Non-Repudiation that can Never be Proven

Question: I understand that non-repudiation is based upon public key cryptography and the principle of only the sender knowing their own private key. However, what is a condition, if any, of non-repudiation that can never be proven through digital analysis? This digital analysis would include inspecting the message and logs. I am assuming that "I was hacked" will not work here because we have access to logs.
Answer: Non-repudiation is not done with public keys; non-repudiation is done with a legal framework which defines responsibilities and duties. Though details depend on the jurisdiction, most will more or less follow the following scheme:

A signature that you perform is binding as long as you did it. That's the definition. The rest is about what happens in case of litigation, and you claim that you did NOT do it.
An electronic signature is one that is made with some mechanism where electrons are involved, but not ink on paper.
Local laws usually shift the burden of proof. If you simply write your name at the end of an email, then that is legally a binding signature, but in case of litigation, it is up to your adversary to demonstrate that you really signed the email. That is, a name at the end of an email will effectively bind you only if it can be positively proven that you wrote that email as it is. That proof can take a lot of forms; e.g., it could be a witness, who saw you write that email.
Local laws may recognize the existence of strong signature systems where the burden of proof is reversed: the signature system is deemed robust by default; if you want to repudiate your signature (i.e. if you claim that you did not do it), then you have to do the work and find proof of framing/hacking/whatever (e.g. you find a witness who saw you hiking in Greenland, far from any network connection, at the time the signature was purportedly generated).
Local law systems will usually grant the "strong" status to a signature system only after a complex assessment process of the inner workings of the said signature systems. This will involve a lot of paper and certifications and hordes of auditors, and it will be expensive. Most local law systems will require that alleged strong signature systems use asymmetric cryptography with public keys and so on (this is a prerequisite, but not sufficient in itself to achieve the "strong signature" legal status). This is where cryptography matters: it is a tool which may help achieve a given goal within a given legal framework.
In any case, it would be inordinately optimistic to assume that "access to the logs" would reliably settle the question of whether hacking occurred or did not occur. Logs can be erased; logs can be faked.
Comment: sign the logs! Turtles all the way down.
Answer: PKI can be used to generate digital signatures. These can be used to provide non-repudiation. As referred to in the previous answer, the burden of proof is what is important where non-repudiation is concerned.
The ability to prove non-repudiation which has been assured through cryptography (specifically PKI) can be aided by demonstrating that the bearer of the private key used to generate the signature is the only person who has access to the private key. This is usually implemented by the generation and storage of the private key using a hardware security module (HSM) or similar.
HSMs come in a variety of forms. Bulk key generators and crypto-accelerators are used for SSL / TLS offloading. Network HSM for generation and storage of keys in distributed key management frameworks, such as ATM networks. They can also come in the form of small, portable devices, like smart cards and USB tokens.
These types of devices are usually chosen where non-repudiation by cryptography is required.
Essentially where non-repudiation is a requirement it important to conduct a full and detailed risk assessment of the solution, including all business areas which will utilize the application, in order to capture all risks, whether they be operational, business, legal / regulatory, or technology.
Answer: Decades ago a group of cryptographers invented the concept of non-repudiation, and they claimed to enforce it in real life with just technical means (a magical "non-repudiation" bit). However, in real life people are free to deny whatever they want, and law courts rule conflicts between parties, not bits.
Here are two arguments for signature repudiation which have been used in actual court cases in EU, and where digital forensics didn't help:

my eID smartcard has the same PIN codde for authentication and
signature, so when the application asked me for my PIN I thought I
was authenticating, not signing something.
when I signed this document I wanted to express that I had read it, not that I agreed with its content.


Do I need cash in Budapest (Hungary)?

Question: I am from Germany and I will go to Hungary in December. I wonder if I need to get any cash? Can I pay with credit / debit card (maestro + master card) in restaurants / cafés / tourist attractions?
Comment: Some banks charge per conversion, which gets expensive fast.  Also, my hostel recommended that I did not use atms, as they have high rates and are potentially untrustworthy.
Comment: Some shops/restaurants, especially in areas with a lot of tourists, will accept euros. The exchange rate generally isn't very attractive, but it's good to know in an emergency.
Answer: My experience in Budapest earlier this year (2018) was that cards are accepted very widely and contactless payment also works. The funicular up to the castle takes cards but I did not try other public transport. I did find one restaurant slightly out of the way where card payment was not available but they took euros. I suggest you ask before ordering in restaurants just in case. The Dohány Street Synagogue takes cards as well.
Edited to include information from helpful comment from  Márton Molnár that public transport also takes cards.
Comment: TIcket vending machines and customer centers for public transport all take cards.
Answer: Having some cash available is highly recommended when traveling abroad.
For example a few months ago Visa systems crashed in Europe for some hours and some transactions made from abroad couldn't be completed.
If you don't want to exchange much cash (but you're going to pay for every conversion as others have noted), then I suggest to carry some cash with you for emergency purposes and using your card as the main mean of payment.

Do I need cash in Budapest (Hungary)?


How can I backup my contacts and get them back?

Question: My question might sound stupid, but I want to backup my contacts, so even when I lost the phone or deleted the contacts, or factory reset the phone, I can still have the contacts. I never backup contacts before, so pls offer a detailed guide, thanks.
Answer: Use google contacts sync. to backup online, so your contacts will be safe there.
Read more at
https://www.google.com/sync/index.html
Answer:
open dialer/contacts
2.choose import/export by clicking on top right corner
3.click Export to .vcf file
Answer: I recommend one of these two free Android apps, both of which I find easy to use:

Red Rock Backup Contacts, which exports to Google CSV, Outlook
CSV, or a custom CSV, and has no builtin restore (You can easily
restore using Google Contacts).
OBSS MCBackup exports to vCard
(one file per contact) and does have builtin restore.

Both of these apps export files that can be imported into most contact managers (not just Android ones).
You'll want to export the files created by these apps somewhere off your phone. For that, you have two options:

Use either of these apps to email the exported contacts to yourself.
Use a USB cord to get the contacts on your computer. Steps:

Use one of the above apps to export the contacts onto your phone's SD card.
Restart the phone to deal with a bug in Android.
Plug your phone into a computer with a USB cable.
Open your phone's storage in your file manager (eg. Windows Explorer or Finder)
Copy the backup files to your computer. For OBSS MCBackup, you want the folder com.vcast.mediamanager/contacts. For Red Rock Backup Contacts, the file you want is called Backup.Contacts.*.csv by default.


What exactly is yeast-bite?

Question: So I cracked open a nearly year-old bottle of oatmeal porter last night and it tasted a bit "yeasty". In fact, much more yeasty than I remember from a few months ago. I was fairly careful in my pouring so I don't think I drank much in the way of sediment.  Is this "yeast-bite" or something else? What exactly is yeast-bite?
Comment: To clarify, the taste I am getting is a definitely "yeasty",but slightly acidic aftertaste. It is tolerable, but does detract from the overall beer flavour.
Comment: Tough to help answer with-out tasting the beer myself, or knowing your palette better.
Comment: I am still not convinced that we have a definitive definition of yeast-bite yet folks! Maybe there isn't one...?
Answer: What you are tasting may be related to the carbonation level of the beer.  If the beer is over carbonated it can develop a bite from the carbonic acid and can create a "twang" in the aftertaste.  Also when opening the bottle the release of CO2 for solution can stir sediment up from the bottom of the bottle which could account for the yeasty taste.
In my opinion this is what many people used to describe as that "homebrew or extract twang." This along with oxidation and possibly off flavors from poor fermentation also contributing.  I do still run into this on occasion while judging but is much less common these days.
This is just a theory and without a sample in front of me it would be hard to pinpoint exactly what you are tasting.
Comment: @Poshpaws, I think Chris is aiming to sample your homebrew. :-)
Comment: @Nathan I would give him some but it was my last bottle :-(
Comment: Thanks for your input, but in this case my porter was, if anything, slightly undercarbonated.
Answer: It would be pretty unusual to find "yeast bite" in a beer that old.  Generally, it's a kind of harshness or "bite" (yeah, I know) caused by yeast in suspension.
Comment: So yeast bite is something to do with young beer? Over-pitching? Is it bitter-tasting or just yeasty? My porter just tastes, well yeasty. The after taste has a bit of a "twang" to it.
Comment: I think he is saying that with a beer that old the yeast is pretty well caked on the bottom of the bottle.
Comment: Oh, OK think I understand. Yes,the yeast was pretty firmly attached to the bottom of the bottle.
Answer: I think you're tasting oxidation.  The little bit of oxygen that gets compressed into the bottle when you bottle a beer will age it just like a wine ages.  Unfortunately, most beers lack the acidity, alcohol and tannin to benefit from micro-oxidation like wine does.  So many beers just... spoil.. with age.  Exceptions tend to be Belgian-inspired beers that are aged in wine barrels and pick up some brett in the barrel which affects the pH and acid profile, along with high alcohol beers like stouts that are built to be barrel aged.  An oatmeal porter, if low in alcohol (under 8% or so) and generously hopped, will change a lot (possibly for the worst) after bottle aging for a year.
Basically, you need alcohol, acid and tannin to age a beer.  And the kinds of tannins that come from grain husks aren't sufficient.
Answer: I was of the understanding that 'yeast-bite' was a consequence of poor temperature control during fermentation - particularly, too high a temperature. It gives earthy or broth-like flavours. There's a UK supplier called Murphy & son that mentions yeast-bite. Chris White's book 'Yeast' recounts a story of a Texas brewer who was getting earthy off flavours and could not work out why. Turns out that the top of the fermenting beer was above the top of the cooling jacket. The yeast was 'cooking' at the top of the FV and adding autolysis flavours.
Otherwise, it might be that your off-flavour is a consequence of autolysis in the bottle. If the sediment is thicker than a dusting across the bottom of the bottle then there was probably an excess of yeast during the conditioning, and now that some time has passed those flavours are making themselves known.
Or, it may be something else, maybe I could try some too... :-D
[EDIT] In response to @Denny down voting. I have done a cursory Google on "Yeast bite cause" and I would refer you to the top two results (UK Google).
1) BYO website Quote:

