How come the universe is made of matter and not antimatter?

Question: Antimatter is like matter on opposite day: it has the same properties as the stuff that makes up planets, stars and galaxies, but one vital piece is different—its charge. The universe supposedly started off with equal parts matter and antimatter, but somehow, matter won out. Most of both substances annihilated each other shortly after the big bang, and left a small surplus of matter remaining.
Comment: The answer is not currently known and the question is an ongoing topic of research in physics.  For details on the various theories, try googling terms such as "matter antimatter asymmetry" or "Baryon asymmetry".
Comment: Your question doesn't seem to be about why there is an asymmetry so much as it's about why matter "won".  It's actually completely arbitrary.  See http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/81787/
Comment: Free Nobel Prize to writer of the first upvoted answer!
Comment: This is a really big and currently actively researched question: if you happen to meet Physics SE user [Michael Brown](http://physics.stackexchange.com/users/17320/michael-brown) on chat his dissertation is in exactly this field.
Comment: @SajinShereef See Brandon's comment above. At the moment, you aren't really asking a question worth answering. Asking why antimatter lost the tug-o-war is like asking why the team with the least points lost. "Ordinary matter" is a label we slap in the winner, and anti-matter is a label we slap on its opposite. A better question is why is there a winner at all?
Comment: @WetSavannaAnimalakaRodVance Hehe, for a moment there I thought you were talking about Mike Brown the planetary scientist. I took a freshman intro geology class he taught, and I was about to be *very* confused how a theoretical physicist with a dissertation in frontier theoretical QFT topics transitioned into the guy who taught me how to recognize feldspar. =D
Comment: @WetSavannaAnimal Yes indeed, but alas! he hasn't logged on to the site in the last 3 months.
Comment: i was asking about matter and antimatter... and i havnt got any answer yet
Answer: This was answered well in the comments but I'll write it up as a proper answer. There are two main questions here:

Why is there an asymmetry between matter and antimatter?
given that there's an asymmetry, why did matter win out?

The second question is answered rather easily. The Big Bang produced more of one of the two types and everything,  from galaxies to human beings, ended up made of this. Since we're made of that type, it is no surprise we ended up calling that one matter and the exotic type antimatter. This is not an intrinsic distinction, though: there is nothing in the lab that distinguishes antimatter from matter.
The real question, of course, is why there is more of one type to begin with. Indeed, as far as we can tell, all the pair production mechanisms that would have turned energy into mass just after the Big Bang ought to create equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Nevertheless, we observe more of the former and less of the latter.
This question is, alas, completely unresolved. We simply do not know. This 'baryon asymmetry problem' is currently an open and active research field, though no one really knows what the solution might look like. If we do find out, though, be sure that you will hear about it in the news, and that there will be a Nobel prize or two for the people that resolve it.
Answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryogenesis
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/baryogenesis.html
Start with baryogenesis.  Bottom line:  Nobody knows why the universe is not mirror symmetric.  We are still exploring how the universe is not mirror symmetric.
As to origin...anybody can be a theorist!  Massless boson photons detect no vacuum refraction, dispersion, dissipation, dichroism, gyrotropy.  Postulate this is exactly true for fermionic matter (quarks).  Parity violations, symmetry breakings, chiral anomalies, Chern-Simons repair of Einstein-Hilbert action reveal vacuum trace chirality toward hadrons.  Big Bang matter is fundamentally chosen over antimatter.  Crazy talk!
Vacuum trace chiral anisotropy selective to fermionic matter alters Noetherian coupling of exact vacuum isotropy to angular momentum conservation.  It leaks for matter as MoND's 1.2×10^(-10) m/s^2 Milgrom acceleration.  Dark matter curve-fits the Tully-Fisher relation.    Crazy talk?
Opposite shoes embed within chiral vacuum (mount a left foot) with different energies.  They vacuum free fall non-identically, exhibiting Equivalence Principle (EP) violation.  Crystallography's opposite shoes are visually and chemically identical, single crystal test masses in enantiomorphic space groups: P3(1)21 vs. P3(2)21 alpha-quartz, geometrically right-handed versus left-handed atomic mass distributions.  Theory only fears experiment.
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/erotor1.jpg
http://www.npl.washington.edu/eotwash/EquivalencePrinciple
   Two geometric Eötvös experiments.  0.113 nm^3 volume/α-quartz unit cell.  40 grams net as 8 single crystal test masses compare 6.68×10^22 pairs of opposite shoes (pairs of 9-atom enantiomorphic unit cells, the test mass array cube's opposite vertical sides).
The significant difference between blowing warm air and respected scholarship
http://phys.columbia.edu/~dvp/dvp-sakharov.pdf
is that this warm air can be tested within 90 days in existing bench top apparatus using commercial materials.  Crazy talk or epiphany, at least we can know.


Apple TV Home Videos

Question: I'm considering importing my home videos into my iTunes library so I can easily access them over any device in the house.  The one problem I'm seeing is when I add home movies, and I have them labeled as home movies in iTunes, on the apple tv they just show up under the movies selection for my iTunes Library.  I heard you can label them as TV Shows and have a bit more control, but honestly I'd just rather have a "Home Movies" option and "Movies" option to pick from on my main screen?  Is something like this possible?
Answer: If you don't mind sacrificing the Genre tag, you could tag "real" Movies with Genre="Movie", and your home movies with Genre="Home Movie", and then browse by Genre on the ATV.
Answer: I set the genre to 'Home Movies'.  While they are still intermingled with actual movies when viewing ALL, I peruse movies by genre.

Apple TV Home Videos


Remove [micro-sd-card] tag

Question: This tag is redundant, as [sd-card] exists. There aren't many things specific to micro SD cards that aren't shared traits with SD cards.
Comment: You're right about the similarity, but just a thought.  Sometimes we use synonyms or even multiple tags so someone can easily find a tag that matches how they are thinking about their problem or searching for a solution.  Do you have any thoughts on whether there might be any value along those lines lost if we eliminate the tag?  Any thoughts on retagging and eliminating this one vs. making it a synonym of the [sd-card] tag?  (in that case, either tag name would work for finding a tag or searching, but only the primary would actually appear on the question.)
Comment: @fixer1234 Now that you mention it, making it a synonym might be a better idea.
Comment: There isn't a generic tag, like [data-card], and one probably wouldn't be useful because it isn't what pops to mind when you're thinking about SD or micro-SD.  Given that the tags are form-factor specific, there's value in seeing the "right" tag; less confusing.  OTOH, there would be benefit in linking these together so answers posted under one form-factor are readily available under the other.  I'm not aware of a way to keep both tags available for attachment, but link them for searching.  A synonym might be next best, with explanation in the wiki excerpt (even though people don't read them).
Answer: People may not have responded to the question due to the solution presented in the question not being seen as desirable, even if some type of action seems warranted.  I'll post an answer to bump the issue with another solution people can react to.

There is a trade-off here.

It is helpful to have separate tags consistent with the terms people use to think about their problem.
Aside from that, the only practical difference between the form-factors that would affect answers here is the lack of a locking switch on the micro-SD format.  Keeping the two tags separate hides useful solutions on the other tag, or encourages people to double tag.

Synonyms are the mechanism available for linking multiple intuitive tags to the same content.  SD Card is the more generic term.  Let's make micro-sd-card a synonym of sd-card, and expand the wiki and excerpt to clarify that the tag applies to both formats.
For that matter, we could probably make it even more generic and make it applicable to any form-factor of a generally similar flash memory card (comment on preferences regarding this last point).

Remove [micro-sd-card] tag


Synonym needed for "teetotaler"

Question: Is teetotaler still an acceptable term for someone advocating alcohol abstinence? If not, what is a better word to use?
Answer: Yes, teetotaler is acceptable. Ngrams shows a slight decline in usage since 1900, but the term is used to refer to the same concept today:

The Wikipedia page linked above gives some synonyms as well:

Nephalism, temperance, abstinence, abstemiousness and restraint are synonyms for teetotalism.

Note that none of the above synonyms is specific to alcohol as teetotalism is, except nephalism, which is a rare term:
Answer: A teetotaler (originally tea-totaler, as I understand) doesn't necessarily advocate abstinence. The word means that he practices abstinence, that he himself abstains.
Comment: Originally "T-Total".
Answer: I'd say that teetotaler is fine for somebody who practices alcohol abstinence, and perhaps even for somebody who mildly suggests that others abstain (perhaps militant teetotaler?)  However, for somebody who strongly advocates alcohol abstinence, a better (stronger) word to use might be prohibitionist.
Answer: I would consider it problematic in that sense. While originally it meant an active member of the Temperance movement, it can be used simply to mean someone who personally abstains. Certainly here in Ireland it would be taken to mean that you didn't drink, but not to say anything about your reasons for that choice, or your attitude to others drinking.
I think if I wanted to be clear that I was talking about someone who actively advocated abstaining from alcohol, I would simply say "temperance advocate".
Answer: It's not used as much as it used to, but it could always make a comeback (it sounds fancy and classy). Most alcoholic abstainers nowadays get referred to as "Straight Edges" but that has more variation and can also include smoking, drug use, promiscuous sex, and can even extend as far as abstaining from soda, caffeine, prescribed medications and meat or animal products. It also tends to be more associated with those who listen to punk music. I personally refer to myself as being on the spectrum between teetotaler and straight edge, but I'm not a vegetarian or vegan and I do occasionally drink caffeinated tea (not soda though).

