qid int64 1 74.7M | question stringlengths 12 33.8k | date stringlengths 10 10 | metadata list | response_j stringlengths 0 115k | response_k stringlengths 2 98.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
4,717 | I have a Heatilator NB4842I gas fireplace. When I turn on the switch on the wall, the pilot lights the burner. When I turn off the switch, the burner goes off but pilot is staying on until I tap on gas valve. It's never done this before, and the unit is only 4 years old and not used often. Any ideas for diagnosing the cause of the problem? | 2011/02/18 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/4717",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | look at page 22 of the manual: <http://www.heatilator.com/downloads/installManuals/4031-551.pdf>
using a multimeter, check the voltage being sent to the valve while the fireplace is on, which should be the green and orange wires. the re-check it after you turn it off and the pilot is still on. if the on and off voltages are different, then your gas valve is faulty. if the voltages are the same, then your controller is faulty.
if the it's valve, do not replace it yourself. in nearly every jurisdiction, it is illegal for non-licensed people to do work on gas fixtures.
note that it might also be that you just never noticed that the pilot remains on for a brief time as it burns the residual gas in the line. | I'm not sure about your model, but in my experience (I have gas heating stoves and a gas fireplace) the pilot should stay lit at all times to prevent the build-up of gas in the case of a small leak. It also protects against the case of a power outage.
I know this is the DIY site, but I'd still recommend having it looked at by a licensed professional. You don't want to screw up with gas and blow up your house. |
6,034 | It has in the first 15 (mostly 2-3 player) games I've played so far but I'm wondering if this is true in general. Are we missing strategies? Is this less true in 4-5 player games?
Another way of asking the question is whether certain game winning ways (which are perhaps the majority of game winning strategies/tactics) tend to produce longest continuous path (and using up all of your cars) as a by-product. These ways include:
* having many 4-6 car routes (requires fewer turns to deploy cars and earns more points)
* achieving long path mid game (increases chance for new tickets to mostly overlap)
* avoiding a hub-and-spoke network (which traverses less territory) | 2012/01/06 | [
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/6034",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com",
"https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/users/2260/"
] | Yes, obtaining longest continuous path of routes **certainly does** highly correlate with winning. It's pretty simple to see why:
* Multiple routes that "cooperate" by overlapping are obviously more efficient than short routes in different parts of the board that have nothing to do with each other.
* Longer routes are vastly more cost-effective than short routes. A 6-length route takes you one turn to put down and earns 15 points. 6 1-length routes would take you 6 turns to put down and earn a measly 6 points.
* As if the inherent advantage of playing long, complementary routes wasn't obvious enough, you even get an additional endgame bonus for having the longest continuous path!
As I suggested in my comment though, you don't have to roll over and let other players build long, efficient routes at their leisure. In my group, sabotage tactics are very common, and if someone obviously has designs on a long, efficient chain of routes, then building obstructively, or just picking up the colours they have telegraphed they will be needing to collect, can really ruin their day.
I also mentioned what is possibly the strongest deterrent to building long, leisurely routes: the capacity for a player to speed up the end of the game by going out quickly. The lucrative Los-Angeles-to-New-York mega-route in your hand becomes a huge liability if your opponents block a few key connections in the midwest and then play to run themselves out of trains as quickly as possible.
As such, it's not *always* good to have a hand of long, valuable, complementary routes at the start of the game: a couple of seemingly unambitious short routes may be enough to win the game, if you play to go out as fast as possible and are the only one to have completed all the routes in your hand. Lumbering your opponents with big negative points can be just as good as working hard to score those points yourself: all's fair in love and trains... | As the accepted answer explains in detail, "Yes" for the basic set. However, with the 1910 expansion using the "Mega" variant, the ticket mix and incentives change so much that the answer is not so obvious.
The biggest change is the 15 point bonus card for completing the largest number of tickets. Many of the additional tickets are short and overlapping East Coast routes. And the initial ticket draw is keeping at least 3 of 5, with subsequent draws keeping at least 1 of 4. So drawing tickets is a much better bet.
In the dozen or so games I've played since acquiring 1910, no one strategy has emerged as dominant, though we've seen some very impressive victories by obtaining and completing over a dozen tickets on the East Coast. |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | If they're just starting programming, I'd *not* recommend VIM to begin with.
1. they'll have enough on their plate to begin with learning the ins and outs of programming
2. depending on the language/platform, I think they'd appreciate an IDE with code completion , general language support etc. (I know you can do this in VIM, but it's a lot more seamless in an IDE).
Note. I'm a VIM fan, and I run my IDEs with VIM plugins, so I have nothing against VIM as such.
I note in your comments you're looking at teaching them Java. [BlueJ](http://www.bluej.org/) is a Java IDE geared towards learning Java, and may be a useful introductory tool. | I know I'm going to get voted way down by the legion of emacs/vi people here, but in terms of learning a language, an IDE with intellisense (or whatever the generic version is called) is absolutely indispensable. For instance, if you use visual studio, you will spend almost no time playing with the IDE. The automatic completion clearly shows the relationships of member variables, and makes it so that you don't have to remember minutia. Scope and type resolution is also invaluable for the beginner. Most important however, is that whatever you are using contains an industrial strength debugger. Logging with strings to a text file is no way to go through life. Even the legion of emacs lovers will probably admit that someone is far more productive with a professional IDE and a beginner is far less likely to get frustrated. Now, if you are going with something opensource/free, your experience may vary. |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | I am by no means an emacs whiz, but in terms of learning the basics of a new language I think it is handy.An IDE can be a distraction from what you are trying to learn (So you end up spending time learning an IDE rather than a language) and emacs provides both good indenting and syntax highlighting, as well as easy access for compiling, debugging, and accessing the shell. | vi and gcc, nothing else |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | I know I'm going to get voted way down by the legion of emacs/vi people here, but in terms of learning a language, an IDE with intellisense (or whatever the generic version is called) is absolutely indispensable. For instance, if you use visual studio, you will spend almost no time playing with the IDE. The automatic completion clearly shows the relationships of member variables, and makes it so that you don't have to remember minutia. Scope and type resolution is also invaluable for the beginner. Most important however, is that whatever you are using contains an industrial strength debugger. Logging with strings to a text file is no way to go through life. Even the legion of emacs lovers will probably admit that someone is far more productive with a professional IDE and a beginner is far less likely to get frustrated. Now, if you are going with something opensource/free, your experience may vary. | vi and gcc, nothing else |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | If they're just starting programming, I'd *not* recommend VIM to begin with.
1. they'll have enough on their plate to begin with learning the ins and outs of programming
2. depending on the language/platform, I think they'd appreciate an IDE with code completion , general language support etc. (I know you can do this in VIM, but it's a lot more seamless in an IDE).
Note. I'm a VIM fan, and I run my IDEs with VIM plugins, so I have nothing against VIM as such.
I note in your comments you're looking at teaching them Java. [BlueJ](http://www.bluej.org/) is a Java IDE geared towards learning Java, and may be a useful introductory tool. | Avoiding the subjective question of editor choice, it's not so much about advanced/beginner as learning too much at once. It's probably a good idea to separate the coding learning curve from the editor learning curve. If you're busy learning to code, use an editor you're already comfortable with (doesn't have to be an IDE, could be gedit, etc.). Once you're comfortable coding, you can move on to an editor of your choice if you're not happy with what you already knew. An advanced coder might still prefer a simple editor, and one who hasn't learned too much might still want to work faster and switch to Vim. |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | I know I'm going to get voted way down by the legion of emacs/vi people here, but in terms of learning a language, an IDE with intellisense (or whatever the generic version is called) is absolutely indispensable. For instance, if you use visual studio, you will spend almost no time playing with the IDE. The automatic completion clearly shows the relationships of member variables, and makes it so that you don't have to remember minutia. Scope and type resolution is also invaluable for the beginner. Most important however, is that whatever you are using contains an industrial strength debugger. Logging with strings to a text file is no way to go through life. Even the legion of emacs lovers will probably admit that someone is far more productive with a professional IDE and a beginner is far less likely to get frustrated. Now, if you are going with something opensource/free, your experience may vary. | It depends on what platform and language you plan to start and then boils down to individual preference. If it happens to be windows and you plan to do C#/VC++/VB then Visual Studio IDE is the best.
I used emacs when I started on Scheme and python and I found it handy.
cheers |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | If you're just starting and you're learning Java, I would go for one of the graphical IDEs. Yeah, something like Eclipse or Netbeans is fairly bloated, but it doesn't change the fact that they make the barrier of entry way lower with suggested error fixes and the like.
vi or emacs in combination with gcc are great, but I would go with something more beginner-friendly to begin with. | Editors seem to be a touchy subject. It really seems to be personal preference. The only reason I ever learned vim was because of the workplace required me to. The only reason I ever used emacs was because of school. Having said that, I think just using the available development tools (VS for .net framework, Eclipse/NetBeans for Java, etc) would be best in my opinion, but again, its definitely personal preference. |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | Whatever editor you choose, have the cheatsheet sticked next to your screen. | I learned Java using a combination of [DrJava](http://www.drjava.org/), [BlueJ](http://www.bluej.org/) and [Eclipse](http://www.eclipse.org/). I started with DrJava since it had an interactive Java shell. Then I played with BlueJ and finally Eclipse once I thought I knew enough.
Now that I "know" a couple languages I just use Vim. |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | If you're just starting and you're learning Java, I would go for one of the graphical IDEs. Yeah, something like Eclipse or Netbeans is fairly bloated, but it doesn't change the fact that they make the barrier of entry way lower with suggested error fixes and the like.
vi or emacs in combination with gcc are great, but I would go with something more beginner-friendly to begin with. | I'd recommend Vim for anyone working with a text editor, but *not* at the same time as learning programming. |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | Avoiding the subjective question of editor choice, it's not so much about advanced/beginner as learning too much at once. It's probably a good idea to separate the coding learning curve from the editor learning curve. If you're busy learning to code, use an editor you're already comfortable with (doesn't have to be an IDE, could be gedit, etc.). Once you're comfortable coding, you can move on to an editor of your choice if you're not happy with what you already knew. An advanced coder might still prefer a simple editor, and one who hasn't learned too much might still want to work faster and switch to Vim. | I'd recommend Vim for anyone working with a text editor, but *not* at the same time as learning programming. |
1,208,257 | How do we get the performance of a video decoder as to how many frames it can decode per second. I know following parameters are used to arrive at fps but not able to relate them in a formula which gives the exact answer:
seconds taken to decode a video sequence, total number of frames in the encoded video sequence, clock rate of the hardware/processor which executes the code, Million cycles per second(MCPS) of the decoder
How is MCPS and fps related? | 2009/07/30 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1208257",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2759376/"
] | It depends on what platform and language you plan to start and then boils down to individual preference. If it happens to be windows and you plan to do C#/VC++/VB then Visual Studio IDE is the best.
I used emacs when I started on Scheme and python and I found it handy.
cheers | I don't know about emacs, but I would recommend learning Vim for a beginner in a heartbeat. The vimtutor program is a great way to pick up the basics. It is a bit of effort, but you soon get used to it.
I started using Vim when I was learning HTML, and it was a massive improvement over something like Notepad. It soon replaced nano as my command-line text editor of choice in Ubuntu as it's easy to navigate around fast with Vim. Then, I decided to learn Python and I found it was easy to get started with it because I was already familiar with Vim. Now I'm learning C and it's great to have an editor I'm already familiar with as it means I don't have to worry about getting used to a new IDE or text editor. This means there's less work for me to do.
I've found knowing how to use Vim gives me a significant productivity boost over any other editor I've used. The only downside is the key bindings get burned into your brain, to the extent that I keep reaching for Escape when I want to move around in a Word document! |
841,532 | We currently have a number of servers in places where the power often drops out for various reasons. The servers all run ESX with a couple of linux guests. Putting in UPS's here isn't practical just yet so I'm looking for some ways which we can reduce our risk of corrupting the file systems.
I originally looked at RAID Controllers (not specifically for disk redundancy) but I've read that using features like caching can actually increase the risk of data loss. It also seems that controllers with cache batteries may help but I'm not entirely convinced.
Does anyone know if RAID controller cards do in fact provide this kind of protection, or is there anything else we can do generally to reduce our risk? | 2017/03/30 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/841532",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/213580/"
] | Storage controllers can come with a [Battery Backed Write Cache](https://serverfault.com/questions/65096/battery-backed-write-cache) and/or a [super cap(icitor)](https://serverfault.com/q/505616/37681) in the case of SSD's to protect cached writes during power outages.
There are indeed scenario's when those still won't protect your data integrity, although BBWC will provide better protection than using a write cache without a battery, completely disabling any and all write caches (at the cost of some performance) can be more reliable.
But the recommended tool is still an UPS, as even a small one will allow the systems to do a graceful shutdown when during a power outage the batteries are close to getting exhausted (as well as protect the hardware against repeated spikes in power). | RAID controllers with [BBU](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_battery) can *sometimes* reduce the risk of filesystem errors when an ungraceful shutdown happened. *Sometimes* because you can't guarantee that the OS on your filesystems isn't killed while writing some block on your disk so the OS will become unusuable (not necessarily the filesystem, though). In the meantime I would invest in some (very small) UPSs, like [this](https://www.criticalpowersupplies.co.uk/ups-systems-three-phase-ups-single-phase-ups-battery-backup/pc-ups/be400-uk), so that the servers can do a graceful shutdown whenever a power outage occurs.
Edit: Well, @HBruijn beat me to it :) |
841,532 | We currently have a number of servers in places where the power often drops out for various reasons. The servers all run ESX with a couple of linux guests. Putting in UPS's here isn't practical just yet so I'm looking for some ways which we can reduce our risk of corrupting the file systems.
I originally looked at RAID Controllers (not specifically for disk redundancy) but I've read that using features like caching can actually increase the risk of data loss. It also seems that controllers with cache batteries may help but I'm not entirely convinced.
Does anyone know if RAID controller cards do in fact provide this kind of protection, or is there anything else we can do generally to reduce our risk? | 2017/03/30 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/841532",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/213580/"
] | Storage controllers can come with a [Battery Backed Write Cache](https://serverfault.com/questions/65096/battery-backed-write-cache) and/or a [super cap(icitor)](https://serverfault.com/q/505616/37681) in the case of SSD's to protect cached writes during power outages.
There are indeed scenario's when those still won't protect your data integrity, although BBWC will provide better protection than using a write cache without a battery, completely disabling any and all write caches (at the cost of some performance) can be more reliable.
But the recommended tool is still an UPS, as even a small one will allow the systems to do a graceful shutdown when during a power outage the batteries are close to getting exhausted (as well as protect the hardware against repeated spikes in power). | Having a single host with a single RAID with write-back cache enabled, someday for sure it would be a data corruption issue.
Take a look at software-defined storage solution that provides =>2 failures to tolerate (2+ copies of your data stored). Having a cluster of nodes where each one has a connection to UPS and shared storage provided on top of RAID 10/6 probably would reduce the data corruption to none. Obviously, 2 independent power lines should be connected to UPS. Having this kind of setup you can enable/use cache for sure. |
2,431 | Reviewing an [old answer of mine](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101649/a-modern-review-of-java/101737#101737), I noticed that one of my links to [another answer of mine](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92157/what-features-are-there-in-c-and-not-in-java/92333#92333) had gone stale, losing both the content and the context of that answer.
Now I seem to remember that the [second question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92157/what-features-are-there-in-c-and-not-in-java/92333) was considered a duplicate of another [closed question](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/6284/22493), and it was probably right to be closed, but did it really deserve to be deleted?
I think that a number of answers there were valuable. I certainly put some effort into making a balanced, impartial (as far as one can) response that tried to cover different ground to other questions/answers. In fact, my own answer aside, I remember that it contained more useful answers than the earlier question which *hasn't* been deleted.
Incidentally, is there any way for me to get back the content of my answer? | 2011/10/17 | [
"https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2431",
"https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/users/22493/"
] | As a duplicate question it becomes a **candidate** for deletion.
Not all duplicates are deleted the wording of the question may be sufficiently different to make it useful as an alternate route to the initial question on the subject.
In this case it looks like another moderator decided that the deleted question wasn't sufficiently different. The fact that [your answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101649/a-modern-review-of-java/101737#101737) linked to [another answer](https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/92157/what-features-are-there-in-c-and-not-in-java/92333#92333) would tend to support that view. If both questions could have effectively the same answer then they are clearly duplicate questions. | In this specific case, the user who asked the deleted question asked the same duplicate question about 2 dozen times. And the question was exactly the type of question we *don't want here*:
* "I don't know what language I should learn next, is Java a good choice?"
* "What's the difference between C# and Java: is Java better?"
Finally, the question was closed for a month without any activity: nobody tried to save it, make a case for it being the better duplicate, or vote to reopen it. Thus, it was deleted as part of the [ongoing cleaning](https://softwareengineering.meta.stackexchange.com/search?tab=newest&q=cleanup) of the site.
Closure [sets a question on the path to deletion](https://money.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/415/deleting-closed-question-of-no-value-is-not-happening/418#418). If a question is worth saving because of its answers, let's save it before that happens: make a case for it on meta, edit the question to improve it so it fits on our site, and/or flag it for reopening explaining why the question now (or always) fit the site's guidelines. |
68,618,413 | Am syncing my mongo DB data to snowflake on a daily basis using a node js script. So if a row is already existing in snowflake, then I want to replace that row with the new data, or if the row doesn't exist in snowflake then I want to insert a new row.
Also, I want to do this for a lot of data.
So is there any way to do bulk upsert in snowflake? If not, then what will be the optimal way to achieve this?
The table may have millions of rows and possibly go to billions in the future. | 2021/08/02 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/68618413",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4387357/"
] | This is a typical use case for a `merge` statement. You can see the documentation for merge here: <https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/sql/merge.html>
Using a merge statement for billions of rows can lead to some [high-churn tables](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/user-guide/tables-storage-considerations.html#managing-costs-for-large-high-churn-tables) so it isn't ideal. It could be better if you can append to the table only and figure out the latest record with a select statement. | You can bulk copy your data into a staging table then use [MERGE](https://docs.snowflake.com/en/sql-reference/sql/merge.html) feature in snowflake. |
65,527,170 | I'm working on an API where a user of my API can sign up for my API to get an API key. When I generate this API key, I'm using asymmetric encryption to create a hash that I store in my database.
My question I have is this, once the user generates an API key and then signs out, the next time they sign in, I don't have the API key anymore to display in my app's dashboard. Is this normal / acceptable?
Do other APIs do it differently? i.e. do they offer the API key to the user? and if so, are they storing the unhashed API key in the DB? Is this a balance between user experience and security? | 2021/01/01 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/65527170",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/749512/"
] | In OAuth2, it's pretty common for systems to show the OAuth2 client id at all times, but the OAuth2 secret exactly once.
If you want to make the user experience good, focus on making it easy to roll a fresh API key without expiring old ones. You can show a list of API keys (not the secret), and when they are last used so it's also easy to let the user disable keys that are likely out of use. | API Keys are not usually considered secure. Typically API Keys are visible to the clients. API keys should not be used to perform secure authorization. However, you can design any system as you want and in your current design if a third-party or attacker can make successful invocations to your API by obtaining the so called "API Key", it's better to hide it and let the user take the responsibility to securely store the key in somewhere else. Also you should make sure in your API, there must be a way to
1. Revoke an existing API key.
2. Generate a new API key with an expiry date. |
10,742 | I have a folder that connects to a hardware weather logger. The data is pretty huge, and I only wish to keep the last 5 hours worth of data. This folder; however, has also some config files such as myconfig.ini.
How can I set up an automatic service that automatically deletes all files in a folder save for a few? | 2010/11/01 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/10742",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/982/"
] | You can use `logrotate`. It's installed by default; check the manual page for instructions. | Taking a slightly different tack: why not set up a 5hr frequency job to rename the current collection directory and create a new current collection directory? You could manually or automatically process/archive/delete the individual 5hr directories. |
10,742 | I have a folder that connects to a hardware weather logger. The data is pretty huge, and I only wish to keep the last 5 hours worth of data. This folder; however, has also some config files such as myconfig.ini.
How can I set up an automatic service that automatically deletes all files in a folder save for a few? | 2010/11/01 | [
"https://askubuntu.com/questions/10742",
"https://askubuntu.com",
"https://askubuntu.com/users/982/"
] | Red Hat/Fedora/Cent has a slick little script called `tmpwatch` that you can easily pull-over to Ubuntu. | Taking a slightly different tack: why not set up a 5hr frequency job to rename the current collection directory and create a new current collection directory? You could manually or automatically process/archive/delete the individual 5hr directories. |
300,372 | We have a SharePoint field named "options" of type Choice and which allow Fill-in, as follow:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ck947.png)
Now if we create a new list item and we type-in a new choice (for example "MY NEW CHOICE"), as follow:-
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/DKdSk.png)
and we save the new list item, then the Choices inside the field definition will not get modified (will not contain the new choice). but when we create or edit a list item >> the Choice field will show the new fill-in choice, as follow:-
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/2oQ8Z.png)
so is this normal? or my tenant has an issue, since the new fill-in choice will not get updated inside the field's definition choices (which will only contain 3 choices; A,B & C without the fill-in choice "MY NEW CHOICE"), as follow:-
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/kZMDu.png)
? | 2022/02/11 | [
"https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/questions/300372",
"https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com",
"https://sharepoint.stackexchange.com/users/84413/"
] | You're correct, there seems to be a change in functionality which isn't consistent with how choice columns have worked in the past.
Also, if you edit the choice column using the modern UI, it will still not show the additional choice that has been added by the user (despite it now being available in the dropdown when creating a new item).
It's quite possible that this is a bug. In that case I would recommend contacting Microsoft support via the admin center for further clarification. You can create a new service request via the Microsoft 365 admin portal. In the menu section, you'll see the "New service request" option within "Support".
Alternatively, you could use a managed metadata column. I find managed metadata columns to be far more flexible than choice columns anyway. | I've just discovered this same disappointing issue!
I had even thought maybe the Drop-Down Menu was pulling from the existing values in the field, but when I updated the values to eliminate an undesired choice, it didn't help.
I found that the setting for "Display choices using: Drop-Down Menu" causes this behavior, but the "Radio Buttons" option only shows the settings-specified choice list and one for "Specify your own value: Enter value here", which is my preferred behavior. |
3,987,363 | I am designing my site on a mac. I used basic formatting and then when i want on to my pc, the wrapper width was too wide. My question is what can i do so that my website looks the same on all browsers/os? | 2010/10/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3987363",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/441049/"
] | 1. Take <http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/> to heart. Looking good is a sensible goal, looking the same isn't.
2. Understand the standards (e.g. we can't tell if the difference is because of a bug or because you've provided instructions that only make sense for a particular window size)
3. Use them (don't forget to [validate](http://validator.w3.org/) the HTML and CSS and to [lint](http://jslint.com) the JS)
4. Ensure you engage [standards mode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode#Triggering_different_rendering_modes)
5. Learn about bugs in browsers | You need to do a lot of testing in different broswers, in some cases you need to have different styles to make them cross browser compatiable, broswers render pages differently here is a nice tutorial with some tools to help you.
You should try and stick to the web standards as much as possible.
<http://www.cookielabs.com/web-development/tools-to-keep-your-site-cross-browser-compatible/comment-page-1> |
3,987,363 | I am designing my site on a mac. I used basic formatting and then when i want on to my pc, the wrapper width was too wide. My question is what can i do so that my website looks the same on all browsers/os? | 2010/10/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3987363",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/441049/"
] | 1. Take <http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/> to heart. Looking good is a sensible goal, looking the same isn't.
2. Understand the standards (e.g. we can't tell if the difference is because of a bug or because you've provided instructions that only make sense for a particular window size)
3. Use them (don't forget to [validate](http://validator.w3.org/) the HTML and CSS and to [lint](http://jslint.com) the JS)
4. Ensure you engage [standards mode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode#Triggering_different_rendering_modes)
5. Learn about bugs in browsers | I'd add a couple of further points to @David Dorward's answer:
1. Validate your [(x)html](http://validator.w3.org/) and [css](http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/), and
2. Use a [css reset stylesheet](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/116754/best-css-reset) to reduce the impact of differing browser-defaults for padding, font-weight, size, margin, etc... (the reset itself isn't, strictly, *necessary*, but understanding **how**, and **why**, it can help is a useful process in itself). |
3,987,363 | I am designing my site on a mac. I used basic formatting and then when i want on to my pc, the wrapper width was too wide. My question is what can i do so that my website looks the same on all browsers/os? | 2010/10/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3987363",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/441049/"
] | 1. Take <http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/> to heart. Looking good is a sensible goal, looking the same isn't.
2. Understand the standards (e.g. we can't tell if the difference is because of a bug or because you've provided instructions that only make sense for a particular window size)
3. Use them (don't forget to [validate](http://validator.w3.org/) the HTML and CSS and to [lint](http://jslint.com) the JS)
4. Ensure you engage [standards mode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode#Triggering_different_rendering_modes)
5. Learn about bugs in browsers | Use a css reset like Eric Meyer, CSSesta, BoilerPlate or YUI.
Sign up for <https://browserlab.adobe.com/>
You can test the most commonly used browsers win & mac |
3,987,363 | I am designing my site on a mac. I used basic formatting and then when i want on to my pc, the wrapper width was too wide. My question is what can i do so that my website looks the same on all browsers/os? | 2010/10/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3987363",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/441049/"
] | 1. Take <http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/> to heart. Looking good is a sensible goal, looking the same isn't.
2. Understand the standards (e.g. we can't tell if the difference is because of a bug or because you've provided instructions that only make sense for a particular window size)
3. Use them (don't forget to [validate](http://validator.w3.org/) the HTML and CSS and to [lint](http://jslint.com) the JS)
4. Ensure you engage [standards mode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirks_mode#Triggering_different_rendering_modes)
5. Learn about bugs in browsers | >
> Autoprefixer uses data on the popularity of browsers and support for vendor prefixes by browsers. Based on this information, it arranges and deletes the prefixes. It can help you to get prefixes for: animations, transition, transform, grid, flex, flexbox and others. It is recommended by Google and used by Twitter and Alibaba.[source](https://autoprefixer.github.io/)
>
>
>
* [autoprefixer tag](https://stackoverflow.com/tags/autoprefixer/info)
* [autoprefixer GitHub](https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer) – [PostCSS plugin](https://github.com/postcss/postcss) to parse CSS and add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from [Can I Use](https://caniuse.com/)
* [Autoprefixer CSS online](https://autoprefixer.github.io/) – web repl for the original autorefixer. |
3,987,363 | I am designing my site on a mac. I used basic formatting and then when i want on to my pc, the wrapper width was too wide. My question is what can i do so that my website looks the same on all browsers/os? | 2010/10/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3987363",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/441049/"
] | You need to do a lot of testing in different broswers, in some cases you need to have different styles to make them cross browser compatiable, broswers render pages differently here is a nice tutorial with some tools to help you.
You should try and stick to the web standards as much as possible.
<http://www.cookielabs.com/web-development/tools-to-keep-your-site-cross-browser-compatible/comment-page-1> | I'd add a couple of further points to @David Dorward's answer:
1. Validate your [(x)html](http://validator.w3.org/) and [css](http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/), and
2. Use a [css reset stylesheet](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/116754/best-css-reset) to reduce the impact of differing browser-defaults for padding, font-weight, size, margin, etc... (the reset itself isn't, strictly, *necessary*, but understanding **how**, and **why**, it can help is a useful process in itself). |
3,987,363 | I am designing my site on a mac. I used basic formatting and then when i want on to my pc, the wrapper width was too wide. My question is what can i do so that my website looks the same on all browsers/os? | 2010/10/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3987363",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/441049/"
] | You need to do a lot of testing in different broswers, in some cases you need to have different styles to make them cross browser compatiable, broswers render pages differently here is a nice tutorial with some tools to help you.
You should try and stick to the web standards as much as possible.
<http://www.cookielabs.com/web-development/tools-to-keep-your-site-cross-browser-compatible/comment-page-1> | Use a css reset like Eric Meyer, CSSesta, BoilerPlate or YUI.
Sign up for <https://browserlab.adobe.com/>
You can test the most commonly used browsers win & mac |
3,987,363 | I am designing my site on a mac. I used basic formatting and then when i want on to my pc, the wrapper width was too wide. My question is what can i do so that my website looks the same on all browsers/os? | 2010/10/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3987363",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/441049/"
] | You need to do a lot of testing in different broswers, in some cases you need to have different styles to make them cross browser compatiable, broswers render pages differently here is a nice tutorial with some tools to help you.
You should try and stick to the web standards as much as possible.
<http://www.cookielabs.com/web-development/tools-to-keep-your-site-cross-browser-compatible/comment-page-1> | >
> Autoprefixer uses data on the popularity of browsers and support for vendor prefixes by browsers. Based on this information, it arranges and deletes the prefixes. It can help you to get prefixes for: animations, transition, transform, grid, flex, flexbox and others. It is recommended by Google and used by Twitter and Alibaba.[source](https://autoprefixer.github.io/)
>
>
>
* [autoprefixer tag](https://stackoverflow.com/tags/autoprefixer/info)
* [autoprefixer GitHub](https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer) – [PostCSS plugin](https://github.com/postcss/postcss) to parse CSS and add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from [Can I Use](https://caniuse.com/)
* [Autoprefixer CSS online](https://autoprefixer.github.io/) – web repl for the original autorefixer. |
3,987,363 | I am designing my site on a mac. I used basic formatting and then when i want on to my pc, the wrapper width was too wide. My question is what can i do so that my website looks the same on all browsers/os? | 2010/10/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3987363",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/441049/"
] | Use a css reset like Eric Meyer, CSSesta, BoilerPlate or YUI.
Sign up for <https://browserlab.adobe.com/>
You can test the most commonly used browsers win & mac | I'd add a couple of further points to @David Dorward's answer:
1. Validate your [(x)html](http://validator.w3.org/) and [css](http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/), and
2. Use a [css reset stylesheet](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/116754/best-css-reset) to reduce the impact of differing browser-defaults for padding, font-weight, size, margin, etc... (the reset itself isn't, strictly, *necessary*, but understanding **how**, and **why**, it can help is a useful process in itself). |
3,987,363 | I am designing my site on a mac. I used basic formatting and then when i want on to my pc, the wrapper width was too wide. My question is what can i do so that my website looks the same on all browsers/os? | 2010/10/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/3987363",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/441049/"
] | Use a css reset like Eric Meyer, CSSesta, BoilerPlate or YUI.
