Microphone issue in audio streaming using FFMPEG

Question: I executed the command
ffmpeg -list_devices true -f dshow -i dummy

to find out that the audio device is Realtek HD Audio Input. But executing the command
ffmpeg -f dshow -i audio="Microphone (Realtek HD Audio Input" -acodec libmp3lame -ab 128k -ac 2 -ar 44100 -re -f rtp://10:14:35:12:1234

gives the error
  "Could not find audio device. audio='Microphone (Realtek HD Audio Input: Input/output error"
I have checked for the working of the microphone and it works well. Please let me know what is the issue here.
The machine runs on Windows-XP SP2.
Comment: Please include the full, uncut ffmpeg console output for both commands.
Answer: Just Try :

ffmpeg -f dshow -i audio="Realtek HD Audio Input" -acodec
  libmp3lame -ab 128k -ac 2 -ar 44100 -re -f rtp://10:14:35:12:1234


Can heuristic analysis detect keylogging?

Question: Antivirus software detects threats by heuristic analysis like it analyzes the commands as they are performed, monitoring for common viral activities such as replication, file overwrites, and attempts to hide the existence of the suspicious file. So can heuristic analysis detect keylogging activity?
Comment: See here: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/23778/will-antivirus-detect-all-keyloggers
Answer: Most systems provide APIs and hooks that allow apps to capture keystrokes (for instance for keyboard shortcuts)
A heuristic could detect the use of such facilities and flag the app for further analysis or provide means to whitelist/block the app, similar to those firewall prompts on Windows.
Modern keyloggers seem to also log the clipboard, presumably to account for paasword manager users.
As all heuristic analysis, it's subject to being subverted/bypassed by a creative keylogger developer.
The logging can also be subverted by tools like KeePass that adds bogus keystrokes when inputting passwords to confuse keylogger.
This rapidly leads to an arms race of increasing costs for both sides :)
Answer: I'll give a bad answer like one I've seen some time ago: yes you can, all you have to do is flag everything as a keylogger.
As said in another answer, this would be complex to do, it's a permanent fight. A keylogger may also not be where you expect it, and might be out of reach of a virus. You may for instance snoop on USB packets, or "simply" (it's complex) flash USB controller firmware. An antivirus will have no way to act against such an unknown threat.


Logitech webcam C615 & Mac Mini

Question: I have a Logitech webcam C615 that I'm trying to hook up with my Mac mini (2011). This may sound silly, but is there a way I can install the software without having an external CD drive? I had no idea that it came with a CD for installation or I would have made the 30 mile trip to the Apple store. :(
Comment: Are you sure you need the CD? Have you tried plugging the webcam in to see if it "just works"?
Answer: If you have access to any other computers that do have a CD drive, you can use Drive Sharing
As Apple says,

This convenient feature of OS X lets you wirelessly "borrow" the optical drive of a nearby Mac or PC. So you can install applications from a DVD or CD and have full access to an optical drive without having to carry one around.
Answer: Even with a CD drive available, I would recommend first checking the manufacturer's website for the latest drivers because there's a good chance they've been updated since the included CD was made. I would only bother with the CD if it contains bundled software or drivers that are unavailable online.
It looks like you should be able to download the latest drivers for your webcam from Logitech's downloads page for the HD Webcam C615.
If that download doesn't contain everything you need from the CD, then I would recommend following Daniel's answer.

Logitech webcam C615 & Mac Mini


How to Create an Alumni Association in India

Question: I have a group of ex-students who want to form an alumni association in india. What is the legal process for this?  E.g., where and how do we register?
Answer: It depends on the purpose of the organization. An applicable law seems to be the Societies Registration Act, 1860 which says

Any seven or more persons associated for any literary, scientific, or
  charitable purpose, or for any such purpose as is described in section
  20 of this Act, may, by subscribing their names to a memorandum of
  association, and filing the same with Registrar of Joint-stock
  Companies form themselves into a society under this Act.

Section 20 then adds the list

Charitable societies, the military orphan funds or societies
  established at the several presidencies of India, societies
  established for the promotion of science, literature, or the fine arts
  for instruction, the diffusion of useful knowledge, [the diffusion of
  political education], the foundation or maintenance of libraries or
  reading-rooms for general use among the members or open to the public
  or public museums and galleries of paintings and other works of art,
  collections of natural history, mechanical and philosophical
  inventions, instruments, or designs.

It does not seem that an alumni association can straightforwardly be registered as a society. However, it appears that "Society" is a term of art connected with tax exemption. And since you didn't use the word "society", I assume you are not looking for the tax benefit. In that case, the Constitution Article 19 1(a) says that "All citizens shall have the right to form associations or unions; or co-operative societies", which implies that no registration is required.
Comment: Good for knowledge . But i don't want to become a loyar. So what is the process of same. And tnks for info it is usefull ;)
Comment: I think registration is requied. Bucouse my b.tech college has register alum. Assoc.


Multiple "-bash command not found" messages in Mac OS X Snow Leopard Unix

Question: When I open terminal I get an automatic error message -bash: PATH command not found.
then I am stumped in getting multiple -bash "x" command not found. messages, even to simple commands such as ls cd mkdir rm.
Just about the ONLY commands I get a response to are echo and export. Could my Unix system files be corrupt, as has been suggested in some searches for help? My hunch is that there is some setting that directs me away from the proper spot to make UNIX commands, but I don't know how to fix that.
Comment: My guess is that you have some faulty syntax in one of the startup files when attempting to set your PATH (given the first error).  If your PATH is set to something wonky because of this, it would explain the other errors.  Could you post your `~/.bashrc` file?
Comment: It may be worthwhile to try executing some of those commands using their full paths, just to be sure it's a path issue (which seems likely).  Try /bin/ls and see what happens.
Answer: Your .bashrc or .bash_profile files (or other startup files) contain a typo, and your PATH is invalid. To really be certain, we'd need to see your .bashrc or .bash_profile files.
Commands like ls mkdir rm won't work because your shell cannot find them in your PATH, because your PATH is invalid. Commands like echo and "export are built in to Bash, which is why they work. I can't explain the problem with cd (perhaps a mistake?)
Search your .bashrc or .bash_profile files and look for the lines where PATH is defined. You might have a bad definition where second PATH doesn't start with a $, like this:
export PATH=PATH:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
export PATH=PATH:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin

It should say something like this:
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin

Comment: Um, `cd` is built into the shell.  It should work even with an invalid `PATH`.


How can I have door latch hardware at different heights on each side?

Question: Has anybody ever figured out a way to have a door handle at a different height inside and outside of a door and work the same latch. I have a door coming down steps I would like to have the handle higher but still have the other side match the handle height in the rooms. I've been playing around with ideas of mortising the side of the door so I can attach the 2 handles with flat bar stock and then fitting a piece back in. Just curious what anyone thinks or if anyone has ever done something like this.
Comment: I don't understand your plan. You'd need a gear- or chain-driven connection to operate the latch bolt from the misaligned handle.
Comment: Is the door in the middle of the staircase or simply at the top of the stairs?
Answer: (Note that this door location isn't up to code. I'm assuming your house is rather old, but if it's not, it's indicative of other problems.)
Do you need the door to actually latch? If not, you could get 1 "ball catch" or "roller catch", and 2 dummy door knobs. Instead of actually turning the doorknob, you just push/pull the door open. The catch keeps the door closed until it's forced open.
Comment: I would like it to latch and lock. The ball catch is the standard. I was trying to get creative with an offset handle that actually works. And code isn't really an issue. I haven't even heard of an instance where it was an issue with code enforcement for a home sale.
Answer: I might suggest a linkage system, assuming you don't mind having a lever actuator at least on the offset side of the door.  Drill a hole in the end of the existing (lever) handle, put in a linchpin or equivalent, connect to a vertical bar; do the same X inches down to a faux-lever handle.  This lower handle is then mounted to a pin or axle where the latch mech normally would go.


How to remove old multi turn water inlet valve

Question: I was replacing some of the parts in my toilet and noticed the grommet on the toilet end of the supply hose is worn and started to leak when I reconnected it.  My preference would be to just replace the grommet but I can't find a replacement grommet part so it looks like I am stuck replacing the water shutoff valve.  But I can't tell on this one how to remove it.  I don't see any threads and believe it might be soldered on.  Unfortunately the valve is right up against the Escutcheon ring. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to find grommets for old style metal flex lines or how to remove the valve?
Answer: that is a compression fitting,the nut is against the wall plate.using 2 pairs of adjustable wrenches,use 1 wrench to hold the valve(holding the valve just under the outlet hose)use the other wrench to loosen the nut.when done the valve will pop off leaving the nut and a brass ferrule.carefully remove the ferrule with pliers(wary not to crush the pipe,grip the ferrule and twist back and forth while putting pressure in a forward,pipe opening,direction)remove the nut,then replace with new valve as above,in reverse


Buy all shares in multiplayer mode openttd?

Question: Is there any way (an extension, plugin, etc) to buy whole companies in multiplayer mode in openttd? Doing a fusion of companies would be quite an interesting challenge.
Answer: First, in order to enable buying shares, the server needs to have the relevant 'Competitors' option set (allow buying shares).
According to the openTTD wiki, even with this option on it is impossible to buy more than 75% of the shares from non-AI opponents or buy any shares at all from companies that are less than 6 years old.
Completely buying out a human opponent in multiplayer is disabled because code to transfer a client to another company server-side does not exist. You would have to patch the code for openTTD to gain this functionality. See also this topic.
In the original openTTD, your loan would be added to your company value. Two human players could expoit this as follows:

Player A repays his loan down to £10,000.
Player B buys 75% of player A's company, having £92,500 money and £100,000 loan.
Player A now loans up to £150,000.
Player B sells the shares for £112,500, now having £205,000 money and £100,000 loan.
£105,000 was just created from nothing.
Reverse the roles of player A and B. However, since B now can fluctuate his value between £105,000 and £255,000, A buys shares in B for £76,250 and sells them for £191,250 after B loans £150,000, leaving him with £115,000.

