Confused about David's army

Question:
2 Sam 17:25 says "Absalom had appointed Amasa over the army in place of Joab." Why wouldn't David have taken that army with him when he fled Absalom and why would they immediately submit to Absalom as their leader.  If an army isn't more disciplined than that, it's not an army, it's just a well armed mob.

As general of Absalom's army, Amasa is an enemy of David.  Why would David, (2 Sam 19:13) later appoint him as his general.  Replacing Joab is understandable, but why one who previously, so wrongly opposed him.
Comment: 3. Why do some users provide so little context ?
Comment: Wikipedia on Amasa: David's appointment of Amasa has been interpreted as "a bold stroke of policy, to promise the post of commander-in chief to the general of the rebel army".
Comment: Like @Bach mentioned, as answer to 2nd question, David provided Amasa, his enemy, the position as commander-in chief of the army because it was like a peace offering.  It was meant to bridge the divide caused due to this civil war in Israel
Answer: The answer here is simpler than the previous question.
Question 1
In 2 Sam 15:13-20 we have a record of who went with David when he escaped Jerusalem.  See especially V18:

and all his servants marched past him—all the Cherethites and
Pelethites, and six hundred Gittites who had followed him from Gath.

Thus, we know that the following people departed with David:

The household servants
Some of the King's family
His personal body-guards
David's personal regiments of the Gittites, Cherethites, Pelethites, etc.
David's senior commanders and advisers such as Joab.  This would have been more that 1000 men and possibly a few thousand (2 Sam 18:1).  These were the most elite, experienced and bravest of the army.

The main bulk of the army stayed behind because it was not all in Jerusalem but stationed in various places all over Israel.  There would have been regiments "from Dan to Beersheba" (2 Sam 17:11).  Only the very best, most loyal and senior parts of the army were in Jerusalem.
The description of the battle in 2 Sam 18:1-8 is not specific about the numbers but David placed the command of the elite troops under three experienced commanders for the battle, namely, (2 Sam 18:2) -

He sent out the troops, a third under Joab, a third under Joab's
brother Abishai son of Zeruiah, and a third under Ittai the Gittite.

The rest of David's Army, was placed under the command of Amasa (2 Sam 17:25) and Absalom, numbered in the hundreds of thousands (see 2 Sam 24).  It sheer size made it unmanageable, unwieldy and unresponsive.  The defeat was decisive.
Question 2
However, when David made his triumphal return to Jerusalem, he did something characteristic of David to heal wounds - he replaced Joab as head of the army with Amasa (2 Sam 19:13).  The purpose is obvious - Ellicott suggests several reasons for the replacement.

(13) Say ye to Amasa.—Amasa, like Joab, was David's nephew, although
possibly his mother may have been only half-sister to David. In this
offer of the command-in-chief to the rebel general, David adopted a
bold, but a rash and unjust policy. Amasa should have been punished,
not rewarded for his treason. He had given no evidence of loyalty, nor
was there proof that he would be trustworthy. Moreover, this
appointment would be sure to provoke the jealousy and hostility of
Joab. But David had long been restless under the overbearing influence
of Joab (see 2Samuel 19:22; 2Samuel 16:10; 2Samuel 3:39), and now
since he had murdered Absalom, was determined to be rid of him. He
therefore took advantage of the opportunity by this means to win over
to himself what remained of the military organisation of Absalom.

Benson reaches a similar conclusion:

Say to Amasa, Art thou not of my bone, &c. — That is, nearly related to me, being my sister's son. God do so to me, and more also,
&c. — He solemnly promises to prefer him to the highest command in the
kingdom; for he now thought it a fit time to depress Joab, who was
grown insufferably insolent and imperious, and who, through his credit
with the army, had protected himself in the commission of the greatest
crimes. He had slain Abner most perfidiously in cold blood, and killed
Absalom contrary to the king's express command, and now lately had
insulted him in his sorrow. Having, therefore, now an opportunity of
transferring the command to another person, who had as great an
interest in the people's favour as Joab, he gladly embraces it, that
so he might both chastise Joab for his faults, and rescue himself from
the bondage in which that general had hitherto held him. Some,
however, have thought that, considering Joab's very faithful services
to David in all the changes of his fortune, and that his violent
measures proceeded in part from a regard to him, as judging them
necessary for his safety and tranquillity, David's conduct in this
instance, in making Amasa captain of the host in Joab's room, is not
an amiable trait in his character, and was not a prudent step at this
time, especially considering Joab's violent temper: and, it must be
acknowledged, it brought on the murder of Amasa.
Answer: I can't find much identification of Pelethites or Kerethites, however when I looked at 18:1 as you suggested, it speaks of "thousands" which tells me at least 2000.  Thank you.
However I'm still not totally convinced about Amasa.  I understand David's problems with Joab, but to trust one of his own family who had betrayed him doesn't sound wise.
Regarding Joab's insolence, David needed someone who would speak without reservation.  Joab's scolding for David's behavior before his troops after Absalom's death, victory in their eyes, probably prevented problems wit the men.

Confused about David's army


What is this pipe

Question: I have a small cupboard in basement I store paint etc. In house has oil heat but getting a sort of gas smell after bumping the pipe feels loose like it was just back filled with gravel . Old home built in 30s I don't have a gas meter electric appliances.
Comment: Have you contacted your gas company? That loose gravel backfill sounds like a ready-made gas migration path for a gas leak *outside* to get *inside*...
Comment: Any chance the house *used to* have gas service before it was switched to all-electric?  An all-electric home built in the 30s is a bit unusual, so it would not surprise me.  If that's the case, the pipe probably just runs to where the meter used to be, and is also capped off there.
Comment: Fwiw, natural gas is odorless. Mercaptan is typically added to natural gas for this exact purpose. Natural gas is lighter than air so it should float up and disperse in the event of a small leak. Mercaptan is heavier than air so you will smell the odor long after the gas has dispersed. On the other hand if you're on propane then propane is heavier than air and it can pool near the ground around the water heater flames and cause a not-so-nice situation.
Answer: That looks like a gas line or black iron pipe.
The shutoff valve is typical of gas it may be loose below
I would use caution if you smell gas it could be leaking.
If you have a gas service it could be for a heater that was planned and not used or one that was removed. A soapy water solution dribbled on the threads and valve to check for leaks is a good idea. Gas lines are low pressure and easily sealed.
If you don't feel comfortable checking it gas companies will usually check for you. They do not want bad things to happen.
Comment: "Gas lines are low pressure and easily sealed" - True they are low pressure, but *finding* leaks can be a big pain if it involves tearing up floors to find the joints in the pipework, etc. The usual (cheaper and quicker) fix is just to disconnect the original pipe from the meter supply and run a new pipe.

What is this pipe


What is the iLevel on Path of Exile?

Question: I've seen several times mentioned "iLevel", which is not shown on the statistics of items. What is it and how to know the iLevel of an item?
Answer: iLevel, or ilvl, is the item level - basically an internal variable that affects what sort of affixes and other properties the item can be generated with. Extremely low ilvl items will have a very limited number of potential affixes they can use, while high-ilvl gear can be generated with powerful modifiers and sockets.
Details on ilvl, including how to check: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Item_level
List of item affixes: http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Affix
Comment: The links are broken now
Comment: Thanks, looks like the wiki was migrated. I have updated the links accordingly!
Answer: In recent versions of Path of Exile, holding down alt when hovering over an item will show you its item level.
As Majuju answered, the item level is used to determine which effects are possible on your item.

What is the iLevel on Path of Exile?


Is the Lagrangian in the Standard Model exact or approximate?

Question: We say that the Standard Model has $SU(3)_{C} \otimes SU(2)_{L} \otimes U(1)_{Y}$ symmetries. However, the $SU(2)_{L}$ symmetry of the doublet ($u, d$) is not exact because $u$ and $d$ have different masses. Does this imply that the Standard Model Lagrangian is not precise because it treats ($u, d$) as though it has an exact $SU(2)$ symmetry? Furthermore, if treating ($u ,d$) as an $SU(2)$ doublet makes the Lagrangian imprecise, can we treat $u$ and $d$ separately so as to develop a more precise Lagrangian?
Answer: You seem to be mixing up a few different things. The Standard Model does not say the up and down quark must have the same mass.

The up and down quark form a doublet of the flavor symmetry $SU(2)_F$. This is an approximate symmetry that is broken explicitly by the up and down quark mass difference.
The left-handed up and down quarks form a doublet $Q_L$ of weak isospin $SU(2)_L$. This is a factor of the Standard Model gauge group.
The right-handed up and down quarks form two singlets $U_R$ and $D_R$ of weak isospin $SU(2)_L$.
The gauge symmetry of the Standard Model does place restrictions on the masses of the quarks; namely it requires them to all be zero. The quarks instead acquire masses through the Higgs mechanism, which breaks electroweak symmetry.
There is no requirement for the up quark and down quark to get the same mass, because their masses come from independent Yukawa couplings, namely $H Q_L U_R$ and $H Q_L D_R$.

You've asked almost ten questions about $SU(2)_F$ and $SU(2)_L$, and I really recommend just picking up any book on the Standard Model and reading through it.
Answer: The standard model Lagrangian does not model quantum gravity nor dark matter (as far as we know), hence it is certainly not an 'exact' description of the universe anyway.
However, your question is with regards to the SU(2) symmetry in the standard model Lagrangian. In this respect, there is no loss of precision as far as I know when one treats the SU(2) doublets on the same footing because it is a spontaneously broken symmetry and spontaneous symmetry breaking need not be put into the Lagrangian by hand.
As a simple example, in the Ising spin model of Ferromagnetism, a spin can either point up or it can point down and the up and down spin configurations are treated on an equal footing and this is manifest as a symmetry of the system, even though in the low-temperature regime the system will spontaneously choose a preferred spin direction and form a Ferromagnet.


