone who is identical to you in all ways is created at the other end. So, to the rest of the world, sure, you never died. But to the person who actually steps into the transporter, it's like being murdered and having someone else take your spot. Your inner experience/consciousness terminates the second you are disassembled. That another person who feels and thinks just like you is materialized means very little to the consciousness that was just snuffed out.
Comment: If you are alive again, how is the death final?
Comment: E.g. Will Riker and Tom Riker are both equally Riker. Tom changed his name simply because he was the one who was forgotten, but he has equal claim to the "Will Riker" identity as the Will who materialized on the Potemkin. Now, you obviously can't step onto a transporter and then suddenly find yourself occupying 2 different bodies. So either the sense of being the original Will Riker is purely an illusion (by having all his memories), or the consciousness of the original only went into one of them.
Comment: You're not actually converted into energy, see Tango's answer. The molecules of your body are disassembled and those same molecules are reassembled elsewhere.
Comment: Since the only difference between the two is that one confinement beam ended up on the Potemkin, and the other was deflected back to the planet surface, there's no reason to believe that the original Riker consciousness would have ended up in one or the other. The only logical conclusion is that the original felt himself being dematerialized, and then he was no more. A split second later, 2 new consciousnesses were born with all of Riker's memories, neither realizing that they were actually 2 new people who hadn't existed just a moment ago.
Comment: It is not just 'wishful thinking'.  It is called 'Suspension of disbelief'.   If it was just 'wishful thinking':  All the characters of Trek are also guilty of the same when they strive to get beamed off a ship, just in the nick of time, before that same ship explodes.  Or they could just go: Well we got a copy of him from a day ago. Think of it more like this: In the old days you had to wire your speakers to get sound.  The sound traveled along the wire.  Later you figured out how to send the audio via BT.  Only in this case, we are talking about your body being converted to energy and sent.
Answer: In a sense you are, but then again (in the Star Trek Universe) there's really no such thing as you, your atoms and subatomic particles can be exchanged and duplicated arbitrarily. In 2361, this happened to Riker:

 he was completely duplicated and there existed two identical copies of him henceforth. However, it is important to note that this didn't happen because the original was not "destroyed" but because the original was beamed to two distinct locations (see the Memory Alpha article for further information).

