Supposedly there is some built in hard drive magic called "Secure Erase" which is wildly faster and more secure than "dd if=/dev/zero..."  I am most excited about the speed increase.  There seems to be a GUI for it as part of Parted Magic:   Is there something like this for Ubuntu?  Better yet, is there a way to actually issue this command "manually" like with smartctl or something?
I've just received my new SSD since the old one died. This Intel 320 SSD supports TRIM. For testing purposes, my dealer put Windows on it, but I want to get rid of this and install Kubuntu on it.  It does not have to be a "secure wipe", I just need the empty the disk in the most healthy way. I believe that dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda just fills the blocks with zeroes and thereby taking another write (correct me if I'm wrong).  I've seen the answer , but it looks like it's suited for clearing empty blocks, not wiping the disk.  hdparm seems to be the program to do it, but I'm not sure if it clears the disk OR cleans empty blocks. From its manual page:     --trim-sector-ranges           For  Solid State Drives (SSDs).  EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT           USE THIS OPTION!!  Tells the drive firmware to discard  unneeded           data  sectors,  destroying  any  data that may have been present           within them.  This makes those sectors available  for  immediate           use  by  the firmware's garbage collection mechanism, to improve           scheduling for wear-leveling of the flash  media.   This  option           expects  one  or  more  sector range pairs immediately after the           option: an LBA starting address, a colon, and  a  sector  count,           with no intervening spaces.  EXCEPTIONALLY DANGEROUS. DO NOT USE           THIS OPTION!!              E.g.  hdparm --trim-sector-ranges 1000:4 7894:16 /dev/sdz   How can I make all blocks appear as empty using TRIM?
Ever since Everything That Happened with Stack Exchange, it's understandable that many users are hesitant to get re-involved on SE.  It's understandable that  are deleting their own accounts, out of protest, or out of frustration, or for many other reasons.  But I have noticed that, at the very least on , where I spend most of my time, questions are getting fewer views and fewer answers, fewer votes are being cast, and fewer questions themselves are being asked.  I've also noticed that flags are taking a long time to be processed, probably because of the fact that Writing.SE .    Are other sites also experiencing inactivity?  Is this in direct correlation with Everything That Happened?  Is it just this site, or are other sites experiencing the same patterns as well? For which values does the Matrix system have a unique solution, infinitely many solutions and no solution? Given the system:  $$\begin{align}  &amp; x+3y-3z=4 \\   &amp; y+2z=a \\  &amp; 2x+5y+(a^2-9)z=9 \end{align}$$  For which values of a (if any) does the system have a unique solution, infinitely many solutions, and no solution?    So I am getting that it has: infinitely many solutions at: (-1)    No solution at (1)    Unique solution at (-1,1)    AM I RIGHT?? Schengen visa for two subsequent short trips: One visa or two? I will go to France from 17/12/13 – 19/12/13, then I will come back to London. And again I will go back to Portugal and Spain from 26/12/13 to 03/01/14 which I will stay in Spain for the longest period. However, the Spanish consulate told me that I have to request for the visa from the French consulate.  The point is: Do I need to apply for a visa for a single trip two times (from French and Spanish consulate) or a single visa for multiple time (from French consulate). Adding a Method to an Existing Object Instance I've read that it is possible to add a method to an existing object (i.e., not in the class definition) in Python.   I understand that it's not always good to do so. But how might one do this? Can one of Newton's Laws of motion be derived from other Newton's Laws of motion? Can one derive Newton's  second and third laws from the first law or   first and third laws from the second law or  first and second  laws from the third  law  I think Newton's laws of motions are independent to each other. They can not be derived from one another. Please share the idea. Getting random row through SQLAlchemy Let $H$ and $K$ be subgroups of a group $G$, and let $HK=\{hk: h \in H, k \in K\}$, $KH=\{kh: k \in K, h \in H\}$. How can we prove that $HK$ is a subgroup iff $HK=KH$? Prevent users from submitting a form by hitting Enter Banach spaces and their unit sphere Let $X$ be a normed vector space.   Show that if a subsequence of a Cauchy sequence converges, then the whole sequence converges. Use the part 1 to show that $S = \{x\in X : \|x\| = 1\}$ is complete if and only if $X$ is Banach.     I have found the first part in a book, but I do not how to prove part 2. Thanx regards Is “ ’s ” ever correct for pluralization? How to fix invisible form fields in Firefox while using Adwaita Dark Theme (or any other dark theme) I have this issue with some form fields in Firefox and using the adwaita-dark theme. In some webpages where the field background is white, you cannot read the text because it is also white.   