If I transfer the work to my friend without notify the client, is it ok?

Question: I just wonder that if I got too many jobs which I can not handle at the same time, can I transfer some of them to my friend? if so, should I notify the client? of course I will make sure the finally output have the same quality
Answer: Is it moral and professional? No!
Do people do this (including large companies)? Yes.
I can't say I never done it without client's knowledge, but each time I get into trouble as I have to act as a middle man and cannot connect client and my friend directly.
So after few such experiences, I started hiring people for project-wide contract. I pay them salary or percentage and I can easily tell client that a colleague from my office will take care the project as I cannot put enough work hours in it. This way they communicate using our company's tools and I act merely as a project manager and lead developer.
When you tell the client about this, you should be ready to lose this client. Most of them will insist that you do the project since they talked to you, but you have to tell them that you cannot and only your office colleague can. I usually lose 2-3 out of 10 clients working this way.
Answer: The concept of morality in business is questionable. And what's ethical is simply to offer the quality services you were paid for and respect your clients. Everything in between is part of a strategy.
I think the main problem is the word FREELANCER. It implies that you work alone at all time while in fact the words BUSINESS or COMPANY are the ones that should be used when you refer to your services. Already by not sticking to freelance, you probably realize that you already know the answer to your question. No one questions the morality or ethic of a business that hires employees; the manager is the one who takes the responsibility for what's going on inside the company and how the work is managed.
So your real concern shouldn't be about morality but liability.
I don't know your age and experience, maybe these advice don't apply to you and your friend.
Should you tell your client?
It's up to you. But I think you should for the simple fact that even though you want to work with your friend and will supervise his/her work, you can't control 100% what that friend will post online, share with other friends, and all the tiny mistakes that could happen. You can't control if that friend will communicate one day directly with the client or some close to the client. You don't know if that friend will always be your friend.
So for these reasons, you should simply mention to your client that you will share the workload with your new team/colleague/partner and will supervise everything. Don't use the word friend, that's very immature and unprofessional (and scary for a client.)
There's ways to say this and be clear that you are still in full control of the quality of the project. Clients are rarely resistant to this, what they want is a guarantee of quality and get the service they paid for on time. They might asked to be reassured but in the end if they trust your judgement and you can deliver the services, you won't have issue with this. It's exactly the same as giving the design work to a designer and you being the one coding the website OR paying an editor to write the content.
Should you transfer some work to your friend?
That's where I think your real issue could come from.
Be aware that doing business with friends and family can be tricky. As PeterMV mentioned, you'll be the middle man and friendship mixed with money can lead to delicate situations. You need to make sure it's clear between you and your friend that you're doing business and the client will come first, the same way as if you hired a stranger. It's usually easy to say when there's no issues but when problems arise, that's when the friendship will be tested. Some friends or family members will expect you to put your client as #2 for multiple reasons and by using various clichés that don't belong to the business world (eg. family first, bff, etc.) For some people, it's hard to accept that while they work for you, you are the client and the boss. Not to mention that if your friend disappoints you with the quality of his/her work, it might be hard for you to deal with this; even worse if you decide one day that person isn't a good fit to work with you. All this depends a lot on your personality and the personality of your friend (and ego.)
The other problem is that being too friendly with "employees" will lead you to reveal a lot of private information about your clients, share files, access, etc. Friends can also get very "comfortable" too, sometimes they do not respect your clients as much as you do. If things ever go bad between you and your friend, you could get caught in uncomfortable situations. And even if it doesn't go bad, it could happen. Only you know how professional and mature is your friend. For example, imagine your friend stored passwords and login access of your clients in a negligent way, and these information get shared; when you work with other people, you need to make sure they use exactly the same methods as you do and the same discipline.
Even if you work with a friend, you should also have him/her sign a NDA. If there's any question or resistance about this,or anything such as "but I'm your friend, you don't trust me?" then don't work with that person. Make it clear that when you work with that person, there's a time for fun and there's a time for business.
As PeterMV suggests, it's often better to simply hire a stranger and keep your leadership role in all this, without mixing it with too much friendship. If you work with a friend, make sure everything is clear and require the same things you would if you hired a stranger.
Comment: Hi go-meek, great input, especially for "friend" part, thanks a lot, yes, friend-ship is worst ship in the world:)
Answer: You should make an explicit mention of this possibility in your general sales conditions. If the customer disagrees, he will tell you. (Or if he does not tell you, he is at fault.)
Answer: Just for reference, identifying and expressing intent could be something as simple as this blurb:

Assignment of Project
  JOHN DOE DBA ACME SOFTWARE, INC. reserves the right to assign subcontractors to this project to insure the right fit for the job as well as on-time completion. JOHN DOE DBA ACME SOFTWAREP, INC. will be solely responsible for all contributions, management and conduct of any subcontractor(s).
Answer: If you are charging per the hour (or day) clearly you can't pass the job onto someone else without the client's agreement, as they are paying what they consider your time to be worth.
If the job is on a fixed price, then the question come down to if the outcome will be 100% the same then if you had done it yourself.   For example a graphic designer should not pass on design work without the client's express agreement, but could get someone else to drive to the printer's to pick up the samples.
If I pay a bricklayer to build me a garden wall, I expect him/she to lay all the bricks as that effects how the wall looks.   I don't care if someone else is employed to move the bricks.   The mixing of the mortar is harder to decide, as it does not take great skill, but must be done with the correct amount to give the strength and colour that is required.      However if the bricklayer ever claims that it is not his/her fault that someone is not done right, as they got their labour to do it, they are off the job, very likely without getting paid!
Answer: It depends on several factors, not least is the contract that you have with your client. If you don't have a contract, probably the client is under the impression that they have hired YOU specifically.
If the contract expressly names you as the worker, even if you have a company, then you are essentially breaking the contract.
If your contract is with your company, and indicates that work might be done by subcontractors or other workers, then you are within the contract to transfer the work (but professionalism requires that you at least notify the client, supply contact information, etc).
In practice, transferring the work, particularly without notifying the client often results in a pissed-off client at best and a lawsuit at worst.
Friends often aren't as committed to the client and the quality of work, and you might find that you are still on the hook for the final deliverables after the friend bails.
Even if things go well, why would the client come back to you?
Comment: Incorrect.  Unless the terms of the agreement SPECIFICALLY state that it's a personal services contract, the original poster is free to subcontract.  It has nothing to do with being big-business or not.  This happens all the time, all over the place.  Notice to the client is NOT required unless it's going to create a potential risk for the client (i.e. exposure of proprietary information or business practices).
Comment: Point taken, however OP is asking about "transfer" of work, not subcontracting. You are also over-simplifying the need for notice. You cannot rely on your own judgement of the risks of exposure and if you've signed an NDA, you better tread very carefully.


Hypervalency of elements

Question: I know that elements of the 3rd period and beyond can use their empty 3-d oribtals for bonding. But why is there a limit on their covalency?
eg. Al has 5 3d orbitals. And it has an empty 3p orbital. Which means that it's maximum covalency should be 9. But it is 6. Why is it so? Is it because of the small size of Al leading to increased repulsions? Also, why do the elements of the 3rd period use 3d before 4s for hypervalency? 4s has less energy so shouldn't it be used first?
Comment: Without using the 3d orbitals it is impossible to rationalise the geometries of hypervalent complexes as predicted by VSEPR. Nevertheless, the contribution of 3d orbitals in hypervalency has been shown to be minimal at best. Search this site or the Internet for more details. As for aluminium, its 3d orbitals are too high in energy for efficient overlap with ligand orbitals.
Comment: Those last two questions are the core ones. Basically what ortho said: $n$d orbitals are essentially not used by main group elements.
Answer: First off, as suggested in the comment above, the contribution of 3d orbitals in hypervalency is probably minimal.
It's clear from sampling the inorganic literature that "beyond the octet," the size of the atom matters, as well as the shape of the ligands, size of the surrounding coordination sphere, etc. To some degree, it's a matter of fitting X atoms around the central atom.
If you have a 5th or 6th row element (2nd or 3rd row transition metal), lanthanide, actinide, etc., higher coordination is relatively common. For example, for lanthanide ions, 8-coordinate is the most common coordination number. Still, 8-coordinate iron complexes have been found, e.g. "Combined Mössbauer Spectral and Density Functional Study of an Eight-Coordinate Iron(II) Complex" Inorg. Chem., 2015, 54 (17), pp 8415–8422 or "Square-Antiprismatic Eight-Coordinate Complexes of Divalent First-Row Transition Metal Cations: A Density Functional Theory Exploration of the Electronic–Structural Landscape" Inorg. Chem., 2015, 54 (4), pp 1375–1383.
I'm not aware of a general overview of hypervalency and "what coordination numbers can you get", but there's a nice overview on modern descriptions using multi-center bonding.
Answer: Your questions are some of those that bug me the most when chemists follow the rationalisation of Pauling and invoke d-orbitals. Most notably the last two:

Also, why do the elements of the 3rd period use 3d before 4s for hypervalency? 4s has less energy so shouldn't it be used first?

They are basically my core point for saying 'it makes no sense to use 3d at all if 4s is also empty and available.'
All your remaining questions are basically follow-up ones of that central one. And there are more to add, e.g. why should phosphorus use only one d-orbital while sulphur uses two and chlorine may use three?
In general tetrahedral environments such as $\ce{PO4^3- , SO4^2-}$ and $\ce{ClO4-}$, the d-orbitals are represented by the irreducible representations $\mathrm{t_2 + e}$. That means, they should either appear in a group of three or in a group of two. This is inconsistent with the picture drawn for phosphate where we would need one — and for the similar $\ce{XeO4}$ we would need four, also inconsistent. (In case you're immediately wondering: Systems such as ethene usually have a lower symmetry which does not contain degenerate irreducible representations; i.e. we would always get a single representation per orbital.)
And also, all elements should be able to have a maximum valency of nine if they used d-orbitals for additional bonding — however, the highest oxidation state of a main group element is $\mathrm{+VIII}$ to the best of my knowledge, only accessed for xenon.
All things put together, there is such a can of worms to explain that we should apply Occam's razor and omit d-orbital discussions for main group elements.

