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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
256,928 | Most of the week I live in the city where I have a typical broadband connection, but most weekends I'm out of town and only have access to a satellite connection. Trying to work over SSH on a satellite connection, while possible, is hardly desirable due to the high latency (> 1 second).
**My question is this:**
Is there any software that will do something like buffering keystrokes on my local machine before they're sent over SSH to help make the lag on individual keystrokes a little bit more transparent? Essentially I'm looking for something that would reduce the effects of the high latency for everything except for commands (e.g., opening files, changing to a new directory, etc.).
I've already discovered that vim can open remote files locally and rewrite them remotely, but, while this is a huge help, it is not quite what I'm looking for since it only works when editing files, and requires opening a connection every time a read/write occurs.
(*For anyone who may not know how to do this and is curious, just use this command: 'vim scp://host/file/path/here)* | 2011/03/13 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/256928",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/71494/"
] | It simply means of the total maximum of your processors normal speed.
With speed step, power saving and everything else disabled, this should always read 100%.
If you have power saving on your laptop that under clocks your CPU compared to the stock speed, it will report a lower percentage.
If you have turbo boost or similar, it will report a higher percentage.
So, again, this is the current maximum percentage your processor can currently run when compared against its reported normal speed.
I am not 100% sure, but my guess is that if you overclock, the overclocked amount would be the "base" speed to Windows and overclocking by 20% would not show a 120% maximum frequency - this is just guessing, I have no way to test. | Just to add that on a modern multi-core computer where unused cores are parked (turned off)
to conserve power, the displayed percentage can be much less than 100%.
I have seen values of 30-50% on an unencumbered 8-core computer. |
256,928 | Most of the week I live in the city where I have a typical broadband connection, but most weekends I'm out of town and only have access to a satellite connection. Trying to work over SSH on a satellite connection, while possible, is hardly desirable due to the high latency (> 1 second).
**My question is this:**
Is there any software that will do something like buffering keystrokes on my local machine before they're sent over SSH to help make the lag on individual keystrokes a little bit more transparent? Essentially I'm looking for something that would reduce the effects of the high latency for everything except for commands (e.g., opening files, changing to a new directory, etc.).
I've already discovered that vim can open remote files locally and rewrite them remotely, but, while this is a huge help, it is not quite what I'm looking for since it only works when editing files, and requires opening a connection every time a read/write occurs.
(*For anyone who may not know how to do this and is curious, just use this command: 'vim scp://host/file/path/here)* | 2011/03/13 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/256928",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/71494/"
] | According to an answer [here](http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproui/thread/19ec3423-2112-4a44-9dd8-eacd097bc920/):
>
> Maximum Frequency in Resource Monitor is the same as the Processor Performance \ % of Maximum Frequency counter in Performance Monitor.
>
>
> For example if you have a 2.5 ghz processor which is running at 800 mhz then % of Maximum Frequency = 800/2500 = 31%. So the processor is running at 31%, or 800 mhz, of the processor's maximum frequency of 2500 mhz (2.5 ghz).
>
>
> The "best" percentage of maximum frequency is subjective. Basically, you want the CPU running at a frequency that is fast enough to do what you want while using the least amount of power so it doesn't drain your battery or increase your electric bill unnecessarily.
>
>
> Your power plan in Windows is part of what determines the frequency as well as settings in the computer's BIOS.
>
>
> Take a look at the section Processor power management (PPM) may cause CPU utilization to appear artificially high in this article: [Interpreting CPU Utilization for Performance Analysis](http://blogs.technet.com/b/winserverperformance/archive/2009/08/06/interpreting-cpu-utilization-for-performance-analysis.aspx)
>
>
> | Just to add that on a modern multi-core computer where unused cores are parked (turned off)
to conserve power, the displayed percentage can be much less than 100%.
I have seen values of 30-50% on an unencumbered 8-core computer. |
256,928 | Most of the week I live in the city where I have a typical broadband connection, but most weekends I'm out of town and only have access to a satellite connection. Trying to work over SSH on a satellite connection, while possible, is hardly desirable due to the high latency (> 1 second).
**My question is this:**
Is there any software that will do something like buffering keystrokes on my local machine before they're sent over SSH to help make the lag on individual keystrokes a little bit more transparent? Essentially I'm looking for something that would reduce the effects of the high latency for everything except for commands (e.g., opening files, changing to a new directory, etc.).
I've already discovered that vim can open remote files locally and rewrite them remotely, but, while this is a huge help, it is not quite what I'm looking for since it only works when editing files, and requires opening a connection every time a read/write occurs.
(*For anyone who may not know how to do this and is curious, just use this command: 'vim scp://host/file/path/here)* | 2011/03/13 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/256928",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/71494/"
] | Very late reply, but I just noticed that my percentage in Resource Monitor for CPU frequency is 129%, which corresponds with my overclock. I have a 3.4 GHz Intel i5 that is overclocked to 4.4, which is a (1000/3400) \* 100 = 29.411% increase over stock speed. Turbo Boost for my processor (the factory boost to frequency) was 3.8 GHz, but this also showed above 100%. Basically, the frequency your processor is listed at on the box and in CPU-Z at its maximum stock frequency (without Turbo Boost) is what Resource Monitor takes to be 100%. | Just to add that on a modern multi-core computer where unused cores are parked (turned off)
to conserve power, the displayed percentage can be much less than 100%.
I have seen values of 30-50% on an unencumbered 8-core computer. |
4,534 | This is for intelectual purposes only, as I am curious.
Searching through google, I cannot find a definite answer to this, so as the subject says, why is it not recommended? What can go wrong?
The only ref I get is about a security warning posted here : <http://www.magentocommerce.com/blog/comments/security-update-for-magento-base-url-configuration-value/>
which is from a very early version of magento.
>
> It has come to our attention that under very specific conditions there is a security issue in Magento 1.0 through 1.0.19870 that may cause invalid links to be entered into your block cache.
>
>
>
Can someone maybe clarify what / how this worked, and is it still an issue.
TIA | 2013/06/07 | [
"https://magento.stackexchange.com/questions/4534",
"https://magento.stackexchange.com",
"https://magento.stackexchange.com/users/202/"
] | I believe this was the same cache poisoning attack as seen here:
<http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2011/Feb/123>
In short, if you use the default virtual host and {{base\_url}} as your site URL, an attacker can send requests to your site with the Host header set to evilsite.com. If they do this and a cache miss happens, then the generated cache would contain links to evilsite.com, and then that would be served out to other clients.
I have spoken to people who have had this attack used against them, so it's definitely in the wild.
For more info on this kind of attack see
<http://carlos.bueno.org/2008/06/host-header-injection.html>
<http://www.skeletonscribe.net/2013/05/practical-http-host-header-attacks.html> | I have no idea and can't imagine at the moment any attack or something based on a not defined base uri. But payment providers, paypal IPN and other backpings come in my mind.
Having said that you want to control your base url, for exampe to avoud duplicated content for search engines. The only thing at the moment I see a problem with is SEO stuff. |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | European Union privacy rules include certain aspects of the [right to be forgotten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten). I am not an expert on what this means precisely, but it seems to include the right to have search engines remove certain information associated with your name from search results.
[Here](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal-request?complaint_type=rtbf) is another page provided by Google with more information and a form for submitting privacy-based requests for removal of search results. I assume other search engines will have similar procedures in place to comply with the EU rules.
Note that these rules apply in the EU. I suspect the embarrassing results associated with your name will still be available in non-EU countries. See [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/opinion/google-right-forgotten.html) related recent article where this somewhat controversial issue is discussed. | From what you described, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you were *earnestly* engaging in public discussions before you had mastered articulate presentation skills, I personally would see that as a positive not a negative. But much more likely, I'm never going to search remote forum boards for a candidate I'm interviewing.
With that said, I think a very proactive measure one could take is to simply build a professional website. If I'm interested in judging the professional contributions of an individual, this is the very first and most likely the last place I will look for them; it gets straight to the point and typically communicates exactly what technical skills they do (or do not) have. If I'm interviewing you, I don't care if you're into sky-diving in your free time, I want to know what your research interests are and how well you communicate technical information. A website is a great place to demonstrate this.
As an anecdote, I also have a unique name (only one in the world) and for a long time if you Googled me, my website was the first result to pop up and some combat sporting events I participated in would pop up on the first page of the search results (it's now moved down much further). At the time, I similarly was slightly embarrassed, as I felt it was a bit unprofessional. Many of the people who have interviewed me were familiar with what was on my webpage. Not a single one was familiar with the sporting events. |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | This question is definitely more of a online reputation management question so my only advice is buckle up and try to anonymize your past actions.
Here are some suggestions:
* Change your username on those forums and remove profile details
+ Often times this will globally change your name across all your posts
* Contact the forums and ask them to de-associate your account from your posts; Stack Exchange does this so I hope others can too
* Delete/edit your old posts if you can
* Deleting your account can sometimes anonymize your old posts but some sites could maintain your username without a link to a profile
Ultimately, assuming you didn't post anything illegal or bigoted then it's not likely to come back and haunt you; unless you decide to become a politician then EVERYTHING will be used to smear you. | This is the problem of unable to change from your perspective to other's. Pick a person you want to know right now and google their name, would you even scroll to the bottom of the page? No. Just a couple of first results is enough to overwhelm your mind. Even when they have read everything about you, they will feel closer to you, not to mock you.
**By being able to put yourself into other's shoes, you can detach to your emotions and move on.**
See more:
* [Perspective-taking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective-taking)
* [Empathy gap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy_gap)
* [The Spotlight Effect](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-big-questions/201111/the-spotlight-effect)
* [Detachment (philosophy) - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detachment_(philosophy))
* [F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content-discovered/?lm=how-people-read-web-eyetracking-evidence&pt=report)
* [Why You Should Stop Caring What Other People Think (Taming the Mammoth)](https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html) |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | I'm deeply involved in web technologies, including search results. The simplest and fastest way to solve this problem is to add other search results. The more "legitimate" and positive results found, the less likely the others will be seen. There are numerous factors in raising search results, but still:
* Create another Stack Exchange account with your name and use it.
* Create social media accounts with your name.
* Join groups and use your real names (in addition to pseudonyms).
* Create a [Disqus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disqus) account with your name.
You don't need to make many posts on each site, but place professionally enhancing content there.
If you really want to spend time with this - open other accounts with simple variations of your name thus creating even more false results.
A little work every day and soon you'll have 100s if not 1000s of positive results that will appear above the other silliness. | European Union privacy rules include certain aspects of the [right to be forgotten](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten). I am not an expert on what this means precisely, but it seems to include the right to have search engines remove certain information associated with your name from search results.
[Here](https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/legal-removal-request?complaint_type=rtbf) is another page provided by Google with more information and a form for submitting privacy-based requests for removal of search results. I assume other search engines will have similar procedures in place to comply with the EU rules.
Note that these rules apply in the EU. I suspect the embarrassing results associated with your name will still be available in non-EU countries. See [this](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/opinion/google-right-forgotten.html) related recent article where this somewhat controversial issue is discussed. |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | Well, be assured that you are not alone. Things kids do were hidden from view in the past, but no longer. Now your entire life is on view for anyone who looks.
In general, however, as long as what you did or said isn't truly horrible, it will do little more than raise eyebrows or elicit a laugh. People generally realize that we eventually grow up and those older than you, whose background is less visible will look back at their own foibles as well.
But if you bragged at age 15 that you liked to blow up frogs with firecrackers, you might want an explanation for why that isn't the same *you* anymore.
More generally, however, I think that society needs to take more account of personal privacy, especially for those not yet officially adult. No one seems to have good solutions for that, however, other than parental supervision. Certainly the social media sites have little interest in your privacy when their business model depends on exploiting information about you. | From what you described, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you were *earnestly* engaging in public discussions before you had mastered articulate presentation skills, I personally would see that as a positive not a negative. But much more likely, I'm never going to search remote forum boards for a candidate I'm interviewing.
With that said, I think a very proactive measure one could take is to simply build a professional website. If I'm interested in judging the professional contributions of an individual, this is the very first and most likely the last place I will look for them; it gets straight to the point and typically communicates exactly what technical skills they do (or do not) have. If I'm interviewing you, I don't care if you're into sky-diving in your free time, I want to know what your research interests are and how well you communicate technical information. A website is a great place to demonstrate this.
As an anecdote, I also have a unique name (only one in the world) and for a long time if you Googled me, my website was the first result to pop up and some combat sporting events I participated in would pop up on the first page of the search results (it's now moved down much further). At the time, I similarly was slightly embarrassed, as I felt it was a bit unprofessional. Many of the people who have interviewed me were familiar with what was on my webpage. Not a single one was familiar with the sporting events. |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | I'm deeply involved in web technologies, including search results. The simplest and fastest way to solve this problem is to add other search results. The more "legitimate" and positive results found, the less likely the others will be seen. There are numerous factors in raising search results, but still:
* Create another Stack Exchange account with your name and use it.
* Create social media accounts with your name.
* Join groups and use your real names (in addition to pseudonyms).
* Create a [Disqus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disqus) account with your name.
You don't need to make many posts on each site, but place professionally enhancing content there.
If you really want to spend time with this - open other accounts with simple variations of your name thus creating even more false results.
A little work every day and soon you'll have 100s if not 1000s of positive results that will appear above the other silliness. | This question is definitely more of a online reputation management question so my only advice is buckle up and try to anonymize your past actions.
Here are some suggestions:
* Change your username on those forums and remove profile details
+ Often times this will globally change your name across all your posts
* Contact the forums and ask them to de-associate your account from your posts; Stack Exchange does this so I hope others can too
* Delete/edit your old posts if you can
* Deleting your account can sometimes anonymize your old posts but some sites could maintain your username without a link to a profile
Ultimately, assuming you didn't post anything illegal or bigoted then it's not likely to come back and haunt you; unless you decide to become a politician then EVERYTHING will be used to smear you. |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | This question is definitely more of a online reputation management question so my only advice is buckle up and try to anonymize your past actions.
Here are some suggestions:
* Change your username on those forums and remove profile details
+ Often times this will globally change your name across all your posts
* Contact the forums and ask them to de-associate your account from your posts; Stack Exchange does this so I hope others can too
* Delete/edit your old posts if you can
* Deleting your account can sometimes anonymize your old posts but some sites could maintain your username without a link to a profile
Ultimately, assuming you didn't post anything illegal or bigoted then it's not likely to come back and haunt you; unless you decide to become a politician then EVERYTHING will be used to smear you. | From what you described, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you were *earnestly* engaging in public discussions before you had mastered articulate presentation skills, I personally would see that as a positive not a negative. But much more likely, I'm never going to search remote forum boards for a candidate I'm interviewing.
With that said, I think a very proactive measure one could take is to simply build a professional website. If I'm interested in judging the professional contributions of an individual, this is the very first and most likely the last place I will look for them; it gets straight to the point and typically communicates exactly what technical skills they do (or do not) have. If I'm interviewing you, I don't care if you're into sky-diving in your free time, I want to know what your research interests are and how well you communicate technical information. A website is a great place to demonstrate this.
As an anecdote, I also have a unique name (only one in the world) and for a long time if you Googled me, my website was the first result to pop up and some combat sporting events I participated in would pop up on the first page of the search results (it's now moved down much further). At the time, I similarly was slightly embarrassed, as I felt it was a bit unprofessional. Many of the people who have interviewed me were familiar with what was on my webpage. Not a single one was familiar with the sporting events. |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | This question is definitely more of a online reputation management question so my only advice is buckle up and try to anonymize your past actions.
Here are some suggestions:
* Change your username on those forums and remove profile details
+ Often times this will globally change your name across all your posts
* Contact the forums and ask them to de-associate your account from your posts; Stack Exchange does this so I hope others can too
* Delete/edit your old posts if you can
* Deleting your account can sometimes anonymize your old posts but some sites could maintain your username without a link to a profile
Ultimately, assuming you didn't post anything illegal or bigoted then it's not likely to come back and haunt you; unless you decide to become a politician then EVERYTHING will be used to smear you. | While I do recommend the point, mentioned by other answers, of having more (non-embarrassing) internet entries with your name (that can be anything from blog entries to mailing list discussions), something that has not been mentioned is that *the people looking for you on the internet won't know that the Yahoo answers poster is the PhD student*.
Sure, you have a very unique name, but... are you sure no one else on the Earth bears that name? Do people looking for you believe that?
When searching someone's name on the internet it's not uncommon to find, in addition to the one you expect, someone else with that name -which clearly is a different one- living on the other side of the globe (and perhaps nobody else, just those two results). Then, there are those results that could relate to the looked up person or not, in which I guess all those embarrassing entries will fit, unless you included extra details there, like listing your school or the place you lived.
The people that really browsed a lot for entries by your name will conclude that *maybe* you said some silly things ten years ago.
My expectation is that, at most, you would get some questioning from other young colleagues for fun (*are you the Mxyzptlk that said 2+2=5?*), at which point it is up to you to acknowledge having made those posts... or not, after all, how would you remember if you made certain Yahoo answers post 10 years ago, even if it mentions a name like yours? |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | From what you described, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you were *earnestly* engaging in public discussions before you had mastered articulate presentation skills, I personally would see that as a positive not a negative. But much more likely, I'm never going to search remote forum boards for a candidate I'm interviewing.
With that said, I think a very proactive measure one could take is to simply build a professional website. If I'm interested in judging the professional contributions of an individual, this is the very first and most likely the last place I will look for them; it gets straight to the point and typically communicates exactly what technical skills they do (or do not) have. If I'm interviewing you, I don't care if you're into sky-diving in your free time, I want to know what your research interests are and how well you communicate technical information. A website is a great place to demonstrate this.
As an anecdote, I also have a unique name (only one in the world) and for a long time if you Googled me, my website was the first result to pop up and some combat sporting events I participated in would pop up on the first page of the search results (it's now moved down much further). At the time, I similarly was slightly embarrassed, as I felt it was a bit unprofessional. Many of the people who have interviewed me were familiar with what was on my webpage. Not a single one was familiar with the sporting events. | Relax.
What you did in your 12 is half your time here back. It will become a third soon, quarter slightly later, etc.
During this time you will feed the Internet with new and more relevant content and low-quality posts will become very obsolete and cannot backfire to you. If anyone tries to play that card in an argument, you can belittle it by "And you were a genius in your 12? You made a very poor improvement since then."
The only case your 12-year-old self can backfire at you is a very serious misbehaviour and it still can be dismissed as "I've learnt my lesson from that".
This is the part of growing up and learning. If you don't learn you don't improve. What actually happens to you is judging your old posts written with 12 year old knowledge and 12-year-old skills by criteria adjusted to recent knowledge and 24-year-old skills. Be sure that after 10 years you will see your today's work, you are proud of, with the same emotions as you are seeing the ancient posts Google has found.
If you are about to be assessed by a sane person they will know that and ignore that. If they will assess you because of your 20 years old posts, it is a strong argument for you to never meet them again. |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | I'm deeply involved in web technologies, including search results. The simplest and fastest way to solve this problem is to add other search results. The more "legitimate" and positive results found, the less likely the others will be seen. There are numerous factors in raising search results, but still:
* Create another Stack Exchange account with your name and use it.
* Create social media accounts with your name.
* Join groups and use your real names (in addition to pseudonyms).
* Create a [Disqus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disqus) account with your name.
You don't need to make many posts on each site, but place professionally enhancing content there.
If you really want to spend time with this - open other accounts with simple variations of your name thus creating even more false results.
A little work every day and soon you'll have 100s if not 1000s of positive results that will appear above the other silliness. | From what you described, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you were *earnestly* engaging in public discussions before you had mastered articulate presentation skills, I personally would see that as a positive not a negative. But much more likely, I'm never going to search remote forum boards for a candidate I'm interviewing.
With that said, I think a very proactive measure one could take is to simply build a professional website. If I'm interested in judging the professional contributions of an individual, this is the very first and most likely the last place I will look for them; it gets straight to the point and typically communicates exactly what technical skills they do (or do not) have. If I'm interviewing you, I don't care if you're into sky-diving in your free time, I want to know what your research interests are and how well you communicate technical information. A website is a great place to demonstrate this.
As an anecdote, I also have a unique name (only one in the world) and for a long time if you Googled me, my website was the first result to pop up and some combat sporting events I participated in would pop up on the first page of the search results (it's now moved down much further). At the time, I similarly was slightly embarrassed, as I felt it was a bit unprofessional. Many of the people who have interviewed me were familiar with what was on my webpage. Not a single one was familiar with the sporting events. |
117,277 | I am a masters student at one of the top two universities in the UK and will be applying for PhD positions soon. When I google my (unique) name, the first few results are what you'd expect, my LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and some university web pages.
However if you keep scrolling and go through the pages of Google's search results, you see some silly forum posts from when I was 12-14 years old, and some poorly written Yahoo Answers questions from the same time. I am now 22 so this was almost 10 years ago.
I know it's stupid but when I was that age no one really taught me how to use the internet properly and so ended up using my full name in a number of places.
I've not written anything offensive and my name isn't on anything objectively bad, but it's just childish silliness (memes, poorly written stories, Yahoo Answers nonsense, and just weird forum posts) and I'm a bit embarrassed to be honest. I feel like as I continue to progress academically, it will become more likely that people will Google me and see all this which might make it likely that I will be judged. Again, it's nothing offensive or objectionable just old young teenager stuff. Benign but embarrassing.
Should I just ignore it and hope that as my career develops these old results get pushed further back in Google's search results? Should I try to remove this stuff from the internet (very difficult as I have lost all these old accounts)?
The stuff I posted back then has little to nothing to do with who I am now professionally, and I would hate for people to think it is. Having a unique name does seem like a curse sometimes and I have made it worse by being extra foolish when I was young. | 2018/09/21 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117277",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98348/"
] | Relax. No one cares, and no one will judge you on what you said when you were 12. (At least, no one who was ever 12 years old themselves...) | Relax.
What you did in your 12 is half your time here back. It will become a third soon, quarter slightly later, etc.
During this time you will feed the Internet with new and more relevant content and low-quality posts will become very obsolete and cannot backfire to you. If anyone tries to play that card in an argument, you can belittle it by "And you were a genius in your 12? You made a very poor improvement since then."
The only case your 12-year-old self can backfire at you is a very serious misbehaviour and it still can be dismissed as "I've learnt my lesson from that".
This is the part of growing up and learning. If you don't learn you don't improve. What actually happens to you is judging your old posts written with 12 year old knowledge and 12-year-old skills by criteria adjusted to recent knowledge and 24-year-old skills. Be sure that after 10 years you will see your today's work, you are proud of, with the same emotions as you are seeing the ancient posts Google has found.
If you are about to be assessed by a sane person they will know that and ignore that. If they will assess you because of your 20 years old posts, it is a strong argument for you to never meet them again. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | No.
The atmosphere is too chaotic for hourly forecasts at time scales beyond several days to be useful. | The best solution I've found so far is to use Dark Sky's [Time Machine](https://darksky.net/dev/docs#time-machine-request%20API). You can request the forecast for any number of days in the future, and beyond 10 days, the API simply returns historical data. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | The trouble is, any skill above climatology beyond about 5-7 days is very very low.
So sites could offer such forecasts, but they wouldn't be worth much of anything.
The main thing they could offer that has any use that is an indication of what typically happened in previous years (i.e. climatology)... but unfortunately I don't know any site that offers such on an hourly basis. We could use more of that! Still, if you're familiar with the area you're looking up for, you're probably fairly used to the typical weather for a given time of year.
There has been some [small skill](http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/verification/summary/) at making blurrier longer range forecasts... basically estimating either within a large range (such as [hurricane forecasts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_seasonal_forecasting)) or (more often) giving probabilities of whether the weather will be above or below that climatological expectations.
For more about the very limited skill of week 2 forecasts, see [this answer](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/22385/how-accurate-is-the-national-weather-service-8-to-14-day-outlook/23280#23280).
But such long-range forecasts don't have nearly the precision to offer hourly forecasts to be of any legitimate use. It'd be like saying it'll take you 46 minutes and 7 seconds to get to work two weeks from Thursday... entirely misleading specificity.
So basically if you're eagerly planning for a trip in 10 days or a wedding in a month or two, you're much better off staying far away from such [novelty longrange forecasts](https://weather.com/weather/monthly/l/Orlando+FL+USFL0372:1:US) until the event gets much closer. Until then, all you can really figure on is what's typical for the given time of year. | [ECMWF](https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/charts/catalogue/?facets=Range,Medium%20(15%20days)) (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) provides global forecast to member organizations and probably there is a way to obtain their hourly forecast up to 15 days. They provide average fields to the public, but the hourly data is not available that way. You can contact them directly and ask them about availability. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | [Weather Underground](https://www.wunderground.com) and [Intellicast](http://www.intellicast.com) provide ten day forecasts in a beautiful (to a nerdy engineer) graphical format, in hourly increments. The skill in the last two to five days of those extended forecasts is suspect. | [ECMWF](https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/charts/catalogue/?facets=Range,Medium%20(15%20days)) (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) provides global forecast to member organizations and probably there is a way to obtain their hourly forecast up to 15 days. They provide average fields to the public, but the hourly data is not available that way. You can contact them directly and ask them about availability. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | [Accuweather Premium](http://wwwl.accuweather.com/premium_forecast_benefits.php) claims 15 days of hourly forecasts.
[This](https://www.zazzle.com/cute_pattern_weather_dart_board-256665018944132042) may be just as good though. | The best solution I've found so far is to use Dark Sky's [Time Machine](https://darksky.net/dev/docs#time-machine-request%20API). You can request the forecast for any number of days in the future, and beyond 10 days, the API simply returns historical data. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | [Weather Underground](https://www.wunderground.com) and [Intellicast](http://www.intellicast.com) provide ten day forecasts in a beautiful (to a nerdy engineer) graphical format, in hourly increments. The skill in the last two to five days of those extended forecasts is suspect. | No.
The atmosphere is too chaotic for hourly forecasts at time scales beyond several days to be useful. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | [Weather Underground](https://www.wunderground.com) and [Intellicast](http://www.intellicast.com) provide ten day forecasts in a beautiful (to a nerdy engineer) graphical format, in hourly increments. The skill in the last two to five days of those extended forecasts is suspect. | [Accuweather Premium](http://wwwl.accuweather.com/premium_forecast_benefits.php) claims 15 days of hourly forecasts.
[This](https://www.zazzle.com/cute_pattern_weather_dart_board-256665018944132042) may be just as good though. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | [Weather Underground](https://www.wunderground.com) and [Intellicast](http://www.intellicast.com) provide ten day forecasts in a beautiful (to a nerdy engineer) graphical format, in hourly increments. The skill in the last two to five days of those extended forecasts is suspect. | The best solution I've found so far is to use Dark Sky's [Time Machine](https://darksky.net/dev/docs#time-machine-request%20API). You can request the forecast for any number of days in the future, and beyond 10 days, the API simply returns historical data. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | [ECMWF](https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/charts/catalogue/?facets=Range,Medium%20(15%20days)) (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) provides global forecast to member organizations and probably there is a way to obtain their hourly forecast up to 15 days. They provide average fields to the public, but the hourly data is not available that way. You can contact them directly and ask them about availability. | The best solution I've found so far is to use Dark Sky's [Time Machine](https://darksky.net/dev/docs#time-machine-request%20API). You can request the forecast for any number of days in the future, and beyond 10 days, the API simply returns historical data. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | The trouble is, any skill above climatology beyond about 5-7 days is very very low.
So sites could offer such forecasts, but they wouldn't be worth much of anything.
The main thing they could offer that has any use that is an indication of what typically happened in previous years (i.e. climatology)... but unfortunately I don't know any site that offers such on an hourly basis. We could use more of that! Still, if you're familiar with the area you're looking up for, you're probably fairly used to the typical weather for a given time of year.
There has been some [small skill](http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/verification/summary/) at making blurrier longer range forecasts... basically estimating either within a large range (such as [hurricane forecasts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_seasonal_forecasting)) or (more often) giving probabilities of whether the weather will be above or below that climatological expectations.
For more about the very limited skill of week 2 forecasts, see [this answer](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/22385/how-accurate-is-the-national-weather-service-8-to-14-day-outlook/23280#23280).
But such long-range forecasts don't have nearly the precision to offer hourly forecasts to be of any legitimate use. It'd be like saying it'll take you 46 minutes and 7 seconds to get to work two weeks from Thursday... entirely misleading specificity.
