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What books (or other sources) would you recommend for folks wanting to learn about intentional community building?
What can I do with used up disposable batteries, such as AA/AAA? It used to be that these had to be separated so they can be put through a special remediation process. However, apparently that was...
What exactly are the steps to creating your own TLS certificates such that they create minimal error messages for users? For example, a simple self-signed certificate will trigger a lot of errors ...
I only have a working knowledge of TLS. TLS today supports name constraints, to restrict which domains a CA can issue certs for: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5280#section-4.2.1.10 I've seen ...
a formal system is a system of axioms equipped with rules of inference, which allow one to generate new theorems. The set of axioms is required to be finite or at least decidable, i.e., there mus...
How does climate change research establish causality? For example, when it is said that human activity causes global warming, what sort of logic is used to justify this claim? Let's not get into t...
When explaining a piece of knowledge, sometimes the explanation is short and simple and other times it is long and complex. Some people put the burden on the explainer, and demand that they make i...
A philosophical zombie is an entity that is externally, behaviorally indistinguishable from some conscious entity, but lacks inner conscious experience, a.k.a. qualia. See articles “Zombies” and “...
Common general-purpose battery types available on the market today are: Disposable batteries, usually with some sort of zinc chemistry Older, generic rechargeable batteries, usually nickel chem...
So 6 months ago, I posted this puzzle on Puzzling Stack Exchange that was part of my "Filling in an 8x8 minesweeper grid with mines" puzzle series. This specific one was based on Day 30 of the Mine...
Since self-signed server certs are discouraged nowadays, often people create their own root CA and sign server certs with that. Obviously client apps won't trust the root CA, so the admin must the...
What are some developed ethical theories and frameworks regarding killing? For example, is it ever ethically justified to kill? When, under what circumstances, and why?
I want to buy an electrical device for cold smoking food. From what I read, the temperature of the food must stay below 80F for cold smoking. When I search for electrical smokers, most products qu...
Are there any negative effects[1] when sending an email wherein the From header is an email address on my server's domain but the Reply-To header is an email address on a different domain, specific...
How come country and state/province is often excluded from WHOIS privacy? So everything else is redacted, but not country and state. However, apparently there's no special requirement from ICANN, s...
From what conceptual framework could one derive self-consistent ethical principles about how to distinguish between situations in which people’s right to privacy enables them to choose what data ot...
Is incremental training the same as transfer learning? What exactly is the difference?
The Steam Deck comes with an OS which is basically a customized Arch, plus Steam, Plasma and some extra programs. The Steam Deck mounts most system dirs as read only, so for example it's not possi...
I think there may be a common fallacy which I do not know if it has been given a name and a fully developed, possibly mathematical, argument. The idea is something like a basic fallacy of assuming...
Consider the following claim: In any causal relationship X -> Y, it is always possible to find an intermediate effect A such that X -> A -> Y. This is a claim about nature, not our c...
In machine learning there seem to be various types of learning. I commonly hear about supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning. However, it is not always clea...
In the past, when I tried to use power tools for woodworking in my garage, it created a lot of sawdust. Everything in the garage got covered by a layer of dust, and it became hard to do things like...
Consider a machine learning problem with inputs $\boldsymbol{X} \in \mathbb{R}^{N \times D}$ and corresponding labels $\boldsymbol{y} \in \mathcal{Y}^N$. When the problem is to solve a regression ...
OSB boards often have a stamp that says "strength axis" with an arrow, usually parallel with the longer dimension of the board. What is this strength axis? Should it be parallel or perpendicular t...
Suppose I want to use OSB for a home renovation project. The OSB will be permanently attached in a habitable part of the house. It will be exposed directly to the room, without any coating, films, ...
Prompt engineering has emerged as a critical concept in the use of LLMs. Are there any good resources for learning prompt engineering techniques?
There is a lot of debate about the "cognitive" capabilities of LLMs and LLM-based chatbots, like ChatGPT. It's common to see statements like "these models just apply statistical pattern matching" a...
What free alternatives are available to the GPT-3 and GPT-4 large language models (LLM)? Are there competing models with similar capabilities that I can download and run on my own computer?
In unsupervised learning, training data does not have labels. But, how can a model be trained without labels?
In North America, it is common to build wood-frame houses with pieces of lumber making up the frame and OSB boards acting as wall sheathing. The OSB sheathing reinforces the frame against various ...
In the following scenario: A person is not running for President of the U.S. Somehow, they receive a large number of votes as a write-in candidate, and secure the election victory. They decline ...
Many stores seem to sell "grounding wire". This is a solid copper wire, similar to normal THHN wires used to do house wiring, except without the plastic jacket. I'm confused why you would bother b...
How can I confirm that an ethernet cable is free of defects? I have a bunch of ethernet cables around my house. Some are apparently defective, and cause network problems when used. When these prob...
I'd like to add a rotating banner (known as a carousel) to the home page of my WordPress site. I've looked through the settings in WordPress and I don't see an obvious way to do this. I've seen o...
If I'm looking to pay someone to replace my floors (eg. carpet, laminate, hardwood), what is this service called? Would I be looking for a contractor, handyman, floorer or something else? I am ask...
I've been bitten several times by cumulative layout shift (CLS) issues with my website. I've found out about them when I view the reports in Google Search Console. We have a good set of tests for...
In riichi mahjong, the term suji is often thrown around when deciding what tiles to discard. What is suji, and how does it factor into mahjong strategy?
I'd like to have a backup of my WordPress website. It looks like I'll need to back up the database, some settings, and some uploads. How do I create backups for my site?
Oriented strand boards (OSB) are often sold with a blue dye on the edges: What is this? I'm assuming it's some kind of chemical protection. Does that mean that when you cut the board and leave a...
The following is cross-posted from Stack Exchange for catching my eye: Schopenhauer already defined "intentionality". There is a part in his philosophy where he separates representation into subj...
What is hyperparameter tuning? What makes the parameters "hyper"? Is tuning the same as learning or training?
When an ordinary person sells their house in the US, what happens to their tax situation? Usually, houses sell for half a million and up, and considering also regular (ie. salary) income, this woul...
I've been working on improving my site's domain authority as reported by Moz in the hopes that it helps our Google rankings. I have some doubts about it though. Google won't be able to see Moz's c...
My website host gives me a single document root directory for all my domains. I'd like to separate out each of my domains into a separate subfolder. Can I use .htaccess in this directory to confi...
I'm building a company with a website about widgets. The .com domain name with just "widgets" is already taken, and so are a lot of other keyword related domains. I could get a domain on an alter...
It is common nowadays for the term “colonialism” to have a default morally negative connotation. But, what really is colonialism, and is it always bad? Why/why not?
Port Orford Cedar is a type of lumber which naturally emits a pleasant aroma. I'd like to make some wooden crafts with this wood, because the wood itself seems nice and I really enjoy the smell. ...
Many companies sell water filters for improving the composition of water received from city mains. There is a variety of models with different number and types of filter stages, and corresponding p...
