Why won't my shower's temperature handle let the water get hot enough?

Question: Whenever I go to take a shower, I have to turn the handle to the absolute hottest setting just to avoid freezing. I know the hot water works in my house, so that's not the issue. It just seems like I should be able to make the water hotter if I could just turn the handle more. Is there a way to accomplish this easily?
Comment: It is possibly that lime scale is gumming up the valve and preventing the thermostatic part allowing hot water through.
You should not alter the temperature control to make it hotter,these are preset in the factory,if you alter it upwards,and if the valve suddenly starts to work properly,you will likely get badly scalded.
Comment: What type of climate do you live in?  are the pipes run on an exterior wall, or through the air conditioning vent?
Answer: Many faucets have an adjustable range.  In the last one I installed there was plastic ring with v-grooves around the outside of it: to adjust the range you positioned two stops that hooked into the v-grooves.
Recommend the TIA* approach to see what you can see - it may be very straightforward.  Just don't drop the screws down the drain!
*Take It Apart
Comment: Or if you don't turn off the water first, have the courtesy to keep a video camera running.
Comment: Also, turn off the water to the shower before taking the faucet apart.
Comment: It worked! Hooray for warm showers.
Answer: In our new house, the shower controls in the kids bathrooms are adjustable so you can set the temperature to prevent scalding. Even if the kids push the control all the way to HOT, the water will only be comfortably warm.
I'm not sure about all controls, but on ours you pop the face off the control. Inside there are 2 (I think) geared rings that you can position to set the maximum temperature.
Comment: This is by code, and its purpose is so that when the kids sleep over at a friends house with an older shower valve that does not have the limiter they get REALLY scalded.
Comment: I'm not sure, but I suspect it doesn't apply to sinks because the risk of major injury is significantly less. You might burn your hands, but you can quickly get them out of the water. In the tub or shower, your entire body is exposed and it is more difficult to get out, especially for small children.
Comment: Seems pointless when sinks are not also protected the same way.. unless the assumption there is that people don't wash hands but do shower. Perhaps my house is the outlier with limited showers and unlimited sinks.
Answer: Doityourself has a good article called "How to Repair a Shower Faucet: Water Doesn't Get Hot" that covers how to troubleshoot and repair a cartridge-type shower faucet, which I suspect is your problem.
Answer: How old is your hot water heater? I ask because I ran into the same issue. I'd turn my shower on full hot, no cold water at all and I'd still only get warm - semi-hot water when realistically I should have been scalded. Turns out my hot water heater was set too low (was set on the "A" setting out of "A, B and C" with "C" being the hottest). I set it to "C" and that solved the issue for a while. It started doing it again, I called around and found out that as a hot water heater gets older it loses it's heating capability. My water heater was about 12 years old and wasn't heating efficiently. Got a new water heater and now I get steaming hot water again.
Comment: It's definitely not the hot water heater. I get plenty of hot water from every other faucet. I think it has something to do with the shower handle. Thanks for the info though.
Comment: Is your water heater electric, natural gas, or oil?
Comment: @Vebjorn, oil. I also had it looked at when I moved in and it's in perfect condition.


Rationale for not dividing both sides of an equation by $x$ (ex: $6x^2 = 12x$)

Question: this came up in class yesterday and I feel like my explanation could have been more clear/rigorous.  The students were given the task of finding the zeros of the following equation $$6x^2 = 12x$$ and one of the students did $$\frac{6x^2}{6x}=\frac{12x}{6x}$$ $$x = 2$$ which is a valid solution but this method eliminates the other solution of $$ x = 0$$  When the student brought it up, I explained to the student that if $x = 0, 2$ and we divide by $6x$ there is a possibility that we would be dividing by 0 which is undefined.  The student, very reasonably, responded "Well, obviously I didn't know that zero was an answer when I was doing the problem".  The student understands why we can't divide by 0 but is still struggling with how that connects to dividing by $x$.  I went on to explain that by dividing by $x$ you are "dropping a solution" because the problem, which was quadratic, is now linear.  Again, this didn't seem to click with the student.  Does anyone have maybe an axiom/law/theorem that I can show the student to give a rigorous reason as to why you can't just divide by $x$?
Comment: @Richard - actually I think it is a mistake to push them toward that method as a way of avoiding this error. It makes them inflexible. You want to graduate algebra students who can handle (say) the equation $x-2=2(x-2)$ *either* by getting everything to one side *or* by reasoning that since division by $x-2$ leads to the absurdity that $1=2$, it *must* have been that $x-2=0$. (Or in any other logically sound way.) Students who habitually push everything to one side before thinking about the specifics are at a disadvantage in many situations where another move is more expedient.
Comment: @Richard - This probably isn't a matter that we can resolve in this format, since it gets into much bigger questions, but I would like to register my continued disagreement. I used to teach students of that level (9th grade in the US) and at the time I did it similarly - i.e. encouraged them to take particular approaches that *I* knew avoided certain difficulties - but now I think that was a mistake. I've come to believe that teaching students a rigid version of algebra that prescribes particular solution methods is fundamentally misleading them about the nature of algebra.
Comment: @MarkFantini - a propos of what I said to Richard, I disagree that factoring is the best solution. It's certainly a fine solution, but the solution suggested by Aeryk below is just as logically sound and for many people more natural. Factoring is great, but it rubs me wrong to push students toward it as a way to avoid making them have to think about the subtlety that the OP brings up (and that Aeryk and Henry Towsner beautifully address).
Comment: While I agree with Mark Fantini and Richard that the factoring method is preferable to the divide into two cases method, I strongly agree with benblumsmith that students should learn to become *robust* in their approach to mathematics.  Ideally, students should learn *both* methods and understand why they are consistent with each other.  That can help to reinforce the underlying algebraic principles involved.
Comment: I have the same issue when helping student with trig manipulations. When we divide by Sin(x), do we have to note that zero degrees is not allowed, and recheck along the way? The question is great, and it opens the door to many other similar situations.
Comment: +1 for the question btw. This is just the sort of conversation I feel this site is for!
Comment: @benblumsmith I didn't say it should be done to push students towards it to avoid breaking down in cases. In my experience most people miss cases, so I favor factoring as a first approach.
Comment: This is a hard one. Last week a student divided both sides on an equation by (x-2) to prove that 1=2. Much excitement! I am trying to drill them to always put all of a polynomial on one side of an equation and then factorise.
Comment: @benblumsmith It is a matter of ages and stages. My students are currently trying to pass Yr 10 equivalent. I need to teach them to find integer solutions to polynomials, preferably a reliable way that does not increase cognitive load and introduce new concepts. Hence: expand everything and get rid of fractions; put everything on one side in standard form; factorise and solve. I think of Algebra as a purely mechanical task which should be simple so we can focus on the things that are more important: problem formulation, interpretation etc. They can understand subtleties next year!
Comment: @benblumsmith: Exactly the point in my answer. Besides, if factorization is the only approach allowed, to solve $2x = 6$ we need to do $2x-6 = 0$ and then $2(x-3) = 0$ and then get either $2 = 0$ or $x-3 = 0$. Perfectly correct but just silly.
Answer: Just before dividing, you can reason "Either $x=0$ or I can divide by $x$." This creates two separate cases to be analyzed.
This works for dividing by anything. You want to divide by $\sin(x)$? You need to make two cases: $\sin(x) \neq 0$ and $\sin(x)=0$. And then analyze each independently.
Answer: I think your student pointed out the key issue: "Well, obviously I didn't know that zero was an answer when I was doing the problem".  That's exactly right: at the time the student was dividing, they didn't know whether or not x is 0, which means they didn't know whether or not it made sense to divide by x.
If you know you can't divide by 0, you know not to divide by things which might be 0, because you don't know whether or not it's vaild.
Answer: Most experienced mathematicians will immediately identify $x = 0$ as a solution to this equation, and then do the same division (factoring) as your student in order to obtain the other solution at $x=2$. The only difference is that the experienced mathematician has already done due diligence with respect to the possibility of erasing a root/dividing by zero.
I am all for dividing both sides by $6x$ here, with the caveat that when dividing by an unknown quantity you are responsible for first checking whether that unknown quantity is (or might be) zero. Your student is most of the way there - all that's left is to push the conclusion C from information A and B which they already seem to have.
A) I don't know what $x$ is (or $6x$, as is the case here)
B) I'm 'not allowed' to divide by zero

C) I don't know whether or not I'm allowed to divide by $x$ (because it might be zero)
There are useful things to think about in this neighborhood as well. A similar situation where the variable-including-divisor being equal to zero represents the only solution, then we end up producing an absurdity. Eg,
$$6x = 4x$$
$$\frac{6x}{x} = \frac{4x}{x}$$
$$6 = 4$$
If we trust our teacher, or the textbook, to have provided us with a logically sound equation in the first place, then the absurdity reached here tells us that we've broken some rules in our working with it. Since the only thing we did was to divide by $x$, we can guess that dividing by $x$ introduced the absurdity. Since we know that dividing both sides of an equation by a quantity is fair game for any value other zero, we now know that $x=0$, etc...
Comment: I strongly agree that it is entirely good to cultivate the intuition of dividing/cancelling... but/and to learn that there can be "gotchas" at the end, requiring some mop-up. But to see that possibility of simplification is very good, and should not be discouraged at all! :)
Answer: I think it is important to emphasize Mark Fantini's remark:  factoring is different from dividing, and factoring is the way to get a complete solution.  I would also suggest that the
problem be rearranged and then factored to give 6x(x-2)=0, or even 2*3*x*(x-2)=0.  Then
one can see that one of 2 , 3, x, or x-2 must be zero.
When one is comfortable with using the factoring method, then one can consider "shortcuts" by jumping from the given equation to saying "Suppose 6x is not 0: then divide..."
Gerhard "Shortcuts Can Cut One Short" Paseman, 2015.01.16
Comment: You could also contrast dividing by x and dividing by 6.  That might help in showing that x^2 = 2x has more than just the solution x=2.  Gerhard "Bigger Steps For Bigger Feet"  Paseman, 2015.01.16
Answer: Firstly, division must obey rules regardless of what you are dividing. If the division is performed over real numbers, then you have to respect the rules for division of real numbers, that is no division by $0$. In other structures $0$ is not the only thing that you cannot "divide".
Secondly, when $x$ is a variable it should be made crystal clear what it refers to. If it can refer to any arbitrary object, then division by $x$ is meaningless. If it can refer to a real number, whether known or unknown, whether zero or not, then division by $x$ must again obey real number rules.
Thirdly, the rules must not be given empty and without meaning. For real numbers, multiplication corresponds to scaling or stretching something, and division is to undo that. If you multiply by zero, you are scaling something until it is gone; zero size. You can never recover the original size, so division by zero is not allowed.
Fourthly, and only after the first three points are made absolutely clear, then you can give some examples to show that indeed division by zero can lead to nonsense.