Synonym needed for "teetotaler"


My interview went well but at the end the interviewer said "All the best for your future endeavours". What does it mean?

Question: I was interviewed for an academic job where I pretty much answered all the questions and the interviewer seemed positive. He even shared his contacts for further questions and said there would be more rounds of interview if everything goes well. However, at the end he said to me "All the best for your future endeavours". I am still trying to figure out what this means? Any comments in general or if someone faced a similar situation, would be nice.
Answer: It doesn't mean anything, it's just a pleasant remark.
When you are accepted or rejected for the job, you will be notified formally, not by vague remarks at the end of an interview.  In the meantime, keep applying and interviewing for other opportunities that interest you.
Comment: "When you are accepted or rejected for the job, you will be notified formally" might not apply universally - I'm still waiting to hear back from my interview in January 2016, although the position seems to have been filled for a couple of years now.
Comment: @lighthousekeeper: It's true that if you aren't invited to a next-round interview within a reasonable time frame, you can predict that rejection is likely.  My experience is that formal rejection letters do eventually follow but there can be exceptions.  Anyway, my point is that you won't normally be told of the outcome, nor even be given hints, at the time of the interview.  Decisions are made offline.
Comment: More to the point, *even if* this particular hiring process does allow for very quick mercy-rejects, you'll be told that **soon** (hence "quick", I've seen "after lunch, cutting short the full day interview" in industry), and in unambiguous words.
Answer: "All the best" would apply regardless of whether you got the job or not.  Remember that hiring isn't necessarily done just by the interviewer, but there is an additional committee with more people behind the scenes that helps decide whether you get the job or not.  It's just common courtesy at the end of an interview to say things like "thank you so much for taking the time", "great getting to speak with you" (for both the interviewer and interviewee).
If you were able to answer the questions and strike a good tone with the interviewer, there isn't much more you could have done in my mind.  Remember that hiring, in any case, tends to be random and sometimes involves luck.  You could do everything right before, during, and after the interview and still not get the job just because they felt someone was a better fit.  Don't take it personally, and just move on; who knows, maybe you may run into them in the future.
Answer: I would interpret it only as "we haven't yet made a decision" or "it isn't in my power to make a decision" but that, indeed, the interviewer wishes you well however it turns out.
Don't interpret it as a negative. I think the response would be rather different if you weren't in the running, at least. These are normally department level decisions, with a committee making recommendations to the chair or dean.
Answer: I have conducted lots of interviews in my time. I was usually the sole decider, and my mind was usually made up by the end of the interview (barring blockers in any still-to-be-done background checks, of course). My policy was to be transparent about my inclination to hire or not to the candidate (it is possible that an interviewer may get more respect if the interviewer by being austere and standoffish - showing that you are keen can be interpreted as a sign of weakness - but whatever, I always liked to be straight with people). So coming from me the parting remark would have been a definite goodbye forever.
Answer: What others have said about it being a routine parting wish or even a non-committal close to an otherwise promising dialogue is possible.
But whenever someone wished me well in the future at the end of an interview, it never happened that I was offered the job. It was often accompanied by a warm smile (always the only smile during the whole process) and hearty handshake too which always aroused my suspicion that the interview had become a tedious pro forma exercise after initial impressions were taken or bad ones confirmed - and the interviewer was relieved to see the back of me.
In your case of it being an academic job, your interviewer was most likely a senior academic rather than from HR -- the latter being notoriously non-committal with everything they say at interviews ! - so I'd keep going on the job-hunt if I were you: you're unlikely to be more than a fallback for this one.
Comment: Yeah, this is correct.  The interviewer shouldn't have said what he did.  It betrays that he expects not to see you again.  It's possible you'll get this job, but I really don't think you will.
Comment: Aye. I was thinking that. It sounds like they're wishing OP the best of luck *in finding a job with someone else*
Answer: Sounds to me like that interviewer is not likely the person who ultimately makes the hiring decision, but rather only has input into it. They might have thought you did well and were implying that they hope you're seen favorably by the hiring authorities above them.
If they were implying that you didn't get the job, that would be a bit like turning down a date by telling the person that they have a great personality. A bit too soon, harsh, and obvious in intent.
Comment: *such as working code or documentation citations* --- I guess this is the Stack Exchange version of an autocorrect mistake, although at least here it is prefaced by "such as" which keeps it from actually being a mistake.
Comment: Please add further details to expand on your answer, such as working code or documentation citations.
Answer: This is essentially a fixed phrase for rejection in a hiring process, so much so that some employers likely avoid it even when rejecting an applicant to sound more friendly and personal.
An interviewer who is sensitive to topics like this would avoid this phrase in all circumstances other then to unofficially inform of rejection.
That being said, some interviewers may not realise or even purposefully ignore this for whatever reason, such as an attempt to sound neutral in their own way.
Overall, I don't think it is a definite rejection, but I would be suspicious that this may be the case.
As an aside, if there are multiple factors causing you to feel that the hiring manager may not be high in emotional intelligence, it is up to you whether to consider it a red flag.


How will we raise the Questions Per Day stat?

Question: All stats of our Area 51 page are in the green except the Questions Per Day. We need to raise it from 2.3 to 15 questions per day. Does anyone have any good ideas? I've seen some sites have had users "pledge" to ask a question a day or every other day. What other ways can we raise our questions per day stat?
Comment: The site is up to 5.9 questions per day now – still short of "excellent" but at least "okay" now. What does the site still need to accomplish to graduate?
Comment: Steady growth and an enthusiastic community (not saying we don't have one :P). There are no magic numbers that mean automatic graduation.
Comment: As of May 19th, we are showing 600 questions per week: http://data.stackexchange.com/music/query/161411/site-activity-and-votegraph#graph - this looks pretty healthy!
Comment: Does that include closed questions? It seems a far cry from the 6.1 QPD stat on A51 (43 questions per week).
Answer: Hmm. I think part of it may be the nature of the topic — it's quite normal to run into a new programming problem every day, but not likely to have a new practice/performance problem.  As individuals we could certainly look into a new area of theory we haven't before, for example; that would provide a good source of questions.  But in the long run that isn't sustainable.
Our number of "active users" is slightly inflated due to the Guitars merge, since it actually counts rep and not current activity, though I don't know the exact numbers.  Since users drive questions I think it may actually be the user department where we are suffering.  Our stats about answering are great, and I think we have a number of experts, so the questions I would ask are:

How can we attract new users, paricularly beginners?
How can we keep new users coming back to the site and asking questions as they progress?

That assumes that the new users are constructive conributors. However, a substantial portion of new users come here asking for recommendations, "what's your favorite song", etc.  While there are certain classes of questions we've decided are off-topic but could potentially be made on-topic one day, those kinds of questions aren't constructive and just aren't doable on Stack Exchange at a fundamental level.  So they're going to be closed, which leads to another question:

How can we ensure poor-fit questions are closed without discouraging people?  How can we turn that negative experience into a positive one?

All 3 of these are fairly difficult questions to answer, and I hope others have some ideas about them as well as the general topic of your post, Luke.
One approach I've been trying to address the last question was suggested by Overlord Shog.  Instead of just saying

Sorry, this is off-topic, see the FAQ

I've been trying to be more specific about the problem and, most importantly, add things like

If you have another question that would be a better fit, please feel free to ask it!

