I'm trying to recall a story I read several years ago.  It was an urban fantasy with Greek gods involved in the plot.  Our protagonist was a magical hacker of some sort, and he had a familiar, a goblin who could turn into a computer with access to magical networks.  Some of the more powerful characters had "troll mainframes."  The primary antagonist was Eris, and she had computers of her own: Apples.  (Yes, the author really went there.)  Does this ring any bells for anyone?
I recall being somewhat impressed by a novel I read a few years back – this book may be less than five years old – which featured a college-aged man.  He had a laptop which transformed into a troll goblin that served as his familiar.  In the story's universe, mages had switched to the Internet for most of their magic &amp; communication.  The main character was essentially a magical hacker, and spent much of the book fighting against his evil aunt (I think, I know it was a female relative) with the help of his cousin.  Older forms of magic were also featured, including using special paintings as magical portals, and spells being whistled by wizards.  It features a scene at a gas station where the laptop is disabled by a virus, and the main character whistles a spell to reanimate dinosaurs from the gasoline.  Is this ringing any bells?
Can the Room of Requirement provide anything if needed? For example:   James Potter wanted to hide from Voldemort, it would have served as a perfect hiding place. Harry Potter wanted all the Hocruxes, he should have gone straight to the room of requirement where he would have found all the Hocruxes along with the Sword. All the muggle borns of the wizarding community could have taken refuge in the room of requirement. Can someone meet a dead person in the room of Requirement if needed? Would it have been possible for Harry to go in past in order to see Dumbledore for the explanation of many things? Can the room duplicate something? For instance, Harry needed the Elder wand; with Voldemort having it, could he still get it? Someone wishes to be knowledgeable than Dumbledore, would the seeker find his desired wish by finding books and things?   Who created the room of requirement (surely not Salazar)? Was it beyond Dumbledore's magic to create such a place? Why does Linux show both more and less memory than I physically have installed? How to change LCD brightness from command line (or via script)? Linear Matrix Inequality of a matrix $T$ with $\| T \|_2 < \rho$ Assume $T \in \mathbb{R}^{d\times d}$. Let $\rho(T)$ be the spectral radius of $T$ and $\rho \ge 0$. Prove that  $\rho(T) &lt; \rho$ if and only if there exists a $P \succ 0$ satisfying $T^TPT - \rho^2 P \prec 0$.  I can prove the Necessity: If $P = I$, for any $x \in \mathbb{R}^d$,   \begin{equation} x^T T^T P T x - \rho^2 x^T P x = \| Tx \|^2 - \rho^2 \| x\|^2 &lt; 0 \end{equation} so $T^T PT - \rho^2 P \prec 0$  I get stuck in proving the Sufficiency. My friend and his wife visited UK during the year 2015. And they came back on time we want to know one information as they same couple want to visit UK again  For how many years or months can multiple entry visa can be given for a couple who have already visited UK? Prove that the normalisation of $A=k[X,Y]/(Y^2-X^2-X^3)$ is $k[t]$ where $t=Y/X$ (Reid, Exercise 4.5) This is a problem about finding the normalisation of a quotient polynomial ring. So I have to find the integral closure of the ring in its field of fractions. The problem statement is as follows:     Let $A=k[X,Y]/(Y^2-X^2-X^3)$. Prove that the normalisation of $A$ is $k[t]$ where $t=Y/X$.   Can I do this by showing that the field of fractions $\text{Frac} A$ of $A$ is equal to $k[t]$, and subsequently showing that the field of fractions is normal? (This could be done by showing that $k[t]$ is a UFD?)  I am lost at calculating/determining $\text{Frac}A$, or similarly proving that $k[t]=\text{Frac}A$. Also, how do I show that it is normal?  I hope you can help! Can I enable the Windows 7 Start menu in Windows 10? I've upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and now I only find this new slower Start menu with all the tiles in it   (picturesource: )  Can I enable the older Windows 7 one again which suites my needs more? The paradox:    We have a circle and there is another circle with smaller radius. They are co-centeric.  