So basically if you're eagerly planning for a trip in 10 days or a wedding in a month or two, you're much better off staying far away from such [novelty longrange forecasts](https://weather.com/weather/monthly/l/Orlando+FL+USFL0372:1:US) until the event gets much closer. Until then, all you can really figure on is what's typical for the given time of year. | [Accuweather Premium](http://wwwl.accuweather.com/premium_forecast_benefits.php) claims 15 days of hourly forecasts.
[This](https://www.zazzle.com/cute_pattern_weather_dart_board-256665018944132042) may be just as good though. |
14,597 | I'm working on a small project and am trying to find a way to get the very extended hour-by-hour forecast for a location. Most services (Darksky, etc.) seem to offer 7-day extended hourly forecasts, but I'm not able to find anything beyond that.
Does anyone have suggestions? | 2018/07/12 | [
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/14597",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com",
"https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/users/13344/"
] | The trouble is, any skill above climatology beyond about 5-7 days is very very low.
So sites could offer such forecasts, but they wouldn't be worth much of anything.
The main thing they could offer that has any use that is an indication of what typically happened in previous years (i.e. climatology)... but unfortunately I don't know any site that offers such on an hourly basis. We could use more of that! Still, if you're familiar with the area you're looking up for, you're probably fairly used to the typical weather for a given time of year.
There has been some [small skill](http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/verification/summary/) at making blurrier longer range forecasts... basically estimating either within a large range (such as [hurricane forecasts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_seasonal_forecasting)) or (more often) giving probabilities of whether the weather will be above or below that climatological expectations.
For more about the very limited skill of week 2 forecasts, see [this answer](https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/22385/how-accurate-is-the-national-weather-service-8-to-14-day-outlook/23280#23280).
But such long-range forecasts don't have nearly the precision to offer hourly forecasts to be of any legitimate use. It'd be like saying it'll take you 46 minutes and 7 seconds to get to work two weeks from Thursday... entirely misleading specificity.
So basically if you're eagerly planning for a trip in 10 days or a wedding in a month or two, you're much better off staying far away from such [novelty longrange forecasts](https://weather.com/weather/monthly/l/Orlando+FL+USFL0372:1:US) until the event gets much closer. Until then, all you can really figure on is what's typical for the given time of year. | No.
The atmosphere is too chaotic for hourly forecasts at time scales beyond several days to be useful. |
2,426,495 | I've just logged this with Microsoft Connect, but I'm wondering whether anyone else has come across it and found a fix. Google's not showing much...
Simple repro:
* Application has a WPF textbox with MaxLength set
* Use the TabletPC input panel to write more text than is allowed
* Press "insert" on the TabletPC panel and the application crashes
Beyond changing the behaviour of my application to not use MaxLength, does anyone know of a solution?
(I'll post here if Microsoft come back with any advice.)
**EDIT:** Should have specified I'm running .NET 3.5 and Windows 7. | 2010/03/11 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2426495",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/281678/"
] | Depending on your application's architecture, if you're using MVVM, I might remove the MaxLength and then do validation in your ViewModel object to ensure the value matches the length you expect.
Otherwise I might use the Binding Validation like what is [described in this article](http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/wpf-tutorial-binding-validation-rules).
Not what I would call optimal in the case of something that's truly length limited like a zip code or a phone number, but it lets you internalize all the validation in one place. | I'll be honest, I've no experience with either WPF or Tablet PC interactions so I'm shooting blind here but I'll either hit the target or learn something :)
From my simplistic view point I see a number of work arounds, all involve removing the max length:
1. On submission, truncate the string in the VM if too long
2. On submission, alert user to truncation and present truncated string back to them in the textbox for editing
3. Hang an event off the textbox and truncate the string "OnChange" with a label alert adjacent to the field, like a web form error.
Anyway, I hope you get some responses from some people who know what they are talking about ;) |
2,426,495 | I've just logged this with Microsoft Connect, but I'm wondering whether anyone else has come across it and found a fix. Google's not showing much...
Simple repro:
* Application has a WPF textbox with MaxLength set
* Use the TabletPC input panel to write more text than is allowed
* Press "insert" on the TabletPC panel and the application crashes
Beyond changing the behaviour of my application to not use MaxLength, does anyone know of a solution?
(I'll post here if Microsoft come back with any advice.)
**EDIT:** Should have specified I'm running .NET 3.5 and Windows 7. | 2010/03/11 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/2426495",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/281678/"
] | Apparently this is fixed in .NET 4.0, but no plans for a 3.5 fix. The suggestion from MS was to handle the TextChanged event to provide MaxLength automatically (ew!). | I'll be honest, I've no experience with either WPF or Tablet PC interactions so I'm shooting blind here but I'll either hit the target or learn something :)
From my simplistic view point I see a number of work arounds, all involve removing the max length:
1. On submission, truncate the string in the VM if too long
2. On submission, alert user to truncation and present truncated string back to them in the textbox for editing
3. Hang an event off the textbox and truncate the string "OnChange" with a label alert adjacent to the field, like a web form error.
Anyway, I hope you get some responses from some people who know what they are talking about ;) |
14,757,375 | I'm submitted my windows 8 metro application in windows store before 2 months ago. In my application i included advertisement a part and it will showing. but before 5 days the ad will not showing in my application... i can't find any solutions....
help me.
thanks in advance. | 2013/02/07 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/14757375",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1711593/"
] | Ads are only appear when they exist, if there is no ads for your region no ads will be shown in the app.
I'm sure that you have impressions, you can check that on your pubcenter account. | Ensure you have defined the add height and width, as per the settings in pubcenter |
972,237 | I have a server, which has 12 Cores, and usage is 42. What does it mean?
As far as I know 1 i 100% of one core. So 42 is 100% of 42 cores?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U2w9s.png) | 2019/06/20 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/972237",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/191681/"
] | For a rough estimation, you can use Load Average value shown on htop right upper corner. Value more than number of the cores is a sign that the system is overloaded, which is apparently true in your case as 42 is greater than 12.
For more info about system load and LA particularly a good read is [here](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-08-08/linux-load-averages.html) | Yes the server is overloaded/busy. Load average is not as straightforward just CPU. Other things are mixed in too e.g.tasks waiting for disk i/o to complete etc. You need to install some monitoring and gather data about the overall performance of your system. You can then use this to figure out what is the cause of your load issue. |
972,237 | I have a server, which has 12 Cores, and usage is 42. What does it mean?
As far as I know 1 i 100% of one core. So 42 is 100% of 42 cores?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U2w9s.png) | 2019/06/20 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/972237",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/191681/"
] | For a rough estimation, you can use Load Average value shown on htop right upper corner. Value more than number of the cores is a sign that the system is overloaded, which is apparently true in your case as 42 is greater than 12.
For more info about system load and LA particularly a good read is [here](http://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2017-08-08/linux-load-averages.html) | probably this link can be useful for you:
<https://www.deonsworld.co.za/2012/12/20/understanding-and-using-htop-monitor-system-resources/>
In short:
The system load is a measure of the amount of computational work that a computer system performs. The load average represents the average system load over a period of time. 1.0 on a single core cpu represents 100% utilization. Note that loads can exceed 1.0 this just means that processes have to wait longer for the cpu. 4.0 on a quad core represents 100% utilization. Anything under a 4.0 load average for a quad-core is ok as the load is distributed over the 4 cores. |
972,237 | I have a server, which has 12 Cores, and usage is 42. What does it mean?
As far as I know 1 i 100% of one core. So 42 is 100% of 42 cores?
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/U2w9s.png) | 2019/06/20 | [
"https://serverfault.com/questions/972237",
"https://serverfault.com",
"https://serverfault.com/users/191681/"
] | Yes the server is overloaded/busy. Load average is not as straightforward just CPU. Other things are mixed in too e.g.tasks waiting for disk i/o to complete etc. You need to install some monitoring and gather data about the overall performance of your system. You can then use this to figure out what is the cause of your load issue. | probably this link can be useful for you:
<https://www.deonsworld.co.za/2012/12/20/understanding-and-using-htop-monitor-system-resources/>
In short:
The system load is a measure of the amount of computational work that a computer system performs. The load average represents the average system load over a period of time. 1.0 on a single core cpu represents 100% utilization. Note that loads can exceed 1.0 this just means that processes have to wait longer for the cpu. 4.0 on a quad core represents 100% utilization. Anything under a 4.0 load average for a quad-core is ok as the load is distributed over the 4 cores. |
1,385,849 | I'm running a CPU consuming process (calculate mandelbrot set) and that process takes almost 100% of the CPU (I have 8 cores on my machine). when I change the affinity to half of the cores the CPU consumption show 50% or lower and that is cool but what I want to understand is how this magic is done:
**my question:**
If I change the affinity while the process is running and there are threads on disabled cores - Is it safe that I won't lose any data? how is it done? | 2018/12/19 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1385849",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/195091/"
] | You have 8 CPU cores, but certainly there are more than 8 threads started. Just count all background processes - there are probably a few dozens of them, each having at least one thread. Operating system must deal with it somehow to provide real multitasking. So OS has a scheduler that starts, pauses and restarts threads according to some algorithm and some set of options. Affinity is one of such options, it determines on which cores the thread can be scheduled. Pausing and restarting threads happens all the time. So does moving them across cores (OS tries to schedule on the same cores, though, because it reduces frequency of cache misses and increases performance). It's safe. | It *shouldnt* have any affect on the program. The operating system's scheduler will be notified that core is no longer available to be used. Switching a process from running state into a waiting state take microseconds, so the switch will appear instantaneous. The process will continue running on all available cores.
However, if the program was poorly written, or the compiler it was made from had some issues or bugs, the program could work improperly, or completely crash. |
1,385,849 | I'm running a CPU consuming process (calculate mandelbrot set) and that process takes almost 100% of the CPU (I have 8 cores on my machine). when I change the affinity to half of the cores the CPU consumption show 50% or lower and that is cool but what I want to understand is how this magic is done:
**my question:**
If I change the affinity while the process is running and there are threads on disabled cores - Is it safe that I won't lose any data? how is it done? | 2018/12/19 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1385849",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/195091/"
] | Although not specifically asked, I should point out (since I load all of my cores for weeks at a time, thus have some familiarity with this subject) that Affinity, while it can be useful, is not as important as Priority. Your jobs will generally finish twice as fast at 100%, compared to 50% CPU Utilization. Set the long running tasks to Low Priority and they will still run at 100% (as long as nothing of higher priority wants to run), but it will minimize the impact on doing other light-weight tasks. Only manage Affinity if there are fan noise/thermal issues you need to address... vacuuming my PC periodically gets me more mileage in that case. | It *shouldnt* have any affect on the program. The operating system's scheduler will be notified that core is no longer available to be used. Switching a process from running state into a waiting state take microseconds, so the switch will appear instantaneous. The process will continue running on all available cores.
However, if the program was poorly written, or the compiler it was made from had some issues or bugs, the program could work improperly, or completely crash. |
1,385,849 | I'm running a CPU consuming process (calculate mandelbrot set) and that process takes almost 100% of the CPU (I have 8 cores on my machine). when I change the affinity to half of the cores the CPU consumption show 50% or lower and that is cool but what I want to understand is how this magic is done:
**my question:**
If I change the affinity while the process is running and there are threads on disabled cores - Is it safe that I won't lose any data? how is it done? | 2018/12/19 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1385849",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/195091/"
] | You have 8 CPU cores, but certainly there are more than 8 threads started. Just count all background processes - there are probably a few dozens of them, each having at least one thread. Operating system must deal with it somehow to provide real multitasking. So OS has a scheduler that starts, pauses and restarts threads according to some algorithm and some set of options. Affinity is one of such options, it determines on which cores the thread can be scheduled. Pausing and restarting threads happens all the time. So does moving them across cores (OS tries to schedule on the same cores, though, because it reduces frequency of cache misses and increases performance). It's safe. | There is absolutely, positively, **no** risk of loss of data (or of data corruption) here. Or of process termination or any other problem. The windows scheduler handles this situation tens or even hundreds of times every second.
Changing process affinity (or changing its priority for that matter) - which really is changing the affinities (and priorities) of the process's threads - is just another reason for preemption.
After preemption, a thread may run on a different logical processor than it did the last time it was running. That is a completely common occurrence. |
1,385,849 | I'm running a CPU consuming process (calculate mandelbrot set) and that process takes almost 100% of the CPU (I have 8 cores on my machine). when I change the affinity to half of the cores the CPU consumption show 50% or lower and that is cool but what I want to understand is how this magic is done:
**my question:**
If I change the affinity while the process is running and there are threads on disabled cores - Is it safe that I won't lose any data? how is it done? | 2018/12/19 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1385849",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/195091/"
] | You have 8 CPU cores, but certainly there are more than 8 threads started. Just count all background processes - there are probably a few dozens of them, each having at least one thread. Operating system must deal with it somehow to provide real multitasking. So OS has a scheduler that starts, pauses and restarts threads according to some algorithm and some set of options. Affinity is one of such options, it determines on which cores the thread can be scheduled. Pausing and restarting threads happens all the time. So does moving them across cores (OS tries to schedule on the same cores, though, because it reduces frequency of cache misses and increases performance). It's safe. | Although not specifically asked, I should point out (since I load all of my cores for weeks at a time, thus have some familiarity with this subject) that Affinity, while it can be useful, is not as important as Priority. Your jobs will generally finish twice as fast at 100%, compared to 50% CPU Utilization. Set the long running tasks to Low Priority and they will still run at 100% (as long as nothing of higher priority wants to run), but it will minimize the impact on doing other light-weight tasks. Only manage Affinity if there are fan noise/thermal issues you need to address... vacuuming my PC periodically gets me more mileage in that case. |
1,385,849 | I'm running a CPU consuming process (calculate mandelbrot set) and that process takes almost 100% of the CPU (I have 8 cores on my machine). when I change the affinity to half of the cores the CPU consumption show 50% or lower and that is cool but what I want to understand is how this magic is done:
**my question:**
If I change the affinity while the process is running and there are threads on disabled cores - Is it safe that I won't lose any data? how is it done? | 2018/12/19 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1385849",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/195091/"
] | Although not specifically asked, I should point out (since I load all of my cores for weeks at a time, thus have some familiarity with this subject) that Affinity, while it can be useful, is not as important as Priority. Your jobs will generally finish twice as fast at 100%, compared to 50% CPU Utilization. Set the long running tasks to Low Priority and they will still run at 100% (as long as nothing of higher priority wants to run), but it will minimize the impact on doing other light-weight tasks. Only manage Affinity if there are fan noise/thermal issues you need to address... vacuuming my PC periodically gets me more mileage in that case. | There is absolutely, positively, **no** risk of loss of data (or of data corruption) here. Or of process termination or any other problem. The windows scheduler handles this situation tens or even hundreds of times every second.
Changing process affinity (or changing its priority for that matter) - which really is changing the affinities (and priorities) of the process's threads - is just another reason for preemption.
After preemption, a thread may run on a different logical processor than it did the last time it was running. That is a completely common occurrence. |
203,856 | I'm designing a DC Lab Power Supply; the voltage regulation circuit looks like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pywTK.png)
I'm developing the BOM, component by component, and next in line is specifying the capacitor in the feedback loop for the op amp, C1 in this schematic.
As I'm going through the selection of specific components, I've developed a new appreciation for the diversity of available capacitors and the relative complexity of what I originally thought was a pretty straightforward component type. So my dwelling on this particular component is as much for the learning opportunity it presents as the desire to pick the right item for this specific case.
My PCB is SMD wherever possible, and I'm inclined to believe a garden-variety 0805 X7R would do the job just fine. However, I've learned they can have surprising behaviors depending on, for example, the voltage applied, so wanted to get the perspective of more experienced designers.
The design of the feedback loop itself was by far the biggest time investment in the circuit overall. I had to refresh my foggy recollection of Body plots, transfer functions, op amp particulars, etc. And it took me quite a few tries to get it this right (and understand why it worked then :). So I'm inclined to think if there's anywhere in the overall where the capacitance in critical that this would be it.
So my question is: ***Is a regular surface-mount ceramic cap the right choice for using in this feedback loop? Or should I be thinking something a little fancier, like perhaps a film capacitor of some type?*** | 2015/12/02 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/203856",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/70923/"
] | The hazard with some ceramic capacitors are that they lose capacitance as the voltage goes up, and as the temperature goes up. Some under conditions *within the data sheet T and V ratings* can drop to 25% of their nominal capacitance. The worst are the very high value, so >1uF caps in small packages where you look at them and think 'how the mike did they cram all that capacity into *that*? The answer is, by making other compromises on the dielectric material.
Used in that C1 position, losing some C would result in the break frequency of that RC moving up from your design of 340Hz. If your stability margin is so small that you need high precision on that time constant, then I suggest you improve your margins.
I don't recall which of temperature and voltage spec designations like X7R leave underspecified, but as you have asked this question for your education, that's fine. I will simply warn you, and you can go digging for the information. You will need to dig deep. I won't say the manufacturers try to hide this stuff, but they sure don't make it easy to find. You will probably need to look in the material, rather than the capacitor, data sheets.
Amongst the main choices for materials are
NP0 - very stable, but only very low values. You might find a 1nF in that.
X7R - expect +/- 15%, only goes to mid values
X5R and Y5R - possibly -75% under some conditions, read the data sheets for the specific capacitor value, package (yes, even the package), voltage , manufacturer and material very carefully.
Keep your max voltage well below the rated voltage. At 1nF X7R, you should not have any problems. | The type isn't critical, as long as it meets your tolerance needs.
Be aware that ceramics (not sure they are available so small) lose >> 20 % (to 50 % or more ) of their capacitance as the applied voltage reaches their rating. To avoid this, you can use a cap that is rated at a higher voltage than you need.
On your circuit -- if your + and - 15 V supplies don't come up properly, is there any possibility that your output will become unregulated ? The 1k will turn on Q1, but requires the opamp to turn it off... |
203,856 | I'm designing a DC Lab Power Supply; the voltage regulation circuit looks like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pywTK.png)
I'm developing the BOM, component by component, and next in line is specifying the capacitor in the feedback loop for the op amp, C1 in this schematic.
As I'm going through the selection of specific components, I've developed a new appreciation for the diversity of available capacitors and the relative complexity of what I originally thought was a pretty straightforward component type. So my dwelling on this particular component is as much for the learning opportunity it presents as the desire to pick the right item for this specific case.
My PCB is SMD wherever possible, and I'm inclined to believe a garden-variety 0805 X7R would do the job just fine. However, I've learned they can have surprising behaviors depending on, for example, the voltage applied, so wanted to get the perspective of more experienced designers.
The design of the feedback loop itself was by far the biggest time investment in the circuit overall. I had to refresh my foggy recollection of Body plots, transfer functions, op amp particulars, etc. And it took me quite a few tries to get it this right (and understand why it worked then :). So I'm inclined to think if there's anywhere in the overall where the capacitance in critical that this would be it.
So my question is: ***Is a regular surface-mount ceramic cap the right choice for using in this feedback loop? Or should I be thinking something a little fancier, like perhaps a film capacitor of some type?*** | 2015/12/02 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/203856",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/70923/"
] | DC bias effects have already been noted (there is an [excellent application note](http://www.murata.com.sg/Portal/ASEANWeb.nsf/dx/faq04.pdf/$file/faq04.pdf) from Murata on this). This link appears to be broken; [this FAQ page](http://www.murata.com/en-eu/support/faqs/products/capacitor/mlcc/char/0005) may be of use.
C0G, although marginally more expensive, bring other things to the table, and in a feedback loop such as yours (I am designing some right now in an interesting application switching a few hundred volts that requires a linear ramp), I want to have a part that will remain at its rated capacitance across bias, time and temperature.
C0G: No DC bias effect from most manufacturers (this has to do with the material used). This is definitely true of AVX, Murata and Johnson.
No [capacitor ageing](http://www.johansondielectrics.com/ceramic-capacitor-aging-made-simple.html)
Tempco <= 30ppm: This will be important if the power supply box heats up significantly.
Compare that to X7R and you will find that in a control loop, C0G is the best choice in a ceramic. I would not normally need to use a better part than that.
I am actually using a 1nF C0G, 50V, 5%, 0603 part from AVX (but all the usual suspects have them). | The type isn't critical, as long as it meets your tolerance needs.
Be aware that ceramics (not sure they are available so small) lose >> 20 % (to 50 % or more ) of their capacitance as the applied voltage reaches their rating. To avoid this, you can use a cap that is rated at a higher voltage than you need.
On your circuit -- if your + and - 15 V supplies don't come up properly, is there any possibility that your output will become unregulated ? The 1k will turn on Q1, but requires the opamp to turn it off... |
203,856 | I'm designing a DC Lab Power Supply; the voltage regulation circuit looks like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/pywTK.png)
I'm developing the BOM, component by component, and next in line is specifying the capacitor in the feedback loop for the op amp, C1 in this schematic.
As I'm going through the selection of specific components, I've developed a new appreciation for the diversity of available capacitors and the relative complexity of what I originally thought was a pretty straightforward component type. So my dwelling on this particular component is as much for the learning opportunity it presents as the desire to pick the right item for this specific case.
My PCB is SMD wherever possible, and I'm inclined to believe a garden-variety 0805 X7R would do the job just fine. However, I've learned they can have surprising behaviors depending on, for example, the voltage applied, so wanted to get the perspective of more experienced designers.
The design of the feedback loop itself was by far the biggest time investment in the circuit overall. I had to refresh my foggy recollection of Body plots, transfer functions, op amp particulars, etc. And it took me quite a few tries to get it this right (and understand why it worked then :). So I'm inclined to think if there's anywhere in the overall where the capacitance in critical that this would be it.
So my question is: ***Is a regular surface-mount ceramic cap the right choice for using in this feedback loop? Or should I be thinking something a little fancier, like perhaps a film capacitor of some type?*** | 2015/12/02 | [
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/203856",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com",
"https://electronics.stackexchange.com/users/70923/"
] | DC bias effects have already been noted (there is an [excellent application note](http://www.murata.com.sg/Portal/ASEANWeb.nsf/dx/faq04.pdf/$file/faq04.pdf) from Murata on this). This link appears to be broken; [this FAQ page](http://www.murata.com/en-eu/support/faqs/products/capacitor/mlcc/char/0005) may be of use.
C0G, although marginally more expensive, bring other things to the table, and in a feedback loop such as yours (I am designing some right now in an interesting application switching a few hundred volts that requires a linear ramp), I want to have a part that will remain at its rated capacitance across bias, time and temperature.
C0G: No DC bias effect from most manufacturers (this has to do with the material used). This is definitely true of AVX, Murata and Johnson.
No [capacitor ageing](http://www.johansondielectrics.com/ceramic-capacitor-aging-made-simple.html)
Tempco <= 30ppm: This will be important if the power supply box heats up significantly.
Compare that to X7R and you will find that in a control loop, C0G is the best choice in a ceramic. I would not normally need to use a better part than that.
I am actually using a 1nF C0G, 50V, 5%, 0603 part from AVX (but all the usual suspects have them). | The hazard with some ceramic capacitors are that they lose capacitance as the voltage goes up, and as the temperature goes up. Some under conditions *within the data sheet T and V ratings* can drop to 25% of their nominal capacitance. The worst are the very high value, so >1uF caps in small packages where you look at them and think 'how the mike did they cram all that capacity into *that*? The answer is, by making other compromises on the dielectric material.
Used in that C1 position, losing some C would result in the break frequency of that RC moving up from your design of 340Hz. If your stability margin is so small that you need high precision on that time constant, then I suggest you improve your margins.
I don't recall which of temperature and voltage spec designations like X7R leave underspecified, but as you have asked this question for your education, that's fine. I will simply warn you, and you can go digging for the information. You will need to dig deep. I won't say the manufacturers try to hide this stuff, but they sure don't make it easy to find. You will probably need to look in the material, rather than the capacitor, data sheets.
Amongst the main choices for materials are
NP0 - very stable, but only very low values. You might find a 1nF in that.
X7R - expect +/- 15%, only goes to mid values
X5R and Y5R - possibly -75% under some conditions, read the data sheets for the specific capacitor value, package (yes, even the package), voltage , manufacturer and material very carefully.
Keep your max voltage well below the rated voltage. At 1nF X7R, you should not have any problems. |
5,381,854 | What are the free testing tools for android and iOS mobile application? | 2011/03/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5381854",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/669936/"
] | For Android, [Robotium](http://code.google.com/p/robotium/) is a hot one! | Android has the [Monkey](http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/monkey.html). |
5,381,854 | What are the free testing tools for android and iOS mobile application? | 2011/03/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5381854",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/669936/"
] | For Android, [Robotium](http://code.google.com/p/robotium/) is a hot one! | What about Robotium? <http://code.google.com/p/robotium/>
Or MoneyTalk (was FoneMonkey) - <http://www.gorillalogic.com/testing-tools/fonemonkey> |
5,381,854 | What are the free testing tools for android and iOS mobile application? | 2011/03/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5381854",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/669936/"
] | Seetest is a one more testing tool. You can download its trial version. Why I suggest this to use over robotium is because of its platform independence. Just write a test script for android and run the same script across all the other platforms like Windows Phone, IPhone, Blackberry, Symbian.
Here is the link to download its trial version.
<http://experitest.com/support/download-2/>
Thanks,
Sangram | Android has the [Monkey](http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/monkey.html). |
5,381,854 | What are the free testing tools for android and iOS mobile application? | 2011/03/21 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/5381854",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/669936/"
] | Seetest is a one more testing tool. You can download its trial version. Why I suggest this to use over robotium is because of its platform independence. Just write a test script for android and run the same script across all the other platforms like Windows Phone, IPhone, Blackberry, Symbian.
Here is the link to download its trial version.
<http://experitest.com/support/download-2/>
Thanks,
Sangram | What about Robotium? <http://code.google.com/p/robotium/>
Or MoneyTalk (was FoneMonkey) - <http://www.gorillalogic.com/testing-tools/fonemonkey> |
27,442 | Let's suppose you have a team of 10 developers working on automation (RPA). They are working in 4 different, independent bots.
The PO comes with more opportunities for automation. These opportunities need to be reviewed, sized and an effort estimation need to be provided, i.e. a discovery session is needed.
How do you plan a discovery session for new work items, considering:
1) The PO and involved stake holders and SMEs definitely can not spend more than 1 day on such a session
2) The ideas for automation, based on previous experience, could be completed within 1-2 sprints (1 sprint = 2 weeks)
3) The development team is already busy working in the current sprint
Do you pull some of the devs working in the current sprint to participate on this? How do you handle that? | 2019/10/24 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/27442",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/37571/"
] | Product Backlog Refinement
--------------------------
>
> The PO comes with more opportunities for automation. These opportunities need to be reviewed, sized and an effort estimation need to be provided, i.e. a discovery session is needed.
>
>
>
What you're calling a "discovery session" is actually a defined event in Scrum called [Product Backlog refinement](https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog).
>
> [Refinement] is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items. During Product Backlog refinement, items are reviewed and revised. The Scrum Team decides how and when refinement is done. Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team. However, Product Backlog items can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner’s discretion.
>
>
>
Your real issue appears to be that the Scrum Team hasn't allocated sufficient time for this essential activity. This is most likely due to the 100% utilization fallacy and/or process failures during Sprint Planning.
The Scrum Team should be allocating up to 8 hours in a two-week Sprint for Backlog Refinement. This activity should always be factored into the Scrum Team's capacity planning activities, especially during Sprint Planning. In particular, the Development Team should be adjusting its forecasts to ensure sufficient capacity for *all* framework activities, including refinement. Failure to charge framework overhead to team capacity reduces transparency, and often leaves the team over-committed once the framework's activities are factored into the amount of work a team can complete in a single iteration. Agile frameworks *require* sufficient slack to remain sustainable!
Accounting for Refinement Explicitly
------------------------------------
If the Scrum Team lacks the process maturity to reliably scope Sprint Goals to available Sprint capacity, it may be necessary for the Product Owner to explicitly include refinement activities in the Product Backlog. This will force the Development Team to include those activities in estimates and the Sprint Backlog, and makes refinement a visible deliverable for each Sprint.