Hypervalency of elements


Recommended tools for a lathe

Question: I am making a homemade lathe with a drill.  I have previously done some wood carving and looking to get into some lathe / turning work.  I have a few chisels from some wood carving and wondering what the difference is and what type of tools I could use for that.
Comment: For folks on a tight budget who are willing to do some metalworking, there are instructions on the web for turning bar stock into a handle to hold the replaceable carbide tips some lathe tools now use. The result ain't pretty, but it works and by using the carbide tips it lets you delay learning to sharpen.. I keep thinking about a large and pondering thus approach....
Comment: Possible duplicate of http://woodworking.stackexchange.com/q/499/49 or http://woodworking.stackexchange.com/q/4324/49
Comment: @mvr007 It may be the case that the author of the first question was not very familiar with turning tools at the time and incorrectly used the term "gouge" instead of "chisel." In both cases, someone is asking for turning tool recommendations for a beginner (as in this question), and the answers are also very similar to those on this question. I'm not sure this question adequately differentiates itself from those other questions, but at the very least I wanted to make sure this question became linked to the others, if not marked as a dupe.
Comment: @rob, I see how this could be considered a duplicate posting but I think it should stay because those questions you linked to speak about very specific tools. The first talks specifically about gouges and the second talks specifically about homemade tools and carving tools being used whereas this post yes talks about the possible use of a carving chisels but then asks for recommendations of what types to use in a more broad fashion, something the other posts don't do.
Answer: While for a some turning work you probably could get away using some chisels as I have seen it done but I highly recommend you invest in a semi-decent set of tools just to get yourself started out (pre-assembled set or your own custom set if you buy the tools individually).
The main difference in the types of tools are the bevels and grinds on the tool as well as the metal type and hardening as that determines how well the tools will hold an edge and how/how often they will be need to be sharpened (I assume you have some knowledge of this is you have done carving before?). In addition the metal quality is important due to the heat generated from the rpm of the wood as it passes over the metal.
The type of tools you are going to want is going to vary some depending on what you are turning (Spindle, bowls, pens, etc) but here is a list of tools I would recommend you get to start out. These tools should allow you to do most turning just it may be more difficult to make certain cuts or do certain tasks dependent on what you choose to turn.

Tool List

Parting Tool - Used for, well parting a piece when you finish it as well as making tenons and precise cuts.
Roughing Gouge - Used for making rough cuts and taking lots of wood off rapidly.
Skew Chisel - Used for making a smoother cut but also gives you the capability to do so in a more controlled tighter fashion.
Spindle Gouge - Same idea as a roughing gouge just a smaller more controlled area.
Round Nose Scraper - Used to again make a smoother cut but in rounded parts of the wood (you could get a square end scraper but I would recommend the
round nose just based on my own preference).
Comment: Thank you for the comment on this, this makes sense.  I will try to look for some of these tools relatively inexpensively somewhere while I am just testing these waters out.  I know ideally it would be nice to get better tools, but I am not sure how much I would be using all of this.
Answer: You can use chisels and other tools that were not specifically made for turning but you shouldn't expect their edges to hold up for very long. Even with commercial turning tools made from steel frequent sharpening is the norm, so with anything less robust than this you're going to be sharpening a lot so be prepared ahead of time.
As much as the hardness of the wood being turned the speed of rotation and the size of the piece are factors — remember that for any given RPM the edge of a larger piece of wood is moving faster than a smaller piece of wood, so it becomes more abrasive and there is greater chance it can fracture or crack the cutting edge of a tool.
Some related info in a couple of previous Q&As:
Can I use sculptor chisels with a lathe?
What should one consider when purchasing an intro turning chisel set?
How can I tell if wood turning (lathe) chisels are sharp?
Comment: Thank you for the other comments on and articles on this.  Great information and something to consider.
Answer: Not listed in mvr007's answer is the bowl gouge.  Historically I have used a large bowl gouge (e.g. Ellsworth 1/2" Bowl Gouge) for 90% of my work turning, only shying away to another tool for some tight spindle details, parting, and really tough roughing.
More recently I have been using scrapers with replaceable carbide tips (e.g. Easy Wood Tools).  Since starting to use them they have served about 70% of my needs.

Recommended tools for a lathe


Why are the Vatican archives kept secret?

Question: Other than a few documents, most of the Vatican archives are kept secret from the public. What is the official explanation for this? As an outside observer, it seems like the secrecy might be to hide evidence for mistakes committed within the church, but I imagine the church would explain it differently.
Comment: Could you give us some links or other references to substantiate this claim of "other than a few document" the Vatican archives  being secret, and also how it compares with governments of other countries?
Comment: Why hide evidence of wrong doing when you can destroy it? That makes no sense.
Comment: @DJClayworth [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Secret_Archives#Opening_of_the_archives) and the official vatican [site](http://asv.vatican.va/content/archiviosegretovaticano/en/consultazione.html)
Comment: These sites only attest to the existence of 'secret' archives (where 'secret' is here used in the old medieval sense of 'private'. They say absolutely nothing about whether there are other records that are not 'private', or indeed how much access is allowed to the 'secret' archives.
Comment: Probably to avoid the possibility of scandal for those who may not know the full context of a document released from there
Answer: "Secret" is probably about the worst possible translation I can think of for the original term. The "Archivio Segreto Vaticano" is the current term in Italian, as documented on the Archive's website. This translates the Latin "Archivium Secretum Vaticanum" (see for example the references here). Secretum in Latin, however, does not necessarily mean "secret". It can; but it can also mean "separate", "set apart", "private": see especially the II (β) entries in the Lewis & Short dictionary entry for the main verb form (secerno). The Archive itself, on its website, interprets segreto as meaning private, that is, personal to the Pope.
The documents themselves are not secret; they are indexed, with a publicly accessible index available in the Leo XIII index room, and documents in the index (organized by the man who was Pope at the time) are freely available for research by scholars, until (as it appears) the end of the papacy ending about 80 years ago; currently this allows access to documents issued in or before 1939, during the papacy of Pope Pius XI. (One can always speculate, of course, that there are deliberately un-indexed works present in the Archives which are indeed secret, in that there's no way for the public to request them; but I'm aware of no evidence that such might reasonably be the case.)
Pope St. John Paul II described the work of those staffing the Archivio Segreto as being fundamentally a public work, part of the overall work of the Vatican Library:

Your work is not confined to your efforts to preserve the books and manuscripts, the Acts of the Supreme Pontiffs and of the Offices of the Roman Curia, and to handing them on down the centuries, but above all it aims to make available to the Holy See and all the world's scholars the treasures of culture and art kept in the Archives and the Library. For this very reason it is also your duty to carry out attentive and detailed studies of these treasures, often with the help of other experts, so that they can be published with scholarly precision.
It is easy to understand the interest and care taken by my venerable Predecessors, especially in recent centuries, to create, promote and oversee the Apostolic Library, and later, as a fully-fledged branch of it, the Papal Archives. I am thinking of Nicholas V, Sixtus IV, Sixtus V, Paul V and many other Pontiffs, down to Leo XIII, who decided to open the Archives to scholarly research, and Pius XI, who was himself personally involved in this noble field of interest as Prefect of the Apostolic Library.

("Address to the Superiors and Staff of the Vatican Secret Archives and theVatican Apostolic Library", 15 January 1999; emphasis added)
There is no "secrecy", then, involved in the "secret archives" of the Vatican; all the documents are available from roughly before any living person's lifetime (and many since their lifetime; for example, all the Vatican's documents on the Second Vatican Council and on the Vatican's "Information Office on Prisoners of War" from World War II have been made public). The word "secret" is merely an unfortunate mistranslation.
Comment: Sure they were. That article states "1883: Pope Leo XIII opened archives dated 1815 **or earlier**." Over the next hundred years or so, documents from the next hundred years or so were made available, as the chronology makes clear.
Comment: I ment secret in the sense 'unavailable to public'. Anyways as per this [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Secret_Archives#Opening_of_the_archives) article i dont see any document before 1800 being made public. Why is it that some are public while other are not?
Comment: Ok. I didnt ntice the "earlier' in the article. Thanks for the answer
Comment: Who's minding all their wealth? Is there any accountability?
Comment: @ruminator that might be an interesting question to pose on its own. It's not related to this answer.


Will I learn more freelancing or working for a company?

Question: I got out of school about a year ago, and have been freelancing since then.  Sometimes it seems like it would be a good idea to work for a company for a few years, to learn from people with more experience than I have. But on the other hand, working for myself has let me pursue projects/technologies that I'm interested in learning about, and I'm hesitant to give that up.  Any advice?
Comment: Depends on what you want to learn as far as I can tell.  Companies may allow you to specialize more whereas freelancing forces you to wear the jack-of-all-trades hat.  YOu will learn a lot from playing many roles in freelance but you will also for a company in a lot of positions be able to specialize and focus on one particular topic to some extent.  They each depend.
Answer: Do both. I always have.  They don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Working for a company will teach you things like:

Deciphering and improving legacy code that is not your own.
Meeting deadlines
Documentation
Making do with technologies and tools that others have selected for you.

