What are the pros and cons of premined altcoins?

Question: When starting an altcoin from scratch, how would distributing premined coins to a certain community affect the currency?
Answer: pro's:

dev gets paid
some bounties and coin distribution can occur

con's:

depending on the size of the premine, developer could get an unreasonably large amount of coins for what is essentially a copy and paste job.
negative preconceived opinions about the coin because it is premined.
dev could be a scammer and dump all the coins, rapidly deflating the price(ie, a pump and dump)
those who claim the bounties may run with the money and pull the services at a moments notice once the bounty is paid.
coin may be subject to 51% attacks, difficulty stranding attacks, and other undocumented forking attacks from anti-premine "activists", who may be the vocal minority but often have the majority of hash on any given coin.
the coin will be under constant attack from trolls
Answer: I'd say a fair distribution of premined coins has these benefits:

Gives the coin visibility over the 80+ altcoins out there, some with competing target markets (e.g. PesetaCoin vs SpainCoin - latter is premined and will be distributed)
Creates interest in it (mostly from the group that can potentially receive them)
A lot of people end up with at least some of those coins, increasing the possibilities some will use such coins to pay for stuff (kick-starting an economy using this coin) rather than simply cashing them right away
Even for those who do cash the coins right away, it's literally money fallen from the sky, created ex-nihilo. Just like fiat, but directly benefiting them.
Answer: With 100% premined coins, this means that at the time the coin start to be used all the coins are already sent to people. This reduce the inflation since all coins are already sent.
One of the problems of premined coins is that it removes the need of mining and mining is an important thing, because its "the process of adding transaction records to Bitcoin's public ledger of past transactions.". Mining is needed to make things secure but without an incentive to mine no one will do it.
One solution to the mining problem is to have an transaction fee, so when you receive some money, an ultra small % of what you received goes back to the system, the problem is that the transation must be ultra small or no one will use the coin. But if the transaction fee is small, then almost no one will want to mine just for those few coins. There is also the problem that the coin is premined, and deflation will occur, at some moment the coin will be worth alot, and the and the transaction fee, if it is X coins instead of Y% of the coins you received, those X coins that were just an small fee, will now be a big amount of money.
Another problem of premined coins is that people usually think the way its distributed to people is not fair, if developers sell the coins before it start some may consider it a scam.
This problem could be solved by having people mine numbers instead of coins, this would happens before the coin is sent to people, after X months or years, they get those numbers people mined, and share the total amount of coins based the amount of numbers people mined.
As some example, if just 2 guys mined numbers, and the first mined 1 number and the other mined 99 numbers. The first one will get 1% of all coins and the other 99% of all coins, at the time the coins are shared to people. If 4 guys only mine, and each one get 50 numbers, they will get 25% of the coins when the coins are shared.


store my BMW without driving

Question: Will battery run out if I store my BMW without running for few months ? That is what my mechanic said. But it does not make sense. Please tell me if that is true or not!
Answer: Yes, it will.
If you have power in the place where it will be stored then it is best to put a battery charger on it - the latest ones have smart sensing and will not overcharge the battery if left connected for long periods.
One make among many you could check out is CTEK...
Comment: The CTEK 7002 is an excellent charger with "float charge" abilities. Always be aware of hydrogen gas exiting a charging battery. Keep sparks away from the batt.
Answer: All modern vehicles with electronics use some power, even when everything seems to be turned off. That standby current is called "parasitic draw," usually between 10 and 100 milliamps. A good battery can handle that draw for a few weeks/months.
However, it is common practise to disconnect the battery negative post before storing the car. Upon re-connect, you will need to reprogram your radio code and stations. Also, the engine computer (ECM) will automatically re-learn your driving habits.
Comment: As well as the standby current (which is taken by things like remote door locking, alarm systems, etc) lead acid batteries self-discharge by about 5% per month. Even ignoring the self discharge, if the standby current is 10mA (0.01 amps) that would completely discharge a 40 AH battery in about 4,000 hours, which is a bit less than 6 months.

store my BMW without driving


HTTP Basic Auth is enough?

Question: I have WebSVN, Gitlab and phpMyAdmin hosted on my dev server. Now, all of it, I password protect the pages (not their individual login) using HTTP Basic Auth, is this the best practice that I can do?
Answer: If you aren't using HTTPS then this information could easily be picked up by anyone sitting between you and your server and reused.  If you are using SSL/HTTPS to encrypt the link, then you should be fine.
Comment: @LeandroGarcia - note that you don't need a commercial SSL certificate.  You could make a self-signed certificate and simply add it to your computer's trusted certificates and it would work for protecting your login.  It wouldn't work well for a public site as people would be suspicious of it, but for your own use, it's fine and free.
Comment: @LeandroGarcia - not really.  It's completely insecure if it is connecting over a network you don't have complete control over.  If it was only being used internally on your network, you should probably be ok as long as you know there are no rogue devices, but it's very risky.  There are various login methods that can encrypt the password exchange alone, but without SSL to verify the server is legit, someone could still get in between you and the server and spoof the login to get your credentials.
Comment: What if I don't have SSL/HTTPS? Do I have alternative?
Comment: Hmm, if that is the case, may I ask how do you protect subdomains or domains that contains some things not meant to be public but must be place there?
Comment: @LeandroGarcia - HTTPS with whatever authentication you want or something like SFTP.  No authentication of a client can be secure unless you first validate the server is authentic.

HTTP Basic Auth is enough?


reverse crowd sale possibility

Question: Is it possible to do a reverse crowd sale? e.g. send tokens to a smart contract to get ether back. Or would this require to load the contract with WETH or something in advance?
Answer: If I understand correctly you already have a token and a regular smart contract which has been used for token distribution and you now want to write a new contract for reverse distribution.
A small problem is that a contract can't detect when someone sends it tokens (and anyway contracts can't execute anything by themselves - only through a transaction). But what you can do it write a contract which handles the token transfer by itself - the token owner just needs to approve token withdrawal in advance. So it could work something like this:
1) Token owner issues a approve transaction to the token contract and names your reverse contract as the spender.
2) Token owner issues a separate transaction to your reverse contract which performs the transfer with transferFrom
3) If the token transfer (transferFrom) is successful the contract sends Ether to the (ex) token owner.
Comment: I'm trying to understand if you can create a crowd sale where the payment method is ERC20 tokens, and the distributed currency is Ether.
Comment: As I see it, yes, as I just tried to describe in my answer. If you didn't understand some part of the answer feel free to ask more about it.

reverse crowd sale possibility


How to connect an action to a value change in C++/Qt

Question: I do have a question. I'm currently developing an app and this app is reporting the available space on a device.
The display is done in my Window class of my file mainwindow.cpp
void MainWindow::createInfoSection()
{
    uint64_t space;
    CreateInfoSection = new QWidget();
    CreateInfoSection->setFixedHeight(40);

    QGridLayout *CreateInfoLayout = new QGridLayout(CreateInfoSection);

    NbOfItemsLabel = new QLabel(tr("%1 Files").arg(m_device.getNbOfFiles()));

    space = m_device.getAvailableFreeSpaceInBytes();

    if(space < MEGABYTE)
        SpaceAvailLabel = new QLabel(tr("%1 KB Remaining").arg(space/KILOBYTE));
    else if (space < GIGABYTE)
        SpaceAvailLabel = new QLabel(tr("%1 MB Remaining").arg(space/MEGABYTE));
    else
        SpaceAvailLabel = new QLabel(tr("%1 GB Remaining").arg(space/GIGABYTE));

    CreateInfoLayout->addWidget(NbOfItemsLabel, 0,0);
    CreateInfoLayout->addWidget(SpaceAvailLabel, 0,1);
    CreateInfoLayout->setAlignment(Qt::AlignCenter);

}

And I had a second method to just update the section when I want
void MainWindow::RefreshInfoSection()
{
    uint64_t space;

    NbOfItemsLabel = new QLabel(tr("%1 Files").arg(m_device.getNbOfFiles()));

    space = m_device.getAvailableFreeSpaceInBytes();

    if(space < MEGABYTE)
        SpaceAvailLabel = new QLabel(tr("%1 KB Available").arg(space/KILOBYTE));
    else if (space < GIGABYTE)
        SpaceAvailLabel = new QLabel(tr("%1 MB Available").arg(space/MEGABYTE));
    else
        SpaceAvailLabel = new QLabel(tr("%1 GB Available").arg(space/GIGABYTE));
}

the space available is get from a method declared in another class that I'm accessing using m_device. getAvailableFreeSpaceInBytes is defined as below in my mtp_wrapper class (in mtp_wrapper.cpp)
uint64_t mtp_wrapper::getAvailableFreeSpaceInBytes() {
    return PulsDeviceMngr->device->storage->FreeSpaceInBytes;
}

The PulsDeviceMngr is a structure which contain multiple elements.
What I'm looking for is a way to detect the change/update the value of FreeSpaceInBytes and update the section defined in my MainWindow using RefreshInfoSection as RefreshInfoSection due have a way to update the section and QLabel.
I'm pretty sure that it can be done by CONNECT/SLOT/SIGNAL
Any idea/examples.
Answer: What is m_device? It is the responsibily of m_device to notify others of changes. If it is possible, add a signal ChangeInBytes to m_device and then connect interested parties to that signal using roughly the following:
connect(SIGNAL(m_device->ChangeInBytes), SLOT(interested_party->slot))

If you can't modify m_device, you should probably create a wrapper-class, checking for changes in an appropriate way.
Answer: You cannot monitor a variable, you need either a setter for the variable, that as suggested, raise a signal, or some sort of pooling on the variable itself to detect changes but this may be overkill.