Length of fermentation and
  fermentation temperature are also
  important yeast-bite considerations. A
  fast, warm fermentation racked
  immediately into bottles will leave
  lots of yeast in suspension in the
  bottles and will also result in a
  thicker layer of sediment as the beer
  matures. Keep your fermentation
  temperatures well within the range for
  the style you are brewing, allow the
  yeast to settle for several days after
  primary fermentation, and rack the
  beer into another container, if
  possible.
Dead Yeast: Autolysis At the end
  of fermentation, when most of the
  yeast has settled into a hard pack of
  sediment, some of the cells will begin
  to die and undergo a process called
  autolysis. Autolysis is probably the
  single most important contributor to
  yeast bite. "Lysis," the dissolution
  or disintegration of the cell, coupled
  with "auto," self, basically means
  "self-destruction." Simply put, when
  yeast cells die at the end of
  fermentation, the yeast's own enzymes
  begin to digest the yeast cell itself.
  This process releases all kinds of
  nasty compounds into the beer,
  including fatty acids and sulfur- and
  nitrogen-containing compounds that
  cause the aromas and flavors described
  above as meaty, rubbery, and sour.

2)Drayman's Brewery and Distillery Quote:

Yeast autolysis or self-lysis is the
  breaking open or rupturing of the
  yeast cell and the transfer (leaking
  out) of undesirable substances and
  off-flavours to the beer. The flavour
  is described as yeast-bite,
  broth-like, meaty, sulphury and dirty
  diaper.
Comment: If you down voted then at least give a reason, please.
Comment: I downvoted because what's typically referred to as "yeast bite" doesn't have earthy or broth like character and isn't temp dependent.  You are thinking of autolysis, which is a different issue.  The yeast bit typically spoken of is a tart harshness.
Comment: @Denny Conn - Thank you for making yourself known. I am surprised you didn't accompany your down vote with a comment. I have edited my answer.
Comment: Sorry I didn't comment at first...I was in a hurry then.  I think what we have here is a difference of opinion on what exactly yeast bite is.  I have to say that based on my own experience, I disagree with both of the sources you quoted.  But since there seem to be varying opinions, I'm sure your info could be useful to some people.
Comment: Thank you for re-visiting, appreciated. No doubt you are correct, this is going to be a subjective thing. Vivre la difference! For me yeasty is, well, yeasty, yeast-bite is nasty.

What exactly is yeast-bite?


Can Suffix trees be used to find all common substrings?

Question: I am trying to use suffix trees to compare string sequences. I have found implementations/theory for the longest common sub string problem using suffix trees.
However, What i am looking for is a discussion of the related problem - "all common substrings".
Specifically, I have a problem in which i need to first find the longest common substring, then find the next longest common substring that does not include the already found lcs indices, and so on until a minimum length. Is this problem solvable by constructing the Generalized suffix tree (GST) only once for the two sequences. I know it can be solved by repeatedly constructing a GST after every iteration of finding and removing the LCS. But, I am wondering if i am missing a neat trick where in the GST is constructed only once.
Comment: It's an interesting question. The problem is that if we have $S=\alpha\beta\gamma$ and we have found that $\beta$ is the LCS w.r.t. $T$, we can't easily "remove" $\beta$ from suffix tree (or suffix array, whatever). We'd like to have something like $S' = \alpha\$\gamma$ after first step, right?
Answer: Yes, suffix trees can be used to find all common substrings. I would say to use a suffix array instead, but if you already have a suffix tree, building a suffix array from a suffix tree takes linear time by DFS. So the rest of my answer will assume we are working with a suffix array.
Given a text $S = s_1 , ..., s_n$, a suffix array for $S$ is an array of integers of range $0$ to $n$ specifying the lexicographic ordering of the $n+1$ suffixes of the string $S$\$
We want to couple the suffix array with the $LCPs$, the longest common prefixes. We can construct the array of $LCPs$ in linear time as mentioned in the paper by Kasai et al. Suffix arrays and their lcp arrays line up together in a way that given an index into the lcp array say $lcp[k]$ where $k$ is the index number, then $sa[k]$ will be the start of one instance of the common substring and $sa[k-1]$ will be the start index of the second instance. The length is of course the value in the lcp array.
Answer: I have an idea that might work. We start with a generalized suffix tree for sequences $S$ and $T$. Each internal node with suffixes of both $S$ and $T$ in its subtree corresponds to some common substring of the sequences. Let us call such nodes non-trivial. The common substring is maximal, if the corresponding node has no non-trivial children. If node $v$ is non-trivial, we store the largest string-depth of a non-trivial node in its subtree as $lcs(v)$. If $r$ is the root, then $lcs(r)$ is the length of the longest common substring of $S$ and $T$.
Updating the tree after deleting a substring from one of the sequences should not be too hard. We first delete the leaves corresponding to the deleted suffixes, updating their ancestors when required. Then we start processing the suffixes preceding the deleted substring. Let $v$ be the lowest non-trivial ancestor of the current leaf. If the length of the suffix is $k$ (we are $k$ steps from the deletion) and $k < lcs(v)$, we have to move the suffix to its proper position in the tree, updating the ancestors when required. If $k \ge lcs(v)$, we are done, as we are not interested in subtrees with trivial roots.
The overall algorithm repeatedly finds the longest common substring of $S$ and $T$ and deletes one of its occurrences from both sequences, as long as the length of the LCS is large enough.
There are some technicalities, but the general idea should work.
Answer: Start with the concatenated text S$T, where $ occurs nowhere in * or T. Construct a suffix tree/array from this text. It's easy now to traverse this suffix data structure to collect all right maximal repeats. By examining the left context, filter out the non-left maximal repeats. This leftward filtering might be implemented using the Burrows-Wheeler table as in Abouelhoda et al, though I don't believe that this is necessary. Repeats occuring only in S or only in T should olso be eliminated at this point. Repeats that haven't been eliminated are then put on a priority queue, with priority defined by length. After the traversal, as recorded repeats are removed from the priority, the final filtering (for substring containment) can be carried out. Given the use of maximal phrases, however, I suspect that very little of this filtering would be necessary.
This algorithm is my own invention. I would not classify it as very clever, but it ought to work.
Answer: A really simple solution: Build a suffix tree for the first string, $S$, and annotate all nodes with $s$. Then insert all suffixes of the second string, $T$. Annotate nodes you pass through or create with $t$. The path label for any node that is annotated with both $s$ and $t$ is a substring of both $S$ and $T$. (See, for example, these lecture notes a quick web search turned up.)


What is the difference between absolute and relative configuration in stereochemistry?

Question: Can you help me understand the difference between absolute and relative configuration?
Answer:
Let's say that we have synthesized a new compound, C(1)(2)(3)(4), where (1)-(4) represent 4 different groups attached to the central carbon, so the molecule is chiral.
Let's say that we find a method to separate the two enantiomers present in the new compound and that we placed the enantiomers into separate test tubes.
Next we might take each enantiomer by itself and place it in a polarimeter.  We would find that the material in one test tube rotates light in the (+) direction and the material in the other test tube rotates light in an equal, but opposite direction (-).
At this point, all we know is that we have two enantiomers that, as expected, rotate light in equal and opposite directions.  We don't know which test tube contains the "R" enantiomer or which contains the "S" enantiomer.  We just know their relative configuration with respect to each other, they are mirror images of each other.
To find out which is "R" and which is "S" we would either need to 1) put a crystal of one of enantiomers in an X-ray diffractometer and get a three-dimensional picture of the structure of the molecule from which we could see whether it is the "R" or "S" enantiomer or 2) carry out a series of chemical transformations where the stereochemical consequences of each step are known (e.g. does each step proceed with inversion or retention of configuration at the chiral center) and convert it to a compound of known absolute configuration
Let's say we pick one of our test tubes and are able to convert that enantiomer to a chiral compound C(A)(B)(C)(D) where we know that R-C(A)(B)(C)(D) rotates light in the (+) direction.
We find that the C(A)(B)(C)(D) we created from our C(1)(2)(3)(4) enantiomer rotates light in the (-) direction; therefore we have produced the "S" enantiomer of C(A)(B)(C)(D).
For simplicity, let's say that all of the reactions we used in our conversion of C(1)(2)(3)(4) into C(A)(B)(C)(D) are known to proceed with retention of configuration.  Then we know that the test tube of C(1)(2)(3)(4) used in our reaction contains the S-C(1)(2)(3)(4) enantiomer. Now we know the absolute configuration of our sample.

EDIT: d, l and D,L
The lower case "d" and "l" can be used interchangeably with "+" and "-" respectively.  The letters stand for dextrorotatory and levorotatory.  They simply indicate how the plane of polarized light will be rotated when a sample of the material is placed in a polarimeter.  So l-2-butanol is the same as (-)-2-butanol.  Use of "d" and "l" is discouraged because it can create confusion with "D" and "L".
Upper case "D" and "L" are somewhat archaic.  Way back when, the two enantiomers of glyceraldehyde were separated, purified and placed in a polarimeter.  One enantiomer rotated the light in a dextrorotatory manner; this enantiomer was called D-glyceraldehyde.  The other enantiomer rotated light in the levorotatory direction and was referred to as L-glyceraldehyde.  If you take what ever chiral molecule you are studying and convert the chiral carbon to glyceraldehyde, and it rotates light in the "+" direction, then you've made D-glyceraldehyde, and if all of your reaction steps involved retention of configuration (see above) then you would have the "D" enantiomer of your material. The terms "D" and "L" relate whatever chiral center you are studying to the chiral carbon in glyceraldehyde.
Comment: You should mention that the (+) isomer can be labeled D (for dextrorotatory).
Comment: @LDC3 I just wanted to keep it focused on the OP's specific question.
Comment: But it does point out that the D and L labels are applied to relative enantiomers. In fact, they can sometimes be applied to a series base on one compound (all natural amino acids are labeled L even though some have dextrorotatory rotation).
Comment: Thank you very much, that was a very useful answer. Just a question regarding the comments. Does D- (capital D) and capital L- mean dextrorotary  and leverorotary? I thought it was small d and l. Would you be able to explain the difference?