Accounting for Refinement (and Other Activities) Implicitly
-----------------------------------------------------------
Alternatively, the Development Team's forecast could be reduced by 10% to implicitly include refinement in its Sprint Planning. For example, if the team has a sustainable average velocity of 25 without accounting for refinement, no more than 22 points should be pulled into the Sprint Backlog each Sprint.
After accounting similarly for other Scrum activities, I'd actually recommend structuring your Sprint Goals around a median of 80% of available team capacity each Sprint to ensure sufficient slack to sustain the pace of development indefinitely.
Other Framework Considerations
------------------------------
There's a lot more to unpack in your question. Many of the underlying issues hinted at in your question are deserving of separate questions, but are too broad to address in depth within a single post. I'll give some of them a quick gloss here.
1. Velocity should be used primarily as a capacity planning metric after applying suitable fudge factors. It is *not* supposed to a measure of productivity or a management target, so don't use it that way.
2. Scrum values a sustainable pace of collaborative development over packing each Sprint to the brim. Don't chase utilization metrics!
3. Use capacity planning to make each Sprint an efficient time box for achieving clear goals and helping the team work *better*. Don't use the framework to force people work harder or faster; that never ends well for anyone, including the business and its customers if quality drops as a result of insufficient slack.
4. Each Sprint *must* have a Sprint Goal. Without one, you can't effectively scope work for the Sprint, consistently deliver on Sprint Goals, or routinely achieve the Development Team's forecasts.
5. Story spikes are time-boxed, exploratory user stories with results that feed effective estimation of more complex user stories and epics. As a rule of thumb, such stories should be treated as work for a future Sprint, with the results of the spike feeding refinement and planning.
* As a general rule, the output of a story spike is an input to a Sprint Review or Backlog Refinement.
* In most cases, story spikes shouldn't lead to additional work in the *current* Sprint.
* Follow-on work flowing from a story spike should be placed onto the Product Backlog as future work to be estimated, prioritized, and planned for subsequent iterations.
6. [Agile release planning](https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271) is based on a sustainable cadence, and optimizes for *predictability* and *adaptation* rather than individual or team utilization metrics.
7. Fixed-scope or fixed-effort planning at the project level is not agile, and will generally result in a brittle project plan with poor product quality.
In short, the problems you're facing may not be simply the result of insufficient team capacity for refinement. It's definitely worth spending several Sprint Retrospectives (or even carving some near-term time out of a following Sprint) to inspect-and-adapt the team's processes.
Parting Thoughts
----------------
Quoting a slide I wrote for one of my recent coaching engagements, I'll leave you with this thought:
>
> A misapplied Scrum framework is like a chainsaw. It's a lot more efficient at cutting down trees than a butter knife, but it's also much more likely to cause bodily harm when used improperly.
>
>
>
The application of agile principles doesn't require a perfect process on day one, or even day 501 of an 18-month project. The intent is to create time and opportunity for *continuous improvements* to the product, the process, and the workflow. Start where you are, and then *iterate* towards a more sustainable process! | >
> The development team is already busy working in the current sprint
>
>
>
One of the principles in the [Scrum Guide](https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog) is that a Scrum team spends time during the sprint refining their backlog of work. This can represent up to 10% of the time in the sprint.
In your situation this backlog refinement would include discovery sessions, review, etc.
How the refinement is organised is up to the team. |
27,442 | Let's suppose you have a team of 10 developers working on automation (RPA). They are working in 4 different, independent bots.
The PO comes with more opportunities for automation. These opportunities need to be reviewed, sized and an effort estimation need to be provided, i.e. a discovery session is needed.
How do you plan a discovery session for new work items, considering:
1) The PO and involved stake holders and SMEs definitely can not spend more than 1 day on such a session
2) The ideas for automation, based on previous experience, could be completed within 1-2 sprints (1 sprint = 2 weeks)
3) The development team is already busy working in the current sprint
Do you pull some of the devs working in the current sprint to participate on this? How do you handle that? | 2019/10/24 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/27442",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/37571/"
] | >
> The development team is already busy working in the current sprint
>
>
>
One of the principles in the [Scrum Guide](https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog) is that a Scrum team spends time during the sprint refining their backlog of work. This can represent up to 10% of the time in the sprint.
In your situation this backlog refinement would include discovery sessions, review, etc.
How the refinement is organised is up to the team. | A short answer I have found easy to implement in many different kinds of teams: Create a user story for the discovery session, and treat it like you do any other story. That is, rank it high enough in your Product Backlog to get into the sprint; estimate and task it out (if you do those things); add the developers who choose to be involved; and if that pushes a development story out of the sprint based on your method of ensuring "sustainable pace," so be it. |
27,442 | Let's suppose you have a team of 10 developers working on automation (RPA). They are working in 4 different, independent bots.
The PO comes with more opportunities for automation. These opportunities need to be reviewed, sized and an effort estimation need to be provided, i.e. a discovery session is needed.
How do you plan a discovery session for new work items, considering:
1) The PO and involved stake holders and SMEs definitely can not spend more than 1 day on such a session
2) The ideas for automation, based on previous experience, could be completed within 1-2 sprints (1 sprint = 2 weeks)
3) The development team is already busy working in the current sprint
Do you pull some of the devs working in the current sprint to participate on this? How do you handle that? | 2019/10/24 | [
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/27442",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com",
"https://pm.stackexchange.com/users/37571/"
] | Product Backlog Refinement
--------------------------
>
> The PO comes with more opportunities for automation. These opportunities need to be reviewed, sized and an effort estimation need to be provided, i.e. a discovery session is needed.
>
>
>
What you're calling a "discovery session" is actually a defined event in Scrum called [Product Backlog refinement](https://www.scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html#artifacts-productbacklog).
>
> [Refinement] is an ongoing process in which the Product Owner and the Development Team collaborate on the details of Product Backlog items. During Product Backlog refinement, items are reviewed and revised. The Scrum Team decides how and when refinement is done. Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team. However, Product Backlog items can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner’s discretion.
>
>
>
Your real issue appears to be that the Scrum Team hasn't allocated sufficient time for this essential activity. This is most likely due to the 100% utilization fallacy and/or process failures during Sprint Planning.
The Scrum Team should be allocating up to 8 hours in a two-week Sprint for Backlog Refinement. This activity should always be factored into the Scrum Team's capacity planning activities, especially during Sprint Planning. In particular, the Development Team should be adjusting its forecasts to ensure sufficient capacity for *all* framework activities, including refinement. Failure to charge framework overhead to team capacity reduces transparency, and often leaves the team over-committed once the framework's activities are factored into the amount of work a team can complete in a single iteration. Agile frameworks *require* sufficient slack to remain sustainable!
Accounting for Refinement Explicitly
------------------------------------
If the Scrum Team lacks the process maturity to reliably scope Sprint Goals to available Sprint capacity, it may be necessary for the Product Owner to explicitly include refinement activities in the Product Backlog. This will force the Development Team to include those activities in estimates and the Sprint Backlog, and makes refinement a visible deliverable for each Sprint.
Accounting for Refinement (and Other Activities) Implicitly
-----------------------------------------------------------
Alternatively, the Development Team's forecast could be reduced by 10% to implicitly include refinement in its Sprint Planning. For example, if the team has a sustainable average velocity of 25 without accounting for refinement, no more than 22 points should be pulled into the Sprint Backlog each Sprint.
After accounting similarly for other Scrum activities, I'd actually recommend structuring your Sprint Goals around a median of 80% of available team capacity each Sprint to ensure sufficient slack to sustain the pace of development indefinitely.
Other Framework Considerations
------------------------------
There's a lot more to unpack in your question. Many of the underlying issues hinted at in your question are deserving of separate questions, but are too broad to address in depth within a single post. I'll give some of them a quick gloss here.
1. Velocity should be used primarily as a capacity planning metric after applying suitable fudge factors. It is *not* supposed to a measure of productivity or a management target, so don't use it that way.
2. Scrum values a sustainable pace of collaborative development over packing each Sprint to the brim. Don't chase utilization metrics!
3. Use capacity planning to make each Sprint an efficient time box for achieving clear goals and helping the team work *better*. Don't use the framework to force people work harder or faster; that never ends well for anyone, including the business and its customers if quality drops as a result of insufficient slack.
4. Each Sprint *must* have a Sprint Goal. Without one, you can't effectively scope work for the Sprint, consistently deliver on Sprint Goals, or routinely achieve the Development Team's forecasts.
5. Story spikes are time-boxed, exploratory user stories with results that feed effective estimation of more complex user stories and epics. As a rule of thumb, such stories should be treated as work for a future Sprint, with the results of the spike feeding refinement and planning.
* As a general rule, the output of a story spike is an input to a Sprint Review or Backlog Refinement.
* In most cases, story spikes shouldn't lead to additional work in the *current* Sprint.
* Follow-on work flowing from a story spike should be placed onto the Product Backlog as future work to be estimated, prioritized, and planned for subsequent iterations.
6. [Agile release planning](https://pm.stackexchange.com/a/16376/4271) is based on a sustainable cadence, and optimizes for *predictability* and *adaptation* rather than individual or team utilization metrics.
7. Fixed-scope or fixed-effort planning at the project level is not agile, and will generally result in a brittle project plan with poor product quality.
In short, the problems you're facing may not be simply the result of insufficient team capacity for refinement. It's definitely worth spending several Sprint Retrospectives (or even carving some near-term time out of a following Sprint) to inspect-and-adapt the team's processes.
Parting Thoughts
----------------
Quoting a slide I wrote for one of my recent coaching engagements, I'll leave you with this thought:
>
> A misapplied Scrum framework is like a chainsaw. It's a lot more efficient at cutting down trees than a butter knife, but it's also much more likely to cause bodily harm when used improperly.
>
>
>
The application of agile principles doesn't require a perfect process on day one, or even day 501 of an 18-month project. The intent is to create time and opportunity for *continuous improvements* to the product, the process, and the workflow. Start where you are, and then *iterate* towards a more sustainable process! | A short answer I have found easy to implement in many different kinds of teams: Create a user story for the discovery session, and treat it like you do any other story. That is, rank it high enough in your Product Backlog to get into the sprint; estimate and task it out (if you do those things); add the developers who choose to be involved; and if that pushes a development story out of the sprint based on your method of ensuring "sustainable pace," so be it. |
122,734 | I'm trying to install a deadbolt on our front door that currently only has a locking handle. All of the things I've read online are for doors that are up to 1 3/4 inches thick, but my door is 2 inches thick.
Will there be any difference besides possibly needing longer screws to get the two halves to meet? | 2017/09/05 | [
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/122734",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com",
"https://diy.stackexchange.com/users/73785/"
] | No, actually, the locking rod is made to snap off at various lengths, to make up for varying door thicknesses.
Make sure to center the bolt itself on the door edge. Disregard the factory template, as it will be based on a different door thickness. | Some locks need more than longer screws because the two sides fit into each other so they don't twist and become misaligned. Also, some use special barrel shaped bolts that are threaded on the inside and the outside and you're not going to find "longer" versions of those ("mounting screws" in the diagram).
I made doors for an outside shed that were a little over 2" thick and I decided I couldn't find a deadbolt that would mount securely enough to be happy with, so I opted for a different locking mechanism.
If you find the right deadbolt, longer screws might work, but you'll have to look at how the two halves come together carefully.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rcv8U.jpg) |
113,052 | The book says:
>
> **Concentration.** Some spells require you to maintain concentration in order to keep
> their magic active. If you lose concentration, such a spell ends.
>
>
>
So what happens if, for example, you are already concentrating on a spell, and cast Witch Bolt without concentrating. Would you get the initial arc of blue energy, or would it not even go off?
I am asking if you can cast a spell that says concentration without concentrating for an immediate effect. This would be useful to avoid interrupting your existing concentration. In essence, if you are concentrating on *thing A* (doesn't have to be a spell since other things need concentration), can you cast a concentration spell getting an immediate effect without losing concentration on *thing A*?
Since the definition of concentration is to keep the spell active (meaning it is already active) I would think that you would get the initial effect (if it had one) without the need to concentrate on it. | 2018/01/08 | [
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/113052",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com",
"https://rpg.stackexchange.com/users/41150/"
] | No. Casting a concentration spell immediately breaks any existing concentration.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the rules clarifications in Xanathar's Guide to Everything (pg. 5) addresses this issue directly:
>
> As soon as you start casting a spell or using a special ability that requires concentration, your concentration on another effect ends instantly.
>
>
> | A concentration spell requires concentration *all the time*
-----------------------------------------------------------
You concentrate on a concentration spell from the instant you start to cast it until you stop concentrating. As such any previous concentration spell loses concentration at that instant. |
13,529 | I am wondering what some file formats are that are out of the scope of "normal" file formats you typically find on the web. The "normal" file formats I'm not considering in this post are:
* Image formats like png
* Video formats like mp4
* Compression formats like zip
* Audio formats like flac
* Document formats like pdf
* Source code formats like xml, js, rb, java, etc.
* Plain text formats like txt
* Data formats like csv
Some "out of the mainstream" file formats that I am looking for in this post are things like these (the few ones I know about):
* [FASTA format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FASTA_format) for nucleotide sequences
* [Mass Spec formats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_spectrometry_data_format#Open_formats)
* [Mol file format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_table_file) for 3D chemical structures.
* [KML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyhole_Markup_Language) and [Shapefile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapefile) formats
* RDF and JSON-ld
Basically I just know a few file formats in the fields of Biology and GIS/mapping. A few others that might fit this "out of the ordinary" concept are SQL dumps or database dumps, or logfile formats like [syslog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syslog).
I am just wondering if one could list any major common yet out of the ordinary ones (out of the ordinary mainly because they are in specialized fields), such as those from these fields, or other fields not mentioned.
* Physics
* Other Chemical/Biological/Genetic ones (for example, I will have to see if there are MicroArray formats, or Gel Electrophoresis)
* Medicine/Hospital tools for their visualizations or records.
* Point clouds
* [Earth science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Earth_sciences_data_formats) / Geology / GIS that I have missed
* Astronomy data formats.
* Major video/audio ones that may be easily missed (like maybe closed captioning is a format, I don't know).
* [Standard metadata formats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata_standard) (not sure about these if they are file formats yet).
* Sports records.
* Financial stuff formats.
Again, I'm only wondering for the *major* ones that are out of the ordinary that you would encounter as common in these (or other major) industries. I know there are [thousands of file formats](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1735659/list-of-all-mimetypes-on-the-planet-mapped-to-file-extensions) haha, so not looking for a comprehensive list or anything, just mainly want to get introduced to the major ones that are out of the ordinary but common. Instead of specific formats it could just be classes of formats too, that works as well. Thank you. | 2018/11/18 | [
"https://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/13529",
"https://opendata.stackexchange.com",
"https://opendata.stackexchange.com/users/5958/"
] | I think you are searching for "Dividend Yield", which can be added to any gains or losses to give the total return.
<http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-dividend-yield/>
<http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-dividend-yield/table>
For "total return" maybe you mean "earnings yield"
<http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-earnings-yield>
<http://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-earnings-yield/table/by-year> | Robert Shiller has monthly total returns of the S&P 500 going back to 1871 on his website at Yale: [http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm](http://www.econ.yale.edu/%7Eshiller/data.htm) |
1,333,317 | So i tried to use my android phone that is connected to a wifi, and used a wifi sharing app called (Netshare), to tether the internet to my mac(wirelessly). The internet worked, the browser works and i can even go to the steam's website through my browser, but when i try to open the steam app it says its not able to connect.Any workarounds?
[Netshare](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KzvFn.jpg)
[HTTP proxy setup as the app said](https://i.stack.imgur.com/37I3u.png)
[HTTPS proxy](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OoXyt.png)
[cant connect to steam](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XmInv.png)
[Nothing works except the store](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uMOAo.jpg)
Ive tried google but couldn't find any relevant posts, not even on steam's website.
\*\*edit
(Found out this has got something to do with TCP and UDP ports, mainly UDP, which the android app i mentioned doesn't seem to provide. So maybe there is a way to forward those UDP connections from the router, to my android phone and to my mac again which is tethered to the phone.Help) | 2018/06/22 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1333317",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/723635/"
] | Looks like the crucial part of what the application does is providing HTTP/HTTPS proxy. Services, clients, protocols etc. that don't use it just don't work.
Workaround? Connect the laptop directly or find a tethering solution that isn't so limited (I don't know if it's possible on Android though). | You can't forward ports through tethers, so the steam ports (27000-27036) aren't being allowed. The only solution is to have a router, but to have internet you'll need an ISP so you'll have to find a deal in your area (ISP's set up the hardware for you). I suggest having over 6MB/s that is probably the minimum for steam and you can look online for how to port forward on your router. |
1,333,317 | So i tried to use my android phone that is connected to a wifi, and used a wifi sharing app called (Netshare), to tether the internet to my mac(wirelessly). The internet worked, the browser works and i can even go to the steam's website through my browser, but when i try to open the steam app it says its not able to connect.Any workarounds?
[Netshare](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KzvFn.jpg)
[HTTP proxy setup as the app said](https://i.stack.imgur.com/37I3u.png)
[HTTPS proxy](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OoXyt.png)
[cant connect to steam](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XmInv.png)
[Nothing works except the store](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uMOAo.jpg)
Ive tried google but couldn't find any relevant posts, not even on steam's website.
\*\*edit
(Found out this has got something to do with TCP and UDP ports, mainly UDP, which the android app i mentioned doesn't seem to provide. So maybe there is a way to forward those UDP connections from the router, to my android phone and to my mac again which is tethered to the phone.Help) | 2018/06/22 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1333317",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/723635/"
] | Looks like the crucial part of what the application does is providing HTTP/HTTPS proxy. Services, clients, protocols etc. that don't use it just don't work.
Workaround? Connect the laptop directly or find a tethering solution that isn't so limited (I don't know if it's possible on Android though). | Just Enable Automatic Detect settings and disable proxy server in internet options > Connections > Lan Settings
[enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/r0LiM.png) |
1,333,317 | So i tried to use my android phone that is connected to a wifi, and used a wifi sharing app called (Netshare), to tether the internet to my mac(wirelessly). The internet worked, the browser works and i can even go to the steam's website through my browser, but when i try to open the steam app it says its not able to connect.Any workarounds?
[Netshare](https://i.stack.imgur.com/KzvFn.jpg)
[HTTP proxy setup as the app said](https://i.stack.imgur.com/37I3u.png)
[HTTPS proxy](https://i.stack.imgur.com/OoXyt.png)
[cant connect to steam](https://i.stack.imgur.com/XmInv.png)
[Nothing works except the store](https://i.stack.imgur.com/uMOAo.jpg)
Ive tried google but couldn't find any relevant posts, not even on steam's website.
\*\*edit
(Found out this has got something to do with TCP and UDP ports, mainly UDP, which the android app i mentioned doesn't seem to provide. So maybe there is a way to forward those UDP connections from the router, to my android phone and to my mac again which is tethered to the phone.Help) | 2018/06/22 | [
"https://superuser.com/questions/1333317",
"https://superuser.com",
"https://superuser.com/users/723635/"
] | Looks like the crucial part of what the application does is providing HTTP/HTTPS proxy. Services, clients, protocols etc. that don't use it just don't work.
Workaround? Connect the laptop directly or find a tethering solution that isn't so limited (I don't know if it's possible on Android though). | On Android, under Network and Internet settings, choose Advanced, then select Private DNS to Automatic. It should work then for loading the Steam app through Hotspot. |
37,776 | [A while ago](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/36944/avoiding-darkness-induced-audience-apathy), I asked if there any possible way for my series to avoid causing [Darkness Induced Audience Apathy](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy). A well thought-out response stated that unless I give my readers a reason to care about my protagonist, they won't give a damn about the conflicts he's involved in (due to his existential nihilistic worldview and selfish nature) and will [outright](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EightDeadlyWords) [despise](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BaseBreakingCharacter) [him](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DesignatedHero).
What I forget to mention was that I plan having my protagonist undergo a character arc over the trilogy where becomes significantly less selfish and eventually abandon his nihilistic philosophy. It's also revealed through a series of flashbacks that his behavior stems from his early years where he was raised by abusive parents, forced to fend for himself on the streets, fell in with a gang of seedy people just to stay alive and was betrayed by someone who he was very close with. And unlike many fictional works that portray nihilism in a negative light, the protagonist's nihilism revolves around the fact that he believes that his life is meaningless due to lacking of clear purpose.
But when all is said and done, I feel that he's nothing more than a soulless archetype (along with every single character in my trilogy) and comes across as a grating character, despite having a good reason to justify his behavior. In short, how can I make my protagonist more likable and somewhat redeemable? | 2018/07/22 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/37776",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | You say it yourself:
>
> I feel that he's nothing more than a soulless archetype
>
>
>
A soulless archetype is not going to be likeable, whether they are a positive or a negative archetype. So how do you give your character a soul?
* What *does* your MC care about? You say "himself", but what does it mean? What is it that he enjoys? Does he have any interests? Hobbies?
* How does your MC feel about himself? How does he feel about the world? Disappointment? Anger? Frustration? Acceptance? How does he feel about more idealistic people?
* What are his wishes for the future? More of the same, or a change? What are his expectations for the future, and how do they correlate to his wishes?
* What are the things the character wouldn't stoop to? Does he accept others doing that thing, or is it a complete dealbreaker?
* Given an opportunity to do something good / something bad at no cost or very little cost to himself, would the character do it?
* Are there any actions taken or not taken that the character regrets? Any doubts regarding doing or not doing something in the future?
Get to know your character intimately - their internal conflicts, fears, aspirations, know them better than they know themselves. Then see how you can show those facets of him in your writing. | ### Skip the flashbacks. That IS the story.
Instead of flashbacks, just consider a story (trilogy or not) that shows *present-tense* scenes with time-skips between chapters showing the transformation from an innocent child, wanting to play, with an imagination, to nihilistic jerk.
* Abuse and neglect by parents, crying and being laughed at by parents and left alone,
* Two years later: Fending for himself on the streets.
* A year later: Fighting over garbage for food, losing.
* A year later: Stealing food, getting caught, escaping by causing injury.
* Two years later: Being "adopted" by a gang leader he trusts.
And so on. **Show** us how this nihilism develops, not through flashbacks but through the key scenes in its development so we readers must *wonder* what decisions the MC will make (always bad ones, but ones we understand as providing the most short term gain).
You must find a key scene early on to open with, showing the innocence and potential for this child, something the MC can remember and fail at trying to suppress. **That** is who the readers can root for; a time when the MC loved and was loved.
Don't tell us that, don't introduce a tragic or ruthless character and THEN try to redeem him. It didn't work for Darth Vader, and it won't work for you!
Personally, if I was writing this (I won't) I would not have abusive parents, but adoptive parents. I would start the character with a loving mother in a loving environment, taken away. She is killed in a bank robbery, or car accident. Perhaps dies horrifically in front of our MC; beginning his trauma.
He gets taken in by a married uncle; but not a nice person, taking him in because the MC's mother left, through insurance and lawyers, a trust fund entitling the Uncle to some regular payment of $100's per month to help with the MC's education and support. But screw that! He's a compulsive gambler, his wife is a drug addict, they put the kid in a corner and ignore him. The lawyers administering the trust shirk their duty to the kid and just keep sending out the checks.
If you want a trilogy, the first book is the first Act, and by the end of this book your character should be committed to *beginning* their journey, from their normal [horrific] world into new territory.
So my story arc *within* the first book is
* Act I, 30%: Loving relationship young child; mother and child alone with no father mentioned (or father heroically dead, a soldier perhaps), End of Act I: mother is slaughtered in front of him, and what happens next?
* Act II, 40%: Adoption, escalating horrors of neglect, abuse, living like an animal but growing into an analytic nihilist, gaining success through not caring. End of Act II: The worst step, perhaps murder (perhaps of adoptive parents), a catalyst. The *solidification* of Nihilism.
* Act III: A conflict here that propels a determination to change; this is the end of ACT I *for the series*. In this novel we established the "normal" world for the MC and why. We are sympathetic from the start and understand why he is the way he is; now we need a reason for him to exert his will and try to change: The memory of his mother, perhaps. But at the end of Trilogy Act I, we show an MC that has made a decision to embark on a journey (emotional, physical, or both) *away* from his normal world because he wants something better. In this case, his normal world may be just brutality and horror that he sees somehow will end in his own pointless death, and it turns out he *does* care.
Throughout the novel, this Act III catalyst must be foreshadowed with hints that the MC does, subconsciously, care, and uses his nihilism to excuse that caring because *what he does, doesn't matter, nothing matters,* so if he shows mercy or cruelty is meaningless, and making an *effort* to be cruel is a waste of energy. In particular, these incidents should relate to whatever *happy* memories he has of childhood, before his mother was killed. Even if the MC doesn't realize it, the reader sees the MC is not going to visit upon others his own horror: He finds excuse to not harm children or their mothers because he doesn't feel like it. He finds excuse to harm those that do, because he *does* feel like it, and nothing matters anyway. These don't have to be glaringly obvious or that frequent, but in most chapters this kind of foreshadowing should be present; if you are a discovery writer and see a chance to engineer such a scene, do it. A nihilist MC can be particularly non-introspective, his explanation for everything he does can be just that he does whatever he feels like in the moment because if nothing matters, why the hell not?
But the reader can pick up on it, that he's in denial of his feelings, and these acts of kindness or mercy **do** matter to him. In fact, they could matter: One of these acts of mercy can have plot ramifications that lead him into the finale for this novel, and his desire to change. (A major conflict with those around him or his environment or law enforcement or whatever, all to be realized in the next novel.) |
37,776 | [A while ago](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/36944/avoiding-darkness-induced-audience-apathy), I asked if there any possible way for my series to avoid causing [Darkness Induced Audience Apathy](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy). A well thought-out response stated that unless I give my readers a reason to care about my protagonist, they won't give a damn about the conflicts he's involved in (due to his existential nihilistic worldview and selfish nature) and will [outright](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EightDeadlyWords) [despise](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BaseBreakingCharacter) [him](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DesignatedHero).
What I forget to mention was that I plan having my protagonist undergo a character arc over the trilogy where becomes significantly less selfish and eventually abandon his nihilistic philosophy. It's also revealed through a series of flashbacks that his behavior stems from his early years where he was raised by abusive parents, forced to fend for himself on the streets, fell in with a gang of seedy people just to stay alive and was betrayed by someone who he was very close with. And unlike many fictional works that portray nihilism in a negative light, the protagonist's nihilism revolves around the fact that he believes that his life is meaningless due to lacking of clear purpose.
But when all is said and done, I feel that he's nothing more than a soulless archetype (along with every single character in my trilogy) and comes across as a grating character, despite having a good reason to justify his behavior. In short, how can I make my protagonist more likable and somewhat redeemable? | 2018/07/22 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/37776",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | You say it yourself:
>
> I feel that he's nothing more than a soulless archetype
>
>
>
A soulless archetype is not going to be likeable, whether they are a positive or a negative archetype. So how do you give your character a soul?
* What *does* your MC care about? You say "himself", but what does it mean? What is it that he enjoys? Does he have any interests? Hobbies?
* How does your MC feel about himself? How does he feel about the world? Disappointment? Anger? Frustration? Acceptance? How does he feel about more idealistic people?
* What are his wishes for the future? More of the same, or a change? What are his expectations for the future, and how do they correlate to his wishes?
* What are the things the character wouldn't stoop to? Does he accept others doing that thing, or is it a complete dealbreaker?
* Given an opportunity to do something good / something bad at no cost or very little cost to himself, would the character do it?
* Are there any actions taken or not taken that the character regrets? Any doubts regarding doing or not doing something in the future?
Get to know your character intimately - their internal conflicts, fears, aspirations, know them better than they know themselves. Then see how you can show those facets of him in your writing. | Galastel had a fantastic answer.
Make them likeable by making them human, "giving them a soul." No person, no matter how unlikeable, is grumpy and hates everything. (Example, Dolores Umbridge, from the Harry Potter series. She sucks! Most people hate her. But she'd likely show a soft spot for a kitten or something. A love of animals (cats specifically) is a relatable quality.) There are things that your MC will get upset/emotional about, or things that make them smile or make them more relatable as a person, or at least more realistic.