Running EXE files with WINE through terminal

Question: I have WINE installed and I have figured out how to use it to run Windows programs from their installed directories in Windows from Linux in my dual-boot configuration. I now want to keep these programs in my application panel. So, what would the command be to run something with WINE?
Comment: Does it show up on your panel now? Right click it and choose to lock it to the panel, does that work? I don't have Linux booted right now and don't run WINE often sorry if that's off the mark. There is this question that might help [Invoke a WINE-installed application from the command line] (http://askubuntu.com/questions/65487/invoke-a-wine-installed-application-from-command-line)
Comment: It does not work with games launched this way.
Comment: Bummer well it's a good question and deserves a good answer!
Answer: I actually found it! wine (filepath)
Comment: Yeah, I figured it out right after posting the question. I figured I'd leave this up just in case some other poor soul in my situation needs help :)
Comment: That's what the link I provided above says :)
Comment: Yeah good idea and you know you can accept your own answer, right? You dont get any rep for that but its totally acceptable :) Raju's looks good too, whatrver solves your problem
Answer: make sure that the program has 'executable' permission
chmod +x game.exe

You can create short cut files(desktop files with your desired image as icon) using the steps mentioned below link
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UnityLaunchersAndDesktopFiles
Above link even explains, how you can add your programs to launcher panel
Comment: I know :) There is a program called alacarte that allows you to easily do that in GNOME and Unity


why does my heat pump wiring diagram show 7 wires going to the thermostat but the thermostat only says it needs 5?

Question: Here is a link to the wiring diagram for my heat pump.  The thermostat that I am planning on buying has the following terminals C, G, Y, O/B, RC, R, Aux, E, and L.  The instructions say to jump the RC and R together after you connect the R wire.  On the wiring diagram I can see where the the R, Y, G, and O wires match up on the Heat pump(HP) and the thermostat(TS).  It looks like to me the W2 on the HP connects to the W on the TS and the C from the HP connects with the B on the TS.  It also looks like the W1 on the HP does not connect to the TS but to another place in the HP.  I thought there would be wires going from  W1 and W2 on the HP to the same terminals on the TS(if I understand correctly that W1 and W2 are 2 different heat settings)?  On the wiring diagram on the HP it looks like it wants 7 wires connected from the HP to the TS, however on the Thermostat instructions it only shows 5 wires being connected...any help/insight would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.
Comment: I'm voting to close this question because it's been abandoned
Comment: Did you ever get this resolved? If so, please give a check-mark to the answer that helped you the most, or write up your own answer explaining what you did to get it fixed and give yourself a check mark. That will help others with this kind of problem know that this has a resolution and is a good place to look for their answer.
Answer:
The below are all you have to worry about, Yellow need not be wired to Y at the air handler
as it is a dummy trminal for convenience, many simply run Y from the stat to the AC unit outside bypassing the Y terminal on the air handler.
Answer: Your thermostat is not wired for 2-stage.


Can I reset my rocket league without losing DLC items?

Question: I want to reset my stuff on rocket league so I can unlock everything again for fun, but I don't want to lose my DLC items. Is this possible, and if so, how do I do it?
Answer: Yes, according to this reddit thread, both your ranks and items are stored locally.
Your save file should be located in a folder inside <code>\Documents\My Games\Rocket League\TAGame\SaveData\</code>. Deleting it will reset your progress.
However, if you have Steam cloud synchronization on, you will just download the save from the cloud, so you either need to turn the cloud synchronization off or forcefully overwrite the cloud contents (see here for an extensive description on how to do so).
Your DLC items should still be available (but make a backup before trying), since it acts the same as if you bought the game with all DLC and started it for the first time.
Answer: There is currently no way to reset item drops. The only way to start fresh would be to buy a new copy of the game on a new account.
Answer: If you are on steam the dlc is another purchased item so if you reset rl the dlc will still be playable afterwards.
Comment: Are you sure? This contradicts the previous answer. Also, did you take in account that the question isn't about playable content, but in-game items?
Answer: Actually, if you didn't turn on steam sync, you could just delete the game and reinstall it and everything will be reset. I learned that the hard way, so make sure if you want to keep it to turn on steam sync.


Delay signal according to normal distribution

Question: I am trying to delay a signal by a certain number of samples. This certain number, I would like to generate using a random normal distribution in Matlab. I am using the following for generating the number of samples r = randn(1,1)/sampleTime. This however generates negative numbers too. In order to avoid the negative numbers, I am taking the absolute value of r but I know that this is not the right way, since in this case I would be ignoring the left part of the distribution. Is there a way I can use just positive samples without shifting the mean too much?
Comment: Why are you using a normal distribution if this is not what you actually want? Do you only want to delay the signal by integer multiples of the sampling interval?
Comment: No matter what distribution you use, if it only consists of positive numbers then it is going to have a positive and non-zero mean. You can look at Rician, Rayleigh and Gamma distributions which can be parameterized to so that the mean is small.
Answer: Normal distribution regardless of whatever mean and variance you provide, can still produce large positive and negative numbers(albeit with a small probability).
Do you want to specifically use normal distribution, or all you need is a random delay generator? If latter is the case, you can use rand() from MATLAB, also you could use randi if you need integer delays.
Also you could use something like this to generate uniformly distributed random numbers in a specific range.
Answer: You could try a distribution like the Gamma distribution which is defined only on the positive x-axis unlike the Normal distribution.
MATLAB seems to have functions to produce it.


Where to post questions asking for expert opinion?

Question: After my lie down, I posted this question on SO. As I suspected would happen, it got moved to programmers. Unfortunately, the kind of people I'm interested in getting answers from (litb,skeet et al - the top SO programmers in their respective disciplines) don't frequent Programmers much. So my question is, where to ask somewhat non-specific questions of high-powered users?
Comment: Related: [Give each site a parallel site for polling, recommendations and subjective-ish stuff](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/57383/289691)
Answer: If it's so important for you to reach Jon Skeet and Johannes Schaub, why don't you just cut out the man in the middle and contact them directly?

Jon Skeet's profile has an e-mail address you can use to contact him;
Johannes Schaub's profile links to his blog - I'll let you figure out the rest.

Surely an expert such as yourself should not feel any hesitancy to do this; experts speak to each other privately all the time.  You need not route all communication through Stack Overflow.
When you ask a question on a public site, anybody can see it and anybody can answer it.  Your content also becomes subject to that site's rules and standards.  Them's the breaks.  In this case, it wasn't appropriate for Stack Overflow and got migrated to Programmers - another public site where individual members are all free to choose what they read and answer.
Maybe the people you are trying to reach don't frequent that site, but that is where the subject you wanted to discuss is considered on topic (and rather borderline at that).  If the normal channels on which you might try to reach certain people are not appropriate for a particular purpose, then find one that is appropriate, or accept the fact that perhaps the people you are seeking don't want to be bothered with those kinds of questions.
Comment: @Henk: Unfortunately that's precisely the point. Neil says "the kind of people I'm interested in getting answers from (litb,skeet et al)" - but what precisely does that mean? The people with the highest reputation? People who have published books? People with MVP or other designations/awards? I'm not seeing any particular criteria being presented, so the only possible answer to this question (if it is in fact a real question and not a rhetorical one) is for him to choose the specific individuals he wants to speak to and contact them directly.
Comment: @Henk: You do, do you? I think *you* seem to be making excuses for a poorly-stated and possibly rhetorical question. If Neil wanted that, why didn't he ask for it unambiguously?
Comment: I think it's clear the OP wants to reach users _like_ those 2, but still in a post with a public nature. Let's not derail this into a direct-messaging issue.
Comment: @aarob I think you're over complicating. Neil wanted to post a discussion/pool on SO, for SO users.
Comment: Look @Henk, bottom line is that Shog and I were the only two people who gave answers that were both direct and practical. Call it derailing if you want, I call it answering the question.
Answer:
So my question is, where to ask somewhat non-specific questions of high-powered users?

Chat perhaps? IRC? A private email list that you maintain and only invite high-powered users to?
Certainly not SO - you might get high-powered users to weigh in, but are just as (if not more) likely to get responses from new users, or bored users, or new, bored users...
You lament in a comment somewhere that you would have been fine asking a (community-wiki) form of this question in the past. But this is debatable; in the very early days of the site, traffic was low enough that [some] folks were [a bit] more tolerant of discussion/poll fare, and there was a period of time when the Community Wiki compromise let some such questions pass... But neither of these were devoid of controversy - indeed, it's far more probable that your question would simply have been repeatedly closed, re-opened, closed, re-opened... Until one or both sides ran out of steam (or a moderator intervened).
And you'd still get the C# kids answering in amazement that anyone could function without a debugger.
So my answer is, nowhere on SE.
See also: Where can I find interesting programming discussions?
Answer: Questions like that will be quickly and without exception moved to programmers.SE. There's probably no way to word that question in a way that would make it suitable on SO.
But I guess you could always invite the Skeets and Litbs of the world in a short off-topic comment on SO, if those are whose opinions you want to hear? They might be inclined to follow up on it, especially coming from a fellow veteran.
Comment: @Neil certainly, yeah, the more new IT related sites pop up (and there's more to come!), the more often this will happen.
Comment: @Rick, actually Programmers closed it.
Comment: Am I the only person that thinks we have lost something, if this really is the case?
Comment: @Neil: It would be interesting to know if Einstein used a slide rule, but not particularly relevant to whether experienced physicists typically used a slide rule.  You have only lost something if your question receives no good answers on programmers.
Answer: It seems to me that Programmers is precisely that place.
Your complaint is that that particular site is not frequented by many of the recognized experts who regularly contribute to Stack Overflow. That's perfectly valid, of course; it's an easily verifiable fact.
But what strikes me as interesting is your next comment:

(and who can blame them?)

