I was recently visiting a developing country and noticed that their interest rates are very high — ~15% with government bonds promising ~13% annually. I was just thinking, if the bid ask spread for that currency with the USD is B/A respectively, then what is stopping people from having B/A x (1+13%)-1 annual USD returns, which roughly turned out to be 8%?  8% for fixed income in USD is very high, but I don’t quite see the problem in my argument — assuming the currency value with respect to USD stays stable in that year.
If I live in the US, for example, where current interest rates are practically nil, how can I take advantage of the fact that ?
How can I find out the size of a block device, such as /dev/sda? Running ls -l gives no useful information. How prove this $\prod_{1\le i<j\le n}\frac{a_{j}-a_{i}}{j-i}$ is integer Understanding minipages - aligning at top I would like to be able to align two minipage at the top, without worrying about what is in the minipage.  I am aware of the optional [t] parameter, but still have some confusion as to how this all works.  I tend to think of a minipage as a regular page in that whatever is placed on it starts at the top and fills the page going across and then down the page, but this does not appear to be the case.  In the MWE example below, I have color coded the sections for reference purposes.   The first case (black) works just as I would expect. The two minipages are aligned exactly as I want with the [t] specifier.  No question here.  The next case (red) only works if the inner minipage also has the [t] specifier. Why is that necessary?  I would have thought that any content would be placed at the top of this page, and since both the outer minipage had a [t] things should have aligned at the top. I would like to place a graphic in the second mini page, and still have the two aligned at the top.   The simple case (blue) of using \includegraphics directly does not result in the content being aligned at the top.  So, then I attempt to put this in a \parbox (green) and this too does not yield the desired results.  I also try to place the graphic inside an inner minipage (brown) and specify the [t] alignment, and even though this worked in the red section, it does not here.  The only difference between the red and brown being that the red section had text, whereas the brown section has a graphic.  I am aware of question regarding  which suggests to place \vspace{0pt} at the top of the minipage, and that does provide the desired alignment (cyan), but adds vertical space at the top.  So, my second question is why is the \vspace{0pt} necessary when a graphic is included, but not when it is text.  This appears to be a hack and wondering if there is a replacement for minipage that works better without having to worry about exactly what is in the minipage?  Also, why did wrapping the figure in a parbox (green) or another minipage (brown) not solve this problem?   Here is the MWE:  \documentclass{article} \usepackage[demo]{graphicx} \usepackage{lipsum} \usepackage{xcolor}  \begin{document} \section{This Works - Aligned at top as desired} \begin{minipage}[t]{0.6\linewidth}     \lipsum[1] \end{minipage} \hfill \begin{minipage}[t]{0.3\linewidth}     \lipsum[2] \end{minipage}  \color{red} \section{Why does inner mini page required the [t]?} \label{Minipage-in-minipage} \begin{minipage}[t]{0.6\linewidth}     \lipsum[3] \end{minipage} \hfill \begin{minipage}[t]{0.3\linewidth}     \begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}% Why is [t] required here         \lipsum[4]     \end{minipage} \end{minipage}  \color{blue} \section{Why are These not aligned at top?} \begin{minipage}[t]{0.6\linewidth}     \lipsum[3] \end{minipage} \hfill \begin{minipage}[t]{0.3\linewidth}     \includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{foo} \end{minipage}  \color{green} \section{Why are These not aligned at top?} \begin{minipage}[t]{0.6\linewidth}     \lipsum[3] \end{minipage} \hfill \begin{minipage}[t]{0.3\linewidth}     \parbox{\linewidth}{\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{foo}} \end{minipage}  \newpage \color{brown} \section{Why does this not work with the [t] as it did in red section?} This worked fine in Section \ref{Minipage-in-minipage}  \begin{minipage}[t]{0.6\linewidth}     \lipsum[3] \end{minipage} \hfill \begin{minipage}[t]{0.3\linewidth}     \begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}% Even with [t] here, this does not work         \parbox{\linewidth}{\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{foo}}     \end{minipage} \end{minipage}   \color{cyan} \section{Adding a \textbackslash{}vspace\{0pt\} works} \begin{minipage}[t]{0.6\linewidth}     \vspace{0pt}% Hack!! But does do the job     \lipsum[3] \end{minipage} \hfill \begin{minipage}[t]{0.3\linewidth}     \vspace{0pt}% Hack!! But does do the job     \begin{minipage}[t]{\linewidth}% Why is [t] required here         \parbox{\linewidth}{\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{foo}}     \end{minipage} \end{minipage} \end{document} Limit of a particular variety of infinite product/series Probability of the union of $3$ events? I need some clarification for why the probability of the union of three events is equal to the right side in the following:  $$P(E\cup F\cup G)=P(E)+P(F)+P(G)-P(E\cap F)-P(E\cap G)-P(F\cap G)+P(E\cap F\cap G)$$  What I don't understand is, why is the last term(intersection of all) added back just once, when it was subtracted three times as it appears from a Venn Diagram?  