If circle make full turn without sliding, both smaller and bigger circle make full turn too. If we assume that the passed road is equal to the circumference of circles. We have got smaller circle's radius is equal to bigger one's.  Unsatisfying Solutions I found:    "Do not assume that smaller circle's circumference is equal to passed road since the surface that contacts to the ground is bigger one. " // Okey but it does not explain the paradox, it explains just what is the wrong assumption (even does not explain why it is a wrong assumption.) It is undeniable that every point on both smaller and bigger circle will contact exactly one and only one point on their path. Therefore we can think that this is a bijective maps and smaller circle is isomorphic to bigger one. (Okey but ....)   Question: What is the true answer? What is wrong with the definition of circumference of a circle and relationship with its taken path. I have a video that was rotated 180° when recorded. Is it possible to correct this with FFmpeg? I often cook fries in a skillet. I put about 1/4 cup vegetable oil into a large skillet and heat on high, then I toss in some frozen fries.   As soon as I toss them in there is an explosion of grease that makes a huge mess. After it simmers down though, I can cook the fries without spilling anymore grease.  Is there anyway to avoid the initial uproar? Move EFI System Partition to another drive In $ \triangle ABC$ show that $ 1 \lt \cos A + \cos B + \cos C \le \frac 32$ Renaming Files and Directories Recursively using rename/find Inkscape filters are not rendering correctly I'm running Inkscape 0.92.4 on Ubuntu Linux 19.10. My graphics driver is from NVidia. I'm given to believe that Inkscape's filters should work and render fairly similarly to how filters work in GIMP. My expectations are based on this image which shows various filter effects which ship with Inkscape:    However, when I apply filters to even very simple shapes, I get horrible pixelated garbage like this:      Can anyone help me understand what is wrong and how to correct it? Thanks! If two vectors $a$ and $b$ make angle $\alpha$ and $\beta$ with the $x$-axis, prove, using vectors, that:   $$\cos(\beta - \alpha) = \cos \alpha \cos\beta + \sin\alpha \sin\beta$$   I tried taking components of each vector along the plane, but that didn't get me anywhere. I tried taking component of vector $b$ along vector $a$, but I also got stuck there. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Say an airplane flies at Mach 1. The doppler effect causes the front of the sound emitted by the plane to reach infinite frequency:    $f = \left ( \frac {343+0}{343-343} \right ) f_0 = ∞$  If the plane suddenly stopped, and there was an observer in front of the sound waves to receive the sound, what would the bunched up waves sound like to the observer? Would they cancel each other out and cause no sound? Proving that $ 2 $ is the only real solution of $ 3^x+4^x=5^x $ Can a quasiclassical electron wave packet in elliptic orbit be formed from bound hydrogen-like eigenstates? Position probability densities of eigenstates of hydrogen-like systems have axial symmetry, so that the wavefunction too much resembles the circular orbits in Bohr's model. I'd like to have a demonstration of correspondence principle, where an electron would be localized to look somewhat like a classical particle, and move in an elliptic (non-circular) orbit around a nucleus.  It seems though that if we try to make a wave packet too localized, then it'll disintegrate (get scattered by the nucleus) too fast to see anything resembling an elliptic orbit. OTOH, if we take it too spread out, it'll have to be quite far from the nucleus so as to avoid hitting it, and thus it'll have high total energy, which may appear to be above ionization threshold (at least partially), after which it'd be quite hard to analytically calculate evolution of the wave packet.  Thus my question is: is it possible to form a more or less localized wave packet, which would (on average) move in an obviously-elliptic orbit (major/minor axes ratio of 4:3 or higher), and only require bound states to fully represent it? If yes, then what properties (FWHM, apocenter, angular momentum etc.) should it have for this to be possible? Why does Earth behave like Natural Bar Magnet? What is the reason for the Earth to behave like a bar magnet and have poles (North and South poles)? Similes and Metaphors - are similes a subset of metaphors?