No Stupid Questions

Wales, Scotland, and England have their own teams (Northern Ireland contributes to the Irish team). The common explanation I've seen is that the nations have deep, distinct histories and cultures, but that doesn't explain why, for example, India doesn't get to send a team from each state despite India's ethnic groups being even more diverse and distinct than those of the UK.

So what is the actual reason for Britain into three parts for the purpose of international sport but not other countries?

I've heard dual booting Linux and Windows isn't a good idea because Windows Update will nuke the Linux boot loader, so I've avoided doing that.

For a very long, technical, and complicated reason, I still need Windows because one piece of software that I absolutely MUST have is only compatible with Windows. No, there is no alternative software available for my use case; none, zero, not any, at all. I've already tried running it within many different VMs, using many different hypervisors, and I've already tried Wine; they aren't an option, the software isn't stable in those cases. I don't want to get in the weeds about it, so please just accept that I NEED some version of Windows installed.

Since Windows 10 doesn't receive updates anymore, can I dual boot Linux and Windows 10 without worrying about whether Windows Update will break anything? I intend to keep Windows on one drive and Linux on another. Windows would only be used when I need to run this one specific program, which is maybe five or ten hours per week. The rest of the time, I'd be using Linux.

There are examples I've seen but not are all obvious unless you knew beforehand:

• Richard Dreyfuss in The Graduate (starring Dustin Hoffman) as "boarding house resident" (uncredited)
• John Krasinski in State and Main (starring William H. Macy) as “caddy / judge's assistant” (uncredited)
• Bruce Willis in The Verdict (starring Paul Newman) as "courtroom observer" (uncredited)
• Channing Tatum in War of the Worlds (starring Tom Cruise) as "boy at church" (uncredited)
• Brad Pitt in No Way Out (starring Kevin Costner) as "party guest" (uncredited)
• Sylvester Stallone in Klute (starring Jane Fonda) as "disco dancer" (uncredited)
• Jeff Goldblum in Death Wish (starring Charles Bronson) as "freak #1" (uncredited)
• Vin Diesel in Awakenings (starring Robin Williams) as "hospital porter" (uncredited)
• Gerard Butler in Tomorrow Never Dies (starring Pierce Brosnan) as "crewman" (uncredited)
• Megan Fox in Bad Boys II (starring Martin Lawrence) as "dancer in club" (uncredited)

I mean, have you seen a movie where an actor you recognize began their career as a extra before they were stars?

Please ELI5, I lost track. I used to learn a bit of C and a bit of Python a few years ago but never really went deeper into programming. And now suddenly it seems that a host of new programming languages have appeared and that stuff that used to work fine in whatever old language it was in is now rewritten in a new language.

How do languages like Golang and Rust differ from older languages (these two have probably been around a while but for me they feel 'new')? Why are we coming up with new languages all the time? Besides those two, what other languages are there worth knowing about? Is it worth learning them? Are they going to come up with yet another one next week? (I know, many questions, an invitation to infodump I guess ...)

It was one of the segments with another correspondent but I don't remember who. They were discussing some legal procedural action that was named after the person who did it. They then went on to liken it to other fictional actions by made up historical figures with silly names. If Rufus Pfuke did something to you, you would be getting "Pfuked". Similar situation with Harlan P Reameduptheass. The segment ended with the correspondent telling John, "You certainly don't want to get Reameduptheass".

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Trying to see if we're all on the same page. Thanks

I lost a draft post in Voyager on Android while I was a few apps away doing research and looking for a photo to add to the post.

That brought to me an understanding that Android will just kill apps for memory purposes.

Then I thought back to Windows 98 and how it had a page file that would write RAM information to the hard disk and use it as RAM. It was slow af, but it worked.

So I'm wondering: it's 2026; why is Android just killing apps instead of writing them to a much faster drive for recall when needed?

I am reading up on logic circuits, families and levels because it's fun. I have no formal education in physics, computing or electronics.

For power supplies, sometimes one of the supply rails is referred to as ground (abbreviated "GND") – positive and negative voltages are relative to the ground. In digital electronics, negative voltages are seldom present, and the ground nearly always is the lowest voltage level. In analog electronics (e.g. an audio power amplifier) the ground can be a voltage level between the most positive and most negative voltage level.

I know from previous reading, that electricity - at least when it comes to direct current, but perhaps even when it comes to AC? - has a way in ("line"?) and a way out ("neutral" or "ground"? - disregarding for a second the fact that ground also carries current in case of a ground fault).

Again, from previous reading, I know that we work computers by either supplying them voltage or not (or in some circuits a higher voltage and a lower voltage). In any case, it's a choice between one or the other, since that is what we are trying to represent: boolean true or false.

So, what is this "negative voltage"? Is this a figure of speech or can voltage actually have a negative value? The part from the article that I quoted above states in relativistic terms, that "the ground can be a voltage level between the most positive and most negative voltage level" (italic text by me), which makes me assume "yes". But if voltage is electromotive force, how can it be negative? I amusingly imagine a force "sucking" the current backwards. 🤭

Explain it to me as if I was five. 👶

It's kinda strange to imagine a person's face being locked out of the arts because a character or actor who looked like them got there first.

Can robot or a device be made that, given the requisite resources, could construct and assemble a functional copy of itself?

To entertain this hypothesis further, let's add a set of explicit constraints or expectations:

1. The copy must structurally match the original device as is realistically possible
2. The device must be able to manufacture at least one copy of itself
3. The overall replication process should sustain itself for an indefinite amount of iterations
4. The device must not repurpose its own parts as parts for its copy
5. The device must not peform any task other than replicating itself and preserving itself to be able to replicate
6. The device may sustain damages of repairable or non-repairable nature as long as it obeys constraints 1 and 2
7. The device may take as much time and resources as it needs to construct its copy as long as both remain finite
8. The device may make use of essential external resources like electricity and cooling to sustain itself as long as its able to accommodate its copy to do the same

Can reproduction be emulated mechanically while obeying all the constraints above or is there a fundamental limitation stopping us from realising this concept? If so, what is it?

30 something woman here, apparently I masturbate a lot compared to my friends.
I have to say "yeah once a week too" when they raise the subject ,when in fact it is multiple times a day. Husband would also do 2 times a day if he kept to his "normal" cadence. I know "whatever works for me" is right, but I'd like to compare to other people my age that aren't my friends.

Let me start by saying that I am in no way trying to be racist or anti-Semitic. I truly do not understand the mental gymnastics that these people are doing. I've been wondering for quite a while is how can America have so many white christian nationalists, and people who are completely freaking racist about EVERYONE not white christians, but all the while they seem to support Israel which is a Jewish state. Which goes completely against the white christian nationalist movement. How do these people reconciliate those two things? Are they just complete hypocrites in their beliefs?

One of the main challenges of maintaining peaceful international relations is the escalation of distrust and the ensuing arms race.

The possibility that others might attack you is a reason to arm yourself. But this step will in turn be interpreted as a threat by the other, who will in turn arm itself (even more). Etc.

Aren't there ways to simply invest in purely defensive weapons? So that your efforts to remain safe do not in turn threaten others? Which in turn allows others to also de-escalate?

In other words, are there military set-ups that are useless for offensive actions but good enough for defending a country?

My conspiracy spidy senses are tingling.

Can explain further if need be.