Stop custom villagers from generating new random trades on their own

Question: So lately I've been working on a minigame map with command blocks and I wanted to create a villager shop. However when I set up some custom trades whenever you traded with him it unlocked new random trades, I don't want this to happen is there a way to prevent this?
(Btw I know this similar has been asked before however the answers didn't quite help me so I decide to ask it myself :D )
Comment: Possible duplicate of [How do I prevent new villager trades from spawning?](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/178230/how-do-i-prevent-new-villager-trades-from-spawning)
Comment: Have you made any attempt to solve this yourself? Arqade works better when askers show effort to solve their own problems; we see that you have a problem you've worked on, and answerers respond to that. You also get a more specific answer that's tailored exactly to the part you're stuck, and Arqade gets a very specific question. Everybody wins!
Comment: Why did the answers not help you? What results do you get when you try them?
Comment: Some of them were super outdated and some were kinda irrelevant.
Answer: As an example, let's say you have this command to spawn a villager:

/summon Villager ~1 ~ ~ {Profession:0,Career:1,Offers:{Recipes:[{buy:{id:"dirt",Count:1},maxUses:9999999,sell:{id:"dirt",Count:2}}]}}

This is a basic command. He will sell 1 dirt for 2 dirt. If you want a villager to not unlocks new trades, you set the CareerLevel higher than its maximum.
The command should look like this now:

/summon Villager ~1 ~ ~ {Profession:0,Career:1,CareerLevel:100,Offers:{Recipes:[{buy:{id:"dirt",Count:1},maxUses:9999999,sell:{id:"dirt",Count:2}}]}}

By setting the CareerLevel to 100, and by having Career set to a value higher than 0 (where a value of 1 works for all professions), we prevented the villager from unlocking new trades upon trading.


Is there any extra-Biblical 'evidence' of Herod's murder of babies?

Question: When Herod heard of the news from the kings form east that there was a new king (Jesus) born, he ordered the killing of all boys younger than the age of two. So that would have been a great slaughter. So is there any historical 'evidence' for that event?
Comment: In New Testament times Bethlehem was a small town of a few hundred inhabitants. There may only have been 10-20 of infant boys. Killing them was obviously a huge tragedy for the town, but not a great slaughter unlikely on the national historic scale.
Comment: @DJClayworth I don't think it's so much they wouldn't care about 10-20 babies. I'm sure it could have cause outrage... If it wasn't for the fact that Herod did this kind of stuff all the time. This incident would have been white noise.
Comment: FWIW, a few years ago a National Geographic article on Herod took the line that since he killed his own offspring, it wasn't much of a reach to believe that people would accept him killing others' offspring without much loss of sleep.  (As I don't have online Nat Geo access, I can't reference the source).  Depending on who it was that writes a given record/chronicle, the emotional impact of someone killing children could be amplified. (And it's a very nasty thing to do -- not just white noise -- in any society).
Comment: Do you mean this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ4ZbqUut0A  ?
Comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_the_Innocents#Historicity
Comment: @Marijn No, I refer to the hard copy of the magazine, which I still get.  If I can find it I'll dig through and see what extra biblical references the author used ... though I recall Josephus being referenced on some of Herod's activities.
Answer: The short answer is: none known to date.  A variety of speculation has arisen on the relationship between how Herod conducted himself and the impact that had on the narrations related to him in scripture.
At the lowest level of detail: the Wikipedia article cites a decent range of sources and still concludes there are no contemporary sources that match one for one with the event reported in scripture.  (As Wiki articles go, it's a decent one).
G.J. Goldberg (http://www.josephus.org/ntparallels.htm#innocents) examines NT parallels with Josephus, in detail, arrives at the same conclusion.  He cites an example from antiquities having to do with a number of Pharisees being put to death as being possibly related.

The story demonstrates at the least that the actions of Herod and the
  other people in the nativity story was not unheard of for the time, so
  that something of the sort {slaughter of innocents} might have occurred but escaped Josephus' notice. Or, the above story itself might have served as the nucleus of a tale that was elaborated over the years and applied to Jesus by his followers.

Herod was rough with a lot of people.  From Goldberg:

Incidentally, in Antiquities 17.6.5 174 there is described a forced
  mass movement of people just before Herod's death. These people the
  king had planned to have these murdered so the Jews would be mourning
  when he died, rather than holding joyful festivities to celebrate his
  passing. This movement could conceivably have contributed both to the
  story of the slaughter of the innocents and the census of Quirinius ...
Comment: Horrid syntax from the source makes me wonder about its credibility.
Comment: @freethinker36 The grammar is correct, though the writing style isn't one I'd use.  (But thanks for commenting, as I found a couple of typos I'd missed. )
Answer: From Wikipedia, The first non-Christian reference to the massacre is recorded four centuries later by Macrobius, who writes in his Saturnalia:

When he [emperor Augustus] heard that among the boys in Syria under two years old whom Herod, king of the Jews, had ordered killed, his own son was also killed, he said: it is better to be Herod's pig, than his son.

The above translated from original source:

Cum audisset inter pueros quos in Syria Herodes rex Iudaeorum intra bimatum iussit interfici filium quoque eius occisum, ait: Melius est Herodis porcum esse quam filium. (Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, Saturnalia, book II, chapter IV:11)


How do I execute stored procedures?

Question: I have a website which does lot of work on financial data. It involves operations on large volumes of data most of the time. Hence I find it useful to do those operations in MySQL stored procedures. I have stored procedures in my database. I want to know how can I execute stored procedures in Drupal? Is there any good method to execute stored procedures in Drupal? How does Drupal handle stored procedures in general? Or we just have to use the PHP to execute stored procedures?
Comment: Have you searched the web? Google returns some results for "drupal stored procedures" that seem interesting. Did you try the code? Can you tell us what did work, and what didn't?
Comment: Yes, I did search in google. There seems to need of few lines of code to execute a single stored procedure with parameters. Is there any helper function in Drupal API to execute stored procedure?
Answer: Assuming you're using Drupal 7 you can use code like the following:
<code>// Get the Drupal database connection and change the statement class to PDOStatement.
// Save the current class for cleanup later.
$conn = Database::getConnection();
$saved_class = $conn->getAttribute(PDO::ATTR_STATEMENT_CLASS);
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_STATEMENT_CLASS, array('PDOStatement'));

// Prepare the statement and bind params
$statement = $conn->prepare("Call GetNodeList(?,?)");

$op_status = $statement->bindParam(1, $node_type, PDO::PARAM_STR | PDO::PARAM_INPUT_OUTPUT, 25);
$op_status = $statement->bindParam(2, $publish_state, PDO::PARAM_INT | PDO::PARAM_INPUT_OUTPUT);

// Execute the statement and reset the connection's statement class to the original.
$exec_result = $statement->execute();
$conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_STATEMENT_CLASS, $saved_class);

// Get your data
while ($row = $statement->fetchColumn(0)) {
  // ...
}
</code>
That method is completely culled from this article and has worked for me well in the past.
Comment: thanks for culling it! the page referenced with "this article" doesn't resolve.
Answer: Not sure whether this is the correct way to this, but it worked for me. I have a legacy system which shares the same Postgres database server that Drupal does.
In a submit handler I needed to send data to this legacy system which had a stored procedure (Postgres calls them functions) to handle the data:
<code>// Get legacy database connection set-up in settings.php
Database::getConnection('default', 'legacy')
  ->query('SELECT * FROM stored_procedure(:named_parameter_1, :named_parameter_2, ...);', [
    ':named_parameter_1' => $value_1,
    ':named_parameter_1' => $value_2,
    ...
  ]);
</code>
This got the data successfully into my legacy system

How do I execute stored procedures?


Using Mysql and sql server from python

Question: I need to write a python application with use both of the mysql and sql server is there
a general python module or library that can access both mysql and sql server as DBI with perl or should i use 2 libraries and if yes which libraries do you recommend .
Answer: I guess you are looking for SQLAlchemy.  You will probably need some time getting into it, but it is invaluable once you have covered the basics.
SQLAlchemy acts as a frontend to other, database-specific libraries using the Python DB-API -- but beyond this, it provides a query builder library that abstracts out differences between databases' SQL syntax and permits programmatic query construction while still offering the full power of SQL.
Answer: Python RDBMS modules implement DB-API.
Comment: Could you provide me which RDBMS modules are they and if they supported on windows ?
Answer: If you are looking for which connection drivers to use, I believe the only one that well work for both [MySQL (driver here) and SQLServer (native to windows/FreeTDS for linux) is pyodbc.  @igor has the right idea, though, use SQLAlchemy, you can connect to each database using different engines, but use the same code to interact with both.

Using Mysql and sql server from python


Zero-knowledge proof using quadratic residue: why two options?

Question: In the zero knowledge proof using QR, why do we even bother with the server sending us $b = 0$ back? As I understand it, the server selects $b = 0$ or $b = 1$. If $b = 0$, then the client (Alice) generates a random number $r$ and sends back $r^2 \bmod x$, while if $b = 1$, then Alice sends back $r^2 \, y \bmod x$. How is $b = 0$ of any value though? Why can't we just stick with $b = 1$?
Answer: Let me attack if you (the verifier) always select $b = 1$ as a random challenge.
The zero-knowledge proof for QR.
Let us recall the zero-knowledge proof for QR.
The common inputs are $y$ and $x$ and the prover possesses a witness $w$ which satisfies $w^2 \equiv y \pmod{x}$.

The prover generates a randomness $r \gets \mathbb{Z}_x$ and sends $a = r^2 \bmod{x}$.
The verifier rejects if $a \equiv 0 \pmod{x}$; Otherwise, the verifier sends a random challenge $b \gets \{0,1\}$.
The prover sends a response $z = w^b \cdot r \bmod{x}$.
The verifier checks if $z^2 \equiv y^b \cdot a \bmod{x}$.

An attack for a fixed challenge $b$
If you always select $b = 1$,
I can deceive you while I do not know $w$.

I choose a random value $\tilde{z} \gets \mathbb{Z}$ and compute $\tilde{a} = \tilde{z}^2 \cdot y^{-1} \bmod{x}$. I send $\tilde{a}$ to you.
You select a "random" value $b = 1$ and send it to me.
I send $\tilde{z}$ as a response.
You finally obtain $\tilde{z}^2 \equiv y \cdot \tilde{a} \bmod{x}$, since I select $\tilde{a}$ to satisfy this equation.

