Force dig to resolve without using cache

Question: I'm wondering if there is a way to query a DNS server and bypass caching (with dig). Often I change a zone on the DNS server and I want to check if it resolves correctly from my workstation. But since the server caches resolved requests, I often get the old ones. Restarting or -loading the server is not really something nice.
Answer: You can use the @ syntax to look up the domain from a particular server.  If the DNS server is authoritative for that domain, the response will not be a cached result.
dig @ns1.example.com example.com

You can find the authoritative servers by asking for the NS records for a domain:
dig example.com NS

Comment: you can also check on google dns `dig @220.127.116.11 example.com`. the records appear much faster there.
Comment: What if you're waiting for the authoritative servers to change?
Comment: Side note: in cases where you're trying to see what responses a caching server would get, `+norecurse` is recommended. `+recurse` is on by default will occasionally change the way a DNS server interprets your question entirely.
Comment: Oh okay. Yeah I was familiar with the @ syntax, but haven't had the idea to query the authoritative server instead. Thanks!
Comment: @KasperSouren Are you talking about the NS records at the authoritative servers or the glue records at the parent? You can find the parent with `+trace` but beware of caching. Andrew B wrote up a good explanation of how caching can trick you when waiting for nameservers to change.
Comment: I get the correct result with `dig @188.8.131.52 example.com` from one machine and an incorrect, cached result with the same command from another one. weird
Answer: There is no mechanism in the DNS protocol to force a nameserver to respond without using its cache. Dig itself isn't a nameserver, it is simply a tool that passes your query on to whichever nameservers you have configured, using standard DNS requests.  DNS does include a way to tell a server not to use recursion, but this isn't what you want.  That's only useful when you want to directly query an authoritative nameserver.
If you wanted to stop a nameserver from responding from its cache, you'd only be able to do that by altering the configuration on the nameserver, but if you don't control the nameserver, this is impossible.
You can, however, get dig to bypass the configured nameservers, and perform its own recursive request which goes back to the root servers.  To do this, use the +trace option.
dig example.com +trace

In practice since this will only query the authoritative servers rather than your local caching resolver, the result won't be stale even if those servers employ internal caching.  The added benefit of using +trace is that you get to see all of the separate requests made along the path.
Comment: Using `+norecurse` just tells the nameserver to return whatever information it has (including cached info, if any), so that isn't correct. `+trace` will work because it will follow the recursion chain all the way to an authoritative server.
Comment: @DavidSpector dig is a software tool that comes with BIND by ISC - while it's common on Linux it is officially available for Windows too, from Bind's website. Download the current stable Windows version of Bind as a zip, unzip and look for dig.exe - for more instructions Google for Using the dig dns tool on Windows.  Do NOT follow any instructions which include copying files into /Windows/System32
Comment: Note that I have modified this answer to remove the `+norecurse` recommendation as it confused the issue.
Comment: You can use it through the new Windows Subsytem for Linux (WSL) on Windows
Comment: I have not been able to find this "dig" command. It does not appear to be a standard Windows command. A command prompt gives me an error message.
Answer: Something important to note here, which I notice many people don't ever include when talking about +trace is that using +trace means the dig client will do the trace, not the DNS server specified in your config (/etc/resolv.conf).  So, in other words, your dig client will work like a recursive DNS server would, should you ask it.  But - importantly, you haven't got a cache.
More detail - so if you've already asked for an mx record using dig -t mx example.com and your /etc/resolv.conf is 220.127.116.11 then doing anything inside the TTL of the zone will return the cached result.  In a way, if you're looking for something about your own zone and how Google sees it, you've sort of poisoned your DNS results with Google for the TTL of your Zone.  Not bad if you have a short TTL, somewhat rubbish if you have a 1hr one.
So, whilst +trace will help you to see what WOULD be seen if you were asking Google for the FIRST time and it had no cached entry, it may give you a false idea that Google will be telling everyone the same as what your +trace result was, which it won't if you'd asked previously and have a long TTL, as it'll serve that from cache until the TTL expires - THEN it'll serve the same as what your +trace revealed.
Can't have too much detail IMO.
Comment: Does dig have its own cache or uses the OS cache?
Comment: Dig doesn't have a cache.  If the upstream nameserver it's using does, though, it benefits from that.
Comment: When using `+trace` dig *begins* the trace using the specified nameserver (eg, 126.96.36.199 if that's what you have configured) for the first lookup (the root zone), but after that it uses the returned nameservers for further queries.  So if your configured nameserver is not working or does not properly respond to a query for the root nameservers, you can have problems (as in the above comment).
Comment: `dig mydomain.com +trace` just returns me the `resolvd` stub results from `127.0.0.53`.  See https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5897
Answer: This bash will dig example.com's DNS entries from it's first listed name server:
dig @$(dig @188.8.131.52 example.com ns +short | head -n1) example.com ANY +noall +answer

The inner dig queries google's DNS (126.96.36.199) to get example.com's
nameservers.
The outer dig queries example.com's first name server.

Here's the same as an alias for a .zshrc (and probably .bashrc):
# e.g. `checkdns google.com`
checkdns () { dig @$(dig @184.108.40.206 $1 ns +short | head -n1) $1 ANY +noall +answer; ping -c1 $1; }

Here's the output for /.:
☀  checkdns slashdot.org                                                                                dev
-->Server DNS Query

; <<>> DiG 9.10.3-P4-Ubuntu <<>> @ns1.dnsmadeeasy.com. slashdot.org ANY +noall +answer
; (2 servers found)
;; global options: +cmd
slashdot.org.       21600   IN  SOA ns0.dnsmadeeasy.com. hostmaster.slashdotmedia.com. 2016045603 14400 600 604800 300
slashdot.org.       86400   IN  NS  ns3.dnsmadeeasy.com.
slashdot.org.       86400   IN  NS  ns4.dnsmadeeasy.com.
slashdot.org.       86400   IN  NS  ns0.dnsmadeeasy.com.
slashdot.org.       86400   IN  NS  ns2.dnsmadeeasy.com.
slashdot.org.       86400   IN  NS  ns1.dnsmadeeasy.com.
slashdot.org.       3600    IN  MX  10 mx.sourceforge.net.
slashdot.org.       3600    IN  TXT "google-site-verification=mwj5KfwLNG8eetH4m5w1VEUAzUlHotrNwnprxNQN5Io"
slashdot.org.       3600    IN  TXT "v=spf1 include:servers.mcsv.net ip4:18.104.22.168 ?all"
slashdot.org.       300 IN  A   126.96.36.199
-->Local DNS Query
PING slashdot.org (22.214.171.124) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from slashdot.org (126.96.36.199): icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=33.0 ms

--- slashdot.org ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 33.026/33.026/33.026/0.000 ms

This solution is complicated enough to be impractical to remember, but simple enough for the problem to not be fixed.  dig isn't my specialty -
 improvements welcome :-)
Answer: Thanks to this solutions I am able to check propagation of DNS TXT records which I need to add to AZURE DNS Zone, for LetsEncrypt certificates.
Here is my dig command:
dig @188.8.131.52 +nocmd _acme-challenge.ultrasecretprojec.to txt +noall +answer


Famous easy to understand examples of a confounding variable invalidating a study

Question: Are there any well-known statistical studies that were originally published and thought to be valid, but later had to be thrown out due to a confounding variable that wasn't taken into account?  I'm looking for something easy to understand that could be explained to and appreciated by a quantitative literacy class that has zero pre-requisites.
Comment: What is the difference between "quantitative literacy" and "numeracy" as a state of mind?
Comment: The [Stanford Marshmallow Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment) is the first one that came to my mind.
Comment: I think of all the public opinion polls that assume no correlation between a person's opinion and their willingness to answer questions from strangers (or their willingness to tolerate a phone call interrupting whatever).
Comment: It's just the preferred terminology.  But I guess really to me numeracy means having a great grasp on number sense itself, whereas in our QL class we try to teach a smattering of lots of things - but probably none of them too well (such as statistics and logic).
Answer: Coffee Drinking & Lung Cancer
My favorite example is that supposedly, "coffee drinkers have a greater risk of lung cancer", despite most coffee drinkers... well... drinking coffee, rather than inhaling it.
There have been various studies about this, but the consensus remains that studies with this conclusion usually just have a larger proportion of smoking coffee drinkers, than non-smoking coffee drinkers. In other words, the effect of smoking confounds the effect of coffee consumption, if not included in the model. The most recent article on this I could find is a meta analysis by Vania Galarraga and Paolo Boffetta (2016).$^\dagger$
The Obesity Paradox
Another example that plagues clinical research, is the claim that obesity can be beneficial for certain diseases. Specifically, many articles, still to this day (just do a quick search for obesity paradox on pubmed and be amazed), claim the following:

While a higher BMI increases the risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer, once a patient already has the disease, a higher BMI is associated with lower rates of major adversarial events or death.

Why does this happen? Obesity is defined as excess fat negatively affecting health, yet we classify obesity based on BMI. BMI is just calculated as:
$$\text{BMI} = \frac{\text{weight in kg}}{(\text{height in m})^2},$$
so the most direct way to combat obesity is through weight loss (or by growing taller somehow).
Regimes that focus on loss of weight rather than fat, tend to result in a proportionally large loss of muscle. This is likely what causes lower BMI to be associated with a higher rate of major adversarial events.
Because many studies do not include measures of body fat (percentage), but only BMI as a proxy, the amount of body fat confounds the effect of BMI on health.
A nice review of this phenomenon was written by Steven G. Chrysant (2018).$^\ddagger$ He ends with:

[B]ased on the recent evidence, the obesity paradox is a misnomer and could convey the wrong message to the general public that obesity is not bad.

Followed by:

Journals [should] no longer accept articles about the 'obesity paradox'.

$\dagger$: Vania Galarraga and Paolo Boffetta (2016): Coffee Drinking and Risk of Lung Cancer—A Meta-Analysis. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev June 1 2016 (25) (6) 951-957; DOI: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-15-0727
$\ddagger$: Steven G. Chrysant (2018): Obesity is bad regardless of the obesity paradox for hypertension and heart disease. J Clin Hypertens (Greenwich). 2018 May;20(5):842-846. doi: 10.1111/jch.13281. Epub 2018 Apr 17.