So in OpenTTD, the developers decided to 'subtract' loans from a company's value. Obviously, an empty player company still has some value, since it can loan a fixed amount of money. Thus the 6-year minimum to prevent you from obtaining a 75% share in the loan for only £3. It also prevents what's effectively unlimited lending.


is there any difference between "feel bad for sb" and "feel sorry for sb"?

Question: I often met both structure "feel bad for somebody" and "feel sorry for somebody" in English, but it's hard for me to make a distinction. They are the same and can be used interchangeably in any situation, right? If there are any difference between them, please give a some examples.
Answer: In the most exact sense of the word, "feel bad for" implies empathy, whereas "feel sorry for" implies sympathy.
In everyday language (in my opinion at least), both of these expressions can be interchangeable, but not always, so it's one of those situations where context is key.
"I feel bad for Bob" and "I feel sorry for Bob" can both mean that you sympathise with Bob's situation, for example if Bob had just lost his job. Unless you are very close to Bob, it's doubtful that his situation physically makes you feel ill, but a native speaker will interpret it as being sympathetic to his loss of employment.
However, "I feel sorry for Bob" can also be interpreted as having pity for Bob, depending on the context. For example, if Bob was in a situation where he was being naive, lets say in a relationship where his friends felt he was being taken advantage of, then one might say that they feel sorry for Bob. Depending on the tone used, "I feel sorry for Bob" may also imply an element "well we did warn him, but he didn't listen", particularly if it's said after some predictable calamity occurred, for example if Bob's new girlfriend just ran off with his best friend.
Answer: They are mostly interchangeable.
We tend to use "feel sorry" more often for somebody who has experienced a personal loss or challenge - a death in the family, a serious injury or illness, etc.  But it's not a strict rule.

I feel bad for the coach of my favorite football team: they had a losing record and he was fired at the end of the season.

vs.

I feel sorry for the coach of my favorite football team: his wife has cancer.


How can I access data from before the last 30 days on Google Analytics?

Question: Google Analytics' maximum date range seems to be last 30 days. There is 0 chance this is actually the maximum viewable age of data, given how crucial it is for webmasters to compare current data to older data...right? How can I view data from an arbitrary time ago?
Answer: Google Analytics does not have a 30 day limitation.  You can choose a "custom" date range and choose whatever start and end you want over any time period.

I personally think that the limited selection of dates available in the drop down is severely lacking.   I use a custom page of date options for Google analytics that I created to link to a wider variety of time periods.


Do journal editors disallow paper from college X to be reviewed by someone from college X?

Question: What is the general opinion among editors about whether my paper should be submitted to review to academics from the same University/department? Will this ever happen? If it does happen, isn't this bad for the quality of peer review because the reviewer might have a good relationship with the person who submitted the paper and may be biased consciously or unconsciously towards giving a favorable review?
Comment: _Since they are reviewers I'd assume that they know most of the work cited in your paper_ — Not necessarily, no.  "Are vaguely familiar with", perhaps, but not "know".
Comment: @Naresh Some journals are not blinded in my field. In fact the #1 ranked journal is not blinded. Also even if it is blinded, they can often just Google the name of the paper and find it on the Author's CV as a work in progress or conference presentation. Especially if they're in the same department, chances are the reviewer has discussed the paper with the author (since it'd only be submitted to them if they have experience in that sub-field) or has seen a faculty presentation of that paper, or knows about a grant associated with that paper.
Comment: Why would they google it? Since they are reviewers I'd assume that they know most of the work cited in your paper. It would not impact their decisions at all.

[http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/625/open-versus-blind-reviewing-process?rq=1] is a similar question.
Comment: @Naresh They might Google it to learn who the author is. A professor I know says he thinks people do this but he doesn't for ethical reasons.
Comment: I have been led to believe that something like this isn't that uncommon - that it's entirely possible for a paper to be sent to your supervisor or similar (I assume with a bit of a gap after you graduate). I've also heard tell (urban legend perhaps) of students submitting a paper without the name of the head of the research group, X, on it (X not even knowing the paper existed), and it was sent to X to review.
Answer: Conflict of interest rules vary between journals, and some are far stricter than others.  In general, it's not clear where to draw the line for what's appropriate.  Asking someone from the same department to review their colleague's paper would generally not be done, even if no rule forbids it.  Beyond that it's a little less clear, and you can make up all sorts of borderline cases.  (It's considered fine for people from different University of California campuses to review each other's papers.  What about someone from the Harvard biology department reviewing a paper from the Harvard medical school?  I don't know, and it's not clear to me that there's a simple rule for deciding what constitutes a conflict of interest.)
Handling conflicts of interest responsibly is an important and difficult part of being a journal editor, since there are all sorts of relationships that are not as easy to detect as a shared departmental affiliation.  For example, some people have been best friends since they were in grad school, while others may be enemies or rivals.
Sometimes when evaluating a submission it's valuable to get advice from someone who has specialized knowledge you need, but who also has a conflict of interest. In that case, you should be aware of the conflict and try to adjust for it (for example, by asking the person for objective information rather than opinions). By contrast, it's much more dangerous to rely on someone who has a conflict of interest you are unaware of.
Comment: What I mean is that sometimes when evaluating a submission it's valuable to get advice from someone who has specialized knowledge you need, but who also has a conflict of interest.  In that case, you should be aware of the conflict and try to adjust for it (for example, by asking the person for objective information rather than opinions).  By contrast, it's much more dangerous to rely on someone who has a conflict of interest you are unaware of.
Comment: @AnonymousMathematician I think your clarification comment is very helpful - please would you edit your answer and add it in? Comments are ephemeral, and can get deleted at any time; and it would be shame to lose valuable content such as you've written there.
Comment: Don't understand your last sentence, but still very insightful.
Answer: The principle is to obtain an objective review. One basic point is therefore to avoid any petsons with a conflict of interest. It is pretty clear that chosing someone from the same department is very likely to involve a conflict of interest, either by  (or equiv.) obtaining an uncritical review or the opposite. Chosing someone from the same university (or equiv.) is perhaps less problematic but for an editor trying to stay clear of possible problems it is likely just as well to avoid such persons as well. The problem is of course larger than this since possible conflicts of interest can exist with many regardless of their location. The honours based system then dictares that reviewers should also decline to review if they believe they cannot provie a fair review or if the involvement can cast such suspicion. We are, however, not living in a perfect world soeditors also have the possibility to moderate apparently unfair reviews.


Use custom Admin URL redirects to login screen

Question: I have the following problem:
My webshop is available from 2 different URL. One that works only in the company network and an external URL. The base URL is set to the internal URL. Now to get the webshop accessible from the internal and the external URL I turned off the auto-redirect to base url option. This works wonderful for the frontend. But if I try to access the backend from the external URL, I get redirected to the base URL (which is the internal URL) after pressing the login button. Because of that I can't access the backend if I am not in my companies network.
Is there a possibility to turn of the base url redirection for the backend?
Update:
Well I've found the "Use Custom Admin URL" option. After turning it on and set the URL to my external URL I can access the backend from outside of the companies network. But it didn't solve my problem. Now if I login to the backend and click on a link I get to the login screen. Although the URL changes to the clicked link. eg. I wan't to access the System -> Configuration the URL changes to: http://externalURL/admin/system_config/index/key/ANAUTOGENERATEDKEY/
And I get displayed the login screen but not the System -> Configuration interface. If I reload the page the login screen disappears and the system -> configuration interface gets displayed.
To sum up: after changing "Use Custom Admin URL" I need to reload the page after every link I try to open to get rid of the login screen and get to the clicked link.
Is this a common magento error?
Answer: I assume you want to set other page instead of dashboard after login in admin
You can set it in admin configuration
<code>Admin -> System -> Configuration -> Advance (Left) -> Admin -> Startup Page
</code>
Comment: thanks for your answer. No thats not what I am looking for. I've updated my question.


What is the appropriate size of hiragana in proportion to kanji?

Question: I remember being told that hiragana should be the same size as kanji when writing them by hand. However, there are times when I see handwritten kana that are much smaller than the kanji. Does this carry any nuance or is there any purpose to it?
Comment: Your question changed entirely in the second paragraph from being about "kana smaller than kanji when handwritten" to being about "kana smaller than other kana on a computer screen" and ギャル文字 including `τ` and `∋`. I think this question needs to be heavily edited to decide on which to ask about. Right now it is two completely different questions rolled into one.
Comment: @BillyNair I agree that reformatting the question again is unfair towards your answer. I apologize. Yet, your answer is still helpful.
Comment: With いっぱ~い, the small TSU is not voiced but modifies the PA making it a double PP, the ~ elongates the A. If it was written without the っ or ~ and just いぱい it would be read "Ipai", as it is written it is now "IPPAAAAAAI!!"
Comment: Now the references to ギャル文字 and いっぱ~い would seem totally confusing... My answer below goes through the nuances of the various smaller kana, legit as well as "ギャル文字" and Sawa's answer deals with the proper use of the smaller kana. Not sure if you are looking for some hidden meaning, but there really isn't much to it.
Comment: Maybe start a new question for ギャル文字 that the answer could be copied to? If there isn't one already, that is... :)
Answer: Usually, they should be the same size, but considering the history that okurigana used to be markings (like subscripts) on the Chinese text to add Japanese inflections, it is natural that they are written smaller than kanji. In fact, in caligraphy, it is usually said that hiragana should be written smaller than kanji.
Answer: In Japanese calligraphy and penmanship, usually kana are written slightly smaller than kanji. Basically, the more strokes a character has, the larger it should be written for proper balance and appearance. This is because simple characters look larger than complicated ones with human eyes. This article says, "漢字:10、ひらがな:8、カナ・ローマ字・数字:7~6、特殊記号:6".
Addition: This is not only in handwriting and not only in Japanese. Even in typography, kana are designed slightly smaller than kanji. It is pretty common from traditional metal types to modern computer-designed fonts. Also, in Chinese calligraphy, characters with few strokes are written slightly smaller than characters with many strokes.
Comment: I was also taught that simple characters look larger to human eyes, and they indeed look larger to me, but I wonder whether this is a universal truth or this is caused by always seeing the Japanese text where simple characters are written smaller than complicated characters.
Comment: @TsuyoshiIto I don't say that it is "universal" or "always". I give a common reason, which is widely known, but I don't deny that there might be other reasons.
Answer: In this particular case ギャル文字 is referring to the uber-feminine use of the language. Some of those characters like the ッ are like our emoticons ;-) and some are legitimate. For example in ギャル文字, the ギ{gi} is modified by ャ{ya}(small YA), so instead of reading it "Giyaru" it is read "Gyaru".
Most of the time you see the smaller character it will be modifying the previous character. Mostly used with the "Y" characters (ya, yu, yo) but it can be used with others. The small TSU character makes the following character longer, so the double "P" in Sapporo is written "さっぽろ" and not pronounced "Satsuhoro" but rather "Sapporo". In the example JPG you linked they used the katakana TSU ッ and only for effect. But can also use it legit in クスッ{kusu}(swallow the last "U") and still be cutesy.