This attack shows that the protocol cannot be sound if the challenge is unique.
Hence, the verifier should flip at least one coin.
Why $b \in \{0,1\}$
In the soundness proof, we retrieve a witness as follows:
Running the (cheating) prover twice with distinct challenges, we obtain two accepting transcripts
$$(a, b_0, z_0) \text{ and } (a, b_1, z_1).$$
Since they pass the verification, we have
$z_0^2 \equiv y^{b_0} \cdot a \pmod{x}$
and
$ z_1^2 \equiv y^{b_1} \cdot a \pmod{x}$.
Therefore, we have $z_0^2 \cdot y^{-b_0} \equiv a \equiv z_1^2 \cdot y^{-b_1} \pmod{x}$
and $(z_1/z_0)^{2} \equiv y^{b_1-b_0} \pmod{x}$.
If we select a challenge from $\{0,1\}$, the difference $b_1 - b_0$ is $1$ or $-1$.
Hence, we obtain $z_1/z_0$ (or $z_0/z_1$) as a quadratic residue of $y$.
The point is that the difference $b_1 - b_0$ is always $\pm 1$.
This means that you can choose $b$ from another set, say, $\{2,3\}$ or $\{3,4\}$.
You can read explanations in the textbooks, e.g., Barak's lecture note.
Comment: There is an obvious attack if he (the verifier) accepts even if $\: a\equiv 0 \;$. $\;\;\;$
Comment: @RickyDemer Thanks. The protocol should reject the case that $a \equiv 0 \pmod{x}$.
Answer: What "zero knowledge proof using QR" are you talking about?
In this one, "we bother with" Bob sending Alice $\:b=0\:$ so that if $\:\: y\not\equiv 0 \;$ and

for both possible values of $b$, there exists a response which would cause Bob to accept

then $x$ is a quadratic residue $\:\pmod n\;$ .


Why is Midoriya from My Hero Academia compared with Naruto and called "green Naruto"?

Question: Many times in internet Midoriya from My Hero Academia is compared with Naruto and called "green Naruto". Why is this so? Is the character design? Is the style of My Hero Academia story compared with Naruto? Or what?
Answer: This has to do with the concept of the Big 3. For a little bit of background on what the concept of the big 3 is you can take a look at What phenomenon are at play such that the "Big Four" are limited to four and not a growing list?.
With the ending of Naruto in sight at the time, and the great reception of Boku no Hero Academia (BNHA) at the same time, it became a sort of hand-off. People watching Naruto needed something new, and BNHA offered something similar but with a fresh twist, while it still kept true to the 'shonen' tropes everyone got so used to throughout the big 3 (and Dragon Ball).
This is similar to how the fandom created the picture of Goku handing over his 'success' to the logical new big 3 at the time. The fandom also created the hand-off from Naruto to BNHA, due to the exit of Naruto, and successful entry of BNHA.
As Midoriya thus is replacing Naruto in the mix of the big 3, he is often regarded as the green Naruto.
Comment: I'm curious, who is the one in the middle between Luffy and Naruto? Is it Ichigo from Bleach?
Comment: @threeFatCat yes
Answer: I think this also has to be mentioned, about "My Hero Academia"'s author.

Horikoshi's favorite manga series include Naruto, One Piece, Akira, Tekkonkinkreet, and Boys on the Run. In a farewell bid upon the conclusion of the former, Horikoshi referred to it as the greatest shonen manga ever, as Naruto made up his childhood and was one of the primary inspirations behind My Hero Academia

Kohei Horikoshi


Looking for an **Open-Source** Single Board Computer

Question: Looking for completely open-source alternatives to the Raspberr Pi, Looking for an 100% libre computing expierence.
Any recommendations?
I don't about hardware specifications it just needs to be 100% libre
For price range preferably under 35 USD
Comment: Esp32 - such as [this one](https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/ESP32/ESP32-EVB/open-source-hardware) - if you are happy with bare metal and don't need an operating system.
Answer: It's hard to find a fully libre design in your price range. Most will be based on Allwiner or similar SoCs, which are probably not vendors you want to support, regardless of the availability of opensource code, not to mention schematics. In addition you probably won't find WiFi without closed, binary blob firmware.
Having said that, there are such vendors and boards. Texas Instruments, NXP and ST Microelectronics are vendors with first party OSS support, although you might have to accept an EULA. NXP has support in Linux Foundation Yocto Project, some TI boards are supported too (BeagleBone Black for example). ST has first-party Yocto layer on GitHub.
Most, if not all, of this SoCs will be using PowerVR graphics, which traditionally didn't play nice with OSS, but the current free driver has performance parity with the priopretary one. This is probably a compromise you'll have to make.
On to boards themselves. First vendor which comes to mind is BeagleBoard, particularly PocketBeagle and BeagleBone Black. Second, which I believe also has schematics available, is MYiR (myirtech), although the software provided will be likely outdated, so you'll have to port or update to something more modern yourself.
Lastly, when asking for fully libre hardware, please specify where you draw the line - when you get to the bottom of it, nothing is fully open. Software is one thing. With hardware some vendors will provide schematics, rare ones will provide board design files, but there are no open source SoCs around. Similarly, most WiFi chips require closed source firmware.
Answer: The best you can get, (which you can't get, because it's not released for the general public yet), is the BeagleV. This board has a RISC-V CPU. It does come with some nvidia hardware on it, but the rest should be good.
It is supposed to be available for the general public around summer 2021, where you will be able to get cheaper options than the current, quite a lot steeper price than what you asked for, of 149$.
You will be able to run several OS' on the board, including Fedora and RTOS.
https://beaglev.seeed.cc/
Comment: Sadly, I don't know a lot more than I've already told you.
Comment: Do you know if that SBC will be available in SoM format?


What device in western countries allows ATC to get clearances or search flight plans automatically?

Question: In Korea, there is a device called 'Flight data terminal' which enable air traffic controller to get clearance or search certain flight plans automatically. But I found that there is no 'FDT' in western countries. I believe there must be some devices whose functions are similar to FDT of Korea, so I want to know the name of that device.
Comment: Could you please explain in more detail what this FDT system does? Without knowing the system, it is impossible to find other systems that work the same.
Comment: Thanks. The main function of FDT is transfering flight plan to ACC and getting clearance. We don't need to call to get ATC clearance. By clicking, we can get clearacne, serach flight plans, and view some details of aircraft like SSR, altitude, destination, and so on.
Answer: The European equivalent would be the Flight Data Processing System (FDPS). The FDPS receives flight plans over the Online data interchange (OLDI) / ATS Message Handling System (AMHS) from the Integrated Initial Flight Plan Processing System (IFPS) which is operated by EUROCONTROL. In addition local flight plan can be added to the FDPS.
Aircraft operators file their flight plan with the IFPS, which checks the flight plan for correctness (syntax errors, route errors, etc) and determines whether the plan is acceptable to the air traffic service providers. If necessary, plans are rejected or modified. Once the plan is acceptable, it is distributed to all Air Traffic Control units (ATCU) along the route.
In the ATCU, the FDPS will receive the flight plan and store it in its flight plan database.
It must be noted that the FDPS is much more than just a flight plan database. It is at the heart of the air traffic control unit. It correlates flight plan data with actual radar tracks, updates flight plan with inputs from air traffic controllers and it supports local flow management functions, conflict detection systems and much more.
Answer: Without knowing the Korean system, it is impossible to tell exactly what you are looking for. However, based on your minimal description, it sounds like you might be looking for systems like CPDLC or other data link systems. These are not automated systems per se, but simply systems that allow digital, text-based communication between ATC and pilots, instead of VHF-based voice communication.
With regards to automation, you might want to look into tools such as medium term conflict detection (MTCD) and arrival management tools (AMAN).
Automatic exchange of fight plan data is done, in Europe at least, via online data interchange (OLDI).


WordPress book for graphic designers?

Question: Is there a good WordPress book intended for graphic designers? I've started working with a friend in an arrangement where he designs a site and I build it in WordPress. This works great since I have the design sense of a blind monkey. He would like to learn more about WordPress and how best to design for it. I'm familiar with several good WordPress books, but most of them are intended for designer/developers. I'm looking for something that will serve as a guideline, offering suggestions for design conventions that are well suited to WordPress. Are there any such books? If there's not a book specifically aimed at designers, which other book would you suggest?
Comment: Are you more precisely asking about creating WordPress Themes? Is the Graphic Designer more a Web Designer or more a Graphic Designer? You wrote in another comment a solid grasp on webdesign, are you aware of the Theme Development Checklist? http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development_Checklist - it must not be helpful for designer but probably it helps to better scope what is interesting for the designer part. Good question!
Answer: What about just taking a look at different themes that are available. I'm not sure what kind of guidelines you're looking for exactly, but you may be able to get a general idea from observing what's already out there. Some good sites for this are:

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/
http://www.wpthemesfree.com/
Answer: Some said this rockable book is awesome, though I don't buy it myself. I'm backend wordpress developer not front end, so I guess this book is not for me.
Answer: This post was just made on reddit the other day, some solid books based on 2 important design factors, layouts and typography. They are not wordpress specific but the ideas still apply.
http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/e2uo2/webbit_where_can_i_learn_web_design_not_just_the/
Comment: The person I'm looking for a book for already has a solid grasp on webdesign. I'm just looking for something to help them learn WordPress from a designer's perspective.
Answer: I would recommend "Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes" by SitePoint:
http://www.sitepoint.com/books/wordpress1/

WordPress book for graphic designers?


Move object to 3D-Cursor but only on one axis

Question: I often find myself in situations where I want to move an object to just one specific coordinate of the 3d-Cursor. Like in below example I want to move a wheel along the y-axis to the center given by the 3D-cursor but I don't want to move it in the other directions (as Shift-S and Selection to Cursor would). I'm aware that I can just copy the x/y/z location of the cursor from the N-Menu. Still, is there a faster way that works with shortcuts maybe?
Comment: Well I snapped the cursor to object so it centers on the x-Axis. If i could do that with snapping directly i would :/
Comment: Sorry, shouldn't have used 'X' to mean unknown :) I can't tell whether your disc has an edge or a vertex centrally aligned down the X axis running towards us. Depending on which, the snap would be to 'Vertex' or 'Edge Center', the appropriate target on the disc. The move, in Object Mode, would be GY.
Answer: I don't think this is possible while creating the objects but you can move them all to the same z-coordinate at the end instead. To achieve this, select all the objects you want to move and then set the Y-coordinate (or whichever property to want to have in common). Then right-click the coordinate property and select 'Copy Single to Selected'.
Comment: That's a good tip I didn't know that thank you! :D