Fail to solve $x = 2x$ by dividing by $x$!
Fail to solve $x^2 = 0$ by dividing by $x$, twice!
Comment: very succinct explanation!
Answer: Frankly, I think your reasoning is the best.  You initially have a quadratic, thus you should expect to find two solutions (although you may not).  By dividing by $x$, you get only a single solution: so what is the other?  You clearly cannot find it by dividing by $x$, but you can find it by either factoring or using the quadratic equation (which should be discouraged in this case).
Really this is about pattern recognition.  The student should recognize when they have:
$$
ax^2 + bx = 0
$$
That they should factor out $x$ to get: $x(ax + b) = 0$ and then set each factor to zero to solve: $x = 0$ and $ax + b = 0 \rightarrow x = -\frac{b}{a}$.  The second part is recognizing that when you have something like $ax^2 + bx + c = dx^2 + ex + f$ that they should solve by setting the equation to zero, collecting like terms, and then attempting to factor (using the quadratic equation as a last resort).
If they can understand factoring and that this is the correct approach to solving such equations then they should have less trouble generalizing to higher degree polynomials (i.e. ones that don't have a nice formula like the quadratic formula).
The rationale for this is 1) the fact that polynomial equations, in general, have multiple solutions (so you should either find them or justify why there are fewer) and 2) we really only "know" how to solve linear equations so we must somehow convert our problem into a set of linear equations to be solved and the best way to do that is to attempt to factor (but explain that this is not always possible/"easy").
Granted, dividing by $x$ is one way to get a linear equation, but since we see that it's quadratic we should find two linear equations...
...which could be redundant like:
$$
x^2 = 2x - 1 \\
x^2 - 2x + 1 = 0 \\
(x - 1)^2 = 0 \\
(x - 1)(x - 1) = 0 \\
x - 1 = 0 \\
x - 1 = 0
$$
We got our two linear equations, but they were identical/gave the same solution.
Answer: This is more of a long comment than an answer.
Some of the other answers here are advocating for factoring rather than case analysis.  I just want to point out that proving the theorem that for any two real numbers $ab = 0$ if and only if $a=0$ or $b=0$ requires the same sort of reasoning as @Aeryk advocates in the accepted answer:
In one direction, if we assume that $ab=0$, then we consider two cases:  if $a=0$, we are done.  If $a \neq 0$, then we can divide both sides by $a$ to conclude that $b=0$.
In the other direction, assuming either $a=0$ or $b=0$ quickly leads to $ab=0$ by multiplying both sides by the appropriate factor.
All of this is just to say that we cannot truly avoid case analysis through factoring:  we can only postpone it.
Comment: @AmyB I agree!  I think it is okay to internalize and use theorems, and using this theorem is something I do myself.  I do not re-derive it every time.  However, if someone is struggling with the concepts (like the student in the OP) then I think it makes sense to go back to basics.  Aeyrk's post does this, while the ones calling for factoring "appeal to authority" in some sense.  There are certainly students who do not understand the reasoning, and will make mistakes like thinking $(x-1)(x-2) = 4$ implies $x-1=4$ or $x-2=4$.
Comment: This is an interesting point.  However student who factor have had the case analysis done by someone else.  All they think about is - when I factor,  I am supposed to try to see what happens when each equals 0. They  become removed from the case analysis.
Comment: I appreciate explanations for downvotes.
Comment: Exactly. The reasoning in the accepted answer (creating a separate case for $x=0$) is intuitive, efficient (why push all the terms to LHS to factorise out the $x$, when one can simply divide it out while obtaining one of the solutions?), and, most importantly, consistent with the general idea to be alert for inadvertant division by $0.$$$$$For the less mathematically-sophisticated students, however, I advocate factoring because I fear them auto-piloting the division by $x$ and, in the process, either losing a solution or breaking the equation (when $0$ is the only solution).
Answer: It comes up frequently in solving trigonometric equations such as:
$2\sin x\cos x=\sin x$
Students often divide by $\sin x$. I find myself using this line a lot:
"If you're ever tempted to divide both sides by a variable expression, then what you probably need to do is use addition or subtraction to get everything on one side equal to $0$ on the other side."
Sometimes I explain why, and sometimes I don't.  If I'm teaching a class, I will certainly explain why.  If I'm tutoring a student who I see for just one hour a week, it depends on whether I feel we have time to go into it.
When I do explain why, I say, like the OP says, that you can't divide by a variable expression because it might be zero, and we can't divide by zero.  If a student were to say, as in the OP's experience, "well obviously I didn't know that zero was an answer when I was doing the problem," I might point out that this is a little like saying, "well obviously I didn't know the gun was loaded when I fired it."  Any risk of disaster is reason enough for caution.


How is this type of grain/noise effect made?

Question: I've spent the morning playing with noise in both illustrator and photoshop, blending layers and testing various grain textures - trying to get close to this type of superbly fine but crisp noise but it ain't working - the black noise in many places (see the teeth and lips) boggles me. Is anyone here that knows how this was done?

https://i.stack.imgur.com/8tXwZ.jpg
Comment: have you tried regular monochromatic noise layered over regular photo?
Comment: There's no way to tell how it was done or even what application was used. The EXIF data has been removed, so I can't even tell which, if any, image editor was used. It could potentially be real film grain.  You can add a film grain effect in Photoshop using the Camera RAW filter.  Have you tried that?
Answer: It looks like either real film grain, or simulated film grain. There's no way to tell how it was done, since there's no EXIF data present to tell even which application was used.
One of the easiest ways to add film grain in Photoshop is to use the Camera RAW filter.
Open an image in Photoshop, right click the image layer, and convert to a Smart Object.
Click Filter > Camera RAW filter. Then when the filter dialog opens, click on the "Fx" tab, and add some grain.
The good thing about this functionality is that it's non-destructive. You can edit the filter and change the amount of grain without destroying the original image.
Answer: Actually, this looks more like Photoshop added noise than film grain. The texture is too sharp for film, where the grain is usually smoother. To replicate this in Photoshop, go to 'Filter → Noise → Add noise' and make sure 'Monochromatic' is ticked.
Answer: To copy the effect I made a snippet of the image. It has at left a slice of the original and the rest has been cleaned with noise reduction, actually median filtering a few times.

The cleaned version has an adjustment layer (with. full white layer mask) It's adjusted to darken the image as much as the grains do, but affecting to the colorfulness quite little (=straight line, nearly 45 degrees) It can be readjusted later if needed.
Then, the layer mask of the adjustment layer got grain:

The result after tweaking the curve a little and lifting a little the contrast of the cleaned image to compensate the darkness caused by the original grain (see, the histogram is a little stretched to the right):

Unfortunately the details of the cleaned image cannot be restored to same glossines than the original, noise reduction removed details, only compensating the darkness of the original grain was possible.
Comment: Ohhh in the name of zeus would you be willing to share that psd file ?
Comment: @SunnevaJoh It has nothing that's not shown. It's here https://www.dropbox.com/s/pq2gazmi3h2590d/Grainjoy.psd?dl=0 The link stays valid 2 days
Comment: I know but I'm an anal idiot and need things in front of me to study them - thank you for taking the time to do this and for being so detailed!!!


cleartext passphrase for keystore

Question: How is passphrase for a keystore to be stored?  we have all passwords encrypted and the key to encrypt is stored in keystore , so how is the passphrase for the keystore to be stored? in clear text? if encrypted then where should we store the key to encrypt? ie seems recursive issue, how to solve without using Hardware security product HCM or whatever acroynm is for that kind of stuff. what is best practise in terms of storing the keys for encryption?
Answer: Best practice is not to encrypt the passwords at all, but to hash them instead, for precisely this reason: if you encrypt, then you need to have the key available to the server.
If your system is such that it absolutely MUST store the actual passwords - for example, your server connects to some other service impersonating the user - then there are a few things you can do, like using an HCM, or storing the key on a different server in the hope that it doesn't get stolen along with the main one, or using something like OAuth so that the credentials you store are only usable by the server and hence of less use to an attacker.
But these are only partial mitigations. If you store passwords on the server then the server knows them and if someone compromises the server they can learn them too.
Comment: but what about passwords for database connections etc... if you one way encrypt ie hash, how do you compare the two to allow access for the connection. is there no way to store encyrpt / dycrpyt passwords easily . from what i understand you would have the password somewhere offline - (poss deployment team) use its md5 hash in properties file compare that to a equally computed md5 from database and allow connection etc??? and never have the actual password in code or server - is this correct understanding?
Comment: how do i hash the password for a keystore? and how do i then use the hash to retrieve something from keystore?
Answer: The best way of doing this, in my understanding, is to hash the passwords and not encrypt them.
Yes hashing is a one way method, but you don't need to retrieve the passwords anyway, so being one way is pretty much what you want.
Imagine that a user sends you his username and his password in order to authenticate. In this scenario you just need to hash the incoming password and compare it with the one you have stored, also hashed, associated with that username. If you have a match you can authenticate the user.
Answer: They should be stored in plaintext, or base64 encoded. You can refer to how Tomcat is configured
<code><!-- Define a SSL Coyote HTTP/1.1 Connector on port 8443 -->
<Connector
           protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol"
           port="8443" maxThreads="200"
           scheme="https" secure="true" SSLEnabled="true"
           keystoreFile="${user.home}/.keystore" keystorePass="changeit"
           clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS"/>
</code>
If your encrypted text is in the database, then this method can only protect you if the attacker get hold of the database but do not have access to the filesystem to discover the passphrase. If the attacker are able to get access to the filesystem, then you will be out of luck here.
The only other method is to get the user to key it in everytime the application runs, which is cumbersome and not very common.