Ideas for a banana dessert crust, gluten free

Question: I came across a nice little dessert consisting of sliced bananas sandwiching peanut butter. My kids would love it, but I have a youngin and he's gluten-free.  Worried handing him raw bananas as he'll a mush them up, so I want to put a crust of sorts on it to contain, or at least minimize the mushing. Chocolate is one alternative but  I'm leaning towards something a little healthier.
Comment: In my experience, no amount of crust will prevent mushing if mushing is what the youngin' wants to do...
Comment: Ha ha, so true, but I should make an attempt... I am thinking a graham cracker crust of sorts may go well, gotta find it gluten-free...
Answer: Pamela's at http://www.pamelasproducts.com/products/baking-mixes/ makes a great non-gluten crust. I even added more coconut flour to it and mixed it in the food processor for a sweet potato pie. It came out firm and tasty. Also baked it first then added the filling and baked it again. If you add more flour you might want to add a little more salt but I like mine bland. Hope this helps.
Answer: The easiest answer is a gluten free graham cracker.
http://www.amazon.com/Kinnikinnick-Foods-Smoreables-Graham-Crackers/dp/B004T3AWRA
Most gluten free cookies and crackers tend to be pretty crumbly, so the additional moisture from the banana will help keep the treat from exploding into 1,000 crumbs.
Here's my favorite gluten free pie crust.
http://www.landolakes.com/recipe/3071/pie-crust-gluten-free-recipe
I use store bought flour blend.
Comment: We'd prefer that you stick to answering the question; the OP wasn't asking about cookie recipes, so I'll just edit that out. (In general we are a Q&A site, not a recipe swapping site, sorry.) The rest is really, helpful, though - upvoted!
Answer: I make those sometimes and I freeze them. They become more like popsicles, and they also aren't as prone to making a mess.
Just be sure to "flash freeze" them separately on a plate/cookie sheet so that they don't stick together.
Answer: Cook's Country, America's Test Kitchen's sister show has a very interesting recipe from this season for a chocolate pie with a meringue crust.
The entire recipe and video is here: Chocolate Angel Pie That recipe is free right now (as of January 2015) because it's from this season. It will go behind a paywall next season. The site offers a 14 day free trial that includes all of their sites, which I totally recommend for all cooks to check out. You need a card to sign up, but they will not charge it if you cancel withing that 14 day window.
For the crust:

1 tablespoon cornstarch, plus extra for pie plate
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar
3 large egg whites
Pinch cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

FOR THE MERINGUE CRUST: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 275 degrees. Grease 9-inch pie plate and dust well with extra cornstarch, using pastry brush to distribute evenly. Combine sugar and 1 tablespoon cornstarch in bowl. Using stand mixer fitted with whisk, whip egg whites and cream of tartar on medium-low speed until foamy, about 1 minute. Increase speed to medium-high and whip whites to soft, billowy mounds, 1 to 3 minutes. Gradually add sugar mixture and whip until glossy, stiff peaks form, 3 to 5 minutes. Add vanilla to meringue and whip until incorporated.
Spread meringue into prepared pie plate, following contours of plate to cover bottom, sides, and edges. Bake for 1½ hours. Rotate pie plate, reduce oven temperature to 200 degrees, and bake until completely dried out, about 1 hour longer. (Shell will rise above rim of pie plate; some cracking is OK.) Let cool completely, about 30 minutes.

That would be a gluten free crust, interesting too. I want to try it.


What are the alternatives to the Periodic Table of the Elements?

Question: What are the different diagrams/tables used to organize the elements other than the Periodic Table? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each?
Comment: There is an interesting article with lots of table variants: http://www.chemistry-blog.com/2009/04/26/alternative-periodic-tables/
Comment: Hmmm, I've never seen anything but the PT used neither in Highschool nor University, up to my degree, in any text book or class I took. I can't really see any advatages any alternative representations have over the classic PT, or we would see them used in mainstream chemistry.
Comment: Check the Wikipedia page on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_periodic_tables
Answer: One periodic table that apparently physicists find useful is ADOMAH periodic table, for its usefulness is finding electron configuration of a particular element. More information at this guide. A disadvantage to this table, along with any new table configuration you have not experienced, will be the lack of knowledge in the trends on your new table. There are many spiral looking tables, but the trends such as the change in atomic radii, or electronegative characteristics, might not be as obvious, and you might have to find a guide or relearn old tricks to methods you would learn in your first year of chemistry. At least the ADOMAH Table is built in such a way that these trends should still be recognizable, although clearly not the same as the normal table you find in any high-school science classroom.
Of particular interest to me are dynamic periodic tables. These are tables that are basically computer applications which will change according to what you are looking for. One outstanding example is the widely popular ptable.com which will maintain all the common trends you probably know already, and dynamically show you various states of the elements when changing the temperature. I learned from this table that rhenium has the highest known boiling temperature, while I thought it was tungsten (although tungsten has the highest melting temperature of the transition metals). And better yet, carbon has the highest melting temperature of all elements, very cool table! The disadvantage is obviously that you cannot carry it around in your notebook without some flavor of a mobile computer and/or internet connection.
I am sure there are many other great tables still to be found, but I hope you have learned something new from my post.
Answer: I wrote this long answer to a question which was deemed "duplicate" but really asked a more specific question, why there are the gaps in the periodic table etc.

Organisation in Periodic table

The elements are organized in groups (the columns) because the elements in each group have very similar chemical properties.
For example, the noble gases are inert: today, we know that it is because all the electron shells up to a rather big gap are occupied, so there is no free electron that can create bonds with other atoms; and it is not easy for the atom of the noble gas to adopt an additional electron, either.
On the opposite side, the group starting from hydrogen and lithium contains highly reactive elements because they have exactly one electron on top of the full shells above.
If one considers elements with electrons in the shell $1s$ only, there are only two elements, hydrogen and helium (the maximally reactive; or the maximally inert), and nothing in between. There is nothing in between because the shell $1s$ only contains two "slots" for electrons, so the number of electrons may only be $0,1,2$ (zero is not an atom).
However, as we go down the table, towards elements with a higher number of electrons (and protons in the nucleus), there are more possibilities. For example, in the second row, we have 8 elements. Why? It's because the shells $2s$ and $2p$ contain two and six states, respectively – eight in total.
So if we want to have at least one electron in the $n=2$ shell, there are eight options, from $1$ to $8$ electrons. Again, the element with $1$ electron in the $n=2$ shell is analogous to the hydrogen, and the element with the maximum number $8$ electrons, i.e. neon, is analogous to helium because the shells are fully occupied.
But unless the first group which only consisted of hydrogen and helium, there are 6 new elements in between, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, and fluorine. Their occupation is something in between the minimal and maximal. Those have no counterparts among the simplest elements that only work with the $1s$, $n=1$ shell because there are simply not six extra integers in between one (hydrogen) and two (helium). That's why the gap appears.
When we work with the more complicated shells, we always reveal some new "intermediate" elements that had no counterparts in the simpler periods. That's why one needs to create increasingly wide "gaps" in the upper periods – because the lower periods have some additional "intermediate" elements because there is a greater number of ways to fill more complicated, larger shells.
Comment: This doesn't really answer the OP's question about whether there  are alternatives to the standard periodic table. It just explains how the periodic table is laid out.
Comment: This is an answer to another question that was labeled a duplicate and closed. It's not my mistake if it was labeled a duplicate even though it is not.
Comment: "This is an answer to another question" - Are you serious?! Getting closed means a question shouldn't get answered. Now attempting to answer what community didn't want to do so is wrong.
Comment: No, getting closed as a duplicate means that the questions are merged as duplicates.
Comment: @LubošMotl Mods can merge dupes only if they both contain good answers. That's rare because we don't want it to happen. Merging doesn't happen to dupes. If it did, some questions in bigger SEs would look like gibberish. After some time, that question is going to get closed.


failed to format the device

Question: I want to format my pendrive kingston 4 GB, but i can't. I used gparted in live cd(remove partition and create new) also program HP USB Disk Storage Formatting (error: failed to format the device) but this isn't helping me. When i want save data on the disk i see window: Disk write protected. What can i do more about this problem ?
Comment: Duplicate: http://superuser.com/questions/158083/how-to-remove-the-write-protection-from-an-usb-flash-disk (along with quite a few others)
Answer: There is probably a small switch physically on the pendrive which is used to mark the drive read-only. While the pendrive is read-only, the drive will not allow itself to be written to in any way (formatting, or saving general data). If there is no physical switch, then there is either some software lock, or it was manufactured for a singular purpose and the read-only lock was put in at the factory (highly unlikely, but theoretically possible). If you're unsure, post the exact model and we can see if it has a write-protect switch.
Answer: Are you using a Mac or a PC? PCs can use NTFS filesystems, but MACs cant. MACs have to have the filesystem formatted at FAT for it to be read properly, until it is FAT (or possibly FAT32) it will be read only.
Good Luck-
Answer: The first thing I would do is try a different program to format it.  Use FAT32, it is not as secure, does not have as robust back up info as NTFS, and can't hold a file larger than 4gb (not that that is a problem on a 4gb drive).  However, it will work on any operating system.  If you can't format it in a different program you should report back with the error.

failed to format the device


In Munchkin, can someone who doesn't participate in a combat play cards that benefit a player who is fighting a monster?