Examples of (poor) studies claiming to have demonstrated the obesity paradox:

McAuley et al. (2018): Exercise Capacity and the Obesity Paradox in Heart Failure: The FIT (Henry Ford Exercise Testing) Project
Weatherald et al. (2018): The association between body mass index and obesity with survival in pulmonary arterial hypertension
Patel et al. (2018): The obestiy paradox: the protective effect of obesity on right ventricular function using echocardiographic strain imaging in patients with pulmonary hypertension

Articles refuting the obesity paradox as a mere confounding effect of body fat:

Lin et al. (2017): Impact of Misclassification of Obesity by Body Mass Index on Mortality in Patients With CKD
Leggio et al. (2018): High body mass index, healthy metabolic profile and low visceral adipose tissue: The paradox is to call it obesity again
Medina-Inojosa et al. (2018): Association Between Adiposity and Lean Mass With Long-Term Cardiovascular Events in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease: No Paradox
Flegal & Ioannidis (2018): The Obesity Paradox: A Misleading Term That Should Be Abandoned

Articles about the obesity paradox in cancer:

Cespedes et al. (2018): The Obesity Paradox in Cancer: How Important Is Muscle?
Caan et al. (2018): The Importance of Body Composition in Explaining the Overweight Paradox in Cancer-Counterpoint
Comment: Another example I recall from our classes was the correlation of the amount of fire engines involved in fighting a fire with the damage of the fire. The confounding variable there was that the bigger the fire, the bigger the damages, but also the more engines were needed to fight the fire. I can't recall how serious those studies were or if it was just some toy example.
Comment: On the obesity paradox --- older subjects with higher BMI suffer fewer broken bones (hips etc) through falls it seems. Do they fall less? Are they 'cushioned' by fat (the Paradox explanation)? Have they got less athropied muscles and other health problems thus fewer falls? Etc.
Comment: To clarify, is the explanation of the obesity paradox that some people who are diagnosed with a disease try to lose weight, and consequently lose muscle, which has a negative effect, while others who do not try to lose weight, and therefore remain obese, do not suffer this effect?
Comment: On the obesity paradox, consider that many cancers cause the patient to lose a lot of weight, and "unexplained weight loss" is one of worrying symptoms that should lead a person to see a doctor - I'm convinced that this also has something do to with the paradox.
Comment: I think I remember reading a "joke" study that determined that in football being ahead in the 3rd quarter was highly correlated with winning the game.  The "takeaway" for coaches was to win more games, they should score more points than the other team.
Comment: Can't say they're all "famous" but _many_ of the medical research conclusions I've read are of dubious value for ignoring (sometimes intentionally) one or more variables.  But I can suggest the infamous "seven countries study" that started the "don't eat fat" nonsense.
Comment: Calling it a "paradox" reveals the (author's) began with the assumption that obesity is harmful.  So not only did they fail to fully consider the variables, they failed to examine their unproven assumptions.  (I'm not saying the assumption is false, just that they didn't think it through.)
Answer: You might want to introduce Simpson's Paradox.
The first example that page is the UC Berkeley gender bias case where it was thought that there was gender bias (towards males) in admissions when looking at overall acceptance rates, but this was eliminated or reversed when investigated by department. The confounding variable of department picked up on a gender difference in applying to more competetive departments.
Comment: Another takeaway from that should be to investigate if this *applying to more competitive departments* (suppose for women) is a more general phenomenon? Anybody have references/links about that?
Answer: Power Lines and Cancer
After an initial study finding a link between living next to high-voltage transmission lines and cancer, follow-up studies found that when you include income in the model the effect of the power lines goes away.
Living next to power lines is a moderately accurate predictor of low household income / wealth. Put bluntly, there aren't as many fancy mansions next to transmission lines as elsewhere.
There is correlation between poverty and cancer. When comparisons were made between households on similar income brackets close to and far away from transmission lines, the effect of transmission lines disappeared.
In this case, the confounding variables were household wealth and distance to the nearest high voltage line.
Background reading.
Comment: @aginensky The original study found correlation (as Jason said), but incorrectly claimed causation without sufficient data or evidence.  The link does reference another researcher who did falsify a study in 1992 though (who was later fired in 1999 when the falsification was discovered).
Comment: As I recall the author of these studies was later shown to have outright falsified his data, the results were discredited and he is now prevented from doing research in this field.
Comment: Interesting. Do you have links?
Answer: Consider the following examples. I am not sure they are necessarily very famous but they help to demonstrate the potential negative effects of confounding variables.
Say one is studying the relation between birth order (1st child, 2nd child, etc.) and the presence of Down Syndrome in the child. In this scenario, maternal age would be a confounding variable:

Higher maternal age is directly associated with Down Syndrome in the child
Higher maternal age is directly associated with Down Syndrome, regardless of birth order (a mother having her 1st vs 3rd child at age 50 confers the same risk)
Maternal age is directly associated with birth order (the 2nd child, except in the case of twins, is born when the mother is older than she was for the birth of the 1st child)
Maternal age is not a consequence of birth order (having a 2nd child does not change the mother's age)

More examples
In risk assessments, factors such as age, gender, and educational levels often affect health status and so should be controlled. Beyond these factors, researchers may not consider or have access to data on other causal factors. An example is the study of smoking tobacco on human health. Smoking, drinking alcohol, and diet are lifestyle activities that are related. A risk assessment that looks at the effects of smoking but does not control for alcohol consumption or diet may overestimate the risk of smoking (Tjønneland, Grønbaek, Stripp, & Overvad, 1999). Smoking and confounding are reviewed in occupational risk assessments such as the safety of coal mining (Axelson, 1989). When there is not a large sample population of non-smokers or non-drinkers in a particular occupation, the risk assessment may be biased towards finding a negative effect on health.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding
Tjønneland, A., Grønbaek, M., Stripp, C., & Overvad, K. (1999). Wine intake and diet in a random sample of 48763 Danish men and women. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 69(1), 49-54.
Axelson, O. (1989). Confounding from smoking in occupational epidemiology. British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 46(8), 505-507.
Answer: There was one about diet that looked at diet in different countries and concluded that meat caused all sorts of problems (e.g. heart disease), but failed to account for the average lifespan in each country: The countries that ate very little meat also had lower life expectancies and the problems that meat "caused" were ones that were linked to age.
I don't have citations for this - I read about it about 25 years ago - but maybe someone will remember or maybe you can find it.
Comment: Are you sure it wasn't fat rather than meat?  The infamous "seven countries study" that started the don't-eat-fat myth not only ignored a few variables but strangely omitted data from many countries.
Comment: I'm sort of sure it was meat. There could easily have been multiple studies. Diet is notorious for bad statistics.
Answer: I'm not sure it entirely counts as a confounding variable so much as confounding situations, but animals' abilities to find their way through a maze may qualify.
As described in this ScienceDirect summary, studies of rats (or other animals) in mazes were popular for a large part of the 20th century, and continue today to some extent.  One possible purpose is to study the subject's ability to remember a maze which it has previously run; another popular purpose is to study any bias in the subject's choices of whether to turn left or right at junctions, in a maze which the subject has not previously run.
It should be immediately clear that if the subject has forgotten the maze, then any inherent bias in choice of route will be a confounding factor.  If the "right" direction coincides with the subject's bias, then they could find their way in spite of not remembering the route.
In addition to this, studies found various other confounding features exist which might not have been considered.  The height of walls and width of passages are factors, for example.  And if another subject has previously navigated the maze, subjects which rely strongly on their sense of smell (mice and dogs, for instance) may find their way simply by tracking the previous subject's scent.  Even the construction of the maze may be an issue - animals tend to be less happy to run over "hollow-sounding" floors.
Many animal maze studies ended up finding confounding factors instead of the intended study results.  More disturbingly, according to Richard Feynmann, the studies reporting these confounding factors were not picked up by researchers at the time.  As a result we simply don't know if any animal maze studies carried out around this time have any validity whatsoever.  That's decades worth of high-end research at the finest universities around the world, by the finest psychologists and animal behaviourists, and every last shred of work had to at best be taken with a very large spoon of salt.  Later researchers had to go back and duplicate all this work, to find out what was actually valid and what wasn't repeatable.
Comment: If I read your link correctly, it appears that Richard Feynmann, who is not a researcher in ethology, animal behaviour or psychology commented in a talk (not an academic conference or publication of any kind) on some unidentified unpublished "study" that may or may not have showed what he says it showed and then concluded that researchers in the field do not care about this because they do not talk about "Mr. Young". And that's supposed to be an example of scientific rigor or evidence that researchers in the field do not care about confounding factors in general?
Comment: @Gala Not that they did not care, but that they did not *know*.  Feynman's point wasn't about scientific rigor from individual scientists - he had no doubt they did the best they could. His point was that the scientific community *as a whole* was substandard at passing on this important information so that other people don't fall into the same trap. He was using this as a nice hook to hang his lesson on, but there are *so many* examples of this - Mendel, for instance.
Answer: There was a great study of mobile phone use and brain cancer. Most people with a lateral brain cancer, when asked which hand they hold their phone in, answer the diseased side. This seemed to show that phone use caused cancer.
However, maybe the answers are informed by hindsight. Someone thought of a great test for this. The sample was big enough to include some people with two cancers. So you could ask, does the declared side of phone use influence the risk of a cancer on the other side of the brain? It was actually protective, thus showing the hindsight bias in the original result.
Sorry, I don't have the reference.
Answer: 'Statistics' by Freedman, Purvis et al.  has a number of examples in the first couple of chapters.  My personal favorite is that ice cream causes polio.  The confounding variable is that they are both prevalent in the summertime when young children are out, about, and spreading polio.  The book is "Statistics (Fourth Edition) 4th Edition, Kindle Edition- by David Freedman  (Author), Robert Pisani (Author), Roger Purves (Author)"
Answer: This is not a study, but a gallery of spurious correlations that could be appreciated by a quantitative literacy class. The downside of this is the lack of an explanation (aside from chance).
Answer: See: Subversive Subjects: Rule-Breaking and Deception in Clinical Trials
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4520402/
Answer: Hormone replacement Therapy and heart disease?
https://www.teachepi.org/wp-content/uploads/OldTE/documents/courses/bfiles/The%20B%20Files_File1_HRT_Final_Complete.pdf
The benefits were determined by observation, and essentially it appears that the people who chose to do hrt  had higher socioeconomic status, healthier lifestyle etc
(So one could argue on confounding Vs observational study)
Answer: There are lots of good examples in Howard Weiner's books.  In particular, Chapter 1 "The most dangerous equation" in "How to understand, communicate and control uncertainty through graphical display"
Examples include:

The small schools movement.
People noticed that some small schools had better performance than large schools so spent money to reduce school size.  It turned out that some small schools also had worse performance than large schools.  It was largely an artefact of extreme outcomes showing up in small samples.
Kidney cancer rates
(This example is also used Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow", see the start of Chapter 10).
Lowest kidney cancer rates in rural, sparsely populated counties.  These low rates have to be because of the the clean living rural life style.  But wait, counties with the highest incidence of kidney cancer are also rural and sparsely populated.  This has to be because of the lack of access to good medical care and too much drinking.  Of course, the extreme are actually an artefact of the small populations.


