How to infuse vanilla into bourbon (or other spices into liquor) using low heat without reducing alcohol proof?

Question: I want to make and serve a vanilla bourbon, so I want to maintain as much of the alcohol as possible--ideally all of it. I've tried nitrous and room temperature infusions with various amounts of vanilla and over various amounts of time. The flavor isn't as strong as I'd like in the amount of time I'd like. (I'm using just the beans and no sheath because the sheath is lending a tobacco like flavor I don't want.) So I was thinking to try heat to get a stronger flavor faster as I've gotten more pronounced vanilla flavors in shorter time when baking it into desert sauces. I figured that if I add the vanilla beans into the bourbon and heat it on low (below 174 degrees F, the boiling point of alcohol), let that go for x time (I'm thinking less than 10 minutes?), then I should maintain the proof? I tried in a large pot but it boiled at 150F, which I think may have been due to large surface area? I plan on then cooling the mix and letting it infuse for 3-5 days at room temperature (and then compare to the ones I infused at room temperature without any heat). It may be just this simple, but I'm getting a lot of mixed input on the internet.
I was also thinking that if it is reduced significantly, perhaps I could just add the infused mixture into straight bourbon to bring the proof back up.
(Note, I have seen the USDA TABLE OF NUTRIENT RETENTION FACTORS but since this deals with cooking alcohol into food rather than on its own, I figured it may be different.)
(I have also heard of people using sous vide for infusing liquor with heat, but I don't really have those supplies at my disposal). If all else fails, perhaps I will just make a vanilla extract from scratch using bourbon and then use that, but it may be too aggressive.)
Comment: Have you tried sealing the Bourbon and Vanilla bean(s) in a vacuum bag and heating gently sous vide?
Answer: Just put a vanilla bean in the bottle of booze and leave it there until the booze is used up. I always have a bottle of rum with a bean it.


How to Study the Suttas?

Question: I practice the Theravada tradition. There are a lot of suttas, and I don't know how to go about studying them. Can I please get some pointers or guidelines on how I can study them? For example, which suttas to start with, or maybe some kind of overall introduction on the suttas, or perhaps a technique in studying the suttas.
Comment: I'm converting this to a wiki, since it seems to be a request for various, complimentary answers.
Comment: [Chronological or other sequence for beginners](http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/q/4112/254) has several helpful answers.
Answer: I recommend the book In The Buddha's Words by Bhikkhu Bodhi. It is an anthology or selection of translated suttas from the Pali canon. It is also thematically and systematically arranged. You can look at the Table of Contents on the Amazon page I linked. It is 512 pages long, which is quite alright. PDF version here.
I quote from the Preface:

In an ongoing series of lectures I began giving at Bodhi Monastery in
  New Jersey in January 2003,1 devised a scheme of my own to organize
  the contents of the Majjhima Nikaya. This scheme unfolds the Buddha's
  message progressively, from the simple to the difficult, from the
  elementary to the profound. Upon reflection, I saw that this scheme
  could be applied not only to the Majjhima Nikaya, but to the four
  Nikayas as a whole. The present book organizes suttas selected from
  all four Nikayas within this thematic and progressive framework.
This book is intended for two types of readers. The first are those
  not yet acquainted with the Buddha's discourses who feel the need for
  a systematic introduction. For such readers, any of the Nikayas is
  bound to appear opaque. All four of them, viewed at once, may seem
  like a jungle—entangling and bewildering, full of unknown beasts—or
  like the great ocean—vast, tumultuous, and forbidding. I hope that
  this book will serve as a map to help them wend their way through the
  jungle of the suttas or as a sturdy ship to carry them across the
  ocean of the Dhamma.
Comment: Thank you so much!this is amazing Ruben.I may try to find it in print.
Comment: @Orion I suggest marking ruben's as the answer here. It is really most excellent.
Answer: As Reuben2020 says, In the Buddha's Words is a really great place to start. Could I also recommend Rupert Gethin's book Sayings of the Buddha. It's a collection of sutra's from the Sutta Pitaka of the Pali Canon. There is a couple of page introduction before each sutta which puts the text into context which I found extremely useful.
Good luck with your reading.
Answer: I also suggest starting with an anthology if one is not much familiar with suttas or the dhamma.
Then, I suggest read the Majjhima. I think it is the best option for the first nikaya. The suttas are not as long as digha (that contains much more context narrative), but long enough to not be raw and provide a nice reading. Also they are so mixed that it is kind of anthology of buddhism on its own, containing just so many important suttas.
After it, i think it's more of a personal drive, and its easier to read other nikayas in parallel. Since samyutta is somewhat organized by content, it can also be used to study a specific content more in depth (and anguttara to a certain extant, since its numerically organized). But i suggest first doing a complete read of each nikaya, to know what is there (and what isn't).
These would be the main 4 nikayas. I'm not very familiar with the Khuddaka nikaya, so i can't really comment on it for now.
Answer: I think Dharmafarer's sutra discovery series is the best starting point. (http://www.themindingcentre.org/dharmafarer/sutta-discovery/sutta-discovery-volume-1-9)
Maybe you can start your study with the trilinear Suttas (http://www.themindingcentre.org/dharmafarer/sutta-discovery/trilinear-suttas)
Answer: There are three study types in alagaddūpama sutta.
The pali and it's sequence, of that sutta, same to kīṭāgirisutta, that I re-translated in this answer.
By kīṭāgirisutta, you must choose a right teacher, that I answered in this answer.
Also, there is a layman-beginner course, in this answer, too. But that course is what the skillful teacher, in this answer, will teach you, so you shouldn't do it yourself alone. Why? Because I have doing it for 10 years, but I still not even achieve appanā-jhānā.  In comparison, my current teacher from pa-auk, who just started to study buddhism since 6 years ago. However, he is one of pa-auk teacher now, because he study buddhism from a professional teachers who have all qualities in this answer, from pa-auk.
Right way will give you a shortcut way.
Answer: Orion,
There is a nice explaining by Upasaka John Bullitt, generous giver of ATI:
Befriending the Suttas - Tips on Reading the Pali Discourses
which does not require much to add at all in the questions regard.
Maybe a random Sutta as restarter today?
[Note: This is a gift of Dhamma and not meant for commercial purpose or other wordily gains]
Answer: The website ReadingFaithfully.org is a great place to start. It promotes the idea of daily, ongoing engagement with the Suttas.
Getting started: https://readingfaithfully.org/about/
Core concepts: https://readingfaithfully.org/2011/09/25/the-five-ps-of-sutta-practice/
Canonical Collections: https://readingfaithfully.org/canonical-collections-for-practice/
Anthologies: https://readingfaithfully.org/anthologies/
Choosing a text: https://readingfaithfully.org/texts-for-practice-based-on-your-current-knowledge-level/

How to Study the Suttas?


Where can I try sea cucumbers in Taiwan?

Question: Apparently sea cucumbers are quite a delicacy in many Asian countries. I was wondering if anyone knows of good places to try sea cucumber in Taiwan, or if there are good places to purchase them?
Comment: There is nothing strange about sea cucumbers. I don't know about Taiwan, but in Singapore you can buy it in any supermarket, and many restaurants will serve it. I've also had it in Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. Definitely not something you need to go to dodgy alleys for.
Comment: Maybe some places around 'snake alley' if you're looking for that sort of thing.
Comment: @ErwinBolwidt I've had it (sea slugs) in Toronto as well- it's fairly common (and overrated, in my opinion, except perhaps as an aphrodisiac, where perception matters). The dried/rehydrated variety in particular should be available anywhere.
Answer: It's not uncommon, so you can buy them in any traditional market. There are, however, the real one and the "fake" one. I will recommend going to a decent restaurant and order a dish with it. Most fancier Chinese restaurants should have it.
Comment: How can one distinguish between the real and fake ones?
Comment: The fake one is a bit harder, and will stay the same after cooking. The real one will be smaller after heating. Also, since the fake one is artificial, the spikes might look more uniform than the real one.

This is a video regarding it. The left one is the fake one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78ux_xUcFP8
Answer: You can find sea cucumber in markets near harbor or hotel restaurant. The price is around NT$400/600g in port markets, but it depends on some factors. In hotel restaurant, a set of sea cucumber in Evergreen Hotel is about NT$2000.
I think there are meals of sea cucumber in most 5-star hotel. If you can read Chinese, have a check on this website for this dish.


How to play against higher rated (much stronger) players

Question: I am about to play a master. This is an important game, and I want to win it. What should I do and how to prepare? Is there something special I can do, such as special openings, sharp lines, etc.?
Comment: What ratings are we talking about?
Comment: @user1583209 This is Slobo's FIDE profile (from another question): https://ratings.fide.com/profile/987751  Rating 1542 (as of last report of course)
Answer: Unless you have gotten much stronger than your 1542 FIDE rating, you have to realize that your odds of winning are not very good. It is fine to be realistic, but just do not let that overwhelm your emotions.
You want to keep calm, and do not be afraid. I would not be afraid at all if I were playing Magnus Carlsen. Oh sure, I know what the result is likely to be as I am not crazy, but there is no point in having any fear, and I would just try to play the best chess I can.
It helps if you are white, but if possible, I would aim for a position where I can reasonably gambit a pawn, or two, for a wild tactical position. If you play a quiet position where your master opponent's stronger positional skill is not challenged, you are destined to lose. On the other hand, even low-level masters can make tactical errors, and over look something.
If you have a lot of time to prepare for him, like in a one-game-per-week tournament, go over every game of his you can get your hands on with a computer. It is not likely, but you might find some opening move that he has played that is a hidden blunder, and if so, you could aim for that position again.
Although rare, lightening does strike. Here is a game that I still recal reading during my first year of playing. This is from the 1980 U.S. Open, and a 1621 player, W Stanley Davis, beat GM John Fedorowicz, who was rated 2479 at the time, so good luck. Please note that it was an aggressive, tactical game.
This is from the December 1980 issue of Chess Life, and I took it from the free archives the USCF now puts out online.
Comment: the race is not always to the swift, the battle not always to the strong, but that is the way my bookie says I should bet.  anyone trying to beat a much higher player of the master level would be foolish to do it with a gambit/sacs and slash and burn attacking approach.
Answer: Objectively speaking there is nothing special you can do.
Just do the regular preparation:

refresh your opening repertoires or specifically the opening you expect to have on the board
analyze your opponent's playing style and if possible play so as to avoid their strengths (e.g. play open tactical position if you see that your opponent prefers closed positions)
do regular tactics training etc.
eat healthy food, go to bed early, do some sports
play as good as you can...

