What is the sharpest aperture for Canon 550d with Sigma 8mm?

Question: I usually use F/8 and a manual zoom at 1m. What configuration should I use to assure both objects that are far away(10m) and objects that are close(1-2m) are sharp
Comment: Note that the sharpest aperture and the aperture which provides the greatest depth of field are different.
Comment: I would try a depth of field calculator such as the one here: http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
It should be pretty easy to get a wide depth of field if you really do have a lens at 8mm.
Comment: ^^^ stick this as an answer, it's a nice simple solution.
Also a great lens, love mine ;)
Comment: what is the diffrece? I am interested in a photo where everything is sharp, nothing blurred
Answer: For achieving maximum sharpness, your aperture must be

stopped down about a stop or two from maximum aperture for optimal optical resolution;
stopped down enough so that depth of field would be sufficient;
open enough so that shutter time would not be long enough to introduce camera shake and motion of subject would not be visible;
open enough so that diffraction would not cause blurriness.

According to MTF50 chart in review by Photodo, the lens has best optical resolution from about f/4.5 to about f/6.3.
Since diffraction limit for Canon 550d is about f/6.8, so the smallest selectable aperture (for  largest DOF) without diffraction is also f/6.3.
If using f/6.3 results in a shutter speed too low to avoid camera or subject motion, you might get a sharper result using a larger aperture or higher ISO. Or you might have to close down further if depth of field is insufficient. At f/6.3, hyperfocal distance is half a meter, so the distances you mentioned in your question are well within focus.
Answer: This is a case where I would strongly recommend performing an experiment for yourself.  With 1/3 stops, the lens only supports 17 aperture settings.  Set up a tripod, manually focus the lens, put the camera in Av mode, cover the viewfinder, use a remote release cable, and take a picture at each aperture; it should only take about 5 minutes.  Then you can examine the results at whatever zoom level you want on your computer monitor.
You may well find that there's a range of apertures that have indistinguishable sharpness, which would give you more freedom in the future!  You'll also learn a little bit more about the characteristics of your lens+camera combination, like any exposure shifts at different apertures.
Finally, if the results aren't sharp enough for you, you may want to add light or post-process the photos to increase the sharpness of your subjects.


Problems building a working magma forge in current version of DF

Question: I am having problems building a working magma forge in my fortress (using the most current version of DF). I have built magma forges in prior versions and am aware that I need to place the "darker green" x in the magma forge template over the hole leading to magma in the Z level below the forge. When I build a forge in my current fortress it apparently builds ok, but when I try to set jobs for the completed forge it says it needs magma under the forge. I have excavated a large open area (approx. 50x40 tiles) one Z level lower in my fortress that is still filling with magma (currently filled to 2-3 depth) from a connected magma pipe. Do I need to wait until the magma fills to a higher level than 2-3, or are there other requirements I am missing to get the forge to work?
Comment: Wouldn't it be fairly easy to wait until the magma fills up entirely to rule that possibility out?
Comment: @frank: I overbuilt the area for holding magma to avoid having to risk a 2nd dwarf later (running from a 2nd magma breach in a new location). The oversized magma cavern will probably fill to 7/7 in about two game years at the current rate, and I am anxious to start smelting quickly without using fuel, thus why I built the magma furnace. The slow fill rate is due to a diagonal magma breach; since a direct breach results in a faster magma fill rate but also a fried mining dwarf.
Answer: As indicated in the second paragraph of the introduction to the Magma Forge on the DF Wiki, you need to wait until one of the eight non-center tiles of the forge fill to a depth of at least 4/7.
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Magma_forge

To build a magma forge, you must have magma-safe materials (non-magma-safe materials will not be shown on the material list), an anvil, and a build site where at least one tile directly beneath one of its eight non-center tiles contains magma at a depth of 4/7 or greater.

Assuming your influx of magma is sufficient to overcome the evaporation process, you ought to be able to wait for a while and the forge will become active.
Comment: More specifically, whichever tile you have the hole in must be at a depth of at least 4/7. If there is floor between the workshop and the magma, that tile's magma depth is ignored.


Can I move my bathroom sink's drain pipe about 6 inches to the right?

Question: I found the vanity I wanted for my bathroom, but it doesn't fit due to the position of the drain pipe.  It needs to move about 6 inces to the right.  I assume there is some sort of adapter or something that can be used for this, but I know approximately nothing at all about plumbing.  Can this easily be done by the naive DIY'er?  How would I go about determining what size PVC pipe I will need, etc?
Comment: The home center will have lots of parts to make this happen. Take a picture and show the plumbing associate what you want to do. A lot will depend on what type of drain material you have.

Moving the drain line is realtively easy, but it does require that you follow some basic rules to make sure it is done correctly. You need to have a proper trap and it must not leak. You also might need some special tools. Post a photo so we can see what you need to do.
Comment: Do you mean the drain where it comes through the wall/floor or where the drain pipe ends within the cabinet?  Can you share some pics?
Comment: My right, or your right?
Comment: It's the drain pipe that comes out of the bottom of the sink and goes into the wall behind the cabinet.  I suppose it would be helpful to have that section of wall tore away and snap a photo, so I will see if I can get that later tonight or tomorrow if necessary.
Comment: So if you put the vanity in the position you want, would the hole in the wall still be behind the vanity and accessible?
Comment: @ScottBruns Your comment should be posted as an answer. ;)
Answer: Yes... Maybe... It depends...
The pipe can defiantly be relocated, the question is how difficult will it be.  It may be as simple as opening the wall, cutting out the old plumbing, adding a few fittings, and closing the wall back up.  Or you might find there is framing in the way, or some other complications.
It's nearly impossible to accurately answer your question, without being able to see what you are dealing with.  The best anybody can do without seeing it, is say yes it can probably most likely maybe be moved.
If you're not sure what to do, or don't feel comfortable doing the work yourself. Remember, your friendly neighborhood plumber is just a phone call away.
Comment: To that end, anything CAN be done.. it's a matter of time/money, and which is directly related to how much you're tearing down and rebuilding. Often the time/money makes the project not worthwhile, such as if you have to reframe an entire exterior wall and move a window, just to move a drain line 6" to the right.. but if you REALLY want to move that line...
Comment: We tore a section of the wall out and discovered that, like you proposed, there is a stud in the way that will greatly affect this effort.  I decided to scrap this and just continue my search for a new vanity.


Melt p-values for CpG sites mapping to the same gene

Question: I have some data I am working with, and I am curious if I am able to combine p-values from a paired t-test for CpG sites in the genome using Fisher's Method to get one p-value for each unique gene. Linked here is the Wikipedia page for Fisher's Method. I understand that an assumption of the method used is that each individual p-value being combined must be independent. I'm relatively new to biostatistics, so I'm curious if using CpGs from the same gene would violate this assumption.
Comment: In a nutshell, your intuition is correct: they are not independent.
Comment: Why do you want to melt CpG values? Do you want to know if an specific gene/region is more phosphorylated than others? What are your hypothesis (you tell about a t-test for the CpG sites? Are you testing if they are phosphorylated vs not or more than the rest of the genome or...?
Answer: Methylation levels have high local correlation, so Fisher's method would be problematic. Having said that, you have no reason to use Fisher's method after a paired t-test. A paired t-test will give you a single p-value per gene, which is what you want. Do be sure to only include CpG with some minimal coverage in both group.
Answer: What is typically done in methylation analysis is to assess the islands of methylations.
Check this workflow, in the section linked it uses some predefined islands for instance. I am no expert on this area but you could asses if the islands or certain regions are more methylated than expected.


Ending of Mr. Nobody

Question: A simple question. At the end of Mr. Nobody Nemo decided to abandon both parents, how is it possible that he met Anna in the future? I can't figure out how he could've met Anna since Anna will be living with her father and new stepmother happily since her father wouldn't have to deal with Nemo's rebelious acts.
Comment: Some way or other, he always meet one of the three girls, mostly Anna.
Answer: The thing is that we don't know what happened after he left both parents. Perhaps he reunited with his parents years later and met Anna during a visit. Perhaps he met her in a totally unrelated event, like he did in the spaceship. The details don't really matter, and the movie, wisely, doesn't dwell on them. The theme of the movie, choice and consequence, is intact either way. Nemo makes a choice and it ended with him reuniting with Anna.
Answer: All the possibilities were the attempts to find the correct decision to his impossible choice, following each choice to its conclusion. They were figments in the mind of the 9-year-old Nemo at the train station. Eventually he takes a third option, to make neither of two choices towards an unknown future.
Consequently, his life simplifies itself, and as result he is able to return to his childhood, watch his parents get back together and be with Anna. The 118-year-old Mr Nobody realizes that his younger self finally found his true love and life.
Source: Mr. Nobody - Epilogue at Wiki
Given his gift of knowing the outcome of his choices, I'm sure he finds his way to meet Anna in the future. The same way as he was able to get into close relation with each of three girls sitting on a bench, his possible future wives.
Answer: All of his lives were real. What started it all was that point at the train to decide to go with his mother or his father. It is unknown which timeline he chose to lead his 118 years old self. Two things were certain: he loved all his lives and he loved Anna the most.
When the Big Crunch occurs, he was laughing because he get to do it all over again. It was hinted that he did this before (assumingly to be infinite). Since his memories were not erased, he get another go at it. Which choice will he pick this time?
And his didn't reunite with Anna (though he can if he wanted to). It just showed two things: the time was repeating again and Anna was the girl he loved most.

