When defining class method, why there an equals sign in argument e.g. func(foo=3)
What does ** (double star/asterisk) and * (star/asterisk) do for parameters?
Asking distant cousins for DNA? In my family we have a DNA contradiction – two cousins (at about the 4th cousin level) took a Y-DNA test, but did not match and had two completely different haplogroups.   Since then, I have traced living cousins with the same surname – the only ones left living that I am aware of – and I would love to pay to have them tested to see if we can figure out where the non-paternity event (NPE) or other event happened (i.e. this new cousin could help us determine which line the NPE occurred in depending on which cousin he matches).   Does anyone have a sample letter, or know the best way to go about asking a distant cousin for DNA?   I have their address and am planning to write a letter, but I can't imagine receiving such a letter, so I am not quite sure how to ask without scaring them off. Should moderators be allowed to decline flags on their own comments? So a company decides to raise money by selling shares of its stock. The stock is offered at an initial price of their determination. The stock is then traded in a market where forces of supply and demand, as well as speculation, affect its price.  When a company performs well (or makes decisions that will likely increase the company's earnings in the future), more people want to buy that stock than do people wanting to sell it. This creates demand for that stock which causes its sell/bid prices rise. When a company performs poorly, the opposite occurs; more people want to sell the stock than want to buy. This creates a surplus that causes sell/bid prices to fall.  Understanding this, people speculate over company performance to determine the future behavior of a stock, and attempt to "buy low, sell high" or "borrow high, return low" in order to make a profit.  But my question is regarding the first part of that process. What is it about company performance that causes the perceived value of its stock to rise? This is especially perplexing since I would guess that most people don't exercise their voting rights, and many stocks don't pay dividends.  It's not like a shareholder has any direct financial gains from increased company earnings (speculative stock pricing notwithstanding).  What is the intrinsic value of the stock?  It seems to me that all participants in a stock market tacitly agree that stock price will have a direct correlation with company performance. So another way of asking the question is, would an opposite agreement hold? What financially (this isn't a question about logistics, communication, or feasibility) stops all participants in a market from agreeing to value a particular company's stock inversely with respect to the company's performance?  Since I feel like I can't quite nail down my question, another form of it would be, why is stock market behavior driven by company performance? Is it safe to use oil at its smoking point? Teflon toxicity and second degree burns aside, are there any health issues related to cooking with oil at or past its smoking point? Googling a bit I found one article that went so far as to say you should always "discard oil that's reached its smoke point, along with any food with which it had contact". Other searches showed pages suggesting cancer risks.  I've never given it a thought before and I often use peanut oil at smoking point to brown meat. Proof that the real numbers are countable: Help with why this is wrong Question about a bijection between $\mathbb R$ and $\mathbb R \cup \{\infty\}$ About a bijection between $\mathbb R$ and $\mathbb R \cup \{\infty\}$  If we'll take a line $f(x)=\begin{cases} ax &amp;, x\in\mathbb R\\ 0 &amp;, x=\infty  \end{cases}$ then we'll have a bijection.   But about this function: $g(x)=\begin{cases} x &amp;, x\in\mathbb R\setminus \{0\}\\ 0 &amp;, x=\infty  \end{cases}$ ? it appears to be a bijection and it's even simpler. Similar to this question  and an fellow up on this one    What was the official reason by Canonical to axed the project when it was love by some many of their users and innovative? I got a new laptop; it came with an existing Windows installation, but I wanted to migrate my current backup to the new machine. I dd-ed the new machine's partitions to an external drive:  /dev/nvme0n1p1 /dev/nvme0n1p2 /dev/nvme0n1p3 /dev/nvme0n1p4   and afterwards move my current partitions to the new machine. What followed was a medium-sized nightmare. The new machine would boot, but the wireless