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Comment Space bar? (Score 1) 4

In many PDF readers I have used, the space bar key works the way you've described - scrolling by one screenful.

I'm not on my usual PC, but I've just tested both Adobe Reader and the Firefox built-in PDF viewer, and both scroll by a screenful both for the space bar, as well as for the page-down key. Neither of them scrolled by the "page" size.

Comment Re:That's why nobody sensible wants them (Score 1) 223

Submission + - Interest Rates Have Gone Negative in Europe

HughPickens.com writes: Matthew Yglesias writes at Vox that something really weird that economists thought was impossible is happening now in Europe where interest rates have gone negative on a range of debt — mostly government bonds from countries like Denmark, Switzerland, and Germany but also corporate bonds from Nestlé and, briefly, Shell. As in you give the owner of a Nestlé bond 100 euros, and four years later Nestlé gives you back less than that. "In the most literal sense, negative interest rates are a simple case of supply and demand. A bond is a kind of tradable loan," says Yglesias. "If there isn't much demand for buying the bonds, the interest rate has to go up to make customers more willing to buy. If there's a lot of demand, the interest rate will fall."

But why would you want to buy a negative interest rate loan? The question itself seems absurd – the very idea that anyone should have to pay someone to keep their money safe rather than demand an interest payment for the use of their money is counter-intuitive. But according to Yglesias, very rich people and big companies need to do something with their money and most European banks only guarantee 100,000 euros.Plowing the money into negative-yielding government bonds can appeal to banks when the alternative is to pay even more to store cash on deposit. J.P. Morgan calculates there is currently 220 billion euros of bank reserves subject to negative interest rates, which looks set to grow exponentially because of the European Central Bank’s forthcoming colossal bond-buying program. "It may be the case that if governments push the negative interest rates thing too far the entire economy would become a cash based system," says Merryn Somerset Webb. "But that might take a while to get to."

Submission + - Systemd looking to assimilate Gummiboot UEFI Boot Manager (phoronix.com)

stoborrobots writes: Phoronix notes that "systemd developers are looking at integrating Gummiboot" .

Gummiboot is a bootloader manager — it loads and executes either EFI images or EFI-aware linux kernels.

Gummiboot is infrequently updated, but Kay Sievers recently added some new functionality.

Mattias Geniar also has some other notes from Lennart Poettering's recent FOSDEM talk about the state of systemd.

Submission + - Science's Biggest Fail - Everything About Diet and Fitness

HughPickens.com writes: Scott Adams of Dilbert fame writes on his blog that science's biggest fail of all time is 'everything about diet and fitness':

I used to think fatty food made you fat. Now it seems the opposite is true. Eating lots of peanuts, avocados, and cheese, for example, probably decreases your appetite and keeps you thin. I used to think vitamins had been thoroughly studied for their health trade-offs. They haven’t. The reason you take one multivitamin pill a day is marketing, not science. I used to think the U.S. food pyramid was good science. In the past it was not, and I assume it is not now. I used to think drinking one glass of alcohol a day is good for health, but now I think that idea is probably just a correlation found in studies.

According to Adams, the direct problem of science is that it has been collectively steering an entire generation toward obesity, diabetes, and coronary problems. But the indirect problem might be worse: It is hard to trust science because it has a credibility issue that it earned. "I think science has earned its lack of credibility with the public. If you kick me in the balls for 20-years, how do you expect me to close my eyes and trust you?"

Comment Re:Double Irish (Score 1) 825

Agreed - I forgot that you can submit that information as part of your last tax return as well. From memory, there is a separate form for it as well, in case you leave your job on-or-before the financial year end date, but don't decide to leave the country until after you've submitted the previous year's tax return, and you don't have any income in this financial year.

But yeah, in the age-1 case you're talking about, you probably wouldn't even have a tax file number anyway...

Comment Re:Seamlessly replace keys? (Score 1) 88

You need slightly more understanding to go with your reading:

"Authentication" means "verification that you are talking to who you think you are talking to".

In SSH, before you send your authentication information to the server (for it to verify that it is talking to you), the server first sends it's own public key, and specific message signature with the corresponding private key. Your client checks if the public key is already known as belonging to the server (by checking known_hosts), and if not, asks if you are willing to trust the key. If you say yes, the client computes the same specific message, checks if the signature sent matches the message and public key. If this succeeds, then your client has successfully authenticated the server (verified that it is right server), and can trust that it is not a "man-in-the-middle" trying to steal your password.

After this, your client sends your authentication information to the server, and the server looks up your password in the password database, or verifies your public key, or whatever, to check your info. If this succeds, the server has authenticated your client, (verifed that your client is under your control), and can trust your client to run commands under your user id.

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