So ultimately this is a question of language. The person at the original location doesn't die, they simply cease to exist.
Comment: I don't understand this answer, particularly your last sentence. It seems like you are saying that, in Star Trek, there is no such thing as life.
Comment: @Wikis: Not bound to the matter it consists of.
Comment: @Wikis A copy would not have been possible if it was as simple as Angelo Steffenel described in his answer
Comment: Is the a general principle you've deduced from watching many episodes or is it explicitly mentioned somewhere?
Comment: @Wikis: I don't recall an explicit quote, no. But it's the logical conclusion from how I understand the Star Trek transporters.
Comment: @Izkata: I think the whole *Thomas Riker* plot is, as AngeloSteffenel implied, not quite as "canon" as the rest.
Comment: actually yea riker has 2 copies. Of course if your moleculs are disasembled you, well, destroyed. You mean you can feel it?
Comment: This is my interpretation of it as well. It's also sorta true of reality. Pretty much all of us have, by now, had every single molecule our body was comprised of at birth be replaced by completely new molecules. Even if we reduce the problem to just the matter that counts: our brain, those molecules are constantly being replaced with new ones. So our consciousness obviously isn't tied to a specific set of molecules. So how can we be disassembled and reassembled while retaining the original consciousness? Maybe continuity of consciousness is the key, and Star Trek tries to address that by keep-
Comment: -ing the individual conscious throughout the entire transporter process. Even when they get stuck in the transporter buffer, their consciousness is still active and recording memories (e.g. Barclay remembers seeing a creature in the transporter buffer in _"Realm of Fear"_ ). But then the whole Tom Riker incident doesn't make any sense, because how could a single consciousness experience becoming made simultaneously into 2 physical copies.
Answer: Any machine that reassembles a human could do that multiple times at different locations creating multiple copies. The base building blocks are not part of your identity. It would be inefficient to send them. Would each copy share the same linear awareness of being? No. If you are transported, you end and your copies continue with no awareness of being a copy. It really doesn't matter how the transportation occurs(energy vs molecules). To be fair, it is science fiction. However, there should be some logic involved.
Answer: Just to add another point, it's pretty clear that Star Trek believes in souls, energy-based souls.  Hence all the plots about souls moving back and forth, and this is discussed in terms of transferring energy.  So the transporter doesn't kill you, because it keeps your energy-based soul intact throughout.  This is why it makes sense that you can't make copies of people; the technology, when functioning as intended, doesn't make souls.
Answer: Think Like a Dinosaur solves the problem with balancing the equation much the same way as is done in The Prestige.
Plus, has anyone bothered to actually calculate the amount of energy involved in converting the mass of an average human body into energy and back again?  You could simplify it by rending it in the equivalent megatons.
Yes, the original dies even as Trinneer observes in Enterprise, "We're all copies."
Comment: Trinner or Trip? If Trip said it, then this would be a canonical answer to the question. Also is _"Think Like a Dinosaur"_ a Star Trek episode or are you referring to _the Outer Limits_?
Comment: Think Like a Dinosaur is not Star Trek.  It's a short story, and the premise is that teleportation does make a copy of the person at the new location.  The aliens (dinosaurs) who share this technology with humans hold as a philosophical belief that the copy left behind must be killed, to satisfy the demands of the cosmic equations.
Answer: I would answer that the Star Trek transporter is simultaneously both death and not death. An explanation as to what would happen when being transported arises from considering what consciousness itself is. Absent the concept of a "soul" or god or some other non-empirical belief system (which is not to say that none of these exist but only that they are beliefs and therefore impossible to test or explain with science) our best guess about consciousness is that it is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex neurological process. That is to say, your sense of self develops as a byproduct of a brain that has been left running.
There is no instant when you gain consciousness, it happens gradually as your brain is turned on and begins processing stimulus until eventually enough operation has occurred and "you" gradually start to exist. This is why no one can remember the instant when "they" began; because they didn't just suddenly pop into existence, they formed over time. Fleetingly at first, and then with more solidity.
The catch is that we tend to see "us" as something separate from our physical bodies, a creation that is more than the collection of neurons and ganglia in our heads. But a purely physical explanation of consciousness would suggest that any such belief is the existential version of an optical illusion. Consciousness may be nothing more than the most efficient way for our brain to represent the current state of a complex, long running, system.
Therefore, we might say that consciousness doesn't really "exist" in the traditional sense at all, so it can't be destroyed. Only the physical form that gives rise to the property can be.
Which brings us to taking a transporter ride. If consciousness is tied to our physical brain, and our brain is dissolved for transport, then we "die" the instant we are dissolved, in that the part of you that you think is you right now ends when the brain creating it ends.
But here is where it gets complicated. Because if consciousness is some kind of illusion and not separate from the physical, then that illusion that is "you" could be perfectly re-created elsewhere and begin functioning unchanged; for all intents and purposes it is still the exact thing that was just destroyed. And so the consciousness of a transported individual wasn't destroyed any more than the sound of an explosion in outer space is destroyed by the vacuum that refuses to carry it; changing the conditions in which the phenomena occurs may alter our perception of it but not necessarily the properties of the phenomena itself.
And so the transported consciousness is both simultaneously destroyed and not destroyed. The closest analogy we living humans have would be going into a dreamless sleep and waking up somewhere else. What happened after we nodded off is perhaps unimportant, ultimately, so long as our state can be retrieved later.
And as for "remembering" what happened while characters were being transported on the show, who knows? Maybe someone designing transporters realized a while back that people found the experience of "dying" unsettling and added a subroutine that provided some artificial stimulus to the brain state pattern while they are being transported so that re-built travelers believe they never experienced any loss of consciousness.
Comment: This is a good philosophical analysis, but what's the position that the show takes? That's probably more what the question's going for.
Answer: Here's another way of thinking about the transporter, death, and consciousness.
My understanding is that the transporter scans and then transports a person atom by atom to a new location, by physically moving your atoms to the new location in a matter stream through subspace (i.e., the matter stream doesn't physically plow through walls or solid rock in our own space).
If I were to remove one atom from your body and move it to a different location, you wouldn't know the difference. Likewise, if I take another atom, and a third and a fourth, you'd still scarcely notice. That's how the transporter works. Your body isn't converted to energy, destroyed and then remade. You don't die and you aren't cloned. Rather you're moved piece by piece ... transported.
What's more, as far as the atoms in your body are concerned, whether still on the transporter pad, en route in the matter stream in subspace, or at the destination, they are still effectively adjacent to each other, in the original configuration, via subspace. I think it's assumed that the domain of subspace used in transportation can simultaneously "touch" every location in our own space, as if the entire domain is filled with wormholes. Therefore it's never the case that half of your body's atoms are completely isolated from the other half in two different locations, which I imagine would be harmful.
Of course you would eventually become aware that you're being moved to a new location, however your consciousness would not be interrupted. Instead, your consciousness would gradually shift so that you're briefly aware of being in two places at once while transporting.
Comment: Interesting conjecture but than how would you explain the duplicated Riker in 'Second Chances' ?
Comment: That's still a mystery. There was an "unusual distortion field" that permitted a second version of Riker to be created from subspace. However if we allow this one unusual case to dictate transporter theory, then cloning via the transporter is possible & we've opened up a can of worms (why not make copies of Data, Picard, etc.).
Comment: I don't believe you can dismiss it.  Conjecture also doesn't explain the 'young' crew members in TNG-Rascals episode.  Their bodies obviously didn't have the mass that the older versions did, so what happened to all that extra mass during transport ?  And conversely, when they sent through at the end of the episode (to 're-age them), where did the additional needed mass come from ?
Comment: Rascals and episodes with evil twins and crew members caught in the matter stream were not the best Trek - I'm going to cast all schlocky episodes out of the canon. :)
Answer: It's interesting. I believe that consciousness is somehow stored in a safeguard in these circumstances (when adding additional mass in the rascals epoisde, converting dr palski back to a middle aged adult, and putting consinous back into picard's reconstructed body). So, during normal transport, matter-energy transformation takes place for the physical body, but the mind is stored in some kind of electronic state, still alive and aware during the transfer. This would explain how in DS9 that the patterns are stored separately from the mind and the computer has established a program to transfer neural consciousness into electronic consciousness, and back again. They were stored in the holodeck because the computer memory was being used for neural memory, otherwise the patterns would be stored normally in the ident database of the transporter for identification (in a sense a copy of DNA but not consciousness) that's why they needed hair to reconstruct palaski. The double riker, some kind of quantum phenomenon that caused both his consciousness and mass to be duplicated and the rematerialised. Honstely, I try to avoid this as it is inconsistent with everything we see. However, is transferring consciousness still the same consciousness, a philosophy question.
Answer: Consider this. Perhaps in the process of transporting, the original does end, perhaps in a terrifyingly painful way, but the person arriving at the destination has no awareness or recollection of this. Perhaps the canonical, "consciousness is maintained" is merely an illusion because the transportee is indeed in stasis for some length of time and simply cannot be aware of it.
Instead of thinking as the habitually transporting person as discreet copies, copy A,B,C,D, you think of them as linear, but discreet timelines of the same person. Version A1,A2,A3,A4....  When Riker accidentally split, he became Riker A and B, each now with their own independent, diverging timelines. But both Riker A(x) and B(x).
Answer: The answer to this is... No.
When someone is transported they are converted into a state called a "matter-energy" which can then be sent to where ever and then reconstituted back into matter.
This Matter-Energy state does not exist, but there is a thing that is close to it where when you isolate matter it seems to freak out and act in a way that could could be used in a teleportation device like described by the show, not technical manuals and "science of..." books that gets plenty of things wrong. This state that I am referring to is from a TED talk given several years ago. I don't know any more than this with regards to this state, but it is just a little support for how this would work in reality.
Anyways, the proof that person does not die in the Matter-Energy state is that some people remain conscious in this state and have experiences and memories from it as illustrated by Reginal Barkley when he has a case of Transporter-phobia due to seeing things in the stream.
One could not "see in the stream" and be right about it if they were dead. They could see things and be wrong if thy were dead, but it is highly unlikely they'd be right. Thus it shows that they're alive.
The transport flubs can then be explained to...
Mirror Universe is an inversion of pattern or something like that.
Duplication of person is refraction and stream splitting like photons are split in the double slit experiment.
Merging together are the patterns mixing
Aging or de-aging is explainable too, but outside of the scope of this question.
So, again, no. The idea that a person dies in transporting comes from physicists trying to explain how one might do this in the real world and ignoring what is laid out in the canon of the series.
Answer: All of Star Trek canon (live action TV/movies) handwaves this aspect of transporter operation. The details of its operation seem to vary with series/episode vintage. In TOS, the subject is somehow disassembled, converted to energy, transmitted to the destination, converted back to the original matter, and reassembled. It is as if there is only the original which just undergoes a series of processing steps, so there is no death and a whole lot of magic. The various transporter incidents/malfunctions occurring in the original series (good/evil Kirk, mirror universe) invoke a lot of magic - how can a device fail in such a subtle way as to duplicate a person while splitting their personality? How can it subsequently merge two beings? How can it swap subjects with those of another universe except for costume?
The notion of a pattern emerged in TNG, but there are a number of references to a "matter stream". While TOS established the in-transit form of the subject to be energy, "matter stream" suggests that in transit, a subject is both/neither energy and/or matter. The duplicate Riker episode requires that the transporter operate by scanning and destroying the original - in the episode, Riker is scanned twice (two "confinement beams") and rematerialized from each beam. Nevertheless, there is no clear statement that the original Riker is killed in the process of making two copies (one aboard ship, and the other from the "reflected" beam).
For what its worth, the Stargate TV series (all of them) also handwave this aspect of teleportation. The stargate is described in terms of a teleporter where the sender and receiver are linked by a wormhole. Although there is an obvious "event horizon" which the subject seems to be able to pass through intact (there are depictions of a person putting a hand through and pulling it back), travel is described in much the same way as the TOS transporter (other than the aspect of the connecting wormhole).
An interesting bit of science fiction (non Trek) which directly addresses your question is Think Like a Dinosaur. In this story, the teleporter scans the subject and transmits the collected information; a copy is then constructed at the receiving site. Upon confirmation that the signal has been received intact, the original must then be destroyed ("balancing the equation") in an explicit step, as a matter of policy, because the receiving site essentially created a duplicate.
Comment: There was a Star Trek (TOS) novel written a few years ago called "Spock Must Die!" in which they were experimenting with a new type of transporter which used tachyons and had a much greater range than the traditional transporter. McCoy was agonising over the moral implications of whether an individual's soul was destroyed when he stepped into the transporter for the first time. The new transporter didn't dematerialise the original; instead it created a tachyon copy at the destination. The fun started when Spock tried the new transporter and a duplicate (evil) Spock was created on the ship.
Answer: Transportation isn't done via particle by particle. - That would kill you..
Rather... think of a field of energy that surrounds you that is tapped into another part of space, Allowing you and that empty space to be at two places at the same time how ever vague my argument may seem, It's the most plausible vs the ones stated above. This method does not kill you and you are aware of what's happening 100% of the time, The only problem is particles on the other side filling the void of where your body is, So moving these particles out of the way would be required otherwise you could end up with (for example)oxygen and dust particles inside your body which could kill you.
Comment: Is there any evidence of this in the show?
Comment: http://www.space.com/17628-warp-drive-possible-interstellar-spaceflight.html

We're getting ever close to manipulating the dimensional parameters of space-time.
Comment: That's a discussion of *real* (albeit theoretical) science. That's no guarantee that that's what's happening on the show. It's also a discussion of things that are a lot closer to warp drives than transporters.
Comment: According to the technology of what's inside the star-ship enterprise, they use a warp drive, This folds/Manipulates space-time its self and is the most relevant to its function being that the teleporters are working off of the same principal.
Comment: Is there any evidence on the show that teleporters work on the same principle?
Comment: Yes, People can be teleported anywhere and there is no machine on the other side that re-assembles them.
Comment: Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/48708/discussion-between-elitism-and-adamant).
Answer: Pattern buffing. The object to be teleported is reduced to a pattern. Regardless of how anyone slices it, the original structure is lost--it's reduced to a pattern and then reassembled.
The original mind permanently ceases to function. The reconstituted pattern emerges with a copy of the memories of the former mind and the living object continues to function as though there is continuity when in fact the continuity is only a copy. Teleporting causes death. Period.
The copy however, now believing that it survived the teleporter, won't hesitate to use it again.
Personally, I wouldn't use one. Dr. McCoy is right, why would a man want his atoms scattered back and forth across space?
Comment: Hi, welcome to SF&F.  This answer seems similar to a number that have already been given, but there's a lot of scope to make this a really good answer if you can provide some of the attribution/evidence that they lack.  Do you have a source for the mental state being "suspended" while in transmission?


