Where can I find a compendium of microorganisms?

Question: I recently bought a microscope hoping to learn more about algae and bacteria and stuff. I've collected a few samples of pond water and found tons of algae and stuff, but I have no idea what to call the things I have found. I am wondering if there is a list of every known algae with a picture and some characteristics that would help me identify what I am looking at. I've looked around on the internet and haven't found much. Thanks
Comment: It sounds like what you need is an identification key. The most common form of a biological identification key is a dichotomous key. In such a key the sequence and structure of identification steps is fixed by the author. At each point in the decision process, multiple alternatives are offered, each leading to a result or a further choice.
Key can be very region-specific so I suggest to search for a key that focusses on the group of animals you wish to identify and the region/country you live in.
Comment: that is exactly what i'm looking for
Comment: So you're looking for maybe a book or list with some common microorganisms that you would find in water so that you know what it is?
Comment: Where are you from? I've got a good suggestion, but apparently it has not been translated in English...
Comment: This website will probably provide you with more information than you need at this stage of your investigations but is it one of the most complete and free resources for microbes of various kinds. http://microbe-canvas.com/
Answer: I do not know how complex of a key you want, but this one is a good identification guide for beginners. It contains a lot of common freshwater pond algae, what they look like, and some basic characteristics. From here, you can identify your specimen and then be able to look them up further. Hope this helps!


Can I verify a child public key derived from its parent public key without involving any private keys and child index?

Question: I have a extended private key, I'm creating multiple child private key / public key pair. If want to verify that the child public is derived from the parent public key. Can I do that? Thanks in advance!
Answer: If you have the parent public key and the (non hardened) index you can generate the child public key and verify that it matches. You can't do it without the index I'm afraid since the derivation involves a one way hashing step.
Comment: Ohh okay then I'll go with the indexes itself. Thanks
Answer: To derive child keys, two conditions have to be met / satisfied:

The extended parent public key is available (public key & chain code)

The derivation path uses non-hardened indexes

(optional) know the derivation path; if you don't know it, it will take you time to iterate through the various combination (i.e. brute force), but typically they are simply incremented, so it shouldn't be costly.

Reference Public parent key → public child key in BIP-0032.


How To Verify Email Service?

Question: I have got an email address after creating an email service in Salesforce.
Now I want to add the email address which I got from email service in "Organisation-Wide-Email addresses" and verify them.
I have added the email address in organization wide address but how can I verify it?
Comment: Is that address a routing address? Is any email sent to this address creates a case in SFDC?
Answer: Ahhh you can try one hack which I have used when I face similar issue. In your email service handler class create any test record and save the email body.
Now send the verification email and your class will create the record. Now from the body of record you will get the verification link and Now you can easily verify the email.
Answer: There are various ways you can do it. Our main motto is to make our code in such a way via which we will be able to do it in LIVE and sandbox without much hassle.

Use of Hierarchical custom settings having a boolean field.
Modify your apex class in such a way to use the custom setting field. If the field's value is true, insert a dummy record or forward a mail to your address.
If custom settings  value is false, do your normal email service operation.

By this your Class once created will have the power to be attached to multiple email services and you can easily verify the, using custom settings as a switch which is quite useful if you want seamless integration in UAT LIVE or multiple sandboxes.

How To Verify Email Service?


Fine Mesh Screen for Chimney

Question: Can I put a fine mesh metal screen on my chimney cap. The current cap has a screen but the mesh is large enough to let stink bugs in. I'd like to put a finer metal screen over the existing screen. Does anyone even make such a product? The chimney is for a gas fireplace which is never used.
Answer: No, this is a bad idea. In the winter, the moist combustion byproducts or plain leaky indoor air can condense and freeze on the cold metal screen. After a while and in the right conditions, enough condensation can freeze to slightly prevent airflow, which makes the whole thing freeze over very quickly. I don't think I need to explain why a frozen-shut chimney is a very bad thing...
Comment: Not only moisture but cresode buildup Ald loss of draft.+
Comment: Two good comments/answers but since it's a natural gas fireplace that I don't use ctrl-alt-delor gave me an answer that will work for me.
Comment: @PlatinumGoose: be careful: often chimneys have more than one chase, so it might not be only your unused fireplace venting out the cap. i agree  plugging the lower end is a better bet, if your damper is somehow not working.
Comment: I'm going to block the fireplace opening not the chimney and the chimney is strictly for the fireplace, furnace vent is separate and water heater is electric.
Comment: I have a duravent wire mesh bird guard?, standard product on my chimney cap. Dandavis's scenario happened verbatim, 11:30 pm, Nov 19, 2020, central NC, 31-32 degrees, no wind, humidity 87%, clear sky, 30.61 in. pressure, dew point 28 degrees. Started a fire with paper, kindling, cedar shavings, some small cedar split wood. Fast, hot, instant fire. After 15/20 seconds, smoke started pouring out of all stove pipe connection points. Freaked me out. After opening all windows and shutting down air supply to fire, smoke stopped. Upon inspection, all square openings of wire mesh were sealed with soot
Answer: Good question. if you reduce are flow to much, then you are at risk of carbon monoxide CO₂ poisoning. You can get good battery operated detectors, that will warn you if there is a problem.
Check the specification for the flue diameter. Then calculate the area. Compare it with what you have after partially blocking it with the mesh. There main still remain a problem with turbulence causing the affective flue size to be reduced. Or with the mesh becoming blocked.
A better solution may be to block it at the other end, with something solid. That way you stop drafts as well. And make it impossible to use the fire, while it is blocked. (If this is practical)
Comment: Good idea, it has a dark glass screen so I can block it off behind the screen and it won't be noticeable and no one can start a fire if it's blocked just behind the screen. I also like the part about minimizing drafts.

Fine Mesh Screen for Chimney


What is the minimum mean squared error estimator of the mean of two normally-distributed variables?

Question: Let $Z=(X+Y)/2$, where $X$ and $Y$ are independent normally-distributed random variables with known variances $\sigma^2_X$ and $\sigma^2_Y$ and unknown (and possibly different) means. Given a sample $x_1$ from $X$ and $y_1$ from $Y$, what is the minimum mean squared error estimator of the mean of $Z$? Is there a biased estimator with an MSE improved over the maximum likelihood estimator $\frac{x_1+y_1}{2}$? Can we generalize to $n$ mutually-independent random variables?
Comment: Maybe this should be tagged as homework?
Answer: Minimize SSE = Σi (zi-a)2 with respect to a and you get the average of the two sample means, so it looks like your MLE is also your minimum MSE estimator, whether you have one (x,y) pair or several.  Not surprising, since the expression for the SSE and the log likelihood function are almost identical.


How do you say the title that some teacher has?

Question: For example, if he graduates in Physical Education and he teach it, can I put: Licensed (teaching) in Physical Education or graduate in Physical Education.
Or, what do you recommend me?
Answer: The two are not the same. Being a graduate in a subject is not always a licence to teach it.
Usually the type, classification and subject of a degree would be given separately from any professional entitlement; for example:
BSc(Hons) 2.1 Physical Education, University of Blank, 2018
Qualified Teacher Status, Physical Education, Registration 23456, 2019
This would be fairly typical for the UK. Other countries' practice will vary widely.
Answer: Terms related to qualifications in teaching vary heavily between countries. If you want to refer to such qualifications in a non-English-speaking country, I would say you should attempt to translate the local term.
However, if you just want to say what their university degree was in, it's just "graduate in X", and I'm fairly sure that's consistent between English-speaking countries. You could also say they "have a degree in X", or "hold a degree in X". In most contexts, just saying "degree" refers to a bachelor's degree.
Comment: I got it, but for example here in Colombia there is a career called lisenced in Pysical education, it means that the person will be able to teach it, without another degree.So in that case, how can I translate to English?
Comment: So, the local Spanish term doesn't include *teacher*, just *physical education*? Does it exist for other subjects, or just for physical education? If it's just for PE, I'd say "licensed physical educator", as the license in ... education could be taken to mean the license applies only to education. It seems a little weird, though, because "physical educator" isn't a thing. You could equally use "licensed teacher of physical education", which would work for subjects other than PE as well, even without "education" in the title. Some might prefer "licensed instructor in" rather than "teacher of".
Comment: I think OP wants to say Licentiate in Physical Education. In Spanish, there is one word both for "licentiate" and "licensed": "licenciado" (a noun when it means "licentiate", and an adjective when it means "licensed").


How to season / care for a Bundt pan?

Question: I just got a new cast-aluminum Bundt pan and I want to take care of it so my bundts don't stick. Does anyone have any helpful advise about how to season and clean the bundt pan?
Answer: Bundt pans (and cake pans in general) are not normally seasoned in any way.
Instead, they are greased and floured each time you make a cake.  The traditional method is to apply butter or oil to the interior (the easiest way is melted butter and a pastry brush, but you can also use wax paper or even clean fingers to apply solid butter).
Then you flour it by putting several tablespoons of flour inside the bundt pan, turning and shaking until it is well floured, then shaking out the excess.
Oil or solid vegetable shortening may be substituted for the butter.
In my experience, 99% of the time, using a simple spray oil will do the job just as well, with much less fuss and mess.
Comment: Hm, even a cast iron one? Given that nonstick baking pans are pretty popular, I'd assume you'd want to season if you can. I think you can season cast aluminum as well? (But of course, it's probably pre-coated, since even cast iron skillets are these days.)
Comment: My favorite product when baking is [Bakers Joy](http://www.bakersjoy.com/products/bakers-joy-original-no-stick-baking-spray-with-flour/). It's a non-stick spray with flour that does an excellent job of keeping breads or other things from sticking. It's a fairly common item in the baking section of grocery stores near other oils or sprays. I keep a can of it stocked in my kitchen all the time :)
Comment: I have never heard of a cast iron bundt pan...  Not saying they dont' exist, but that seems odd.  The trademarked ones from Nordic Ware are cast aluminum:  http://www.nordicware.com/store/products/detail/pro-cast-original-bundt-pan/21D8047C-7C89-102A-B382-0002B3267AD7
Answer: I just bought one at a garage sale that was a Nordic Ware heavy cast aluminum still in the original box. It is a non Teflon coated original. The box states to use non salted shortening like Crisco, generously applied, and temper in a 200-300°C (390-570°F) oven for about an hour.
Comment: KEY POINT--  *non Teflon coated original*
Answer: I inherited my mother-in-law's cast aluminum Bundt pan several years ago, the one we had given her as soon as they came onto the market back in the '60's. It had been well seasoned over the years by the many, many perfect pound cakes she had baked in this pan.
I feel certain that she only washed out the pan with water, no detergent, after each use, and wiped it dry with a paper towel. She used Baker's Joy with flour before each use, and the pan baked the most gorgeous dark exterior on the cakes.
My pan, on the other hand, only a few years less old than hers, does not turn out a cake with a nice crust. I'm sure now that it is because I've always washed it with dish detergent after each use.
I am reseasoning my pan today and will not use detergent on it, hoping my pan will become as well seasoned as hers.