This question was edited in order to clarify that this kind of wording of the question might help people who are not familiar with what a GTK+ theme. I also thing that the wording will help to get more hits through search engines. If it's still considered a duplicate, I'll accept it. com.google.android.trichromelibrary causes many Android apps to crash Recently, apps that are fine an hour ago now crash when I open them. The crash report message seems to be caused by a null pointer exception (NPE) in com.google.android.trichromelibrary. Apps affected for me:  Gmail Dashlane  Is it just me, or is there actually something wrong with the library? How can I fix these affected apps? Crash report: *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** Build fingerprint: 'Xiaomi/polaris/polaris:10/QKQ1.190828.002/20.9.4:user/release-keys' Revision: '0' ABI: 'arm64' Timestamp: ... pid: ..., tid: ..., name: com.dashlane &gt;&gt;&gt; com.dashlane &lt;&lt;&lt; uid: ... signal 11 (SIGSEGV), code 1 (SEGV_MAPERR), fault addr 0x0 Cause: null pointer dereference          ...  backtrace:     #00 pc 00000000038621f0 /data/app/ com.google.android.trichromelibrary 438909034-YaxP9ttrIDcQBfleP5vm7Q==/base.apk! libmonochrome_64.so (offset 0x646000) (BuildId: ... )  (click  for the screenshot of the bug report) Why is time evolution unitary? Is the reason why the time evolution operator is unitary based on purely physical arguments, i.e. that the physical processes that an isolated system undergoes shouldn't depend on any particular instant in time (homogeneity of time); thus two experimenters who conduct the same experiment starting from the same initial state, but at different times, should have the same probability amplitude for that state?! Or is there some mathematical argument as well?  Also, is the reason why the time evolution operator is linear implied by the superposition principle (as an arbitrary state can be expressed as a linear combination of basis states the operator should act linearly as otherwise the state as a whole would evolve differently to the superposition of states that it was initially represented by)?! What is the optimal path between $2$ fixed points around an invisible obstructing wall? Prove the inequality and limitation Suppose $\{a_k\}$ ,$\{b_k\}$ and $\{\xi_k\}$ are non negative, and for all $k\ge 0$ , we have $$a_{k+1}^2\le(a_k+b_k)^2-\xi_k^2$$   Prove   1.$$\sum_{i=1}^{k}\xi_i^2\le(a_1+\sum_{i=0}^kb_i)^2$$   2. If $\{b_k\}$ also satisfy $\sum_{k=0}^{\infty}b_k^2\lt+\infty $, then $$\lim_{k\to\infty}\frac{1}{k}\sum_{i=1}^k\xi_i^2=0$$   After doing this transformation:$$\xi_k^2\le(a_k+b_k)^2-a_{k+1}^2$$ $\Rightarrow$ $$\sum_{i=1}^{k}\xi_k^2\le(a_1+b_1-a_2)(a_1+b_1+a_2)+(a_2+b_2-a_3)(a_2+b_2+a_3)+\cdots(a_k+b_k-a_{k+1})(a_k+b_k+a_{k+1})$$ then I can't move forward any more. Javascript variables keep track to their copies? I've got to send a bulk email out to a bunch of people in reply to emails they sent me. I've got all the original emails stored in a single outlook folder. I want to extract all of the reply addresses from the emails in that folder so I can send an email to all of them.  The article  shows you how to export the FROM address of these emails, however a large amount of them came from a web service that sends emails 'on behalf of' the person I'm trying to mail to. So I need the reply-to address, and the export wizard doesn't do that.  Does anyone have a tip on how to do this? This is Outlook 2007 on Exchange 2010. A game called  is making rounds on social media. I am trying to determine the maximum score attainable for this game.  Let's assume WLOG that only 2s are returned (if 4s are possible the max score is doubled).  First, I'll relax some of the rules to create a game, $\mathcal{G}$, that can achieve a score at least as high as the original, 2048 game.  A run $R$  of $\mathcal{G}_n$ consists of a sequence of moves $m_1,\ldots,m_k$ which manipulate a multiset, $\mathcal{S}$ of maximum size n.  Each $m_i$ is either:   a put $p$, which inserts a 2 into $\mathcal{S}$, or a merge, $\alpha_i$, which replaces two $2^i$ elements from $\mathcal{S}$ with a single $2^{i+1}$ elt.   I allow sequential moves of the same type because 2048 allows multiple merges or no-merge turns.  The score of a position is the sum of $\mathcal{S}$.  What is the maximum score possible on a game of order n?  Note: The final position must have only unique values, else a merge and put would be possible in increase score.  I claim it is $\sum_{i=1}^{n} 2^i$, but couldn't come up with any good induction arguments.  It's pretty easy to prove that an element $2^k$ is producible in a game $\mathcal{G}_k$, but proving an upper bound for production got a bit hairy, and also doesn't cover the full space. What command do I need to unzip/extract a .tar.gz file? I received a huge .tar.gz file from a client that contains about 800 mb of image files (when uncompressed.) Our hosting company's ftp is seriously slow, so extracting all the files locally and sending them up via ftp isn't practical. I was able to ftp the .tar.gz file to our hosting site, but when I ssh into my directory and try using unzip, it gives me this error:  [esthers@clients locations]$ unzip community_images.tar.gz Archive:  community_images.tar.gz   End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on the last disk(s) of this archive. note:  community_images.tar.gz may be a plain executable, not an archive unzip:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of community_images.tar.gz or community_images.tar.gz.zip, and cannot find community_images.tar.gz.ZIP, period.   What command do I need to use to extract all the files in a .tar.gz file? Changing colors of lightning-button