what´s wrong with my guitar

Question: A couple of years ago, I bought a beautiful used Martin guitar 000-28VS (12-fretter). It had some neck issues, so it was quite cheap for this type. This is fixed now, but the more I play it, the less I like the sound. It has power enough. Great in the street or in a noisy jam, but the sound is everythind but sweet and harmonic, I think. Especially the two treble strings sound harsh and kind of muted up the neck and has too little clear fundamentals, but instead a lot of unpleasant overtones, and nail noises, like a cheap guitar and not a beatutiful Martin. The guitar is all solid (spruce and indian rosewood). I have looked inside it, and there is nothing loose. I use GHS vintage bronze 11-50, which sound great on my other guitars. The tap resonance is accvording to my tuner a little below A.  I have wondered if the top could be a little too lightlu braced. It has s
Comment: The repair might not been as thourough as you thought. Get the guitar to a professional guitar builder and let him check it out, and while you at it, let that person set up your guitar to your liking
Comment: Thanks for your answer. The neck had to be adjusted for too much relief (trussrod), and the nut was a little too low, which caused buzzing against the first fret (not big things). But the sound.  It is as if it has too little fundamentals (especially first and seccond string) and too many unpleasant overtones (harsh sound and nailscratching). The sustain is not the best either.  I have a cheap Sigma copy of this guitar.  It has not quite the same power, but sounds just right in every way.  So what is wrong with my fine Martin.  Does anybody know these symptoms.   Best wishes   Steen
Comment: Check or try to find something vibrating on the awful sounding notes. Could be slightly buzzing on a higher fret.
Answer: Unfortunately it may be just the way that particular guitar sounds. Solid top guitars can have a pretty wide variance on tone from top to top.  As the wood ages the tone will also change.
You should check under the saddle and see if it has been shimmed. If the action was lowered and then raised again, a piece of plastic or possibly even cardboard may have been placed under the saddle. A shim can change your tone significantly.  If there is a shim, you should have the saddle replaced with a new bone or equivalent material one (not the cheap soft plastic ones).
It is also possible that there was some router "chatter" when the bridge was made and the saddle slot isn't fully flat, causing less than full contact of the saddle bottom to the bridge wood, which would also give you a loss of tone. This is a simple repair for a qualified Luthier.
Sometimes an instrument will sound better under different tensions, so trying out different gauge sets of strings may help. Some guitars will sound better with lower tensions, some with higher, so you will have to do some experimenting.  Also check out alternative sets like the Silk and Steels.
Edit:   You might also try replacing the bridge pins with wooden (ebony or rosewood) or metal pins for a tone change. The metal ones give more sustain and brightness, but I have heard them give a guitar more "fullness" too.
Comment: Here's a link to some info about saddles:  http://www.frets.com/FretsPages/Musician/Guitar/Setup/Saddle/saddle01.html
Comment: Dear Alphonso Balvenie.  Thanks for your ansvers.  I think your very first sentence hits the thruh, since none of your other suggestions seem to be the case. It has scalloped bracing, and I suspect the top is braced a little too lightly.  I have tried some lower tension strings, and the guitar seems to like them better, but it still has some  harsh overtones and lack fundamentals. Next time I shall try silk and steel.  On youtube there is a video called Bad sounding guitar. Here you can get an impression of what I am talking about (even if my guitar is better).  Best wishes  Steen
Comment: Thanks for the "bridgelink".  I must admit, I have not (yet) had the bridge saddle removed. it is a bone saddle and everything seems to be tight and perfect. But I have tried tried to tap it in its full length with a screwdriver, and there are no "hollow" spots to be heard.  But I will check it next time I change strings, because I know from banjos how tremendous effect bridges can have to the sound.

what´s wrong with my guitar


Closing questions about knock-off printers

Question: Should we really close this question:  3d printer part clones from china - legality..?
Are legal questions on topic? We have a legal section in the Game plan - What is on-topic? and a legal tag.
Answer: My perspective is this is more of a "is it illegal to buy illegal things" is not exactly bound to 3d printing. Though I still read those related to the operation of printers, IE the legality around printing dangerous things such as firearms and their parts is unique to the 3d printing and fabrication spaces.
Honestly I feel that any legal questions should not be handled here unless it's extremely specialized to 3d printing. Copyrights counterfeits and IP are ubiquitous in almost all things sold, so this is not a good candidate. For me, I wouldn't touch a question like this, as if someone gives bad advice, they could potentially be liable, or put stack overflow in a bad situation. (I assume the TOS covers some liability cases). That all seems to be more better suited the Law Stack exchange. The existence of the stack exchange is the deciding part for me, a community better suited to ask questions related to trade laws.
No I do not think it should be allowed.
Note the question is better now that they added Locations, but still doesn't feel right.
Answer: I've taken onboard StarWind0's points and added them to the on-topic page. See this meta answer to On-topic has been updated - finally!. Regarding the question itself it ended up needing the fourth vote and got re-opened. I'll add an IANAL type answer at some point.
I agree that it would be more suited to Law, and its generic nature could actually be asked anywhere (and that should be pointed out in any posted answer to the question and/or as a comment to the question)  - however, we could allow just this one example, and any similar questions thereafter can be closed as duplicates against that one, as we have done in the past (have one generic cover-all question/answer that similar questions can be pointed to)...
I read an authoritative answer somewhere about if a question is valid on two different sites then where should it be asked, but I can't find it any longer. However, whilst this question was not cross-posted the aspect of overlap covered in the answers to Is cross-posting a question on multiple Stack Exchange sites permitted if the question is on-topic for each site?

Occasionally, people are interested in different perspectives on the same fundamental question. There are many Stack Exchange sites with overlapping topic spaces and it can be useful to get a "second opinion". Even then, however, it's best to tailor your question to each site. Ideally link to the question on the other site and explain what you hope to learn from asking another community.

and probably more au-point, How should we deal with questions that fit on more than one Stack Exchange site?

If the question belongs on two or more sites, then whichever on-topic site got the question first should probably get priority and keep it. That's where the author is probably more comfortable, or decided was the place to ask.


Converting Word pages to book pages, for novels?