Ending of Mr. Nobody


How can I ensure that I can trust to OS?

Question: How can I ensure that some OS can be trusted? I'm not speaking about possible security problems which can happen everywhere but about something like a backdoor left by a developer. Can such a thing occur (Or had they occured) in Windows, or in most popular linux distros like Debian/Fedora/Arch/Ubuntu/Gentoo?
Comment: Well, if you haven't heard the news from the past several years, there have been allegations that Microsoft co-operated with a certain government organization, and that Linus Torvalds had been approached by the same to put backdoor into kernel.  But those are allegations. Can backdoors occur ? Potentially.  More likely issue I'd worry about is bugs that can be exploited, specifically in drivers and user's applications.
Comment: You may like to read [An attempt to backdoor the kernel](https://lwn.net/Articles/57135/), from 2003.
Comment: Linux Mint had a backdoored download https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2994
Answer: There are two ways: inspect every line of code, or build your own OS. Not only the OS, but all the libraries, the compiler, everything that touches your source code.
A backdoor can be deployed? Yes. But on any open source OS (Linux, OpenBSD, Plan9 et al) any backdoor can be detected by other programmers, the same cannot be told about closed sourced OS (Windows and MacOS came to mind).
Comment: To be fair, OSX has a lot of open source components, and there are a lot of people reverse engineering Windows. But it is true that far fewer people will be analyzing Windows since it's a lot slower to audit something by reverse engineering it.
Comment: @forest: the build process of OSX is still behind closed doors and therefore not auditable, so the open sourcedness of those components is much less convincing. Many open source distros invests efforts into making build reproducibility for this reason.
Answer: It's relatively easy to check the development history of an open-source operating system, on github or elsewhere.  If there are more than a few developers, and they are working under their real names, then you don't have to audit each line of code; you already know that each line of code has already been audited before it gets put into the "official" codebase.  You can probably compile from source if you study the docs.
Yes, it is possible to hide backdoors and malware in software where the code is open to scrutiny; there are even software writing contests based on exactly that.  (See the Underhanded C Contest in wikipedia.)  However, "underhanded" code is necessarily spaghetti-ish and violates good SDLC practices; open-source software is necessarily optimized for readability and maintainability.  Nobody would be allowed to put a machine code snippet in a C constant, for example, in a commercial software product; much less in an open-source community project.
Also, don't underestimate how difficult it is to write and deploy malicious code that actually works as intended.  Just because an exploitable attack vector theoretically exists, and has been documented in a bug report somewhere, doesn't mean somebody has actually spent the development hours necessary to exploit that bug in a way that is both scalable, and undetectable to the user.  Much less, undetectable to fellow developers.
And besides, open-source software is less vulnerable to malware and remote-code execution exploits, simply because of the variety of distros; it's harder to create malware for them.  If you use a linux variant, and accidentally encounter a malicious attachment or some sort of drive-by download, it will almost certainly be a Windows executable.  You will laugh out loud and simply delete it.
TLDR: Don't be paranoid... you can trust any half-way respectable open source project.
Comment: I'm familiar with the conspiracy theory (and underlying facts) of the "_NSAKEY" story, regarding a commercial, consumer-grade OS.  Obviously that can't be done with an open-source project, for reasons elaborated above.
Comment: I would further add that, even if you do "trust" an open source OS enough to use it, it is still advisable to reverse engineer critical component, if you have the capability.  Shared libraries, networking stacks, firewall rules and implementation, crypto tools, etc.  Disable unwanted/unneeded hardware drivers that come bundled in.  But it would be unadvisable to believe you must audit every line of code.


App runs directly but not after Clickonce publishing

Question: I have written a demo application, which will be expanded later into an actual app (the demo for now is that it is only UI without any meat behind it yet).  I tried to publish it, and am having problems getting the published version to run, even on my machine, where it was developed.
When I run the app under visual studio, there are no issues.  Likewise, if I run it from the bin\debug or bin\release folder when studio is closed, there is also no problem.
After publishing it (more below), and running the install, it installs, but doesn't run.  If I go to where the application is actually installed (c:\users]\steveb\appdata\local\apps\2.0\gibberish1\gibberish2\reallylonggibberish\tmg.exe), it runs nicely from there as well.  However, from the link it makes me, it refuses to run, and in the system event viewer I get two events:
First:  Net Runtime – event ID 1026
<code>Application: applaunch.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.Security.SecurityException
   at TMG.UserForm..ctor()
   at TMG.Program.Main()
   at System.AppDomain._nExecuteAssembly(System.Reflection.RuntimeAssembly, System.String[])
   at System.Runtime.Hosting.ManifestRunner.NewThreadRunner()
   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.RunInternal(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean)
   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object, Boolean)
   at System.Threading.ExecutionContext.Run(System.Threading.ExecutionContext, System.Threading.ContextCallback, System.Object)
   at System.Threading.ThreadHelper.ThreadStart()

followed by:

Application error – event ID 1000

Faulting application name: applaunch.exe, version: 4.7.3056.0, time stamp: 0x5a8e5805
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.17134.441, time stamp: 0x428de48c
Exception code: 0xe0434352
Fault offset: 0x000000000003a388
Faulting process id: 0x2cb0
Faulting application start time: 0x01d49dd862272806
Faulting application path: C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\applaunch.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: cf77cf44-c3b4-44a3-b7ae-956e11898c98
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
</code>
All this is on my own machine.  I have tried putting the setup on other machines, and it is not working there as well, but I didn't get to this level of debugging there, although I expect it is the same.
Any help appreciated.
Comment: Sounds like a UAC problem.
Comment: You might want to check your Security settings in your project's properties. Try enabling ClickOnce security settings and setting the app as a 'full trust application'.
Answer: akseli - your comment was correct - it was in partial trust mode, which I assume translates as "don't run this anywhere including where it was written".  Thanks for the help.


What are Atmospheric Rossby Waves and how do they affect the weather?

Question: I've been researching Atmospheric Rossby waves but from the multiple sources I used they all seem to be in conflict. Some say Rossby waves are parcels of air moving from east to west due to the coriolis effect (which seems like a description for a jet stream) while others sources say it's the curving of the jet streams. I have a hard time understanding Atmospheric Rossby waves and how they affect the weather and climate.
Answer: Where to start....
If you take a look at midlatitude weather on any given day, you will find a pattern of upper tropospheric winds that look like this (source: NWS):
.
Notice how it looks like a wave? These are called Rossby waves. You may imagine that the jet stream is imbedded in the ups and downs of these pressure contours. If we take a look at a typical winter storm (here is a random storm from 2003):
Notice how wavy the 500 mb heights are? Don't they resemble the first figure?
Now you might say "I've seen those things and they definitely move west to east." This is true. That is because the prevailing wind is westerly (in the above examples). This can be shown in a mathematical analysis, though it should be noted that baroclinic Rossby waves (mostly in the midlatitudes) propagate slower than barotropic Rossby waves, which is what this analysis works on.
I can probably into more extensive detail about Rossby waves, but I'll just end here.
Comment: Great answer, looking forward to trying to understand the mathematics you've linked to! In the mean time this question still needs some help in understanding more about atmospheric waves: [Now Mars is pulsing 3 times per night in the UV, can anyone explain these waves in simple terms? Do these waves happen on Earth?](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/q/20043/6031)
Answer: Maybe you can try to understand Rossby wave by appreciating the analogy between (internal) gravity wave and Rossby wave.
Two distinct features of geofluid are stratification and (differential) rotation.  Stratification, or vertical variation of density, produces internal gravity wave.  Similarly, differential rotation (or variation of rotation), gives rise to (barotropic) Rossby wave.  Their difference can not be easily identified by observing the tracer (temperature, density etc.) field in the figure below, without knowing the coordinates.

Vertical decreasing density with altitude gives a fluid parcel a restore force when it is displaced upward/downward; Likewise, meridionally increasing rotation also gives a restore force when a parcel is displaced northward/southward.  Therefore, a fluid parcel cannot move freely in the vertical and meridional directions due to these restore forces (you probably already notice that the contours of many things  on rotating planets are horizontal lines or zonal lines).  Such restoring forces actually generates respectively the internal gravity wave and Rossby wave.  The gradient of potential temperature (density of mass), as well as the gradient of potential vorticity (density of rotation) here is a measurement of the restoring force.
The internal gravity wave can bring lighter (heavier) fluid downward (upward).  Similarly, the Rossby wave brings colder (warmer) fluid equatorward (poleward) and thus affects the weather.  In addition, the Rossby wave also squeezes the atmosphere so that the water vapor condenses into rainfall, affecting the weather.
Comment: What an interesting way of thinking about it (at least for me with a rockier friendship with dynamic equations after so many years diverged from using them).  Thanks


Visa requirement for UK

Question: I am a permanent resident in Australia married to an Australian Citizen.
I am travelling to the UK to visit my husbands family but I have a Thailand Passport. Do I need a visa for UK for holiday entry?
Answer: You can check if you need a visa here https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa Family members of UK citizens are not eligible for a Family Permit, so you will need a Standard Visitor visa to enter the UK.