How to design lava/volcano sounds

Question: Just wondering if any of you have any tried and true techniques or suggestions for designing lava and/or volcano sounds (anything from volcanic eruption, flowing lava, molten volcanic rock movement, etc)
Comment: More questions like this, please.
Comment: @Jay Jennings are you referring to the sort of odd one off newbie production questions that have come up on SSD in the last couple of weeks?
Comment: Thanks @Jay.  Not sure what makes this a "newbie" question, @Dave.  Newb though I may be, relatively speaking, I asked this question not because I wasn't capable of coming up with a solution on my own but because I was curious to see how other sound designers might approach this. I believe it's only through learning from others that we can truly improve our own skills and knowledge.  Even when you think you already know something, you may be surprised to see you can still learn from someone else. That's what makes socialsounddesign such an amazing place. I imagine that Jay would tend to agree.
Comment: I don't think Dave was referring to your question as being a newb question. I think he was talking about the ones that are often more or less "how do I sound design?" or "how do I beats-make?" Or, the odd scenario specific ones like "I have all the production sound and I got the video and the camera audio synced up from the editor - what do?" Your question is fine, and good too.
Comment: lol, yeah, I've seen some of those. Hopefully I didn't come across as overly defensive. Just the way I read Dave's comment makes it sound as though my question is being lumped into the newbie production questions category.
Answer: i've had success pitching down recordings of polenta, chili, thick stews to get that gloopy sound. Layer low frequency rumble, debris and rocks etc
Answer: A few ideas:

access the real thing! There are plenty of geothermal areas in the world which people have recorded... eg theres 58 geysers on sounddogs - use them and/or youtube as a reference if nothing else
snow, ice, avalanche, water & explosion sounds are all good source material for manipulation eg completely take the attack off an explosion and you have an element of a geyser - layer it with eg a pitched down water burst/hose gush... I've also in the past taken single ocean wave breaks, pitched it down/EQ'd it & then created a doppler/pitch curve on it, since the water spraying out of a geyser is going to doppler to a degree from your pov....
perform EQ sweeps rolling most of the high freq off snow or ice movement & you can get some good murky gritty movement that could work for lava...
for volcanic rock movement, an obvious starting point is rock movement, so try close micing grinding heavy rocks together & add subharmonic synth processing (LowEnder plugin or dbx120 outboard) - doing pitch curves on these may help evoke their movement
i have some sounds in my library called 'erratic pass' that I made years ago in Metasynth using white noise as a source & applying lots of pitch modulation to it so its kind of bubbly and erratic... Then I processed those with doppler plugin and EQ sweeps to provide movement & create lots of variations.. its useful as a layer as its bright/cuts through, but when layered under real sounds you definitely dont 'read' it as synthetic or artificial... Could be useful under a geyser spray, just for a brief moment, as effectively water is spraying everywhere, so it is an erratic burst of hiss :)
Answer: Can't seem to find the video but i saw a one yesterday with Ben Burtt discussing the new Star Trek which he created some 1500 sounds for. Some of which was lava and volcano. For lava he said they dropped blocks of dry ice in water.
Comment: I believe this may be the one you're referring to? http://www.soundesign.info/news/the-sound-design-of-star-trek-into-darkness
Answer: I would think mixing some earthquake/LFE sounds with some way pitched down concrete debris being moved and some low bubbling? Like pitching down some slow boiling syrup or sugar water so you don't get the rolling popping boil but the sludgy kind?

How to design lava/volcano sounds


Saying a pasuk to scare dogs

Question: It seems somewhat widespread that Jews that are scared of dogs think that saying ולכל בני ישראל לא יחרץ כלב לשונו will either protect them or scare the dog away or something like that.
Does this have any source in authentic Judaism or is it just made up by a primary school teacher 20 years ago?
Comment: Hi Moshe. Where have you seen this practiced that you call it "somewhat widespread"? If you [edit] to specify a community that might help people find you an answer. Try and include any other details of the practice that you can think of.
Comment: @DoubleAA For example: http://halachicadventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/ari-and-ari2.pdf We continuously recited the pasuk "U'lechol  Bnei  Yisrael  lo  yecheratz  kelev
leshono,"  which  is  traditionally  recited  to  protect  us  from  dogs
Comment: The only connection that I have seen that verse used was in regard to giving the dogs a nevela (non-kosher or improperly slaughtered meat). I believe that Rash"i mentions that this is a reward to dogs for not barking or howling when the first born Egyptians were killed.
Comment: I have found a source in shas for being attacked by dogs - avodah zara 18b refers to dogs who bite people and the person said 'oh God of Meir (referring to Rabbi Meir) please answer me' and they were answered.
You could say that that which they don't reply with this passuk implies it is a made up minhag
Comment: See Haamek Davar on that Pasuk, where he understands that dogs are attuned to some degree of spiritual presence.
Answer: Yes. this is something that is said in the gemara in order to protect one from dogs. As an example
Rav David Silverberg

The Gemara in Masekhet Berakhot (56b) comments that if a person dreams
  about a dog, upon awakening he should immediately recite this verse
  from Sefer Shemot that speaks of the dogs' silence on the night of
  Yetzi'at Mitzrayim.  This should be done quickly, the Gemara urges, as
  otherwise a different verse about dogs may come to mind first, namely,
  Yeshayahu's description of dogs as "azei nefesh" ("brazen" – Yeshayahu
  56:11).

While I do not have the citation for scaring away a dog I have found a reference which assumes the custom.
CHOLENT WITH THE GAUCHOS

We continuously recited the pasuk "U'lechol  Bnei  Yisrael  lo
  yecheratz  kelev leshono,"  which  is  traditionally  recited  to
  protect  us  from  dogs.
Comment: This is a very similar idea but not exactly the same. Do you have any idea or indication how this would be expanded from dreams to scaring dogs away when they come near you?
Comment: @MosheSteinberg I remember that there is also a reference to scaring away dogs but do not have the exact citation.
Comment: I have looked into that gemara from brachos a little bit more and it seems to be (aruch hashulchan says so explicitly in OCH 220:3) that it is just a dog passuk related to good thing.  Hence, you should say that passuk after a doggy dream, because the result of dreams depends on their interpretation. If this is true, it is not at all applicable to your daily walk in the park.
Answer: The Dubno Maggid is quoted as including the following in one of his derashos:

"A yeshiva rebbe once decided to take his students on a walk through
  the forest. 'Now boys,' he told them, 'we're going to be walking
  through a forest, and there's a good chance we might come across wild
  dogs. Well boys – have no fear! All you have to do if we come across
  wild dogs is to recite the pasuk, "And to all the Children of Israel no
  dog whet its tongue", and no harm will become us...

Utilizing the pasuk seemed to be a given by the Dubno Maggid when he made the comment in the 1800s--more than just made up by a Rebbi 20 years ago.

Saying a pasuk to scare dogs


Revision of an application after submission, when responding to a deadline to maintain family continuity

Question: I have a fast-approaching deadline to make payment on an NOA application (a CON on original granted patent), in order to get it granted. I also want to keep open the chance to extend the family by filing a CIP, which is well underway. But I may not have it truly ready on time to file, just before making that payment on the NOA patent. If I file what I have, then later revise any or all parts of the application, what are the consequences? Are there additional fees involved, and how much time may be allowed for such revision submissions?
Answer: Under the AIA there is a provision to file an, essentially, no-content continuation. Use the File by Reference option on the ADS form. You need to follow up with specification, drawings and claims later but you will have filed the continuation on time if it is before the parent issues as a patent. See https://www.uspto.gov/patent/forms/important-information-completing-application-data-sheet-ads
Comment: Thank you! Good to know.
Comment: If the next application is say, 90% ready but more refinement is needed, would it be better to file nothing at all (as in the option you cited), followed by the full and complete one – rather than filing the incomplete application and then following with a request to replace it with an updated one?  (Maybe that would simplify things and avoid confusion on the examiner side?)
Comment: In either case you want to have the correct specification and claims on file before the examiner ever picks it up.


Are mere experiences allowed as answers?

Question: I answered a question today, which was a mere experience, related to the problem, but not exactly a specific answer...
Is that really allowed, or does each post need to have a proper, specific answer to the specific problem?
Link: My Answer
Comment: @bigbadmouse yes but IPS.SE is different by its nature, for instance in skeptics, you alwais have to give proof of what you said because that's the whole nature of the site. Most of them rely effectively on facts and references.
Comment: Experience based answers arent just allowed, they should be encouraged.
Comment: I have been massively shot down in flames for using experience based answers on SE generally. People's objections are usually based around "where are your references? Cite something! Support this! " - not always possible when relating experience.
Comment: no, understand that totally. Its happened here too though, that's what annoyed me. I will be quoting this question back at them next time
Comment: @bigbadmouse looking at your answers, none of them are based on experience. Writing an experience based answer requires describing the experience you're basing your answer off of. Which none of your answers do.
Comment: i deleted it, it was about disability parking, and also on the travel forum. I stated my issue there and lots of people up-voted me
Answer: Yes, experience based answers are acceptable.
As long as they are detailed and don't only offer a 'mere' suggestion but also explain why the suggestion worked in your case or might work in theirs.
We have had discussions in the past about the back it up rule and we have also had (now) site moderators reaffirm your suspicions.
Written in Against the evidence or experience requirement within @Catija's answer it states:

We must require answers that address the specific question asked
directly and these answers must be supported with either personal
experience or a reference. Answers that do not meet this requirement
should be either downvoted, commented on for improvement, or outright
deleted. Once we have moderators, they can use post notices to request
improvement.

Does your answer meet this requirement?
It does and it doesn't. You're offering your own personal insight which is great and telling the OP he should care less. Which can be a good solution in some ways, but with just a suggestion to do that is quite vague to some people, as it can be interpreted in different ways.
Some may take it to the extreme and literally not care at all, but in this case, the OP can't help correcting people so that extreme won't be an option here, so a middle ground might work. To improve your answer to make it a good quality answer, I personally would add a couple of times caring less specifically in a conversation helped you avoid correcting a person in the past, what did you do that helped you, that might help the OP? Currently, your answer says what to do and how people perceive it, just not about correcting itself.
An example of a high-quality experienced based answer
I recently asked the question Should I always ask a dog owner before I pet their dog?
The most upvoted answer is brilliant, it not only answers the question directly, it also offers in great detail as to why you should always ask, why they would want someone to ask and why their dog is not in a position to just be petted without them being notified. This should be used as a reference for future experienced based answers, it's a very high-quality answer and has been confirmed by the community with the sheer amount of votes it has.
Basically, if you directly answer the question and explain in detail why your experiences help answer said question. You'll have a good quality answer.
What I try to do
I try to offer my own personal experiences and then see if there are any references on the internet that also back up what I'm saying and add them in. I'm not saying you always will be able to, but it's that little bit of extra information for future readers or the OP to take away.
Answer: In this case what you call 'mere experience' is also a very good answer to OP's question, because you have been in the same situation as OP and you have been able to clearly communicate how your problem developed, when you became aware of it, and what steps you took to put it right. Without telling OP "you should do thus or thus to solve your problem" you have simply said "I had the same problem as you have, and this is what I did to successfully solve that problem." That method of writing an answer is perfectly acceptable on IPS.SE!