Sign up for <https://browserlab.adobe.com/>
You can test the most commonly used browsers win & mac | >
> Autoprefixer uses data on the popularity of browsers and support for vendor prefixes by browsers. Based on this information, it arranges and deletes the prefixes. It can help you to get prefixes for: animations, transition, transform, grid, flex, flexbox and others. It is recommended by Google and used by Twitter and Alibaba.[source](https://autoprefixer.github.io/)
>
>
>
* [autoprefixer tag](https://stackoverflow.com/tags/autoprefixer/info)
* [autoprefixer GitHub](https://github.com/postcss/autoprefixer) – [PostCSS plugin](https://github.com/postcss/postcss) to parse CSS and add vendor prefixes to CSS rules using values from [Can I Use](https://caniuse.com/)
* [Autoprefixer CSS online](https://autoprefixer.github.io/) – web repl for the original autorefixer. |
302,700 | I measured the input capacitance of a MOSFET and found it was greater than an IGBT. Why is this? Is it due to the Miller capacitance seen in a MOSFET? | 2017/04/30 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/302700",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/147175/"
] | Miller capacitance is nothing that you can easily measure with a cap-meter. The effect comes from the voltage on one pin falling such that less voltage difference is seen on more of the area, such that more charge can flow on the gate. For an IGBT this effect is not present so much, since the MOSFET in front of the BJT does not see the full voltage swing which a single mosfet would see if it was used instead. Further, since there is more amplification going on in an IGBT, it probably has a much smaller MOSFET inside while the BJT is big.
So it is to be expected that in an IGBT and a MOSFET with roughly the same capabilities, the IGBT has smaller capacity. | Miller Effect works like this:
[simulate this circuit](/plugins/schematics?image=http%3a%2f%2fi.stack.imgur.com%2fHAvrh.png) – Schematic created using [CircuitLab](https://www.circuitlab.com/) |
53,136 | I understand that the public key is kept hidden until a bitcoin transaction is made, at which point the public key has to be revealed to prove that you created the transaction with your private key. Until then, only a hash of your public key is ever shared, know as your bitcoin address.
Once my public key is known, would it be possible for someone to lookup my private key in a rainbow table ? | 2017/05/05 | [
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/53136",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/users/49054/"
] | Thanks for the large bitcoin collider (LBC) link. Had a long look at it but it's way over my head. Seems they are finding private keys regularly that fit active accounts with some BTC on them. That's an an alarming sight. Especially since this is still running on a tiny scale.
Then I came across this excellent post:
<https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/65mjm3/bitcoin_wallets_under_siege_from_collider_attack/dgbudsk/>
As to why the LBC seems to have already found private keys to active accounts, he answered:
>
> The wallets they've attacked so far are not generic random-private-key
> bitcoin wallets as the usual ones, but they've been specifically
> crafted to be broken. They belong mostly to the puzzle transaction
> which contains many "easy" private keys.
>
>
>
What does that mean?
I'm not entirely sure these are all talking about the same approach/problem, but I think it's similar in the end: How hard is it to find a private key to a specific active bitcoin address or any of the active bitcoin addresses? I hope dyoniziz from reddit is correct. | indeed that would theoretically be possible. such a table luckily is very large. for more read e.g. on the [large bitcoin collider](https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/). if an active address means that is spends money, then the pubkey is revealed which makes it easier to attack. as long as an address only received money it is protected better by the 2nd hashing layer.
lbc can be ignored but they walk systematically through the keyspace from small difficulty to large by entropy. easy to find keys are just a bait to have more people involved. @Pieter: of course weak RNG is a problem, but that was not in question; we better get some open hardware standards for TRNG.
interestingly people vote this down. we have to face it: there are problems with the implementation of bitcoin apart from just scalability. the hashing was not well thought through and the ecc algo (Secp256k1: T=(p,a,b,G,n,h); **a=0**, b=7 … h=1. see [slide by ruedi](https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6295_-_de_-_saal_2_-_201412281645_-_krypto_fur_die_zukunft_-_ruedi#video&t=1618)) got the parameter a nulled without any good reason (performace is not a good argument at all in means of crypto). cryptography does not honor weaknesses, small they may be. |
53,136 | I understand that the public key is kept hidden until a bitcoin transaction is made, at which point the public key has to be revealed to prove that you created the transaction with your private key. Until then, only a hash of your public key is ever shared, know as your bitcoin address.
Once my public key is known, would it be possible for someone to lookup my private key in a rainbow table ? | 2017/05/05 | [
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/53136",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/users/49054/"
] | No.
A rainbow table is simply a memory-cpu tradeoff that allows you to find preimages of a function faster by having a precomputed table with some of the entries.
In order to construct a rainbow table for bitcoin private/public keys, you still have to first iterate through all the keys at least once. It doesn't matter that only part of the keypairs will end up in your rainbow table - you still have to go through all them.
That is an impossible task. There are 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,852,837,564,279,074,904,382,605,163,141,518,161,494,336 valid private keys to go through. To put that in perspective: if you would put a computer on every square micrometer of earth (1/1600th of the cross section of a human hair) that can compute as many public keys per second as the entire Bitcoin mining network does hashes per second at the time of writing (4 exahash/s), it would take you 120000 times the age of the universe to go through all keys.
And, even if somehow you had an oracle that could give you the rainbow table, it would need to be impossibly large to make cracking private keys practical. If your table had a trillion entries, it would only make cracking a trillion times faster. That's still utterly impossible. | indeed that would theoretically be possible. such a table luckily is very large. for more read e.g. on the [large bitcoin collider](https://lbc.cryptoguru.org/). if an active address means that is spends money, then the pubkey is revealed which makes it easier to attack. as long as an address only received money it is protected better by the 2nd hashing layer.
lbc can be ignored but they walk systematically through the keyspace from small difficulty to large by entropy. easy to find keys are just a bait to have more people involved. @Pieter: of course weak RNG is a problem, but that was not in question; we better get some open hardware standards for TRNG.
interestingly people vote this down. we have to face it: there are problems with the implementation of bitcoin apart from just scalability. the hashing was not well thought through and the ecc algo (Secp256k1: T=(p,a,b,G,n,h); **a=0**, b=7 … h=1. see [slide by ruedi](https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6295_-_de_-_saal_2_-_201412281645_-_krypto_fur_die_zukunft_-_ruedi#video&t=1618)) got the parameter a nulled without any good reason (performace is not a good argument at all in means of crypto). cryptography does not honor weaknesses, small they may be. |
53,136 | I understand that the public key is kept hidden until a bitcoin transaction is made, at which point the public key has to be revealed to prove that you created the transaction with your private key. Until then, only a hash of your public key is ever shared, know as your bitcoin address.
Once my public key is known, would it be possible for someone to lookup my private key in a rainbow table ? | 2017/05/05 | [
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/53136",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/users/49054/"
] | No.
A rainbow table is simply a memory-cpu tradeoff that allows you to find preimages of a function faster by having a precomputed table with some of the entries.
In order to construct a rainbow table for bitcoin private/public keys, you still have to first iterate through all the keys at least once. It doesn't matter that only part of the keypairs will end up in your rainbow table - you still have to go through all them.
That is an impossible task. There are 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,852,837,564,279,074,904,382,605,163,141,518,161,494,336 valid private keys to go through. To put that in perspective: if you would put a computer on every square micrometer of earth (1/1600th of the cross section of a human hair) that can compute as many public keys per second as the entire Bitcoin mining network does hashes per second at the time of writing (4 exahash/s), it would take you 120000 times the age of the universe to go through all keys.
And, even if somehow you had an oracle that could give you the rainbow table, it would need to be impossibly large to make cracking private keys practical. If your table had a trillion entries, it would only make cracking a trillion times faster. That's still utterly impossible. | Thanks for the large bitcoin collider (LBC) link. Had a long look at it but it's way over my head. Seems they are finding private keys regularly that fit active accounts with some BTC on them. That's an an alarming sight. Especially since this is still running on a tiny scale.
Then I came across this excellent post:
<https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/65mjm3/bitcoin_wallets_under_siege_from_collider_attack/dgbudsk/>
As to why the LBC seems to have already found private keys to active accounts, he answered:
>
> The wallets they've attacked so far are not generic random-private-key
> bitcoin wallets as the usual ones, but they've been specifically
> crafted to be broken. They belong mostly to the puzzle transaction
> which contains many "easy" private keys.
>
>
>
What does that mean?
I'm not entirely sure these are all talking about the same approach/problem, but I think it's similar in the end: How hard is it to find a private key to a specific active bitcoin address or any of the active bitcoin addresses? I hope dyoniziz from reddit is correct. |
53,136 | I understand that the public key is kept hidden until a bitcoin transaction is made, at which point the public key has to be revealed to prove that you created the transaction with your private key. Until then, only a hash of your public key is ever shared, know as your bitcoin address.
Once my public key is known, would it be possible for someone to lookup my private key in a rainbow table ? | 2017/05/05 | [
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/53136",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/users/49054/"
] | Thanks for the large bitcoin collider (LBC) link. Had a long look at it but it's way over my head. Seems they are finding private keys regularly that fit active accounts with some BTC on them. That's an an alarming sight. Especially since this is still running on a tiny scale.
Then I came across this excellent post:
<https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/65mjm3/bitcoin_wallets_under_siege_from_collider_attack/dgbudsk/>
As to why the LBC seems to have already found private keys to active accounts, he answered:
>
> The wallets they've attacked so far are not generic random-private-key
> bitcoin wallets as the usual ones, but they've been specifically
> crafted to be broken. They belong mostly to the puzzle transaction
> which contains many "easy" private keys.
>
>
>
What does that mean?
I'm not entirely sure these are all talking about the same approach/problem, but I think it's similar in the end: How hard is it to find a private key to a specific active bitcoin address or any of the active bitcoin addresses? I hope dyoniziz from reddit is correct. | Lets say, I have 101 private keys generated by a pseudo-RNG, but I lost one. Theoretically, I think its possible to use 100 private/public pairs to crack the missing one. Because , while the actual number space is crazy large, the pseudo-RNG number space is limited by the floating point space of the hardware itself. Also, I think it is possible to create a rainbow table from the 100 which makes it more accessible. If I am wrong, someone please explain. |
53,136 | I understand that the public key is kept hidden until a bitcoin transaction is made, at which point the public key has to be revealed to prove that you created the transaction with your private key. Until then, only a hash of your public key is ever shared, know as your bitcoin address.
Once my public key is known, would it be possible for someone to lookup my private key in a rainbow table ? | 2017/05/05 | [
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/53136",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/users/49054/"
] | No.
A rainbow table is simply a memory-cpu tradeoff that allows you to find preimages of a function faster by having a precomputed table with some of the entries.
In order to construct a rainbow table for bitcoin private/public keys, you still have to first iterate through all the keys at least once. It doesn't matter that only part of the keypairs will end up in your rainbow table - you still have to go through all them.
That is an impossible task. There are 115,792,089,237,316,195,423,570,985,008,687,907,852,837,564,279,074,904,382,605,163,141,518,161,494,336 valid private keys to go through. To put that in perspective: if you would put a computer on every square micrometer of earth (1/1600th of the cross section of a human hair) that can compute as many public keys per second as the entire Bitcoin mining network does hashes per second at the time of writing (4 exahash/s), it would take you 120000 times the age of the universe to go through all keys.
And, even if somehow you had an oracle that could give you the rainbow table, it would need to be impossibly large to make cracking private keys practical. If your table had a trillion entries, it would only make cracking a trillion times faster. That's still utterly impossible. | Lets say, I have 101 private keys generated by a pseudo-RNG, but I lost one. Theoretically, I think its possible to use 100 private/public pairs to crack the missing one. Because , while the actual number space is crazy large, the pseudo-RNG number space is limited by the floating point space of the hardware itself. Also, I think it is possible to create a rainbow table from the 100 which makes it more accessible. If I am wrong, someone please explain. |
66,962 | For example: I am using HMAC SHA 256 to sign an XML file. Part of the file data is a version number. If I append the version to my secret to use it as a key, does that weaken the HMAC? As the version is also part of the signed message is it weakend or still safe? | 2014/09/08 | [
"https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/66962",
"https://security.stackexchange.com",
"https://security.stackexchange.com/users/26744/"
] | No, its not weakened. The HMAC ensures that even if some of the key is known, the remainder remains unchanged. Otherwise there would be zeroes instead of the version number. However, the HMAC isn't made "stronger" either. | If I understand you correctly, you're using a known (i.e. visible to an attacker) piece of information as part of your key. If this is the case, then you are absolutely weaking your HMAC, because you're reducing the amount of unknown keyspace they need to bruteforce to forge a message.
For example, if you're using a 128-bit key with your HMAC, but 32 of those bits are always known to an attacker, then they only need to attack a 96-bit keyspace. |
197,558 | I have windows 7 Ultimate, 64bit.
I have installed SQL Server 2008 Express and have created a database in it.
I have a jar that helps me create a connection file to connect to this database.
I have used this on several other computers (XP/Win2003) and it has worked fine.
However, testing the connection gives me a connection refused.
So I started troubleshooting by first [installing the Telnet client](http://www.fettesps.com/windows-7-enable-telnet/) and trying to hit SQL Server Express. No joy:
This is my home PC. No Windows Firewall running.
Default install of SQL Server (port number is 1433)
Can hit SQL Server in SQL Server Mgmt Studio fine.
1. Why is Telnet failing?
2. How to troubleshoot further?
Thanks. | 2010/10/09 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/197558",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/49303/"
] | Have you enabled TCP/IP as a connection option for the instance in SQL Server Configuration Manager? | Check that your protocols are enabled in Start\Microsoft SQLServer\Configuration tools\Configuration manager.
On the task bar to the left, select SQL Server Network Configuration, and enable Shared Memory, Named Pipes and TCP/IP.
Select SQL Server Services and restart SQL Server Browser and SQL Server.
See if that helps |
13,105 | This is basically just to satisfy my curiosity. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this:
I believe power supply to a home's main panel usually consists of:
1. A neutral wire
2. A hot wire 120 volts AC above the neutral
3. A hot wire 120 volts AC below the neutral
It shouldn't matter which hot is used to supply 120 volt devices, but is the same one used for all 120 volt devices - so that the other one is only used to provide 240 volts?
Or do both get used, and one goes to each side of the panel?
EDIT: Adding diagram - 3-Wire Single Phase
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-phase_electric_power>
 | 2012/03/22 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/13105",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/5350/"
] | Each leg of the hot connect to every other breaker down each side of the panel in most current designs (older panels, maybe >30 years, may have a bar down each side). Therefore, two adjacent 120V breakers will be on opposite hots. This means that a 240V breaker takes up two positions on the same side, instead of having to span from one side of the breaker panel to the other. The two legs will be roughly balanced, with the neutral handling any imbalance. | As others have noted adjacent breakers are connected opposite phases. This is intended to roughly balance the load. In normal household use loads will shift and different phases will the most heavily loaded at different times. It also enables two breaker setups using both phases.
* 240v circuits (as already noted). This usually uses two wires + ground, but may uses a third wire for a neutral lead. Typical uses are stoves, dryers, heaters, and water heaters. Loads should always be balanced unless a neutral lead is required
* Paired 120v circuits where tripping either breaker will disconnect both phases. This uses three wires + ground and includes a neutral connection. This is commonly used for kitchen wiring so that plugging two devices into the two sockets of an outlet will not overload the circuit. Before the plug is installed a tab joining the hot side of the two plugs is removed and the two hot leads are connected to the two hot screws. The neutral lead will carry the difference in load between the two circuits. (If the load are perfectly balanced, the neutral lead will carry no load.) Loads are usually unbalanced, but running a kettle and a toaster on the same outlet is safe.
Three phase panels work like two phase panel but alternate A, B, and C phases. Adjacent circuits are phase shifted so provide a nominal 208 volts rather than 240 volts. Again the intent is roughly balance the load across phases. |
34,459 | If you had 35mm tires (Schwalbe marathon supremes to be specific) would you get innertubes speced as 28-35mm or 35-42mm? Or whichever is cheaper? | 2015/09/15 | [
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/34459",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/users/5382/"
] | **Smaller tube is better.** Even significantly smaller (eg. 20-25 mm inner tube in 40 mm tire) will work just fine. Other way around it might be hard to fit the tube inside the tire even before inflating tube. | It would be better to use a 28-35mm tube vs the larger. A smaller tube also makes it easier to install. |
34,459 | If you had 35mm tires (Schwalbe marathon supremes to be specific) would you get innertubes speced as 28-35mm or 35-42mm? Or whichever is cheaper? | 2015/09/15 | [
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/34459",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/users/5382/"
] | **Either will work**.
Use what your prefer. Smaller will weigh a bit less and be easier to install. Larger won't have the tube stretched as much, so hypothetically could survive a puncture better. | **Smaller tube is better.** Even significantly smaller (eg. 20-25 mm inner tube in 40 mm tire) will work just fine. Other way around it might be hard to fit the tube inside the tire even before inflating tube. |
34,459 | If you had 35mm tires (Schwalbe marathon supremes to be specific) would you get innertubes speced as 28-35mm or 35-42mm? Or whichever is cheaper? | 2015/09/15 | [
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/34459",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/users/5382/"
] | **Smaller tube is better.** Even significantly smaller (eg. 20-25 mm inner tube in 40 mm tire) will work just fine. Other way around it might be hard to fit the tube inside the tire even before inflating tube. | It depends. If you have another bike for which one size is also suitable, get that one. If you're on the limits of your rims with these tyres and could only go one way with your next set, get the tube that would fit those. My previous tyres were 35s and I knew I would probably replace them with something a little thinner so I made sure to get the --35 size target than the 35--.
Tubes are amazingly forgiving. The bike I got recently to fix up turned out to have a 24" tube on a 26" wheel, and it held. |
34,459 | If you had 35mm tires (Schwalbe marathon supremes to be specific) would you get innertubes speced as 28-35mm or 35-42mm? Or whichever is cheaper? | 2015/09/15 | [
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/34459",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/users/5382/"
] | **Either will work**.
Use what your prefer. Smaller will weigh a bit less and be easier to install. Larger won't have the tube stretched as much, so hypothetically could survive a puncture better. | It would be better to use a 28-35mm tube vs the larger. A smaller tube also makes it easier to install. |
34,459 | If you had 35mm tires (Schwalbe marathon supremes to be specific) would you get innertubes speced as 28-35mm or 35-42mm? Or whichever is cheaper? | 2015/09/15 | [
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/34459",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com",
"https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/users/5382/"
] | **Either will work**.
Use what your prefer. Smaller will weigh a bit less and be easier to install. Larger won't have the tube stretched as much, so hypothetically could survive a puncture better. | It depends. If you have another bike for which one size is also suitable, get that one. If you're on the limits of your rims with these tyres and could only go one way with your next set, get the tube that would fit those. My previous tyres were 35s and I knew I would probably replace them with something a little thinner so I made sure to get the --35 size target than the 35--.
Tubes are amazingly forgiving. The bike I got recently to fix up turned out to have a 24" tube on a 26" wheel, and it held. |
607,444 | I'm trying to use Macrium Reflect Free to clone a disk from a 75 GB SSD to 225 GB SSD. The source has three partitions, and I want to clone them all, but I want the first and third to be the same size, and the middle one to be expanded to fill the remaining space on the drive.
In this screen capture, I have (1) added the first and second partition and (2) expanded the second partition, leaving 50 GB of free space.
When I click "Copy selected partitions", it should add the third partition (which is only 9.76 GB) into the remaining 50 GB of space, but I get this:
How can there be insufficient space?
I should mention that this is what I get if I try to copy the first and third partitions first:
It seems to be forcing the partitions to be placed in the same location as they were on the source, but why?
**Primary question:** How can I accomplish my goal of cloning these three partitions, with the middle one expanded to fill the free space on the disk? | 2013/06/14 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/607444",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/10220/"
] | I would image the drive as it is to the new SSD. Then, use a partitioning tool, like [EASEUS Free Partition Master](http://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/personal.html) to resize and move the partitions – it should do it for you very nicely. | * Drag down the first two partitions, select the second one, click on cloned partitioned properties.
* Resize the second partition so as to leave just enough room for the third.
* Click O.K.
* Now drag down the third partition.
* At this point you should be all set to clone.
**Note:** When you are in partition properties, for partition 2 you can just type in the third partition size where it says free space on the left side. |
607,444 | I'm trying to use Macrium Reflect Free to clone a disk from a 75 GB SSD to 225 GB SSD. The source has three partitions, and I want to clone them all, but I want the first and third to be the same size, and the middle one to be expanded to fill the remaining space on the drive.
In this screen capture, I have (1) added the first and second partition and (2) expanded the second partition, leaving 50 GB of free space.
When I click "Copy selected partitions", it should add the third partition (which is only 9.76 GB) into the remaining 50 GB of space, but I get this:
How can there be insufficient space?
I should mention that this is what I get if I try to copy the first and third partitions first:
It seems to be forcing the partitions to be placed in the same location as they were on the source, but why?
**Primary question:** How can I accomplish my goal of cloning these three partitions, with the middle one expanded to fill the free space on the disk? | 2013/06/14 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/607444",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/10220/"
] | I would image the drive as it is to the new SSD. Then, use a partitioning tool, like [EASEUS Free Partition Master](http://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/personal.html) to resize and move the partitions – it should do it for you very nicely. | I ran into this same issue. If you select all three partitions and then click 'Copy selected partitions' you will only be able to resize the last partition. If you select the first two partitions, click copy, resize the second, then select the third and click copy again, it will complain that there is not enough space. However, if you instead click and drag the partition, it works. I suspect the 'Copy selected partition' button is attempting to copy all three partitions, not simply adding the third partition. |
607,444 | I'm trying to use Macrium Reflect Free to clone a disk from a 75 GB SSD to 225 GB SSD. The source has three partitions, and I want to clone them all, but I want the first and third to be the same size, and the middle one to be expanded to fill the remaining space on the drive.
In this screen capture, I have (1) added the first and second partition and (2) expanded the second partition, leaving 50 GB of free space.
When I click "Copy selected partitions", it should add the third partition (which is only 9.76 GB) into the remaining 50 GB of space, but I get this:
How can there be insufficient space?
I should mention that this is what I get if I try to copy the first and third partitions first:
It seems to be forcing the partitions to be placed in the same location as they were on the source, but why?
**Primary question:** How can I accomplish my goal of cloning these three partitions, with the middle one expanded to fill the free space on the disk? | 2013/06/14 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/607444",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/10220/"
] | * Drag down the first two partitions, select the second one, click on cloned partitioned properties.
* Resize the second partition so as to leave just enough room for the third.
* Click O.K.
* Now drag down the third partition.
* At this point you should be all set to clone.
**Note:** When you are in partition properties, for partition 2 you can just type in the third partition size where it says free space on the left side. | I ran into this same issue. If you select all three partitions and then click 'Copy selected partitions' you will only be able to resize the last partition. If you select the first two partitions, click copy, resize the second, then select the third and click copy again, it will complain that there is not enough space. However, if you instead click and drag the partition, it works. I suspect the 'Copy selected partition' button is attempting to copy all three partitions, not simply adding the third partition. |
41,656 | I understand the reasons so many people have dislike for adverbs in writing, but I'm struggling with how to find a real balance.
For example, these adverbs can die:
* "He ran quickly" is easily replaced by "He sprinted."
* "She felt lonely" is bland compared to a description of how she stood apart and longed to be part of the conversation.
I have a much harder time with:
* "She stood alone by the bar." Standing there by herself is the very point of the sentence. "She was alone as she stood by the bar" is wordier and clumsier and adds nothing to the original. Almost any other way of wording it suffers the same problem.
* "He leaned in conspiratorially." I don't even know where to start. I could have him lean in and speak with a conspiratorial tone, but that doesn't mean quite the same and, again, adds nothing.
* "She gradually regained her composure." Dropping the adverb changes the meaning and I don't see a way to clean that up.
I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what you can't change for the rest.
Is that a good way to approach it, or am I missing a better way? | 2019/01/27 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/41656",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/36344/"
] | You're on the right track. Replace the verb and adverb construction with a more exact verb.
Describe what your characters are doing instead of using an adverb. Your characters' actions show what an adverb would tell.
"He leaned in conspiratorially."
becomes
"He looked over his shoulder, then leaned in."
"She stood alone at the bar."
becomes
"She stood at the bar, with an empty cocktail glass and a dirty ashtray her only companions."
or
"She stood at the bar, a lonely figure in black."
or
"She stood at the deserted bar."
"She gradually regained her composure."
becomes
"She teetered on the edge of panic for a few endless moments, then forced herself to regain her composure."
or, describe what she is doing while she regains her composure.
"She brought her cigarette to her lips again and again, only to let it fall without taking a drag. Her cherry red lipstick stained the filter of the long menthol. She paced between the phone and sofa, desperate to collapse into the overstuffed cushions but too scared to the leave the phone. She stopped halfway to the phone and rubbed her eyes.
"I can do this. I have to do this." she whispered.
Closing her eyes brought a comforting darkness. She took a deep breath and the color began to return to her cheeks.
or, for a shorter example,
"She glowered at him and filled her lungs with enough air for an epic screech, but instead of screeching she compressed her lips in a grim line. Her complexion mellowed from a purplish hue to a somewhat less outraged red." | It is the overuse and abuse of adverbs that people caution against.
Sometimes the adverb is the perfect choice, communicating with precision the intent and tone of the author.
The extinction of adverbs is overkill. There is nothing wrong with the proper use of modifiers.
You have a good instinct here. One should never ignore an opportunity to improve the natural flow and interest of one’s prose.
I find myself using the occasional ‘eventually‘ and ‘gradually‘ and even a few ‘softly’, but if on reading it, I feel the need to change a word, I do.
There is a hierarchy of significance in words, with nouns and verbs perceived as pure metal and adjectives and adverbs being less valuable. Less valuable does not render them useless, just less significant. All sentences have a subject and a verb, but that does not mean that is all that we can use.
If that were so, we would be limiting ourselves to the *See* *Spot run* kind of sentences we encountered as we learned to read. Complexity of thought invites shades of colour and precision, which often involves the use of modifiers. |
41,656 | I understand the reasons so many people have dislike for adverbs in writing, but I'm struggling with how to find a real balance.
For example, these adverbs can die:
* "He ran quickly" is easily replaced by "He sprinted."
* "She felt lonely" is bland compared to a description of how she stood apart and longed to be part of the conversation.
I have a much harder time with:
* "She stood alone by the bar." Standing there by herself is the very point of the sentence. "She was alone as she stood by the bar" is wordier and clumsier and adds nothing to the original. Almost any other way of wording it suffers the same problem.
* "He leaned in conspiratorially." I don't even know where to start. I could have him lean in and speak with a conspiratorial tone, but that doesn't mean quite the same and, again, adds nothing.
* "She gradually regained her composure." Dropping the adverb changes the meaning and I don't see a way to clean that up.
I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what you can't change for the rest.
Is that a good way to approach it, or am I missing a better way? | 2019/01/27 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/41656",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/36344/"
] | >
> "She felt lonely" is bland compared to a description of how she stood apart and longed to be part of the conversation.
>
>
>
You've only paraphrased rather than presented the alternative that avoids the word *lonely*, but I agree it would be a better approach. It is not, however, the best one. Note that in "She *was* lonely" the last word is actually an adjective, but there's a reason it still doesn't work. (And it's not just down to whether adjectives are also problematic, which some say it is and some say it isn't.) There's a show-don't-tell issue to consider, whether you tell me she felt lonely, or tell me she longed to be in the conversation. Ideally you'd do something more like, "Alone at her table, Ellen glanced to another half-full nearby, where laughter interrupted the animated chit-chat. They wouldn't admit to having room for one more." It gets in her head more.
>
> "She stood alone by the bar." Standing there by herself is the very point of the sentence. "She was alone as she stood by the bar" is wordier and clumsier and adds nothing to the original. Almost any other way of wording it suffers the same problem.
>
>
>
As noted above, changing *stood* to was makes *alone* an adjective. Is the sentence really any better? To be honest, the real issue is *-ly* adverbs. [This](https://amazon.co.uk/dp/B00Y8OEYQ0) book statistically analysed literature and found adverbs overall aren't any rarer in the most respected writing, but *-ly* adverbs are.
Having said that, it's always worth doing writing exercises that help you think of more options. If we literally ban adverbs and adjectives from the sentence, what can we do? Example: "She stood at the bar with no-one to threaten her elbow room." Whether it's better this way is a tough call!
>
> "He leaned in conspiratorially."
>
>
>
Imagine that happened in TV or film. How do you *know* the lean is conspiratorial? What you know is how the actor moved, how their face contorted, and what they said and how. So mirror that; imagine an actor playing out your scene, then write what you see. "He didn't lean closer until looking left and right, and it wasn't for cars." The eagle-eyed would argue *closer* is an adverb there, but again, it's not the bad kind. (I say "argue" rather than "know" because some grammarians see adverbs as an "other" dumping ground in grammar. If you've ever caught someone saying, "actually, that's a determiner", you'll have a feel for where this goes.)
>
> "She gradually regained her composure." Dropping the adverb changes the meaning and I don't see a way to clean that up.
>
>
>
She took a while to regain her composure. Well, I say a while; feel free to say "too long" or "a little too long". (Is "a little" an adverb? I guess!)
>
> I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what you can't change for the rest. Is that a good way to approach it, or am I missing a better way?
>
>
>
That's **exactly** the way to do it. The anti-adverb advice, like much writing advice, should not be interpreted as "This rule has been announced", but as "People make certain mistakes far more often than others". If you've *thought about* why an adverb is still in your writing, you were probably right to keep it in. I bet at least some of the substitutions I've described herein seemed to you like trying too hard. | It is the overuse and abuse of adverbs that people caution against.
Sometimes the adverb is the perfect choice, communicating with precision the intent and tone of the author.
The extinction of adverbs is overkill. There is nothing wrong with the proper use of modifiers.
You have a good instinct here. One should never ignore an opportunity to improve the natural flow and interest of one’s prose.
I find myself using the occasional ‘eventually‘ and ‘gradually‘ and even a few ‘softly’, but if on reading it, I feel the need to change a word, I do.
There is a hierarchy of significance in words, with nouns and verbs perceived as pure metal and adjectives and adverbs being less valuable. Less valuable does not render them useless, just less significant. All sentences have a subject and a verb, but that does not mean that is all that we can use.
If that were so, we would be limiting ourselves to the *See* *Spot run* kind of sentences we encountered as we learned to read. Complexity of thought invites shades of colour and precision, which often involves the use of modifiers. |
41,656 | I understand the reasons so many people have dislike for adverbs in writing, but I'm struggling with how to find a real balance.
For example, these adverbs can die:
* "He ran quickly" is easily replaced by "He sprinted."
* "She felt lonely" is bland compared to a description of how she stood apart and longed to be part of the conversation.
I have a much harder time with:
* "She stood alone by the bar." Standing there by herself is the very point of the sentence. "She was alone as she stood by the bar" is wordier and clumsier and adds nothing to the original. Almost any other way of wording it suffers the same problem.
* "He leaned in conspiratorially." I don't even know where to start. I could have him lean in and speak with a conspiratorial tone, but that doesn't mean quite the same and, again, adds nothing.
* "She gradually regained her composure." Dropping the adverb changes the meaning and I don't see a way to clean that up.
I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what you can't change for the rest.
Is that a good way to approach it, or am I missing a better way? | 2019/01/27 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/41656",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/36344/"
] | >
> "She felt lonely" is bland compared to a description of how she stood apart and longed to be part of the conversation.