Question: This situation happened in our friendly game where 2 players had feelings for each other and were keen on helping each other. Because we already had a house rule in play that limited the amount of times someone could offer their help, eventually they couldn't legally help each other. However, when a player A was fighting a monster, player B who was not in that combat, played "-5 to a Monster", thus making player A win. Player A was not on level 9, so the result wouldn't end the game, but I felt it was against the rules. However when they argued with me, I couldn't find anything in the rules that would explicitly say Munchkins can't help each other outside of combat. Any words about "the competitive spirit" wouldn't matter to them.
Comment: I doubt what they are doing is against the rule, but Munchkin is much more flexible than you think. If that two players are always helping each other you can always form another "Party" with another player which you agree to help each other and collectively sabotage these two players. I can't say if such a move will cause any relationship issues out of the game, but it certainly will rebalance the game. In fact, in most games I played, if two players are helping each other too much they'd end up being targeted by all the others since they have the advantage of a permanent ally.
Answer: You can absolutely play cards to help other players, even when not involved in combat
From the rules (direct PDF link)

You can interfere with others' combats in several ways, including:
Use a one-shot card. You could help another player by using a
  one-shot to strengthen his side. Of course, you can "accidentally"
  strengthen the monster with it, instead . . .

Emphasis mine


What does the Cinnamon in my coffee turn into?

Question: I few years ago I put Cinnamon in my coffee. After a few hours (I'm a slow coffee drinker) I started to take my last sip and a big clump of mucus hit my tongue and I almost puked. After recovering, and almost getting into fist fights with several co-workers (They loved pulling pranks) a few of them said cinnamon always does that. I'm still not so sure? What is up with Cinnamon and coffee and are there any other spices that does that? Or should I have continue to punch my co-workers?
Comment: I put cinnamon and honey in my coffee for therapeutic reasons and I simply suck down the sludge. Its a bit like swallowing a raw egg.
Answer: Cinnamon is made from the ground bark of a variety of trees in the Cinnamomum genus. All of these barks contain starches, soluble fibers, and insoluble fibers to some degree.
Lower grade cinnamons such as Cinnamomum cassia contain higher amounts of lignins, bassorins, pectins, and mucilages; accounting for almost 80% of the mass of the powdered cinnamon.  These compounds form gummy, mucus-like masses when hydrated or dissolved in water.  The mucilages in cinnamon can be dissolved in cold water, but it takes heat and time to fully hydrate the bassorins and other compounds which creates a gummy mass.  Higher quality cinnamon from different species may contain less mucilages or other compounds, but all powdered cinnamon will form a mass to some extent.  Herbs and spices such as cardamom, chicory, nutmeg and many others contain many similar compounds in various proportions that could also form gummy masses, but it would take research and/or experimentation to figure out the amounts needed.
Cinnamon flavors can be added to coffee without ending up with sludge in your cup by adding the cinnamon to the brewing chamber or by adding cinnamon extract or cinnamon essential oil to the brewed coffee.
Comment: +1 This is the only answer that actually answers the question.
Comment: This is the real and correct answer to the original question
Comment: If I could upvote twice...
Answer: I know people who like cinnamon in their coffee, but the trick is to put the cinnamon in with the grounds before you brew it.  I am not sure if there are other spices that do that.  However, if you are looking to get back at your co-workers, just get some fine garlic powder, and sprinkle it on the base of their windshield.  The air intake will suck it in, and blow it throughout their car, and the inside of their car will be smelling like garlic for a long time.  The finer the powder, the better.
Comment: I've never done it, but I don't see why not......  Just don't put in the garlic powder.
Comment: Absolutely. That's exactly where you should put it. Start with a little, too much could be overpowering.
Comment: I always wondered what the liquid left from soaking dried thai or chinese chile peppers in hot water, which smells and looks all like black tea, does when you serve it as black tea....
Comment: Can you put the cinnamon in the grounds if you use a French press?
Comment: Can I add in the basket for a drip coffee maker? If I added it afterwards, it tastes bad.
Comment: I'll try this.  The cinnamon, not the garlic.
Answer: Try using cinnamon sticks in place of powders.  I have better results, also you can refill your cup of coffee and reuse the cinnamon sticks from your last cup.
Answer: Cinnamaldehyde, the compound that gives cinnamon its flavor, is known to cause inflammation in mucous membranes (http://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/20036).
It's also mildly water soluble. So, when you made your coffee it was probably diluted enough that it didn't cause a problem. As it sat out, it probably fell out of the solution and settled in the bottom of your cup in a more concentrated form.
Comment: What does the fact that a chemical stimulates mucus production in humans have to do with how it behaves when wet?
Comment: "Falling out of the solution" doesn't happen. If some substance is dissolved in some liquid, then the substance will never settle to the bottom.


Apple Profiles - Apple Configurator 2

Question: I've been looking for hours now on how to edit a profile on Apple Configurator but to no luck. There are some similar responses, but none of them were of too much help. I am trying to edit a profile that exists on a iPad Air, but not the mac. Can anyone help me?
Answer: It's not possible to edit a profile whilst only having the profile on a device. You must have the profile on your computer to edit it. Profiles can't be exported from a device to be edited in Configurator.

Apple Profiles - Apple Configurator 2


What should I consider when choosing continuous lighting vs. strobes for studio photography?

Question: If one were to want to get started with studio photography (I'm thinking things like portraits, headshots, perhaps pets, etc) what would be the considerations in choosing whether to go with continuous lighting vs. strobes for the lighting equipment?
Comment: Are you only considering 'hot lights,' or were you hoping for an evaluation of daylight-balanced CFL continuous lighting solutions as well? 'Hot lights' is a slang term, BTW... Maybe you want to consider calling that out in the question? Or not. Just a thought...
Comment: Good point Jay - I'll rephrase the question to remove the jargon a bit.
Answer: Studio strobes:

+ More light means lower ISO, larger aperture etc.
+ Can freeze motion
+ Can overpower the ambient light meaning you can leave the room lights on to see what you're doing
+ Greater choice of flash units / accessories / lighting modifiers
+ Can be used with battery pack for location shoots
- Have to be triggered somehow
- Need to use a flash meter, or test shots to set exposure
- Can be too bright (some have limited options to turn the power right down)
- Can be more expensive to start off with