If the opponent is much much stronger, don't expect too much. You are not going to do wonders by just a preparation.
If you like to gamble, you could prepare a non-standard side-line opening which might surprise your opponent and if you are lucky, you might get an advantage. Still that's risky as typically those openings are somewhat unsound if your opponent knows what they are doing.
Answer: In his book "Chess for Tigers", Simon Webb says that the best thing to do is to drag the elephant into the swamp. In other words, aim for complications, where the stronger player has a chance to make a mistake.
In a similar vein, a local player wrote an article about his rise in rating, and his advice was to make the stronger player beat you.
Both of these methods have worked for me to upset stronger players.
Answer: Exactly how you'd play any other game. Adjusting from the strongest elements of your game (that is: the ones that you play normally) will only make you play worse than your rating, reducing your chances of winning.
Answer: It depends how good you are.
Are you a near master?  Are you much weaker?
If the player is much stronger you need to play for the draw and make him take chances which cause him to lose.
If you know the master and he always uses certain openings then for sure brush up on those and what defenses/attacks you might use.
If you know what his style is then you can try for openings that deny him his natural advantage.
If  you know his personality you might be able to find a way to throw him off his game with things off the board.
Get a good nights sleep.  Do not worry about the game.
Relax and play your best to maximise your chances.
There is no guarantee that you will beat anybody.
Just play your best and play solid not taking stupid chances.  Go into the game being willing to take a draw.
But IF the opportunity arises then be willing to go for the win.
Fischer played to win every game from the first move.  For more ordinary players that style is way too risky. Especially if you are playing someone much better than you.
Answer: These two general strategies might be effective:

Get into a tactical melee. In a slow positional game where the 2nd-best move is only a little worse than the best move, you're practically bound to lose. But if you get into a sharp position where a blunder is fatal, and opponent blunders first, you can still win.
Scorched earth policy hoping to get into a very drawish position while exchanging everything. If opponent is much better than you, they might feel pressured to win, and if the position simply doesn't allow for it then they might overpress and lose.

That said, since they are much stronger than you, you should expect to lose.
Comment: I didn't downvote, but I question option 2. a strong player will only allow trades on favorable terms, and the OP can, without realizing it, end up trading down into an endgame that is trivially won for the master.
Answer: Play aggressively and in positions you're comfortable with. They expect you to play passively and those are easy wins for them.
In most situations you would steer towards tactics over position. Tactical ability peaks fairly young while positional knowledge tends to grow over time. A master is most likely going to be past his tactical peak and relying more on his positional play. It would be almost unheard of for a player like you to beat a master positionally but it's always possible they could make a tactical mistake.
If you have examples of their games you can prep lines using an engine. However, you should make sure you know what you're doing. Don't play a line just because an engine or book says it's good.


Which game system was the computer game HeroQuest based on?

Question: If I remember correctly, the computer game HeroQuest was based on rules from a tabletop RPG. Does anyone know which RPG's rules it was based on?
Answer: It was based on the classic Games Workshop / MB board game Hero Quest.  (This was one of the better GW releases of the era.)  GW released an Advanced version which came closer to roleplay; it allowed for a GM and some ability development.  Still clearly a board game though.
Comment: A useful video review of what makes Hero Quest so good is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx8sl2uC46A
Comment: I played the board game back in the day. It was more or less a tabletop RPG played *as* a board game, with relatively fewer rules and less DM fiat, since there were only a limited number of things a player was allowed to attempt. I think there were less than 10 spells total in the game that one could learn, and maybe half a dozen weapons.
Answer: The HeroQuest computer game is an implementation of the GW/Milton Bradley board game, Hero Quest.
It draws heavily from the shared tropes of the Warhammer line of games, including Warhammer Fantasy Battle and especially Warhammer FRP. It shares some minor mechanical similarities with WFRP, but is not actually the same system.
There also was an Advanced HeroQuest. It used a similar ruleset and compatible components, but was more involved.
The whole HeroQuest system is out of print.
There is a HeroQuest RPG, but it's unrelated to the board game, being instead related to RuneQuest. It is currently in print in a 2nd edition, it's first edition being the revision of the slightly older version called Hero Wars.


Why don't messenger carousel auto slide?

Question: I had read some article that we shouldn't use auto slide carousel in website but I have question on Facebook messenger platform since many ppl use carousel to present menu to user. Should it auto slide to make user know that it has many menu or it shouldn't slide ??
Comment: It's unclear what you're asking. Can you link to the article you reference? And post a screenshot of the piece of Messenger that you're asking about?
Comment: Sorry, Here's link that I read about carousel in website. https://conversionxl.com/blog/dont-use-automatic-image-sliders-or-carousels/
But I don't see any article on Autoslide carousel in messenger yet.
Comment: And here's some example of messenger carousel https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/send-messages/template/generic/
Comment: Questions asking why a specific piece of software does / doesn't do something are questions we can only speculate on. You'll need to contact the company themselves - maybe on a support forum - to get the actual answer.
Answer: Auto-scroll / auto-advance is probably inappropriate for a Facebook Messenger carousel UI component. I'll get to why below, but first some context...
In the comments below your question you added some important context: a UX critique of traditional website carousel sliders (Fig. 1) and a link to Facebook Messenger developer documentation for a carousel payload template (Fig. 2). I'm including screenshots from those pages below for context.

Fig. 1: Traditional Website Carousel

Fig. 2: Carousel of Facebook Messenger generic templates
You are correct that recent UX articles discourage designers from using carousel sliders (Fig. 1) on websites. Common criticisms are:

Sliders monopolize screen space
Sliders hide content
Auto-advancing sliders can require users to wait for a slide to return
Auto-advancing sliders can cause a user to click the wrong slide by advancing during a touch or click interaction

The Facebook Messenger carousel of generic templates  (Fig. 2) is a different kind of carousel. It is very similar to carousel style advertising elements that appear in the Facebook mobile app. The intent of the Messenger carousel is to allow a user to scroll through a menu of up to 10 closely related options or purchases, for example a set of t-shirts available in a variety of different colors.
A Facebook Messenger carousel is different from a website carousel, both in how it is encountered by user and how it is structured. A website carousel slider appears in the context of a web page, while a Facebook Messenger carousel is a standard UI component people expect to encounter in the Messenger app. A website carousel is often a slideshow of pictures, while a Facebook Messenger carousel is intended to show a clear set of options with clear action buttons (in the example "view details" and "shop now"). Because Facebook has built this UI component into their Messenger platform, users expect to see it and are trained to use it by Facebook. There may be better UX options, but it is likely Facebook has done significant experimentation to determine this UI component delivers results for advertisers on their platform.
Why Auto-scroll is Probably Inappropriate
Since each item in the carousel is interactive, auto-scroll is probably inappropriate. Auto-scroll requires the user to learn the speed of the scroll so they know when it is safe to tap the button. That may be fun in a game, but not in a shopping experience. Using the t-shirt shopping example, Auto-scroll could cause a user who intends to pick a grey shirt to tap the blue shirt if the carousel advances while the user is in the middle of tapping the "Shop Now" button. Imagine how much frustration that might cause as the user has to figure out how to remove the unwanted item from their cart. The sale might be lost.
Possible Alternatives to Auto-scroll
Google's Material Design guidelines have a section covering scrollable tabs, a related interaction pattern that is worth reading about. Google talks about two overflow patterns when there are more tabs than fit on the screen: allowing a tab to peek and showing a more arrow. It may be that Facebook's Messenger platform handles this sort of hinting for you or that you, as the developer, can force some sort of hinting. A "peek" hint might look like Fig. 3 below where a full message is shown and a slice of the next scrollable message peeks from off the page.

Fig. 3: Peeking item concept
A visual indicator like a more arrow may also work.
A quick animated bounce when the carousel is first rendered might be used to show the UI component scrolls horizontally and might be visually fun. The animation might repeat until the carousel is scrolled for the first time.


Why does milk contained in cartons of milk expand?

Question: In the morning, I went to the fridge to drink some chocolate milk. At night, when I took out the same carton of milk, the packaging seems expanded, like some kind of air is inside. Explain please !
Comment: Fermentation takes weeks to happen, and you would know it happened if your milk was spoiled. A lot of times what happens is just that the cold air inside the jug warms up and expands enough to bulge out the sides of the carton.
Comment: There are probably several reasons. One that I can think of is that spoilage bacteria may have introduced gases that increased the pressure inside the carton. Probably that's why you notice the bulging.
Comment: @user16893 say you have 1L of air at +4C temp (T=277K) and move it at constant pressure to room temp of +24C (T=297K). You should be able to calculate change in volume as PV=nRT, where P=const
Comment: Perhaps the culprit here is the packaging, not the contents.  Since you say 'carton', I'm assuming the ones with a square cross section, no?  So they're shipped, and on the shelves, packed tightly together and so hold their square shape.  Put a single carton in the refrigerator, and the sides slump a bit under the weight of the contents, since for economic reasons they're made no stronger than necessary.
Answer: The likeliest culprit here is fermentation carried out by bacteria present in the milk. Fermentation of a sugar, for example glucose, releases carbon dioxide (a gas) :
$$C_{6}H_{12}O_{6} \rightarrow 2 C_{2}H_{5}OH + 2 CO_{2}$$
Since this reaction produces a gas, the gas builds up in the milk carton causing it to bulge. This is not, generally, a good sign, make sure to smell the milk before drinking it!
Comment: Do the bacteria in milk undergo ethanol fermentation? It's always been my understanding that homolactic fermentation predominates, though that isn't actually based on anything.
Comment: @canadianer no idea, to be honest. I'd be interested in the answer if you look into it though!