Training, cross validation and testing accuracy (RMSE and R2) differs when using different shuffles and splits

Question: I have a very small data set of 60 observations. My training, cross-validation and testing accuracy (RMSE and R-squared) differ in a considerable amount when using different random states while performing shuffling and then splitting. The training, testing and cross validation accuracy changes each time a different random state is used. How can I solve such an issue and how to really assess the performance of the model?
Comment: With a small dataset, "considerable" differences might still be within normal, statistically expected differences. With 60 samples and an accuracy of 70%, the 95% CI ranges from 58% to 82% accuracy, so you shouldn't be surprised if you're seeing that level of variation by resampling.
Answer: In terms of evaluation, the best you can do with a very small amount of data is repeating $k$-fold cross-validation many times (i.e. very large $k$), and consider the whole distribution of scores as the performance (in particular take into account the variance across folds).
It's going to be difficult anyway to obtain a reliable measure of performance with such a small dataset. Two options come to mind:

obtain more instances, possibly by using some interpolation method to generate artificial data (but it's not as good as real data).
make the model less complex by reducing the number of features, as this is likely to reduce the variance in the performance.
Answer: Take a look at this: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/335936/choosing-the-correct-seed-for-reproducible-research-results?fbclid=IwAR1i1-WjSYxCQrV5GU5-LHD6rU7VYfoE_X-xg3J7zmQa2o2Obnf27CDfwuY there is a very thorough answer that might be of use.


How to UV unwarp and keep the original face proportion?

Question: I have a simple cube and in edit mode , i stretched it in Z direction  so now the cube become very tall and the faces on top and botom are still perfect square. I setup the edge seams already so it will unwarp the box perfectly. The proportion of uv will be correct if i use square image (texture). If my texture doesnt' have 1:1 aspect ratio, the uv will try to adjust itself to the image aspect ratio. How to ignore image/texture aspect ratio ?
Comment: what version of blender do you have?
Comment: i use version 2.8
Answer: In 2.80 the active image on faces removed (because it is internal renderer property). So how to do you tell blender that the image, that you want to use, is active? Do this:

Open Shader editor (object mode)
Create a material in your object (if it doesn't exists)
Put image into Shader editor (you can drag&drop it from file browser or from data-block selector) or add and setup image texture.
Select this image node.

Now, when the node with image are selected, this image is going to be active, and UV-unwrapping will use it proportions.
Answer: If your texture is 800x600 do some simple math: 600/800=0.75, so scale the whole UV by 0.75 on X axis (A to select all UV, S X 0.75 Enter).


Prerequisites of computational complexity theory

Question: what's the prerequisite topics needed for understanding computational complexity theory and analysis of algorithm ...including big-O and Big-theta notations and these staff. I want a mathematical background and good book suggestions for each topic ... thanks
Comment: Many textbooks will describe the necessary prerequisites in their introduction. Have you tried looking there?  (Book suggestions/recommendations are off-topic for this site.  See the help center.)
Answer: Here are some prerequisites:

Mathematical maturity. You get this by taking math courses.
Mathematical induction. Important.
Rudimentary calculus. That also includes all you need to know about big O notation, which you can learn as part of your study of algorithms and complexity. Calculus is mainly used for estimating sums and in general asymptotic analysis.
Rudimentary linear algebra. Not relevant for everything, but common enough.
Basic discrete probability theory (linearity of expectation, Markov's and Chebyshev's inequalities, Bernoulli random variable, binomial distribution, indicator variables). Very helpful. Part of it (Chernoff's bound) you will learn as part of your study.
Basic graph theory. Most people probably don't actually have any background in graph theory to begin with, and learn whatever they need as part of their algorithms course.

Since calculus and linear algebra are common enough, what is probably most challenging is discrete probability theory. There are many textbooks covering this, and probably all of them are fine. Whatever you don't learn ahead of time you will pick up in your algorithms and complexity classes.
On the other hand, it is important to be proficient in induction and arithmetic manipulations, and to have some basic level of mathematical maturity. The only way to achieve this is to gather experience in doing basic proof-based math.
Comment: In algorithms and complexity we use calculus mostly to estimate sums and to compute first-order (or more) approximations. Sometimes you see more advanced stuff such as differential equations, but that's rare. One of my papers uses integration by parts at some point, but this is also not very typical
Comment: As for mathematical maturity, it's hard to define; you (hopefully) obtain it after sufficient active exposure to (proof-based) math. In a sense, it is multi-levelled, and people working in algorithms and complexity typically don't reach the same level of maturity as algebraic geometers, say.


How do you know your node baker, endorser, accuser is running properly?

Question: Before the update my Tezos baker was running fine, the accuser when running would update every minute or so with a line that displayed in the terminal, the baker and endorser did not have anything displayed in their terminal, but when my time to endorse came up, it took it and displayed the endorsement. After the Edo update, the node runs, but the endorser, accuser and baker all just say node is bootstrapped and then it just sits there, silent and running, but no indicator anything is happening. So I assumed it was running, and then today I missed an endorsement. How do I know its all running properly before missing endorsements?
Answer: You need to be sure you're running PtEdo2Zk tezos-baker and tezos-endorser instead of PtEdoTez. Your tezos-baker should at least provide low priority baking rights.
Answer: Before you start baker/endorser/accuser, run export TEZOS_LOG="* -> debug" That will output much more information, like you were used to.  You probably did this when you launched 007 but forgot to redo when you started 008.


What are the world writable directories by default?

Question: In a standard Linux filesystem, which of these common directories are world-writable by default?
 /tmp
 /etc
 /var
 /proc
 /bin
 /boot
 /....
 ....

Why are they world-writable?  Does that pose a security risk?
Answer: The only FHS-mandated directories that are commonly world-writable are /tmp and /var/tmp. In both cases, that's because they are intended for storing temporary files that may be made by anyone.
Also common is /dev/shm, as a tmpfs (filesystem backed by RAM), for fast access to mid-sized data shared between processes, or just creating files that are guaranteed to be destroyed on reboot.
There may also be a /var/mail or /var/spool/mail, and sometimes other spooler directories. Those are used to hold mail temporarily before it's processed. They aren't always world-writable, depending on the tools in use. When they are, it's because files can be created there by user tools for processing by daemons.
All of these directories usually have the sticky bit (t) set, meaning that only the owner of a file or of the directory can move or delete the files in it.
Any program running as any user can make files in these directories, and it's up to the creating program to do the right thing as far as security for its particular data goes. There's no particular general security problem other than someone potentially filling up the filesystem, but plenty of scope for a program to get it wrong.
There have been some moves towards service-specific /tmp directories. These avoid some of the potential bugs that can come up, so it's not as vital for the program to be bug-free in how it uses the directory.

You can find the world-writable directories on your system with:
find / -maxdepth 3 -type d -perm -777

Answer: /tmp, /var/tmp, and /var/lock are world-writable by default.  There may be symlinks, such as /usr/tmp → /var/tmp, provided for compatibility with older applications.
/tmp and /var/tmp world-writable because they are meant to be used by any user for any temporary storage.  /var/lock is world-writable so that any process, running as any user, can create lock files in a central location.
Is there a security risk?  No, but sort of yes.
The permissions for all of those directories are 1777, with the leading 1 being the sticky bit.  That means that while anyone can create a file in those world-writable directories, only the owner can delete his/her own files (and of course, the root user can too).
The possible security risk can arise from insecure temp file creation.  Since those directories are a free-for-all, users need to take precautions to ensure that the files they create are actually new files, rather than opening an existing file or symlink that may have been planted there by a malicious user.  If files are created using proper techniques, such as open(…, O_EXCL) or mkstemp(3), then such risk is avoided.
Comment: On modern systems, one of those compatibility symlinks is `/var/lock` → `/run/lock`
Answer: /tmp
It is risky, because you need to add extra code to use it safely.  Obviously this gets overlooked.
A recent example is given by Steve Kemp.  http://blog.steve.org.uk/sometimes_reading_code_makes_you_scream_.html

./mgmt/tools/SysAPI.cc:  tmp = fopen("/tmp/shadow", "w");
./mgmt/tools/SysAPI.cc:    system("/bin/mv -f /tmp/shadow /etc/shadow");

If you (the attacker) replace /tmp/shadow before the second line, you get to replace everyone's password.  (I guess the attack requires you to create the file before the first line, and make the file world-writeable).
Systemd on linux allows mitigating such vulnerabilities by isolating /tmp for many system services.  (Except ones that "misuse /tmp as a location for IPC sockets and other communication primitives").
In Fedora Linux - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/ServicesPrivateTmp
Systemd explanation - http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/security.html
Comment: "I guess the attack requires you to create the file before the first line" -- Indeed. If the file doesn't already exist, the first line will create it as the running user (presumably root), and a different malicious user won't have permissions to replace it before the second line. If the file does already exist, `fopen` overwrites it but doesn't reset permissions, so the malicious user can still make changes. Also, a malicious user could have done something like `ln -s /bin/bash /tmp/shadow` before the first line, so that an essential system binary would get overwritten.
Answer: To find world writable directories, you can use
find / -xdev -type d \( -perm -0002 -a ! -perm -1000 \) -print

For files change type to f
For symlinks type to l
To set sticky bit:
find / -xdev -type d \( -perm -0002 -a ! -perm -1000 \) -print0| xargs -0 chmod +t


Equivalent key size between HMAC and AES?