Visa requirement for UK


Triangulation method to create multipatch objects (decomposition of polygon surfaces)

Question: Which triangulation method or algorithm does arcscene use to create multipatch parts (patches) as you see in the attaching picture. The algorith decompose the polygon area into a set of triangles using vertices of the polygon object. But which method is it? It is not delanuay or ear clipping in my opinion but which one I can not figure it out any help??
Answer: This Esri whitepaper might get you started on the path to your answer:
http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/multipatch-geometry-type.pdf
Or if you want Delaunay triangulation, you can try out this tool:
http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=6e9bc6cbf93d4939b2eb04ff8519be47
Comment: I have already read the white paper but there is no information about triangulation method in it.
Comment: Did you try asking over at GeoNet? Sounds like the information you seek might only be known internally, and their people watch those forums.
Comment: yes I asked but unfortunately could'nt get an answer


Are there rules for role-playing in the afterlife?

Question: I want to run a short campaign that starts with the dead PCs' souls adventuring in the afterlife in Kelemvor's realm. Are there rules already for this? If not, what adjustments must I make to the rules for the PCs being dead when the campaign begins?
Comment: This appears to have been reopened; that seems fine since ["there are no rules" ≠ "primarily opinion-based"](https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7353/does-ask-the-dm-gm-equate-to-primarily-opinion-based). Hey I Can Chan does have a point that a factual answer here might not be *satisfying* and using a forum might give different/more satisfying results, but we can still see here what the answer actually turns out to be, working in parallel to the forum version. :)
Answer: I have done this in 3.x extensively and, for reasons that will become apparent, I think the situation is similar.  There are two funadamentally distinct ways to handle it that I have used, and both are appropriate for 5e play.  Ultimately, the difference comes down to whether PCs are basically unchanged by death and the formation of outsiders (that is, the inhabitants of the outer planes who are formed from mortal spirits) from souls occurs very slowly over time or perhaps only by certain rituals or something, or whether that transformation is essentially immediate-- the dead quickly taking on the least form of the beings appropriate to their alignment and losing most of the abilities they had in life.
5e doesn't come down on which of these you should do.  The DMG planar section is full of optional rules for outer planes that sometimes talk about planes being full of the 'spirits of the dead', like when discussing the recently deceased booking passage over the river Styx or the inhabitants of Carceri, but also talks about Hades being full of larvae formed from the souls of the dead.  The fact these are all optional rules makes it seem to me like they intend you as DM to pick one or the other or a weird mix of both when using the default cosmology.
In any case, these are very different games.  In my experience, I usually ran things the first way, where there's not much difference besides a 'dead' tag and a lack of body/soul duality in 3.5, while running things the second way, using the petitioner template, in Pathfinder.  The mechanics of such campaigns will be very different from each other in 5e as well, since the differences between player and monster mechanics are very pronounced.
In the dead people don't change version, the game runs pretty much like normal, with a few caveats:

Being a single soul/body unit makes certain spells and effects function differently.  Consider what you will have happen if a character is killed a second time before they return to life.  Remember that things can't suck the character's spirit out of its body any more, or anything like that, instead either not working or leaving no body-missing-a-soul behind.
The character's corpses are still important even after death.  If they are to be raised, you need to figure out what 'free and willing to return' means, and how the character experiences that.  Is a character doing time in Bytopia for public drunkenness 'free'?  Is a character currently struggling to escape from the pin of a three-headed guard dog of the underworld 'free'? What about a character whose alignment has been shifted by planar effects?  What about a character who's failed a bunch of saves and been turned into a larva? what about a character trapped on Carceri?  And then there's the matter of willing, and what sorts of information about the circumstances surrounding the casting the character is aware of, and if they get, like, a pop-up ad for resurrection or a mental query or the magic just figures it out inerrantly or what.
Characters of certain classes may have more dire problems.  The warlock class, for example, provides several opportunities for a PC to create a character that is really, really dead once they are dead.
You'll also want to be ready to apply advantage and disadvantage liberally, in lieau of modifiers in 5th edition's rules paradigm, to account for stuff that's less or more of a problem when somebody's dead.
And, of course, be ready for the PCs, once they are high enough level, to go back to the material plane, pick up their bodies, put them on ice in some temple, and resume wandering round as normal adventurers who also happen to be dead.  Of particular importantance is deciding what sort of thingy is required to know somebody is dead when you interact with them.  Generally, I have people automatically know that, but that's a very 3.x thing and not very 5e-y.  You might require a passive Wisdom(Religion) check, or something.  In any case, remember that people might not know that before meeting the characters and the characters might very well not tell them, so then you'll need to know if they know or not.

The second method is much further away from normal.  In Pathfinder, with the Petitioner template, PCs lose pretty much everything and instead have a very short list of alignment/form-based special abilities, and 2 levels of racial hit dice in Outsider.  That puts them on par with first level characters, but weird.  For example, they'll have many more skills than a typical first level character, and at higher levels, but vastly inferior combat abilities to any respectably built first level character, as well as no real option to be a spellcaster.
If you are interested in this method, the way to do it in 5e is to have players play monsters instead of player races.  Design petitioners for each of the 9 alignments (pay special attention to True Neutral, which will need its own whole deal, cause there's no True Neutral Outer Plane, unless you count the Material Plane itself), give them a special thingy or two each (perhaps using these as inspiration), and have players pick what alignment they had in life.  Just as your 12 skill points and one feat helped add in a tiny bit of agency in the 3.X version, consider letting players still pick a background and get the benefits and proficiencies that are a part of that.
There's yet more problems with this method, though, because you then have to decide how the PCs advance.  You can either let them add class levels, which I would discourage, or let them evolve into more powerful beings of their alignment, which is okay except for balance issues.  In practice, I've only used this method for specific one-shots or short campaigns that focus around ensuring the players will work together for the duration of the arc despite their different alignments being in the forefront all the time.
As for printed 5e material, you'll definitely want to check out the Planes section of the DMG, as well as what few outsider-y monsters have been published so far, pretty much all of which are in the Monster Manual.
Comment: Wow! I appreciate the long and thorough answer. Thanks!
Answer: I've not seen anything to address this whole subject officially.  The answer from Dark Wanderer is excellent as all of those things are mistakes that you'd learn from after making them.  There is no good answer specific to RAW, as 5E is too young to have produced a book addressing the complexity of the Planes of Existence.
If you dig into the Planar material, you'll get bits and pieces that relate to what an afterlife has to handle.  Earlier editions have books on this, but know that each has a slightly different cosmology and vary from one another in meaningful ways.  For instance, editions have flipped functions of the Ethereal and Astral Plane and which one is a path to the outer planes. I"ve tried to address this myself and I find there isn't enough meat in 5E.  I find it convoluted as the pieces feel as if they weren't designed with the idea of all working together.  Going back to other editions for source material--leads to some more confusion.
Since 1st edition AD&D, the outer planes match a spectrum of alignments--some of which did not exist in the game.  There are 8 non-neutral alignments, but there are 16 outer planes, with half-steps between each alignment--half steps that do not exist in the game.  In 5e, they overlap two alignments, like a DMZ between alignments.  They mostly re-used names of various early European "heavens" and "underworlds"  (valhalla, olympus, etc).  By 5e they generalized them somewhat (Arborea, the Olympian Glades of Arborea, CG; DMG pg 58)  But if you don't use these pantheons... the names become more meaningless.  And are all Greek gods ChaoticGood?  Olympus was the home of all the Greek gods.  It is a confusing subject.  SO don't hesitate to move away to something that makes better sense.  It is the afterlife, it doesn't have to make sense to the living.
5E DMG pg 43 starts the discussion about the Planes.  In addition to some flavor and mentions of places from past editions, they provide some possible effects on living characters that travel to the planes.  The book is quick to say make this into your own.
But you're concerned with the dead not the living traveling there... the 5e books give you some referential ideas if you read through stuff.
In 5e The Prime Material Plane has three overlapping planes of existence. Think of it like phases in Star Trek.  You change your phase of existence and shift into the Shadowfell or Feywild or Border Ethereal.  Your body moves into that plane, but you are still where you were in the Prime.  When you go ethereal, you see the material world you left around you.  However, your body is converted to etherealness... incorporeal-just like ghosts.  If you phase into the ShadowFell or FeyWild there are corresponding landmarks that relate to the same place in the Material world (and your physical body comes with you).  FeyWild has evil and good creatures and regions. Shadowfell is only undead and evil.  They are supposed to be echoes of the real world--but the design was more flavor than symmetry.  For instance, the Shadowfell has gates to evil outer planes, but Feywild doesn't mention any access to the outer planes.
I am certain that I read that souls travel to the Shadowfell when they die. I can't find that in the DMG.  This was true in 4E, maybe I'm imposing old editions on new.  In 5E the portals to the shadowfell overlap where spirits and death lingers, such as battlefields, graveyards.  So this sounds like there is a natural transition tendency to the ShadowFell at death.
Now the confusion for me in 5e, is that the Ethereal is not where your soul goes/exists, despite ghosts and specters being ethereal beings.  In 5e, the Astral Plane is an infinite plane with no size.  DMG.46, "visitors travel as disembodied souls to reach the outer planes."  Pretty much sounds like this is where you go when you die.  The Astral Plane is the realm of thought and dream (DMG.46) The Ethereal does not get you to the outer planes as it did in previous editions.  Astral projection, PHB 215, sends your "soul" (astral body, consciousness) to the Astral Plane but leaves your body behind with a silver cord linking your soul to your body.  If your astral form dies... 0 HP , you go back to your body via the cord.  Cut the cord, your "soul and body are separated, killing you instantly."  The vagueness here is "killing you," which you? Astral Soul "you" as well as your physical body?  Death of the body is definite.  But whether this kills your astral body/soul is the question for me.  In previous versions, it killed the body and your Astral form was left to wander.
The weird part--which has always been confusing--is if you travel to another plane via a portal in the Astral Plane, your body is transported through the cord to the Outer Plane you travel to.   This is how Gate works, you step through with your body.  If you gate to the Astral Plane, your BODY moves to the Astral Plane as well--no cord.  These two different forms of existence within the Astral has existed since early editions.  The flavor of astral projection conflicted with the concept of just stepping into it.  Also the Gith physically live in the Astral Plane, where you can find corpses of gods.
Maybe the Ethereal might be thought of as where lost souls wander the prime material?  It does have portals in the Deep Ethereal to the other INNER planes.
 The books skip what the function of the Ethereal is in this edition.  It has to for some monsters.
MM has bits and pieces in demons and devils, particularly about Lemures and contracts of owning a soul. Night Hags are a little confusing as they ethereally straddle a sleeping victim and invades their Dreams with a Nightmare Haunting Action. (Thoughts and dreams are Astral subject matters).  So here the Ethereal plane is just there to ghost-walk through the world.  The haunting can kill the victim.  The hag tries to corrupt their thoughts and get them to commit evil acts when awake.  If they do and the subsequent hauntings kill the victim, she traps their soul for transport to Hades.
It really is too big a subject for the core books.  But the above are the official tidbits that I recall touch on the subject.
You really will have to homebrew it or borrow modified ideas from previous versions.  Personally, I like the previous versions where the Ethereal was a ghost realm, overlapping all the Inner Planes and the Border Ethereal was the edge where you transitioned to the Outer Planes.  The Astral Plane was solely a plane of mind and thought, never referring to the soul.  Then the Gith started physically living there, god corpses... it got confusing too.
Comment: This is a bit wandering, and could probably be easier to understand if there was a thesis statement at the beginning to give readers a roadmap to help navigate the rest of it. (For just one example, the stuff about demons, devils, and hags seems to be really unrelated to dying then adventuring in Kelemvor's domain, so what's that for? A thesis statement would make it easier to identify if that's just a tangent, or is actually central to your point.)