Why does dimethyl ether have a bond angle bigger than 109.5 degrees?

Question: Why does dimethyl ether have a bond angle bigger than 109.5 degrees, in contradiction with VSEPR theory?
Comment: Due to replusion between the two methyl groups, according to Competition Science Vision, October 2008, page 1033.
Comment: Related: http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/18697
Answer: In case of $\ce{Me2O}$, the positive deviation of the bond angle can be explained on the basis of steric crowding of two methyl groups.
There are other contradiction too like this:
In case of $\ce{(SiH3)2O}$, the huge bond angle increase is mainly due to back bonding and partly due to steric repulsion.
Answer: Let us compare the $\ce{C-O-C}$ bond angle in dimethyl ether (110.3°) with H-O-H bond angle in $\ce{H2O}$ (104.5°).
The bond angle in dimethyl ether is greater due to the following reason. The $\ce{CH3}$ functional group is many times heavier than the H atom (both act as side atoms). So the effect of lone pair - lone pair repulsion in $\ce{H2O}$ is pronounced in $\ce{H2O}$ whereas due to heavy molecular weight the repulsive forces aren't able to fully force $\ce{CH3}$ functional groups to compress them.


How can I delete my profile / answers?

Question: I would like to know how can I delete my profile , along with all my answers / comments or any other trace of my persona from this website .
I have tried sending a mail to the specified mail address - but no luck.
Even if it is ironic that the first question I ever ask on this site is how to disappear from here - Any guidance would be greatly appreciated
Answer: Please follow these instructions. If that is what you tried to do (I am not sure what email you refer to) and it didn't work let me know and I will delete your account personally.
Note that your contributions will likely be anonymized and retained, not deleted.
Sorry to see you go and best of luck.
PS also please clarify if this is your account as well or is there reason you share IP and mostly upvote each other.
Comment: @krembo99 as far as I know by posting you are putting your content under [cc-wiki](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) and in line with it site is under no obligation to let you retract submissions. This is not my personal opinion, I just relay how I was told such cases are handled. I thought I asked quite directly (no insinuating whatsoever) if that is your account as well. If you say it's not - good enough for me.
Comment: @krembo99: The appropriate reference here is actually the Stack Exchange [Terms of Service](http://stackexchange.com/legal/terms-of-service) (Section 3 -  Subscriber Content): by contributing to the site, you grant us a license to use your contributions, *even if* you later remove them. The CC BY-SA license is sort of stacked on this, and works to ensure that *we* don't abuse contributions (by, say, trying to prevent others from re-using them). If you request it, we will agree to remove your name from a post or from the site entirely - but mass-deletion is disruptive and will not be done.
Comment: Thank you for your answer . The e-mail address I am referring to is : firstname.lastname@example.com .
Comment: Is there no way to delete all my answers and comments ? even going and deleting one by one ? as for the IP - I am not so sure for what reason would I need to clarify anything, and I am definitely not sure what you are insinuating or with whom exactly do I share IP - but If you insist knowing , I am frequently in china where many website are blocked/monitored/censured and almost all foreigners here use more or less the same proxy for safe access . if there is another user here from china - a shared IP might occur.
Comment: FWIW: We got your email, @krembo99 - but most of us were asleep at the time. Please be patient, we'll respond in due time.
Comment: @Shog9 - thank you. I just want to know about the issue of deleting the content before any further action. the CC-wiki license as intended (with attribution required) is regarding the content that I wrote .with anonymous content - no contribution to the author can be made.
Comment: @Shog9 thank you for the clarifications both here and in the thoughtful and more detailed mail regarding the other issues.I will further contemplate on future actions -  But I also think now you would need to invent a new "badge" for me to honor one of the greatest achievements of my life. Loosing more than 300 points and 2 badges in less than 24 hours is a record that I dare to say no one else can ever break on SE ! :-)
Comment: @krembo99: [lest you feel too bad about the lost rep...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/03/important-reputation-rule-changes/#comment-45382)
Comment: @Shog9 - Couldn´t care less for those. It was a failed attempt to humor myself. the other issue though is rather annoying . Having a name, questions, and comments that are not mine  associated with me makes me wonder who is the poor someone it was "robbed" from. Because someone else inevitably wrote them .
Comment: @Shog9 :-) sorry, I just saw now that it was a link (screen contrast totally off)  .So I guess I will have to achieve something better in life . :-)

How can I delete my profile / answers?


Why are regular push-ups the norm?

Question: With knuckle push-ups having the two additional benefits of building up wrist strength and knuckle toughness compared to the convention push up, why aren't knuckle push-ups considered the "standard" push up?
Comment: In short - they are easier, yet enough difficult.
Answer: Knuckle push ups don't ''build wrist strength'' they just teach you how to stabilize better your push up, palm push ups be it with fingers pointing forward or backward or with palms up all build actual wrist strength and produce small forearm hypertrophy through isometric stretch while knuckle push ups don't.
also doing push ups on your knuckles elevates you slightly making the actual push up even easier, try doing normal weighted push ups and weighted knuckle push ups, you will be able to push more weight with the knuckle variation.
knuckle push ups are never better or harder, they just require more stabilization and more pain tolerance.
If you want to strengthen your knuckles then push ups are a sub-par exercise for this goal, something better would be actually punching hard things with progression.
Start by punching buckets of water,then sand then wood then walls and so on to create micro fractures in your bones and make them grow thicker and denser.
Knuckle push ups are only good if your goal is to do finger push ups, you start doing them on knuckles then on all fingers and then slowly use less and less fingers until you can do 1 finger push ups. Other than that they don't serve any other purpose and are mostly useless.
If your goal is to get stronger wrist and big forearms then direct wrist work is needed; pronations,supinations,extensions,flexions,adductions,abductions and isometric holds.
Training the wrist can be done with your own body weight,hammers,dumbbells,your own other hand,tables,chairs,ropes,rings,bars,barbells,bands and even the weight of other people. As long as each workout is harder than the previous one you will get strength and muscle gains regardless of the method used.
Comment: I would say you toughen your knuckles, you don't strengthen them.
Answer: If your maximum is under 50 pushups, do 200 a day. If your maximum is above 75, do 300 pushups a day. Repeat the ODD/EVEN routine for a total of 10 days. Then take three days off and do NO upper body pushing exercises that work the chest, triceps, and shoulders.Your calorie burn rate depends on your weight. For example, a 155-pound person can burn 563 calories in an hour running 5mph. If you weigh 150 pounds, 10 minutes of moderate pushups burn 57 calories, while 10 minutes of vigorous pushups burn 96 calories.
Comment: What does any of that have to do with the question being asked?
Comment: "Running" 5mph. That is a fast walk.
Comment: This user posts mostly unrelated 'answers'. He even promotes a scam product on his profile page.

Why are regular push-ups the norm?


Is there a rule which preposition to use for a place?

Question: Is there a rule for choosing between the prepositions zu, in, bei, nach, an for a special place or does one have to memorize all of them?
For example:

Beim Arzt
  An den See
  Nach Berlin
  Zur Bäckerei
  Ins Büro
Comment: I've found that "an, auf, bis, in, nach, vor, zu, hin und her" are German prepositions that can mean "to" as well.
Comment: @Gigili What is the bounty good for, Eldros is telling you most rules in his answer. There is no strict rule in form of a law.
Comment: Some of your examples are interchangeable: Zum See / also beim Arzt defines where you are, while the others define where you are going to.
Comment: @Hinek: The problem comes from all prepositions have the meaning of "to".
Comment: I'd translate Beim Arzt with At the doctor, not to the doctor ... well, unless you say "Ich schau dann mal beim Arzt vorbei"
Comment: Gigili, of all the preposition you cited in your comment, only the one I mentioned are used with a place and has for translation *to* in this context. "auf+Platz" would me *on a place*, "bis" means *until*, "in" means *in* or *inside*, "nach" and "vor" are *after* and *before* and "hin und her" can be translated into *back and forth* (or *to and fro* which has the same meaning). If any of those preposition are translated by *to* then, not likely with a place.
Comment: @Eldros: Maybe I wasn't so successful at asking what I really wanted to ask.
Comment: [Here](http://www.mein-deutschbuch.de/lernen.php?menu_id=14) is a great guidance about prepositions that @Jan introduced.
Comment: Der richtige Gebrauch der Präpositionen ist ein langwieriges Studiium in jeder Sprache. Hier würde ich eine Grammatik zur Einführung und das genauere Studium der jeweiligen Einträge in modernen Lexika empfehlen. Bei Präpositionen unterscheidet Deutsch sehr genau zwischen wo/wohin und woher. Mit einfachen Regeln kommt man hier nicht weit. Man hat es mit einem System von vielen Einzelbereichen zu tun, die man kennen muss.
Answer: First, one should note that bei is in general not used with verbs such like gehen, kommen or other words which would express an idea of movement. One would say:

Ich bin beim Arzt.

but:

Ich gehe zum Arzt.

Now for a few guidelines about the other prepositions:
Nach is used when you go to a city, a country, or any other named inhabited settlement of region.

Wir haben uns entschieden, nach Frankreich zu fahren.

Zu is when your destination is a building.

Ich muss für dich zum Rathaus gehen, damit du dein Zertifikat endlich hast.

In is used when the idea to be in the place is important. A few examples, from the top of my head: "ins Meer", because you will swim in it, "ins Kino" because you want to watch a film in it, "ins Büro/ins Geschäft" because you go there to work. Note that the use of in and zu are very similar, and you nearly have to memorize which preposition to use in each case.
The use of an is quite difficult to define. I would say the most common use is when you want to go to some kind of border. 'See' and 'Küste' can be understood in this case as a border between land and water. This can be used naturally in the case you go there, but also when you are there.

An der Nordseeküste, am plattdeutschen Strand, ...