This can all be done through subtle details (what draws your MC's attention? how do these things make them feel?) Your character doesn't have to be universally beloved, but if MC has absolutely no likeable qualities, consider developing them further before moving on with your story. |
37,776 | [A while ago](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/36944/avoiding-darkness-induced-audience-apathy), I asked if there any possible way for my series to avoid causing [Darkness Induced Audience Apathy](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy). A well thought-out response stated that unless I give my readers a reason to care about my protagonist, they won't give a damn about the conflicts he's involved in (due to his existential nihilistic worldview and selfish nature) and will [outright](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EightDeadlyWords) [despise](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BaseBreakingCharacter) [him](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DesignatedHero).
What I forget to mention was that I plan having my protagonist undergo a character arc over the trilogy where becomes significantly less selfish and eventually abandon his nihilistic philosophy. It's also revealed through a series of flashbacks that his behavior stems from his early years where he was raised by abusive parents, forced to fend for himself on the streets, fell in with a gang of seedy people just to stay alive and was betrayed by someone who he was very close with. And unlike many fictional works that portray nihilism in a negative light, the protagonist's nihilism revolves around the fact that he believes that his life is meaningless due to lacking of clear purpose.
But when all is said and done, I feel that he's nothing more than a soulless archetype (along with every single character in my trilogy) and comes across as a grating character, despite having a good reason to justify his behavior. In short, how can I make my protagonist more likable and somewhat redeemable? | 2018/07/22 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/37776",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | You say it yourself:
>
> I feel that he's nothing more than a soulless archetype
>
>
>
A soulless archetype is not going to be likeable, whether they are a positive or a negative archetype. So how do you give your character a soul?
* What *does* your MC care about? You say "himself", but what does it mean? What is it that he enjoys? Does he have any interests? Hobbies?
* How does your MC feel about himself? How does he feel about the world? Disappointment? Anger? Frustration? Acceptance? How does he feel about more idealistic people?
* What are his wishes for the future? More of the same, or a change? What are his expectations for the future, and how do they correlate to his wishes?
* What are the things the character wouldn't stoop to? Does he accept others doing that thing, or is it a complete dealbreaker?
* Given an opportunity to do something good / something bad at no cost or very little cost to himself, would the character do it?
* Are there any actions taken or not taken that the character regrets? Any doubts regarding doing or not doing something in the future?
Get to know your character intimately - their internal conflicts, fears, aspirations, know them better than they know themselves. Then see how you can show those facets of him in your writing. | I've been having the same problem with my main character --he's not very likeable, but I don't want to knock off his rough edges too early.
I've tried different things, but the one I'm most happy with is **giving him goals and values that he personally believes in**, even if they are questionable from an objective point of view. Everyone is the hero of his or her own story, and one of the keys to an intrinsically unlikable narrator is guiding the audience to see things from the protagonist's perspective.
I tend to overuse this book as an example, but *Lolita* is the paradigmatic example of an author building unlikely sympathy for a narrator, who by any objective standard is a complete monster, entirely through skillful use of point of view. |
37,776 | [A while ago](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/36944/avoiding-darkness-induced-audience-apathy), I asked if there any possible way for my series to avoid causing [Darkness Induced Audience Apathy](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy). A well thought-out response stated that unless I give my readers a reason to care about my protagonist, they won't give a damn about the conflicts he's involved in (due to his existential nihilistic worldview and selfish nature) and will [outright](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EightDeadlyWords) [despise](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BaseBreakingCharacter) [him](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DesignatedHero).
What I forget to mention was that I plan having my protagonist undergo a character arc over the trilogy where becomes significantly less selfish and eventually abandon his nihilistic philosophy. It's also revealed through a series of flashbacks that his behavior stems from his early years where he was raised by abusive parents, forced to fend for himself on the streets, fell in with a gang of seedy people just to stay alive and was betrayed by someone who he was very close with. And unlike many fictional works that portray nihilism in a negative light, the protagonist's nihilism revolves around the fact that he believes that his life is meaningless due to lacking of clear purpose.
But when all is said and done, I feel that he's nothing more than a soulless archetype (along with every single character in my trilogy) and comes across as a grating character, despite having a good reason to justify his behavior. In short, how can I make my protagonist more likable and somewhat redeemable? | 2018/07/22 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/37776",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | ### Skip the flashbacks. That IS the story.
Instead of flashbacks, just consider a story (trilogy or not) that shows *present-tense* scenes with time-skips between chapters showing the transformation from an innocent child, wanting to play, with an imagination, to nihilistic jerk.
* Abuse and neglect by parents, crying and being laughed at by parents and left alone,
* Two years later: Fending for himself on the streets.
* A year later: Fighting over garbage for food, losing.
* A year later: Stealing food, getting caught, escaping by causing injury.
* Two years later: Being "adopted" by a gang leader he trusts.
And so on. **Show** us how this nihilism develops, not through flashbacks but through the key scenes in its development so we readers must *wonder* what decisions the MC will make (always bad ones, but ones we understand as providing the most short term gain).
You must find a key scene early on to open with, showing the innocence and potential for this child, something the MC can remember and fail at trying to suppress. **That** is who the readers can root for; a time when the MC loved and was loved.
Don't tell us that, don't introduce a tragic or ruthless character and THEN try to redeem him. It didn't work for Darth Vader, and it won't work for you!
Personally, if I was writing this (I won't) I would not have abusive parents, but adoptive parents. I would start the character with a loving mother in a loving environment, taken away. She is killed in a bank robbery, or car accident. Perhaps dies horrifically in front of our MC; beginning his trauma.
He gets taken in by a married uncle; but not a nice person, taking him in because the MC's mother left, through insurance and lawyers, a trust fund entitling the Uncle to some regular payment of $100's per month to help with the MC's education and support. But screw that! He's a compulsive gambler, his wife is a drug addict, they put the kid in a corner and ignore him. The lawyers administering the trust shirk their duty to the kid and just keep sending out the checks.
If you want a trilogy, the first book is the first Act, and by the end of this book your character should be committed to *beginning* their journey, from their normal [horrific] world into new territory.
So my story arc *within* the first book is
* Act I, 30%: Loving relationship young child; mother and child alone with no father mentioned (or father heroically dead, a soldier perhaps), End of Act I: mother is slaughtered in front of him, and what happens next?
* Act II, 40%: Adoption, escalating horrors of neglect, abuse, living like an animal but growing into an analytic nihilist, gaining success through not caring. End of Act II: The worst step, perhaps murder (perhaps of adoptive parents), a catalyst. The *solidification* of Nihilism.
* Act III: A conflict here that propels a determination to change; this is the end of ACT I *for the series*. In this novel we established the "normal" world for the MC and why. We are sympathetic from the start and understand why he is the way he is; now we need a reason for him to exert his will and try to change: The memory of his mother, perhaps. But at the end of Trilogy Act I, we show an MC that has made a decision to embark on a journey (emotional, physical, or both) *away* from his normal world because he wants something better. In this case, his normal world may be just brutality and horror that he sees somehow will end in his own pointless death, and it turns out he *does* care.
Throughout the novel, this Act III catalyst must be foreshadowed with hints that the MC does, subconsciously, care, and uses his nihilism to excuse that caring because *what he does, doesn't matter, nothing matters,* so if he shows mercy or cruelty is meaningless, and making an *effort* to be cruel is a waste of energy. In particular, these incidents should relate to whatever *happy* memories he has of childhood, before his mother was killed. Even if the MC doesn't realize it, the reader sees the MC is not going to visit upon others his own horror: He finds excuse to not harm children or their mothers because he doesn't feel like it. He finds excuse to harm those that do, because he *does* feel like it, and nothing matters anyway. These don't have to be glaringly obvious or that frequent, but in most chapters this kind of foreshadowing should be present; if you are a discovery writer and see a chance to engineer such a scene, do it. A nihilist MC can be particularly non-introspective, his explanation for everything he does can be just that he does whatever he feels like in the moment because if nothing matters, why the hell not?
But the reader can pick up on it, that he's in denial of his feelings, and these acts of kindness or mercy **do** matter to him. In fact, they could matter: One of these acts of mercy can have plot ramifications that lead him into the finale for this novel, and his desire to change. (A major conflict with those around him or his environment or law enforcement or whatever, all to be realized in the next novel.) | Galastel had a fantastic answer.
Make them likeable by making them human, "giving them a soul." No person, no matter how unlikeable, is grumpy and hates everything. (Example, Dolores Umbridge, from the Harry Potter series. She sucks! Most people hate her. But she'd likely show a soft spot for a kitten or something. A love of animals (cats specifically) is a relatable quality.) There are things that your MC will get upset/emotional about, or things that make them smile or make them more relatable as a person, or at least more realistic.
This can all be done through subtle details (what draws your MC's attention? how do these things make them feel?) Your character doesn't have to be universally beloved, but if MC has absolutely no likeable qualities, consider developing them further before moving on with your story. |
37,776 | [A while ago](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/36944/avoiding-darkness-induced-audience-apathy), I asked if there any possible way for my series to avoid causing [Darkness Induced Audience Apathy](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarknessInducedAudienceApathy). A well thought-out response stated that unless I give my readers a reason to care about my protagonist, they won't give a damn about the conflicts he's involved in (due to his existential nihilistic worldview and selfish nature) and will [outright](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EightDeadlyWords) [despise](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BaseBreakingCharacter) [him](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DesignatedHero).
What I forget to mention was that I plan having my protagonist undergo a character arc over the trilogy where becomes significantly less selfish and eventually abandon his nihilistic philosophy. It's also revealed through a series of flashbacks that his behavior stems from his early years where he was raised by abusive parents, forced to fend for himself on the streets, fell in with a gang of seedy people just to stay alive and was betrayed by someone who he was very close with. And unlike many fictional works that portray nihilism in a negative light, the protagonist's nihilism revolves around the fact that he believes that his life is meaningless due to lacking of clear purpose.
But when all is said and done, I feel that he's nothing more than a soulless archetype (along with every single character in my trilogy) and comes across as a grating character, despite having a good reason to justify his behavior. In short, how can I make my protagonist more likable and somewhat redeemable? | 2018/07/22 | [
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/37776",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com",
"https://writers.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | ### Skip the flashbacks. That IS the story.
Instead of flashbacks, just consider a story (trilogy or not) that shows *present-tense* scenes with time-skips between chapters showing the transformation from an innocent child, wanting to play, with an imagination, to nihilistic jerk.
* Abuse and neglect by parents, crying and being laughed at by parents and left alone,
* Two years later: Fending for himself on the streets.
* A year later: Fighting over garbage for food, losing.
* A year later: Stealing food, getting caught, escaping by causing injury.
* Two years later: Being "adopted" by a gang leader he trusts.
And so on. **Show** us how this nihilism develops, not through flashbacks but through the key scenes in its development so we readers must *wonder* what decisions the MC will make (always bad ones, but ones we understand as providing the most short term gain).
You must find a key scene early on to open with, showing the innocence and potential for this child, something the MC can remember and fail at trying to suppress. **That** is who the readers can root for; a time when the MC loved and was loved.
Don't tell us that, don't introduce a tragic or ruthless character and THEN try to redeem him. It didn't work for Darth Vader, and it won't work for you!
Personally, if I was writing this (I won't) I would not have abusive parents, but adoptive parents. I would start the character with a loving mother in a loving environment, taken away. She is killed in a bank robbery, or car accident. Perhaps dies horrifically in front of our MC; beginning his trauma.
He gets taken in by a married uncle; but not a nice person, taking him in because the MC's mother left, through insurance and lawyers, a trust fund entitling the Uncle to some regular payment of $100's per month to help with the MC's education and support. But screw that! He's a compulsive gambler, his wife is a drug addict, they put the kid in a corner and ignore him. The lawyers administering the trust shirk their duty to the kid and just keep sending out the checks.
If you want a trilogy, the first book is the first Act, and by the end of this book your character should be committed to *beginning* their journey, from their normal [horrific] world into new territory.
So my story arc *within* the first book is
* Act I, 30%: Loving relationship young child; mother and child alone with no father mentioned (or father heroically dead, a soldier perhaps), End of Act I: mother is slaughtered in front of him, and what happens next?
* Act II, 40%: Adoption, escalating horrors of neglect, abuse, living like an animal but growing into an analytic nihilist, gaining success through not caring. End of Act II: The worst step, perhaps murder (perhaps of adoptive parents), a catalyst. The *solidification* of Nihilism.
* Act III: A conflict here that propels a determination to change; this is the end of ACT I *for the series*. In this novel we established the "normal" world for the MC and why. We are sympathetic from the start and understand why he is the way he is; now we need a reason for him to exert his will and try to change: The memory of his mother, perhaps. But at the end of Trilogy Act I, we show an MC that has made a decision to embark on a journey (emotional, physical, or both) *away* from his normal world because he wants something better. In this case, his normal world may be just brutality and horror that he sees somehow will end in his own pointless death, and it turns out he *does* care.
Throughout the novel, this Act III catalyst must be foreshadowed with hints that the MC does, subconsciously, care, and uses his nihilism to excuse that caring because *what he does, doesn't matter, nothing matters,* so if he shows mercy or cruelty is meaningless, and making an *effort* to be cruel is a waste of energy. In particular, these incidents should relate to whatever *happy* memories he has of childhood, before his mother was killed. Even if the MC doesn't realize it, the reader sees the MC is not going to visit upon others his own horror: He finds excuse to not harm children or their mothers because he doesn't feel like it. He finds excuse to harm those that do, because he *does* feel like it, and nothing matters anyway. These don't have to be glaringly obvious or that frequent, but in most chapters this kind of foreshadowing should be present; if you are a discovery writer and see a chance to engineer such a scene, do it. A nihilist MC can be particularly non-introspective, his explanation for everything he does can be just that he does whatever he feels like in the moment because if nothing matters, why the hell not?
But the reader can pick up on it, that he's in denial of his feelings, and these acts of kindness or mercy **do** matter to him. In fact, they could matter: One of these acts of mercy can have plot ramifications that lead him into the finale for this novel, and his desire to change. (A major conflict with those around him or his environment or law enforcement or whatever, all to be realized in the next novel.) | I've been having the same problem with my main character --he's not very likeable, but I don't want to knock off his rough edges too early.
I've tried different things, but the one I'm most happy with is **giving him goals and values that he personally believes in**, even if they are questionable from an objective point of view. Everyone is the hero of his or her own story, and one of the keys to an intrinsically unlikable narrator is guiding the audience to see things from the protagonist's perspective.
I tend to overuse this book as an example, but *Lolita* is the paradigmatic example of an author building unlikely sympathy for a narrator, who by any objective standard is a complete monster, entirely through skillful use of point of view. |
205,180 | In a Web application, is it possible to force a PDF file to be printed on the client? If the browser is configured to open the PDF inside the window, I guess that calling window.print() will work, but some browsers (like mine) are configured to open the PDF externally. | 2008/10/15 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/205180",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2680/"
] | you can set a http header to application/pdf and then force a new window open with javascript and print that way. but who would really do that? i mean come on now. | Do you mean that you want to force the file to be sent to a printer? Are you thinking of the Law of Unintended Consequences -- the user's device isn't connected to a printer? Could be a BlackBerry, could be a laptop on wi-fi. What if the user doesn't want it to go to the default printer? |
26,152 | Is it in the spirit of Stack Exchange to always make a sincere attempt to interpret the OP's intentions? I believe it is.
Precision is important in maths, and where questions are imprecise it will often be helpful to address that imprecision. However I frequently see answers or comments which pick some logical fallacy or inaccuracy within a question, then to declare the question answered on the basis of it, while making apparently minimal attempt to interpret what the OP intended.
I think it's important to interpret the OP's intentions and to address the question they *intend* to ask, rather than some technicality. We will all have seen perhaps the stupidest example of this, in which the next number in some sequence is proposed by some method which can generate infinitely many candidates all having equal claim.
I am in favour of such stupidity attracting a waterfall of downvotes from the community. | 2017/04/09 | [
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26152",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/users/334732/"
] | Although I agree with the premise that we need to interpret in the best interest of the OP, your point with downvoting is debatable due to a couple of reasons:
1. Interpreting (or, sometimes, guessing) intent takes time and should have been the OP's role.
2. If you ask answerers to interpret, there is bound to be misinterpretation, even in good faith.
On the other hand, the benefit of interpreting is largely for:
1. pedagogical reasons, which will likely...
2. guide the user to clarify or provide additional context and maintain a satisfactory post.
That said,
* It's the [ultimate responsibility of the OP to clarify their *exact* intent](https://math.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask).
Appropriate flagging and review actions should be done just like on any other post.
* The OP needs to engage with the commenters and work towards the OP's intended goal.
In such cases, commenters should put forward constructive criticism instead of tongue-in-cheek responses.
* When illustrating a point, balance and don't extend too far.
Interpretation may not be agreed by all (including the OP) and might even be annoying if not properly presented. Think twice before offering interpretations. When not sure, engage with the OP!
These are my thoughts and opinions after engaging in one such recent post. I tend to enforce these three bullet points whenever I comment, ask, answer and vote. | This is a tricky issue, because the person asking the question is not you.
You may think some question, as it is stated, is so trivial that it can't possibly be what the person meant. But that judgement is coming from someone with *your* experience and expertise — someone with much less experience and expertise may very well be stumped on this trivial issue!
Sometimes, even a person with experience and expertise just makes a mistake or overlooks the simple thing.
Recall the story about the teacher who declares something trivial, and when questioned in class takes a 30 minute break to work through things, and then comes back and announces "yes, it is trivial" and continues on.
I would estimate that at least 10% of the time I post a "disingenuous" answer, it happens to be exactly the answer the originator was looking for. And there is no harm in posting it even if the question as written is not what the poster intended, because others will still come along and answer alternative guesses as to the intention and engage in comments to try and clarify the question.
---
Incidentally, I get far more complaints on the flipside of this issue — when the literal interpretation looks like a 'reasonable' question to ask, but reading between the lines suggests the intended question is something else, I often get a lot of flak for trying to address the something else when everyone else is answering the 'reasonable' question. |
26,152 | Is it in the spirit of Stack Exchange to always make a sincere attempt to interpret the OP's intentions? I believe it is.
Precision is important in maths, and where questions are imprecise it will often be helpful to address that imprecision. However I frequently see answers or comments which pick some logical fallacy or inaccuracy within a question, then to declare the question answered on the basis of it, while making apparently minimal attempt to interpret what the OP intended.
I think it's important to interpret the OP's intentions and to address the question they *intend* to ask, rather than some technicality. We will all have seen perhaps the stupidest example of this, in which the next number in some sequence is proposed by some method which can generate infinitely many candidates all having equal claim.
I am in favour of such stupidity attracting a waterfall of downvotes from the community. | 2017/04/09 | [
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26152",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/users/334732/"
] | Although I agree with the premise that we need to interpret in the best interest of the OP, your point with downvoting is debatable due to a couple of reasons:
1. Interpreting (or, sometimes, guessing) intent takes time and should have been the OP's role.
2. If you ask answerers to interpret, there is bound to be misinterpretation, even in good faith.
On the other hand, the benefit of interpreting is largely for:
1. pedagogical reasons, which will likely...
2. guide the user to clarify or provide additional context and maintain a satisfactory post.
That said,
* It's the [ultimate responsibility of the OP to clarify their *exact* intent](https://math.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-ask).
Appropriate flagging and review actions should be done just like on any other post.
* The OP needs to engage with the commenters and work towards the OP's intended goal.
In such cases, commenters should put forward constructive criticism instead of tongue-in-cheek responses.
* When illustrating a point, balance and don't extend too far.
Interpretation may not be agreed by all (including the OP) and might even be annoying if not properly presented. Think twice before offering interpretations. When not sure, engage with the OP!
These are my thoughts and opinions after engaging in one such recent post. I tend to enforce these three bullet points whenever I comment, ask, answer and vote. | Is a point of this site to help to socialize mathematics? How great is our obligation to help those learning to express themselves with mathematical precision? There is a broad spectrum of compassion within the user community. Some obvious homework questions are answered immediately. Some closed immediately. Do we want to have a site that welcomes mathematical explorers, or do we want to enforce discipline and rigor?
Most of the responders have mathematical skills, and they are stripped of social tools when a question is stripped of tone and context when encoded to a string of letters. We are reduced to inference, to guessing. Some users think poorly formed questions should be rebuffed. They may argue that condoning such behavior enforces bad habits. Some users try to add value and provide help not just for the OP, but anyone who looks at the question later.
Do we want the site diluted - or polluted - with extraneous questions? Or do we want to embrace the community at large, and accept a need for maturation? The site rewards users for removing poorly received questions. Should the reward be increased? Should the trustees of the site be entrusted to cull low value material?
The countervailing currents swirl. |
26,152 | Is it in the spirit of Stack Exchange to always make a sincere attempt to interpret the OP's intentions? I believe it is.
Precision is important in maths, and where questions are imprecise it will often be helpful to address that imprecision. However I frequently see answers or comments which pick some logical fallacy or inaccuracy within a question, then to declare the question answered on the basis of it, while making apparently minimal attempt to interpret what the OP intended.
I think it's important to interpret the OP's intentions and to address the question they *intend* to ask, rather than some technicality. We will all have seen perhaps the stupidest example of this, in which the next number in some sequence is proposed by some method which can generate infinitely many candidates all having equal claim.
I am in favour of such stupidity attracting a waterfall of downvotes from the community. | 2017/04/09 | [
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26152",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/users/334732/"
] | I think that sincere attempt is part of what a good answer requires.
I frequently think I know what the OP intended even though it's not what the question says. If the question is otherwise reasonable (shows effort, ...) I may answer (or comment), beginning
>
> I think you mean ... if so
>
>
>
sometimes, with just a hint when I think I can help the OP solve the problem her/himself.
When this strategy succeeds it helps everyone: the OP learns and the moderators have less work managing the close queue.
I (too) dislike (snarky) answers that are correct because they rely on the literal but clearly unintended meaning of the question. | This is a tricky issue, because the person asking the question is not you.
You may think some question, as it is stated, is so trivial that it can't possibly be what the person meant. But that judgement is coming from someone with *your* experience and expertise — someone with much less experience and expertise may very well be stumped on this trivial issue!
Sometimes, even a person with experience and expertise just makes a mistake or overlooks the simple thing.
Recall the story about the teacher who declares something trivial, and when questioned in class takes a 30 minute break to work through things, and then comes back and announces "yes, it is trivial" and continues on.
I would estimate that at least 10% of the time I post a "disingenuous" answer, it happens to be exactly the answer the originator was looking for. And there is no harm in posting it even if the question as written is not what the poster intended, because others will still come along and answer alternative guesses as to the intention and engage in comments to try and clarify the question.
---
Incidentally, I get far more complaints on the flipside of this issue — when the literal interpretation looks like a 'reasonable' question to ask, but reading between the lines suggests the intended question is something else, I often get a lot of flak for trying to address the something else when everyone else is answering the 'reasonable' question. |
26,152 | Is it in the spirit of Stack Exchange to always make a sincere attempt to interpret the OP's intentions? I believe it is.
Precision is important in maths, and where questions are imprecise it will often be helpful to address that imprecision. However I frequently see answers or comments which pick some logical fallacy or inaccuracy within a question, then to declare the question answered on the basis of it, while making apparently minimal attempt to interpret what the OP intended.
I think it's important to interpret the OP's intentions and to address the question they *intend* to ask, rather than some technicality. We will all have seen perhaps the stupidest example of this, in which the next number in some sequence is proposed by some method which can generate infinitely many candidates all having equal claim.
I am in favour of such stupidity attracting a waterfall of downvotes from the community. | 2017/04/09 | [
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26152",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/users/334732/"
] | I think that sincere attempt is part of what a good answer requires.
I frequently think I know what the OP intended even though it's not what the question says. If the question is otherwise reasonable (shows effort, ...) I may answer (or comment), beginning
>
> I think you mean ... if so
>
>
>
sometimes, with just a hint when I think I can help the OP solve the problem her/himself.
When this strategy succeeds it helps everyone: the OP learns and the moderators have less work managing the close queue.
I (too) dislike (snarky) answers that are correct because they rely on the literal but clearly unintended meaning of the question. | Is a point of this site to help to socialize mathematics? How great is our obligation to help those learning to express themselves with mathematical precision? There is a broad spectrum of compassion within the user community. Some obvious homework questions are answered immediately. Some closed immediately. Do we want to have a site that welcomes mathematical explorers, or do we want to enforce discipline and rigor?
Most of the responders have mathematical skills, and they are stripped of social tools when a question is stripped of tone and context when encoded to a string of letters. We are reduced to inference, to guessing. Some users think poorly formed questions should be rebuffed. They may argue that condoning such behavior enforces bad habits. Some users try to add value and provide help not just for the OP, but anyone who looks at the question later.
Do we want the site diluted - or polluted - with extraneous questions? Or do we want to embrace the community at large, and accept a need for maturation? The site rewards users for removing poorly received questions. Should the reward be increased? Should the trustees of the site be entrusted to cull low value material?
The countervailing currents swirl. |
26,152 | Is it in the spirit of Stack Exchange to always make a sincere attempt to interpret the OP's intentions? I believe it is.
Precision is important in maths, and where questions are imprecise it will often be helpful to address that imprecision. However I frequently see answers or comments which pick some logical fallacy or inaccuracy within a question, then to declare the question answered on the basis of it, while making apparently minimal attempt to interpret what the OP intended.
I think it's important to interpret the OP's intentions and to address the question they *intend* to ask, rather than some technicality. We will all have seen perhaps the stupidest example of this, in which the next number in some sequence is proposed by some method which can generate infinitely many candidates all having equal claim.
I am in favour of such stupidity attracting a waterfall of downvotes from the community. | 2017/04/09 | [
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/26152",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com",
"https://math.meta.stackexchange.com/users/334732/"
] | This is a tricky issue, because the person asking the question is not you.
You may think some question, as it is stated, is so trivial that it can't possibly be what the person meant. But that judgement is coming from someone with *your* experience and expertise — someone with much less experience and expertise may very well be stumped on this trivial issue!
Sometimes, even a person with experience and expertise just makes a mistake or overlooks the simple thing.
Recall the story about the teacher who declares something trivial, and when questioned in class takes a 30 minute break to work through things, and then comes back and announces "yes, it is trivial" and continues on.
I would estimate that at least 10% of the time I post a "disingenuous" answer, it happens to be exactly the answer the originator was looking for. And there is no harm in posting it even if the question as written is not what the poster intended, because others will still come along and answer alternative guesses as to the intention and engage in comments to try and clarify the question.
---
Incidentally, I get far more complaints on the flipside of this issue — when the literal interpretation looks like a 'reasonable' question to ask, but reading between the lines suggests the intended question is something else, I often get a lot of flak for trying to address the something else when everyone else is answering the 'reasonable' question. | Is a point of this site to help to socialize mathematics? How great is our obligation to help those learning to express themselves with mathematical precision? There is a broad spectrum of compassion within the user community. Some obvious homework questions are answered immediately. Some closed immediately. Do we want to have a site that welcomes mathematical explorers, or do we want to enforce discipline and rigor?
Most of the responders have mathematical skills, and they are stripped of social tools when a question is stripped of tone and context when encoded to a string of letters. We are reduced to inference, to guessing. Some users think poorly formed questions should be rebuffed. They may argue that condoning such behavior enforces bad habits. Some users try to add value and provide help not just for the OP, but anyone who looks at the question later.
Do we want the site diluted - or polluted - with extraneous questions? Or do we want to embrace the community at large, and accept a need for maturation? The site rewards users for removing poorly received questions. Should the reward be increased? Should the trustees of the site be entrusted to cull low value material?
The countervailing currents swirl. |
98,392 | [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LlJlS.jpg)I have a univariate time series (there is a value for each time sampling) (sampling time: 66.66 micro second, number of samples/sampling time=151) coming from a scala customer
This time series contains some time frame which each of them are 8K (frequencies)\*151 (time samples) in 0.5 sec [overall 1.2288 millions samples per half a second)
* I need to find anomalous based on different rows (frequencies)
Report the rows (frequencies) which are anomalous? (an unsupervised learning method)
Do you have an idea to which statistical parameter is more useful for it? or is it possible to evaluate without time sampling?
Do have an idea about suitable fast method (with lowest time delay: therefore some algorithm like kmeans does not work)
I should produce online automated ML | 2021/07/28 | [
"https://datascience.stackexchange.com/questions/98392",
"https://datascience.stackexchange.com",
"https://datascience.stackexchange.com/users/58433/"
] | It is straightforward to stack different neural networks with current deep learning frameworks (i.e., PyTorch or TensorFlow). There is no separate output for $r$, it just one of many layers.