Question: I have seem comparison between AES and RSA, e.g., AES 128 bit key is equivalent to RSA modulus 3072 bits. Is there such comparison between AES key size and HMAC?
Answer: Well, there are two potential key recovery attacks against HMAC (assuming a reasonable hash function):

Brute force the key; that is, take a valid (Message, MAC) pair, and try every possible key, and look for a key that gives that MAC for that Message
Brute force the internal hashing state immediately after processing the IPAD/OPAD; here, you would take a valid (Message, MAC) pair, and try every possible key, and look for a key that gives that MAC for that Message

Now, for first attack would take $O(2^k)$ time (for a key size of $k$); the second attack would take $O(2^{2n})$ time (if the hash function had an internal state size of $n$ bits).
With realistic key sizes and hash functions, $2^k < 2^{2n}$; hence the best attack is an exhaustive search of the key space; this gives us the same approximate strength as AES for a given key size.
Comment: Note: HMAC with an internal state of $n$ bits is vulnerable to a collision attack with $O(2^{n/2})$ queries to an oracle implementing HMAC with fixed key; this is another limit to HMAC's security.
Answer: NIST specifies the paired hash digest size beat least twice the key size of AES, therefore:

AES-128 is paired with at least SHA-256 or SHA-512/256
AES-192 is paired with at least SHA-384
AES-256 is paired with SHA-512
SHA3 hash functions will be added to the list in the future

The reason being that the collision and preimage resistance of the hash function are not weaker than the AES key strength. Don't be the weak link in the chain if you will.
When used with HMAC or as part of a digital signature scheme, the security strength is generally not less than half the digest size, which means digests twice the size of the block cipher key. As poncho notes the state size of the hash is also relevant, in all cases the state size for these functions is at least twice the digest size, so that should also not be the weak link.
Additionally in a digital signature scheme based on ECC (with prime curves), the same 2X security generally applies, a 256-bit curve gives 128-bit security, so a curve operation on a hash will have the security of either the hash or the curve, whichever is weaker. Having them be the same size ensures the same security level. NIST specifies several curves to match the standard security strengths.
All of these strengths assume there is no shortcut attack on the hash, and for the SHA-2 family, none are known on the full hash function when used in a scheme aware of its limitations (such as a length extension attack).


Offbrand Android Tablet - Google Mail/contacts/calendar issue

Question: I bought a Pandigital Supernova 8" tablet with Gingerbread OS, for a really good price, and despite the fact it had a lot of oddball apps on it, I was able to root it, and get google play/gmail etc on it. I'm having a real problem though, getting Google calendar/contacts to sync. I installed the Gmail app, it prompted me to login to my gmail address and mail itself works fine. But.. The contacts applet and calendar do not sync with my gmail account. If I go into the contacts applet it says there are no contacts, and there is no google selection in the "add accounts" area. While trying to figure this out, I found there were two .apk's missing, GoogleCalendarSyncConnector.apk and GoogleContactsSyncConnector.apk. Once added and the tablet rebooted, I figured this would work, but alas, it did not.  What am I missing??
Answer: Warning - I've not tried this.  I've a lot of experience with Android but haven't specifically tried hacking Google services on to a non AOSP based ROM.  I recommend that you make a full nandroid backup through clockworkmod or any other recovery tool before you attempt this.  If you can't backup, I'd think seriously about not trying this.
That said - Google doesn't like ROM developers ship their ROMs with all the Google framework apps installed, which is good for you because it means that everything you need to get up and running properly with the Playstore, GMail, Google Accounts etc can be found in one handy zip file.  Have a read up of this page, take note of this paragraph:

Google Apps packages are not cross-compatible with other major Android versions. For example, the 20120224 pack for Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0) is not compatible with Gingerbread (Android 2.3). Likewise, the DRC83 package for Donut (Android 1.6) will not work with Honeycomb (Android 3.x). Flashing an incompatible package may cause a variety of bugs, boot-loops, crashes, force-closes, kernel panics, plagues, rashes, coughing, sneezing, headaches, diarrhea, vomiting blood, blood dripping from scrotum, thermonuclear war, unending Tic-Tac-Toe games, Mayan Doomsday, flooding, purple pustules forming on the face, a bricked device, exploding batteries, or nothing at all. Regardless, it is not recommended, and support will not be provided by any competent developer to a user who has done so.

The file which matches your OS version (Gingerbread, 2.3) is http://goo.im/gapps/gapps-gb-20110828-signed.zip.
Flash this file via the recovery console, or you can install manually by following the script at \META-INF\com\google\android\updater_script.
Again I warn you that you could mess up your device, and I'm willing to bet there aren't that many ROMs out there if you mess up the current one.
Good luck!
Comment: Thanks for the tip.. I don't have a third party rom on this tablet, I'm crazy about CM7, have it on my LG phone, but apparently its not available for this tablet, so the tablet is merely rooted. As far as I know, I don't have any nandroid backup on this tablet, simply TitaniumBackup, and have done several full backups of the tablet.. Will this duplicate a nandroid backup??
Comment: No. TitaniumBackup will backup your app data, apk files, cache but won't backup your OS.  I was worried that you may not be able to do a nandroid backup - this link will explain how to do a nandroid without a recovery image - http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/08/07/onandroid-allows-live-full-nandroid-backups-without-rebooting-into-recovery/.  NOTE - I don't yet know how you'd restore without a recovery image
Comment: Found the Onandroid app to do a non-recovery nandroid backup. I think I'm screwed, as when I ran it I claimed it couldn't find a /system on the tablet, which of course there IS.. I'm to the point where I think I'm gonna give this tablet to the kids and buy me a real tablet, one that includes the google apps stock and that doesn't require all this b.s. ... Thanks for the info though...


Is possible to design a book in Illustrator or Photoshop?

Question: I have to design a book, It has 24 pages include the cover page, one of pages size is A4.. Let me know, What is the suitable Adobe software for my design.. Can't I design this book using Illustrator? Definitely should I use the Adobe InDesign?
Comment: It sounds like you already know that you should use Indesign. You could make it by gluing macaroni on sheets of paper, but Indesign will be easiest to manage.
Comment: yes I know, but I dont know InDesign, I know only Photoshop & Illustrator, that is why I want to know, Can I use the Illustrator for my design,???
Comment: That was what I was trying to say. You could use anything, byt Indesign makes the most sense.
Comment: If you know illustrator you should be somewhat productive in inDesign quite quickly (A hour or so)
Comment: yep I want know learn InDesign also.. I will try to learn InDesign quickly, as you told.. Thank you..
Answer: Yes, it's possible.
Would I want to do it? No way, except for a book of 24 pages of full-color photographs and no text. Then I might do it in Photoshop.
The thing about most "books" is that they contain linked columns of flowing text, plus generated text such as tables of contents, indexes, lists of illustrations, page numbers, and more. NONE of those is possible in image-editing or illustration programs. They are meant to be done in page-layout programs such as InDesign, QuarkXPress, and FrameMaker. And if you want running headers/footers, text variables, conditional text, master pages, xrefs, and many other book-level niceties, you must have a robust big-publication editor such as FrameMaker.
Answer: Every Adobe product has a purpose for which it should be properly used.
InDesign is mainly used to organize text and images and design layouts like you can see mostly in newspapers and magazines.
Photoshop is usually used for editing "pixel" based images such as a photo. The advantage of using Photoshop is its ability to view effects as you apply them, and view them again instantly and easily if you come back to your work at a later time.
It's better to use these two tools in combination, Photoshop for the layout details while using InDesign for better text rendering.
Answer: Adobe Illustrator is equipped for Book design if you do not have Indesign. Please keep in mind that the working file may become enormous unless you keep all the illustrations/images unlinked in the initial file. Photoshop is NOT a good option for typographic layouts, as it tends to encourage stretching/distorting fonts.