Question: The title says it all. How can I gauge how long my novel would be, if for example I've written 400 single-spaced pages of size 12 Times New Romans in Microsoft Word?
Answer: I cheated once: I pulled a book off my shelf and recreated it (in InDesign, but you might be able to do it in Word). Page size, margins (I used a ruler), font, type size, everything. Once I recreated what was on the page, I had a gauge for size. Then I dumped my current work into that, and I had a rough idea of how long my "novel" was.
Comment: @Aerovistae - Meh. The four things Lauren gave as basic measurements for print layout would take maybe 2 minutes to set up in Word. Kerning, line and paragraph spacing widths of hyphens and em-dashes, real typesetter stuff, *that* would be obsessive IMO especially if you bought InDesign or FrameMaker for the purpose, but along the lines of the question regarding converting a handwritten manuscript to type, I wouldn't consider it a bad thing to know your approximate page count. And I do find Lauren's excesses funny :-)
Comment: This is so funny.
Comment: This answer needs more upvotes.
Comment: It's an especially obsessive thing to do, the sort of thing only someone who *really, really* cares is going to go to the trouble of doing. Like someone actually measuring the inches in a football field to make sure it's built to the right specifications. And if you've read enough of Lauren's posts and have an inkling of her general character then it's funny just because it totally suits her.
Comment: @Aerovistae - Why's it funny? It's actually fairly logical in the era of WYSIWYG editors. You won't be able to control all of the specifics your publisher will in something basic like MS Word or AOO Writer, but InDesign/FrameMaker/QuarkXpress were written specifically to allow this level of control. The only question is cost.
Comment: @Aerovistae I measured my house once. Inside and out. I was recreating it in a 3D rendering program. Accounted for everything to within two inches, IIRC.
Answer: The standard way of calculating word count, aside from simply using the "word count" feature of your word processor, is to format your document in standard submission format and then multiply the number of pages by 250. This is the technique that was used back in the days before computers could instantaneously count the number of words in a document. It also has the incidental advantage of accounting for the actual length of your paragraphs on the page, so that long passages of dialogue (which consist of lots of short paragraphs) or lists are correctly adjusted for.
Comment: @Aerovistae: 250 words / page.  Not sure the answer is that helpful, but I *think* what he means is that, to get a (standard) page count from a word count, you can do the inverse of what used to be done to get a word count from counting standard pages.  So, do a word count with a word processor, then DIVIDE by 250 to get the number of standard pages.
Comment: This doesn't make sense to me. This implies that a 50 page document would come out to a 12500 page book.....50 pages * 250. Can you make this clearer?
Comment: maybe just convert Word pages to words, (or look up word count) and then convert words to pages using an average from the format you want your book in, like paperback by Tor.
Answer: It's almost impossible to be able to calculate this without knowing the final format the printed work will be in. There are a huge number of variables that will all have an impact on the length of the text -
The font chosen, the type size, the linefeed (font leading), the paragraph spacing, the hyphenation settings, whether the text is justified or unjustified, the kerning, the letter and word spacing, the text column width, the text column depth, the likely number of footnotes and so on.
Without really knowing these parameters any estimation will only be a very rough one which could be out by as much as 40-50%.
Answer: You can set a page size in Word. Don't use 8.5 x 11, use whatever the real, final page size will be. Also set the correct margins. If you're self-publishing and producing your own master, you can produce the PDF or whatever format directly from this and you'll know exactly what will be on every page. But even in general, it will at least give you a rough idea of how much fits on each page and how many pages the final book will be.
I did my second book with the intended final page size and margins in Word and I found that helpful to give me a feel for how long chapters would look, as well as to help me keep toward my targetted total length. In my case I figured that 250-300 pages was a good length for that particular book and I had it divided into five sections so I wanted at least roughly 50 pages each. So as I was working I had a feel for whether I was beeing too wordy or not wordy enough, whether I needed more material or had to trim, etc.
Answer: If you are using Word to create your manuscript, then you can use Word Count to find its length and work from there.
I would expect typical text (whatever that is) set in 12 point Times New Roman to contain approximately 600 words (4000 characters) per page. So a 400 page manuscript would be about 240,000 words.
That will be a big book! The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is around that size and it weighs in at 900 pages in paperback.
Have you considered whether your magnum opus would "work" in two volumes?
Comment: Oh good god I haven't really written 400 pages. It was just a number. I *wish* I had that kind of time.
Comment: Assuming of course that the finished novel will also be printed in 12pt Times, which is unlikely. It's more likely to be in a smaller size (depending on the typeface/font chosen) such as 9pt. This of course depends on the format it would be printed in - large format hardback is generally a larger font size than the paperback equivalent. Your method therefore is unreliable.
Comment: No it is not unreliable, @spiceyokooko. I made NO ASSUMPTIONS about the typeface of the final book, other than to select a particular title (which I named) and to give its {wordcount, page} values. That provides a rule of thumb that is as good as any other.
Answer: It also would depend on dialogue I think. I pulled out a book last night that had 4 novels in one. Page size was around 8x10. I looked up the first novel and the original paperback had 200 pages. In the version I had in the bigger format it was type set on 90 pages.
Comment: Heya! I'm not sure this answers the question. What do you mean it "depends on dialogue"? And, yes, page-length is definitely a function of typesetting. But, can we still give a helpful answer to the question? Or are you saying there's no helpful way to convert/estimate pagelength?
Comment: I agree with the "depends on dialogue" part.  If you have a lot of dialogue, you'll have white space and less words per page.  Whereas if you have a block of description, more words will fit on each page.
Answer: I went ahead and broke it down: Give or take, the average paperback has 250-350 words per page. Thats 35 lines at 10 words per line. Of course some of those lines may only have 3 or 4 words (for dialogue). So again we're at, say, 300 words. take your total word count and divide it by 300. that'll give you an idea, not accurate down to the letter but still a pretty good idea. I used James Pattersons "3rd degree" and Dean Koontz's "Odd Hours" for reference as they were closest to me atm.
Comment: Ironically, this answer boils down to what was said in the top answer: Take your total word count and divide by 250 (or 300).  [And note the 20% difference you get, just by following different rules of thumb, which partly substantiates the pessimistic answer from @spiceyokooko.]


How to capture a fast moving subject?

Question: I am a photographer and although I have done it for a while I still need help capturing that right picture. Currently I have been taking photos at my church, I am having trouble capturing the spiritual dancers while their dance, or the church goers as they are praising. I know in order to capture a fast moving subject you have the set the shutter speed up a bigger number, but no matter where I set it too, the picture always comes out blurry. What is the best shutter speed to set to capture a fast moving subject?
Comment: This question would probably be better if you can show us one or two examples of how these pictures come out for you. You can [edit] it and upload images here, or you can link to them elsewhere and someone will edit them in.
Comment: Blur can be due to camera movement and/or subject movement. At low shutter speeds your stability may be the limiting factor. Sometimes you can get amazingly good results at shutter speeds in the 0.1 second range (or even slower) if the camera is stable. What camera are you using? What lighting levels. What is largest lens aperture. A 50mm at ~= f/1.8 lens is available for most DSLR type cameras. These are about as low cost as reasonable quality lenses get and quality is excellent for the $.
Answer: I think your issue here is two-fold.  You're not just trying to capture fast action, you're trying to capture fast action in low light.
There is no hard-and-fast set number that will guarantee you won't have any motion blur from fast action. The faster the action, the faster your shutter speed needs to be to "freeze" it.
The problem that's probably happening is that indoors, in a church, your light levels are low enough that even with a high ISO setting and your lens's maximum aperture setting, you still need a slower shutter speed to get a good exposure.
To get faster shutter speeds, you can only do a few things, if you're already maxed out on iso and aperture.

You can get a faster lens.  Many consumer-grade lenses max out at f/5.6. This isn't particularly wide, and is called a "slow" lens, because of the shutter speeds it may force you to use.  Getting an f/2.8 (or smaller f-number) lens gets you 4x or more light than an f/5.6 lens, if used wide open.  However, faster lenses are more expensive (although primes can cut that cost down), and larger aperture settings make focus harder (thinner depth of field makes a much smaller target you have to hit), and the wider open a lens goes, the more flaws you can see in image quality (softness, chromatic aberration, vignetting, etc.)
You can add a flash.  You need more light.  Add more light.  There are many ways to use a flash so that it doesn't give you that deer-in-the-headlights white look most non-flash shooters associate with flash.  Bouncing is one go-to-technique.  Going off-camera-flash is another.
You can fake a higher ISO setting.  But I wouldn't recommend doing this, unless your camera maxes out around 1600 or 3200.  It adds a crap ton of noise.  But shoot RAW, and underexpose, then in post, push the exposure back up (i.e., push processing). This is what the "extended" ISO settings in most cameras do.
Use the blur creatively.  Blur indicates movement.  Sometimes that can be a good thing.  Just make sure that the blur you're getting is from the subject movement, not from camera movement from handholding.  The basic rule of thumb with camera shake blur is that your shutter speed needs to be at least 1/focal_length.  Some folks also throw in crop factor. So, say, if you're using a 55-200 lens @200mm on a crop body, that would mean using a shutter speed of 1/300s or faster just to eliminate camera shake blur.  If you've got good handholding technique.

See also: Why are my photos not crisp?
Comment: Another recommendation would be to get a camera which has rapid multiple shot capability, so you can take several pictures in a row very quickly with one button-push, and then cherry-pick the best ones.  Trying to get a whole group of moving people without catching any of them with a weird momentary expression on their face, hair or clothes blocking the view, unfortunate juxtaposition with background elements, etc. can be a challenge.
Comment: @DarrelHoffman burst shooting _might_ help, but can be as much of a hindrance as anything else--better to rely on good timing and anticipation with short bursts. [Back-button AF](http://www.clickinmoms.com/blog/how-to-use-back-button-focusing-tutorial/) _might_ also help, but this situation sounds more like stage shooting.
Answer: You are too short on your description. But here are the basic options.
A) Is the background also blured? Use a tripod.
B) Use a flash. Try to bounce it on the church celling to achive a more natural look.
C) Push the ISO... there is a chance your camera simply can not handle the situation. This in my opinion is the best reason to upgrade a camera, better low light response. What is your maximum ISO? If you have a maximum of 1600 you are in trouble, so go for the flash option.
D) Get a faster lens. And probably this is one good reason to upgrade a lens, a faster one. A 50 mm f1.8 lens?
E) Underexpose a bit. Shoot in raw and underexpose one or 2 stops. Yes you will have more noise, but noise is easier to correct than motion blur.

What is the best shutter speed to set to capture a fast moving subject?

The specific answer depends on the subject. Here is an insane camera... Photographing a beam of light... Yes you readed well: https://www.ted.com/talks/ramesh_raskar_a_camera_that_takes_one_trillion_frames_per_second? In that case they shoot video at a trillion frames per second... So that totally depends on the subject.
A talking person, a dancer, a racing car, a bullet... light.
I would say to shoot a preacher or dancer, arround 1/500 - 1/1000, but again, depends on the dance.
Answer: It depends on the speed of the movement, the distance and the focal length used. The moving subject will move at some angular velocity relative to your vantage point (this is given by the speed of the movement divided by the distance), your focal length determines the field of view, so you then know how fast the movement is relative to the size of your image sensor, and then you can convert that to pixels per second. The exposure time needs to be chosen such that the motion will be less than one pixel.
Since there are quite a few unknowns here, it's best to study some of your previous blurred pictures and measure the blur in pixels. You can consider an edge that should have been a high contrast edge that in your picture is smeared out over a number of pixels. Suppose that you took that picture at 1/500 seconds exposure time at 100 mm focal length and you measure the blur to be 7 pixels. If the next time you are at approximately the same distance, then using 50 mm focal length will get you to about 3 or 4 pixels blur. If you don't what to use use an even lower focal length, the remaining factor of 4  has to be obtained by using a faster shutter speed, you need  a shutter speed of 1/2000 seconds. The ISO should then be increased by a factor of 4, if you use the same aperture.
Now, as Micheal Clark points out in the comments, if you choose to use a resized picture then the blur in the original picture can be larger. In that case you can go through this procedure where you use the blur size in pixels after you resize the picture.
Comment: You only need to be concerned about blur at the pixel level if the viewing size is going to be very large (such as when pixel peeping). If you're going to downsize the image to, for example, post it online then you only need to  worry about the angular size of the pixels of the downsized image (i.e. you take a 6000x4000 24MP image and resize it to 1200x800 then a single pixel in the smaller image contains the same amount of area as a 5x5 pixel square in the original).

How to capture a fast moving subject?


placing origin at end of Bezier Curve

Question: i have created a bezier curve, to make a corrugated sheet, and i am then trying to slide a thin cube mesh. i have placed the origin at one end of the the cube mesh and am trying to do the same with the bezier curve, but it will not move to the cursor which i have placed at the end point of the curve! how can i trick it into doing what i want, or any other method. Running OSX 10.15.6 and 2.83.3
Answer: Here are a few ways to do it:

Go to Preferences > Add-ons and search for "Curve Tools" and activate the Add Curve: Curve Tools add-on by checking the box next to it. In the 3D Viewport press N to extent the Tool Shelf and click the Edit tab. Then go to Curve Tools > One Curve and click the "Set origin to spline start"-button.

