It happens everywhere: blogs, forums, newspapers, ...   :     “Regrettably, the time President Trump spent sharing sensitive   information with the Russians, was time he did not spend focussing on   Russia’s aggressive behaviour, including its interference in American   and European elections, it’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and   annexation of Crimea,” he said.   Independent   It is so prevalent that even being 100% certain that it should be spelled its, I (as a non native speaker) start to think that it's is an accepted variant.   Am I wrong in thinking that the only correct spelling for the possessive is its? Is it's an accepted spelling somewhere in the Anglosphere? Are people not aware of this, or they do not care? Very often people make this error repeatedly in a single article. Is it simply a very widespread typo? (really, so widespread??) Should I correct people in forums / comments about this?
I know that its is the possessive and it's is the contraction, and know when to use them.  But why doesn't the possessive have an apostrophe?   "The bear's eating a fish." [contraction] "The bear's coat is brown." [possessive] "It's eating a fish." [contraction] "Its coat is brown." [possessive] "One's eating a fish." [contraction] "One's coat is brown." [possessive]    lists the etymology as "From  +‎ ", and  says that this is actually the original form:     Originally written it's, and still deliberately spelled thus by some writers until early 1800s.   So what happened to the apostrophe?  When did people stop using it, and why did they?  It seems that it's as the possessive is more natural, as most people do this until they're taught that it is wrong (or even after).  Update: Online Etymology Dictionary has been updated to include two potential explanations:     The apostrophe came to be omitted, perhaps because it's already was established as a contraction of it is, or by general habit of omitting apostrophes in personal pronouns (hers, yours, theirs, etc.).   Can anyone back up either of these arguments?  The possessive one's still has the apostrophe, despite these.
Why don't gksu/gksudo or launching a graphical application with sudo work with Wayland? I installed Ubuntu 17.10. Now I am having trouble with gksu:  $ gksu -dg synaptic No ask_pass set, using default! xauth: /tmp/libgksu-HgUjgQ/.Xauthority STARTUP_ID: gksu/synaptic/8760-0-alex-XPS-15-9530_TIME4974977 cmd[0]: /usr/bin/sudo cmd[1]: -H cmd[2]: -S cmd[3]: -p cmd[4]: GNOME_SUDO_PASS cmd[5]: -u cmd[6]: root cmd[7]: -- cmd[8]: synaptic buffer: -GNOME_SUDO_PASS- brute force GNOME_SUDO_PASS ended... Yeah, we're in... Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused (synaptic:8767): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: :1 xauth: /tmp/libgksu-HgUjgQ/.Xauthority xauth_env: (null) dir: /tmp/libgksu-HgUjgQ   If I don't use -g, the password dialog is disabled. So looks like a problem with creating a tty for root.  Any advice? Do spice containers need to be hermetic? Spice containers purchase  I'm planning on upgrading my spice storage. Reading some advice online (e.g. , and ) I came to the conclusion that spice containers should:   Not be exposed to direct sunlight and high temperatures Be airtight   Which means that either you store it inside of some closed cupboard/wardrobe/room or you have containers which do block light and are in a relatively shady place. And the containers need to be airtight.  Available solutions  I've been browsing for some containers available online in my country and the 2 most sensible options I've seen are these:       The problem  The first one is hermetic (it has some rubber around the lid) but it's clear glass. The other one does not have the rubber, just a regular twist-off lid, but it's amber glass.  It'll be hard for me to find any space inside of cupboards to store all of my spices (I need at least 30), so I'd rather buy amber glass container, which I believe will effectively block the sunlight, even when kept on the counter. But I can't find any hermetic amber-glass containers, only ones with regular lid.  The question  Is that regular twist-off lid enough to keep spices airtight and fresh? Or should I focus on buying a hermetic container (like the one in clear glass). I could then for example paint them black to block the sunlight. Word for a person who knows two or three languages A polyglot is a person who is fluent in many languages, but what do we call a person who is fluent in only two or three languages?  