All posts tagged: reliably

Democrats see midterm hope in reliably red Iowa as Trump approval ratings sag

Democrats see midterm hope in reliably red Iowa as Trump approval ratings sag

Published by Sam Flores

IOWA — Connie Klug didn’t leave the Republican Party. The party left her, she said. She was raised in the GOP, considers herself a fiscal conservative and married a registered Republican. But decades ago, Klug said, she felt the party drifting. The isolation she felt intensified more recently, as she watched her former political comrades turn a blind eye to what she views as President Donald Trump’s abuses of power. “It’s astonishing to me how the Republican Party is just looking the other way. Trump continues to stretch the law, and no one’s doing anything,” Klug said from the kitchen of her home in Adel, Iowa, down a long dirt road about a 30-minute drive west of Des Moines. Klug was hosting several friends for a roundtable with Sarah Trone Garriott, a Democratic state senator and one of a handful of candidates who have at least a fighting chance of flipping Republican-held U.S. House seats in the former swing state that is now reliably red. Trone Garriott is running in the 3rd Congressional District, which …

I setup a router reboot timer, and it’s made my internet reliably faster

I setup a $4 router reboot timer, and it’s made my internet reliably faster

Published by skeptic

pros and cons Pros Simple, no-fuss gadget. Reboots every 24 hours. No apps, buttons, or settings. Cons No option to change reboot interval. No indication of how long until it reboots. Only one DC jack size. Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. It’s a fact of life that consumer-grade routers can be a bit… rubbish. Sure, you can solve many of your internet-related woes by buying a bunch of high-end gear and then connecting to a high-speed internet pipe, but most people don’t have the cash or inclination to do that. Most people just want their reels to load faster. Also: I retested Apple AirTags after 5 years – how they compare to Bluetooth tracker rivals I’ve been in tech now for three decades, and one thing I’ve known since the dawn of time — when internet bits flowed at speeds that seem glacial by today’s standards through modems attached to beige desktop PCs — is that one guaranteed way to speed up an internet connection is to reboot a router. But who has …

Gravity’s strength measured more reliably than ever before

Gravity’s strength measured more reliably than ever before

Published by skeptic

Stephan Schlamminger and his colleague, Vincent Lee, examine the torsion balance they used to measure the gravitational constant R. Eskalis/NIST For centuries, physicists have been trying to measure the strength of gravity, a number called “big G”. The measurements have never lined up with one another, hinting that either we don’t fully understand our experiments or perhaps we don’t fully understand gravity. The latest test doesn’t confirm either of these scenarios – but the extraordinary precision and care taken in the newest big G experiment may finally bring researchers closer to a consensus. Gravity is much weaker than the other fundamental forces, which makes it extraordinarily hard to measure it precisely. “As kids, we were all mesmerised when we played with magnets by the way they attract each other. The same is true of gravity – if you have two coffee cups and you put them in each hand, there is still a force between them, but it’s so small you can’t feel it, so you’re not as mesmerised,” says Stephan Schlamminger at the US …

Democrat Taylor Rehmet wins a reliably Republican Texas state Senate seat, stunning GOP : NPR

Democrat Taylor Rehmet wins a reliably Republican Texas state Senate seat, stunning GOP : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

FILE – The State Capitol is seen in Austin, Texas, on June 1, 2021. Eric Gay/AP hide caption toggle caption Eric Gay/AP Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a special election for the Texas state Senate on Saturday, flipping a reliably Republican district that President Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2024. Rehmet, a labor union leader and veteran, easily defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss, a conservative activist, in the Fort Worth-area district. With almost all votes counted, Rehmet had a comfortable lead of more than 14 percentage points. “This win goes to everyday working people,” Rehmet told supporters. His victory added to Democrats’ record of overperforming in special elections so far this cycle. Democrats said it was further evidence that voters under the second Trump administration are motivated to reject GOP candidates and their policies. Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin called it “a warning sign to Republicans across the country.” The seat was open because the four-term GOP incumbent, Kelly Hancock, resigned to take a statewide office. Hancock easily won election each time he ran …

Scientists use atomic switches to reliably connect individual molecules to electrodes

Scientists use atomic switches to reliably connect individual molecules to electrodes

Published by Jenni Sidey

Electronics keep shrinking, but silicon is starting to run into physical limits. To go smaller, researchers are turning to something far tinier than any transistor on a chip: single molecules that act as circuit elements in their own right. One of the biggest roadblocks has been surprisingly simple to state and very hard to solve. How do you make a clean, stable electrical connection between a single molecule and metal electrodes so those tiny parts can work together as a real circuit for you to use? Cracking the Wiring Problem At the Molecular Scale A team in Japan has now taken a major step toward that goal. Researchers at the Institute of Science Tokyo and partner institutes have built silver based atomic switches that can reliably connect individual molecules to electrodes in a solid device. Their work shows how to build and break metal filaments one atom thick, then let a single molecule slip into that gap and carry current. This sounds abstract, but the goal is concrete. If engineers can wire up molecules in …