The other case I found is a figurative one:

An die Arbeit gehen : to get to work, to go down to business

To sum it up, those are guidelines, and unfortunately, in most of the cases, knowing which preposition to use gets only easier with how familiar you are with the language.
Comment: "The use of _an_ […] when you want to go to some kind of border." I try to explain a little differently: "an" can has the meaning of going to a point that's just nearby the referred place, not the place exactly. The different meaning of "An die Arbeit gehen." becomes explicit, if you change the word order: "die Arbeit angehen" – meaning "to go about doing sth."/"to approach". "_Zu_ is when your goal is a building." …or a person (Ich gehe zu Laura).
Comment: I think that there is more to add, but I wanted to throw those few leads I had.
Comment: @feeela: feel free to propose an edit with this additional information.
Answer: rough short rule...
location can be entered/has an entrance, masc. and fem. countries:

wohin - in + acc , wo - in + dat. , woher - aus

location cannot be entered, usually persons ALSO brand names like MC Donalds:

wohin - zu , wo - bei , woher - von

countries (neuter) , cities etc:

wohin - nach, wo - in, woher - aus

There are many examples that don't fit here like Markt (auf, zu) or Meer (an, zu). But chosing by the above stated rules your outcome will be at least second best.
Big exception:
nach Hause, zu Hause, von Zuhause
Answer: I write the following without any formal knowledge of language, but German is my mother tongue.
I will try to give you some examples how they could be used.
Many terms like "in das" have abbreviations. These abbreviations are rather used than to spell it out. Especially in spoken language, but I would also say in written language.
in, im = in dem, ins = in das
You're currently inside of something:
  - Ich bin im Haus
  - Ich bin in der Universität.
  - Ich bin im Tunnel.
  - Ich gehe im Kreis. (Activity-related, not position-related)

But with some exceptions:
  - Ich bin auf dem Campus (der Universität).

Similar, you will say:
  - Ich gehe ins Haus.
  - Ich fahre in den Tunnel

bei, beim
When you're with a person
  - Ich bin bei meinem Freund.
  - Ich war beim Arzt.
When you're currently doing something (slang):
  - Ich bin beim lernen.

nach
You're currently in place A, but you want to get to B:
   - Ich fahre nach Paris (bin aber gerade in London).

an, am
I don't see a rule here:
- Ich bin an der Uni (eingeschrieben; momentan auf dem Campus)
- Meine Zunge klebt an der Laterne

zu, zum = zu dem
Similar to "nach", but "nach" is rather used for cities while "zu" is
rather used for ... well, I think the rest

- Ich fahre zu meinem Freund.
- Ich fahre zum See.
- Ich gehe zum Reiten (or better: Ich gehe reiten.)

Answer: From my own experience in learning the language, there is this small difference between the "rule" and the "used".
In the German language, you will find so many rules, and for EACH rule you definitely find an exception.
That being said, I would suggest you learn the prepositions in a language in context. Never translate or memorize something with just one word.
Just like the others said, there are always rules/ways/patterns to use some prepositions with, but:

you will only come to understand them if you memorise just one
sentence for each example.

For example, never learn "Beim Arzt" alone, learn: "ich bin beim Arzt", that would save you some time remembering when using "bei" here.
Now that if you learn the correct sentences, you will easily get the correct one, when you need it on the go (I am speaking from my own experience).


Hard disk scheduling - N-set-SCAN vs FSCAN

Question: I'm wondering which is a better scheduling algorithm to use. The only real difference I can see is that in FSCAN there are two queues, and when a scan begins all requests are put in one queue and the other left empty. Then during the scan the other queue is used to store new requests and deferred until all the old requests have been processed.
Answer: If you take a peek at how real operating systems do it, the answer is that they use algorithms that are orders of magnitude more complex than either.
If I told you the dirty secret behind operating systems (and compiler, and...) text books, I'd have to kill you afterwards.

Text books only show you the parts where there is some hints of order (some theory behind the algorithms). Most of an operating system's code is battling unruly hardware, work around device bugs, get some half-decent answer out of woefully inadequate data, and do all that fast. Many algorithms are heuristics, derived by trying many ideas, keeping and refining those that worked best. For compilers, the authors of the book describing lcc say that the contents of most compiler books was around 5% of the code of the compiler, and the bug rate in that negligible. I'd say operating systems aren't much different.


Can we control which alternative sites get suggested when something is marked as "off topic"?

Question: I've marked something as off topic today, but this meta was the only suggestion in the list web sites to move the question to. Do we build up this list ourselves? If yes, what are some suggestions to put on there? I would think StackOverflow, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering should be on it. Any other ideas?
Comment: Perhaps you can discuss it in chat or on meta (here), so that we can learn and discuss the boundaries of our on-topic definitions.
Comment: What needs to be done is to have paths added. Mods can move something anywhere, others can only move it to a small list of designated sites. The default is only to the meta, but more can be added. They usually don't like to for beta sites, however...
Answer: Yes, this can be done, but we'll first have to establish the site and graduate out of beta. Only then will a permanent migration path be established. Until then, that option is not available for users.
The reason is that providing an option in the close menu is a way to let the community decide where to chuck it without a mod intervention. This is a very bad idea when a site is new and budding, because of a few reasons as below:

With all the initial activity and excitement, people are overenthusiastic in shipping things off to other sites. This might not actually be the right thing to do because we're still defining what's on topic for us and to what extent questions marginally outside our bounds will be tolerated. Also, we need questions!
Just because a question is more math/programming related doesn't necessarily mean it's on-topic there or a good quality question. The community has to grow to learn and understand which questions should be moved and which shouldn't. The golden rule of migration is "don't migrate crap".
You can close questions with just 1 rep in private beta. This means that a user, who has no understanding of the SE system, can vote to migrate a question elsewhere, possibly flooding that site with questions that are possibly off-topic there.
From what I've observed from other sites, a good number of the users who are active in the private beta and initial phase of public beta never make it to the end as dedicated users. We don't want good questions to be incorrectly shipped off by a small group of people w/o mod intervention, especially when the consensus of the larger community is yet unknown.
Some sites never make it out of beta, so providing a migration path to this site might result in certain questions dying when the site is shut down. So migration has to be done carefully and selectively.

So, the best thing to do right now is to flag it for a mod to migrate. In the initial days, the site is moderated by SE employees and they will not evaluate your flag unless a strong consensus builds up (i.e., a meta post with several in agreement or multiple flags). In a few weeks, they'll select pro-tem mods from the community who can gauge them better and they'll work with mods from the other sites in deciding if questions should be migrated.


Need help painting a desk top made out of MDF

Question: I recently put together a quick desktop that I want to attach to a treadmill desk I am working on. I made it out of MDF. I want to paint it Matte Black! My question is how can I paint it in a way that it will be as resistant as possible to rubbing and scratching from desktop items like a laptop computer and other items that might be getting pushed around?
Answer: MDF is essentially a sponge when it comes to painting it. So the first thing you need to do is prime it properly so that it doesn't absorb the paint. To prime it properly, use a non-water-based primer. These are known as solvent-based primers, or, more commonly called "oil-based" primer.
If you use a water-based primer, you end up with the sponge problem...the MDF will absorb all the water and your surface will end up with a rough raised-grain texture that you can't easily sand out.
Once you get a oil based primer on the MDF, you can then paint it as you wish.
As for resilience, note that MDF is soft. So no matter what you coat the surface with, you are going to be at the mercy of the substrate when it comes to heavy objects hitting it.
Fo starters, use a good quality paint. If you are particularly concerned, consider one of the epoxy based paints used to paint over laminate countertops/kitchen cabinets.
You may ultimately want to consider just putting a laminate on top of the MDF or just replace the MDF part with a section of countertop. Remember that MDF is soft, so that might be the weak part of the entire equation
Comment: This is good advice, but doesn't address the issue of how to make a matte black finish as resilient as possible.
Comment: @JPhi1618 I'll update it.
Comment: Thanks - I was curious if this had a better answer as well for a project I was considering.  Adding a separate veneer or laminate was all I could come up with.  MDF is so soft...
Comment: Would one of those wood hardening products work? I am guessing it absorbs in and hardens. Wonder if I try that and then an oil based primer?
Comment: @JohnDangerous the catch is you don't *want* it to absorb anything. That will cause it to well and raise the grain which is a pain to get smooth again. Honestly, I think it'd be best to just put something on top of the MDF...even a thin piece of plywood.
Comment: Ok good point. The problem is I already routed the edges which is a pain because I was reading that the edges is where MDF absorbs the most. If this doesn't work I will just cut another desktop out of some furniture grade ply I have in the garage. I probably should have done that in the first place. I was just being lazy lol.


What would happen to Bitcoin if GPS/Galileo timing ceased to be available?

Question: According to this web site, the timing from a system like GPS is essential to "financial networks [which] rely on precision timing for synchronization and operational efficiency."  Is the Bitcoin network one of those?
Comment: For example, does the "lock time" function rely on precise timing? https://coinguides.org/bitcoin-lock-time/
Comment: Also what about knowing the accuracy of blockchain timestamps?  Ref this answer: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/107019/120379
Answer: Bitcoin needs approximately sundial time accuracy to operate. Computers have their own free running clocks which provide more than enough accuracy in the absence of other references, and NTP sources which are terrestrial rather than GPS based.
nLockTime and other internal tools are not based on local clocks, as there's absolutely no guarantee that anybody in the network actually has an accurate one.
A situation in which time sync from GPS, GNSS, Baidu and Galileo were all unavailable would be rather apocalyptic anyway and would transcend the availability of Bitcoin.
Comment: thank you for guiding me to the NTP information.  I had no idea what that stood for until today! https://www.ionos.com/digitalguide/server/know-how/network-time-protocol-ntp/
Comment: I have heard that the modern financial system, including such simple things as an ATM withdrawal, relies on GPS timing.  I wanted to make sure Bitcoin is not just as vulnerable: https://qz.com/1106064/the-entire-global-financial-system-depends-on-gps-and-its-shockingly-vulnerable-to-attack/
Comment: @user24925 I just skimmed over S. Nakamoto's whitepaper on $BTC and could not see any specific reference to the level of timing accuracy required.  Do you have a reference?
Comment: The white paper is really an overview of the system, most of the things aren't really spelled out as such. I don't know of a reference for how timing works.
Answer: After perusing Satoshi Nakamoto's original paper and this web site, it turns out the only reason time stamps even matter is for implementing what Nakamoto calls the "moving average targeting an average number of blocks per hour" such that if blocks "are generated too fast, the [proof-of-work] difficulty increases."  According to the linked web article, the implementation also took potentially falsified time stamps into account, such that there is a 90-minute "maximum allowed gap between the time provided by the nodes and the local system clock" of the node trying to submit a new block.