It could look like this:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fc7UQ.png)
You can freeze or not freeze any layers in a stacked neural network. You can decide how far to backpropagate the training updates.
The advantages of unfreezing layers is that the model can learn better feature representations. The disadvantages of unfreezing is that training can take longer for very deep neural networks. | First of all: probably you should not train with the loss you propose, because with MSE you will train to minimize the total error, not to keep the features as they were, which is what CNNs are good at detecting; this is the same problem as what happens when you [train an image autoencoder on MSE, that you obtain blurry images](https://ai.stackexchange.com/q/8885/1315). Instead, configure the network as you want, reusing layers from the networks you deem appropriate, with the needed adaptation layers, and then train the whole network on the task that you need your network to do (e.g. classification).
When doing so, you can choose to only train some parts of the network, or train them at different learning rates. These are some potential alternatives:
1. Freeze all the layers except the adaptation ones. The original weights of the reused layers will remain as they originally were.
2. Train the adaptation layers at a normal learning rate and the other layers at a very small learning rate. This is typical of transfer learning setups and it aims at making the learning more flexible. |
1,672,408 | We have an application which is periodically sending TCP messages at a defined rate(Using MODBUS TCP). If a message is not received within a set period an alarm is raised. However every once in a while there appears to be a delay in messages being received. Investigation has shown that this is associated with the ARP cache being refreshed causing a resend of the TCP message.
The IP stack provider have told us that this is the expected behaviour for TCP. The questions are,
Is this expected behaviour for an IP stack? If not how do other stacks work around the period when IP/MAC address translation is not available
If this is the expected behaviour how can we reduce the delay in TCP messages during this period?(Permanent ARP entries have been tried, but are not the best solution) | 2009/11/04 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/1672408",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/64123/"
] | In my last job I worked with a company building routers and switches. Our implementation would queue packets waiting for ARP replies and send them when the ARP reply was received. Therefore, no TCP retransmit required.
Retransmission in TCP occurs when an ACK is not received within a given time. If the ARP reply takes a long time, or is itself lost, you might be getting a retransmission even though the device waiting for the ARP reply is queuing the packet.
It would appear from your question that the period of the TCP message is shorter than the ARP refresh time. This implies that reuse of the ARP is not causing it to stay refreshed, which is possible behaviour that would be helpful in your situation.
A packet trace of the situation occurring could be helpful - are you actually losing the first packet? How long does the ARP reply take?
In order to stop the ARP cache timing out, you might want to try to find something that will refresh it, such as another ARP request for the same address, or a gratuitous ARP.
I found a specification for MODBUS TCP but it didn't help. Can you post some details of your network - media, devices, speeds? | Your description suggests that the peer ARP entries expire between TCP segments and cause some subsequent segments to fail due to the lack of a current MAC destination.
If you have the MODBUS devices on a separate subnet, then perhaps the destination router will be kind enough to queue the segment until it receives a valid MAC. If you cannot use a separate subnet, you could try to force the session to have keep-alives activated - this would cause a periodic empty message to be sent that would keep the ARP timers resetting. If the overhead of the keep-alive is too high and you completely control the application in your system, you could try to force zero-length messages through to the peer. |
137,994 | I have noticed that British English speakers tend not to use *that* after *now* in certain dependent clauses where American English speakers will almost certainly use it.
BE version of two examples:
>
> * Now the temperature's dropped, we've been using the fireplace more
> often.
> * Now I'm finished painting the front door I can rest.
>
>
>
AE version of two examples:
>
> * Now that the temperature's dropped, we've been using the fireplace more
> often.
> * Now that I'm finished painting the front door I can rest.
>
>
>
As in many cases of BE vs. AE, my curiosity is piqued. I wonder if over time AE speakers added the *that* or if BE speakers dropped it. Is the *that* "understood" in BE or \*misunderstood," so to speak, in AE?
More broadly, I suppose I'm asking about the role [that] *that* plays in sentences like the AE examples above.
I'm guessing the answer is related to the fact [that] it would have been acceptable, perhaps even preferable, to leave out the first "[that]" above, but, at least in AE, not the second. Then again, communicating about any specific word presents its own challenges.
(I'm aware [that] this may be a duplicate question, but my EU search did not return a match. It's tricky coming up with optimal search terms for this topic.) | 2013/11/17 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/137994",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/15050/"
] | >
> BE version of two examples:
>
>
> * *Now the temperature's dropped, we've been using the fireplace more often.*
> * *Now I'm finished painting the front door I can rest.*
>
>
> AE version of two examples:
>
>
> * *Now that the temperature's dropped, we've been using the fireplace more often.*
> * *Now that I'm finished painting the front door I can rest.*
>
>
>
In your examples, the occurrence of *"that"* is that of a marker: a marker of clausal subordination. It helps to indicate that a following clause is subordinate, that it isn't a main clause. (This type of marker is sometimes mandatory, sometimes optional, sometimes not allowed. It depends on the construction and the matrix verb.)
In your "AmE" examples, the marker "that" is being used to help the reader parse the sentence while the reader is reading it -- the "that" tells the reader that the stuff after it is a subordinate clause, not the main clause. In your two "BrE" examples, the reader might misinterpret the leading subordinate clause to be the main clause as the reader is reading.
Your two "AmE" versions are grammatical. But the grammaticality of your two "BrE" versions are probably questionable -- to my AmE ear, at first blush, I'd mark the "BrE" examples as ungrammatical. (Though, I'd prefer the expression *"I've finished"* over *"I'm finished"* for your examples.)
.
EDITED: In light of a recent comment, here's some related info from the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., *The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language* (CGEL), page 952:
>
> Conditions under which *that* is obligatory
>
>
> (a) When the content clause is subject or otherwise precedes the matrix predicator
>
>
> [3]
>
>
> * i. *[That they were lying] is now quite obvious.*
> * ii. *But [that he really intended to cheat us] I still can't believe.*
>
>
> Compare these with *It is now quite obvious [(that) they were lying]*, where the content clause is in extraposed subject position, and *But I still can't believe [(that) he really intended to cheat us]*, where it is in post-verbal complement position. What distinguishes [3] from these is that in [3] *that* is needed to signal the start of a subordinate clause: if [i] began with *They were lying* this would be perceived initially as a main clause, whereas in the extraposed subject construction the matrix *It is now quite obvious* prepares the ground for a subordinate clause, and the marker of subordination does not therefore have the essential role that it does in [i]. The same applies in [ii], where we have a further contrast between [ii] itself and *He really intended to cheat us, I believe*. The absence of *that* in the latter indicates that *he really intended to cheat us* is indeed a main clause, and *I believe* is a parenthetical: we have here two main clauses in a supplementation relation, not one clause subordinated within another, as in [3]. (fn 2)
>
>
>
So, now, after a bit more thinking about it, my evaluation is that the two "BrE" versions are ungrammatical. | (This is my first attempt at using algebra in NGrams - so if anyone else has more understanding than me, please either confirm I'm right or explain what I've got wrong.)
With that caveat in mind, I think [this NGram](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%28now%20it:eng_us_2012%29/%28now%20that%20it:eng_us_2012%29,%28now%20it:eng_gb_2012%29/%28now%20that%20it:eng_gb_2012%29&year_start=1850&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1;,%28now%20it:eng_us_2012%29%20/%20%28now%20that%20it:eng_us_2012%29;,c0;.t1;,%28now%20it:eng_gb_2012%29%20/%20%28now%20that%20it:eng_gb_2012%29;,c0)...
...shows that *now it* has always been about 7 times more common than *now **that** it*. More crucially, it shows that ratio has always been about the same in both BrE and AmE.
I think that OP's perception of a US/US split is specious. Apart from my chart (which I admit may be erroneously applied), you should note that this answer text contains many instances of the word "that" which (that!) could have been omitted. And doubtless even more "potential" instances (where I *could* have inserted another "that", but actually I didn't).
---
TL;DR: As [John Lawler says here](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/115635/what-is-the-function-of-that-in-this-sentence#comment235644_115637)...
>
> *[**that**] is a complementizer, which is a marker to introduce and identify a particular type of subject or object clause. Unlike conjunctions, complementizers only link clauses, and **have no meaning**, not even "and"; they're strictly part of the grammatical machinery.*
>
>
>
Which is to say that it's just an [optional] grammatical component in many contexts - and since it doesn't mean anything in and of itself, it probably doesn't mean much whether people use it or not. |
21,400 | 1. Did the Buddha meant to be attentive all the time or is that just an ideal to strive for?
2. If we are attentive and feel sensations do we always see the impermanence in them? So first to recognize what is going on in- or outside and then seeing the impermanence and potentially the unsatisfactoriness in them, right? But wouldn't that decrease pleasures in certain activities/objects? | 2017/07/06 | [
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/21400",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com",
"https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/11674/"
] | That is two questions. I'll answer the second.
Things are not unsatisfactory in themselves because they don't have selves. Anicca is the flip side of Anatta (non-self). Because things are made entirely of other things and aren't independent self-entities if any one 'thing' in the universe changes then everything changes because it all interpenetrates. This is the middle way between existence and non-existence - a big debate in Buddha's time and ever since!
Dukkha (third of the three marks of existence) is what arises when we deny Anicca-Anatta. If we truly see/embrace/understand/know Anicca-Anatta then we are in Nirvana - which is nice not nasty.
So in practice we look deeply and see Anicca-Anatta which feels good. Nothing changes. Ice-cream still tastes yummy but we can see that it, along with our tongue, is impermanent and is also a product of the whole universe. Without impermanence the ice-cream would never have frozen and wouldn't melt. Without non-self the ice-cream couldn't become part of us. i.e. Wholesome pleasures increase in breadth and depth as we see them deeply. | Yes. One should be in constant awareness seeing impermanence as you mentioned.
>
> Yato ca bhikkhu atapi, sampajannam na rincatiatapi, sampajannam na rincati;
> tato so vedana sabba, parijanati pandito.
>
>
> When a meditator, striving ardently, does not lose sampajanna, the thorough understanding of impermanence, even for a moment, such a wise person fully comprehends and experiences all sensations by exploring the entire field.
>
>
> By constantly observing the sensations in the body, one experiences the arising and passing away. This constant observation of the body sensations based on the realisation of impermanence is sampajanna.
>
>
>
[The Importance of Vedana and Sampajanna in Vipassana Meditation](http://www.vridhamma.org/Vedana-Sampajanna-in-Vipassana-Meditation) by VRI
The pleasure or gratification one gets from sense objects are temporary and end in unsatisfactoriness when it changes. By not seeking pleasure in temporary things you are trading lesser pleasure for a more lasting and higher pleasure of Nirvana. Until you get there at least you are not in emotional rollercoaster if you see impermanence.
Not seeking pleasure is that you do not react to sensations mentally noting their impermanence. For house holders the the restain one should practice is the [5 precepts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Precepts). You can seek pleasurable things within this confine. But while doing that if you practice insight a time will come where you will start giving up on things you might consider thrill seeking. But this should be a gradual process. This should not be an ideological or philosophical belief that you should give up on such activities, in which case it is attachment to a concept or ideal, which on itself in not ideal as it will result in misery. |
71,371 | To refer to the beneficiary or patient of an action, sometimes one can form a word using the verb and the *-ee* suffix, e.g.
* assign → *assignee*
* employ → *employee*
* refuge → *refugee*
On the other hand, some forms like *givee* (the beneficiary), *killee* (the victim) or *massagee* (the one massaged) sound inherently stupid. I guess there probably are other *-ee* nouns that are at least that bad, but which I would unfortunately miss because of my poor English and wild imagination. Are there any usage rules or common-sense methods that would help me to distinguish between the proper, understandable words and the rest?
Any help or some references to on-line sources would be greatly appreciated. | 2012/06/17 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/71371",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/22465/"
] | The suffix *-ee* comes from the French past participle suffix *-é(e)*. There is a relatively short list of [English words ending with -ee](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_words_suffixed_with_-ee), the vast majority of which are French or Latin in origin. I suppose *killee* and *givee* sound wrong because they’re of Anglo-Saxon origin, not Romantic, so the *-ee* suffix is less natural.
In general, I would avoid using *-ee* to coin new words, and further avoid using *-ee* words other than the most common, such as *employee*, *attendee*, *detainee*, &c. The silliest-sounding *-ee* words seem to be those using native English roots, where *-ed* is better:
>
> \*The mugger mugs the muggee.
>
>
> The mugger mugs the mugged.
>
>
> | Unfortunately English tends to be a little bit random in the way rules such as this one are followed, partly as it often tends to be based on the etymology of the word - i.e. the language that the word has been borrowed from.
That said, you could get away with adding "ee" and "er" to pretty much any verb and the person hearing it, if given enough context, would be able to understand you. For instance, there is a [memorable exchange](http://www.friendscafe.org/scripts/s5/514.php) in the TV sitcom Friends:
Monica: Oh man, they think they are so slick messing with us! But see they don't know that we know that they know! So…
Chandler: Ahh yes, the messers become the messees
"Messer" meaning people who mess and "Messee" meaning people who are messed
Neither of these words are in general use, but the language works because enough context is given (the verb "mess" had been used in the previous line"), the character is known as a comedian and the words themselves are emphasised when spoken.
However, for anyone who is not themselves thoroughly fluent in English my advice would be simple: only use this construction if you have heard or seen the specific word used multiple times elsewhere. Otherwise you may end sounding awkward or pretentious. |
71,371 | To refer to the beneficiary or patient of an action, sometimes one can form a word using the verb and the *-ee* suffix, e.g.
* assign → *assignee*
* employ → *employee*
* refuge → *refugee*
On the other hand, some forms like *givee* (the beneficiary), *killee* (the victim) or *massagee* (the one massaged) sound inherently stupid. I guess there probably are other *-ee* nouns that are at least that bad, but which I would unfortunately miss because of my poor English and wild imagination. Are there any usage rules or common-sense methods that would help me to distinguish between the proper, understandable words and the rest?
Any help or some references to on-line sources would be greatly appreciated. | 2012/06/17 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/71371",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/22465/"
] | The suffix *-ee* comes from the French past participle suffix *-é(e)*. There is a relatively short list of [English words ending with -ee](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_words_suffixed_with_-ee), the vast majority of which are French or Latin in origin. I suppose *killee* and *givee* sound wrong because they’re of Anglo-Saxon origin, not Romantic, so the *-ee* suffix is less natural.
In general, I would avoid using *-ee* to coin new words, and further avoid using *-ee* words other than the most common, such as *employee*, *attendee*, *detainee*, &c. The silliest-sounding *-ee* words seem to be those using native English roots, where *-ed* is better:
>
> \*The mugger mugs the muggee.
>
>
> The mugger mugs the mugged.
>
>
> | **All the comments that follow appear to me to be true of my English. No guarantee that they apply to others'. Comments welcome.**
Thinking about examples that I feel more and less happy with, I'd say that there are some prosodic constraints on *-ee*.
In the best examples, *-ee* attaches to a root that has (i) two syllables, (ii) has, or can have, primary on the first syllable, (iii) has no long vowel in the second syllable. Your examples *assignee*, *employee*, and *refugee* all fit this description, as do *nominee*, *advisee*, and *conferee*.
Note that, in the last two, stress shifts from its normal locus (*adVISE*, *conFER*) to the first (*ADvisEE*, *CONferEE*). This is why (ii) says "can have", not just "has". Some prefixes seem less able to accommodate this stress shift: *forgetee* is completely impossible for me, and *impugnee*, *repressee* are pretty iffy.
Nondisyllabic roots are (un)acceptable depending, again, in part at least, on prosodic factors. Two unstressed syllables before *ee* is problematic: witness such contrasts as *convertee* (imaginable) ~ *controvertee* (not), or *preposee* (imaginable) ~ *presupposee* (not). Similarly, one long syllable is also uncomfortable, as in your *massagee*. But *examinee* and *eliminee* are both fine for me, with the extra syllable occurring before the main stress.
When it comes to monosyllabic roots, if the root has a long vowel, I find the examples slightly better than if the vowel is short. I'm fine with *slayee* (a Buffy example), *callee* (cited above), *freeee* (it's about time we had a quadruple vowel in English), but not so happy with *givee*, *dropee*, *kickee*. To make the latter three vaguely acceptable, I find myself inserting a glottal stop between root and suffix (*kick'ee*, *etc.*).
That said, though, phonology is clearly not the whole story. I'm fine with *confutee* but unhappy with *confusee*, unhappy with *refutee* but fine, of course, with *refugee*. Or maybe I'm just tired... |
44,347 | I have a wav file that the subject is whispering in, how do I amplify without distortion? I have tried using Audacity, made it slightly better but audio still too low.
Thanks | 2018/05/25 | [
"https://sound.stackexchange.com/questions/44347",
"https://sound.stackexchange.com",
"https://sound.stackexchange.com/users/24835/"
] | You actually need to increase the signal-to-noise ratio rather than simply "amplifying" the signal. To do this you need a noise reduction tool such as Izotope RX Spectral denoiser. | In audacity I'd normalize the audio, then look at the spectrum. Do an equalization, dropping the low frequencies significantly as well as the highs. A whisper is high frequency breathy, so keep trying different curves till you get the best sound. Also if there are non-speaking gaps you can use a gate to silence the noise between words. This can be disconcerting, but worth a try.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ckkF.png) |
44,347 | I have a wav file that the subject is whispering in, how do I amplify without distortion? I have tried using Audacity, made it slightly better but audio still too low.
Thanks | 2018/05/25 | [
"https://sound.stackexchange.com/questions/44347",
"https://sound.stackexchange.com",
"https://sound.stackexchange.com/users/24835/"
] | >
> How do I amplify without distortion?
>
>
>
Most DAWs like Audacity allow you to apply gain to an existing recording. Sometime's it's called "clip gain" or "trim". You can get away with this to a certain extent in many cases but there is always a trade-off (like signal to noise ration as @Mark mentioned). But as long as you don't apply too much gain (especially at the loudest parts), it will not clip (distort). Digital gain (like volume/trim controls in DAWs) is very clean up to the point where your signal distorts and then it gets very harsh and nasty. You will know if you are clipping. If nothing else you will see your meters maxing out and hitting the red (clip indicators).
It's likely that signal-to-noise ratio will be a bigger issue for you since it's a recording of a whisper. You may find that once you apply enough gain to hear the whisper at a reasonable volume, you will also have brought up a ton of noise (hiss or hum etc...) with it. Ideally the recording engineer would have applied enough gain to the incoming microphone signal at the preamp to improve SNR, but clearly this is not the case.
There are ways to "clean up" this noise with programs like iZotope RX which @Mark also mentioned. There will be more trade-offs here in that the process of removing noise could introduce other artifacts and unpleasant sounds if you're not careful. But iZotope's plugins usually do a pretty good job even with the basic presets and you might be able to get away with this too.
That being said, next time you should turn your preamp up when you're recording to avoid all this. You are fighting the fact that the signal coming from the microphone (whispering) was not that much stronger than the noise in the system (including any fans or other noise sources near the mic, noise within the electronics, etc). So the noise is embedded in the signal at nearly the same level as the speech. That's why if you try to bring up the volume of the speech, the noise comes with it. At the end of the day, "garbage in = garbage out". | In audacity I'd normalize the audio, then look at the spectrum. Do an equalization, dropping the low frequencies significantly as well as the highs. A whisper is high frequency breathy, so keep trying different curves till you get the best sound. Also if there are non-speaking gaps you can use a gate to silence the noise between words. This can be disconcerting, but worth a try.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ckkF.png) |
39,911,535 | I'm new to Blockchain but I do understand the concept behind it. My question is can we only contribute to blockchain through chaincodes or can we also create a distributed ledger? And also where does the Ledger gets stored? | 2016/10/07 | [
"https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/39911535",
"https://Stackoverflow.com",
"https://Stackoverflow.com/users/4302224/"
] | There are many ways to implement a distributed ledger, blockchain is one way, but there are many new and exciting alternatives.
For example (prior art), Amandla-3i-Backbone uses an architecture where agents execute on a host. Essentially, a transaction is committed in just over 10 steps.
Amandla-3i-Ecosystem
Step 1
An arbitrary Agent decides to make a transaction. This Agent can be embedded in any product, such as an Android mobile application.
In this example, the application is transferring money to another user.
What is not shown in this step is that the Agent would need to locate a suitable Trade-Agent to conduct the transaction. This could be hardwired into the application, or it could have access to another Trust-Agent that could forward the details of a reputable Trade-Agent.
Step 2
The Agent describes the transaction it wants to the Trade-Agent which will conduct the complex workflow on behalf of the Agent requesting the transaction.
Note that the Agent is renting processing power from it’s local Node, and will be charged by the Trade-Agent for all work done. This monitisation means that economic type attacks are not possible.
The first thing the Trade-Agent does is contact the Buyer-Brokering-Agent directly.
It’s important to note that the Buyer and Seller do not interact directly, because Trust-Agents need to witness each transaction so that Brokering-Agent don’t oversell their currency at a high rate of exchange. An analogy would be a government printing too much money. It would be the Trust-Agents that would need to signal a devaluation in the appropriate Brokering-Agent currency if they witnessed this economic theft from taking place.
Step 3
Just after informing the Buyer-Brokering-Agent of the upcoming transaction, the Trade-Agent connects with a number of Trust-Agents that will witness the transaction. This could be a high number (possibly as much as 7 or more) of Trust-Agents. It is in the interest of the Trade-Agent to authenticate this transaction with a high degree of trust in order for the Trade-Agent to maintain its credibility on the network, since it is also rated by other Trust-Agents. It is likely to choose agents that have verified their execution and code to ensure there is no cheating. Only 2 Trust-Agents are shown on the diagram for descriptive purposes.
Step 4
The Trust-Agents begin the chaperoned trade by connecting to the same Buyer-Brokering-Agent and present the trade that they intend to witness.
Step 5
In the meantime, the original Trade-Agent connects to the seller and establishes the upcoming trade.
Step 6
Also simultaneously, the Trust-Agent also connects with the Seller-Brokering-Agent and signals their role as witness.
Step 7
Once the Seller-Brokering-Agent is informed of the transaction, it also makes a connection directly with the Buyer-Brokering-Agent and performs the chaperoned transaction.
Step 8A and Step 8B
Both the Buyer-Brokering-Agent and the Seller-Brokering-Agent connect to each of the Trust-Agents that are witnessing the transaction as part of the authentication process.
Step 9
The Trust-Agents confirm that the transaction was successful.
Step 10
The Trade-Agent completes the transaction.
[Distributed Ledger Transaction Diagram](https://i.stack.imgur.com/CDefm.png)
Example call
[Sample call](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HfnUq.png) | *note: I'm not an expert, I'm a student.*
a ledger is composed of the data in the blocks of your blockchain. the schema of the ledger is agreed upon in advance (in the protocol of the blockchain), and trust is assured through the design of the ledger, mechanics of the blockchain, and often the proof of work in writing the next block.
blockchains don't need to be multi-party, they only need to be multi-party to be very useful. blockchains can be distributed by utilizing the network layer, with an eye to scale and trust: a large number of participants or important work should require good proof of work and/or other security measures. Trust can even be ensured by giving certain parties higher rights than others, but this is more useful in industrial uses than in digital currencies.
an example of a network solution that is suitable (but cumbersome) to use for custom blockchains is peerJS (I'm fairly sure it is sufficient). In essence though, the entire thing can be written over connections such as webRTC or raw network connections.
an alternative to writing all of this yourself is to use a general purpose ledger with composable contracts, like etherium or IBM's hyperledger. However, I would argue this is less than ideal for learning about the technology. |
34,712 | The [Vatican Council](http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15303a.htm) *(opened on 8 December, 1869)* defined as "a divinely revealed dogma" that "the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks *ex cathedra* — that is, when in the exercise of his office as pastor and teacher of all Christians he defines, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole Church — is, by reason of the Divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer wished His Church to be endowed in defining doctrines of faith and morals; and consequently that such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of their own nature (ex sese) and not by reason of the Church's consent"1 - *Source:* [Explanation of papal infallibility | Infallibility | New Advent](http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07790a.htm).
1. cf. [**Denzinger 1839**](http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma19.php) And so We, adhering faithfully to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith, to the glory of God, our Savior, the elevation of the Catholic religion and the salvation of Christian peoples, with the approbation of the sacred Council, teach and explain that the dogma has been divinely revealed: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when carrying out the duty of the pastor and teacher of all Christians by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority he defines a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, through the divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter, operates with that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished that His church be instructed in defining doctrine on faith and morals; and so such definitions of the Roman Pontiff from himself, but not from the consensus of the Church, are unalterable.
The question is, does the Pope teach infallibly ONLY when he speaks *ex cathedra*? Are there instances when a Pope has taught infallibly but not precisely as according to the definition by the Vatican Council? If so, what are some examples? | 2014/11/19 | [
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/34712",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com",
"https://christianity.stackexchange.com/users/-1/"
] | *Ex cathedra* is the means by which a pope defines dogma.
Infallible means "not prone to err."
The First Vatican Council says a pope cannot err when defining dogma. This does not imply he's prone to err when not defining dogma, nor does it mean he must speak *ex cathedra* to be inerrant.
Encyclicals, for example, are inerrant; otherwise, the Church would demand the faithful to assent to what might contain error, and the Church cannot lead one into error because the Church is indefectible. From Pope Pius XII's *[Humani Generis](http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html)*:
>
> 20. Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: "He who heareth you, heareth me";[Luke, X, 16] and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.
>
>
> | Does the RC Church believe the Pope teaches infallibly ONLY when he speaks ex cathedra (from the chair)?
Roman Catholic teaching affirms that they believe their Pope teaches infallibly Only when he is speaking or teaching from 'the chair', ex cathdra.
RCC has said ONLY when their Pope speaks from the chair, do they believe he will not err in doctrine or moral teaching.
This comes from personally hearing a RCatholic explain ex cathedra reading from RCC approced documentation to me. (this falls within the proof acceptable for support)
As further proof, here is a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church;
Pope and Bishops (891)
The Pope is infallible when, as supreme pastor and teacher of the faith, he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to faith and morals.
This infallibility is also present in the body of bishops when, together with the Pope, they exercise the supreme Magisterium, above all in an Ecumenical Council. When the Church proposes a doctrine as Christ's teaching "for belief as being divinely revealed," the faithful must adhere by "the obedience of faith." This infallibility extends to the entire deposit of divine revelation.
This definition is called ex cathedra.
Ex Cathedra
From the Catholic Encyclopedia
Literally "from the chair", a theological term which signifies authoritative teaching and is more particularly applied to the definitions given by the Roman pontiff. Originally the name of the seat occupied by a professor or a bishop, cathedra was used later on to denote the magisterium, or teaching authority. The phrase ex cathedra occurs in the writings of the medieval theologians, and more frequently in the discussions which arose after the Reformation in regard to the papal prerogatives. But its present meaning was formally determined by the Vatican Council, Sess. IV, Const. de Ecclesiâ Christi, c. iv: "We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable."
<http://www.catholicity.com/encyclopedia/e/ex_cathedra.html> |
181,527 | gdb implemented support for [reverse debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_debugging) in 2009 (with gdb 7.0). I never heard about it until 2012. Now I find it extremely useful for certain types of debugging problems. I wished that I heard of it before.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that the technique is still rarely used and most people don't know that it exists. Why?
Do you know of any programming communities where the use of reverse debugging is common?
Background information:
* [Stackoverflow: How does reverse debugging work?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470434/how-does-reverse-debugging-work)
* gdb uses the term "reverse debugging" but other vendors use other terms for identical or similar techniques:
+ Microsoft calls it [IntelliTrace](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd264915.aspx) or "Historical Debugging"
+ There's a Java reverse debugger called [Omniscient Debugger](http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), though it probably no longer works in Java 6
+ There are other Java reverse debuggers
+ OCaml's debugger (ocamldebug) calls it [time travel](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.00/manual030.html) | 2013/01/04 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181527",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/76071/"
] | For one, running in debug mode with recording on is **very** expensive compared to even normal debug mode; it also consumes a lot more memory.
It is easier to decrease the granularity from line level to function call level. For example, the standard debugger in eclipse allows you to "drop to frame," which is essentially a jump back to the start of the function with a reset of all the parameters (nothing done on the heap is reverted, and `finally` blocks are not executed, so it is not a true reverse debugger; be careful about that).