Debugging directx pixel/vertex shaders?

Question: I'm trying to figure out how to debug pixel and vertex shaders in DirectX, I've tried using Pix for Windows but find it to be quite buggy and effectively non-operational. Is there an alternative that would allow me to debug these shaders inside my own application?
Answer: In short, no.
Yes pix is a bit buggy but has improved MASSIVELY since its first release.  Make sure you are running the latest SDK!
Answer: I don't know of any third party tool for debugging hlsl-shaders, but I had good experiences with debugging it by using some simple techniques.
You could just copy render targets on cpu and store it into a bitmap, print it out to the terminal, or access it in your CPU debugger.
If there is a bug, you should first check whether the buffers you use really have the right values, at the beginning it can happen often that some textures are created with wrong parameters or the data is expected in another order ... in my experience this is a common error-source.
Answer: Just output debug information as color. For example you can output 255*(normal+1) as r,g,b, you can output some intermediate shader variable as color, or you can check if it is within the bounds in the shader and output white if it is and black if it's not. That usually help.
Answer: PIX for Windows comes with the DirectX SDK (from June 2010 I can verify) and will allow you to visually debug what you are setting state wise and allow you to step through your shaders line by line. Its a life saver.

Debugging directx pixel/vertex shaders?


Preparing soy milk at home

Question: How can I prepare soy milk at home? Is it as simple as: soak soy, then blend and strain the milk, or is some centrifuge technique used?
Answer: It is basically as simple as you say (soak, blend, strain) ... just that you should also boil it (for long enough - cca. 10 minutes) to get rid of the fresh bean (grassy) flavor (mainly caused by oxidation of polyunsaturated oils in the beans), together with some other unpleasant side effects of eating uncooked beans (like the infamous gas-producing effect of some oligosaccharides).

McGee, On Food & Cooking says:
The key to minimizing the development of beany flavor is to inactivate
the beans' enzymes quickly, before they have a chance to attack the
oils. This is done by soaking the beans to speed subsequent cooking,
and then immersing them in boiling water or pressure-cooking them.

There is a vast number of soy milk preparation instructions online ... this one has always worked really well for me: http://justhungry.com/milking-soy-bean-part-1-soy-milk with all steps and techniques described in detail, and you will also find some continuing posts on how to further turn it into tofu, if you wish so.
Depending on further processing steps and your personal preferences you might choose one recipe/preparation method over another, so I will not recommend any specifics, but in general this should set you on the right track.
p.s. I found that straining/squeezing through cheesecloth/cotton muslin/nut milk bag over a colander is a winning technique ... no need to go any fancier.
Comment: +1 for the McGee quote ... I found it also a while ago and since I started using the pressure cooker I managed to completely avoid the beany flavor. And the recipe you link to is really useful. Definitely deserving upvotes.
Comment: @Martin, Thank you very much for the information given
Comment: @Martin, that site is really good, with all steps have been a clearly, with a photo shot
Answer: This is the procedure passed down to me thro my mom.
Let's say we are using two quarts of beans.
Ensuring the purity of texture and taste.

Compulsively ensure the beans are as clean as possible from impurities.
Such compulsion is especially necessary if you wish to coagulate the soy milk into soy custard. We need the texture of the milk or custard to be as smooth as possible.
My recommendation: Use whatever compulsive method you are comfortable with to rinse the beans.
I would rinse the beans first, once or twice in tap water. Then soak it for another half an hour before rinsing them again.
Double layers of muslin cloth used as strainer. Muslin cloth must be soaked in mineral/purified water to compulsively remove detergents and tap water chlorine. I would microwave the muslin cloth being soaked to about 100F, uncovered to let whatever chlorine escape.
You might even wish to use mineral water rather than chlorinated water for any of the water used in the next sections. Ensure the taste of the bottled mineral water you use has the taste that you like. Otherwise use bottled purified water.
Containers - if you don't mind plastic particles, steel flavour, aluminium flavour or bpa leaching into the beans/pulp, otherwise, be prepared to invest in large corning/pyrex ware that are totally glass/porcelain. Don't even think of using the earthen pot which you frequently used for pot roast unless you wish to have a hint of bacon flavour in the milk.
I think you should just use the cheapest container and not bother with the mineral/purified water for your first time. Or until you have gained sufficient experience to make premium soy milk.

Producing the pulp

I should soak soy beans for 24 hours. The water level should cover the beans in excess of at least half the volume of the beans. i.e., if we use two quarts of beans, the excess water level above the beans should be at least a quart. Cover the pot to keep the heat in.
But: I would soak it for 24 hours in water kept lukewarm with lowest possible heat on a stove. The idea is to keep it warm to encourage water absorption but not too warm to encourage soybeans nutrients from leaching out to the water.
OK, confession, I can't remember if soak for 24 hours or 8 hours.
You would see the beans having absorbed much of the water. Add water to ensure water level half an inch above the beans. Raise the heat to bring the water to boil. Turn the heat down to keep the water simmering. Cover the pot. Simmer the pot of beans for four hours. Check the level of the beans regularly to ensure sufficient water level above the beans.
I am  thinking the next time, I would use a slow cooker for this step.
After the 4 hour simmering, drain the water. Grind the beans into a mush with a blender. Be compulsive in ensuring the mush particles are as fine as possible. I would grind no more than a third of the volume of the blender container each time.
Boil the soy pulp/mush with sufficient water. If you wish to have thick soy milk, especially if you wish coagulate into soy custard, ensure water level is no more than a quarter inch above the beans. Because we are now boiling pulp, the heat transfer of the pulp is impeded by its thick viscosity. We need to ensure the pulp at the bottom is not burnt and ensure heat is transferred to the top of the pulp by stirring. You would need to constantly add water to the pulp to balance between how thick you wish the soy milk to be vs how easy you prefer your stirring job would be.
When the pulp comes to a boil, simmer it for another half hour, by repeating the balancing act of stirring and adding sufficient water. I guess after a few times, I should be experienced enough to know how much water the pulp would absorb so that I would add all the water the pulp needed at the beginning to make my stirring job easier at first. The last time I made soy milk/custard was four years ago - so, I don't remember.

Squeezing out the milk

If you plan to make soy milk production your hobby, you would buy soy squeezing equipment. Squeezing the hot pulp by hand using the muslin cloth is the least enjoyable part of the process.
Each time scoop the pulp onto the doubled-up muslin cloth just enough so that you could fold the cloth into a cone to squeeze it.
You have to balance between how hot the pulp you could handle and how inefficient the fluid transfer is, from cold pulp - in your consideration in how cool you wish to wait for the hot pulp to cool down. You should consider using latex gloves that have been compulsively cleaned to handle the hot soy lava. Be prepared to take precautions to prevent hot fluids from being squeezed onto your face and especially the eyes or any body parts.

Two passes of squeezing

The first pass of squeezing is for thick milk you wish to make into custard.
Boil the dry pulp again under the same previous procedure, to repeat the muslin squeezing. This 2nd pass is for soy milk.

Soy custard

Making soy custard is another art altogether, techniques and timing you need to develop  yourself to make firm and smooth custard.
Basically you pour the thickest fresh soy milk you have produced into a wooden container (e.g., wooden salad bowl) or corning ware and stir the right amount of coagulating salt.
Let it sit for hours. I can't remember the salt compound, but I'm sure I could google it he next time I plan on making soy custard+milk+chicken.

Soy chicken

Do not throw the residual pulp away. It is for making soy chicken.
Make a paste from tapioca flour. Blend the tapioca paste into the pulp. The amount of tapioca paste must be sufficient to make it a binding agent for the pulp.
I have poor experience in this area. The last time I made this soy custard+milk+chicken, I actually used the residue to make real chicken meat balls by blending real chicken meat and cilantro into the tapioca and soy pulp mix (what my mom would do). I guess there wasn't enough tapioca and the chicken balls were falling apart.
What I need to perfect is having tiny bits of fresh vegetable and meat content in the soy chicken balls without the balls falling apart.
Roll the blended mixture into small spheres, cigars or patties with your fingers and palms constantly covered with tapioca flour and brine (to prevent the patties from sticking to your skin).
Dump the soy balls, cigars, patties into an already hot boiling pot of water. Fish them out after a minute or two.
Comment: My apologies for the ramble. Being aspie, my trait would be noticed in many of my postings of my ability to reproduce large chunks of procedure without the innate ability and empathy to comprehend the steps needed to sieve only information needed by normal humans to make their reading pleasurable.
Comment: The last time I used a pressure cooker in making soy milk was also the first time I had ever operated a pressure cooker. The final pulp exploded all over the kitchen ceiling. It was a mess.
Comment: Good first hand experience. But I downvote cause you just share your particular recipe and there are many ... and this is not a page for sharing recipes, although it is the questions fault because it is set in a way that would attract recipes.
Comment: @Blessed Geek, I upvoted for spending your time on writing the recipe, thanks

Preparing soy milk at home


Where can I find more diamonds or champagne?