You seem to be implying that there are numerous problems with the Programmers site that make it sensible for these expert users not to frequent it, and since it's otherwise identical to Stack Overflow, those problems must be content-related.
And that brings us full-circle: You're requesting a place to ask questions that you yourself deem to sufficiently explain why expert programmers wouldn't be terribly interested in spending time on a site that contains them. That seems like a pretty good reason why such questions don't belong on SO, and it's hard to imagine why whichever site we decided they did belong on wouldn't already be (or at least, very quickly become) plagued by the exact same problems that you think afflict Programmers.
The questions asked and topics discussed on Programmers are of an undeniably different nature than those asked on Stack Overflow. If those questions are "uninteresting" to expert programmers, thus explaining why they're not equally regular contributors to the other site that hosts them, then why should we allow those questions to be asked on Stack Overflow? It seems that they would just clutter up the site with content that expert users don't really want to see and have no interest in contributing to.
About the only thing you can do is leave a comment for the particular users whom you'd like to see answer your question, directing them to the question posted on Programmers, and asking them to contribute their opinions. There's no guarantee that they'll do this, of course, but it's always an option.

Edit: In response to the second part of your question, questions that have been migrated to another site are clearly labeled as having been migrated from the original site, including a link back to the question as it was asked on that original site. It's a big banner with an arrow, just like shows up on a closed question. It's very unlikely that anyone will think the question was asked there in the first place.
Comment: @neil Stack Overflow has grown up a lot in 3 years. Is it reasonable to expect the same behaviors you saw in a 1 year old child, when that child is 4 years old?
Comment: I don't deem the question to be subpar, and a year ago I would have asked it as CW on SO, and got a good response.
Comment: @Neil: You're right, I don't know that. Given your reputation/status, I probably would have respected your wish not to migrate it. I'm not sure if that would have been the right decision, but it's probably the one I'd have made. I suspect other high-rep users might have done the same. But if you accept that Programmers is an outlet for subjective, non-technical discussions that don't belong on SO, then I'm having a hard time understanding how one could *objectively* deny that this question belongs there.
Comment: Yeah, wasn't sure about that word choice, either. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here, so I'm trying to phrase things carefully. I removed "subpar" to emphasize the larger point.
Comment: @Cody You are correct abot there being a notification, but not about it being a banner. A banner, particularly a disclaimer,  should appear at the top of the screen, not at the bottom.
Comment: @Cody How do you know that my question was not voted off SO by script kifddies, and not by skeet and litb? I'm not arguing that my question was  OT on SO (god knows I've voted to close zillions of OT questions ), but that there are some questions of opinion that are worth asking, and should be answered, and will NOT (for many reasons) be answered on programmers.
Answer: There is no way to really ask some people in particular.
Remember SO is a community. And experts are everyone (potentially :D)
Answer: Well, I'm not an expert, so probably not qualified to answer your original question, but I can explain my reaction to your question, which could shed some light on the problem:
For a start, the 'provocative' title had the predictable effect of provoking people, which directly contributed to it getting closed after being migrated Programmers. It also made it seem that the question was near 90% rhetorical. You failed to define exactly what you meant by 'experienced', but in the context of your question, it almost seems like your definition of experienced would be "someone who doesn't use a debugger (like me)".
No promises, but I'm guessing that something phrased like this might have had more chances of surviving (on Programmers, not on SO).

Reasons to use a debugger
I have observed over on Stack Overflow
  that many developers seem to rely
  heavily on the debugger. This
  intrigues me, because I haven't been
  using one for years. With experience,
  I've found that there are many better
  ways to resolve problems (example a,
  example b, example c).
Am I the only one? If you are an
  'experienced' developer (say 10+
  years), do you still regularly use a
  debugger, and is it in preference to
  the other options outlined above, or
  other reasons I haven't thought of?
  Maybe it depends on what technology
  you're using, and what kind of program
  you're developing?
Sorry if this is 'too' subjective.
  Please help me improve if it's the
  case, I'm new here!

Or, alternatively, you could ask the opposite question: "reasons not to use a debugger", it sounds like you've got some good answers!
Answer: Anyone can chip in with a contribution here. And even when you think a question is tailor-made for a particular person, they can also choose not to contribute - maybe they're tired that day or just have better things to do than answer questions.
So far so obvious, but where I'm going with that is: If you want to guarantee answers from certain people or even just a certain calibre of person then that sounds more like looking for a consulting agreement with someone than posting to a community.


How can you tell WHEN and WHERE to counter jungle?

Question: I always seem to try to counter jungle and either get jumped by their jungler or there is nothing at the camps. How can I effectively tell when and what camps to counter jungle?
Answer: I believe that counter jungling takes much more skill and memorization than just regular jungling. But here are some pointers.

Know the enemy jungler: If you want to counter jungle effectively, you should know the general time they take to clear the jungle, whether they start at blue, red, or wolves first, (typically), and you should know what escapes, initiates, and such they have to surprise you while you are counter jungling.
Know the jungle timers: This just takes some memorization to know when their jungle would be up so you can some and steal it while they are off ganking.
Know to use CV: If your support has CV, remember it has a minute cool down, and constantly ask for it on enemy buffs, dragon, etc when you think they would be there. This helps to know that you can either snag the other buff or gank without fear of their interference.

I hope this helps a bit.
Comment: Don't rely solely on CV; wards provide great vision.  If you know your opponent started blue, drop a ward there before it respawns.
Answer: From my experience counter jungling is an art of timing and awareness.
When you spot the enemy jungler you can pretty accurately assume his route and this gives you some rough times on his jungle camps.
Now you have seen the enemy jungler heading top from his wolves with a nice ward from mid or something, you know that his wraiths and golems will be up at this point,
Is mid fast enough/high enough hp to contest you and waste your time (leblanc, ahri)
if not you can pretty much safely take the wraiths then re assess the situation and head for golems.
Now the tough part
Everyone worth anything will have timers on their buffs and sometimes yours, this makes stealing buffs very hard. Dont ever try to solo steal buffs, you will most likely get caught. Try to take buffs either with some slick wards and smite steals or as a team effort (ie. enemy blue is up and the enemy mid had to b, you have 30s ish and your top and mid come with you to steal it.)
Answer: Counter jungle is a prove that you are a good Jungler.

Get wardance/CV on the opponent jungle. (Mandatory after the first 6 minutes)
Get the jungle time and order of your opponent jungle. (Mandatory)
Get team work.

Check this video:

If you notice, they do not have Wards on Shyvanna jungle, but even so they get her in the right spot, because of the timing and order of her jungle. Moscow 5 bottom lane, make a cover up to avoid Alistar and Lee got crushed by Janna and Corky. After that, they gank Mid lane getting first and second blood, BESIDE 3 assists in the process (Alistar get assist on the FB and Lee+Karthus one the second blood).
The point here was:
 - They got the team communication.
 - They got team support.
BAD way of doing it:

If you see in this video, they don't attack as a group, playing everyone by themselves.
Answer: A good time to counter jungle is when you spot their jungler with wards or CV, and go to the opposing jungle side. Map vision is the Key!!!


Does solar wind have any influence on probes?

Question: I know that because of the Earth's magnetosphere, we are largely isolated from the influences of the solar winds. But what happens when a probe leaves the Earth's atmosphere and travels inward through the Solar System (like the Venera probes)? How does the solar wind affect the probe? What if it was a vehicle was carrying people? What measures should been taken into account?
Comment: It can fry the electronics.  And people on-board.  Charged particles are not funny.
Answer: Of course it affects the probes, as the number and energy of the elementary particles increase as we get higher from the earth in general (even airplanes get higher dose of radiation than cars) and when we pass the outer layers of the earth's atmosphere in specific.  Major Engineering conferences take place to discuss this issue, that's why your question is a good one.
Technological challenges appear in the engineering of the material that we may use to protect our equipment of course.
You can have further technical information in this presentation.
Comment: +1, nice link. One minor issue with the link: The 5 to 7 year lag quoted for rad hardened equipment compared to COTS. It's much longer than that nowadays; I would say 15 to 20 years. We get a new rad hardened computing device once a decade or so, and when first released that device might be a decade out of date. By the time we get the next one, it's 20 years out of date.
Answer: Yes.
The solar wind was calculated for as far back as the last couple Mariner probes, and the Pioneer and Voyager probes.
Additionally, NASA and ESA also account for light pressure, including reflected IR from on-board thermal sources. The Pioneer Anomaly is the best example of this - a few hundred watts of thermal energy bouncing off the side produced a sufficient thrust to put the Pioneer probe off predicted location by a measurable amount.


How to add arbitrary move to analyze by chess engine in Arena

Question: I'm using Arena 3.5.1 with Stockfish_8_x64 engine. In engine output window it proposes best moves with different continuation variants and values. Can I add few arbitrary moves there myself and ask engine to calculate it values?
Comment: Make the move yourself on the board?
Answer: No. By definition an output window is for output from the program. You can only use input methods to input data. To do this just make the move you want on the board and see the computer analysis for that move in the output window. To do this for several different alternative moves create separate variations, one for each of your alternatives.


What should we do with non-answers when the user can't comment?