In OSPF does a DR consume more resources than a BDR?

Question: What is the best practice in conserving router resources? Should a single ABR router be the DR for all areas? Will that have a negative impact on the resources, or would it be better to let other routers act as the BR?
Answer:
In OSPF does a DR consume more resources than a BDR?

Both the DR and BDR for a link will form a full adjacency with any other OSPF routers on the same link. That is what consumes the most router resources.

Should a single ABR router be the DR for all areas?

There is a problem with that idea. DR/BDR is per (broadcast/non-broadcast) link, not area. Each area may require multiple DRs/BDRs because there are multiple broadcast links in an area. You may also have entire areas that consist of point-to-point links, where there are no DRs in the entire area.
Assume a network as in this diagram, where all the links are ethernet (broadcast) links:

The ABR can certainly be the DR for all the orange links (it needs to have enough resources to handle being the DR for all those links), but each of the red links will also need a DR, and the ABR cannot be the DR for those links.
In fact, there is no single router in an area that can be the DR for all the red links in the area because no single router in any area is connected to all the red links in the area.
Also, for example, if all the links in the yellow area are point-to-point links, including the links to the ABR, then the yellow area will not have any DRs, and the ABR will not be a DR for the yellow area.
If all the links in the AS are point-to-point links, then there will be no DRs in the entire AS.

In an OSPF AS that has multiple areas, you must have at least one ABR, but DRs have nothing to do with an area. DRs are used on broadcast/non-broadcast links so that not every router on the link needs to form a full adjacency with every other router on the link, only with the DR and BDR for that link.
I think you are conflating two different concepts.
Answer: Designated router (DR) selection: In general, the DR and backup designated router (BDR) on a multiaccess link (for example, Ethernet) have the most OSPF work to do. It is a good idea to select routers that are not already heavily loaded with CPU-intensive activities to be the DR and BDR. In addition, it is generally not a good idea to select the same router to be the DR on many multiaccess links simultaneously.
http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1763921&seqNum=6


Are there creatures of fantasy in other countries that have the same prevelance as zombies, werewolves and vampires in the United States?

Question: Most creatures of fantasy appear to be derived from these similar themes, but I wonder if I simply have not heard of creatures in other countries that hold captive the imaginations of the citizens in the same way zombies, werewolves and vampires appear to in the United States.
Comment: I think there's an interesting question in here, but it is too subjective as worded. Can you try to refine it? One thing to consider is: how do you measure the "prevalence" of a monster within a culture to form the basis of comparison?
Comment: Are you interested in prevalence only in mainstream modern works?  If not, I'm pretty sure dragons beat all three of those monsters in both popularity and direct combat.
Comment: We have "prevalent" monsters because we make movies about then and they're exposed more, while in other countries it's more of a regional/folktale type situation. Also, some are "spiritual" monsters, like the dragon in China.
Comment: @Beofett I'm having difficulty coming up with a "measuring stick" for this one. Prevalence or popularity is hard to define. I guess the only subjective equivalent would have to be measured by someone who lives in that country and has been to the United States. However, Feral Oink's answer below about Chupacabra is a pretty fair analogy.
Comment: I don't see how a comprehensive answer to this wouldn't be the size of a novel.  Between all the countries around the world, and all their various local myths, there is a massive pool of monsters and stories.  Combined with the vaguely-defined measuring stick of 'prevalence', makes this impossible to feasibly answer.
Answer: There are number of creatures that exist or are mentioned in Russian folk tales. They are pretty popular within ex-Soviet republics, mostly in Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia.
Some creatures I remember are:

Baba Yaga (a witch living in the forest, sometimes having "the bone leg", bakes and eats people who get lost in the woods - prefers little children. Hops around the forest in a levitational device called "stupa" which is a huge wooden mortar. Her accomodation is a wooden log cabin or hut elevated on a pair of chicken legs. The hut can move around the forest and follow simple voice commands. The hut is not very smart as in many folk tales it followed orders not only from Baba Yaga but also from random people, hunters, knights who happened to find it in the woods. Most of them get eaten by Baba Yaga anyway, so may be the hut is used to entrap them)
Koshei "the Deathless". An immortal skeleton, massively rich evil wizard\king of the forest, sometimes considered to be Baba Yaga's relative or boyfriend. His death is in the needle hidden in the egg hidden in the duck hidden in the hare hidden in (several more animals) hidden in a chest chained on top of some huge tree.
Vodyanoi (waterman) - lives in rivers\lakes, has commanding powers over Rusalki (mermaids, all females). Can drown people who in his opinion bring harm to rivers and lakes. Rusalki can drown people just for fun (males) or to increase own headcount (females).
Leshii (forest man) - similar to waterman, but lives in the forest. Each forest can have
one or more forest men. Can either help someone who gets lost in the wood or lure them deeper until they starve or break the neck, etc. More random behavior and more dangerous than waterman.
Barabashka: common term for poltergeist- or ghost-like creature. Mostly harmless, but can be very annoying. Steals things, spills water, breaks mirrors. Lives in peoples homes, mostly rural. Not often found in big cities.

There are good articles on these subjects in wikipedia which make good bed time reading.
Answer: The chupacabra, originally of Puerto Rico, now well-known in Mexico and thereabouts is a good example (they are well-established even in Arizona, where I live). Chupacabra has been profiled by the likes of Animal Planet. However, it has sinister, blood sucking attributes beyond what might seem like an otherwise harmless crypto-goat*.
Duppy, also referred to as jumbie, are creatures with high prevalence rates in Jamaica and parts of the Carribean, Guyana, but less so in Puerto Rico.
*"Crypto-creature" is more accurate. Chupacabra prey on goats, but are not necessarily goat-like, though it is difficult to know with certainty. They do run on two legs, might fly and certainly can jump.
Comment: As a Mexican married to a Puerto Rican, I can tell you that the chupacabra comes from Puerto Rico. I know Mexicans have different superstitions but nothing like Puerto Rico's chupracabra.
Comment: @Sara Sorry, he says he is my all-purpose (global?) "crypto-zoological expert" ;o)
Comment: @Sara I just verified this with my Puerto Rican folklore and history "expert" ;o) He said that it is well-known that chupacabra are indigenous to Puerto Rico and as you said, living large indeed! They prey on chickens and rabbits, as well as goats. I will make a slight notation in my answer to indicate this. Thank you so much!
Answer: Scandinavia:
Trolls: Numerous tales about trolls are recorded, in which they are frequently described as being extremely old, very strong, but slow and dim-witted, and are at times described as man-eaters and as turning to stone upon contact with sunlight.
Watch the movie Trolljegeren, it's a modern horror/comedy movies about trolls.
Huldra:The huldra is a stunningly beautiful, sometimes naked woman with long hair; though from behind she is hollow like an old tree trunk, and has an animal's tail. In Norway, she has a cow's tail, and in Sweden she may have that of a cow or a fox. Further in the north of Sweden, the tail can be entirely omitted in favor of her hollow or bark-covered back.
Mare: The mare is an evil spirit or goblin in Germanic folklore which rides on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on bad dreams (or "nightmares").
Answer: This question has kind of already been answered so I am just adding to the list.
In modern day Indonesia, the believers of polytheistic Hinduism wake up every morning and weave a basket from long grass in which they place a small cookie or biscuit, a flower, and a piece of incense.  This ensemble then goes into something that looks like a small mailbox.  Its purpose is to LITERALLY "keep the demons satisfied and happy" so they leave that house alone.  You see these ALL OVER Bali.  I would say that qualifies as a pretty strong belief in modern monsters, and it's population wide (Hindu only).
Many Native American and Native Canadian tribes still believe in various Nature Spirits / Totems.  Though not really monsters, they do have plentiful stories about shaman who can shape-shift and the like.
Modern Aboriginals in Australia have a VERY strong belief in Ghosts.
Both China & Japan are OBSESSED with Anime monsters - e.g. your tentacle creatures, transformer type robots, etc.  These guys get LOTS of print media - a Japanese comic shop is nearly wall-to-wall with graphic novels about these guys.  Vampires show up a lot in Japanese stories as well.
In parts of the UK and Ireland, though the countries are by far predominantly Christian, there are still pockets of "true believers" in the Fey / Fair Folk / Faeries, though this belief is kind of watered down from the original stories to more like "garden sprites" at this point.  There is a settlement up in the far North of Scotland where they grow crazy vegetables in impossible soil and they attribute it whole-heartedly and quite openly to the "Garden Devas."
Voodoo, though losing dominance, still actually holds sway a few places on earth as well, e.g. Haiti.  That's more a belief in Black Magic and evil sorcerers however, rather than monsters.
Hope this helps.
Comment: This is quite good, but I don't think any of the creatures mentioned fill the same spot as the triad mentioned in the OP...