Question: I need a bunch of diamonds to make a mod, and the only way I know of is to turn in champagne as exchange, but so far I've only found one bottle (I forgot where).  Where can I get more champagne and diamonds?
Answer:
Multiple fridges in the kitchen area of the Hotel.  (This is a one time event, you cannot go back to the kitchen after the quest there is complete)
Two refrigerators in the abandoned house also known as the Square near the southern edge of the Moresby map. You can fast travel to and from here to farm them.
Refrigeration units inside the Supermarket.
Three refrigerators in the Laboratory, two in the room where Dr. West is standing, and one fridge in the corner room down the hall through the two double doors.
Two refrigerators within the hut on the Eastern edge of the River Village, at the top of the hill.

The fridges in the Hotel was where I found the most. I think I got about half a dozen bottles of champagne from there the first time I went through.
The best way to get champagne is to fast travel between the Abandoned House and the Laboratory, checking the fridges at each location every time.
Source
Comment: Seconded on the hotel. Probably got 12 bottles on my first run through (because I'm an obsessive kleptomaniac).
Answer: You can find about 3-7 Bottles of Champagne in the Supermarket in the City Of Moresby, remember the path when you visit(-ed?) it. make multiple runs as needed.
Answer: With the kitchen (if you have the patience), you can run back and forth to the security room and the fridges will respawn, although this doesn't happen every time.
To me it was worth it. Just remember that you will not be able to come back and with a chance to get anywhere between 6-12 champagne bottles each go.
Answer: When I did the kitchen I found 1 or 2 champagne bottles in the first room, then when you get close to that dead body with his arm cut off next too a extra snack, the guy says there's a mob of them in there... I went in there and got like 8 9 more champagne bottles.


In Islam is there another universe other than ours?

Question: Does the Qur'an mention another universe?
Comment: Define "having shirk thoughts"?
Comment: Hm, would this be considered a matter of believing things about the ghaib (unseen)? If so, what is the ruling concerning belief about the ghaib that doesn't contravene explicit texts, but is also not supported by them?
Comment: Why would it be shirk?
Comment: Not sure what your definition of a 'universe' is. In Islam there are 7 heavens under each sky. We live in the seventh heaven and everything we see/observe is part of this heaven or universe. Hope this helps you in pursuit of the Truth. Note: Paradise & Heaven are two different concepts in Islam.
Answer: Allah refers himself as the lord of the worlds in the Quran which indicates that there might be other universes out there. He said in the Quran:

He is the Living (One): There is no god but He: Call upon Him, giving
  Him sincere devotion. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds! --
  (40:65)

We don't know much about that because such details is not provided in the Quran or sahih hadiths.
And Allah knows best.
Answer: Yes.

"So He decreed them as seven heavens in two days, and He revealed in every heaven its Command. And We have adorned the lowest heaven with lamps(i.e Stars), and (set Angels) preserving them. That is the determining of The Ever-Mighty, The Ever-Knowing." 41:12

In another verse(which I couldn't found at the moment), Angels for them to PHYSICALLY come to our universe , our sky will have to crack open. Otherwise, we live in different places and I believe each one has its own law of physics etc.
Now you might consider putting your trust on God as the devils are all out pushing people to Doubt.
Answer: Has not you seen the 1st or 2nd ayat of quran: "alhamdu li llahi rabbi lgalamin" - "Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds," - http://www.islamawakened.com/quran/1/2/default.htm ? http://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp : l-ʿālamīna of the universe N – genitive masculine plural noun.


is お死枚 a pun on 四枚?

Question: So I was watching Hunter x Hunter episode 142, and at one point one of the characters is about to shoot a bunch of coins at the other, and he asks 君に渡すのは
何枚でしょう, which is correctly translated as "how many am I going to give back to you?".  After he shoots them though, he answers his own question saying 答えはお死枚, which is translated as "enough to kill you".  I've never seen a counter like 枚 be used in this way, but a part of me suspects this is a pun on 四枚, but the fact that he shoots far more than four coins leads me to believe this is false.  Can someone explain what's going on here?
Comment: Maybe a pun for おしまい(お終い)?
Answer:
Maybe a pun for おしまい(お終い)? – Chocolate

It is indeed a pun but not for お四枚.
For further information, this is a kind of [当て字]{あてじ} .
Among the heavy metal music circle, motorcycle gangs or even ordinary youngsters in Japan, this kind of [当て字]{あてじ} are often used as a kind of fashion or materials for designs. They would represent ordinary words with similar pronunciation but usually unpleasant, creepy or grotesque kanjis like:

聖飢魔Ⅱ sei-ki-ma-tsu (Ⅱ is two similar to tsu in Japanese) 世紀末{せいきまつ} the end of the century, a Japanese heavy metal band
夜露死苦 yo-ro-shi-ku よろしく Nice meeting you.
夜露死苦尾寝骸死魔酢駄個裸 yo-ro-shi-ku-o-ne-gai-shi-ma-su-da-kora よろしくお願{ねが}いしますだコラ Hey, please remember me. Hey, please help me. Hey, please treat me well.
愛離我闘 a(?)-ri-ga-tou ありがとう Thank you!
氣魔愚隷 ki-ma-gu-re きまぐれ whim, whimsy
仏恥義理 butsu-chi-gi-ri ぶっちぎり off the charts, landslide, overwhelming, outright, resounding, sweeping, runaway
栖威邪苦 su-i-ja-ku 衰弱{すいじゃく} breakdown, collapse, consumption, weakening, debility
愛羅武勇 ai-ra-bu-yuu アイラブユー I love you!
鬼流汰威無 ki-ru-ta-i-mu キルタイム kill time
出羅苦栖 de-ra-ku-su デラクス deluxe
Answer: I think to further explain Chocolate and mackygoo's conclusions:

答えはお死枚

If a counter for flat-objects such as coins or paper is 枚, you'd quantify as 一枚, 二枚, 三枚, 四枚(read as よんまい!), 何枚, etc.
(お)死枚 can then be, as a quantifier, "enough for death."
That, and, お終い is a way of expressing "ending" someone.
Hence, the pun: "The answer is 'enough to kill/end you'"

is お死枚 a pun on 四枚?


Get input data from specific transaction

Question: I have a contract. I store data in ethereum using contract. Is it possible, to work with contract in git-like way.
For example, i have a list of previous transaction hashes. Can i fetch data from any specific transaction using web3j for example?
Comment: yes, but what is the specific question ? obtain data from transaction or specific value from one contract?
Comment: Gawey, obtain data from specific transaction. I can not add a comment unfortunately. It was me, who asked the question
Comment: Moderator deleted comment conversation. Hey! I can not comment to the first post! But anyways, Gawey, Thank you so much for your answers and links :)
Answer: BTW, how i did it using web3j:
    Dto dto = new Dto();
    Observable<EthTransaction> observable = getWeb3().ethGetTransactionByHash(transactionHash).observable();
    observable.subscribe(ethTransaction -> ethTransaction.getTransaction().ifPresent(dto::setTransaction));
    return dto.getTransaction();

So, here is transaction with specific tx hash. Then simply getInput() to get data from transaction
Answer: QuickBlocks (http://quickblocks.io) provides a number of command line tools that you might find interesting. You can do this from the command line for example:
getBlock 4100010

and it will print that block to the console. Or,
getTransaciton 0xhashhash

and it will print that transaction to the screen. Other tools include getTrace, getReciept, getBloom, isContract, whenBlock, among others. It's also a C++ programming library, so you can write code against it.
Public service announcement: I work for QuickBlocks.


In vibration study, should the reference be necessarily the mean/equilibrium position?

Question: When we determine the natural frequency of free vibration for a system, we start of by defining a reference from where displacements will be measured. I have usually seen in books, taking the reference corresponding to the equilibrium position of the system. Is this compulsory? Or the reference can be arbitrary?
Comment: A real-world system will have many modes of vibration. In practice you often measure the motion at many different locations, and then use mathematical procedures to identify the individual mode frequencies and mode shapes. So the "origin" of the initial measurements is probably only important in a textbook type of problem.
Comment: ... for example if I am measuring the vibration of a jet engine rotor spinning at 3000 RPM, the lowest vibration frequency of the blades is about 70 Hz (not 50 Hz which would correspond to 3000 RPM) and I am  making the measurements with a laser system located 10 meters away from the engine, I certainly don't know where the "equilibrium position" of *anything* is  until the engine is actually running!
Comment: Many times there is an offset to the data, from the measuring device. Or the equilibrium position may be unknown a-priori. But centering it will on the equilibrium pos. will usually be one of the first things to do when analyzing with the data.
Answer: It can be arbitrary. It just simplifies the mathematics significantly. However the end result should be the same.
Answer: So you need a point, "zero point" as you really want the amplitude of the displacement as the conditions vary.
if you use a moving point to measure another moving point then you have to recalculate to get the simple displacement. As long as you get the equations of movement correct the result will be the same.
As a different example, we were plowing at night. We were told to"line up" with an identifiable point on the horizon to keep the first plow line straight (this was before all the gps in tractors). My mate picked a white dot then proceeded to plow all night. In the morning his first line was found to be a curve... Lots of hilarity as he had a lot of short work to do (this is where you spend more time positioning compared to working - costs you money as you are paid for ground covered). We realised that the white dot he had picked was a sheep gently grazing across another field :) Not a fixed point then...
Answer: Any point in a wave can be arbitrarily chosen as the reference and it wouldn't change the frequency and amplitude. but it would change the phase of the wave which is essential in complex analysis and tensor calculus.
y = A sin(B(x + C)) + D

A is th amplitude

Period = 2π/B

phase shift is C (positive is to the left)

vertical shift is D

it is interesting that if you have two identical waves with a half period phase difference and you add them together the sum will be a straight line. This is the basis of noise cancelling.
Other uses of phase angle difference is in electrical motors and the key to Tesla engine.
If you add two identical waves with same phase angle you get the same frequency twice amplitude.