Hopefully this will help to turn the comment from "rejection" to "invitation", in some sense, and the user will try again.
Comment: Better than just being specific with your criticism, be *constructive* with your criticism. Don't say "sorry, we don't do listening recommendations", say "sorry, we don't do listening recommendations, because , but if you tell us something specific that you want to learn, we might be able to help you." - ok, it's hard to come up with a good example here, it really has to be tailored to each question.
Answer: Matthew makes a very good point about engaging users - we have 45 pages of users with a reputation of 101 or less. That's about 1600 people who have visited but not had any upvotes.
Have we put them off by being harsh about their first question? If so, let's edit and encourage updating of the question rather than just telling them it is off-topic.
Have we looked at all the answers? Are there a lot of answers with no upvotes - perhaps an idea is to encourage more of the regulars to check out the review tab at least once a week. Responding to every new answer posted can help a new member feel engaged, and could translate to repeat visits. Again, the two most common activities should be an upvote if the answer deserves it, or assistance/edit/comment if it is not quite there. Downvotes still need to be allowed for the answers that really can't be saved, but let's encourage more than discourage.
Aside from that, I guess we could try and get into the habit of watching in the news, blogs, online etc. for music topics which could translate into a question, ask the question, and then post that URL back at the original site - it's all about spreading the word, really.
Comment: Heartily agree with this. I've had a few questions closed within hours, with no real suggestions for how they could be re-worded (ie. plenty of negative criticism, no guidance for improvement). I've stuck around, but I'm sure others wouldn't.
Comment: I think musicians can struggle with the stack overflow model, a few users have been harsh about vague questions, if a question has no merit it should just be downvoted.
Answer: Update 1 -10/15/12
Our QPD is now 3.1. It's rising, but we need to move faster. We have over 2,300 visits per day. If we can continue to feed good-quality content, our user-base (approaching 3000 users) will continue to expand and the QPD will continue to rise. However, at 538 days in beta (almost one and a half years), we're running a risk of being closed. I find it imperative to make an extra push for graduation.
Comment: You should add this as an update to your question, rather than posting it as an answer here.
Answer: Since the ultimate goal is to have a repository of helpful information on a broad range of common musical questions/problems, couldn't we ask questions specifically so that there are answers on the site?  What I mean is that you can ask a question about something that you've already figured out on your own if you think the answers will be helpful to a lot of people.
I think that these sort of questions may actually end up being some of the best ones.  It would certainly help QPD as well as future visitors.
Comment: Answering your own questions (i.e. as a blog post) is encouraged in the [FAQ](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/its-ok-to-ask-and-answer-your-own-questions/).
Comment: @Hannele Thanks.  I hadn't noticed that, and hadn't noticed any questions that people answered themselves.  Here I thought I had a great original idea... ;)


Does shortcut with radio's wire harness 12v constant (Yellow) and the red (accesorry 12v) could have damaged car components?

Question: Here is the diagram of Factory radio wiring ...  I burned a 10 a fuse linking the radio itself and the Clock. But i didnt removed the battery doing the job si thats why i have shortcut .... Yeah it was stupid. Want to know if damage could have happened to ecm, ecu or anything else ... Thanks
Answer: There's always a chance that something got damaged when the fuses blow, however chances in this case are minuscule.
Make sure the situation with the short circuit is resolved, replace the fuse and don't do any work, especially electrical, with the power source connected.
Comment: Alirigh thanks for the answer. Well gm told me if the check engine isnt on, There is nothing to the ecu. Also the Factory diagram show the concerned fuse and would mean the over volt or over amp would have stoped at the fuse.
Comment: Normally the ecu is protected itself by fuses right ?


Why are people voting down questions of new comers?

Question: If their question lacked an attempt or any details, we could just tell them couldn't we? Why not vote down only those questions which either can't be understood or are off topic? Are people trying to scare away newbies or something?
Comment: How do you know the person posting is a newcomer? If a new *account* can be used to evade the guidelines and rules, users wanting to do so will just create new accounts all the time.
Comment: I guess you could find several older related discussions. For example, [Downvoting new user's questions](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/19434/downvoting-new-users-questions) or [Quick downvoting of ill-formatted questions by new users](http://meta.math.stackexchange.com/questions/4113/quick-downvoting-of-ill-formatted-questions-by-new-users)
Answer: Votes and comments serve different roles.

I leave a comment when I want to tell something to the author.
I downvote when I want to signal (not just to the author) that the question is of low quality.

Sometimes it's both, sometimes just one of these.
Votes enable actions that comments don't. For example, one can filter questions based on their score, excluding all downvoted ones. Negative score also reduces the visibility of questions, and facilitates automatic deletion.

Why not vote down only those questions which either can't be understood or are off topic?

Those should be closed and deleted, not just downvoted. By the way, homework dumps are off-topic here.
Comment: As I've said before, with over 21,000 downvotes to only 14 upvotes I find your opinion on this matter to be highly suspect. I do understand your defense of this practice as basically stating "those are the odds", but I find it to be quite meager - particularly, when you've answered over 1600 questions.  I find it hard to believe that less than 1% of the questions you've found interesting enough to answer were worth your upvote. I think I'll flag this comment for moderator attention because I don't intend to be out of line and, frankly, I'm curious as to their opinion on the matter.
Comment: @Unihedron I don't recall making that claim.
Comment: @MarkMcClure the point is a different one. If one thinks the utilitarian value of a dv is bigger than that of an uv, and one uses all votes regardless, then one should cast only dv.
Comment: @Mark: -1 for claiming upvotes to be important for active members of communities to cast: Downvoting is how [se] maintains its quality, not otherwise!
Answer: I think you should not downvote.  Instead vote to close.  With 4 people cooperating, the question will be marked "on hold" with a request that it improved.
That is the treatment a newcomer should get.  NOT downvotes.
Comment: I don't see why newcomers should get a special treatment. Sure, leave a comment explaining the downvote if you think it can help. But special treatment leads to two problems: 1/ When are newcomers not newcomers anymore? Is it based on rep, number of Q&A, time on the site? 2/ If the feedback users get is inconsistent, they will only be confused. "But I asked this other question in the same way and I didn't get downvoted... Why?" (Plus what quid said)


Can Iron Man's robots (or JARVIS) lift Mjolnir?

Question: My friends want to know if Iron Man's suit can lift Mjolnir, or any of Iron Man's "robots" or JARVIS can do the same. They cite when JARVIS controls Iron Man suits in the 2nd and 3rd Iron Man movie. I am looking for a canonical answer, so I don't care if it is from the movies or comics.
Comment: There's a scene in the 1st Thor movie where Stan Lee is trying to move the hammer with a truck and it won't move. However, at the end of 'Age of Ultron', Cap and Iron Man joke about an elevator being able to move the hammer. It seems the enchantment on the hammer somehow knows whether or not an intelligent being is trying to move it, even indirectly.
Comment: "Canonical answer" is pretty meaningless term in comics since Marvel has a whole multiverse for how it works in different media. In one universe, it might be possible, in another universe, it might not. Now if you were just referring to a certain universe, you might be able to get a "canonical" answer.
Comment: Your "friends" want to know — mmm, sure. Bro it's cool to be a geek now. Let your freak flag fly right alongside ours.
Comment: @PaulD.Waite _I'm_ a Freak :)
Comment: This one time, at Mjolnir camp...
Answer: Marvel Cinematic Universe (Earth-199999)
Iron Man tries to use his suit to help lift Mjolnir, but is unable to.

It's unclear whether or not JARVIS operating the suit could lift Mjolnir. However, since Vision had part of JARVIS in him, it's possible that JARVIS alone might have been able to lift it, should he too demonstrate worthiness.
Ultimates Universe (Earth-1610)
In Ultimatum #5 and in Ultimates 3 #5, Magneto was able to use his powers of magnetism to control Mjolnir. It follows that Iron Man could devise a robot or suit that lifted the hammer through magnetism as well.

Mainstream Universe (Earth-616)
Magneto can't lift Mjolnir in this universe, so magnetism is out of the question. However, Iron Man, with the help of his suit, is able to lift Thor's hammer…in space!