How to season / care for a Bundt pan?


What equipment can be used to measure sound equipment quality?

Question: My audiologist has a special device which measures the performance and distortion of my hearing aids. It graphs input to output quality of reproduction. Does such equipment exist for studio speakers, headphones or custom in ear monitors?
Comment: May be an electronics stack exchange question
Answer: These days the most popular equipment is a calibrated microphone, interface, computer, and special software.
http://sonarworks.com/ is one good example but there are many, depending on the specific needs.


Limit to extrusion volume

Question: Assuming heat transfer to melt the filament is not an issue, what's the bottleneck in pushing more filament through the nozzle? Is extrusion volume per time proportional to applied extruder torque?
Comment: What is your end goal? If you push a ton of material thru, then you need equivalent speed control on the X-Y drives to place the material properly.  See, for example, modified setups which allow extruding soft clay (5 mm nozzle or bigger)
Answer: The molten plastic in the extruder becomes a hydraulic fluid effectively when it gets melted. You're pushing on a fat piston (1.75 mm or 2.85 mm, depending on filament type), and shoving fluid out through a 0.4 mm or so hole. There's a limit to flow rate at a given pressure, but the bigger issue actually tends to be friction. Molten plastic really loves to grab on to metal, and the ratio of surface area to volume is fairly high in the long, skinny tube that is the inside of an extruder. To make matters worse, the not-quite-molten section of the melt zone up at the top normally doesn't make a lot of contact with the walls due to lower pressures not deforming the plastic all that much, but at higher pressures you get much more deformation, increasing the linear distance that the plastic is dragging against the tube walls, and the pressure with which the two surfaces are bonding together. Especially in cheapo clone extruders you'll find roughly bored inner surfaces with many circumferential grooves which exacerbate this issue - this is why most extruders have a PTFE lining as far down as they can go. I had this issue in my $3 "all-steel" extruder barrel, where even printing PLA was an issue because of how readily the plastic formed huge plugs and grabbed the inside of the extruder.
So what you end up with, is that increased torque mostly linearly translates to increased pressure, which results in linearly increased friction inside the barrel, plus a little bit extra due to extra deformation in the top of the melt zone. You can polish the inside of the barrel (heatbreak? seen both terms) to help alleviate internal friction somewhat.
To make things even more fun, there's obviously a limit with how much force you can exert through the mating surface of a single hobbed bolt and the side of the filament. Too much force and the teeth will simply rip off the side of the filament and then you'll have no feeding torque whatsoever. To get much higher torque you'd need to design an extruder that both supports the filament much better than modern designs do, and spreads the force out over a larger surface area, either by using a much larger diameter feed gear, or multiple tightly-coupled feed gears.
I went into some degree of detail on the feed mechanism in this answer that another user asked about using a commercial extruder for plastic injection molding, which overlaps somewhat with your question here.
I know the original question assumed perfect heat transfer that was not a limiting factor to the process, but how that actually works is relevant to the question as well. E3D took one approach with their Volcano design, simply by making the melt zone much longer to increase heat transfer; the downside is there's obviously substantially more friction when you've got 4x the linear distance of molten plastic against metal, assuming you're not using a PTFE liner. This does have the advantage of letting the plastic take its time to reach the target temperature, decreasing how far over your target plastic temperature you need to have the heating element. One thing not often discussed in 3d printers is the fact that the plastic asymptotically approaches the temperature registered on your thermistor. If you're printing very, very slowly, your plastic will nearly be exactly at the target temperature. If you print very quickly with very high volumes, you'll tend to have slightly cooler plastic than intended because it simply wasn't in contact with the heater long enough to come up to temperature. The solution for very small designs might be higher temperatures, but the drawback there is that if you slow down even for a moment, say moving to thinner line widths or picking up and moving the extruder, you'll overheat the plastic. So there's practicality questions that need to be answered to determine how you'll actually heat that much plastic to the right temperature. Increased distance improves reliability at the cost of increased friction (and therefore extruder torque required), and increased temperature mostly bypasses that question at the cost of reliability.
TL;DR Increased extrusion speed requires increased pressure, which increases friction dramatically and in a non-linear fashion and results in stripped filament.
Comment: "shoving fluid out through a 0.4 mm or so hole"  Larger hole diameter nozzles are also available. One would have to determine if the heater could keep the plastic molten if more plastic was being pushed thru a larger hole. A search on Amazon shows nozzles with up to 1.0mm hole (vs the more commonly supplied 0.4mm nozzle).  If one had a printer that used 3mm filament (vs the smaller 1.75mm), that printer might have  a larger diamater nozzle hole as well.
Comment: Could you theoretically do an "all PTFE" hotend? Something like nonstick cookware, all the way through the nozzle.
Comment: This is a super useful answer, thank you very much! Most interesting bit is  "increased torque mostly linearly translates to increased pressure, which results in linearly increased friction inside the barrel". I think flow rate is about proportional to delta-pressure, but how does it relate to friction?

So optimally we'd probably want a metal hotend with a very,very thin PTFE lining all the way down?
Comment: All PTFE would reduce friction to be sure, at the expense of limiting how hot you can get the entire assembly. PTFE starts breaking down not far past ABS printing temperatures. As far as friction vs flow rate, I'm honestly not 100% sure how they correlate, because I'm not well versed in hydraulic fluid physics, but I can tell you that hydraulic friction through tubes is well documented and you could probably do some reading on Wikipedia to get a decent idea.
Comment: I think your analysis is too pessimistic - consider a design that takes 10-mm diameter input filament, with appropriately sized drive gears.
Comment: 10mm diameter filament would have some additional issues; ABS and PLA are not nearly as thermally conductive as aluminum, so you'd get a sheath of molten plastic surrounding a solid core as the plastic moved down through the extruder. You'd have to keep the plastic inside the heater block for even longer to get the whole filament molten. You'd have a larger surface area of plastic melting but the solid core would clog the nozzle, and more surface area is more friction..

Limit to extrusion volume


UX metrics categories for a web app

Question: We want to start using metrics to help drive design improvements. I like to tackle things from a high level down approach and I am trying to find some categories of metrics for web apps but not have any luck with this. (Just for the context of why I want these categories: my team is going to start creating a list of the metrics we want our Telemetry guild to gather for us and I want to to categorize these metrics to make it easier to talk about them and prioritize them. I know that categories will emerge naturally once we start listing important metrics but I thought it would be good to get an idea of what the industry is using in terms of categories or metric types at the start as well.)  Does anyone have any resources for this? Nothing I Google is giving me what I am looking for - just lots of links to analytics tools.
Comment: If I understand you correctly, just go to Google Analytics. In the admin area you'll see what you're looking for
Comment: I realize now I was using analytics when I meant metrics.
Comment: What I meant is that if you check GA, you'll already see a lot of categorized metrics you can borrow for your project. I'm not sure which metrics you need, but unless you're looking for deep psychology, eye scanning or other advanced metrics, I'm pretty sure you'll get some ideas
Answer: Im not sure if this off topic or even something others would agree with, but I recently completed something similar for a webApp where we needed to implement tracking on our platform to get useful metrics and metrics to share with stakeholders to understand the success of key features.
I found GA not particularly useful as its more focused on page metrics and not user events and didn't give the metrics that would inform design decisions. Bounce Rates, dwell times, click through rates weren't especially useful. So we went with MixPanel, which allowed us to create bespoke events to understand specific features more clearly.
This allowed us to see much more specific and useful data. While it did take time understanding MixPanel and how to create meaningful events to track it became a useful tool.
I dont work for mixpanel and there are alternatives that also take a user events approach.
Comment: GA has very strong user event metrics, specially when mixed with Optimize. You could use Hotjar as well as many other, but it all depends on the kind of data you need. Anyways, I don't think the OP is looking for software recommendations, just a list of categories
Comment: Perhaps, I misunderstood the question, I was trying to convey that the benefits of being able to create bespoke events or even just pass a js object was more useful in webapps/platforms than what our developers had managed to achieve with GA. Being able to see the types of data or events paths was incredibly useful and perhaps it came down to not being familiar enough with GA.
Answer: Seems like you need to work out a measurement plan to figure out what you want to measure and how those numbers will be used in design improvements. From there, you can figure out how to set up your analytics and decide which tool to use.
I found it helpful to start the planning with a bunch of questions:
Who is using our app? User demographics
What is the context of use - time of day, device type and screen size?
How long do they use the app?
What do they do on the app?
... and then drill down and then work out the data that needs to be collected and analysed.
Comment: Yes thank you for your feedback on this. Actually since I posted my original question I have decided to try out the Goals-Signals-Metrics approach which I read about in a few articles. I am currently working on this with a coworker. So really we are doing as you suggested - coming up with a measurement plan. :)

UX metrics categories for a web app


Is it normal for beginner guitarist to break strings often?