Select the curve, go into Edit Mode. Select the starting vertex. press Shift + S, and choose Cursor to Selected. Go into Object Mode. Press F3 (default search key) and type "Set Origin" and choose Origin to 3D Cursor.

In the 3D Viewport Header click the Snapping-button. (It is the icon next to the little magnet icon.) Choose Snap to Vertex. Then in the same header click Options and check the box next to Origins (uncheck it when you're done). Now hold Ctrl (or click the magnet icon) while moving the origin to snap it to the starting vertex.
Comment: thanks for your help, i have now got where i need to go.

placing origin at end of Bezier Curve


How to best understand website design for those with a background in graphic design?

Question: What are the best resources (i.e. tutorials, video keynotes, blog posts, etc) that best assist graphic designers understand the paradigm of website design? As a web designer, I'm really interested in having my sister (a graphic designer) working with me. How to best explain her how to design for the screen, with practical and easy-to-learn resources (i.e. how to build website layouts for the web) without having to spend time with books?
Answer: I'm a former print designer who happily made the transition to web design. Your sister already has a great head start; the same concepts of hierarchy, grid systems, and typography translate wonderfully from print to Web, so she won't have to relearn those.
To begin her journey as a Web designer, I'd recommend that she should:
Learn the differences
Brian Hoff's advice for print designers transitioning to web design is a great place to start. Jakob Nielsen also has some slightly higher-level advice for print designers from 1999 that's still worth reading.
Learn basic HTML/CSS
The HTML Dog tutorials are great, as are Khoi Vinh's recommendations for print designers if she can make time for the books. (Khoi's book, Grid Principles for Web Design is handy for all designers too.) Finally, the ThinkVitamin videos on HTML/CSS are among the best around if she prefers to learn that way, and the Web Development from Scratch series on Net Tuts looks promising too.
Learn to use FTP
It's worth her learning how to upload HTML, CSS, and images if she doesn't know already.
Learn to build a simple site from scratch
Beyond that, you might encourage her to make a simple design in Photoshop or Fireworks, perhaps for a personal portfolio site or blog, and to turn that design into HTML and CSS using only a text editor and a web browser. Web Design Tuts has a walkthrough to help with that.
Learn from you
Having a mentor to call upon helps no end, so the best thing she could do is to learn from you. Encourage her to share her designs at their early stages and offer suggestions. Help her see that as web designers, we're just solving on screen the same problem that print designers have long been solving on paper: how to order information in a way that people can best understand, use, and fall in love with.
Comment: +1 for "Learn to build a simple site from scratch" - the most common problems I've seen with sites built by print designers bringing their craft to the web have been misuse of the medium (i.e. an entire e-commerce website made out of high-res imagemaps or embedded in a Flash movie)
Answer: I was a graphic designer first then after three years i am now a web developer. When i was migrating i started with first website layout design in photoshop. Sites helped me a lot was from tutsplus network. As i am new here so i cant give too much link. But i think you should checkout the psd.tutsplus.com site. They have some good psd web interface design tutorials from industry leader web artists. Here is one of my all time favorites.
Also try her signup for deviantart (if she not yet). I think every designer should join this community too. There are lots of web interface design groups they all are mainly graphic designer.
It is good thing you have a sister to work with you. I wish i had one!! :)


How can I put my name in the lower corner of my pictures using photoshop?

Question: How can I put my name in the lower corner of my pictures using Photoshop? Specifically, how can I put my name in mass numbers of my pictures using Photoshop? I have 1500 photos from a recent biology trip that need my name in them so people know that the works are mine. I can do it one by one, but is there a faster way to do it?
Answer: You can use batch processing.
Not sure which version of PS you're using, but try File > Automate > Batch.
You'll need two folders, one with all your original images, and another empty one to dump the edited versions in. You select these folder destinations, record the edits you want (in your case, you''l add text in the corner, or your logo or whatever) and then you run the batch.
PS will look like it's going a bit crazy for a while - opening each file, adding the text and saving it into the new destination folder, but don't worry. It's doing it automatically.


How is frequency selection (tuning) accomplished in a direct conversion receiver?

Question: How is frequency selection (tuning) accomplished in a direct conversion receiver ? A crystal filter can't be used is that correct ? Because there is no IF to mix with the incoming frequency band ...
Answer: For single-channel direct-conversion to baseband, tuning is done by setting the heterodyne or mixer oscillator frequency, and possibly by tuning band-pass filters, if any, in front of the direct-down-converter mixer. For AM or SSB, the oscillator is tuned to zero-beat with the carrier or suppressed carrier. For CW, the mixing oscillator is tuned slightly higher or lower than the CW signal frequency of interest to produce an audio side-tone.  For digital modes a similar offset is used to mix the signal of interest into the audio input bandwidth of a computer sound-card or mono audio input interface.
The upper and lower sidebands around the tuned frequency end up aliased, so cannot be separated.  But audio or baseband low-pass filtering can be applied to the resulting aliased baseband signal.
For dual-channel direct-conversion to quadrature/complex/IQ sampled data, DSP processing on the IQ data stream can separate out the upper and lower sidebands, and filter out (via FFT or otherwise) multiple signals somewhat offset from the mixer oscillator frequency, but sufficiently below half the sample rate in offset.  This offset acts as a very low IF.
Answer: The IF (intermediate frequency) is not mixed with the incoming signal, but the LO (local oscillator).
Tuning in a direct conversion receiver is achieved just as it is with a superhet: by varying the LO frequency. A direct conversion receiver simply has an "IF" of 0 Hz. In fact another name for a direct-conversion receiver is a "zero-IF receiver".
A crystal filter would not be used because with the signal mixed down to baseband, typically the frequencies of interest are too low for a crystal filter to be applicable. Furthermore, the lower frequency means the fractional bandwidth required to get an acceptably steep roll-off is obtainable with a simple RC filter. And in common modern practice the analog filtering is limited to antialising for an ADC, with the final channel selection being performed by digital filters.


How do I label already-frozen bags?

Question: We have a question about how to label things for the freezer in general, but that's for if you've managed to plan ahead. What if you have a bag in the freezer, already thoroughly frozen, so tape doesn't stick well and markers don't write well? What's a good way to label it at that point?
Comment: (Note: this was originally posted as an answer to that previous question, but it's a new question that seemed pretty useful, so I figured I'd go ahead and ask.)
Answer: If you can't get the marker to work, just add another bag around the old one.
Answer: Get a piece of paper, preferably a bit thicker. Write on it with black marker. Wet small part of it with warm water and stick to the frozen thing. The water will freeze acting as a glue.
Comment: I find that ice on the bag easily pops off. I think the paper would work the same way. If the bag can still flex, I think this would not work. Otherwise, it depends on the plastic. But generally, they are smooth and hydrophobic.  THat is, the bag will not "wet".
Comment: That's a fantastic idea! I was going to suggest using masking tape or painters tape and write on that... but it may not stick well to a wet/frozen bag.
Comment: @JDługosz I guess this depends on the use case. I use this method and it works fine for me, but then again I don't move things around that much. I sometimes rearrange them, but most of the time they aren't moving.
Comment: Yeah, this seems like it'd work reasonably well for infrequently moved inflexible things (hard containers or bags filled with something frozen into a solid chunk that you'll use all at once) but less well for flexible things that get shuffled around and opened and closed (like a bag of loose berries).
Answer: I've used freezer bag clips labelled in marker or chinagraph pencil. You could write on a room temperature clip then swap it for whatever closure you use, or add it to a tied bag. To reuse, chinagraph comes off with a wet cloth (e.g. washing up), most markers come off with alcohol (surgical spirit for example).
Some marker pens do work so long as you wipe the bag immediately and write fast before condensation forms.
Answer: I usually wrap my freezer bags with some brown paper (similar to what you'd get from a butcher). This lets me label the front and sides, because I often need to put frozen stuff side-up as I'm rotating things in the freezer.
So, you can just cut a brown paper bag so it wraps around whatever you need to label, and a tiny bit of tape to secure the ends of the paper once it's around your frozen bag.
Also comes in handy to see if your freezer was off for a period of time, as you'll see watermarks on the paper if anything managed to thaw more than a tiny bit.

How do I label already-frozen bags?


Why did Harry Potter behave like this to Lupin?

Question: In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Prof. Lupin turns into a werewolf and tries to kill Harry, and just a few days later Harry talks nicely with Prof. Lupin.
Why would Harry do that?
Answer: Because he knows that Lupin is a werewolf because of Hermione.

Hermione: He's a werewolf! That's why he's been missing classes.
Lupin: How long have you known?
Hermione: Since Professor Snape set the essay.

A werewolf can hurt his dear ones without knowing and transforming into a werewolf is very painful too. Since Harry knew he is just having a rough time being werewolf, he talks to Lupin normally.
Obviously, if someone's dear ones hurt him/her while being in trouble and he/she knows that they are not doing this intentionally, he/she would talk normally and help'em.
Hermione and Harry later in the forest after they freed Buckbeak:

Hermione: Poor Professor Lupin's having a really tough night.
Answer: Because a werewolf has no control over themselves if they turn.
However, some of the worst effects can be mitigated by consuming Wolfsbane Potion, which allows a werewolf to retain his or her human mind while transformed, thus freeing him or her from the worry of harming other humans or themselves. But Lupin had not taken his potion that day. So, he lost control.
Lupin was a good person and he was turned into a werewolf by Fenrir Greyback at a very young age, that wasn't his fault.
Moreover he was very close friends with Harry's parents.


How can I check the first date of a Steam game being played in my library?

