Short Takes – 11-16-23

House conservatives give Speaker Johnson a ‘mulligan’ in funding fight — for now. TheHill.com article. Pull quote: ““I gotta tell you, you can’t assume my vote on any bill if the Speaker is going to roll us,” Roy said Tuesday on Fox Business.”

Electronic Weapons: Jamming What Cannot be Jammed. StrategyPage.com article. Pull quote: “Meanwhile, spoofing satellite navigation systems has become more popular and practical because it does not require expensive or high-tech equipment. While American weapons and military navigation systems have a backup in the form of unjammable INS systems, these are useless if the spoofing is not detected. American systems are supposed to detect spoofing and revert to INS but the Americans do not disclose details of how these systems work in order to make it difficult for spoofing systems to be modified to be less detectable. That is one reason why the U.S. has not released detailed information on spoofing incidents because some of them may have evaded the INS spoofing detection tech.”

Here’s the Proof There’s No Government Alien Conspiracy Around Roswell. Wired.com article. Pull quote: “To me, the fact that they’d [Fermi and Teller] been wandering around Los Alamos three years later wondering why aliens hadn’t visited is the most compelling single piece of evidence we have that absolutely nothing of interest happened outside Roswell in July 1947.” An interesting look at the Roswell phenomenon.

Wave-Powered Desalination System Produces 13,000 Gallons of Drinking Water a Day From Each Buoy. GoodNewsNetwork.com article. Pull quote: “They have tested their buoy desalinators in harsh weather of 6-meter waves (nearly 30 feet) and found they work well. These early modules have already been sold to communities in Chile, one of the driest parts of the world.” Company web site.

Ransomware Group Files SEC Complaint Over Victim’s Failure to Disclose Data Breach. SecurityWeek.com article. Pull quote: “In an apparent effort to increase its chances of getting paid, the malicious hackers claim to have filed a complaint with the SEC against MeridianLink, accusing the company of failing to disclose the breach within four business days, as required by rules announced by the agency in July.”

New plant hardiness map, used by gardeners nationwide, is unveiled. Phys.org article. Pull quote: “"Overall, the 2023 map is about 2.5 degrees warmer than the 2012 map across the conterminous United States," Daly said. "This translated into about half of the country shifting to a warmer 5-degree half zone, and half remaining in the same half zone. The central plains and Midwest generally warmed the most, with the southwestern U.S. warming very little."”