Question: I'm playing an acoustic for 4-5 months now and i've broken 3 strings in the process.. Is this normal or should i be a lot more careful with strings?
Comment: Simple questions. Same string? Same place? What guitar? What gauge strings? What sort of music? What pick? What tuning?
Comment: 1st string i broke was the low E, then, high e, and just now i've broken the high e again. All 3 times were standard tuning.. I believe it was rock all 3 times. Not too sure about the guitar model/name. .73mm nylon pick. Not too sure about the place and string gauge though..
Answer: Too many variables to really know what's going on.
But here are a few things that could cause chronic string breaking.

Frets are not dressed properly, too square with sharp edges.
Bridge or nut grooves not filed smooth.
Defective or inferior strings.
Guitarist way too strong (sarcasm alert).

It is not likely that your playing is the cause.  I've been playing for 40+ years on gauge 11 strings and bend up a 4th and they don't break.  When I purchased my Gibson 335 fresh off the rack I broke the high e string every time I bent it at the 15th fret.  This was the fret being too sharp.  A proper dressing and it never happened again.  The guitar is more likely to hurt your fingers if you over play than the other way around.
Is your guitar new?  If so it is likely that it needs a professional set-up with the frets, nut and bridge groves files a little.
EDIT: Maybe option #4 is not that crazy.  Here are some issues that a true new comer can experience.  If you have an electric solid body guitar and you're playing without an amp it is possible that you are over compensating by hitting the strings very hard in an attempt to hear something.  You need to get your hands on a small amp with a head phone jack.  If you are playing a nylon string acoustic with a pick that could damage the higher unwound strings.
This is why I said that there are too many unknowns.  I charge the author of the question with the task of updating the question to have more information.  Please provide: Electric vs acoustic vs classical, using amp or no, gauge strings, make and model of guitar if known, type of pick used, if you are taking lessons or learning from Youtube, etc.
Comment: It's really old, over 20 years old i think. Sadly i can't really do anything about it, i have to work with what i have. Buying a new one is not an option, considering i'm only 15 (Can't really get a job at this age).
Comment: Well keep at it.  Just because it's 20 yo doesn't mean it was set up correctly.  Can you offer more info?  Like does it break when you bend?  Does it always break in the same place, at the bridge or nut, at the same fret?  Then we could all try and help diagnose it.
Comment: Not really, i haven't noticed a pattern.. Although i think i might be just strumming too hard.
Comment: So, maybe my 4th option is not so sarcastic.  Is it an electric or acoustic guitar?  If it's electric are you using an amp?  Without an amp you won't hear and may strum very hard to compensate.  If acoustic is it steel string or nylon string classical.  If the later then you shouldn't use a pick.  If you really think you are strumming to hard then lighten up.
Comment: I'm gonna edit to address that possibility
Answer: I'd second ggcg, although some variables, as mentioned which are unknown, if you tune the guitar over the standard EADGBe, when new to tuning, then that can cause some wear on the strings. I know when I started out I'd almost break one per 1-2 weeks.
Another thing, and I don't know if this actually plays a role because I just do it on new strings to avoid having to tune new strings after 5 minutes of playing, is stretching them (like A LOT) by bending the s*** out of them as I'm tuning new strings (while you're approaching the desired tones) so to get to the point, I don't know if that stretching contributes to better resistance to stress but if it does, something to try.
Last factor, sometimes beginners go from one extreme to the other: attacking the strings too softly or too hard. Because picking them too hard can also make them break easier.
Comment: I'm fairly convinced that 'stretching' the strings doesn't so much stretch them, as bed them in, particularly at the machine head post. Still needs doing though!
Comment: Hm, you're probably right for the bedding, never occured to me there might be almost no "stretching" to none at all
Answer: When I have a problem with strings breaking on a particular guitar, I look to see if there's a sharp spot or hard bend at the point of contact where the string break occurred and I notice if it breaks in the same place every time. Doing that has always led me to find the reason for string breaks. I've never had a Low E string break as you stated in your comment, that just baffles me.


PostGIS convert geography(Point,4326) to GPS

Question: I got a database with a column of type geography(Point,4326), the data contained looks like 0101000020E610000092E057F66EF73140930035B56CBD4840. How can I convert it to GPS coordinates?
Answer: The ST_X/ST_Y functions are only defined on the geometry type, so cast there before calling them.
SELECT ST_X(geogcolumn::geometry), ST_Y(geogcolumn::geometry) FROM thetable;

Comment: According to my tests (postgres 9.2, postgis 2.0.1), this is a bit faster than ST_AsEWKT
Answer: It looks like this column is in Well Known Binary (WKB) or Extended Well Known Binary (EWKB) Format. You should try to query it using something like:
select astext(your_column_name) from your_table_name

That will give you the textual representation. Not sure what you mean by GPS co-ordinates? Do you want to convert it into a .gpx file or just get the lat/lon. In which case the former will do that, although you might have to clean up the output in text editor or something.
The alternative would be
select ST_X(your_column_name),ST_Y(your_column_name) from your_table_name

which will give you the numeric lats and longs in two columns as your query table.
---- EDIT
These are functions on Geometry columns --- on Geography columns, the following is correct:
 select ST_AsEWKT(your_column_name) from your_table_name

Comment: What I mean by GPS coordinates is just lat/lon. I've tried the functions you proposed but both returned an error ERROR:  function astext(geography) does not exist
ERROR:  function st_x(geography) does not exist. Is there something I have to install to get it working?
Comment: Try ST_AsEWKT(your_column_name)


How did Paul know so much about Melchizedek?

Question: The Old Testament has 3 verses on the subject. 2 in Genesis 14:18 and 19 and Psalms 110:14. That's all. Yet Paul has given a surprising description of Melchizedek, the complete chapter of Hebrews 7 is devoted to the subject.
Comment: Note that few people today identify Paul as the author of Hebrews.
Comment: These is a much more detailed version of this same question on he [hermeneutics.se] site that I asked some  years ago here: [Where does the extra information about Melchizedek come from in Hebrews 7?](https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/q/7800)
Answer: The writer of Hebrews approached the subject of Melchizedek through a combination of different avenues.
1) What's listed explicitly in the text, through both direct information from scripture (the King of Salem/Peace), and through translation of his name (King of Righteousness).
2) The way Melchizedek acted, playing the part of a priest by blessing God's people.
3) The way Melchizedek was treated, Abraham giving him a tithe indicating his superiority to Abraham.
4) The reference to the "Priestly Order of Melchizedek" in the Psalms.
Taking the above into account, The writer of Hebrews is anticipating the objection to Jesus' priesthood on the grounds of Him being from the line of Judah, not Levi. The writer is pointing to this "other order" that wasn't from the line of Levi (because Levi was from Abraham, and Melchizedek is clearly outside of the line of Abraham).
The author develops this point further by both literary reference and literary license. Because the character of Melchizedek just appeared and disappeared in the Torah, it's "as if" he didn't have a beginning or end, "as if" his priestly order has always been. Because Abraham tithed to Melchizedek and was blessed, and because the superior always blesses the inferior, then logically the priestly order of Melchizedek must be greater than the priestly order of Levi (Melchizedek > Abraham > Levi).
The writer of Hebrews didn't have any special knowledge of Melchizedek, he just expounded on the available information as the Holy Spirit led him, both through his own understanding and the clear messianic nature of Psalm 110, which is referring to Jesus the Messiah.
Answer: Paul knew because of Jewish Tradition, Guided by the Holy Spirit, he understood that the traditions where not traditions of men, but traditions of God.
The Targum, the Aramaic interpretive translations, identify Malchizedek as the Son of Noah, Shem.  The Targum, or Targumim, is part of the traditions used by the Rabbi's to identify and explain the Hebrew Scriptures to an audience that spoke mainly Aramaic after the Babylonian Captivity. The oral tradition as well as other traditions such as actions like the Jewish Liturgy, was how the Rabbi's preserved their teaching.  It is through these traditions that we get the names of Jannes and Jambres which are not mentioned in the OLD Testament which Paul uses without question identifying these men in scripture. Much like what is done in the Current Church started by Christ,  the actions of the faithful, repeated constantly over and over again to preserve the Traditions of God, are what maintain the orthodoxy of the Faith.
In Short, it was the traditions of the Rabbi's which held that Shem was the Descendant of Noah and Grandfather of Abraham.  Who, at the instruction of God, offered Bread and Wine as a Sacrifice to God.  This foreshadowed Exodus 24, where Moses, the Priests,  and 70 Elders ate and Drank as they beheld God.  What did they eat and drink, the answer can be found by the Table of the Presence, the food that was made present, The Showbread, placed on the Table of the Presence in the temple and with it flagons for Libation offerings, flagons for pouring out wine.
These Holy and Sacred Traditions of God continued to the Passover meal in the upper room, where the Jews after the Roman occupation started another tradition to preserve their Culture as Gods People.  In fear of losing their identity the started the tradition of the Passover Seder, which Christ fallowed and altered in the upper room as the long awaited Messiah was himself and instead of opening the door to wait for the messiah as the Jews do even today, he walked through that door to inevitably,Calvary. Christ, having foreknowledge of the persecutions that would be on his Church, instituted a Sacred Tradition of his own, that we would do continually, the Holy Eucharist, Himself being the Bread and the Wine that was poured.  This is in reality what the New Covenant is, the Eucharistic Meal, Christ offering himself to us, drawing us to him.  Paul knew this, he knew the importance of this Bread and Wine offering only too well.


Inkscape - easy way to make a lace design?