Iron Man says that nobody but Thor can lift the hammer on Earth, which would include himself. Presumably that's with the help of his suit.
Also, Andy, the Mad Thinker's Amazing Android has emulated Thor's worthiness and could pick up Mjolnir. Presumably if one of Tony's other robots could do the same, they too could lift Mjolnir.
Comment: "What about the rest of us?" "Go away" *Tosses them into a fissure*. Damn, Magneto...
Answer: The inscription reads, "Whosoever holds his hammer, be he worthy, shall posses the power of Thor."
"WHOSOEVER" not "WHATSOEVER"
There was a scene that Thor hangs his hammer on a coat rack. How can a coat rack be able to carry the weight of Mjölnir? I guess that is because the coat hanger is not alive.
In the movie, Tony puts on his gauntlet to try to lift it, I mean he was in the suit, thereby Mjölnir won't budge.
What will happen if Thor puts Mjölnir in an elevator? Will it be able to carry it up? I guess it will. Elevator is a machine.
Jarvis is an AI, a machine, so I believe Jarvis controlling an Iron Suit would be able to pick up the hammer. "Pick up" not "wield it".....It will only be a normal hammer, It won't possess the power of Thor.
Comment: Coat rack is not worthy
Comment: Addendum: The hammer was placed at rest on the Helicarrier in The Avengers, and this did not cause the craft to immediately plummet.
Answer: Unlikely.
In Age of Ultron, Tony puts on the gauntlet from one of his Iron Man suits, and is unable to lift the hammer. He can't even do it when Rhodey adds one of his suit's gauntlets to the mix. This implies that the suits themselves aren't "worthy" -- it would require someone worthy to be wearing it.
Vision appears to be a special case -- he's not merely a robot in a suit, he's a fusion of Stark robot, JARVIS AI, and Mind Stone magic. Somehow, collectively, that makes him able to lift Mjolnir.
Comment: But that was Tony with a gauntlet, the question is about robots without a person in them.
Answer: In the Age of Ultron, Tony Stark and James Rhodes both had gloves on from the different armors and still weren't able to lift the hammer. Thor's hammer has the enchantment no being can lift it unless they're worthy of it, just like when the Hulk tried to lift it aboard the Helicarrier if Jarvis was controlling amp Iron Man or War Machine armor, he would be able to lift the hammer but he would not have the power of Thor.
Answer: The suits can no doubt not lift Thor's hammer, as you see when Tony and Rhodey attempt to using parts of two separate suits. Jarvis is also incapable, as he is only artificial intelligence, and has no physical form.
Answer: Any thing that is being "willed" to lift the hammer has to be worthy
Vision WAS WORTHY the mind stone was merging PARTS OF several consciousnesses, Jarvis, Ultron, Stark, and Banner all held together by the Mind stone. Within a Synthetic body. Collectively they form Vision a Synthetic being WITH THE UPMOST LOVE FOR LIFE HERE IS ONE THEORY..
The Theory that The MCU version of Vision is actually Adam Warlock. In the comics Warlock wears the stone in his forehead...and there is only one stone of that kind..
In the comics warlock (a Synthetic lifeform) was chosen as the champion of life. BECAUSE OF HIS LOVE FOR LIFE.
Vision also has a love for life. He states in the movie ("I am on the side of life" when asked whose side he was on (Ultron's or Mankind's)
Therefore he is capable of the ultimate GOOD.  Whatever is necessary to protect life.
He is therefore capable of lifting Thor's Hammer.

Now regarding the coat hook supporting the hammer.. The answer to that is actually pretty simple.
Here it is......dun dun dunnnnn!!! Thor told it to stay there....so it did...


How do you obtain the Poké Flute to wake up Snorlax in FireRed?

Question: I'm trying to get past a Snorlax and I need a Poké Flute to wake him up—how do I get one?
Answer: Go to the top of the pokemon tower in lavender town and beat team rocket and then Mr. Fuji will give you the poke flute. Then use it on the snorlax and catch it.
Answer: First you have to obtain the Silph Scope from the Rocket Hideout in Saffron City.
Then you must travel to the Lavender town Pokemon tower and scale your way to the top.
After defeating Marowak you will have to fight through a few Rocket Grunts, and then Mr. Fuji will give you the Pokeflute as thanks.
Answer: You will need the Silph Scope first. Go to the Team Rocket hideout (Celadon City) and best the Team Rocket leader. Then go to Lavender City, into the tower and make your way to the top. Beat a few grunts then Mr Fugi will give you the Pokeflute as thanks.
Then you can go to the Snorlax and battle him.
Answer: You need to defeat a team rocket person and someone will give you it. You can use it to wake up Snorlax from the road and catch it.


Remove Org-mode tags from ASCII but not LaTeX export

Question: I'm aware of #+OPTIONS: tags:nil to have tags not be exported. I'd like them exported to LaTeX exports, but not ASCII exports. Is there a way to have options only apply to certain exports? Is there some other method to have ASCII export drop tags?
Answer: You can achieve what you want by advising the commands that serve as entry points for the different export back-ends offered by org-mode. For example, to tell org-mode to skip tags when exporting to ASCII, you can advise the command for exporting to ASCII (org-ascii-export-to-ascii) as follows:
(defadvice org-ascii-export-to-ascii
    (around turn-off-tags (&optional async subtreep visible-only
                                     body-only ext-plist) activate compile)
  (let ((org-export-with-tags nil))
    ad-do-it))

Note that Emacs 24.4 introduces a new advice system which might replace the old system at some point in the future. Here is a modified version of the code above that makes use of the new advice system (use this version if you are already on Emacs 24.4 and want to future-proof your configuration):
(defun turn-off-tags
    (orig &optional async subtreep visible-only body-only ext-plist)
  (let ((org-export-with-tags nil))
    (funcall orig async subtreep visible-only body-only ext-plist)))

(advice-add 'org-ascii-export-to-ascii :around #'turn-off-tags)

Generalizing the solution
The general naming scheme for export commands that produce files is org-<backend>-export-to-<backend>:

org-ascii-export-to-ascii
org-html-export-to-html
org-latex-export-to-latex
...

Here is a skeleton that you can use to set as many <backend>-specific options as you like:
(defadvice org-<backend>-export-to-<backend>
    (around org-<backend>-set-export-options
            (&optional async subtreep visible-only body-only ext-plist)
            activate compile)
  (let ((<variable> <value>)
        (<variable> <value>)
        (<variable> <value>))
    ad-do-it))

Ported to the new advice system:
(defun org-<backend>-set-export-options
    (orig &optional async subtreep visible-only body-only ext-plist)
  (let ((<variable> <value>)
        (<variable> <value>)
        (<variable> <value>))
    (funcall orig async subtreep visible-only body-only ext-plist)))

(advice-add 'org-<backend>-export-to-<backend>
            :around #'org-<backend>-set-export-options)

Comment: @mankoff Did you get a chance to try out this solution? Let me know if you have any follow-up questions.
Answer: Recall macros are expanded before the document is parsed.  This might get you started.
#+MACRO: tags-on-latex (eval (format "#+OPTIONS: tags:%s" (if (org-export-derived-backend-p org-export-current-backend 'latex) "t" "nil")))
{{{tags-on-latex}}}
* h                                                                     :tag:

For more fine-grained control (say html) just add more backend to the &rest part of  org-export-derived-backend-p.


What information about a person are private and what are public?

Question: What information of a person I may write on my web site without special permission from that person? Lets take 'Steve Jobs', you can find a lot of websites where you can find date of birth, name, parents, biography and so on. I am sure that most of that sources do not have requested any special rights for that. However Steve Jobs without doubt is public figure. But what if I do it on my website for some person "not so" public. Where is a border? What info about a person is not personal and may be published?
Comment: Please specify which country you are in, the country or countries of the people you wish to publish information about, and also what the purpose is for publishing it. This makes a big difference and we need these details to properly answer the question. Thank you.
Comment: @richhallstoke International
Answer: Here are some examples from Washington state law (from RCW 9.73). Wrongfully obtain and divulging a telegraphic message by connivance with a telegraph clerk (etc.); reading (and then divulging) the contents of a sealed letter; any recording made without consent plus divulging same. Actually, there are not so many such restrictions. There is a Public Records Act, which, contrarily, requires that some information be made available. In 1956, according to the attorney general, signatures on voter petitions are not public records. More recently, according to SCOTUS, they are public records (the law changed in the intervening half-century). In general, anything that is subject to the records law is completely publishable. There are various limits on what information from public records is not supposed to be divulged, for example RCW 42.56.050

A person's "right to privacy," "right of privacy," "privacy," or
  "personal privacy," as these terms are used in this chapter, is
  invaded or violated only if disclosure of information about the
  person: (1) Would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, and (2)
  is not of legitimate concern to the public. The provisions of this
  chapter dealing with the right to privacy in certain public records do
  not create any right of privacy beyond those rights that are specified
  in this chapter as express exemptions from the public's right to
  inspect, examine, or copy public records.

Social security numbers enjoy a certain level of heightened protection, depending on the state and the act. Washington has a chapter on Identity Crimes, which includes a prohibition against improperly obtaining financial information (which is defined broadly to include SS numbers, passwords, and so on), but the law does not cover "stumbling onto" information, and also does not criminalize publishing information. Washington does not have a law prohibiting publishing an SS number, but California does.
As for your specific list, as far as I know it is never illegal or civilly problematic to publish a person's name, parents' names, (ordinary) biography; nor is date of birth taken to be protected in any way, although DOB is widely used in connection with identity confirmation.
There is a common law tradition of recognizing the "right of privacy", and there is a tort "public disclosure of private fact". An important element of that tort is that the information is offensive to a reasonable person: a reasonable person probably would not be offended by someone publishing their birthday, but perhaps some juries have found publishing such information to be offensive.
Because of the 1st Amendment, you have the right to publish stuff unless there is a compelling state interest in you not doing so.
Answer: If your use of this data is purely in a non-commercial capacity (i.e. nothing to do with your employment whether for a company or self-employed) then you would probably be exempt from GDPR, however if it relates to any commercial purpose...
If you are based within the European Union (EU) or store data about individuals (they may be your customers) located within the EU (living/working/travelling etc) then the General Data Protection Regulation will apply to you from May 25th 2018.