cleartext passphrase for keystore


Cheap antenna for new HF HAM

Question: I just got a 100W HF radio and I am new at this. What is the cheapest antenna I can hook up without burning up my radio or shocking myself?
Comment: That's a pretty broad question, but my go-to is an inverted-V dipole cut to whatever band it is you're interested in.  My second choice is a random wire thrown into the top of a tree, but that requires a tuner, which (usually) isn't free.
Comment: It makes quite a difference what band you're going for. With 70cm/2m size isn't much of a problem, but bands 20m and higher you shouldn't forget your space-budget. What bands does your license allow for?
Answer: The cheapest antenna you can set up is a speaker wire dipole.  A spool of speaker wire long enough to split the conductors and make a center fed half wave dipole ought to cost around ten dollars US (or less).  You can get useful radiation with supports made from cheap stud lumber from the home improvement store (8-10 dollars per support to get 5 meters off ground -- low for an HF dipole, but it will work).  Insulators can be made from bungee cord or zip ties (since the poles aren't conductive).
The only thing you have to spend real money on is a suitable length of 50 ohm coaxial cable and an adapter to connect the antenna wires.  You most likely don't even need a balun with a center fed dipole.
This close to the ground, you won't get the very low takeoff angle for DX, but you'll get plenty of ground wave contacts -- when 40 and 80 m are behaving a little (gray line or at night) you should be able to cover a few hundred miles, anyway.
Comment: This is exactly what I did to get on 40 meters around 1971.  Held it up above my house with 3 2x2s probably 16' long (my dad helped me there).  Heard lots of stuff, but my crap Hallicrafters SX-100 drifted so badly that by the time I answered a CQ (at my terrible 5WPM) the receiver was nowhere near the right frequency for me to hear the response ...
Comment: Adapter to connect the coax to the antenna?  Cheap?  Try wire nuts.
Comment: @user10489 Coax (239/259 to two wire) adapters are about $2 from Amazon, ship free with Prime.
Answer: Hello and welcome to the hobby!
Generally speaking, it depends on your conditions and area available. Assuming it's not a problem (e.g. you live in a suburb area and have a backyard or are willing to travel to the nearest forest) the simplest, cheapest and quite efficient antenna you can build is a dipole / inverted-V. There are a few ways to build one. I believe there is little sense to describe them here because there is a lot of information on this topic online and in the literature as well. I would like only to leave a few hints here:

A 10-meters long fishing rod is a good and cheap mast for a 7Mhz or 14Mhz dipole. Use three ropes and screwdrivers to make guys.
A 1:1 balun made of 8 turns of RG58 coax on FT240-31 or FT240-43 ferrite core will improve the performance of the antenna.
You can build a multiband antenna, so called fan dipole, if you connect multiple arms for each band
"ARRL Handbook" and "ARRL Antenna Handbook" are great source of information on antennas.
Answer: Wire antenna are usually the easiest for beginners. The standard is a dipole with 1/4 wavelengths on each side connected in the center to your coax. Another easy antenna is a end fed half wave. It requires a bit more equipment as you need a transformer to match the high impedance.
You can buy or make your antennas. Home brew antennas are a popular way to get started in making equipment instead of buying. While there are many web resources with information on making EFHW antenna, here is good presentation that is relatively recent, http://gnarc.org/wp-content/uploads/The-End-Fed-Half-Wave-Antenna.pdf
I made a 40 meter end fed half wave antenna with a 49:1 transformer with 2 type 43 cores. I have made over 2500 contacts using it, primarily digital modes like FT8 and FT4, using mostly 40 meter, a few 30 meter, some 20 meter,a couple of 17 meter and 15 meter.

Cheap antenna for new HF HAM


InDesign: any specific rules for margins in print

Question: In InDesign when I set up a DIN A4 document, margins are usually set at 12,7mm. I was wondering if this is for a reason and if there are any rules / best practices for margins as to whether one should use a certain width / height or if this is completely up to me, since I would rather like to work with 10mm as it better aligns with my document grid.
Comment: As far as I understand it (worked at a printers as a student) these settings (margins, gutters, bleed, choke etc) are to provide adequate (read, protected) text display areas on finished printed sheets. When cutting down a multipage booklet 3/4mm could be lost from the middle pages laying proud after folding. The guillotine creates a uniform edge.  Ditto the central gutter between facing pages which would hide text in the bind. Bleed allows colour to go the other way beyond the page so you don't get a nasty white border. If in doubt ask your printer
Answer: No rules, this is up to the designer. The 12.7mm is a default (not sure why really), however I have designed many printed items and always set custom margins. Many times I also used 10mm since I like to work with simple numbers. For a larger page count and if using "facing pages" you could consider a larger inner (inside) margin, for example make all sides 10mm except the inner margin which could be 15-20mm.
Comment: 12.7mm is also equal to about 36pts which is 3 lines of body text according to Indesign's default baseline grid. Perhaps this is where the convention comes from?
Comment: 12.7 mm is just half inch.
Comment: Probably, i never reallly bothered to research the 12.7 since i always change it.
Comment: @crazyqwert, Rafael is correct and that just points out how random it is. 12.7 mm is equivalent to 0.5 inch, and since InDesign was developed in the US, where we use inches, that became the standard default for the program. Ignore it completely and create a design template that works for you.


A person wants to deposit 2.1 million into my account

Question: A man wants me to transfer 2.1 million into my account and then have me purchase properties with the money. Am I being scammed? He has given his banking info, Password, and routing information.
Comment: He has given you *somebody's* banking info, password, and routing information.
Comment: I doubt even that.... I assume he made a website that looks like a banking website and gave out an account number and password :p
Comment: The easiest way to detect a scam: Ask what is in it for them and why they need you. In this case are you a bank or a realtor who normally does this type of transaction? if not why in the world would they trust you with so much money when there are lots of more traditional ways to buy real estate. A: He is scamming you, or using you as an accomplice in a crime so you can take the heat.
Comment: Once again, this response fits: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/71013/17718
Answer: Yes, this is scam. Absolutely and 100%.
The details of the scam may vary, but are largely irrelevant as far as the correct course of action goes - which is to cut all communications with this person, and stay away.
As a side note, no one ever needs to know your banking password, and you'd never need to know theirs.


I don't have access to my amp right now, and I want to play so that I can hear myself through my heaphones from my laptop

Question: I'm not trying to record and I don't care if the sound isn't studio grade I just want to hear the effect my pedal applies to the guitar through my pc. I don't have an audio interface and I don't want to get one, how can I go about this?
Comment: If you have no interest in recording then why use the PC at all? For low cost you can get a micro amp with a headphone jack or a headphone amp.
Comment: Laptops tend to have single TRRS headset sockets. That will be your first hurdle. Socket adaptor & special cables required, probably need to be hand-made. Second will be impedance-matching. Third will be latency. Honestly, I'd wait until I could get hold of my amp.
Comment: @JohnBelzaguy Would prefer not to spend money if possible.
Comment: @Tetsujin Thank you, I looked up the socket compatability and I see now why people recommend the audio interface. Thank you!
Answer: Audio interface or not, you will need a program that lets you hear your "microphone" in real time (whether that is an actual microphone or a guitar is irrelevant, from the software side of things.)  There are free and paid solutions for this, such as Garageband, Logic, FL Studio, and Reason.  Without an audio interface, there are a couple of extra problems you may run in to.
Firstly, many laptops have a TRRS combination "headset" jack, which handles both the microphone (or guitar) input and headphone output, rather than a separate headphone and microphone jack.  To overcome this, you will either need a cable to plug your guitar into a USB input, or an adaptor that separates the microphone input from the headphones output.
If you choose to plug your guitar into your laptop's microphone input, you will have an impedance mismatch- guitars generally should be used with high impedance inputs, and your laptop will not have such an input.  This means your signal will be quiet, and you will have very little treble.
Then your next issue will be latency- the time it takes between hitting a note and hearing it in your headphones.  This depends on your laptop's sound card and available drivers.  I measured my laptop's round trip latency at about 25ms, which is over double what you might hope for.  An audio interface designed for low latency applications will do much better in this regard.
So while you can go without an audio interface, as I have done for a while, it takes effort to get this system working, and you will have less-than-desirable performance.
Answer: You'll need a USB guitar cable and an amp simulator program (there are several free ones).
Comment: USB guitar cable is an audio interface...
Comment: That's true, a 1 in by 0 out interface.  You got me there.  But what kind of answer was the original poster expecting?  They want to interface their guitar with a PC without buying an interface.  /shrug
Comment: You're absolutely right, just pointing out
Answer: Your gonna have to cough up the money for an audio interface, unless you have a device with a 1/8" or 1/4" jack that you can reduce down to your microphone input on your PC.  I've ran signals through my microphone input on my PC, it wont be stereo, but you can play through your PC's speaker(mono).  I've hooked it up like that before, but nothing beats a good USB audio interface, you get everything in digital, and there's tons of software made to interact with it.