Question: Was playing around with designing clothes on Inkscape, and was wondering if you are able to make lace? I've already tried to make lace with the Bezier Curve, but every time I try it looks awful. Any easier ways?
Comment: Welcome on GD.SE, Imbrosia! Can you tell us something about your efforts or be more specific on your question? e.g. what's really *awful*? Have you explored [this old thread](http://www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=11511)?
Answer: There's an extension for making a pattern for an actual lace (not only a drawing of one), maybe it could be useful to you: https://tesselace.com/2017/10/31/inkscape-for-bobbin-lace/
If it's circular, the 'rotate copies' live path effect is an option, too.
Comment: Thank you for this, I shall check it out!
Answer: I suggest that you may want to use two features inherent in Inkscape.
The first is tiled clones, which allows you to create an array of any object, path or group. There's quite a bit of flexibility within the settings for that feature.
The second feature is interpolate. Interpolation in this context requires a "start" object and an "end" object and generates a fill-in array which adjusts the item/object in a morphing sort of way.
You need only to create a small section of your desired lace and use those two features to create a pattern. The level of adjustment available with both of them is quite spectacular.
I recognize that link-only answers are not a good idea, but the features are complex enough that it's difficult to provide a useful summary/instruction for them. Alternatively, user searches for the terms will provide more options.


What are the symptoms of salt poisoning?

Question: I used a large amount of salt yesterday. Now (after 19 hours) I'm feeling ill. Although I do not think it is my case, I am curious: What amount of salt is toxic? What are the symptoms of salt poisoning? How many hours does it usually take to appear?
Answer: Too much salt in the body is known as hypernatremia, and the symptoms are fairly straightfoward. You get very thirsty.

The major symptom of hypernatremia is thirst. The absence of thirst in
  conscious patients with hypernatremia suggests an impaired thirst
  mechanism. Patients with difficulty communicating or ambulating may be
  unable to express thirst or obtain access to water. Sometimes patients
  with difficulty communicating express thirst by becoming agitated.

Treatment is to drink a lot of water (and quit eating so much salt). Your kidneys will do the rest to restore your normal sodium levels.
Frankly, hypernatremia isn't particularly dangerous. What is dangerous is the opposite, hyponatremia.


What's the difference between a bank and an investment bank?

Question: According to some, banks and investment banks are different things. But at the end of the day it seems an investment bank & a bank are both still one in the same, intermediary node in the flow of capital where fees are taken.
Comment: I've removed that link as this seems like possible spam. Questions on Stackexchange should be fully comprehensive without going to external resources (though such resources are allowed, as long as affiliated links are properly disclosed to prevent spam).
Comment: It's not "according to some". They are two completely different things.
Answer: They provide entirely different services and serve entirely different markets.
Commercial banks take in deposits and provide loans.  Chase is an example of a commercial bank.
Investment banks do not take deposits, and if they provide a loan it is from their own money, not depositors'.  They make money by providing financial services for which they are paid -- underwriting an IPO, handling a merger or acquisition, handling trading, etc.  Goldman Sachs is an example of an investment bank.
Answer: A motorcycle and a pickup truck are both wheeled vehicles that will take you to your destination. But they are very different if you want to move a wardrobe.
Retail banks are the ones we rely on to actually transfer money between people and businesses. They are typically heavily regulated in terms of loans to deposits ratios, the percentage of risky loans they're allowed to hold, and so on. In the USA, deposits with such banks are often insured by the FDIC.
Investment banks are free from most of those regulations. They can, and do, go bankrupt when their risky investments go bad. The separation of retail and investment banking is supposed to prevent such a failure impacting the retail banking sector.


Magento2: how to display 4 digit prices and tier prices in the admin > catalog?

Question: How to modify Magento 2 in order to be able to show 4 digit prices and tier prices in the admin catalog? I can save 4 digit prices and they go in the database, even when I load a product edit form in the admin I can see a JSON on the source of the page which contains my 4 digit prices, but in the form itself the prices are all rounded to 2 digits. How can I get the form to show my 4 digit prices without rounding them down to 2 digits?
Answer: Hey after hours of searching I finally found how! its in vendor/magento/zendframework1/library/Zend/Currency.php line 74!
change this bit:
protected $_options = array(
    'position'  => self::STANDARD,
    'script'    => null,
    'format'    => null,
    'display'   => self::NO_SYMBOL,
    'precision' => 2,
    'name'      => null,
    'currency'  => null,
    'symbol'    => null,
    'locale'    => null,
    'value'     => 0,
    'service'   => null,
    'tag'       => 'Zend_Locale'
);

change 'precision' => 2, for 'precision' => 4,
Now I just need to figure the right way to apply this change from a clean module.


Is there a service that would return me all streets in a city (ZIP)?

Question: I am looking for a service that you know of, that would return me all streets in a city (ZIP) for the purpose of building a drop-down (or auto-complete) address entry field.
Comment: Any country? Or a specific country?
Comment: U.S. in particular.
ESRI, Bing, Google or any other service provider will do. It its free is even better:)
Comment: I know this is an old thread but wanted to post that Melissa Data has a service that does this and that I'm currently looking to solve this exact problem. Kotebiya's link for [This document](http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/pdfs/tiger/tgrshp2008/rel_file_desc_2008.pdf#page=3) above is broken and I'm searching for its replacement as well as pulling the data files from the mentioned locations and manually looking for the linkages in the datasets. Preferably, I'd like to host the data internal to my own systems and update with a service, but, can absolutely support the case for calling an
Answer: Most companies actually seem to use dual range address calculators (At least in my experience the results are consistent with that behavior). Basically each uninterrupted strip of road has a range, or multiple ranges of numbers, on either side that specify the maximum street number and minimum street number. One side has odd and the other usually has even.
The Census Bureau does publish road shapefiles based on USPS and local planning agency information called Edges. Using this in tandem with FEATNAMES you can derive all streets within a Zip Code. This document explains the relationship and linkage between datasets. With both Edges and Featnames, you will have the location and set of names for each strip of road.
Most importantly, though, this is one of the few and only instances where the Census Bureau publishes a Zip Code location. Usually, they post areas which have one dominating zip code known as ZCTA's (Zip Code Tabulation Areas). Be careful how you use it though, some streets have different Zip Codes on either side, and some roads have no zip codes.
Answer: I've never heard of a service like that. In the case of a drop down of streets from just a zip code, the list would be huge - probably not what you want to do, or subject your users to.
What you need is to create a find task with a filter, linked to a geocode service. Tough to guide you without knowing what API you are using, but Bing has one as does ESRI. We built ours from the ground up, searching our own data. If you did get the data (from the census people?) a simple find task wouldn't be too hard to setup what you want to do.
If anyone knows of a pre-fab service for the US (or Cdn on the off chance) I'd like to hear about it!


Cannot find archive in Gmail even when looking in All Mail

Question: I seem to have tried everything suggested in answers to this same question.  Today, June 13th, 2019, I accidentally moved some messages into the archive, and I know I've done the same thing in the past. I cannot find anything called "archive" or any messages that are not labeled as in my "inbox."
Answer: In Gmail, there is no Archive folder. All emails you "archive" ends up in All Mail folder - https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#all
And to filter out non-archived emails you can search for in:archive - https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#archive
Answer: As mentioned, there is no "archive" folder in Gmail.
But I found a way to find only the messages sent to the "archive".
Write in the search bar:
has:nouserlabels -in:Sent -in:Chat -in:Draft -in:Inbox

In the search results you will see all the messages Which are not under any label  (="archive").


Would it be feasible to use a breadth first search algorithm for finding a solution to the 3x3x3 rubiks cube?

Question: I am trying to implement a rubiks cube solving program,and I am trying to figure out which algorithm to use,so far I have only come up with using breadth first search to find a shortest path from the initial configuration node to the solution node.
Each edge of the graph would be a 90 degree turn of a face of the rubiks cube(180 degree turns considered as 2 turns).
As for representing each configuration of the rubiks cube in a node I am thinking of using a 3x3x3 array of integers.Each element of the array would be an int from 1 to 6 representing each of the colours.
So if I used the Breadth First Search Algorithm for finding an optimal solution to the rubiks cube, would it run without taking up too much memory or too much time on an average computer?
Comment: What are your thoughts?  Have you tried to work out how long it would take?  Have you tried to work out how many states there are?  Is there something that prevents you from answering this on your own?  We're happy to help you understand the concepts but just solving exercise-style problems for you is unlikely to achieve that. You might find [this page](https://cs.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1284/755) helpful in improving your question.
Comment: The answer can depend on how you encode manipulating the cube as a graph. For instance, there are algorithms for cycling three corners without changing the rest of the puzzle, so you could add an edge between the end-state of that move. More importantly, it is important to define a single move is: a single 90 deg turn? Or is an 180 deg turn also a single move?
Answer: For given Rubik's cube, the maximal number of moves required to solve any permutation of valid configuration is 26 in quarter-turn metric, but only 20 as half-turn metric, it means that if you have the most distant configuration amongst all possibilities the height of the tree is 20 levels, using BFS you have to store the previous level, using only quarter-turn metric the number is 26, but using unconstrained BFS the algorithm will terminate after 20 steps. It would also be nice to keep the path from current configuration to solved state if you wish to use it later. With majority of solutions at 18 moves as high as about $29*10^{18}$, the straightforward application of BFS is not really feasible for memory usage.
The worst case time required to solve puzzle from any configuration will traverse all solutions space, this is not feasible either. To put it in numbers, the empirical result to find the worst case number of moves took 35 cpu years, checking only solutions that require less than 20 moves, not aiming at the optimal state, reducing problem by symmetry and splitting to 55,882,296 sets that require checking shrinking actual number of states even further. These observations are not available using vanilla BFS. So the time usage is also not feasible.
As for the comments, using any algorithmic system of solving cube by human will not yield optimal solution, but will span at about 40 to 80 moves, but would be really straightforward to implement and both time and space would be negligible.
The Rubik's Pie (Domino) from the other answer is significantly easier, not only by removal of one layer, but some quarter turns are not possible to perform, but still it requires 18 moves in Half-turn metric and 19 in Quarter-turn metric, with solution space with only $406 425 600$ possible positions which is small when compared with $43 252 003 274 489 856 000$ ($10^{11}$ times smaller).
Answer: This depends on what you mean by too much time. I implemented a multi-threaded bidirectional BFS solver for the Rubik's Pie (2x3x3), and for a configuration that took 14 moves to get back to the solution node, it took about 10 hours to find the sequence, but ymmv.
Time was definitely the biggest factor. For a Rubik's cube of that size, there just aren't that many children of a given configuration, so you should be fine on memory.