Is bi-glot a proper term for this?  I don't think the words bilingual / trilingual fit the bill, because I am looking for a -glot word. As a developer of free software, I want to get my application into Ubuntu.  Should I provide a source tarball and ask for packaging? Or should I create a package myself? Should I target Ubuntu directly, or should I try to get into Debian and then into Ubuntu automatically? When is mapping $g$ to $g^{-1}$ a group homomorphism? It just means that the map maps the identity to the identity and inverses to inverses. So does that mean it's only a homomorphism if the inverse is itself? I'm trying to install Anbox in my new Ubuntu 16.04 using instructions from  . It seemed to work, but I got no icon in my dash, so I suspect that the installation is not complete. With Synaptic  Package Manager I can see that anbox-common &amp; anbox-modules-dkms are installed, but I have no icon in my dash, so I tried running   sudo snap install --edge --devmode anbox   and got this error:  error: cannot install "anbox": Get    https://search.apps.ubuntu.com/api/v1/snaps/details/core?channel=stable&amp;fields=anon_download_url%2Carchitecture%2Cchannel%2Cdownload_sha3_384%2Csummary%2Cdescription%2Cdeltas%2Cbinary_filesize%2Cdownload_url%2Cepoch%2Cicon_url%2Clast_updated%2Cpackage_name%2Cprices%2Cpublisher%2Cratings_average%2Crevision%2Cscreenshot_urls%2Csnap_id%2Csupport_url%2Ccontact%2Ctitle%2Ccontent%2Cversion%2Corigin%2Cdeveloper_id%2Cprivate%2Cconfinement%2Cchannel_maps_list:    dial tcp: lookup search.apps.ubuntu.com on [::1]:53: read udp    [::1]:54255-&gt;[::1]:53: read: connection refused   What am I doing wrong? Why was the connection refused? According to the instructions, it seems this is the correct command to install it.  ps: I'm not that familiar with Linux, I'm more of a Windows guy, trying to learn Linux. Organic yet accurate modeling with the golden spiral Foreword  First off, let me say that I am profoundly amazed at the orderliness in nature. If you haven't heard about the Fibonacci sequence (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...), you should check it out.  This mathematical concept of the Fibonacci numbers can be shaped into a set of squares, where the lengths of the sides of the squares follow the Fibonacci sequence:     This is sometimes called a golden ratio. It can be formed into a (golden) spiral. (a.k.a. logarithmic spiral):      Application  I am looking for ways on how to utilize this concept in Blender. Primarily in organic modeling. The golden spiral is found all throughout nature. From flower seed heads, sea shells, and ram horns to hurricanes and spiral galaxies.  My question is: how can I model based off of one or multiple golden spirals? Specifically, I'm interested in modeling a sunflower head like the one in the following image. I'm mostly interested in the point of origin of the individual seeds (not worried about the shape). Does Blender have any features related to this? Isomorphism of centers of isomorphic groups Are immutable arrays possible in .NET? Is it possible to somehow mark a System.Array as immutable.  When put behind a public-get/private-set they can't be added to, since it requires re-allocation and re-assignment, but a consumer can still set any subscript they wish:  public class Immy {     public string[] { get; private set; } }   I thought the readonly keyword might do the trick, but no such luck. The following is a homework problem:  Prove that between two roots of the function $f(x) = \exp(x) \sin(x) -1$ there must be at least one root of the function $\exp(x)\cos(x) +1$.  I think it is possible to prove it by simply computing the signs of the functions at $\frac{\pi}{2}k, \pi k, \frac{3\pi}{2}k, 2\pi k$. However, I'm looking for a more elegant way. It is intuitively clear that the roots of $f$ are ˋˋconverging'' to the roots of $sin$ and the ones of $g$ to the ones of $cos$. Do you have any hint how to construct a nice argument based on this observation? I am having trouble with this problem from my latest homework.  Prove the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality. That is, for two positive real numbers $x,y$, we have $$ \sqrt{xy}≤ \frac{x+y}{2} .$$ Furthermore, equality occurs if and only if $x = y$.  