>
>
>
You've only paraphrased rather than presented the alternative that avoids the word *lonely*, but I agree it would be a better approach. It is not, however, the best one. Note that in "She *was* lonely" the last word is actually an adjective, but there's a reason it still doesn't work. (And it's not just down to whether adjectives are also problematic, which some say it is and some say it isn't.) There's a show-don't-tell issue to consider, whether you tell me she felt lonely, or tell me she longed to be in the conversation. Ideally you'd do something more like, "Alone at her table, Ellen glanced to another half-full nearby, where laughter interrupted the animated chit-chat. They wouldn't admit to having room for one more." It gets in her head more.
>
> "She stood alone by the bar." Standing there by herself is the very point of the sentence. "She was alone as she stood by the bar" is wordier and clumsier and adds nothing to the original. Almost any other way of wording it suffers the same problem.
>
>
>
As noted above, changing *stood* to was makes *alone* an adjective. Is the sentence really any better? To be honest, the real issue is *-ly* adverbs. [This](https://amazon.co.uk/dp/B00Y8OEYQ0) book statistically analysed literature and found adverbs overall aren't any rarer in the most respected writing, but *-ly* adverbs are.
Having said that, it's always worth doing writing exercises that help you think of more options. If we literally ban adverbs and adjectives from the sentence, what can we do? Example: "She stood at the bar with no-one to threaten her elbow room." Whether it's better this way is a tough call!
>
> "He leaned in conspiratorially."
>
>
>
Imagine that happened in TV or film. How do you *know* the lean is conspiratorial? What you know is how the actor moved, how their face contorted, and what they said and how. So mirror that; imagine an actor playing out your scene, then write what you see. "He didn't lean closer until looking left and right, and it wasn't for cars." The eagle-eyed would argue *closer* is an adverb there, but again, it's not the bad kind. (I say "argue" rather than "know" because some grammarians see adverbs as an "other" dumping ground in grammar. If you've ever caught someone saying, "actually, that's a determiner", you'll have a feel for where this goes.)
>
> "She gradually regained her composure." Dropping the adverb changes the meaning and I don't see a way to clean that up.
>
>
>
She took a while to regain her composure. Well, I say a while; feel free to say "too long" or "a little too long". (Is "a little" an adverb? I guess!)
>
> I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what you can't change for the rest. Is that a good way to approach it, or am I missing a better way?
>
>
>
That's **exactly** the way to do it. The anti-adverb advice, like much writing advice, should not be interpreted as "This rule has been announced", but as "People make certain mistakes far more often than others". If you've *thought about* why an adverb is still in your writing, you were probably right to keep it in. I bet at least some of the substitutions I've described herein seemed to you like trying too hard. | You're on the right track. Replace the verb and adverb construction with a more exact verb.
Describe what your characters are doing instead of using an adverb. Your characters' actions show what an adverb would tell.
"He leaned in conspiratorially."
becomes
"He looked over his shoulder, then leaned in."
"She stood alone at the bar."
becomes
"She stood at the bar, with an empty cocktail glass and a dirty ashtray her only companions."
or
"She stood at the bar, a lonely figure in black."
or
"She stood at the deserted bar."
"She gradually regained her composure."
becomes
"She teetered on the edge of panic for a few endless moments, then forced herself to regain her composure."
or, describe what she is doing while she regains her composure.
"She brought her cigarette to her lips again and again, only to let it fall without taking a drag. Her cherry red lipstick stained the filter of the long menthol. She paced between the phone and sofa, desperate to collapse into the overstuffed cushions but too scared to the leave the phone. She stopped halfway to the phone and rubbed her eyes.
"I can do this. I have to do this." she whispered.
Closing her eyes brought a comforting darkness. She took a deep breath and the color began to return to her cheeks.
or, for a shorter example,
"She glowered at him and filled her lungs with enough air for an epic screech, but instead of screeching she compressed her lips in a grim line. Her complexion mellowed from a purplish hue to a somewhat less outraged red." |
41,656 | I understand the reasons so many people have dislike for adverbs in writing, but I'm struggling with how to find a real balance.
For example, these adverbs can die:
* "He ran quickly" is easily replaced by "He sprinted."
* "She felt lonely" is bland compared to a description of how she stood apart and longed to be part of the conversation.
I have a much harder time with:
* "She stood alone by the bar." Standing there by herself is the very point of the sentence. "She was alone as she stood by the bar" is wordier and clumsier and adds nothing to the original. Almost any other way of wording it suffers the same problem.
* "He leaned in conspiratorially." I don't even know where to start. I could have him lean in and speak with a conspiratorial tone, but that doesn't mean quite the same and, again, adds nothing.
* "She gradually regained her composure." Dropping the adverb changes the meaning and I don't see a way to clean that up.
I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what you can't change for the rest.
Is that a good way to approach it, or am I missing a better way? | 2019/01/27 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/41656",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/36344/"
] | You're on the right track. Replace the verb and adverb construction with a more exact verb.
Describe what your characters are doing instead of using an adverb. Your characters' actions show what an adverb would tell.
"He leaned in conspiratorially."
becomes
"He looked over his shoulder, then leaned in."
"She stood alone at the bar."
becomes
"She stood at the bar, with an empty cocktail glass and a dirty ashtray her only companions."
or
"She stood at the bar, a lonely figure in black."
or
"She stood at the deserted bar."
"She gradually regained her composure."
becomes
"She teetered on the edge of panic for a few endless moments, then forced herself to regain her composure."
or, describe what she is doing while she regains her composure.
"She brought her cigarette to her lips again and again, only to let it fall without taking a drag. Her cherry red lipstick stained the filter of the long menthol. She paced between the phone and sofa, desperate to collapse into the overstuffed cushions but too scared to the leave the phone. She stopped halfway to the phone and rubbed her eyes.
"I can do this. I have to do this." she whispered.
Closing her eyes brought a comforting darkness. She took a deep breath and the color began to return to her cheeks.
or, for a shorter example,
"She glowered at him and filled her lungs with enough air for an epic screech, but instead of screeching she compressed her lips in a grim line. Her complexion mellowed from a purplish hue to a somewhat less outraged red." | >
> I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for
> which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what
> you can't change for the rest. Is that a good way to approach it, or am
> I missing a better way?
>
>
>
My understanding is that you want to minimize the use of adverbs and adjectives as much as possible. Personally, I see nothing wrong with using adverbs and adjectives. However, some authors can go overboard with adverbs and adjectives by writing purple prose. Something like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hVUKC.png)
If the reader has to stop and think about every single word in a paragraph, then there is something wrong with the paragraph. In the example, a typical reader probably has to think, "what on earth is pisces? Hmmm... oh, *fish*." Then, that reader sees *ethereal*, *shattered molecules*, *precipice*, blah blah blah. The modern reader has no time for looking up every single word. What is more likely is that the modern reader will stop reading and close your book; the reader will not even buy it, and you will receive no payment in royalties.
All this talk about good writing style is about what the modern reader wants, so that the reader will be willing to buy your work, and so that you can make money. Advice on good writing style should never be taken on absolute terms. They should always be taken on relative terms, because they are advice that works currently for a specific language demographic. If you choose to write your book in Standard Written Chinese, then you likely have to follow the writing conventions that modern Chinese readers (more likely to be first-language speakers than second-language speakers, whereas English is the only language in the world with more second-language speakers than first-language speakers) are accustomed to.
It is possible to invent your own adverbs, like so:
>
> And so, the little horse *clippity-cloppity* went up the road.
>
>
>
But, you may lose your readers that way, because your readers will probably wonder why you insert a made-up word in the sentence. You can just remove that word, and the sentence will read fine. When you are reading your work, assume the role of the modern reader. Will the modern reader feel comfortable with adjectives and adverbs? If the reader is getting slowed down by the adjectives and adverbs, then it's time to revise! That's why it's important to have close friends to proofread your work for simple typographical errors as well as stylistic choices. |
41,656 | I understand the reasons so many people have dislike for adverbs in writing, but I'm struggling with how to find a real balance.
For example, these adverbs can die:
* "He ran quickly" is easily replaced by "He sprinted."
* "She felt lonely" is bland compared to a description of how she stood apart and longed to be part of the conversation.
I have a much harder time with:
* "She stood alone by the bar." Standing there by herself is the very point of the sentence. "She was alone as she stood by the bar" is wordier and clumsier and adds nothing to the original. Almost any other way of wording it suffers the same problem.
* "He leaned in conspiratorially." I don't even know where to start. I could have him lean in and speak with a conspiratorial tone, but that doesn't mean quite the same and, again, adds nothing.
* "She gradually regained her composure." Dropping the adverb changes the meaning and I don't see a way to clean that up.
I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what you can't change for the rest.
Is that a good way to approach it, or am I missing a better way? | 2019/01/27 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/41656",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/36344/"
] | >
> "She felt lonely" is bland compared to a description of how she stood apart and longed to be part of the conversation.
>
>
>
You've only paraphrased rather than presented the alternative that avoids the word *lonely*, but I agree it would be a better approach. It is not, however, the best one. Note that in "She *was* lonely" the last word is actually an adjective, but there's a reason it still doesn't work. (And it's not just down to whether adjectives are also problematic, which some say it is and some say it isn't.) There's a show-don't-tell issue to consider, whether you tell me she felt lonely, or tell me she longed to be in the conversation. Ideally you'd do something more like, "Alone at her table, Ellen glanced to another half-full nearby, where laughter interrupted the animated chit-chat. They wouldn't admit to having room for one more." It gets in her head more.
>
> "She stood alone by the bar." Standing there by herself is the very point of the sentence. "She was alone as she stood by the bar" is wordier and clumsier and adds nothing to the original. Almost any other way of wording it suffers the same problem.
>
>
>
As noted above, changing *stood* to was makes *alone* an adjective. Is the sentence really any better? To be honest, the real issue is *-ly* adverbs. [This](https://amazon.co.uk/dp/B00Y8OEYQ0) book statistically analysed literature and found adverbs overall aren't any rarer in the most respected writing, but *-ly* adverbs are.
Having said that, it's always worth doing writing exercises that help you think of more options. If we literally ban adverbs and adjectives from the sentence, what can we do? Example: "She stood at the bar with no-one to threaten her elbow room." Whether it's better this way is a tough call!
>
> "He leaned in conspiratorially."
>
>
>
Imagine that happened in TV or film. How do you *know* the lean is conspiratorial? What you know is how the actor moved, how their face contorted, and what they said and how. So mirror that; imagine an actor playing out your scene, then write what you see. "He didn't lean closer until looking left and right, and it wasn't for cars." The eagle-eyed would argue *closer* is an adverb there, but again, it's not the bad kind. (I say "argue" rather than "know" because some grammarians see adverbs as an "other" dumping ground in grammar. If you've ever caught someone saying, "actually, that's a determiner", you'll have a feel for where this goes.)
>
> "She gradually regained her composure." Dropping the adverb changes the meaning and I don't see a way to clean that up.
>
>
>
She took a while to regain her composure. Well, I say a while; feel free to say "too long" or "a little too long". (Is "a little" an adverb? I guess!)
>
> I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what you can't change for the rest. Is that a good way to approach it, or am I missing a better way?
>
>
>
That's **exactly** the way to do it. The anti-adverb advice, like much writing advice, should not be interpreted as "This rule has been announced", but as "People make certain mistakes far more often than others". If you've *thought about* why an adverb is still in your writing, you were probably right to keep it in. I bet at least some of the substitutions I've described herein seemed to you like trying too hard. | >
> I feel that maybe I should approach it like this: Kill off adverbs for
> which a natural or more interesting replacement exists. Accept what
> you can't change for the rest. Is that a good way to approach it, or am
> I missing a better way?
>
>
>
My understanding is that you want to minimize the use of adverbs and adjectives as much as possible. Personally, I see nothing wrong with using adverbs and adjectives. However, some authors can go overboard with adverbs and adjectives by writing purple prose. Something like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/hVUKC.png)
If the reader has to stop and think about every single word in a paragraph, then there is something wrong with the paragraph. In the example, a typical reader probably has to think, "what on earth is pisces? Hmmm... oh, *fish*." Then, that reader sees *ethereal*, *shattered molecules*, *precipice*, blah blah blah. The modern reader has no time for looking up every single word. What is more likely is that the modern reader will stop reading and close your book; the reader will not even buy it, and you will receive no payment in royalties.
All this talk about good writing style is about what the modern reader wants, so that the reader will be willing to buy your work, and so that you can make money. Advice on good writing style should never be taken on absolute terms. They should always be taken on relative terms, because they are advice that works currently for a specific language demographic. If you choose to write your book in Standard Written Chinese, then you likely have to follow the writing conventions that modern Chinese readers (more likely to be first-language speakers than second-language speakers, whereas English is the only language in the world with more second-language speakers than first-language speakers) are accustomed to.
It is possible to invent your own adverbs, like so:
>
> And so, the little horse *clippity-cloppity* went up the road.
>
>
>
But, you may lose your readers that way, because your readers will probably wonder why you insert a made-up word in the sentence. You can just remove that word, and the sentence will read fine. When you are reading your work, assume the role of the modern reader. Will the modern reader feel comfortable with adjectives and adverbs? If the reader is getting slowed down by the adjectives and adverbs, then it's time to revise! That's why it's important to have close friends to proofread your work for simple typographical errors as well as stylistic choices. |
56,008 | **Edit: A bounty was offered;** Later, [**I answered my question**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008/the-project-sahara-v2/56776#56776) - see below the looong math answer. I accepted it, because it's the only one to calculate the outcome with all the parameters included. **I'll award the bounty manually to the answer that best addresses the question (except mine).**
This is the second, updated version of [**The Project Sahara**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/55556/the-project-sahara) my grandfather made with me:
The European countries in cooperation with USA, Japan, and other economically strong states will give money and brains to build and manage this project. On the western African coast, close to the equator, where the rocky Sahara desert is, giant fields of solar panels and thermosiphons (water heaters/boilers) will be built.
Nowadays solar panels have an efficiency of about 5%, that is a power of cca 70W/m^2, and water heaters have an efficiency of cca 30%, that is 400W/m^2 from the Sun (not in electricity this time). If we had 1000 square km with 50% water heaters, we would get a power of **235GW** - that is **1020TJ** (terajoules; 1 terajoul is 1000000000000 joules) of energy **every day** (12 hours). Without using any otherwise usable land.
The energy would be used to do this:
* **boil seawater** using the water heaters to get (distilled) water and salt
* **sell the salt** (salt prices fall down; From about $0.2/kg to about 0.05/kg, then the other salt-selling companies fall, and the salt prices go up again)
* **export** some of the **water** across Africa
* **export** some of the **electricity** across Africa
* using the electricity it will **break down water into oxygen and hydrogen**, and using CO2 from the air and the hydrogen, **produce methane** (CH4)
* **export methane as a fuel** for cars, etc., instead of petrol - it will be exported using pipes, as petrol is - petrol prices fall, and the states and companies selling it will suffer a crisis; ISIS goes short of money.
* sell some of the oxygen to whoever wants it, and release the rest into the atmosphere - it's an unwanted product.
This project has many advantages:
* **methane is easy to store**, especially **long-term**; Hydrogen isn't, and electricity isn't at all
* logistics: it will be transported as easily as petrol, maybe easier
* burning methane... well, burning methane will produce again the CO2 used to make it - no change overall
* a lot (thousands, actually) of **working spaces created**. This could literally employ a whole slum city to maintain the panels/heaters - sweeping panels and guarding entrances doesn't need qualified workers. This would update the economical and political situation in whole Africa
* **new technologies**. New technologies would be invented along this project - like it was during NASA's moon-conquering program
* no more Russia and Saudi Arabia dictating fuel prices
* no need to push away the locals - there are no locals, instead, people will be encouraged to come
Is such a giant project achievable? I know it will never happen in reality, but that's because if the political situation, but I'm asking about the technical side of this.
### Is this feasible?
### **And importantly, how can I improve this project?**
Also, thanks to [@TrEs-2b](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/11049/tres-2b) for his interest and support of this project: [What are the political outcomes of the Sahara Project?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56463/what-are-the-political-outcomes-of-the-sahara-project) | 2016/09/21 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/22613/"
] | It seems to me that this is over-engineered. We already have a method for taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that requires water and sunlight and produces oxygen and hydrocarbons as a side effect. Why add extra steps?
* Evaporate saltwater to make fresh water. Possibly with a [saltwater greenhouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater_greenhouse). Not in the Sahara, but in places like Florida, Texas, California, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Spain, Greece, Italy, Saudi Arabia, India, and Japan.
* Use the water for irrigation of plants. They will draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen.
* Extract something useful, e.g. grain from the plants.
* Use the remainder of the plant in a [cogeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration) facility. This will produce heat (evaporate more saltwater?), electricity, fuel, and fertilizer.
There's also an alternative version that grows kelp instead of land plants. That saves the evaporation and irrigation steps.
The point of water in the Sahara would be less to produce fuel and more to increase the amount of biomass. We'd want to pull the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trap the carbon in plants. We wouldn't want to send it back to the atmosphere after burning it as fuel. The [Sahara Forest project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Forest_Project) is an example of a plan to do this. | **Yes but you'll have to do it like all big things do things**
"Oh Tres, what ever do you mean?" I hear you ask, well when man started building, did they start with the Burj Khalifa? No, they started with grass and mud huts. When we went to the sky did we start with a rocket? No, we built balloons. I could go on, but my point is clear, for every project that exists, you start small and get bigger.
Start with a small plot of land, a couple dozen square meters, then slowly expand. eventually you will reach the size you want of hundreds of square kilometers and then, as other answers point out, the project becomes efficient and feasible. |
56,008 | **Edit: A bounty was offered;** Later, [**I answered my question**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008/the-project-sahara-v2/56776#56776) - see below the looong math answer. I accepted it, because it's the only one to calculate the outcome with all the parameters included. **I'll award the bounty manually to the answer that best addresses the question (except mine).**
This is the second, updated version of [**The Project Sahara**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/55556/the-project-sahara) my grandfather made with me:
The European countries in cooperation with USA, Japan, and other economically strong states will give money and brains to build and manage this project. On the western African coast, close to the equator, where the rocky Sahara desert is, giant fields of solar panels and thermosiphons (water heaters/boilers) will be built.
Nowadays solar panels have an efficiency of about 5%, that is a power of cca 70W/m^2, and water heaters have an efficiency of cca 30%, that is 400W/m^2 from the Sun (not in electricity this time). If we had 1000 square km with 50% water heaters, we would get a power of **235GW** - that is **1020TJ** (terajoules; 1 terajoul is 1000000000000 joules) of energy **every day** (12 hours). Without using any otherwise usable land.
The energy would be used to do this:
* **boil seawater** using the water heaters to get (distilled) water and salt
* **sell the salt** (salt prices fall down; From about $0.2/kg to about 0.05/kg, then the other salt-selling companies fall, and the salt prices go up again)
* **export** some of the **water** across Africa
* **export** some of the **electricity** across Africa
* using the electricity it will **break down water into oxygen and hydrogen**, and using CO2 from the air and the hydrogen, **produce methane** (CH4)
* **export methane as a fuel** for cars, etc., instead of petrol - it will be exported using pipes, as petrol is - petrol prices fall, and the states and companies selling it will suffer a crisis; ISIS goes short of money.
* sell some of the oxygen to whoever wants it, and release the rest into the atmosphere - it's an unwanted product.
This project has many advantages:
* **methane is easy to store**, especially **long-term**; Hydrogen isn't, and electricity isn't at all
* logistics: it will be transported as easily as petrol, maybe easier
* burning methane... well, burning methane will produce again the CO2 used to make it - no change overall
* a lot (thousands, actually) of **working spaces created**. This could literally employ a whole slum city to maintain the panels/heaters - sweeping panels and guarding entrances doesn't need qualified workers. This would update the economical and political situation in whole Africa
* **new technologies**. New technologies would be invented along this project - like it was during NASA's moon-conquering program
* no more Russia and Saudi Arabia dictating fuel prices
* no need to push away the locals - there are no locals, instead, people will be encouraged to come
Is such a giant project achievable? I know it will never happen in reality, but that's because if the political situation, but I'm asking about the technical side of this.
### Is this feasible?
### **And importantly, how can I improve this project?**
Also, thanks to [@TrEs-2b](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/11049/tres-2b) for his interest and support of this project: [What are the political outcomes of the Sahara Project?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56463/what-are-the-political-outcomes-of-the-sahara-project) | 2016/09/21 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/22613/"
] | Its not the political situation, its the economic situation that makes it unfeasible. All those things you are generating are valuable, but how long will you have to sell your products in order to break even on the money spent on solar panels?
Selling water seems like a great idea, but its really hard to move a lot of water. Its heavy, has a low price per volume or weight, and needs to be sent in tanks or it will evaporate.
Solar electricity can be exported, but you'd be exporting a ton during the day, and none at night. If people need power at night (they do) they will look at more reliable local power solutions and the competition will cut into your profit margins. Also, Africa is surprisingly big and long distance power lines are expensive and go through politically unstable places (thanks Boko Haram!).
Thousands of jobs isn't a big deal in a continent closing on a billion people.
Here in the key deal-breaker: The sabatier reaction is very energy expensive. You need a LOT of solar panels to power it. The return on selling methane will take decades to pay off your solar panels...at which point you might need to replace the panels. No one really knows how long these new super-efficient panels last since none of them are more than a couple years old. My biggest life lesson from working in an industrial environment is to never underestimate machinery's capacity for sudden catastrophic failure...and electronics are even worse! | Technically feasible? Probably. But do we **want** to?
======================================================
We could stop all communicable human-to-human disease. All it takes is that we all go into voluntary and solitary quarantine and stay there until the incubation period of all diseases have passed.
We could stop all airplane accidents, right now. All it takes is that we instantly ban air travel.
We could stop anthropological global warming dead in its tracks. All it takes is that we stop using fossil fuels, and stop eating meat, right now.
We could all be rich, because all it takes it to start extracting the 20 000 000 000 kg of gold — that is more than 2kg per person on Earth — [that is in plain sea water](http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html).
The question is not if these projects are technically feasible — they are — but whether we want to go through with them, considering the cost and the hassle they cause.
In the end your project comes down to measuring outcome vs cost; time spent building it until there are results; the use of scarce resources vs the gain we get when it is completed.
And when you have all of those numbers, you need to put those in contrast to using other methods to achieve the same things that your project is meant to deliver.
Yes your project is all fine on paper when **not** considering these things. But if we are to spend something that is more than a fortune on this project; if there is uncertainty as to the amount of time before it delivers; if other projects have to stand back in order that money and resources be made available for this one... then it is quite likely that people will say "Oh screw it... there are better options".
So the question is not: is it technically feasible? Because the answer is a plain: yes, it probably is. The question is if we want to do it when we consider the harsh realities of things such as cost, the use of scarce resources, and time... especially compared to competing technologies. |
56,008 | **Edit: A bounty was offered;** Later, [**I answered my question**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008/the-project-sahara-v2/56776#56776) - see below the looong math answer. I accepted it, because it's the only one to calculate the outcome with all the parameters included. **I'll award the bounty manually to the answer that best addresses the question (except mine).**
This is the second, updated version of [**The Project Sahara**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/55556/the-project-sahara) my grandfather made with me:
The European countries in cooperation with USA, Japan, and other economically strong states will give money and brains to build and manage this project. On the western African coast, close to the equator, where the rocky Sahara desert is, giant fields of solar panels and thermosiphons (water heaters/boilers) will be built.
Nowadays solar panels have an efficiency of about 5%, that is a power of cca 70W/m^2, and water heaters have an efficiency of cca 30%, that is 400W/m^2 from the Sun (not in electricity this time). If we had 1000 square km with 50% water heaters, we would get a power of **235GW** - that is **1020TJ** (terajoules; 1 terajoul is 1000000000000 joules) of energy **every day** (12 hours). Without using any otherwise usable land.
The energy would be used to do this:
* **boil seawater** using the water heaters to get (distilled) water and salt
* **sell the salt** (salt prices fall down; From about $0.2/kg to about 0.05/kg, then the other salt-selling companies fall, and the salt prices go up again)
* **export** some of the **water** across Africa
* **export** some of the **electricity** across Africa
* using the electricity it will **break down water into oxygen and hydrogen**, and using CO2 from the air and the hydrogen, **produce methane** (CH4)
* **export methane as a fuel** for cars, etc., instead of petrol - it will be exported using pipes, as petrol is - petrol prices fall, and the states and companies selling it will suffer a crisis; ISIS goes short of money.
* sell some of the oxygen to whoever wants it, and release the rest into the atmosphere - it's an unwanted product.
This project has many advantages:
* **methane is easy to store**, especially **long-term**; Hydrogen isn't, and electricity isn't at all
* logistics: it will be transported as easily as petrol, maybe easier
* burning methane... well, burning methane will produce again the CO2 used to make it - no change overall
* a lot (thousands, actually) of **working spaces created**. This could literally employ a whole slum city to maintain the panels/heaters - sweeping panels and guarding entrances doesn't need qualified workers. This would update the economical and political situation in whole Africa
* **new technologies**. New technologies would be invented along this project - like it was during NASA's moon-conquering program
* no more Russia and Saudi Arabia dictating fuel prices
* no need to push away the locals - there are no locals, instead, people will be encouraged to come
Is such a giant project achievable? I know it will never happen in reality, but that's because if the political situation, but I'm asking about the technical side of this.
### Is this feasible?
### **And importantly, how can I improve this project?**
Also, thanks to [@TrEs-2b](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/11049/tres-2b) for his interest and support of this project: [What are the political outcomes of the Sahara Project?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56463/what-are-the-political-outcomes-of-the-sahara-project) | 2016/09/21 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/22613/"
] | It seems to me that this is over-engineered. We already have a method for taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that requires water and sunlight and produces oxygen and hydrocarbons as a side effect. Why add extra steps?
* Evaporate saltwater to make fresh water. Possibly with a [saltwater greenhouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater_greenhouse). Not in the Sahara, but in places like Florida, Texas, California, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Spain, Greece, Italy, Saudi Arabia, India, and Japan.
* Use the water for irrigation of plants. They will draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen.
* Extract something useful, e.g. grain from the plants.
* Use the remainder of the plant in a [cogeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration) facility. This will produce heat (evaporate more saltwater?), electricity, fuel, and fertilizer.
There's also an alternative version that grows kelp instead of land plants. That saves the evaporation and irrigation steps.
The point of water in the Sahara would be less to produce fuel and more to increase the amount of biomass. We'd want to pull the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trap the carbon in plants. We wouldn't want to send it back to the atmosphere after burning it as fuel. The [Sahara Forest project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Forest_Project) is an example of a plan to do this. | I'd like to pitch a few ideas.
1. To boil the seawater - why go through 5% efficiency when you can directly have near 100%? Also keep in mind that the salt will require raffination if it is intended for human consumption (energy intensive). Likely you will end up with mountains of salt which you will need to treat as poisonous waste. Also condensing the water takes some extra cooling likely making it quite expensive. If you are after cheap drinking water *reverse osmosis* is the way to go nowadays. Either way it would make way more sense to build such plants coastal not in the desert.
2. Using methane. Using modern technology it would make way more sense to convert to methanol/ethanol. Hear me out on this. It would have all the benefits of methane (ok stores slightly less energy). But is even easier to store and handle since it is liquid - no need for pressure containers, plain tanks and bottles suffice. Also with a few chemical addtives it could be used as fuel for current era cars (it's the same as biofuel). Also keep in mind compared to current petrol or methanol - ethanol has very low toxicity or environmental danger and it's not even explosive - so it might even be possible to save money as it requires less safety.
3. nothing in this project benefits from doing this in massive scale. Why not plan for many small size plants? |
56,008 | **Edit: A bounty was offered;** Later, [**I answered my question**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008/the-project-sahara-v2/56776#56776) - see below the looong math answer. I accepted it, because it's the only one to calculate the outcome with all the parameters included. **I'll award the bounty manually to the answer that best addresses the question (except mine).**
This is the second, updated version of [**The Project Sahara**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/55556/the-project-sahara) my grandfather made with me:
The European countries in cooperation with USA, Japan, and other economically strong states will give money and brains to build and manage this project. On the western African coast, close to the equator, where the rocky Sahara desert is, giant fields of solar panels and thermosiphons (water heaters/boilers) will be built.
Nowadays solar panels have an efficiency of about 5%, that is a power of cca 70W/m^2, and water heaters have an efficiency of cca 30%, that is 400W/m^2 from the Sun (not in electricity this time). If we had 1000 square km with 50% water heaters, we would get a power of **235GW** - that is **1020TJ** (terajoules; 1 terajoul is 1000000000000 joules) of energy **every day** (12 hours). Without using any otherwise usable land.
The energy would be used to do this:
* **boil seawater** using the water heaters to get (distilled) water and salt
* **sell the salt** (salt prices fall down; From about $0.2/kg to about 0.05/kg, then the other salt-selling companies fall, and the salt prices go up again)
* **export** some of the **water** across Africa
* **export** some of the **electricity** across Africa
* using the electricity it will **break down water into oxygen and hydrogen**, and using CO2 from the air and the hydrogen, **produce methane** (CH4)
* **export methane as a fuel** for cars, etc., instead of petrol - it will be exported using pipes, as petrol is - petrol prices fall, and the states and companies selling it will suffer a crisis; ISIS goes short of money.
* sell some of the oxygen to whoever wants it, and release the rest into the atmosphere - it's an unwanted product.
This project has many advantages:
* **methane is easy to store**, especially **long-term**; Hydrogen isn't, and electricity isn't at all
* logistics: it will be transported as easily as petrol, maybe easier
* burning methane... well, burning methane will produce again the CO2 used to make it - no change overall
* a lot (thousands, actually) of **working spaces created**. This could literally employ a whole slum city to maintain the panels/heaters - sweeping panels and guarding entrances doesn't need qualified workers. This would update the economical and political situation in whole Africa
* **new technologies**. New technologies would be invented along this project - like it was during NASA's moon-conquering program
* no more Russia and Saudi Arabia dictating fuel prices
* no need to push away the locals - there are no locals, instead, people will be encouraged to come
Is such a giant project achievable? I know it will never happen in reality, but that's because if the political situation, but I'm asking about the technical side of this.
### Is this feasible?
### **And importantly, how can I improve this project?**
Also, thanks to [@TrEs-2b](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/11049/tres-2b) for his interest and support of this project: [What are the political outcomes of the Sahara Project?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56463/what-are-the-political-outcomes-of-the-sahara-project) | 2016/09/21 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/22613/"
] | Its not the political situation, its the economic situation that makes it unfeasible. All those things you are generating are valuable, but how long will you have to sell your products in order to break even on the money spent on solar panels?
Selling water seems like a great idea, but its really hard to move a lot of water. Its heavy, has a low price per volume or weight, and needs to be sent in tanks or it will evaporate.
Solar electricity can be exported, but you'd be exporting a ton during the day, and none at night. If people need power at night (they do) they will look at more reliable local power solutions and the competition will cut into your profit margins. Also, Africa is surprisingly big and long distance power lines are expensive and go through politically unstable places (thanks Boko Haram!).
Thousands of jobs isn't a big deal in a continent closing on a billion people.