SPFx node version keeps updating

Question: I've built several SPFx web parts but now I'm getting errors because I'm "somehow" on node v12 which I don't believe works with SPFX. I certainly didn't update it so how has it switched to v12 and how do I prevent this from happening again?
Answer: Some programs need a specific version of node for their work and while you install them, they silently install node of the version they need. To prevent it in the future, I'd recommend using nvm - Node Version Manager. It allows you having multiple versions of node in your computer and switch between them easily.
Installing node v.12.14.1:
<code>$ nvm install 12.14.1
</code>
Using node 12.14.1:
<code>$ nvm use 12.14.1
</code>

SPFx node version keeps updating


Is this patent applicable for gaming industry only? Can some parts of it be used in other fields of work without infringement of rights?

Question: In reference to the patent: EP2457626B1
Answer: This a granted patent, not just an application. I see the term "game" or "game apparatus" in every independent claim so, to me, it looks like it is indeed limited to gaming only. However, you would do well to get an opinion from a patent attorney. If you want to patent its application in other contexts, it is prior art and may impact patentability.


New Central Air Install: choosing single-stage vs dual-stage condensers

Question: Specifically:  would a 2-stage 3-ton condenser be more efficient than a 1-stage 2-ton condenser?  Let's assume the same SEER rating for both.
What about reliability? - I heard that 2-stage are a lot more complicated, does it mean more maintenance?
Finally, is it worth the extra investment if we live in the NorthEast and will be using central air 2 months a year?
Please advise.
Answer: 2 stage equipment is for comfort, not economy. You probably won't make that extra cost back if used 2 months a year and your house leaks AT ALL. (high SEER units are useless in an improperly insulated house) Reliability is doubled in that half the system can be broke and it will still work. Heating in your area is more important I would think, spend that money on an ECM (variable speed) furnace with a modulating gas valve. If they are the same SEER then there is no operating cost difference (right guys?). A 3 ton will just run less often and cost more to do so than a 2 ton. If you want to save money, thermal scan your house and fix those issues. Unless your rich and a green freak, I see no benefit to dual stage systems less than ~10 tons. The second stage is for those months that your first stage can't handle. In your situation it sounds like it would either always run both or never need the second.
ECM's pay for themselves in about 3 years, MGV's 10 or so depending on usage. 18 SEER will never pay for it self unless your house has an astronomical R value.
Quote from HVAC TALK

2 Stage is for COMFORT.
Some people may save some money, from the longer run in first stage because they won't feel that sudden coolness from the short on time that a single stage has at the mild and mid range winter temps.
  Meaning they don't set the stat as high as they did with their old unit.(comparing 2 stage 90% to single stage 90%) So it looks like the low fire is saving them a lot of money by being more efficient, when its really because they have their stat set lower.
Same with 2 stage A/C. They may set their stat 1 or 2 degrees higher. So they save because they are more comfortable at a higher temp. Which of course, maintaining a higher temp, uses less electric.
Most 2 stage units going in are replacing older lower efficiency single stage units. Moving up from a 80% to a 90%, or 9 SEER to a 15 SEER, so they see the overall savings. And rave about 2 stage savings.
  Contractors then repeat how much a 2 stage system saved that person.
So its just repeating observations made, without a control, to check it to.
In your case, (not to take money from a contractor, but), I'd just set the lock out lower, and see how it does this winter.
Keep the money you were going to spend on a new system in the bank, and let it make some interest.

http://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?178756-2-stage-furnace-not-more-efficient-than-1-stage/page2
This guy "Beenthere" seams to really know his stuff.
Comment: I do a little licensed hvac work and think this answer is good +
Answer: I agree with the above comments partially, but there are more pluses to two stage units. Yes, they are for comfort but they also save money by the fact that a one stage unit always runs wide open, where as two stage units will run in single stage mode if there isn't a big enough temperature difference and will save on electricity. On extremely hot or cold days it has the second stage to keep up.
But if I needed a one stage 3 ton and I was thinking about a two stage I would still get a 3 ton and it would save you money over time. If you downsize the unit, then it's just gonna work harder to keep up and it would all be pointless. As an added bonus, most two stage units have dehumidification but as little as you stated you would be using (it two months a year) I agree with these other guys; it's not worth it, and the ECM motors are good in the fact that they ramp themselves up and down according to the CFM but they also have some disadvantages. Such as if the static pressure goes up via dirty filter and / or coil it will ramp itself up to its max rpm's then back itself down.
But after it does this three times, it will lock itself out and a tech will have to come out. Also, the modules on them have been prone to overheating and burning up transistors which is a problem they have about got worked out, unless you bought a Bryant, Carrier, Rheem, Goodman, York, or Lennox unit in 2012.
Which in that case: look out! LOL. But all in all a brilliant design; it uses almost half the watts and electricity as other motors and if a unit is purchased with such motor, by the tax act it's a $1500 break. They're also  brushless type motors, which is really good seeing as most motor failures are from worn brushes. ECM's can also be hooked to either 120v or 240v so, all and all worth the money
Comment: Last I checked, payback on ECMs was about three years. Definitely worth it.
Answer: I think a deeper look at 2-stage can reveal a LOT of 'it depends' on if it's really worth doing vs  1-stage. Remember they are doing to same work, low stage is just taking longer to do it! The variables are so complicated it's really impossible to know if you are going to get better results with 2-stage vs single stage. Partly because estimating your load and it's seasonal variance and selecting exactly the right sized unit is a bit of a crap shoot.
If your 2-stage system happens to be a bit oversized, it may run in low so much that it would be similar to a smaller single stage unit. (and the opposite scenario). It's all so complicated and difficult just assuming 2-stage is better is a bit of an assumption. And I've found no easy way to temporarily force a 2-stage to run always on high if that's the response I want. So I will probably have it installed to permanently only run on high anyway. (I selected a 2-stage unit for warranty reasons) Because I prefer the comfort response with it on high. People say the longer cycle times of low-stage can extend the compressor life, maybe. But remember that longer cycles does mean more time spent above target temp on cool, for example..so it can be a comfort issue. And efficiency can be no better, or possibly even worse under some conditions. It depends. There are so many considerations can't list them all here.


How to select (size) a pump for a swimming pool?

Question: What are questions one must ask and the calculations that must be performed to select an optimal pool pump?
Answer: You will need to know how many gallons of water are in your pool. The general rule of thumb is your pool pump should be able to clean your pool in 8 hours so you'll divide your total gallons of water by 8 to get gallons filtered per hour. Then divide that number by 60 to get gallons filtered per minute because that's the figure most pool pumps are rated by. Now look for a pump motor that is close to the gallons per minute you figured out for your pool. You have to take into account what your pool filter is rated for too as it has to be very close to the pump output. You'll also need to know the pipe size of your existing pump so you get one similar to it. You also want to get a pump with the same electrical specs.
Often people are inclined to get the same size pump as the one they are replacing. That's not a good idea because efficiencies of motors and pumps have greatly improved over the years.
I've covered a lot and here's a web site I've used often for doing this. Good luck.
http://www.inyopools.com/HowToPage/how_to_size_a_pool_pump_for_your_in_ground_pool_.aspx?CommentPage=1
Comment: Well done. This is a comprehensive answer


Sending and receiving SMS via a huawei 3g Dongle E220

Question: I have a Huawei E220 3G dongle. I have set it up with my Raspberry Pi to connect to the internet by executing the sakis3g script. Now I want to send and receive SMS to and from Raspberry pi via the 3g dongle to my mobile phone.
How should i go about this. Please suggest some methods.
Answer: You could use a command line utility Gammu. Check out http://wammu.eu/gammu/
Or you can follow this tutorial to interface with the modem directly to send and receive sms on your Raspberry Pi: https://web.archive.org/web/20140712150707/https://myraspberryandme.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/short-message-texting-sms-with-huawei-e220/
Answer: You can have a look at this tutorial as well: Turning the Raspberry Pi into a SMS Center using Python
Comment: In keeping with our [policy regarding informationless link-only answers](http://meta.raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q/842/5538), if this post is not edited to contain information that can stand as an answer, however minimal, in 48 hours it will be converted to Community Wiki to simplify having it corrected by the community.


Why didn't Paul use the House Atomics?

Question: In Dune, Paul uses his ability to destroy the Spice (with the Water of Death) as leverage to force Shaddam IV to give him the imperium. However, doesn't this unique position give him the power to violate the Great Convention? None of the Great Houses would use their atomics to destroy Dune, because that would destroy the Spice. That means that as long as he is on Dune, Paul can use the Atreides house atomics with impunity without fear of retaliation. Since Paul controls the Fremen on Arrakis, he should be safe from invasion as well. Why does Paul risk hand-to-hand combat when he could take the imperium from the safety of Sietch Tabr? If it was due to the Atreides moral code, why didn't the Harkonnens try it when they controlled Arrakis?
Answer: In point of fact, Paul Atreides does use the family atomics, for the short-term goal of taking over Arrakis from the Harkonnens, and the Empire from the Emperor.

"My Duke", Guerney said, "my chief worry is the atomics. If you use them to blast a hole in the Shield Wall..."
"Those people  up there won't use atomics against us," Paul said. "They don't dare...and for the same reason they cannot risk our destroying of the spice."
But the injunction against--"
"The injunction!" Paul barked. "It's fear, not the injunction that keeps the Houses from hurling atomics against each other. The language of the Great Convention is clear enough: 'Use of atomics against humans shall be cause for planetary obliteration.' We're going to blast the Shield Wall, not humans."