Continous Lighting

+ Can be done on the cheap using gear lying around the house
+ Can use the camera's metering system
+ Can be used for video as well
+ No need to trigger
- Limited power output
- Can cook your subject
- High levels of ambient light can be undesirable when working
- Fire risk with homemade mods!
- There can be colour issues with some florescents
Comment: +1 for overpowering ambient! It may sound like a small thing, but knowing that (virtually) all light in the picture is there because you put it there, not because you happen to have a light fixture in a certain place, is a big thing.
Answer: I'll give you my experience...
I started out using halogen continuous lights because they were cheap, but they're very hot and draw a lot of power. Nevertheless, I could get some very powerful lighting though, mind you, I went the "Home Depot" route here. What I discovered, however, is that I had no real effective way of performing light modification (filters, gobos, grids, etc.) without some fire risk. So, then I got a very basic Westcott setup that used highpowered CFL bulbs. The set came with two stands, the heads, and softboxes. Not bad, it seemed, but to get a decent shutter speed for photographing children, I had to pump up the ISO way too much for my liking, I prefer low ISO in a studio setup. These two options also suffered from a lack of control over the quantity of light and the duration of it and these are important factors in freezing motion and getting creative with lighting. They do, however, unhook your camera from the light, giving you some freedom of movement.
However, all of those weaknesses led me, finally, to strobes. I purchased a couple of Alien Bees B800 strobes, with stands and umbrellas, then added a softbox, an octabox, and grids. With these I was able to get far more control of the light, especially the duration and intensity. I hooked them up with basic radio triggers and I got the freedom of cableless movement that continuous gives. They do cost quite a bit more, though not especially so when compared with highpowered speed lights, but the flexibility was worth it to me and, I have to say, my buying experience with Alien Bees was second to none, they have my consumer endorsement if they want it.
Anyways, I still use the Westcott gear, it's actually quite handy for product type photography as well as background lighting and similar actions, I just don't use them as a key or fill light choice. The tungsten hot lights, however, are now back to general duty for a workshop, as I just wouldn't ever consider using them again. Admittedly, these were not dedicated for photography or videography, but I'm just not interested in pumping out that much heat for little to no gain.
So, just like the tripod trip from weak to strong, I suspect that if you start with the cheapest option, you will move up the chain and rapidly, and spend a lot for nothing along the way. If you're not willing to run out on the strobe cost right now, but you do have speed light of good power, you may actually want to start with reflectors to get bounce for fill and move up from there. At the very least, you'll still be using those reflectors when you do get the bigger guns which, I think, is inevitable if you enjoy the portrait process.
Answer: The heat's one thing -- and you can get around that with cool lights (fluorescent, LED or HMI) -- but the biggest difference for me is that continuous lighting needs to be pretty darned bright in order to use relatively low ISOs and reasonable shutter speeds. That's just uncomfortable for everybody -- and it leads to squinting and those loverly junkie-style pinpoint pupils everyone loves so much. Sure, you can fix 'em in post, but why? The pupil size alone makes flash worthwhile for portraiture -- people come off looking a lot friendlier and more approachable with larger pupils.
Flash also lets you work with movement, whether that's to give life to hair or clothing or to capture the briefest expressions. You can do that with continuous lighting as well, but it either means cranking the levels up to solar surface brightness or dealing with noise in post (or grain, if you're shooting film). That depends on your shooting style as well, I suppose, but most of what I shot was at around f/5.6 or f/8 and tightly framed -- you don't need to be at f/1.2 to get a DoF that has the subject in focus with little or no background detail if the subject/bg separation is enough to light the background separately. (A fast lens, though, does make critical focus a lot easier to achieve provided that the lens doesn't shift focus.)
Studio flash is more expensive at the entry level than continuous lighting, but it doesn't have to be outrageously so. There are a number of well-respected "off" brands (the only thing "off" about them is that they tend to be direct sellers rather than selling through retail outlets), like Paul C. Buff's AlienBees and White Lightning lines, as well as entry-level units from the "names", like Elinchrom's DLite series, that will let you in the game at about the price of a decent zoom lens. They're often cheaper than equivalent "name brand" continuous lighting kits. The only drawback I know of is that it's really hard to double them up for video use (although if the modelling lights are bright enough...).
Comment: +1 to squinting and pupils. I've had models get really grumpy working with continuous lighting who were actually quite good under studio flashes.
Answer: There is another common division, you list hot lights and strobes. But there are at least two major types of strobes: Studio strobes (typically powered by battery packs or mains) and speedlights (small battery powered strobes).
There are many professional photographers who use and prefer speedlights (David Hobby, Joe McNally, Syl Arena). Check out their sites for insight.
I use speedlights, three LP160s and an ancient Vivitar 285. I like their small size and low prices. They are surprisingly flexible.
I may have one or two PB Einsteins on my future, but I'll get another LP160 years before that.
I think that speedlights can do the work for less money, but some folks think that big monoblocks say "professional" in ways that are important
Answer: Overall light output vs rate of energy usage / heat output.
There's a reason hot lights are called "hot"; they put out a lot of heat per unit of light, especially compared to strobes. And heat doesn't do anyone any good. That's why strobes are more often preferred for still photography, and hot lights are more often used for video (where strobes aren't an option).
Answer: Another consideration is the color of the light.  While monolights and speedlights are 5500 to 8000K  and appear very white, almost any domestic lighting will produce light between 2500 and 5000K which appears as a yellow or orange tone in the image.
LED lighting has come a long way recently with many consumer products available to help in the studio. For example there are 500W equivalent work-lights, some supplied with stands that are inexpensive and useful. If you dig around there are also high power screw-in LED bulbs, e.g. Savage 30W and 50W and fittings (e.g. Gary Wong) to mount on a light stand and hold an umbrella. These more modern LED lamps use high efficiency chips with a color temperature around 5500K.
If you are interested in something more exotic, there are studio LED systems that allow color adjustment by controlling the red, green and blue components. LED studio lamps may also have the ability to accept gels and other modifiers.
Answer: Continuous light is dim at photographic shutter speeds.  For still life / tabletop work, where you can use a one second shutter speed without issue, continuous offers the advantage that you can see it (to plan it) and the camera can meter it.  But for portraits, you will always be at higher ISO, lower shutter speed, and wider apertures than you would like.  Sort of a constant struggle.
For that reason, flash is the popular way for portraits (subjects that might move). Flash easily allows ISO 100, f/8 at 1/200 second, where with continuous, you probably pray that ISO 800, f/2.8 at 1/30 second might be good enough. So in practice, there are very good odds that with continuous, you will either convert to flash soon, or give it up soon. Flash is used differently, so like anything else, there's a thing or two to learn.  You have to take a test shot to see the result, and you will need a meter to set the levels of each light (to know what they are doing). However, you can simplify the setup with the meter, to then get what you expect (can repeat it closely next time).
Some samples of "continuous vs flash power" at http://www.scantips.com/lights/flashbasics2a.html


Can I grow coffee plants in my garden?

Question: I live in the Netherlands, where the climate is very unstable. Whilst I love my coffee and love doing a lot of stuff myself, the urge to grow my own coffee had risen. I was wondering if the Dutch climate makes for good coffee / coffee plants.
Comment: My guess is that given that coffee is a high altitude tropical plant, maybe not... but this is more a question for the gardening site.
Answer: Coffee is considered a tropical plant and is not going to overwinter in the Netherlands.  It makes a good house plant but there are some obstacles between you and a cup of coffee you grew and processed yourself.

a plant capable of fruiting is two to three meters tall
it is usually three to five years old before flowering and producing beans
the beans can take nine months to ripen on the plant
under good cultivation one tree can produce one to two kilograms of beans a year depending on variety

More notes about cultivation are found here:

Important growing factors are:
Avoiding excessive cold and heat.
1200-1500mm of rain per annum.
A few hours of light per day.
No strong winds.
Altitude - The higher the better.

The last might be the most challenging for growing coffee in the Netherlands.
Comment: Sounds like something that's very hard to accomplish but still doable. I'm not very fond of robusta beans due to their muddy taste so I think I will go with arabica in this case. Unless robusta is a more friendly plant. Doe you happen to know some sort of robusta that mimics the taste of a arabica bean?
Answer: While you can grow coffee at home, you are almost certainly not going to be able to grow it outdoors in the Netherlands. Coffee tends to only grow well in fairly mountainous equatorial regions with moderate temperatures.
Answer: Why not start seeds and grow them in a container this year? You can bring it inside before cold weather threatens and take it with you when you move. I am pretty sure coffee plants are zone 10. I saw one in the Logee's Greenhouse catalog the other day and thought it would be cool to grow one, but then came to my senses and decided I wouldn't want one more plant that I had to overwinter inside.
I've linked the coffee plant page from Logee's because it tells you a tiny bit about the temps and conditions the coffee plants need.
Here is a link that might be useful: Coffee Plant

Can I grow coffee plants in my garden?


Measurements used in Halacha

Question: What is the underlying argument between the Chazon Ish and Rabbi Chaim Naaeh and Reb Moshe Feinstein? I know they argue in amounts, but what is the underlying argument? How did each get the Measurement he got, why do they argue, and what about?
Comment: The motivation for this question was theses comments made by Reb Ovadiah somthing along the lines that the Chazan Ish did not understand somthing I was wondering what he did not understand
Comment: http://www.kikarhashabat.co.il/video.php?vid=60693-56216
Comment: Warning it takes really long to load
Answer: From what I've heard, it all starts with how you measure a "thumb-width", and from there multiply up to "handbreadth" (tefach), "cubit" (ama), and so on. The thumb-width question is whether it's measured from the narrower or wider part of the thumb.
Answer: Another issue, though perhaps unrelated to the above opiners, is that these measurements are not stable with human appendages being a siman.  Rather, the width of an average thumb defines the measurement, which can change with changing generations.  Rav Moshe uses this logic (quoting the Chasam Sofer/Chavos Yair) as one apology for why the Chasam Sofer had a larger shiur than he.

Measurements used in Halacha


can a power bank be used to plant malware?

Question: A power bank has some sort of circuitry, but I am not sure if there is any software on a power bank or if they are only pure batteries, but people are connecting their mobile phones and laptops to them by USB and historically USB sticks represent a medium to transfer malware.
Comment: There is nothing to stop someone from putting custom circuitry in a power bank, which would act as a keyboard or other device, but I'm guessing you're asking about a standard device? If so, might be worth editing into the question
Answer: A pure power bank likely cannot - most of them have the data lines not connected to any chips, but rather to resistor networks.  However, someone could easily make something that appears to be a power bank but has nasty firmware on it.
You can get data disconnected (power only) USB cables that you could use to plug into a suspect power bank.  However, since phones use the data lines to decide how much power they can draw, in disconnected lines they draw the minimum and will charge slower.
You could make up a cable to match your phone, but it gets complicated.
Comment: Also see [Secure USB cable for charging in untrusted environments](http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/124131/secure-usb-cable-for-charging-in-untrusted-environments) for elaboration on the safe cable.
Answer: Answering directly to your question. Yes, i believe a power bank can be used to plant malware. If you bought an unknown brand of powerbank or from a questionable source.
One could have a battery that powers a raspberry pi or pi zero in a 'powerbank' case.
Your phone would still charge as if you are plugged into the laptop. Malware can be pushed via adb or other crafted scripts.
In this day and age, you get hacking devices disguised as Power Adapters, Power Strips etc. What's new if a hacking device is guised as a powerbank.
Check out this news article from Gizmodo :)


How can I root my Verizon HTC Incredible 2?

Question: I am technically inclined, I work as a IT technician and study computer science and engineering. Does anyone have a guide or guides, or can help me root my HTC Incredible 2?
Comment: @Izzy: We have moved away from closing rooting questions as duplicates of that canonical question because the processes are so different between devices. See: http://meta.android.stackexchange.com/questions/790/should-we-revisit-our-how-do-i-root-x-policy
Comment: possible duplicate of [How do I root my device?](http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/1184/how-do-i-root-my-device)
Comment: Argh, sorry... ._.
Answer: Here a guide from XDA-Dev:
(If you like to learn visually and would rather not go through these steps, check out this YouTube video.)