Does PHP have a XSS API?

Question: ASP.NET has a cross site scripting API by default, however does PHP have a cross site scripting prevention API?
Answer: ASP.NET does not provide a XSS API.  I suspect you are talking about Request Validation which is a feature in ASP.NET that inspects HTTP requests and looks for potentially dangerous input.  To my knowledge PHP does not offer anything like this.
While request validation can be a benefit by preventing certain types of XSS attacks, it is not a replacement for properly securing an application from XSS vulnerabilities.  This can be dangerous because it lulls developers into a false sense of security.  In addition to this, request validation can be disabled, so if you are relying on it for XSS protection and then someone else disables it, you are in big trouble.
There is a good post here that talks about some of the shortcomings of request validation in ASP.NET.
So in summary: there is no PHP equivalent of ASP.NET's request validation and you shouldn't rely on request validation to protect you from XSS anyways.
Answer: I have used HTML Purifier before and have been pretty satisfied.
http://htmlpurifier.org/
However, I have not performend extensive/advanced testing on it.  The basic XSS attempts get caught, the website seems to show the maintainter has a knack for this thing so I assume it is not a bogus project.  If anyone on here believes otherwise, please let me know.
Answer: There is the OWASP Enterprise Security API which has a php version.
Otherwise, there is the web application firewall approach where using something like PHPIDS or mod_security can stop some of the attacks.
Comment: I wouldn't trust PHP full stop
Comment: The PHP port of the ESAPI has been dead for quite awhile now.  I wouldn't trust it to protect me against much, and certainly not against XSS which evolves.
Comment: Well, yes, but I thought that was a given.  :-)

Does PHP have a XSS API?


Furnace blower comes on full time when the thermostat is set to Auto

Question: I have a Maytag furnace and the blower motor comes on right away when the thermostat is placed in auto and stays on when reaching the temperature set point and the heat goes off. I have replaced the board in the furnace, I'm not getting any fault codes, and I don't see a fan switch or button telling the fan to stay on the indefinitely. The fan does turn off when I switch the thermostat to off. I have no idea what else to do. Please help
Comment: A model number would be just dandy. We're throwing darts, otherwise.
Answer: Something here isn't adding up. Your post states that when you place the fan selector to auto, the fan immediately turns on. The fan should be running before you select auto. The fan selector switch has two positions on and auto. On - closes the connection from R to G bringing on the fan. Auto - does nothing at the thermostat and the furnace will bring on the fan as required.
So from your post I can deduce there is potentially a problem with the thermostat. The simplest way to diagnose where the problem is to

Unmount the thermostat, check the state of the furnace. It should be doing nothing.
Mark down the wire locations. Jumper R to G. The fan should come on.
Jumper R to W. The burner should fire and the fan should energize within about 2 minutes.

A thermostat is little more than a set of manual switches that operate based on temperature. If the instructions above provide different results then outlined my next guess would be that the board was somehow wired incorrectly.
The board could have a continuous fan selected by dip switches but it wouldn't shut off when setting the thermostat to off. So again it looks like a faulty thermostat. The only thing I can think of that wouldn't be the thermostat is a continuous fan speed set high and the cooling fan speed (G terminal) set so low that it is not noticeable.
If the stat checks out, more information is required to determine the problem.
Comment: I figured out what it was. It was wired for a 2 stage opperation. So pretty much if I were to have an ac unit and furnace at the same time, I disconnected the blue wire in the thermostat wiring and everything was resolved. The blower motor that supplies air to the house now fires last in the ignition sequence, and powers down once the house reaches the desired temperature. Thank you for taking the time to answer my question!


Rigify not attaching to mesh

Question: I'm trying to rig specifically just a character face (Floating head situation, no need for body rig.) I tried the newer rigify that generates a face bone structure, but when I generate the rig, the bones don't deform and if I try to pair with automatic weight, the mesh doesn't move at all. What are some of the reasons rigify won't work?
Answer: Rigify doesn't work that way. In order to use it correctly, here are the steps :

Add Rigify rig from the add menu, which creates a "metarig". The "metarig" is a simplified rig without any interesting feature, his goal is only to be a temporary rig used for placing correctly the full-featured rig. He should not be used as a deforming rig.
In edit mode, place the metarig's bones correctly on your model. (You can find a bone positioning guide here) Do not delete nor add bones in the metarig.
When it's done, go in the Metarig's Armature Tab and click the "Generate Rig" button under the "Rigify buttons" Pannel.

This will generate a full featured rig according to how you placed the metarig's bones.

Now if you want, you can delete all the unwanted parts (and the "metarig").
It's time to bind your rig to your object. First, in the Armature Tab, you need to switch to the layer containing the deform bones, which should be that one :

All the bones in that layer should have a "DEF" prefix, meaning they are "DEForming" bones. If not, try the other two next layers.
Then you select your objects to bind, then your armature, and you hit Ctrl P → Set Parent to Armature With Automatic Weights.
This should be enough to get your face rigged and skinned. It may not be perfect tho, so I encourage you to do some deforming tests, as well as some facial expressions in order to quickly identify deforming issues and being able to fix them via weight paint mode.
I hope I helped.
Answer: You are telling that,  if you try to pair with automatic weight, the mesh doesn't move at all. It means it has a problem with weight painting.
To paint Your mesh first select your armature and then shift + select your mesh and then go to weight paint mode. Now you can paint your mesh as you want by selecting different bones. like upper eye bone for upper eyelid and lower eye bone for lower eyelid etc.
 also check this link

Rigify not attaching to mesh


what is the proper file permissions needed for certificate files

Question: I am curious about what should be the file permission of the ssl certificate files. Because you really don't want anyone physically copying the server key, so why does the hosts make it readable to everyone? (644)
Answer: This is partially subjective and especially because your question lacks too many points of context like: which applications are using these certificates, which OS (based on your mention of 644 it seems you speak about Unix systems - in which case saying rw-r--r-- seems far more readable to me - but there are other OS out there), which level of security, etc.
So let us go back a little. For typical HTTPS PKI operations a server needs to have one certificate (per virtual host typically) which is bascially the public part of a key and, separately, the private key file. We will often see these called: the certificate and the key.
Personal pet peeve diversion: stop saying "SSL certificate", even if everyone does it, as it is a double errors. First, SSL does not exist anymore, we do TLS nowadays. And then it is really a X.509 certificate used for TLS communications, as you could do TLS without certificates at all or TLS with other key materials than X.509 certificate, so these two things are independent in fact.
The certificate is public by definition. So it can be made available to anyone, that is "world readable". As any other file I would however make sure that it is not owned (nor the directory in which it resides) by the same UID under which the webserver runs.
As for the key, by definition, it is private. Its Unix rights should be as small as possible, based on other constraints. If it is owned by same UID as the webserver (not the case I recommend), it can be r--------; otherwise a sensible option would be to make it owned by root or some other admin account and create a group for the webserver so that the rights could be rw-r-----.
Comment: Its a hosted site. I want the private key (server key) not readable to the public. Otherwise, they copy it, then they install it on a different machine, then that machine ties my bandwidth up on the web server. What is wrong with the system itself is there is no way it can be tied to just one machine (like it should be on web hosting sites) if needed.
Comment: @drtechno like I said in my answer, the private key should be readable only by the webserver account, and not stored in the content exposed through HTTP of course. That way, I do not see how it can be copied, except if your users have shell access to the box and have extended rights or having the webserver running under their user account. Of course the private key should not be accessible from the public! The certificate is tied to one machine because it is tied to the key which should be private and specific to one machine and no others.
Comment: They did found their way in somehow through some sort of xml or php exploit or the apachie exploit, all three are on youtube on how to do this on anybody's site. A friend has a site hosted on amazon, and they attacked his site so bad that anyone who would go to it would see a "certificate error" and in the explanation of the error displayed all Keys (public and private)
Comment: @drtechno Yeah "some sort of".... of course if things are misconfigured various attacks exist. Retrieving the certificate is not a problem, it is public, anyone gets it once they connect through HTTPS. As for the key, if only the webserver can read it **and** it is not stored in the area served under HTTP **and** you do not have applications launched by the webserver that can be subverted then the key is safe. Other solutions: protect it with a password (but you will need to enter it at each webserver start) and/or run applications as separate accounts from the webserver one.
Comment: the whole thing gets me as its a simple html page site (a 100K page). I didn't have any time to transfer a whole website before my bandwidth was sucked from my webserver's Internet connection (5GB of bandwidth was consumed). The only thing I did to the security was to enable hotlink protection.
Comment: @drtechno I think you are mixing multiple issues that are not necessarily related.


Paying taxes to a corrupted government

Question: There are many countries with corrupted governments who steal taxpayers' money. Is one still obliged to pay taxes if the government is corrupted and steals a big fraction of the taxes one pays? What's the point of paying taxes if tax revenue gets stolen anyway?
Comment: Governments don't steal, don't oppress, don't discriminate, don't sin, etc - people do. So as long as the gvm governs and controls the order in the country, it is completely legit as DD"M.
Answer: Rav Hershel Schacter wrote a nice piece on this very topic. In short, he explains that in the times of the Talmud the king would collect a tax. If the tax would be unfair than dina dimalchusa would not apply. However, nowadays we don't look at taxes the same as the times of the Talmud. Rather we view each neighborhood as partners and the taxes go towards the "partnership" of the neighborhood.  These taxes pay for , police, fire, garbage, and so on. Most of taxes go to things that people need and want. However, if you would live in a place where a tax is taken in a very apparent unfair manner, then per the Shulchan Aruch it isn't Dina demalchulsa anymore.
Article link:
https://www.torahweb.org/torah/special/2005/rsch_taxes.html
Comment: All you do to address the question is to say that it "might be a question". This doesn't seem like an answer to me.
Comment: Is that how you read the answer ?! Its pashut that in a normal country where they provide services using tax money then one cannot say it's unfair. However, in a country where the taxes are unfair then one would not have to pay like the talmud and SA,the reason I ssy it may be a question is because I do not know what country he has in mind .
Comment: I don't know what country he has in mind either, but I'm pretty sure any place today where you can live openly as a Jew isn't corrupt enough for that Sh"A to apply.