Hoax easy-listening record?

Question: Years ago I was told that someone (Eydie Gorme?) had made a record in the early '60s, possibly under a pseudonym, where she purposefully sang every song a half-tone flat, as a joke.  Has anyone else heard of that?
Comment: I can't answer that, but I'm wondering what the ploy/joke was?  She had to pay the musicians, record label and everyone else involved, and purposely record something that no one would buy because it was out of tune?  Doesn't make sense.  Sounds like one of those not-so-well-thought-out urban legends to me.
Answer: At a guess, you might be thinking of the strange career of Mrs. Miller.  The William Hung of her day, she was a middle-aged housewife with aspirations to opera, whose producer coaxed her into recording several hit albums of pop-culture standards in the 1960's.  The majority of her appeal was based on the modesty of her talents, and she later accused her producer of deliberately making her sound worse than she actually was.

Hoax easy-listening record?


Images are refering wrong path on node import

Question: i import a node in my site using paste code method. after imported some images are refering wrong path ("https://www.example.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/test.png?itok=a2KPyReV"). but the image is inside of the below path ("https://www.example.com/sites/default/files/test.png")
Comment: What exactly is your "paste code method"?
Comment: i mean there is two option in node import one is upload file and past code.i used past code option to import a node.
Answer: The wrong path belongs to an image derived from image cache. It's the default "large" image style defined in admin/config/media/image-styles. You can try to rebuild the image cache, but success depends a bit on your "paste code method" which i'm unfamiliar with...


How does computer memory store the file name?

Question: I have this doubt for long time. When i save a notepad file, it takes the memory for the information in the file. let's say, I type 'ABC' in notepad and saved the filename as stack, it shows that the memory consumed 3 bytes for the file but what about the file name " stack" ? Where does it store that particular information in our memory?
Comment: Use these keywords [file system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system) to search and read about the different ways that this is done.
Answer: You are right, the computer saves the file name somewhere. But not, it isn't kept in a "stack" or in "memory", files are kept on external memory (disk, flashdrive, perhaps even somewhere else "on the cloud"). This memory in turn is organized to give an efficient map from file names (stored in filesystem proper data structures) to file contents (arranged so it is e.g. possible to extend the file, erase it's contents and reclaim the space, ...). When you ask your operating system for the file size, it answers with the user-visible space (as that is what you presumably are interested in). The space used up in management of the above (file name, references to the pieces used by this file, map of free space on the device, directory structure for managing names, ...) is usually not your concern. You can ask for it if you look at "how full is the device", just that the space used for management usually can't really be associated with a particular file, it is used by many files together.
Get some book on operating systems, and look up "file systems". Or check simple examples like the (MS-DOS) FAT filesystem or the Unix file system design (just concentrate on the Version 7 one, with it's simple layout). File systems in current use are very complex beasts, trying to squeeze out performance of humongous, glacially slow, rotating disks or levelling wear on fast SSDs.
Comment: Another good reference, which has a much simpler file system organisation that is easier to understand, is *The Design of the Unix Operating System* by Maurice Bach. https://archive.org/details/DesignOfTheUnixOperatingSystemByMauriceBach


Can a player character create a cursed magic item on purpose?

Question: In the DMG on pages 128–129 are rules on magic item crafting by player characters. However, there isn't really a way to create cursed magic items given. Are there any official sources for player characters creating cursed magic items?
Answer: There are no details on this process in any official resources. The closest thing is that the Bestow Curse spell can have effects beyond those listed in its description, subject to DM approval, and that spells related to a created item (in this case, Bestow Curse) must be cast by the creator each day of the creation process. This leaves a lot of details up to individual DMs.
Answer: Yes, there are rules listed for crafting magic items in the DMG on pages 128-129 as you rightly pointed out and RAW it doesn't specify curses. But with this in mind it sets out a structure and rules around creating magically enchanted items. So using this rule set as a guide you can be as inventive as your DM allows with what you use to curse the item.


Using git correctly in a small team

Question: What would be the easiest way to use git correctly in a small team of about 5 developers, with one server running the live application?
Comment: @Euphoric - What an incredibly narrow minded attitude. For the ease of branching and merging alone `git` or `hg` beats most centralised VCSs. I can understand people getting annoyed at people constantly harping on about how great DVCSs are, but burying your head in the sand and refusing to acknowledge that you can develop different and possibly more efficient workflows with DVCS than without one is just as bad.
Comment: @Euphoric depends on your tooling and workflow.
Comment: @Euphoric, using Git doesn't mean your source control is "decentralised".  I work in a small team, and we use Git, and we still have a central repository.  That's what you push to.  Using a DVCS doesn't usually mean every person is pulling from every other person with no central point.
Comment: I would question using git in this case. There is no advantage for using decentralised source control, when you have all people in one room with one dedicated server. And there is still overhead of pulling/pushing on top of commits.
Comment: @ONOZ please describe your current way of working in more detail.
Comment: One of the key practices to agile development is to integrate often . Decentralised source control only adds overhead to this by adding more actions developer needs to make to get their changes to everyone else. And improved merging algorithms and source tracking can easily be implemented into centralised source control. There is no need to completly change your development workflow for that.
Comment: What would you do instead?
Comment: We are still starting with the project and we haven't set up a system. Currently investigating the possibilities.
Comment: - Is the application already live?
- Is the team (all developers) in the same place?
Answer: I suggest you to create some branch:

production
master
local

Production branch is "live" branch. Is the application in use right now.
When an update is needed, a developer can pull master branch into local branch. Than, can start to code. At the end, just pull and push from developer local branch to master. A Project manager can take a look in master branch. Test it. And when ready, can merge production with master. And now you'll have new software.
Comment: Because of local branch can be named as XXX-feature-name, thus, you have master branch as merge of all feature branch you want in production. Yes: because some feature may not be included.
Comment: If you're in a consulting or enterprise situation, you may also want to have a branch for UAT.
Comment: Agree, i am using this work flow.
Comment: Could you elaborate on why the difference between a local and master branch? I can see why you would want to have a working production version, but when you pull/push changes it will automatically merge even without a local branch right?
Answer: We've got a similar situation -- except we have dozens of web apps not one. We've been successfully using A successful Git branching model  for the last year or so with no significant complaints.
Comment: I've also used this to create branching models in the past few years.  It's a fantastic model.
Comment: Thumbs up for the link
Answer: Start simple and build up to a more complex workflow as and when you need to.
Whatever you do, don't let A successful Git branching model be the first thing people see, it will only confuse and overwhelm them. Look at this later when you have more experience.
I would suggest that you start with a central git repository and have everyone, including your production and test builds clone from that.
Within your git repository, create a production branch and a test branch.
Developers should work in their own local or remote feature branches until they are completed and merged into master. From here they can be merged into the test branch for deployment into the test environment and when they pass the tests they can be merged into the production branch.
That way you can always see what is new and untested, what is tested but not yet deployed into production and what is actually in production.
Comment: Interesting opinion, I would consider _the_ git branching model to be a deal breaker for git, on the other hand it might not be so obvious to non-git users.
Comment: @wirrbel There is no such things as *the* git branching model, you can implement whatever branching model you desire using `git` to fit your workflow. The one I suggest here is simple and is likely to be better for inexperienced `git` users than [A successful Git branching model](http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/) but AsGbm is likely to be better for more experienced `git` users, but isn't so suitable for some teams (people wanting to maintain multiple *release* branches for instance). As I said though, the problem with AsGbm is that it can look overly complicated.
Comment: I see your point.  Just for me, I started with AsGbm (or rather adapted it to my needs). It was perfect since I could see how git could be used differently than svn
Answer: You must have one master repository on integration server and each developer must clone it. After it just do pull and push. Develop new big features in separate branch. No rocket science here. On live server - you also must clone master repository. And it's good practice to have branch like "live" for it.
Comment: git archive is another option for deploying on the live server on the assumption that you don't actually want to directly edit stuff on the live server

Using git correctly in a small team


What is this weird, dull looking, gray patching on my beardie's head and neck?