Working freelance jobs will let you explore whatever interests you at any given moment.  You're more likely to be able to play with cutting-edge technologies, and you can choose your favorite tools.
Comment: Sure, who needs a social life, right?  (I joke, but here I am doing exactly the same thing...)
Comment: If you want to do both just be careful about whatever non-compete contract your employer wants you to sign.
Comment: True.  Also make sure your company doesn't own everything you code - even on your time.
Comment: Good advice! This setup helps you learn new things and have a solid income at the same time...
Answer: You learn the same amount - just a different set of skills.
Just like everything else, practice makes perfect. The skills required - and acquired - are vastly different from freelance work and working with others. Working in a team for X years will deeply expose you to the game of politics and general team rapport. Whereas, freelance work for X years will make you extremely sufficient at self-learning and appreciate of your flexible schedule. If you're really sitting on the fence, go and try both. Otherwise, delve (further) into what you're leaning towards and prepare yourself for the future.
I prefer the face-to-face interaction with people on a regular basis. Something that stuck from school was a teacher once said: here at school, you learn 20% from me and 80% from your classmates. I'm sure there's no evidence to back the numbers up, but I like it.
Comment: I am not sure about "You learn the same amount - just different set of skills".  It really depends on as a freelancer how motivated you are and potentially depends on what duties you perform for a company who employs you.
Comment: @Chris - Difference in our mentalities: you succumb to letting your environment determine how much you learn. (The first 'you' is emphasized for a reason.)
Comment: Just pointing it out since you did not explicitly mention it.
Answer: I'd say work for a company for a good few years, but be careful to choose a place that stresses team interaction and has strong senior developers with plenty of 'in the trenches' experience - this is vital to your success and it's hard to get when you're on your own. After that, do 'whatever floats your boat'.
Answer: Adding on - Working in an organization taught me to be a team player and things to look out for. In a real world, projects are equally driven by political decisions as they are by business needs.
You may also get exposure to working with external organizations (especially when you are in a consulting firm).
Answer: In freelancing, your business value is given by seeing and solving problems, often in direct interaction with your customer. One of the hardest parts is actually discovering what your customers wants. Think of it as being a medical doctor, who has to find out about his patient's pain and develop a therapy
In a company, business value is often created by coordination of tasks with others. This requires a rather high amount of discussions and meetings. On the other hand, you might have more access to resources (equipment, knowledge, ... ) to tackle a problem. Think of it as being part of a bank that earns interests on generated knowledge.
Answer: Most freelance assignments are solo projects.  Contracting can give opportunity for team work.  Working at a company gives team work opportunities.
What you learn in these two setups is going to be different.  Which of these you learn more and which you learn less is what you will become in future.
My opinion is, there might be more opportunities to work on big projects (liken them to skyscrapers, cities, etc) when working at a company, in a team.  And, there might be more opportunities to write cleverest code that you enjoy most, but could only handle projects of some size (which, in my opinion, can at best be of medium size and complexity) after which you would need to work in a team.
Answer: Find a place where you can surround yourself with mentors, strong senior people, and innovative thinkers. Make sure you're in an environment that is challenging. You can find these things in a company, or as a freelance, but as a freelance contractor, you're more at the whim of the contracts you get.
If you can, try and find a consulting company. There you can find the best of both worlds. You'll get diverse projects, technologies, but usually you'll have a great support network and you'll be surrounded by other senior consultants.  And you'll also learn a lot of soft skills that will help you with the non-technical aspects of your job.
Answer: Working for a company can be pretty invaluable starting out.  You get to see how things are done "out in the real world," procedures and processes that you wouldn't think of on your own.
As they say, you don't know what you don't know.
Answer: As often happens with these types of questions, the answer is somewhere in between - it depends!
There are plenty of great companies to work for, who'll give you all the learning opportunities you could wish for.
There are other companies that will suck the life out of you on some god awful project on outdated technologies.
A job interview will not often reveal the truth on what a company is really like.
Even in the really great companies you might find yourself constrained under a crappy group/division/manager.
For me, finding a great company to work for (however you define great, and whether you find out the truth) for a few years would be a great start. You can always freelance again later.


How are the gene sequences of individual sperm and egg cells "randomized"?

Question: What I mean by "randomized" is, in the place where an egg cell or sperm cell is made, what is the mechanism by which each one is not made identically? Though I am a layman, I'm pretty sure that if the sperm cell that was right next to "me" had made it to the egg instead of the one that did, the resultant human would have a different genomic sequence and different features.
Comment: are you familiar with concepts like haploid, homozygos, alleles, chrossing over? I am trying to figure out how high scientific level my answer should be.
Answer: Meiosis is the type of cell division responsible for the diversification of genetic material among egg and sperm cells. The diversity comes primarily from crossing over (Prophase I) and the cell divisions (Telophase I & II) later on in the process.

Meiosis begins with one diploid cell containing two copies of each
  chromosome—one from the organism's mother and one from its father—and
  produces four haploid cells containing one copy of each chromosome.
  Each of the resulting chromosomes in the gamete cells is a unique
  mixture of maternal and paternal DNA, ensuring that offspring are
  genetically distinct from either parent. This gives rise to genetic
  diversity in sexually reproducing populations, which provides the
  variation of physical and behavioural attributes (phenotypes) upon
  which natural selection acts.

Further detail of the precise phases can be found in the Wikipeida article.

[picture from wikipedia]
Answer: I think we can attribute this to sheer probability. The human genome contains around 3 billion base pairs. When you consider recombination from chromosomal crossover that occurs in germ line cells, there is an astronomically huge number of possible unique combinations that can be made.
Of course, males generate many many sperm, so some of these are bound to be similar. But the number of sperm produced by any individual doesn't come anywhere close to the number of possible unique sperm that he could produce.


Should I replace a stove wall outlet that became loose but we bent back the prongs?

Question: The stove suddenly quit working, with only the broiler still working. Upon investigation, the 3 prong stove outlet prongs inside of the outlet appeared to have been spread apart too far so the 3 prong stove plug-in was no longer making a good connection. He pushed the prongs inside the outlet closer together, now there is good contact again with the stove plug. But should I replace the outlet for safety? And What would cause the outlet prongs to spread apart inside of the wall? My feeling is the stove must have been unplugged by someone and then not plugged in correctly or jammed in or maybe when it was pulled out from the wall for cleaning, it was yanked.
Comment: 3-prong outlet or 4-prong?  It matters.
Comment: Can you post photos of the breaker for the stove as well as the inside of the outlet box for the stove?
Answer: 3-prong outlets are obsolete and very dangerous.  Specifically, the appliance industry lobbied NFPA to allow bootlegging ground on dryers and ranges, on the logic that these sockets are rarely disturbed. However, This means an ordinary failure in the neutral wire electrifies the chassis of the appliance.
As such, any failure in a 3-prong appliance cord is nothing to trifle with.  It should be replaced, both socket and plug, with all possible urgency.
Now, if upon removing the socket, you discover there actually is a ground wire there*,  or if there is metal conduit which provides ground, or if it is easy to retrofit a ground wire via any viable route, or if you are willing to fit a GFCI breaker on this circuit which moots ground... In any of those cases, you should seize the moment and upgrade to a 4-prong plug and socket. Part of this is removing the neutral-ground bootleg strap in the appliance.
If you use the "not actually grounding it but fitting a GFCI breaker" approach, mark the socket "GFCI Protected/No Equipment Ground".
These sockets are not designed for (not strong enough for) frequent swapping.  If you have a reason to be frequently swapping this plug, then ask a new question about your reasons for doing so, and if there is a better way to do this (there is).

* It happens all the time where a house is built with a 4-prong socket, and the appliances arrives with a 3-prong plug, so the builder changes the socket to 3-prong since modifying buildings is his bailiwick, and modifying appliances is not. Later a new appliance is purchased, and the installer changes the 4-prong plug to a 3-prong (instead of restoring the 4-prong socket) because modifying appliances is his bailiwick, and modifying buildings is not.
Answer: I would replace the outlet. For whatever reason the outlet wasn't making contact with the plug. The "jaws" of the outlet can soften up because of age and heat generated from the current flow. Pushing them closer together is just a band aid and they will probably spread apart again causing some arcing ... during Thanksgiving day or Christmas. Good luck.
Also take a good look at the plug. If it looks burned or scorched replace it too.


Visualization Tools for Web App and Database Servers Performance Monitoring

Question: I am interested in finding solution for visualizing the performance of our web servers and database servers in real-time (or as real time as possible).  I have seen some stuff for the MS Stack but I am actually interested in finding a nice solution for the standard LAMP stack.
Answer: Depending on what information you are looking to collect and how you'd like to report on it, collectd (http://collectd.org/) and a decent rrdgraph wrapper (I use my own slightly modified version of http://haroon.sis.utoronto.ca/rrd/scripts/) may provide what you are looking for. The rrd.cgi pages contain decent examples of the output.
The setup is very manual, but once configured I've found it to be solidly stable.
Answer: You say 'realtime', so maybe you can review the options listed in other questions on serverfault like this one:
What tool do you use to monitor your servers?
But when you add 'visualization', the question changes somewhat.
I've used cricket and rrdtool together for a lot of my home-grown monitoring needs:

http://cricket.sourceforge.net/
http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/

But others, like munin, seem very similar.
While I have no advice on the database side, there are cricket scripts to pick information directly from 'mod_info' apache module.  For databases, there are a large number of metrics of interest, and likely depend heavily on vendor (oracle vs mysql etc).  On the OS side, cricket has plenty of scripts to support basic CPU, Memory, etc too.
While cricket seems to have a large installed base, there doesn't seem to have been any major core development in a while, so try comparing it to other solutions before you commit to a solution.
Comment: should mention that i use munin now and couldn't be happier.  too easy to write plugin scripts for it.
Answer: Cacti ( http://www.cacti.net/ ) is a good FLOSS graphining monitoring tool
Answer: Maintaining your DB can be a full time job. I wouldn't try finding a single tool for the LAMP stack. You should focus on getting a great tool for MySQL and a great tool for Apache.
I am a MySQL Enterprise Gold subscriber and I love love love their MySQL Enterprise Monitor. It really makes my job a pleasure. You also get excellent customer support. They are very fast to respond to any question, and the level of expertise is great. Until I found serverfault.com, I used to create low priority tickets just to "bounce ideas off of them" the response time was far better than any mailing list, and unlike IRC you can trust the advise.
We also purchase RedHat support, but I never use it. The MySQL support is money well invested.
Answer: Zenoss (www.zenoss.com/) is a great solution for small shops ( <= 50 servers). You just have to install an snmp agent on your machines and simply point zenoss there. It is part of the new generation monitoring systems and it is largely based on Nagios and Cacti. So, very simple to manage from GUI and you can get graphs, alerts and syslog in-a-box. For larger server installs , where one has to deal with complicated configuration management and inventory integration, you might want to take a look at Munin or Collectd.
Worth mentioning that Collectd is focused on high resolution collection (i.e. near real time ).
Most people, including me, have some sort of data collection tool and a web presentation interface for data points pulled from the equipment every 5 minutes to see long-term trends and use tools like top, htop, apachetop, mytop , foo-top , dtrace/systemtap for live profiling.