Paying taxes to a corrupted government


Finding a word tree translater for sentences that does all the work for me

Question: I am not an expert in linguistics.  I want to know if there is a site or a program that will allow me to put in complex sentences of novels that I read , then answer with a word tree labeling the various components of the sentence and there relationship to each other, so I have a better idea of what is going on linguistically and semantically. Something that basically does all the work for me.
Answer: Weblicht offers such a service for German and English to the academic community. In order to use it, you need an Academic Account for Fedarated login in a participating European country or you need to be enrolled in the CLARIN IdP.
Note that the tools behind the service are often free tools and can be downloaded from their respective URLs (Search for Stanford Parser, Stuttgart Parser, or Berkeley Parser) and used from the command line.


Can I use a 60A circuit for both a cooktop and oven?

Question: I removed an  electric slide-in range. The box was wired with 8-3 stranded copper on a 60a circuit breaker.  I am installing a cooktop with a built-in oven. All I have is the one 8-3 wire in the wall. What are my chances of  using that wire for both the cooktop and oven? Cooktop is a 40 amp unit.  Not sure of the oven. Edit.. oven is a 30amp appliance.  Neither will be used even close to their full potential.
Comment: Can you get us the actual kW ratings of the cooktop and oven in question?  Also, can you post a photo of the inside of the existing junction box please?
Comment: It is only a three wire conductor in the wall. both appliances give a 3 wire hook up chart. Either way I need to do something. 30 amp oven and 40 amp cooktop does not equate to my 60 amp breaker nor the 8ga wire.  I did see a post on the common junction box. Ref. 220.19 (4) and 210.19 a (3).  Not excited right now. Does it look like just running another 8ga 50a circuit  separating the two appliances? Also I would be removing the original 60 amp breaker and replacing it with a 50 amp breaker.  Do you see a way I could replace the 8ga wire and 60a breaker so that I can have a single junction box
Comment: The oven is 5000 watts and the cooktop total 8500 watts.  I'll get a picture of the panel when I see it again. You guys will surely have a stroke when you see it though. My plan will be removing the 60 amp and replacing it with a 50a on the 8ga wire. Installing a 40a  on a new 8-3 .
Comment: While a photo of the panel would be interesting, we need a photo of the inside of the box for the existing range receptacle/outlet though, that'll tell us if that 8AWG can really handle 50A or if it's limited to 40A (which matters in your case)
Answer: That 8/3's overbreakered no matter what
The 8AWG copper you have in your walls is rated for 40A at 60°C or 50A at 75°C as per Table 310.16, so you'll have to swap that 60A breaker out for a 40A (NM cable) or 50A (armored cable, SE cable, wires in conduit) no matter what else you do.
40A is adequate for most ranges though
However, due to the Table 220.55 range load demand factors, which also apply to a separate cooktop and oven on a single circuit, 40A is adequate for the vast majority of range setups, and even those that don't fit on 40A have no trouble with a 50A circuit, unless you have a very large cooktop.  In particular, a 12kW nameplate range load only is treated as 8kW of actual load for circuit sizing purposes, and every additional kW or major fraction thereof adds 5% to that 8kW.  So, knowing that a 40A circuit gives us 9.6kW and that ranges are not treated as continuous loads by the NEC, we get 10% over 12kW, or a 13.2kW maximum range load on a 40A circuit.  Going up to 50A gives us 12kW, which translates into a 14.4kW maximum range load.
Comment: Sorry it took a while to get back. Appliances were back ordered until just 2 weeks ago.
Answer: #8 wire on the 75 degree table Is good for 50 amps but of the range is rated as a 50 amp load you need to go up to #6, a 40 amp load rated range should be put on a 50 amp breaker as that is 125% of the load.
If your circuit rating is 40 amps the receptacle can be 40 or 50 amp per table 210.21.b.3.
If the range requires 4 wire you may need to pull new wires if you have black, red, white a new separate ground can be pulled as long as it taps a circuit from or goes back to the same panel. If you have 3 &  a bare copper and your new range requires 4 wire most locations require a new cable to be pulled.
Comment: So the existing circuit breaker is oversized?
Comment: Yes that's why I tried to give the appropriate sizes
Comment: I thought range/oven calcs were more complicated than that?
Comment: You are thinking of load calculations for the entire system load you still have to have the wire sized for the actual load  unless multiples on a tapped feed a range is a oven and cook top Combined and will have 1 value.  but have 10ea 12kw loads and the total for the system is only 25kw table 220.55 the wires are still have to be sized for 12kw. But where there are multiple different loads on a tap it gets a bit more complex but not for a single device calculated at 8kw if under 12kw and +5% for each kw over 12.
Comment: The panel is a mess. I ended up removing the 70amp breaker and replaced it with the 60 amp from the range circuit. The cooktop now has  a 40amp with 6/3. The oven has a new 6/3 cable with a 30 amp breaker.  The hot water heater  had a 50amp breaker with 10/2. It now has a 30 amp with an 8/3 wire. All of the loose connection at the breakers were secured. Two electrical tape splices got wire nuts and tape. I will get around to addressing that later.  The new cook top pulled 29.8 amps with all burners on boiling water.  6/3 wires remained cool. The oven pulled 16 amps set at 400.
Comment: @TimothyRyan -- I take it you replaced that existing 8/3 cable in your wall?


What's the difference between "have been" and "would have been"?

Question: Is there any difference between have been and would have been? Please also provide sample sentences if possible.
Answer: would is a past form of the modal verb will. would have been means something in the past would have happened if or if not something in the past (before that event) happened. For example;

Without your advice, I would have been robbed of my bag.

would have been implies something that could have been did not happen because of some reason.
However, have been, as in the following sentence;

I have been robbed of my bag. I wish someone advised me not to go there.

The event / action in have been part has occurred, and could have been avoided if warned of.


What kind of Visual Sensors are employed aboard Rockets?

Question: Cameras are the most common form of visual sensors and I usually see one strapped on the side of the stages as well as inside the separation module to show the separation of the rocket stages. What kind of cameras are preferred and where are they mounted?
Answer: The answer is, 'it depends'. Every launcher company uses its own methods.
SpaceX uses GoPro cameras inside the payload fairings (to monitor recovery attempts) and on the landing barge (ASDS). They have more cameras on the stages, but I can't find anywhere that mentions what type of cameras are used there.
Comment: Thank you, I'm researching cold cameras that can handle 30+ km altitude in terms of temperature and also about their specifications. GoPros are somehow unreliable at cold temperatures from numerous accounts and not may other cameras are built for such activities. Could you provide a reference for the gopro thing?
Comment: There are some photos of recovered hardware from spaceX showing what looks like standard Gopros - https://www.google.com/search?q=spacex+fairings+gopro gets you links to an assortment. I'd be guessing but most likely cause of death would be the battery getting cold so standard gopro + heater may get you a cheap but reasonably reliable camera
Comment: Cameras on the fairing may not get very cold: they're jetissoned at a point where the aerodynamic heating drops below 1 kW/m^2, and the return trajectory is only a few minutes. It'd be interesting to know what cameras are used on the stages (which do get very cold).
Answer: There are several instances of GoPros (for example) used on the ISS but that's not a launch vehicle.
GoPro cameras (for example) have been used on rockets in at least two places:
SpaceX video: Falling Back to Earth | HD Footage From Space

A GoPro inside a fairing from a recent Falcon 9 flight captured some spectacular views as it fell back to Earth. Footage is played in real time.

NASA JPL video: LDSD: Supersonic Test Flight (HD)
This answer says:

In the screen shot you can see the boom holding the camera in the bottom of the picture.
All of the sound you hear is real, picked up by the GoPro microphone. You might notice the sound go down in intensity through the main motor burn. That is due to the vehicle increasing in altitude, with the lower densities reducing the sound transmission.


Legacy/obsolete UK postcodes

Question: I don't expect anyone to be able to answer this, but hope to be proved wrong.  Does anyone know if there is a reasonably comprehensive source of old postcode data?  I have data going back a few years and a fair proportion are codes that appear to have been been retired by Royal Mail.  Has anyone has found decent source of such codes?
Comment: Well my data goes back nearly 10 years, but it would certainly be useful to know how people have tackled this more generally :)
Comment: It would be easier if you add the year you want to find postcodes before or after of it. You said you have data going back a few years. But how many years before? :)
Comment: It would be really useful to me to know a ballpark figure of how many obsolete postcodes there are to help me know how to tackle a problem I have. 10k? 100k? Going back 10 years would be enough!
Comment: Found the answer to my own question: about 800,000.
Answer: This site UK Data Service has historical postcodes from 1988. But I don't know if it is open data since I have to login. I hope this will help you :)
Comment: The link is no longer working. I tried looking for a new one in the UK Data Service site but couldn't find anything
Answer: Postcode data is now available on the ONS website.
From that page you can download a CSV file which when uncompressed is over one gigabyte in size. One of the fields is DOTERM, which gives you the date of termination. It therefore should be a comprehensive source of data on retired postcodes.
Further info on which ONS postcode product to use here.

Legacy/obsolete UK postcodes


Understanding the split plot

Question: Can someone explain me the intuition behind the split plot?
From what I understand, it is essentially restricted randomization. But I still do not quite understand it. Is there a resource or example anyone can give me to make it clearer?
Answer: Split plots are often used out of necessity, but there can be statistical advantages in term of precision of your contrasts (or also disadvantages). Here is my rudimentary understanding of intuition for using split plot:
First, let me establish that two common terms in split plot design are "whole plot factor" and the "sub-plot factor." In an agricultural study the whole plot factor are at a larger spatial scale, say entire fields, which represent different levels of some treatment such as drainage efficiency. The sub-plot factors are spatially nested within the whole plot factor. Subplot factors are often something that can be applied at a smaller spatial scale, such as crop type.

