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Submission + - Kavanaugh hearing - Senator Tells the Truth

Cutting_Crew writes: During the Kavanaugh hearing and after all the smearing and yelling Senator Ben Sasse unloads on Congress as to why we are where we are. Nine Supreme Court Justices (or any judge) shouldn't be making new law, finding loopholes to insert new law into existing law or using their personal feelings or preferences to rule. It should rule on what the legislature has passed.

As Ben Sasse explains this is why there is no much vitriol with supreme court nominees because the people have no other recourse, no other avenue to fight back because the legislature has been passing on responsibilities to other branches.

Submission + - Russian engineers show a vodka-fuelled nanosatellite propulsion system (ssau.ru)

dunkelfalke writes: At the SPEXP-2018 (a conference on small satellites) engineers of the University of Samara have presented a prototype of a liquid-fuelled thermoelectric engine meant for nanosatellites. The engine is esentially a steam rocket that uses a water-ethanol mixture with 40% alcohol by volume. The ethanol is supposedly added for its antifreeze properties.

The weight of the engine is 1.05 kg, the weight of the fuel is 0.45 kg

Comment Re:Plants & CO2 & sunlight (Score 2) 174

While parent is basically a throwaway, there's a grain of truth to it completely by accident.

If there was a reasonably accessible way to do this more efficiently, plants would use that instead of photosynthesis.

Doesn't mean there is no way to do it, but it's not likely going to be some obvious or simple process that nature could have managed on its own.

Submission + - Huawei Caught Cheating Performance Test For New Phones (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes: UL, the company behind the tablet and phone performance benchmark app 3DMark, has delisted new Huawei phones from its “Best Smartphone” leaderboard after AnandTech discovered the phone maker was boosting its performance to ace the app’s test. The phones delisted were the P20, P20 Pro, Nova 3 and the Honor Play. “After testing the devices in our own lab and confirming that they breach our rules, we have decided to delist the affected models and remove them from our performance rankings,” the company said in a statement.

For the Huawei case, the rules are actually a little fuzzy. Phones are permitted to adjust performance based on workload, which results in peaks or dips in performance for different apps, but they are not permitted to hard-code peaks in performance specifically for the benchmark app. Huawei reportedly claimed that the peak in performance seen during the run of the benchmark app was an intuitive jump determined by AI; however, when an unlabeled version of the benchmark test was run, the phones were unable to recognize it and, as a result, displayed lower performances. In other words, the phones aren’t so smart after all.

Submission + - Five-Eyes nations to force backdoors in encryption (itnews.com.au) 1

Bismillah writes: Last week, officials from the Five-Eyes countries (US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand) issued a statement saying tech providers will have to come up with a way to provide lawful access to encrypted data, or else. How tech companies do it is up to them, but they will have to do it. Plus, uploads of illicit content must be prevented. If it can't be prevented, providers have to take such content with all haste.

Submission + - New Horizons spots Ultima Thule (jhuapl.edu)

UncleJosh writes: On August 18th the New Horizons spacecraft used its LOng-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) to take 48 images in the direction of its next target, Ultima Thule, previously known as 2014 M69. After they were sent back to earth in the following days, those 48 images were added together and then a "template" of the same star field constructed from images taken by LORRI in September 2017 were subtracted to reveal the image of Ultima Thule exactly where the mission team expected it to be, but somewhat before they were sure they would be able to detect it. "It really is like finding a needle in a haystack. In these first images, Ultima appears only as a bump on the side of a background star that's roughly 17 times brighter, but Ultima will be getting brighter – and easier to see – as the spacecraft gets closer."

Submission + - Want to feed the world? Stop burning ethanol (americanthinker.com)

walterbyrd writes: In researching an article years ago, this reporter stumbled over a shattering revelation that makes the use of ethanol seem completely unacceptable. The question was posed: "Just how much food value are we burning up for the sake of this federally imposed silliness?"

The answer was found in a paper by D.K. Albino, published by the New England Complex Systems Institute: "The total amount of ethanol produced in the US in 2011 was 13.95 billion gallons, enough to feed 570 million people that year."

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