Create Gantt View for External Lists Sharepoint 2010

Question: I created External List in SharePoint 2010. I want to create a Gantt View for this external list now. How to do it?
Answer: In order for a Gantt view to work you have to have at least a description, a start date and an end date.  For an external list, try adding Start and End date columns and create a new view.  Select Gantt from the new view options.


Ethereum mining process

Question: I have question regarding mining process and stratum protocol. I need for my lab to implement simple cpu miner in Node JS. I've found some info regarding ethash, and some steps. But there's no info regarding interaction with pool. Is every calculated hash must be submitted to pool or only valid hashes? Who makes PoW check, mining client or pool? How's pool calculating miners speed if only valid shares are submitted?
Answer: There are different approaches, so there's no single solution.
You can define a difficulty per miner so you are sure that the miner will send 6 solutions per minute, or 1 block each 10 seconds. And take the averange difficulty of those blocks as the miner contribution to the pool.
A miner with more hash power will be able to solve blocks with a higher difficulty, and will contribute more to the pool.
You want to achieve a balance in the communications between the pool and the miners. Lots of messages means higher bandwidth, but you want the miner always have the more recent blocks so they work is useful.
The verification of a solution is fast, so the pool should always verify the solution reported by a miner is valid.

Ethereum mining process


How to fix the time display at the top of the screen flashing?

Question: Sometimes when I unlock my iPhone 6s 64Gb with iOS 9.2 the time display at the top of the screen flashes or the whole display at the top of the screen (signal strength time and battery) takes a second to appear. This seems to happen only after not using the phone for more than 30 seconds. Ex. I put the phone on standby, unlock it one minute later. It also seems to happen more often when I use the fingerprint scanner to unlock it, not as much when I enter my passcode, and when I unlock the phone quickly like unlocking from standby with a fingerprint rather than waking the phone up first and then unlocking it. Has anyone else experienced this and does anyone know how to fix it, or is it just a minor bug that will be fixed in 9.3?
-Thanks
Answer: I've noticed the same thing, but only when there was a notification on the lock screen.  I'm chalking it up to that, and not worrying about it.  But still interested to learn more if anyone knows anything.
Comment: By the way -- iphone SE iOS 9.3.1
Comment: Wow didn't think anyone would answer this, thanks. Now that you pointed it out I noticed that is what happens with my phone as well. Hopefully Apple knows about this subtle but annoying issue and will fix it in the next update.


Kubernetes multi cloud

Question: I'm exploring doing kubernetes on a multicloud setup the configuration I want is a master connected to nodes in multiple cloud platforms. In my limited research I haven't found many tools to make this happen,   from what I can tell rancher seems like the best option, but I don't think this fits within the traditional usecase. My question is does this sound like something rancher was made for? Honestly it seems more of a kubeadm usecase but the caveat is I want to use multiple managed solutions where multiple masters all share a common node pool.
Comment: as the accept answer says clusters are not meant to span different cloud provider. if you automate everything you can keep many clusters in sync that run anywhere. we use git webhooks to drive helmfile to manage all out environments from config in git. we open sourced our git driven approach for okd Kubernetes as ocd at https://ocd-scm.github.io/ocd-meta/
Answer: (Rancher employee) Kubernetes itself is really not meant for that use-case.  A cluster is generally a set of machines in the same provider with close proximity (latency) to each other.

Etcd (and therefore API/CLI/UI/scheduling/everything) performance depends heavily on the (worst-case) latency between all members.
Only one cloud-provider integration (storage providers, L4 load balancers) can be configured and most assume nodes are all in the same "region" or similar concept.
Commonly used network plugins assume adjacency and/or provide no encryption or authentication suitable for communicating across untrusted networks/the internet.
Communication between pods/services within the cluster has no consideration for where the "nearest" place to reach a pod for that service is, so latency from a pod to another service can be large (however far apart the two worst nodes are) and unpredictable (sometimes close, sometimes far).  (There is an option for nodePorts to always go to a local pod, but if there is no local pod it will just get dropped).

You can make a "custom" cluster and add nodes from wherever and do what you're asking in Rancher, but you're not going to have a good time (no matter what product is building the cluster).
Comment: Thanks that's disappointing to hear but exactly what I wanted to know. I appreciate it.

Kubernetes multi cloud


Slow SSD performance - IBM X3650 M4 (7915)

Question: I set up a test environment for development purposes. It consists of a IBM X3650 M4 (7915) server with:

2 x Intel Xeon E2690 @ 2.90GHz
96GB 1333MHz ECC RAM
2 x HDD 146GB 15k rpm
6 x SSD 525GB (Crucial MX300)
embedded ServeRaid m5110e in JBOD mode with no cache
Ubuntu Server 16.10
md RAID software on HDDs (RAID0) and SSDs (RAID10)

I can't totally bypass the RAID controller because it's integrated on the motherboard and don't have a dedicated HBA card (should I buy one?), but I set it to JBOD mode.
I tested and over-tested those SSDs as single disks, in RAID10 and RAID0 configurations. I observed expected behaviours from software RAID but not from single disks: RAID scales (it's ok for me) but single SSDs runs at half the expected IOPS!
Tests were run using fio and the configurations depicted by storagereviews.com ( Link ).
Here is a summary graph of averaged runs over all the 6 SSDs (1 x 60 seconds run on each SSD):

Reading from various benchmarks (storagereview.com, tomshardware.com, etc.) and from official specs, those disks should reach double random read IOPS. For example:

for 4k workload tom's hardware tops at 92358 IOPS reads at 32 IO Depth while mine tops at ~37400 IOPS ( Link ).
storagereview.com runs slightly different benchmarks but all of them give totally different results - ~90k IOPS for 4k aligned reads ( Link ).
Hardware.info gives identical results for the 1TB model (Link).

I optimized yet all the various /sys/block/sd* and /dev/sd* parameters like scheduler, nr_requests, rotational, fifo_batch, etc.
What should I look for?
UPDATE 1
I forgot to mention that disks where overprovisioned at 25%, so overall size reported in the following outputs is roughly 75% of 525GB. Anyway, IOPS before and after overprovisioning never overpassed the 37k limit.
Output of hdparm -I /dev/sdc:
/dev/sdc:

ATA device, with non-removable media
    Model Number:       Crucial_CT525MX300SSD1
    Serial Number:      163113837E16
    Firmware Revision:  M0CR031
    Transport:          Serial, ATA8-AST, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5, SATA Rev 2.6, SATA Rev 3.0
Standards:
    Used: unknown (minor revision code 0x006d)
    Supported: 10 9 8 7 6 5
    Likely used: 10
Configuration:
    Logical     max current
    cylinders   16383   16383
    heads       16  16
    sectors/track   63  63
    --
    CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064
    LBA    user addressable sectors:  268435455
    LBA48  user addressable sectors:  769208076
    Logical  Sector size:                   512 bytes
    Physical Sector size:                   512 bytes
    Logical Sector-0 offset:                  0 bytes
    device size with M = 1024*1024:      375589 MBytes
    device size with M = 1000*1000:      393834 MBytes (393 GB)
    cache/buffer size  = unknown
    Form Factor: 2.5 inch
    Nominal Media Rotation Rate: Solid State Device
Capabilities:
    LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
    Queue depth: 32
    Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
    R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16  Current = 16
    Advanced power management level: 254
    DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
         Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
    PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
         Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
    Enabled Supported:
       *    SMART feature set
            Security Mode feature set
       *    Power Management feature set
       *    Write cache
       *    Look-ahead
       *    WRITE_BUFFER command
       *    READ_BUFFER command
       *    NOP cmd
       *    DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
       *    Advanced Power Management feature set
       *    48-bit Address feature set
       *    Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
       *    FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
       *    SMART error logging
       *    SMART self-test
       *    General Purpose Logging feature set
       *    WRITE_{DMA|MULTIPLE}_FUA_EXT
       *    64-bit World wide name
       *    IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD
            Write-Read-Verify feature set
       *    WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command
       *    {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
       *    Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
            unknown 119[8]
       *    Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
       *    Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
       *    Gen3 signaling speed (6.0Gb/s)
       *    Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
       *    Phy event counters
       *    NCQ priority information
       *    READ_LOG_DMA_EXT equivalent to READ_LOG_EXT
       *    DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
            Device-initiated interface power management
       *    Software settings preservation
            Device Sleep (DEVSLP)
       *    SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
       *    SCT Write Same (AC2)
       *    SCT Features Control (AC4)
       *    SCT Data Tables (AC5)
       *    reserved 69[3]
       *    reserved 69[4]
       *    reserved 69[7]
       *    DOWNLOAD MICROCODE DMA command
       *    WRITE BUFFER DMA command
       *    READ BUFFER DMA command
       *    Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit 8 blocks)
       *    Deterministic read ZEROs after TRIM
Security:
    Master password revision code = 65534
        supported
    not enabled
    not locked
    not frozen
    not expired: security count
        supported: enhanced erase
    2min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 2min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 500a075113837e16
    NAA     : 5
    IEEE OUI    : 00a075
    Unique ID   : 113837e16
Device Sleep:
    DEVSLP Exit Timeout (DETO): 50 ms (drive)
    Minimum DEVSLP Assertion Time (MDAT): 10 ms (drive)
Checksum: correct

Output of fdisk -l /dev/sdc:
Disk /dev/sdc: 366.8 GiB, 393834534912 bytes, 769208076 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Output of cat /sys/block/sdc/queue/scheduler:
noop [deadline] cfq

Output of dmesg | grep "ahci\|ncq":
[    5.490677] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: version 3.0
[    5.490901] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 6 ports 1.5 Gbps 0x2 impl SATA mode
[    5.498675] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: flags: 64bit ncq sntf led clo pio slum part ems apst
[    5.507315] scsi host1: ahci
[    5.507435] scsi host2: ahci
[    5.507529] scsi host3: ahci
[    5.507620] scsi host4: ahci
[    5.507708] scsi host5: ahci
[    5.507792] scsi host6: ahci
[   14.382326] Modules linked in: ioatdma(+) ipmi_si(+) ipmi_msghandler mac_hid shpchp lpc_ich ib_iser rdma_cm iw_cm ib_cm ib_core configfs iscsi_tcp libiscsi_tcp libiscsi scsi_transport_iscsi coretemp ip_tables x_tables autofs4 btrfs raid456 async_raid6_recov async_memcpy async_pq async_xor async_tx xor raid6_pq libcrc32c raid0 multipath linear raid10 raid1 ses enclosure scsi_transport_sas crct10dif_pclmul crc32_pclmul ghash_clmulni_intel igb aesni_intel hid_generic dca aes_x86_64 lrw ptp glue_helper ablk_helper ahci usbhid cryptd pps_core wmi hid libahci megaraid_sas i2c_algo_bit fjes