Some warnings:

This is not a FULL unlock (S-OFF or to unlock your SIM card slot.)
This WILL VOID your warranty.
This will work with ANY version of HBOOT.
This is a how to for WINDOWS ONLY.
If you are logged out of HTC Dev at any time during the identifier period (1–5), just sign back in and don't click anything. It will automatically redirect you to the last page you were on.
I am not responsible if you didn't follow a step correctly and your phone lights on fire, cracks into two, wants to destroy you, etc…

What you are going to need:

A computer
Fastboot and ADB [API] ← These are applications to be use to flash ROM's.
HTC Drivers ← Drivers HTC gives, couldn't find them on HTC's site.
Android SDK
microUSB cable, phone, and some time

STEPS TO ROOT:

You are going to want to head over to the HTC Developer site and make an account or sign in. Once you have done one of the two, you are going to want to click 'Unlock Bootloader,' then 'Get Started.' It will next ask you what device you are trying to unlock, click 'Droid Incredible 2 (Verizon)' then 'Begin Unlock Bootloader.' Then a pop up window will ask you if you are sure, just click 'Yes.' Then, another pop up window will appear, just tick the two boxes and press 'Proceed to Unlock Instructions.'
Go to your phone. Take off the [back] battery door and remove the battery (don't hold the power button and make it a proper shut off, just rip the battery out. Then, put the battery back in. Once you have replaced the battery, hold the volume down button and the power button at the same time until a white screen shows up. You can use the volume rocker to highlight your selection, and the power button to select the highlighted selection. Right now, we want to highlight 'BOOTLOADER' and use the power button to select it. Next, grab your miniUSB cable and plug it into your computer to your phone.
Next, make a folder on your computer in the C:\ Drive. In Windows Vista & 7, you can just go to Computer from the Start Menu and it will be labeled Local Disk (C:). You can name the folder whatever you want, I am just going to name it Android. Next, you are going to want to download my ADB, Fastboot, and ADBAPI .zip file and place all three files into the Android folder. After you unzip the ADB/Fastboot folder, you are going to want to (if you have not already) download and install the Android SDK manager. You will need to install SDK tools [and I believe a version of Android?] After you have installed everything, you can go to the Start Menu again and type in 'cmd' in the search bar and press enter. Then type in the following: (Or you could take the easy way of going to your C:\ drive and shift-clicking the folder and press 'Open Command Window Here…)
cd C:\Android

After you have got into Command Prompt and are in the \Android folder, type in the following:
fastboot oem get_identifier_token

You will then see a great big brick of random characters. Right click in the bottom right-hand corner of '<<<<< Identifier Token End >>>>>' and click 'Mark...' Hold down the left-mouse-button and select the great brick of text up until '<<<< Identifier Token Start >>>>' (don't highlight any of the 'INFO' things.) Then, right-click again and you will have the identifier token copied to your clipboard. Back on the HTC Dev site, it will ask you for your identifier; just paste the identifier in the box and it will send you an email with a .bin file (Unlock_code.bin) and just throw that into the folder with ADB and Fastboot.
You are going to want to click the continue link that HTC Dev sent you as well to downloading the file. After you have finished downloading and put it in the folder, type in the following:
fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin

Once you have done that and pressed Enter, your phone will change screens. It will ask you if you are SURE you want to do this. Just press the volume rocker up and press the power button. Your phone will reboot and take you back to Android. It's normal and it doesn't mean it failed... Your phone is fine and it should have went OK if you followed the steps. We are done with HTC Dev now, so you can close it.
Next thing we are going to want to do is flash ClockWorkMod (CWM) Recovery onto your phone. You are going to want to download the .iso for CWMR and flash it to your phone (download link). After you are done downloading the .iso, place it into your ADB and Fastboot folder. Once your phone has finished starting up, take the battery out again and put it back into HBOOT mode (step 2.) You are going to want to go back into FASTBOOT (step 2, again) and flash the recovery by doing the following:
fastboot flash recovery recovery(press TAB)

Once you press enter and fastboot says it has completed, it will just have the Fastboot screen. Just highlight 'Bootloader' and press the power button. Next, to make sure it worked… Scroll down to 'Recovery' (which is right under Fastboot) and select it. The HTC screen should show and then CWMR should come to life.
This is where the real magic happens. We are going to install SuperUser on to your phone now. Reboot your phone into regular Android. Now, you can plug it into the computer and make it a disk drive or pop out the miniSD card and put it into a converter. Now, you are going to want to download SuperUser and put it onto the miniSD (I recommend not putting it in any folders so it is easy to find.) Now, put your phone back into CWMR (step 6.) Now, use the volume rocker to scroll down to 'install .zip from sd card' and press the power button. Now, find the SuperUser.zip (or whatever it is named) and press the power button. The 'yes' to install it is in the middle of all the 'no' options, use the volume rocker to select 'yes' and press the power button. Wait for CWMR to finish, and in the meantime... Just stare at your phone. After you have finished installing SuperUser, restart your handset into Android. Once it has finished restarting, go into the app drawer and find the SuperUser app. Press the 'menu' button and tap 'Settings.' Scroll down to 'Su Binary x.x.xx' and tap it. On the bottom it will say 'Update Binary,' just tap that and it will do its 'magic.' Once SU has finished updating Binary, you have a rooted DINC2.
Answer: The general approach to gaining "root" on the HTC Incredible 2 is to get S-OFF, so you can flash a custom ROM. I'm on the road now, and have neither the inclination nor the resources to compose a full guide here, so I will point you to the best rooting guide for our phone:
Gain S-OFF and Root the HTC Incredible 2
Note: the guide is aimed at Linux users--use an Ubuntu live CD if you have to.
Anyway, it's a much better guide than the ones I see in the Google top 10, which are either hard to follow along, or leave out (possibly) necessary steps, like hboot downgrading. Finally, another helpful resource:
Comprehensive S-OFF/Root Methods


Removing vocals using multiple versions of the same song

Question: I have 4 tracks that are exactly the same, except that each one has vocals in a different language. I know how to remove center-panned vocals, but is there any way to remove them that takes advantage of having multiple versions of the same track?
Answer: If the vocals are in different languages then no, there is nothing that can be done to cancel them out automatically.
If the different lyrics have gaps in different places then you could manually select these gaps using a DAW and drop them into a "master" version.
Answer: This may not be the answer you're looking for, but it may bring closer to what you want.
The idea is not to remove vocals, but reduce the volume: you simply put all the all the different versions on a track each in a multitrack program like Reaper, Cubase or Pro Tools. Make sure you precisely align the songs so the wave curves follow each other at sample level.
The outcome of this is that what is the same across the tracks, i.e. the music,  is boosted and what differs, i.e. the vocals, is reduced. The more different versions you have the better.
If you wanted to remove the music instead, you simply duplicate the track which you want to isolate the vocals from, and phase invert that and increase the gain to the point where the average music from the four other tracks cancels out the music in the fifth track. You may need to route the four tracks to a group and reduce the volume of that instead of increasing the volume of the fifth as it may be hot already and cause clipping if you increase gain).
Answer: These are the two things I found sofar, I cannot gurantee they will help you, but they do seem to go into the right direction
https://www.sonicvisualiser.org/
https://code.soundsoftware.ac.uk/attachments/download/2488/sonic-visualiser-3.3-win32.msi
http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~simond/match/
http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~simond/match/match-0.9.4.jar
Cubase 10 Audio Alignment

https://steinberg.help/nuendo/v8/en/cubase_nuendo/topics/sample_editor_tempo_matching_audio/sample_editor_tempo_matching_audio_alignment_c.html
Feel free to update your findings here aswell, should you ever find something, as I'm interested in a computational method to ease this process.


How to move configuration of GNOME apps between machines?

Question: I've set up a git repository with my common configuration files (home dotfiles) I'd like to share between my machines. I have a problem though with applications such as GNOME Terminal, which use the gconf system for their settings. Is there a way to store these settings alongside other config files in git?
Answer: Configuration files for common GNOME applications are managed by gconf and can usually be found under ~/.gconf. In the past I've used rsync to keep these settings synchronised across disparate, but similar, machines. Putting them under version control may present some problems, however, as these files are more likely to be automatically generated than edited by a human hand. Version control can get really, really complicated when you're tracking these sorts of changes.


How do capsule neural networks work?

Question: Geoffrey Hinton has been researching something he calls "capsules theory" in neural networks. What is it? How do capsule neural networks work?
Comment: Now the paper can be viewed at: [Dynamic Routing Between Capsules](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.09829) by Sara Sabour, Nicholas Frosst and Geoffrey E. Hinton.
Answer: It appears to not be published yet; the best available online are these slides for this talk. (Several people reference an earlier talk with this link, but sadly it's broken at time of writing this answer.)
My impression is that it's an attempt to formalize and abstract the creation of subnetworks inside a neural network. That is, if you look at a standard neural network, layers are fully connected (that is, every neuron in layer 1 has access to every neuron in layer 0, and is itself accessed by every neuron in layer 2). But this isn't obviously useful; one might instead have, say, n parallel stacks of layers (the 'capsules') that each specializes on some separate task (which may itself require more than one layer to complete successfully).
If I'm imagining its results correctly, this more sophisticated graph topology seems like something that could easily increase both the effectiveness and the interpretability of the resulting network.
Comment: The paper is now (November 7, 2017) published: [Dynamic Routing Between Capsules](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.09829.pdf).
Answer: To supplement the previous answer: there is a paper on this that is mostly about learning low-level capsules from raw data, but explains Hinton's conception of a capsule in its introductory section: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fritz/absps/transauto6.pdf
It's also worth noting that the link to the MIT talk in the answer above seems to be working again.
According to Hinton, a "capsule" is a subset of neurons within a layer that outputs both an "instantiation parameter" indicating whether an entity is present within a limited domain and a vector of "pose parameters" specifying the pose of the entity relative to a canonical version.
The parameters output by low-level capsules are converted into predictions for the pose of the entities represented by higher-level capsules, which are activated if the predictions agree and output their own parameters (the higher-level pose parameters being averages of the predictions received).
Hinton speculates that this high-dimensional coincidence detection is what mini-column organization in the brain is for. His main goal seems to be replacing the max pooling used in convolutional networks, in which deeper layers lose information about pose.
Answer: One of the major advantages of convolutional neural networks is their invariance to translation. However, this invariance comes with a price, that is, it does not consider how different features are related to each other. For example, if we have a picture of a face, a CNN will have difficulties distinguishing the relationship between the "mouth" feature and "nose" feature. The max-pooling layers are the main reason for this effect, because, when we use max-pooling layers, we lose the precise locations of the mouth and nose, and we cannot say how they are related to each other.
Capsules try to keep the advantage of CNN and fix this drawback in two ways

Invariance: quoting from this paper

When the capsule is working properly, the probability of the visual entity being present is locally invariant – it does not change as the entity moves over the manifold of possible appearances within the limited domain covered by the capsule.