Aside from reasons of practicality (which may be the case in the example I wrote above), split power may be efficient (or inefficient!). Federer and King 2007 suggest that one reason to use Split plot is that in comparison to a 2-way ANOVA you generally have increased precision to detect contrasts between the sub-plot factors. Also, interaction effects may be easier to detect. In contrast, precision to detect contrasts between the whole plot factor generally decreases.
These differences are explained by the fact that two separate residual error terms are used for hypothesis testing. The whole plot error term is calculated by first averaging the subplots within each whole plot.
Spit plot is also sometimes used as a split plot in time, which as I understand is similar to a repeated measures, often used on subjects. I'm not sure what the advantage one way or another is on this. The terminology maps as follows:
<code> split-plot design = repeated-measures design
 whole plot        = subject
 whole plot factor = between-subject factor
 split-plot factor = within-subject factor = repeated-measures factor
</code>
A very comprehensive reference on split plot theory and implementation is: Federer WT & King F (2007) Variations on split plot and split block experiment designs (John Wiley & Sons).
Answer: A good resource would be Mead's "The design of experiments" (1988), chapter 14. I think there is a new version here. But you don't really need the new version to understand split-plot, and I am assuming you have access to these books at your local library.
I can give you my 2-cent-worth.
In the ideal world, if you have 2 treatments, you would want to do a factorial design. It is probably the most efficient design you can use. However, there is often practical limitation. Perhaps the 2 treatments have to be applied to different levels of the unit (1 larger, 1 smaller), then you will have to contend with split-plot. So my view of split-plot is that it arises out of practical limitation.
Linking to the notion of restricted randomization, yes, split plot is a type of restricted randomization. The treatment that is applied to the main unit ('larger' plot) is randomized in a restricted sense. But the restriction is posed by practical limitation rather than statistical ideal.

Understanding the split plot


Which areas of mathematical knowledge are required for understanding different genres of theoretical economics literature (and at which level)?

Question: I would like to know which mathematical skills are most important to understanding different types of theoretical economics literature. An ideal answer would list disciplines used for different 'genres' of literature; for example: "Mathematical finance requires elementary linear algebra and stochastic calculus" (is this accurate?).
Comment: Which strand of Economics? It depends a lot on that
Comment: This is too broad. This depends entirely on what kind of economics you're talking about. Can you make this more specific?
Comment: To illustrate FooBar's and jmbejara's point: dynamic macroeconomic models make extensive use of optimal control/dynamic programming, which is much more sparsely used in micro theory. Conversely, micro theory depends a lot more on tools from topology and analysis than does much of macro.
Comment: That's exactly the kind of information I am looking for. Perhaps it should be rephrased as "which fields of theoretical economic literature require which technical competencies?"
Answer: For microeconomic theory, a starting point would be

Basic multivariate calculus,
topology/set theory
real analysis,
probability theory,
a basic knowledge of linear algebra.

For 'applied' micro theory (theoretical industrial organisation, applications in information economics, etc.), or for reading of a graduate-level microeconomics text (such as Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green's "Microeconomic Thoery"), a good understanding of the basics of these areas will suffice. Most material will be set in something like a Euclidean space and will draw on a fairly restricted set of methods and results from the above domains. You can already get a long way with a good understanding of the basic continuity properties of the reals ($\epsilon$-$\delta$ proofs, open and closed intervals, intermediate value theorem, basic fixed-point theorems, etc.), the ability to do partial differentiation, integration, and to calculate conditional probabilities and expectations.
As one turns to the journal literature and looks more towards pure (rather than applied) economic theory, the level of mathematical sophistication increases somewhat and it becomes more likely that you will encounter more exotic (from the point of view of economics) mathematical methods and results.
Answer: For macroeconomics, it depends a bit on the part you're working in
basic requirements are always

Basic multivariate calculus
Real analysis
Probability theory and stochastic calculus
Beginnings of linear algebra

If you go down the Macro/Econometrics route, your linear algebra knowledge should be quite profound.
Then, you should have (because discrete time is almost everywhere a standard tool) working knowledge in

difference equations
Bellman Equations

If you go theoretical, that also requires

Functional analysis

If instead you're going to continuous time (this will be the case for Macro-Finance, also likely Growth. For mainstream macro, it seems to be the trend, but is yet unclear), you will need knowledge of differentiable equations, in particular

Solution methods to First and second order ODE
Derivation and Solutions to Kolmogorov Forward Equation (Fokker Plank)
Working knowledge with Wiener processes

Where again, if you want to do purely theoretical work, your knowledge (in particular with probability theory) needs to be much more profound.


If you are planning to be away for a long trip (possibly a year or longer), do you need to have domestic health insurance with the ACA requirement?

Question: If you are planning to be away for a long trip (possibly a year or longer), do you need to have domestic health insurance with the ACA requirement? Or would your travel medical insurance be enough?
Answer: From healthcare.gov:

U.S. citizens living in a foreign country for at least 330 days of a
  12-month period are not required to get health insurance coverage for
  that 12-month period. If you're uninsured and living abroad under this
  definition, you qualify for a health insurance exemption for plan
  years 2018 and earlier. This means you don't have to pay the fee that
  other uninsured people must pay when they file their taxes.
Note: Starting with the 2019 plan year (for which you'll file taxes in
  April 2020), the fee no longer applies. If you don't have coverage
  during 2019 or later, you don't need an exemption in order to avoid
  the penalty.

So for this year, if you're out of the country for at least 11 months, you don't need health insurance under the ACA. Starting next year, the ACA insurance requirement has been eliminated, so there is no penalty for not obtaining health insurance.
Comment: But check that the travel health insurance does cover you for your needs, as many are only an additional cover and do not include the normal care.
Comment: And if your healthcare doesn't cover your needs, you still get care, but become a burden to the social services of the other country, which is something many countries have a big problem with, as far as wanting reimbusement or denying you future admission.   On the other hand, some national health programs willingly  cover legal residents who are aliens.


Is it ethical for an author to cite their own work with themselves as first author when they are not first author?

Question: I was reading through a journal article by an author. Let's call him Author X. The author while referring to some of his own journal articles cite them as Author X et al., even though Author X is not the first author in the cited article. Is this allowed or should it be treated as academic dishonesty?
Comment: Assuming there is no citation style would appear it as "Author X et al." then I believe YES; it is dishonest. Reviewers/Editors supposed to detect this before publishing.
Comment: Could the answer to this depend to some degree on the author-order-convention in the field? In my field authors are listed in alphabetical order, so listing a different one first would be somewhat odd, but wouldn't really amount to claiming a more important role in the paper. Also, it might make some sense in the case of undergrad research where the supervising researcher of a larger group doesn't have the earliest surname.
Answer: The only reason I would use a formulation such as this is if the work being "cited" were multiple works performed by a changing group of members with a "constant" member who was probably the group leader. And, even in that case, I would use the formulation "X and coworkers," rather than "X et al.," to indicate that the it's not a "direct" citation, but a matter of convenience. The reason for this is that it's quite distracting to have to write:

as discussed in A et al. [cite], B et al. [cite], C et al. [cite], A et al. #2 [cite], . . .

when there's a bunch of different references that are all part of the same research effort.
Comment: I have seen "X and coworkers" a couple of times and would also recommend its use.
Answer: It depends on how literally you are using the word "cite".  If you mean the articles are listed in the bibliography with the authors in a different order from how they were published, or the author order is changed in a formal citation such as "(Author X et al. 1994)" even if the bibliography is correct, then yes, it would be considered dishonesty, because it misrepresents the author listing.
On the other hand, it's possible to give correct formal citations to some papers and then go on to talk about "Author X et al." without actually implying that this represents author order at all; instead, you are just highlighting X among the researchers who have worked on these problems.  Overemphasizing a particular author's role could be offensive, but it's not necessarily dishonest in the same sense as misrepresenting the author order on a specific paper.  (And it might even be appropriate in some unusual cases.  For example, imagine that X has been working in this subfield for many years and has published a dozen papers, each with a different student as first author.  If you need a brief way to refer to this group of researchers as a whole, then "X et al." might not be crazy.)
Comment: Even in the case you describe, I'd be leery of using the "X et al formulation". It seems unfair to whoever the first author really is.
Comment: @Suresh what if you are in a field where authorship is alphabetical and the name starts with Z?
Comment: I'm not sure why that makes a difference. I agree that in alphabetical ordering the "first" author gets unreasonably prominence, but listing the authors as "Z et al" doesn't solve the problem.
Answer: I have a hard time seing any other answer than NO, it is not ethical. If the paper referenced is published it is very clear. If one neds to reference an individual other than the first author, it is always possible to quote the name followed by the refeence for (a very hypothetical) example

... X made the Y analysis (Z et al., yyyy)  ...

If the work is unpublished, it typicaly should not be referenced using typical references so then the "personal communication" or whatever for would be pertinent could be given in any way relavant to the particular case.
The main point is of course to give credit where credit is due. so,if it is clear that someone has performed a very specific task (indicated in the paper referenced) then it might be ok to point that out but never to change the original citation which has to match the reference in the reference list, which in turn has to match the published article. So for me exceptions to the general rule are vanishingly few and I have never encountered a case where this has happened either as a reader of journals or as an editor.
Answer: It is definitely misrepresenting the situation, but I am not sure it is intentional. I met several (where several means a large number) researchers who were not aware that the "et al." phrase can only be used with first authors, and they used it in the meaning of "and his/her coworkers". If the given person's mother tongue is not English, I would say it is more of a mistake than intentional dischonesty.