Looking deeper at dmesg output, the following strange messagges were bolded and quite suspicious:
...
[    0.081418] CPU: Physical Processor ID: 0
[    0.081421] CPU: Processor Core ID: 0
[    0.081427] ENERGY_PERF_BIAS: Set to 'normal', was 'performance'
[    0.081430] ENERGY_PERF_BIAS: View and update with x86_energy_perf_policy(8)
[    0.081434] mce: CPU supports 20 MCE banks
[    0.081462] CPU0: Thermal monitoring enabled (TM1)
...
[    0.341838] cpuidle: using governor menu
[    0.341841] PCCT header not found.
[    0.341868] ACPI FADT declares the system doesn't support PCIe ASPM, so disable it
[    0.341873] ACPI: bus type PCI registered
...
[    1.313494] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[    1.313857] pci 0000:16:00.0: [Firmware Bug]: VPD access disabled
[    1.314223] pci 0000:04:00.0: Video device with shadowed ROM at [mem 0x000c0000-0x000dffff]
...
[    1.591739] PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 7f)
[    1.591761] ACPI: \: failed to evaluate _DSM (0x1001)
[    1.591764] PCI host bridge to bus 0000:7f
...
[    1.595018] PCI: root bus ff: using default resources
[    1.595019] PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus ff)
[    1.595039] ACPI: \: failed to evaluate _DSM (0x1001)
...
[    1.854466] ACPI: Power Button [PWRF]
[    1.855209] ERST: Can not request [mem 0x7e908000-0x7e909bff] for ERST.
[    1.855492] GHES: APEI firmware first mode is enabled by APEI bit and WHEA _OSC.
...

UPDATE 2
My question isn't a duplicate of this question because my IOPS are always half the expected IOPS for single SSDs and not for the whole RAID, even at low IO Depths where IOPS are very small (<10k).
Look at the graph above: at IO Depth of 1 the single SSDs hit an average of 5794 while they should be at least 8000 each, which is far away from my top edge limit of 40k. I didn't write down RAID results because they are aligned with expected behaviour, but here it is: RAID10 reaches around 120k IOPS for IO Depth of 16 and 32 (about 40k IOPS per 6 disks over 2 due to RAID10 mirroring penalty, so 40k for 3).
I think too that my embedded RAID card can represent the bottle-neck but I can't find a definitive answer. I observe, for example, that running a fio test-run over each SSDs in parallel (6 tests running at the same time, each of them on one single SSD) halves the IOPS of single SSD for IO Depth of 16 and 32. This bring the IOPS at 20k where they were 40k.
Comment: Let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/53987/discussion-between-david-schwartz-and-pietrop).
Comment: I suspect you're hitting the controller's IOPS limit. Do you have any reason to think the controller can handle more than 40K IOPS? Many RAID controllers, designed before SSDs were common, where not designed to handle significantly more IOPS than typical hard drives could.
Comment: Possible duplicate of [Why is my RAID1 or RAID10 virtual drive (6 SSDs) not significantly faster than a single SSD?](http://serverfault.com/questions/620250/why-is-my-raid1-or-raid10-virtual-drive-6-ssds-not-significantly-faster-than-a)
Comment: @DavidSchwartz I read that question before but no, it's not my case. My IOPS are always half the expected IOPS for those devices and I'm referring to single SSDs, not RAID performance. Look at the graph: at IO Depth of 1 the single SSDs hit an average of 5794 while they should be at least 8000 each. I didn't write down RAID results because they are aligned with expected behaviour. In my case RAID10 reaches around 120k IOPS for IO Depth of 16 and 32 (about 40k IOPS per 6 disks over 2 due to RAID10 mirroring penalty, so 40k for 3).
Comment: @DavidSchwartz I updated my question with a strange behaviour that I've just observed running parallel tests. One of my first thought was that my RAID controller is a bottleneck but I can't explain the overall 120k IOPS in RAID10 (alwasy software RAID - I'm using the RAID controller in JBOD mode).
Comment: The controller limit is on the IOPS it can issue to a single channel per second. In JBOD or software RAID mode, it has separate issuing hardware for each channel.
Comment: @DavidSchwartz If controller is the limit, shouldn't it limit only 16 and 32 IO Depths? Why I see half IOPS also for low IO Depths? Shouldn't it be a limit imposed by the SSD and not by the controller?
Answer: Let try the following, analyzing the single device sda:

check that SSD's private DRAM cache is enabled, by issuing hdparm -I /dev/sda (post here the output)
make sure your partitions (if any) are correctly aligned (show the output of fdisk -l /dev/sda)
set scheduler to deadline
make sure NCQ is enabled with dmesg | grep -i ncq (again, post here the output)
Comment: Some errors reported in `dmesg` output where solved adjusting some BIOS options. I updated the output.


Will I get punished for my father's deeds?

Question: My father introduced a family to one of my cousins for marriage. They got married. After the marriage problems began and my dad acted as if it wasn't his responsibility. That girl aborted her baby too. Now they're divorced. I know somehow they think it's my dad's fault. I know it's my dad's fault but that girl aborted her baby too and it might be one of the reasons for divorce. Now I am afraid if in future my marriage happens will it break like my cousin? Will I suffer because of my dad's mistake?
Comment: Check out this: https://islam.stackexchange.com/a/28217/37617. It might help you out.
Comment: Why is it your dad's fault? People get married and get divorced the people who introduced them are generally doing this considering it a good deed. People may be introduced for marriage but find out they don't fit and separate ... Your dad introduced them, but they toke the decision to get married they had every chance to say "no". This is a wrong way of thinking. Everything a person does it is his own deed, decision and responsability for which he/she will be accountable in this life and the hereafter (except for a few exceptions like people who are ill-minded).
Comment: In fact a few centuries ago it was very common to have been divorced and married multiple time even for women. It is nothing wrong to get a divorce or ask for khul'a. It  is legal act in Islam.
Answer: Praise be to Allah,
An incident and mistake from someone else has nothing to do with the other person as long as they don't approve of it. In your case, your cousins failure of marriage has nothing to do with your marriage. Your father's mistake has nothing to do with you as long as one doesn't approve of the mistake the other person did. The Qur'an mentions that no one shall bear the burden of others's sins and each person is only responsible for what they do


Why would the Vashta Nerada accept the Doctor's offer in Forest of the Dead?

Question: His threat was pretty awesome. yeah. But it was also very blank. First, he clearly wasn't protected from them, they could easily eat him. Second, he was offering them a forest, but what would they do with it if they don't have any food source?
Comment: This is, honestly, a lot of different questions.  Try to trim it down some.
Comment: Just editing it did your part.  It gets put in a review queue, other users will check it out, and vote on it, pretty much the same process that put it on hold.
Comment: @Radhil I've done that, how do i put it off hold?
Comment: I just saw this episode last night :) - I was wondering the same thing, but then the Doctor did say look him up... so when they found out that the Doctor can be unforgiving about losing people they probably just accepted the offer for self preservation.
Comment: *they could easily eat him* **And** the Daleks could easily exterminate him. Somehow practice seems to diverge from theory.
Answer: Fear.
The Doctor might not actually have had anything able to keep them from just eating him - but they don't necessarily know that. They have no way to.
This is the man they have on record as having survived numerous "deaths" before as well as having wiped out entire species. Someone immensely dangerous who keeps to his threats.
So, they evidently just came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth the risk of trying, lest they end up like one of his many, many past foes.
As for the food: Given on Earth they apparently mostly eat road kill (and only the occasional lost human), they apparently don't actually need to eat anywhere near as much as they did at the library. So, it might take a while for that to become an actual issue for them - as opposed to the immediate danger they were presented with then and there.
Comment: "I am the doctor, and you are in the biggest library in the universe.... Look me up". They have way to know that the doctor IS able to do something to keep them from just eating him
Comment: @dna I meant as in they don't know he doesn't currently have anything at that precise moment - and hence fear will make them think he does, with what all the books will say about all the times he did. If that hopefully makes sense.


How to merge all scene geometry into a single mesh?

Question: I would like to have all the geometry of a scene merged in one mesh. It should include curves, fonts, group instances, particles, with applied modifiers, etc...
obj.to_mesh doesn't work for group instances for example.
Comment: Is this a question about scripting? you mention `obj.to_mesh` but don't include scripting in your tags.
Comment: Yes it was actually about scripting, but your answer on how to do it in viewport is also interesting for other people I guess. I add the Python tag
Comment: in that case I think there are better ways to do this then, also interested why you would need to do this?
Comment: The modifier stack has some limitation regarding order. I'm trying to shrinkwrap a mesh on another mesh that has an animated boolean and particles. Problem is the shrinkwrap applies after the boolean and gives strange/messy results as there is nothing to shrinkwrap on (2 modifier stacks, so...). Also particles disappear instantly too being spawned or not but in no way disappearing slowly like the rest. I guess the modifier Stack has to be changed to allow user to choose the order in which modifiers apply. In the meantime I didn't found another way (memory and time consuming but it works)
Comment: better than a long test, the file (without particles as my PC crash if I try to add one system to the displaced mesh): http://www.pasteall.org/blend/27520
Answer: First make all duplis real, then convert all to mesh and join.

Object -> Apply -> Make Duplicates Real
Object -> Convert to -> Mesh (This applies mesh modifiers too)
Select the base object to join into (Shift+RMB)
Object -> Join

Shorthand: Ctrl+Shift+A -> Alt+C, M -> Shift+RMB -> Ctrl+J.

Note, You might want to first un-hide all objects, view all layers and make any linked data local too, thats if you want to apply to the entire scene and not just what you see.
Comment: Works well, thanks for the Shorthand, like that :) @ideasman42 After usage of the method in real case, here are some remarks: Make duplicate real must sometime be done twice (dupligroups of objects with particles for example). Duplicates with lots of instances (1 000 000 of small spheres for example) won't convert in acceptable timeframe. Maybe add a warning (it may freeze the computer/crash Blender) in the answer until Blender get's better support of many objects.
Answer: Select all objects with A,A then press CtrlJ to join into one mesh.