Is Rumble a viable jungler?

Question: I was just thinking that the AoE from his torch and the slow from his harpoon and the movement speed boost/shield would kinda make Rumble a pretty good jungler, but nothing like Skarner/Lee Sin. Has anyone done it?
Answer: As long as you can land your harpoons, jungle Rumble is actually really good. Running tanky AP runes (I run flat AP Quints, MPen reds, flat armor yellows, and either scaling MR or flat AP blues) and a combination of masteries that gives you MPen and armor (I run 21-9-0, picking up Bladed Armor, rather than Veteran Scars).
As for starting items, I tend to start either boots + 3 pots or an Amp tome to get an earlier revolver.
Found a link to a replay of CLG's Saintvicious! http://www.own3d.tv/video/285384/Saintvicious_Jungle_Rumble_Post_Mastery_Change...._It_is_pretty_damn_strong
Answer: Jungle Rumble is out shined by so many others, its not even worth it. Without a strong leash you will have to back after doing the blue buff. Do to rumbles lack of sustain you get so low in the jungle your first few run throughs it is easy to counter jungle. Even with spell vamp it only applies 33% on your Flamespitter (Q), as it is an AOE spell.
Do it for fun? Sure.
Do it because its good? No way.
Comment: Why would other strategy be better than this one? Provide some arguments please, if it is only your personal opinion, it is not a real answer.

Is Rumble a viable jungler?


Is it a bad idea to not have a swap partition on an embedded linux setup?

Question: I have a small embedded linux kernel and file system created via buildroot that is installed onto a compact flash drive running on an x86 board. I am using an initramfs (due to power loss concerns) but mounting a small number of directories on ext3 partitions on the CF drive for data that has to be persistent. However, recently I have been reading about swap partitions and their uses and as my current setup does not employ a swap partition at all. I am wondering if this is safe? I do not anticipate that the applications running on the device will be using a great deal of memory but is it better to create a swap partition regardless? I am very conscious of the limited writes that can be made to CF devices so if it is not vital then I would prefer not to use a swap partition. What would be the worst case scenario if I go ahead without a swap partition?
Answer: No, this is not a bad idea. Many devices that you may find around are running linux without swap partition. For example, there are many DLink router models with linux inside. The only possible issue is that it may run out of memory. However, with embedded solutions this should not happen if the system is properly designed (no memory leaks, e.t.c.) and user is not allowed to start any extra programs on his own.
Answer: You should configure memory so the normal workload fits in it (disk is much, much slower than memory). Embedded devices, by their very definition of running a limited, fixed workload, have very predictable memory requirements. So it doesn't make sense to add swap.
Answer: It's actually recommended. Having a swap partition on flash would wear it off (flash has a couple of 100k of write cycles).


Permanent work permit for Spain

Question: I'm a non EU citizen, and my girlfriend is from Romania living in Spain. She doesn't have Spanish citizenship but has been living there for last 10 years. We want to settle in Spain together but without getting married as we need some more time to finish her studies.
So, how can I get a work permit and what are the other requirements for this?
Comment: Without more details, it sounds like you would have to qualify on your own right. Spain doesn't have a boyfriend/girfriend visa, but they will recognize relationships that are *defacto* marriages. Are you living together now? Do you share bills? Do you have children together and are raising them together? Are you both named on leases or mortgages? How long have you been together in this capacity? These are the kind of things Spain will be looking for if you want to base your stay there on her status.
Comment: Thanks for response @ouflak.   As of now we are not living together, but I'm planning for a full time PhD in Spain and during that period we will live together (which is normally 2 years). So will it help me?
Answer: If you are planning on a PhD, then you should enter on that route and be able to support yourself according to Spain's requirements with the respective work limits for that visa. If you are asking as to whether your future intentions to someday qualify for a particular status will help in the present, then no. You will have to qualify on your own right and acquire any status related to your partner at that time when you qualify.

Permanent work permit for Spain


Why is this integral zero? (Inner product between two 1-forms on a Riemann surface)

Question: I have a quick question regarding the proof of Proposition II.3.2 in Farkas & Kra (pg. 40).  The proposition is that if $\alpha$ is a square-integrable, $C^1$ 1-form, then $\alpha$ lives in a certain subspace if and only if $\alpha$ is closed.  The relevant portion of the proof goes as follows:
Suppose $\alpha$ is closed and that $f$ is a smooth function whose support lives inside a precompact set $D$.  The inner product is then calculated as
$(\alpha, *df) = -\iint\limits_D \alpha \wedge d\bar{f}$
$\qquad = -\iint\limits_D [d(\alpha\bar{f}) - d\alpha \wedge \bar{f}]$
$\qquad = -\iint\limits_D d(\alpha\bar{f})$
$\qquad = -\int\limits_{\partial D} \alpha \bar{f} = 0$
I don't understand the very last "= 0" part.  Maybe I'm being dense, but just because $\alpha$ is closed doesn't mean $\alpha \bar{f}$ is closed, does it?  (I tried writing out $\alpha = g\, dx + h\, dy$, so $\bar{f}\alpha = \bar{f}g\,dx + \bar{f}h\,dy$, then $d(\bar{f}\alpha) = (\bar{f}_x h - \bar{f}_y g) dx\wedge dy$.)
Sorry if this is a stupid, obvious question, but I just don't see it.  Many thanks.
Answer: By assumption, $f = 0$ on $\partial D$. (The support is compact in $D$.)


USB access from guest in Hyper-V

Question: Can a Hyper-V guest operating system access a USB device connected to the Hyper-V host?
If so, how can I set this up?
Answer: Hyper-V specifically does not allow this. At all. (At least as of Server 2012 R2). The best work-around I've seen is to look for third party software that supports sending usb datagrams over a network connection. There will be an app installed on the host to make the usb device available, and an app installed on the guest that connects to the host and creates a "virtual" usb device in the guest operating system.
I have had luck doing this specifically with a security dongle that a certain software package required be attached.  The usb network software we used was from a company called Fabula Tech.  Even better, this system can work with any set of machines on the network, so the usb host not need be located on the same machine as the virtual machine guest.
In researching this, I also found small embedded devices with a LAN connection and as many as 10 usb ports, in one case even designed to mount in a rack. The idea was that for shops running systems where a virtual machine may move around to different physical hosts, you weren't tied to keeping your guest on a specific physical box any more just because it needs access to a specific physical usb device, and your physical usb devices weren't tied to machine with a small upgrade cycle and service windows. Then the usb host device itself could be viewed more like an appliance or as part of the cable plant.
Answer: No. Simple. Guests can not access the server's USB ports.
Comment: @MilesErickson The Question is incomplete because it does not ask for any of the common workarounds.
Comment: This answer is incomplete because it does not mention any of the common workarounds for this problem.
Answer: Hyper-V will not provide access to the host machine's USB ports. This may change in Windows 8, which, it is rumored, may use Hyper-V as a foundational technology even for client versions of the OS.
Instead of using the host machine's USB ports, a far better approach would be to buy a network-attached USB device, like an AnywhereUSB hub or something cheaper and then install special USB-over-IP drivers on the guest machine. One key advantage of this approach is that you can migrate the virtual machine to another Hyper-V server without worrying about where theUSB devices actually reside in the physical world.
Note that USB 2.0 speeds are not currently when emulating USB over an IP network, possibly due to latency issues. Basically, it works great for product licensing/security dongles and other low-bandwidth devices. Your results may be disappointing if you try to mount a hard drive or a printer. These are higher-bandwidth devices that should be shared from a physical computer using SMB (Windows File and Printer Sharing) instead.
Answer: Yes, you can, though only starting in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, with the Remote Desktop Virtualization roll applied.  With this in place, and by setting Group Policy to allow it, you can remote USB over a "terminal services" or "remote desktop" connection to the VM.  See the following link for configuration:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff817581(WS.10).aspx
This will allow you to redirect the USB device (from the machine at which you sit) to the VM (which may be on the same machine) for as long as you have a remote desktop connection.
Comment: "access a USB device connected to the Hyper-V host" - The USB device would have to be connected to a RDP Client. I'm fairly sure this is some archaic USB License Key. A better solution would likely be finding different software made by a company that lives in the 21st century.
Comment: Inpractical because it would mean having a RDP session opnen all the time from the server to the VMon the same machine, as well as a logged in user on the machine.
Comment: I understand that, Tom, but the question didn't stipulate that it had to remain connected even when the user disconnects.  He only asked if it was possible.  It is, both with Server 2008 R2 SP1 and with third-party products.

USB access from guest in Hyper-V


Where do quants get historical FOMC meetings events for backtesting?

Question: Is there any usual/best practice to fetch historical fomc meetings events online?
Comment: We tried to give you the best answer possible so it would be fair if you could upvote and accept - Thank you :-)
Answer: You can find information about the meetings online here:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm
As an example the following paper backtests certain effects supposedly connected with these meetings and whether they might be exploited:
The Pre-FOMC Announcement Drift by David O. Lucca (Federal Reserve Banks - Federal Reserve Bank of New York) and Emanuel Moench (Deutsche Bundesbank), Journal of Finance, Forthcoming FRB of New York Staff Report No. 512, July 26, 2013
Abstract

We document large average excess returns on U.S. equities in
  anticipation of monetary policy decisions made at scheduled meetings
  of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in the past few decades.
  These pre-FOMC returns have increased over time and account for
  sizable fractions of total annual realized stock returns. While other
  major international equity indices experienced similar pre-FOMC
  returns, we find no such effect in U.S. Treasury securities and
  money market futures. Other major U.S. macroeconomic news
  announcements also do not give rise to pre-announcement excess equity
  returns. Pre-FOMC returns are higher in periods when the slope of the
  Treasury yield curve is low, implied equity market volatility is high,
  and when past pre-FOMC returns have been high. We discuss challenges
  at explaining these returns with standard asset pricing theory.