Here in the key deal-breaker: The sabatier reaction is very energy expensive. You need a LOT of solar panels to power it. The return on selling methane will take decades to pay off your solar panels...at which point you might need to replace the panels. No one really knows how long these new super-efficient panels last since none of them are more than a couple years old. My biggest life lesson from working in an industrial environment is to never underestimate machinery's capacity for sudden catastrophic failure...and electronics are even worse! | **Yes but you'll have to do it like all big things do things**
"Oh Tres, what ever do you mean?" I hear you ask, well when man started building, did they start with the Burj Khalifa? No, they started with grass and mud huts. When we went to the sky did we start with a rocket? No, we built balloons. I could go on, but my point is clear, for every project that exists, you start small and get bigger.
Start with a small plot of land, a couple dozen square meters, then slowly expand. eventually you will reach the size you want of hundreds of square kilometers and then, as other answers point out, the project becomes efficient and feasible. |
56,008 | **Edit: A bounty was offered;** Later, [**I answered my question**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008/the-project-sahara-v2/56776#56776) - see below the looong math answer. I accepted it, because it's the only one to calculate the outcome with all the parameters included. **I'll award the bounty manually to the answer that best addresses the question (except mine).**
This is the second, updated version of [**The Project Sahara**](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/55556/the-project-sahara) my grandfather made with me:
The European countries in cooperation with USA, Japan, and other economically strong states will give money and brains to build and manage this project. On the western African coast, close to the equator, where the rocky Sahara desert is, giant fields of solar panels and thermosiphons (water heaters/boilers) will be built.
Nowadays solar panels have an efficiency of about 5%, that is a power of cca 70W/m^2, and water heaters have an efficiency of cca 30%, that is 400W/m^2 from the Sun (not in electricity this time). If we had 1000 square km with 50% water heaters, we would get a power of **235GW** - that is **1020TJ** (terajoules; 1 terajoul is 1000000000000 joules) of energy **every day** (12 hours). Without using any otherwise usable land.
The energy would be used to do this:
* **boil seawater** using the water heaters to get (distilled) water and salt
* **sell the salt** (salt prices fall down; From about $0.2/kg to about 0.05/kg, then the other salt-selling companies fall, and the salt prices go up again)
* **export** some of the **water** across Africa
* **export** some of the **electricity** across Africa
* using the electricity it will **break down water into oxygen and hydrogen**, and using CO2 from the air and the hydrogen, **produce methane** (CH4)
* **export methane as a fuel** for cars, etc., instead of petrol - it will be exported using pipes, as petrol is - petrol prices fall, and the states and companies selling it will suffer a crisis; ISIS goes short of money.
* sell some of the oxygen to whoever wants it, and release the rest into the atmosphere - it's an unwanted product.
This project has many advantages:
* **methane is easy to store**, especially **long-term**; Hydrogen isn't, and electricity isn't at all
* logistics: it will be transported as easily as petrol, maybe easier
* burning methane... well, burning methane will produce again the CO2 used to make it - no change overall
* a lot (thousands, actually) of **working spaces created**. This could literally employ a whole slum city to maintain the panels/heaters - sweeping panels and guarding entrances doesn't need qualified workers. This would update the economical and political situation in whole Africa
* **new technologies**. New technologies would be invented along this project - like it was during NASA's moon-conquering program
* no more Russia and Saudi Arabia dictating fuel prices
* no need to push away the locals - there are no locals, instead, people will be encouraged to come
Is such a giant project achievable? I know it will never happen in reality, but that's because if the political situation, but I'm asking about the technical side of this.
### Is this feasible?
### **And importantly, how can I improve this project?**
Also, thanks to [@TrEs-2b](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/11049/tres-2b) for his interest and support of this project: [What are the political outcomes of the Sahara Project?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56463/what-are-the-political-outcomes-of-the-sahara-project) | 2016/09/21 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/56008",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/22613/"
] | It seems to me that this is over-engineered. We already have a method for taking carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that requires water and sunlight and produces oxygen and hydrocarbons as a side effect. Why add extra steps?
* Evaporate saltwater to make fresh water. Possibly with a [saltwater greenhouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater_greenhouse). Not in the Sahara, but in places like Florida, Texas, California, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Spain, Greece, Italy, Saudi Arabia, India, and Japan.
* Use the water for irrigation of plants. They will draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen.
* Extract something useful, e.g. grain from the plants.
* Use the remainder of the plant in a [cogeneration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogeneration) facility. This will produce heat (evaporate more saltwater?), electricity, fuel, and fertilizer.
There's also an alternative version that grows kelp instead of land plants. That saves the evaporation and irrigation steps.
The point of water in the Sahara would be less to produce fuel and more to increase the amount of biomass. We'd want to pull the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trap the carbon in plants. We wouldn't want to send it back to the atmosphere after burning it as fuel. The [Sahara Forest project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara_Forest_Project) is an example of a plan to do this. | Technically feasible? Probably. But do we **want** to?
======================================================
We could stop all communicable human-to-human disease. All it takes is that we all go into voluntary and solitary quarantine and stay there until the incubation period of all diseases have passed.
We could stop all airplane accidents, right now. All it takes is that we instantly ban air travel.
We could stop anthropological global warming dead in its tracks. All it takes is that we stop using fossil fuels, and stop eating meat, right now.
We could all be rich, because all it takes it to start extracting the 20 000 000 000 kg of gold — that is more than 2kg per person on Earth — [that is in plain sea water](http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/gold.html).
The question is not if these projects are technically feasible — they are — but whether we want to go through with them, considering the cost and the hassle they cause.
In the end your project comes down to measuring outcome vs cost; time spent building it until there are results; the use of scarce resources vs the gain we get when it is completed.
And when you have all of those numbers, you need to put those in contrast to using other methods to achieve the same things that your project is meant to deliver.
Yes your project is all fine on paper when **not** considering these things. But if we are to spend something that is more than a fortune on this project; if there is uncertainty as to the amount of time before it delivers; if other projects have to stand back in order that money and resources be made available for this one... then it is quite likely that people will say "Oh screw it... there are better options".
So the question is not: is it technically feasible? Because the answer is a plain: yes, it probably is. The question is if we want to do it when we consider the harsh realities of things such as cost, the use of scarce resources, and time... especially compared to competing technologies. |
215,995 | In my story, people have been on Mars for around 15 years in the mid to late 2040s. The base lies in Arcadia Planitia, where the atmosphere is slightly thicker, offering greater radiation protection. The base is a good number of people at this point (I have not pinned down the realistic number at this point), with astronauts from the US, JAXA, and the ESA.
Considering that this has mostly been spearheaded by NASA and SpaceX, in partnership with many smaller companies doing things like 3D printing, what would the habitats look like?
In my research I've found a wide variety of concepts, from 3D printed habitats:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NL29f.png)
To pre built habitats landed on the surface:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e3OiP.jpg)
To even early concepts for using Starship itself as the habitat for Lunar and Martian bases:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bi3cL.png)
One of the big things that I've found confusing is whether or not Martian bases need a covering of soil to protect against radiation. Obviously there are other alternatives to stop the radiation, like making the whole outer layer of your base the water tanks - but I simply want to know which of all these designs is the most likely.
I feel somewhat sure that the answer will be - no one knows because we haven't tried to live on Mars yet - ie, I have reached the limit of research, where really its up to me to decide. I thought I would ask for feedback anyway.
Remember - this is the late 2040s, and people have been on Mars for a while now. | 2021/10/22 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/215995",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/90113/"
] | How the architecture of this base would be is imho determined by the stage of the mission.
Let's put a picture first, where is this place on Mars..
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UkbBB.png)
A good location for touristing, nice mountains, nice views.. but first things first! There's a lot of serious work to do before you can invite tourists in.
Because I see development as a main factor, my answer has a chronological order,
**Initially, choose your first or third solution..**
On the day of landing, when Youtube videos are taken for family and friends, the crew will shoot their selfies outside, in a space suit. "Look at me walking around on Mars". But after some time has past, and Earth television is about other topics, the crew will prefer to remain inside, where the lab is, and where food is consumed, where you sleep. When humans settle there, they'll primarily care about their small community, isolated from a hostile atmosphere. And being able to walk around in normal clothing.
The hard work, like harvesting water, maintaining greenhouse and energy facilities and terraformation experiments outside is done by robotic machines. Sometimes humans go outside to solve issues, transport machines, or help machines starting up. The base would look like your first solution, or the third one. A large, central building from within humans coordinate the mission and evaluate experiment outcome, laboratory investigations of objects, do logistics, etcetera.
**In a later stage, maybe the second one..**
The second drawing looks like a scenario you'll have *separate* buildings for sleeping and working. At first, this would be very impractical: the crew *must* regard "outside" as some kind of clean room, where you'd be required to wear a special suit. Every door is a million dollar project.
Airlocked gateways between the buildings could be a modification to make #2 workable.
**Find a natural habitat, like a cave**
You've placed your settlement in a mountanous area. There may be caves there, some could be sealed off. The advantage is the huge space available. Take some safety precautions though.. it must be possible to heat the place without cracks, and you can't have leaks.
**New space suits are developed, or terraformation succeeds..**
Some factors would enable more outside activities. Suppose you have space suits of a new generation, where you can wear the suit inside without the helmet, or terraformation is already working (partially) and lighter space suits, or masks can be used when walking around. So further down the line, for the sake of aesthetics, privacy and scalability of your base, using normal Earth-type buildings may become feasable. This is a stage you could put hotels and tourists in.. and recreational expeditions. | Underground.
------------
The most important technical advance of the 21st century is the so-called "disintegration ray" - a computer-controlled array of acoustic emitters.
* First it maps a substrate, such as the wall of an underground construction site, developing a detailed model of how sound propagates through the material.
* Then it produces a waveform meant to create waves of shear along a specific front, such as a line of scission extending deep into stone, and indeed closing off a block in the rear.
* Then it adapts with the observed waveform until the substrate fractures at the desired locations.
* The material thus separated is in blocks well suited for further construction above or below ground. Apart from lifting against gravity, there is no theoretical limit to the efficiency with which rock can be separated and moved using sufficiently advanced technology.
Using this methodology, the countries of Earth have been able to build underground vertical farms and conserve water for agriculture, endure extremes of heat and cold, preserve endangered species and ecosystems, enclose dangerous polluting industrial sites, and in recent years, escape the harmful effects of nuclear fallout. (The countries of Earth have also found some uses for it on one anothers' armies, as the definition of "substrate" is highly flexible)
With this technology already mature on Earth, the move to Mars was very straightforward. Apart from a handful of prefabricated shelters at leanding, shelters used underground shelters to escape the risk of harmful radiation and to lower the energy requirements for heating to what could be provided by their solar panels. |
215,995 | In my story, people have been on Mars for around 15 years in the mid to late 2040s. The base lies in Arcadia Planitia, where the atmosphere is slightly thicker, offering greater radiation protection. The base is a good number of people at this point (I have not pinned down the realistic number at this point), with astronauts from the US, JAXA, and the ESA.
Considering that this has mostly been spearheaded by NASA and SpaceX, in partnership with many smaller companies doing things like 3D printing, what would the habitats look like?
In my research I've found a wide variety of concepts, from 3D printed habitats:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NL29f.png)
To pre built habitats landed on the surface:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e3OiP.jpg)
To even early concepts for using Starship itself as the habitat for Lunar and Martian bases:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bi3cL.png)
One of the big things that I've found confusing is whether or not Martian bases need a covering of soil to protect against radiation. Obviously there are other alternatives to stop the radiation, like making the whole outer layer of your base the water tanks - but I simply want to know which of all these designs is the most likely.
I feel somewhat sure that the answer will be - no one knows because we haven't tried to live on Mars yet - ie, I have reached the limit of research, where really its up to me to decide. I thought I would ask for feedback anyway.
Remember - this is the late 2040s, and people have been on Mars for a while now. | 2021/10/22 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/215995",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/90113/"
] | The base will not have been established for that long, there will have been considerable experimentation and also a desire to reuse as much as possible. So I would expect a variety of solutions not necessarily deployed in the most logical manner. Despite popular wishes and artwork I doubt any Starships will be laid out horizontally unless they are being scrapped for structural reasons.
I would think quite a few cargo Starships will have been left behind and might still be in use. Perhaps one has been half cannibalized and they are experimenting with using the parts. A few crewed Starships somehow connected together as part of the original bases, half a dozen pressurized modules supplied by ESA connected together with a couple of small domes one transparent with plants growing in it. Some non descript mounds one of which covers the main habitation module (some sort of large Bigelow structure. Perhaps a larger partly sunken building is under construction or partly completed. Everything is filthy with dust.
In the surrounding area a vast array of solar panels, a bulldozed bund to protect the settlement from blast effect (now less needed as the ships land further away on a purpose built landing pad). Half a dozen vehicles such as multi-purpose bulldozers, large pressurized rovers, a flatback and small crane for transferring cargo.
Other things – what looks like an oil refinery with lots of large tanks and equipment for ISRU generation of pure water, methalox, oxygen and nitrogen for breathing and some waste reprocessing. A fair amount of equipment and experiments yet to be started, under way or out of commission. Population one or two dozen, a few people have recently spent 2 synods on Mars. | How the architecture of this base would be is imho determined by the stage of the mission.
Let's put a picture first, where is this place on Mars..
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UkbBB.png)
A good location for touristing, nice mountains, nice views.. but first things first! There's a lot of serious work to do before you can invite tourists in.
Because I see development as a main factor, my answer has a chronological order,
**Initially, choose your first or third solution..**
On the day of landing, when Youtube videos are taken for family and friends, the crew will shoot their selfies outside, in a space suit. "Look at me walking around on Mars". But after some time has past, and Earth television is about other topics, the crew will prefer to remain inside, where the lab is, and where food is consumed, where you sleep. When humans settle there, they'll primarily care about their small community, isolated from a hostile atmosphere. And being able to walk around in normal clothing.
The hard work, like harvesting water, maintaining greenhouse and energy facilities and terraformation experiments outside is done by robotic machines. Sometimes humans go outside to solve issues, transport machines, or help machines starting up. The base would look like your first solution, or the third one. A large, central building from within humans coordinate the mission and evaluate experiment outcome, laboratory investigations of objects, do logistics, etcetera.
**In a later stage, maybe the second one..**
The second drawing looks like a scenario you'll have *separate* buildings for sleeping and working. At first, this would be very impractical: the crew *must* regard "outside" as some kind of clean room, where you'd be required to wear a special suit. Every door is a million dollar project.
Airlocked gateways between the buildings could be a modification to make #2 workable.
**Find a natural habitat, like a cave**
You've placed your settlement in a mountanous area. There may be caves there, some could be sealed off. The advantage is the huge space available. Take some safety precautions though.. it must be possible to heat the place without cracks, and you can't have leaks.
**New space suits are developed, or terraformation succeeds..**
Some factors would enable more outside activities. Suppose you have space suits of a new generation, where you can wear the suit inside without the helmet, or terraformation is already working (partially) and lighter space suits, or masks can be used when walking around. So further down the line, for the sake of aesthetics, privacy and scalability of your base, using normal Earth-type buildings may become feasable. This is a stage you could put hotels and tourists in.. and recreational expeditions. |
215,995 | In my story, people have been on Mars for around 15 years in the mid to late 2040s. The base lies in Arcadia Planitia, where the atmosphere is slightly thicker, offering greater radiation protection. The base is a good number of people at this point (I have not pinned down the realistic number at this point), with astronauts from the US, JAXA, and the ESA.
Considering that this has mostly been spearheaded by NASA and SpaceX, in partnership with many smaller companies doing things like 3D printing, what would the habitats look like?
In my research I've found a wide variety of concepts, from 3D printed habitats:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NL29f.png)
To pre built habitats landed on the surface:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e3OiP.jpg)
To even early concepts for using Starship itself as the habitat for Lunar and Martian bases:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bi3cL.png)
One of the big things that I've found confusing is whether or not Martian bases need a covering of soil to protect against radiation. Obviously there are other alternatives to stop the radiation, like making the whole outer layer of your base the water tanks - but I simply want to know which of all these designs is the most likely.
I feel somewhat sure that the answer will be - no one knows because we haven't tried to live on Mars yet - ie, I have reached the limit of research, where really its up to me to decide. I thought I would ask for feedback anyway.
Remember - this is the late 2040s, and people have been on Mars for a while now. | 2021/10/22 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/215995",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/90113/"
] | **Plastic sheet bubbles**
It is simple and practical. Rolls of plastic sheet come from Earth. The ground is raked smooth. A lower layer is unrolled on the bottom. Inflation apparatus is put on it. The roof is placed on top and circumferentially fixed into the ground. Inflate.
There is your building. It is all you need. Wind is weak with the thin atmosphere as is conductive heat loss.
Access points can be cut into the plastic for pipes, windows etc as desired. The plastic is easy to patch which will make for a good long term colony look. Note: patches will be on the inside where pressure will help hold them in place.
---
I was thinking about this scheme. If some low volatility grease or asphalt were put on the top of the dome it would be tacky and dust would adhere. The layer of dust in the grease would serve to block radiation and also protect the underlying plastic from sand abrasion. | Underground.
------------
The most important technical advance of the 21st century is the so-called "disintegration ray" - a computer-controlled array of acoustic emitters.
* First it maps a substrate, such as the wall of an underground construction site, developing a detailed model of how sound propagates through the material.
* Then it produces a waveform meant to create waves of shear along a specific front, such as a line of scission extending deep into stone, and indeed closing off a block in the rear.
* Then it adapts with the observed waveform until the substrate fractures at the desired locations.
* The material thus separated is in blocks well suited for further construction above or below ground. Apart from lifting against gravity, there is no theoretical limit to the efficiency with which rock can be separated and moved using sufficiently advanced technology.
Using this methodology, the countries of Earth have been able to build underground vertical farms and conserve water for agriculture, endure extremes of heat and cold, preserve endangered species and ecosystems, enclose dangerous polluting industrial sites, and in recent years, escape the harmful effects of nuclear fallout. (The countries of Earth have also found some uses for it on one anothers' armies, as the definition of "substrate" is highly flexible)
With this technology already mature on Earth, the move to Mars was very straightforward. Apart from a handful of prefabricated shelters at leanding, shelters used underground shelters to escape the risk of harmful radiation and to lower the energy requirements for heating to what could be provided by their solar panels. |
215,995 | In my story, people have been on Mars for around 15 years in the mid to late 2040s. The base lies in Arcadia Planitia, where the atmosphere is slightly thicker, offering greater radiation protection. The base is a good number of people at this point (I have not pinned down the realistic number at this point), with astronauts from the US, JAXA, and the ESA.
Considering that this has mostly been spearheaded by NASA and SpaceX, in partnership with many smaller companies doing things like 3D printing, what would the habitats look like?
In my research I've found a wide variety of concepts, from 3D printed habitats:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NL29f.png)
To pre built habitats landed on the surface:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e3OiP.jpg)
To even early concepts for using Starship itself as the habitat for Lunar and Martian bases:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bi3cL.png)
One of the big things that I've found confusing is whether or not Martian bases need a covering of soil to protect against radiation. Obviously there are other alternatives to stop the radiation, like making the whole outer layer of your base the water tanks - but I simply want to know which of all these designs is the most likely.
I feel somewhat sure that the answer will be - no one knows because we haven't tried to live on Mars yet - ie, I have reached the limit of research, where really its up to me to decide. I thought I would ask for feedback anyway.
Remember - this is the late 2040s, and people have been on Mars for a while now. | 2021/10/22 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/215995",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/90113/"
] | The base will not have been established for that long, there will have been considerable experimentation and also a desire to reuse as much as possible. So I would expect a variety of solutions not necessarily deployed in the most logical manner. Despite popular wishes and artwork I doubt any Starships will be laid out horizontally unless they are being scrapped for structural reasons.
I would think quite a few cargo Starships will have been left behind and might still be in use. Perhaps one has been half cannibalized and they are experimenting with using the parts. A few crewed Starships somehow connected together as part of the original bases, half a dozen pressurized modules supplied by ESA connected together with a couple of small domes one transparent with plants growing in it. Some non descript mounds one of which covers the main habitation module (some sort of large Bigelow structure. Perhaps a larger partly sunken building is under construction or partly completed. Everything is filthy with dust.
In the surrounding area a vast array of solar panels, a bulldozed bund to protect the settlement from blast effect (now less needed as the ships land further away on a purpose built landing pad). Half a dozen vehicles such as multi-purpose bulldozers, large pressurized rovers, a flatback and small crane for transferring cargo.
Other things – what looks like an oil refinery with lots of large tanks and equipment for ISRU generation of pure water, methalox, oxygen and nitrogen for breathing and some waste reprocessing. A fair amount of equipment and experiments yet to be started, under way or out of commission. Population one or two dozen, a few people have recently spent 2 synods on Mars. | **Plastic sheet bubbles**
It is simple and practical. Rolls of plastic sheet come from Earth. The ground is raked smooth. A lower layer is unrolled on the bottom. Inflation apparatus is put on it. The roof is placed on top and circumferentially fixed into the ground. Inflate.
There is your building. It is all you need. Wind is weak with the thin atmosphere as is conductive heat loss.
Access points can be cut into the plastic for pipes, windows etc as desired. The plastic is easy to patch which will make for a good long term colony look. Note: patches will be on the inside where pressure will help hold them in place.
---
I was thinking about this scheme. If some low volatility grease or asphalt were put on the top of the dome it would be tacky and dust would adhere. The layer of dust in the grease would serve to block radiation and also protect the underlying plastic from sand abrasion. |
215,995 | In my story, people have been on Mars for around 15 years in the mid to late 2040s. The base lies in Arcadia Planitia, where the atmosphere is slightly thicker, offering greater radiation protection. The base is a good number of people at this point (I have not pinned down the realistic number at this point), with astronauts from the US, JAXA, and the ESA.
Considering that this has mostly been spearheaded by NASA and SpaceX, in partnership with many smaller companies doing things like 3D printing, what would the habitats look like?
In my research I've found a wide variety of concepts, from 3D printed habitats:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NL29f.png)
To pre built habitats landed on the surface:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e3OiP.jpg)
To even early concepts for using Starship itself as the habitat for Lunar and Martian bases:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bi3cL.png)
One of the big things that I've found confusing is whether or not Martian bases need a covering of soil to protect against radiation. Obviously there are other alternatives to stop the radiation, like making the whole outer layer of your base the water tanks - but I simply want to know which of all these designs is the most likely.
I feel somewhat sure that the answer will be - no one knows because we haven't tried to live on Mars yet - ie, I have reached the limit of research, where really its up to me to decide. I thought I would ask for feedback anyway.
Remember - this is the late 2040s, and people have been on Mars for a while now. | 2021/10/22 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/215995",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/90113/"
] | The base will not have been established for that long, there will have been considerable experimentation and also a desire to reuse as much as possible. So I would expect a variety of solutions not necessarily deployed in the most logical manner. Despite popular wishes and artwork I doubt any Starships will be laid out horizontally unless they are being scrapped for structural reasons.
I would think quite a few cargo Starships will have been left behind and might still be in use. Perhaps one has been half cannibalized and they are experimenting with using the parts. A few crewed Starships somehow connected together as part of the original bases, half a dozen pressurized modules supplied by ESA connected together with a couple of small domes one transparent with plants growing in it. Some non descript mounds one of which covers the main habitation module (some sort of large Bigelow structure. Perhaps a larger partly sunken building is under construction or partly completed. Everything is filthy with dust.
In the surrounding area a vast array of solar panels, a bulldozed bund to protect the settlement from blast effect (now less needed as the ships land further away on a purpose built landing pad). Half a dozen vehicles such as multi-purpose bulldozers, large pressurized rovers, a flatback and small crane for transferring cargo.
Other things – what looks like an oil refinery with lots of large tanks and equipment for ISRU generation of pure water, methalox, oxygen and nitrogen for breathing and some waste reprocessing. A fair amount of equipment and experiments yet to be started, under way or out of commission. Population one or two dozen, a few people have recently spent 2 synods on Mars. | Underground.
------------
The most important technical advance of the 21st century is the so-called "disintegration ray" - a computer-controlled array of acoustic emitters.
* First it maps a substrate, such as the wall of an underground construction site, developing a detailed model of how sound propagates through the material.
* Then it produces a waveform meant to create waves of shear along a specific front, such as a line of scission extending deep into stone, and indeed closing off a block in the rear.
* Then it adapts with the observed waveform until the substrate fractures at the desired locations.
* The material thus separated is in blocks well suited for further construction above or below ground. Apart from lifting against gravity, there is no theoretical limit to the efficiency with which rock can be separated and moved using sufficiently advanced technology.
Using this methodology, the countries of Earth have been able to build underground vertical farms and conserve water for agriculture, endure extremes of heat and cold, preserve endangered species and ecosystems, enclose dangerous polluting industrial sites, and in recent years, escape the harmful effects of nuclear fallout. (The countries of Earth have also found some uses for it on one anothers' armies, as the definition of "substrate" is highly flexible)
With this technology already mature on Earth, the move to Mars was very straightforward. Apart from a handful of prefabricated shelters at leanding, shelters used underground shelters to escape the risk of harmful radiation and to lower the energy requirements for heating to what could be provided by their solar panels. |
16,508 | This Contest has Ended.
=======================
---
Hello and welcome to the **72nd** edition of the Screenshot of the Week!
To start with, congratulations to the winner of the previous contest! [Faither's](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/16497/222022) picture from [assassins-creed-odyssey](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/assassins-creed-odyssey "show questions tagged 'assassins-creed-odyssey'") won with 12 upvotes!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oq5Tb.jpg)
---
To submit a screenshot, simply post it as an answer to this question, but please take note of the following:
* One screenshot per post, and one post per person, please!
* Limited picture modifications are allowed, such as cropping, simple filters, and blurring of identifying info such as names, but not adding other images or text.
* To ensure a fair playing field, please post screenshots you've taken yourself rather than ones you found online.
* Stack Exchange’s [Code of Conduct](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/conduct) still applies - so if it would be unacceptable to post normally, it’s unacceptable here.
Also, try to avoid pictures that include spoilers. We want everyone to be able to enjoy this contest, so the less spoilers the better.
### How long will the contest run?
We will accept submissions for a week, until 19:00 UTC of 2022-08-29, then have a second week-long period where only voting will be accepted. This is to give every submission, even those posted at the end of the first week, a chance to be voted on by everyone.
After the end of the second week, at 19:00 UTC of 2022-09-05, we will count upvotes only to determine the winning screenshot, which will be featured for a week on the main site's photo widget.
---
Living with Nature
==================
Befitting last week's winner, the current Screenshot of the Week's theme is 'Living with Nature'.
Post screenshots of your character working with nature/the environment, from buildings to befriending animals to using nature to defeat your foe.
As a reminder, we're always accepting suggestions for themed weeks, and have compiled that suggestion process into a [question of its own](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15029/screenshot-of-the-week-themes). Additionally, there is the [hall of fame](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14939/screenshot-of-the-week-hall-of-fame) you can check out that contains all the previous contest winners. | 2022/08/23 | [
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16508",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/users/222022/"
] | Finding respite and time to mourn in some overgrown castle ruins in [a-plague-tale-innocence](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/a-plague-tale-innocence "show questions tagged 'a-plague-tale-innocence'").
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8DygH.jpg) | Sometimes, nature is scary. [animal-crossing-new-horizons](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/animal-crossing-new-horizons "show questions tagged 'animal-crossing-new-horizons'")
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QH11H.jpg) |
16,508 | This Contest has Ended.
=======================
---
Hello and welcome to the **72nd** edition of the Screenshot of the Week!
To start with, congratulations to the winner of the previous contest! [Faither's](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/16497/222022) picture from [assassins-creed-odyssey](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/assassins-creed-odyssey "show questions tagged 'assassins-creed-odyssey'") won with 12 upvotes!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oq5Tb.jpg)
---
To submit a screenshot, simply post it as an answer to this question, but please take note of the following:
* One screenshot per post, and one post per person, please!
* Limited picture modifications are allowed, such as cropping, simple filters, and blurring of identifying info such as names, but not adding other images or text.
* To ensure a fair playing field, please post screenshots you've taken yourself rather than ones you found online.
* Stack Exchange’s [Code of Conduct](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/conduct) still applies - so if it would be unacceptable to post normally, it’s unacceptable here.
Also, try to avoid pictures that include spoilers. We want everyone to be able to enjoy this contest, so the less spoilers the better.
### How long will the contest run?
We will accept submissions for a week, until 19:00 UTC of 2022-08-29, then have a second week-long period where only voting will be accepted. This is to give every submission, even those posted at the end of the first week, a chance to be voted on by everyone.
After the end of the second week, at 19:00 UTC of 2022-09-05, we will count upvotes only to determine the winning screenshot, which will be featured for a week on the main site's photo widget.
---
Living with Nature
==================
Befitting last week's winner, the current Screenshot of the Week's theme is 'Living with Nature'.
Post screenshots of your character working with nature/the environment, from buildings to befriending animals to using nature to defeat your foe.
As a reminder, we're always accepting suggestions for themed weeks, and have compiled that suggestion process into a [question of its own](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15029/screenshot-of-the-week-themes). Additionally, there is the [hall of fame](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14939/screenshot-of-the-week-hall-of-fame) you can check out that contains all the previous contest winners. | 2022/08/23 | [
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16508",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/users/222022/"
] | Sometimes, nature is scary. [animal-crossing-new-horizons](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/animal-crossing-new-horizons "show questions tagged 'animal-crossing-new-horizons'")
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/QH11H.jpg) | An angry alpha Bidoof in [pokemon-legends-arceus](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pokemon-legends-arceus "show questions tagged 'pokemon-legends-arceus'")
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yAsLZ.jpg) |
16,508 | This Contest has Ended.
=======================
---
Hello and welcome to the **72nd** edition of the Screenshot of the Week!
To start with, congratulations to the winner of the previous contest! [Faither's](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/16497/222022) picture from [assassins-creed-odyssey](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/assassins-creed-odyssey "show questions tagged 'assassins-creed-odyssey'") won with 12 upvotes!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oq5Tb.jpg)
---
To submit a screenshot, simply post it as an answer to this question, but please take note of the following:
* One screenshot per post, and one post per person, please!
* Limited picture modifications are allowed, such as cropping, simple filters, and blurring of identifying info such as names, but not adding other images or text.
* To ensure a fair playing field, please post screenshots you've taken yourself rather than ones you found online.
* Stack Exchange’s [Code of Conduct](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/conduct) still applies - so if it would be unacceptable to post normally, it’s unacceptable here.
Also, try to avoid pictures that include spoilers. We want everyone to be able to enjoy this contest, so the less spoilers the better.
### How long will the contest run?
We will accept submissions for a week, until 19:00 UTC of 2022-08-29, then have a second week-long period where only voting will be accepted. This is to give every submission, even those posted at the end of the first week, a chance to be voted on by everyone.
After the end of the second week, at 19:00 UTC of 2022-09-05, we will count upvotes only to determine the winning screenshot, which will be featured for a week on the main site's photo widget.
---
Living with Nature
==================
Befitting last week's winner, the current Screenshot of the Week's theme is 'Living with Nature'.
Post screenshots of your character working with nature/the environment, from buildings to befriending animals to using nature to defeat your foe.