Question: I noticed this a few days ago, it doesn't look like anything normal, I was wondering if it might be scale rot due to too much moisture, but now it's not so gray anymore, I completely dried and cleaned his habitat just to make sure that was all good, then I gave him a good bath and now his color is back a little bit. But just in case can anybody tell me if something might be wrong with him or if it's just a really slow shed that looks weird?
Answer: Nevermind, it was just a very slow shed that was a little dark in color. I guess he's finally gotten big enough to start having uneven sheds.


Why does a mingw-compiled Game Maker extension crash on exit when compiled without -static?

Question: I compile a DLL with mingw 4.5.0 and use it as a Game Maker 8.0 extension. Game Maker dynamically loads the dll. Everything appears to work (the dll functions are called and provide correct return values), but when I close Game Maker a dialog pops up: "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library", "This application has requested the Runtime to terminate in an unusual way." After that, the process continues to linger in the background for a few seconds and then disappears.
This also happens when none of the functions of the dll are actually called. There is no DllMain, and all static/global variables are basic data types or std::string (it actually also happens when I remove the std::strings).
The dll statically links with zlib and libpng. The problem seems to vanish when I pass -static to the linker which (I assume) also links the runtime statically. However, this considerably inflates the size of my DLL, and it is at best a workaround until I understand what is going on.
Any ideas on what might be the cause?
Update: Actually, it seems that the problem only happens when two extensons are loaded in Game Maker: One with a dll linked with -static, and the other without. Linking both without -static makes the problem disappear. However, I still don't understand the problem, because the dlls never directly interact or share data structures.
Update 2: I recently found out that this might be related to strange behavior of Game  Maker itself. It seems that global variables aren't initialized correctly when the DLL is loaded, which might cause a crash on unloading if global objects try to free memory they don't own. That would mean the -static was just a random factor that changed the value of the uninitialized memory the globals were associated with.
Update 3: Modified the above to include the info that this is about Game Maker extensions, since this is likely relevant as per Update 2.
Answer: It's just a guess. Try to look into something like the "static initialization order fiasco" that is described here. It may be that your problem is more related to the destructors (since it happens on close).


Check/raise question

Question: Please help put my mind at rest. I've just watched an episode of Emmerdale, in which some of the characters are having a friendly game of Texas Hold-em. The flop in down, there are only two players left in the hand, player 1 checks, player 2 checks, then player 1 raises, surely the betting round is over when both players have checked, and the raise is void, as there is nothing to raise against, or have I got it wrong?
Comment: It is very rare that TV show or movies represent the Poker rules accurately. Mostly they just push brightly colored chips or stacks of cash around in a way that looks good on screen. There is really no point in trying to learn or understand the game from them.
Comment: Cheers for that.
Answer: Yes, betting is closed for that street(flop) once it has been checked around.
Even if player 1 bet and player 2 called betting would be closed for that street.
If player 1 bet / raised that could be interpreted as bet / raise in the dark for the turn.  You can announce check in the dark so you should be able to bet in the dark. There are some dealer on the site so hopefully they will chime in. Most likely the dealer would tell the player betting was not yet open and player could say that is my bet on the table once betting is open.
Answer: A betting round is over once all players in the hand have acted. In Texas Hold 'Em, the turn card should have preceded the next round of betting. What you saw on the episode was incorrect.
Comment: No Problem! You can 'upvote' answers that are useful and select an answer that you feel satisfied with, this helps to inform and educate other users and gives us who provide answers some delicious 'points'

Check/raise question


Does MySQL support parallelism while loading into a database?

Question: I want to load data into a MySQL table using Load/Insert statement. Is there a way to use parallelism for performance benefit?
Something like this in Oracle :-
alter session enable parallel dml

P.S :- I am using JDBC connection for connecting to MySQL .
Answer: Per this Bug thread When will Mysql have parallel query and partitioning; there is no support for Parallel query in MySQL.
See this similar post in So equivalent of parallel query of ORACLE in mysql
Answer: There isn't really a way to parallel from the statements themselves, it's more about the underlying architecture. If you are working with a cluster you can shard a database to improve performance. However, sharding is not the same as parallelizing statements in the sense of what you are asking.


What's the difference between Santa Cruz Rum and Jamaican Rum?

Question: Reading through a book of cocktail recipes from the late 1800s, I notice some recipes call specifically for Santa Cruz rum and some call for Jamaican rum. Is this a mere place of origin reference, or is there some qualitative difference? For example, would one of them be what we now call spiced rum? Or light rum vs dark rum?
Answer: Cocktail historian David Wondrich discusses this very topic in his book "Imbibe!", pages 74-75. (It's structured around Jerry Thomas' first cocktail books—perhaps it's in one of those you're seeing the spirit referenced?) The references are indeed to places of origin, but there are qualitative differences as well.
Modern designations like "light" and "dark" are essentially meaningless (2, 3). Spiced rum is typically poor-quality, neutral spirit with sugar and artificial flavoring added. It's a style that only took off in the 1980s with the advent of Captain Morgan, and can safely be omitted from any classic (or modern craft) recipe.
Rums of the 60s and 70s were characterized by light body and clean taste, in order to compete with vodka, the popular new kid on the block. Their blandness—which opened the doors for Captain Morgan's popularity—was (and in too many cases still is) a far cry from the rums of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.
Jamaican rum was (and still is, in many places) regarded as the "best," or at least the most flavorful. Heavy-bodied, funky, and delicious.
Smith & Cross is probably the best easily-sourced rum that might get close to the strength and flavor of rums that one may have seen 150 years ago. Hamilton Pot Still Jamaica and Doctor Bird are also excellent choices. Hampden Estate (which has been in continuous operation since 1753) rum is very good, but current offerings are more expensive than you might want. Rum-Bar and Plantation Xaymaca are fairly solid, 100% pot-still picks, but fairly mild in terms of strength and "hogo." Appleton is solid, though similarly mild. Coruba, Navy Bay, and Myers's are pretty far from the recipe-creator's intent, but worlds better than, say, Bacardi.
Santa Cruz rum—the "un-Jamaican,"—was lighter than the Jamaican rums of the era, but not nearly so light as today's multicolumn rums from St. Croix, Cuba, or Puerto Rico.
Given how little we know about the Cruzan rums of yesteryear, you've got a fair bit of leeway. Try to find a rum that's got at least some age (which shouldn't be guessed by the color), some backbone and bite but not too funky. A tough of vanilla from the oak and grass from the cane.
Wondrich offers the following blend to approximate the profile of Sta. Cruz rum: 1 part Smith & Cross (or other full-proof, 100% pot-still Jamaican rum), 2 parts lightly aged rhum agricole (paille or ESB), 3-4 parts young Cuban-style rum (like Don Q or Havana Club).
To keep things simple, you can probably get "close enough" with a milder blended rum like Appleton Signature, Denizen Merchant's Reserve or Dark Vatted, Chairman's Reserve, Mount Gay Black Barrel (Eclipse is OK but pretty rough with a too-big hit of ethanol), the Probitas/Veritas collaboration from Foursquare and Hampden, a mild-ish pot-still rum like Rum-Bar Gold, or even something US-domestic like Richland or a local rum distillery you want to support. If you have a favorite rum (not a spiced/flavored one), try it in a recipe and see what you think! Heck, even Cruzan—as different today to its forebears as it is—should still be OK.
Also, given this was originally posted nearly 8 years ago, let us know if you have any updates :) Cheers!
Comment: Thank you! I would not call myself a rum connoisseur but I've enjoyed a variety of rums since then. I don't recall what cookbook it was but it was touted as the oldest recorded cocktail book.
Comment: @Yamikuronue, great! Yes, it was probably Jerry Thomas' 1962 "How to Mix Drinks or The Bon-Vivant's Companion" aka the "Bartender's Guide," widely regarded as the world's first cocktail recipe book. If you're still interested in this topic, I do highly recommend David Wondrich's "Imbibe!," second edition. It puts the drinks (and those of his contemporaries) in historical context, and helps you decipher the recipes, ingredients, and execution. Cheers!
Answer: The difference seems to have been smaller than that. (I'm not an expert on the subject, but I did read this page.)
You can probably use any aged rum here; light rum would probably have too little flavor and spiced rum probably wouldn't fit. Of course, it depends on the specific recipe.
Answer: If the cocktail is from the 1800's it's just the place of origin. Nowadays the two are both fairly strong rums. They taste almost the same except the Jamaican Rum (where I live) is cheaper.
Comment: Source, please. Or are you actually an anthropologist with a specialization in cocktail recipes?
Comment: Were they also strong in the 1800s?
Comment: IN the 1800's the rum wasn't that strong. You can hear stories and such but today's rum has the "enhanced flavor of spicing and hard/soft rums".
Comment: @Bob I just know. It helped Yami.
Comment: As a side note, reading this (*) says that rum used in the navy in the 17th century was usually more than 57% alcohol.
(*) http://gizmodo.com/a-beginners-guide-to-navy-strength-rum-1694043250
Answer: The reference to Jamaica rum refers to a heavy dark rum like Meyers. Santa Cruz was a lighter bodied rum. The Jamaicans do also make light rums like Appleton.
Comment: If you can share references for your statement about Santa Cruz rum, that would make this answer even better. I've seen this term debated even by cocktail historians such as David Wondrich.
Answer: I found this site that describes it as

Rum produced in Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Typically
light rums with a sharp flavor.