Question: In this question a new user came in late and added a "did you ever figure this out?" answer.  The proper thing would have been for the user to comment on the original question, but since he's new and doesn't have any rep that option isn't available.  Any suggestions for what to do in this case?
Comment: Excellent question Ralph! That is indeed one of the limitations of this site. Its often difficult to work with a new user since you also can't take them into a chat room either.
Answer: Tricky one, I've closed it since it was flagged as it's definitely detrimental to the site as a source of concise information, I left a comment which the user should be able to see even if others can not.
Yes this user could't comment, but it doesn't take much effort to earn the rep required. The system is presenting a road block in this case, but I think the cost of such is worth it since it teachers people about how the site works and how to use it effectively.
Comment: Since SE doesn't allow you to message users, leaving "did you ever figure this out?" (esp for questions that are quite old) seems to me the only way to get the attention of the OP. Voting up a question that is months old doesn't do that. I've done this in a couple rare situations on SO with good results. Is this really never OK?
Comment: @Saariko, getting the rep doesn't get the immediate response if the new user is here in search of the answer to a specific problem they're having. IMO, "earn the rep" and you can "post your follow-up comment" doesn't convey to them that this is a "friendly community site". Agreed @jkraybill, would be nice at times to message another user. Perhaps posting a question to them with an `@` while in the chat room would be the way to do that?
Comment: Note that, as a moderator, you *can* convert these to comments (attaching them to a question *or* answer) if you find they have some value. In this case, directing the author to post a separate question would've been more appropriate however.
Comment: A "did you ever figure this out?" is just a "me too" answer/comment, and yea, they should be deleted - and not left as a comment. The proper way is to vote up the question. The other option for the new user will be to earn the rep (in a legit way :-)  ) and than add a bounty on the question. That way it can get the needed atraction
Comment: @crmprogdev I think you're right about it giving the wrong impression about the community, but we can't change it, and if the restriction was removed I think the amount of extra spam and cruft would be considerable.
Comment: @MattLacey so i guess the latest feeling on this is flag the moderator to convert it to a comment?
Comment: Reckon so. I typically do that most of the time, can't remember what I was thinking at the time in this instance. One issue I do sometimes have though is not knowing which other post the converted comment should be attached to!


Allow only certain users access to a site

Question: Is there a way to restrict, for example, an AD group access to a specific site out of the box? For example, I want to restrict access to users to Site A who are not US citizens. Is there a way OOTB or would this be done using custom solution? Any advice or links would be greatly appreciated.
Comment: You can use AD groups in your SharePoint groups to govern who has access.
Comment: Create New AD Group Called Contractors or USAilens and use that instead to govern the access NON us citizens
Comment: Do sharepoint know who the users are or are they anonym?
Comment: @allegrooctopus There is already an AD group for these users. How would I execute OOTB?
Comment: @EricAlexander in other words just exclude the AD group in SP groups under site permissions?
Comment: @Andreas SP does know who the users are.
Comment: Right, if you have an AD group of all employees and an AD group of just US employees, you remove the all employees group from the permissions and add the US employees AD group.
Comment: First Break Inheritance for that site, so it no longer inherits parent site permissions. Then Go to the Site permission and delete that AD group from there..
Answer: SharePoint makes it easy to do as each "subsite" contains its' own permissions. In order to achieve your request, you would break inheritance of that subsite from the parent, and only keep the groups you want.
So I don't have to write out all steps, I'm going to c/p from this source:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/break-inheritance-permissions-in-sharepoint-2010-t.html

To stop inheriting permissions in a subsite from a parent site, follow
  these steps:
Browse to the Site Permissions page for a site (choose Site Actions→Site Settings→Site Permissions).

The Site Permissions page is displayed with a message reading This Web site inherits permissions from its parent.

Click the Stop Inheriting Permissions button in the Permission Tools tab Edit group.

A message window appears reading, in part, You are about to create unique permissions for this Web site.

Click OK.

The Site Permissions page is displayed with a message reading, This Web Site has unique permissions.
The site's permissions levels and SharePoint groups are no longer Read Only.

Click the Grant Permissions button on the Ribbon to grant permissions to users and groups.

The Grant Permissions dialog box appears.
In the Select Users section, enter the SharePoint Group you want to grant permissions to access the site, list, or library.
This is where you want to use your SharePoint Groups — Site Members, Site Visitors, or Site Owners. What if users are in your
    group that you don't want to have permissions to the subsite, list, or
    library? You need to create a new SharePoint group and grant that
    group permission to the subsite, list, or library.

In the Grant Permissions section, select the Grant Users Permissions Directly radio button.
Select the permission level that matches the permissions you want to grant.

The default permission levels for team sites are Full Control, Design, Contribute, and Read. You can create your own permissions
    levels by clicking the Permission Levels button on the Ribbon if you
    need additional groups of permissions.

Click OK.
Comment: Thank you. I do know how to do that. Unfortunately users who are, for example, non US citizens will not be defined here as there are thousands of them. I was thinking more like, lets say, AD group A contains  Non US Citizens and I want to restrict access to them to Site A. Or are you talking about adding AD group A to Full Control Group in default permission level? Please advise.
Comment: Do you want to deny users access to a site / subsite in a web application, or deny access to the entire web application?
Comment: @TempaC I want to deny them access to a site. For example, deny Non US Citizens access to Site A.
Comment: @Aspire27 - How does your permission currently look? Everyone has access to your SharePoint site using via "nt\authenticated_users" ?
Answer: You will need to write a PowerShell script to match user's property and Add users into an AD group e.g. 'Non Citizen Group' and then assign this Group to SharePoint Site A. If the Site A is a sub-site (not site collection) you will need to break inheritance.
See this link: https://serverfault.com/questions/613004/powershell-script-to-move-aduser-to-appropriate-group-based-on-its-department-id
As far as I am aware, there is no way you can select users based on attribute for permission purposes in SharePoint.
Hope this helps.
Answer: This is a theoretical answer that I've not validated nor tested. I don't have a test environment to test this theory. Trying this on a SharePoint environment might very well break it beyond repair! So be advised.
The following theory applies only for the web application in its entirety, not sites in a web application.
Since a SharePoint Web Application is made accessible via an IIS website, it might be possible to use the IIS feature called "URL Authorization".
The URL Authorization feature offers the option to create a Deny Rule. You create a Deny rule when you want to prevent access to Web content for specific roles, groups, or users.
Steps for creating a Deny Rule in IIS:

Open IIS Manager and navigate to the level you want to manage. For information about opening IIS Manager, see Open IIS Manager (IIS 7). For information about navigating to locations in the UI, see Navigation in IIS Manager (IIS 7).
In Features View, double-click Authorization Rules.
In the Actions pane, click Add Deny Rule.
In the Add Deny Authorization Rule dialog box, select one of the following types of access:

All users, specifies that all users, whether they are anonymous or identified, can access the content.
All anonymous users, specifies that anonymous users can access the content.
Specified roles or user groups, specifies that only members of certain roles or user groups can access the content. Type the role or user group in the text box.
Specified users, specifies that only certain users can access the content. Type the user ID in the text box.

Optionally, check Apply this rule to specific verbs if you want to require that the users, roles, or groups allowed to access the content can only use a specific list of HTTP verbs. Type those verbs in the text box.
Click OK.

Again, this is something to test in a test-environment that you can afford to lose. I've not tested this in SharePoint.
More information: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772441%28v=ws.10%29.aspx


Assessing Forecasting with Correlated Residuals

Question: Trying to use a linear regression model to forecast the CPI. I noticed that when I took a moving average of the residuals, though homoscedatisc and nonautocorrelated (i.e. they squiggle up&down with no uniform pattern), that they seemed to move in the same direction as the CPI. That is the moving average of the residuals and the depended variables correlated. What does this imply? Is this a case of omitted variable bias? Are my coefficients biased? What are some common prognoses for a such a problem?
Comment: Residuals of what kind of model? And were you using seasonally adjusted CPI?
Comment: Hi John, An arimax model. So AR terms and some structural/fundamental variables that I think drive the CPI.
Comment: of course it means your model is not good, average of residuals must be zero. can you please tell us at least what your model looks like? give us equation
Answer: The reason you're seeing the bias is because of the adjustment, commonly referred to the "fudge factor" that they government applies to basically all of their published statistics.  This is almost always in the direction to make the numbers rosier, and therefore your error term likely will exhibit signs of positive serial correlation.

The standard test for first-order serially correlated errors is the Durbin-Watson test statistic.  For higher-order testing of serial correlation you can use the Breush-Godfrey test.


Transfer / Export or a specific notification ringtone

Question: My friend has a notification ringtone that I want on my phone but I can't find it on hers so I can send it to myself.  The ringtone came on her phone and is not on her SD card. Does anyone know how I can do this?  We both have the same LG android phone.  Or at least know where I can download it off the Internet.  It's simply called "POP" and goes something like "Ch'pow"   LOL.  Thanks
Comment: Those files are stored below `/system/media/audio`. Not sure if you can access this folder directly on a not-rooted phone. But maybe some media picker allows you to "share" the file via e.g. bluetooth?
Comment: Did that work out for you? If so, it might be useful if I convert my comment to a more detailed answer, so future "searchers" can easily see this issue has a solution.
Comment: @TylerCollier Done, including additional pointers :)
Comment: @Izzy, it helped me. Add your comment as an answer and I'll upvote it. Please notify here in the comments or I'll forget!
Answer: Pre-installed ringtones can be found below <code>/system/media/audio</code> (see also my answer here for additional details). If you want to know where to place your custom ringtones on your device, take a look at my other answer here.
Enjoy!


If a claim is broader than the description, what is protected exactly?