network drivers were not recognized and later found out (to the best of my knowledge) they couldn't be installed. I tried:   booting from the console and running:  sfc /scannow chkdsk C: /f /r /x   both seemed to have completed successfully, but now the machine would get stuck in a startup repair loop. I tried resetting the machine (whilst keeping my files), but this failed halfway through. now the machine's still stuck in the loop and decided to try and repair it externally using a bootable Windows&nbsp;10 . It's likely that I'll need the new machine's Windows&nbsp;10 key. I'm not sure if it's stored in the BIOS (it came with Windows&nbsp;10  preinstalled) or somewhere on the partitions.   How can I get the key from the partitions (if it's there at all) while booting from a Linux image? Ring of rational-coefficient power series defining entire functions Probability of Various Combinations of Weather There's a 10% chance it will rain today. There's a 15% chance it will snow today.   What percentage chance is it that it will:   Both rain and snow (it can both rain and snow at the same time)? Neither rain nor snow? -   Raining and snowing are independent of each other.  EDIT: (ADDED)   Rain or snow but not both? I have installed a vlc in centos 6.5. I want to run it as root. But I get the following error,      "VLC is not supposed to be run as root. Sorry. If you need to use   real-time priorities and/or privileged TCP ports you can use   vlc-wrapper (make sure it is Set-UID root and cannot be run by   non-trusted users first)." Functions Which are non differentiable on a Given Set. I have recently read the famous Weierstrass Non differentiable function which is continuous everywhere but nowhere differentiable.     But now my question is:    Given a countable set $S (\subset \mathbb{R})$ , can we construct a function which is continuous everywhere but non differentiable only at points of S..?    My Attempt: If $S$ finite say, $S=\{c_1,c_2,...,c_n\}$ Then the following function is the desired one:$$f(x)=\sum_{i=1}^{n}|x-c_i|$$   But I cannot construct the function for a arbitrary Enumerable set $S.$     Can we generalize the question for an arbitrary set $S$? Please Help.  Thank you...!! Let $a_n$ be a sequence s.t $a_1 > 0 \land a_{n+1} = a_n + \dfrac{1}{a_n}$. Prove that $a_n$ is increasing and tends to infinity Let $a_n$ be a sequence s.t $a_1 &gt; 0 \land a_{n+1} = a_n + \frac{1}{a_n}$. Prove that $a_n$ is increasing and tends to infinity.  Proof:   Consider $a_{n+1} - a_n$:  $a_{n+1} - a_n = a_n + \frac{1}{a_n} - a_n = \frac{1}{a_n}$ This is greater than $0$. Thus, $a_n$ is increasing.  Now this is where I need some help. I would like to say that $a_n$ is unbounded and then conclude that monotone and unbounded implies tending to infinity.  Maybe by contradiction? Something I did in the first Animal Crossing was make a house on an alternate character solely to showcase bugs/fish I felt were too cool to only leave in the museum. However bugs can't be mailed or dropped, so I'm at a loss as to how to do this.  Is there a way I can give bugs/fish to a second character or will that character have to find them themselves? Normalizing point cloud data How I can get Digital Height Model (only object heights, DSM - DTM = DHM)?  Many applications can do this, but they convert it to GRID or TIN format. I was wondering if it was possible to keep the data as point clouds. How to install a deb file, by dpkg -i or by apt? Short story about a crew finding an ancient alien ship filled with tons of artifacts from their society How to address a professor in letter? How can you accelerate without moving? I know this question has been asked in other forms, generally regarding the balance of forces.  This time I want to focus on motion.  I've got a laser accelerometer on my desk.  It tells me that I'm accelerating at $9.8~\rm m/s^2$.  For the first experiment I'm travelling in space.  I pick a nearby star and discover that I move about $490$ meters in $10$ seconds from that star.  For the next experiment I'm on the surface of Earth.  I measure the same acceleration with my laser accelerometer.  I pick a spot (the center of the Earth) and discover I don't move at all in $10$ seconds.  How is acceleration without motion possible? I have a Minecraft 1.8.1 vanilla server and would like to reward certain users. I would like to /give some users a 99999/99999 durability renamed Diamond Pickaxe (with all enchantments on it). How do I use commands to change/repair the durability of items? If possible, using only one command and use /give.