Will bigger rims raise my car height

Question: I currently have 14/180/65 installed, if I were to install a 15 inch rim with the factory specified tire size for the 15 inch rim would it raise my car height ? I also have 30mm lowering springs installed would it cause problems?
Answer: When you increase the rim size, you get a lower profile tire so that the overall outside diameter doesn't change.  At the tire store and some websites this is known as your car's +1 (or +2, +3) tire size.
If you don't change the tire size you'll run into several issues from minor annoyances like the speedometer being wrong to major issues like rubbing (and subsequent blow-outs).
Comment: "from minor annoyances like the speedometer being wrong" your answer is right but please do not undervalue this. It can become a major issue if you drive (much) faster than your speedometer shows. Keep radar traps and the police in general in mind.
Answer: Building off of JPhi's answer, a few tire options.
180/55R15 - same width, 1.7% smaller diameter
180/60R15 - same width, 1.3% larger diameter
185/55R15 - wider, 0.9% smaller diameter
190/55R15 - wider, exact same diameter
https://tiresize.com/calculator/
Some of these sizes may be more common than others.  All of these sizes exist theoretically, but if it is not a common size, it is unlikely you will be able to find it anywhere, or you will have limited options.

Will bigger rims raise my car height


What is endurance used for?

Question: What is endurance used for in Fallout Shelter? The storage room says it uses Endurance, but what does that mean? It doesn't produce anything so what is the advantage or putting a dweller in there?
Comment: Related: http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/224914/should-i-assign-dwellers-to-the-warehouse
Answer:
Endurance: Dwellers with high endurance can withstand a lot of punishment, and are best suited for exploring the wasteland or for manning Nuka-Cola production plants.

As few players have brought this up, the endurance is the power of the person to RESIST againts damage, when exploring the waste land he will take less radiation and damage.
Comment: Can you provide a source for where it says endurance makes them harder to take damage? Is that from the Fallout universe at large, or specifically Fallout Shelter?
Comment: Yes the endurance raises the resistance as the level will raise the health. For the wasteland or the vault entry, you should normally use dwellers with high E stats and a good level.
Comment: I've provided the information when its only specific about Fallout Shelter, the mobile game.
Answer: Endurance increases the max HP gained each time a dweller levels up. This means if you level up a dweller that does not yet have max endurance you are permanently reducing the potential max HP of that dweller. Even though special over 10 isn't visible in the display it still has an effect so you also want the best endurance gear you can find.
Endurance is also used in the Nuka-Cola plants (which replace all other food and water buildings). If you had the foresight to train all your food and water workers for endurance early you can have some of them make Nuka-Cola and send the rest into the wasteland. If you didn't train them in endurance then you should still send them all into the wasteland... but then "forget" to call them back.
The formula is

MaxHitPoints += (BaseEndurance + OutfitEndurance) * 0.5 + 2.5;

fallout.wikia.com
I haven't directly tested this formula but it fits with my experience.

What is endurance used for?


Anapanasati (Forced Breathing)

Question: Is the breath all important? I know that the breath conditions the body, in that the breath tranquilizes the body, but often I read about NOT volitionally breathing in and out and this is exactly what I am doing. Can I use an alternative object or even open monitorin, that is many objects in a succession?
Comment: If this is asking about having too much conscious control when breathing, see also [Meditation - how to breath naturally?](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/q/24402/254)
Comment: Anapanasati is not about Forced Breathing. It not about Breathing. It's just a way to concentrate the mind. It's about looking at normal breathing. Not controlling. It's a part of Samatha Bawana.
Answer: The breathing naturally arises as a "sign" that the mind has right mindfulness & right concentration. If a meditator aspires to fulfill the 16 stages of Anapansati, they should never seek to observe the breathing & never be concerned about the breathing. The Buddha taught his path is the abandoning of craving. The meditator should only watch the mind; to ensure the mind is free from craving.
An analogy is a mother hen sitting on eggs hoping for the eggs to hatch. All the mother hen does is sit on the eggs, to keep the eggs warm & safe. In time, the chicks inside the eggs will hatch the eggs. The mother hen does not use a hammer or her beak to crack open the eggs.
Similarly, the more the mind thinks about watching breathing, the less the mind will watch the breathing. This is because thinking cannot watch breathing because what watches breathing is consciousness.
Using thinking to watch breathing is the same as a mother hen using her beak to crack open the eggs. It is the wrong method & will only harm the chicks.
Answer: Although I understand the point of view of the individual that came before me, I believe the importance of what you focus on depends on what type of practice you are working on.
You stated that "the breath conditions the body". If you are working up your concentration abilities through samatha meditation, voluntarily breathing is not an issue. Your focus should be on how long you can hold your attention onto the breath. If you notice other experiences, or thoughts arising, simply acknowledge it and return your attention to the sensations of your breath.
You may experience thoughts about your experience of breathing. The previous writer is correct in that thinking cannot observe breathing. But what the Buddha taught is that consciousness is an illusion created by a belief in a separate, permanent self. Consciousness is not self. When you concentrate on the sensations of the breath, try to observe and realize the truth that in that moment, all you are experiencing is breath. There is no one to do the observing.
Answer: You do not force to do anapanasathi meditation. Only you have to concentration your inhale and exhale pattern. Before you do that, you can concentration on any object.I think that is the beginning to start a anapanasathi meditation.
Comment: I think that many misunderstand the use of word 'concentration' here. And instead of concentration on breath they end-up doing concentrated breathing. I think a more suitable word would be maintaining 'awareness' on breathing.
Answer: One should not resort to controlled or forced breathing as this practice is Pranayama one of the contemporary practices the Buddha tried and rejected in favour of Anapanasatti.
In Anapanasatti one just watchers the breath.
Sammā Diṭṭhi Sutta lists 16 alternatives:

I. Karma (kamma): the unwholesome [§4]; the roots of the unwholesome
  [§5]; the wholesome [6]; the roots of the wholesome [§7].
II. Food (āhāra) [§10], arises and ends with craving (taṇhā) [§11].
III. Suffering (dukkha) [§§14-19].
IV. Decay and death (jarā,maraṇā) [§§21-23].
V. Birth (jāti) [§§25-26].
VI. Existence (bhava) [§§29-31].
VII. Clinging (upādāna) [§§33-35].
VIII. Craving (taṇhā) [§§37-39].
IX. Feelings (vedanā) [§§41-43].
X. Contact (phassa) [§§45-47].
XI. The 6 sense-bases (saḷāyatana) [§§49-51].
XII. Name and form (nāma,rūpa) [§§53-55].
XIII. Consciousness (viññāṇa) [§§57-59].
XIV. Formations (saṅkhāra) [§§61-63].
XV. Ignorance (avijjā) [§§65-67].
XVI. Mental influxes (āsavā) [§§69-71].
Answer:
Is the breath all important?

You can use the alternative object, such as a living being of Mettā meditation, however, the recommend object for the beginner from the elder Thai, such as Mun Bhuridatto, and Burmese monks, such as Ledi sayadaw or Ācinna sayadaw, is Ānāpānassati. Why?
Because the Buddha taught Dhamma sequentially, and the Ānāpānassati is the first meditation in MahāSatipaṭṭhānaSutta, KāyagatāsatiSutta, and ĀnāpānassatiSutta. Why?
Because Ānāpānassati is the easiest meditation because the breath is urging the practitioner every time while the other meditation is not. It likes someone who provoking the practitioner every moment at the nose.

I know that the breath conditions the body, in that the breath tranquilizes the body, but often I read about NOT volitionally breathing in and out and this is exactly what I am doing.

It's not that natural. It's just practicing to know the claiming down breath. The practitioner knows only breath. Don't care of  volitionally or not.  If you breath volitionally but you don't care of it, then you come back to know your breath, it's ok.
This is the misunderstood from the reading study system.
There are 4 subjects that the practitioner needs to recite and memorize:

Measuring the breathing in/out long at the apparent measuring on the nose point (sometime left hole, sometime right, sometime on the upper lip, etc, whatever is ok because the practitioner is caring to measure the breath, not the touching).
Measuring the breathing in/out short at the apparent measuring on the nose point.
Trying to measure the entire breath in/out sensitively continuously at the apparent measuring on the nose point.
Trying to measure the entire claiming-down breath in/out sensitively continuously at the apparent measuring on the nose point.

These 4 subjects need to go together, but the practitioner who just read without reciting and memorizing will forget some of them then the meditation will not grow upper step.

Can I use an alternative object or even open monitorin, that is many objects in a succession?

Actually, the practitioner uses many meditations in daily life as the support meditations, but the Ānapānassati is the easiest primary meditation for the beginner.
Answer: When it comes to breathing, think of it as a cyclic biorhythm more than just vacuum imposed gaseous exchange.
If you chart the resting breath it would look something like cos or sin on a graph... Along with your breath there are various other biorhythms in a state of harmony and as such the functions of the body run by the background processors of the mind.
When you exercise, that strain imposed on on system results in a disharmony and in order to maintain that state of strain your mind has to exert more conscious energy on the relative harmony of the biorhythms.
As explained in my reply to this similar question: https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/43689/20365
A biorhythm may be encompassed by another if the agonist component (muscle - in this case the diaphragm) is turned into a passive. In other the words, by the diaphragm remaining stationary and other muscles exert enough pressure on the lungs to promote gaseous exchange, you don't have to thing about the breath, only the movement.
I got the idea from great whites and their necessity to continue swimming. They compress one side of their body so the other side of the body can be flooded with blood. Turns out we can copy their example of blood pressure efficiency for breathing efficiency when exercising.
Cultivate in harmony

Anapanasati (Forced Breathing)


What's the meaning of 'plasma' in 'plasma membrane'?

Question: I wonder why is it called plasma membrane - what's the biological meaning of the word 'plasma'?
Comment: Plasma comes from the greek word which means something created or forged
Answer: I thought it was a no-brainer, apparently it's more of a historical journey into the origins of Botany. But I have a hypothesis: During the debate of whether the cell or the fluid within it was the origin of life, that fluid was called 'protoplasm' - first formed, i.e. it's the origin of life. The plasma membrane, then, is simply that which surrounds the 'plasma' - the protoplasm.
Comment: If you wanted the etymology of the word, would better have gone to english.stackexchange.com. Also, note that in etymology, there is a large disparity between what hypothesis sounds logical to a layperson and what hypothesis is true.