Does Mastercard or American Express have more worldwide acceptance?

Question: I've always used Visa but after seeing some useful travel cards from Mastercard & American Express; I was wondering whether they would be useful at all if they aren't accepted widely. Out of the two which one has a wider acceptance especially in Europe.
Comment: Commenting rather than answering because I don't have the stats to hand but: Mastercard is pretty widley accepted across europe (along with it's debit equivilant, Maestro). So is Visa. AmEx has much lower acceptance (partly beacause they charge a bigger fee).
The other thing to note is "chip and pin" cards will be better received than "swipe and sign" in most of europe.
Comment: @verve Depends who issued your card. There is nothing about it being an American Express card that prevents chip+pin or contactless, it's just about what the issuer wants/offers. My Amex card issuers are both happy to give me chip+pin+contactless cards, as and when the card expires and they post out a new one
Comment: @AE I'd say it depends on the kind of merchant in the UK. Chain hotels, supermarkets, trains, petrol, big shops, high end restaurants, chain restaurants, tourist shops are all fine. Beyond that it's hit and miss - 2 corner shops near me take Amex, but most "mid-week with friends" normal restaurants don't
Comment: While British Rail no longer exists, I think the classic Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch still has some relevance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF-U9nL9Ios
Comment: Here in the UK, Amex acceptance is relatively rare, whereas VISA/Mastercard are accepted everywhere. (I have an Amex card which gives good cashback but I hardly ever get to use it, usually have to use a different credit card instead).
Comment: @Shane Does your Amex have the cash advance facility enabled? You often have to ask for it, and the credit limit for that may well be lower than the overall one. There's normally a noticeable fee too, but not much worse than withdrawing cash off any other credit card...
Comment: @armb British Rail (or the successor companies) do accept Amex! But I have had that exact reaction before from the staff on South West Trains [mostly former BR staff], who did not think they did.
Comment: @CMaster Amex cards don't have chip or paywave it appears...old school!
Comment: @verve Amex cards with a chip are available by request. Most cards are Chip-and-Sign, but I believe they do have a few pin options as well. (This is also true of many Visa and MC offerings - especially those aimed at travelers.)
Comment: Chip AND Sign? Isn't the point of the chip is that you need to input a PIN which is the security feature? But you have to sign as well?  Wow, Visa really is more convenient.   :-)
Comment: @verve In fairness, US cards, even Visa or Mastercard-branded, are often chip-and-sign (which is indeed annoying and the subject of endless discussions).
Comment: @verve I hold several different American Express cards with chips, pins and contactless! If yours don't, you need to talk to your card issuer, there's nothing stopping an Amex from having chip+pin nor contactless, as my wallet can prove :)
Comment: @Gagravarr So Amex will make a chip only card contactless just because you phone them?  Even if they didn't manufacture them like that?
Comment: Here in Hong Kong, AMEX is not very popular, can only be used in fine dining, hotels & tourist areas. Visa, MasterCard and UnionPay share are equally popular.
Comment: Another aspect of "Acceptance" is the ability to make cash withdrawals at ATMs. I can do this with my generic MC anywhere, but I have never been able to do so with my AMEX, even in an AMEX office.
Comment: @Shane If your Amex is a "charge card" it will not have cash advances ever.
Comment: In Western Europe, Visa and Mastercard are practically the same — establishments generally accept Visa/Mastercard as if it were a single brand. I used to have an Amex too, and the amount of places that actually accepted it was ridiculously low, so much that I returned it. Even places with an AMEX badge on their door will often come up with excuses to make you pay with your Visa (or cash).
Comment: I think it also depends by city as well as by country. In London, Amex is accepted about 60-70% of places I visited. In Geneva, nearly every establishment accepted Amex.
Answer: Mastercard, hands down. If you want a card to make payments abroad, your choice is between Mastercard and Visa, especially in Europe. Other cards are much less commonly accepted (and in fact quite rare there).
American Express cards can be good for their perks: cash back, insurance, miles, rewards, whatever but not for convenience when travelling… You could perhaps get an Amex to complement your Visa but certainly not switch and rely solely on it.
Importantly, unlike acceptance, perks also depend on the bank/institution and the type of card, rather than only on the network so there are several level of American Express and also some Visa or Mastercards with useful perks like travel assurance. If that's what you are after, you need to read the fine print and compare specific cards very carefully.
Comment: @LessPop_MoreFizz It would not make sense to say that something depends on the network if I was speaking about a single network but I added a new paragraph to avoid the confusion. In any case, in light of the example I just gave, it does not make any difference to the accuracy of the statement. Also, writing that "perks *also* depend […] rather than *only* on the network" does imply that the network does matter. So, again, what exactly is inaccurate in my answer?
Comment: AmEx issues it's own cards, and offers *substantial* insurance protections across the board. It's a big part of why they can be so valuable to have.
Comment: @LessPop_MoreFizz Maybe but like I just explained, that's not the point of either the question or my answer.
Comment: And that means that making an explicitly inaccurate statement no longer matters?
Comment: @LessPop_MoreFizz Which statement is inaccurate? The last sentence is obviously about credit cards in general and is still true of Amex (say [this offering](https://www.americanexpress.com/france/carte_air_france_silver/gagnez_miles_flying_blue.shtml) which comes in three flavours with different perks)…
Comment: It's not *at all* obvious that that sentence is about anything other than American Express. Especially given the curious choice to end the immediately preceding sentence with an ellipsis rather than a period.
Answer: The answer is almost certainly MasterCard, but this is a poor basis on which to decide between the two.
You're right to intuit that American Express is accepted less often than Visa or MC. This is largely because AmEx charges a higher fee to merchants for transactions, and because the cards themselves are generally less common. AmEx is also only accepted in 140 countries, compared to the 200+ in which Visa and MasterCard operate. That said, I'd still call it 'widely accepted', and AmEx cards often offer a host of benefits that other cards often won't match, particularly in the realm of purchase protection and travel insurance.
Mastercard and Visa are accepted at just about equal rates around the world. In general, if you can use one, the other will work. The thing about both, is that neither is issued by a bank, and so, the benefits of a particular Visa or MasterCard option will vary wildly. Thus, it's a bit silly to limit the conversation to comparisons of the individual networks when talking about a Visa or MC, because a Chase Visa Sapphire card is so wildly different from, say, a Chase Student Rewards card. From interest rates to purchase protection to rewards, literally almost everything about any two Visa or MasterCard issued cards can be different.
In general, the only notable network-wide differences between Visa and Mastercard are as follows: Visa offers you substantially better protections than MC when used to pay for a rental car. MasterCard offers you price protection and guarantees your ability to return merchandise within 60 days. Individual Visa or MasterCard offerings through a specific bank may offer benefits and services that exceed either of these baselines, and, for example, may make an individual MC offering a better choice for use on a rental car, even though the MasterCard network as a whole is not.
TL;DR: If you're concerned about acceptance, it's important that you probably have at least one Visa or MasterCard, which it sounds like you already do. For any further cards beyond that, look at the specific perks and protections and benefits of an individual card, and don't worry too much about acceptance rate. And remember, it's always good to carry some cash. It has an acceptance rate closer to 100% than any alternatives.
Comment: I don't understand the lengthy lecture about non-travel related issues. There are some valid points in there but which cards are more widely accepted is a valid question, no reason to chide the OP for choosing on this basis, especially on this site (incidentally, that's actually the main purpose of these cards for many people in Europe, where credit and rewards are often less important).
Comment: Do you have any reference to the network-wide Visa rental car thing? Only it's not something I've ever heard about before as a visa card holder
Comment: @Relaxed funny, I find differing levels of insurance coverage to be just as much of a travel issue, if not more of one, than acceptance statistics.
Comment: @LessPop_MoreFizz Yes, there are some useful info buried in there and even an answer of sorts to the actual question but why be so dismissive about it and insist on talking about something else? You're kind of blaming the OP for comparing cards based on the network because perks vary widely but that's a problem entirely of your own making, he wasn't asking about perks…
Comment: @LessPop_MoreFizz Must be a north american thing, there's no similar page on the UK visa site (visa.co.uk) nor on the Australian one (visa.com.au). No mention on any of the UK visa card issuers sites either. So, not visa network wide
Comment: @Gagravarr http://usa.visa.com/personal/card-benefits/credit-card/collision-waiver.jsp
Comment: @LessPop_MoreFizz From that link `You are eligible only if you are a valid cardholder whose name is embossed on an eligible U.S.-issued Visa card` - so it isn't network wide, it's something Visa USA offers
Comment: @Gagravarr I happened to link the visa USA page because I'm a US cardholder. [Here's the Canadian equivalent, for example.](http://www.visa.ca/en/personal/travelling/cldi/index.jsp)
Comment: I've had Mastercards with what seems to me to be comparable auto rental coverage — see http://www.mastercard.com/tt/personal/en/findacard/credit_cards/platinum/platinum_mc_master_rental.html — is there some specific benefit or gotcha I'm missing?
Comment: @mattdm doesn't apply to all Mastercards.
Answer: Having worked a bit in retail since the 90s and my wife having a pub for a while, I can say that at least in Germany, Mastercard is the most accepted one (alongside Visa, you almost nowhere see only one of those two, usually bank contracts are in a such way that when you want to accept one, you basically get the other one for the same transaction fee without any further costs). In some areas you have to search quite hard for AmEx being accepted.
Why is that so? I remember that in the late 90s the shop I was working in stopped supporting AmEx because they raised transaction fees. Again. Also depending on the contract you had with your bank, I can remember that a few years ago AmEx costs for certain transaction price ranges common in pubs was 3 to 5 times as much as for Visa/Mastercard.
I have hardly any solid base for other countries in europe, let alone other continents, but it seems that in europe Amex is not much represented elsewhere either.
Answer: A lot of the other answers are recommending MasterCard, but actually, Visa holds the largest market share among card networks (49.3%) versus MasterCard's 30.8% or American Express's 9.2%. The difference is even more pronounced for debit cards with Visa holding a majority over MasterCard. American Express does not offer debit cards. (The analysis linked to is based on financial report filings at the end of 2013; older analysis from 2010 with similar conclusions here as well.)
In general, you'll find either Visa or MasterCard is accepted more widely than Amex, especially across Europe which you're interested in.
Anecdotally - at least from my experience in the UK - chain stores, restaurants, bars etc. are much more likely to accept American Express as they probably get larger transaction fee discounts on their merchant accounts.
Comment: Your stats are for *usage*, not acceptance.  As noted earlier, Visa & MC payments virtually always come as a package, and it's quite rare to see one accepted without the other.
Comment: I, for one, do not *recommend* anything but the OP asks about Mastercard vs. Amex and explicitly isn't asking about Visa (or, incidentally, market share). Stats are fine but reading the question is important too…
Comment: Usage and acceptance are definitely correlated.
Comment: The statistics are interesting but I agree with jpatokal - I don't know that marketshare is an important statistic here.  I did some searches earlier in the day and didn't come up with any good acceptance figures, and was rather surprised at that - I would think one or the other of the major two would release that statistic to trumpet their prevalence, or Amex would if it were reasonably close.
Comment: @jpatokal Agreed, the stats are for usage. But in the absence of merchant account numbers / volumes, it's a useful metric to have since they are likely correlated. I didn't find any but there should be something in SEC filings on merchant numbers as well.
Answer: Basically, in Europe:
Visa = Mastercard >> AmEx
Answer: Most of the answers are already correctly responding to your question, but I'd like to chip in with my personal experience.
When I was living in Canada 3 years ago, Amex was supported by half businesses that were supporting credit card payments. The reasons behind it is that Amex charges higher fees to the businesses so they prefer to support other cards first. It is more likely to see Amex support in big hotels or places offering very pricey stuff, as the transaction ceilings are way higher.
I now live in France, and the same statement turns out to be true.
Travel-wise, the best tip I can give to a traveling couple is that one should have Visa, the other MasterCard. Unless you have a huge wallet, Amex will not be very useful to you.
Answer: When it comes to creditcards, the existing answers already point out that Mastercard and Visa are the most commonly accepted cards in europe.
However, what should be noted is the following:
In Europe credit cards are not as widely accepted as in the US
If you want to spend your time shopping in big tourist centers, or renting cars, you should be fine with a creditcard. However, if you also want to pay in smaller stores, supermarkets, or restaurants, you may find that they do not accept credit cards.
If you don't specifically need a creditcard, but just want to pay things wherever you go in europe, the following is important to note:
Cash is the most commonly accepted payment method - after that, Maestro in the Netherlands/Germany but Visa/MC of any kind elsewhere
Maestro actually is not even offered at all outside of certain northern European countries (phased out entirely in France about 10 years ago for example).
Comment: It sounds like the situation in Germany or the Netherlands, not really everywhere in Europe. In France for example, I suspect Maestro cards do work everywhere but I don't think I ever came across any local with a Maestro-branded card or any shop that accept them but not Visa or Mastercard. But that's something to consider nonetheless (+1).
Comment: In the US, Maestro cards can't be used for purchases; they only work at ATMs.
Answer: I may relate to places where I travelled to or lived in.
Around the world, Visa > Master Card >> Amex. In many places they don't accept Amex at all.
In Europe:

Germany: they use Maestro circuit debit cards a lot. Those are really common, the next choice after cash.
France: they do accept "Maestro like" debit cards but they are not as common nor work as good. I could not get my Maestro card accepted by half the places (shops, gas stations...). Also, I could not pay their many toll highways if not with cash or VISA / Vanilla Master Card.
Italy: they accept Maestro and Maestro white label cards in a LOT of places, more often than where they accept credit cards. Italy got some seriously weird laws so carrying and paying with cash may be difficult. If you go with a Maestro card, check it's accepted by ATMs, they have some ATM circuits that don't take all the white labels, expecially in the south. VISA is accepted the most, Master Card tends to work but not all the varieties, make sure to have a the most standard Master Card possible. Amex is accepted in some hotels and restaurants and not elsewhere.
Spain: they accept Maestro expecially in the turistic locations. They also accept some common white labels. VISA and Mastercards are widely accepted expecially in the turistic locations. Amex is accepted at hotels and restaurants, I have talked with some shop owners and they all complained Amex charges more so they tend to not support it. Banks tend to give Master Card debit cards, Maestro is supported expecially because a lot of German tourists go to certain turistic places (in example: Canary Islands).


Does the exit node see which second node transmitted the given traffic?

Question: Does the exit node see which second node transmitted the given traffic, and do other nodes see the same thing? (Does node see the previous node that sent
this traffic?) And do nodes see any nodes of the chain, except previous and/or next using in the transmission of this traffic (for example, does exit node
see which first node sent this traffic, etc) and if yes, which nodes see and what?
Answer: Each link in the "chain" of nodes that make up a circuit can see who the previous and next links are, but (absent misconfiguration or attack) no more than that.  So the exit node know who sent it the cell, but it doesn't know who the entry node was.  The middle node knows who the entry and exit nodes are, but doesn't know who connected to the entry node (the user) nor who the exit node is talking to (the destination).
Answer:
Does the exit node see which second node transmitted the given traffic

Yes. It also knows where the traffic is going (e.g. which server the user wants to talk to). Generally speaking, every node in the network knows where it's traffic is coming from and where it is going. But as long as the nodes in the chain don't cooperate, it can't know anything beyond that.
The reason
Tor is an overlay network that sits on the public internet. On the internet, hosts communicate by sending packets to each other. All of them carry the sender and destination address (two IP addresses). The sender address is necessary so that the destination knows where to send the reply to, and the destination address is obviously necessary so the routers on the internet know where to send the packet to.
So a Tor node, which sits on a public internet host, can always figure out where traffic it gets came from by looking at the sender (source) IP address of the IP packets it gets. Conceptually, this happens at the IP layer of the TCP/IP reference model, while Tor sits at the application layer (two layers up), so it can't do anything about this.
Tor's reason of existence is to make it possible to hide the source IP addresses of a communication flow's packets, which isn't something the IP and TCP/IP protocols were designed to do. Since Tor uses these protocols, it's nodes can't hide from each other.
Answer: The exit node sees which relay node said traffic is coming from, but it doesn't know the guard node or end-user's identity. The relay node sees both the guard and relay node, but doesn't see the end-user or the destination of the traffic. The guard nodes sees the end-user and the relay node but doesn't know the exit node or the destination of the traffic.
Essentially by limiting who knows what, we're able to create a connection in which no one has enough information to properly identify or attack a specific user. Surely there are different ideas as to how Tor can be attacked, and some of these attacks can work quite well. But generally speaking, if a user is using Tor properly with good OpSec practices, they're probably going to be "safe enough".


Recipe for potting soil

Question: I live in an area (Delhi, India) where sterilised potting mixes are unavailable. And potting mixes are expensive. So I prepare my own usually. I want to prepare potting soil for planting roselle and lettuce separately. I have the following things with me- Cocopeat, Vermicompost, Bagasse compost, Neem kernel meal, Mustard meal, Perlite (mostly powdered) and Vermiculite. I also have soil used previously. But I avoid it because it is difficult to move the container and it becomes prone to disease and other problems. So is there any general ratio I can follow for the ingredients for these plants?
Answer: For every 10liters of vermicompost, I would use 8 liters of coco peat (the fine kind, or use less), 2 liters bagasse compost, 1 liter perlite, 1 cup vermiculite, 1 spoonful of neem kernel meal, and 1 spoonful of mustard meal.
Comment: Great! So the vermicompost is the most? The problem with my bagasse compost is that it stinks (it was bought from outside)
Comment: Well, in that case I would use less of the bagasse. Vermicompost, if completely composted (looking like black dirt, and not smelling other than a general soil smell that should not be unpleasant), can even be used on it's own for a lot of plants. Coco peat will bulk it up though, but if coco is used in excess you can get problems with magnesium and calcium deficiencies. You can add more perlite if you like, but you could do without as well. Vermiculite is something that should be added in moderation for most plants. The meals add nutrition and should also be used sparingly.
Comment: So is vermiculite harmful if added in larger quanitites?
Comment: If it changes the soil's properties to outside of what is healthy for your specific plant it is. It's not about it's nutritional properties or toxicity as much as it is about providing optimum conditions for your species, and for every species there will be an ideal level. If you would count mushrooms as plants, which they aren't, some can grow on a substrate made of up to 90% vermiculite when done right, but I doubt any plant would grow well on this mixture

Recipe for potting soil


What alternatives are there to replace orcs, kobolds, and hobgoblins in low-level encounters?