The Houses and the Spacing Guild are in no position to retaliate. Presumably, "Planetary obliteration" would have destroyed the spice as much as the Water of Death.
There is an "injunction" against the use of atomics, but Paul is justifying their use as military engineering, not as a way to kill his enemies directly. He gives the Houses and the Guild an out this way.

"It's too fine a point," Gurney said.
"The hair-splitters up there will welcome any point," Paul said. "Let's talk no more about it."

It's clear that the atomics are actually used from this scene with the Emperor:

The Emperor surged to his feet. "This play has gone on long enough. I will take your brother and this planet and grind them to--"
The room rumbled and shook around them. There came a sudden cascade of sand behind the throne where the hutment was coupled to the Emperor's ship. The abrupt flickering of skin pressure told of a wide-area shield being created.
"I told you," Alia said. "My brother comes."
Comment: You might want to mention that his key motivator is to attack and seize control from the Emperor. Using the atomics could easily unite the other houses against him.
Comment: @Valorum the Guild was probably more crucial than the Houses, but maybe my later changes helped with your point.
Comment: Remember that the Empire is a tripod. Without the support of the Great Houses, the Guild is powerless.

Why didn't Paul use the House Atomics?


Does leaving the Central AC on all day and all night cause the motor to burn or compressor line to freeze up?

Question: I'm not suggesting doing this or whatever, I just want to know the answer.  Let's say it is 80 deg F outside and I put the AC on 50 deg F.  Obviously this will cause the AC to run all day, would this running all day cause the motor to burn or would the AC be fine?  Would the Compressor lines freeze? Again this is a general, model agnostic, question.  You can assume it's a good functioning unit with no obvious problems.
Comment: The only likely problem is the evaporator coil inside your furnace/air handler could ice up.  This sometimes happens when humidity is high and the unit runs continuously for many hours, as the evaporator coil has no opportunity to defrost.  And it's most likely to happen during the first 6 hours or so of unit operation.  For this reason it's best to slowly reduce the thermostat temp rather than dialing it down to 50 from the start.  Give it a setting where it will turn off occasionally.
Comment: A properly operating system will not ice up, modern high efficiency units use thermal expansion valves this valve regulates the temperature at the evaporator preventing icing in most cases , units with an improper charge or running outside design criteria (improper operation / properly functions unit will not freeze) if we change to old school simple orifice when properly set up the compressor will cycle based on pressure and again it will not freeze. A system that runs for longer times may remove more moisture it just depends on the size of the evaporator and temp it runs at.
Comment: Assumed it's a good functioning unit; there's no question here other than if continually running motors and compressors is better than stop-start cycling. Which is usage dependent, and under the constraints of this question we have no second variable to test. "2 stage equipment is for comfort, not economy." – [New Central Air Install: choosing single-stage vs dual-stage condensers](https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/41072/new-central-air-install-choosing-single-stage-vs-dual-stage-condensers).
Comment: Same with cutting your gas valve back which "will cost you more in electricity, as it'll run longer to come up to temp, but it will bring you a more even comfort level." – [How to Lower the Ouptut of Oversized Furnace](https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/82159/how-to-lower-the-ouptut-of-oversized-furnace) .... **The word is *comfort*. If you're not comfortable, you might as well just open the windows.**
Comment: It does beg the question of if running a unit for 20y straight is better than not running it at all. But IME, no unit lasts much more than 20y, so I'd rather be the guy who's comfortable for those 20y. - We'd have to get into things like dry-rot, [w/e the word is for, 'sitting too long'], proximity to the ocean, etc.
Answer: With a properly functioning system no the motor will not burn up. And the coils and line set may show some frost but would not freeze up.
If you leave the system running and there is a drastic temp drop things might ice up a little but the throttle valve will start restricting the flow of refrigerant so the compressor may start cycling , systems usually have a minimum off time so the cycling will not over heat the motor. For systems with simple orifices the pressure switch turns off the compressor until time to start again.
Most all residential compressors have internal thermal overloads that stop the motor from operating if they get two hot. This is yet another safety so no a properly operating hvac system will not burn up if left on all the time.
Answer: Compressor motors are self-cooling and designed to work for extended periods. Obviously more runtime means more wear, but there's no point at which it'll typically overheat or suffer other damage.
Refrigerant lines shouldn't freeze. In theory enough heat is taken out in the exchanger that it never gets out of operating range. Refrigerant stays liquid far below where it should ever be in use--around -150°F.
What can happen, though, is ice buildup. If you actually cool the building to such low temps, relative humidity rises dramatically. This leads to condensation and ice. Eventually the heat exchanger becomes completely clogged and the system breaks down. Then it runs without actually doing much, just wasting energy. If the weather is warm outside you'd be hard-pressed to get that to happen, though.
Comment: The liquid state is based on the pressure and temp. Only liquid helium 2 stage systems get -150 that I know of . Most refrigerants are compressed to 150-400 psi and cooled to room temp on the condenser and are in a liquid state when cooled. Then the pressure is released in the evaporator creating the cold (over simplified terms for op).
Comment: The refrigerant lines definitely shouldn't freeze, but the evaporator coil (inside the building) could become covered in ice if the system is low on coolant. This can block the airflow and cause it to not remove any more heat or humidity from the building until it's shut off & defrosted.
Answer: It shouldn't. When our previous house was for sale an incompetent house inspector set the thermostat to about 55 F. We were not home and it ran about 36 hours. The outside temp was only in the low 70's so the thermostat had to be turned low to run . The house was cold when we got home but otherwise no problem. The incompetent part was about a water heater TP valve.
Answer: This often occurs when an a/c system is undersized. It will run continuously and never cycle off because the system does not have the cooling capacity to reach a reasonable set point like 75 F. This does not cause any problems except I think it can cause excessively dry air inside.
We have a 3.5 ton unit in a 2000 sq ft poorly insulated house. On a very hot day with the set point at 75 F, the unit will come on at 11 am and not cycle off till 4 pm or later. The unit has been in service for 29 years (orig compressor and air handler motor).
EDIT
The explanation of excessive drying of indoor air with an undersized a/c is that when the evaporator is cycled on it still removes nearly all the moisture from the air passing over it. The claim is that an evaporator with more cooling capacity does not remove significantly more moisture than one with less cooling capacity while it is cycled on. And since a properly sized evaporator will be cycled off a lot of the time, then the relative humidity in the house will be higher with a properly sized evaporator. Some fancier units can control both temp and humidity. I think they do this by regulating the cooling capacity of the evaporator which affects the relative duty cycle.
Comment: Isherwood says the opposite about humidity. You can't both be right.
Comment: I could well have this wrong. "I'm not the man I was . . .", Julien Baptiste,
Comment: I agree with Jim. An undersized unit will run continuously and not be able to drop the temperature below a certain point. However, most of the time the building will be leaky enough that the unit can't remove all the humidity either.
Comment: An oversized unit will quickly cool the temperature and shut off (short cycle) but not remove enough humidity to feel comfortable. The right size will drop both temp and humidity, then shut off, and be able to maintain both by cycling periodically.


Legal issues with selling goods in home country when not authorized to work in US?

Question: If someone is not authorized to work in the US and they are currently living there, are there any laws being broken if they ship goods back to their home country? For example, if we call the goods "gifts", but they are shipped to the home country, then sold and part of the profit is sent back to the person in the US. Is that legal?
Comment: "...if we call the goods "gifts", but they are shipped to the home country, then sold..." You sound like you already know that that's called fraud.
Answer: While there is no law against knitting and no law against sending knitted goods back to the old country, doing so for compensation is a form of self-employment (which is a form of employment). Any employment, including self-employment, is subject to visa-type restrictions, as sketched here. You cannot engage in productive labor, except if you have a B-1 visa (business visitor), you can engage in some forms of productive labor for a non-US employer: negotiating a contract, sales presentation, or a short training session. If you have a B-2 visa, all forms of work are forbidden.
Comment: What about trading (in goods purchased in the US)?  The question could just as well be about that.


How do you make an item frame turn activate a redstone source?

Question: I was recently playing with friends and noticed they had a contraption which would activate a redstone signal when they turned the item frame a certain way.  How do you make a item frame turn activate a redstone signal?
Comment: Have you tried putting redstone or using comparators?
Answer: Item frame rotation based output.  This is not my design.
The item frame does not rotate, an item in the frame does.  Some items have to be rotated fully twice(example: maps) in order to output full signal.  If using more then one of these devices to form a combination lock, those double rotation items would make it very difficult to unlock.
It is a simple device that uses a comparator to read the signal level of the item frame.  If the signal level is too low or high (item rotated improperly) it will not output.  It does this based on the length of the redstone dust after the comparator.  The easiest way to use the rotation point you want is to rotate the item to the position you want.  Continue to run redstone dust after the comparator until you no longer see the dust has signal.  Place a torch on the side of the last block with signal.  Leave one redstone dust after that block that feeds into a repeater.
In this example a signal of 4 or the arrow pointed down will activate the redstone dust at the very end of the line.  In the picture, the lower image is the device sending out a signal.

If you are interested in how it works, the comparator outputs the signal.  If the signal is to low, the first torch outputs high(is lit) and this causes the not gate(second torch) to output low(off).  If the signal is correct, the first torch turns off, the second torch turns on.  If signal is too high, the repeater outputs high which causes the second torch to turn off.
Edit: I located the video I originally saw this on.  It's by SethBling.
Comment: wtf how cool is that. i was googling for this and didn't think it would actually be a thing!
Answer: Comparators can be used to detect a signal from a block (chest, item frame, lecture, etc.). Used to make locks, coders, selecters, I'm making up the names. There are many  things to do with it. By placing it behind an item frame it will detect a signal when an item is in said item frame.
Answer: You can shorten the redstone length by adding a dropper and another comparator, and setting the first one to subtraction mode.  Then, use items in the dropper to "offset" the value you are looking for, and set a repeater one redstone wire away from that length.
Answer: Here is a really compact circuit I've developed for item frame rotation. It's slightly based on one of Mumbo Jumbo's circuits. It's also super easy to adjust to what output level you want.


