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Submission + - NASA Seeks Nuclear Power for Mars (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by joshtops
joshtops writes: As NASA makes plans to one day send humans to Mars, one of the key technical gaps the agency is working to fill is how to provide enough power on the Red Planet’s surface for fuel production, habitats and other equipment. One option: small nuclear fission reactors, which work by splitting uranium atoms to generate heat, which is then converted into electric power.
NASA’s technology development branch has been funding a project called Kilopower for three years, with the aim of demonstrating the system at the Nevada National Security Site near Las Vegas. Testing is due to start in September and end in January 2018.
The last time NASA tested a fission reactor was during the 1960s' Systems for Nuclear Auxiliary Power, or SNAP, program, which developed two types of nuclear power systems. The first system — radioisotope thermoelectric generators, or RTGs — taps heat released from the natural decay of a radioactive element, such as plutonium. RTGs have powered dozens of space probes over the years, including the Curiosity rover currently exploring Mars. [Nuclear Generators Power NASA Deep Space Probes (Infographic)]
The second technology developed under SNAP was an atom-splitting fission reactor. SNAP-10A was the first — and so far, only — U.S. nuclear power plant to operate in space. Launched on April 3, 1965, SNAP-10A operated for 43 days, producing 500 watts of electrical power, before an unrelated equipment failure ended the demonstration. The spacecraft remains in Earth orbit.

Submission + - Elderly drivers in Japan could be limited to vehicles with automatic braking 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Japan's National Police Agency has proposed several new rules to regulate elderly drivers, including limiting them to vehicles with automatic braking systems to increase public safety. The panel was tasked with finding ways to mitigate the risks associated with dementia, poor vision and deteriorating physical strength associated with seniors. Deadly traffic accidents caused by people 75 or older are on the rise, though fatal accidents overall are on the decline. Automatic braking systems apply the car's brakes if a collision is imminent.

Separately Japanese authorities are offering elderly drivers who give up their licences a discount on their funerals.

Submission + - Linux Mint 18.2 'Sonya' Ubuntu-based distro is here with Cinnamon, Mate, KDE, an (betanews.com)

Submitted by BrianFagioli
BrianFagioli writes: Another day, another distro! Today, Linux Mint 18.2 achieves stable release. While the usual desktop environments, Cinnamon and Mate, are available immediately, so too are both KDE and Xfce. It is nice to see all four of these flavors released at once, as sometimes the Mint Team opts to stagger them.

Code-named "Sonya," this operating system is based on Ubuntu 16.04 which is a long term support version. This means Linux Mint 18.2 will be supported until 2021. The kernel is fairly modern at version 4.8. To further highlight the continuing death of optical media, the excellent Brasero is no longer being included by default.

Submission + - SPAM: "The Hillary Leaks" - Wikileaks Releases 19,252 Previously Unseen DNC Emails

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The state department's release of Hillary emails may be over, but that of Wikileaks is just starting.

Moments ago, Julian Assange's whistleblower organization released over 19,000 emails and more than 8,000 attachments from the Democratic National Committee. This is part one of their new Hillary Leaks series, Wikileaks said in press release. To wit:

Today, Friday 22 July 2016 at 10:30am EDT, WikiLeaks releases 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the top of the US Democratic National Committee — part one of our new Hillary Leaks series. The leaks come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC: Communications Director Luis Miranda (10770 emails), National Finance Director Jordon Kaplan (3797 emails), Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer (3095 emails), Finanace Director of Data & Strategic Initiatives Daniel Parrish (1472 emails), Finance Director Allen Zachary (1611 emails), Senior Advisor Andrew Wright (938 emails) and Northern California Finance Director Robert (Erik) Stowe (751 emails). The emails cover the period from January last year until 25 May this year.

The emails released Friday cover a period from January 2015 to May 2016. They purportedly come from the accounts of seven key DNC staffers, listed above: Andrew Wright, Jordon Kaplan, Scott Comer, Luis Miranda, Robert Stowe, Daniel Parrish and Allen Zachary.

A quick scan of the emails focus on Bernie Sanders and dealing with the fallout of many Democrats opposing Hillary Clinton and calling the system “rigged.” Many of the emails exchanged between top DNC officials are simply the text of news articles concerning how establishment democrats can “deal” with the insurgent left-winger.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - New life in DOS old bones (kingofgng.com)

Submitted by KingofGnG
KingofGnG writes: After their well-deserved moment of glory which lasted from 1981 to 1995, command line-based operating systems for PC better known as “DOS” (Disk Operating System) should be extinct by now. And yet DOS, and particularly Microsoft’s MS-DOS and the open source projects directly inspired to it, still is a market niche populated by extremely peculiar usage scenarios, old users and enthusiasts that have no intention to quit the command line for good.