Delta and gamma neutral

Question: A financial institution currently has a portfolio with delta of 450 and gamma of
6,000. A traded option is available with a delta of 0.6 and a gamma of 1.5. How
could the portfolio be made both delta neutral and gamma neutral?
Sorry for this easy question, however I want to know how to make the portfolio delta and gamma neutral. Thanks a lot.
Answer: Your portfolio composition is not clear. To simplify, we assume that it consists of units of a stock and options on this stock. What you can do is to sell 4000 units of options that will bring it to gamma neutral, and then to balance the delta, you can buy 2,400-450=1,950 units of the stock.
Comment: +1 Just a quick note, this works because the stock has zero gamma.
Answer: I assume that stock is also available. Consider then

What is the delta of stock? What is the gamma of stock?
What position should the financial institution take in the traded option and the stock so that the gamma and delta of the portfolio are both 0?
Comment: Hi, please see my post on [Meta](http://meta.quant.stackexchange.com/q/1455/848) about what to do with these kinds of answers. The question feels like homework and this answer gives some pointers in the right direction.

Delta and gamma neutral


Can I build a faster LEGO train motor?

Question: I was going over LEGO Power Functions train motors, and I was not satisfied with the speed. Speed seven is fast enough to derail the train on the curve, but not fast enough realistically. I am thinking that if I open the motor and put in bigger cog wheels, it will hopefully make my train go fast enough (I'm trying to get at least 10 mph.) Will this work? Where can I get bigger cog wheels?
Comment: You also need to remember that there are really two scales at work with LEGO trains: One is the true "Minifigure" scale, and the other is the actual train build scale: Most real world trains are wide enough to fit two sets of two seats in a carriage (four people and an aisle), while LEGO trains barely manage 1 seat wide. The gauge of the track does not match the scale of the people.
Comment: Even if speeding up the motor were possible (which I'm ambivalent on), I doubt that you'd be able to use it at that speed on Lego track. Once again, issues of scale come back to bite you. A small .1mm lip would be the equivalent of almost 4cm lip in real life. Which is well outside the rail specs and would put the train at high risk for detailing. Though Lego has very tight tolerance, I don't think they are tight enough for that speed.
Comment: 10 mph means that train is going really fast. In scale, that's approximately 380 mph!!!
Comment: Yes, but I like to think of it as 574.8 km/h (just like the real TGV!)
Comment: 10mph is nearly 4.5 metres / second. You're going to need a lot of track...
Comment: Nick2253: It has been done before with a 9v motor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DZnSroTRLA. I was just trying to figure out how I can do the same with a PF motor.
Comment: @TaylorGarrett That train isn't going even remotely close to 10mph.  I don't think it's going faster that 5mph, since it looks like I could easily out-jog that train.
Comment: I think you would say otherwise after watching this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-h-BKMfpGU
Answer: Mathematically, the largest driver wheel you can buy for LEGO is Big Ben's XL driver, with a diameter of 36.8mm.  To reach 10 mph, that wheel will have to spin:
36.8 mm diameter -> 115.6 mm circumference -> 7.2 x 10^-5 mi/revolution -> 2320 RPM (!!)
This means that you have to gear up a motor to run at 2320 RPM.  An XL PF motor with no load spins at about 220 RPM.  I just don't think that's going to happen.
And if your goal is to use the smaller wheels, there's no way to accomplish what you want with LEGO.
Don't forget, the TGV (and other high speed trains) are incredibly complex and well engineered machines.  It requires a specific track layout, curve radius, rail width tolerance, surface roughness tolerance, and we haven't even reached the train itself.
Honestly, accomplishing a scale-equivalent speed using only LEGO bricks would lead to a revolution in transportation design, because if you can do it with LEGO at L-gauge without blowing up, you could easily do it with steel, plastics, and composites at people-scale.
Comment: While that may be "smooth" from our perspective, that is incredibly tough from the trains perspective. The gaps and angles there are simply unacceptable for a train moving at 10 mph
Comment: if someone want to check the computation, or play with variables: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%2810miles+%2F+%2836.8mm++PI%29%29%2F60
Comment: Thank you for your answer. I already have the curve radius problem that you speak of completely eliminated using this technique:  http://www.holgermatthes.de/bricks/en/smooth-curves.php.
Comment: The stalling torque on an XL PF motor is 40 N.cm so to get 10x the speed, it would be 1/10 the torque, or 4 N.cm, or 0.04 Nm. Without knowing the mass of the wheel its hard to go further with those calculations though. *In a perfectly efficient frictionless world of course.*
Comment: The PF XL motor is a bad choice for a direct RPM comparison, as it's more built for axle-bending torque instead of pure speed (yes, you can use gears to change the two, but you aren't doing so in your comparison) - a faster motor such as the 2838 (old,  9v motor) reaches 4k RPM, the buggy motor reaches 1700 RPM, which is much more in-line with the 2k RPM of the train motors themselves. Even the E-motor is close to 800 RPM and makes more sense in a comparison if you want a fast motor RPM.
Answer: 10 mph (16km/h) is a crazy speed at that scale [citation needed]. Chances are quite high that your car will derail even on straight lines.
Now, is it possible to reach that speed using lego motors and lego pieces ? I'd say no, but I think you can get quite fast, in the magnitude of 10-12 km/h (6-7.5mph).
As stated in another answer, using the bigger train wheels available, you need to reach 1740RPM loaded (for a 7.5mph target).

Note: all electrical motor facts are from: http://www.philohome.com/motors/motorcomp.htm

The first option coming to my mind is using a (couple of) pull-back motors (http://brickset.com/parts/6024100)

The torque is quite high, the rotation speed is crazy, but:

it'll totally unwind in about 8-10 meters, going freewheel
it'll probably slip at startup
it's not RC

The second option is using the PF train motor, which rotate at ~1900RPM unloaded. You can get extra power (up to 1.9W) by powering it with 12V batteries (at your own risks). Changing the gearing on this one won't get you far. Sure you'll get higher unloaded RPM, but your performances loaded will be really poor.
I've seen cars using 2 of those reach 12km/h, so why not trains ?
Still not fast enough ? Try the mighty RC Buggy motor (http://brickset.com/parts/4177239)

You will have to gear it up a bit (unloaded RPM is 1700), probably at 2x. You might even have to power-it up to 10.5V, but I've seen technic cars reaching 12km/h using this motor, so why not trains ?
But it's already time to slow down, you're approaching the first curve.
Comment: The reason those cars can reach 12km/h is because they are ridiculously overbuilt.  Imagine a car that looked like that in real life, and you'd get something like a dune buggy with 2-3 ft wide wheels.  However, it would be really hard to reach that speed with a scale-accurate vehicle because you've got relatively imprecise (in-scale) LEGO tolerances to deal with.
Answer: Aside from the mechanical enhancement, you could also apply more electrical power to the motor. Some LUGs achieve record-breaking train speed by doing just that, although they usually use custom rails as well as transformers.
Of course, overpowering motors isn't usually recommended; and for a PF one you'll have the issue of embedding a larger battery; but considering the PF motor isn't very expensive and may be able to sustain excessive power quite gracefully, it might be worth a try.
Other than that, yes, using other motors than the train one might be a good solution. Even with regular trains, you can build a mock motor which can then be driven by another PF motor in the cabin. Not sure it would sustain high speeds though.
Comment: Thanks for the suggestion! This really helps. I plan on purchasing an XL motor and some gears (like the ones in the picture in the link that you posted) and get my train going! Thank you! You have gave the answer that I was looking for! Installing this in my train will be not a problem at all.
Comment: Also notice their special custom tracks and the way curves are made bent to counterbalance centrifugal forces.
Also, for having witnessed it, a train crash at those speeds is spectacular, although maybe not so for the one who owns the train.
Answer: If the original train motor is not fast enough, you could build your own engine using normal PF motors and use gearing that is suitable for your needs. Then drive your train via stand-alone train wheels:
Answer: Yes, this train is not going at 10mph. The 12 kph from that video is about 6-7 mph. Closer to 5. You could try rewinding the coils in the motors of the wheel system as to increase the rpm of the motor.
Look this up if you are unclear on anything.
Also, try switching out the motor for that of higher RPM
Answer: Simple way is to buy mini faster engine on ebay and install it in, like 10000rpm one or 25000rpm one would then it would increase speed but the issue is quite complicated to install in but can be done then if rpm increase, speed would be about the same but don't think it would hold on the track you would need to redesign whole train add weight and then different wheels etc...
Comment: Hi Nuero, you seem to have a quite concrete suggestion here. Do you, per chance, have any experience with this kind of solution, i.e. have you done that yourself? If so, I'm sure OP and the community would appreciate if you shared your insights, results, potential pitfalls and recommendations.

Can I build a faster LEGO train motor?


Inflationary recession vs Deflationary recession

Question: I heard the terms deflationary recession & inflationary recession in a podcast and would like to understand what it means, what causes them and past examples.
Comment: Thank you for the information/posts, all. i also believe what you stated Daniel, and I believe its already happening and accelerating. The question of deflationary vs inflationary isnt the crux of the issue, at least not in current economic climate. Im curious, how do you see the crypto space responding to scenarios such as the one you painted? I feel that the tech/coins who with strong use cases/teams and who are gaining utility may surge while the mass majority may die off with liquidity drying up, esp if retail investors need to take their funds and use them.. hard to say but I think that w
Answer: Deflationary recession refers to a recession in which prices are falling. An example was the Great Depression. Below you have a graph of the yearly rate of change in CPI. A negative number means a fall in prices, i.e. deflation. Shaded areas mean recession period according to NBER.