Question: In your average "generic D&D" campaign and setting, orcs, kobolds, and hobgoblins are frequently used to stock low level adventures and dungeons. These are usually nice for 1st/2nd level characters, but they become dumb and boring very quickly. Are there better (semi-)intelligent, numerous foes to throw at 1st level characters? How do I make my low level humanoid foes not just "same old, same old?"
Comment: I feel like this question has a severe lack of specificity (heck it doesn't even specify a flavor and the options are assuredly vastly different depending both on setting and edition).
Comment: I edited the Q a little, but there is such a thing as "bog standard" D&D - it's not edition dependent and many people use settings that can be at best described as "generic." Sure, Dark Sun may vary, but anyone who's played D&D for many years at all knows exactly what this question's getting at (though "develop other iconic low level foes for your specific setting" is a legitimate part of an answer).
Comment: Do note that an answer that just has a couple monster names is not really a good answer to this question. Answer with techniques.
Comment: It's a list question. List questions are not on topic. And while there is *some* information (what the question-asker doesn't want), that's not nearly the same thing as being specific enough to limit this to any particular "correct" answer.
Comment: Agreeing with @KRyan on this one. As it stands there seems to be more emphasis on the first question than the second and from what I understand the list-types aren't good for here. What I see in the answers below is mostly listing.
Comment: The most upvoted answers talk about techniques.... Which redeems the question somewhat.
Comment: Yes, like many older q's it's gone through eras of site theory and edits.  Upvote good answers and downvote bad ones.  I dusted this one off to use as an example of how to answer questions like this right.
Answer: I think there's such a huge variety in humanity that often goes relatively ignored that can be used as low-level threats.
A trick I like to use to make human encounters stand out is to focus on two aspects of the enemy—be it dress, custom, weapon choice, adornments, tattoos—that stick out.  This makes it seem a little more diverse.
With the same couple of human templates, you can "re-skin" them time and again to create a large number of low-level encounters.  For example:

A group of rebels, who have taken to banditry to support their (dying) cause;
Initiate cultists, out to prove their undying loyalty to their faith by skewering your hide;
Soldiers who have deserted from the army, desperate to gather enough coin to escape;
Traveling merchants (and their caravan guard) who try to make up for a bad haul by trying to ambush their fellow travelers;
Angry bands of peasants, who blame any sort of strangers as the reason for the recent drought/famine/pestilence;
Conscript soldiers, newly-minted and spoiling for a fight, regardless of the reason;
A famous minstrel, and his loutish band of traveling bravos who don't care to share the road with anyone.

Low-level human encounters don't just have to be nameless bandits.  All of the changes above can be handled in many game systems using the same basic stats.  Just changing the window dressing.
Comment: Agreed.  One of the things that struck me back in 1e days that disappeared over time was the vast array of tribesmen, brigands, cavemen, berserkers, etc. that formed a pretty large chunk of the encounter tables.
Comment: I've always felt that the most interesting "monsters" in any RPG were the human ones.
Comment: Adding to the example possible encounters of humans:
* Cannibals
* Plague victims
* Army recruitment team
* Witch hunters
Answer: There's a ton of low-level monsters out there.  Other humans (or elves, dwarves, tieflings) are appropriate antagonists at any level.  Draconians are cool and you hardly ever see them nowadays.  Same goes for kenku and bullywugs.
You can also get a lot of mileage from reskinning monsters; if the PCs encounter a race of strange hostile creatures with long heron-like beaks who peck, or a race of humanoids whose heads are covered with dozens of eyes, it doesn't matter that they may mechanically be identical to goblins, they'll look different.
Comment: Seconded. Reskinning is a wonderful thing.
Comment: That's the wonderful thing about re-skinning. If a human sorcerer NPC has a daily that shoots a snake-made-of-lightning, but you want a more primal, orcish feel, you can have an orcish witchdoctor send out a wolf or otter or Dalek made-of-acid. Same monster, roughly the same mechanics, but different name and visual ability.
Comment: Fourthed'd. Think about this, humans are incredibly diverse. Cultures can vary in noticeable ways from one town to the next.

Think about how a creature may adapt to their environment, and the influence their neighbors, or large scale events has had on their way of life.
Comment: And this isn't a D&D4-specific question. Low-level monsters in all prior editions don't tend to have any special powers that could give them away, and tactics were entirely up to the GM.
Comment: Thirded.  I can't stand nearly any of the stock low-level monsters, but once you change their name and description, they're quite useful as "monsters of proven difficulty."
Comment: Re-skinning does rock, but won't players see through it when they recognize monster-specific tactics or powers?
Answer: Some of my favorites (approaching this from an old school perspective but should work with later editions of D&D also):
Skeletons:  Good low level monsters with a nice special ability (lower damage from edged weapons) that provides a added obstacle;
Zombies: 2 HD, but easy to hit and slow (always strike last) so while fearsome can be overcome with good tactics and planning;
Bandits:  Human bandits can be good, you can either make them 0-lvl with a few 1hd leaders, or class them all at 1st level (thieves and fighters are best) and give them an assortment of weapons and AC (but nothing too good, they are bandits, I'd arm with with clubs and let them have padded or leather armor at best); they should outnumber the PCs but be defeatable.  Spice it up with a troop of non-human bandits...half elves, halflings or dwarves are interesting because they have added abilities (immunity to certain spells, better saves) that make them tougher than normal;
Dogs or wolves:  Level appropriate, only one attack (bite), yet can be really nasty if they team up on one character (I actually had a group of wild dogs kill a high level thief in a campaign of mine, they ganged up on him and he had a few very unlucky rolls!), however they can be scared away easily if the characters use good tactics (fire, lots of noise, concentrate attacks on the pack leader, etc)
Stirges:  While only 1+1 hd, they have nasty special abilities, so for a low level party I wouldn't have more than two at the very most attack.  These things are nasty though so be careful throwing them at a low level party unless they have the option to run away!
A single creature of higher level can be an interesting foe to be tackled by a group of low level characters, especially if the creature has no special abilities.  For example, a single giant lizard, ogre, large spider (paralytic poison instead of killing poison), giant frog, or similar beast can be overcome with good teamwork, missile weapons, fire and good tactics, and can actually help a party "bond" ("Hey, we were only first level but we managed to take down that giant lizard without losing anyone!").  One of my old standbys was to have a low level party have to deal with an ogre to get past an obstacle. It was their decision to either parley with, sneak past, or battle the monster directly....interesting to see how many different ways the party could find to get past the much higher level foe!
Comment: +1 for arm bandits with clubs. In some editions, clubs are free, meaning they're the ultimate weapon for poor/cheap forces, but still pack a punch and can be thrown. Also, a classic example of a single creature of higher level as a challenge is a Carrion Crawler, imo
Answer: If you have experienced players who know whatever game you are playing well, then they're probably well aware of the abilities of beginning monsters.  One option open to a GM might be to take the stats of one creature, and create something new around it.
Example:
A Nyssan-Fey (CE) is a humanoid creature about 5' tall with large dark eyes and a bluish-gray tint to its skin.  They dwell in forests.  Their lairs run just below the surface (not unlike an ant colony), with entrances often being found amidst the roots of great trees.  Their favored food is raw meat from woodland creatures.  However, they have also been known to venture (at night, since they see best in the dark) into villages and steal children. They tend to wear leather armor and carry daggers or shortswords.  (Use "goblin" for stats.)
Even though they know how to deal with goblins, and "goblin" is being used as a template, the players will have to wrestle with the mystery of this unusual creature with which they are not familiar.
Comment: +1: The first paragraph is just what I'd have recommended. :) Take the stats of an existing creature and use it for something entirely thought up by you, then, to add to the mystery and twist the players' metagame expectations, perhaps add one remarkable and well identifiable advantage and one similar disadvantage (to balance things out) and there you go. To extend irreverance's example, this Nyssan-Fey: the tint of their skin comes from being magical: upon being touched it "discharges" a "shield" spell (once per 15 rounds) but this also leaves the creature dazed for a round.
Answer: That's a really open-ended question. What's the setting? If it's urban, maybe a few Dire Rats from the sewers, or a pack of muggers, or a malfunctioning Constabulary/Maintenance Construct. There's also mafia grunts, or gang kids (which makes for a good non-lethal combat encounter), or maybe even have your party get caught up in a riot against martial law.
Forested areas give rise to bandits, elves, rogue druids/dryads/fey creatures, or a pack of wolves or other predators.
Plains let you create a run-in with scouts, Riders of Rohan style. Or a raiding party who is travelling between towns.
With mountains you can get hunters, or hermits, or other secluded individuals who attack because you're encroaching on their territory.
There are always options.
Answer: You can spice up low level play by playing the low levels somewhere other than the Material Plane. A guy I know wrote some stuff about "High Adventure in ------" for the inner and outer planes, here's the one he did for the plane of fire as an example:
Ten Low Level Adentures in The Plane of Fire:
You're getting the report from the overseer of the pipeline workers. The Kobold tells you that they aren't getting as much water as expected because....