This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data in the context of the activities of an establishment of a controller or a processor in the Union, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the Union or not.
This Regulation applies to the processing of personal data of data subjects who are in the Union by a controller or processor not established in the Union, where the processing activities are related to: (a) the offering of goods or services, irrespective of whether a payment of the data subject is required, to such data subjects in the Union; or (b) the monitoring of their behaviour as far as their behaviour takes place within the Union.

(GDPR, Article 3: Territorial Scope)

Additionally, since GDPR also covers the supply chain with regard to storing or processing personal data, though data processors have slightly different responsibilities. If you were required to comply you may also have to update contracts and policies, produce documentation, and possibly change your hosting provider to one that is GDPR-compliant if your current provider is not.
With regard to the boundary of what you could publish, the GDPR definition of 'personal data' is as follows:

For the purposes of this Regulation: (1) 'personal data' means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person;
(GDPR, Article 4(1): Definitions)

With this in mind, if the information is about an individual, and you are subject to GDPR then not only can you not publish personal data without genuine consent or a legitimate interest (e.g they are a customer under contract), but you can't collect, store or process it either (including on paper).


Brewing with bread yeast

Question: recently bought northern brewer irish ale and yeast was misplaced. can I use bakers yeast? Also, how long will wort last before adding yeast?
Comment: The wort will keep for a day or two, but you need to boil again before adding yeast to kill off anything.
Answer: Baker's yeast is a very poor yeast for brewing - prone to infection and produces poor alcohol content before dying off. Your wort should keep for a day or two if tightly covered, but if unsure, you can reboil it to sterilise before brewing.
Answer: There is very little difference in price compared to a big difference in results.
Bread yeast feeds on starches in the flour, producing CO₂ which expands the gluten proteins in the flour, gluten proteins cause the dough (of which flour is a main ingredient) to expand and rise. Baking removes the alcohol. Beer yeast is designed for low temperature and consists of a yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Brewer's yeast, also used for wine) or Saccharomyces pastorianus (for Lager) while Baker's yeast is a different strain; though similar to brewing yeast.

Fermentation of fruit (grapes, plums, etc.) is a faster process than the fermentation of wheat, potatoes or corn.  This is because most fruits, when ripe, store carbohydrates as a monosaccharide called fructose.  Yeast can metabolize monosaccharides immediately.  Cane sugar (sucrose) is a disaccharide.  Most species of yeast have the enzyme sucrase.  Sucrase breaks sucrose into the two monosaccharides glucose and fructose.  However, potatoes, corn and wheat store carbohydrates as a polysaccharide called starch.  Starch is a large molecule composed of many monosaccharides linked together.  Yeast cannot metabolize starch directly. The starch has to first be broken down into its monosaccharides, which are glucose.  Yeast lacks the enzyme amylase that will digest starch into glucose.
In beer brewing, germinating barley is added to the fermenting wheat.  The germinating barley supplies the enzyme diastase which breaks the starch into maltose, a disaccharide of glucose.  The yeast can separate maltose into glucose, but the metabolism of maltose by yeast is a slow process.  As the maltose is hydrolized into two glucose molecules, the glucose is then fermented into ethanol.

Wine yeast is specifically developed to produce results designed for the type of wine you are making. From ECKraus Blog - "Making Wine With Bread Yeast… Not!":

Most bread yeast will ferment alcohol up to about 8% with ease, but when trying to produce alcohol beyond this level, the bread yeast begin to struggle, very often stopping around 9% or 10%. This is short of what we'd like to obtain for almost any wine.
Another reason making wine with bread yeast is not a good idea is that bread yeast do not clear out very readily or settle very firmly, either. They typically will form a low layer of hazy wine in the bottom of the fermenter that will never completely clear out.
Even more importantly, bread yeast produce alcohol that is plagued with a lot of off-flavors. The bread yeast becomes so stressed and has to work so hard that off-flavored enzymes and fatty acids are produced along with the alcohol.
There are several other issues with using bread yeast to make your wine, but these are the big ones: the alcohol, the clearing, and the flavor.

So while Baker's yeast, used for beer, probably won't affect the strength it won't taste correct and the poor flocculation would make the resulting brew excessively cloudy.

Brewing with bread yeast


Security risks of Read-only MySQL Database access behind firewall

Question: Are there any obvious security risks to providing a none IT Staff member read-only Database access (through MySQL Workbench) to a Wordpress Database, if this is behind a firewall/VPN?
Comment: The risk is that someone gets read access to all that data. The question is, what's the risk if that access is abused? We cannot answer that for you/
Comment: Does the staff member have a legitimate business need to access this data? Why does its location behind a firewall matter? Isn't it already behind a firewall?
Comment: I removed the line about how you plan to communicate the password because it has nothing to do with your question, and you yourself identified that as a bad idea.
Answer: As per your Question, No one can give Yes, No Answer. Because Risk is not a hacking. Security is not a providing technical security with firewall or any security devices.

Risk is a situation involving exposure to danger.

You have to understand what is a requirement of users. And according to that you need to provide only appropriate access to users. Because if you have classified data, which has permission level.
If you give access to users, you need to make sure that they can access only data which related to their permission level. Otherwise users will gain all secret information from your database without having any technical attack.
That will be a big risk ever you face.


Wood for a cutting board, will sanding make it food safe?

Question: I would like to make a cutting board from some hardwood I have. I'm pretty sure it has been imported, so I think it might have been fumigated or treated for insects/pests at some point. I've tried researching about this but I found very little, but the little I did find suggested sanding it as the fumigation process would only leave chemicals on the surface. Does anyone have any input? It looks like a good beginners project but I want it to be as food safe as possible.
Comment: Please do not use treated wood for chopping board. It might be easier to dope foreign molecules deep into the grain. Getting the doping material out of the wood would probably require dissection of the piece of wood at angstrom finite dimensions. OTOH, I have yet to come across pressure-treated hardwood.
Comment: I just recently read a book on carving wooden spoons, and there was a brief mention of avoiding sanding ... something about how it damages the wood differently from cutting, such that it'll weaken the wood and cause it to absorb water.  (which I've noticed when I've tried to 'fix' wooden spatulas via sanding)
Answer: If you think the wood was treated or fumigated, I wouldn't trust sanding to make the wood food-safe. As another answer notes, wood is porous and could very well have absorbed the chemicals deeper than you'll sand out.
I would definitely err on the side of caution here and only use wood that you know is safe to begin with. There is no finish that you can use on a cutting board that will keep the base wood completely out of contact with the food, due to knives being used on it.
I would recommend starting with hard maple. It makes durable, great-looking cutting boards, and is completely food-safe.
Answer: Wood is inherently porous, so the big concern with wooden cutting boards is keeping them relatively sanitary after chopping things like meat and fish on them.  Some people use mineral oil or bees wax, although I have personally used coconut oil.  Straight cooking oil isn't a good idea because it will go rancid.
One thing that you want to make absolutely sure of is that the wood has not been pressure treated or soaked in any kind of preservatives.  If the hardwood was ever exposed or intended to be exposed to outside elements then there is a good possibility that it could be treated with highly toxic preservative chemicals.
Answer: My brother is a carpenter, and he would suggest using Salad Bowl Finish (http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=5344) I can personally attest to the fact that it does a nice job - we used it on all the cutting boards in our kitchen.
Comment: SBF is a great product, but not in this application. The problem here is that SBF (and any film finish--polyurethane, etc) only sits on the surface. It will be worn away and cut through by use as a cutting board, which will expose the treated wood underneath.


How do I remove the LAMP stack so I can start over?

Question: I'd like to start over with my webserver and I'd like to reinstall all the LAMP packages, how do I do that?
Comment: Just for yours and anyone else's information.
After uninstalling LAMP with with this command:
sudo apt-get remove lamp-server^ MANY things/software were removed.
Things that you would think are unrelated... Now when I try to boot, it just hangs at the terminal after rebooting ...[Ok]
Comment: Anyway I can check if its completely removed or not? Link or coomand or something?
Answer: sudo apt-get purge mysql-server apache2 php5
That will remove the "big-boy" packages, which should take care of most cases.
You can find this information in the documentation, specifically this section on how to start over:

To remove the LAMP stack remove the following packages:
Note: This assumes you have no other programs that require any of these packages. You might wish to simulate this removal first, and only remove the packages that don't cause removal of something desired.
sudo apt-get remove apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-php5 libapr1 libaprutil1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libmysqlclient15off libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl libpq5 mysql-client-5.0 mysql-common mysql-server mysql-server-5.0 php5-common php5-mysql
To also remove the debconf data, use the purge option when removing. To get rid of any configurations you may have made to apache, manually remove the /etc/apache2 directory once the packages have been removed.