Question: Finding the most recent date played is simple enough, but is there a way of finding the date of the first instance it was played?
Purchase date doesn't help me in this regard as I rarely play games on the same day as they are bought.
Answer: The short answer is, Yes you can view when it was first played. This can be done from accessing the library,
and the going to the game you want. For example I will take a look at beamng.drive.
So you clearly see the last played date, To find out the first played you must go to the Activity bar, scroll down a bit till you find where you first played it. And so  you can clearly see when I first put it on my wish-list then bought it and played it for the first time.
Best regards, eShadow
Edit: Some games allow you to view this option from the in-game status menu. Others don't. If your game doesn't support it you can use my answer.
Comment: Ooh, that's new. Neat!
Answer: Short answer, nope.
Play sessions are not explicitly tracked by Steam (or, if they are, this data is not accessible on a user level through either the API or an interface), as far as I know they only log the most recent time you've played it which is then overwritten each time you start the application again (while online).
Depending on why you would want this there might be other solutions.
What would you use it for?
Comment: Actually I'm sorry but there is a way to view the first played date. Check my answer to view how.
Answer: I know this is super late, but for certain games such as CS:GO, if you click on activity under your name, then look on the right side of the screen and click on games, some will have a button for "personal game data", and for CS:GO it will have your first time played displayed with exact time and date.
Answer: You can do this for some games.
When you open steam and go to your profile and in the section Recent activity click on All recent activity, choose the game you want and then click on Personal Game Data (not every game will have this button) and there is information "Started playing ..." etc.
Answer: Old Thread, still no answer.. Only one way to narrow it down, atleast:
If the game has achievements, check those for the earliest date.
Some games even have an achievement for first sign in or similar stuff you do in the beginning
Hope this helps
Comment: I also used this method, as you mentioned most games have some simple achievements like "win a round" which should be accurate
Answer: Alright, I know this is most likely not going to be seen but... I have had a major breakthrough. In the top left of your steam application, above the Library button there is a menu that says Help, now click on that and go to Steam Support (make sure you have played the game recently) click on the game you wish to view and it will tell you when it was purchased (Yes it works with free games too)
[1]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/7mD6I.png Go Here and Click Steam Support
[2]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/BoRnx.png Click on the game you wish to check in my case War Thunder
[3]: https://i.stack.imgur.com/3KsuX.png and voila. Enjoy!
Comment: The OP asks for the first time a game is *played*, not purchased.
Comment: Well it does atleast give a rough timeframe.
Comment: I don't think the downvote was necessary as this does indeed give a rough timefram
Comment: @Wanjia well if you read the question it does tell you that this information doesn't matter
Answer: Better late then never. It is quite easy. Check folder creation date of the game installed.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common[game folder]
Comment: That's a good thought, but not always accurate. I've had two or three computers since the first time I played some of the games I have installed, so the date created is just when the game was installed on my latest computer.
Comment: @MageXy Completely agree. This is only accurate if the directory has never been copied from anywhere else. Backups, or transferring Steam to another location will update the creation date to the present time.
Answer: Sorry to necro, but you can actually see the summary of your steam purchases when going to your wallet, and clicking that one link (don't remember the name). You'll only see the game you purchased via the steam store tho, so no gifts and no keys are listed there.
Hope this helps :)
Comment: From the question: "Purchase date doesn't help me in this regard as I rarely play games on the same day as they are bought."
Answer: i found how
go on your library select the game
and click on Assistance
and right after that you'll see when it was bought
Comment: The OP asks for the first time a game is *played*, not purchased.


The most successful non-pitchers on the mound

Question: A couple of seasons ago, Baltimore's Chris ("Crush") Davis filled in as an emergency pitcher in a long, extra-inning game, pitching 2 innings and not giving up a run.  What non-pitcher has the best ERA with more than 5 innings for a career?
Comment: Perhaps a good place to start: [Non-pitchers with pitching appearances](http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/fieldPitch.shtml).
Comment: Here's a [fun article](http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/11063042/best-worst-position-player-pitchers-2014) from two weeks ago about this topic:
Answer: Thanks to SamtheBrand for the great chart showing how non-pitchers faired statistically on the mound.  Some would doubt the inclusion of Babe Ruth to the list because most of his incredible pitching statistics were done when he was principally a pitcher for the Red Sox.  Many of the other "non-pitchers" with substantial stats as pitchers played 100 years ago.  But of those from the "modern" era of baseball, one name stands out -- Jimmy Foxx.  The Hall of Fame 3B and Catcher offered to pitch when needed for the Phillies in his last season, 1945, when his hitting had gone sour because of declining eye sight.  Still, the war was still going on, and the player pool was thin.
One biographer captured that year:

Foxx hit the last seven home runs of his career for the Phillies, but what made his final season unique was his turn on the pitching mound. Volunteering to help the team out in any way he could, Foxx pitched 23 innings, with a 1-0 record and 1.59 ERA. His high point on the mound came in the second game of a doubleheader on August 19, when Foxx pitched five no-hit innings in an emergency start. (He had pitched once very briefly while with the 1939 Red Sox.) His last major-league at-bat came against the Dodgers on September 23. At the close of the season Foxx retired for good, with a .325 lifetime batting average, 2,646 hits, and 534 home runs—a total that was second only to Ruth until 1966.  His total of 1,922 runs batted in still ranked as 8th all time in 2008.

Source: http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/e34a045d


Redirect the default HTTP port to an application

Question: On my CentOS server at mydomain.com, I have an svn web application running on port 8880. I want to hide the port: at this moment, if anybody wants to access, they need to access through http://thisdomain.com:8880/svn. I want to make the application accessible at http://thisdomain.com/.
Comment: What do you mean by "hide," exactly? Completely inaccessible? Accessible only if you know some trick? Moved? Blackholed?
Comment: Close the port and access it via SSH port forwarding or a VPN tunnel.
Comment: @WarrenYoung Hide as in hide the port from the URL. It took me a while to understand.
Answer: Option 1: NAT Port Forwarding
If all you need to do here is redirect requests on external port 80 to an internal program running on port 8880, you can use iptables port forwarding for this:
# iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -i eth0 --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to 127.0.0.1:8880

There are several points to understand here:

I'm guessing you're running on some sort of VPS, so eth0 probably isn't the right interface name. You will have to replace this if so.
Incidentally, if you're on shared hosting or your VPS doesn't allow iptables, skip to the next option.
As written above, the rule assumes you have configured this internal program to listen only on the localhost interface, 127.0.0.1. This gets you the "hiding" behavior you've asked for.
Your preexisting firewall rules may interfere with this rule as it is currently written. There's no substitute for actually understanding your current iptables rules before modifying them, but if it doesn't work, you can blindly try adding another rule like this:
# iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -i eth0 --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

Such a thing would be needed if your default FORWARD chain's rule is DENY.
You need to make sure these rules come up on boot.
If you're careful, you can edit /etc/sysconfig/iptables on CentOS to accomplish this. This file uses a syntax similar to — but not exactly like — the iptables command line language. You should probably test this on a local VM to reduce the chances that you'll accidentally lock yourself out of your public server.
It would be safer to put the commands in /etc/rc.local, but beware that if you restart the iptables service (e.g., service iptables reload) your custom rules will get removed if they're not in /etc/sysconfig/iptables.

If you've read through all that and wonder why I've made it Option 1 when Option 2 below is simpler, it is that it is much more efficient. Port forwarding is basically "free" in terms of resources once you've set it up.
Option 2: HTTP Proxy
Another way to go is to use some sort of HTTP proxy. I have used Tinyproxy for this sort of thing. It's more flexible than NAT port forwarding and doesn't require that you muck with the OS's firewall.
It is packaged for CentOS in EPEL, so that once you have enabled the EPEL repository, you just need to say yum install tinyproxy.
Make these changes in the stock /etc/tinyproxy/tinyproxy.conf file:
Port 80
Upstream localhost:8880

Also, comment out the Allow line, so Tinyproxy will accept connections from outside IPs:
# Allow 127.0.0.1

You need to make sure that Apache isn't running (service httpd stop) when you try to start this (service tinyproxy start), since it will be taking over port 80.
The documentation for Tinyproxy is just a terse reference, so I'm uncertain whether this use of Upstream is a hack better replaced by use of Tinyproxy's reverse proxy features. It works for me, though, and it takes fewer changes to the configuration file, so this is how I do it.
If you're wondering why I haven't just used Apache for this from the start, it's simply that it's more complex and takes more resources. Apache does have proxying features. Unless you need the full power of Apache, though, I don't see a reason to go that way over Tinyproxy.
Unlike NAT port forwarding, it does take some system resources to run Tinyproxy. It takes some RAM, and if your traffic level is high enough, it could become I/O bound. If your server isn't particularly busy, though, you probably won't even notice that it is running.
Answer: This would be done in your httpd.conf file as a virtual host. It would look something like:
<VirtualHost thisdomain.com:8880>
DocumentRoot /www/docs/svn/myapp
ServerName thisdomain.com
</VirtualHost

Make sure that apache is lisening for the correct port. Find where is says listen 80 and include  listen 8880
Comment: Hi Jeight, i have this on the httpd.conf:
ServerRoot "/data/csvn"
Include "data/conf/csvn_modules_httpd.conf"
Include "data/conf/csvn_main_httpd.conf"
Include "data/conf/csvn_logging.conf"
Include "data/conf/csvn_default_dirs_httpd.conf"
Include "data/conf/svn_viewvc_httpd.conf"
Include "data/conf/csvn_misc_httpd.conf"

When u say DocumentRoot i need to point to?
Comment: I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. DocumentRoot is the path that you want your domain to start in. So when people go to thisdomain.com it starts them using that path as root.
Comment: I don't think this does what the OP wants. The OP has a service already listing on port 8880, and wants it to appear on port 80. Maybe you could rewrite your answer to show how to use Apache as a reverse proxy to accomplish this?