The following chart is taken from the paper:
Answer: The Fed website has all this information. The period 2010 to 2016 is very conveniently laid out here http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm [as already noted by vonjd], and meetings from earlier years can be looked up more laboriously here http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomc_historical.htm .
I made my own spreadsheet and I just update it once a year when the Fed posts new information.


Why do flight attendants continue to stand, when the seatbelt sign is on?

Question: Especially during turbulence, I notice that passengers are warned to sit and fasten seatbelts, but flight attendants continue to serve only cold beverages (since the overflow, slosh, spill of hot beverages would be dangerous), stand, walk, and work. Why? It appears unfair for flight attendants to suffer any more risk and danger, even if the turbulence is minor, than passengers.
Comment: Because they're thrill junkies, and sometimes dealing with obstreperous, annoying, loud, and rude passengers just isn't a big enough adrenaline rush. :-)
Comment: I don't know if this is related, but because they are trained to handle that, it makes me think if *they* get hurt, they're less likely to *sue*. The air line would make more money if they're working, and it's probably still profitable for them even if they get hurt a little once in a while.
Answer: I worked as a flight attendant for several years and I am still employed within the industry but in a different capacity, so I know a thing or two about this topic.
Flight Attendants (FAs) are strictly required to be seated during take-off and landings only and usually not during descent or climb, unlike passengers who are usually required to be seated and buckled. Then it depends on the local rules for how long they are supposed to stay there. In some airlines, the FAs must sit as long as the seatbelt sign is lit, while in others they can move about once the gears are up (you can hear this easily, as they make a loud sound when they are retracted). Other airlines might state FAs can move once the plane reaches a certain altitude and/or are given some sort of sign from the cockpit.
There is not one type of turbulence, but various classifications. Some of them are just light (small bounciness) and some are dangerous and can injure (or kill) people who are not seated and buckled. It is usually cabin crew who are the victims (I have personally been through this kind of turbulence).
Usually, pilots will, during the pre-flight briefing, brief the cabin crew of any expected turbulence and will usually say something like: "seatbelts are for everybody" or "seatbelts are for passengers". If things during the flight end up different from the forecast that was given to the pilots prior to the flight, the pilots will call the cabin crew and inform them. They will tell the cabin crew whether to continue the service because it is a light turbulence, they may suggest only to serve cold beverages, or tell the FAs to sit tight and secure everything if approaching severe turbulence.
This is basically the "secret" behind it. There is no magical training given to cabin crew on how to defeat the laws of physics and stand balanced while in turbulence; it is just the word from the pilots as they are the most knowledgeable about the weather conditions. The crew are only trained on types of turbulence and on how to secure the cabin and service carts quickly in case of sudden severe turbulence that was not detected in advance. In that case, they are told to hang on to anything and secure themselves.
Passengers, on the other hand, are required to be seated and buckled during all phases of the flight except cruise and when there is no turbulence. This is simply due to liability and not to add more complication in these critical times.
Comment: If you hear the pilot announce over the intercom, "cabin crew be seated," then you should probably be seated too.
Answer: Flight attendants are quite used to minor turbulence. The average passenger is not, and could easily end up somewhere uncomfortable. Turbulence also has the habit of getting worse without too much warning.
FAs do buckle up once the turbulence reaches a certain level. I once departed Hong Kong during a typhoon - the FA sitting across from me said the crew was told to stay seated for 20 minutes after takeoff, and she'd never heard that instruction before.
Comment: But "getting worse without too much warning" seems to imply that the FAs *are* in danger - and just in case we might end up with the whole FA team knocked-out and no-one there to un-panick the crowd ...
Comment: @reirab - What training? I'm an FA and there is no training for how to deal with turbulence. Official training says to obey the seat belt sign. You simply sit down and buckle up. that's all you can do and all you should do. The seat belt sign is actually for everybody, FAs included. If FAs are still standing, they are going against training, not because of it.
Comment: @HagenvonEitzen But the probability of that is extremely low and, unlike most of the passengers, the FAs are trained to deal with it. I don't recall ever hearing of a case of the entire cabin crew being knocked unconscious by turbulence. Actually, I don't remember hearing of a case of any of the cabin crew being knocked unconscious by turbulence.
Comment: Notice I said "getting worse without **too much** warning - it's rarely instant. The cabin crews will recognize an unusual uptick in turbulence and can get themselves stowed very quickly (even faster if the bumps are accompanied by a few pings from the flight deck). 50 passengers milling about cannot.
Comment: The passengers being required to be seated during minor turbulence also allows the flight attendants to quickly stow anything they are doing and return to their own seat if the turbulence rises quickly as the walkway should be clear from other passengers.
Comment: @reirab Unlikely it would happen, but supposing the FAs are trained to deal with the entire cabin crew being knocked unconscious by turbulence, I can only imagine what they are supposed to do.  "Do not attempt to move yourself or to calm panicked passengers until you regain consciousness..."
Comment: @reirab Googling suggests that it happens from time to time: this [*Daily Mail* article](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2740488/Newleyweds-terrifying-turbulence-easyJet-flight-Gatwick-honeymoon-Italy.html) claims one steward was knocked unconscious and another badly injured their hip on an EasyJet flight in September 2014, though the [*Independent*'s version of the same story](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/easyjet-flight-crew-hit-the-ceiling-after-heavy-turbulence-9706303.html) doesn't mention unconsciousness.
Comment: This [ABC News article](http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/tremors-sky-sudden-airplane-turbulence/story?id=10107607) also mentions a member of cabin crew being knocked unconscious.
Comment: @SteveH: What country are you in?  I have heard this is different in different places.  In the US it is normal for FAs to stand while the seat belt sign is on, and instructions for them to sit seem to be communicated privately from the pilots.  (The seat belt sign seems to be used in the US if there is any chance of even the slightest turbulence.)  But I understand in other places, the seat belt sign applies to the FAs also (and as a result, the sign is used only when nontrivial turbulence is expected).  It's also possible that SOP varies between airlines.
Comment: @SteveH my sympathies - your training sucks. But you do recognize the difference between "washboard road" and "angry weather god" levels of turbulence.
Comment: @SteveH That's interesting. Can you post an answer that elaborates on this? In particular, as Nate mentioned, it would be interesting to know where (or, if you don't mind telling, which airline) this applies to? Within the U.S., the FAs almost never seem to be seated just because of the seat belt sign. When more severe turbulence is expected, one of the pilots will usually announce something to the effect of the cabin crew needing to take their seats. I also seem to recall this on Southeast Asian airlines, such as Cathay and Korean Air.
Comment: The flight attendants are also supposed to police the passengers, and it's hard to do that when you can't see most of the cabin.
Comment: @Michael haha - I meant that they're trained to deal with severe turbulence, so that they generally don't get knocked unconscious, not that they're trained to deal with the scenario that all of them get knocked unconscious simultaneously.
Answer: It's about risk management. In minor turbulence, probably nothing bad will happen so it's OK to have a few people walking around but, in the unlikely event of a big bump, you don't want to have 300 passengers thrown around the plane. If the turbulence is bad enough, even the flight attendants sit down and put their seatbelts on.
Answer: In the U.S., the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs,) specifically 14 CFR 121.317, only require that passengers be seated when the seat belt sign is on, not the crew.

(f)  Each passenger required by § 121.311(b) to occupy a seat or berth shall fasten his or her safety belt about him or her and keep it fastened while the "Fasten Seat Belt" sign is lighted.

This is primarily for the reasons mentioned in paul and David Richerby's answers, namely, that the cabin crew is trained and experienced in walking through the cabin in light to moderate turbulence and that have 3 or 4 unsecured people is much less of a risk than 150 unsecured people. The very slight risk of a cabin crew member being injured during light to moderate turbulence is not seen to outweigh the benefit of cabin crew being able to continue performing their duties. As paul and David mentioned, the flight crew will still advise the cabin crew to be seated during take-off, landing, and more severe turbulence. For instance, in my experience at least, it seems that the cabin crew is usually advised to take their seats as the aircraft is entering or crossing a jet stream or operating near thunderstorms.
Comment: It is also a liability concern.  If they tell the passengers to buckle up and someone gets hurt, they most likely will not be held liable.  So if there is any indication that there may be a problem, the safe thing to do is to turn on the fasten seat belt sign.  In many cases, they are just being overly conservative, and the cabin attendants who are properly trained can still move around safely.


Using Motorola NVG510 as wireless router via connecting it to Motorola SB5101 Cable Modem

Question: I have a comcast cable connection at home. I have a Motorola SB5101U cable modem and Motorola NVG510. What I want to do is connecting the cable modem to the comcast cable and have internet access, and to connect the NVG510 modem through ethernet, then to have a wireless LAN at home that I can use to connect to internet.
SB5101 is a one-port ethernet and usb cable modem.
NVG is a 4-port ethernet wireless dsl modem.
When I connect the dsl modem to the cable modem, I simply can't access the internet, without knowing whether the modems can communicate (the dsl modem's admin page does present any related information, or I couldn't find otherwise).
I applied a suggested method which is setting the dsl modem's IPv4 address from the cable's modem's IPv4 address and DHCPv4 start and end addresses from the same address space (same address for both). This way I only can access to internet from one computer only if it is connected to the dsl modem via ethernet. On wireless I got no internet connection and I got an IP conflict error. Then I changed the DHCPv4 end address on the dsl modem and provided an IP interval for DHCP, this way I could connect multiple computers to the dsl modem through wireless or ethernet, but only one computer having an ethernet connection could access the internet.
This is my question and the answer I got.
Is there some way I can't do what I want as described in the beginning.
Answer: Turn off the NVG510's DHCP server and connect one of its LAN ports to the SB5101. You can also follow the instructions you got in the answer to your question on Yahoo which also seems correct.


Is there a way to see the amp levels while charging my iPhone?