This makes a lot of sense as Saint Croix in French translates to Santa Cruz in Spanish. Unfortunately, it doesn't have another citation so it could be wrong.


politically-driven demotion in public sector

Question: A friend of mine was demoted in his/her job in a government agency. There seems to be no wiggle room to discuss this decision, as it was driven by political rather than performance reasons -- they did away with the whole department he/she was heading. So instead of the "Department Head" title, my friend was thrown back to the "Lead Scientist" title from about three years ago in their career. Does anybody have an advice as to how this situation should be described in that person's CV? Being demotivated in the current job is a huge reason for anybody to think about a new job... which starts with updating the resume.
Comment: why was this downvoted? it is workplace related
Comment: "Judgement comes not from success, but from failures. Most companies want to hire people that have had their failures paid for by previous companies..." (as explained in [this fantastic answer](http://workplace.stackexchange.com/a/1485/168))
Comment: I don't think you mean demotivated.  Going from a staff to management position then back to staff is not all the uncommon.  If the staff position has the exact same name then I would fudge a bit in the heading.
Comment: Is your friend really demotivated? I work with scientists, and most (although not all) of them don't like being something like a "department head", they prefer to continue being scientists. However, financial considerations force most of them into managerial roles. Unless your friend's salary was cut, they might be happier in their current role.
Answer: I would suggest your friend start by reframing what happened. Your friend was not demoted, and even more so your friend was not demoted for a political reason.
Your friend's department was eliminated. This is a thing that happens in both public and private sectors. Sometimes (rarely) it's because the people in the department aren't doing their jobs well. More often, in both public and private sectors, it's because somebody decides that whatever it is they do no longer needs to be done internally. While this is painful for everyone concerned, it is a thing that happens and we all have to deal with it. A car company decides they'll buy fully assembled versions of something you used to assemble from parts. A software company decides they won't offer sysadmin or hosting services any more. A book publisher decides to get another company to do the cover designs and marketing instead of doing them in house. A government agency decides to stop having a certain department at all.
Then, on the heels of that blow, something actually pretty good happened to your friend. Even though the entire department was eliminated, your friend still works there. Is a Lead Scientist and perhaps has a chance to get back to Department Head since that is something your friend has demonstrated some ability at.
If the resume is going out today, your friend should list Department Head as a current title, and explain in the cover letter that the department is folding, hence the job search. If the search drags on and your friend is working as Lead Scientist while still looking, then the resume should say Department Head as a position up till the end date, then another position after that as Lead Scientist, and the description for that position should start "after the agency eliminated the ABC department, I moved to the DEF department as Lead Scientist" and then go on to list whatever the duties and accomplishments are in that department.
The resume and cover letter can focus on the twin points that "I was so good that they kept me even though they no longer needed my department" and "I can and have run a department and I'm only looking for a job now because the agency decided to eliminate the department I was running." If your friend is concerned that an employer will think the department was eliminated for not being good, a single sentence that just states it was good is probably all you need. Everyone in business knows that when entire departments go, it's really not about the skill level of the people in them. It's about an overall business or political picture.
Comment: And if this person is seeking a differnt govenrment job (or government contract job) be assured that things like titles and time in each will be reference checked and it is really a bad idea to lie about them as you will get caught and lose the job opportunity.
Answer: A resume/CV should be focused on responsibilities and accomplishments more than any particular title. What your friend did during this time will be more telling than any title ever could be. I would recommend simply leaving off the "Department Head" title entirely, and simply refer to the entire stint as "Lead Scientist".
The demotion appears to be a paperwork demotion anyway. To avoid losing the "prestige" of the "Department Head" title, it would still be a good idea to have a bullet (near the top) that identifies the period during which the title applied. Append on to it the reason for the reduction in title. Something like.

Appointed Department Head 2011-2014. Title position dissolved Nov 2014,
  all duties and responsibilities retained.

This allows for the experience to remain relevant, doesn't appear as a "grandstanding" move by listing a title that no longer applies or can be verified (and Department Head is definitely one a prospective employer will want to verify), and also casually identifies that the title no longer applies due to an administrative change rather than a performance-related demotion.


Skillet Cooked Shrimp Texture

Question: I was wondering exactly what a perfectly cooked shrimp's texture should be.  I know the "rubbery" texture means over cooked and that if it's clear in the middle it's undercooked.  But in terms of mouth feel and texture what should I expect? There is a "crunch" to each bite, almost like I'm breaking through some sort of layer.  I just don't know if this is normal or not.  I cooked the shrimp in a non-stick skillet on medium heat for about 5-6 minutes total and flipped the shrimp every 30-45 seconds.
Comment: Yeah that sounds right to me. My opinion is however that a little overlooked is better than a little undercooked. I can't stand undercooked shrimp.
Comment: That sounds about right to me. I tend to think of the texture as a "pop" that indicates plenty of internal juices. There might be more of a culinary term for that which I don't know, so I'll leave that to others and post this as an answer later if there aren't better submissions.
Answer: The doneness of something is obviously a matter of a opinion, but based on the comments I received the "crunch" in each bite is normal. It is overcooked if it is tough and rubbery and it is undercooked if you cut it open and you see white on the outside but a clear-ish color towards the middle.

Skillet Cooked Shrimp Texture


Drawing room romance parody in "Hail, Caesar!"

Question: I was able to identify most of the parodies in "Hail, Caesar!". For example, the sailors dancing scene is "On the Town" (1949). However, I could not figure which movie the drawing room romance was referencing; this is the scene in the movie in which Ralph Fiennes plays director "Lawrence Lorentz". Can anyone identify which film/director is being parodied here?
Comment: Haven't seen the film yet, but from the trailer, it looks a lot like [Lena trying to learn proper diction](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3OkXi5osfU) in "Singin' In The Rain" (*"an' I caiin't stan'm!"*)
Answer: Clarisse Loughrey of The Independent points towards Private Lives (1931) as a possible referent for Merrily We Dance, but notes that it really seems like more of a composite of several different movies from an earlier era:

The reference point for Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes)'s high-society drama seems a little more obscure; odd, since the other parodies here seem so directly ripped from specific films. Merrily We Dance essentially comes off as an amalgamation of older, refined offerings from the 1930s; a reference to the film adapting a highly successful Broadway production suggests it may be a nod to the work of Noël Coward.
1931 saw the first cinematic adaptations of one of Coward's most well-known plays, Private Lives. ...
Coward originally voiced concerns that [Norma] Shearer would be incapable of handling the play's sophisticated dialogue; to which she replied, "I don't care what he thinks - he thinks in theater terms - I think in film terms. It doesn't seem to occur to Mr. Coward that we both may turn out to be right!"
In turn, Hail, Caesar! sees Laurentz exasperated to discover Western film star Hobie Doyle cast as Merrily We Dance's romantic lead; resulting in the film's standout comedic bit, in which Laurentz tries in vain to teach Doyle the elegance of the Mid-Atlantic accent.

I've come across several other reviewers who have noted that this style of movie seems a bit anachronistic for the time period (e.g., the other quote below.)
As far as who the character of Laurence Laurentz is based on, a lot of people point towards George Cukor or Vincente Minelli:

Hobie's flamboyant, exasperated director seems partially a nod to MGM mainstay Vincente Minnelli, father of Liza, who directed his then-wife Judy Garland in "Meet Me in St. Louis" (1944). But the '30s-style black-and-white comedy Laurentz is directing (whose leading lady resembles Deborah Kerr) seems much more like a mashup of Minnelli and Cukor, who directed Kelly's last MGM musical, "Les Girls'' (1957).
Answer: According to Den of Geek it could be a reference to My Fair Lady (1964). From their website:

Ralph Fiennes has one of the funniest scenes of the movie when he tries to teach Alden Ehrenreich's cowboy how to properly speak for a drawing room drama. We imagine that a classical Hollywood old schooler like George Cukor had this problem multiple times over the years.

Later:

Helming lavish spectacles of the highest prestige, Cukor had a habit of bringing the best out of Katharine Hepburn throughout her career, as well as knowing how to photograph the most exquisite costumes. Simply look at the below clip from My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn (who many at the time thought was miscast as the cockney-turned-posh flower girl), and her in-story troubles with pulling off the proper affectation.

The referenced clip
Although, according to The Verge's review it could be Singin' In The Rain (1952) (emphasis mine):

As much as the Coens reference specific MGM pictures from shot to shot, they're also drawing heavily on Singin' In The Rain, with its sense of looming, sweeping industry change on the horizon. (A lengthy scene where Hobie tries to wrap his natural drawl around his new highfalutin lines is cribbed directly from the film. So is the shot where he drives out of town, neon lights reflected in his car window.)


Replacing boot (tailgate/trunk) struts/pistons

Question: The struts/pistons are no longer strong enough to hold the boot (trunk for americans) open. I went to buy one from the shop only to find the price was for an idividual unit. Is there ever a case where only one would need to be replaced? - how can I test which one needs replacing if this is the case?
Answer: Is there ever a case where only one would need to be replaced?