Don't use tasksel to remove packages, bad things can happen, this is covered in this bug report.
The rest of the documentation covers how you would reinstall  apache and all the stuff you'll need to get going again.
Comment: This worked for me: `sudo apt-get purge apache2 php5-cli apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-php5 libapr1 libaprutil1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl libpq5 mysql-client mysql-common mysql-server php5-common php5-mysql phpmyadmin && sudo apt-get autoremove`

_Using:
"PHP 5.3.10-1ubuntu3.6 with Suhosin-Patch (cli), Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu), mysql  Ver 14.14 Distrib 5.5.31, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 6.2"_
Comment: Anyway I can check if its completely removed or not? Link or coomand or something?
Comment: It's not working for me it says    E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?
Comment: You're assuming that php5 is the only version available
Answer: Remove LAMP
sudo apt-get purge libapache2-mod-auth-mysql phpmyadmin
sudo apt-get purge mysql-server mysql-server-5.1 mysql-server-core-5.1
sudo apt-get purge apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common libapache2-mod-php5
sudo apt-get autoremove

Install LAMP
Run tasksel  Select LAMP server.
To fully manage  your  lamp Server database, install  phpmyadmin
sudo  apt-get  install  phpmyadmin
Comment: please note: I ran "sudo apt-get remove lamp-server^" and it removed almost everything on my machine.  On the next reboot, I couldn't even get to my desktop.
Comment: Same here, ruined my ubuntu install with sudo apt-get remove lamp-server^
Comment: Wow! ^ It is happening right now as I comment and I had no idea. just saw it removing python3-apparmour and realised something was wrong.  Wish I had read this before.
Comment: Anyway I can check if its completely removed or not? Link or coomand or something?
Answer: sudo apt-get purge apache2 php5-cli apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils apache2.2-common \
     libapache2-mod-php5 libapr1 libaprutil1 libdbd-mysql-perl libdbi-perl \
     libnet-daemon-perl libplrpc-perl libpq5 mysql-client mysql-common mysql-server \
     php5-common php5-mysql phpmyadmin \
&& sudo apt-get autoremove

Answer: new version of LAMP Stack can be uninstalled by
$ sudo /opt/lampstack-[version]/uninstall

e.g
$ sudo /opt/lampstack-7.1.22-2/uninstall


Where can I find out where trains are at the moment, with a map or otherwise?

Question: I am looking for a website like flightradar24 but for trains, or I like to follow more precisely where my train is than the limited "next departures/arrivals" information that is readily available.  Where can I find such information?
Comment: On the "close as too broad votes": I agree that there is a list of answers to this question, but there are precedents for this and the list is finite, manageable, and maintainable.  So I think this question is useful and should be able to remain open.
Comment: When you say _my_ train, do you mean the one you are on?  If so, sit near a window with a GPS app.  :-)
Comment: @WGroleau The latter may not work.  In particular, it works poorly on electrified railway lines.  And I might mean "my train" before I have had the chance to get on it :)
Answer: Austria
ÖBB Zugradar
Czech Republic
GRAPP Online map with all trains by Czech railway authority (SŽDC) Trains colored by delay. In details of train are scheduled and actual departures
ČD
Denmark
Landets Puls.
Finland
VR
France
Géolocalisation des trains | SNCF
Location on a map is no longer available (since at least June 2022). One can usually see between which stations a train currently is on SNCF Connect (app, web…) but this information is often incorrect in case of delays.
Carto Graou
Germany
Livemap via apps-bahn.de.
ZugFinder
Hungary
MÁV
India
ndtv.com for all IR trains with NDTV
Netherlands
Actuele spoorkaart (in Dutch)
Poland
PKP
Slovakia
ŽSR
Sweden
SJ Traffic Info. Can show the route and current position of a single train specified through the search box. Live position information is not available for all trains.
Switzerland
vasile.ch for SBB
Zugverfolgung / Geops.  Although it appears to show locations for many countries, only a small subset of data are actually real-time.
United Kingdom
Realtimetrains.  Detailed times but no map.
Raildar. Very roughly geographic diagrammatic representation. Tries to reconstruct how trains move through junctions between the reporting points in the raw data from Network Rail, but often fails miserably so can be confusing to watch,
Opentraintimes. More control-center style schematic presentation of the same data.
Traintimes offers live data of the London tube and via "More Information" in the upper right corner you can switch to London buses or National rail.
Traksy. Alternative presentation of the same data as Opentraintimes with an option to "track" a given train.
USA
TRAVIC.
San Francisco Muni (choose "show map" after selecting line and direction)
San Francisco Muni (subway only)
Transit (app. Includes real-time location data for some urban and commuter services)
Amtrak Track your Train (Amtrak only)
World
TRAVIC shows trains in many European countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, Israel, Brasil, Chile, USA, Canada; note though that for most trains the location shown is only interpolated from the timetable data. You can recognize a train for which live data is available by having a colored ring around the black ring (of the same color as the inner circle).
Comment: @Newton TRAVIC is for transit in Bay Area only?  I remember seeing one for Amtrak trains but couldn't find it just now.
Comment: You can zoom in to other parts of the map too. You can see trains and transits on the east coast as well. The Amtrack tracker is https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html but I have never used it.
Comment: Note that TRAVIC includes a bunch of data that's interpolated based on schedules (you have to click on the individual vehicles to see that). That shows a predicted location, but not an actual GPS tracked one. Depending on the agency's tendency to operate on-time service, it may or may not be meaningful.
Comment: @ZachLipton From looking around on TRAVIC a little bit, it seems the trains for which there is live data available have another colored ring around the black ring. While they say that they use live information wherever available, I only could find trains in France and the bay area for which they had any.


How to automatically push an action when EOS is sent to the contract

Question: I am looking for an alternative to the payable function of Ethereum in EOSIO. I want to invoke an action when EOS is sent to the contract. Is it possible?
Answer: You are looking for Custom Dispatchers.
Answer: Yes, compared to Ethereum, rather than having payable you would set up your contract to listen to an action, in particular transfer from eosio.token.
The listener will reference a specific action to execute in your contract you would use to define what logic/code should happen.
In the EOSIO world, it's better practice to minimise the amount of logic done in a transfer listener. One technique might be to maintain a balance of how much EOS a user has deposited. Then, use a completely different action for the user to engage in order to buy something from the contract etc.
Another catch is that the transfer listener cannot charge the sender RAM, so if you want to create a record in a multi-index container your contract must pay for it.
Using the better practice method, you would have one action which bills the user to create the record, then the transfer listener which credits the sending account 1.0000 EOS. Then another action which bills the user taking away his 1.0000 EOS balance.
A simple example of an eosio.token transfer comes generated for you in the https://github.com/MrToph/generator-eos project.


Length of distinguishing string for a DFA

Question: Is it possible for a $DFA$ which has $n$ states that, there exists two distinguishable states $p, q$ such that there exists a distinquishing string between $p$ and $q$ whose length is greater than $n$?
Answer: It is a classical fact that if two states are distinguishable, then they are distinguished by a string of length at most $n-1$. This follows from an analysis of Hopcroft's algorithm. See also lecture notes of Luca Trevisan.
Let us say that $q_i \equiv_k q_j$ if $\delta(q_i,w) \in F \Leftrightarrow \delta(q_j,w) \in F$ for all $|w| \leq k$. We can compute $\equiv_k$ inductively as follows:

$q_i \equiv_0 q_j$ iff $q_i,q_j \in F$ or $q_i,q_j \notin F$.
$q_i \equiv_{k+1} q_j$ iff $q_i \equiv_k q_j$ and for all symbols $\sigma$, $\delta(q_i,\sigma) \equiv_k \delta(q_j,\sigma)$.