Some argue that deflation was actually a factor contributing towards the great fall in GDP, because the Fed did not act soon enough, keeping the money supply low. The Gold Standard is partly to blame for this inaction of the Fed.
Inflationary recession is when a recession is accompanied with increasing prices. It is commonly known in Macroeconomics as Stagflation. That was the case on the 1973-1975 recession in the US. The graph below shows the yearly rate of change in CPI (again, shaded area represents a recession):

The latter happened mainly because of the 1973's oil crisis where the OAPEC (oil cartel) stopped selling oil to countries supporting Israel (including the US), rising its price.
Answer: I would like to answer this question by sort of describing what each would start to look like. In an area where the population is aging, the resulting decline in incomes and spending tend to be deflationary because less money is earned and less money is spent, reducing economic activity, also known as Gross Domestic Product.
The elderly also sell assets such as stocks, bonds and their primary house to fund their retirement, and if the elderly populace is a major cohort (due to low birth rates and increasing life spans, etc.), then this mass dumping of assets is also deflationary, as the increasing supply of sellers and the stagnating supply of buyers pushes prices lower.
Also, if you take 10 million workers from secure, full-time employment with full benefits to low-paid, insecure part-time jobs with few benefits, you have there the makings of a self-reinforcing deflationary spiral in action because a significant portion of the labor force is now receiving less income, which necessarily slashes their spending and, just as importantly, their ability to borrow huge sums of money to buy vehicles, homes, overseas vacations, etc.
In consumer-dependent economies that are dependent on debt for much of the consumer spending, this decline in borrowing and spending power is extremely deflationary, as there is a lot less money available to chase the existing output of goods and services.
Japan is a case in point. An NHK TV program last Spring reported some young people in Japan are trickling back to rural villages and renting large traditional farm houses and the adjoining land for $200/month, a fraction of what they were paying for cramped studios in big cities. This is an example of deflation in action: people abandon costly housing, transportation, etc. and adopt lifestyles that generate far less income and far lower expenses--both are deflationary.
Technology is relentlessly deflationary. Where consumers once spent small fortunes buying stereo equipment and music storage (LPs, cassettes, CDs, etc.), cameras, film, photo printing, etc., game consoles and equipment, small-screen TVs, and paying for telephony, now a single device--a smart phone--combines all these functions (with some obvious limitations) in one device.
Globalization and commoditization are also deflationary. Global wage arbitrage and automation lowers production costs, and the commoditization of labor and inputs (capital and materials) push prices lower.
Declining energy costs are also deflationary, as the cost of energy affects the pricing of almost every good and service.
You may have heard a lot about printing money being inflationary, but that's not necessarily so. I cited a deflationary trend in Japan above, but I did not mention that Japan has been printing money for decades and yet they have been in a deflationary spiral for decades.
Why or how can this be? Well, if economic activity declines by $1 trillion due to lower incomes, spending, etc., creating $1 trillion out of thin air and injecting it into the economy as monetary and fiscal stimulus is more or less simply replacing the $1 trillion of deflation.
To back up my claim that the Bank of Japan has been printing money like crazy and no inflation in site, check out this chart:

Now, the problem with classifying a recession as inflationary or deflationary is that, much like using GDP to get a pulse on the health of an economy, its past its time. We live in a different world now, we live in an economy where this coming recession will not be inflationary or deflationary, but rather non-linear.
Okay, so what is the difference between a linear and non-linear recession you may be wondering?
Linear correlations are intuitive: if GDP declines 2% in the next recession, and employment declines 2%, we get it: the scale and size of the decline aligns. In a linear correlation, we'd expect sales to drop by about 2%, businesses closing their doors to increase by about 2%, profits to notch down by about 2%, lending contracts by around 2% and so on.
What I am suggesting is that is not what we are going to experience this time around. We will experience a recession that is non-linear and asymmetric.
For example, an apparently mild decline of 2% in GDP might trigger a 50% rise in the number of small businesses closing, a 50% collapse in new mortgages issued and a 10% increase in unemployment.
I recently moved away from a state that is already and has been for quite some time going through this kind of non-linear and asymmetric recession, especially in regards to their pension crisis that they are doing a good job of keeping under wraps. I do not want to offend anyone, so I will not mention what state in the Union this was that I recently relocated from. I will just say they currently have $115 billion in unfunded liability to public pensioners. That kind of crisis leads to higher property taxes, services being cut or simply collapsing and manifesting itself in such things as potholes on almost every single road you drive on, including the wealthier neighborhoods.
But this public-sector pension crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. What happens when the gains in equities and bonds that have nurtured the illusion that public-sector pension funds are solvent and can be funded by further tax increases reverse into losses?
So a better way to start looking at and understanding recession, would be linear vs. non-linear as opposed to inflationary vs. deflationary.
Answer: A recession can be caused by two events. A decrease in demand or a decrease in supply. A decrease in demand causes prices to fall which is deflation. A decrease in supply causes prices to rise which is inflation. See the graphs below.
Examples of inflationary recession:

The 1973 oil crisis caused 'stagflation' in the US and triggered a recession. Link.

Examples of deflationary recession:

The Japanese asset price bubble of the 1980s has caused decades of deflation and low inflation in Japan. Link.
The Great Depression of the 1930s. Link.

Inflationary recession - aggregate supply falls which decreases output and causes prices to rise.

Deflationary recession - aggregate demand falls which causes prices to fall.


How can I tell if a listed adjuvant is no longer toxic due to a vaccine's composition?

Question: Frequently there is some banter about the risk associated with adjuvants by people who consider vaccines more dangerous than beneficial. If a given vaccine lists an adjuvant that is toxic in isolation, how can I find out if it is inert or otherwise harmless in the overall composition of the vaccine?
Comment: Could whomever explain the vote to close?
Comment: "Questions on Skeptics are expected to generally **relate to challenging a belief or truth**, within the scope defined in the faq." I don't see how this relates to challenging a belief or truth.
Comment: @Jason Adjuvants are frequently discussed among vaccine supporters/opponents as not/disease causing agents.
Comment: Oh, I wasn't aware of that. I might suggest re-wording your question to mention it explicitly; as it is, it just seems like a question about vaccines rather than a question related to a belief about vaccines. I would withdraw my vote to close if I could.
Comment: Water is toxic in high doses. So the question is rather a non-sequitur.
Answer: The important principle of toxicology here is

The dose makes the poison

by Paracelsus.
You have to find out the quantity of the adjuvant to compare it to known safety data. You can check Material safetey data sheets (MSDS) for those substances, or directly search for safety studies about those substances, e.g. on Pubmed.
The quantity of most additives in vaccines is very small, far below dangerous amounts.


Why are the DD Girls called that?

Question: Why are the DD Girls named such?
Their name in katakana: [ディーディー・ガールズ], has no meaning, other than just being "DD Girls"...
How do we even know that they're called the DD Girls?
Answer: The DD Girls only appear in the original anime; they are not in the Sailor Moon manga or consequently, Sailor Moon Crystal. In their first appearance in the anime (in the first half of ep. 45), they identify themselves as the DD Girls:

Queen Beryl: In moments, Queen Metalia will be fully resurrected. I will allow no one to interfere. Anyone who can finish these girls [the Sailor Senshi] off, step forward.
DD Girls: Please let us, the DD girls, take on the task.

(For reference, the line spoken by the DD girls sounds roughly like その役目、我がデイーデイー・ガールズに, but my Japanese skills are extremely lacking and I may well be wrong.)
There does not appear to be an official explicit explanation for their name; if there were, I would have expected someone to point it out already somewhere. However, if I had to take a guess, I would suggest that it is simply a matter of themed naming: consider that the DD Girls show up when the Sailor Senshi are at D Point. (They also work for the Dark Kingdom, but the correspondence between the letters is less overt there, so that seems less likely.)
Answer: The "D.D. Girls" (ディーディー・ガールズ) were rumored to be based on a very popular J-Pop girl band at the time of the first season being written/planned, known as: "C.C. Girls" (シーシー・ガールズ) (previously known as "D.D. Gaps").
Quite interesting how similar the names are. Both are written in Katakana also. Not sure if it was ever explained officially, but it's an interesting theory.
Comment: Interesting! ... If you could translate the Wikipedia page on them, that'd help pick out similarities?

Why are the DD Girls called that?


Trainable, high-quality, open-source Speech Recognition package under Windows

Question: For an internal project, I am looking for a Speech Recognition solution that fulfills the following criteria:

It needs to be open-source and offline (i.e. not just using cloud
based API's)
It needs to be trainable and not just used for
inference
It needs to run in a Windows environment but could
leverage on Cygwin or other "virtualization" options
Given that it needs to be trainable, it also should support GPU/CUDA access

The packages which I have tried so far are Kaldi, DeepSpeech, DeepSpeech2, and CMU Sphinx
Kaldi and DS(2) are targeting Linux
Using WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) would be ideal, except that it cannot utilize the GPU and thus is a no-go for training.
Cygwin looked so far very promising, as it neatly exposes the GPU, but I am running into other problems compiling the packages (e.g. for Kaldi, I can't compile OpenFST on Cygwin)
CMU Sphinx is the only package that works, but the quality has been very poor compared to Kaldi or DS(2)
I have spent quite a bit of time trying to make things work, but only identified the challenges so far.
If somebody managed to get a decent (Kaldi / DS(2) - type quality) system running under Windows then I would most welcome a recommendation.
Answer: You have to train on Linux, there is no chance you will be able to work on Windows. Otherwise Kaldi should be your choice.