In other words, capsule takes into account the existence of the specific feature that we are looking for, like the mouth or nose. This property makes sure that capsules are translation invariant the same that CNNs are.

Equivariance: instead of making the feature translation invariance, the capsule will make it translation-equivariant or viewpoint-equivariant. In other words, as the feature moves and changes its position in the image, the feature vector representation will also change in the same way which makes it equivariant. This property of capsules tries to solve the drawback of max-pooling layers that I mentioned at the beginning.
Answer: Capsule networks try to mimic Hinton's observations of the human brain on the machine. The motivation stems from the fact that neural networks needed better modeling of the spatial relationships of the parts. Instead of modeling the co-existence, disregarding the relative positioning, capsule-nets try to model the global relative transformations of different sub-parts along a hierarchy. This is the eqivariance vs. invariance trade-off, as explained above by others.
These networks therefore include somewhat a viewpoint / orientation awareness and respond differently to different orientations. This property makes them more discriminative, while potentially introducing the capability to perform pose estimation as the latent-space features contain interpretable, pose specific details.
All this is accomplished by including a nested layer called capsules within the layer, instead of concatenating yet another layer in the network. These capsules can provide vector output instead of a scalar one per node.
The crucial contribution of the paper is the dynamic routing which replaces the standard max-pooling by a smart strategy. This algorithm applies a mean-shift clustering on the capsule outputs to ensure that the output gets sent only to the appropriate parent in the layer above.
Authors also couple the contributions with a margin loss and reconstruction loss, which simultaneously help in learning the task better and show state of the art results on MNIST.
The recent-paper is named Dynamic Routing Between Capsules
 and is available on Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.09829.pdf .
Answer: In the abstract of the paper Dynamic Routing between Capsules (November 7, 2017) that formally introduced capsule neural networks, the authors write

A capsule is a group of neurons whose activity vector represents the instantiation parameters of a specific type of entity such as an object or an object part. We use the length of the activity vector to represent the probability that the entity exists and its orientation to represent the instantiation parameters. Active capsules at one level make predictions, via transformation matrices, for the instantiation parameters of higher-level capsules. When multiple predictions agree, a higher level capsule
  becomes active. We show that a discriminatively trained, multi-layer capsule system achieves state-of-the-art performance on MNIST and is considerably better than a convolutional net at recognizing highly overlapping digits. To achieve these results we use an iterative routing-by-agreement mechanism: A lower-level capsule prefers to send its output to higher-level capsules whose activity vectors have a big scalar product with the prediction coming from the lower-level capsule.
Answer: Capsule Networks have two key ideas:

the first idea is how to represent multi-dimensional entities. Capsule Networks does this by grouping these properties of a feature together ("capsules").
the second is that you activate higher-level features by agreement between lower-level features ("routing by agreement").

First, Capsule Networks partition the image into regions subsets.
For each of these regions, it assumes that there is at most one instance of a single feature, called a Capsule.
A Capsule is able to represent an instance of a feature (but only one) and is able to represent all the different properties of that feature, e.g., its (x,y) coordinates, its colour, its movement etc.
The difference from Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) is that the Capsules bundle the neurons into groups with multi-dimensional properties, whereas in CNNs the neurons represent single, unrelated scalar properties.
This structured Capsule representation allows you to do "routing by agreement".
To understand this, lets look at the example of a face detector. Here, you could have capsules representing "mouth", "eye", "nose" etc.
Since the Capsules are multi-dimensional you also train them to predict the parameters for the entire face.
Now, if the "mouth", "nose" and "eye" Capsules agree about the parameters of the face we have a very strong signal that this is a good prediction since accidental agreement in a high-dimensional space like a neural network is very unlikely.
You use this to stack the Capsules into deep networks where the activation of higher-level Capsules are conditioned on agreement between the lower-level Capsules (e.g. the Face capsule being activated by agreement on the face position between the Nose, Mouth, Eye Capsules in the earlier, lower-level layer).
In contrast to regular feed-forward nets this requires a bit of iteration in the forward pass through the network, but you can still use back-propagation train it.
It is an interesting way to add a bit of structure to the data. So far, it looks like they are able to provide better generalization from limited training data.
Comment: A few sketches on paper could be helpful
Comment: The paper, [Dynamic Routing Between Capsules by Sabour, Frosst and Hinton](https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.09829v1) has some illustrations.

How do capsule neural networks work?


I was asked to transfer a book via airplane

Question: A friend of my friend forgot a book in my country. As I am flying to India soon, I was asked if I could take the book there with me. I am worried that something could be inside the book, and that it could be illegal, and then I will be responsible. Am I at risk?
Unfortunately I currently do not have the possibility to get more information about the owner or the book. I just got the contact of an elderly couple who are going to give the book to me tomorrow in the city.
Am I overly cautious?
Comment: Anecdotal, but I've met a girl that smuggles LSD on book pages through Ben Gurion to sell in Israel to fund her hippy travels.
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/103034/discussion-on-question-by-c-brincoveanu-i-was-asked-to-transfer-a-book-via-airp).
Comment: Just ask them to mail the book instead
Answer: If you have been asked to bring something that belongs to "a friend of my friend", please make an excuse.

I currently do not have the possibility to get more information about the owner or the book