If $\equiv_k = \equiv_{k+1}$ then $\equiv_k$ is the Myhill–Nerode relation $\equiv$, since the formula above shows that $\equiv_k = \equiv_m$ for all $m > k$. Conversely, if $\equiv_k \neq \equiv_{k+1}$ then $\equiv_{k+1}$ has more equivalence classes than $\equiv_k$ (since $\equiv_{k+1}$ refines $\equiv_k$). If $\equiv_0 \neq \equiv_1 \neq \cdots \neq \equiv_m$ then $\equiv_m$ must have at least $m$ more equivalence classes than $\equiv_0$, which has at two equivalence classes (in the non-trivial case). Since $\equiv_m$ contains at most $n$ equivalence classes, we deduce that $m \leq n-2$. Hence $\equiv = \equiv_{n-2}$.
Answer: Distinguishing strings can, in general principle, be of any length, though the specifics will depend on the automaton and states that you're looking at.
For example, consider the usual automaton that accepts even-length strings over the alphabet $\{1\}$. We have states $q_\mathrm{e}$ (which is the start state and is accepting) and $q_\mathrm{o}$ (which is not accepting), and the transition function just swaps state every time a character is read.  For this automaton, every string over $\{1\}^*$, including the empty string, distinguishes the two states. Strings of even length (including $\epsilon$) distinguish because they're accepted by $q_\mathrm{e}$ and rejected by $q_\mathrm{o}$; odd-length strings are the other way around.
Answer: Hint: what happens if you remove a loop in the path corresponding to the word?
Comment: Yes, it seems impossible the length to be greater than n for this reason, but Hopcroft's algorithm says the upper bound for that length is $\frac{(n-1)(n-2)}{2}-1$. Am I missing something?
Comment: @csinrtoc Do you have a reference for that bound? And is it tight?
Comment: I have no reference at the moment. I guess I misunderstood some point. Given expression might be related to time complexity of the algorithm, instead of the length of the string.
Comment: This hint doesn't seem very useful. Removing a loop from the path starting from state $p$ clearly doesn't change whether the word is accepted from that state, but it might change whether it's accepted from $q$, so the modified string might not be distinguishing.
Comment: For some reason, I thought csinrtoc wanted to know if the shortest distinguishing word was always of length $\le n$. As DavidRicherby said, removing loops nearly works but not quite. But it suggests looking at loops in $A\times A$ with $(p,q)$ as initial state, and $(p',q')$ final iff exactly one of them is. This gives a $n^2$ bound. If you look more precisely at which states you use, all the states you will use, except the last will be in $(Q\times (Q\setminus F))\cup ((Q\setminus F)\times Q)$ which is of size $\le \frac{n^2}{2}$ which is probably the source the bound csinrtoc provided.


Is there a list of simplified Chinese radicals?

Question: Is there a list of simplified Chinese radicals? The radical 159 车 consists of 7 strokes, in fact it is its traditional version 車 which includes 7 strokes ...
Answer: I think there's quite a few around.  My favorite is Search by Radical at chinese-tools.com.
Here's a screenshot:

(Stack Exchange version of the image.)
Answer: You should refer to Table II of Final Table of Simplified Characters (简化字总表) for 14 simplified radicals. Although the table itself has been replaced since 2013, it is the only official reference for simplified Chinese radicals.
Answer: A complete list of radicals is easily available in a regular dictionary. It's usually placed at the very beginning of the dictionary, including all radicals. No matter which one you are looking for, you'll be able to find it.
For example this one.
Answer: Here is a list of Chinese radicals, including both simplified and traditional versions.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Chinese_radical


What are the most useful KPIs for tester

Question: There are many KPI (Key Performance Indicators) suggested to measure the performance of software tester. My concern is what are the most useful/ efficiency KPIs for a tester?
Comment: Is it something you want to do or something you have been asked to do ? Do you think it's a good thing to measure people by KPI's ?
Comment: Hi Judy, welcome to SQA forums. There is a similar question you might want to check out: http://sqa.stackexchange.com/questions/3381/what-is-a-good-kpi-for-software-qa
Comment: I can point you to a long discussion on the STC about the issue, might not directly help but can make you aware of the issues around this - http://www.softwaretestingclub.com/forum/topics/how-to-evaluate-testers-work
Comment: @PhilKirkham: That's thing I want to do and have asked to do to evaluate my team members. Is there any other methods would you suggest?
Answer: There is never a general industry-wide answer to this sort of question. What might be "Key" for your company may very well not be "Key" for my company.
To answer this question for your specific context, find out what matters to the stakeholders you serve. Figure out what is important, what is not, and then determine what indicators can help you determine if you are on track or not.
And tread very, very carefully here. Depending very much on magic "Indicators" is very risky. Without a lot of context, such indicators can be very misleading. As just one example, if you determine that "number of bug reports written" is a key indicator, you may be emphasizing quantity and missing the quality of those bug reports. https://strazzere.blogspot.com/2010/04/misuse-and-abuse-of-bug-counts.html
Also, remember that measurement systems always have side effects which can often lead to dysfunction. If you are in charge of implementing a measurement system, you owe it to yourself and your organization to read "Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations" by Robert Austin first.
Comment: @dzieciou - all set now
Comment: Unfortunately, the link is broken.
Answer: Agile doesn't support KPI applied on individual Software tester. Rather, you can apply KPI to measure whole team performance which include PM, Dev, testers etc. There are different factors like how many user-stories team handled in 2/3/4 week sprint, issues during sprint vs issues reported by customer etc. RCA(root cause analysis) is very important for each issue reported by customer so that we can improve the things in next sprint.


Why is difficult to unplug things from this electrical receptacle?

Question: The electrical receptacle in my bathroom is difficult to use. It seems hard to unplug hair dryers etc. Do I need to replace it or can I fix it?
Answer: It's probably best to get the socket replaced rather than repaired - especially one that's in a bathroom as you might need to have a RCD socket to protect against shocks.
Sockets should have a certain degree of stiffness so that the plug doesn't just fall out or come partially out if you put even the slightest strain on the flex.
Answer: Does it happen to be marked with TR (Tamper Resistant)? I find these outlets are more difficult to insert/remove plugs from.  That being said, it should not take significant amounts of force to use.
Is it just a specific hair dryer that is difficult to remove? If so you should inspect the prongs for damage.  If it is all plugs then the outlet is the problem.


Hokkien pronunciation of `白头偕老`

Question: 白头偕老 is a set expression in Mandarin, meaning to get old together, in a loose translation. I found it in a Hokkien song called 牵阮的手 (Mandarin 牵我的手, English While you hold my hand). In the linked video, it is pronounced in a way that sounds like pe̍h-thiô-kai-nóo making it rhyme with the rest of the lyrics. In a CD I have, though, I hear it pronounced something like pe̍h-thâu-kai-láu, losing the rhyme. In both cases, the accurate sounds and the tones are reconstructed from the 台湾闽南语常用词辞典. In fact, in the second one, I am not sure whether to put láu or lāu. I chose the former since it is indicated as 文 (literary), whereas the former is indicated as 白 (vernacular), and this looks like a set phrase possibly stemming from Classical CHinese, which makes a literary reading seem more appropriate. Anyway my question is: is either of these right? Or is none of these right? And if so, which is the right one?
Comment: The literary pronunciation of 老 could be nóo, as indicated by the 台湾闽南语常用词辞典.
Comment: Yes I saw that. The point in the vernacular vs. literary distinction was to justify the choice of `láu` over `lāu`, which of course cannot be distinguished by hearing the song sung. What I actually heard in the CD was like `pethaukailau`, which with the dictionary was reconstructed to the above, choosing tone `´` because it is literary whereas tone `¯` is vernacular. The video has `pethiokainoo`, or in fact something I was not certain whether to interpret as `loo` or `noo` but surely had an `oo`, which is why I chose `nóo`.
Answer:
nóo vs. ló

These two are both for literary pronunciation. Since 白頭偕老(白头偕老) is a traditional Chinese idiomatic expression (成語 Chengyu), we tend to pronounce it in the literary way.
The difference between these two might be in the sub-dialect aspect. I'd pronounce it as pe̍h-thâu-kai-ló since it's easier for me to pronounce. But I reckon that pe̍h-thiô-kai-nóo is considered more sophisticated and authentic generally.

láu vs. lāu

These are indeed two common pronunciations for 老. But I humbly argue that these two are not very likely to be used in this particular context 白頭偕老(白头偕老) (at least in my neighborhood).
I have recorded a clip saying pe̍h-thâu-kai-ló, so you can cross-check with the CD that you mentioned above. Go to pe̍h-thâu-kai-ló if you don't mind my Donald Duck voice.

Hokkien has many sub-dialects, so sometimes people (like myself) might need to be more open-minded about "what is the right way to say a certain word?".

Note and reference:

My parents are from the northern part and the middle part of Taiwan. They use Hokkien(Min Nan) as their first spoken language.
The singer in the music video is from southern part of Taiwan.
I use Mandarin as my first spoken language.
Answer: When using the literal pronunciation totally like reading Classical Chinese, it might be "Pi̍k thiô Kai ló" (Zhangzhou dialect) or "Pi̍k thôo Kai nóo" (Quanzhou dialect.)  It seems that ló/nóo and thiô/thôo only differ in accents.

Hokkien pronunciation of `白头偕老`


Are the "user reputation league" and "user accept rate" coming back?