Processing an online payment - which will be processed on Shabbos

Question: With my bank, when you process, online, a payment, it automatically goes out on the following day. If I authorize it on Friday they will send it on Saturday. I can also request any future date I want. Is there a problem if they process it on Shabbos?
Comment: Must it go out the next day? Would they be violating their 'contract' to send it out right away? What about if they sent it out late on Sautrday night?
Comment: Related: [Script running on Shabbat](http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/10358/2), [Asking on SO right before Shabbat](http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/8256/2), [E-commerce site open on Shabbat](http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/9304/2).
Answer: This is discussed in an article on my rebbe's website, about kinyanim (transactions) on the internet:

A serious issue that is often raised today is whether one may maintain
  one's website to conduct business transactions on Shabbat. Although
  this author is unaware of Teshuvot written on this topic, two
  important discussions serve as a basis for discussion of website
  operation on Shabbat. Dayan Yitzchak Weisz (Teshuvot Minchat Yitzchak
  3:34) discusses the permissibility of maintaining a vending machine in
  a public area that operates on Shabbat. He notes many authorities
  (including Rav Akiva Eiger) that forbid taking title to items on
  Shabbat even if the transaction took place during the weekday. To
  avoid this problem Dayan Weisz suggests that the owner declare that he
  does not take title to the money deposited in the machine until after
  Shabbat and that the purchasers acquire title prior to Shabbat to the
  items that they will take from the machine on Shabbat. Prominent
  rabbis have expressed serious reservations about the validity of this
  solution to this author.
Rav Uri Dasberg (Techumin 19:349-363) discusses whether a bank may
  allow its automatic teller machines to operate on Shabbat. Among his
  suggestions is arranging that the machine display a message urging
  customers not to use the machine on Shabbat. Prominent rabbis have
  expressed serious reservations about this suggestion as well. Indeed,
  Rav Dasberg notes that the late Rav Shlomo Goren forbade Bank
  Hamizrachi to keep its ATMs in operation on Shabbat. Accordingly, one
  should ask his Rav for a Halachic ruling regarding this serious
  Halachic issue.


Creating a video from a text and an audio file

Question: I have a text and an audio file. I want to create a video that simply displays the text with the audio file playing in the background.  I have to create many such videos, so I'm looking for an automated solution. What program/script  could achieve that?
Comment: So, subtitling, basically?
Comment: @Mulvya I guess that could be one approach, one difference being that we don't have any video as input.
Comment: ffmpeg can do it. Like Mulvya says I'd use subtitles if you want the te\xt to change over the course of the video.
Comment: ffmpeg can create a blank video as canvas. I mentioned subtitling because I assume you want the displayed text to sync with the audio. If not, you can scroll the text - see https://superuser.com/q/1273424/114058
Answer: The Amara website offers a free service that accepts audio and text files, synchronizes them, and lets you download a .srt file (synchronized SubTitle). Source of suggestion: Photography TutsPlus.
YouTube also accepts text files without time coding as SubTitle files and then you can enable auto-sync, you ought to be able to download a .srt file after processing is completed (not tested by me).

To do it manually (with some automation) try the following.
If you convert the text file to a .ass or .srt file then you can use the following commands:

ffmpeg.exe -i subtitles.srt subtitles.ass
ffmpeg.exe -i video.mp4 -vf ass=subtitles.ass video-new.mp4

That will show the words hardsubbed on the video synchronized with the audio. The video can be a moving image (video) or a static image.
Using a .ass editor allows more control over color and other font features than using .srt files.
Without using a SubTitle Format file you won't get synchronized text.
You can add the audio to a video and upload it to YouTube, then wait 15 minutes, after which YouTube will have used audio recognition to convert the audio to subtitles (with better than 80% accuracy). Then you can download the .srt file from the Video Manager and edit the SubTitle file by comparing it to your (presumably accurate) text file.
If you were hoping for a program that automatically syncs raw text files with audio and makes a video I have found nothing by Googling (outside of pay services).
There are a few questions over at SO, but they remain unanswered.
I will do some more searching and improve this answer in a few hours.
Not a one-mouseclick solution but it's about as automated as I can suggest, for free (other than Amara).
[I welcome Mulvya to edit and improve this answer.]
Answer: I wrote a Python script create a video that simply displays the text with the audio file playing in the background.
Example of file structure before running the script (in this example, the three pairs of audio file + transcript):
C:\Users\Franck\Documents\GitHub\code>tree /f
Folder PATH listing
C:.
│   generate_videos.py
│
├───audio
│       file1.wav
│       file2.wav
│       file3.wav
│
└───transcripts
        file1.txt
        file2.txt
        file3.txt

After running the script (output.mp4 is the concatenation of videos\*.mp4):
C:\Users\Franck\Documents\GitHub\code>tree /f
Folder PATH listing
C:.
│   generate_videos.py
│   output.mp4
│
├───audio
│       file1.wav
│       file2.wav
│       file3.wav
│
├───images
│       file1.png
│       file2.png
│       file3.png
│
├───transcripts
│       file1.txt
│       file2.txt
│       file3.txt
│
└───videos
        file1.mp4
        file2.mp4
        file3.mp4

Code:
from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont
import textwrap
from pathlib import Path
import glob
import os
import shlex
import subprocess

def draw_multiple_line_text(image, text, font, text_color, text_start_height):
    '''
    From unutbu on [python PIL draw multiline text on image](https://stackoverflow.com/a/7698300/395857)
    '''
    draw = ImageDraw.Draw(image)
    image_width, image_height = image.size
    y_text = text_start_height
    lines = textwrap.wrap(text, width=40)
    for line in lines:
        line_width, line_height = font.getsize(line)
        draw.text(((image_width - line_width) / 2, y_text),
                  line, font=font, fill=text_color)
        y_text += line_height

def generate_image(transcript_filepath, image_filepath):
    '''

    '''
    #image_width
    image = Image.new('RGB', (800, 600), color = (0, 0, 0))
    fontsize = 30  # starting font size
    font = ImageFont.truetype("arial.ttf", fontsize)
    #text1 = "I try to add text at the bottom of image and actually I've done it, but in case of my text is longer then image width it is cut from both sides, to simplify I would like text to be in multiple lines if it is longer than image width."
    #text2 = "You could use textwrap.wrap to break text into a list of strings, each at most width characters long"

    text1 = open(transcript_filepath, 'r').read()
    text_color = (200, 200, 200)
    text_start_height = 0
    draw_multiple_line_text(image, text1, font, text_color, text_start_height)
    text2 = transcript_filepath
    draw_multiple_line_text(image, text2, font, text_color, 400)

    image.save(image_filepath)

def create_folder_if_not_exists(directory):
    '''
    Create the folder if it doesn't exist already.
    '''
    if not os.path.exists(directory):
        os.makedirs(directory)

def get_basename_without_extension(filepath):
    '''
    Getting the basename of the filepath without the extension
    E.g. 'data/formatted/movie_reviews.pickle' -> 'movie_reviews'
    '''
    return os.path.basename(os.path.splitext(filepath)[0])

def run_command(command):
    print('command: {0}'.format(command))
    process = subprocess.Popen(shlex.split(command), stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    while True:
        output = process.stdout.readline()
        print(output.strip())
        if output == b'' and process.poll() is not None:
            print('Done running the command.')
            break
        if output:
            print(output.strip())
    rc = process.poll()
    return rc

def main():
    '''
    Generate videos based on image+text
    '''
    transcript_file_extension = 'txt'
    speech_file_extension = 'wav'
    data_folder = 'transcripts'
    transcript_filepaths = list(glob.glob('{1}/**.{0}'.format(transcript_file_extension, data_folder)))
    transcript_filepaths.sort()
    speech_filepaths = list(glob.glob('{1}/**.{0}'.format(speech_file_extension, data_folder)))
    speech_filepaths.sort()
    print('transcript_filepaths: {0}'.format(transcript_filepaths))
    print('speech_filepaths: {0}'.format(speech_filepaths))

    output_folder = 'images'
    audio_folder = 'audio'
    video_output_folder = 'videos'
    create_folder_if_not_exists(output_folder)
    create_folder_if_not_exists(video_output_folder)
    output_folder = os.path.abspath(output_folder)
    print('output_folder: {0}'.format(output_folder))

    ffmpeg_concat_filepath = os.path.abspath('ffmpeg_concat_file.txt')
    ffmpeg_concat_file = open(ffmpeg_concat_filepath, 'w')
    for transcript_filepath  in transcript_filepaths:
        image_filename = get_basename_without_extension(transcript_filepath)
        image_filepath = os.path.join(output_folder, '{0}.png'.format(image_filename))
        generate_image(transcript_filepath, image_filepath)
        audio_filepath = os.path.join(audio_folder, '{0}.wav'.format(image_filename))
        video_filepath = os.path.join(video_output_folder, '{0}.mp4'.format(image_filename))
        os.system('ffmpeg -loop 1 -y -i {0} -i {2} -shortest {1}'.format(image_filepath, video_filepath, audio_filepath))
        ffmpeg_concat_file.write("file '{0}'\n".format(video_filepath))

    ffmpeg_concat_file.close()
    # [How to concatenate two MP4 files using FFmpeg?](https://stackoverflow.com/a/11175851/395857)
    # Note: the following command only works in Microsoft Windows.
    # See the Stack Exchange link for the command for Linux and Mac OS X
    os.system('ffmpeg -safe 0 -f concat -i {0} -c copy output.mp4'.format(ffmpeg_concat_filepath))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()
    #cProfile.run('main()') # if you want to do some profiling

Tested with:

Python 3.6
Pillow 5.3.0
ffmpeg version N-50911-g9efcfbe Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers, built on Mar 13 2013 21:26:48 with gcc 4.7.2 (GCC)
Windows 7 SP1 x64 Ultimate:

It should work on any operating system as long as ffmpeg is available (e.g., in the path on Microsoft Windows).
Video output example:


Can a reverse osmosis system remove radioactive elements in contaminated water?