How do I make a cookie with a cream filling (similar to an Oreo filling)?

Question: I want to make a cookie stuffed with the cream filling you find in an Oreo. I've seen a few cookie sandwich recipes that use a filling made with butter. My question is, since this filling will be stuffed inside my cookie BEFORE baking, would the presence of butter cause issues while it's being baked?
Comment: Can you please post the whole recipe? Presumably the person who developed it knows that it works, but it is highly unusual, I have never heard of this type of cookie filling being added before baking.
Comment: @rumtscho I don't have a recipe, I wanted to work on one so I was asking in general.
Answer: A filling made with butter will melt at baking temperatures, and probably spill out of your cookies, or at the very least stop the cookie dough from baking properly (it will either soak the dough with moisture, break open the cookie with steam, or both) and not reform into the filling you want.
Instead, you should look into making hollow cookies and piping or injecting the filling once baked and cooled, or if you want filled cookies then find a recipe for filled cookies (but the filling will have to be something substantially different).
Comment: I figured that would be the case. Thank you for your input!
Comment: @Kat Corrected; thanks. Phone autocorrect to blame.
Comment: @dbmag9 I figured, I had to type my comment four times to get the right filling/filing in each spot.


What type of fasteners should I use when replacing exterior deck boards?

Question: I have a wooden walkway that leads from my deck down to my pool.  Some of the boards are rotten and I want to replace them.  Is this a project for a Nail Gun (which is how everything is currently put down) or a Screw Gun?  Reason I ask, is that while the current boards are put down with nails, I have to hammer in the nails probably once every 6 months in random spots?  Would braiding on screws hold the wood down better and not have to be "re-screwed" every 6 months?
Comment: What is "braiding"?
Comment: I think OP means "spiral shaft nails" aka "spiral flooring nail" seen used for sub-flooring.
Comment: @JamesOlson - yes, that is what I was referencing.  Sorry for my incorrect terminology.
Answer: Decks have been built with screws for the last 30 years where I live. Nails are unheard of for the reason you mentioned. Your local hardware store will have a selection of epoxy-coated or galvanized screws in various colors that will serve you well. 2-1/2" is typical for 5/4 decking, and 3" for 2-by decking.
You can use a standard drill to drive deck screws. You don't need a screw gun, though the auto-depth feature they offer can save time on large projects.
Answer: If you want to use wood I would use pressure treated boards ( either 2x4 or 5/4 radius edge) and secure them with ACQ screws.  They are either Brown or green depending on where you live.  First thing to check however is the condition of the stringers (boards running perpendicular to the deck boards) to see if they have rotted out.  If they are rotten, you should replace them or the nails and screws will never hold.
If you have a bigger budget, consider using one of the composite deck boards such as Trex. You won't have to stain them ever and they don't rot.
Cheers,
MarkR
Answer: Wood screws are definitely the way to go. They will pull the deck board tight to the joist.  I'm not sure what type of wood you have for your project, but this Fastenmaster screw would work for pressure treated, softwoods and redwoods.
If you do have a larger budget, a composite or pvc deck board would be a good solution to the rotting issue.


Libor Swap Rates

Question: In a 5 year Libor Swap, say fixed vs. 3 months Libor, what is the credit risk reflected by the fixed leg ? (I'm ignoring counterparty credit risk). Would the fixed leg reflect 3 month Libor quoting bank credit quality ?
Answer: LIBOR is the London Interbank Offered Rate.  These are the rates that banks are offering to lend to each other and therefore will reflect the average credit quality of the banks that participate in the establishing the setting of the rate, which is generally about a AA credit rating.
Comment: So the 5 year swap rate reflects the average over 5 years of prospective panel banks 3 months credit risk, not the 5 year credit risk. In other words the credit risk of rolling a 3 months loan to a bank that is always AA, not the credit risk of lending for a period of 5 years to a bank that is initially AA.
Comment: The panel of contributing banks is (re) selected every year, so the panel would presumably stay of AA rating over time unless all banks get downrated.
Comment: Sure, but would the 5 year swap rate reflect the 3 month credit risk of the average bank that contributes to Libor, or would it be the 5 year credit risk ?

Libor Swap Rates


fsck an ntfs drive in Linux

Question: Is there a way to fsck/chkdsk an NTFS drive from Linux?
Answer: Yes.  This was handled by fsck on some releases.  If the partition is not listed in /etc/fstab, then you will likely need to tell it the partition type.  I've used this from a Linux CD to recover a partition Windows wouldn't boot from.
Based on the comments below, the actual fixing is done by the ntfsfix program.  It should be available, even if there is no program to run a fsck on an NTFS file system.
Comment: Although as noted in the man page for ntfsfix/fsck.ntfs, it is not a Linux version of chkdsk and only checks for certain kinds of obvious problems on the disk.
Comment: I assume from the above comment that `fsck.ntfs` was at some point handled by `ntfsfix`. Comments on a lower post indicate this may not be workable now as their arguments are not compatible. Anyway, in Debian 8.2, `fsck.ntfs` does not exist - but `ntfsfix` does and was able to fix a corrupted MFT I encountered. Thanks @SabreWolfy for the hint.
Answer: Unfortunately the ntfsfix tool is very limited compared to Microsoft's chkdsk. Try to get a Windows install going - preferably with the newest version of Windows as Microsoft is presumably constantly improving chkdsk (I hope..) New versions of Windows are often available for free as trials. If the problem is in a USB disk you can try installing Windows in something like VirtualBox and give the VM control of the USB device.
Comment: Take care using Windows 'chkdsk /f' on an NTFS used by Linux. I just followed this advice to fix errors on my external 2TB backup drive. It deleted the names of 268 files and directories (incl. all my incr. backups) due to invalid characters (from NTFS viewpoint - most often ':' used in timestamps). I reverted it all using the log file, but it took half a day of coding. Some but not all Linux system-calls block writing such invalid names on an NTFS. I use rsync for backups, which silently copies such invalid filenames - normally useful, until you need to fix other problems on the disk...
Comment: Or use Ultimate Boot CD for Windows. It's a live Windows XP CD with lots of recovery tools. That's how I solved my problem (corrupted NTFS partition). I tried using the `ntfsck` program included in the Parted Magic live USB, but I got an error saying `Boot sector: bad NTFS magic. Segmentation fault`.
Comment: maybe limited for some people, but it fixed my corrupted MFT just fine :-) [until the next time, perhaps! i'm not sure about this drive...]
Comment: Hyper-V Server is a completely free (beer) but heavily cut-down version of Windows
that's designed for running VMs.  The installer should contain all the usual utilities like `chkdsk`/`diskpart`, etc.
Comment: UBCD has many qualities but I should not describe it as a Windows XP CD.
Answer: In my case, none of fsck & ntfsfix could fix the issue of my external NTFS mobile disk.
I end up to boot into windows os, and use follow steps to fix the disk issue.
Steps:

Check the identifier of the bad disk. e.g g
Open the "cmd" terminal of windows.
Input chkdsk <disk>: /f to fix it.
Where <disk> is the identifier, e.g chkdsk d: /f
Then it would be fixed within seconds (For a disk of size 1Tb).

After years, finally I found something that windows can do easily, but linux can't ;)

@Update - vm solution
You can also create a windows vm (e.g win 7), then mount the mobile disk to windows vm, then you can also use chkdsk to fix the disk, it's similar as boot into a windows machine.
Comment: I'd recommend using flag `/x` (unmount) for enforcing preventing access to the drive. Help manual says using `/x` implies also `/f`, so it helps for doing fixes the same way Linux does (`fsck` requires drives being unmounted).
Comment: +1 for the idea of the VM. Thanks!
Answer:
ln -s /bin/ntfsfix /sbin/fsck.ntfs

fsck /dev/sdg1
fsck from util-linux 2.21.2
Mounting volume... OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Checking the alternate boot sector... FIXED
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
NTFS partition /dev/sdg1 was processed successfully.