Question: If a description describes one embodiment but the claim is very broad that does not limit to that embodiment, what will be actually protected? Any embodiment under the broad claim or the specific embodiment in the description? To give an example, a transdermal biosensor using an enzyme is described but the claim is generally a sensor that uses enzymes. What will be protected?
Comment: If you have a specific patent you are considering, please specify it. People very often misconstrue the breadth of claims.
Answer: The simple answer is the claim establishes what is protected. It is important to determine if you are viewing an actual granted patent or a patent application. Applications often have excessively broad claims which usually get narrowed as part of the patent prosecution process.
Answer: If you are talking about an issued U.S. patent there is a reasonable chance that, if it is enforced, a court will interpret a claim more narrowly than its actual words.
There is one truism of claim interpretation that you don't import the specification into the claims. On the other hand a second truism is that the claim needs to be enabled across its scope and needs to be supported by the specification. Some judges are saying, in effect, "independent of the breadth of the words of the claim, I know what the inventor really invented and it is the preferred embodiment."
One expert has written a book about this called The Rules of Patent Drafting: Guidelines from Federal Circuit Case Law. I am not linking to Amazon since it is over $200 but the author has written about it elsewhere.


Data mining or machine learning

Question: As part of comment In one of my posts or flaggings, I mentioned machine learning instead of data mining. There is no excuse for my wrong posting or flagging. Is this the reason that my posts are no longer accepted or the reason for my timed suspension in many sites including the AI site?
Answer: No, this is not the reason. The reason is that you create posts whose content is off-topic. Please, see our on-topic page. Please, read it very carefully (especially, the notes)! If something is unclear there, please, let me know or ask another meta-question.

Data mining or machine learning


What geological and climatic factors could result in a planet where the only biomes are oceans, deserts and wetlands? A wet OR dry world

Question: Imagine a planet that sustains life, has oceans and continents plus an earth-like atmosphere; a planet similar to earth in most ways, but with only extremely dry and extremely wet biomes. Science fiction is rife with desert-worlds, swamp-worlds, ice-worlds, gummi-worlds... Could there be a swirl world, of swamps and sand?
Comment: Are you fine with planets that are impossible or ridiculously implausible to have been created through natural processes?
Comment: I have to agree with the bot that "what would the consequences for life be on such a planet; consider astronomy, geology, and ecology" is too many additional questions. Usually we first tackle the premise and then figure out consequences, in one field of science at a time. So I would strongly consider that you edit those out unless you want to risk your question getting closed.
Comment: Your current edit is fine :) I think it is good now, but others can still chime in. You might still want to add whether you want natural worlds or are fine with completely artificial ones.
Comment: Please edit the question to limit it to a specific problem with enough detail to identify an adequate answer.
Comment: I guess I don't really understand how to make such an edit to the question. If I understood my own question better, I wouldn't need an answer. Perhaps someone could propose a version of the question that is more appropriate to the site.
Comment: Earth itself was probably very like this during the late archean and early proterozoic.
Answer: Highs and lows
The Tibetan Plateau is a vast elevated region in central Asia, resting north of the Himalayas. The average elevation is 4500 meters and it is very dry; mostly arid steppe and tundra.

The dryness is not just due to the rain shadow of the Himalayas down south; it is the elevation of the region itself. Incoming wind has to rise a couple kilometers, as it does so it cools down. And cool air can maintain less water than warm, so it water droplets condense and rain is released on its way up. A plateau of this altitude can never be swampy.
Just down south, over the mountain peaks, Nepal is full of valleys like these:

And below that is Bangladesh, which is obviously even wetter.
So one solution for a planet of wet and dry is to have extended plateaus sprawling over the surface, with wetter valleys and seas between them. Definitely make both the poles plateaus as well, unless you can live with an ice cap biome.
Answer: The dominant form of autotrophs require water for their reproductive cycle, and have been unable to evolve a way around this
The type of planet you are describing actually existed for a time in Earth's history, from the middle Devonian to the Carboniferous periods (~380-300 Ma), primarily in the Devonian though. The reason for this is that plants didn't conquer the land all at once, the very earliest branches of vascular plants (ferns, horsetails, and club mosses) are resistant to drying out as adults but still require water to reproduce. They lack seeds and rely on water to allow their sperm to fertilize their eggs (and keep their eggs from drying out). In a sense they are plant "amphibians".
What ends up happening in the Devonian and Carboniferous is you get this system where the coastal wetlands and immediate riversides are heavily vegetated swamplands (i.e., the coal swamps), but plant life drops off really quickly the further one gets away from the riverside. There were some horsetail meadows in areas slightly further away from the rivers and uplands with some seed plants but that was about it. This is because most of the major trees are some form of giant club mosses (Lepidodendrales), giant horsetails (Calamites), or tree ferns, all of which are dependent on water to reproduce.
Now, what happened in our world is that seed plants evolved and were able to colonize the drier areas of the planet that the ferns, horsetails, and club mosses couldn't. But if seeds never evolved (i.e., there was some evolutionary constraint preventing it) then plants would still be stuck around the waterways. This would produce a world that would mostly be ocean, "swamp", and "desert", though there would be some other biomes present as plants tried their best to escape their ties to the water even if they couldn't fully break them.
Comment: swamp and desert in the vegetation sense, rather than the precipitation sense ... interesting take on the question.
Comment: Agree +1 there will be desert when no plants are there to keep the water and form soil.
Answer: Non-rotating planet.

A day lasts a year on this planet.  It is an extreme place.  The sun relentlessly bakes one half of the planet.  All the land dessicates into desert.  No rain falls.  On the other side it is night.  The land radiates away its heat to space and everything freezes.  There is no wind and no weather.  Both sides are bone dry.  They switch places over the year.
There are two places where it is not so dry.  One is the ocean.  It might freeze over on the cold side but deeper down the temperature is the average yearly temperature and it can be reasonable.
And the day/night terminator.  This is the place where night turns into day and day turns into night.  This line slowly makes its way around the planet.  All the water that evaporated from the hot side condenses as it moves into the cold side.  Torrential rain and storms ensure.  The terminator is where your wetlands are.  They are wetlands only for a while, as they thaw under the storms.  Soon they will bake dry in the heat of day.  Some of the terminator life does its things only in the short season, then hibernates the rest of the year.  A lot of the terminator life is mobile and moves along with the rain.
Your wetlands move around the world, separating hot bright desert from cold dark desert.  On those rare occasions you can see the sun through the clouds, the shadows are long because it is always dusk or dawn at the terminator.
More on this scenario is written here by the inimitable Cort Ammon.
Effects of a non-rotating Earth
Inimitable, but I try.
Comment: Unfortunately this isn't a stable arrangement without magic, as there's a non-zero net tidal torque on the planet from the sun. (Something like a retrograde moon could partly cancel that out, but exact cancellation would require an amazing coincidence.) That said, a very slowly spinning (but not tidelocked) planet would also work here, and that's quite possible, with several resonant (e.g. [Mercury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(planet)#Spin-orbit_resonance)) and non-resonant (e.g. [Venus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Orbit_and_rotation)) examples in our own solar system.
Comment: @IlmariKaronen I think he is going for a 2:1 resonance. The planet actually rotates twice as it orbits once. This could be achieved if there was a high eccentricity or other large bodies locking into orbital resonance with it.
Answer: It sounds like your world has a much more efficient water cycle than the Earth, coupled with different weather patterns.
On Earth, the water cycle acts much like a dehumidifier. If it wasn't for the water cycle, then evaporation from the oceans would cause the atmosphere to become completely saturated with water vapour, that is, the humidity would be 100% everywhere. The reason we don't have that is that the sun heats the ground, which heats the air and causes it to rise, and as it rises it expands and cools, which causes water vapour to condense and fall as rain. Once that's happened you're left with much drier air.
It sounds like on your world the same processes happen but much more efficiently. Water evaporates from the ocean, producing moist air. Due to the prevailing winds this moist air blows onto certain areas of the land, where it rises and falls as rain. But while on Earth this tends to happen more or less everywhere to some degree, on your world the rain tends to fall straight away on those areas downwind from the sea, leaving very dry air that doesn't produce rain elsewhere.
So why would this happen? There's a few things I can think of. Maybe the water cycle is just stronger on your world - the sun is hotter, or the ground generally darker so that it absorbs more heat, for example. Perhaps there is also less water on your world - smaller oceans than Earth, compared to the amount of land - so that the air is less saturated with moisture generally.
Maybe there is also a lot less wind in general, so the air doesn't get mixed about a lot like it does on Earth, and maybe the weather patterns are generally a lot less chaotic. This could be an effect of the topography - there are mountain ranges in just the right places to channel the global wind circulation into very consistent patterns. This seems quite plausible to me, and I would expect worlds like yours to be within the natural variation of Earth-like planets in the universe.
Answer: You might be able to have a world that was created by different formations of tectonic plates & cosmic events affecting the ice ages of a planet.
A swamp planet that gets hit by an asteroid at such a speed that it created a desert! It might be a glass desert to be honest. I'm not sure how long this would be able to last, it may come to equilibrium over time. I also doubt that this would even work.
Not to mention that this theory would result in a single patch of desert (or even a series of desert patches caused by an asteroid storm) rather than beautiful swirling deserts to bogs.


In Alien Resurrection, the crew are afraid of returning to Earth? Why, what has happened on Earth?