As a reminder, we're always accepting suggestions for themed weeks, and have compiled that suggestion process into a [question of its own](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15029/screenshot-of-the-week-themes). Additionally, there is the [hall of fame](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14939/screenshot-of-the-week-hall-of-fame) you can check out that contains all the previous contest winners. | 2022/08/23 | [
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16508",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/users/222022/"
] | Finding respite and time to mourn in some overgrown castle ruins in [a-plague-tale-innocence](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/a-plague-tale-innocence "show questions tagged 'a-plague-tale-innocence'").
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8DygH.jpg) | An angry alpha Bidoof in [pokemon-legends-arceus](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pokemon-legends-arceus "show questions tagged 'pokemon-legends-arceus'")
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yAsLZ.jpg) |
16,508 | This Contest has Ended.
=======================
---
Hello and welcome to the **72nd** edition of the Screenshot of the Week!
To start with, congratulations to the winner of the previous contest! [Faither's](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/16497/222022) picture from [assassins-creed-odyssey](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/assassins-creed-odyssey "show questions tagged 'assassins-creed-odyssey'") won with 12 upvotes!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oq5Tb.jpg)
---
To submit a screenshot, simply post it as an answer to this question, but please take note of the following:
* One screenshot per post, and one post per person, please!
* Limited picture modifications are allowed, such as cropping, simple filters, and blurring of identifying info such as names, but not adding other images or text.
* To ensure a fair playing field, please post screenshots you've taken yourself rather than ones you found online.
* Stack Exchange’s [Code of Conduct](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/conduct) still applies - so if it would be unacceptable to post normally, it’s unacceptable here.
Also, try to avoid pictures that include spoilers. We want everyone to be able to enjoy this contest, so the less spoilers the better.
### How long will the contest run?
We will accept submissions for a week, until 19:00 UTC of 2022-08-29, then have a second week-long period where only voting will be accepted. This is to give every submission, even those posted at the end of the first week, a chance to be voted on by everyone.
After the end of the second week, at 19:00 UTC of 2022-09-05, we will count upvotes only to determine the winning screenshot, which will be featured for a week on the main site's photo widget.
---
Living with Nature
==================
Befitting last week's winner, the current Screenshot of the Week's theme is 'Living with Nature'.
Post screenshots of your character working with nature/the environment, from buildings to befriending animals to using nature to defeat your foe.
As a reminder, we're always accepting suggestions for themed weeks, and have compiled that suggestion process into a [question of its own](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15029/screenshot-of-the-week-themes). Additionally, there is the [hall of fame](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14939/screenshot-of-the-week-hall-of-fame) you can check out that contains all the previous contest winners. | 2022/08/23 | [
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16508",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/users/222022/"
] | Finding respite and time to mourn in some overgrown castle ruins in [a-plague-tale-innocence](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/a-plague-tale-innocence "show questions tagged 'a-plague-tale-innocence'").
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8DygH.jpg) | Someone surely was once living with nature here on this island in [subnautica](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/subnautica "show questions tagged 'subnautica'").
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qxbk5.jpg) |
16,508 | This Contest has Ended.
=======================
---
Hello and welcome to the **72nd** edition of the Screenshot of the Week!
To start with, congratulations to the winner of the previous contest! [Faither's](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/a/16497/222022) picture from [assassins-creed-odyssey](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/assassins-creed-odyssey "show questions tagged 'assassins-creed-odyssey'") won with 12 upvotes!
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oq5Tb.jpg)
---
To submit a screenshot, simply post it as an answer to this question, but please take note of the following:
* One screenshot per post, and one post per person, please!
* Limited picture modifications are allowed, such as cropping, simple filters, and blurring of identifying info such as names, but not adding other images or text.
* To ensure a fair playing field, please post screenshots you've taken yourself rather than ones you found online.
* Stack Exchange’s [Code of Conduct](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/conduct) still applies - so if it would be unacceptable to post normally, it’s unacceptable here.
Also, try to avoid pictures that include spoilers. We want everyone to be able to enjoy this contest, so the less spoilers the better.
### How long will the contest run?
We will accept submissions for a week, until 19:00 UTC of 2022-08-29, then have a second week-long period where only voting will be accepted. This is to give every submission, even those posted at the end of the first week, a chance to be voted on by everyone.
After the end of the second week, at 19:00 UTC of 2022-09-05, we will count upvotes only to determine the winning screenshot, which will be featured for a week on the main site's photo widget.
---
Living with Nature
==================
Befitting last week's winner, the current Screenshot of the Week's theme is 'Living with Nature'.
Post screenshots of your character working with nature/the environment, from buildings to befriending animals to using nature to defeat your foe.
As a reminder, we're always accepting suggestions for themed weeks, and have compiled that suggestion process into a [question of its own](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/15029/screenshot-of-the-week-themes). Additionally, there is the [hall of fame](https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14939/screenshot-of-the-week-hall-of-fame) you can check out that contains all the previous contest winners. | 2022/08/23 | [
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/16508",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://gaming.meta.stackexchange.com/users/222022/"
] | Someone surely was once living with nature here on this island in [subnautica](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/subnautica "show questions tagged 'subnautica'").
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/qxbk5.jpg) | An angry alpha Bidoof in [pokemon-legends-arceus](https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pokemon-legends-arceus "show questions tagged 'pokemon-legends-arceus'")
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yAsLZ.jpg) |
462,215 | Sometimes you see people collecting money into a "jar" with a hole for coins in it. This may or may not be intended for charity (e.g. it could also be used by someone playing a guitarr on the street).
My question is: what is the everyday name of such a jar and what is the action of collecting money into it called? If you have more than one word propositions, please share. | 2018/08/29 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/462215",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/125709/"
] | In British English this would be called a '[Collecting Tin](https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/collecting-tin)' As per Collins Dictionary:
>
> a tin for donations of money for charity or another particular purpose
>
>
> *He found a coin in his pocket and slipped it into her collecting tin, helping himself to a scarlet poppy.*
>
>
>
You will note that it covers collections being made for non-charitable purposes as well as charitable.
Additionally, the terminology can still be used even if the collecting tin is plastic, as a [google image search for 'collecting tin' demonstrates](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22collecting%20tin%22&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB761GB761&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiy9MCN6ZTdAhUHr6QKHXmmAuIQ_AUICigB&biw=783&bih=580).
However, someone 'busking', playing their guitar or other instrument on the street for money would be unlikely to use a tin. Traditionally they would use an upturned hat, but many musicians will leave their instrument case open for donations or have a small box or plastic bucket so that people can drop money in as they pass rather than having to push it through a slot. Such a box or bucket might still be metaphorically referred to as a 'hat', as in the phrase ['put out the hat'](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22put%20out%20the%20hat%22&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB761GB761&ei=X-2HW7q4EoS8kwXq15ugAQ&start=10&sa=N&biw=872&bih=580). | In the Midwestern U.S., we might refer to the "jar" as a "kitty" if it is being collected for a common purpose in a communal pot. In our home, the "kitty" is the bucket of money used to take a Florida trip every few years.
<http://www.saywhydoi.com/money-in-the-kitty-why-do-we-say-we-put-money-in-the-kitty/#comment-88722> |
318,621 | **Update:** This was five years ago. I've since revised my judgement of Stack Exchange's ethics downward, roughly to zero.
I just received an email with an unsolicited job offer from somebody who ***claims*** to have found me on Stack Overflow. It was addressed to "Ed", a name I use nowhere but Stack Overflow (it's [not my real name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany)), and she says she's looking for a .NET developer, which I am.
So "random spam sent to 1,000,000 random people" is obviously a possibility, but it seems to me it's an unlikely one. Stack Overflow is the only place I know of where the name "Ed" is associated with my [Gmail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail) address and my profession. Anybody can say "Stack Overflow" in an email; putting that together with those two other pieces of information is curious.
She claims to be recruiting for a business called (seriously) "pureromance.com". The email seems to suggest that they sell sex toys or something related; I'm not going to click the link at work to find out the exact details.
UPDATE: Checked them out. It's not a legitimate business. It's a multi-level marketing deal where you pay them for the privilege of trying to sell their sex toys to your friends. They make the usual preposterous promises, with a thick layer of sex positive female empowerment rhetoric spackled on top.
I don't use Stack Overflow Jobs. I don't have a developer CV on Stack Overflow. These days I'm not contacting anybody anywhere about jobs (nor sex toys (NO NO IT"S FOR A FRIEND!!!)), and I've never gone looking for jobs under an assumed name anyhow. I often get emails from recruiters I've dealt with in the past, but they use my real name.
Is there any legitimate way a spammer could get my email address from Stack Overflow? I've got nothing about Stack Overflow on my [LinkedIn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn) or [GitHub](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub) profiles.
It seems very much out of character for Stack Overflow to be handing out users' email addresses, even to reputable businesses. Or are recruiters regarded as an exception? If it is Stack Overflow, I'm disappointed, and I'd like to find the profile setting to prevent this from happening again.
But it seems really far-fetched that Stack Overflow is knowingly handing out my email address to anybody without explicit permission.
UPDATE
======
@Carpetsmoker links to the [Stack Overflow Privacy Policy](https://stackexchange.com/legal/privacy-policy), which says just what you and I both assumed it would:
>
> "It's hard to imagine that we would ever consider collecting, let alone sharing, sensitive information with a non-agent third party, but if such a day should come, we will first give you the opportunity to explicitly consent (opt-in) to such disclosure or to any use of the information for a purpose other than the one for which it was originally collected or previously authorized."
>
>
>
UPDATE 2
========
I just remembered I briefly corresponded a few months ago, using that same email address, with a Stack Overflow user.
It is a very strange world we live in.
Update 3
========
Two days later, on a Saturday, this Kathryn Pravel character contacted me again:
>
> I wanted to follow up on my previous note about the Sr .Net role at Pure Romance. Any questions I can answer for you?
>
>
> [blah blah blah blah]
>
>
>
I changed my "send as" name in gmail to a new unused pseudonym and replied:
>
> Yeah, I've got a question you can answer:
>
>
> Where did you get my contact information, and why are you bothering me?
>
>
> Just curious. That name isn't associated publicly with that email address on Github or Stack Overflow.
>
>
>
No reply. I marked her as spam and that's the end of it. | 2016/03/09 | [
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/318621",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/424129/"
] | We're not handing out your information to *anyone*, and we log *all* access to it.
Some recruiters (especially those contingency ones) use some pretty elaborate user scripts that attempt to fetch as much data as they can from many sources (github, bitbucket, etc, etc) while they're viewing a profile on Stack Overflow. It didn't come from us, unfortunately we can't control what public fragments of information they're able to piece together about you.
We don't do that kinda crap. And I'll be *really* happy when Jobs is fully integrated because I'd love for us to set a much louder standard that clearly says *don't do that kinda crap, it only annoys people.*
You could reply with:
>
> I ... think .. I just need to be held right now. I've got Mookey the stuffed bear, but I'm not in a very good place.
>
>
>
I don't think they'll contact you subsequently.
### RE: Your Update 2:
Classic contingency recruiting. They are *famous* for "share your friends with me and I'll kick you some cash if I can get them hired!" Deplorable, stupid and disgusting. And I'm not even going to get started.
I can't be positive because I'm not omnipotent, but I'm 99.9999999999974% sure that's how they got your information, and why they alluded to Stack Overflow. | I suggest posting the e-mail publicly, with full headers (just remove your own e-mail address and possibly server).
That will help the rest of the world write spam filters, which will in turn incentivize recruiters to be less spammy and not get tagged as undesirable. Moreover, it'll make their details publicly available where they can be scraped for inclusion in unsavory lists (I would never suggest that a Stack Exchange user do the unsavory things, but just putting the recruiter's email in plain text ought to bring it to the attention to those who are going to do unkind things anyway)
In addition, since they're lying about where they got the information, the email qualifies as "deceptive" and you can file a complaint with the FTC about a CAN-SPAM violation. See <https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0038-spam#report> |
318,621 | **Update:** This was five years ago. I've since revised my judgement of Stack Exchange's ethics downward, roughly to zero.
I just received an email with an unsolicited job offer from somebody who ***claims*** to have found me on Stack Overflow. It was addressed to "Ed", a name I use nowhere but Stack Overflow (it's [not my real name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany)), and she says she's looking for a .NET developer, which I am.
So "random spam sent to 1,000,000 random people" is obviously a possibility, but it seems to me it's an unlikely one. Stack Overflow is the only place I know of where the name "Ed" is associated with my [Gmail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail) address and my profession. Anybody can say "Stack Overflow" in an email; putting that together with those two other pieces of information is curious.
She claims to be recruiting for a business called (seriously) "pureromance.com". The email seems to suggest that they sell sex toys or something related; I'm not going to click the link at work to find out the exact details.
UPDATE: Checked them out. It's not a legitimate business. It's a multi-level marketing deal where you pay them for the privilege of trying to sell their sex toys to your friends. They make the usual preposterous promises, with a thick layer of sex positive female empowerment rhetoric spackled on top.
I don't use Stack Overflow Jobs. I don't have a developer CV on Stack Overflow. These days I'm not contacting anybody anywhere about jobs (nor sex toys (NO NO IT"S FOR A FRIEND!!!)), and I've never gone looking for jobs under an assumed name anyhow. I often get emails from recruiters I've dealt with in the past, but they use my real name.
Is there any legitimate way a spammer could get my email address from Stack Overflow? I've got nothing about Stack Overflow on my [LinkedIn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn) or [GitHub](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub) profiles.
It seems very much out of character for Stack Overflow to be handing out users' email addresses, even to reputable businesses. Or are recruiters regarded as an exception? If it is Stack Overflow, I'm disappointed, and I'd like to find the profile setting to prevent this from happening again.
But it seems really far-fetched that Stack Overflow is knowingly handing out my email address to anybody without explicit permission.
UPDATE
======
@Carpetsmoker links to the [Stack Overflow Privacy Policy](https://stackexchange.com/legal/privacy-policy), which says just what you and I both assumed it would:
>
> "It's hard to imagine that we would ever consider collecting, let alone sharing, sensitive information with a non-agent third party, but if such a day should come, we will first give you the opportunity to explicitly consent (opt-in) to such disclosure or to any use of the information for a purpose other than the one for which it was originally collected or previously authorized."
>
>
>
UPDATE 2
========
I just remembered I briefly corresponded a few months ago, using that same email address, with a Stack Overflow user.
It is a very strange world we live in.
Update 3
========
Two days later, on a Saturday, this Kathryn Pravel character contacted me again:
>
> I wanted to follow up on my previous note about the Sr .Net role at Pure Romance. Any questions I can answer for you?
>
>
> [blah blah blah blah]
>
>
>
I changed my "send as" name in gmail to a new unused pseudonym and replied:
>
> Yeah, I've got a question you can answer:
>
>
> Where did you get my contact information, and why are you bothering me?
>
>
> Just curious. That name isn't associated publicly with that email address on Github or Stack Overflow.
>
>
>
No reply. I marked her as spam and that's the end of it. | 2016/03/09 | [
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/318621",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/424129/"
] | We're not handing out your information to *anyone*, and we log *all* access to it.
Some recruiters (especially those contingency ones) use some pretty elaborate user scripts that attempt to fetch as much data as they can from many sources (github, bitbucket, etc, etc) while they're viewing a profile on Stack Overflow. It didn't come from us, unfortunately we can't control what public fragments of information they're able to piece together about you.
We don't do that kinda crap. And I'll be *really* happy when Jobs is fully integrated because I'd love for us to set a much louder standard that clearly says *don't do that kinda crap, it only annoys people.*
You could reply with:
>
> I ... think .. I just need to be held right now. I've got Mookey the stuffed bear, but I'm not in a very good place.
>
>
>
I don't think they'll contact you subsequently.
### RE: Your Update 2:
Classic contingency recruiting. They are *famous* for "share your friends with me and I'll kick you some cash if I can get them hired!" Deplorable, stupid and disgusting. And I'm not even going to get started.
I can't be positive because I'm not omnipotent, but I'm 99.9999999999974% sure that's how they got your information, and why they alluded to Stack Overflow. | As Tim wrote in his [answer](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/318622/4), the worst offenders are combining profiles from different places, scraping GitHub, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn, etc., sometimes guessing email addresses. Some companies are even doing this as a business model.
There are a couple of things we can do from a technical perspective, but the first thing we're going to do is change the TOS ASAP, so that at least this is a violation of the Stack Overflow terms of service. At least that will give us some recourse against anyone who does this openly. Watch for an announcement in the next few days. |
318,621 | **Update:** This was five years ago. I've since revised my judgement of Stack Exchange's ethics downward, roughly to zero.
I just received an email with an unsolicited job offer from somebody who ***claims*** to have found me on Stack Overflow. It was addressed to "Ed", a name I use nowhere but Stack Overflow (it's [not my real name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany)), and she says she's looking for a .NET developer, which I am.
So "random spam sent to 1,000,000 random people" is obviously a possibility, but it seems to me it's an unlikely one. Stack Overflow is the only place I know of where the name "Ed" is associated with my [Gmail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail) address and my profession. Anybody can say "Stack Overflow" in an email; putting that together with those two other pieces of information is curious.
She claims to be recruiting for a business called (seriously) "pureromance.com". The email seems to suggest that they sell sex toys or something related; I'm not going to click the link at work to find out the exact details.
UPDATE: Checked them out. It's not a legitimate business. It's a multi-level marketing deal where you pay them for the privilege of trying to sell their sex toys to your friends. They make the usual preposterous promises, with a thick layer of sex positive female empowerment rhetoric spackled on top.
I don't use Stack Overflow Jobs. I don't have a developer CV on Stack Overflow. These days I'm not contacting anybody anywhere about jobs (nor sex toys (NO NO IT"S FOR A FRIEND!!!)), and I've never gone looking for jobs under an assumed name anyhow. I often get emails from recruiters I've dealt with in the past, but they use my real name.
Is there any legitimate way a spammer could get my email address from Stack Overflow? I've got nothing about Stack Overflow on my [LinkedIn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn) or [GitHub](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub) profiles.
It seems very much out of character for Stack Overflow to be handing out users' email addresses, even to reputable businesses. Or are recruiters regarded as an exception? If it is Stack Overflow, I'm disappointed, and I'd like to find the profile setting to prevent this from happening again.
But it seems really far-fetched that Stack Overflow is knowingly handing out my email address to anybody without explicit permission.
UPDATE
======
@Carpetsmoker links to the [Stack Overflow Privacy Policy](https://stackexchange.com/legal/privacy-policy), which says just what you and I both assumed it would:
>
> "It's hard to imagine that we would ever consider collecting, let alone sharing, sensitive information with a non-agent third party, but if such a day should come, we will first give you the opportunity to explicitly consent (opt-in) to such disclosure or to any use of the information for a purpose other than the one for which it was originally collected or previously authorized."
>
>
>
UPDATE 2
========
I just remembered I briefly corresponded a few months ago, using that same email address, with a Stack Overflow user.
It is a very strange world we live in.
Update 3
========
Two days later, on a Saturday, this Kathryn Pravel character contacted me again:
>
> I wanted to follow up on my previous note about the Sr .Net role at Pure Romance. Any questions I can answer for you?
>
>
> [blah blah blah blah]
>
>
>
I changed my "send as" name in gmail to a new unused pseudonym and replied:
>
> Yeah, I've got a question you can answer:
>
>
> Where did you get my contact information, and why are you bothering me?
>
>
> Just curious. That name isn't associated publicly with that email address on Github or Stack Overflow.
>
>
>
No reply. I marked her as spam and that's the end of it. | 2016/03/09 | [
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/318621",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/424129/"
] | We're not handing out your information to *anyone*, and we log *all* access to it.
Some recruiters (especially those contingency ones) use some pretty elaborate user scripts that attempt to fetch as much data as they can from many sources (github, bitbucket, etc, etc) while they're viewing a profile on Stack Overflow. It didn't come from us, unfortunately we can't control what public fragments of information they're able to piece together about you.
We don't do that kinda crap. And I'll be *really* happy when Jobs is fully integrated because I'd love for us to set a much louder standard that clearly says *don't do that kinda crap, it only annoys people.*
You could reply with:
>
> I ... think .. I just need to be held right now. I've got Mookey the stuffed bear, but I'm not in a very good place.
>
>
>
I don't think they'll contact you subsequently.
### RE: Your Update 2:
Classic contingency recruiting. They are *famous* for "share your friends with me and I'll kick you some cash if I can get them hired!" Deplorable, stupid and disgusting. And I'm not even going to get started.
I can't be positive because I'm not omnipotent, but I'm 99.9999999999974% sure that's how they got your information, and why they alluded to Stack Overflow. | I just reply with a link to my 5gb "resume" that happens to be MPAA protected content. |
318,621 | **Update:** This was five years ago. I've since revised my judgement of Stack Exchange's ethics downward, roughly to zero.
I just received an email with an unsolicited job offer from somebody who ***claims*** to have found me on Stack Overflow. It was addressed to "Ed", a name I use nowhere but Stack Overflow (it's [not my real name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany)), and she says she's looking for a .NET developer, which I am.
So "random spam sent to 1,000,000 random people" is obviously a possibility, but it seems to me it's an unlikely one. Stack Overflow is the only place I know of where the name "Ed" is associated with my [Gmail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail) address and my profession. Anybody can say "Stack Overflow" in an email; putting that together with those two other pieces of information is curious.
She claims to be recruiting for a business called (seriously) "pureromance.com". The email seems to suggest that they sell sex toys or something related; I'm not going to click the link at work to find out the exact details.
UPDATE: Checked them out. It's not a legitimate business. It's a multi-level marketing deal where you pay them for the privilege of trying to sell their sex toys to your friends. They make the usual preposterous promises, with a thick layer of sex positive female empowerment rhetoric spackled on top.
I don't use Stack Overflow Jobs. I don't have a developer CV on Stack Overflow. These days I'm not contacting anybody anywhere about jobs (nor sex toys (NO NO IT"S FOR A FRIEND!!!)), and I've never gone looking for jobs under an assumed name anyhow. I often get emails from recruiters I've dealt with in the past, but they use my real name.
Is there any legitimate way a spammer could get my email address from Stack Overflow? I've got nothing about Stack Overflow on my [LinkedIn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn) or [GitHub](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub) profiles.
It seems very much out of character for Stack Overflow to be handing out users' email addresses, even to reputable businesses. Or are recruiters regarded as an exception? If it is Stack Overflow, I'm disappointed, and I'd like to find the profile setting to prevent this from happening again.
But it seems really far-fetched that Stack Overflow is knowingly handing out my email address to anybody without explicit permission.
UPDATE
======
@Carpetsmoker links to the [Stack Overflow Privacy Policy](https://stackexchange.com/legal/privacy-policy), which says just what you and I both assumed it would:
>
> "It's hard to imagine that we would ever consider collecting, let alone sharing, sensitive information with a non-agent third party, but if such a day should come, we will first give you the opportunity to explicitly consent (opt-in) to such disclosure or to any use of the information for a purpose other than the one for which it was originally collected or previously authorized."
>
>
>
UPDATE 2
========
I just remembered I briefly corresponded a few months ago, using that same email address, with a Stack Overflow user.
It is a very strange world we live in.
Update 3
========
Two days later, on a Saturday, this Kathryn Pravel character contacted me again:
>
> I wanted to follow up on my previous note about the Sr .Net role at Pure Romance. Any questions I can answer for you?
>
>
> [blah blah blah blah]
>
>
>
I changed my "send as" name in gmail to a new unused pseudonym and replied:
>
> Yeah, I've got a question you can answer:
>
>
> Where did you get my contact information, and why are you bothering me?
>
>
> Just curious. That name isn't associated publicly with that email address on Github or Stack Overflow.
>
>
>
No reply. I marked her as spam and that's the end of it. | 2016/03/09 | [
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/318621",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/424129/"
] | As Tim wrote in his [answer](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/318622/4), the worst offenders are combining profiles from different places, scraping GitHub, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn, etc., sometimes guessing email addresses. Some companies are even doing this as a business model.
There are a couple of things we can do from a technical perspective, but the first thing we're going to do is change the TOS ASAP, so that at least this is a violation of the Stack Overflow terms of service. At least that will give us some recourse against anyone who does this openly. Watch for an announcement in the next few days. | I suggest posting the e-mail publicly, with full headers (just remove your own e-mail address and possibly server).
That will help the rest of the world write spam filters, which will in turn incentivize recruiters to be less spammy and not get tagged as undesirable. Moreover, it'll make their details publicly available where they can be scraped for inclusion in unsavory lists (I would never suggest that a Stack Exchange user do the unsavory things, but just putting the recruiter's email in plain text ought to bring it to the attention to those who are going to do unkind things anyway)
In addition, since they're lying about where they got the information, the email qualifies as "deceptive" and you can file a complaint with the FTC about a CAN-SPAM violation. See <https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0038-spam#report> |
318,621 | **Update:** This was five years ago. I've since revised my judgement of Stack Exchange's ethics downward, roughly to zero.
I just received an email with an unsolicited job offer from somebody who ***claims*** to have found me on Stack Overflow. It was addressed to "Ed", a name I use nowhere but Stack Overflow (it's [not my real name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany)), and she says she's looking for a .NET developer, which I am.
So "random spam sent to 1,000,000 random people" is obviously a possibility, but it seems to me it's an unlikely one. Stack Overflow is the only place I know of where the name "Ed" is associated with my [Gmail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail) address and my profession. Anybody can say "Stack Overflow" in an email; putting that together with those two other pieces of information is curious.
She claims to be recruiting for a business called (seriously) "pureromance.com". The email seems to suggest that they sell sex toys or something related; I'm not going to click the link at work to find out the exact details.
UPDATE: Checked them out. It's not a legitimate business. It's a multi-level marketing deal where you pay them for the privilege of trying to sell their sex toys to your friends. They make the usual preposterous promises, with a thick layer of sex positive female empowerment rhetoric spackled on top.
I don't use Stack Overflow Jobs. I don't have a developer CV on Stack Overflow. These days I'm not contacting anybody anywhere about jobs (nor sex toys (NO NO IT"S FOR A FRIEND!!!)), and I've never gone looking for jobs under an assumed name anyhow. I often get emails from recruiters I've dealt with in the past, but they use my real name.
Is there any legitimate way a spammer could get my email address from Stack Overflow? I've got nothing about Stack Overflow on my [LinkedIn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn) or [GitHub](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub) profiles.
It seems very much out of character for Stack Overflow to be handing out users' email addresses, even to reputable businesses. Or are recruiters regarded as an exception? If it is Stack Overflow, I'm disappointed, and I'd like to find the profile setting to prevent this from happening again.
But it seems really far-fetched that Stack Overflow is knowingly handing out my email address to anybody without explicit permission.
UPDATE
======
@Carpetsmoker links to the [Stack Overflow Privacy Policy](https://stackexchange.com/legal/privacy-policy), which says just what you and I both assumed it would:
>
> "It's hard to imagine that we would ever consider collecting, let alone sharing, sensitive information with a non-agent third party, but if such a day should come, we will first give you the opportunity to explicitly consent (opt-in) to such disclosure or to any use of the information for a purpose other than the one for which it was originally collected or previously authorized."
>
>
>
UPDATE 2
========
I just remembered I briefly corresponded a few months ago, using that same email address, with a Stack Overflow user.
It is a very strange world we live in.
Update 3
========
Two days later, on a Saturday, this Kathryn Pravel character contacted me again:
>
> I wanted to follow up on my previous note about the Sr .Net role at Pure Romance. Any questions I can answer for you?
>
>
> [blah blah blah blah]
>
>
>
I changed my "send as" name in gmail to a new unused pseudonym and replied:
>
> Yeah, I've got a question you can answer:
>
>
> Where did you get my contact information, and why are you bothering me?
>
>
> Just curious. That name isn't associated publicly with that email address on Github or Stack Overflow.
>
>
>
No reply. I marked her as spam and that's the end of it. | 2016/03/09 | [
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/318621",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/424129/"
] | I suggest posting the e-mail publicly, with full headers (just remove your own e-mail address and possibly server).
That will help the rest of the world write spam filters, which will in turn incentivize recruiters to be less spammy and not get tagged as undesirable. Moreover, it'll make their details publicly available where they can be scraped for inclusion in unsavory lists (I would never suggest that a Stack Exchange user do the unsavory things, but just putting the recruiter's email in plain text ought to bring it to the attention to those who are going to do unkind things anyway)
In addition, since they're lying about where they got the information, the email qualifies as "deceptive" and you can file a complaint with the FTC about a CAN-SPAM violation. See <https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0038-spam#report> | I just reply with a link to my 5gb "resume" that happens to be MPAA protected content. |
318,621 | **Update:** This was five years ago. I've since revised my judgement of Stack Exchange's ethics downward, roughly to zero.
I just received an email with an unsolicited job offer from somebody who ***claims*** to have found me on Stack Overflow. It was addressed to "Ed", a name I use nowhere but Stack Overflow (it's [not my real name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Plunkett,_18th_Baron_of_Dunsany)), and she says she's looking for a .NET developer, which I am.
So "random spam sent to 1,000,000 random people" is obviously a possibility, but it seems to me it's an unlikely one. Stack Overflow is the only place I know of where the name "Ed" is associated with my [Gmail](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail) address and my profession. Anybody can say "Stack Overflow" in an email; putting that together with those two other pieces of information is curious.
She claims to be recruiting for a business called (seriously) "pureromance.com". The email seems to suggest that they sell sex toys or something related; I'm not going to click the link at work to find out the exact details.
UPDATE: Checked them out. It's not a legitimate business. It's a multi-level marketing deal where you pay them for the privilege of trying to sell their sex toys to your friends. They make the usual preposterous promises, with a thick layer of sex positive female empowerment rhetoric spackled on top.
I don't use Stack Overflow Jobs. I don't have a developer CV on Stack Overflow. These days I'm not contacting anybody anywhere about jobs (nor sex toys (NO NO IT"S FOR A FRIEND!!!)), and I've never gone looking for jobs under an assumed name anyhow. I often get emails from recruiters I've dealt with in the past, but they use my real name.
Is there any legitimate way a spammer could get my email address from Stack Overflow? I've got nothing about Stack Overflow on my [LinkedIn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn) or [GitHub](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub) profiles.
It seems very much out of character for Stack Overflow to be handing out users' email addresses, even to reputable businesses. Or are recruiters regarded as an exception? If it is Stack Overflow, I'm disappointed, and I'd like to find the profile setting to prevent this from happening again.
But it seems really far-fetched that Stack Overflow is knowingly handing out my email address to anybody without explicit permission.
UPDATE
======
@Carpetsmoker links to the [Stack Overflow Privacy Policy](https://stackexchange.com/legal/privacy-policy), which says just what you and I both assumed it would:
>
> "It's hard to imagine that we would ever consider collecting, let alone sharing, sensitive information with a non-agent third party, but if such a day should come, we will first give you the opportunity to explicitly consent (opt-in) to such disclosure or to any use of the information for a purpose other than the one for which it was originally collected or previously authorized."
>
>
>
UPDATE 2
========
I just remembered I briefly corresponded a few months ago, using that same email address, with a Stack Overflow user.