Question: I found out reading this question, that the "Reputation League" is taken down due to performance issues.
Lately, I've also noticed that the "Accept Rate" (which used to show below every user name asking a question) is also missing.
These were good features. I personally liked the later more than the former. Is the site planning to have them back? Or are they permanently removed?
Comment: I wish the accept rate would come back too!  I wish there were intuitive ways newer users could figure out the concepts of accepting an answer and such (without being prompted, which seems too heavy-handed), and that was an obvious cue!!!
Comment: @Boriana Fair point! I too think by removing this feature, new users can choose not to accept the answer, because some of them might not know the significance. And it was also encouraging for other users as they were able to make out what type of user (OP) they are dealing with.
Answer: As shown in this answer to Let's stop displaying a user's accept rate, the accept rate has been removed, and it is not going to be shown again. Jeff Atwood, one of the founders of Stack Exchange proposed an alternative in Replace accept rate with citizenship level, for which Shog9's answer says:

While I like the idea of a general-purpose "citizenship" metric in theory, watering it down with stuff like flagging just makes it harder to interpret. The best idea we could come up with ended up being sort of a parallel reputation system that increased whenever you did something positive on the site - while interesting, I'm not convinced this would do much to encourage specific forms interaction the way accept rate did.
Answer: Adding the same link which @MPD added some time ago.
The reputation league for Drupal StackExchange still exists : http://stackexchange.com/leagues/99/alltime/drupal. It is taken down from the user profile probably because of performance issues.


Time capsule router performance

Question: Just bought latest generation 2Tb Time Capsule that replaced my old USB drive for Time Machine backups and my Belkin G router. Everything runs fine except when I start downloading torrents. With Belkin, I could run several downloads, work remotely on three machines, and my wife could be streaming Netflix over Apple TV. Now, with Transmission running a 2.1MB/s download and no Netflix streaming, my remote connections feel like I am on dial-up. This is really disappointing. Any suggestions on how to fix it? I know I can throttle the torrents but I also frequently download large files for work and I can't just sit there waiting for download to finish before I can continue working remotely.
Answer: The TC router really isn't as great as it could be, I would go back to using the belkin as your wireless network and have the TC running from it.
I have a 500gb TC used on a SKY router, I have used it as a router, but also found it was slow.
Answer: Don't forget about latency.
Torrenting has a tendency to open an unusually high number of concurrent connections that create a lot of chatter on the network and exhaust the router's memory by overloading the NAT cache. 'Feels like a 56k connection' can be a symptom that your router is having difficulty handling the load. A high number of dropped packets (requiring re-transmission) is another.
An quick fix is to simply reduce the number of connections. Unless you're swarm peers all have very slow upstream bandwidth, it shouldn't impact your download speed much.
Note: The NAT Cache is where the router stores the mapping of connections between the remote user public IP and the local user's private IP.
You can configure it in Transmission under...
<code>Transmission->Preferences->Peers->Global Number of Connections
</code>
Manufacturers (incl Apple) have a tendency to cheap out on the router hardware because it won't have a negative impact on the 'average' user.
SideNote: The lack of QOS capabilities on the TC is pretty lame.

Time capsule router performance


Does AWS RDS support MEMORY storage engine?

Question: Title says it all.  Strangely can't find a result on this.
Comment: RE: Rollback: This question was about MySQL from the beginning, and the accepted answer indicates such. The Aurora answer (which I upvoted) is really helpful and sufficiently related to the original question (RDS) that Google will send requests here. Still, the question remains what it was.
Answer: This answer applies to AWS Aurora not straight MySQL RDS.
Just because SHOW ENGINES says the database has the MEMORY storage engine doesn't mean you can actually use it. We have found that in AWS Aurora the SHOW ENGINES; call will tell you that the MEMORY engine is supported. However, if you try to change the engine to MEMORY or create a non-temporary table with MEMORY engine you'll get an InnoDB engine, because Aurora only supports InnoDB. When you run the engine change you'll get a warning that the InnoDB engine has been used.
Here's what I got from AWS support:

Aurora is designed to provide support for only InnoDB storage engine for regular tables. Engines other than InnoDB are only supported for session-level temporary tables. With default configuration, when you try to create a table using a storage engine other than InnoDB, Aurora will implicitly create the table as InnoDB. Session level temporary tables are not persistent and they will be dropped once the session is completed.
Answer: Yes, it does. How come ? Run this query in the RDS Instance:
mysql> select * from information_schema.engines where engine='MEMORY'\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
      ENGINE: MEMORY
     SUPPORT: YES
     COMMENT: Hash based, stored in memory, useful for temporary tables
TRANSACTIONS: NO
          XA: NO
  SAVEPOINTS: NO
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

Since SUPPORT says Yes, the answer is Yes.
You could also run SHOW ENGINES; and see all engines supported or not in RDS.
Comment: Your answer is generally helpful, however not always true, because the answer isn't necessarily binary. As Barry points out in the other answer, Aurora MySQL has the unique limitation of memory engine with temporary tables, and not proper globally visible tables, even though Aurora emits "YES" for `SUPPORT` in the query you show here.
Comment: @ChristopherMcGowan I know my answer is an oversimplification. One must read the documentation to see what limits or any kind of moratorium is placed on any storage engine in RDS or Aurora. That's why I am not surprised the other answer has more votes.


Does "a media work" make sense?

Question: There is a genre of art called new media art or media art. What do you think about the expression "I created a media work"?
Edit:
If "I created a media work" is incorrect, what is a correct way?
Answer: All art is created through the medium of something or other, whether drawing, painting, sculpture, video or anything else.
This to say that I have created a media work is really a bit vague and self evident.
There's a complication to this however. Media was once the plural of medium but the word has now been reduced by popular usage to the singular and has taken on new meanings. So we constantly here that social media plays... or the news media is.....
I can't speak for the genre of art that you refer to as new media art (even though visitors to art galleries are these days bombarded with sound scapes and video creations).
Assuming that the genre you refer to is recognised, you could speak of creating a new media work But this is ambiguous. It's hard to know whether the word new qualifies media or work.
So you'd be safer avoiding it and resorting to a description such as A work (created) in new media, at least until the expression new media becomes idiomatic among those outside artistic circles.
Answer: "I created media art" or "I create media art" might be better as this describes the type of art you have created, and that you create.
If I had produced some digital graphic art and I wanted to ask someone to take a look at it, I might say, "I created digital graphic art, here, come take a look and see what you think?".
Same for media art.  "I created media art, please share your thoughts on this magical creation...".
Answer:
I created a media work

Doesn't really scan, "work" on it's own is rarely used to indicate an individual - you would use "works" for a collection, the genre doesn't really matter (although in some cases you would be able to decipher the intended meaning from context). You can see the same if you say

I created an impressionist work

This doesn't scan either whereas this does:

I created a series of impressionist works

Instead you would use "piece" or "artwork" to indicate the singular so:

I created an impressionist artwork

in your particular case since the genre ends in the term "art" while it would be technically correct to say

I created a "media art" artwork

it's inelegant to say (and to a lesser extent read) so you'd say:

I created a "media art" piece

instead. The quotation marks (when written) are helpful for parsing the "media art" as a single term made up of two words, when saying it either a slight change of inflection on the words or a very slight pause before saying piece would have the same effect.

Does "a media work" make sense?


How can I tell my roommates I don't want to live with them anymore

Question: I currently live with 3 roommates. Two of them joined last year and the other one has lived with me for 4 years. The problem is that I don't feel really comfortable living with them anymore and I want to move out. It's really difficult to me to tell them what's going on because I am very shy and they are not my friends at all. Well, the one who lived with me for 4 years is actually my friend but the relationship is not as good as it was because of the new roommates. How should I tell them that I want to move out?
Comment: Some extra information as to your relationship with each of them, and your reasons for wanting to move would be very beneficial to potential answers
Comment: I agree with Jesse, and also, some questions -`1)` if you could, you would want to move out with this one friend? `1)` The problem is mainly the two new roommates? `3)` What's holding you from just tell them you decided to look for another place - afraid of their comment? their feelings? `4)` That maybe it will affect you in the future?  `5)` Do you with to keep good contact (friendly, friendly+) with at least the friend, or it's important regards all of them?
Answer: If you've decided on doing this, then I'd suggest starting from a position of facts and not emotion.  Anyone who has had a roommate knows that the relationship is not permanent - roommates come and go.  It's part of life with roommates.
They need time to find a new roommate, so the sooner the better.  Set the date when you plan on moving out by, and have that discussion.  "Guys, I'm going to move out on [x date].  I want to let you know in advance so you've got time to find a replacement if you want to."  If they want to know why (and generally they won't), tell them the truth: "I feel like a change/I want my own place/I feel like doing something different".  There's no need to go into too much detail here.  That explanation will generally do.
Answer: In my experience (several years of leaving with other students in different houses), people moving out isn't really a big deal. Just explain several weeks beforehand (so paperwork can be taken care of) that you're doing so. A simple reason like

I would like some more room for myself

Is both true and doesn't pressure people into feeling attacked. It also allows people to do something nice for you when you leave.
I have noticed people appreciate some sort of moment to say goodbye. A simple dinner at home or a couple drinks allow this. It is always better not to burn your bridges if possible.