On fedora 22, there is another binary :
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 13 May 22 22:13 /usr/sbin/fsck.ntfs -> ../bin/ntfsck

Answer: If you have NTFSProgs installed, you should be able to run fsck.ntfs or fsck -t ntfs to fsck an NTFS drive.
Comment: Running Debian 6.0.3, just installed ntfsprogs, no fsck.ntfs installed, and when running fsck with -t ntfs, get "fsck.ntfs not found". So don't think the two are related.
Comment: @ZayneSHalsall In Debian, it happens to be a symlink to `ntfsfix` which is in `ntfsprogs`. I guarantee you that you will be able to run `ntfsfix` if `ntfsprogs` installed properly.
Comment: Newer versions of Debian and Ubuntu don't have this symlink. You can make it yourself, but the problem is that `ntfsfix` has a completely different set of arguments to the standard `fsck` ones. It's better to make `fsck.ntfs` (and `fsck.ntfs-3`) a script containing `exec ntfsfix ${@:$#}` (with a shebang of `#!/bin/bash`).
Comment: @squircle thank you man `sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda1` fixed my issue. `fsck.ntfs -f /dev/sda1` and `fsck -t ntfs -f /dev/sda1` exited early with `fsck from util-linux 2.31.1`
Comment: ntfsfix is there, but ntfsprogs is not available. maybe in ntfs-3g.
Answer: Using a fsck.ntfs solved my similar problem in a Windows ntfs partition + Ubuntu 20.XX LTS partition (can't remember exact version):
Running lsblk -f returns:
NAME   FSTYPE FSVER LABEL       UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda
├─sda1
├─sda2 vfat   FAT32             1950-4B8D                             505,9M     1% /boot/efi
└─sda3 ext4   1.0               29ee8e5b-457e-4610-a503-c8142cc40d68
sdb
└─sdb1 ntfs         HDD         42AEC908AEC8F607
sdc
├─sdc1 ntfs         Recuperação 04C0478BC0478242
└─sdc2 ext4   1.0               8be461e1-7470-45f6-844c-7559ed2769e9  380,6G     8% /

As you can see, I need to fix my HDD labeled driver (42AEC908AEC8F607), so ln -s /bin/ntfsfix /sbin/fsck.ntfs and after an fsck /dev/sdb1 solved for me, even loggin windows 'refuse to mount' FAILED:
root@bruno-andrade:/home/bruno# fsck /dev/sdb1
fsck from util-linux 2.37.2
Mounting volume... The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0).
Metadata kept in Windows cache, refused to mount.
FAILED
Attempting to correct errors...
Processing $MFT and $MFTMirr...
Reading $MFT... OK
Reading $MFTMirr... OK
Comparing $MFTMirr to $MFT... OK
Processing of $MFT and $MFTMirr completed successfully.
Setting required flags on partition... OK
Going to empty the journal ($LogFile)... OK
Checking the alternate boot sector... FIXED
NTFS volume version is 3.1.
NTFS partition /dev/sdb1 was processed successfully.

Thanks to @tanguy in his answer: fsck an ntfs drive in Linux
Comment: I would be *EXTREMELY* cautious about using non-native tools on a Windows NTFS partition.  The Ubuntu 20  version of ntfsfix should be OK under most circumstances ... but lots of folks (myself included!) have distros dating back 10 years or more.  It could be *catastophic* to apply some arbitrary Linux tool on some NTFS filesystems...  Two better alternatives: 1) Boot to Windows, or 2) use a Windows VM.
Comment: Welcome to Super User! Before answering an old question having an accepted answer (look for green ✓) as well as other answers ensure your answer adds something new or is otherwise helpful in relation to them. Here is a guide on [answer]. There is also a site [tour] and  a [help].

fsck an ntfs drive in Linux


How do I stop my bike tires from puncturing?

Question: I recently bought a specialized Stumpjumper 29 and its only been a few weeks but I've punctured the tire four times already. I think im getting the punctures from the trees and bark on the trail but is there any type of tire that is more puncture resistant that the stock one I have right now?
Comment: Are you sure you're not getting snakebite from running the pressure too low?
Comment: Assuming you are using tubes, are you checking the tire for thorns before replacing them? What do the holes look like? Consider switching to tubeless...
Answer: Its unlikely that the problem is your tire quality. Stump jumpers are not cheap bikes and come with pretty decent tires. Although a Kevlar belted tire might help, its likely to be a waste of money.
First up is what you are riding over. Bark, twigs and trees themselves are not going to puncture a MTB tire. Thorns, particularly dry ones, will. Even relatively small thorns (a couple om millimeter) will puncture a tire.
If you have punctured and have not removed the offending pointy thing, you will puncture again, this might be what has happened. Are the holes in the same place each time? This is the most likely reason for four in quick succession.
Are your punctures one or two holes? If two, you are getting "snake bites" from too low tire pressure - (well covered already, use search)..
If you are riding over thorns, then you need to buy thick heavy tires with a Kevlar belt. Light tires puncture easier. Also install thick, heavy tubes. This extra weight wil slow you down, but not as much as fixing punctures does. Consider going tubeless (the sealer also helps seal up puncture holes). You could also ride different trails - I have some locally that I avoid for this reason.
It could always be you just had a bad run of it......
Comment: +1 "slow you down, but not as much as fixing punctures does"
Answer:
Watch what you're riding over. Thorns, glass, and other sharp objects are obviously not your friends. Seems like a no brainer, but it's worth pointing out.
Ensure that there's not something sharp embedded in your tire. This is a common problem- you'll run over something that punctures your tire and when you change tube it's flat again not too long after. Sometimes this is due to whatever punctured your tube the first time still being stuck in your tire.
Keep your tire pressure up. If you're noticing two holes in about the same spot on the tube that resembles a "snake bite", you're getting what's called punch flats. This happens when the tire and tube compresses sufficiently between the ground and the rim to actually cut the tube. Increasing tire pressure can help alleviate this
Let your bike "float" under you. This just comes with practice, but if you get your butt off the saddle in rough stuff and let the bike move underneath you, the impacts aren't as severe and you are once again less likely to suffer pinch flats. As this technique improves you can also decrease your tire pressure if necessary.
Go tubeless. This may require a conversion kit, or your existing tires and tubes may be tubeless ready in which case you'd just need valve stems and sealant. If you're unsure about which is the case, ask the folks at the shop you bought it from. Keep in mind you can still go flat but it's less likely. MTB tubeless also limits the max PSI you can use, which shouldn't be a big deal as one of the benefits of tubeless is running lower PSI.
Answer: Chances are your tyre has something sharp on the inside, that is rubbing on the tube while you ride and eventually causing another puncture.
Fixing a puncture is not good enough. You also need to find out why the puncture happened in the first place, and solve that problem. Remove the sharp object from the tyre (usually it sticks through and then gets stuck in there) or if it's a pinch flat you need higher air pressure.
When replacing the tyre, always fit it so the label lines up with the valve stem. That way if you're repeatedly getting punctures in the same place you will know exactly where on the tyre to search for the offending sharp object that is stuck on the inside, causing repeated punctures.
Also check the wheel rim for anything sharp or damaged. But you have a new bike, so that's unlikely unless there was a manufacturing fault.
Answer: Get rid of the tubes and use Stans no Tubes instead.  You'll save a bit of weight where it counts the most, but more importantly the tires will be self sealing.  Well worth it, I think most mountain bikers use it and you've probably switched to it by now, but for anyone else that ends up on this page.
Here's a demo
Comment: I double this comment. There are so many variables that can be causing your punctures that it's hard to help you, but assuming you have the correct pressure on your wheels and the punctures are not from snake bites, Stan no Tubes or Slime (http://slime.com/category/tubes/) should help you a lot. I've had amazing experiences with Slime, and they're not very expensive so you should definitely try them.
Comment: I second the answer, but the generic term to use is to convert to tubeless, which implies using sealant. Stans is far from the only good tubeless sealant (I have personal experience with Orange Seal). Tubeless is a bit more questionable in *road* bikes and cyclocross bikes, but it is very well-established in mountain biking and gravel cycling.
Answer: In addition to all the comments about being careful, Continental that claims to have a puncture resistant tire.  ProTection Apex  https://www.continental-tires.com/bicycle/technology/mtb/protection-apex
I ride road bikes and use Continental Gatorskin on my bike. I have run over glass and not had them puncture. If the ProTection Apex are anything like the Gatorskin, they would be a good puncture resistant tire.