Can the UK sabotage EU agreements prior to article 50

Question: Looking at how Belgium prevented the EU from having a trade deal with Canada, suppose the next trade deal with the US is to be signed after article 50 was invoked- could the UK prevent such a deal from going ahead?
Comment: Can you clarify "how Belgium prevented the EU from having a trade deal with Canada"? Us future people don't have the convenience of remembering then-topical news.
Answer: That is the whole issue behind the "no talks before article 50 is invoked" rule.
If talks were allowed, at any time the UK would be able to use the leverage of blocking the internal politics of the EU to get whatever it wanted.
Once art.  50 is invoked, there is a time limit. It means any blocking action by the UK will have due date, and that the EU will have the leverage of simply "letting the UK go" without any concessions after the two years, in case that the UK becomes a PITA.
Then the follow up question is "why would the UK invoke art. 50 if it means giving away this advantage?" Here the answer is internal, if art. 50 is not invoked and there are not ongoing negotiations (because the EU won't agree without art. 50), people at home will begin claiming that Theresa May is not complying with the Brexit referendum and she will lose her support.


What happened to the Qeng Ho?

Question: Does Mr. Vinge ever mention what happened to the Qeng Ho during the events of A Fire Upon the Deep?
Comment: Is there any reason to believe they were even aware of those events? What happened to the crabs living near the hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Atlantic during World War I?
Comment: @JohnO: As I recall, it first moved the zone boundaries down to make hyperthought possible on the Tine homeworld (formerly in Low Beyond), then up to engulf the Blight in Slow space; a small region of formerly Slow space must have experienced the Beyond for a matter of *minutes*. It's unlikely the Qeng Ho had any ships there at all, or would have noticed; the Beyond doesn't make slow ships fast or dumb machines smart, it makes fast ships and smart machines *possible*. (Although how tragic it would have been if someone had been attempting AI or FTL just then. "But it worked! I swear it!...")
Comment: The only reference I recall is that Pham Nuwen was recovered (cobbled together from several bodies, IIRC) from a ship in the Unthinking Depths by a bottom-lugger on a millennia-long mission.  I don't have the books to hand right now, though.
Comment: @Beta To be fair, when the antidote to the Blight was used, it messed up the zones entirely. The Qeng Ho could have easily woken up one morning to discover that FTL was possible, or that their ship's computer was suddenly sapient.
Comment: @Beta I agree that it only makes FTL possible not promised, however it's unclear just what is necessary for hyperthought/AI. Furthermore, what I describe wouldn't be "artificial intelligence" per se, but rather "emergent intelligence". Quite likely, P starts to = NP in the Beyond, and weird things could start to happen to Slow computers in such circumstances. Finally, while that is indeed how I remember it, I doubt the final configuration was necessarily consistent, there were likely small regions that had formerly been Slow but became Beyond, especially at the edge  of the change.
Answer: In A Fire Upon the Deep, the Qeng Ho only exists in Pham Nuwen's memory, which are known to be strongly influenced by Old One. Ravna hasn't heard of it, and Pham notes to her that

"So you looked through the Relay archives, and didn't find my Qeng Ho." My Qeng Ho. He paused. Remembering? Trying to remember? For an instant Ravna saw a gleam of panic on his face. Then it was gone, and there was just the lazy smile. "Can any of us imagine the archives of the Transcend, all the things Old One must know about humanity? Vrinimi Org should be grateful to Old One for explaining my origins; they could never have learned that by themselves.

And later:

"My own memories? (…) Yes, the Qeng Ho. Pham Nuwen, the great Trader of the Slowness. All the memories are still there. And for all I know, it's all the Old One's lie, an afternoon's fraud to fool the Relayers."

(We do know that the Qeng Ho did exist by author fiat, but that is not clearly said in-story — the biggest clue is that his knowledge of medieval technology and strategy turns out to be accurate. We know it from the author's notes, and from the existence of A Deepness in the Sky set in the same universe.)
It is known that

all humankind in the Beyond was descended from Nyjoran stock.

All evidence suggests that Nyjora was not founded by a Qeng Ho expedition. That's not something they remember, which would clash with the fact that humanity in Ravna's time does have histories dating from before Nyjora, going back all the way to Old Earth. Ravna even found a record of a Qeng Ho (?) "on Earth, a thousand years before space flight". Ravna even states that "there must
have been Asia-descended colonies", but has no knowledge record of an actual one. Pham's physical characteristics (which are likely to be more accurate than his memories, as his DNA was presumably intact) don't match Nyjorans' (he has "bright reddish brown [hair], a color [Ravna] had only seen in pre-Nyjoran histories"). Human names in the Beyond are consistently of Norwegian inspiration, contrasting with Qeng Ho's Chinese streak.
We're told that Earth and the Qeng Ho volume are "thousands of light-years in the Slowness". That would make escaping the Slow Zone a very unlikely event, barring major Zone surges that would leave a civilization in the Beyond for long enough to develop ultralight technology and expand. It's thus very plausible that apart from Pham's ship, Nyjorans were the only ones lucky enough to push in the right direction. Qeng Ho may be long dead, or it or its recognizable descendants may still be operating somewhere in the Slowness.

What happened to the Qeng Ho?


Who was Obito going to revive?

Question: I just watched the recent episode (391) and just prior to Obito being taken over by Black Zetsu, he seemed to have acknowledged his sins and was planning on using Rinne Rebirth - but for whom? It certainly wasn't for Madara because Black Zetsu wouldn't have gotten involved. Jiraya was on his mind, so was it him? Or was he planning on reviving all of the ninja who died during the war?
Comment: My guess is that he wanted to do the exact same thing that Pain made to revive the people on Konoha Village. It could not be Jiraya because when Pain revived everybody on the village, he specifically said that he cannot revive Jiraya because in order for the jutsu to work, the death must be recent.
Comment: @scubaFun there is no need for the death to be recent, otherwise Madara couldn't be revived, then you know the series has no purpose!
Comment: @krishna - Itachi's fan, it makes sense what you said, both on your comment and answer, I always thought that Pain was unable to revive Jiraya because of what I mentioned.
Answer: Obito was trying to revive all the people he killed in battle, the way same way as Nagato did.From here

Obito attempts to amend his mistakes by using the Samsara of Heavenly
  Life Technique to revive those he killed, noting he had finally
  understand why Nagato betrayed him.

For your question why Nagato didn't revive Jiraiya... My guess is the dead people will
 be revived from where their dead body is,

Since Jiraiya's body was far too deep in ocean that even Kabuto can't reach to
  collect his DNA, it would be waste to revive him. Even after reviving
  he will die because of water pressure. So Nagato didn't try to revive
  Jiraiya.

It is also mentioned in Jiraiya's wikia page

Later on, Kabuto revealed that he attempted to retrieve Jiraiya's body
  to bring him back through Summoning: Impure World Reincarnation, but
  it was far too deep in the ocean for him to reach without being
  crushed by the water pressure.
Comment: If dead people are going to be revived from where their dead body is, then how come people came alive from the hidden leaf village crushed by 'Shinra Tensei'. Their bodies also should be crushed inside, and if you revive them, they'll die in suffocation. Your second&third references are about 'Edo Tensei' only, it has nothing todo with 'Rinne Tensei'.
Comment: Tell your reasonings in comment, why you are downvoting the answer...

Who was Obito going to revive?


with a website created in Belgium, hosted on google app engine, which county's laws does my site need to obey?

Question: with a website created in Belgium, hosted on google app engine, which county's laws does my site need to obey? I know that as a company, you have to obey the law of the country where you are based, but how does that go for a website? Do you have to obey to the laws of every country from where inhabitants can visit your site?
Comment: IANAL but I suspect that if you violate the law of the hosting nation that your site will be shut down though you will not necessarily be subject to prosecution.
Comment: but as far as I know, app engine doesn't tell you where your site is hosted. I hope that following app engine's ToS means that I comply with any regulation sites hosted there should follow.
Comment: I have read the ToS and I don't see any explicit statements regarding this however all legal verbage is tied to US law. Google has to abide by US law therefor their content will. Posting snippet as answer.
Answer:
16.10 Governing Law. For City, County, and State Government Entities. If Customer is a city, county or state government entity, then the
  parties agree to remain silent regarding governing law and venue. For
  Federal Government Entities. If Customer is a federal government
  entity then the following applies: This Agreement will be governed by
  and interpreted and enforced in accordance with the laws of the United
  States of America without reference to conflict of laws. Solely to the
  extent permitted by federal law: (i) the laws of the State of
  California (excluding California's choice of law rules) will apply in
  the absence of applicable federal law; and (ii) FOR ANY DISPUTE
  ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THIS Agreement, THE PARTIES CONSENT TO
  PERSONAL JURISDICTION IN, AND THE EXCLUSIVE VENUE OF, THE COURTS IN
  SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. For All Other Entities. If Customer is
  any entity not set forth in Section 16.10(a) or (b) then the following
  applies: This Agreement is governed by California law, excluding that
  state's choice of law rules. FOR ANY DISPUTE ARISING OUT OF OR
  RELATING TO THIS Agreement, THE PARTIES CONSENT TO PERSONAL
  JURISDICTION IN, AND THE EXCLUSIVE VENUE OF, THE COURTS IN SANTA CLARA
  COUNTY, CALIFORNIA.