Note that this has been available for several years now and works hand in hand with hot-code replacement. | As mentioned already, performance is key e.g. with gdb's reversible debugging, running something like gzip sees a slowdown of 50,000x compared to running natively. There are commercial alternatives however: I work for Undo [undo.io](https://undo.io), and our UndoDB product does the same but with a slowdown of less than 2x. There are other commercial reversible debuggers available too. |
181,527 | gdb implemented support for [reverse debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_debugging) in 2009 (with gdb 7.0). I never heard about it until 2012. Now I find it extremely useful for certain types of debugging problems. I wished that I heard of it before.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that the technique is still rarely used and most people don't know that it exists. Why?
Do you know of any programming communities where the use of reverse debugging is common?
Background information:
* [Stackoverflow: How does reverse debugging work?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470434/how-does-reverse-debugging-work)
* gdb uses the term "reverse debugging" but other vendors use other terms for identical or similar techniques:
+ Microsoft calls it [IntelliTrace](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd264915.aspx) or "Historical Debugging"
+ There's a Java reverse debugger called [Omniscient Debugger](http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), though it probably no longer works in Java 6
+ There are other Java reverse debuggers
+ OCaml's debugger (ocamldebug) calls it [time travel](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.00/manual030.html) | 2013/01/04 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181527",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/76071/"
] | For one, running in debug mode with recording on is **very** expensive compared to even normal debug mode; it also consumes a lot more memory.
It is easier to decrease the granularity from line level to function call level. For example, the standard debugger in eclipse allows you to "drop to frame," which is essentially a jump back to the start of the function with a reset of all the parameters (nothing done on the heap is reverted, and `finally` blocks are not executed, so it is not a true reverse debugger; be careful about that).
Note that this has been available for several years now and works hand in hand with hot-code replacement. | For an overview of the technology choices and products, see a series of blog posts I wrote about a year ago (and some follow-ups since):
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1547> - the tech
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1554> - research
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1564> - products
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1768> - updates to the previous post
My feeling for why it is used so little is that it requires special hardware, or using a special debugger, or setting up your system right. Most people do not invest the time to get maximum value from their debug tools, unfortunately.
And the fact that the "cheap default" of gdb is almost unusably slow and has quite a few stability problems for everything but the most common target systems. |
181,527 | gdb implemented support for [reverse debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_debugging) in 2009 (with gdb 7.0). I never heard about it until 2012. Now I find it extremely useful for certain types of debugging problems. I wished that I heard of it before.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that the technique is still rarely used and most people don't know that it exists. Why?
Do you know of any programming communities where the use of reverse debugging is common?
Background information:
* [Stackoverflow: How does reverse debugging work?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470434/how-does-reverse-debugging-work)
* gdb uses the term "reverse debugging" but other vendors use other terms for identical or similar techniques:
+ Microsoft calls it [IntelliTrace](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd264915.aspx) or "Historical Debugging"
+ There's a Java reverse debugger called [Omniscient Debugger](http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), though it probably no longer works in Java 6
+ There are other Java reverse debuggers
+ OCaml's debugger (ocamldebug) calls it [time travel](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.00/manual030.html) | 2013/01/04 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181527",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/76071/"
] | For one, running in debug mode with recording on is **very** expensive compared to even normal debug mode; it also consumes a lot more memory.
It is easier to decrease the granularity from line level to function call level. For example, the standard debugger in eclipse allows you to "drop to frame," which is essentially a jump back to the start of the function with a reset of all the parameters (nothing done on the heap is reverted, and `finally` blocks are not executed, so it is not a true reverse debugger; be careful about that).
Note that this has been available for several years now and works hand in hand with hot-code replacement. | From my experience as a sales engineer for TotalView debugger, people do know that it exists but they don't think it works, regardless of the (acceptable or not) slowdown.
University of Cambridge recently did a survey entitled ["Failure to Adopt Reverse Debugging Costs Global Economy $41 Billion Annually"](http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/1/prweb10298185.htm).
And coming back to GDB, I've heard (a lot) that slowdown makes it quite unusable on a "real-life" application.
I'd personally love to hear back from more people using reverse debugging on applications others than "Hello world!" |
181,527 | gdb implemented support for [reverse debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_debugging) in 2009 (with gdb 7.0). I never heard about it until 2012. Now I find it extremely useful for certain types of debugging problems. I wished that I heard of it before.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that the technique is still rarely used and most people don't know that it exists. Why?
Do you know of any programming communities where the use of reverse debugging is common?
Background information:
* [Stackoverflow: How does reverse debugging work?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470434/how-does-reverse-debugging-work)
* gdb uses the term "reverse debugging" but other vendors use other terms for identical or similar techniques:
+ Microsoft calls it [IntelliTrace](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd264915.aspx) or "Historical Debugging"
+ There's a Java reverse debugger called [Omniscient Debugger](http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), though it probably no longer works in Java 6
+ There are other Java reverse debuggers
+ OCaml's debugger (ocamldebug) calls it [time travel](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.00/manual030.html) | 2013/01/04 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181527",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/76071/"
] | For one, running in debug mode with recording on is **very** expensive compared to even normal debug mode; it also consumes a lot more memory.
It is easier to decrease the granularity from line level to function call level. For example, the standard debugger in eclipse allows you to "drop to frame," which is essentially a jump back to the start of the function with a reset of all the parameters (nothing done on the heap is reverted, and `finally` blocks are not executed, so it is not a true reverse debugger; be careful about that).
Note that this has been available for several years now and works hand in hand with hot-code replacement. | I think it is important to expand a little further on this "reverse" or "historic" debugging. I think to understand complex systems and behavior in those, to replay "events" which make state explicit is absolutely crucial.
What I want to express is that you are not alone in wondering why this technique is not so much applied today or why the related problems are rarely discussed clearly.
So let’s emphasize two very important concepts here:
1.To understand a programming system it is helpful to make state explicit
2.To even further understand a programming system replaying sequences of state (events) can help a lot.
Here are some sources which tackled the problem and proposed or designed solutions for the problem (dealing with state in complex systems):
-Out of the tar bit, paper: <http://shaffner.us/cs/papers/tarpit.pdf>
Main ideas: avoid, isolate or make state explicit
-CQRS
<http://www.cqrs.nu/>
This is a combination of two concepts: Command Query Segregation and Event Sourcing. There exists different implementations ( Java,C# , Scala).
The replaying of Tate sequences and the evolving of a domain model are the crucial parts here.
If you *really* zoom out and see the very broad picture you can already see that with the "rise" of functional programming people are already ((un)consciously ) attracted to fp because it makes state explicit!
But that only deal with point one, to address the second one you need another concept which could be "loosely" described as functional reactive programming.
So you might say all well and good but who actually uses CQRS and FRP? I would say (IMO because I don’t have concrete numbers) actually a lot of companies its just that they don’t know the work they do has this terminology. Maybe you google a bit around and you hear from enterprises which use CQRS, there are some success stories already out there.
FRP too is rising slowly as an example I could give Netflix: <http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/02/rxjava-netflix-api.html>
Which just released an implementation of RX which is actually .NET based (but has a Javascript implementation too). So People are using these techniques today already, IN THE LARGE to understand complex systems and to make them even better. That is why they use reverse debugging techniques. |
181,527 | gdb implemented support for [reverse debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_debugging) in 2009 (with gdb 7.0). I never heard about it until 2012. Now I find it extremely useful for certain types of debugging problems. I wished that I heard of it before.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that the technique is still rarely used and most people don't know that it exists. Why?
Do you know of any programming communities where the use of reverse debugging is common?
Background information:
* [Stackoverflow: How does reverse debugging work?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470434/how-does-reverse-debugging-work)
* gdb uses the term "reverse debugging" but other vendors use other terms for identical or similar techniques:
+ Microsoft calls it [IntelliTrace](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd264915.aspx) or "Historical Debugging"
+ There's a Java reverse debugger called [Omniscient Debugger](http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), though it probably no longer works in Java 6
+ There are other Java reverse debuggers
+ OCaml's debugger (ocamldebug) calls it [time travel](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.00/manual030.html) | 2013/01/04 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181527",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/76071/"
] | As mentioned already, performance is key e.g. with gdb's reversible debugging, running something like gzip sees a slowdown of 50,000x compared to running natively. There are commercial alternatives however: I work for Undo [undo.io](https://undo.io), and our UndoDB product does the same but with a slowdown of less than 2x. There are other commercial reversible debuggers available too. | For an overview of the technology choices and products, see a series of blog posts I wrote about a year ago (and some follow-ups since):
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1547> - the tech
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1554> - research
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1564> - products
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1768> - updates to the previous post
My feeling for why it is used so little is that it requires special hardware, or using a special debugger, or setting up your system right. Most people do not invest the time to get maximum value from their debug tools, unfortunately.
And the fact that the "cheap default" of gdb is almost unusably slow and has quite a few stability problems for everything but the most common target systems. |
181,527 | gdb implemented support for [reverse debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_debugging) in 2009 (with gdb 7.0). I never heard about it until 2012. Now I find it extremely useful for certain types of debugging problems. I wished that I heard of it before.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that the technique is still rarely used and most people don't know that it exists. Why?
Do you know of any programming communities where the use of reverse debugging is common?
Background information:
* [Stackoverflow: How does reverse debugging work?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470434/how-does-reverse-debugging-work)
* gdb uses the term "reverse debugging" but other vendors use other terms for identical or similar techniques:
+ Microsoft calls it [IntelliTrace](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd264915.aspx) or "Historical Debugging"
+ There's a Java reverse debugger called [Omniscient Debugger](http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), though it probably no longer works in Java 6
+ There are other Java reverse debuggers
+ OCaml's debugger (ocamldebug) calls it [time travel](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.00/manual030.html) | 2013/01/04 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181527",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/76071/"
] | As mentioned already, performance is key e.g. with gdb's reversible debugging, running something like gzip sees a slowdown of 50,000x compared to running natively. There are commercial alternatives however: I work for Undo [undo.io](https://undo.io), and our UndoDB product does the same but with a slowdown of less than 2x. There are other commercial reversible debuggers available too. | From my experience as a sales engineer for TotalView debugger, people do know that it exists but they don't think it works, regardless of the (acceptable or not) slowdown.
University of Cambridge recently did a survey entitled ["Failure to Adopt Reverse Debugging Costs Global Economy $41 Billion Annually"](http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/1/prweb10298185.htm).
And coming back to GDB, I've heard (a lot) that slowdown makes it quite unusable on a "real-life" application.
I'd personally love to hear back from more people using reverse debugging on applications others than "Hello world!" |
181,527 | gdb implemented support for [reverse debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_debugging) in 2009 (with gdb 7.0). I never heard about it until 2012. Now I find it extremely useful for certain types of debugging problems. I wished that I heard of it before.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that the technique is still rarely used and most people don't know that it exists. Why?
Do you know of any programming communities where the use of reverse debugging is common?
Background information:
* [Stackoverflow: How does reverse debugging work?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470434/how-does-reverse-debugging-work)
* gdb uses the term "reverse debugging" but other vendors use other terms for identical or similar techniques:
+ Microsoft calls it [IntelliTrace](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd264915.aspx) or "Historical Debugging"
+ There's a Java reverse debugger called [Omniscient Debugger](http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), though it probably no longer works in Java 6
+ There are other Java reverse debuggers
+ OCaml's debugger (ocamldebug) calls it [time travel](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.00/manual030.html) | 2013/01/04 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181527",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/76071/"
] | As mentioned already, performance is key e.g. with gdb's reversible debugging, running something like gzip sees a slowdown of 50,000x compared to running natively. There are commercial alternatives however: I work for Undo [undo.io](https://undo.io), and our UndoDB product does the same but with a slowdown of less than 2x. There are other commercial reversible debuggers available too. | I think it is important to expand a little further on this "reverse" or "historic" debugging. I think to understand complex systems and behavior in those, to replay "events" which make state explicit is absolutely crucial.
What I want to express is that you are not alone in wondering why this technique is not so much applied today or why the related problems are rarely discussed clearly.
So let’s emphasize two very important concepts here:
1.To understand a programming system it is helpful to make state explicit
2.To even further understand a programming system replaying sequences of state (events) can help a lot.
Here are some sources which tackled the problem and proposed or designed solutions for the problem (dealing with state in complex systems):
-Out of the tar bit, paper: <http://shaffner.us/cs/papers/tarpit.pdf>
Main ideas: avoid, isolate or make state explicit
-CQRS
<http://www.cqrs.nu/>
This is a combination of two concepts: Command Query Segregation and Event Sourcing. There exists different implementations ( Java,C# , Scala).
The replaying of Tate sequences and the evolving of a domain model are the crucial parts here.
If you *really* zoom out and see the very broad picture you can already see that with the "rise" of functional programming people are already ((un)consciously ) attracted to fp because it makes state explicit!
But that only deal with point one, to address the second one you need another concept which could be "loosely" described as functional reactive programming.
So you might say all well and good but who actually uses CQRS and FRP? I would say (IMO because I don’t have concrete numbers) actually a lot of companies its just that they don’t know the work they do has this terminology. Maybe you google a bit around and you hear from enterprises which use CQRS, there are some success stories already out there.
FRP too is rising slowly as an example I could give Netflix: <http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/02/rxjava-netflix-api.html>
Which just released an implementation of RX which is actually .NET based (but has a Javascript implementation too). So People are using these techniques today already, IN THE LARGE to understand complex systems and to make them even better. That is why they use reverse debugging techniques. |
181,527 | gdb implemented support for [reverse debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_debugging) in 2009 (with gdb 7.0). I never heard about it until 2012. Now I find it extremely useful for certain types of debugging problems. I wished that I heard of it before.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that the technique is still rarely used and most people don't know that it exists. Why?
Do you know of any programming communities where the use of reverse debugging is common?
Background information:
* [Stackoverflow: How does reverse debugging work?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470434/how-does-reverse-debugging-work)
* gdb uses the term "reverse debugging" but other vendors use other terms for identical or similar techniques:
+ Microsoft calls it [IntelliTrace](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd264915.aspx) or "Historical Debugging"
+ There's a Java reverse debugger called [Omniscient Debugger](http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), though it probably no longer works in Java 6
+ There are other Java reverse debuggers
+ OCaml's debugger (ocamldebug) calls it [time travel](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.00/manual030.html) | 2013/01/04 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181527",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/76071/"
] | For an overview of the technology choices and products, see a series of blog posts I wrote about a year ago (and some follow-ups since):
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1547> - the tech
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1554> - research
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1564> - products
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1768> - updates to the previous post
My feeling for why it is used so little is that it requires special hardware, or using a special debugger, or setting up your system right. Most people do not invest the time to get maximum value from their debug tools, unfortunately.
And the fact that the "cheap default" of gdb is almost unusably slow and has quite a few stability problems for everything but the most common target systems. | From my experience as a sales engineer for TotalView debugger, people do know that it exists but they don't think it works, regardless of the (acceptable or not) slowdown.
University of Cambridge recently did a survey entitled ["Failure to Adopt Reverse Debugging Costs Global Economy $41 Billion Annually"](http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/1/prweb10298185.htm).
And coming back to GDB, I've heard (a lot) that slowdown makes it quite unusable on a "real-life" application.
I'd personally love to hear back from more people using reverse debugging on applications others than "Hello world!" |
181,527 | gdb implemented support for [reverse debugging](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_debugging) in 2009 (with gdb 7.0). I never heard about it until 2012. Now I find it extremely useful for certain types of debugging problems. I wished that I heard of it before.
Correct me if I'm wrong but my impression is that the technique is still rarely used and most people don't know that it exists. Why?
Do you know of any programming communities where the use of reverse debugging is common?
Background information:
* [Stackoverflow: How does reverse debugging work?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1470434/how-does-reverse-debugging-work)
* gdb uses the term "reverse debugging" but other vendors use other terms for identical or similar techniques:
+ Microsoft calls it [IntelliTrace](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/dd264915.aspx) or "Historical Debugging"
+ There's a Java reverse debugger called [Omniscient Debugger](http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/), though it probably no longer works in Java 6
+ There are other Java reverse debuggers
+ OCaml's debugger (ocamldebug) calls it [time travel](http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/manual-ocaml-4.00/manual030.html) | 2013/01/04 | [
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/181527",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com",
"https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/users/76071/"
] | For an overview of the technology choices and products, see a series of blog posts I wrote about a year ago (and some follow-ups since):
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1547> - the tech
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1554> - research
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1564> - products
* <http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1768> - updates to the previous post
My feeling for why it is used so little is that it requires special hardware, or using a special debugger, or setting up your system right. Most people do not invest the time to get maximum value from their debug tools, unfortunately.
And the fact that the "cheap default" of gdb is almost unusably slow and has quite a few stability problems for everything but the most common target systems. | I think it is important to expand a little further on this "reverse" or "historic" debugging. I think to understand complex systems and behavior in those, to replay "events" which make state explicit is absolutely crucial.
What I want to express is that you are not alone in wondering why this technique is not so much applied today or why the related problems are rarely discussed clearly.
So let’s emphasize two very important concepts here:
1.To understand a programming system it is helpful to make state explicit
2.To even further understand a programming system replaying sequences of state (events) can help a lot.
Here are some sources which tackled the problem and proposed or designed solutions for the problem (dealing with state in complex systems):
-Out of the tar bit, paper: <http://shaffner.us/cs/papers/tarpit.pdf>
Main ideas: avoid, isolate or make state explicit
-CQRS
<http://www.cqrs.nu/>
This is a combination of two concepts: Command Query Segregation and Event Sourcing. There exists different implementations ( Java,C# , Scala).
The replaying of Tate sequences and the evolving of a domain model are the crucial parts here.
If you *really* zoom out and see the very broad picture you can already see that with the "rise" of functional programming people are already ((un)consciously ) attracted to fp because it makes state explicit!
But that only deal with point one, to address the second one you need another concept which could be "loosely" described as functional reactive programming.
So you might say all well and good but who actually uses CQRS and FRP? I would say (IMO because I don’t have concrete numbers) actually a lot of companies its just that they don’t know the work they do has this terminology. Maybe you google a bit around and you hear from enterprises which use CQRS, there are some success stories already out there.
FRP too is rising slowly as an example I could give Netflix: <http://techblog.netflix.com/2013/02/rxjava-netflix-api.html>
Which just released an implementation of RX which is actually .NET based (but has a Javascript implementation too). So People are using these techniques today already, IN THE LARGE to understand complex systems and to make them even better. That is why they use reverse debugging techniques. |
46,029 | I had received bitcoins before my wallet was fully synchronized and it took several days for it to finish the process, so I decided to deposit the bitcoins in another wallet. Now I can see they are "on deposit", but they do not show up in my other wallet. How can I move them to my wallet or use them?
Thank you! | 2016/06/19 | [
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/46029",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com",
"https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/users/37841/"
] | If you want to send newly received Bitcoins from a wallet that is not yet synchronized you have two choices:
1. Wait until your incoming Bitcoin transaction has synced. Your wallet cannot send Bitcoins that it cannot yet determine it has received (because it has not yet synced to the block height were you received the BTC)
2. Import the keys of your receiving address or HD wallet into a wallet that has fully synced the blockchain or a light/SPV wallet
Please understand that you own any Bitcoin for which you control the private keys and that Bitcoin can be used with any wallet. However just because you own Bitcoin does not mean that you can spend it from a wallet that is not yet synchronized. When a wallet is not synchronized at least up to the point where an address you control has received the Bitcoin you are looking for, your wallet has no way to verify your ownership of that BTC. | I have noticed myself that does take some time for everything to synchronize but once it does it'll be there for you |
85,824 | A few years ago I graduated from a master program at a university. Since I since then has been working mainly in my own company and with granted projects, I don't have so many references from work life or post university activities, even though it's four years since I graduated.
When I apply for grants and jobs I am often asked for a reference, preferably a professor (which I have in my former professor) or a supervisor (which I don't have, since I'm not employed at a company).
**How long is it "normal" to use your former professor as a reference when applying for grants and jobs?** | 2017/03/01 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/85824",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/70121/"
] | There is no hard limit, other than the professor being alive.
Generally, it is useful to include only references that are relevant and can express something about your current abilities. So, if a professor can say something meaningful and relevant about you, even after a decade or more, then you can include them as a reference.
If, however, your abilities and skills have significantly changed in the respective area (e.g. you gained substantially more experience in this particular field), then the reference is outdated, and it is better not to include them. | I have been asked for recommendations from students immediately after a course ends to up to about 5 years later. Some times for graduate school applications, other times for job applications.
To be honest, I see it as part of the job and generally do not mind giving them. I agree that there is not really a hard time limit so long as the recommendation is relevant to your skill set or character. The best thing that you can do is just ask them directly. |
186,483 | I am at the very end of my PhD, and my PhD advisor has been repeatedly inappropriate and overstepped boundaries that would probably fall into "mandated reporter" territory, if I were to tell anyone. I do not say this lightly, but I literally feel traumatized by the majority of my PhD experience. I also worry my professor might be mentally or medically suffering, and they might need serious help. **tldr**; I am confused about whether I should tell anyone at my university about my advisor's behavior or just walk away, as soon as I can graduate.
tw: Substance abuse and sexual harassment (?)
While intoxicated, my professor told me in detail about their sexual history (including *detailed* description of specific sex acts), while I was at a work event with them, which has made me incredibly uncomfortable (I tried to change the subject and then walked away). It was completely unsolicited and off-topic. I really hope they don't remember telling me these things, but I feel very disturbed. It didn't seem like they were propositioning me, but more of uninhibited exhibitionism.
My advisor also pressures people in the lab to drink at lab events (while they themselves get intoxicated: entire bottles of wine or several bottles of beer/hard liquor) and to do unsafe things ("don't wear a seat-belt" while on group trips, insisting on driving after several drinks, and telling us we have to tell white lies to cover for them when they break university policy). I have tried to change the lab culture around this, by always bringing and offering non-alcoholic drinks and other distractions.
My advisor has also pressured us (PhD students/postdocs) to stay overnight at their house or share a hotel room with them at conferences, for various reasons. I sincerely don't think they have gone so far as to ever assault anyone, but I am the only student of theirs that has not staid overnight at their house, which I feel caused a social divide and stigma towards me. It is super awkward, at best, to share sleeping arrangements with a drunk advisor (sometimes, they are an angry drunk).
There have been other major behaviors that would be too identifying to describe, but they are **very** abnormal, threatening, controlling, and/or point to mental instability or some kind of illness that seriously impairs judgement. I have experienced extreme stress in response to these cycles of instability, and it has taken a toll on my mental and physical health.
My plan has always been to graduate as fast as I can, try to have the "best" relationship I possibly can with my advisor, move on, and forget all of this. I feel ashamed, because I wish I listened to my gut and switched labs, the first time my advisor used threatening language towards me and/or behaved in ways that made me feel very uncomfortable, years ago. I have a next job lined up, and I'm just waiting for my advisor to give any final edits on my complete thesis and sign-off. This last part has been a huge struggle and has been dragging on for a very long time. The thesis is in good shape (it is "ready to submit to journals" according to my committee), but it still needs to be published as several separate manuscripts (which requires extended collaboration with my advisor).
I am worried if I talk to someone at my university about these concerns, it will be career ending for me (I will not be able to get a letter for any future fellowship or job applications from my PhD advisor, which will "raise a red flag," and my papers will be in jeopardy). My advisor has tenure, so I don't know if it would even have any proactive or mediating outcome.
I recently learned, however, that another student has also been experiencing extremely similar verbal/emotional abuse as I have, and I am especially wondering if I should say something to someone. This other student is extremely emotionally distressed and worried about their professional and financial future. I also feel worried about the several more junior students in the lab that I will leave behind.
**Does anyone have any advice/experience in such a situation?**
* Who should I talk to, if anyone: Should I talk to an ombudsman? Should I talk to my department head, but only share a selection of these issues (leaving out things that could fall into mandated reporter territory, ie sex and otherwise; things I didn't write about here, but are worse)? Or should I tell someone everything? I tried talking to my thesis committee, but they stopped me and told me there were mandated reporters (so I decided not to proceed in asking for their advice).
* *When* should I talk to someone? After the ink dries on my graduation papers? After my publications are accepted? After I get my first non-trainee job offer? What should I do if their behavior gets worse in the meantime?
* Is there any way my career can recover, if I am transparent about my experiences to someone who is a mandated reporter? I am not so naive to think "reporting" my concerns would actually change anything or make my situation better: it would be throwing myself under the bus, to potentially generate awareness or encourage this advisor to get help, if I'm lucky.
* What special care can/should I take, if I worry this behavior might be driven by substance abuse or some other untreated medical issue?
Thank you to anyone who read all the way through, this hot mess. I really appreciate it. | 2022/06/28 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/186483",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/158025/"
] | Most universities have an anonymous tip line. Use that and let someone else come to you to ask questions. This way, you're not the one who tipped the university off (i.e., nobody will *know* that you did), only the one who answered questions in the same way as hopefully some of your colleagues will. Be specific and detailed in your initial, anonymous report to make sure the university cannot just dismiss it as "he said she said".
You are probably right that there is a price you will pay, if only that your adviser can no longer write letters of recommendation if they are removed from their position. You can mitigate this by making your report only after you have found a different position. On the other hand, you gain peace of mind that the next generation of students does not have to go through what you have gone through. | Short term concern:
>
> I will not be able to get a letter for any future fellowship or job
> applications from my PhD advisor, which will "raise a red flag,"
>
>
>
you stated as well that
>
> I have a next job lined up
>
>
>
So who cares about the reference letter from your advisor.
Let's build a worst-case scenario. You do nothing, no one does nothing. You get your reference letters, you build your career, your advisor keep on behaving then 10 years down the road someone reports your advisor and you are then put in the spotlight "look, he/she was referenced by them and he/she build a career" ... good luck with pushing your *me too* connections then to save your face.
Ok, back to reality, you are a lab PhD under immense pressure (even with the best advisor, because productivity increased 5000 times in the past 50 years, in research as well, but PhDs are still pushed to perform the same breakthrough science like if they were the lucky 0.01% of the population, while now they are the 1% and growing).
Unfortunately many labs groups have a "collegial" style, and this plus the practical attitude required to "get s\*\*t done" make people forgetting they are humans and behave like animals, because if the time of the people has to be dictated by the machinery/lab equipment, they will start as well behaving like machines and not like humans.
Ok, enough with philosophy.
If you do not know to whom you should address your concerns, you are already in trouble: it means the institution is not pro-active in preventing such behaviours, so whatever you will do, it will almost for sure retort against you. You mention "university policy", is there an anonymous way of reporting? Since your advisor is tenured, they will not go full power against him, but after they collect enough anonymous reports, they will start doing something (something ultra mild, like writing them "please adhere to the rules" ... but that is not your duty, although it is something you can escalate)
You should speak with the students representatives, without specifically naming the advisor, but being transparent about their acts, or you can speak with the department head, asking to have a private chat. Then you can speak with the head, mentioning your advisor had some erratically behavior that made you very uncomfortable. However, you do not need to be precise on the behavior, at first. But you can open the discussion. The remarks I can leave are
* yes, you have to do something for the next students;
* yes you may professionally suffer in the process (you already suffered a lot at the private level, this is just a small drop, not suffering at the professional level or even benefitting from your advisor at the professional will **not** make up for the personal suffering you had, unless you are ready to have personal disorders in the medium-long term...)
* no, things will not change in the short term, so you have to best assess your way out from this group, consider that you should not have any relations with them after your graduation.
In short, you have to decide how much more personal pain you are ready to accept to benefit professionaly from this relation. Professionally speaking, having a PhD in STEM is a sure thing to get a job.
Without your advisor support you will not get the profesorship at Cornell, but if the single reference letter from your advisor is so important, it means you do not have so good contacts so you will not become the next big shot (sorry being blunt).
Good luck, you have all my sympathy and probably the sympathy of many people in the lab, although you feel the stigma ... animals move in herds. |
186,483 | I am at the very end of my PhD, and my PhD advisor has been repeatedly inappropriate and overstepped boundaries that would probably fall into "mandated reporter" territory, if I were to tell anyone. I do not say this lightly, but I literally feel traumatized by the majority of my PhD experience. I also worry my professor might be mentally or medically suffering, and they might need serious help. **tldr**; I am confused about whether I should tell anyone at my university about my advisor's behavior or just walk away, as soon as I can graduate.
tw: Substance abuse and sexual harassment (?)