Ender 3 V2 under extrusion problems

Question: Every time I start a print, midway during printing, my printer starts to under extrude.
I tried lots of different models every time the problem occurs.
What should I do about this?
Comment: If you could, please add some extra information on printing temperature, material type, and e.g. retraction settings.This is probably caused by insufficient cooling of the hotend or the extruder gets hot.
Answer: This is some kind of filament stuck in the hotend tube problem. Just like "heat creep" as mentioned above. PTFE pipes should be checked, all parts should be carefully cleaned. I also add checking the extruder (gears, tightness) to the list. The plastic extruder can structurally loosen or break over time. I switched to metal extruder a long time ago, but metal also breaks / loosens after a while. Finally I'm using a double gear extruder without any problem. And I replaced the stock pipes with more durable PTFE and "Pneumatic Fittings". Pneumatic fittings are also very important by the way.
Answer: If everything is stock on the machine and all other setting are properly configured, this is most likely heat creep.  This is caused when the PFTE tubing is not properly set within the hot end itself leaving a small gap.  As filament is fed into the hot end and heated to melting, some filament oozes out in the gap between the PFTE tubing and the nozzle. This melted filament then cools and hardens making it harder to extrude filament causing under extrusion.
You may want to calibrate your E-steps and flow as well, here is an excellent website.
Answer: I was getting intermittent underextrusion (to the point of brief "ghost printing") with my own Ender 3 over the past few days, after a couple weeks of exemplary operation.  In looking the machine over (searching for issues that could cause clogging, for instance), I discovered that the "extruder arm" (the spring loaded arm on the extruder that carries the bearing and channel that presses the filament against the actual extruder wheel) was badly cracked; the crack ran from the brass insert where the screw holding the pressure bearing threads in, up to the hole for the screw the whole arm pivots on; it was near breaking off entirely.
I was able to find a .stl file for a replacement arm on Thingiverse (search for "ender 3 extruder arm"), and dismounted the broken arm and super glued it back together, hoping it would hold up long enough to print a replacement (I also contacted the Amazon seller about warranty service, since I've had the machine only three weeks and there's a 90 day warranty).
If this is the cause of your own failures, it will likely go from "intermittent underextrusion" to "doesn't work at all" without any further warning.  Fortunately, that arm is made of a plastic that takes glue well (probably either polypropylene or ABS, as it appears to be injection molded); mine has held up for long enough to print a replacement, and (so far) through about eight hours of my next print in line (which is going perfectly).

Ender 3 V2 under extrusion problems


Which single letter abbreviations are typically used for the production factors Land, Labour and Capital?

Question: I often see "L" for Labour and "K" for Capital, as well as "M" for natural resources (i.e. Land) but they don't seem to be applied consistently.
Comment: Related: https://economics.stackexchange.com/questions/5056
Answer: In economic models, K is commonly used to represent "capital." This is presumably due to the fact that German for capital is "kapital," and also to the fact the C is more commonly used to represent consumption.
There is no difference in meaning between labor and labour. Labor is the preferred spelling in American English, and labour is preferred throughout the rest of the English-speaking world.
I believe it really depends what country the economic authors or book writers are from.


How to move media items to new folder without impacting references programmatically?

Question: We have lot of items in the one of the image folder so we are planning to move these images in multiple folder. We would like to do this programmatically however we are not sure if it will impact the field it is used in Items or not? We want to update all the reference link also along with movement of the media. Can it be possible?
Answer: If you are using media items in image field or rich text, then you do not need to change anything because when any item move it does not change item guid it remains same.
Answer: As others have mentioned Sitecore stores the Id of the Media item in the field value so you should be able to move it without having any impact.
One of the best and easiest ways to do this is to use SPE.
I've written about bulk moving items here before:
https://www.flux-digital.com/blog/bulk-move-items-sitecore-powershell-extensions
I've written an example script which will go through your images and move them to an sub-folder using year-month format (e.g "2019-09"):
<code>#Moves Images to sub-folders with year-month format (e.g "2019-09") to organise them better and improve performance

    $imageRootPath = "master:/sitecore/media library/My Site/Images/"
    $images = Get-ChildItem -Path $imageRootPath
    foreach ($image in $images) {
        #get year-month folder format and create folder path
        $monthFolderName = [datetime]$image.Created
        $subFolderPath = "$($imageRootPath)/$($monthFolderName.ToString('yyyy-MM'))"
        #if a year-month folder already exists then move the image to this folder
        if (Test-Path $subFolderPath) {
            Write-Host "Sub-folder Exists, moving image to: $($subFolderPath)";
            Move-Item -Path $image.ItemPath -Destination $subFolderPath;
        }
        #if a year-month folder doesn't exists then create it and move the image to this folder
        else {
            Write-Host "Sub-folder Doesn't exist, creating sub-folder: $($subFolderPath)";
            New-Item -Path $subFolderPath -Name "" -ItemType "/sitecore/templates/System/Media/Media folder"
            Write-Host "Moving image to: $($subFolderPath)";
            Move-Item -Path $image.ItemPath -Destination $subFolderPath;
        }
    }
</code>
Once you've run this the structure will look something like so:

You could always update this script to use a different format such as a-z or year only etc depending on what you would prefer.
Answer: By Default Sitecore uses Media Id to store the image/media reference in a field. for example -
<code><image mediaid="{DB854E88-4293-4D0B-9623-85F58FCAB7D6}" />
</code>
You can see this in the raw value of the image field, same is for the RTE field but if you are using the media path for specific item somewhere in the code, then you need to update your code in this case. If you are only worried about the Sitecore fields then you are good to go, the movement of media item will not change the media item ids.
Comment: At this point i am worried about Sitecore fields. I believe that if it is used in code (ideally it should not be) then i need to make code changes for it. Thanks for your reply.


Starting out in MTG, but core sets are being phased out, so what to do?

Question: I've played MTG casually a couple times, built some starter decks, but gave all my cards away in a purge a couple years ago. I want to get back into Magic, but after reading about all of the upcoming changes at the end of this summer (so, a month from now?), I'm not sure how to pick it back up. Should I buy a core set anyways to start building decks, or hold off?
Comment: Note that Duels: Origins is also supposed to be released later this month on PC (via Steam), Xbox and a bit later on PS4. And maybe on Android, but I can't remember :)
Comment: Magic Duels: Origins is a free to play iOS game that serves as an excellent primer to getting (back) into Magic. It has explanations of all the rules as well as "skill quests" which are mini demonstrations that allow you to see each ability in action. I highly recommend it!
Answer: If you want to start with a core set, Magic Origins is fine to buy - it's going to be in standard another 18 months. The changes are all in the future: no more core sets after this one, two-set blocks, changed rotation schedule. But that doesn't change that Magic Origins is here now!
Even if nothing were changing, it'd still be another year until the next core set, and if you're going to actually get into the game, a year is plenty of time that by then you wouldn't be worrying about core set vs "expert" expansion anyway. So it doesn't seem like the changes are really taking any intro-level stuff away from you. Besides, Wizards knows they need to keep the game at least a bit accessible to new players; I'm sure they'll keep creating things like the Duel Decks that'll give you a way to pick it up even once the core sets are gone.
Comment: On a side note, Wizards have been saying that they are actually working on another product geared towards new players to replace the Core Sets.
Comment: @Autar Hadn't heard that, but relatedly, Duels of the Planeswalkers has definitely been an intro product for a while, and I think that success was one of the things that made Wizards feel safe discontinuing core sets.
Comment: Here is an answer on the subject by Mark Rosewater (MTG's Head Designer) : http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/124622559563/back-when-the-two-set-paradigm-was-announced-you
Answer: You can also get Clash packs, which are really good value for their cost. The new release "Outlast" is said to be worth Twice its price. they give you two Set Decks of 60 cards that work Flawlessly. I have bought this pack myself so I know from experience. Alternatively there maybe certain places you can go that Host "Friday Night Magic" it is getting increasingly popular, that's how I started up again recently.
There are Deck builders toolkits available that give you a lot of cards like over 300. with every colour, from them you can make decks that suit you. the hardest thing I thought to get used to was the introduction of multicolour decks but they are easy to pick up.
Just make sure you stick to 60 cards as a precaution as in my opinion it makes it easier to get what you need out of the deck. Also Check the website: magic.wizards.com that should have a place to show you the rules and how to play. Good Luck!