Question: When the crew learn that the ship is set to automatically return to Earth they are clearly disturbed by this. What is Earth like at this time in the Alien story? What has happened to Earth to make them so afraid of returning there?
Comment: I think they are reluctant to return to Earth just because they are smugglers involved in all kinds of illegal activities.
Comment: Ripley gave her life trying to save Earth. Her fear was that the company would bring the aliens back, and that they would be to dangerous to control. In resurrection she is reborn as the hybrid who no longer fears the aliens. The idea that Earth is a lost cause makes her more empathetic to the aliens. The deformed mutations in the lab, and the dislike for Earth all point to "man being his own worse enemy". It's not the best plot line in the movie series.
Comment: As mentioned in the book: "*Earth is populated by both humans and free roaming aliens*".
Answer: In the film, Johner says, "Earth? I'm not going to that fucking slum."
A deleted final scene actually shows us the state of the planet - and it doesn't look pretty. It would appear that a cataclysmic event has left the planet a barren wasteland.
I, too, would be reluctant to return to Earth.
Deleted Scene from Alien Resurrection
Comment: But well, if Earth is such a delsolate place, why not let the Aliens have their share of it. This Mad Max-Wasteland doesn't really fit into the picture of Earth as the center of human civilization (or at least government), that I got from the movie's dialogue. Maybe this is the reason for deleting this scene. But good answer, though.
Answer: I believe that they blew up the ship ultimately to stop the possibility of an alien infestation from occurring on earth. This has always been Ripley's mission in the previous films...therefore her Human half took over in the end.
Answer: My assumption was that although they didn't like earth they didn't want to see it overrun by the alien species.
They were afraid of returning there because the aliens would be unstoppable.


how to change magento order number

Question: how to make magento generate order number by year and month and increment number
for example if we in August 2017 so the order numbers to be  1708001 , 1708002 , 1708003 , 1708004 , 1708005 , 1708006 , 1708007
and so on
thanks
Comment: I found this
https://magecomp.com/magento-custom-order-number.html
Answer: I'm not sure if this would cause issues (the first of which if you have more than 1000 orders in a month also could cause duplicates).
The way i would probably start going about it however would be to create a custom cron job that sets the increment ID based on the current date etc and runs something like below at the start of each month:
Instance:
<?php
namespace Harri\OrderUpdate\Cron;

class Updater {

    protected  _resource;

    public function __construct(Context $context,
         \Magento\Framework\App\ResourceConnection $resource)
    {
        $this->_resource = $resource;
        parent::__construct($context);
    }

    public function execute() {
        $connection = $this->_resource->getConnection(\Magento\Framework\App\ResourceConnection::DEFAULT_CONNECTION);

        $ordernumber = date("y") . date("m") . "001";

        $sql = 'ALTER TABLE sequence_order_1 AUTO_INCREMENT=' . $ordernumber;

        $connection->query($sql);
    }
}

The above file 'Harri/OrderUpdate/Cron/Updater.php' is very rough but should build your order id based on the date and update the database so the next order starts with this ID.
Cron Tab:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:module:Magento_Cron:etc/crontab.xsd">
<group id="default">
    <job name="order_updater" instance="Harri\OrderUpdate\Cron\Updater" method="execute">
        <schedule>0 0 1 * *</schedule>
    </job>
</group>
</config>

Above file 'Harri/OrderUpdate/etc/crontab.xml' is configured to run the file above at the start of each month.
See here about cron with Magento.
http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/config-guide/cron/custom-cron-ref.html
Comment: default order increment id length is 9 chars, so that would allow for 99999 orders per month with id YYMM00001
Answer: Some merchants want to customize order numbers or invoice numbers to be different than what Magento 2 produces by default. They might want the numbers to contain more information, or they might have an existing format that shouldn't be changed. Perhaps the numbers need to pick up where they left off from a previous website (or maybe they just don't look pretty enough). These numbers each have an Increment ID, and the values used to create them are stored in the database and are not configurable from admin, so we'll need a little SQL to make our customizations. Without further ado…
We can individually adjust the following properties of increment IDs for Orders, Invoices, Credit memos, & Shipments:
1.Prefix
2.Suffix
3.Step
4.Start-value
5.Pad-length
The Prefix, Suffix, Start-value, and Step are stored in the database, while the Pad-length is set in the code. Before changing them, let's see how they're all used to generate increments IDs:
FORMULA:
In Magento 2, the method for determining the increment ID is in Magento\SalesSequence\Model\Sequence.
The pattern is set as: a string, plus a 9-digit number (padded with 0s), plus another string.
The getCurrentValue() method returns a new increment ID according to the pattern as: The Prefix, plus the return value of the calculateCurrentValue() method, plus the Suffix. The calculateCurrentValue() returns the main number:
return ($this->lastIncrementId - $this->meta->getActiveProfile()->getStartValue()) * $this->meta->getActiveProfile()->getStep() + $this->meta->getActiveProfile()->getStartValue();

For more details,pleas visit this URL :- https://www.classyllama.com/blog/m2-incrementid

how to change magento order number


What happens to the worlds that don't want to join the United Federation of Planets?

Question: What happens to the worlds that are within Federation Space that decline to join the UFP? How are they treated?
Comment: If they're not part of the Federation, can they really be said to be within Federation space?  I'd expect them to just be [enclaves](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave).
Comment: *exterminate, exterminate, exterminaaaaaate*
Comment: They're ground under the bootheels of Starfleet, but since Star Trek is written by Federation citizens, you'd never know that. :)
Comment: There's also the planets whose application to the Federation is denied.
Comment: There are none...if you catch my drift...
Comment: Spock puts on a fake beard and phasers the major cities, just like in the *Mirror, Mirror* universe.
Comment: They nuke the entire planet from orbit--it's the only way to be sure
Answer: I think the simple answer is: They got to keep their space.
I have no official source to back this up, but if we look at the Federation, then the most plausible way to deal with worlds which are enclosed by Federation space is to give them their space.
E.g. imagine a world within Federation-Space boundaries, if that world does not want to be part of the Federation, it would most likely get a certain "private" space assigned to it and maybe further privileges (like fly-through Federation space to other stars etc.).

From there the diplomatic relations are pretty straight forward like with every other world outside their borders.
Comment: Keep in mind that in a 3d universe, the Federation could even leave unclaimed "corridors" allowing these worlds to leave the broader area of Federation territory without technically entering Federation space.  It's only on a 2d map that doing this would cut Federation space itself into disconnected pieces.
Comment: I doubt they'd surround non federation worlds like that.  More likely theres a concept similar to international waters.
Answer: Another example: In the 4th-season Next Generation episode "First Contact", Chancellor Durken, a planetary leader, asks Captain Picard:

And if I should tell you to leave, and never return to my world?

Picard replies:

We will leave, and never return.

It's strongly implied (in that episode and elsewhere) that this is Federation / Starfleet policy.
References:

Memory Alpha (doesn't have the actual quote)
IMDB (does)
Comment: Isnt there a TNG episode that contains an encounter with a world like this, that has requested to be left alone, and the Enterprise has to visit for some reason / crisis? Cant find it for the life of me, apologies if im confusing it with something else.
Comment: @Dpeif: Sounds like the TOS episode "A Taste of Armageddon". The Enterprise receives a message from Eminiar VII warning them not to approach, but Ambassador Fox orders Kirk to proceed anyway. http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon_(episode)
Comment: good call, now that you say that I am also reminded of the TNG novel *[Metamorphosis](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Metamorphosis_(novel))* with the planet Elysia. Perhaps that is the source of my original confusion.
Answer: To use a real world analogy, Switzerland is entirely enveloped by the European Union.  There is no animosity between the EU and the Swiss.  They are regular trade partners and the borders are open.  The Swiss have signed a number of treaties which harmonize their laws and regulations with the EU yet they retain their independence, constitution and currency.
This is made easier because of the structure of the European Union.  Many things we think are part of the EU (for example, who gets to use the Euro) are actually other treaties which allows non-EU members to participate (and EU members to not participate).  It's complicated.
I would expect the Federation to act much the same way.  Some members, like the UK, would never consider being military enemies but are always grumbling about the rules and stumping for exceptions because they are a unique, and rich, snowflake (no Euro, no free travel).  Some non-members, like the Swiss, would enjoy economically playing nice nice with the Federation but would not want to participate in their military or politics.  Some non-members would use Federation credits because their economy is too small to bother with their own currency.
On the flip side, the Federation would politically and economically pressure its enveloped neighbors to stop doing things it doesn't like.  Another real world example from the Swiss and EU is world pressure on the Swiss to get rid of secret Swiss bank accounts as places for people to hide their money.  Instead of rolling tanks in, the EU and US threatened to move their money out.  "Do this, or we won't bank with you anymore and collapse your economy".  I would expect the Federation to deal with its enveloped neighbors in much the same way, using trade pressure rather than starships.
This is just an analogy, and I don't have canon reference to back it up, but I feel its a good one.  The Federation is cobbled together out of different cultures and species with their own history, traditions and laws just like the EU.
Comment: @MissouriSpartan:  If you have enough trade with someone that trade sanctions could be considered a threat, then I'd say that non-interference doesn't apply.  They have to work with you to trade, so they've agreed to contact.
Comment: @MissouriSpartan If you're referring to [the Prime Directive](http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Prime_Directive), that only applies to less developed species. Usually non-starfairing species. If the neutral planet is engaging in interstellar trade, the Prime Directive does not apply. If an advanced civilization wanted no contact, there is no conflict with the Federation and they would likely honor it. In general, the Federation does not interfere even with advanced races. Examples: they deal with the ultra-patriarchal Ferengei, and showed great restraint in the Klingon civil war.
Comment: But the issue with threatening even just through trade would also be against the non-interference mandate the Federation holds dear. So I'm not sure I agree with that point. Yes they would have made first-contact, but they also would have agreed that they would not have anything to do with that world since they turned them down. Thus to become aggressive against a world (even if it's just a trade threat) would mean interference.
Comment: @JRE yes but my point is, that would be clear violation of Federation protocol in non-interference. It would be blatant interference in how a world does business. If the neutral world was trying to prepare a joint invasion of Federation space with the Romulans, that'd be one thing, but if they had economic practices that the Federation didn't like, the Federation would have to openly violate their own non-interference clause by interfering through economics. There are worlds that would want no contact at all too.
Answer: This is addressed in the Star Trek: Star Charts factbook.
Planets that are deemed unsuitable to join the Federation (or simply choose not to do so) appear to be placed into enclaves, surrounded by Federation space, but not part of the Federation proper.
I think we can be reasonably sure that the Federation will attempt to maintain positive diplomatic relations with these non-aligned planets and continue to evangelise the positive benefits of joining.
Answer: Depending on the outlook, nothing, but a good example of this is the Maquis who were Federation born citizens but rebelled against the Federation and started their own independent state and were almost at the point of formally declaring this to the Federation, until The Dominion wiped them all out.
A quote from the Maquis wiki.