Sure: rust will kill anything but it does tend to start at a point of entry and spread.  It could kill one strut before it dissolves the rest of the car.  Likewise, a side or corner impact could bend a single strut.
how can I test which one needs replacing if this is the case?

Realistically, if you have a car of some years, I'd assume that they're both gone rather than trying to puzzle out how to squeeze a few more years / months out of one old one.
In terms of testing, you can pretty easily slap together a test rig with scrap lumber.

Bolt the bottoms of both struts to a base plate.
Now attach the tops to something robust but relatively light that you can use for compression testing (e.g., a yard stick).
Press them both down - does one resist much more strongly?  That one is better.
Release them both after full compression - which one gets to the top first?  That one is better.

If you purchase a replacement strut and repeat the process, I think you'll find that you really want two news rather than one new, one oldish.
Answer: It has been my experience that the gas struts are similar to headlights. Occasionally one will fail early, but most of the time the second unit fails shortly after the first. If only one side is replaced it will take the load of the weaker side. This causes it to wear prematurely as it is carrying more than half the load. Also remember that any extra weight on the trunk/boot such as snow, bicycle rack or aftermarket spoiler will increase wear and shorten the cylinders life.
Comment: Good point - the majority of the unbalanced load will hit the strongest spring / damper first and hardest.  That's a good reason to assume that they're both aged / poor / bad.


Can a question of law be taken to a civil court, while not naming a specific defendant?

Question: There exist known methods of surveilling people within their homes and elsewhere and even harassing them there that provide complete anonymity for the surveillor/harasser.  If those means afford such a degree of insulation for the surveillor/harasser that no defendant can ever be identified or proven, can a harassee take the matter of those harassments to a civil court so as to seek a judgement of that surveillance/harassment being illegal and doing harm as a simple matter of law?
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/111722/discussion-on-question-by-ted-jackson-can-a-question-of-law-be-taken-to-a-civil).
Comment: Thank you, Pat W.  That is far better than a deletion.
Comment: Not for me. I'm still banned from chat.
Comment: Pat W., please allow 'You're bad' to post in the chat you set up.  Although he shows signs of being an intentional antagonist and 'player', he at least has been the only individual willing to discuss the issue, and the "goody mob's" techniques (signs) ALWAYS leave a measure of doubt as to their intentions (befitting the CIA).  Even an antagonist (including a bona-fide 'goody mobster') can be useful sometimes. And I'm not afraid to confront ANYONE over the issues, including 'goody mobsters'.  If he will deal with the issue rationally, even if a skeptic, then I'd like to continue our chat there.
Comment: Why is no one asking any questions?  It seems the subject is the ultimate conversation stopper.  Please ASK.  I can give you substantive answers that actually make SENSE.  PLEASE ask.  ANYONE.  It's such a huge subject and I've only scratched the surface here.
Comment: @TedJackson "They".
Comment: Do you have a question, Studoku?
Answer: Laws are different around the world and you didn't bother to state your location, but typically no- this is not how the system works.
What would be the point? There's no defendant. You, the plaintiff would argue against thin air and then what? The court rules in your favour, declares this illegal, and nothing happens because there's no defendant.
Is it so you can use this ruling if you find out later? Pretty sneaky. Let's look into how this would actually work.
You bring up a case- Jackson vs a mannequin or something. You make your arguments. The defense makes literally no defense. The judge rules in your favour, with a result of nothing as there is no defendent.
Next, you find the culprit and bring a case against them. You point out that this is illegal because we came to that decision last week. What's that defendant? An argument against it being illegal? Too bad, the decision has been made.
When I posted this answer, it was before the "Nyah, I was ranting about government spying but was deliberately vague- aren't I clever?" comment and I assumed it was against, say, a neighbour but it doesn't really matter. You cannot have a system that makes a judgement without a defendant so it can be applied later.
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/111641/discussion-on-answer-by-youre-bad-and-should-feel-bad-can-a-question-of-law-be).
Answer: In the United States federal courts, the answer is no. The U.S. Constitution limits their jurisdiction to "cases or controversies," which requires adverse parties. It also requires a plaintiff who has standing, which requires that the court's resolution of the case will provide some relief for that injury.
The case you're describing fails on both points. First, as you noted, there is no defendant adverse to the plaintiff. Second, there's no indication that the action you're talking about would change the amount of surveillance the plaintiff is being subjected to.
Comment: The situation is like fighting a mob boss who knows how to insulate himself by working through others and how to use clever language to issue orders and communications (i.e. "Get him a pair of concrete shoes, Vinny.")  But the mob I'm referring to is orders of magnitude beyond the traditional mob in capability and method.  And yes, you're quite right, there is no reason to believe it will ever change.  Just hope you never feel its bite.  If Justice Cavanaugh were subjected to it, he'd probably be in an institution by now and not on the Supreme Court.
Answer: To see why this wouldn't work, let's take a slightly different example. Suppose you have something stolen from you, but you can't identify the thief. Suppose also, in this jurisdiction, for whatever reason, there is some ambiguity about the legality of theft (perhaps due to the nature of the thing that was stolen). Even if it would be interesting, important, and useful to resolve the ambiguity:

If the ambiguity would be resolved in the direction that there was no law against the particular form of theft, then you would be out of luck regardless, and should go to the legislature first to petition for a revision of the laws.

If the ambiguity would be resolved in the direction that the theft was in fact illegal, there would be nothing for the court to do, since the court lacks both control over and access to the thief and the stolen property. You would be out of luck regardless, and should go to law enforcement or private investigators to catch the thief and locate the stolen property first.

Courts have such a big caseload of urgent problems generally that it is a more or less ironclad rule that you can't bring hypothetical questions or questions where the court cannot actually remedy the injustice (for reasons of jurisdictional or physical impossibility). You have to have an actual live issue and make a showing that the court could actually provide redress of grievances. No one's putting murder, rape, and domestic violence cases on pause for days so the court can spend a few days in the ivory tower musing on a purely academic ("moot") question.
With regards to being surveilled/harassed: you would either have to catch the surveillor/harasser in the act (if it was illegal) or first change the law to ban these types of surveillance/harassment (if it was technically legal). If you don't know who's surveilling/harassing you, and the court doesn't either, what do you expect the court to do? Even if they agree with your theory of the case, they can't enforce anything against an unknown, much less a potentially unknowable, malefactor.
Comment: Thank you for that, Rivers.  As far as theft goes, three appliances were stolen from my apartment and the door left wide open, noticed when I got home from work.  I obtained a police report.  Two days later, my neighbor found those appliances neatly stacked outside my front door.  No legal justification was ever given to me.  No warrant.  No nothing.  I submitted that report as an exhibit among others in my FOIA case against the FBI and CIA.  The civil court judge ignored it and promptly awarded the defendants' motion to dismiss.  Later, my gun that I never fired was stolen too.  Same story.
Comment: @tedjackson The organizations you mention, because of their high profile and at times undeniably shadowy and suspect operations, are very frequent targets of litigation as a result. Much of this litigation is valuable in safeguarding civil rights, but some of it is frivolous or crackpot, and because these organizations have strong relationships with the judicial branch they will frequently succeed in moving to dismiss on such grounds as they enjoy the presumption of good faith. Bring absolutely ironclad evidence next time. If this is happening to you, it can and should be recorded and tracked.
Comment: They are expert at avoiding 'ironclad' evidence.  How does one even begin to prove that an anonymous means to 'bee sting', surveill and otherwise harass is being used at all?  They've gone to great lengths through many decades to inculcate the public with the notion that complaints are crazy talk.  The best that a TI can do, if he/she is fortunate to have a heaping helping of creative and advertising media mockery to refer to like I do (most unusual for a TI) is to build a circumstantial case of their dilute, obscured junkola particularly with the partial name-dropping included in some of it.
Comment: I did precisely that in my FOIA case and the judge simply made no comment about any of it.  Would it have been possible to request a jury to examine and weigh the arguments and exhibits instead of just the judge who might have been pre-prejudiced by the defendants themselves, a jury at least being sworn to do their constitutional duty and work impartially?  I didn't do so, because I could only afford a pro-se case and knew I wasn't versed enough in courtroom law to go about it competently.
Answer: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, 50 USC 1803–1805 provides the legal framework for such surveillance by the federal government. The Attorney General can declare an emergency, apply for a warrant but not have to wait for the warrant to be issued. They apply to the FISA Court, which is a special court, and generally warrants are granted (nearly 20,000 granted, less than a dozen rejected). This is a secret court, so any information available probably will not be released, or will be heavily redacted. Congressional authority for secret courts stems from 50 USC 1803(c), where court rules can be set up to protect the security of records held by FISC. Here is one ruling (against petitioner, alleged to be Yahoo). The NY Times famously published a report indicating that the courts have secretly ruled, in classified rulings (ergo secret law), that the "special needs" doctrine has been expanded and that "collection and examination of Americans' communications data to track possible terrorists does not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment". This pertains to a mass surveillance program carried out by the NSA.
Theoretically, you could sue various governmental agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA, TFI, MIB...) demanding under FOI that they provide records. You make a direct request to the agency; if you are not satisfied with the result, you file a lawsuit in federal court in your district. This paper may be helpful, assuming you are going pro se. You may also want to review this chapter, which pertains to declassifying information, since the agency response might be "that's classified". The bottom line is that if the information you seek has been deemed classified, then your only recourse is declassification review; if they deny having any record and you can provide no proof of such a record, your suit will be dismissed. Unlike FOI where you can ask for "any and all", you have to specify a document for declassification under MDR review.
Surveillance by other levels of government (state police, county sheriff, school district) is less likely to be immunized from review since they don't deal in national security issues. Surveillance by Facebook or your local grocery store or TV station could be revealed if you allege harm by one of these parties and sue them, in which case as part of discovery you could demand production of their surveillance of you. They may petition for summary dismissal, so your petition needs to be specific enough to survive their counter-motion.
You have to name a respondent. The standard solution is to name all possible respondents.
Comment: I've always remained peaceful and calm despite numerous clever efforts to goad me to anger.  I, like most targeted individuals, don't have a war chest to pay lawyers' exorbitant bills.  I've never been formally accused of anything, since there is really nothing to accuse me of, so no lawyer can possibly come forth to work pro bono or in the expectation of a share of awarded damages with no clearly identifiable defendant.  So, like for most TIs, once again it's a no-win situation.  Like I said, I sued under the FOIA pro se and the likely defendants evidently lied because they could lie.
Comment: @TedJackson So get a law degree and do it yourself. Youtuber LegalEagle is already doing something similar (though he was a lawyer long before deciding to sue the government).
Comment: I'm an engineer.  That's what I love.  Going for a law degree would be an exercise in a hell of boredom.  Cheryl Welsh undertook that route though and got a law degree I heard from other TIs.  The SciFi channel even produced some cartoon news about her.  A little overdramatized, but it's a fairly good look at the life of a TI.  Haven't heard from her in a long time.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWcsNpwmjsk
Comment: And yea, as pictured, 'they' do have means of causing malfunction and non-function of appliances.  Can cause frozen frames at suggestive moments on the cable dial, tap and bump sounds that function like 'bee stings' (marking moments of spoken or thought dialog or anything that can be construed as symbolic), numerous ways to manipulate human physiology from endless sleepless nights to loss of excretory control to making the arms go limp and lifeless for a moment while driving.  I'm sure they have many ways to kill that all would assume were of natural causes - physiological and situational.
Comment: If anyone wants to learn much more about me and my case, I've been writing essays for three decades at my website.  http://afafa.org and at FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/TJackson112  Check out this media gaming.  Watch as the symbolic weed sharer pays the ultimate price:  http://afafa.org/Unlinked/StarTrek_Implant.mp4