Never bring anything through customs that is not yours, or has not been packed by you, or has the opportunity to be "altered".
If the friend-of-a-friend's book has great value, it should be shipped by an international delivery service, but not with your name on it.
I don't think this stance is overly cautious today. Back story: I went to a certain country with a (no longer) friend who took a book with him. On arrival, he ripped open his own book, where he had concealed seeds of a Dutch strain of skunk weed in its binding. When I asked, it turned out that he had been to this country before and made contact with some growers.
Comment: @j4hangir it's not distrust, it's just someone is being cheap at best. How much overhead is wasted for 4+ parties (OP, friend, friend of a friend, current holder of book) to transfer a single book? Just mail it. It'll arrive at the door or post office for pickup without needing to schedule a meet-up. So much more convenient.
Comment: @Nelson you're assuming a halfway decent postal system. In the UK or Germany I'd agree. It's not like that everywhere. If I had something I needed to send to Russia I would jump at the chance to have somebody carry it for me. My wife (from Moscow) sends lots of postcards to family and friends when we travel. From major EU cities, those going elsewhere in western Europe or the US normally arrive in a few days. Those going to Moscow often take several weeks, and even three months isn't unheard of. That's when they arrive at all...
Comment: Contraband issue aside, you'd also be putting yourself at risk of accidentally violating some customs rule that you aren't aware of.  I've heard of people trying things like this to try and get around import duties on purchases.  It's too easy to do it the *right* way that it's not worth the risk.
Comment: @j4hangir Given how loosely the term "friend" is used on-line, replace "friend-of-a-friend" with "complete stranger", and ask yourself if you think the OP should be more trusting.
Comment: @Nelson, confirming anecdote: friend was on a train in Russia where two uniformed people were pulling letters out of a mailbag, opening them, laughing about the contents, and throwing them away.  (Which doesn't justify what OP asked about)
Comment: Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been [moved to chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/103017/discussion-on-answer-by-weather-vane-i-was-asked-to-transfer-a-book-via-airplane).
Comment: Better be safe than sorry, sure. But it's also worrisome to spread such distrust.
Comment: Setting aside the issue of illegal drugs, I can't see why one would want to be friends with a person who would willfully destroy a book.
Answer: I am with commenter Aganju here. In some countries this kind of things is completely normal, even among complete strangers. And in plain view of custom officers. I think it depends a lot on the level of mutual trust within a society vs. the availabality of other modes of sending (small) packages quickly.
It is also a situation I have been involved in quite regularly. Both as a sender and also as someone carrying stuff for other people. For some countries, sending e.g. important documents or medication via mail is simply not a good idea. And of course this is also cheaper and quite fast. So I personally do not see how this situation should be suspicious from the outset.
On the other hand there are some reasons to be careful. You apparently do not know India very well (or at least not well enough to know whether this is common or not). Stuff may break or get lost on a flight, and you may not want to take that responsibility. Organizing the pickup may be time-consuming (from my experience, this usually involves phone calls and some waiting). And of course you should also be careful about stuff that you cannot check yourself, e.g. packaged goods. But I personally probably would not be too concerned about a book.
Sure, there is some additional risk involved in carrying stuff for others. But the same is true for sending stuff this way. The carrier might lose things, or he might ask at customs if they think the book is legit. I wonder what could possibly be in a book that makes this higher risk of loss or detection outweigh the risk involved in carrying the book through customs. On the other hand you might also wonder how a book is worth asking a friend of a friend to pick it up and carry it for you. Is it in Romanian and are Romanian-language books hard to find in India?
Basically, if you carry the book, you have a certain risk that you are used for something illegal. If you do not carry it, you risk being considered unhelpful or at least (if you are a foreigner) slightly culturally insensitive. For me personally and for some countries I know (not India), the second risk - as a function of severity and probability - outweighs the first one, but that is a decision that you must make for yourself.
Comment: I keep to the rule 'never bring anything across a border for anybody' as I value my freedom more than the convenience of someone else.
Comment: @Jan DHL will send a medium sized package up to 2kg for 16 Euro from Germany to India and says it will take about 10-14 days. You can pay a few euros extra to get expedited shipping and even insurance. Taking a non-trivial risk (there was already an anecdote by somehow how this can go horribly wrong) to save someone **you don't know** less than 20 bucks is simply naive.
Comment: Let me generalize this: "I never do favor X to Y because it might be a trap". I think this is is quite reasonable for some X and some Y, but not necessarily for transporting used books across a border.
Comment: @Jan, there are plenty of aspects to this situation that make it suspect to say the least. Sure, books can have sentimental value, but if so, you'd expect the owner to take better care of it. They're also usually cheap to replace. And the "friend of a friend" part makes it even less trustworthy. What is the relation between OP and the friend? And between the friend and their friend? And the latter and the "elderly couple"? How do they happen to live in the city the OP visited? If there was more of a backstory, surely OP would've mentioned it? The lack of details is worrisome.
Comment: 1. A package of regular mail from Romania(?) to India? One week? Are you sure? 2. I would draw the line according to how well I know someone. Jewellery has a high likelyhood of being taxed at customs. It is also likely to make people really upset if lost. So I would carry that only for people I know very well. Bit the OP's question is about a book. 3. The book may also be easy to replace where the OP lives and hard to replace in India. I live in Europa and I own a number of books that are easy to replace in certain countries and hard to replace where I live.
Comment: And why would this have to be resolved _now_? If it happened, like, a week ago, a package sent through regular mail would probably already have arrived at the friend-of-a-friend's address. And none of this means that the OP is "unhelpful" or "culturally insensitive". It means they're looking out for suspect situations. Sure, one can be paranoid, but IMHO that does not apply to this weird situation. And if not for a book, would you give the same advice for, say, jewellery? Clothing? A toy? Where would you draw the line, and why?
Comment: @Voo: The anecdote was that someone's friend hid something in a book that the friend himself carried through customs. And exactly nothing happened. But thanks anyway for pointing out that shipping might actually be more convenient and quite cheap in many cases. It seems that India does require some major paperwork for this, though.
Comment: Has everyone who is saying _"it's just a book!"_ actually seen the object? What if the "book" is a large leather-bound Bible and "to protect it" is in a shrink-wrapped package - would you take it then? Have you seen the news?...
Comment: @Oskar Bravo: Depends on how well I know the person, as stated above. Also you should not take antique books, no bibles to Saudi Arabia, no "Mao, the true story" to China etc.
Comment: @Jan You're getting the point that a "book" may not be just a book... When asked what two books he would take to a desert island, Ardal O'Hanlon answered, _"A large, inflatable book and one titled, 'How To Make Oars Out Of Sand'"_.
Comment: last week episode of border patrol Australia showed how they intercepted 2 separate shipments of heroin, each packaged the same way in a thin concealed layer at the bottom of the chess set case. I was impressed by the "quality" of the packaging and concealment and I am pretty sure this same method could be easilly re-used on a book cover (if it hasn't been used many times already ...) ... just saying, the most innocent objects can be used for contraband, and not everyone has an X-ray imaging device available to cross check your "friend of friend"'s word.
Comment: *But I personally probably would not be too concerned about a book* ...and that's exactly why smugglers like to use books.
Comment: 4. If the friend of the friend lives somewhere else, the book can always be be picked up by a friend of the friend of the friend ;)
Comment: It is usually quite easy to verify whether a book is just a book. It is also quite easy to find reasonable excuses  for not packing books above a certain size or weight.
Comment: @Jan So how would you verify that nothing was put in the book binding or a thick cover? Seems the opposite of "quite easy". I can think of several ways to transport contraband in a book.
Answer: Just a different view here.
During floods in Kerala, India, I was in Singapore. There was a high problem of clean water, especially in rural Kerala. So, we friends met and found a high volume manual water filter that is found by a startup in Singapore. Problem is sending via mail or courier. It will take too much time to clear customs and by the time it reaches there, utility would be over.
So, checked and sent via a friend's friend who is going to Kerala and sent via him. Purchased at noon, at night it was in Kerala and from morning, it helped a lot of families access to clean water in time of need.
So, check the reason, check the story and if you feel trustworthy enough to transport, do that after proper verification. If you don't feel comfortable, feel free to reject. A book which is valuable for them and needed soon is ok, in my personal opinion.
Comment: *If you don't feel comfortable, feel free to reject.* - This. The book can be opened and verified. Ask the person not to pack.
Comment: The problem is that the OP _doesn't_ feel comfortable and doesn't really know the "book" provider. He isn't even sure it is really a book - it could be a large, sealed book-shaped package. How do you verify that?
Comment: Yes. It all depends on trust. If you don't trust, you don't do it, however simple the item is.
Comment: When I ask my friend's to bring anything to send anything via them (yes, it happens frequently). I don't seal the package, so that they can verify. I usually take it out and show the item before handing over.
Comment: It may not be something a regular person could verify. What if a micro-storage device were embedded in the cardboard of the cover (assuming a hardback book)? OP probably isn't going to destroy the book cover to make sure it doesn't contain contraband. So unless it's a very obvious decoy, OP may not be able to adequately verify that it's ok by inspection.
Comment: @Anish  "The book can be opened and verified.". Now let's just hope that nobody ever figures out that you can put things into book covers or book bindings.
Answer: This depends on a lot of things but first and formost it should depend on how much trust you are willing to place in the 'friend of a friend' (hereafter FOAF) and in the friend whose friend it is.
If the FOAF is someone I met a couple of times but whom I wouldn't yet call a friend, if the actual friend of mine is someone I share and do a lot with and if the story in general checks out then I would probably agree. However, there are a lot of red flags that could be raised:

if I never met the FOAF that's essentially a no
if the friend themself is someone I am not overly close with, that's a no
(I have friends whose requests I am more likely to deny than others')
if the connection to the elderly couple raises even the slightest doubt, that's essentially a no
(Why was the FOAF with them? Are they related?)
if the explanation for choosing a human courier over the mail don't add up based on what I know about my friend and their friend or if it doesn't match what I know about their typical behaviour, that's a no
if there's even the smallest hole in the FOAF's story of why they were in your country, that's essentially a no

The list goes on and there are more questions that can be asked. Only if you are comfortable with every single answer to all questions that come up you should be willing to agree. The fact that you asked this question strongly implies that you are unsure about at least one aspect and that you should probably (politely) decline. However, I won't deny that I can see examples where I would agree.
Answer: As they say, if you have to ask, the answer is "No".
It's fine to accept parcels from friends (I've done that myself), but only for a definition of "friend" which implies deep unconditional trust.
Imagine you're stuck near that person's house with a body you need to get rid of. You have an explanation for what's happened, but a random stranger will likely assume you just killed the guy for cash and call the police. Would you consider asking that "friend" to give you a hand? If not, there's not enough trust between you to carry items over the border for them either.
Comment: Me, reading each paragraph: 1. _"Okay, good point."_  2. _"Hm, not fine at all, but you're talking about trustworthy friends."_ 3. **"WHOAH NELLIE!"** -- I think you might have drawn a more relevant analogy with the Star Trek episode _The Trouble with Tribbles_, rather than using murder and disposing of evidence to make your point.
Answer: Just say No.
It's not your book, so you shouldn't be taking it unless you're being paid as (and have insurance as) a courier - which would be much more expensive than mailing the book. Also, is that book available in India? If so, it would probably be cheaper to buy a new copy.
You don't know these people. You should not be risking so many unknowns for them.
Answer: Some paper is actually explosive.   A few such pages embedded in a book could be a big problem on a plane.   TSA rules say don't take it, period.
Comment: {{citation needed}}
Comment: if it was the case, which I doubt, all books would be prohibited on flights.
Comment: @Max Nitrate film actually burns pretty badly - you can search for examples on youtube - , but there's lots of just as or more dangerous materials that are trivial to smuggle on board if you wanted to. In any case believing that TSA rules make any logical sense is just as naive. It's just security theater.
Comment: @lambshaanxy "Explosive" is a bit of an exaggeration, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose is often found in sheets of paper form for things like stage magic.
Comment: Are you implying that all books are banned on flights?
Comment: Nitrocellulose also shows up just fine on bomb scanners.
Comment: to the point that photographic film can set off bomb scanners... And yes, I've had that happen.


ASIC Speed measurement

Question: Mining hardware manufacturers use "Hash rate" to define how fast the mining is with their ASICs, but do they mean 1 sha256 cycle speed or Bitcoin hash speed sha256(sha256(header)); ?
Answer: The usual interpretation of "hash rate" is the number of distinct block headers that can be tried per second.  So this should include the time needed to:

increment nonce value
increment extraNonce or other coinbase parameters and recalculate Merkle root, when needed (once in every 2^32 attempts)
compute two rounds of sha256
compare the resulting hash value to the target.

Of course the two rounds of sha256 are the slowest part of this process, by far.
As Raghav Sood says, there's no way to know if any particular vendor is actually following this interpretation, but it's so widely used that I'd regard anything significantly different as fraudulent.
Answer: As per the Bitcoin wiki, Hash rate or hash per second is taken to mean SHA256D(data), which is the double round.
It's unclear if all miners follow the same convention.
Comment: I agree, it's unclear whether manufacturers follow the rule. Honest would be if they state the normal sha256 round and let's say "the Bitcoin" hashing round, because the latter is much more resource consuming as it seems.

ASIC Speed measurement


Outlook 2010 - Only receive NEW emails

Question: Is there a way to only receive new emails. That is, emails received by the mail server past a certain point? I'm terribly unorganized with my emails and I have a huge repository of emails that I don't need to be on outlook.
Answer: Unfortunately if the server was pop and the option of "leave message on server" you will have to re download all the emails.Easiest way to sort is to download all the messages and sort using date. Then anything older than "1 year" (for example) you can just select all in that range and delete
Answer: You can at least get it to only download the headers, then delete the old messages (and make sure your settings are such that this will actually delete the copy on the server), then switch to download everything and you should be good to go forward

Outlook 2010 - Only receive NEW emails