While intoxicated, my professor told me in detail about their sexual history (including *detailed* description of specific sex acts), while I was at a work event with them, which has made me incredibly uncomfortable (I tried to change the subject and then walked away). It was completely unsolicited and off-topic. I really hope they don't remember telling me these things, but I feel very disturbed. It didn't seem like they were propositioning me, but more of uninhibited exhibitionism.
My advisor also pressures people in the lab to drink at lab events (while they themselves get intoxicated: entire bottles of wine or several bottles of beer/hard liquor) and to do unsafe things ("don't wear a seat-belt" while on group trips, insisting on driving after several drinks, and telling us we have to tell white lies to cover for them when they break university policy). I have tried to change the lab culture around this, by always bringing and offering non-alcoholic drinks and other distractions.
My advisor has also pressured us (PhD students/postdocs) to stay overnight at their house or share a hotel room with them at conferences, for various reasons. I sincerely don't think they have gone so far as to ever assault anyone, but I am the only student of theirs that has not staid overnight at their house, which I feel caused a social divide and stigma towards me. It is super awkward, at best, to share sleeping arrangements with a drunk advisor (sometimes, they are an angry drunk).
There have been other major behaviors that would be too identifying to describe, but they are **very** abnormal, threatening, controlling, and/or point to mental instability or some kind of illness that seriously impairs judgement. I have experienced extreme stress in response to these cycles of instability, and it has taken a toll on my mental and physical health.
My plan has always been to graduate as fast as I can, try to have the "best" relationship I possibly can with my advisor, move on, and forget all of this. I feel ashamed, because I wish I listened to my gut and switched labs, the first time my advisor used threatening language towards me and/or behaved in ways that made me feel very uncomfortable, years ago. I have a next job lined up, and I'm just waiting for my advisor to give any final edits on my complete thesis and sign-off. This last part has been a huge struggle and has been dragging on for a very long time. The thesis is in good shape (it is "ready to submit to journals" according to my committee), but it still needs to be published as several separate manuscripts (which requires extended collaboration with my advisor).
I am worried if I talk to someone at my university about these concerns, it will be career ending for me (I will not be able to get a letter for any future fellowship or job applications from my PhD advisor, which will "raise a red flag," and my papers will be in jeopardy). My advisor has tenure, so I don't know if it would even have any proactive or mediating outcome.
I recently learned, however, that another student has also been experiencing extremely similar verbal/emotional abuse as I have, and I am especially wondering if I should say something to someone. This other student is extremely emotionally distressed and worried about their professional and financial future. I also feel worried about the several more junior students in the lab that I will leave behind.
**Does anyone have any advice/experience in such a situation?**
* Who should I talk to, if anyone: Should I talk to an ombudsman? Should I talk to my department head, but only share a selection of these issues (leaving out things that could fall into mandated reporter territory, ie sex and otherwise; things I didn't write about here, but are worse)? Or should I tell someone everything? I tried talking to my thesis committee, but they stopped me and told me there were mandated reporters (so I decided not to proceed in asking for their advice).
* *When* should I talk to someone? After the ink dries on my graduation papers? After my publications are accepted? After I get my first non-trainee job offer? What should I do if their behavior gets worse in the meantime?
* Is there any way my career can recover, if I am transparent about my experiences to someone who is a mandated reporter? I am not so naive to think "reporting" my concerns would actually change anything or make my situation better: it would be throwing myself under the bus, to potentially generate awareness or encourage this advisor to get help, if I'm lucky.
* What special care can/should I take, if I worry this behavior might be driven by substance abuse or some other untreated medical issue?
Thank you to anyone who read all the way through, this hot mess. I really appreciate it. | 2022/06/28 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/186483",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/158025/"
] | Most universities have an anonymous tip line. Use that and let someone else come to you to ask questions. This way, you're not the one who tipped the university off (i.e., nobody will *know* that you did), only the one who answered questions in the same way as hopefully some of your colleagues will. Be specific and detailed in your initial, anonymous report to make sure the university cannot just dismiss it as "he said she said".
You are probably right that there is a price you will pay, if only that your adviser can no longer write letters of recommendation if they are removed from their position. You can mitigate this by making your report only after you have found a different position. On the other hand, you gain peace of mind that the next generation of students does not have to go through what you have gone through. | You have lots of options here, so you will just have to figure out which option is best for you. Also, in relation to potential career damage, it is primarily your advisor who is in danger of serious career damage, not you. From what you have described it sounds like your supervisor has a problem with alcohol and has bad judgment in relation to some social matters (especially while inebriated). Your best course of action depends on a number of factors relating to your view of your supervisor and your preferred approach.
---
**Option 1: Report the problems to the university**
One option here is to report these problems to the university and let the university work things out using its usual disciplinary policies. Since there are multiple students witnessing these behaviours it should be possible to establish those behaviours with evidence, and this is likely to lead to some kind of requirements being imposed on this academic. The consequences will depend on the university and their approach; it might lead to termination, or it might lead to some lesser response like a period of detoxification and some requirements for reforms in his work behaviour. In any case, once you report the issues and provide relevant statements, the university will do the rest.
If you were to take this approach, it might negatively affect your ability to get a letter of recommendation from your supervisor (or it might not, depending on his attitude). Even if this were to occur, it is likely that the university could provide you with some reasonable alternative, such as a letter of recommendation from another academic or the Dean of the Department. (For example, the Dean might supply you with a form letter stating that your supervisor was removed for disciplinary reasons and this has led you to be unable to get a letter of recommendation from that supervisor through no fault of your own.) The university will feel some responsibility here since it has placed you under the supervision of someone who is not behaving himself, so it should not be difficult to get something that can act as a reasonable substitute for a letter of recommendation.
As to any other possible career damage to you, I think that is unlikely. If you can get some alternative to a letter of recommendation from your supervisor (e.g., a letter from the Dean) then this ought to function perfectly adequately.
(Also, I'm not sure there is any such thing as a "mandated reporter" for sexual harassment unless you are a minor. Sexual harassment against other adults is something that can be reported, but I'm not aware of anyone having an onus to report on behalf of another adult.)
---
**Option 2: Write your advisor a letter**
It sounds like you still sympathise with your advisor despite the problems you've described. It also sounds like you want to do something, but don't like the idea of reporting the behaviour to the university. In view of that, one option you have is to wait until you've graduated your program and then write your advisor a personal letter setting out your thoughts on the problems you've raised.
To maximise the chances of this being received in a postive spirit, you could frame this as a thank-you letter where you thank him for his work supervising you and set out both the good and bad points relating to his supervision. When you get to the bad points, raise the problems you are concerned about and tell him that these detracted from the quality of supervision and made you uncomfortable. You should note that you have observed that he appears to have problems with alcohol and you think this has caused him to display some bad judgment in some cases. You might also mention that you had considered reporting these issues to the university, but you have decided to just talk to him about it instead.
I may be naive, and I can't really say how a person would react to this type of feedback, but I would think that there is a pretty good chance that a supervisor hearing about these problems would be pretty embarrassed and want to reform their behaviour (and probably also cut down on the drinking). You mentioned that your supervisor asks students to cover for him with the university, so he's aware that he's doing the wrong thing. He might be labouring under the illusion that his behaviours are okay with the students, and your letter could break that illusion.
---
**Option 3: Do nothing**
You are at the end of your PhD program now and you have obviously already put up with this behaviour for a substantial amount of time. Therefore one reasonable option you have is just to finish out your program and go on with your career elsewhere, without ever resolving things with your supervisor. This has the advantage of being an easy course-of-action, but it also has the disadvantage that it doesn't fix anything for other students who come in to be supervised by this supervisor later on. |
186,483 | I am at the very end of my PhD, and my PhD advisor has been repeatedly inappropriate and overstepped boundaries that would probably fall into "mandated reporter" territory, if I were to tell anyone. I do not say this lightly, but I literally feel traumatized by the majority of my PhD experience. I also worry my professor might be mentally or medically suffering, and they might need serious help. **tldr**; I am confused about whether I should tell anyone at my university about my advisor's behavior or just walk away, as soon as I can graduate.
tw: Substance abuse and sexual harassment (?)
While intoxicated, my professor told me in detail about their sexual history (including *detailed* description of specific sex acts), while I was at a work event with them, which has made me incredibly uncomfortable (I tried to change the subject and then walked away). It was completely unsolicited and off-topic. I really hope they don't remember telling me these things, but I feel very disturbed. It didn't seem like they were propositioning me, but more of uninhibited exhibitionism.
My advisor also pressures people in the lab to drink at lab events (while they themselves get intoxicated: entire bottles of wine or several bottles of beer/hard liquor) and to do unsafe things ("don't wear a seat-belt" while on group trips, insisting on driving after several drinks, and telling us we have to tell white lies to cover for them when they break university policy). I have tried to change the lab culture around this, by always bringing and offering non-alcoholic drinks and other distractions.
My advisor has also pressured us (PhD students/postdocs) to stay overnight at their house or share a hotel room with them at conferences, for various reasons. I sincerely don't think they have gone so far as to ever assault anyone, but I am the only student of theirs that has not staid overnight at their house, which I feel caused a social divide and stigma towards me. It is super awkward, at best, to share sleeping arrangements with a drunk advisor (sometimes, they are an angry drunk).
There have been other major behaviors that would be too identifying to describe, but they are **very** abnormal, threatening, controlling, and/or point to mental instability or some kind of illness that seriously impairs judgement. I have experienced extreme stress in response to these cycles of instability, and it has taken a toll on my mental and physical health.
My plan has always been to graduate as fast as I can, try to have the "best" relationship I possibly can with my advisor, move on, and forget all of this. I feel ashamed, because I wish I listened to my gut and switched labs, the first time my advisor used threatening language towards me and/or behaved in ways that made me feel very uncomfortable, years ago. I have a next job lined up, and I'm just waiting for my advisor to give any final edits on my complete thesis and sign-off. This last part has been a huge struggle and has been dragging on for a very long time. The thesis is in good shape (it is "ready to submit to journals" according to my committee), but it still needs to be published as several separate manuscripts (which requires extended collaboration with my advisor).
I am worried if I talk to someone at my university about these concerns, it will be career ending for me (I will not be able to get a letter for any future fellowship or job applications from my PhD advisor, which will "raise a red flag," and my papers will be in jeopardy). My advisor has tenure, so I don't know if it would even have any proactive or mediating outcome.
I recently learned, however, that another student has also been experiencing extremely similar verbal/emotional abuse as I have, and I am especially wondering if I should say something to someone. This other student is extremely emotionally distressed and worried about their professional and financial future. I also feel worried about the several more junior students in the lab that I will leave behind.
**Does anyone have any advice/experience in such a situation?**
* Who should I talk to, if anyone: Should I talk to an ombudsman? Should I talk to my department head, but only share a selection of these issues (leaving out things that could fall into mandated reporter territory, ie sex and otherwise; things I didn't write about here, but are worse)? Or should I tell someone everything? I tried talking to my thesis committee, but they stopped me and told me there were mandated reporters (so I decided not to proceed in asking for their advice).
* *When* should I talk to someone? After the ink dries on my graduation papers? After my publications are accepted? After I get my first non-trainee job offer? What should I do if their behavior gets worse in the meantime?
* Is there any way my career can recover, if I am transparent about my experiences to someone who is a mandated reporter? I am not so naive to think "reporting" my concerns would actually change anything or make my situation better: it would be throwing myself under the bus, to potentially generate awareness or encourage this advisor to get help, if I'm lucky.
* What special care can/should I take, if I worry this behavior might be driven by substance abuse or some other untreated medical issue?
Thank you to anyone who read all the way through, this hot mess. I really appreciate it. | 2022/06/28 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/186483",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/158025/"
] | Most universities have an anonymous tip line. Use that and let someone else come to you to ask questions. This way, you're not the one who tipped the university off (i.e., nobody will *know* that you did), only the one who answered questions in the same way as hopefully some of your colleagues will. Be specific and detailed in your initial, anonymous report to make sure the university cannot just dismiss it as "he said she said".
You are probably right that there is a price you will pay, if only that your adviser can no longer write letters of recommendation if they are removed from their position. You can mitigate this by making your report only after you have found a different position. On the other hand, you gain peace of mind that the next generation of students does not have to go through what you have gone through. | Im in a similar situation and talked to the responsible person, after years of gathering courage/self gaslighting. The name of the person u have to talk is „ombudsperson“. I created an alias and wont gibe information unless the uni does something, also because he would guess it was me. You got this. |
186,483 | I am at the very end of my PhD, and my PhD advisor has been repeatedly inappropriate and overstepped boundaries that would probably fall into "mandated reporter" territory, if I were to tell anyone. I do not say this lightly, but I literally feel traumatized by the majority of my PhD experience. I also worry my professor might be mentally or medically suffering, and they might need serious help. **tldr**; I am confused about whether I should tell anyone at my university about my advisor's behavior or just walk away, as soon as I can graduate.
tw: Substance abuse and sexual harassment (?)
While intoxicated, my professor told me in detail about their sexual history (including *detailed* description of specific sex acts), while I was at a work event with them, which has made me incredibly uncomfortable (I tried to change the subject and then walked away). It was completely unsolicited and off-topic. I really hope they don't remember telling me these things, but I feel very disturbed. It didn't seem like they were propositioning me, but more of uninhibited exhibitionism.
My advisor also pressures people in the lab to drink at lab events (while they themselves get intoxicated: entire bottles of wine or several bottles of beer/hard liquor) and to do unsafe things ("don't wear a seat-belt" while on group trips, insisting on driving after several drinks, and telling us we have to tell white lies to cover for them when they break university policy). I have tried to change the lab culture around this, by always bringing and offering non-alcoholic drinks and other distractions.
My advisor has also pressured us (PhD students/postdocs) to stay overnight at their house or share a hotel room with them at conferences, for various reasons. I sincerely don't think they have gone so far as to ever assault anyone, but I am the only student of theirs that has not staid overnight at their house, which I feel caused a social divide and stigma towards me. It is super awkward, at best, to share sleeping arrangements with a drunk advisor (sometimes, they are an angry drunk).
There have been other major behaviors that would be too identifying to describe, but they are **very** abnormal, threatening, controlling, and/or point to mental instability or some kind of illness that seriously impairs judgement. I have experienced extreme stress in response to these cycles of instability, and it has taken a toll on my mental and physical health.
My plan has always been to graduate as fast as I can, try to have the "best" relationship I possibly can with my advisor, move on, and forget all of this. I feel ashamed, because I wish I listened to my gut and switched labs, the first time my advisor used threatening language towards me and/or behaved in ways that made me feel very uncomfortable, years ago. I have a next job lined up, and I'm just waiting for my advisor to give any final edits on my complete thesis and sign-off. This last part has been a huge struggle and has been dragging on for a very long time. The thesis is in good shape (it is "ready to submit to journals" according to my committee), but it still needs to be published as several separate manuscripts (which requires extended collaboration with my advisor).
I am worried if I talk to someone at my university about these concerns, it will be career ending for me (I will not be able to get a letter for any future fellowship or job applications from my PhD advisor, which will "raise a red flag," and my papers will be in jeopardy). My advisor has tenure, so I don't know if it would even have any proactive or mediating outcome.
I recently learned, however, that another student has also been experiencing extremely similar verbal/emotional abuse as I have, and I am especially wondering if I should say something to someone. This other student is extremely emotionally distressed and worried about their professional and financial future. I also feel worried about the several more junior students in the lab that I will leave behind.
**Does anyone have any advice/experience in such a situation?**
* Who should I talk to, if anyone: Should I talk to an ombudsman? Should I talk to my department head, but only share a selection of these issues (leaving out things that could fall into mandated reporter territory, ie sex and otherwise; things I didn't write about here, but are worse)? Or should I tell someone everything? I tried talking to my thesis committee, but they stopped me and told me there were mandated reporters (so I decided not to proceed in asking for their advice).
* *When* should I talk to someone? After the ink dries on my graduation papers? After my publications are accepted? After I get my first non-trainee job offer? What should I do if their behavior gets worse in the meantime?
* Is there any way my career can recover, if I am transparent about my experiences to someone who is a mandated reporter? I am not so naive to think "reporting" my concerns would actually change anything or make my situation better: it would be throwing myself under the bus, to potentially generate awareness or encourage this advisor to get help, if I'm lucky.
* What special care can/should I take, if I worry this behavior might be driven by substance abuse or some other untreated medical issue?
Thank you to anyone who read all the way through, this hot mess. I really appreciate it. | 2022/06/28 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/186483",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/158025/"
] | Short term concern:
>
> I will not be able to get a letter for any future fellowship or job
> applications from my PhD advisor, which will "raise a red flag,"
>
>
>
you stated as well that
>
> I have a next job lined up
>
>
>
So who cares about the reference letter from your advisor.
Let's build a worst-case scenario. You do nothing, no one does nothing. You get your reference letters, you build your career, your advisor keep on behaving then 10 years down the road someone reports your advisor and you are then put in the spotlight "look, he/she was referenced by them and he/she build a career" ... good luck with pushing your *me too* connections then to save your face.
Ok, back to reality, you are a lab PhD under immense pressure (even with the best advisor, because productivity increased 5000 times in the past 50 years, in research as well, but PhDs are still pushed to perform the same breakthrough science like if they were the lucky 0.01% of the population, while now they are the 1% and growing).
Unfortunately many labs groups have a "collegial" style, and this plus the practical attitude required to "get s\*\*t done" make people forgetting they are humans and behave like animals, because if the time of the people has to be dictated by the machinery/lab equipment, they will start as well behaving like machines and not like humans.
Ok, enough with philosophy.
If you do not know to whom you should address your concerns, you are already in trouble: it means the institution is not pro-active in preventing such behaviours, so whatever you will do, it will almost for sure retort against you. You mention "university policy", is there an anonymous way of reporting? Since your advisor is tenured, they will not go full power against him, but after they collect enough anonymous reports, they will start doing something (something ultra mild, like writing them "please adhere to the rules" ... but that is not your duty, although it is something you can escalate)
You should speak with the students representatives, without specifically naming the advisor, but being transparent about their acts, or you can speak with the department head, asking to have a private chat. Then you can speak with the head, mentioning your advisor had some erratically behavior that made you very uncomfortable. However, you do not need to be precise on the behavior, at first. But you can open the discussion. The remarks I can leave are
* yes, you have to do something for the next students;
* yes you may professionally suffer in the process (you already suffered a lot at the private level, this is just a small drop, not suffering at the professional level or even benefitting from your advisor at the professional will **not** make up for the personal suffering you had, unless you are ready to have personal disorders in the medium-long term...)
* no, things will not change in the short term, so you have to best assess your way out from this group, consider that you should not have any relations with them after your graduation.
In short, you have to decide how much more personal pain you are ready to accept to benefit professionaly from this relation. Professionally speaking, having a PhD in STEM is a sure thing to get a job.
Without your advisor support you will not get the profesorship at Cornell, but if the single reference letter from your advisor is so important, it means you do not have so good contacts so you will not become the next big shot (sorry being blunt).
Good luck, you have all my sympathy and probably the sympathy of many people in the lab, although you feel the stigma ... animals move in herds. | Im in a similar situation and talked to the responsible person, after years of gathering courage/self gaslighting. The name of the person u have to talk is „ombudsperson“. I created an alias and wont gibe information unless the uni does something, also because he would guess it was me. You got this. |
186,483 | I am at the very end of my PhD, and my PhD advisor has been repeatedly inappropriate and overstepped boundaries that would probably fall into "mandated reporter" territory, if I were to tell anyone. I do not say this lightly, but I literally feel traumatized by the majority of my PhD experience. I also worry my professor might be mentally or medically suffering, and they might need serious help. **tldr**; I am confused about whether I should tell anyone at my university about my advisor's behavior or just walk away, as soon as I can graduate.
tw: Substance abuse and sexual harassment (?)
While intoxicated, my professor told me in detail about their sexual history (including *detailed* description of specific sex acts), while I was at a work event with them, which has made me incredibly uncomfortable (I tried to change the subject and then walked away). It was completely unsolicited and off-topic. I really hope they don't remember telling me these things, but I feel very disturbed. It didn't seem like they were propositioning me, but more of uninhibited exhibitionism.
My advisor also pressures people in the lab to drink at lab events (while they themselves get intoxicated: entire bottles of wine or several bottles of beer/hard liquor) and to do unsafe things ("don't wear a seat-belt" while on group trips, insisting on driving after several drinks, and telling us we have to tell white lies to cover for them when they break university policy). I have tried to change the lab culture around this, by always bringing and offering non-alcoholic drinks and other distractions.
My advisor has also pressured us (PhD students/postdocs) to stay overnight at their house or share a hotel room with them at conferences, for various reasons. I sincerely don't think they have gone so far as to ever assault anyone, but I am the only student of theirs that has not staid overnight at their house, which I feel caused a social divide and stigma towards me. It is super awkward, at best, to share sleeping arrangements with a drunk advisor (sometimes, they are an angry drunk).
There have been other major behaviors that would be too identifying to describe, but they are **very** abnormal, threatening, controlling, and/or point to mental instability or some kind of illness that seriously impairs judgement. I have experienced extreme stress in response to these cycles of instability, and it has taken a toll on my mental and physical health.
My plan has always been to graduate as fast as I can, try to have the "best" relationship I possibly can with my advisor, move on, and forget all of this. I feel ashamed, because I wish I listened to my gut and switched labs, the first time my advisor used threatening language towards me and/or behaved in ways that made me feel very uncomfortable, years ago. I have a next job lined up, and I'm just waiting for my advisor to give any final edits on my complete thesis and sign-off. This last part has been a huge struggle and has been dragging on for a very long time. The thesis is in good shape (it is "ready to submit to journals" according to my committee), but it still needs to be published as several separate manuscripts (which requires extended collaboration with my advisor).
I am worried if I talk to someone at my university about these concerns, it will be career ending for me (I will not be able to get a letter for any future fellowship or job applications from my PhD advisor, which will "raise a red flag," and my papers will be in jeopardy). My advisor has tenure, so I don't know if it would even have any proactive or mediating outcome.
I recently learned, however, that another student has also been experiencing extremely similar verbal/emotional abuse as I have, and I am especially wondering if I should say something to someone. This other student is extremely emotionally distressed and worried about their professional and financial future. I also feel worried about the several more junior students in the lab that I will leave behind.
**Does anyone have any advice/experience in such a situation?**
* Who should I talk to, if anyone: Should I talk to an ombudsman? Should I talk to my department head, but only share a selection of these issues (leaving out things that could fall into mandated reporter territory, ie sex and otherwise; things I didn't write about here, but are worse)? Or should I tell someone everything? I tried talking to my thesis committee, but they stopped me and told me there were mandated reporters (so I decided not to proceed in asking for their advice).
* *When* should I talk to someone? After the ink dries on my graduation papers? After my publications are accepted? After I get my first non-trainee job offer? What should I do if their behavior gets worse in the meantime?
* Is there any way my career can recover, if I am transparent about my experiences to someone who is a mandated reporter? I am not so naive to think "reporting" my concerns would actually change anything or make my situation better: it would be throwing myself under the bus, to potentially generate awareness or encourage this advisor to get help, if I'm lucky.
* What special care can/should I take, if I worry this behavior might be driven by substance abuse or some other untreated medical issue?
Thank you to anyone who read all the way through, this hot mess. I really appreciate it. | 2022/06/28 | [
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/186483",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com",
"https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/158025/"
] | You have lots of options here, so you will just have to figure out which option is best for you. Also, in relation to potential career damage, it is primarily your advisor who is in danger of serious career damage, not you. From what you have described it sounds like your supervisor has a problem with alcohol and has bad judgment in relation to some social matters (especially while inebriated). Your best course of action depends on a number of factors relating to your view of your supervisor and your preferred approach.
---
**Option 1: Report the problems to the university**
One option here is to report these problems to the university and let the university work things out using its usual disciplinary policies. Since there are multiple students witnessing these behaviours it should be possible to establish those behaviours with evidence, and this is likely to lead to some kind of requirements being imposed on this academic. The consequences will depend on the university and their approach; it might lead to termination, or it might lead to some lesser response like a period of detoxification and some requirements for reforms in his work behaviour. In any case, once you report the issues and provide relevant statements, the university will do the rest.
If you were to take this approach, it might negatively affect your ability to get a letter of recommendation from your supervisor (or it might not, depending on his attitude). Even if this were to occur, it is likely that the university could provide you with some reasonable alternative, such as a letter of recommendation from another academic or the Dean of the Department. (For example, the Dean might supply you with a form letter stating that your supervisor was removed for disciplinary reasons and this has led you to be unable to get a letter of recommendation from that supervisor through no fault of your own.) The university will feel some responsibility here since it has placed you under the supervision of someone who is not behaving himself, so it should not be difficult to get something that can act as a reasonable substitute for a letter of recommendation.
As to any other possible career damage to you, I think that is unlikely. If you can get some alternative to a letter of recommendation from your supervisor (e.g., a letter from the Dean) then this ought to function perfectly adequately.
(Also, I'm not sure there is any such thing as a "mandated reporter" for sexual harassment unless you are a minor. Sexual harassment against other adults is something that can be reported, but I'm not aware of anyone having an onus to report on behalf of another adult.)
---
**Option 2: Write your advisor a letter**
It sounds like you still sympathise with your advisor despite the problems you've described. It also sounds like you want to do something, but don't like the idea of reporting the behaviour to the university. In view of that, one option you have is to wait until you've graduated your program and then write your advisor a personal letter setting out your thoughts on the problems you've raised.
To maximise the chances of this being received in a postive spirit, you could frame this as a thank-you letter where you thank him for his work supervising you and set out both the good and bad points relating to his supervision. When you get to the bad points, raise the problems you are concerned about and tell him that these detracted from the quality of supervision and made you uncomfortable. You should note that you have observed that he appears to have problems with alcohol and you think this has caused him to display some bad judgment in some cases. You might also mention that you had considered reporting these issues to the university, but you have decided to just talk to him about it instead.
I may be naive, and I can't really say how a person would react to this type of feedback, but I would think that there is a pretty good chance that a supervisor hearing about these problems would be pretty embarrassed and want to reform their behaviour (and probably also cut down on the drinking). You mentioned that your supervisor asks students to cover for him with the university, so he's aware that he's doing the wrong thing. He might be labouring under the illusion that his behaviours are okay with the students, and your letter could break that illusion.
---
**Option 3: Do nothing**
You are at the end of your PhD program now and you have obviously already put up with this behaviour for a substantial amount of time. Therefore one reasonable option you have is just to finish out your program and go on with your career elsewhere, without ever resolving things with your supervisor. This has the advantage of being an easy course-of-action, but it also has the disadvantage that it doesn't fix anything for other students who come in to be supervised by this supervisor later on. | Im in a similar situation and talked to the responsible person, after years of gathering courage/self gaslighting. The name of the person u have to talk is „ombudsperson“. I created an alias and wont gibe information unless the uni does something, also because he would guess it was me. You got this. |
17,901 | I have a pair of Yongnuo RF-603 radio flash transceivers, two SB-600s & D200. I'm planning to build a large rectangular softbox that'll use both speedlights for extra power. Is there a synch cord splitter or other DIY method of triggering two flashes from the one hotshoe or synch port on the receiving trigger? I realize I can use the D200 to master the two speedlights via CLS, but this can be dicey if I'm outdoors and lose line-of-sight, or use a long lens at long distance, or embed the lights within the softbox. | 2011/12/10 | [
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/17901",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/users/7587/"
] | If you have the PC-Sync cable connectors (either directly to the camera and flashes or indirectly through a hot-shoe converter), and have minimal soldering skills, you can cut a PC-Sync cable and solder standard audio 3.5mm phone jacks so you can disconnect it and do all sorts of nice things. For example, use a standard phones extension cables to extend the range of the flashes or use an audio splitter to split the PC-Sync to a Y form - to connect a camera to two flashes.