Talmudic sages of Davidic descent

Question: Which (individual) sages of Talmud were said to be traced back to King David? IIRC, R. Hillel was one (?). Are there others? Sources are welcome.
Comment: IIRC, we can see from many examples, that both sides count (fraternal or maternal), like in Pinchas Ben Elazar (was called בן פוטיפרע).
Comment: https://www.sefaria.org/Otzar_Midrashim%2C_Bustanai%2C_The_Tale_of_Rabbi_Bustanai?vhe=Otzar_Midrashim,_New_York,_1915⟨=he
Comment: I don't  have a source off hand but they say Rashi descended from King David through R'' Yochanan HaSandlar.
Comment: I don't  have a source off hand but they say Rashi descended from King David through R'' Yochanan HaSandlar.
Answer: The Rashei Galusa in Bavel were descended from David, and we know that some of them were among the Amoraim. They include the earlier Rav Huna (a contemporary of R' Yehudah Hanassi, and possibly a teacher of Shmuel), Mar Ukva, and Rav Huna brei dR' Nosson. Also R' Nosson (the Av Beis Din in the time of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel II) was a son of the Reish Galusa (see Horios 13b and the elucidation of it cited in note ה here).
R' Sherira Gaon also identifies the better-known Rav Huna (disciple and successor of Rav) as מבי נשיאה, from the family of the Nasi (Reish Galusa), which might also mark him as a descendant of David (although not necessarily: it could just mean that he was related to them by marriage, as was Rav Nachman).
Answer: Ketubot 62b says that Rav Yehuda HaNasi was a descendent of King David. This most likely means his father Rav Shimon ben Gamliel (II) was as well.
The Wikipedia entry for Hillel says he also was a descendant of King David:

According to the "Iggeret of Rav Sherira Gaon" (a comprehensive history of the composition of the Talmud from the 10th century), Hillel descended from the Tribe of Benjamin on his father's side, and from the family of David on his mother's side.
Comment: Hillel, Rabban Shim'on ben Gamli'el and Rabbi Yehuda Hannasi were all from the same line. I didn't look at Rav Sherira's letter inside but I'm guessing his source is from [Bereshit Rabba 33:3](https://www.sefaria.org.il/Bereishit_Rabbah.33.3?lang=he&with=all&lang2=he): Rabbi says וְאִין סָלֵיק רַב הוּנָא רֵישׁ גָּלוּתָא לְהָכָא, אֲנָא קָאֵים לִי מִן קֳדָמוֹהִי, לָמָּה דְּהוּא מִן יְהוּדָה וַאֲנָא מִן בִּנְיָמִין, וְהוּא מִן דִּכְרַיָא דִּיהוּדָה וַאֲנָא מִן נֻקְבְתָא
Comment: @AlBerko There are other sources too (at least one). [מגילת יוחסין מצאו בירושלם וכתוב בה הלל מן דדוד](https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%99_%D7%AA%D7%A2%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%AA_%D7%93_%D7%91)
Comment: @ba could be- will try to see if I can find it in the letter later and if so will edit it in
Comment: *"This most likely means"* - this doesn't. As I commented above we can conclude that if the Gemmorah mentions R"Y and not his father R'Shimon, R"Y was related by his maternal line. THis is very suspicious when any source mentions only one person and not all of his descendants (Hilel and not R"G, R"Y etc).
Comment: @ba Right, those are with all the contradicting scrolls they have found. What does it mean הילל מן דדוד? SHouldn't it say מן דוד? How come Bavli didn't know of that?
Comment: @AlBerko 1. What contradictions? 2. מן דדוד is the Aramaic equivalent of משל דוד. and 3. I assume the Bavli did know if since (as quoted by alicht's answer) it says Rabbi was descended from David
Comment: @ba the previous passages deal with contradicting Torah scrolls that were "unexpectedly" found. The Gemmorah continues, there was another scroll of genealogy. 3. Is *that* a contradiction? Since Rabbi descended from Hillel?

Talmudic sages of Davidic descent


Is it possible that Lord Shri Krishna may reveal himself to his ardent devotees in the physical world itself?

Question: What I mean is.. the final goal which we bhakts seek is just a glimpse of the particular God we are devotee of...
As the folklores keep on mentioning instances of thousands of divine lovers and bhakts lastly meeting God and getting boons ... The present day yogi's deny the same for numerous reasons. Their point is all about finding the true nature of your own self and becoming enlightened!
Comment: No one has been able to see him as of yet. If you do please let me know.
Comment: Yes in medidation inside you but for that you need saranagathi.. Need a correct preceptor Guru and mantra deeksha.. and pure love of God.. may be daily ganga snanha worshiping the rishis and muni and doing pooja lot of things are required this is called atma sakshatkara..
Comment: You must become austrial body to see God when and how long you wish to see.
Comment: Finding a glimpse of a mere (mythological) avatar is your goal? Your goal should be unification with the iswar!
Comment: @Wikash_ **"Finding"** a glimpse is not my concern, I asked whether is it possible that Lord  Krishna may reveal himself to his devotees in present day world..
Comment: Well you stated that in your op. The answer is that no one has been verified to do so thusly we do not know.
Answer: The following is an excerpt from the teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi.

Miss Umadevi, a Polish lady convert to Hinduism, asked Sri Bhagavan:
I once before told Sri Bhagavan how I had a vision of Siva at about
  the time of my conversion to Hinduism. A similar experience recurred
  to me at Courtallam. These visions are momentary. But they are
  blissful.
I want to know how they might be made permanent and continuous.
  Without Siva there is no life in what I see around me. I am so happy
  to think of Him. Please tell me how His vision may be everlasting to
  me.
M.: You speak of a vision of Siva. Vision is always of an object. That
  implies the existence of a subject. The value of the vision is the
  same as that of the seer. (That is to say, the nature of the vision is
  on the same plane as that of the seer.)
Appearance implies disappearance also. Whatever appears must also disappear. A vision can never be eternal. But Siva is eternal.

So getting the vision of the God, in a form like Shiva or Krishna or Rama, etc, is possible after devotion, prayers with pure heart, but they will be momentary.
A permanent BLISS is what should be sought for, which is beyond having the vision of the God.
Comment: @Fancy-Toon: Sages like Sri Ramana Maharshi said that the visions either in dreams or during meditation are projections of our own intense feelings.  So if one concentrates on the image of Sri Krishna, one may get vision of the same after the intensity of feeling reaches certain level
Comment: Are such visions real..like one point of view is that one can't have an idea of something one has never been given access to.. since our mind is only capable of reproducing images from the ton of information it has gathered over the past .. so most probably the krishna in ones vision is what he/she had already seen in a calendar.
Comment: @srimannarayana_k_v Ya, I completely agree with this swami ji.. please tell me if what people call as _darshan_ different from vision .. I believe it is.. where the supreme force reveal it's true self to the devotee, is it a possibility or just a myth?
Comment: @Fancy-Toon: I think there is no difference between these 2 words - darshan and vision. One is Sanskrit word and another is English word.  To be precise it is the outer appearance or manifestation of what had been till then in the inner side.  Visions are not final stage, as per Sri Ramana Maharshi's teachings, yet they give enough encouragement to the aspirant to pursue in the field of spirituality further.
Answer: Yes, it is possible to get a vision of Lord Krishna even today in Kali yuga, but only if you are a soul dedicated to Him. When Lord Krishna see that you are a soul firmly grounded in faith dedicated and devoted to Him, He will reveal himself to you in some way, even in a vision or revelation of Him. But if you are not such a soul, He will not reveal himself to you. For such persons He will stay to be just a mythological figure from the story books of Hinduism, and just a dead stone of a statue standing on the altar in the Krishna mandir or temple. Lord Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita 7.25:

nāhaṁ prakāśaḥ sarvasya yoga-māyā-samāvṛtaḥ mūḍho 'yaṁ nābhijānāti
loko mām ajam avyayam
I am never manifest (prakāśaḥ) to the foolish and unintelligent. For them I am
covered by My internal potency, and therefore they do not know that I
am unborn and infallible.

In this verse the Lord says that He is never manifest to some persons, which imply that He displays or manifest himself to some other persons.
We also learn from the Upanishads examples about this. One such example is in the Isha Upanishad, mantra 15:

hiraṇmayena pātreṇa satyasyāpihitaṁ mukham tat tvaṁ pūṣann apāvṛṇu
satya-dharmāya dṛṣṭaye
O my Lord, sustainer of all that lives, Your real face (satyasya mukham) is covered by
Your dazzling effulgence. Kindly remove that covering and exhibit
Yourself (dṛṣṭaye) to Your pure devotee.

Here we see that a soul dedicated and devoted to the Lord, ie a devotee or bhakta of the Lord, is praying the Lord to reveal himself so that he can see his face, ie his personal form such as a form of Lord Krishna. A devotee (bhakta) of the Lord wants to get a vision of the Lord, and the Lord will reveal himself to a devotee but only to a sincere devotee firmly grounded in faith in the Lord. It is a Lord's choice to who he wants to reveal himself. That is confirmed in the Upanishads, see Srila Prabhupada's purport on the Bhagavatam 10.13.54 where he quoted Mundaka Upanishad verse which tells that the Lord chooses to who he wants to reveal himself:

yam evaiṣa vṛṇute tena labhyas tasyaiṣa ātmā vivṛṇute tanuṁ svām
He is obtained only by one whom He Himself chooses. To such a person,
He manifests His own form. (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 3.2.3)

So, the Lord will reveal tanuṁ svām "his own form" to a devotee of his choice.
When finally the Lord reveals himself to his devotee it is said that the devotee becomes liberated. That is stated in the Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.9 (in some versions the verse number is 2.2.8):

bhidyate hṛdaya-granthiś chidyante sarva-saṁśayāḥ kṣīyante cāsya
karmāṇi tasmin dṛṣṭe parāvare
The knot in the heart is pierced, all misgivings are cut to pieces,
and the chain of fruitive actions is terminated when one sees the
Supreme Lord everywhere, within all superior and inferior beings.

Here "The knot in the heart is pierced" indicate that the devotee becomes liberated from the false identification of himself with his body, ie he is liberated from the influence of ahaṅkāra or false ego, and "the chain of fruitive actions is terminated" indicate that the devotee becomes liberated from fruitive actions, ie karma. This Mundaka Upanishad verse is repeated two times in the Srimad Bhagavatam in verses 1.2.21 and also 11.20.30. Those two Bhagavatam verses differ from the Mundaka's verse only in the last part of the verse where Mundaka has tasmin dṛṣṭe parāvare. The word by word translation and explanation or purport of the verse is available at vedabase. The translation of the Mundaka Upanishad verse is available at vedabase in the purport to the Bhagavatam verse 10.87.35.

The verse quotations are available on vedabase at https://vedabase.io/en/