A group of Firenewts has claimed that the pipeline runs through their tribal lands and have begun monkey wrenching.
The water reserves aren't as extensive as hoped near the surface, and the pipeline will have to be extended into the caverns.
Superstitious fears have broken out among the workers, they speak of burning snakes.
Drilling has broken through to inferno before expected, this rock isn't as stable as we'd hoped.
The water has some kind of creatures living in it. Creatures that live in water.
Some creatures have been bringing clouds of smoke with them when they crawl over the pipeline.
A rival mining group is siphoning water from our reserves.
Some guy who looked like a Yak has paid more than enough money for the land to get the crew to drill elsewhere.
Everyone who touches the water seems to forget what they were doing.
The water has been draining up to the mountain.
Answer: I personally find human (and other player races) villains to be useful at any level.  They can embody the same gamut of real life villains and adventurers.
I also find "civilized race" motivations more interesting, and it gives you many more opportunities to explore conflict in ways other than just combat.  Of course you can just kill the human thugs the same as the goblin thugs ...
Answer: How about wolves (and other animals), bullywugs, aren't skeletons 1st level or low level, bats, spiders (even though I'm arachnaphobic personally), city thugs or toughguys, bandits and vagabonds.
Comment: @Stefano Characters don't need names and detailed motivations just because they're human, any more than being an orc precludes a character from having a name and detailed motivations.
Comment: Good comment and ideas. Some comment, though: animals can be painful due to their special abilities. skeleton are undead, so they are appropriate only in undead-laden campaigns. NPCs are great, but they tend to speak and in the need for a name. I personally love NPCs, they make the story more realistic and with unexpected twists.
Comment: @Stefano I wouldn't go so far as to make bandits and thugs NPC's. I basically use them as fodder. Ex: You and your party turn the corner and there's a group of guys, one of them fingering a dagger and he says "gives us all your money !". There ya go ... 1st level fight. :)
Comment: I had such a fight where PC decided to stun and capture, instead of kill. Interestingly enough, this gave me a powerful reason to trigger a series of events, partly in their favour, partly against them.
Answer: You can also reskin your goblins and orcs. Call them intelligent ape-men or sentient trees and use the same statistics. You will know the stats will be balanced for the level, but from your player's perspective the monster will be a sentient tree and not a goblin.
Answer: Numerous answers have talked about re-skinning, which I think is a really great tactic.  I use it for nearly every monster in the game.  After two years of 4E, I think the only stock monsters I've used are stirges and gelatinous cubes, which I used specifically for an old-school-feeling dungeon.  Everything else has been reskinned.
What hasn't been mentioned is how the DDI Compendium can be used to make this so easy.  For example, I recently needed to make some low-level human wizards.  You know how many monsters exist in the compendium that look like that out of the box?  Not many.
On the other hand, I did a search for "Creatures" from level 1 to 4 with the keyword "Humanoid."  Bang, 403 results.  I wanted something more like a warlock in combat, so I searched by the main role "Skirmisher."  Now I had 99 results, many of which could be re-skinned easily by printing them out and scribbling new names for their powers.  Use the Compendium as much as possible.  Well, if you have it, anyway.  Learn the keywords and roles.  Keep in mind that you will miss out on some monsters this way, because not all monster sources have been fastidiously tagged with roles and keywords.
It's a side benefit that most DDI Compendium entries lack any sort of flavor text, so you're not distracted by wondering what the original monster was like.
Finally, I suggest that you keep your printouts around so that you never need to remember what you used last time.  When you start off picking really weird, obscure monsters that you know nothing about, you probably won't remember what they were later.  Then you'll pick something else and your players will (maybe) grouse.  "Last time their ranged attack was only burst 1!"  You may consider this as feature, though.
Answer: I create new monsters no matter the level.  I avoid using creatures from the books.
Example: The PC's are traveling a road through the forest between villages when they come across the corpse of an apparently wealthy fellow with these strange spiky mushrooms growing out of him.  Once they get within 10' of the corpse the mushrooms sprouts feet, runs at the closest PC and attempts to impale itself on the PC.  All the mushrooms attack the same character and all have but 1 or 2 hp and only do 1 or 2 hp.
20 or 30 of them all attacking in a single round can be unnerving.  Not in the book, low level and a complete freak out.
Answer: Try Goodman Games' "The Adventure Begins" PDF for twenty first-level adventures with all kinds of non-boring monsters. Animated magic mirrors, killer crab swarms, electrostatic bats, rust spiders...
Another thing I see them doing in those adventures is traps. A good trap can break the monotony of rats and goblins. The important thing is that you get to explore the area first and that the trap lasts long enough for you to interact with it. Like the classic flooding room, or a corpse covered in tiny cuts that turn out to be caused by a vortex of whirling paper that animates whenever you try to steal the scrolls. That's from "The Adventure Begins" too.
Answer: You've got a couple major options.
Zazz Them Up
Still use orcs, goblins, and hobgoblins - just make them interesting.  3/3.5e lets you level up humanoid opponents to add some rules diversity but that's not the main part of the challenge.  Note what Paizo has done with goblins in their game world - they've created an alternate take on them that people find interesting and compelling beyond being "small sacks of hit points." Similarly in 3.5e the Red Hand of Doom mega-adventure used hobgoblin armies to good effect and Dragon Mountain riffed off "Tucker's Kobolds" to make kobolds interesting foes.
Everything in the game from orcs to dragons to tarrasques can be boring - it's basic storytelling techniques that make it not so. The subsequent techniques will not help much without those.
Humanize Them
In a five-year-long Night Below campaign I ran, there was a tribe of goblins with faces tattooed blue that garnered the players' interest.  They took one prisoner that surrendered after killing the rest and were going to take him back to town for trial (in a weird sop to their consciences) and they decided he was so hapless that they ended up vouching for him and getting him released. They met him again as witch doctor for another tribe, when they got captured by an orc tribe that made them go into a hobgoblin cave to kill the hobs for them. To them, these humanoid races weren't marionettes with hit points and loot, but actual people - different and hostile and usually bad people, but intelligent individuals. This provides a lot more interesting interaction options (which many adventures depend on; I remember I6 Dwellers of the Forbidden City back in 1e days had strong "side with one humanoid dude against another" subplots and it's a common theme in Paizo APs today).
Yes, this interferes with basic race-murder fantasies, but that's the price you pay.
Use humans!
Once you are running humanoids like they're not little MMO killbots, you start to realize maybe you should be using people.  The berserkers in T1 The Temple of Hommlet were especially vexing to my party back in 1980whatever when we encountered them.  The 1e DMG is really good about this - the encounter tables are primarily about people living in areas.  Cavemen, tribesmen, merchants, guards, bandits, etc.  The exotic becomes mundane with overuse; orcs are frightening because they're super amped up over people as long as they're unusual foes; if they're rank and file then they get boring.
Skin 'Em
Stats are stats and appearance is appearance.  Like the blue-skinned goblins above, you can add variety by simply reskinning them slightly - "oh they are elemental goblins mutated by being in the Temple of Elemental Evil, they let off smoke wherever they go!" - or greatly - "skittering crystal crabs squeal and attack you!" without changing the stats at all.
I ran a dungeon once where there were a bunch of more-draconic-than-usual kobolds looking after a clutch of blue dragon eggs and blue dragon wyrmlings (the parent had been slain); they had draconic characteristics but did I waste the time applying "half-dragon templates" like this was going to be published or something?  Hell no, I just made 'em look more dragony and had them bite instead of doing weapon attacks.
Use Something Else
Buy any random monster book published by any company over the last 20 years and you'll probably get more humanoid races that you really ever wanted. "Tonight... Xvarts!" There's animal-based and plant-based and mineral-based low level humanoids of every description. Just in the ocean there are so many humanoid races to frankly frustrate me as a GM trying to figure out how there's a place for half of them.
Answer: Giant forms of normal creatures can be fun (e.g. insects (ants, ticks) or reptiles (frogs)).  Stirges can be fun.  Remember, you can also use higher hit-dice monsters against lower-level parties, you just need to reduce the number occuring.  Maybe they run into a patrol of 2-3 bugbears...or maybe 2-3 troglodytes.
Answer: For low-levels I'm a big fan of elementals and fey creatures...and undead! At least for out-and-out monster adventures. If you are looking for some alternate takes on huumanoids, I think Bullywugs would be a good substitute, especially for a swampy locale. I had really good results from reskinning fell-taints as a form of hostile plantlife-- intelligence pods from a hyper-intelligent orchid.
Answer: What I like to do at low levels is have the kobalds/goblins/orcs have lots of trained animals and beasts to throw at the party.  In my current game, they have centipedes, fire beetles, and spiders as pets.  It helps mix up what would normally be a boring encounter.
Answer: Wild animals are very good, mentioned wolves, also boars, bears, crocodiles.
Mutated animals, such as wererats (they are the easiest opponents in vallheru computer games).
Comment: A good alternative, but the animals' low intelligence will limit the challenge (no weapons, no tactics besides basic ambush or hunting in packs). The GM would need to compensate that somehow.
Answer: Don't name the monsters, whatever you use, and describe them carefully only if they are observed carefully. An alternative is to simply call every small humanoid a goblin, regardless of their special powers and specific appearance and so on.
Either approach forces or encourages the players to name the monsters for you. Then you can use those names. (In my game, the hobgoblins are called bugbears.) This will add feel to the game and retain some of the mystery, as the players can't be quite sure of what they are dealing with.
Answer: Make the goblins, etc., actually monstrous and mysterious and interesting. Or at least make some of them that way.
For example, suppose orcs are spirits/demons of hatred that have taken physical shape, and slaying one releases the spirit, which might try to possess something nearby. Maybe the slayer, or maybe some innocent bystander or woodland animal.
Or maybe goblins have unreliable magical tricks and are born when dark magic corrupts children. Or maybe some of them are.
This can keep even the most stereotypical monsters interesting - just treat them as fey or demons of legend.
Comment: Translation: "Don't use the stereotypical mobs, replace them with fey or demons."?
Comment: @BrianBallsun-Stanton No, I suspect that Thanuir's intended meaning was that the problem with using the same old monsters can be addressed largely through emphasising different parts of the existing flavour rather than using different monsters. It makes sense, if you think about it: Why are goblins boring? Because we have a well-established idea of what goblins are from a hundred past adventures. If a GM suddenly starts emphasising the quasi-supernatural soup-stealing trickster aspects of the goblin myth rather than just making 'em short humanoids, suddenly they're interesting again.
Comment: @BrianBallsun-Stanton: As user867 said, draw from sources that are not D&D. E.g. poetry such as [goblin market](http://content.loudlit.org/audio/goblin/pages/01_01_goblin.htm), various mythologies and fairy tales.
Answer: I only have Goblins and Orcs in my Majestic Wilderlands and I level them. For example I have 4 HD Orcs instead of Bugbears, and that tribe is noted for being particularly ferocious. And I agree with C. Ross about human opposition being generally more interesting. A lot of my adventures in my campaign come from the conflict of culture, religion, and society. The approach as the benefit that it works well at all levels.
Answer: Don't forget the low-hp versions of more powerful monsters (often humanoids). They can inflict greater damage -- possibly slaying on a single hit -- but go down quickly. Party defenses take on paramount importance, providing tactical educational opportunities. A well-coordinated party can succeed with few or no casualties.
Answer: The Formian work pretty well, they are unusual and can start as a poor menace but they can end as a terrible enemy ;)
Answer: If you're talking 4e then just use the compendium to find things of a suitable budget. If you've got 400-600 xp to spend on an standard encounter for 4 players. Stick a 600 xp limit into the compendium and browse away!
Answer: Re-skinning lower level creatures as Gnolls has worked for me.  Additionally with the increased difficulty level Gnolls typically represent you can bring them back for revenge once the characters have leveled some.
Answer: I like swarms that do little damage and that are hard to really kill. For example, hundreds of rats driven mad by hunger or fear.
Mosquitos, lice, bees, mutant butterflies that look beautiful until they land on you with their acid tipped proboscis...
Answer: I'm assuming you're asking this because the books only really has humanoid creatures for level 1-3 encounters.  Add a special feature about the group that makes the different and interesting.
Shared hp bar - use a handful of level 1 bandits but they all share the same hp bar, when one is attacked make sure you say they all flinch as if being hit by that spot.
"its actually the shadow" - mentin that when the enemy shadow touches other shadows it changes shape slightly as though its being pulled. Have enemies reroll when they are in a shadowy low-light area.
The hydra, put a low level orc or somesuch creature that rushes in and fights them on their own.  The creatures cut at him but he keeps coming back basically use the same guy to run multiple monsters, keep doing this until someone crits or does half his HP in damage with one hit.
Doing little things like this change the enemy so you need to account for the difficulty change.
You could also do something negative to the players, splash a potion on them thaat makes them grant combat advantage in the sunlight. Or create an area where arcane/divine powers are strengthened/weakened as an area the enemy want to stay near but the players don't.