Any and all help would be appreciated. How do I run a Perl script from within a Perl script? I've got a Perl script that needs to execute another Perl script. This second script can be executed directly on the command line, but I need to execute it from within my first program. I'll need to pass it a few parameters that would normally be passed in when it's run standalone (the first script runs periodically, and executes the second script under a certain set of system conditions).  Preliminary Google searches suggest using backticks or a system() call. Are there any other ways to run it? (I'm guessing yes, since it's Perl we're talking about :P ) Which method is preferred if I need to capture output from the invoked program (and, if possible, pipe that output as it executes to stdout as though the second program were invoked directly)?  (Edit: oh, now SO suggests some related questions.  is close, but not exactly the same as what I'm asking. The second program will likely take an hour or more to run (lots of I/O), so I'm not sure a one-off invocation is the right fit for this.) How does Dijkstra's Algorithm and A-Star compare? Or, an introductory guide to robust filename handling and other string passing in shell scripts.  I wrote a shell script which works well most of the time. But it chokes on some inputs (e.g. on some file names).  I encountered a problem such as the following:   I have a file name containing a space hello world, and it was treated as two separate files hello and world. I have an input line with two consecutive spaces and they shrank to one in the input. Leading and trailing whitespace disappears from input lines. Sometimes, when the input contains one of the characters \[*?, they are replaced by some text which is is actually the name of files. There is an apostrophe ' (or a double quote ") in the input and things got weird after that point. There is a backslash in the input (or: I am using Cygwin and some of my file names have Windows-style \ separators).   What is going on and how do I fix it? I want to decrease the vertical space between the top of the page and the chapter heading. I have tried to follow the instructions for titlesec but I am not successful. I have tried the following two setups without any changes occuring.  First:  \documentclass[12pt]{report}   \usepackage[compact]{titlesec}   \begin{document}   \chapter{Characters}  The origin of the group determinant begins with Richard Dedekind in the late 1800's. He began to explore the idea after studying the discriminant in a normal field [A]. He made several observations about the group determinant, but was only able to prove some of them.   \end{document}   Second:  \documentclass[12pt]{report}   \usepackage{titlesec}   \titleformat{\chapter}[display]   {\normalfont\huge\bfseries}{\chaptertitlename\ \thechapter}{20pt}{\Huge}   \titlespacing{\chapter}{0pt}{0pt}{0pt}   \begin{document}   \chapter{Characters}    The origin of the group determinant begins with Richard Dedekind in the late 1800's. He began to explore the idea after studying the discriminant in a normal field [A]. He made several observations about the group determinant, but was only able to prove some of them.   \end{document} Fish vs Fishes for plural use Now, I encountered a sentence in a text book, saying     Many fish are specially adapted to live only in certain places.   I know that plural of the word fish can be fish as Merriam says    But wouldn't it someway or somewhat sound unusual or "too unique"?  Is it only to me? Started new job. Rollover previous employer 401k to new 401k, IRA or Roth IRA? How should a family with young children apply for UK visas? Why isn't the gamma function defined so that $\Gamma(n) = n! $? As a physics student, I have occasionally run across the gamma function  $$\Gamma(n) \equiv \int_0^{\infty}t^{n-1}e^{-t} \textrm{d}t = (n-1)!$$  when we want to generalize the concept of a factorial.  Why not define the gamma function so that   $$\Gamma(n) = n!$$  instead?  I realize either definition is equally good, but if someone were going to ask me to choose one, I would choose the second option.  Are there some areas of mathematics where the accepted definition looks more natural?  Are there some formulas that work out more cleanly with the accepted definition? Is the money you get from shorting a stock free to use for going long on other stocks?