Question: I'm told that different amp levels charge iDevices in different times. Sometimes I plug into my laptop, sometimes into a car converter, and other times into the side of a flatscreen TV for charge. Is there a way to see on the iPhone (or iPad) what the amp level coming out of the USB port are? Perhaps an app?
Answer: I don't believe so.
The available API for battery state in iOS gives you only 5% resolution. It might be possible to write an app that polls battery state and calculates a rate of charge based on the time between 5% intervals but I don't know of any apps that do this. If you want to get your app on the app store that's about the best way of measuring it directly. I know of an app that captures the screen and looks at the battery charge image to determine charge an alternative way but that's iffy, the size or appearance of the battery indicator might change between versions and then it breaks.
Jailbroken devices are a whole other can of worms. I know how to get 1% resolution on devices with a private API but you can't get such an app on the store so distribution is going to be limited.
BTW your terminology is a bit confusing. "Current" would be the right term, less commonly "amperage". I had to read a couple of times through to work it out, I thought you were talking about music volume at first.
Answer: I cannot speak for official apps, but I know that for jailbroken iDevices, there is a console/Terminal command that can be run called powerlog that provides live feedback about power usage, (dis)charging levels, amperage/current, capacity, etc. It's a very powerful tool, and if you already have a jailbroken device and are comfortable with using command-line tools (a big if, I suppose :P), then it is definitely an option to consider.
Answer: Here's a hardware solution that's currently on Kickstarter: Legion Meter
Blurb from their Kickstarter page:

Legion Meter is a device that can safely accelerate your
  smartphone/tablet's charging speed up to 92%. It also features a
  built-in multimeter for displaying voltage, current, power, and
  milliwatt hours on the integrated OLED display. Legion Meter installs
  in seconds and is fully plug and play.
Answer: There is an app to do so. It called Amperes. Shows you different charging rates for different chargers/ wires that you use to charge your iPhone/iPad.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/amperes/id1245475416?mt=8


How should we tag Dash (the shell)

Question: I went to ask a question about Dash (/bin/sh) in Ubuntu to find that "dash" is being used to describe problems with Unity's Dash interface.
Comment: As dash is the default shell for scripting, many of these could probably be tagged [tag:shell-scripting].
Comment: I'm not a power user and sometimes this site makes me feel like a new-born noob, but my guess is 50 to 60% of the users might understand that, but for users like me we would never put Dash with  shell-scripting.  I guess that's why people edit tags.
Comment: Actually, there's no such thing as a default shell for shell scripting. It just depends on the shebang line. In my case, my default is: `#!/bin/bash`.
Comment: Just to let you know there is the [dash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Almquist_shell) shell.
Answer: Why not dash-shell? That seems to me to be rather destriptive without being over-generic (shell-scripting).

How should we tag Dash (the shell)


Why does dandwiki have a poor reputation?

Question: Dandwiki has a markedly poor reputation in the online RPG community; material from it is often dismissed out of hand, and users are encouraged to avoid it and to not incorporate work posted there into their games. For what reasons has the site gained this reputation?
Comment: "Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience..." (from the close this question menu dialog) Expert experience with dandwiki and its reputation should be expected from answers to this question.
Comment: Related on UX: [Why do people not notice our enormous, prominent, clear and contrasting purple banner?](https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/120541/why-do-people-not-notice-our-enormous-prominent-clear-and-contrasting-purple-b)
Answer: There are really two problems:

Zero quality control. Anyone can add anything they want, and since there is no vetting, the overwhelming majority of it is bad. This becomes a vicious circle where the only people who go there are the people who cannot recognize the low quality of the content—which means their own content is likely low quality as well.
Poor indication of what is and is not homebrew. Many things have been put up there in the wrong places and marked as official material when it is not, which makes it very hard to trust it for use as a System Resource Document.

Both problems basically stem from the same source—the lack of sufficient critical mass in editors to maintain the place. Wikis only function well if there are enough editors to mind what the public is putting there, and dandwiki never had that. In fact, it never was clear if people were even allowed or supposed to provide editing on others' work—which defeats the point of a wiki. This lack of editors also meant there is no one correcting mis-use of various marks of officiality, which leads to the second problem.
The second problem is really the real problem. As they say, 90% of everything is crap, so the first problem is neither surprising nor supremely problematic; it just means you have to spend time and effort finding the few diamonds in the rough that I'm sure are there. But misleading readers about material and making them think it was "official" causes a lot of headaches for DMs and groups and is the real reason that people dislike the site so strongly.
Comment: @KRyan Relevant to point 1 is "the dead sea effect". An organisation/place is bad, so the good people leave, which increases the concentration of badness, so more good people leave faster... infinite vicious cycle all the way down.
Comment: I once attempted to try to help point out balance issues in classes on dandwiki on the chat pages for those classes. It didn't help. I gave up and left. So yeah.....you have a case-in-point right here @doppelspooker
Comment: +1 Definitely on point number 2, maybe worth also saying it's difficult to tell what edition something is, especially if you're a new player. Just last night I was helping a player create a character and they were getting confused because they used the dandwiki. They kept finding 3.5e sources of information instead of 5e.
Comment: @doppelspooker Honestly, I don't know that it matters; its reputation is so tarnished (and really, its premise so shaky to begin with) that I don't really feel like it's worth investigating the current state of things. If someone wants to do so and report back in another answer, I'd likely upvote that, but the question is about how their reputation got to be the way it is, and that's what I'm answering. A quick check sees the banner you mean—which I initially thought was an ad, so that's less than great—but I have no idea if they have gotten better at classification.
Comment: Dandwiki nowadays has a banner on homebrew pages versus SRD pages. It may be worth acknowledging that and how it might be improving or affecting things, if at all -- right now it sounds like things get misclassified per point 2.
Comment: It might be worth noting that crap can serve as inspiration for the seasoned designer, or just as a lark for those seeking a game without particular balance for pure S&Gs, but insufficient clarity of edition and homebrew/SRD/etc. makes even this somewhat of a task even then.
Answer: It contains lots of homebrew.
The site hosts pages and pages of homebrew races, classes, feats, spells, etc.  Far, far more than the amount of official content on the site.  Take a look at the list of class pages.
It's easy, especially for new players, to mistake the homebrew for official content.
Official content on the site is marked with a "SRD" label (example), but the homebrew banner is inexplicably hard to notice despite being bright purple.
The results from the site are highly ranked in relevant searches (e.g., this is the first result in a google search for 3.5 necromancer).
When combined with the name (you expect a site called https://www.dandwiki.com to be a wiki for D&D, right?), this means that it's very easy for new players to stumble upon homebrew content, think it's official, and expect to be able to use it in their games.  As a DM, saying "no" to this gets annoying after the first few times, especially since...
Lots of the homebrew is super terrible.
There's no oversight on what gets added to the site (it's a wiki, anybody can edit it)!  Not only that, but the site doesn't even make it easy to spot the bad entries (comments are restricted to the hidden-by-default "discussion" pages, there's no voting mechanism, etc.)
As a result, the site is full of crap.
Comment: @A_S00, the wildly different color and style combined with the position of the banner makes it look like a banner ad or an irrelevant part of the site header.  Most people will simply ignore it because of this.
Comment: Banner invisibility now being discussed over at UX.SE: [Why do people not notice our enormous, prominent, clear and contrasting purple banner?](https://ux.stackexchange.com/q/120541)
Comment: @SirTechSpec Hah!  It totally is there, but I have absolutely never noticed it, so apparently yes you are.  Editing.
Comment: Am I the only one who sees a big banner at the top of the homebrew content with a disclaimer?
Comment: @SirTechSpec I encountered content, once or twice, that was *not* under such banner but I would bet it's a homebrew. And since I wasn't able to find an option to flag it for moderator's attention, I can't trust it was ever evaluated.
Comment: I first accessed the site on a monochrome device ([rationale](https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/)) and never noticed the homebrew banner. When I found something game-breaking, then realised that it wasn't SRD... I immediately realised what people meant about it.
Answer: The biggest problem with "dandwiki" is that it is named "D&D Wiki" instead of "D&D Homebrew Wiki (that also has pages for publications/products and SRD content)."
I have been a somewhat active user of the site for the past year now and maintain that this is the biggest problem, but most diehard contributors argue that just because it has SRD content and such the title of "homebrew" is inappropriate.  This is despite the fact that homebrew is over 90% of what the wiki is used for, and arguably the only reason to use it over better sites that exclusively contain SRD material.
For any remotely experienced DM, the titular inclusion of "Homebrew" alone implies (a) hey this is homebrew, (b) most of this will be crap so use your own judgement, (c) if you aren't the DM, ask your DM about it.  Almost every external complaint I've heard about dandwiki originates from three points not being clearly communicated and/or understood.
The "homebrew" banner was globally added to the top of homebrew pages a few months ago to help this miscommunication problem.  It's a step forward.  I maintain that a title/logo change would do more to help it, though.
Secondary and lesser problems include that despite the extreme efforts of a very small group of people to balance and improve homebrew content, anyone and everyone adds whatever they want, and changes whatever they want—without even needing to create an account.  Often these problematic contributors are actively and even wildly opposed to someone else improving "their" work (which coincidentally became the origin story of dnd-wiki a few years back), which only makes the problem worse.  Even so,  it is at the end of the day homebrew.  If everyone who ever visited the site was immediately aware, "this content is mostly homebrew, so use your own judgement," then I am sure the wiki would have a significantly better reputation.
Comment: As I noted in comments to my answer, the homebrew banner currently looks rather like an ad. I had to have it pointed out to me; I ignored it out of long training ignoring ads. But anyway, +1: you are absolutely correct that the site's reputation for problems stems almost entirely from people thinking material is official when it is not, and then showing up to games with it expecting that it's allowed when it won't be (or worse, DMs thinking they are supposed to allow it when they shouldn't).
Answer: Pages being moved or renamed
In addition to what other posters had mentioned (low-quality and poorly-distinguished homebrew), pages tend to get shuffled around.
About halfway through a campaign that ran for nearly a year, a class I was using (a conversion of Pathfinder's Summoner class) got renamed. Since the class in question had about 7-10 different conversions on the site already, and this particular version had an annoying habit of getting changed (evolution point cost of some abilities was changed seemingly every other time I leveled), it was a pain to find it again. It ended up being sorted way down the page, but I nearly had to scrap my character and remake him using one of the other, quite different conversions of the Summoner class.
Comment: Please bear in mind [we expect people to answer the question independently](https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3326/), meaning they should still be able to make sense if all other answers are removed. Answers that are merely add-on tidbits are pointedly to be avoided, and answers that can stand alone should avoid phrasing themselves as add-ons. You may wish to summarise the issues to make it more comprehensive, or leave this experience as a suggestion for someone else to add.
Comment: @doppelgreener This seems to me like it *is* a complete answer—pages getting shuffled around or edited out from under you *is* a reason to have a problem with the site. The fact that the answerer also agrees with other answers doesn't really affect the fact that this an answer.