The Maquis considered themselves an independent state and were going
  to formally declare their separation from the Federation, but these
  plans never materialized, because they were eventually defeated by one
  of Cardassia's prime allies, the Dominion and its powerful army of
  Jem'Hadar

How they were treated was generally bad (albeit they did start deploying guerilla tactics against the Cardassians and Federation), even though technically outside of the jurisdiction from the UFP, the Federation generally treated them as traitors and they were enforced under Federation law. They were free game to every other alien race out there, The Dominion destroyed them for their Cardassian pals because of how the Cardassians viewed them as terrorists.
Comment: I think the Maquis are a bad example, as far as I know, most of them were quitters from Starfleet, some of them stealing equipment and ships along the way. Additionally they took steps against Federation, too. So of course Federation wanted them prisoned.
Comment: The Maquis did a lot of things that easily looked like terrorist/thug activities. It was hard to sympathize with them.
Comment: The Maquis are a complicated example.  They lived in the Federation/Cardassian Demilitarized Zone and were a political hot potato.  Some in the Federation were sympathetic, but their activities threatened the peace.
Comment: No, I meant that of course the Federation is pissed at the Maquis, because they pissed at them first (quitting Starfleet, stealing equipment/ships, threats, espionage,  etc.).
Comment: The Maquis are also a bad example because they were originally people who *didn't* want to leave the Federation, but were going to be abandoned by the Federation, and because the decisions of which planets were or weren't Federation were determined by negotiation with another multi-system polity.
Comment: @Bobby - if by bad example you mean that they were judgement impaired and generally not good people, then yeah I guess you could say they are a "bad example"?
Answer: On the STTOS episode "Journey to Babel" a secret agent from a "neutral" planet, who was   surgically altered to appear Andorian, set a trap for the Enterprise as it carried diplomats to the planet Babel where negotiations between Federation planets were to take place.
Also note frequent episodes in all of the series in which the Federation makes first contact with alien civilizations.    In these episodes, the Federation treats the people on these planets as humanely and respectfully as possible.
Answer: It appears that the Federation marks out and lays claim to all space it travels in until it reaches another alien species that also lays claim to an exclusive area of space such as the Klingon Empire or Romulan Star Empire in which case a treaty is negotiated designating an agreed to amount of space as belonging to the alien government which is surrounded by a buffer zone claimed by neither party (designated a Neutral Zone) serving as a barrier between the two regions that neither party are permitted to enter (the distance across the neutral zone presumably being negotiated and agreed to by both parties in the treaty).
Certain worlds are not permitted to join the Federation due to lacking in technological development (pre-warp) or on account of certain conditions existing on the world that is incompatible with the Federation government such as the Orion Syndicate's participation in the slave trade or the Ferengi's obsession with profit and acquisition of wealth, who are permitted relative freedom of movement within Federation Space though they are not actually members of the Federation. Another condition required by the Federation is that the planet be unified (or at least) have a universally recognized governmental organization who can speak and act on behalf of the planet as a whole with the Federation during negotiation prior to membership and through such governmental organization an Ambassador to the Federation Council could later be chosen to represent the whole planet in the Federation Legislature in San Francisco. Such worlds are considered neutral worlds. Other worlds that for various reasons have been rejected admission to the Federation would share equivalent status as a neutral world.
Depending on the circumstances, a neutral world may be completely avoided by the Federation as "off limits"; may participate in trade and act in a manner similar to a member world in varying degrees of contact but without the protection of Starfleet against any alien incursion or assistance with any domestic conflict (the Orion Syndicate, Ferengi); or may be studied in secret such as the Vulcan relatives discovered on Mintaka III (ST:TNG "Who Watches the Watchers").
As yet, there have been no instances of a member world of the Federation attempting to leave the Federation after having joined that I am aware of, and so whether the Federation is a union by continued voluntary consent of its members (in practice) or would be held together by force of arms enforced by the phasers and photon torpedoes of Starfleet, has as of yet to be tested on any official Star Trek series.


Is it secure if I only encrypt a small part of a file

Question: I'm writting a script that can encrypt files in a folder. It takes like 30s to encrypt a 1GB file, so I wondering if it's safe when I encrypt some bits of a file and leave the rest unencrypted? I want the script to run as fast as possible.
Comment: "Safe" in what way?
Comment: Is it safe to only apply privacy settings to 10% of your facebook posts? Whatever part of the file you don't encrypt will be visible.
Comment: @schroeder "safe" mean no one can't get the content of it. for example, if it's a video, I want no one can watch it.
Comment: 30 seconds for 1GB is a little steep. Here's some reference Go code that does it in 2 seconds on my old i3: https://gist.github.com/libeclipse/a930de7c6af7878f585b3f0028d18c4e
Answer: That fully depends on the contents of the file. If this is encrypted text where the key for decryption is placed at the beginning of the file it might be enough to encrypt only this information since it is essential to interpret the rest of the data. But in most other cases it would probably be a bad idea to encrypt only a part.
For example imagine that this is a document containing passwords in plain text. In this case it is obvious that encrypting only part of it would be a bad idea because it would only protect a small number of passwords and leave the rest exposed. But also with most video or audio files it is possible to recover the majority of the content even if some parts are corrupt (or encrypted).
Comment: @ThànhLongBùi: encryption speed depends on the algorithm used, its actual implementation,  speed of CPU, disk, RAM etc.  Thus you need to find out first where the actual bottleneck is, i.e. CPU bound, disk bound, RAM bound...
Comment: so, except of improving my script, are there any other methods to increase the encrypting speed? Because I might have to encrypt 1xx GB of data.
Comment: You could implement your own DRM scheme (or, more realistically, apply someone else's) This would prevent anyone playing the video without the appropriate "license" that unlocks the DRM. DRM is applied at encoding time and is likely to be more efficient than a brute-force encryption. Though you would need to validate that.
Answer: Imagine that you have a photo and want nobody to see it. So you open up an image editor and only blur a small part of it.
I can bet everyone can still guess what's on the photo.
This is exactly what you're trying to do with encryption, and this is also why it's a bad idea.
Answer: Modern hardware with AES-NI can do AES encryption at the speed well in excess of 1-2 GB/s. By comparison, your hard disk probably can only write at 50MB/s-100MB/s or SSD about 500MB/s-1GB/s. In other words, with properly implemented hardware accelerated encryption, it's unlikely that encryption speed is your bottleneck here.
If you have a huge file (tens of gigabytes or larger), and you want to be able to edit parts of the file without reencrypting/rewriting the entire file, that's a totally different problem. To be able to do this efficiently and securely, you need to understand about block cipher encryption modes. You'd want to have your encryption system to use encryption mode that supports random access securely, such as XTS mode. Note that encryption mode that supports efficient random access are often considered by some people to be not as strong as serial access encryption mode. You should research and consider if the supposed weaknesses of random access encryption is of concern to your particular scenario.
The easiest way you can use encryption mode that supports random access efficiently, is to mount the encrypted file as a block device/disk using full disk encryption software, like TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt, LUKS, or BitLocker.
Comment: You might be right, but it doesn't answer the question at all.
Answer: 30s is not a ton of time, so let it encrypt the entire file, if possible. If it freezes the OS (assuming you know you what that means), then let it encrypt 512 megabytes, or about 1/2 of the file, in that 30s. It seems just as safe to me, and saves you half the lost memory for essential processes. Any less and you risk attackers gaining this information. In short, you can encrypt a small part of the file, given that you encrypt exactly 1/2 of the bytes in this order:
<code> GARRISON
+ANANANAN
---------
 GNREIFOA
</code>
of which GARRISON is an arbitrary letter combo, ANANANAN is an arbitrary 2-letter Vigenere key that has an A in it. That A ensures every other letter encodes to itself. I wouldn't recommend using AAAANNNN, because enough of the plaintext is visible for you to decode the encrypted text by using a known plaintext attack. More than this is unnessecary, and (50+ MB) less than this makes it easier for attackers to crack the encryption. I am using text, but how do you think you are going to type 500 million (using UTF-16, 1 billion in ASCII and UTF-8) characters into notepad?! Using a Vernam cipher or an XOR (not reusing the key) may well be suitable for what you describe. XORing a message shouldn't take that long
Comment: Didn't answer the question
Comment: does that help? I mean, I know how to encrypt, so go figure. If all you want to encrypt is a message, then use a 2-key vigenere. If you are encrypting 100 gigabytes, then you can use another method.


Would questions concerning how a segment of code would likely be written in another language in topic?