It is a very strange world we live in.
Update 3
========
Two days later, on a Saturday, this Kathryn Pravel character contacted me again:
>
> I wanted to follow up on my previous note about the Sr .Net role at Pure Romance. Any questions I can answer for you?
>
>
> [blah blah blah blah]
>
>
>
I changed my "send as" name in gmail to a new unused pseudonym and replied:
>
> Yeah, I've got a question you can answer:
>
>
> Where did you get my contact information, and why are you bothering me?
>
>
> Just curious. That name isn't associated publicly with that email address on Github or Stack Overflow.
>
>
>
No reply. I marked her as spam and that's the end of it. | 2016/03/09 | [
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/318621",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/424129/"
] | As Tim wrote in his [answer](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/318622/4), the worst offenders are combining profiles from different places, scraping GitHub, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn, etc., sometimes guessing email addresses. Some companies are even doing this as a business model.
There are a couple of things we can do from a technical perspective, but the first thing we're going to do is change the TOS ASAP, so that at least this is a violation of the Stack Overflow terms of service. At least that will give us some recourse against anyone who does this openly. Watch for an announcement in the next few days. | I just reply with a link to my 5gb "resume" that happens to be MPAA protected content. |
24,361 | I unioned 2 layers into 1 layer, and it created sliver polygons.
I used the elimination tool to merge them with neighboring polygons.
As as result, it merges all sliver polygons to only one polygon (selected in the picture).
What I need, is that, every sliver polygon to be added to its neighboring polygon.
How that could be achieved?
I am using ArcGIS Desktop 10.
 | 2012/04/29 | [
"https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/24361",
"https://gis.stackexchange.com",
"https://gis.stackexchange.com/users/6941/"
] | I solved it myself.
After unioning the layers, the silver polygons were added as a single polygon.
Therefore I had to use the Explode Multi-part Feature tool from advanced editing toolbar, which separated the polygon into multiple single polygons.
Then the Elimination tool was able to add the polygons to neighboring polygons easily. | If the sliver polygons share a common attribute value with the neightbouring polygons, you could try to use "Dissolve" from the Data Management toolbox.
But, it's strange that the union of two polygon layers generates that sliver polygons. The problem should be on the original layers. You could try to repair the geometries on both layers and use the "Integrate" tool to ensure no sliver polygons are created after the union. |
402,028 | The answer in question is this:
<https://stackoverflow.com/review/low-quality-posts/27366041>
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3m4P0.png)
>
>
>
I found no other way to object to it being flagged and then deleted. Not even to write to the moderator who did it about it. So I'll do it this way.
Not that I care much about it being deleted, or even losing 100 from my reputation. That's life. But I want to express my disagreement.
It may be self-promotion, but, as one moderator, Trenton McKinney, admitted, it does answer the question. Even more, it is the only relevant answer the question has received in 3 years.
They say link-only answers are no good. What am I to do if this is the only relevant thing to say? The OP didn't ask how a product like WebLock is developed, he asked how he could do a specific job that happened to be solved very well with WebLock. Saying more would not have been of any help (assuming he'd still be interested in the answer).
If I didn't get the question right, then they should have said so. But I think I did, and it seems said moderator agrees.
Now, after he deleted my answer and lowered my reputation by 100, they also locked the question as being not up to the standards. How was I supposed to know this? When I answered it it was obviously not locked. | 2020/10/13 | [
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/402028",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/7461525/"
] | You're not telling the full story here. There's a mod flag that does though. Does [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/64309051) look familiar?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/buBby.png)
You now have multiple problems.
1. Your answer is [link-only](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/225370/your-answer-is-in-another-castle-when-is-an-answer-not-an-answer)
2. You're promoting your own app here without disclosure. [Check out the Help Center for why we don't permit that](https://stackoverflow.com/help/promotion)
3. You posted that to two separate questions
That's spam in my book. You're lucky the above answer was merely deleted or you'd have lost 200 rep instead of 100. | Here's what happened after you posted your answer.
First, your answer was short, and only had a link, so the system thought it as Low Quality, and it entered the Low Quality posts review queue.
There, 2 users with the [delete vote privilege](https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/trusted-user) voted to delete your answer. While this was happening, some users flagged it as spam. When users flag as spam, the [Community♦ user](https://stackoverflow.com/users/-1/community) automatically downvotes.
After reaching 6 red flags, your answer got automatically deleted by the 6 flags rule, which is why one of the delete voters is the Community user.
And as an FYI, try answering on-topic questions that can receive high-quality answers. Answers that are just a link may be flagged as Not an Answer and deleted. You could have added a little context around the link, but 1. It was self-promotion, and 2. The question was pretty low quality. |
402,028 | The answer in question is this:
<https://stackoverflow.com/review/low-quality-posts/27366041>
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3m4P0.png)
>
>
>
I found no other way to object to it being flagged and then deleted. Not even to write to the moderator who did it about it. So I'll do it this way.
Not that I care much about it being deleted, or even losing 100 from my reputation. That's life. But I want to express my disagreement.
It may be self-promotion, but, as one moderator, Trenton McKinney, admitted, it does answer the question. Even more, it is the only relevant answer the question has received in 3 years.
They say link-only answers are no good. What am I to do if this is the only relevant thing to say? The OP didn't ask how a product like WebLock is developed, he asked how he could do a specific job that happened to be solved very well with WebLock. Saying more would not have been of any help (assuming he'd still be interested in the answer).
If I didn't get the question right, then they should have said so. But I think I did, and it seems said moderator agrees.
Now, after he deleted my answer and lowered my reputation by 100, they also locked the question as being not up to the standards. How was I supposed to know this? When I answered it it was obviously not locked. | 2020/10/13 | [
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/402028",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/7461525/"
] | I'm one of the users who initially handled your post, so I'll weigh in here.
---
Your answer was indeed a valid answer to the question. While it's true that answers that contain no information other than a link [are subject to deletion](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/225370/258777), your answer IMO does not qualify for deletion under this policy because "try WebLock" is a valid answer even without the link.
However, whenever you are promoting your own product, **you MUST ALWAYS DISCLOSE YOUR AFFILIATION** with the product, in accordance with the site's [self-promotion guidelines](https://stackoverflow.com/help/promotion). This is not just a Stack Overflow policy but a matter of etiquette across the Internet in general -- promoting your own product without disclosing affiliation comes across as [astroturfing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing) and is considered deceptive. Additionally, you posted [another self-promotional post](https://metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/spammers/227072) within a just few minutes, again without disclosing affiliation.
Finally, both questions were old (not a good look, because it seems like you're fishing for places to promote your product) and off-topic (so the whole question is liable for deletion anyway).
---
The posts tripped some automated filters, bringing it to the attention of several reviewers including myself. I left a friendly comment explaining our self-promotion guidelines, and flagged the post for moderator review, about 30 minutes after it was posted if my memory is correct. About an hour later, it looks like a moderator reviewed the post and decided to deleted it as spam. In the meantime, the questions were both closed for being off-topic and will likely be deleted soon too.
So, the end result is that some off-topic questions were cleaned up, and you learned about the etiquette for self-promotion on the Internet. Sounds to me like the system worked exactly as intended. | Here's what happened after you posted your answer.
First, your answer was short, and only had a link, so the system thought it as Low Quality, and it entered the Low Quality posts review queue.
There, 2 users with the [delete vote privilege](https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/trusted-user) voted to delete your answer. While this was happening, some users flagged it as spam. When users flag as spam, the [Community♦ user](https://stackoverflow.com/users/-1/community) automatically downvotes.
After reaching 6 red flags, your answer got automatically deleted by the 6 flags rule, which is why one of the delete voters is the Community user.
And as an FYI, try answering on-topic questions that can receive high-quality answers. Answers that are just a link may be flagged as Not an Answer and deleted. You could have added a little context around the link, but 1. It was self-promotion, and 2. The question was pretty low quality. |
402,028 | The answer in question is this:
<https://stackoverflow.com/review/low-quality-posts/27366041>
>
> [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3m4P0.png)
>
>
>
I found no other way to object to it being flagged and then deleted. Not even to write to the moderator who did it about it. So I'll do it this way.
Not that I care much about it being deleted, or even losing 100 from my reputation. That's life. But I want to express my disagreement.
It may be self-promotion, but, as one moderator, Trenton McKinney, admitted, it does answer the question. Even more, it is the only relevant answer the question has received in 3 years.
They say link-only answers are no good. What am I to do if this is the only relevant thing to say? The OP didn't ask how a product like WebLock is developed, he asked how he could do a specific job that happened to be solved very well with WebLock. Saying more would not have been of any help (assuming he'd still be interested in the answer).
If I didn't get the question right, then they should have said so. But I think I did, and it seems said moderator agrees.
Now, after he deleted my answer and lowered my reputation by 100, they also locked the question as being not up to the standards. How was I supposed to know this? When I answered it it was obviously not locked. | 2020/10/13 | [
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/402028",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com",
"https://meta.stackoverflow.com/users/7461525/"
] | You're not telling the full story here. There's a mod flag that does though. Does [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/64309051) look familiar?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/buBby.png)
You now have multiple problems.
1. Your answer is [link-only](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/225370/your-answer-is-in-another-castle-when-is-an-answer-not-an-answer)
2. You're promoting your own app here without disclosure. [Check out the Help Center for why we don't permit that](https://stackoverflow.com/help/promotion)
3. You posted that to two separate questions
That's spam in my book. You're lucky the above answer was merely deleted or you'd have lost 200 rep instead of 100. | I'm one of the users who initially handled your post, so I'll weigh in here.
---
Your answer was indeed a valid answer to the question. While it's true that answers that contain no information other than a link [are subject to deletion](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/225370/258777), your answer IMO does not qualify for deletion under this policy because "try WebLock" is a valid answer even without the link.
However, whenever you are promoting your own product, **you MUST ALWAYS DISCLOSE YOUR AFFILIATION** with the product, in accordance with the site's [self-promotion guidelines](https://stackoverflow.com/help/promotion). This is not just a Stack Overflow policy but a matter of etiquette across the Internet in general -- promoting your own product without disclosing affiliation comes across as [astroturfing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing) and is considered deceptive. Additionally, you posted [another self-promotional post](https://metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/spammers/227072) within a just few minutes, again without disclosing affiliation.
Finally, both questions were old (not a good look, because it seems like you're fishing for places to promote your product) and off-topic (so the whole question is liable for deletion anyway).
---
The posts tripped some automated filters, bringing it to the attention of several reviewers including myself. I left a friendly comment explaining our self-promotion guidelines, and flagged the post for moderator review, about 30 minutes after it was posted if my memory is correct. About an hour later, it looks like a moderator reviewed the post and decided to deleted it as spam. In the meantime, the questions were both closed for being off-topic and will likely be deleted soon too.
So, the end result is that some off-topic questions were cleaned up, and you learned about the etiquette for self-promotion on the Internet. Sounds to me like the system worked exactly as intended. |
417,324 | I'm building a miniature pinball machine and I am attempting to use an infrared reflector sensor (QRE1113) to detect when the ball rolls over it (I got the original idea from Ben Heck's videos).
In my testing the sensor does respond adequately to a ball rolling over it, and it's easy to make this determination through the Arduino analog input.
**However** a pinball machine has way more rollover sensors than the Arduino has analog inputs (final playfield will have ~10-20 rollovers).
My Arduino code doesn't need to know the analog value of the sensor, all it needs to know is whether the value has dropped below a certain threshold meaning a ball is on top of the sensor.
So ideally I would like to convert this analog value to a low or high depending on whether that threshold has been reached, and to then send that result to a digital pin instead of an analog one.
I *sort of* solved this problem by hooking the sensor up to a digital pin, but using a potentiometer to adjust the sensitivity so that the threshold voltage I want to detect happens to line up with the threshold of what Arduino considers to be high or low.
This is essentially identical to this schematic (but I'm NOT using the sparkfun breakout board, I'm using the bare sensor):
<http://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Sensors/Infrared/QRE1113%20Line%20Sensor%20Breakout%20-%20Analog.pdf>
The only difference from that schematic is that instead of the 10K resistor I have a 1M resistor and a 500K potentiometer in series in place of where the 10K resistor would be (I think their schematic has a mistake, a 10K resistor gave me terrible results and through trial and error I found 1M works best).
This solution works but it feels cludgy because I'm not actually generating a proper 3.3V HIGH or 0V LOW signal and instead sending an analog signal that just so happens to match up with what Arduino considers the fringes of a high or a low.
Is there a better more "official" way to do this instead of my hack that would allow me to send 0V or 3.3V to the Arduino digital pin based on the analog sensor reaching a certain threshold (ideally adjustable since it takes some trial and error to get the right sensitivity).
I'm building this machine mostly to learn electronics so the "lower level" the solution the better. I know there are ADC boards will expand how many analog inputs I have via "magic", but it would be way more satisfying to build something out of basic components that I can understand.
PS: I'm mostly a software guy. Building electronics circuits is new to me so if I'm thinking about the problem all wrong let me know as well. | 2019/01/16 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/417324",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/210110/"
] | As mentioned in the comments, you want a comparator.
At a high level, a comparator has two inputs, a positive and a negative, and one output which is high whenever the positive input is at a greater voltage than the negative input. You might notice that this is just like what op amps do when you don't give them any feedback; indeed, the circuitry for a comparator is very similar to that for an op amp, and you can use an op amp as a comparator, but purpose-made comparators perform better.
As Eugene in the comments pointed out, you probably want a Schmitt trigger comparator, which, instead of a single threshold value, has two; after going high, it remains high until it reaches the lower of the two thresholds, and after going low it remains low until it reaches the higher threshold. This helps with noise immunity. | One solution is:
* binary detect with hysteresis, MUX and use a PISO register (Parallel In Serial Out), detect sensor in software and decode events or detect single events in hardware then clear when sent thru PISO register.
You can use as many HEX Schmitt trigger IC to convert the analog signal to digital providing the signal goes below 1/3 and above 2/3 Vcc.
If say ball that is blocking an IR signal = "1", this can be used as a leading edge, or wait for the trailing edge or just send the state to the MUX.
The MUX duration depends on speed of 8 bit byte interrupt sampling of the ball detect and software XOR decoding.
For hardware decoding you again can decide the leading edge, or trailing edge and just send "1" once and clear when the byte is read waiting for the next event.
These IC's are very common, so if you aren't familiar, Digikey has them all for many supply ranges in CMOS, SMD and THT. |
58,930,998 | I am working on a project which requires me to give the user a list of do/dont's which shouldn't be edited.
So is it possible to make read-only comments.
Any help would be appreciated thanks!!!
(Note: its not a rshiny script) | 2019/11/19 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/58930998",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/8389396/"
] | This is not possible. R scripts are regular files, all parts of them are editable. | Maybe you should use a read only repository and put your code there?
[How to make a git repository read-only?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1662205/how-to-make-a-git-repository-read-only)
I never had to use sections of the code with read only access, and I am not sure if we can make this kind of thing. |
25,067 | My 2 year old child loves reciting the alphabet on her own. Her mother and I take turns to recite the alphabet one by one with her. However, we noticed that when she reaches I she says Y and then Z. And also the other way round!
Sometimes she has also got confused between H and A.
We thought she'd learn the correct ones with time, but it has been over 3 months now.
Any suggestions for improvement? | 2016/05/24 | [
"https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/25067",
"https://parenting.stackexchange.com",
"https://parenting.stackexchange.com/users/22279/"
] | Of course she doesn't eat. First she gets to make a mess (what fun) and play with putting things on food like salt (something a 2 year old doesn't need extra of). And when shes done she gets her very own special dish of cheese (something that's not particularly good for her).
There is zero incentive to eat real food here. What about only offering her a couple of healthy options?
Pick things she did eat before and refuse to give her anything else. Tell her tonight's choices are potato, carrot and peas and that is all there is in the house.
You don't have to force feed her, that backfires later in life because they tend to never enjoy the food they were force fed (<http://www.raisehealthyeaters.com/2012/07/what-forcing-kids-to-eat-looks-like-20-years-later/>). And you don't have to send her to bed hungry, just keep offering those same choices. | It doesn't seem something to lose your sleep over, however:
A) Psychologists make a big deal about how people's ability to 'try new stuff', be open to change, etc, is useful in life. Your degree of openness to change is one of the "big 5" personality traits.
B) If you want her to eat something else, you have to stop feeding her what you don't want her to eat. We typically say "this is the food that's available for dinner today, you can eat it or not, but there's no other food available".
C) There's fun book called something like "new cheese" about a group of mice, some of which don't want t try new cheese and so suffer when the old one runs out, while the others go on finding new cheese of different kinds. You can read her the story and then explain how n'new food' is like 'new cheese'...
D) We've 'explained' to our kids that you only like food after trying it seven times! Seven! So when they say they don;t like something we just counter that its because they have not tried it seven times yet! You can also point out to the fact that they did not originally like the food that they do like now... |
7,423 | I just noticed that tactics is now a [synonym of warfare](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/tags/warfare/synonyms) instead of being a separate tag.
As someone who spent 3 years involved in planning the tactics of warfare, 3+ years involved in determining the actual tactics of police operations, and more than 10 years involve in developing tactics for business operations - I cannot see the reasoning in including tactics and warfare as absolute synonyms.
Before even moving into the ability to ask about tactics in areas outside of warfare I must point out that warfare strategy does not equal tactics. I have a full argument in [a separate post](https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7205/is-the-elementary-evil-vs-you-wights-rooting-henrys-troops-out-ready-for-re/7213#7213) but the main gist is:
*There is a difference between operational planning, tactical planning, mission or course of action (COA) planning, and actual orders.*
This means that for questions involving warfare the more appropriate response would not be making this a synonym but adding the actual levels of planning (as tags) that organizations use. Or leave strategy & tactics separated (strategy is open-ended most of the time but that is a different conversation).
---
To add my argument, beyond warfare strategy, the tactics I had as a military police officer vs. as military member (Marine) in **warfare** is just a gross miss-interpretation of tactics in a general sense - and yes, I still have orders from both instances and the variance is immense.
I can expand on length & with multiple examples if needed but a clear example could be *"no warning shots"* vs. *"disabling shots are the first priority"* and *"close with and destroy with fire & close combat"* vs. *"disable & apprehend all suspects involved with incident"*.
I would link to the discussion on this within meta but I cannot find a single one.
**I may come off a bit defensive about this but that comes from years and years of experience and the fact that my police actions using police tactics do not equate to my actions as a military member in combat** | 2019/07/20 | [
"https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7423",
"https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/users/54517/"
] | [status-completed](/questions/tagged/status-completed "show questions tagged 'status-completed'"): I deleted the synonym but didn't do anything about the 23 questions that were auto-retagged after the synonym was created.
---
Both tactics and strategy apply to contexts beyond war -- police, corporate maneuvers, governments trying to bring about a particular end, *resisters* trying to bring about a particular end... this synonym should not exist.
From what I've been able to discover, the tag was suggested and approved in December 2018. All of the questions that originally had the [tactics](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tactics "show questions tagged 'tactics'") tag should get it back again when I delete the synonym. However, the 23 questions where the [tactics](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tactics "show questions tagged 'tactics'") tag was remapped to [warfare](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/warfare "show questions tagged 'warfare'") because of the synonym will *not* revert. No retaggings happen when a synonym is broken (source: message from a CM in a mod-private channel). So if we want to fix those 23 cases, someone's going to have to search for [warfare](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/warfare "show questions tagged 'warfare'") questions asked or retagged since then and look to see if any should be retagged back to [tactics](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/tactics "show questions tagged 'tactics'"). (Questions asked since then can be found using search. I don't know how to search for *retaggings* in that timeframe on-site, though you could do it with [SEDE](https://data.stackexchange.com/help).) Or we could decide to just leave them alone and fix them as we come across them and notice.
I'll hold off on deleting this synonym to give people a chance to object, but if I don't see complaints and the voting is supportive, I'll delete it in a couple days. There's a larger question of how/whether this cluster of tags should be restructured; I'm focusing on the smaller issue of this one IMO incorrect synonym. | I wonder if we need to have three distinct tags :
* **Warfare** Meaning the politics of warfare, objectives and even the process of starting and ending a war (e.g. negotiations, diplomacy as it leads to and end war).
* **Strategy** The art or skill of deploying resources to achieve a large scale goal, even an over victory. Specifically excludes political considerations.
* **Tactics** The art of deploying military and police resources on a small scale. Specifically excludes military strategy and politics.
These can/should be combined with these tags :
* **Military** referring to situations where a trained military is the main forces, or one of the keys ones.
* **Policing** referring to situations where a trained police force is the main force of one of the key ones.
* **Politics** referring to issues related to political aspects of a scenario.
There's no reason why both military and policing tags could not be used together (e.g police must defend against/attack military units or the politics of a specific policing tactic).
I am not entirely convinced by your argument that police tactics should bee seen as different from military tactics. Modern military tactics do not exclude non-lethal policing style techniques. Many countries now deploy military units in peace-keeping roles and not simply as a military force. On the other hand police forces rarely need to employ large scale strategic thinking (outside of the logistics of scares resources).
>
> To add my argument, beyond warfare strategy, the tactics I had as a military police officer vs. as military member (Marine) in warfare is just a gross miss-interpretation of tactics in a general sense - and yes, I still have orders from both instances and the variance is immense.
>
>
>
While this is not an unreasonable statement, we're talking about a tag and proper combinations of tags are what is needed, not dedicated specific tags, which lead to "tag bloat". |
2,899,326 | I have a folder, and for all php files in that folder (or even better, in that folder or any folders within it) I'd like to make some changes to the php settings. Can I just place a php.ini file in that folder with those settings I'd like to change?
If so, any reason why this *wouldn't* be working for me? It's my own server.
Thanks!
edit: I'd like to be able to use a local php.ini file, as I've been able to do with several webhosts. Is this a possibility? | 2010/05/24 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2899326",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2045611/"
] | You'll have to use a .htaccess file for that. There a section in the PHP manual about that:
<http://php.net/manual/en/configuration.changes.php>
For more general information on htaccess files you can read:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Htaccess>
or
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/htaccess.html> | instead of modifying php.ini file for each folder you would be required to modify a .htaccess file. Keep the file in the folders with whatever setting you like. You cant do this with a php.ini file since changes in php.ini are considered server wide |
2,899,326 | I have a folder, and for all php files in that folder (or even better, in that folder or any folders within it) I'd like to make some changes to the php settings. Can I just place a php.ini file in that folder with those settings I'd like to change?
If so, any reason why this *wouldn't* be working for me? It's my own server.
Thanks!
edit: I'd like to be able to use a local php.ini file, as I've been able to do with several webhosts. Is this a possibility? | 2010/05/24 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2899326",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2045611/"
] | You'll have to use a .htaccess file for that. There a section in the PHP manual about that:
<http://php.net/manual/en/configuration.changes.php>
For more general information on htaccess files you can read:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Htaccess>
or
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/htaccess.html> | You could also use `ini_set()`, if you wanted to do it in code. |
2,899,326 | I have a folder, and for all php files in that folder (or even better, in that folder or any folders within it) I'd like to make some changes to the php settings. Can I just place a php.ini file in that folder with those settings I'd like to change?
If so, any reason why this *wouldn't* be working for me? It's my own server.
Thanks!
edit: I'd like to be able to use a local php.ini file, as I've been able to do with several webhosts. Is this a possibility? | 2010/05/24 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2899326",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2045611/"
] | It looks like you're wanting to use [**per-directory php.ini files**](http://php.net/configuration.file.per-user) which are available as of PHP 5.3. If it's your own server, I'd like to think you're happy to keep up with the latest stable releases (currently 5.3.2). Back to ini files, to quote that manual page:
>
> Since PHP 5.3.0, PHP includes support for .htaccess-style INI files on a per-directory basis. These files are processed only by the CGI/FastCGI SAPI. This functionality obsoletes the PECL htscanner extension. If you are using Apache, use .htaccess files for the same effect.
>
>
> In addition to the main php.ini file, PHP scans for INI files in each directory, starting with the directory of the requested PHP file, and working its way up to the current document root (as set in $\_SERVER['DOCUMENT\_ROOT']). Only INI settings with the modes PHP\_INI\_PERDIR and PHP\_INI\_USER will be recognized in .user.ini-style INI files.
>
>
> | You'll have to use a .htaccess file for that. There a section in the PHP manual about that:
<http://php.net/manual/en/configuration.changes.php>
For more general information on htaccess files you can read:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Htaccess>
or
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/htaccess.html> |
2,899,326 | I have a folder, and for all php files in that folder (or even better, in that folder or any folders within it) I'd like to make some changes to the php settings. Can I just place a php.ini file in that folder with those settings I'd like to change?
If so, any reason why this *wouldn't* be working for me? It's my own server.
Thanks!
edit: I'd like to be able to use a local php.ini file, as I've been able to do with several webhosts. Is this a possibility? | 2010/05/24 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2899326",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2045611/"
] | You could also use `ini_set()`, if you wanted to do it in code. | instead of modifying php.ini file for each folder you would be required to modify a .htaccess file. Keep the file in the folders with whatever setting you like. You cant do this with a php.ini file since changes in php.ini are considered server wide |
2,899,326 | I have a folder, and for all php files in that folder (or even better, in that folder or any folders within it) I'd like to make some changes to the php settings. Can I just place a php.ini file in that folder with those settings I'd like to change?
If so, any reason why this *wouldn't* be working for me? It's my own server.
Thanks!
edit: I'd like to be able to use a local php.ini file, as I've been able to do with several webhosts. Is this a possibility? | 2010/05/24 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2899326",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2045611/"
] | The .htaccess files are typically the best way to go for an Apache server. However, to answer your original question, yes you can set a php.ini file in every directory if you want. However, in order for it to work, PHP must be set to run as PHP-CGI. My guess is that you are running PHP as an Apache module.
See this link for reference on where PHP looks for php.ini and when it looks for it: <http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.file.php> | instead of modifying php.ini file for each folder you would be required to modify a .htaccess file. Keep the file in the folders with whatever setting you like. You cant do this with a php.ini file since changes in php.ini are considered server wide |
2,899,326 | I have a folder, and for all php files in that folder (or even better, in that folder or any folders within it) I'd like to make some changes to the php settings. Can I just place a php.ini file in that folder with those settings I'd like to change?
If so, any reason why this *wouldn't* be working for me? It's my own server.
Thanks!
edit: I'd like to be able to use a local php.ini file, as I've been able to do with several webhosts. Is this a possibility? | 2010/05/24 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2899326",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2045611/"
] | It looks like you're wanting to use [**per-directory php.ini files**](http://php.net/configuration.file.per-user) which are available as of PHP 5.3. If it's your own server, I'd like to think you're happy to keep up with the latest stable releases (currently 5.3.2). Back to ini files, to quote that manual page:
>
> Since PHP 5.3.0, PHP includes support for .htaccess-style INI files on a per-directory basis. These files are processed only by the CGI/FastCGI SAPI. This functionality obsoletes the PECL htscanner extension. If you are using Apache, use .htaccess files for the same effect.
>
>
> In addition to the main php.ini file, PHP scans for INI files in each directory, starting with the directory of the requested PHP file, and working its way up to the current document root (as set in $\_SERVER['DOCUMENT\_ROOT']). Only INI settings with the modes PHP\_INI\_PERDIR and PHP\_INI\_USER will be recognized in .user.ini-style INI files.
>
>
> | instead of modifying php.ini file for each folder you would be required to modify a .htaccess file. Keep the file in the folders with whatever setting you like. You cant do this with a php.ini file since changes in php.ini are considered server wide |
2,899,326 | I have a folder, and for all php files in that folder (or even better, in that folder or any folders within it) I'd like to make some changes to the php settings. Can I just place a php.ini file in that folder with those settings I'd like to change?
If so, any reason why this *wouldn't* be working for me? It's my own server.
Thanks!
edit: I'd like to be able to use a local php.ini file, as I've been able to do with several webhosts. Is this a possibility? | 2010/05/24 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2899326",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2045611/"
] | The .htaccess files are typically the best way to go for an Apache server. However, to answer your original question, yes you can set a php.ini file in every directory if you want. However, in order for it to work, PHP must be set to run as PHP-CGI. My guess is that you are running PHP as an Apache module.
See this link for reference on where PHP looks for php.ini and when it looks for it: <http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.file.php> | You could also use `ini_set()`, if you wanted to do it in code. |
2,899,326 | I have a folder, and for all php files in that folder (or even better, in that folder or any folders within it) I'd like to make some changes to the php settings. Can I just place a php.ini file in that folder with those settings I'd like to change?
If so, any reason why this *wouldn't* be working for me? It's my own server.
Thanks!
edit: I'd like to be able to use a local php.ini file, as I've been able to do with several webhosts. Is this a possibility? | 2010/05/24 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2899326",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2045611/"
] | It looks like you're wanting to use [**per-directory php.ini files**](http://php.net/configuration.file.per-user) which are available as of PHP 5.3. If it's your own server, I'd like to think you're happy to keep up with the latest stable releases (currently 5.3.2). Back to ini files, to quote that manual page:
>
> Since PHP 5.3.0, PHP includes support for .htaccess-style INI files on a per-directory basis. These files are processed only by the CGI/FastCGI SAPI. This functionality obsoletes the PECL htscanner extension. If you are using Apache, use .htaccess files for the same effect.
>
>
> In addition to the main php.ini file, PHP scans for INI files in each directory, starting with the directory of the requested PHP file, and working its way up to the current document root (as set in $\_SERVER['DOCUMENT\_ROOT']). Only INI settings with the modes PHP\_INI\_PERDIR and PHP\_INI\_USER will be recognized in .user.ini-style INI files.
>
>
> | You could also use `ini_set()`, if you wanted to do it in code. |
2,899,326 | I have a folder, and for all php files in that folder (or even better, in that folder or any folders within it) I'd like to make some changes to the php settings. Can I just place a php.ini file in that folder with those settings I'd like to change?
If so, any reason why this *wouldn't* be working for me? It's my own server.
Thanks!
edit: I'd like to be able to use a local php.ini file, as I've been able to do with several webhosts. Is this a possibility? | 2010/05/24 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2899326",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2045611/"
] | It looks like you're wanting to use [**per-directory php.ini files**](http://php.net/configuration.file.per-user) which are available as of PHP 5.3. If it's your own server, I'd like to think you're happy to keep up with the latest stable releases (currently 5.3.2). Back to ini files, to quote that manual page:
>
> Since PHP 5.3.0, PHP includes support for .htaccess-style INI files on a per-directory basis. These files are processed only by the CGI/FastCGI SAPI. This functionality obsoletes the PECL htscanner extension. If you are using Apache, use .htaccess files for the same effect.
>
>
> In addition to the main php.ini file, PHP scans for INI files in each directory, starting with the directory of the requested PHP file, and working its way up to the current document root (as set in $\_SERVER['DOCUMENT\_ROOT']). Only INI settings with the modes PHP\_INI\_PERDIR and PHP\_INI\_USER will be recognized in .user.ini-style INI files.