A spin zero graviton?

Question: Why can the graviton not be a spin 0 particle? On a similar note why can it not be a spin 4, spin 6 particle?
Comment: Do you mean to ask what *experimental evidence* we have that the graviton has spin 2, rather than 0, 4, or 6?  Or maybe the theoretical reason?
Comment: @Mike Considering we have no direct evidence of gravitons, I would think an experimental answer is out of the question.
Comment: Agreed, but it would be a valid question from someone who doesn't know that, which is why I'd like clarification.
Comment: Probably because of symmetry of gravitational field - promising answer is on Quora: https://www.quora.com/How-do-we-know-that-a-graviton-%28if-it-exists%29-has-spin-2
Comment: I meant a theoretical answer, I read in Feynmanns quantum gravity book something about it being related to the trace of the stress-energy tensor vanishing, so perhaps something along those lines.
Comment: Related: http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/14932/2451 , http://physics.stackexchange.com/q/39476/2451 and links therein.
Answer: For force carriers the interacting field theory determines the spin. A scalar field yields spin 0; the Higgs is the only example; a vector field yields spin 1, the photon, W, and Z are examples; a tensor field yields spin 2.
Since gravitational field theory requires a tensor field for General Relativity,  quantized gravity, in the weak-field, linearized limit, yields the spin 2 graviton.
Higher order spins can be constructed from complex particles, meaning systems with two or more constituents.
For more information see Would a spin-2 particle necessarily have to be a graviton?
Answer: Peter is right. The tensor nature requires it to be a spin 2 field, and the graviton is its presumed quanta.
But there have been and are theories of gravity that include a spin 0 field. Brans-Dicke theory was one (I think mostly or fully disporved), and some theories for dark energy are spin 0 - quintessence is one, it assumes the cosmological constant is not really constant but a slowly changing scalar field. Scalar fields, like the Higgs field, are spin 0, they just have a value at each point of spacetime. The field in that case can NOT be the same or some other entity associated with the Higgs field -- the Higgs particl is massive and is short range. Gravity is long range, and it's quanta is supposed to be zero mass or very light.
That dark energy field, in that theory, is called the dilation, it's what dilates the universe, accelerates it. The quintessence theory has not Been proven or disproven from measured or experimental data, but it is is believed that it is hard to match it To all the known experimental evidence for standard gravity which has been proven to sub cm ranges. It'd have to be such that the adjustment due to the scalar field does not conflict with known longer range measurements of planets orbits, the perihelion of mercury precession predicted by General Relativity, and many other. The standard cosmological model has that quantity, the cosmological constant, constant, not a field, and fits all the known data so far. More accurate measurements of the acceleration of the universe much earlier in its history will be done, but it's thought that it's going to be difficult to find enough of a change. That would prove it a field. Still, it is not known for sure either way. There are other theories of dark energy, none more or less likely as of now.
So, if dark energy is a scalar field there would be a Higgs like particle of spin 0, with 0 or very little mass, that would be the cause of dark energy. But it would not be a cousin of the Higgs.
Dark matter doesn't have the same kind of properties. It isn't everywhere, is strongly influenced by gravity from normal matter, and has been around since shortly after the Big Bang. It's believed to be composed of particles that are remnants from the Big Bang. It's gravity helped form galaxies and clusters/superclusters. It's believed that it is composed of some heavy particles or some set of them. It moves slowly, so they are not light particles. It's been mapped around and inside galaxies and clusters, so in some way it's easier to see (or feel it's gravity). Whatever it is is not Higgs like.
Spins greater than 2 are not possible in a theory that in inertial or local coordinates is Lorentz invariant.

A spin zero graviton?


Can somebody force my Tor circuits to always start from his "guard node", to access my traffic?

Question: The first node after "my browser" is always the same.
I am worried to see that even when asking for "new identity" or "new circuit", it restarts always by the same IP address in France. I have no knowledge on the subject. I only use Tor because my physical security has been compromised by someone who used hacking, among other means, to track me and had not stop to now. My fear is that this node could be not a random node guard but a weak one or even one belonging to the "pirate" team I try to stay hidden from.
Can someone clarify please between what is really to fear and is not?
Answer: Yes. An attacker can perform a sybil attack or just kick down your guard node repeatedly until your Tor client choose a malicious node as guard.
Controlling your guard node doesn't lead to decrypting your traffic, but mostly makes you vulnerable to traffic correlating or path bias attacks, thus makes tagging attack and eavesdropping possible.
See Should I choose a new guard if the network is overloaded?
Answer: You keep using the same guard node for a long time. This is by design.
See this question: Why is a longer guard rotation period with fewer guards better than the other way around?
Even if someone has control of your guard, they can not see your traffic or tamper with it. They can only tell which middle node(s) you use.
(Besides, if someone has control over your Tor client so that they can force it to use a guard of their choosing, I imagine you are already compromised to the point that they have much easier options.)


Can I use Tor for clients that are connected via OpenVPN?

Question: Basically I have OpenVPN server and I would like to configure it so that clients that connect to OpenVPN are then connected to the Tor network on the server are able to browse hidden services and access clearnet via exit nodes. Is this possible, if so how? I am now running OpenVPN and Tor on CentOS.
Answer: The user will have to configure their browser to use the Tor on your VPN server as proxy with remote hostname resolution. Otherwise they can not browse hidden services.
Answer: You will probably need to create a transparent proxy (which uses socks to forward traffic via Tor), and have traffic routed through that. You will also need to do something funky with DNS, to stop clearnet DNS traffic leaking out of your VPN server.
So it's technically possible, but difficult. Some other systems exist which do this, for example http://onionwrt.link/ - it's not clear how they achieve this. NB: I don't fancy running their install script as root on my own device
Answer: simple setup openvpn on local ip address eg. 10.10.10.1:1194
setup squid>>>privoxy>>>tor combination that open squid as vpn ip service eg. 10.8.8.1:3128
make a squid /etx/squid/tor.url config
tell your browser to use squid on 10.8.8.1:3128
start openvpn --config client.ovpn
start browser over squid
voila


Does the Signal/Noise ratio keeps constant as you rise the gain?

Question: I have written about this question in my blog.
I appreciate your opinions.
http://javierzumer.com/en/test-niveles-de-ganancia/
Answer: Digitally speaking, the SNR should remain the same when you simply increase level.  The SNR in the digital world is the same as the SQNR (Signal to Quantization Noise Ratio), which is determined by your bit depth.  16-bits gives you 96 dB SQNR (ideal case, assuming your signal is captured at maximum level before clipping), so if you captured some quiet audio at say around -30 dBFS, and normalized the audio file to 0 dBFS, your digital noise floor would also increase by 30 to -66 dBFS.  That's why with quiet or unpredictable recordings, using 24-bit gives you more leeway to boost levels in post without worrying about your quantization noise.  In the previous example with 24-bit your SQNR would still be less than -100 dBFS after normalization.
Of course if your audio signal has captured a higher level of analog noise (i.e. background ambient noise or circuitry noise), that will take precedence over the quantization noise, but once digital should still increase linearly as you boost amplitude.  Hence as @TheFaderJockey says get your analog signal hottest at the preamp gain to minimize noise ahead of digitization.
Answer: In the analogue world, the "gain knob" at the top of your console is often actually an attenuator, rather than an amplifier.  The mic pre boosts the signal by a fixed level, and the  gain knob actually reduces that level as the knob is moved to the left.  Add to that the fact that the preamp is probably the cleanest sounding amplifier circuit in your signal chain: introducing the least amount of noise.
Therefore, for the highest SNR, the best practice is to get your gain up as high as you can right there at the pre.  Set it so that you have just a little headroom before clipping, and you'll have the highest SNR you can achieve.
Comment: If a preamp has both a gain and an output. You're saying max the gain knob first, then the output? I've rented a TL Audio Ivory 5001 for the month.
Comment: While I am not familiar with that particular piece of kit, I looked up a block diagram for it, and in this case I would say yes:  start with the input gain first if your goal is clean signal.

According to the block diagram, the input gain knob acts just upstream of the (solid state) preamp whilst the output knob attenuates the output of a secondary (tube/valve) amplifier.

So really, it would depend on whether or not you are looking to capture the cleanest signal possible, or if the character of tube circuitry is more important to you.
Comment: Were it I, I would use the input gain control to get my level, and consider the output control as a "character" knob.  Turning it up will increase the signal level through the tube amplifier, giving you that lovely harmonic distortion characteristic of such circuits.  If you weight your gain structure more toward the input side, you'll get a cleaner signal.  If you weight it more to the output side, you'll get a "warmer" signal.  It all depends on what you are aesthetically looking for.


CID? - Where is the picture when sent from MAC: outlook?

Question: When sending an e-mail from outlook on Windows OS it works just as expected. However, when sending it from outlook on a MAC OS it doesn't. The item gets created but the body will have an CID. If the image is attached it doesn't even appear.
The following is an announcements list configured to receive e-mail:

Does anyone have any idea on how to fix this?
Thank You for reading.
Answer: This had nothing to do with SharePoint. The problem was on exchange...