Source: Google App Engine ToS
Answer: In most cases, it's probably hosted in the country your Google account is affiliated with.  What types of laws are you worried about violating? The U.S. has started holding foreign web companies to U.S. laws if their intended audience are U.S. citizens. It doesn't matter where your servers are located. So if your site targets U.S. consumers and breaks U.S. laws, then you could face prosecution in the U.S. This was enacted in response to internet gambling sites which were hosted in the Bahamas.
Recently, some U.S. lobbies and politicians have also begun pushing for an internet blacklist bill that would allow the government (and private companies whose influential lobbies are backing this bill) to arbitrarily shutdown access to websites without due process or any opportunity for the accused to defend itself. In fact, even just making reference to a site on this blacklist would be cause for your site to be added to the blacklist as well.
In this case, if you're not in the U.S., you won't face prosecution, but your site would effectively cease to exist for U.S. web users. It's basically an American version of the Great Firewall of China and similar censorship infrastructure that exists in Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. (the technology for which was conveniently sold to these repressive governments by American companies).
Even though the bill (which copyright lobbies had attempted to push through congress in different guises over the years) was finally passed by the Senate this year, a temporary hold has been placed on it by senator Ron Wyden. But if the overwhelming opposition to it by the general public as well as tech industry heavyweights like Google, Yahoo!, eBay, the EFF, and the founders of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare, as well as American Express, Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and others are unable to get the proposed law revoked, then many sites that allows user-generated content, like YouTube, Twitter, etc. would all be in a lot of trouble.
Comment: Let's hope that SOPA gets revoked then, I'm not from the US, so I have no representative to call, but I signed several petitions, aned am telling everyone I know to do so.
Comment: Here is what my site will do, it's content are basically a lot of youtube videos, users can place youtube videos on the site, but only if the holder of their account in my site, is also the holder of the account that posted the vid on youtube, this is for non-legal reasons. I declare in my ToS that youtube's policies that apply to their videos, also apply on my site, but I have no idea what I should do regarding written content, i'm thinking to about placing that under a creative commons license, or something like that, I just started figuring this stuff out, so I don't know much about it.
Comment: @Frederik: AFAICT, you don't have much to worry about there. You can specify any kind of license for content that users post directly to your site, as long as your TOS lets users know this beforehand. And YouTube has never had a problem with other sites embedding their videos. They welcome it. So the only thing you have to worry about is if users start posting potentially illegal content to your site. The internet blacklist bill would apply to your site in this case.


Is there a recording of Chopin's "Winter Wind" with the drums added, as heard in Your Lie In April?

Question: I've looked everywhere for that Etude in A minor Op. 25 No. 11 with drums, as that song sounded so epic in the anime!! Any idea if that version of the song is purchasable or located anywhere online?
Answer: There is an album of the pieces actually from the show, called Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso: Our Music Book. Unfortunately, based on a version I found on YouTube, it seems like the Winter Wind on that album is just a standard rendition of the piece (presumably from the main recital). On that basis, I suspect that there isn't an officially released copy of the version with drums.


Migrate only customer and sales orders tables from Magento 2.1 to 2.4.1

Question: I need to migrate customer and sales tables from Magento 2.1 to 2.4.1. What would be the best way to do it ? As i know, magento provides migration tool. From the manuel, i see this tool is used for migration from magento 1 to magento 2.
Answer: Yuksel
You can use Magento default data-migration-tool to do it. But from my experience, the configuration is pretty complicated and many errors can happen! I would suggest you hire a highly-professional third-party to avoid all the hassles.


Would generating the 'digital signature' of a very short message be less work if you encrypted the message instead of it's hash?

Question: Imagine one's computer clearsigned a message by encrypting the message with one's private key and storing the two (the plaintext and the ciphertext) together in a folder (and publishing the public key). Would the encrypted message that is serving as the digital signature (whether or not that would be correct term for it) be as short as the result of a hash being  generated and encrypted (which is the normal way), in the case where the message is very short and therefore, since there is no need to generate a hash at any stage, be quicker?
Comment: Err, we don't encrypt with the public key, why do you need this? hashing the message was part of the secure signatures since the first true signature Rabin signature. Visit [Should we sign-then-encrypt, or encrypt-then-sign?](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/q/5458/18298)
Answer: Fixing the question
"clearsigned" is PGP or S/MIME vocabulary. The correct wording in a cryptographic context is signed with appendix, meaning the message remains unchanged and the signature is separate.
The question's "encrypting the message with one's private key" is a serious error in terminology. Encryption is never with a private key. Decryption often is. When we do asymmetric encryption, that's always with a public key. When we do symmetric encryption, that's with a secret key. Because the intend of encryption is making data unintelligible to adversaries, and adversaries are assumed to know the public key, which would allow to undo the "encryption".
It is meant signing the message with one's private key per textbook RSA. We know it's RSA since encrypting the message with one's private key is just not possible in other asymmetric encryption schemes supported by PGP (and to my knowledge S/MIME).
Also, it's not stated the public key must be published thru a channel of trusted integrity. If it's not, an adversary can generate a public/private key pair and do just as the legitimate sender does, with any message of their choice. The message and signature need not go thru a channel of trusted integrity: the whole point of digital signature is avoiding that past establishment of a trusted public key.
And, the normal/right way of signing with RSA is not just hashing and signing. When using a common hash such as SHA-256, for this to be secure by the common criteria of Existential UnForgeability under Chosen Message Attack, we need at least to pad the hash (as in RSASSA-PKCS1-v1_5, or RSA-FDH), or (slightly) better use RSASSA-PSS.
Finally the title asks about less work, and the question asks about if the signature would be as short, which are different things.
So I'll rewrite the question as:

Assume we published the public key $(n,e)$ thru a channel with integrity. Imagine we use our computer to sign with appendix a short message $m$ by applying the textbook RSA private key function directly, as $s\gets m^d\bmod n$, storing the message $m$ and the signature $s$ together in a folder. Would the digital signature be as short as signing the message the normal way, that is with a signature padding involving a hash? And would it require less work?

Answering the fixed question
TL;DR: Yes, yes, but don't do that.
What's proposed would be just as short: in both cases the signatures adds the same $\left\lceil\log_2(n)\right\rceil$ bits. It would require less work, because we do not have to hash and pad.
However the work saving is negligible, since padding is typically much less costly than the RSA private key operation. Even the saving on signature verification is typically marginal.
Another bad news is that there's a severe size limitation to the message: $m$ must be at most $\left\lfloor\log_2(n)\right\rfloor$ bit. We are talking less than 256 bytes with RSA-2048.
The apparently good news is that we can save significantly on size by modifying the method slightly: we can remove the message itself from our folder/transmission, for it can be recovered¹ as a byproduct of signature verification, using that $m=s^e\bmod n$. We would be in good company doing this: the original RSA article did just that.
But the terminally bad news is that the signature system becomes susceptible to many plausible attacks. That's entirely independently of if we remove $m$ or not: the adversary is assumed to be able to change $m$ at will (else why would we sign?). Textbook RSA signature (without padding) still offers some assurance if the signers generates the messages that they sign all by themselves, and there is a lot of redundancy in the messages, and it's carefully checked over the full width of $m$ by the verifiers. But if we remove some of that, all hell can break loose.

¹ That recovery is exact if $m$ is of known size. If not, we can get back $m$ including it's size, by loosing some of the maximum message size. One possibility eating just 1 bit is to left-pad the message with a single 1 bit on signature, and remove that bit on message recovery.
Comment: In addition to PGP, **S/MIME also has clear-signing**. Both of these were designed for email decades ago when people naively thought email would be used to communicate useful information to recipients rather than to spam, phish, infect, spy on, harass and otherwise attack and harm people as is now the case.


What are the environmental requirements of an Arduino?

Question: I'd like to use an Arduino Yún in a somewhat outdoor environment (in a metal box on a truck).  I think I've seen that the temperature requirements of the Uno are -40 °C to +85 °C, but I can't find that information about the Yún.  It would be nice to know where to find information about the temperature and humidity safe working requirements for every Arduino model.
Answer: The AtMega32u4 (the chip that drives the Arduino Yun) has an operating requirement of -40 to +85, so if you go outside that range, you will definitely void warranty (which is not to say it will break, of course!). See datasheet at http://www.atmel.com/devices/atmega32u4.aspx
A datasheet for the AR9331 seems to say that it only works down to 0°C ( http://www.eeboard.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/08/AR9331.pdf page 305, "Commercial Case Temperature") - this seems awfully high for a minimum temperature.
While that does not mean that, inside that range, you are safe, I would GUESS that you probably are - I would guess that the AtMega32u4 or AR9331 is going to be the most delicate part in there.
Of course, to get a definitive answer, you (or someone) would have to check the specs on each part.
Comment: +1 Useful albeit incomplete aswer. You are unlikely to void warranty on temperature excursion alone. I do not know why anyone would downvote this.
Comment: @Gerben. Indeed - but if one component is specified at  eg -40 to +85 and another at eg 0 -125 you can be confident [tm] that the overall figures is not outside 0 - 85 - unless extra work and specific design renders it otherwise. .
Comment: That's only for the chip itself. Since the chip might have a different expansion coefficients as the PCB, the soldered connection might tear/crack over time. Same goes for all the other components on the Yun's board.


How to feed tuples of multiple features to the input layer of a Neural Network

Question: I have a dataset for which every object has multiple features, and some of those features exist in tuples, like as in list of $(x, y)$ coordinates for each object. I know I can create an input layer of number of neurons equal to number of features of each object, but how do I pass these 'tuple' sets to the input. Do I break them and append to create a longer list of features, but will that not lead to loss in some correlation between these 2 sets of points from tuples?
Comment: See this question and its answers: https://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/32685/feature-extraction-from-a-scatter-plot/32686#32686
Answer: This sounds like an ideal situation for a complex valued neural net. A readable introduction is https://makeyourownneuralnetwork.blogspot.com/2016/05/complex-valued-neural-networks.html
Answer: You can try dimensionality reduction on those tuples.
Draw each tuple-valued feature separately on a 2-dimensional plane. If the (x,y) points follow a line (maybe a curved line), then the tuple can be replaced with a single value. One point on the line is taken as an origin, and all other (x, y)-points are replaced with the distances to the origin along the line. If the line is curved, the distances are also curved, not the Euclidean distances.
If (x,y) points in a feature don't follow a line, but spread inside a two dimensional region then it is safe to treat them as two separate features.


What is a good site for book recommendations?

Question: It seems this site does not allow book recommendations. Where is a good place to get recommendations from people who are very familiar with the sci-fi genre?
Comment: Closing this as duplicate since the other is more up-to-date.
Answer: Our chat room is always open for book recommendations. And we have a fortnightly Recommendation Chat Event that is specific to book/movie/comicbook/whateveryouwant recommendations. The next event is scheduled for this Wednesday (Dec 28th) and happens again every two weeks after that.
Answer: As OghmaOsiris mentioned, the chat room is a great place for sci-fi recommendations.
Another possibility is the Literature Stackexchange beta site.  While they are not focused on sci-fi, they do allow book recommendation requests on a trial basis, with specific criteria.