>
>
> | The .htaccess files are typically the best way to go for an Apache server. However, to answer your original question, yes you can set a php.ini file in every directory if you want. However, in order for it to work, PHP must be set to run as PHP-CGI. My guess is that you are running PHP as an Apache module.
See this link for reference on where PHP looks for php.ini and when it looks for it: <http://www.php.net/manual/en/configuration.file.php> |
1,921,096 | i've got a few issues with my charts that i didnt find documentation about
1. I have a 3d pie chart that can be transformed in animation to 2d, when picking "view 2d" option from the pop-up menu. can I trigger this action through JS code?
the onlinr documentation only refers "MSCombi3D.swf" chart type. I tryed applying the code in the example on my pie chart but it doesnt recognize : myChart.view2D()
2. Is there a way to control the location of the data values, in a line chart? (below or above the line).now the values appear above and below randomly
3. can i control the speed of bars movement in a bar chart when it loads? | 2009/12/17 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1921096",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/231324/"
] | 1 & 2 It is not possible.
3. You would need to use Animation Styles with "\_xScale" property & set the duration attribute as you desire to control the speed. (refer to: <http://www.fusioncharts.com/docs/Contents/Styles/Animation.html> ) | 1) Of course you can. Using JQuery Framework you can do basically anything you want with JS, including changing your chart type. Check JS-based FS also to make an easier integration.
2) I'm almost sure you can't. This kind of questions are better suited for FS support directly. If there is a way they'd know. |
131,359 | I'm surprised I can't find a previous question on this.
We all know that being teleported instantly from one place to another has a big problem. If your co-ordinates are off, you might appear in the middle of a mountain or at best you appear in the correct place but intersecting with the air.
I think that the air problem is solved relatively easily.
When transporting inanimate objects, you could send them to a vacuum chamber thus avoiding collision problems. Similarly a human could be sent wearing a pressurised suit to avoid exposing them to a vacuum.
So here's the crunch.
What happens if the coordinates are wrong?
**Question**
A miscalculation or deliberate action causes a one metre diameter solid steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock in the middle of Mont Blanc. Assume the teleportation is one-way so the rock stays where it is. (Thanks to kikirex for raising this)
What happens at various levels of physics?
* Subatomic level - Can subatomic particles occupy the same space at the same time. What if they did - is there a nuclear explosion? Do we synthesise different elements?
* Human-scale level - Will the mountain whose rock is presumably already under great pressure be able to contain the extra matter by compression?
* Mountain-scale level - Will the arrival of the steel sphere cause the mountain to fracture or even explode?
---
EDIT
A number of answers have doubted the possibility of the object even reaching the destination. In my mind there has been some development that allows a macroscopic object to quantum-jump to the new location. It's the subject of a different question so I didn't want to mention it here. This note is only FYI and I don't intend it to invalidate any answers so far. For now I'll accept the transmission systems (or impossibility thereof) of the answerers. | 2018/11/27 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/131359",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/10759/"
] | I think we have enough information to make a pretty good scientific estimate of what happens, given the unscientific premise.
The first key point to remember is that matter is almost entirely empty space. The *mass* of matter is confined to the atomic nuclei which are very, very tiny. In solid matter, atoms are separated by about 10-8 meters. *Nuclei* 10-15 meters across. This means that the fraction of space occupied by nuclei is about 10-7 (the ratio of the two linear dimensions) *cubed* or about 10-21. (Think of an atom as a 1 cm sphere of very dense nuclear matter in the center of a 100 km sphere of electron cloud. To the same scale, the rock and the metal sphere are essentially a solar-system sized spheres filled with the gossamer 100 km bubbles just touching each other.)
That means that only a tiny, tiny number of the nuclei in the meter sphere of steel will teleport into the same space as a nucleus in the rock. There will be some, so there's still energy release due to nuclear reactions, but it's small, basically chemical-sized. (Think of a meter sphere of dynamite: You don't want to be standing next to it when it blows, but it's not going to destroy a mountain.)
The volume of each atom that isn't nucleus is occupied by the atom's electron cloud. Electron clouds are compressible and the energy created by teleporting in the steel sphere's electron clouds -- you do realize that your problem requires the energy released to come from somewhere? -- is roughly the same as the energy needed to compress a 1 meter steel sphere and and a 1 meter sphere of rock into a single 1 meter sphere of *stuff*. (The strength of materials -- steel, rock, human tissue, whatever -- is entirely due to the mutual interactions of the constituent atomic electron clouds.) If you take two spheres and compress them into one sphere, you need pretty much the same result energetically as you get from the teleportation.
It should be possible to estimate this, and I'm going to research it. It's important to note that the energy levels involved are chemical (though extreme!) rather than nuclear.
My guess is that this will produce a bigger bang than the accidental nuclear superpositions do, but still not enough to destroy the mountain.
...However, until I could get a solid numerical estimate, I think I'd make a point of watching it from ten or twenty miles away... | Fair warning: this answer is a bit of a cop-out.
Still with me? Alright, good.
One of the more important things to you can do to create an internally consistent magic system is to follow the laws of physics. Newton's third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and this should be true for magic too.
Ok, why am I telling you this? Well, what would be the opposite reaction for teleportation? Presumably, more teleportation. The best way I see to deal with this question is to say that teleportation doesn't just move object A to space B. It also moves whatever was in space B to wherever object A was. That way no matter what happens, there's nothing to collide with when object A arrives. |
131,359 | I'm surprised I can't find a previous question on this.
We all know that being teleported instantly from one place to another has a big problem. If your co-ordinates are off, you might appear in the middle of a mountain or at best you appear in the correct place but intersecting with the air.
I think that the air problem is solved relatively easily.
When transporting inanimate objects, you could send them to a vacuum chamber thus avoiding collision problems. Similarly a human could be sent wearing a pressurised suit to avoid exposing them to a vacuum.
So here's the crunch.
What happens if the coordinates are wrong?
**Question**
A miscalculation or deliberate action causes a one metre diameter solid steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock in the middle of Mont Blanc. Assume the teleportation is one-way so the rock stays where it is. (Thanks to kikirex for raising this)
What happens at various levels of physics?
* Subatomic level - Can subatomic particles occupy the same space at the same time. What if they did - is there a nuclear explosion? Do we synthesise different elements?
* Human-scale level - Will the mountain whose rock is presumably already under great pressure be able to contain the extra matter by compression?
* Mountain-scale level - Will the arrival of the steel sphere cause the mountain to fracture or even explode?
---
EDIT
A number of answers have doubted the possibility of the object even reaching the destination. In my mind there has been some development that allows a macroscopic object to quantum-jump to the new location. It's the subject of a different question so I didn't want to mention it here. This note is only FYI and I don't intend it to invalidate any answers so far. For now I'll accept the transmission systems (or impossibility thereof) of the answerers. | 2018/11/27 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/131359",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/10759/"
] | According to some interpretations of [quantum field theory](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-field-theory/), or QFT, the fundamental state of matter isn't particles but fields instead. What we could call a particle is merely a local excitation of a field, or of a few fields that interact with each other.
This requires that the universe be comprised of fields that can have different local levels of energy. It also implies that the universe is permeated in non-zero levels of energy, because any point in the universe that can contain energy isn't empty.
In physics there is a distinction between a vacuum and a void. A vacuum is the absence of particles, or with a QFT interpretation the absence of local excitations of fields, whereas a void is the absence of energy. A vacuum is not a void, as it holds what we call [Zero Point Energy](http://www.calphysics.org/zpe.html).
This Zero Point Energy is just the resting state of a non-excited field. If you were to add energy to this field you would have something that looks like a particle of that field's type. A photon in an electromagnetic field, an electron in an electron field, etc. These fields can interact with each other, [an electron can absorb and later emit a photon](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mod5.html).
I suggest that instead of viewing it as a collision of atoms, you interpret the teleportation process as being additive. Each of the fields and their energy levels in the mountain ranges suddenly gain the amounts of energy contained within the steel sphere.
This would have a number of incalculable consequences. The simplest solution would be to say that the energy that was added is immediately expelled from the system due to it no longer being stable in the context of another field already containing different energy levels. So all of the energy being added is forced to spread out evenly in the surrounding space. Which is just a very odd way of describing an explosion. Just how big of an explosion would it be though?
The composition of steel is variable but let's say it's 99% iron and therefore has a [density of nearly 7 874 kg/m³](https://www.aqua-calc.com/page/density-table/substance/iron).
A 1 meter diameter sphere has a volume of V = 4 ⁄ 3 × π × R³ = 4 ⁄ 3 × π × 0.5³ = 0.52 m³.
So that's a total of 7 874 × 0.52 = 4 095 kg of iron atoms.
To calculate the energy contained in 4 095 kg of iron we can apply the famous E = mc²
E = 4 095 × (3 × 10^8)² = 3.68^20 J = 0.36 Zettajoule
It's almost the equivalent of [the entire world's energy consumption in 2010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)#1018_to_1023_J).
For comparison to something we have more direct evidence of the destructive effects of, the atomic bomb that annihilated Hiroshima had an energy yield of a few Terajoules (10^12 J).
In fact it's such a massive amount of energy that it's over 250 times the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule#Multiples>).
Of course, a non-violent alternative is to imagine that the effects of adding energy to a field changes the composition of the elements we can observe, and transmutes the mountain into various other elements higher up in the periodic table. So instead of rock composed of oxygen and silicon you might have a mix of zirconium and molybdenum. This type of effect, if discovered, could lead to the birth of a transmutation industry. Perhaps it should be destroyed to protect the economy, or used in secret to the profit of a few. | I will try a different approach – I suppose it is good to consider different angles on how this collision can happen...
Speaking on approach, if this is a collision... from where does the steel come into the mountain? I need to know that in order to know where the energy goes to.
---
Though experiment
-----------------
Let us say I have a huge lamp in my backyard, and this lamp is designed to work in outer space, and has a built-in battery. Then I turn up the lamp, afterwards, I teleport it up (away from earth)... say 80% the distance to the moon. And I look up... I will not see the light from the lamp until about a second after I send it, because that is how much time light takes to go from the lamp to me.
If we consider a space-time diagram (where space is in the horizontal and time in the vertical), first the lamp is stationary, meaning that its world in moves only in time (it is ontop of the vertical axis), about a second per second. At some point I turn it on, we can represent all the places that the light of the lamp can reach as a cone that opens up. When I teleport the lamp, the world line of the lamp moved horizontally in such way that I was out of the light cone of the lamp... and as time passes, one second later (up in the diagram), I get back in the light cone (the light cone crosses the vertical axis).
**Note**: interestingly, the light cone from before the movement and after would at some point intersect. Meaning that there could be observers that can see the light from the lamp before it being teleport and after at the same time.
---
Force
-----
Now, what force do I need to apply to the teleport object such that it moves in this unusual way? Remember that for everything as we know it, time moves inexorably forward. We do not know of any force that when hitting an object, it would make time stop for that object (as in: if you were hit, you would see the world held in place).
We could try to calculate what that force would be, and we would come up with infinite... and it would make the object move faster than the speed of light, and it would technically be traveling to the past.
**Note**: In fact, if I send a probe to meet with the lamp at its destination, such that it arrives at the same time at the lamp gets there... when we do the Lorentz transformation for the probe, we would find that the lamp was send from the future according to the frame of reference of the probe.
Thus, we must conclude that we must hit the object with a force that moves from the future to the past.
---
If we consider force as a vector that has magnitudes in each dimension, I am proposing that all known physics is dealing with force vector that have 0 in the time dimension, and we need force vectors that have a negative value there (assuming positive means towards the future).
Now we know that we are talking about a collision from the future to the past. *That’s the angle*.
---
Newton’s laws
-------------
**First Law**
Let us say, we can push the object to the past. Why would it stop going to the past? Well, it could be because it collides with something. Or perhaps there is some form of drag (after all, there is something pushing everything inexorably to the future).
**Second Law**
`F = m*a`; We are – of course – describing a movement, and assuming the mass does not change. Thus, hmm… we would have an acceleration vector with a negative value on the time coordinate.
Considering that acceleration is displacement (distance) over time squared, we are talking about an acceleration that will make the object perceive time slow down and then go backwards.
However, remember that we are not moving the object to the same place! We are sending it to a different location. That means that acceleration also must have space components.
The way I imagine (i.e. what I am about to say lacks any rigor): We might see the object start moving in the direction we teleport it, stretch (I'd blame Lorentz contraction), then disappear.
**Third Law**
How can we do that push in the first place? There must be an equal an opposite reaction. And, no, that does not mean solving the teleport by exchange (a solution I am personally fond of, but not allowed by OP). We must be pushing something to the future with the same force. That is, the teleport machine has a form of recoil. Perhaps we need to send a small object away to the distant future; as consequence of the teleport of something heavy, a short distance to the short past.
Also, when the collision happens, it could push objects to the past and bounce to the future. *Weird stuff.* However, no, I am not going with that... instead...
---
Feynman diagrams?
-----------------
Feynman diagrams has the oddity that when flipped in time they remain valid. Thus, they serve as a useful model for interactions with particles moving backward in time.
What we find is that – and I oversimplifying here – a particle moving backwards in time, is its own antiparticle moving forwards in time. That means that an object moving backwards in time, will be – for the rest of us – made of antimatter.
So, about your steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock… yeah, boom. It annihilates with the solid rock.
---
Released energy
---------------
*The following computations are done with Wolfram|Alpha*
Well, you told me that it is a sphere that measure 1m on diameter. That is 0.523599 cubic meters of steel. Going with 7900 kg/m^3 for the steel density, we have 4136.43 kg. Then, 2650 kg/m^3 for nondescript rock, we have another 1387.54 kg; for a total of 5523.97 kg.
5523.97 kg gives us 4.9647×10^20 J by good old Einstein’s equation. That is an explosion equivalent to 1.1866×10^11 tons of TNT (118.7 gigatons of TNT).
I struggle to express this…
*The following information is from Wikipedia*
The Tunguska event is estimated to be 3×10^7 tons of TNT. And Tsar Bomb is only 5×10^7 tons of TNT. Those are four orders of magnitude smaller. Thus, we are looking for something more devastating.
The dinosaur killer is 1.92×10^14 tons of TNT. Three orders of magnitude bigger. So, not *that* devastating.
*The following is from Science Magazine*
I found an article about a crater found under Greenland that is said to have required an impact of 3×10^21 J or 7.17×10^11 tons of TNT. This is the right order of magnitude. The article says:
>
> The impact would initially produce a bowl-shaped cavity ~20 km in diameter and ~7 km deep, which would quickly collapse (within ~1 min) to form a complex crater more than 31 km in diameter and ~800 m deep with a central uplift. This impact scenario would have melted and vaporized up to ~20 km^3 of target rock, approximately half of which would have remained within the crater, forming a melt sheet up to ~50 m deep.
>
>
>
---
Other considerations
--------------------
From the point of view of the object... does its own time continues on during the teleport? Perhaps it does not, it also perceives the teleport as instantaneous.
Where is the object in the instant of the teleport, according to the object? My intuition is that it must be in all places in the path from its origin to its destination. If you think of it that way, you would see that it must hit with the near past of something close to your lab before it can hit the target mountain. And the collision does not look good for your lab.
Perhaps it is preferable to think that the teleport works by moving the object through "hyperspace" and thus avoiding any undesired collision. Moving into hyperspace will also be moving in an additional dimension. In that case... well, whatever it hits at its destination is pushed into hyperspace.
---
Addendum: Quantum-jump
----------------------
How does a particle get from one place to another? Currently, as far as quantum theory goes, we must consider as if the particle takes all the infinite possible paths from the origin to the destination. That includes paths that go back in time, and paths that go through barriers of other objects. However, the effects of some of these paths cancel each other out, and some paths have a higher influence than others according to the wave function.
Thus, in order to compute the future state of a quantum system, we start by the more relevant paths and move to the less relevant ones, and by doing so we approximate the solution.
Now, at the moment of interaction, the quantum state of the particle must be solved, and it will be at a given place... and to resolve what happens as a result of the interation, we do what I described above. In fact, this is the use of Faymann diagrams, they are used to categorize the possible things that could happen in such way that we can organize them and start computing.
Then the problem with extending quantum tunelling to massive objects is that massive objects are formed by particles that are constantly interacting with each other, keeping the system coherent. *That is also the solution to Schrödinger's cat. Or if you prefer Einstein's version that has a bomb that explode or not, that is why you do not see the box explode and not explode at the same time.*
However, that is not to say that an object cannot spontaneusly teleport under this framework. It would just be absurdly unlikely that all of its particle undergo decoherence simultanously, tunnel to another place and become coherent in the same arrangement.
We do not really know enough of the why quantum physics works. For instance, it is possible to think about the wave function of complex objects, or even the wave function of the whole universe. And, well... is the universe interacting with something else to keep it coherent?
So, let us go with OP and say that this is not only possible but that we can create a machine to make it happen. Well, in this case, we have an elegant coup-out: if a particle cannot occupy a position because there is another particle there (Pauli exclusion principle), then the probability of the object appearing there is zero, thus, it will not happen, instead the steel sphere will appear somewhere else.
**Addendum**: As kingledion, Mark Olson and Carl Sagan point out "Matter is composed chiefly of nothing". There is a lot of empty space in the atoms. However, if the teleport respect pauli exclusion principle (and should it not?) then the particles of the steel sphere will appear is such way that no nuclear reaction happens, only chemical. Thus, you could still have the steel sphere embeded in the rock, and it would be made of... hmm... a different steel, due to the rock chemistry.
---
Addendum: Don't Panic
---------------------
Assuming you can build a machine that can cause highly improvable events such as the spontaneous and instantaneous displacement of an object, as mentioned above. Let us call it Teleport-MK1.
The Teleport-MK1 would still not be able to break the exclusion principle. That does not mean it is useless… for example, you could use it leap people's underwear a meter※ to the left as a party trick.
※: Because it is safer that just moving it one foot, and metric is better™.
However, a more interesting use is to have it arrange matter in any desired configuration, as long as it is possible. This device could transform virtually any raw material into any physically possible object, including food (or very advanced substitutes), and other machines. Let us call this reconfiguration of the Teleport-MK1 the Replicator-MK1.
If the universe allows the creation of a machine capable causing impossible events, then you can use a Replicator-MK1 to create it. The new device would not only be able to teleport and manufacture, it would be able to do anything, even if it is infinitely improbable.
What happens when you use it to teleport a steel sphere inside a mountain? Whatever you want.
**Note**: Possible side effects of the use of the new device include time traveling bowls of petunias, use with care. Read Douglas Adams books on the subject for more information. Whatever happens, remember: Don't Panic.
---
Tl;dr
-----
When the steel spehre collides with the mountain, it will either:
* Swap places with the rock
* Cause a huge explosion
* Push the rock into hyperspace
* The steel sphere appears somewhere else (the universe forbids the collision)
* The steel sphere chemically merges with the rock
* Whatever you want
(this is not an exhaustive list of things that could happen, just the ones I mention in my answer) |
131,359 | I'm surprised I can't find a previous question on this.
We all know that being teleported instantly from one place to another has a big problem. If your co-ordinates are off, you might appear in the middle of a mountain or at best you appear in the correct place but intersecting with the air.
I think that the air problem is solved relatively easily.
When transporting inanimate objects, you could send them to a vacuum chamber thus avoiding collision problems. Similarly a human could be sent wearing a pressurised suit to avoid exposing them to a vacuum.
So here's the crunch.
What happens if the coordinates are wrong?
**Question**
A miscalculation or deliberate action causes a one metre diameter solid steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock in the middle of Mont Blanc. Assume the teleportation is one-way so the rock stays where it is. (Thanks to kikirex for raising this)
What happens at various levels of physics?
* Subatomic level - Can subatomic particles occupy the same space at the same time. What if they did - is there a nuclear explosion? Do we synthesise different elements?
* Human-scale level - Will the mountain whose rock is presumably already under great pressure be able to contain the extra matter by compression?
* Mountain-scale level - Will the arrival of the steel sphere cause the mountain to fracture or even explode?
---
EDIT
A number of answers have doubted the possibility of the object even reaching the destination. In my mind there has been some development that allows a macroscopic object to quantum-jump to the new location. It's the subject of a different question so I didn't want to mention it here. This note is only FYI and I don't intend it to invalidate any answers so far. For now I'll accept the transmission systems (or impossibility thereof) of the answerers. | 2018/11/27 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/131359",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/10759/"
] | According to some interpretations of [quantum field theory](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-field-theory/), or QFT, the fundamental state of matter isn't particles but fields instead. What we could call a particle is merely a local excitation of a field, or of a few fields that interact with each other.
This requires that the universe be comprised of fields that can have different local levels of energy. It also implies that the universe is permeated in non-zero levels of energy, because any point in the universe that can contain energy isn't empty.
In physics there is a distinction between a vacuum and a void. A vacuum is the absence of particles, or with a QFT interpretation the absence of local excitations of fields, whereas a void is the absence of energy. A vacuum is not a void, as it holds what we call [Zero Point Energy](http://www.calphysics.org/zpe.html).
This Zero Point Energy is just the resting state of a non-excited field. If you were to add energy to this field you would have something that looks like a particle of that field's type. A photon in an electromagnetic field, an electron in an electron field, etc. These fields can interact with each other, [an electron can absorb and later emit a photon](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mod5.html).
I suggest that instead of viewing it as a collision of atoms, you interpret the teleportation process as being additive. Each of the fields and their energy levels in the mountain ranges suddenly gain the amounts of energy contained within the steel sphere.
This would have a number of incalculable consequences. The simplest solution would be to say that the energy that was added is immediately expelled from the system due to it no longer being stable in the context of another field already containing different energy levels. So all of the energy being added is forced to spread out evenly in the surrounding space. Which is just a very odd way of describing an explosion. Just how big of an explosion would it be though?
The composition of steel is variable but let's say it's 99% iron and therefore has a [density of nearly 7 874 kg/m³](https://www.aqua-calc.com/page/density-table/substance/iron).
A 1 meter diameter sphere has a volume of V = 4 ⁄ 3 × π × R³ = 4 ⁄ 3 × π × 0.5³ = 0.52 m³.
So that's a total of 7 874 × 0.52 = 4 095 kg of iron atoms.
To calculate the energy contained in 4 095 kg of iron we can apply the famous E = mc²
E = 4 095 × (3 × 10^8)² = 3.68^20 J = 0.36 Zettajoule
It's almost the equivalent of [the entire world's energy consumption in 2010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)#1018_to_1023_J).
For comparison to something we have more direct evidence of the destructive effects of, the atomic bomb that annihilated Hiroshima had an energy yield of a few Terajoules (10^12 J).
In fact it's such a massive amount of energy that it's over 250 times the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule#Multiples>).
Of course, a non-violent alternative is to imagine that the effects of adding energy to a field changes the composition of the elements we can observe, and transmutes the mountain into various other elements higher up in the periodic table. So instead of rock composed of oxygen and silicon you might have a mix of zirconium and molybdenum. This type of effect, if discovered, could lead to the birth of a transmutation industry. Perhaps it should be destroyed to protect the economy, or used in secret to the profit of a few. | Comic book teleportation does not exist and is not supported by physics, so the short answer is nothing of that can happen.
Supposing you want to force the issue, though, you need to define how that matter is going to get from point A to point B.
* **Quantum tunneling** is out of question - it only works for subatomic particles, and is too random to teleport a whole body.
* **A big enough wormhole** [would relocate the whole Earth in a very funny way](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/103973/21222).
* **Emitting each particle** so that they travel as beams, stopping at the destination(a la Star Trek), would probably cause them to not bind to each other again as before. Mind you, each particle might also hit whatever is at the destination as a cosmic ray, which may open a crater on the target mountain of the question.
There is no way to solve this with the [science-based](/questions/tagged/science-based "show questions tagged 'science-based'") tag. If you go with [magic](/questions/tagged/magic "show questions tagged 'magic'"), which is the only way to teleport something as seen in videogames and movies, then anything goes; I personally like John Carmack's solution. Faced with the same question about three decades ago, he invented the concept of [telefragging](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TeleFrag). |
131,359 | I'm surprised I can't find a previous question on this.
We all know that being teleported instantly from one place to another has a big problem. If your co-ordinates are off, you might appear in the middle of a mountain or at best you appear in the correct place but intersecting with the air.
I think that the air problem is solved relatively easily.
When transporting inanimate objects, you could send them to a vacuum chamber thus avoiding collision problems. Similarly a human could be sent wearing a pressurised suit to avoid exposing them to a vacuum.
So here's the crunch.
What happens if the coordinates are wrong?
**Question**
A miscalculation or deliberate action causes a one metre diameter solid steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock in the middle of Mont Blanc. Assume the teleportation is one-way so the rock stays where it is. (Thanks to kikirex for raising this)
What happens at various levels of physics?
* Subatomic level - Can subatomic particles occupy the same space at the same time. What if they did - is there a nuclear explosion? Do we synthesise different elements?
* Human-scale level - Will the mountain whose rock is presumably already under great pressure be able to contain the extra matter by compression?
* Mountain-scale level - Will the arrival of the steel sphere cause the mountain to fracture or even explode?
---
EDIT
A number of answers have doubted the possibility of the object even reaching the destination. In my mind there has been some development that allows a macroscopic object to quantum-jump to the new location. It's the subject of a different question so I didn't want to mention it here. This note is only FYI and I don't intend it to invalidate any answers so far. For now I'll accept the transmission systems (or impossibility thereof) of the answerers. | 2018/11/27 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/131359",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/10759/"
] | I will try a different approach – I suppose it is good to consider different angles on how this collision can happen...
Speaking on approach, if this is a collision... from where does the steel come into the mountain? I need to know that in order to know where the energy goes to.
---
Though experiment
-----------------
Let us say I have a huge lamp in my backyard, and this lamp is designed to work in outer space, and has a built-in battery. Then I turn up the lamp, afterwards, I teleport it up (away from earth)... say 80% the distance to the moon. And I look up... I will not see the light from the lamp until about a second after I send it, because that is how much time light takes to go from the lamp to me.
If we consider a space-time diagram (where space is in the horizontal and time in the vertical), first the lamp is stationary, meaning that its world in moves only in time (it is ontop of the vertical axis), about a second per second. At some point I turn it on, we can represent all the places that the light of the lamp can reach as a cone that opens up. When I teleport the lamp, the world line of the lamp moved horizontally in such way that I was out of the light cone of the lamp... and as time passes, one second later (up in the diagram), I get back in the light cone (the light cone crosses the vertical axis).
**Note**: interestingly, the light cone from before the movement and after would at some point intersect. Meaning that there could be observers that can see the light from the lamp before it being teleport and after at the same time.
---
Force
-----
Now, what force do I need to apply to the teleport object such that it moves in this unusual way? Remember that for everything as we know it, time moves inexorably forward. We do not know of any force that when hitting an object, it would make time stop for that object (as in: if you were hit, you would see the world held in place).
We could try to calculate what that force would be, and we would come up with infinite... and it would make the object move faster than the speed of light, and it would technically be traveling to the past.
**Note**: In fact, if I send a probe to meet with the lamp at its destination, such that it arrives at the same time at the lamp gets there... when we do the Lorentz transformation for the probe, we would find that the lamp was send from the future according to the frame of reference of the probe.
Thus, we must conclude that we must hit the object with a force that moves from the future to the past.
---
If we consider force as a vector that has magnitudes in each dimension, I am proposing that all known physics is dealing with force vector that have 0 in the time dimension, and we need force vectors that have a negative value there (assuming positive means towards the future).
Now we know that we are talking about a collision from the future to the past. *That’s the angle*.
---
Newton’s laws
-------------
**First Law**
Let us say, we can push the object to the past. Why would it stop going to the past? Well, it could be because it collides with something. Or perhaps there is some form of drag (after all, there is something pushing everything inexorably to the future).
**Second Law**
`F = m*a`; We are – of course – describing a movement, and assuming the mass does not change. Thus, hmm… we would have an acceleration vector with a negative value on the time coordinate.
Considering that acceleration is displacement (distance) over time squared, we are talking about an acceleration that will make the object perceive time slow down and then go backwards.
However, remember that we are not moving the object to the same place! We are sending it to a different location. That means that acceleration also must have space components.
The way I imagine (i.e. what I am about to say lacks any rigor): We might see the object start moving in the direction we teleport it, stretch (I'd blame Lorentz contraction), then disappear.
**Third Law**
How can we do that push in the first place? There must be an equal an opposite reaction. And, no, that does not mean solving the teleport by exchange (a solution I am personally fond of, but not allowed by OP). We must be pushing something to the future with the same force. That is, the teleport machine has a form of recoil. Perhaps we need to send a small object away to the distant future; as consequence of the teleport of something heavy, a short distance to the short past.
Also, when the collision happens, it could push objects to the past and bounce to the future. *Weird stuff.* However, no, I am not going with that... instead...
---
Feynman diagrams?
-----------------
Feynman diagrams has the oddity that when flipped in time they remain valid. Thus, they serve as a useful model for interactions with particles moving backward in time.
What we find is that – and I oversimplifying here – a particle moving backwards in time, is its own antiparticle moving forwards in time. That means that an object moving backwards in time, will be – for the rest of us – made of antimatter.
So, about your steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock… yeah, boom. It annihilates with the solid rock.
---
Released energy
---------------
*The following computations are done with Wolfram|Alpha*
Well, you told me that it is a sphere that measure 1m on diameter. That is 0.523599 cubic meters of steel. Going with 7900 kg/m^3 for the steel density, we have 4136.43 kg. Then, 2650 kg/m^3 for nondescript rock, we have another 1387.54 kg; for a total of 5523.97 kg.
5523.97 kg gives us 4.9647×10^20 J by good old Einstein’s equation. That is an explosion equivalent to 1.1866×10^11 tons of TNT (118.7 gigatons of TNT).
I struggle to express this…
*The following information is from Wikipedia*
The Tunguska event is estimated to be 3×10^7 tons of TNT. And Tsar Bomb is only 5×10^7 tons of TNT. Those are four orders of magnitude smaller. Thus, we are looking for something more devastating.
The dinosaur killer is 1.92×10^14 tons of TNT. Three orders of magnitude bigger. So, not *that* devastating.
*The following is from Science Magazine*
I found an article about a crater found under Greenland that is said to have required an impact of 3×10^21 J or 7.17×10^11 tons of TNT. This is the right order of magnitude. The article says:
>
> The impact would initially produce a bowl-shaped cavity ~20 km in diameter and ~7 km deep, which would quickly collapse (within ~1 min) to form a complex crater more than 31 km in diameter and ~800 m deep with a central uplift. This impact scenario would have melted and vaporized up to ~20 km^3 of target rock, approximately half of which would have remained within the crater, forming a melt sheet up to ~50 m deep.
>
>
>
---
Other considerations
--------------------
From the point of view of the object... does its own time continues on during the teleport? Perhaps it does not, it also perceives the teleport as instantaneous.
Where is the object in the instant of the teleport, according to the object? My intuition is that it must be in all places in the path from its origin to its destination. If you think of it that way, you would see that it must hit with the near past of something close to your lab before it can hit the target mountain. And the collision does not look good for your lab.