Question: I am curious to know if a reverse osmosis system can clean water from radioactive elements like cesium-134 and cesium-137. If it can, how efficient can it be?
Answer: I don't know about cesium in particular, but according to the EPA's web site (see the section called "How will radionuclides be removed from my drinking water?"), both isotopes should be covered under the beta particle section.
I cannot quantify the efficiency part of your question, but presume it's acceptable to the EPA (which may or may not instill confidence to you in terms of whatever methodology they're using).

The following treatment method(s) have proven to be effective in removing radionuclides at levels below their MCLs:
Beta particle and Photon Radiation: ion exchange and reverse osmosis;
(Gross) Alpha Emitters: reverse osmosis;
Radium 226 and Radium 228 (Combined): ion exchange, reverse osmosis, lime softening;
Uranium: Ion exchange, reverse osmosis, lime softening,  coagulation/filtration.
Answer: Radioactivity does not apply so much to an element as it does to a specific isotope of that element.  Many elements have both radioactive and non-radioactive isotopes.  In general, if a reverse osmosis membrane removes a particular element or compound it will remove all isotopes of that element to a similar degree.
Answer: "The best solution may be the one used routinely to treat water at the Savannah River Site. The process combines activated carbon, reverse osmosis, and ion exchange. If one doesn't get the iodine-131, two others have a chance to capture the radiation through other means."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2011/04/07/how-to-remove-radioactive-iodine-131-from-drinking-water/#18325ad52a66


Enthusiast-badge: not awarded if I changed my user name or swapped my Open ID?

Question: I'm almost certain that I've hit SO for more than 30 days in succession at this point, but I still haven't gotten my Enthusiast badge.  I did do two things to my profile in this time period: I changed my display name on my profile, and I swapped my primary Open ID from a crappy old provider to Google.  Could either of these have prevented me from getting the badge?
Answer: Name change: Doubtful. I've changed my Meta name several times, and am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I got my Fanatic badge (the gold variant of Woot, Enthusiast) yesterday for Meta.
The OpenID might, but I wouldn't know about that. Did you user ID number change when your OpenID changed? I'd think that the badges are tied to user ID, not OpenID. But I've been wrong before ...
Are you 100% sure you actually did visit the site, reloading pages and all, successively, whilst logged in? I actually e-mailed team@so over my Enthusiast badges for the Trilogy (since I'd gotten it on Meta first), and they're very certain the algorithms are working correctly -- sure enough, a few days afterward, my Woot (Enthusiast) badge appeared on SO.
Comment: I guess I'm not 100% sure, and with Jeff's comment, I must not have.  I need patience, I guess :-)  Thanks.
Comment: Like Guns N Roses said, all you need is a little patience. And making sure you really are hitting the sites whilst logged in. :) (I think that might have been my issue -- just quickly breezing through SU and SF instead of actually ensuring that the sites weren't just loading from browser cache.)
Answer: Changing names or openid will not affect the enthusiast award calculations.
Comment: Is there a time-lag between the 30th day and the Woot! badge being awarded?
Answer: This should no longer happen, as we respect (usually) the oldest user when merging.  If it happens and you're missing the badge, post here on meta and I'll fire up a monster query that goes off and grants them for all time.
The default query for granting these runs against denormalized data and doesn't strictly respect each history record (but is very, very fast, it's a trade-off).  Occasionally something happens and we go grant a few of these for users that were missed due to bad merges or some other crazy case.


According to traditional Catholicism, what is the spiritual solution for the divorcee who hasn't had their marriage annulled?

Question: There has been quite a bit of controversy over what is becoming known as 'modern Catholicism' (post-Vatican II) and 'traditional Catholicism' (pre-Vatin II). 'Modern Catholicism' thought generally holds that divorcees who have not had their marriages annulled and are in another marriage can still receive Communion, so long as they repent. 'Traditional Catholicism' thought, to my understanding, generally holds that divorcees who have not had their marriages annulled and are in another marriage cannot receive Communion since they are still in a state of sin so long as they are neglecting their previous marriage that is not annulled. Assuming the traditional Catholic view to be true, what would be the solution to this problem for the remarried divorcee? Would the traditionalist Catholic suggest that the divorcee divorce the person that they are currently married to (in which case I'm assuming that marriage would be annulled)? And if so, would the person then be obligated to return to the marriage they left (which seems very improbable and unrealistic)? If it is a continual sin to be with another person while your previous marriage is still considered valid, in what way should the more complicated situations of divorce without annulment be evaded?
Comment: "Modern Catholicism", if that means "the official teachings of the Catholic Church post-Vatican II", still believes as far as I'm aware that a divorced couple who have remarried, but have not had their "previous" marriage annulled, cannot receive communion. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Or do you mean something different by "modern (post-Vatican II) Catholicism"?
Comment: OK - but that's a *little* different, I feel, from what the text of your question actually says.
Comment: You might clarify "so long as they repent." Genuine repentance of a sin includes the firm resolution not to commit that sin any more. In the case at hand, it would mean at least avoiding sexual intimacy with the new "spouse". Someone with the attitude "I'm sorry I did that but I'll continue doing it" has not really repented.
Comment: I'm not referring necessarily to official doctrine. I'm referring more so to some of the more liberal thought that has been generated specifically after Vatican II, specifically within the Synod on the Family and some of the priests appointed under Pope Francis like Cardinal Reinhard Marx, including Francis's denunciation of the 'traditional' Cardinal Burke for no reason.
Comment: The point of the text is firstly to find an answer to what traditional Catholicism (as in the canon that is currently used and taught by official doctrine) suggests as a solution to complicated situations surrounding divorce without annulment, and more so remarriage in such a case. The main point is not to precisely distinguish between 'modern' Catholicism and 'traditional' Catholicism. I was just throwing that information in there because it's somewhat relevant to the discussion, as both circles of thought are present in some capacity in the Church as a whole.
Answer: Let's start with a discussion of what the situation is, as the Church traditionally has seen and taught it:
The official teaching of the Church is that civil divorce is usually immoral in itself, but may be morally tolerable under certain circumstances:

If civil divorce remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children, or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense.

(Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2383)
And a Catholic who is "the innocent victim of a divorce decreed by civil law" (Catechism paragraph 2386) is not committing a moral offense.
However, even in these two cases, the Church teaches that the civil divorce does not in itself end the marriage before God - indeed, that is impossible if the marriage is valid:

A marriage that is ratum et consummatum [that is, validly constituted, and subsequently consummated] can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death.

(Code of Canon Law, Canon 1141)
That being the case, the question of whether the couple are "still married"—that is, whether they were validly married in the first place—must be investigated beyond determination of their divorced status. The Church will presume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that the couple are indeed still married, because this is how the Church works: it assumes a marriage is valid until it can demonstrate it to be invalid:

In a doubtful matter marriage enjoys the favor of the law.

(Code of Canon Law, canon 1150)
Thus, the traditional Catholic view is that a divorced couple who have not obtained a decree of nullity (an annulment) are still considered married.
This is not a problem in itself; but if the couple is remarried (civilly—they wouldn't be able to be remarried in the Church), the Church considers them to be committing adultery:

If a husband, separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because he makes that woman commit adultery; and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has drawn another's husband to herself.

(Catechism, paragraph 2384, quoting St. Basil, Moralia paragraph 73)
Adultery being a quite serious sin, the Church teaches that the civilly remarried couple are not fit to receive the Eucharist:

If the divorced are remarried civilly, they find themselves in a situation that objectively contravenes God's law. Consequently, they cannot receive Eucharistic communion as long as this situation persists.

(Catechism paragraph 1650)
The Catechism of the Catholic Church does offer some suggestion about what to do in such a case:

Reconciliation through the sacrament of Penance can be granted only to those who have repented for having violated the sign of the covenant and of fidelity to Christ, and who are committed to living in complete continence. ... They should be encouraged to listen to the Word of God, to attend the Sacrifice of the Mass, to persevere in prayer, to contribute to works of charity and to community efforts for justice, to bring up their children in the Christian faith, to cultivate the spirit and practice of penance and thus implore, day by day, God's grace.

(Catechism para. 1650–51; the second sentence is quoted from Familiaris Consortio)
It is not specified what "in complete continence" means; it could mean that the remarried couple is to separate, or at least that they are to live together without sexual or romantic activity of any sort—either of which would be no doubt rough on their relationship, and certainly on any children of their union. The Church nowhere seems to teach that someone must go back to their previous marriage, though perhaps that might be suggested by individuals whom the couples could consult for guidance. It appears to prefer that, since the civilly divorced couple have given an indication that they are unable to live together, they should live separately and in celibacy—either with or without the company of their civilly-remarried spouse.
This is no doubt "a hard saying" (cf John 6:60); many in such a situation understandably feel that the Church is abandoning them. Nevertheless, the Church currently teaches that this is the only way available to insist on (a) the holiness of the Eucharist and (b) the lifelong nature of marriage. Those who are searching for a different approach do so out of pastoral feelings for Catholics affected by the situation, which they are trying to reconcile with the formal teachings of the Church.
Comment: Thanks for the well thought out reply. Would it be possible that 'live in continence' means refraining from sexual activity, and not necesarrily a decree to separate from the remarriage?
Comment: @ManweElder That's what I meant by "at least that they are to live together without sexual or romantic activity of any sort".
Comment: Sorry, didn't see that.
Answer: The problem isn't the divorce, but the remarriage. If you simply get a divorce for a good reason, you are not in state of sin - although the divorce itself is a mortal sin.
The real problem is remarriage. Modernist Catholics say divorcees who have not had annullment and have another partner can receive communion, but it has never been (and it never will be) the teaching of the Church, because it is against Our Lord's law.
The teaching of the Church is: Marriage is indissoluble. If someone gets divorced, there are not much options...
If the person is not "remarried", the person must remain on celibacy until the partner dies (or until death)
If the person is "remarried", or it leaves the "new partner" or they'll live like "brothers", with absolutely no intimacy, as it would be adultery.
If else, the person lives in state of mortal sin, thus cannot receive the sacraments (Not even the Reconciliation, if there is no will to abandon the "new partner"
There are no "gray areas".
Comment: Welcome to the Christianity Stack Exchange, we are glad you are here.  Your answer is pretty good, but would be significantly improved by referencing some Catholic documents that back up your assessment.
Answer: In September 2015 Pope Francis issued a motu proprio Mitis iudex dominus Jesus which bears on this question. It does not change the need for a declaration of nullity as regards the prior marriage, but it does streamline the process, especially if the original marriage is invalid because of a lack of form.
A baptized Catholic must follow proper form--the marriage must be witnessed by a Catholic priest or deacon or the Catholics party(s) must have been granted a dispensation for the marriage to be valid.  Metropolitan Tribunal, Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.
According to Art. 6, Can. 1688 of the motu proprio;

After receiving a petition proposed according to the norm of can. 1677, the diocesan bishop or the judicial vicar or a judge designated by him can declare the nullity of a marriage by sentence if a document subject to no contradiction or exception clearly establishes the existence of a diriment impediment or a defect of legitimate form, provided that it is equally certain that no dispensation was given, or establishes the lack of a valid mandate of a proxy. In these cases, the formalities of the ordinary process are omitted except for the citation of the parties and the intervention of the defender of the bond.
Comment: Thank you, luchonacho. I do not know how to accept your edit other than by way of comment.