As for the radio triggers, it seems like all the cheapo ones have 4 channels or more to choose from. I will not be surprised if receivers of the same model share the same frequencies so one transmitter can trigger two or more receivers. | I am assuming the yongnuo trigger is TTL judging from the hotshoe pics, sadly the pdf on their site isn't loading for me. If you wanted to go the wired route and connect to two flashes together I can recommend the latest [Yongnuo FC-682/M](http://www.hkyongnuo.com/e-detail.php?ID=249) TTL cord. Unlike it's older model, the new one has two TTL hotshoe mounts so that once mounted on the wireless trigger you can mount one flash onto that, and then another at the end of the cord. Obviously doesn't give you as much reach as having another wireless receiver but if you're mainly going to use it for a softbox this shouldn't be a problem |
17,901 | I have a pair of Yongnuo RF-603 radio flash transceivers, two SB-600s & D200. I'm planning to build a large rectangular softbox that'll use both speedlights for extra power. Is there a synch cord splitter or other DIY method of triggering two flashes from the one hotshoe or synch port on the receiving trigger? I realize I can use the D200 to master the two speedlights via CLS, but this can be dicey if I'm outdoors and lose line-of-sight, or use a long lens at long distance, or embed the lights within the softbox. | 2011/12/10 | [
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/17901",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com",
"https://photo.stackexchange.com/users/7587/"
] | Another option to consider is getting one pair of radio triggers and then using an optical device like the Wein Peanut to make the second flash into a slave, if it doesn't already have that capability. I've used this kind of setup to fire extra flashes and stretch my existing wireless trigger capability.
Note that if you go with the wired trigger bridged off a single wireless device that the trigger voltage for the two flashes should be the same to avoid any problems with the flash units. Since you mention that you're using two flashes of the same type you're covered. | I am assuming the yongnuo trigger is TTL judging from the hotshoe pics, sadly the pdf on their site isn't loading for me. If you wanted to go the wired route and connect to two flashes together I can recommend the latest [Yongnuo FC-682/M](http://www.hkyongnuo.com/e-detail.php?ID=249) TTL cord. Unlike it's older model, the new one has two TTL hotshoe mounts so that once mounted on the wireless trigger you can mount one flash onto that, and then another at the end of the cord. Obviously doesn't give you as much reach as having another wireless receiver but if you're mainly going to use it for a softbox this shouldn't be a problem |
15,726 | It's a common proverb that you would see pink elephants if you drink to much.
In particular there is [a quite memorable scene](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJv2Mugm2RI) from Disney's 1941 "Dumbo" where Dumbo and his mouse companion receive a whole music show from pink elephants after they drank spiked water.
My question is if this proverb was in the English language before that movie or if that movie is somewhat the source of it, it is old enough to be after all. | 2011/03/09 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/15726",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/5801/"
] | The [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_pink_elephants) about it sums it nicely: the first reference was by Jack London in 1913, in *John Barleycorn*. It may be derived from a 1890’s saying: *“being followed by pink giraffes”*. | *Pink elephants* have been used before the Disney movie.
Looking at the *Corpus of Historical American*, I find the following sentences.
>
> I'm just as cordial a friend as whiskey ever had; but my con science rebels at floodin' my vital organs with seventeen different colored wines at one meal. I've been infested with **pink elephants** an' green dragons an' I never com plained none; but hang me if I can get any comfort out of a striped yellow spider ten feet high on horrid hairy legs.-- Wason, Robert Alexander (*Happy Hawkins*, 1909).
>
>
>
>
> "You'll see me! You've been usin' me and my schooner long enough, and if there's anything in this yarn of yours, it's mine. Who's this man?" "He's a rich man, and he'll take us," said Dinshaw. "I'd believe ye sooner if ye said ye saw **pink elephants**," said Jarrow. "Git down to cases. What's his name? " "Money talks," suggested Vanderzee. " Moonshine! " declared Peth.-- Moore, Frederick Ferdinand (*Isle o' Dreams*, 1913)
>
>
>
>
> All I could see were strange faces bobbing around that at times looked like **pink elephants** and Kodiak bears. One with the headdress of the Sisters of St. Ann seemed kindly, and I was prevailed to follow her to the hospital. She was Sister Epiphane, the trained nurse. She plastered me up with antiphlogistin mud and off I went to bed.-- Hubard, Bernard R. (*MUSH, YOU MALEMUTES!*, 1932)
>
>
> |
15,726 | It's a common proverb that you would see pink elephants if you drink to much.
In particular there is [a quite memorable scene](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJv2Mugm2RI) from Disney's 1941 "Dumbo" where Dumbo and his mouse companion receive a whole music show from pink elephants after they drank spiked water.
My question is if this proverb was in the English language before that movie or if that movie is somewhat the source of it, it is old enough to be after all. | 2011/03/09 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/15726",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/5801/"
] | The [Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_pink_elephants) about it sums it nicely: the first reference was by Jack London in 1913, in *John Barleycorn*. It may be derived from a 1890’s saying: *“being followed by pink giraffes”*. | "Pink Elephant" was used as an example of a *delirium tremens* hallucination since at least as early as 1896. The phrase "seeing snakes" or "seeing snakes in ones boots" had been the standard euphamism for such hallucinations since at least the 1820s. In about 1890, writers started exaggerating the "snakes" idiom to include colored snakes, colored rats, and various, increasingly elaborate combinations of colored snakes, monkeys, rats and other animals. There is at least one example of "being followed by pink giraffes" in print, but that does not seem to have ever been a common idiom. "Pink Elephant" became a dominant image (although by no means the only image) between 1901 and 1904.
<http://esnpc.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-colorful-history-and-etymology-of.html> |
15,726 | It's a common proverb that you would see pink elephants if you drink to much.
In particular there is [a quite memorable scene](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJv2Mugm2RI) from Disney's 1941 "Dumbo" where Dumbo and his mouse companion receive a whole music show from pink elephants after they drank spiked water.
My question is if this proverb was in the English language before that movie or if that movie is somewhat the source of it, it is old enough to be after all. | 2011/03/09 | [
"https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/15726",
"https://english.stackexchange.com",
"https://english.stackexchange.com/users/5801/"
] | *Pink elephants* have been used before the Disney movie.
Looking at the *Corpus of Historical American*, I find the following sentences.
>
> I'm just as cordial a friend as whiskey ever had; but my con science rebels at floodin' my vital organs with seventeen different colored wines at one meal. I've been infested with **pink elephants** an' green dragons an' I never com plained none; but hang me if I can get any comfort out of a striped yellow spider ten feet high on horrid hairy legs.-- Wason, Robert Alexander (*Happy Hawkins*, 1909).
>
>
>
>
> "You'll see me! You've been usin' me and my schooner long enough, and if there's anything in this yarn of yours, it's mine. Who's this man?" "He's a rich man, and he'll take us," said Dinshaw. "I'd believe ye sooner if ye said ye saw **pink elephants**," said Jarrow. "Git down to cases. What's his name? " "Money talks," suggested Vanderzee. " Moonshine! " declared Peth.-- Moore, Frederick Ferdinand (*Isle o' Dreams*, 1913)
>
>
>
>
> All I could see were strange faces bobbing around that at times looked like **pink elephants** and Kodiak bears. One with the headdress of the Sisters of St. Ann seemed kindly, and I was prevailed to follow her to the hospital. She was Sister Epiphane, the trained nurse. She plastered me up with antiphlogistin mud and off I went to bed.-- Hubard, Bernard R. (*MUSH, YOU MALEMUTES!*, 1932)
>
>
> | "Pink Elephant" was used as an example of a *delirium tremens* hallucination since at least as early as 1896. The phrase "seeing snakes" or "seeing snakes in ones boots" had been the standard euphamism for such hallucinations since at least the 1820s. In about 1890, writers started exaggerating the "snakes" idiom to include colored snakes, colored rats, and various, increasingly elaborate combinations of colored snakes, monkeys, rats and other animals. There is at least one example of "being followed by pink giraffes" in print, but that does not seem to have ever been a common idiom. "Pink Elephant" became a dominant image (although by no means the only image) between 1901 and 1904.
<http://esnpc.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-colorful-history-and-etymology-of.html> |
12,378 | Instead of discovering that earth was round, we find that we live on a infinite, flat "earth".
What are some cultural implications if we were to live in a world like that (disregarding any physical impossibilities, and that gravity, biological/ecological systems remain roughly the same as reality).
One interesting idea is that cities could be tens of thousands of kilometers from another and that one can only explore so much of the world in their lifetime.
EDIT: I don't mean flat as in geometrically flat, but flat in general. There would still be mountain ranges and oceans and forests and stuff. But there would be different and exotic ecological systems as you travel. | 2015/03/20 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12378",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/8105/"
] | This would actually be really awesome. It wouldn't really be a planet anymore, but it could conveniently be called a plane or plane-et.
**We could find the epicenter of life.**
Presumably, abiogenesis is quite rare. On an infinite flat Earth it will certainly have occurred elsewhere, but not likely very near to us. Theoretically, we would eventually be able to travel fast enough that we could get to the edge of life. This is similar to how we look at the background radiation of the universe to see its birth.
**Aliens on the same plane-et**
Because life will have certainly occurred elsewhere (a vanishingly small chance in infinite space is a guarantee) we could meet lifeforms that would be totally alien to us, but clearly able to live in similar conditions. They might even be significantly more advanced than us.
**Geo-location would be difficult**
We couldn't build geosynchronous satellites. No GPS. For something to remain geostationary it would need to constantly thrust. Orbit wouldn't be possible. Getting the satellites into the same impossible space as the Sun (or moon if we've got it) wouldn't help because they wouldn't be good references for geolocation. The best we could do is built beacon towers. But the range would be incredibly limited and line-of-sight requirements would make it fairly ineffective.
**Infinite resources**
Obviously we wouldn't need to worry about resources so much. Including fresh air and water. We could pollute as much as we wanted because there would always be more resources further away.
**Nomadic Lives**
Most likely we'd live a long term nomadic life. Is it really worth building a massive city when the resources in the area will eventually be used up? Why would a farmer preserve their land if it's so much easier just to keep moving? When something like land becomes infinite, it's hardly precious anymore. We'd use it up and move on. Maybe we'll circle around in 10,000 years when things have replenished a bit. | Life starting from a single point will create a so called [Fairy Ring](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_ring).
Life will move outwards, expanding the ring seeking for a new resources. Many concentric ever expanding rings may be created as a new life evolves, that is able to use resources that the life in the previous ring was not able to use. |
12,378 | Instead of discovering that earth was round, we find that we live on a infinite, flat "earth".
What are some cultural implications if we were to live in a world like that (disregarding any physical impossibilities, and that gravity, biological/ecological systems remain roughly the same as reality).
One interesting idea is that cities could be tens of thousands of kilometers from another and that one can only explore so much of the world in their lifetime.
EDIT: I don't mean flat as in geometrically flat, but flat in general. There would still be mountain ranges and oceans and forests and stuff. But there would be different and exotic ecological systems as you travel. | 2015/03/20 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12378",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/8105/"
] | The world would become progressively more alien as you moved across it.
Unlike on Earth, where animals and humans can move across the entirety of the world given a few thousand/million/tens of millions of years, an infinite flat earth would always have somewhere that's far enough away that nothing from where you are has ever been there.
This would probably lead to a continuous cycle of mass extinctions brought about by animals migrating in from a place where they have evolved in a manner that allows them to out-compete their neighbors. Something like Europe could exist, with mammals and birds forming most of the terrestrial fauna, when a group of highly evolved velociraptors finishes ten million years of gradual migration and then decimates the entire local ecosystem.
At a great enough distance, *nothing* would have even a single common ancestor. You'd likely get great patches of land in which only single celled or incredibly basic forms of life exist, since this form of life evolves in abiotic conditions relatively quickly, but then takes billions of years to become multi-cellular. These stretches would separate islands of complex life, which would become increasingly complex and highly evolved at their centers.
Aside from the mass extinctions that would occur when these life-islands grew into each other, different life islands could also evolve their own sentient species. These species, again, wouldn't share any common ancestors, and could well be separated by hundreds of millions of miles. They would all be incredibly alien to one another, more different than humans are from plants or mushrooms, but they could eventually come into contact with one another. Physically reaching one another would take quite a bit of time, since they'd likely be separated by immense distances, which would be difficult to traverse, but across which radio waves could probably travel. | A lot of people ignored the question and delved into the rabbit hole of physical impossibilities given the physics of our known universe that were ruled out in the question. Given an infinite, planar type world with similar characteristics and physics to earth (though I am not sure how different temperate zones would come about) I agree that with others that life would develop separately in different locations. With infinity there is the possibility that completely separate forms of life (e.g., non-DNA based) would come into existence. I think the question is also interesting starting with a planar non-infinite landscape.
But in general, I think life forms would spread gradually over the landscape as they do on earth (though probably from different pockets of life on the infinite landscape). I do not see why, as one suggested, that we would continually (as a whole) be nomadic just because the world was infinitely flat. The answerer's premise was that we would run out of resources in one area and because of the infiniteness of the world, land and resources would not be valued and we would pull up stakes and move on. But just as happens here on earth (according to the premise), the land would replenish itself, and I think people would spread out naturally as population/resource pressures arose. The whole population would not pick up and move as nomads. And unless there was a scientific way to determine it, I do not think the population would realize the world was infinite so population migration would probably proceed much like it did no earth. They probably just wouldn't do the type of exploration we did to find shorter routes to places based on the curvature of the world. |
12,378 | Instead of discovering that earth was round, we find that we live on a infinite, flat "earth".
What are some cultural implications if we were to live in a world like that (disregarding any physical impossibilities, and that gravity, biological/ecological systems remain roughly the same as reality).
One interesting idea is that cities could be tens of thousands of kilometers from another and that one can only explore so much of the world in their lifetime.
EDIT: I don't mean flat as in geometrically flat, but flat in general. There would still be mountain ranges and oceans and forests and stuff. But there would be different and exotic ecological systems as you travel. | 2015/03/20 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12378",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/8105/"
] | A lot of people ignored the question and delved into the rabbit hole of physical impossibilities given the physics of our known universe that were ruled out in the question. Given an infinite, planar type world with similar characteristics and physics to earth (though I am not sure how different temperate zones would come about) I agree that with others that life would develop separately in different locations. With infinity there is the possibility that completely separate forms of life (e.g., non-DNA based) would come into existence. I think the question is also interesting starting with a planar non-infinite landscape.
But in general, I think life forms would spread gradually over the landscape as they do on earth (though probably from different pockets of life on the infinite landscape). I do not see why, as one suggested, that we would continually (as a whole) be nomadic just because the world was infinitely flat. The answerer's premise was that we would run out of resources in one area and because of the infiniteness of the world, land and resources would not be valued and we would pull up stakes and move on. But just as happens here on earth (according to the premise), the land would replenish itself, and I think people would spread out naturally as population/resource pressures arose. The whole population would not pick up and move as nomads. And unless there was a scientific way to determine it, I do not think the population would realize the world was infinite so population migration would probably proceed much like it did no earth. They probably just wouldn't do the type of exploration we did to find shorter routes to places based on the curvature of the world. | Not good (or at least, not much better than our history).
The issue is not only as much "real estate" you have, but how much of it is usable. For example, most of the Earth surface has no human population (the oceans, Antartica) or just a bare minimum (deserts, Amazonian).
In that sense, if your area becomes overcrowded, maybe the nearest free soil is too far away (or has to pass through too many of other tribes'territory) to be of any actual interest.
So you would begin with isolated human groups, which would grown and expand. At the beginning, most of them would be able to send excess population out of the frontier, but with time the "frontier" tribes will find that the free soil is too far away (think how once, the USA frontier run through the Appalachian Mountains).
As technology progresses, the "frontier tribes" would become bigger and bigger (because with better technology is easier to keep the political unity). There would be cycles of frontier nations becoming too big, desintegrating in several nations, and the new "inner" nations using their power to push back the weaker nations of the privous cycle. Probably, sometimes population pressure in the older (inner) nations would lead to massive migrations/waves of conquests, like those of the Germanic peoples or the Mongols. |
12,378 | Instead of discovering that earth was round, we find that we live on a infinite, flat "earth".
What are some cultural implications if we were to live in a world like that (disregarding any physical impossibilities, and that gravity, biological/ecological systems remain roughly the same as reality).
One interesting idea is that cities could be tens of thousands of kilometers from another and that one can only explore so much of the world in their lifetime.
EDIT: I don't mean flat as in geometrically flat, but flat in general. There would still be mountain ranges and oceans and forests and stuff. But there would be different and exotic ecological systems as you travel. | 2015/03/20 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12378",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/8105/"
] | The world would become progressively more alien as you moved across it.
Unlike on Earth, where animals and humans can move across the entirety of the world given a few thousand/million/tens of millions of years, an infinite flat earth would always have somewhere that's far enough away that nothing from where you are has ever been there.
This would probably lead to a continuous cycle of mass extinctions brought about by animals migrating in from a place where they have evolved in a manner that allows them to out-compete their neighbors. Something like Europe could exist, with mammals and birds forming most of the terrestrial fauna, when a group of highly evolved velociraptors finishes ten million years of gradual migration and then decimates the entire local ecosystem.
At a great enough distance, *nothing* would have even a single common ancestor. You'd likely get great patches of land in which only single celled or incredibly basic forms of life exist, since this form of life evolves in abiotic conditions relatively quickly, but then takes billions of years to become multi-cellular. These stretches would separate islands of complex life, which would become increasingly complex and highly evolved at their centers.
Aside from the mass extinctions that would occur when these life-islands grew into each other, different life islands could also evolve their own sentient species. These species, again, wouldn't share any common ancestors, and could well be separated by hundreds of millions of miles. They would all be incredibly alien to one another, more different than humans are from plants or mushrooms, but they could eventually come into contact with one another. Physically reaching one another would take quite a bit of time, since they'd likely be separated by immense distances, which would be difficult to traverse, but across which radio waves could probably travel. | Not good (or at least, not much better than our history).
The issue is not only as much "real estate" you have, but how much of it is usable. For example, most of the Earth surface has no human population (the oceans, Antartica) or just a bare minimum (deserts, Amazonian).
In that sense, if your area becomes overcrowded, maybe the nearest free soil is too far away (or has to pass through too many of other tribes'territory) to be of any actual interest.
So you would begin with isolated human groups, which would grown and expand. At the beginning, most of them would be able to send excess population out of the frontier, but with time the "frontier" tribes will find that the free soil is too far away (think how once, the USA frontier run through the Appalachian Mountains).
As technology progresses, the "frontier tribes" would become bigger and bigger (because with better technology is easier to keep the political unity). There would be cycles of frontier nations becoming too big, desintegrating in several nations, and the new "inner" nations using their power to push back the weaker nations of the privous cycle. Probably, sometimes population pressure in the older (inner) nations would lead to massive migrations/waves of conquests, like those of the Germanic peoples or the Mongols. |
12,378 | Instead of discovering that earth was round, we find that we live on a infinite, flat "earth".
What are some cultural implications if we were to live in a world like that (disregarding any physical impossibilities, and that gravity, biological/ecological systems remain roughly the same as reality).
One interesting idea is that cities could be tens of thousands of kilometers from another and that one can only explore so much of the world in their lifetime.
EDIT: I don't mean flat as in geometrically flat, but flat in general. There would still be mountain ranges and oceans and forests and stuff. But there would be different and exotic ecological systems as you travel. | 2015/03/20 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12378",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/8105/"
] | This would actually be really awesome. It wouldn't really be a planet anymore, but it could conveniently be called a plane or plane-et.
**We could find the epicenter of life.**
Presumably, abiogenesis is quite rare. On an infinite flat Earth it will certainly have occurred elsewhere, but not likely very near to us. Theoretically, we would eventually be able to travel fast enough that we could get to the edge of life. This is similar to how we look at the background radiation of the universe to see its birth.
**Aliens on the same plane-et**
Because life will have certainly occurred elsewhere (a vanishingly small chance in infinite space is a guarantee) we could meet lifeforms that would be totally alien to us, but clearly able to live in similar conditions. They might even be significantly more advanced than us.
**Geo-location would be difficult**
We couldn't build geosynchronous satellites. No GPS. For something to remain geostationary it would need to constantly thrust. Orbit wouldn't be possible. Getting the satellites into the same impossible space as the Sun (or moon if we've got it) wouldn't help because they wouldn't be good references for geolocation. The best we could do is built beacon towers. But the range would be incredibly limited and line-of-sight requirements would make it fairly ineffective.
**Infinite resources**
Obviously we wouldn't need to worry about resources so much. Including fresh air and water. We could pollute as much as we wanted because there would always be more resources further away.
**Nomadic Lives**
Most likely we'd live a long term nomadic life. Is it really worth building a massive city when the resources in the area will eventually be used up? Why would a farmer preserve their land if it's so much easier just to keep moving? When something like land becomes infinite, it's hardly precious anymore. We'd use it up and move on. Maybe we'll circle around in 10,000 years when things have replenished a bit. | I was actually at a planetarium this weekend and I thought of this question based on a display that was there. It had the travel times to pluto and Proxima Centauri based on a car, a plane, and a rocket ship and then light. What that drove home to me was that I think most of these answers are looking at things from too high of an abstraction perhaps.
On earth if I get on a plane there is a limit to how far I can travel; on this flat world there isn't, not in any direction. There isn't going to be just the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal but probably some Northwest Canal and a Hyperion Canal and a Southern Canal and that is still just in the same grid as we are in; There will be many, many more before one gets to the distance of the moon (1.3 light seconds away); which going a constant 80 mph 24 hours a day would take one 124 day to reach (or 248 to travel from one end to the other).
In this setting what would a MAD policy even mean? one could just out fit a fleet of Zeppelins and travel, but then again there is no assurance that one would necessarily reach a place one could live/conquer even if one traveled ones entire life (or many lifetimes). Likewise, the notion of a "UN"; there would always be nations known to at least some of the member nations that are not part of the UN, and eventually it would reach the point where traveling to and from meetings would take longer than meetings themselves would, or even longer than ones life; while still being much shorter than what can be communicated.
The speed of light being so much faster than anything else, it would be trivial to be able to communicate with people with whom contact is impossible. Mars is 3 light minutes away at closest approach but traveling at Mach 1 would take about 22 years to reach that distance, so quite close enough to communicate with via radio (or on stackexchange using fiber optics or satellites fixed to the celestial spheres, even if first person shooters might be out of the question) but generalized trade wouldn't really happen, not via shipping or rail or plane or even supersonic flight.
So there would be a limit to everything as we are finite even as the world would not be; nations may be fine with nuking some cities and conquering areas many times larger than our earth but eventually either in war or in peace stability would be reached as in 1984 in regions where to go further from their central regions is not worth the marginal effort of doing so.
There would also be many more opportunities for Columbian exchanges to happen, where technologies, foods, and illness (which can be devastating) from one area mix with another (giving the Old World the potato, tomato, chili pepper, corn, chocolate, etc.) Which means that even long trading expeditions could end up being very profitable.
Sure the fragmentation would mean that eventually the people that one is trading/communicating with may not even be people any more (I mean we already dealt with/are still dealing with that idea in our own pale blue dot) but they are really not any stranger or more dangerous than the people who closer at hand but still far enough away to be different than one is oneself, which as already pointed out can be literally next door. |
12,378 | Instead of discovering that earth was round, we find that we live on a infinite, flat "earth".
What are some cultural implications if we were to live in a world like that (disregarding any physical impossibilities, and that gravity, biological/ecological systems remain roughly the same as reality).
One interesting idea is that cities could be tens of thousands of kilometers from another and that one can only explore so much of the world in their lifetime.
EDIT: I don't mean flat as in geometrically flat, but flat in general. There would still be mountain ranges and oceans and forests and stuff. But there would be different and exotic ecological systems as you travel. | 2015/03/20 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12378",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/8105/"
] | The world would become progressively more alien as you moved across it.
Unlike on Earth, where animals and humans can move across the entirety of the world given a few thousand/million/tens of millions of years, an infinite flat earth would always have somewhere that's far enough away that nothing from where you are has ever been there.
This would probably lead to a continuous cycle of mass extinctions brought about by animals migrating in from a place where they have evolved in a manner that allows them to out-compete their neighbors. Something like Europe could exist, with mammals and birds forming most of the terrestrial fauna, when a group of highly evolved velociraptors finishes ten million years of gradual migration and then decimates the entire local ecosystem.
At a great enough distance, *nothing* would have even a single common ancestor. You'd likely get great patches of land in which only single celled or incredibly basic forms of life exist, since this form of life evolves in abiotic conditions relatively quickly, but then takes billions of years to become multi-cellular. These stretches would separate islands of complex life, which would become increasingly complex and highly evolved at their centers.
Aside from the mass extinctions that would occur when these life-islands grew into each other, different life islands could also evolve their own sentient species. These species, again, wouldn't share any common ancestors, and could well be separated by hundreds of millions of miles. They would all be incredibly alien to one another, more different than humans are from plants or mushrooms, but they could eventually come into contact with one another. Physically reaching one another would take quite a bit of time, since they'd likely be separated by immense distances, which would be difficult to traverse, but across which radio waves could probably travel. | Most of the answers until now have focused on biology/evolution, even though you asked about cultural implications. One of them would be that all reference points would be, of necessity, local.
Each place on the infinite Earth-plane could and would probably be considered as the center of the universe (figuratively and/or literally) by its inhabitants. You haven't specified how this flat Earth would be lit, but a single sun (or light source of any kind) could never be enough, so there must be either some kind of luminous sky or multiple suns revolving "up there", for example. In any case there would be no north, south, east or west. Navigation would have to be done using notable local landmarks such as mountain peaks. In a flat plane the "horizon" would not exist; things would just appear to become infinitesimally small in the distance, in a clear day, or obscured by air itself (no mixture of gases is perfectly transparent), so people who happened to live in a place with no great mountains around would effectively lack all navigational clues.
Religion and science would include these things in their paradigms. They would have to cope with infinity. Some could imagine that reality must be finite and therefore everything outside a given radius from the local origin is an illusion. Legends could be common about some adventurer or prophet who travelled to the end of the real world and came back. |
12,378 | Instead of discovering that earth was round, we find that we live on a infinite, flat "earth".
What are some cultural implications if we were to live in a world like that (disregarding any physical impossibilities, and that gravity, biological/ecological systems remain roughly the same as reality).
One interesting idea is that cities could be tens of thousands of kilometers from another and that one can only explore so much of the world in their lifetime.
EDIT: I don't mean flat as in geometrically flat, but flat in general. There would still be mountain ranges and oceans and forests and stuff. But there would be different and exotic ecological systems as you travel. | 2015/03/20 | [
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12378",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com",
"https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/users/8105/"
] | While abiogenesis might have a singular origin (with descendants of that singular event outracing any "new" events) as some of the answers have described, various other "steps" [multicellular life, intelligent life, industrial civilization] may not be so rare, and you could have multiple societies of different species and even entirely different anatomical basis within the same "life island" with the same basic chemistry and backdrop of oxygen-producing single-celled life. You wouldn't have to go so far as the "edge of life" to find "aliens". The edge of hominids, or of land vertebrates, would suffice. The further out, the more alien.
The first "aliens" would probably be human, or very nearly so (almost certainly a species descended from the same *Homo/Australopithecus* line.), which had independently developed to the point of inventing rapid transportation and radio.
On the subject of rapid transportation, in the book "Missile Gap" (in which Earth's continents are transplanted to the surface of a very large but finite flat megastructure), a large [Ground-effect vehicle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_vehicle) was used for exploration. (The *name* of the book, incidentally, comes from the fact that intercontinental ballistic missiles are not a viable technology in the uniform gravity field caused by such a world.) | Not good (or at least, not much better than our history).
The issue is not only as much "real estate" you have, but how much of it is usable. For example, most of the Earth surface has no human population (the oceans, Antartica) or just a bare minimum (deserts, Amazonian).
In that sense, if your area becomes overcrowded, maybe the nearest free soil is too far away (or has to pass through too many of other tribes'territory) to be of any actual interest.
So you would begin with isolated human groups, which would grown and expand. At the beginning, most of them would be able to send excess population out of the frontier, but with time the "frontier" tribes will find that the free soil is too far away (think how once, the USA frontier run through the Appalachian Mountains).
As technology progresses, the "frontier tribes" would become bigger and bigger (because with better technology is easier to keep the political unity). There would be cycles of frontier nations becoming too big, desintegrating in several nations, and the new "inner" nations using their power to push back the weaker nations of the privous cycle. Probably, sometimes population pressure in the older (inner) nations would lead to massive migrations/waves of conquests, like those of the Germanic peoples or the Mongols. |
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