Perhaps it is preferable to think that the teleport works by moving the object through "hyperspace" and thus avoiding any undesired collision. Moving into hyperspace will also be moving in an additional dimension. In that case... well, whatever it hits at its destination is pushed into hyperspace.
---
Addendum: Quantum-jump
----------------------
How does a particle get from one place to another? Currently, as far as quantum theory goes, we must consider as if the particle takes all the infinite possible paths from the origin to the destination. That includes paths that go back in time, and paths that go through barriers of other objects. However, the effects of some of these paths cancel each other out, and some paths have a higher influence than others according to the wave function.
Thus, in order to compute the future state of a quantum system, we start by the more relevant paths and move to the less relevant ones, and by doing so we approximate the solution.
Now, at the moment of interaction, the quantum state of the particle must be solved, and it will be at a given place... and to resolve what happens as a result of the interation, we do what I described above. In fact, this is the use of Faymann diagrams, they are used to categorize the possible things that could happen in such way that we can organize them and start computing.
Then the problem with extending quantum tunelling to massive objects is that massive objects are formed by particles that are constantly interacting with each other, keeping the system coherent. *That is also the solution to Schrödinger's cat. Or if you prefer Einstein's version that has a bomb that explode or not, that is why you do not see the box explode and not explode at the same time.*
However, that is not to say that an object cannot spontaneusly teleport under this framework. It would just be absurdly unlikely that all of its particle undergo decoherence simultanously, tunnel to another place and become coherent in the same arrangement.
We do not really know enough of the why quantum physics works. For instance, it is possible to think about the wave function of complex objects, or even the wave function of the whole universe. And, well... is the universe interacting with something else to keep it coherent?
So, let us go with OP and say that this is not only possible but that we can create a machine to make it happen. Well, in this case, we have an elegant coup-out: if a particle cannot occupy a position because there is another particle there (Pauli exclusion principle), then the probability of the object appearing there is zero, thus, it will not happen, instead the steel sphere will appear somewhere else.
**Addendum**: As kingledion, Mark Olson and Carl Sagan point out "Matter is composed chiefly of nothing". There is a lot of empty space in the atoms. However, if the teleport respect pauli exclusion principle (and should it not?) then the particles of the steel sphere will appear is such way that no nuclear reaction happens, only chemical. Thus, you could still have the steel sphere embeded in the rock, and it would be made of... hmm... a different steel, due to the rock chemistry.
---
Addendum: Don't Panic
---------------------
Assuming you can build a machine that can cause highly improvable events such as the spontaneous and instantaneous displacement of an object, as mentioned above. Let us call it Teleport-MK1.
The Teleport-MK1 would still not be able to break the exclusion principle. That does not mean it is useless… for example, you could use it leap people's underwear a meter※ to the left as a party trick.
※: Because it is safer that just moving it one foot, and metric is better™.
However, a more interesting use is to have it arrange matter in any desired configuration, as long as it is possible. This device could transform virtually any raw material into any physically possible object, including food (or very advanced substitutes), and other machines. Let us call this reconfiguration of the Teleport-MK1 the Replicator-MK1.
If the universe allows the creation of a machine capable causing impossible events, then you can use a Replicator-MK1 to create it. The new device would not only be able to teleport and manufacture, it would be able to do anything, even if it is infinitely improbable.
What happens when you use it to teleport a steel sphere inside a mountain? Whatever you want.
**Note**: Possible side effects of the use of the new device include time traveling bowls of petunias, use with care. Read Douglas Adams books on the subject for more information. Whatever happens, remember: Don't Panic.
---
Tl;dr
-----
When the steel spehre collides with the mountain, it will either:
* Swap places with the rock
* Cause a huge explosion
* Push the rock into hyperspace
* The steel sphere appears somewhere else (the universe forbids the collision)
* The steel sphere chemically merges with the rock
* Whatever you want
(this is not an exhaustive list of things that could happen, just the ones I mention in my answer) | If you want to observe the laws of science, then you must explain how a stream of data can be reconstituted at a remote location without a high energy assimilation machine turning that data into a cohesive mass. Energy will not simply turn into mass, much less cohesive arrangements of steel alloy, without that assimilation machine. But if you have such a machine, then it will be responsible for creating a vacuum in which the assimilated mass does not collide with any other objects, not even air, so the coordinates of the reconstituted steel sphere are irrelevant. |
131,359 | I'm surprised I can't find a previous question on this.
We all know that being teleported instantly from one place to another has a big problem. If your co-ordinates are off, you might appear in the middle of a mountain or at best you appear in the correct place but intersecting with the air.
I think that the air problem is solved relatively easily.
When transporting inanimate objects, you could send them to a vacuum chamber thus avoiding collision problems. Similarly a human could be sent wearing a pressurised suit to avoid exposing them to a vacuum.
So here's the crunch.
What happens if the coordinates are wrong?
**Question**
A miscalculation or deliberate action causes a one metre diameter solid steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock in the middle of Mont Blanc. Assume the teleportation is one-way so the rock stays where it is. (Thanks to kikirex for raising this)
What happens at various levels of physics?
* Subatomic level - Can subatomic particles occupy the same space at the same time. What if they did - is there a nuclear explosion? Do we synthesise different elements?
* Human-scale level - Will the mountain whose rock is presumably already under great pressure be able to contain the extra matter by compression?
* Mountain-scale level - Will the arrival of the steel sphere cause the mountain to fracture or even explode?
---
EDIT
A number of answers have doubted the possibility of the object even reaching the destination. In my mind there has been some development that allows a macroscopic object to quantum-jump to the new location. It's the subject of a different question so I didn't want to mention it here. This note is only FYI and I don't intend it to invalidate any answers so far. For now I'll accept the transmission systems (or impossibility thereof) of the answerers. | 2018/11/27 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/131359",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/10759/"
] | Comic book teleportation does not exist and is not supported by physics, so the short answer is nothing of that can happen.
Supposing you want to force the issue, though, you need to define how that matter is going to get from point A to point B.
* **Quantum tunneling** is out of question - it only works for subatomic particles, and is too random to teleport a whole body.
* **A big enough wormhole** [would relocate the whole Earth in a very funny way](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/103973/21222).
* **Emitting each particle** so that they travel as beams, stopping at the destination(a la Star Trek), would probably cause them to not bind to each other again as before. Mind you, each particle might also hit whatever is at the destination as a cosmic ray, which may open a crater on the target mountain of the question.
There is no way to solve this with the [science-based](/questions/tagged/science-based "show questions tagged 'science-based'") tag. If you go with [magic](/questions/tagged/magic "show questions tagged 'magic'"), which is the only way to teleport something as seen in videogames and movies, then anything goes; I personally like John Carmack's solution. Faced with the same question about three decades ago, he invented the concept of [telefragging](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TeleFrag). | If you want to observe the laws of science, then you must explain how a stream of data can be reconstituted at a remote location without a high energy assimilation machine turning that data into a cohesive mass. Energy will not simply turn into mass, much less cohesive arrangements of steel alloy, without that assimilation machine. But if you have such a machine, then it will be responsible for creating a vacuum in which the assimilated mass does not collide with any other objects, not even air, so the coordinates of the reconstituted steel sphere are irrelevant. |
131,359 | I'm surprised I can't find a previous question on this.
We all know that being teleported instantly from one place to another has a big problem. If your co-ordinates are off, you might appear in the middle of a mountain or at best you appear in the correct place but intersecting with the air.
I think that the air problem is solved relatively easily.
When transporting inanimate objects, you could send them to a vacuum chamber thus avoiding collision problems. Similarly a human could be sent wearing a pressurised suit to avoid exposing them to a vacuum.
So here's the crunch.
What happens if the coordinates are wrong?
**Question**
A miscalculation or deliberate action causes a one metre diameter solid steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock in the middle of Mont Blanc. Assume the teleportation is one-way so the rock stays where it is. (Thanks to kikirex for raising this)
What happens at various levels of physics?
* Subatomic level - Can subatomic particles occupy the same space at the same time. What if they did - is there a nuclear explosion? Do we synthesise different elements?
* Human-scale level - Will the mountain whose rock is presumably already under great pressure be able to contain the extra matter by compression?
* Mountain-scale level - Will the arrival of the steel sphere cause the mountain to fracture or even explode?
---
EDIT
A number of answers have doubted the possibility of the object even reaching the destination. In my mind there has been some development that allows a macroscopic object to quantum-jump to the new location. It's the subject of a different question so I didn't want to mention it here. This note is only FYI and I don't intend it to invalidate any answers so far. For now I'll accept the transmission systems (or impossibility thereof) of the answerers. | 2018/11/27 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/131359",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/10759/"
] | I think we have enough information to make a pretty good scientific estimate of what happens, given the unscientific premise.
The first key point to remember is that matter is almost entirely empty space. The *mass* of matter is confined to the atomic nuclei which are very, very tiny. In solid matter, atoms are separated by about 10-8 meters. *Nuclei* 10-15 meters across. This means that the fraction of space occupied by nuclei is about 10-7 (the ratio of the two linear dimensions) *cubed* or about 10-21. (Think of an atom as a 1 cm sphere of very dense nuclear matter in the center of a 100 km sphere of electron cloud. To the same scale, the rock and the metal sphere are essentially a solar-system sized spheres filled with the gossamer 100 km bubbles just touching each other.)
That means that only a tiny, tiny number of the nuclei in the meter sphere of steel will teleport into the same space as a nucleus in the rock. There will be some, so there's still energy release due to nuclear reactions, but it's small, basically chemical-sized. (Think of a meter sphere of dynamite: You don't want to be standing next to it when it blows, but it's not going to destroy a mountain.)
The volume of each atom that isn't nucleus is occupied by the atom's electron cloud. Electron clouds are compressible and the energy created by teleporting in the steel sphere's electron clouds -- you do realize that your problem requires the energy released to come from somewhere? -- is roughly the same as the energy needed to compress a 1 meter steel sphere and and a 1 meter sphere of rock into a single 1 meter sphere of *stuff*. (The strength of materials -- steel, rock, human tissue, whatever -- is entirely due to the mutual interactions of the constituent atomic electron clouds.) If you take two spheres and compress them into one sphere, you need pretty much the same result energetically as you get from the teleportation.
It should be possible to estimate this, and I'm going to research it. It's important to note that the energy levels involved are chemical (though extreme!) rather than nuclear.
My guess is that this will produce a bigger bang than the accidental nuclear superpositions do, but still not enough to destroy the mountain.
...However, until I could get a solid numerical estimate, I think I'd make a point of watching it from ten or twenty miles away... | According to some interpretations of [quantum field theory](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quantum-field-theory/), or QFT, the fundamental state of matter isn't particles but fields instead. What we could call a particle is merely a local excitation of a field, or of a few fields that interact with each other.
This requires that the universe be comprised of fields that can have different local levels of energy. It also implies that the universe is permeated in non-zero levels of energy, because any point in the universe that can contain energy isn't empty.
In physics there is a distinction between a vacuum and a void. A vacuum is the absence of particles, or with a QFT interpretation the absence of local excitations of fields, whereas a void is the absence of energy. A vacuum is not a void, as it holds what we call [Zero Point Energy](http://www.calphysics.org/zpe.html).
This Zero Point Energy is just the resting state of a non-excited field. If you were to add energy to this field you would have something that looks like a particle of that field's type. A photon in an electromagnetic field, an electron in an electron field, etc. These fields can interact with each other, [an electron can absorb and later emit a photon](http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mod5.html).
I suggest that instead of viewing it as a collision of atoms, you interpret the teleportation process as being additive. Each of the fields and their energy levels in the mountain ranges suddenly gain the amounts of energy contained within the steel sphere.
This would have a number of incalculable consequences. The simplest solution would be to say that the energy that was added is immediately expelled from the system due to it no longer being stable in the context of another field already containing different energy levels. So all of the energy being added is forced to spread out evenly in the surrounding space. Which is just a very odd way of describing an explosion. Just how big of an explosion would it be though?
The composition of steel is variable but let's say it's 99% iron and therefore has a [density of nearly 7 874 kg/m³](https://www.aqua-calc.com/page/density-table/substance/iron).
A 1 meter diameter sphere has a volume of V = 4 ⁄ 3 × π × R³ = 4 ⁄ 3 × π × 0.5³ = 0.52 m³.
So that's a total of 7 874 × 0.52 = 4 095 kg of iron atoms.
To calculate the energy contained in 4 095 kg of iron we can apply the famous E = mc²
E = 4 095 × (3 × 10^8)² = 3.68^20 J = 0.36 Zettajoule
It's almost the equivalent of [the entire world's energy consumption in 2010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)#1018_to_1023_J).
For comparison to something we have more direct evidence of the destructive effects of, the atomic bomb that annihilated Hiroshima had an energy yield of a few Terajoules (10^12 J).
In fact it's such a massive amount of energy that it's over 250 times the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule#Multiples>).
Of course, a non-violent alternative is to imagine that the effects of adding energy to a field changes the composition of the elements we can observe, and transmutes the mountain into various other elements higher up in the periodic table. So instead of rock composed of oxygen and silicon you might have a mix of zirconium and molybdenum. This type of effect, if discovered, could lead to the birth of a transmutation industry. Perhaps it should be destroyed to protect the economy, or used in secret to the profit of a few. |
131,359 | I'm surprised I can't find a previous question on this.
We all know that being teleported instantly from one place to another has a big problem. If your co-ordinates are off, you might appear in the middle of a mountain or at best you appear in the correct place but intersecting with the air.
I think that the air problem is solved relatively easily.
When transporting inanimate objects, you could send them to a vacuum chamber thus avoiding collision problems. Similarly a human could be sent wearing a pressurised suit to avoid exposing them to a vacuum.
So here's the crunch.
What happens if the coordinates are wrong?
**Question**
A miscalculation or deliberate action causes a one metre diameter solid steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock in the middle of Mont Blanc. Assume the teleportation is one-way so the rock stays where it is. (Thanks to kikirex for raising this)
What happens at various levels of physics?
* Subatomic level - Can subatomic particles occupy the same space at the same time. What if they did - is there a nuclear explosion? Do we synthesise different elements?
* Human-scale level - Will the mountain whose rock is presumably already under great pressure be able to contain the extra matter by compression?
* Mountain-scale level - Will the arrival of the steel sphere cause the mountain to fracture or even explode?
---
EDIT
A number of answers have doubted the possibility of the object even reaching the destination. In my mind there has been some development that allows a macroscopic object to quantum-jump to the new location. It's the subject of a different question so I didn't want to mention it here. This note is only FYI and I don't intend it to invalidate any answers so far. For now I'll accept the transmission systems (or impossibility thereof) of the answerers. | 2018/11/27 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/131359",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/10759/"
] | I think we have enough information to make a pretty good scientific estimate of what happens, given the unscientific premise.
The first key point to remember is that matter is almost entirely empty space. The *mass* of matter is confined to the atomic nuclei which are very, very tiny. In solid matter, atoms are separated by about 10-8 meters. *Nuclei* 10-15 meters across. This means that the fraction of space occupied by nuclei is about 10-7 (the ratio of the two linear dimensions) *cubed* or about 10-21. (Think of an atom as a 1 cm sphere of very dense nuclear matter in the center of a 100 km sphere of electron cloud. To the same scale, the rock and the metal sphere are essentially a solar-system sized spheres filled with the gossamer 100 km bubbles just touching each other.)
That means that only a tiny, tiny number of the nuclei in the meter sphere of steel will teleport into the same space as a nucleus in the rock. There will be some, so there's still energy release due to nuclear reactions, but it's small, basically chemical-sized. (Think of a meter sphere of dynamite: You don't want to be standing next to it when it blows, but it's not going to destroy a mountain.)
The volume of each atom that isn't nucleus is occupied by the atom's electron cloud. Electron clouds are compressible and the energy created by teleporting in the steel sphere's electron clouds -- you do realize that your problem requires the energy released to come from somewhere? -- is roughly the same as the energy needed to compress a 1 meter steel sphere and and a 1 meter sphere of rock into a single 1 meter sphere of *stuff*. (The strength of materials -- steel, rock, human tissue, whatever -- is entirely due to the mutual interactions of the constituent atomic electron clouds.) If you take two spheres and compress them into one sphere, you need pretty much the same result energetically as you get from the teleportation.
It should be possible to estimate this, and I'm going to research it. It's important to note that the energy levels involved are chemical (though extreme!) rather than nuclear.
My guess is that this will produce a bigger bang than the accidental nuclear superpositions do, but still not enough to destroy the mountain.
...However, until I could get a solid numerical estimate, I think I'd make a point of watching it from ten or twenty miles away... | I will try a different approach – I suppose it is good to consider different angles on how this collision can happen...
Speaking on approach, if this is a collision... from where does the steel come into the mountain? I need to know that in order to know where the energy goes to.
---
Though experiment
-----------------
Let us say I have a huge lamp in my backyard, and this lamp is designed to work in outer space, and has a built-in battery. Then I turn up the lamp, afterwards, I teleport it up (away from earth)... say 80% the distance to the moon. And I look up... I will not see the light from the lamp until about a second after I send it, because that is how much time light takes to go from the lamp to me.
If we consider a space-time diagram (where space is in the horizontal and time in the vertical), first the lamp is stationary, meaning that its world in moves only in time (it is ontop of the vertical axis), about a second per second. At some point I turn it on, we can represent all the places that the light of the lamp can reach as a cone that opens up. When I teleport the lamp, the world line of the lamp moved horizontally in such way that I was out of the light cone of the lamp... and as time passes, one second later (up in the diagram), I get back in the light cone (the light cone crosses the vertical axis).
**Note**: interestingly, the light cone from before the movement and after would at some point intersect. Meaning that there could be observers that can see the light from the lamp before it being teleport and after at the same time.
---
Force
-----
Now, what force do I need to apply to the teleport object such that it moves in this unusual way? Remember that for everything as we know it, time moves inexorably forward. We do not know of any force that when hitting an object, it would make time stop for that object (as in: if you were hit, you would see the world held in place).
We could try to calculate what that force would be, and we would come up with infinite... and it would make the object move faster than the speed of light, and it would technically be traveling to the past.
**Note**: In fact, if I send a probe to meet with the lamp at its destination, such that it arrives at the same time at the lamp gets there... when we do the Lorentz transformation for the probe, we would find that the lamp was send from the future according to the frame of reference of the probe.
Thus, we must conclude that we must hit the object with a force that moves from the future to the past.
---
If we consider force as a vector that has magnitudes in each dimension, I am proposing that all known physics is dealing with force vector that have 0 in the time dimension, and we need force vectors that have a negative value there (assuming positive means towards the future).
Now we know that we are talking about a collision from the future to the past. *That’s the angle*.
---
Newton’s laws
-------------
**First Law**
Let us say, we can push the object to the past. Why would it stop going to the past? Well, it could be because it collides with something. Or perhaps there is some form of drag (after all, there is something pushing everything inexorably to the future).
**Second Law**
`F = m*a`; We are – of course – describing a movement, and assuming the mass does not change. Thus, hmm… we would have an acceleration vector with a negative value on the time coordinate.
Considering that acceleration is displacement (distance) over time squared, we are talking about an acceleration that will make the object perceive time slow down and then go backwards.
However, remember that we are not moving the object to the same place! We are sending it to a different location. That means that acceleration also must have space components.
The way I imagine (i.e. what I am about to say lacks any rigor): We might see the object start moving in the direction we teleport it, stretch (I'd blame Lorentz contraction), then disappear.
**Third Law**
How can we do that push in the first place? There must be an equal an opposite reaction. And, no, that does not mean solving the teleport by exchange (a solution I am personally fond of, but not allowed by OP). We must be pushing something to the future with the same force. That is, the teleport machine has a form of recoil. Perhaps we need to send a small object away to the distant future; as consequence of the teleport of something heavy, a short distance to the short past.
Also, when the collision happens, it could push objects to the past and bounce to the future. *Weird stuff.* However, no, I am not going with that... instead...
---
Feynman diagrams?
-----------------
Feynman diagrams has the oddity that when flipped in time they remain valid. Thus, they serve as a useful model for interactions with particles moving backward in time.
What we find is that – and I oversimplifying here – a particle moving backwards in time, is its own antiparticle moving forwards in time. That means that an object moving backwards in time, will be – for the rest of us – made of antimatter.
So, about your steel sphere to appear instantaneously in solid rock… yeah, boom. It annihilates with the solid rock.
---
Released energy
---------------
*The following computations are done with Wolfram|Alpha*
Well, you told me that it is a sphere that measure 1m on diameter. That is 0.523599 cubic meters of steel. Going with 7900 kg/m^3 for the steel density, we have 4136.43 kg. Then, 2650 kg/m^3 for nondescript rock, we have another 1387.54 kg; for a total of 5523.97 kg.
5523.97 kg gives us 4.9647×10^20 J by good old Einstein’s equation. That is an explosion equivalent to 1.1866×10^11 tons of TNT (118.7 gigatons of TNT).
I struggle to express this…
*The following information is from Wikipedia*
The Tunguska event is estimated to be 3×10^7 tons of TNT. And Tsar Bomb is only 5×10^7 tons of TNT. Those are four orders of magnitude smaller. Thus, we are looking for something more devastating.
The dinosaur killer is 1.92×10^14 tons of TNT. Three orders of magnitude bigger. So, not *that* devastating.
*The following is from Science Magazine*
I found an article about a crater found under Greenland that is said to have required an impact of 3×10^21 J or 7.17×10^11 tons of TNT. This is the right order of magnitude. The article says:
>
> The impact would initially produce a bowl-shaped cavity ~20 km in diameter and ~7 km deep, which would quickly collapse (within ~1 min) to form a complex crater more than 31 km in diameter and ~800 m deep with a central uplift. This impact scenario would have melted and vaporized up to ~20 km^3 of target rock, approximately half of which would have remained within the crater, forming a melt sheet up to ~50 m deep.
>
>
>
---
Other considerations
--------------------
From the point of view of the object... does its own time continues on during the teleport? Perhaps it does not, it also perceives the teleport as instantaneous.
Where is the object in the instant of the teleport, according to the object? My intuition is that it must be in all places in the path from its origin to its destination. If you think of it that way, you would see that it must hit with the near past of something close to your lab before it can hit the target mountain. And the collision does not look good for your lab.
Perhaps it is preferable to think that the teleport works by moving the object through "hyperspace" and thus avoiding any undesired collision. Moving into hyperspace will also be moving in an additional dimension. In that case... well, whatever it hits at its destination is pushed into hyperspace.
---
Addendum: Quantum-jump
----------------------
How does a particle get from one place to another? Currently, as far as quantum theory goes, we must consider as if the particle takes all the infinite possible paths from the origin to the destination. That includes paths that go back in time, and paths that go through barriers of other objects. However, the effects of some of these paths cancel each other out, and some paths have a higher influence than others according to the wave function.
Thus, in order to compute the future state of a quantum system, we start by the more relevant paths and move to the less relevant ones, and by doing so we approximate the solution.
Now, at the moment of interaction, the quantum state of the particle must be solved, and it will be at a given place... and to resolve what happens as a result of the interation, we do what I described above. In fact, this is the use of Faymann diagrams, they are used to categorize the possible things that could happen in such way that we can organize them and start computing.
Then the problem with extending quantum tunelling to massive objects is that massive objects are formed by particles that are constantly interacting with each other, keeping the system coherent. *That is also the solution to Schrödinger's cat. Or if you prefer Einstein's version that has a bomb that explode or not, that is why you do not see the box explode and not explode at the same time.*
However, that is not to say that an object cannot spontaneusly teleport under this framework. It would just be absurdly unlikely that all of its particle undergo decoherence simultanously, tunnel to another place and become coherent in the same arrangement.
We do not really know enough of the why quantum physics works. For instance, it is possible to think about the wave function of complex objects, or even the wave function of the whole universe. And, well... is the universe interacting with something else to keep it coherent?
So, let us go with OP and say that this is not only possible but that we can create a machine to make it happen. Well, in this case, we have an elegant coup-out: if a particle cannot occupy a position because there is another particle there (Pauli exclusion principle), then the probability of the object appearing there is zero, thus, it will not happen, instead the steel sphere will appear somewhere else.
**Addendum**: As kingledion, Mark Olson and Carl Sagan point out "Matter is composed chiefly of nothing". There is a lot of empty space in the atoms. However, if the teleport respect pauli exclusion principle (and should it not?) then the particles of the steel sphere will appear is such way that no nuclear reaction happens, only chemical. Thus, you could still have the steel sphere embeded in the rock, and it would be made of... hmm... a different steel, due to the rock chemistry.
---
Addendum: Don't Panic
---------------------
Assuming you can build a machine that can cause highly improvable events such as the spontaneous and instantaneous displacement of an object, as mentioned above. Let us call it Teleport-MK1.
The Teleport-MK1 would still not be able to break the exclusion principle. That does not mean it is useless… for example, you could use it leap people's underwear a meter※ to the left as a party trick.
※: Because it is safer that just moving it one foot, and metric is better™.
However, a more interesting use is to have it arrange matter in any desired configuration, as long as it is possible. This device could transform virtually any raw material into any physically possible object, including food (or very advanced substitutes), and other machines. Let us call this reconfiguration of the Teleport-MK1 the Replicator-MK1.
If the universe allows the creation of a machine capable causing impossible events, then you can use a Replicator-MK1 to create it. The new device would not only be able to teleport and manufacture, it would be able to do anything, even if it is infinitely improbable.
What happens when you use it to teleport a steel sphere inside a mountain? Whatever you want.
**Note**: Possible side effects of the use of the new device include time traveling bowls of petunias, use with care. Read Douglas Adams books on the subject for more information. Whatever happens, remember: Don't Panic.
---
Tl;dr
-----
When the steel spehre collides with the mountain, it will either:
* Swap places with the rock
* Cause a huge explosion
* Push the rock into hyperspace
* The steel sphere appears somewhere else (the universe forbids the collision)
* The steel sphere chemically merges with the rock
* Whatever you want
(this is not an exhaustive list of things that could happen, just the ones I mention in my answer) |
22,663 | At around the 28 mins and 13 secs of Season 3, Episode 9, of the TV series Strike Back, Major Oliver Sinclair (portrayed by Rhashan Stone) claims the following, the truth of which I'd like to know.
>
> Any intelligence agency can monitor emails that has been sent and received. So if you want to avoid detection, leave it in the drafts box for someone to read.
>
>
> | 2014/08/03 | [
"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22663",
"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com",
"https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | In short: **if the draft mail is stored in the server**, it is saved there in a specific folder there like any other mail. So if the spying entity has access to the disk (as opposed to having access to the communications network) they have access to the drafts as well. Example: In maildir format (de-facto Unix standard) drafts are just a flag set by the user on the file that contains the message: <http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html>:
>
> Flag "D" (draft): the user considers this message a draft; toggled at user discretion.
>
>
>
Most mail agents using maildir, anyway, does not use the D flag but create a .Drafts diretory inside the cur directory, which relates directly to the Drafts folder on the MUA.
There are some instances where client-side encryption is used, for which drafts are stored encrypted on the server. They are still accessible to the spying entity, but not readable. This is not the case on any web-based mail provider that you can use from any browser. It is the case, however, with Lavaboom <https://lavaboom.com/en/tech-info#key-handling> which you can **not** use from several browsers. | Absolutely not. You can safely assume that an intelligence agency has access to your online mail box, including drafts.
For example, this is a [leaked NSA document claiming that 500,000 online inboxes are snooped on every day](http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/the-nsas-overcollection-problem/517/).
Snowden again makes fun, in front of a community of peers, of using an online platform for espionage purposes:
>
> A good example of this, **really a bad example when it comes to Opsec**, is this recent American spy who was discovered in Germany. He was apparently, allegedly, in the newspapers, suing for the United States against Germany. He then, I guess, wasn’t satisfied with what was going on so he said, “Hey, I’m going to shop myself to what I think are the Russians,” because he got an email — **He was using gmail. Great, great OpSec there** — and he got an email that purpotd to be the Russian embassy, and they said, “Hey, you want to sell some documents?” And he said, “Oh, yeah, sure, sure.” And he sent them three classified documents.
>
>
>
<http://www.ellsbergsnowdentranscript.tumblr.com/> and <http://youtu.be/FGgo7MSJVVA?t=30m>
As an example: General Petraeus and his mistress used this system to swap private emails and were discovered by the FBI.
>
> FBI agents traced the alleged cyber harassment to Broadwell, the officials said, and discovered she was exchanging intimate messages with a private Gmail account. Further investigation revealed the account belonged to Petraeus under an alias.
>
>
> Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teenagers alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement officials said.
>
>
> Rather than transmitting emails to the other's inbox, they composed at least some messages and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic "dropbox," the official said. Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail that is easier to trace.
>
>
>
<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/info-emerges-about-2nd-woman-petraeus-case>
and the FBI has been snooping on these accounts after having established a just cause (in this instance, because some other emails had been sent). After that, it's game over.
>
> They learned that Ms. Broadwell and Mr. Petraeus had set up private Gmail accounts to use for their communications, which included explicit details of a sexual nature, according to U.S. officials. But because Mr. Petraeus used a pseudonym, agents doing the monitoring didn't immediately uncover that he was the one communicating with Ms. Broadwell.
>
>
> By late summer, after the monitoring of Ms. Broadwell's emails uncovered the link to Mr. Petraeus, prosecutors and agents alerted senior officials at FBI and the Justice Department, including Mr. Holder, U.S. officials say. The investigators never monitored Mr. Petraeus's email accounts, the officials say.
>
>
>
<http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324073504578113460852395852?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324073504578113460852395852.html> |
114,907 | Jane is one of my female colleagues. She doesn't get on well with a third colleague, Joe.
As he does every morning, Joe comes in to our office to say hello. Right after that, I receive an instant message from Jane through the office chat (in a private channel) saying:
>
> I don't want to be mean but does he shower in the morning?
>
>
>
I know that Joe can sometimes smell sweaty, especially when it's hot, but it has never been a major problem for me.
I don't know how to respond to that, without being rude to either of them and staying as professional as I can.
Notes:
* Jane is from China, we work in western Europe.
* Jane can be really sensitive to body odours.
* Joe does not work near Jane, and the morning greeting is about the only physical contact they have every day.
* It's not the first time she said something rude about somebody else in the company : I always try to change the subject or not to respond, but it's the first time it's so blatantly mean. | 2018/06/28 | [
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/114907",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com",
"https://workplace.stackexchange.com/users/88713/"
] | ~~Close her question as off-topic.~~ Dismiss her gossip:
>
> Joe does not share his daily routine with me, so I wouldn't know about it. You should probably ask him directly if you are so curious.
>
>
>
If she continues bothering you, you can choose to be more stern:
>
> Jane, I do not want to have this talk. If it really bothers you, you can talk to Joe directly.
>
>
> | Honesty.
If it isn't an issue for you or you don't smell it,tell her so.
In general, it is good to stay out of interpersonal squabbles and gossip.
Is the colleague cycling to work? Good thing to tell her too.
It might even be an indication to get communal showers at work.
Though that is a whole large can of worms on its own, so tread carefully if at all.
Also, don't use the colleague as an example why showers are needed.
In fact, you shouldn't even be talking about getting showers if there are none, since you don't have an issue. |
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