What can I do to get the most "fully stocked" tower bux bonuses?

Question: I'm interested in any answer, but I'm particularly curious if there is a limit on how often you can it for a given store.   For the Food store's it is normally hard to keep them stocked, and if I can only get "Fully Stocked" tower bux bonus say once an hour per store, than I wouldn't work as hard to keep those stores full.
Comment: I am interested in the answer to this too, I noticed sometimes when I fully stock them I don't get the bonus. I am sure there is a limitation.
Answer: You always get the bonus, the issue you're noticing is you don't always get the  Tower Bux. You'll note a little (useless) coin bonus at the bottom right every time you fully stock. They actually used to have the same Fully Stocked notification for Coin Bonuses, but it was annoying as heck and they removed it long ago.
The Tiny Tower wiki claims you have a 1/6 chance of getting Bux for fully stocking a store.
Quickly stocked floors like Food floors are easy to fully stock if you're paying constant attention and they'll thus get you the most fully stocked bonuses. Otherwise, just stock stores which you can keep up with at a reasonable place. Quickly stocked floors are hard to keep up with, and it's probably not worth changing your playing style, you'll have to pay a LOT of attention to the game to keep up with <1 hour restock times.
Generally, just don't change your style of play other than always stocking your third items first. Also, Dream Job Bitizens double stock but not stock time or sales, so your stock lasts longer; this means you have 2x as much time to get the fully stocked bonus.
Comment: The wiki claims that (IIRC, can't check right now) there's a 1/16 chance of getting the tower buck fully stocked bonus, which is not that bad.
Comment: @Tacroy thanks for the tip, turns out it's 1/6 as Emerica's post suggested
Comment: That's right, now I remember - 1/16th is the chance of getting a tower buck as an elevator tip.
Comment: Thanks for the informative answer.  I updated the question to be a little more specific.  You were right that it was the random tower bux bonus I was after.
Comment: @EBongo I figured; no one cares about the coin bonus, just like with the elevator tips :)
Answer: It appears that you always get a fully stocked gold bonus, but getting the fully stocked bonus bux is totally random. Much like getting a tip from the elevator.
This thread shows that it is about a 1 in 6 chance to get bux for fully stocking.
Comment: +1 for math.  I gave the check to Ben Brocka for the most complete answer, but you definitely added valuable insight.
Answer: To keep the food stores (in your example) longer, there are only two things you can do.
Spend Tower Bucks to (3 per upgrade) to upgrade the stock level of all three levels.  This will increase your stock by 75 items on all 3 levels.
Make your TinyTower citizens happy by placing them in their dream job.  That will double the total stock per how many dream job employees you have at that store.  Note: This is random when you gain the residents (don't be afraid to evict them!).
Both of these paths can significantly increase your chances for receiving the bonus.  [ But from my experience it seems to be random ]
Comment: Just to clarify about your dream job comment: Placing 1, 2 or 3 bitizens in their dream job will multiply x2 the stock produced for the 1st 2nd and 3rd item respectively, so having one bitizen in his dream job will multiply the 1st item, placing 2 will multiply the 1st and 2nd and placing all three will multiply all item.
Comment: Note that the more stock a store has, the longer it takes for any one stock level to empty so that you can re-fill it.  This means that it takes longer for an attempt at getting the Fully Stocked bonus TB.
Comment: Foxtrot - I may have caused confusion by not being specific enough.  I have since clarified in the question and title that I'm trying to figure out how to maximize the Fully Stocked tower bux bonus.


Extreme Latency When Sending Large Number of Items To Publishing Queue

Question: In one of my Tridion implementations, there is an extreme latency when sending a component or page to the publishing queue. Typically an item is published at a master level, and published in 300 or 400 child publications at the same time. While I understand this is a large amount of items to publish, it seems excessive that I should need to wait 20-40 minutes just to add them to the queue. The performance has degraded over time, it appears, as well. What can I do to decrease the amount of time sending large amounts of items to the publishing queue takes?
Comment: How you are publishing using core services or GUI extensions?
Comment: Also, probably worth checking on your database maintenance plans...
Answer: It might be worth it to have a look at your QUEUE_CONSUMERS table in your Tridion CM database. Some destinations in there might be offline, and Tridion will wait until a timeout occurs every time it needs to send such notifications.
Have a look at a previous TRex question: explanation of QUEUE_CONSUMERS and QUEUE_FILTERS tables
Also, I wrote a blog post about it: http://yatb.mitza.net/2012/10/slow-db-performance-on-content-manager.html
Answer: I'm guessing you're using the option in advanced publishing properties to publish in child publications, or some kind of a custom Event System implementation.
In both cases, make sure your database is optimized. Essentially, ensure indexes and stats are up to date.  Also look at increasing the swap space/page file size; and ensure the DB server has enough resources to process such a number of requests, e.g. CPU.
The other variables are the horsepower of your CM server (again, CPU and memory), and network traffic between the CM and it's DB.
If you're using custom code to trigger the cascaded publishing, then look at what that logic is doing (perhaps the algorithm isn't very efficiently structured).  You can also look at sending items to the queue individually instead of as one giant request.


Can I use unsweetened baking cocoa raw, or do products with it in it need to be cooked?

Question: I'm asking because I found a recipe online for an ice cream that calls for baking coco, but doesn't call for cooking. I've used baking coco before to make hot chocolate, but it seems that it wouldn't dissolve fully if not first put in some sort of hot liquid, even though it's finely ground. If not, do I need to treat it differently before putting it in a recipe?
Comment: Very related: http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/8274/dissolving-cocoa-powder-in-milk (especially [Marti's answer](http://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/8279/1672) - heat is not the only way to make cocoa dissolve)
Answer: If we are talking about something like Hershey's (the brand I know) unsweetened cocoa powder (the dark reddish-brown very fine powder), it can be mixed with cold milk if you make a paste of it first, and then dilute it to the consistency you want. I.e. start with the powder, pour in the milk bit by bit stirring and "mashing" as you go so as not to let any of the powder float on the milk. This cocoa powder also mixes easily with oil & fat, so that property should help with your ice cream ingredients which probably have some butterfat included.
If your recipe includes only ingredients and no instructions, perhaps that paste technique can help.
Answer: Most of the ice creams I've made have been custard-based, meaning that egg yolks are cooked together with cream and sugar.  The mixture is chilled and then churned.  For a custard-style ice cream recipe including cocoa powder, the cocoa would likely be dissolved during the cooking step.
If you are following a no-cook recipe that includes cocoa powder, I would at least use a whisk to mix the cocoa in as thoroughly as possible.  However, dissolving the cocoa in a hot liquid would likely result in a smoother ice cream.
Not sure what kind of recipe you are following, but you could probably heat the milk/cream, stir in the cocoa powder to dissolve, then chill the mixture before churning it.
Comment: I'd be kind of wary of a no-churn ice cream recipe.  Or rather, expect more of a popsicle texture than an ice cream texture.  Without the churning process, you won't get air incorporated into the mixture as it's freezing.  Anyway, I would take the extra time to heat the cream and stir in the cocoa powder.
Comment: Ironically enough it was a no churn, no cook recipe. Cream, sweetened condensed milk, raw baking coco, brownie bits, 2 types of chocolate. Mix and freeze. I know uncooked coco is nasty in large quantities (2-3 TBSP) , which is why i asked!
Answer: I enjoy buying vanilla ice cream and mixing in baking cocoa to taste.  You can make it as rich as you want, and it tastes good.
Comment: This does not answer the question.


Income tax rebate on Housing Loan Interest for under construction house pending more that 3 years

Question: I have booked a flat in Hyderabad with reputed Builders.
I have booked the flat in December 2012.
Loan of about 35 Lakhs was sanctioned in August 2013 and about 30 Lakhs was disbursed to Builder in September 2013. I am paying the EMI to the bank from October 2013 month till date.
However the construction of flat is not completed till date and registration of the flat on my name is also pending since then.
My question is, Can I claim tax benefit on the Principle and Interest amount I am paying to Bank? Any help in suggestion would be highly appreciated.
Answer:
Can I claim tax benefit on the Principle and Interest amount I am paying to Bank?

The Principle payment there is no benefit till you take possession of the house. If you take possession of the house before 31 March 2016[even if taken on 30 March], the principal payments from April to March can be claimed. Any principal payments you made from Sept 2013 till 31 March 2015 is lost.
The Interest payments can be claimed in a portion of 20% each year from the year you take possession. For Example if the interest was Rs 1 lacs till 31 March 2015, you can claim Rs 20,000 for next 5 years. The overall limit still stays Rs 1,50,000
Note: There is a clause in tax rebate that states that if the possession of house is not taken within 3 years from taking the loan, the rebate on interest would be reduced to Rs 30000 from 1.5 lacs.