How can I change weights quicker on spinlock bars

Question: I've recently bought some spinlock dumbbells and a spinlock bar so that I can perform my weights routine at home. My workout involves increasing the weight between sets of the same exercise and I'm finding that the amount of time it takes to change weights using the spinlock bar discourages me from completing my exercises. Can anyone give me some advice on how I can hack my equipment so that I can change weights quicker?
Comment: This answer to my related question may be of interest: https://fitness.stackexchange.com/a/43386/11931
Answer: Unfortunately, spinlocks are what they are.  When you don't change the weights on the dumbbells often, they are a great choice.  However, when you change between sets or for different exercises it becomes a pain.  That reason alone is why most gyms have a large selection of fixed weight dumbbells (also to get more people using the gym by helping you be quicker about your workout).
You have some choices:

Get some more spinlock bars so that once you are set up for your session, you just change the set of dumbbells you are using.
Get those fancy dumbbells that let you dial in the weight you want.  I've heard mixed reviews about these things, and they are expensive.
Get a dumbbell set like gyms have.  It's more equipment, but you'll never have to do another spinlock again.

There are some loadable dumbbells where you have a compression collar to keep the weights in place.  However, this doesn't necessarily make things better because it is trading one problem for another.  In order to keep the collars small, they have a screw that you tighten to keep the collar in place.  Believe it or not, spinlocks are an improvement and a quicker change than those.
I'm not aware of any compression collars with a quick release like you can find on Olympic barbells that are small enough to work with most dumbbells.  Part of the challenge is the threads on the spinlock dumbbell reduce the friction that the quick release collars depend on.  If you know a machinist, they might be able to create something for you, but most people don't have that kind of resource.
Answer: I know it's an old question, but I believe there's more than just accepting spinlock bars as they are. You can also use these clamps show below, they are supposed to work well in most types of dumbbell and are also quicker to lock/unlock than the default spinlock bar locks.
It's what I use and they never slide out - although I have smooth dumbbell bars and load them to the very end sometimes.

The quick-lock type nowadays comes in smaller sizes that would fit a dumbbell bar. It's more expensive than the clamps where I live, so I didn't bother buying them.


Under what circumstances should error messages be presented to the user?

Question: Should error messages ever be presented to an end user and if so what rules or advice should you have about what should be in them?
Comment: Your app better tells me when something doesn't work rather than pretending everything went fine (think of saving - "I saved you important stuff (actually, the harddrive is on fire, but I don't want to annoy you)!")... so yes, the user should know about errors.
Comment: Two links I find helpful on the general topic but not exact answers to your question, so here as a comment... http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/11/01/922449.aspx    and   http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2008/09/10/vexing-exceptions.aspx
Answer: Yes
Error messages (when needed) should be presented to the user.

What rules or advice should you have about what should be in them?

Present an error to the user when:

What they need to know. Don't include errors that they won't understand. "SQL connection failed" is not a good error. "There was an error saving your appointment." is much better.
They can fix it. "You didn't include a date for your appointment." is a solvable error.
They expect something to happen. Don't fail silently when they are expecting something. Acknowledge the user action at the very least, and at best provide an appropriate error.
Comment: @Alison maybe an error code along with the message so, in the case of support, there's less to be lost in translation from the user?
Comment: @Alison: Think of the "Details >>" or "(+) Details" button on many error message dialog boxes. The technical details are hidden by default, and can be revealed when needed.
Comment: should you ever include any more technical details that might help when the error is reported?  E.g. "There was an error saving your appointment. (SQL connection failed)"?
Answer: Error messages should be presented to the user if:

The user initiated the error condition (for example, "you did not include a password on the input form")
The user can do something about the error condition (for example, "there is no network connection")
A critical error has occurred that the application cannot recover from (for example, "the database is corrupt")
Comment: I wouldn't display "the database is corrupt."  Many non-technical people do not know what a "database" is or how it could be "corrupt".  With critical errors like that, there needs to be a way a support team is notified with technical details, and the user should just see a message stating there was a problem with whatever operation they were trying to attempt; ie: "There was a problem trying to save your changes.  Your support team was alerted, and given the details they need to help solve this issue."  You should also provide any workarounds in the message, if possible.
Comment: If a network failure occurs the user does not need to know if the system can work around the failure or recover from it. For example, a message delivery error occurs - there is no need to alert the user because we can retry the message. But if 10 failures occur then we give up, so we need to notify the user somehow. Of course they may not be able to do anything about it either, so we may just change an icon's status to red instead of throwing up a dialog to tell them about it.
Comment: @Justin Can you give examples  of when should the error not be presented ?
Comment: @Justin Thanks for the example, basically the last point becomes if the application can not recover from (or work around) error
Comment: Yes, that is probably a better way to put it. Thanks for your feedback.
Comment: Good point, that was a poor example. But you get the idea; if the application will not start up you have to say *something*.
Answer: You should present error messages to the user if he/she can do something about it. Either by allowing sending a bug report before quitting, or by deciding the way to go after a specific kind of error, one that have different possible resolutions that the user knows better the context.
Don't break the user experience if you can/until you have to.
Answer: I think it's quite important to show some kind of user-level message when exceptions raices up, this way they have something to report to a supervisor, the dev team could have some more information and bug tracking could be done a lot faster.
The detail on the message should depend on the environment the app is running, from totally verbose in dev env to "There was a problem saving a profile, please contact your supervisor" on a prod env.
Answer: Errors should be presented to the user when he/she can do something about, along with suggested course of action even if it is to be "call this number" or "click on this link to report the issue".
Never present the user with an error that is meaningless or does not offer a course of action.
Comment: I guess the downvoter is one of those that likes to show the users cryptic messages - "Not enough memory to display this dialog." or
"Error Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue."
Answer: I like to be able to tell users if there is a problem with their environment or configuration that is going to stop the software from working and if possible suggest how to address it. You can't always know why you will fail, but environment problems are one of the more common things you run into with PCs.
Users should always know somehow if there is a problem that means they can't do the task they are trying to do. You might not term it in the same way as you would for your own use, but you need to let them know that something has happened. Ideally you want to offer the facility to automatically notify the developer that the problem has occurred as well.
The third situation is if they have made a mistake - left a field empty, put the wrong format of data into a field and so on - that they can rectify for themselves.
The error messages always need to make it clear what has happened and what the user can do to sort it, or what they need to do to make the best of it.
Answer: Yes, errors should be reported. Consider the situation where the user inputs the wrong password and was bot able to log in. Imagine what if the application instead of giving error, "Wrong password or username" simply gets back to the original password asking screen. The user will certainly get confused saying "Huh.., what did just happen?".
Report every possible error that can occur and which the user can understand. Also think about what the information should be displayed. Think about the support. If the user after getting error, comes back asking why the error, then the support should be able to answer. For this there should be enough information in the error. This information need not be shown to the user, but must be somewhere in the logs.
Answer: You should always present a problem to a user in easily understandable words based on information provided by the underlying architecture.
"The file could not be saved to this location.  You must save it to another location".
You should also allow for the user to access the full error messages and forward them to the development team, but do not do it up front.  This can be very helpful in a phone support situation.
Answer: My advice, code-wise, is to never swallow errors/exceptions, and never catch general exceptions. Catch only specific ones that you know are possible (for example, array "out of bounds" errors) and handle them accordingly, giving the user some type of feedback as per @Josh K's answer.
However, there are times where it's probably better to swallow errors. Something stupid like a user opens a file used by your app and prematurely kills the program, causing some type of file handling error -- your application is closing, it offers no benefit to deal with it. In this case, you still shouldn't just ignore it, just dump the problem to an error log and if the user has a problem, you can refer to that.
That's also another point: record your application's errors with an error log. Fairly simple to do and could save you dozens of headaches in the future. Just take precautions to make sure it doesn't balloon up to 20 GB in size.


What is this "ÿþA"?

Question: When I read in csv files to r the requesting dataframe has very different dimensions than I see when I open the file in excel or notepad and the column heading is labeled as "ÿþA".  What does this mean?
thanks,
Comment: Maybe it is the byte order mark (BOM). Try `fileEncoding = "UTF-8"` as parameter to `read.csv`
Comment: Have a look at `readLines('yourfile.csv', n = 1)`.  You may just be able to clip that off with a `gsub`
Answer: The file you are reading is using an UTF-16 or UTF-32 encoding (with a BOM), and the r read.csv function has not been informed correctly.
As Karsten suggests you should use the fileEncoding parameter to specify the correct encoding, which I suspect should be "UTF-16LE".
Here is what the R Studio documentation states about encoding:
Encoding
The encoding of the input/output stream of a connection can be specified by name in the same way as it would be given to iconv: see that help page for how to find out what encoding names are recognized on your platform. Additionally, "" and "native.enc" both mean the 'native' encoding, that is the internal encoding of the current locale and hence no translation is done.
Re-encoding only works for connections in text mode: reading from a connection with re-encoding specified in binary mode will read the stream of bytes, but mixing text and binary mode reads (e.g. mixing calls to readLines and readChar) is likely to lead to incorrect results.
The encodings "UCS-2LE" and "UTF-16LE" are treated specially, as they are appropriate values for Windows 'Unicode' text files. If the first two bytes are the Byte Order Mark 0xFFFE then these are removed as some implementations of iconv do not accept BOMs. Note that whereas most implementations will handle BOMs using encoding "UCS-2" and choose the appropriate byte order, some (including earlier versions of glibc) will not. There is a subtle distinction between "UTF-16" and "UCS-2" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-16/UCS-2: the use of surrogate pairs is very rare so "UCS-2LE" is an appropriate first choice.
As from R 3.0.0 the encoding "UTF-8-BOM" is accepted for reading and will remove a Byte Order Mark if present (which it often is for files and webpages generated by Microsoft applications). If it is required (it is not recommended) when writing it should be written explicitly, e.g. by writeChar("\ufeff", con, eos = NULL) or writeBin(as.raw(c(0xef, 0xbb, 0xff)), binary_con)
Requesting a conversion that is not supported is an error, reported when the connection is opened. Exactly what happens when the requested translation cannot be done for invalid input is in general undocumented. On output the result is likely to be that up to the error, with a warning. On input, it will most likely be all or some of the input up to the error.
It may be possible to deduce the current native encoding from Sys.getlocale("LC_CTYPE"), but not all OSes record it.
And here is what Wiki states on the BOM:
Byte order mark
The byte order mark (BOM) is a Unicode character used to signal the endianness (byte order) of a text file or stream. It is encoded at U+FEFF byte order mark (BOM). BOM use is optional, and, if used, should appear at the start of the text stream. Beyond its specific use as a byte-order indicator, the BOM character may also indicate which of the several Unicode representations the text is encoded in.1
Because Unicode can be encoded as 16-bit or 32-bit integers, a computer receiving these encodings from arbitrary sources needs to know which byte order the integers are encoded in. The BOM gives the producer of the text a way to describe the text stream's endianness to the consumer of the text without requiring some contract or metadata outside of the text stream itself. Once the receiving computer has consumed the text stream, it presumably processes the characters in its own native byte order and no longer needs the BOM. Hence the need for a BOM arises in the context of text interchange, rather than in normal text processing within a closed environment.