Question: Let's say I know Haskell and I'm learning Scala? Could I ask "I'm trying to accomplish X in Scala, I couldn't get it working.  Here is the Scala I wrote that either I don't think is idiomatic, or isn't working, or is incomplete because I'm missing information Y. But here is how I would write it in Haskell. What is the idiomatic approach to this problem in Scala?"
Answer: No. This site is about software development concepts – think software architecture and design. We are not a code translation service. We do not cover implementation issues. We do not discuss best practices.
If you frame that questions about how a language-agnostic concept (e.g. type inference, or monads) manifests itself differently in Haskell and Scala, that might be on topic. But it also might be closed as opinion-based, because it could be misunderstood as asking which language is better. You would also have to take care to keep the question clear and answerable (real questions have answers!), rather than trying to start a discussion.
This can be difficult, so it might be worth looking into our chatroom The Whiteboard. There, you can get feedback on potential questions. But it's also a place for softer questions that do not fit within the scope of the main site.
Answer: No, that sort of question would not be on-topic here.  It might be on-topic at StackOverflow, but you need to make sure that you come up with a SSCCE (Short, Self Contained, Correct, Example) for your question.
Comment: doesn't look like good fit for SO either: [Is "How do I convert code from this languange to this language" too broad?](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/296119/839601) ---> [excellent explanation in a dupe target over there](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/265834/839601)
Answer: What you are asking is covered by this related meta question: where to start? which explains why your question would be off-topic here.
You may get useful feedback from The Whiteboard if any of our resident FP experts are in chat.
Comment: Not really.  If I such a question is posted according to guidelines, I would post working Haskell code, and non-working Scala code that I've 'tried', or psuedocode, pointing out I couldn't find the necessary language features to implement a good solution in the language docs.  This is neither broad, nor vague, and it includes something I've tried.  I'm also not asking 'where to start', because I've already started by reading the docs, searching Google, and trying to write something.
Comment: Edited the comment to better reflect what my question would look like.


How to use LM35's temperature as cold junction for K type thermocouple?

Question: I have been trying to built an thermocouple base temperature monitoring system which can measure negative temperatures (say about -150 C). I previously have used max6675 but later on I found out it can measure only from 0 to 1024 C. So I want to make my own thermocouple Cold junction compensation but using LM35's temperature as its reference temp and this can work for both high and low temperatures(say -100 c and 1000c ) and last but not the least I want to feed it to a Arduino and I don't want to use AD595 or AD859x series chips or breakout boards. So how can this cold junction compensation can be achieved?
if anyone knows then please help.
Thanks in advance.
Comment: You need to learn about thermal shorts and opens, to design the thermal properties of your PCB.
Answer: an example below for J sensors was done by TI.
http://www.ti.com/lit/an/sloa204/sloa204.pdf
For cold-junction temperature measurement, an IC-based analog output device (such as the LM35) is chosen. This device has linear output with a 10-mV/ºC slope.
Answer: The thermocouple voltage gives you the temperature delta between the hot junction and the cold junction.
The cold junction thermometer gives you the cold junction temperature.
Use simple arithmetic to give hot junction temperature = cold junction temperature + delta temperature.
Answer: A thermocouple gives you a voltage that is a function of the temperatures at both the "hot" (which could actually be cold) junction and the "cold junction". The cold junction is where the two dissimilar alloy wires are connected to copper.
If the cold junction is held at a constant 0°C you can find the temperature as a function of the voltage from a polynomial or lookup table T = f(Vtc) where f is a nonlinear function.
It's obviously inconvenient to have an ice bath to hold the cold junction at 0°C, so measuring the cold junction temperature and compensating is a practical approach.
To do this accurately, you need the inverse nonlinear function Vtc = f'(Tcjc)- also with reference temperature of 0°C. You then add the resulting voltage to the measured voltage so you have:
T = f(Vtc + f'(Tcjc))
For the fully compensated and linearized temperature.
For example, suppose you have a copper-constantan thermocouple and the CJC temperature reads as 21°C and Vtc = +6.00mV.
Vtc = f'(21°C) = 830uV.
To be clear, 830uV is the voltage you would read if the hot junction was at 21°C and the reference or cold junction(s) were at 0°C.
T = f(6.00mV + 0.83mV) ~= 152.5°C.

If you're unconcerned about accuracy, you can just do a linear approximation around the expected CJC temperature but that's not good enough for many applications. The output in mV/K can vary significantly over the full range of a thermocouple.


Is it possible to convert a png into a shape in Sketch?

Question: I want to subtract a PNG (leaf shape) from an image, but the subtract option is not active. Seems that Sketch does not recognize my leaf png as a "shape". I did not find a way to convert the png into a shape, is this possible?

Comment: Hi @Bernie, welcome to GDSE. What you are looking for is called 'image trace' and a quick google search finds lots of results. Thanks for your question and keep contributing to the site!
Answer: What I would do is - manually trace the leaf in Sketch (2 min), copy and rotate to achieve the effect (2 min), create the mask and apply to the image.

the end result
the mask, consisting of the leaves + a rectangle.
Answer: It seems that Sketch used to have "Vectorize Selection" in the bitmap editor but that function has been removed since version 40, according to the release note.
Try the old version which can be downloaded from here.
(You can use multiple versions by renaming the app, like "Sketch.39.1.app")
https://download.sketchapp.com/sketch-39.1.zip
Manual tracing is something most people want to avoid as much as possible, especially for the lazy programmers like me, because it can be done by machines in most cases.
I hope the Sketch team will add the funciton back in the latest version.


How to automatically pause a playing media on bluetooth disconnect

Question: I'm using Jabra Halo Smart bluetooth headphones on my MacBook Pro running OS X El Capitan 10.11. One annoying issue is that whenever I'm out of bluetooth connection range the music starts playing on internal speakers. Is there anyway to automatically pause the music on headset disconnect or change?
Comment: [AutoMute](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/automute-preventing-awkward-situations/id1118136179?mt=12) is an app that addresses this issue.
Answer: As per apple's policy , when you cross the bluetooth limit of your headset your system  will be automatically switch the audio output into the internal speakers.Mostly in platforms are like that.
But there are many third party apps like , Breakaway  is a utility that will pause/resume iTunes for you whenever you unplug and/or plug in your headphones. You can now walk away from your computer for a moment without missing a beat of your favorite song, or disturbing anyone with your speakers coming on.


Is it possible to export postgres database without views?

Question: I check pg_dump doc, and there seems to be an option that allows to export only views. But is there a way to dump a database without all the views?
Answer: There's no option that excludes all views. But there are workarounds.
If you isolate all your views in a single schema (as in create schema views_only...), you can use

either the -n or --schema=public argument to select only the public schema (might not do what you want),
or the -N or --exclude-schema=views_only.

If you follow a strict(ish) naming convention, you can use

either the -t or --table=something to select only the tables,
or the -T or --exclude-table=something to exclude the views.

Be careful with this. In the relational model, base tables and views share a namespace for a reason--they're supposed to be interchangable. SQL generally honors that part of the relational model. Some people use prefixes for database objects, so "we know whether an object is a view, a table, or a stored procedure that returns a table". If you build views with names like "view_wibble", and later decide to replace that view with a table, you have the distasteful options of naming your table "view_wibble", or rewriting application code, stored procedures, other views, etc to use "tbl_wibble" instead of "view_wibble".
But you can use these command-line options more than once. So you can name each of the views you want to exclude. The is probably the best idea.
pg_dump ... --exclude-table=view1 --exclude-table=view2 --exclude-table=view3 ...


How does Firefox sync really work (when adding new devices)?

Question: I'm adding some less frequently used computers to my Firefox sync account. These computers were previously synced using Foxmarks BYOS.
When I started using Firefox Sync, I deleted some old bookmarks.  Later, as I added some other machines, old bookmarks (that still existed on the other machines) were synced back to my main machine.
To prevent that from happening, I wonder if I perhaps need to delete all the bookmarks from new machines before adding them to the Sync account.  But then I worry that it might sync the deletion of all the bookmarks and delete them all from the server and my other machines.

Is there any documentation on the exact syncing behavior in the case of adding new devices?
Is there any way to monitor progress and sync status?
Is there any way to cause a "one way" sync for first time connection (sync server to
browser only, overwriting everything in the browser?
Is there any way to see a list of devices that are associated, and the last time
they have synced?

Thanks!
Answer: When you set up sync on the new device there is an option to replace all of the data on that computer with the sync data. Or vice versa.


What are "spheres" in Neal Stephenson's "Anathem?"

Question: In "Anathem," the avout (fraa and suur) used "spheres" to do various things.  The spheres wered used as a tool to make life comfortable in most cases, but what are they exactly?  How should I visualize them?  Stephenson didn't really paint a clear picture of it.
Amazon link to Anathem
Google Books preview of Anathem
Comment: It is also made of "newmatter", just like a cord, which is why it has all these strange properties. These are the only pieces of advanced technology allowed in the mathic world.
Answer: It is hard to describe a visual image of the spheres, simply because their forms were so malleable.

The sphere is a porous membrane.  Each pore is a little pump that can
  move air in or out.  Like a self-inflating balloon.  The spring
  constant - the stretchiness - of the membrane is controllable.  If you
  turn the stretchiness way down (that is, make it stiff) and pump in
  lots of air, becomes a hard little pill.

You can also do the opposite, and make the membrane very stretchy, and or/remove most of the air.
So the sphere can look like anything from a small, hard ball, to a large, floppy disk, plus anything in between (in the passage that follows the above quote, fraa Erasmas makes his sphere into a flat mat, and then inflates it into an air bed between two and three feet in diameter).
In another reference, it can be shrunk to a size that fits easily in the palm of a hand.
Comment: In addition to the above mentioned features, the spheres could also be made to glow, to be used as low level lighting.
Comment: I guess that'll do, even though those are the ideas I had anyway.  Like you said, it's hard to describe a visual image.  Thanks.
Answer: The whole thing is a geometric metaphor. Think about it: you have the "bolt" which is a flat sheet, basically a cartesian plane. Then you have the "chord", which is a rope, or a platonic line, and then you have the "sphere", which is a sphere.
It has some practical applications (as you see in the book), but it's mainly symbolic.