What is the best way to learn to play a piece on the guitar?

Question: I've been playing the guitar for about 3 years. I would like to play more country and bluegrass. What is the best way to pick up new techniques and learn how to play anything besides basic guitar chords. Also, how is the best way to increase my skill at bar chords?
Answer: That's really two questions but here goes:
Barre Chords: Barre chords can cause problems if you haven't been exercising your left hand (if you're a righty) in that particular way. There are all sorts of ways to ease into them. Here are a few:

Use a capo at the first fret and then play barre chords up 1/2 step. You're not trying to play in tune -- just to get exercise making the chord shapes. The reason this often works is it effectively lowers the nut, making the action a tad faster where most people play barre chords. After you've done this for a while, take off the capo and play some more. It's like getting callouses -- the only way is repetition.
Use lighter strings. If you aren't getting a clear sound without a capo, consider switching to lighter strings until you're strong enough to manage heavier ones. I know bluegrass and country both sound better on heavy strings but if you aren't getting a clear sound you may have no choice.

New Techniques and Stuff: Bluegrass and country are full of major pentatonic runs. They also utilize a ton of first-position chords (at least traditional country -- when you get to more progressive styles guitar players are all over the fretboard). Where this all came from was connecting chords together with short runs or putting some little lick between verses. If you're into Bluegrass, listen to "Uncle Pen" and you'll get the lick thing right away. You can capo on 2nd fret and played out of a G shape. Don't be surprised when you find out that country pickers are among the most dextrous in the guitar world. Keith Urban is a madman, and if you're looking back on Bluegrass guitar, Doc Watson was humbling so say the least. But take a few notes from each and try to get them into your playing.
All this stuff wraps around basic guitar chords so you are on the right track. Just find some songs you like and noodle around with them until you can make them feel like yours.
Comment: Thanks very much! This was very helpful. I'm really glad I discovered this site - I love country and bluegrass!
Answer: An old mate of mine, Keith Porter, from the 'the TIME THIEVES', gave me great advice about how to stretch out your playing if you want to progress beyond the basic chords. His advice was - play a chord - and then observe what notes you are actually playing. This will give you a foundation of notes to start a 'riff' off of that chord. Play around with just the notes of that chord. Play the chord again, and then explore playing the chord notes. Play notes from that chord as a lead up to the next chord and then reverse it. Pretty soon you will start picking up all the Arpeggios and sundry other melodic and 'riff' style runs to use between your chords. When you get used to it don't play the full chord at the start of you riff, just the root. Then try getting to the first note of the 'riff' where you would normally play that chord. I play Bar chords up the neck as a means of putting myself in the ready position on the neck to start my 'run' or 'riff'. Mix Bar chords and 'Banana' chords together in your playing to create a change in sound with verses and chorus, or bridge. Makes for more versatility, and people will see what a great guitar player you are. Chords are only notes played together. Stretch them out and explore the potential to create !!!!


How can I accept Bitcoin as a payment without a 3rd party gateway

Question: I want to create a website where users can pay with Bitcoin. However I want to create my own payment gateway because I do not want to rely on services like BitPay. I want a unique BTC address for every user where the users can send money to this wallet and then spend the coins on the site.
I heard that it is possible with bitcoin-cli/bitcoind. I also have high skills in PHP and Linux so this isn't a problem.
Comment: You can write your own php software that does RPC calls to your bitcoin node, see https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/0.18.0/ for more info
Answer: There are several solutions out there and currently the most hyped one is probably BTC-Pay. It also supports lightning, so you should be pretty future-ready.
Answer: If you're new to Bitcoin, I would advise you to play around btc wallet on testnet you could check mycelium for instance and get some btc via faucet. You need to understand that you don't need any third party for interacting with bitcoins, you just require a wallet. A wallet is a program that handle UTXOs, craft transactions and broadcast them to bitcoind nodes (or other compliant full node implementation), waiting for them to be mine. As you're developper, I highly recommend you to buy Mastering Bitcoin from Andreas M. Antonopoulos.
After than, you will simply design you're backend so that you can accept bitcoin payment, there is many open source project for your needs as btcpayserver or bitcore. I would suggest btcpayserver on your case, but both are "basically" bitcoind wrapper on steroids tailored for enabling applications on top of Bitcoin.
Comment: I am not new to Bitcoin. I know that I do not need Bitpay to accept them. However all tutorials I find only rely on Bitpay. I want a more technical answer which explains the steps I need to do to accept Bitcoin
Comment: Did you check btcpayserver then ? It describes exactly what you need "Start Accepting Bitcoin Payments With 0% Fees & No Third-party" and this is basically an API you will interact with in PHP. Your goal is to accept bitcoin payment, not building a wallet.
Answer: I solved it by getting into the Bitcoin Core RPC interface.
I also did a talk about it in German here. My solution is completely independent of any 3rd party software.
Comment: @Prayank Not all parts of it, only the wrapper. See the comments section in the video but as I said I only started with a PHP website that has a startpage, a login page and a secured page that only logged in users can view. Keep in mind that the wrapper I used in the video is not 100% complete, nor up-to date. Please use something that is actively maintained. For example Bitcoin.php
Comment: Video looks interesting. Do you have this php code on github?


Why does Pluto have a molten core and the Moon does not?

Question: We recently found out that Pluto has a molten core. Since the Moon is bigger than Pluto should the Moon have had a molten core at some point in time?
Comment: Do you have a source for a molten core?   There's talk that Pluto might have a liquid watery ocean below it's surface, but that's not the same as a liquid core.    http://www.universetoday.com/14315/is-there-life-on-pluto/
Comment: @userLTK: In terms of Pluto's geology (Plutology?), liquid water should count as a molten core, shouldn't it?  Since most of the surface seems to be ice, with nitrogen ices &c being the active elements...
Comment: @Jamesqf, well,I don't want to debate the specifics of what molten means (water vs rock), but if others wish too take up that point, they can, but where I'm pretty confident debating this argument is that Pluto's theoretical liquid ocean isn't at it's core at all, but near the surface.   Below the surface to be sure, but closer to the surface than the core.   It's not a liquid "core" at all.
Answer: About one-third of the near side of the Moon is covered by basaltic plains, called Mare. These plains are evidence that molten rock once flowed on those areas of the Moon and that in its early history the Moon experienced volcanism.
NASA analysis of Apollo era seismic data indicates the Moon has a core similar to Earth: a solid central core within a molten outer core.
The molten Lunar core is small compared to the size of the Moon and the Moon's mantle is so thick that molten rock from the core can no longer reach the surface of the Moon.
From my review of NASA's New Horizon's website, there is no statement about the composition of Pluto's core. Two other sources, News.com and Space.com make different statements about Pluto's core.
News.com states,

Essentially, it looks as though Pluto has a molten radioactive core and tectonic plates.

Whereas, Space.com states,

The dwarf planet probably has a rocky core surrounded by a mantle of water ice, with more exotic ices such as methane, carbon monoxide and nitrogen ice coating the surface.

These comments appear to be conjecture and are not official NASA releases based on NASA acquired data from the New Horizons probe that flew past Pluto.
Comment: Minor nitpick, but plural of [Mare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_mare) is [Maria](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv-im_CZEqI) :)
Comment: If the Moon contains a molten core similar to Earth's, it cannot have molten rock.  It would be molten metal.