Here on page 3, this is explained but not in enough details that I can understand it: I want a translucent PNG overlayed on top of my screen (above all windows). I'm using this to mark a visible region while streaming.   So far I've figured out that qiv -transparent filename.png will add a mask to the window, but it's a boolean mask. I don't get translucent fading with the alpha channel.  I know several effects have opacity, and I can sent window opacity, so I'm hoping there's some way to display an image that way.  What program, tool, or widget can I use to blend an image onto the top of the desktop? "Open in Terminal" in Ubuntu 18.04 This option seems to have gone away after upgrading from Ubuntu 16.04. I tried installing nautilus-open-terminal but it is unable to locate the package for 18.04. Also trying to install nautilus-actions gives:  Package nautilus-actions is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source     How to fix this? Flex-box: Align last row to grid `time echo` got no output Related questions with over 99 score display incorrectly The score for the 4 questions are 111, 1218, 261 and 5 respectively, but they display 2 digits per line. This is an obvious bug in design. Is there a single word to describe a solution that hasn't been optimized? When I log in on a Windows 8 machine for the first time with my Microsoft Account (by providing an e-mail address), a new user folder is created:  C:\Users\dzinx_000   In previous versions of Windows, I could choose the name of this folder (it was equal to my username). As I use the commandline often, it is quite annoying to me.    Can I somehow rename it to dzinx?  Does simply renaming the folder break everything? I have two screens on my Windows 8.1 computer (with Classic Shell Start Menu installed). The thing is that I would like to have the taskbar's  (where the clock and all the icons like Skype or Spotify are, at the right) on both of my screens, and not only on the primary one.  Could you help me ? I would like not to install a heavy and paid software like DisplayFusion. I used to say "sharp sign" to refer to the # sign.   Today a friend told me that the correct term is number sign or hash sign or even just hash.  What is the difference between these options and what's the correct usage of the names for this sign? Billing Information Required for App Updates I'm trying to update 3 apps on my iPad and 3 things happen that never usually happen.   It asks me to sign in. It asks for my billing information. My card gets denied.   Now I know my card still works fine so that isn't the problem. The same thing happens when I try to install previously downloaded apps (that cloud button) or install new free apps.  I have no outstanding payments (is it even possible to have outstanding payments with Apple?) so why is this happening?  In case it's needed, I'm using an iPad Air running the latest version. 16GB Harddrive and Wi-Fi only.  I should also make it clear that "None" isn't an option for payment. Managing constructors with many parameters in Java In some of our projects, there's an class hierarchy that adds more parameters as it goes down the chain. At the bottom, some of the classes can have up to 30 parameters, 28 of which are just being passed into the super constructor.  I'll acknowledge that using automated DI through something like Guice would be nice, but because of some technical reasons, these specific projects are constrained to Java.   A convention of organizing the arguments alphabetically by type doesn't work because if a type is refactored (the Circle you were passing in for argument 2 is now a Shape) it can suddenly be out of order.  This question might be to specific and fraught with "If that's your problem, you're doing it wrong at a design level" criticisms, but I'm just looking for any viewpoints. How to get permission number by string : -rw-r--r-- TV series from 70s or 80s - 1 female pilot was cloned from the other pilot's fingernail This was a tv show that aired in the US in the '70s or early '80s, possibly on Saturday mornings. Since I was a child, I'm assuming it was a kids program? It was comic science fiction and set on a spaceship. The only 3 specific details I remember are:   The crew traveled between ship levels by using open "jump tubes" that were similar to a giant vacuum tube message system, only without any "container" for the passenger. They just stepped into an alcove with a big hole in the floor and ceiling, then shot up or down. Frequently the show would use this as a source of slap-stick comedy.  The captain was male. The 2 pilots were female, and 1 had been cloned from the other's fingernail cell. They often disagreed about which one was the clone. Find the sum of angles without trigonometry? How can I create a select menu in a shell script? I'm creating a simple bash script and I want to create a select menu in it, like this:  $./script  echo "Choose your option:"  1) Option 1   2) Option 2   3) Option 3   4) Quit     And according to user's choice, I want different actions to be executed. I'm a bash shell scripting noob, I've searched the web for some answers, but got nothing really concrete.