Submission + - SPAM: Almost Half of All TSA Employees Have Been Cited for Misconduct

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Almost half of all TSA employees have been cited for misconduct, and the citations have increased by almost 30 percent since 2013.

Of the total allegations filed, 90.8 percent were against TSA officers, while 4.8 percent were filed against managers or administrators. Of the areas of misconduct, “Attendance & Leave” sees the highest number of offenders, while “Failure to Follow Instructions,” “Screening & Security,” “Neglect of Duty,” and “Disruptive Behavior” round out the top five.

It also appears that the TSA has been reducing the sanctions it has been giving out for this bad behavior.

Submission + - Pokemon Go Banned by Fatwa in Saudi Arabia (usatoday.com)

Submitted by EmagGeek
EmagGeek writes: Top clerics in Saudi Arabia have issued a fatwa banning the playing of Pokemon Go as a form of gambling.

The decree was issued by General Secretariat of the Council of Senior Scholars on the website of the General Presidency for Scholarly Research and Ifta, Arab News reported Wednesday.

The edict actually updates an existing ban on the Pokemon card and video games before they morphed into the mobile phone virtual reality game that has swept the world.

The clerics issued the old fatwa, (No. 21,758), 16 years ago, declaring the original Japanese game a form of gambling, which is forbidden in Islam,

Submission + - Milo Yiannopoulos Permanently Suspended from Twitter

Submitted by Raenex
Raenex writes: Breitbart writer and conservative provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos, was permanently suspended from Twitter amid a dust-up with Ghostbusters (2016) actress Leslie Jones. Trolls had been harassing Jones with racist tweets after the movie's opening, prompting agitated responses from Jones. Milo entered the fray with, "If at first you don't succeed (because your work is terrible), play the victim" and "EVERYONE GETS HATE MAIL FFS". After some back and forth, Milo was eventually blocked by Jones and banned by Twitter after CEO Jack Dorsey became involved.

While outlets such as TechCrunch signaled their approval, Milo summed up his banning with the following: "Twitter is intent on protecting free speech, as long as you are a Hollywood actress who bravely tweets about white people, or a New York globalist advocating for violence against Donald Trump. They’ve made it clear that being gay and conservative doesn’t get me past the velvet rope into their free speech club, which is looking more and more like the same liberal echo chamber the mainstream media turned into decades ago."

Submission + - SPAM: EPA's gasoline efficiency tests are garbage

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The tests the EPA uses to establish the fuel efficiency of cars are unreliable, and likely provide no valid information at all about the fuel efficiency of the cars tested.

The law requiring cars to meet these fuel efficiency tests was written in the 1970s, and specifically sets standards based on the technology then. Worse,

[T]he EPA doesn’t know exactly how its CAFE testing correlates with actual results, because it has never done a comprehensive study of real-world fuel economy. Nor does anyone else. The best available data comes from consumers who report it to the DOT—hardly a scientific sampling.

Other than that, everything is fine. Companies are forced to spend billions on this regulation, the costs of which they immediately pass on to consumers, all based on fantasy and a badly-written law. Gee, I’m sure glad we never tried this with healthcare!

Submission + - Newt Gingrich Calls for US Muslims to Take Sharia Test, Face Deportation 2

Submitted by flopsquad
flopsquad writes: Following the July 14th terror attack in Nice, France, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has called for US Muslims to be tested for their belief in Sharia law, and if so, deported:

Western civilisation is in a war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in Sharia they should be deported.

While the cleverest few might try to defeat such a test by answering "No," Mr. Gingrich laid out additional steps to shore up the plan:

The first step is you have to ask them the questions. The second step is you have to monitor what they're doing on the Internet. The third step is, let me be very clear, you have to monitor the mosques. I mean, if you're not prepared to monitor the mosques, this whole thing is a joke.

Gingrich also opined that:

Anybody who goes on a website favoring Isis, or al-Qaeda, or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony, and they should go to jail.

No word on the 1st and 4th Amendment implications of his proposals, nor on where Gingrich plans to deport US citizens who fail his Sharia test.

Submission + - It's a federal crime to visit a website after being told not to vis (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Okian Warrior
Okian Warrior writes: he U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has handed down a very important decision on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Facebook v. Vachani which decision is quite troubling. Its reasoning appears to be very broad — it says that if you tell people not to visit your website, and they do it anyway knowing you disapprove, they’re committing a federal crime of accessing your computer without authorization.

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