Is it haram to draw a eye, but no face or body

Question: Salam, I have gotten into the habit of drawing eyes, and I don't know if it is permissable in Islam. Can someone please explain to me if it is allowed or no?
Answer: Answered by @EPIC Tube HD:  About taswir, as far as I know when it is haraam is when the form is complete, in a way that it the statue or picture is being given ruh, it can live normally. So, when it is a single head, or a particular body part, or something like that, it is still allowed. Because when a ruh is being put inside, it cannot live normally. – EPIC Tube HD
In one narration, Aisyah had a sheet (or was it a pillow I forgot) with a picture of a pigeon. When Rasulullah saw it, He cut that picture and leave other part of the picture still intact. In a separate occasion, he found a full statue in front of an entrance of a house. He then ordered that statue to be destroyed, or leave just some part of it in such way that it doesn't resemblance a living being anymore. And there is an acception to this ruling. Taswir is allowed for toys. It was narrated by Aisyah RA. – EPIC Tube HD


iPhone functionality while using CarPlay

Question: Is it possible to open and use a different app on iPhone while using CarPlay or is the CarPlay only mirroring the iPhone? More specifically would it be possible to have Waze running on iPhone and use different apps such as music apps on CarPlay simultaneously? If not what does happen when some non-CarPlay app is opened on iPhone? Does the CarPlay go to home screen?
Answer: It all changed with the release of iOS 13. You can now have a different app open on the phone and different on the CarPlay screen. Enjoy!
Answer: Essentially, as soon as you use any other app, CarPlay will drop to its home screen.
You can have Waze running backgrounded on the phone itself, so you can hear its announcements, but you cannot enable it on the CarPlay screen.
Whilst doing this, you can return CarPlay to any of its own apps, music, map etc, or any of the specific apps provided by the CarPlay manufacturer - e.g. Pioneer [except for a bug in their AppRadio mode which breaks under iOS 11 making it totally useless.]
There's a video on the Pioneer site showing Waze working in AppMode... which I've never been able to achieve. It also shows 2-finger zoom like an iPhone, which my CarPlay cannot do, so maybe it's a newer model than my SPH-DA120.
This may all come down to the make & model of your CarPlay system, unfortunately.
If it's Pioneer, you won't get it working, until/unless they fix the AppMode bug .


Shipping applications in servers to clients

Question: More than half of the applications I make for clients require a server setup with apache and mysql.
What is the easiest way of shipping a server so that the billing of the server goes to them or so that they can set the server up locally/ in their own server if they want to?
Comment: Very closely related: http://freelancing.stackexchange.com/questions/2022/how-to-setup-client-ownership-of-domain-name-and-hosting/2023#2023
Comment: I'm not certain if this is really a freelance question. It seems to be a more logistics question. Perhaps better answered at http://StackOverflow.com (but that's just my guess).
Answer: VPS
There are various solutions to this ("shipping a server with the setup"). The one I predominantly use is a VPS solution where:

I set up the VPS server through a host. Usually with the following:

Ubuntu/CentOS (or another flavour of *nix), maybe even Windows if required
Apache/Nginx (Web Server)
PHP & SQL

With the particular host I use, I was allowed to take a snapshot of a base server that allows me to simply deploy a server with selected resources - harnessing that setup (Exactly what you want as a server setup). From here, I simply bill the client appropriately. Keeping in mind the potential maintenance that you may need to carry out on the server could also/should also carry a surcharge.

Recommending Hosting
Alternatively - you could recommend hosting to a customer, listen out the pros & cons between them will also help keep the customer satisfied. From here - let them purchase the hosting - guiding them through the process is a must! Ensuring everything they select/input is correct and adequate enough to run the applications you design.
Research for this isn't necessarily required, but can go a long way in the clients eyes. There is no shortage of hosts, so the choice is yours!

Note
One thing to note; Shared hosting isn't always the best solution. Users are thrown onto overcrowded boxes which is highly evident in performance.

This is usually why I sway customers from shared hosting to VPS hosting where we are in complete control. Along with a comparable pricing model.


How can I re-flag a question?

Question: There are some posts which I have flagged and some action is genuinely required for those posts. I would say they are recent, but there were even more recent flags raised by me which were quickly acknowledged. But a few are still unattended/pending. I am not in a hurry to get them reviewed, but I just want to know that how do I again bring them to moderators' attention. Is there any way to re-flag a post?
Answer: You cannot "re-flag" a post, in particular not if you are talking about an "off-topic" flag, since users are allowed to flag (or vote) to close and reopen each post exactly once.
Furthermore, off-topic flags are generally not handled specifically by moderators, but by the user-driven close review queue. So while sometimes you may get "lucky" because a moderator acts on the post, generally you should not expect moderator attention for any off-topic flags. The processing time for these flags highly depends on how many users are currently reviewing them and whether the reviews are unanimous or not.
Comment: @FakeMod That's because none of your flags have been disputed or declined so far - good work!
Comment: There are also times that a flag is dismissed by a moderator even if no action is taken. I know sometimes I see something flagged that I don't agree with per se, but appreciate a user bringing it to our attention. There are other times when a flag is good because it makes me look at something, but it turns out to fix itself before I need to do something. I'll mark those helpful, even if there isn't any visible action taken.
Comment: @FakeMod You don't - as I said, each user can flag or vote to close each post exactly once. "Aged away" means that not enough reviewers voted on the post one way or the other in about 2 weeks.
Comment: So, how do I surely know that my flag has been declined?
Comment: @FakeMod If you click on the "X helpful flags" in your profile, you will reach a page where you can see your individual flags and whether they are 'helpful', 'pending', 'disputed' or 'declined'.
Comment: But I don't see the "disputed" or the "declined" option.
Comment: @ACuriousMind How do I reinstate the "aged away" flags?

How can I re-flag a question?


How to make small shoes fit bigger feet

Question: I received a pair of nice sneakers as a gift. I like them a lot, but they are about a size too small. I can squeeze into them, but it is very uncomfortable. How can I expand the shoes, so that they will fit bigger feet and be more comfortable? I would prefer a hack that doesn't damage the shoes. Note: I don't need to just shape the shoes, I need to make them bigger.
Answer: The best hack for this is to use heat because heat makes things expand. All you will need is a hairdryer, a thick pair of socks (or two thinner pairs of socks), and your shoes. Put the socks on and then put the shoes on. Now, put the hairdryer on the highest heat. Blow dry the areas where the shoe needs to expand (usually the toe and maybe the sides). Bend and flex your feet while you are blow drying. You usually have to do this for 20-30 minutes per shoe. Make sure to hold the hairdryer at least 2 inches (5 cm) away from the shoe to avoid damage.
Comment: I think you should put this answer with the breaking in shows question. Just because you have an answer still does not make the question not a dupe, you are just expanding on how to make a new pair of shoe fit will, which is breaking in shoes. Think about it, then consider answering in the other question.

How to make small shoes fit bigger feet


TS Database performance issue

Question: I've just found out about this forum while searching for answers for an InfluxDB performance "issue". I'm using it to store financial tick data (7 fields per row), query it and process it into candles. At the moment I'm querying around 1 billion ticks, about 4 years of data, for a total weight of about 28GB. The first problem was InfluxDB loads the entire query on Ram every time, so my computer would crash; I had to solve this by subdividing the query into chunks manually (month by month), and iterating through them while appending processed data to a DataFrame, exporting it at the end of the last query. When I got it to work, those were my query times (number of rows on the left, query time in hours, minutes and seconds in the center, processing time for creating the candles, on the right):
9480222, 2:07:46, 38:26
12839124, 3:06:02, 24:48
17256737, 4:19:54, 26:07
13716707, 3:28:37, 18:54
12671435, 2:35:27, 20:58
11112483, 2:15:53, 26:53
17055181, 3:34:21, 52:18
21232810, 6:29:42, 1:33:52
16935780, 4:47:56, 1:05:11
Those numbers seem a bit off. The average is around 60-70k rows per minute, 1k rows per second. Since this is my first experience with TS Databases and with Influx, would you consider this performance normal?
I'm running InfluxDB 1.7.9, Influx Python client 5.2.3, Python 3.7, running from Pycharm, on a MacBook Pro with 16GB Ram.
Any tip is welcomed!
I also read posts were a lot of people were advising on not using a database at all, just chunking data and storing it in files. That's something I intended to do for heavier data such as Order Book data, but I've already spent quite some time setting this up and building my infrastructure around it and I'd like to make it work decently at least for the time being.
Thanks in advance
Answer: A modern computer can perform billions of calculations per second, so 60k rows per minute for OHLC is ridiculous. That implies millions of clock cycles per row!
The first thing I would check is data-transfer times using a simple query (no aggregations) from Influx.

TS Database performance issue


What does mean "background" in statistics or geostatistics?

Question: somebody told me it was a bottom value , but I still don't get the whole picture.
Comment: Can you give an example of where it is used?
Answer: Note: Since there is more than one use case of background in geostatistics, I will pick only one. If this is not the right background you are looking for, please edit and clarify your question.
Answer: A data point can be given by an absolut value A or a background value B plus a deviation D where B + D = A.
Example: If you are looking at a map showing the mean temperature of year X, you can look at the absolute field A or on its deviation D from the climatological year mean temperature of 1961-1990 B. Sometimes the latter tells you more, depending on what you are interested in. Additionally, analyses and statistical methods are often applied to the deviation field instead of the absolute field to identify patterns.
Comment: Not sure why this was put on hold. It's a good question about a confusing subject.
Comment: I work with geologists where I'm explaining this quite often. Background is definitely not just the lowest values. Especially because you can have negative anomalies. The short answer is "background" characterizes the data/signal that is not anomalous. Therefore understanding background is an important step in understanding what an anomaly is. If this gets taken off hold I can help with a more complete answer and references.
Comment: FuzzyLeapfrog: your answer is closer to explaining residual  than background. In the usual geological meaning a sample either belongs to a population which is background or not. In that context anomalies are not background plus something. They are sourcing from a different, typically less common population which is not background. Your description is more like EM noise and signals where more continuous mixing takes place.
Comment: "Background is definitely not just the lowest values." I agree and never maintained the contrary in my answer. Since OP did not clarify their question, it's hard to say what kind of *background* they are looking for. Could also be the background field in the sense of kriging etc. ... I agree that this question should not be on hold.
Comment: No! Didn't mean to imply you did! It was in the originators comment. I have a feeling a "Krigger" would ask a more specifically worded question. I can see several good questions spinning off this one too.