How did an input of resources in 16th century Spain contribute to inflation?

Question: My history book claims that the flow of Silver from the New World to Spain in the 16th century contributed to an inflation. However, that seems very unintuitive. How could gaining resources lead to a worse economy? The only explanation I could think of is that the sellers in markets knew that people had more money (silver) so they could charge higher prices. However, I still don't understand, because this would mean all exports are bad, because they bring in outside wealth.
Comment: Why do you draw the conclusion in the last sentence, i.e. why does one instance where export of a particular resource may have lead to inflation mean that all exports (regardless of balancing imports, etc.) are bad? Resolve this (perhaps drop the sentence) and you may be already close to an answer :)
Comment: Have you ever taken an Economics course? Silver's usefulness as a resource was much less than its use as currency in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Comment: @PieterGeerkens The OP seems aware of silver's use as money (see term in brackets).
Comment: In a nutshell - having a constant source of "unearned" income encouraged deficit spending and reckless hubristical imperial ventures (the war with the Dutch provinces, the Armada, etc) which eventually bankrupted Spain (4 times!). Here's a more detailed and nuanced exposition I'd written: http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/9234/decline-of-the-spanish-empire P.S. Your question is almost a repeat of the one I'm linking to and I found it using the tags. I'd really urge you and everybody to use the tags more :)
Comment: On, and one more thing: the unearned income discouraged the development of industry and trade - why bother if silver flows in anyway?
Comment: @Drux *Being aware*, yet asking a question that demonstrates a complete failure to understand the concept, demands that the concept be reiterated.
Comment: @FelixGoldberg it'd increase industry and trade related to the acquisition of silver from the colonies, thus shipbuilding, construction of weapons and clothing for troops, training of seamen and soldiers, etc.
Comment: @PieterGeerkens You're very harsh with the OP. A course of economics gives hindisghts about some situations, but no necessarily all, and some people are bad at expanding from one specific answer to a generic answer. Also, the answer given to the question are not economic but historic (for exampel Felix Goldberg speaking about the Armada)
Answer: Quite simple really, and basic economics:
More money circulating in the economy, combined with no comparable increase in things to do with that money, leads to an increase in prices.
And as the Spanish government used the bulk of that silver to coin money to pay for their wars, the amount of money in the hands of people in Spain increased dramatically. If there's 10 people offering 1 pig each on the local market, and there's 10 potential customers, each of which has 1 ounce of silver to pay for it, the most a seller can charge for a pig is 1 ounce of silver.
If there's 10 pigs on offer and 100 people each of whom has 10 ounces of silver, the price of a pig can go up to 10 ounces of silver and he's still likely to sell that pig.
That's how you get inflation (and yes, I know this is overly simplified, in reality there are of course other factors in play, as the farmer is himself a customer and his cost to raise that pig also changes, but that works along the same mechanism).
Comment: @Lohoris Actually Spain used the port of Antwerp to sell it's colonial wares (including the silver). The blockade of Antwerp by the republic made this a lot harder. Further the Spanish went to war with both the French and the English, so Spain would have resembled a closed system at times. Especially since the  bankruptcies of the Spanish government and the taking of Spanish trading vessels by the WIC would have put severe strains on Spanish merchants.
Comment: @Lohoris and even without that, as an empire their internal market was large enough compared to its foreign trade that they could be considered a closed system for all practical purposes.
Comment: -1 This is only true in a closed system. Since there should have been imports and exports, this is no longer true.
Comment: People in Spain owned their debt?
Comment: Ok, but in this description this is not a problem and this does not lead to bankrupcy. So what happened?
Answer: @jwenting is correct.  Inflation is defined as an increase in the money supply uncoupled from an increase in the means of production.  One crucial distinction is important - you asked about an increase in "resources" - silver is specie/currency, not a simple resource.
Adding specie to a market will always cause inflation.  @lohoris argues that this is true only in a closed economy.  I'm not convinced that I understand @lohoris' argument, but to the extent that I do, trade flows (import export) will only moderate the effect by "exporting" inflation.  If the surge in specie is dramatic enough, and the trade flows are small enough (as a proportion of the economy), then the impact of trade flows is not relevant.
I'm not an expert in Spanish history (Spain seems to have some peculiarities that are not common to the rest of Europe), but my understanding is that the increase in specie was actually coupled with a decrease in the efficiency of labor - the colonies added a tremendous amount of potential labor that was organized in a way that was effectively slavery, while the existing labor was diverted away from production/capital deepening towards speculation.  As I say, this is not a period I've studied deeply, but if this summary is correct, it would only worsen the effects of inflation.
BBC History magazine's podcast this week has a section on finance which deals with this - the Kwasi Kwarteng points out that Spain lacked the financial institutions that might have helped them to deal with the influx of specie. If you're interested, I think his book is War and Gold
Comment: in fact, it has been argued that export surpluses increase inflation as they increase the supply of currency to the exporting partner while reducing the amount of goods available to the exporting partner to be purchased by that currency. Thus a net export surplus (over all partners) is not going to decrease but increase inflation.
Answer: Spain was the first to experience a high rate of inflation that swept across Western Europe in the 15th-17th centuries known as the Price Revolution. The inflation rate was about 1-1.5%. The upper estimates are 3.3%. So to answer the question, it seems counterintuitive, because these rates are not high by our standards, but since the inflation rate had been effectively 0% for 300 years, it had enormous impacts to economies and societies which were ill-prepared. One of the main reasons for this inflation was the importation of American gold and silver, which entered European markets in large amounts through Spain, but it is not the only reason.
As mentioned in the question, increasing the money supply increases inflation. It does this by decreasing the value of the currency. It will buy fewer goods. Silver was also being mined within Europe, thus further increasing the amount of the metal.
The other element of monetary inflation is the velocity of the currency. Silver that is sitting in banks or used to trade for goods is not increasing the inflation rate. Spain traded most of its American silver for goods with the Chinese or Ottoman Empires. Over time, these empires also saw increases in inflation and after that point would not be places that Spain could "export" its inflation. The velocity of the currency was increased during this time period due to urbanization. More people were being paid in currency and using currency to trade for manufactured goods causing the money to change hands more quickly.
Inflation may also not be caused by the currency, but by unmet higher demand for goods and services. The end of the Black Death increased population rates thus increasing demands for goods. The beginnings of the process of urbanization and industrialization saw fewer agricultural workers than may have been ideal and inflation in food prices. Peasants lost traditional rights to common lands and were required to pay rents. There was increased demand for new manufactured goods. Overall, living costs increased around six fold over a 150 year period.
Comment: Oh so because the money was made out of silver getting new silver is analogous to contemporary states printing more and more paper currency
Comment: @Ovi Money printing is debasement, how inflation usually happens, but the math is the same: M(money supply)x v(velocity)=Inflation. The money supply can be increased by debasing, or making more money through printing or watering down a silver currency-less silver in it-or in this rare case, they were able to ship in enough silver to increase the money supply. It didn't cause a lot of inflation, although it was high for them at that historical junction; debasement can cause currency collapse since its unlimited. Right now we have low velocity because the banks are sucking up any money they can.