What is this "ÿþA"?


Are there tools to determine code similarity?

Question: I'm not talking about a diff tool.  I'm really looking to see if a project contains code that may have been "refactored" from another project.  It would be likely that function names, variable names and whatnot would be changed.  Conditionals might be reversed, etc.
Comment: Is this for a class or something?
Comment: @TheLQ - I can think of more than one case outside of a class room setting where I've gone hunting to see where the "cut and paste is reuse, right?" brigade has gone through.
Comment: Comments and output messages (like errors etc) can often fingerprint code better than the actual code.
Comment: They always threatened us with this at Uni, it'd be interesting to see if such a tool actually existed.
Comment: Don't forget about Steve Smith's [Atomiq](http://www.getatomiq.com/).
Answer: When I was teaching software engineering, I used the (free) service at Stanford called MOSS (Measure of Software Similarity).  This allowed me to detect plagiarism between student projects very easily.  The system also allowed me to enter "known good" code examples that I had used during class that were to be ignored.
The great thing (completely a side issue) about the results that came back were that we could tell which students worked together --- even if they didn't blatantly copy the code, they discussed the problems enough that their code was similar.  The sad part was finding the odd student with NO SIMILARITY to any other code.  They usually didn't do so well.
Answer: You might be able to use the PMD tool to find what you are looking for.  It is meant to detect cut and paste within a code base but if you include the suspected origin project source it might help you see where code was copied from it.
Comment: yep - we use the CPD from PMD in our code
Comment: But PMD is for Java only, right?
Answer: The closest thing I know of to what you are looking for is Clone Detective. It is a Visual Studio plug-in.

Clone Detective is a Visual Studio
  integration that allows you to analyze
  C# projects for source code that is
  duplicated somewhere else. Having
  duplicates can easily lead to
  inconsistencies and often is an
  indicator for poorly factored code.
Answer: It sounds like you want to compute the difference between two abstract syntax trees (AST), so you might be interested in the Smart Differencer tool.
Found on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/974855/eclipse-abstract-syntax-tree-diff.
Comment: (Thanks for the compliment to my tool). SmartDifferencer finds differences between a specific pair of files; similarity is the complement of the differences so I agree that it is sort of the right idea  But it requires you to identify a pair of files to give it, and that's painful if your systems consist of many files.  What is really needed is that complement: find the similarity, and do it without personally identifying pairs of files.  See my CloneDR answer in this same thread for such a tool. Yes, it uses related technology.
Answer: Even if you're not talking about a diff tool, you can still use one for this, to a certain extent at least.  If I see two sections of code that look similar, for example, I frequently paste both into BeyondCompare to see how much work it would be to simplify it by refactoring the common functionality out.
On the other hand, if you don't know where the similar code is, but you're just wondering if any exists somewhere... what are you looking for?  An automated tool to detect plagiarism?  I'm not sure any such thing exists.
Comment: If it did, SCO might have won against IBM :-)
Answer: This article on wikipedia on the subject also includes links to several tools that can be used to find similar or duplicate code. We have an internal tool for this, so I'm not familiar with the external tools mentioned in the article.
Answer: What you really want to do is see if there is code cloned (copied) across the two projects (both projects consisting of possibly large sets of files).  You can do this by running a clone detection tool.   Wikipedia lists a variety of them.
To decide grossly if there is lot of copying, you only need to match source lines, and there are a variety of exact source-line clone detectors out there.  I believe PMD is one of them.  What these won't do is find code that is copy-paste-edited; they will find boilerplate copy-paste-unchanged code likely wrapped around the copy-past-edited stuff.
If you want to see the details of the copying for copy-past-edit code, you need a clone detector that finds "parameterized" clones.   Token based detectors do this for edits which replace just variable names or constants.
Abstract-syntax tree (AST) based detectors do this for edits involving larger chunks, such as expressions, statements, insertions, deletions, et. These latter tend to give better answers, because unlike the token detectors, they can use the language structure of the computer source code as a guide.
Our CloneDR tool is such a detector.
I don't know of tools that will actually find "equivalent" code (reversed conditionals), etc.  Researchers have built clone detectors that do something like this, but the combinatorics make this very expensive to execute, and the research prototypes scaled poorly.
Answer: I really like how CCFinderX visualizes similarity, so you might want to check that one too. Supports quite a few of languages, it's free and fairly easy to setup (Python 2.6).


A completely regular space that is very non-normal

Question: Take a completely regular Hausdorff topological space $X$ considered as a subset of its Stone-Čech compactification $\beta X$.  If $X$ is not normal, we can find a closed subset $Y$ of $X$ and a continuous function $f:Y\rightarrow[0,1]$ with no continuous extension to $\overline{Y}^{\beta X}$.  Can $f$ fail to have a continuous extension to any $Z\subseteq\overline{Y}^{\beta X}$ properly containing $Y$?  Can this even happen when $Y$ is not locally compact (so $Y$ is not open in $\overline{Y}^{\beta X}$)?
Comment: I take it you meant "closure of $Y$ as a subspace of $\beta X$". But I found the notation a little confusing at first (looks like an exponential).
Comment: Yes, $\overline{Y}^{\beta X}$ refers to the closure of $Y$ in $\beta X$.
Answer: If I did not miss something, the following is a simple example of such space. The idea is to have a space such that $\beta X$ is equal to the one point compactification of $X$.
Consider the Tychonov plank $T=(\omega_1+1)\times(\omega+1)$, and $X$ be its subspace $T - \{\langle \omega_1,\omega\rangle\}$. Then $T=\beta X$, as well known, see for instance
http://dantopology.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/the-tychonoff-plank/. Take the usual closed subset $Y=\{\langle \omega_1,y\rangle :y\in\omega\}\cup\{\langle x,\omega\rangle :x\in\omega_1\}$,
then $\overline{Y}^{\beta X}-Y$ is the singleton $\{\langle \omega_1,\omega\rangle\}$.
Thus the function $f$ which has value $0$ on one part of $Y$ and $1$ on the other cannot be continuously extended to any subset of $\bar{Y}^{\beta X}$ properly containing $Y$.
Comment: Great! That's exactly the kind of example I was after.
Comment: Can you also give an example where $Y$ is not locally compact?
Comment: I don't have time to check it now, but maybe Example 92 in "Counter-example in Topology" does the job (it's a regular space such that any real valued function is constant, so its Stone-Cech compactification is equal to the one-point compactification).
Comment: Ah, but of course, since this space is not even Tychonoff, it does not embed in its Stone-Cech compactification (and does not have a one-point compactification by the way), so what I wrote in the previous comment does not make sense. I do not have an example offhand, I am afraid.


How to set WCF base addresses in code when using the Configure method

Question: For pure code-based WCF configuration, in .NET 4.0 one could configure a base address for a service when creating an instance of a ServiceHost (assuming a self-hosted scenario, which is suitable for my needs). While one could still do this with .NET 4.5, MSDN implies that using the new Configure() method is a better practice because it makes such code-based configuration a bit easier for self-hosted and a lot easier for web hosted scenarios (see Configuring WCF Services in Code).
The problem, however, is that though the object you have to work with inside the Configure method (a System.ServiceModel.ServiceConfiguration) has a BaseAddresses property it is read-only. Surely there must be a way to set the base addresses in code? My web searches have turned up not only nothing about this specific question, but no articles or posts about this Configure method at all, except for the single MSDN page I have referenced!
Comment: This is seriously WTF. I'm having the same issue as you now and am baffled at the lack of discussion about this online.
Answer: Looking in reflector what BaseAddresses property does:
// System.ServiceModel.ServiceConfiguration
public ReadOnlyCollection<Uri> BaseAddresses
{
    get
    {
        return this.host.BaseAddresses;
    }
}

I was unable to find any other method in ServiceConfiguration working with ServiceHost.BaseAddresses
Instance of ServiceConfiguration is created using ServiceHost instance:
// System.ServiceModel.ServiceConfiguration
internal ServiceConfiguration(ServiceHost host)
{
    ServiceConfiguration.CheckArgument<ServiceHost>(host, "host");
    this.host = host;
}

This means that ServiceConfiguration is just an extension to standard way of configuring ServiceHost. So I would suggest any old way of setting BaseAddress is still considered as the best practice (programmatic or using configuration).